Year: 2008

Questioning our Sanity Again

Fred Lebrun asks the question again:

Well, if it’s true, why in the world would you go out and buy something the government is going to take away from you anyway? Of course, the idea of confiscating our legally owned and permitted handguns is totally insane and flies in the face of where we’re at nationally.

Confiscation is not the real fear driving this.  The fear is that Obama will reenact a broad based manufacturing or sales ban on a large number of commonly used firearms.  His transition team has already called for it.  At this point it’s not paranoia.

And I for one say amen to that. I’m a handgun owner, and rifle and shotgun owner, and an avid hunter.

Avid hunter?  How do you feel about this?  Of course, he goes on to call for more gun control.

UPDATE: Joe Huffman has more.

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Consider it a Warning

I know that Bryan Miller would prefer just to stick his hands over his ears and shout “I can’t hear you.” but the proliferation of articles in news outlets around the country should serve as a warning to the incoming administration.  They’ve been flowing into my inbox all week:

I could sit here all day and do this, and get articles from every corner of the country.  Google alerts have been absolutely wild with stories like this.  How many millions of purchasers does it take to drive a sales boom of this magnitude?  How many millions more people would like to buy now, but can’t afford it?  Is an organized and motivated group of people like this one that is politically wise to cross?  These are things the Obama transition team needs to be thinking about.  The unfortunate thing is, I doubt they are.

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Lead Ammo Ban Proposed

The Humane Society of the United States, which endorsed Barack Obama this election, is calling for a nationwide ban on lead ammunition:

“If there was any doubt about the urgent need to rid our country of lead ammunition, here is proof positive,” said Andrew Page, senior director of the Wildlife Abuse Campaign for The HSUS.

This could be one way they come at us folks.  Get ready.  The CDC has already debunked the need for this, but HSUS is coming off a stunning electoral victory, and they will want to make the most of us.  Do you think Ray Schoenke is going to speak out against this?  Don’t hold your breath.  ASHA accomplished their goal — they got Obama and the Democrats elected.  For the next four years, fighting this stuff is going to fall on us.  Hunters need to wake up.

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Why It’s Not the 1930s Again

For those who are worried that we’re reliving the 1930s, whether you think we’re about to repeat nazi Germany, or even be dealt another “New Deal”, you should take a look at this electoral map of 1932:

1932 Electoral Map
1932 Electoral Map

Roosevelt defeated Hoover by a margin of 57 to 40 percent.  With the exception of Pennsylvania, Delaware, Connecticut, and rural New England, which were traditional Republican strongholds at the time, FDR won every other state, including all of The South, The West, and the Midwest.  His win in 1936 was even more spectacularly lopsided.  The last time we saw wins of this magnitude?  Ronald Reagan.

Folks, this is not a country that is about to embrace socialism, or yield to a new Obama dictatorship.  They are not about to send their sons and daughters off to join a paramilitary secret police force.  We are not living in that world.  The left pulled out all the stops, and played every play in their book, and the best they managed was 53%.

What do we have to watch for?  The things we know progressives like doing.  More government entitlements.  More gun control.  We have to be prepared to fight this national service corps, not because it’ll become the next SS, but because it’s a bad idea.  We will definitely have a tax fight on our hands.  We have to be prepared to wage the political fight of our lives to stop these measures, especially new entitlements, which are almost impossible to get rid of once you have them.  But we’re not in a death match to stave off Soviet or Nazi America.  Not yet, at least.

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Gun Sales a Terror Watch Indicator?

Apparently the folks at BioDefense Corporation think citizens exercising their Second Amendment rights are terrorists waiting to happen:

“A disturbing increase in reports that gun sales are dramatically increasing now that the presidential election is over indicates that other forms of intentional mayhem such as bio-chemical assaults might also increase,” said BioDefense Corporation ( http://www.biod.com), producers of the new MAIL DEFENDER complete mailroom security solution.

Pretty clearly it’s a short path from buying firearms to launching an elaborate bio-terrorist attack!  Sounds like they are using any excuse to drum up business to me. Either that or it’s an indication of how far out of touch with the rest of America Bostonians have become.

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Academics on the Gun Rush of 2008

From a UCLA Professor of Anthropology:

I don’t know where to begin on the current state of insanity in the U.S. Let’s see, maybe guns is a good place to start. Gun sales are reported to have risen noticeably since Obama was elected. Some of this was probably just the usual paranoid insanity of the NRA gun nuts. Some are convinced that Obama means to take their guns away. If that were true, what would be the point of buying more? But of course these new guns, along with all the others they possess, could be hidden for use when the government tries to take over their guns. When you suggest to these nuts that their rifles, pistols, and even AK 47’s wouldn’t be much use against the weapons the government could employ they either look blank or argue they should be allowed 50 caliber machine guns and even howitzers and tanks. As one of them put it the other day, “if you can tow it behind your pickup it ought to be legal.” Who can argue against such logic (insanity). As near as I can determine Obama has a perfectly sensible approach to the problem of guns, recognizing the difference between the needs of rural dwellers and inner city gangs and etc. He has never suggested taking away everyone’s guns. But nothing is sensible when it comes to the NRA.

I’m always amazed at the total lack of respect of people of the left have for our beliefs and arguments.  Just crass dismissal, without even an attempt to intellectually refute us.  You’re just “nuts” and “paranoid.”  Especially when it’s pretty clear this university professor has never bothered to investigate Obama’s record on guns, which includes a lengthy career of trying to destroy the Second Amendment.

And finally, there is the tired notion of an armed population being obsolete.  I’ve said in the past, you can’t stop your government from killing you, but the use of political violence, which is one of the evils that the Second Amendment is meant to protect against, is not about killing for the sake of killing, it’s about coercion.  It’s about forcing people to submit to the will of others who wish to rule over them.

These are radical ideas, and not something I think most people sitting in the ivory towers of academia really wish to think about.  I can’t say I blame them.  They are unpleasant ideas, representing circumstances very different than we currently face. But societies looking to avoid such unpleasantness have often found it, and been unprepared.  Our good professor would like to dismiss us because we choose to engage in the intellectual exercise.  It’s part of the Bill of Rights, and something our founders, having just emerged from a successful revolution, thought about a great deal.  I think we do them a disservice if we don’t keep their ideas alive and relevant, regardless of how sound our political system is at the moment.

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This Isn’t Going to Help

Congressman Broun of Georgia is warning of an Obama dictatorship:

Broun cited a July speech by Obama that has circulated on the Internet in which the then-Democratic presidential candidate called for a civilian force to take some of the national security burden off the military.

“That’s exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did,” Broun said. “When he’s proposing to have a national security force that’s answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he’s showing me signs of being Marxist.”

Obama needs to invoke Godwin here and declare victory.  I’m not exactly in favor of Obama’s plan for national indentured servitude of young people, but can we dispense with the fear mongering and start worrying about why large numbers of Republican voters stayed home this election?   Can we start worrying about why young people are increasingly lost to Republican candidates?   Obama won.  Get over it.  He’s not going to be the moderate centrist people are hoping for, but he’s also not going to be Hitler or Joe Stalin either.  I can promise you I won’t like what’s coming, but right now we have to worry about being strong opposition, not floating paranoid theories about brownshirts.  I expect to find that kind of crap coming from obscure web sites and blogs (you know, like this one), not from the mouth of a United States Congressman.

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