Month: March 2010

I seem to have upset some people over at the Firing Pin Journal by suggesting that it’s not too much to ask to be civil to our opponents in this debate. Also at Gun Free Zone. I’ll be honest, as I was introducing myself to the Brady Folks outside the Supreme Court building during McDonald, I was half expecting someone to snap a photo of me shaking hands with Paul Helmke and Peter Hamm and putting it on a web site somewhere “See! This proves everything we ever thought about Sebastian! He’s really one of them!”

But really, it would be hard for me to function in my world if I held people’s differing political beliefs against them. My grandmother was anti-gun. My aunt would ban them all. My mother was not particularly fond of them either. I have a coworker who wouldn’t ban them, but would force you to lock them up a gun club and leave them there. This is a coworker who I’ve long allied with, through good management and bad (mostly bad). I’ve had heated arguments with him about this topic. But we both shared the same vision for what we wanted the company to be and have cooperated to promote hat vision within the company’s internal politics (our vision is winning now, which is why I’ve been so busy). I’ve dated at least one anti-gun girlfriend, who grudgingly worked her way toward ambivalence, and let me take her little brother shooting.

It’s very difficult for me to understand holding any kind of  personal animosity toward the people at the Brady Campaign, or most of the other gun control promoting groups when there are people I am very close with in my personal life who would do worse to my rights given half the chance. I wouldn’t last long if I gave the cold shoulder to everyone once I found out their position on the gun issue if it didn’t agree with mine. I certainly wouldn’t last long if I wouldn’t let the disagreement go.

That’s not to say I don’t understand the resentment of being looked down upon by people who have certain cultural prejudices about the kind of people gun owners are. I do. But the solution to that is to be a functional, normal member of society, and to be up front about what you did this past weekend if they ask. The first time you tell your anti-gun friend or coworker “Shot a match this weekend.” he or she might recoil in horror. By the fifth time they’ll be asking how you did. They may never agree with you, but you can at least start to break down the worst that people think/fear about gun owners and people who shoot.

So showing civility to the other side is something I do believe is part of being a good citizen, but I also think it’s a smart strategy for moving the issue forward as well. If upon finding someone is anti-gun your response is never to speak to them again, you’re missing out on an opportunity to break down preconceptions and prejudices. How do you all deal with anti-gunners in your lives?

I feel like I’m picking on Abby Spangler a lot lately, but she’s just such a deliciously easy target. She’s pretty happy about this article Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign wrote suggesting that they are just getting started with this Starbucks thing. She comments on her Facebook page:

STARBUCKS, you are making a tragic mistake allowing guns. You are on practically every block in Manhattan, in neighborhood after neighborhood across America — and somehow you think that you shouldn’t have to be in the middle of this debate. If you weren’t in the MIDDLE of every community, maybe you wouldn’t be — but you are. Is allowing guns in Starbucks the way you reward the customers who have given you so much money in our communities? WOW. We will be protesting you allowing guns next to our children eating scones tomorrow in Virginia, just as others have already done in Seattle.

I can promise you, Abby, that Starbucks is well aware they are in ever corner of every community in America, which is precisely why they are wisely not inserting themselves into this debate. There are four Starbucks locations in Bismarck, North Dakota. There’s one in Lawton, Oklahoma. Two in Moscow, Idaho. Two in Richmond, Kentucky.

Why would Starbucks want to risk offending a not insignificant part of their customer base in these areas. The vast majority of Starbucks locations are not in Manhattan. I would wager the majority of their locations aren’t even in major cities. So, Abby, gun owners and people who have licenses to carry guns are giving business to Starbucks too, and they know that. That’s why they aren’t bending.

Some folks have taken a bit of an exception with my post saying I’d lie and cheat my way to saving the Second Amendment if I thought that’s what it would take. But don’t mistake my statement as a suggestion that I believe lying and cheating is an effective tactic. It’s not. In fact, I think it can disastrously backfire. Take this article by Josh Sugarmann, where he once again tries to conflate semi-auto rifles pattern after military rifles as “assault rifles.” Sugarmann’s tactics did result in some short term victories for the gun control movement, but over the long term, they destroyed it, because the issue he pushed awakened the sleeping giant. Sometimes I thank God HCI followed up with an Assault Weapons Ban instead of a series of smaller strategic moves against us that we never could have mitigated or gotten rid of.

But back to my original point, what I meant to illustrate is that if folks are going to go around saying things like “Vote from the rooftops,” or declaring that you’re willing to shoot your fellow Americans, if need be, to defend the Bill of Rights, then it seems to me that we owe it to our country to exhaust all possible political tactics, including dirty, dishonorable, and abhorrent ones, if it could result in stopping a push against us. If you admit that you’re willing to do anything, then you’re no better than the gun control folks. They are only doing anything they need to do to achieve victory. We have vastly different versions of what we’d like America to be, and the gun issue touches very directly on how Americans view their relationship with their government, which is why it’s such a contentious issue. But if the alternative to the political process involves civil unrest, or God forbid, civil war, we owe each other the courtesy of understanding. That’s what I’m saying. Strategy should be evaluated based on its effectiveness, and what other means are available. We should always choose the straight and narrow when that’s open to us, and will get the job done. We’re fortunate, in our case, to be the side with the most options.

Joe noticed the joke I made on Twitter about taking some Starbucks over to the Brady folks on the fairly chilly day that McDonald was heard. I did not follow through with it, because I was focused on getting in to see the case, but I thought it would be a good hearted ribbing if I could have pulled it off. Either way, I was rather surprised that in the comments people were saying things like:

I see no problem whatsoever with being rude to people who’s sole intention is to infringe upon the rights and liberties of their fellow countrymen…who have demonstrated a willingness to stoop to any level to forward their agenda including slander, obfuscation and outright lies.

These are not honorable people with whom we simply have a disagreement, their actions daily prove that they are dishonorable and are beneath respect.

Until things devolve to the point where we arrive at what Clausewitz would call “politics by other means” then they are, in fact, “people with whom we simply have a disagreement.” The entire point of a political system is so that we can air these disagreements and avoid having to enter politics by other means. To do that, it takes a certain amount of separating politics from the personal.

A political struggle has nothing to do with honesty, honor, or integrity. Those are foreign concepts to the process. Politics is not honorable, it is dirty. Ask yourself this: if you had good data that strongly indicated that gun control actually worked, and that respecting the Second Amendment cost society greatly, would you support getting rid of it? Or would you use every means at your disposal to preserve it? Would you manipulate statistics to be more in your favor? Use rhetoric that would be more persuasive to the public, even if you knew in your heart you were bending the truth? If you say yes, you’re really no better than the Brady folks. If you say no, you’re not really dedicated to this fight.

While I was in DC this weekend, I saw the Temperance Fountain, which stands as monument to a movement that was once so powerful it amended the constitution. It is maintained by the Cogswell Society, who’s motto is “To temperance; I’ll drink to that.” I would like nothing more than there to be a future tribute of this nature to the gun control movement, and I don’t care what I have to do to get there. Much like the great leftist organizers, I am not interested in honor, or having clean hands. I want to win. I am no better than the Brady folks.

I will do anything to keep the Second Amendment alive, and send the gun control movement into political irrelevance. Because of that, I don’t think it’s too much to accept them as fellow citizens, who simply have the misfortune of being on the opposite, and God willing, losing side of this political argument. Is it really too much sacrifice to be civil and magnanimous? It is really wrong to have some understanding of how it would feel if the shoe were on the other foot?

I sincerely hope if the shoe is ever on the other foot again, that I can remain as civil to them as they were able to be with the pro-gun people who spoke with them outside of McDonald. I seems to me, as long as our American Republic continues to function, we owe that to each other.

Take a good look at who the most vocal opponents of the gun control women are at this Seattle counter protest:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwn6dxD_MTI[/youtube]

Even though you hear the term, “men with guns” they aren’t men arguing back at you sweetheart. Not that I favor these forms of confrontational protest, but women are fast becoming our most passionate advocates.

Abby Spangler, head of Protest Easy Guns, seems to have gender issues. Bitter and I have been giving her a bit of a hard time on Twitter with some of the things she’s been saying about “men with guns.” This is representative of something we’ve seen a few times from Abby:

And to Starbucks corporate management: How’s it feel to be kissing up to guys carrying guns drinking your coffee? FEEL GOOD? Wouldn’t you rather be kissing up to the women of America? FEEL OUR HEAT at Saturday’s Starbucks protest. All are welcome.

So no women carry guns eh? Even though they are the fastest growing category of concealed carry license holders? Look at Arizona’s statistics? Sorry, not all men, and lots of women.

She obviously wasn’t at Cafe Berlin in DC, after the McDonald oral arguments on Tuesday. Sandy Froman was kind enough to invite us out to lunch with NRA’s General Counsel folks and Dave Hardy. There were ten of us, and five were women, four of whom are accomplished attorneys. One of them, Sandy, is also a past President of the National Rifle Association. These are women, Abby, not men, and they are all thoroughly dedicated to protecting the rights of other women to keep and bear arms. This isn’t about “men with guns.” It never has been. Time to turn off the caps lock and get real.

UPDATE: More sexism here. This being promoted by the Brady Campaign, no less.