April 2010 – Page 6 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Two Kinds of Protest

Hey, if having more open carry means we get more of the other, I’m fall for it:

Portland is becoming a popular site for people who want to show that they can do things that are legal, just not things usually done.

Earlier this month, Congress Street was home to a parade of topless women, who were asserting their right to appear in public while shirtless, which is the same as it is for a man.

This Sunday, Back Cove will be the site of a demonstration by gun rights enthusiasts, who will be asserting their rights to openly carry firearms.

Though, I seem to recall there was an incident in New Hampshire where someone combined these two forms of protest, and asserted her right to carry a firearm topless.

All Good Memes Must Come to an End

As some of you might have heard, the German film company who owns the rights to Downfall has been issuing DMCA Takedown notices to YouTube trying to get the parodies pulled from the Internets. That, of course, has created the inevitable Hitler Parody:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBO5dh9qrIQ[/youtube]

It’s an old and tired joke, but I’m sorry to see it go. Especially like this. The great irony is I actually bought a copy of Downfall because of the parodies, and it’s a great piece of historical drama. I would highly recommend it.

Hat tip to Eugene Volokh.

Time to Play the Blame Game

The failure of the Second Amendment March is all NRA’s fault! Funny,Â I seem to recall seeing a reminder in NRA’s Grassroots Alerts for several weeks approaching the march. The problem is, our folks aren’t much for protesting. That’s not anyone’s fault, it’s just the nature of the beast.Â I seem to recall back in February of last year saying as much:

The main that will likely go wrong is you get, if youâ€™re really lucky, a thousand or so to show up.Â Even in this lousy economy, most gun owners have a job, and have families, which means they have better things to do than to attend protests.

PA gun rights groups organize a rally every spring in Harrisburg, and if it get enough people to fill the Capitol Rotunda, itâ€™s a good turn out.

I would say that the D.C. rally got some decent press coverage. It wasn’t really a failure. They tried to do something positive, and trying is more than most people who are in this issue ever do. There’s been no harm done. I don’t think there’s any reason to throw blame around. Get back on the horse and try something else.

Open Carry Ban in California Advancing

Covered by Jeff Soyer. It’s passed out of the Public SafetyÂ Committee, and now goes to Appropriations. Here’s a list of appropriations committee members. Now is the time to contact them and express opposition. The bill is AB1934. Having skimmed over the bill, I think the worst effect this has is not just banning openly carrying an unloaded handgun, but also making loaded open carry in an unincorporated area, which previously has been lawful in California, unlawful. It would seem to do this by removing a part of the law that explicitly defines carrying in a belt holster openly as not being concealed.

Practically speaking, I don’t know how many people availed themselves of open carry in an unincorporated area, and I don’t know how much of California is unincorporated, so it’s hard to assess the magnitude of this loss, should it come to pass.

North Carolina Carry Laws

Given what the law is for North Carolina, I think I’ll probably leave mine at home when we go to the NRA Annual Meeting in Charlotte. When it’s in Pittsburgh next year, you’ll be able to carry. The only place off limits in PA are court houses, and (maybe) primary and secondary schools. That’s it.

Brady Fundraising on Open Carry

We’ve already seen the Brady Campaign partner with new media fundraising and organizational groups like Credo, who worked with them on the Starbucks Campaign. Now we notice they are working with a group called Karma411, which is a new mediaish fundraising group. They seem to have begun a campaign to try to raise money using the open carry issue as a lever to drive people’s interest in their cause.

I’m going to be watching this campaign closely. They’ve set a goal of 10,000 dollars. Will they reach it? So far they are only 20 dollars toward their goal. What I want to see is how much traction Brady gets with this issue. This is going to reveal some pretty critical pieces of information in relation to this fight:

New media fundraising is going to give us some kind of idea how their message resonates with younger people, who are going to be the target audience of this new media message. If they can bring another generation into the gun control fight, that’s going to beÂ beneficialÂ to them in the long run.
It give us some idea how much money there is in scaring people about open carry. We’ve documented here in thorough detail that the Brady folks are having difficulty raising money. Is this an issue they could use to turn that around? Is the issue dead, or is it just that they’ve been going aboutÂ fundraisingÂ the wrong way?
It gives us more information for our own internal debates about the issue. If Brady can’t raise any money on it, those of us who have beenÂ detractorsÂ of open carry as a strategy will have to accept that despite what the public may or may not think about it, it’s not an issue that is going to hurt us, because the other side can’t do much with it. On the other hand, if they beat their fundraising goals, that’s a critical piece of information that open carry might be motivating renewed interest in gun control.

None of this will be perfect or conclusive information, no matter what way it goes, because we don’t really know what karma411’s fundraising effectiveness is. Ten grand is a sideshow of a fundraising effort anyway, even for the Brady Campaign. But the important thing is the names they get from this can be used to raise further money. I’ll be curious to see how this turns out for them, because it’ll at least be an important bit of information we can use.

I Don’t Think They Understand the Process

Sometimes I read what politicians do, and it makes me wonder how many times they’ve stumbled across the stupid stick.

The House Transportation Committee voted unanimously to report as amended HB 914 which amends Title 75 requiring certain first time DUI offenders to have their vehicles equipped with an ignition interlock device and increase the required time period for ignition interlock to third and subsequent offenders. After the vote was taken, several committee members raised questions regarding the bill and its potential impact. A motion to reconsider the vote was made but eventually withdrawn with the understanding there will be further discussions regarding the bill.

Typically the questions are asked and impact considered before the damn vote.

In other news, I hope that those who have made one unfortunate mistake of driving while a little over the limit are willing to give up mouthwash and/or use of their cars.

Fight Continues Against Pittsburgh L&S

Looks like NRA is appealing in the decision from Pittsburgh.

DCVRA Reactions

Both Roll Call and the WaPo have pretty good articles on this topic. It looks like the Dems were on board with moving the bill, until there was an attempt to fix DC’s carry laws, which soured the deal. It looks like it would have made DC Alaska carry, but it’s hard to say whether that’s really the case, or whether it was a shall-issue provision. It’s Elanor Holmes Norton, and I doubt she understands the issue in detail.

Why up the ante? I don’t really know, since NRA doesn’t share with me the details of their legislative strategy. I can only speculate what’s going on. There are folks who believe they are conspiring with the GOP to kill the DCVRA, using the gun language as a hammer. I’m not sure why NRA would be all the concerned about DC voting rights (and they shouldn’t be), but it’s quite possible the minority critters are using the gun issue strategically in this manner. If you’re a lobbyist, what are you going to do? “No, we’ll score that vote against you and lower your grade if you offer that that amendment which favors our issue!” You’ll lose credibility quickly if you start doing that.

But either way I think we come out ahead. There’s not much to lose by upping the ante. The worst that happens is we don’t pass anything, and the Court cases challenging DC’s laws go ahead. That’s a slower, and less predictable path, with the possibility of setting bad precedent, but there’s at least a way to move forward. But even if you lose the legislative battle, you win, because the fight reveals useful information. We’ve had a few gunfights in the Senate already, the most important one being when we barely lost on the Thune Amendment. We haven’t had a gunfight in the House because the leadership isn’t allowing votes to come to the floor. Ahead of the 2010 elections, it would be really nice to get some of these newer “pro-gun” mostly Dem politicians on record with a vote. So I could see reasons why NRA wants to pick a fight, rather than just letting the Senate version move ahead without one. This puts the anti-gun leadership in a very tough position, and forces a lot of the newer politicians to put their money where their mouth is.

It sucks that rights of DC residents are tied up in this game, and I’m sympathetic to that frustration, but I think, in the end, one way or another, this is going to work out. We have a lot more options today than we did ten years ago.

Bombing is Such a Negative Term

I love the fact that the GOP candidate who actually has a serious shot at winning HI-1 is changing the term from money bomb to money wave.

Like Ted Kennedy’s seat going to Scott Brown, this has some symbolism as well because it is being billed as “Obama’s home district.” I don’t know his position on the gun issue, but having a Republican win that seat will likely make the anti-gun Democratic leadership quake. They already nearly caved on getting ride of DC’s gun laws after the Brown win, so we might be able get more out of them if this seat flips. More importantly, I think it will remind Democrats that gun owners are one group they haven’t “officially” pissed off yet, so they really shouldn’t cross the line to do so now.

In the same way that I remind folks that Massachusetts is not like the rest of the country, Hawaii is also fairly solidly Democratic. This seat is D+11. I mean this is my grandmother’s district. That won’t mean much for 99.9% of the people who read this, but just know that I have lost a lot of hair trying to have any kind of serious discussion about issues that goes beyond “it feels good.” Even more frustrating is that because she can afford to live in the district, anyone who makes her feel good gets a decent donation.

From what I’ve read in passing about this race, the two Democrats may well split their vote so the GOP can win. The Democratic leadership is behind one candidate, while unions and others have lined up behind the other Democrat. Also, the Democrats couldn’t find a single person in the district to run – both live elsewhere.

This will be an interesting one to watch. Just like Massachusetts, Hawaii has been known to elect Republicans from time-to-time. (Gov. Linda Lingle is apparently the only Republican in history to make my grandmother “feel good.”) And apparently the seat was once Republican for a whooping two terms back in the late 80s/early 90s.