2010 – Page 161 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Way to Stay Classy, Anti-Gun Folks

I think perhaps the Brady folks need to remove some tags on their photos. Take a look at this Facebook picture, and hover over some of the pictures and look at the captions. Apparently some anti-gun folks believe gun owners are compensating for “a small wiener” and lack of getting “laid in high school?” And that these folks are “assholes?” Now, based on the fact that it looks like some people have gotten anti-Brady and pro-gun stuff in there, I would say they likely were put there by misguided supporters, rather than staff. But it doesn’t appear they are policing the tags very well.

UPDATE: The Bradys say they are removing the tags. It’s tough escaping the fact that this is a culture war issue.

Men With Guns, Eh Abby?

I wanted to share with you a comment from a few days ago from “One of the Women” we had lunch with post-McDonald:

Regarding those four women lawyers you were at lunch with after McDonald oral arguments, I was one of them. Two of those women lawyers had arrived in the dead of night, alone, and had to park their cars in an isolated area in a parking garage at Union Station. 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. Each woman was alone. It was dark. Neither woman is physically strong. Each had to navigate her way across a dark parking lot to a dark elevator room, down an enclosed elevator, through a dim and unpopulated area inside Union Station.

And each woman had to do it absolutely unarmed. One of the women is soon to be 60 and could have been beaten to a pulp by most any male over the age of 16. The area was accessible by anyone. And the laws in D.C. prohibited her from the most obvious self-protection â€” a small, hand-held firearm. A 60-year-old woman attorney with an absolutely spotless record, and D.C. laws would not allow her to have the means of self-protection with her. There was no security officer any where near, and a phone call for help would have required an officer driving to Union Station, driving up four levels of a parking garage, and looking for a dead or mangled body.

Abby Spangler needs to start thinking of women and of womenâ€™s safety.

Absolutely. Bitter and I did the same walk, later in the morning than they did. I had to leave my gun at home, because despite the fact that I can legally carry in Virginia, I can’t have a gun in the District, even locked in my vehicle, unloaded and in a locked container. For all intents and purposes, my Second Amendment rights did not exist for that weekend. As great a victory as Heller was, and as great a victory as I believe McDonald will be, we still have a long way to go.

Coverage of Starbucks Protest

From NBC Washington. A fairly balanced report. Noticed at least one Brady staffer in the crowd — Dennis Henigan. Our side managed to come across without seeming nutty, which I think is great. Sure, there’s a guy open carrying a rifle, but the context is perfect. Notice the guy who had the concealed gun? Right next to it is an iPhone, and he has a cup of Starbucks in his hand. So much for Abby’s implicit suggestion that gun owners are not people of means enough to spend any significant amount of money at Starbucks, eh?

UPDATE: Contrast with this coverage from the local ABC affiliate, which was completely one sided, and used loaded terminology. Most of the report is spent covering their side of the issue, and about two seconds is devoted to our side.

UPDATE: WTOP, the local radio news station in DC coverage here.

More Pictures from McDonald

Dave Hardy had some up, including one with Bitter and me in it, in the crowd outside of McDonald after the argument. We’re toward the center of the shot. To the right of the shot you can see the backs of Bob Dowlut, NRA General Counsel, and Sarah Gervase who works in General Counsel’s office, and who filed a brief in the case. I don’t recognize anyone else in the shot.

At first I didn’t think I was in the picture. I just noticed some old guy was obscuring Bitter, but then I realized the grey old man was actually me. Crap! I didn’t think I had turned that grey. I’ve gotten way too fat too. Sometimes you don’t notice until you see yourself in a picture.

His picture of the reception is better than mine. There’s some people in there you might recognize.

Interesting Arguments

Clayton Cramer talks about an article he wrote recently about decriminalization of marijuana. I would put myself firmly in Clayton’s first category, namely that I think the social costs of prohibition are higher than an increased incidence of schizophrenia, though the social cost of that is certainly nothing to dismiss. I’d have no problem funneling money we save on the war on drugs toward taking care of the mental illness that result from substance abuse. But I find Clayton’s fourth point interesting:

People arguing that marijuana laws don’t have any influence on behavior–no matter what the laws are, the same number of people will smoke pot. Yet, at the same time, they acknowledge that having it illegal drives up prices, attracting the violent criminals into the trade. Somehow, rising prices don’t affect demand or consumption.

Let me change that around a bit:

People arguing that gun laws don’t have any influence on behavior–no matter what the laws are, the same number of criminals will get guns. Yet, at the same time, they acknowledge that having guns illegal drives up prices, attracting the violent criminals into the trade. Somehow, rising prices don’t affect demand or consumption.

But I suspect that Clayton believes as I do, that the issue is a bit different. I don’t dispute that prohibition would drive the price of guns up, and the number of criminals able to afford guns down. But if I can’t have a gun either, it’s little comfort to me that the guy who robs me on the street threatens to shiv me instead of shoot me, or the guy breaking in my house threatens to beat me with a crowbar instead. Also, much like with Clayton’s argument about alcohol, we’re already an armed society. That genie left the bottle a long time ago. Of course, I also think, with respect to marijuana, that is probably also the case. It’s hard to prohibit something that you can grow in a closet with the right equipment, and if you think about what you have to do to stop something of that, it involves a police state. That’s why I’ll continue to be a proponent of decriminalization. Mental illness we can treat, a police state is a much harder nut to crack.

We Need 1000 More Like Him

One of the things I love about Matt Carmel is that he’s a troublemaker, and in a way that I think really helps our movement out. His latest plan to sponsor a little team is just such an example. You might recall that Matt was also the person behind the Palm Pistol, which was designed specifically for disabled persons, so they could successfully defend themselves. As Matt mentioned in an e-mail:

Although the committee refused to provide a reason for the denial, it is fairly clear that someone has a problem with firearms and the shooting sports. But more galling is the kinds of sponsors the committee does accept. For example, one South Orange company is a chicken fast food chain called â€œCluckâ€U Chicken,â€ whose very name is a play on profanity. A recent visit to their store revealed a tasteless (no pun intended) Teeâ€shirt prominently displayed at the cash register. It showed a scantily clad woman suggestively posing in a small bikini captioned with the words â€œLarge Breasts, Juicy Thighs, Luscious Legs.â€ They also had bumper stickers with the text â€œHey! Cluckâ€Uâ€ and a hand drawn cartoon with the words â€œBite Meâ€ next to their company name. This kind of projected corporate image is somehow deemed more appropriate for children than a legitimate firearms dealer whose business is long rooted in our American culture and traditions. Additional sponsors deemed appropriate by the committee include businesses that promote the sale and use of alcohol and/or tobacco such as Bunnyâ€™s, Librettiâ€™s, Parkwood Diner, Quickcheck, Rosies Wine Bar, Swirl Wine Events and Town Hall Deli. Maplewood Veterans of Foreign Wars is also a sponsor, considered by some to be an organization that glorifies war and violence.

Matt is my kind of troublemaker. You can see the whole press release here. I sincerely hope that one day he decides to run for the NRA Board.

Lots of Anti-Gun Folks In This World

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 Â 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?

Starbucks is Smarter than Abby

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.

The Two Faces of Jack Markell

I was relatively shocked that Jack Markell, F-rated Governor of Delaware, actually signed an improvement to Delaware’s Concealed Deadly Weapon Licensing system late last week. He must be having second thoughts about supporting the Second Amendment, because now he’s pushing back on the bill to roll back the ban in public housing in Delaware. I guess he’s not interested in his grade improving all that much, or avoiding having to spend state money, in a time when state money is scarce, on a costly lawsuit to defend the ban in federal court.

Lying Doesn’t Work

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.