I think what Joe Huffman hit on is one of the primary reasons the entire Ezell case has been so satisfying to gun owners:
It was a pleasure to read. There was agreement with so many things we have been saying for decades. That the anti-gun people have dismissed these arguments almost without discussion that to now have a court rule with is an extreme pleasure. Most importantly they explicitly and repeatedly use the First Amendment as an analog to the Second Amendment. I will not restrain from saying, “We and many others told you so!â€
It’s always hard to place exactly what fires people up so much about this issue, but if I had to pick one thing it is not being taken seriously by the media, by politicians, or by any of the powers that be for quite some time, and especially during the 90s, and early part of the last decade.
Imagine you are quite familiar with, and well-educated on a certain pet topic. Imagine the media and all the talking heads on TV love to opine about your pet topic, but continuously mischaracterize things, get things wrong, often times even demonizing you for having an interest in it. Imagine politicians listening to the media and talking heads, and lining up to pass laws that affect you based on their own ignorance of your pet topic. I don’t care what the topic is, that’s a recipe for a high degree of frustration and anger at the people and system that’s doing it.
When I look at our opponents, the ones I have the highest degree of tolerance for are the ones who take the topic seriously. Having an opinion different than my own, I don’t find that remarkably frustrating. While I doubt it will solve the problems they would like, I can at least understand why someone might think universal background checks is a good idea. I can even understand why someone might take the position, as much as I might disagree with it, that the Second Amendment is obsolete and should be repealed.
Take the topic seriously, educate yourself, and come up with good arguments. My chief problem with our opponents is that so many of them are ridiculous figures. Just take a look at CSGV’s Twitter feed, or look at the crazy on their Facebook page. Read japete’s rambling word salad, to see what I mean, or some of the ridiculous arguments Chicago had made and is still making in Ezell. Look at the number of anti-gun bloggers who are creative trolls. Look at figures like Katrina Confiscator in Chief Ray Nagin, or Mayor “Shove a Gun Up Your Butt” Daley. These two guys are total buffoons. They make a pretense of being serious, but they’re not. They disrespect the topic, even for their own side.
I would be the first to admit we have buffoons on our side too, but what I don’t see from the gun control side of things are people who are serious about their topic, arguing passionately, and rolling their eyes or otherwise engaging, educating and challenging the lesser intellects in the movement in an attempt to build a better one; forming a stronger intellectual basis for moving their issue forward. Where’s the folks asking CSGV what they achieve demonizing and denigrating 40% of the US population? Where’s the folks criticizing Brady for flunking Obama when he’s their best hope of hanging onto anything? Where’s the folks asking Joan who’s she’s really winning over, or what intellectual foundation for her movement she’s building by ringing that bell?
This is not the team you’re going to go to the playoffs with folks, if you believe in more gun control. If this were a sport, I’d be at the point now I’d be sandbag it a bit, just to be sportsmanlike, but this is much more serious than that, so let me be the first to say I’m pleased when they need juice the most, we’re facing tired and unskilled second stringers. But even in this current situation, 34-7, end of the 4th quarter and just outside our opponent’s endzone, it’s telling they still don’t take us seriously.
It’s scary that they won’t acknowledge that they have lost, and lost and lost again! Me? I want to keep them down, keep a close eye on them. As I have said from the beginning, we have the truth on our side. There was no blood in the streets. There was no increase in crime. There were no bloody shootouts in bars. The numbers of law abiding folks carrying guns increases daily and still no outbreak of anything they lied and said would happen.
People listen to lies, but the truth shall set ye free! (Heard that somewhere!
I think the reason they still don’t take us seriously is that, being committed leftists, they believe in the historic inevitability of their victory on this, and every other, issue. While I doubt they believe their BS about “overwhelming majorities” supporting their weird views, I think they believe that leftists will eventually win big enough everywhere else that they’ll be able to drag civilian disarmament across the finish line.
I have absolutely no qualms about running up the score against such truly despicable people.
If they took us seriously and actually examined the facts, they’d know that they’re wrong, and they can’t have that. They’re only denying reality at this point by clinging to their lies. I agree it’s definitely frustrating for people to put their two cents in when they don’t know jack about the topic.
To your list of anti-rights buffoons, you can add Judge Posner. He claimed to represent the “conservative” case against Heller, and wrote a long article to that effect. Yet during the McDonald hearing, when Alan Gura referred to the frequently stated desire of the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment to apply it to the Second–something that Posner should have already known from very basic legal research–Posner didn’t even understand what Gura was saying. Posner actually seemed to think that it was the Southern former slaveowners who wanted to apply it to the states! He also wrote an article blaming the GOP loss in 2012 in part on its support for gun rights–this when at least 40% of DEMOCRATS oppose gun control. He seems to be trapped in a Nineties time warp. Frankly, I suspect he’s senile.
SAF has now filed for an injunction against the prohibition of carry in Illinois. I don’t care if the media or the antis take us seriously as long as we win.
As MichaelB just said the SAF just caused heart palpitations in various aldermans and state rep. offices across Chicago. Hehehe. I thought Ezell was big, God this new injunction filing is huge(whether or not it is granted). We’re at the point where reality is going to hit many of them hard. And to all the Chicago area politicians and those scattered throughout the rest of our state who have deprived us of our rights for so long, Sic Semper Tyranis.
I wonder how you define an ‘endzone’.
Basically, they no longer have any real relevance in the public debate. Doesn’t mean we win everything we want, but they don’t really have much of an ability to alter the status quo in their favor, leaving us to slowly chip away at what we can chip away at.
And simmering right along, due for an update is Kachalsky v Cacace in NY over may-issue permitting.
Fantastic post, Sebastian.
Let the enemies underestimate us, underestimate our will to win, and underestimate our real donation to a REAL grassroot cause.
Williams v. Maryland is coming up too, the writ to clarify if carry outside the home is fundamental.
This excerpt from the court decision is pure gold, & entirely backs up what you’re saying:
“Scudiero [Chicago’s Zoning Commissioner] testified that Chicago’s zoning code prohibits all property uses not expressly permitted and contains…no provision for gun ranges. If firing ranges were added as a permitted use, she said they should be classified as an “intensive use†under the Code. An “intensive use,†she explained, is a use “that could pose a threat to the health, safety and welfare†of city residents and therefore may be located only in a manufacturing district; even then, intensive uses are allowed only by specialâ€use permit, not presumptively. On crossâ€examination Scudiero admitted she has never been to a firing range. She acknowledged as well that the governmental firing ranges within the city are not limited to manufacturing districts; they are located near churches, schools, university buildings, residential housing, a county courthouse, retail stores, and parks. She has not received any complaints from the public about these ranges.”
Why let a few facts get in the way of a good story, after all?
Where would modern pro-rights gun owners be if there had not been a sunset ban on the assault weapons bill? I think it would still be the law of the land.
The leftists have only to win ONCE decisively to stop any and all progress by pro-rights groups for a very long time, or permanently. Think Miller vs US, which lasted from 1939 to Heller; think AWB, which only lasted 10 years because that was a compromise needed to get it passed. That is why they believe in the inevitability of their victory. They only have to win once, every once in a great while, and still they make progress in infringing our rights.