July 2011 – Page 11 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Civil Rights Victory in Wisconsin

Scott Walker has signed concealed carry reform. Didn’t have the votes to get to Constitutional Carry, but the state will have a fairly decent licensing regime. NRA’s alert is here. The law will take effect the first day after the 4th month after publication, which I think means November 1st, when the stated will start issuing licenses.

The great irony in all this is that Doyle vetoed a significantly more burdensome licensing regime during his administration, which was met by our opponents with great fanfare and relieve. The bill Scott Walker just signed into law is much more liberal. This is a good lesson for our opponents that even when you think you’ve won, we’re just going to wait it out, and come back and beat you again that much worse.

Civil Rights Victory in New Jersey

Evan Nappen is reporting a win in Court in New Jersey. You can see the case here. The police removed the firearms permit of a man for being a habitual drunkard. Despite seeking treatment, and having recovered from his addiction, they refused to re-issue him a permit. The Court in this case appears to have dodged the Second Amendment question, and reached a verdict based on the trial court improperly denying the man the ability to present evidence as to his recovery.

For quite some time the branches of government in New Jersey responsible for enforcing the state’s gun laws have routinely not followed them, and have generally been arbitrary and abusive in regards to gun owners. The courts in the Garden State previously have taken little interest in putting a stop to it, not only allowing the abuses to continue, but adding their own string of abuses and usurpations.

This is an indication that may be changing, if only so they can dispose of the case without addressing the Second Amendment implications. This can only go on for so long. In other words, the courts in New Jersey can try to run, but they can’t hide. Justice will come.

The End Zone

Joe Huffman noted my explanation of an “endzone” analogy in my post yesterday about being taken seriously, and notes that we might be pretty close to getting there:

I find it telling that no mention of any anti-gun organization is made. When 54 percent of those surveyed have a favorable view of the NRA what percentage could possibly have a favorable view of the Brady Campaign? And what percentage has evenÂ heard of the Violence Policy Center or Coalition to Stop Gun Violence?

For those that don’t read comments, my definition of endzone was, when we get our opponents to the point that they are no longer at all relevant in the public debate, and are unable to seriously influence public policy. I think we’re heading in the right direction, but I don’t think we’re all that close, for a couple of reasons:

Our opponents still have plenty of allies in traditional media that are willing to raise awareness of their issue.
Our opponents still have plenty of politicians that are willing to be leaders on their issue, though their old die hards are getting up there. Lautenberg is so old he’s starting to fossilize on the Senate floor.
Our opponents mine tragedy for political gain, and the law of averages says there will eventually be one they can be successful at exploiting if they can hold on long enough. Assassinations and murder of public officials or high profile celebrities are among the kind of tragedy they are particularly prone to exploiting.

Even if our opponents strongest leaders retire and are replaced by new leadership that don’t have enthusiasm for gun control, and the media collapses or loses interest in the subject, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be able to buy a submachine gun, cash and carry, at the local Home Depot, for a couple of reasons:

The vast majority of the public, including gun owners, do not support legal machine gun ownership.
The vast majority of the public, including gun owners, support background checks.
The vast majority of gun owners only understand gun ownership in a very broad sense. There is a lot of rational political ignorance among gun owners, even when it comes to firearms public policy.
Politicians are going to be wary of enacting laws that to a majority of voters, are going to seem extreme. Politicians mostly care about getting re-elected.

I would even wager this would apply to a majority of NRA members as well. Most gun owner organizations have a small number of people who are remarkably dedicated, but the vast majority pay their dues, read their magazines or other literature.Â Many do not even vote regularly. These are people who are willing to rise when there’s real danger, but they are not day to day allies, and you generally won’t get anything out of them unless our backs are to the wall.

The people reading this blog are actually quite remarkable within the firearms community, because you pay attention and care enough about the issue to read regularly, semi-regularly, or at least be reasonably informed about what’s going on. Ilya Somin’s writings on rational political ignorance apply every bit as much to gun owners as they do any other group of people. The vast majority of gun owners are rationally ignorant about the debate on firearms policy and gun control that’s raging on around them.

Just looking at NRA members as a more engaged subset of gun owners, if I had to wager, based on what I understand from polling data various people have done, your average NRA member doesn’t much like the idea of banning guns (that are not machine guns), and is generally with us on most of the contemporary issues in that regards. They don’t want government to make it difficult or impossible to buy guns and ammunition, or generally make gun ownership a hassle for the law abiding. They also, by and large, support right-to-carry laws.

But when you get to specific policy they are relatively ignorant. They don’t really understand our guns laws. They don’t understand NFA issues. They don’t understand the private sale issue. They definitely don’t understand the “terror watch list” issue. In fact, if you look at the history of gun control, our opponents have only been successful when they either manage to confuse gun owners into inaction (in the case of assault weapons bans in the 90s, cop killer bullets, etc) or win their outright support (background checks).

Boiled down to the essence, the equation is simple really: most people don’t want gun control that will affect them. Legalize suppressors? Most gun owners, even NRA members, don’t have them, have no experience with them, and don’t understand why they need to be legal. Even if they wouldn’t complain if they were legal, it’s outside their current experience as gun owners. Same for machine guns. Same for SBRs and SBSs. These are just not issues they understand or care about. Some gun owners and NRA members are outright hostile to the idea of legalized machine guns as suppressors, which was evident when NRA posted on their Facebook about gaining ground on suppressor use, when a minority of FB followers of NRA protested.

In conclusion, even if we eliminate our opponents from the public debate and political sphere, we are still our own worst enemies. Some my respond that this is why we can’t rely on NRA, but they are what we have. There is no pool out there of 4 million gun owners champing at the bit to legalize machine guns and suppressors. GOA has minuscule membership in comparison. NAGR and JPFO even less. SAF has many, but doesn’t participate in politics, and is highly unlikely to be able to do much against the NFA in court any time soon. You have to make the most out of what you have to work this, and this is reality. We can still accomplish much, but miracles require more gun owners on board with the program, and at least being educated, voting and communicating with lawmakers. This is not the end zone, it is merely the beginning of the end zone.

Gun Control By Executive Order

The Administration is saying executive orders on gun policy will be coming any day now. It’ll be very interesting to see what they are. Keep in mind that Obama has the ability to ban Glocks, XDs, SiGs and any of the multitude of handguns that come into this country by fiat. My opinion is that he will not go this far, since it will a) likely bring forth a constitutional challenge in the courts, and b) fire up our base. I’m expecting something modest, that the majority of gun owners won’t notice, but that will still piss us off, and force us into trying to undo it. We shall see.

End of the Shuttle Era

The last shuttle launch is today, at 2:50PM. I really wanted to go see one of these launch in person, and was thinking about going to the last one. But it is not to be, and given they are expecting up to half a million people to attend the last launch, I don’t think I’d get anywhere near it without camping out.

Every generation has one of those “where were you” moments. For my parents, it was the assassination of President Kennedy. For mine, it’s where you were when the Challenger exploded. I regularly watched launches when I was a kid, but I’ve paid scant attention to launches since. I suppose it’s only fitting the last one almost got by without me thinking about it.

I don’t mourn the end of the shuttle program. It’s been a boondoggle, and I think NASA’s current policy of encouraging private carriers is the only way we’re going to become a spacefaringÂ civilization. People will go to space when there’s money in it, and will figure out how to do it cheaply. Our manned space program has wasted decades since the end of Apollo. When I was a kid, I thought I’d see men walking on Mars in my lifetime. I think that’s unlikely, and it’s a bit sad that if I do see it, that man will likely be Chinese.

Something that Bothers Me

We watched The Parking Lot Movie the other day on Netflix. Now, I love my Netflix for these oddball documentaries. (That and bad sci-fi, but that’s not relevant to this post.)

But something has nagged at the back of my mind for a while. One of the employees admitted that he would arbitrarily charge different prices to different customers regardless of how long they parked because of judgements he would make on their personal status in life.

I realize that as a parking lot owner, you’re probably not that concerned about lawsuits, but having an employee admit it, and then say that he gave the company all of the extra profits from these duped customers, that just screams bad news all around. There’s just something about that admission that doesn’t sit well with me, even though I don’t think I’d fall into the categories of people the guy would charge double the actual fees.

I do recognize that there are plenty of circumstances where people pay different prices for the same goods or service even from the same company – airline tickets or anything from Amazon are the first things that come to mind. But when there’s a posted uniform rate agreed upon at the time you park and then an employee makes a snap decision that isn’t based on time, service, or demand, but on personal traits he doesn’t like in customers, that doesn’t really seem kosher. Is it lawsuit worthy? At the very least, it seems like it wouldn’t be worth the hassle to park there since you never know when the parking lot attendent will have his panties in a twist over something you may have done that offends him – like breathe.

Another thing that stands out is that they described the hiring process which is essentially, “I know a guy.” Okay, that’s fine. Except there were no female employees at all. God forbid if a woman ever applied for a job there and was turned away. I guess what bothers me is that the parking lot featured (in Charlottesville, Virginia, btw) really put itself out there to advertise shady business practices and a hiring process that may not be on the up-and-up. This doesn’t seem like something most small business owners would actually want to do.

Maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps the parking lot in the movie has had even more business than ever. I admit to being thoroughly entertained by the documentary, I’m just not sure that I actually trust anyone associated with the business not to rip me off even if I play by all of the agreed-upon rules.

Take Us Seriously

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, â€œWe andÂ 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 ChiefÂ 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.

NRA Doesn’t Do Squat for _____________

I actually haven’t heard people say it about this state, but because I know there are so many NRA program supporters out in Arizona, I’ll highlight what NRA has been doing for them lately.

In 2010, the NRA Civil RIghts Defense Fund provided assistance in three cases. Two of them were in regards to personal situations with firearms and the third involved a shooting range.

The year also saw more than $314,000 in grants flow through the state courtesy of The NRA Foundation and the generous attendees of Friends of NRA banquets. (See how many are left? Go to one and the join your fellow Arizona gun nuts for some NRA sandwiches when you win the NRA toaster.) Back to the money. That cash went to 35 organizations that support shooters around the state.

Campus Carry in Virginia

Looks like the Attorney General of Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli, has ruled that University of Virginia can’t bar people with concealed carry permits from carrying on campus. Virginia is similar to Pennsylvania in this regard, in that there’s no law against carrying on campus, but universities have generally been free to set policy. Cuccinelli’s position appears to be that UVa’s prohibition is too board, contrasting with a Virginia Supreme Court case over Mason’s policy, which was upheld, but which the court noted was narrowly tailored.

Giant Killer Plant Stalks New York

I have never heard of this weed until now, but apparently it is taking over New York:

This noxious weed has spread across the state, threatening humans with sap that causes severe burns, blistering, permanent scarring and even blindness.

No, it’s not Mayor Bloomberg, but Giant Hogweed. The Wikipedia description matches the article. I think we need to close the Giant Hogweed loophole and make sure that people on the terror watch list cannot buy this plant.