Month: September 2011
We’re Winning: Positive Press on Suppressors
Continuing the Manufactured Controversy
The Arizona Star is continuing to beat on the manufactured controversy with the Glock raffle, even though by this point it’s pretty clear that it has backfired:
Yet, it comes as a complete surprise to the Pima County Republicans’ interim leader, Mike Shaw, that anyone might object to raffling off a gun to raise money to defeat Democrats in the next election.
But it shouldn’t be a shock – and given the publicity the Pima County GOP has received from its galling decision, it’s perhaps not an unwelcome surprise.
So about that list of adjectives:
Crass, insensitive, vulgar, displaying a lack of empathy or compassion, dumbfounding, offensive, callous, boorish, thoughtless – all words that would fit.
The only people I’ve heard complain about this are the left-leaning Arizona media, the Pima County Democrats, and irrelevant anti-gun groups. The grassroots response was to get into the raffle, so much so they decided to raffle a rifle as well. To borrow Robb’s analogy, would it be outrageous to auction off a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue if a year ago someone plowed into a school bus, and they found a half drunken bottle of Johnny Walker Red in his back seat? Would that be “Crass, insensitive, vulgar, displaying a lack of empathy or compassion?” or would it just be normal?
As the Tucson Citizen points out “By the way, Giffords owns a Glock. Where’s the outrage?” Well, that just doesn’t fit the narrative.
Quote of the Day
As was suggested in comments to earlier posts, it’s becoming increasingly hard to deny the suspicious that the object of getting guns to the Sinaloa Cartel was … to get guns to the Sinaloa Cartel.
It makes you wonder if this operation goes beyond the simple explanations, like that it was meant to create a basis for more domestic gun control, and gets into a much broader purpose, that could develop into a major scandal. If the media weren’t completely in the tank, I might suggest this could be an administration destroying scandal.
Kate Pavlitch is reporting that senior administration officials were briefed on the operation. I keep wondering whether mainstream media outlets like the Washington Post and the New York Times are going to give up the charade that this was just good intentions gone sour, rather than push the idea there were never any good intentions in Fast and Furious, and that it accomplished exactly what it was intended to.
UPDATE: I should say, if this scandal gets into cloak and dagger territory, it will really speak to the incompetence of this administration. If you’re going to go that route, do you really want to leave a key component of your strategy in the hands of…. ATF? I’d like to think no one would be that foolish.
Upgrade Complete
The upgrade to a new ext4 file system is complete. Hopefully this will help the blog performance significantly. I had some complications. Apparently none of the LiveCD distributions support JFS. Another good reason to get rid of it, but it made getting the final backup a little more difficult than I anticipated.
Thanks Brady Folks!
The Pima County Republican Party’s controversial gun raffle fundraiser was such a success that they ended up raffling off another weapon.
The notoriety fueled such demand, said interim Chairman Mike Shaw, not only did the raffle for the Glock pistol sell out, but they subsequently raffled a deer rifle as well.
The raffle garnered worldwide attention because it was organized eight months after the Tucson shooting spree.
I don’t think the Pima County GOP would have had such success if the anti-gun groups hadn’t made an issue out of it. I enjoy very much watching our opponents hoisted on their on petard. Please, be sure to try to the irony before you leave. It’s delicious.
Down For Maintenance Sometime This Weekend
When I set up this blog four and a half years ago, the performance of some of the journaled filesystems that did not originate from Linux, like JFS and XFS, were better than the native filesystems, notably ext3, which was really a journaled version of ext2. So the blog, for a number of years, has run off JFS, which had its origins in IBM’s flavor of Unix, AIX.
But from most benchmarks I’ve been able to find, and my own testing, ext4 is better than either JFS or XFS in terms of performance. The blog is running on a very old filesystem, and it’s time to make the switch. The defrag we’ll get from the switch alone should boost performance, even absent the filesystem switch.
I estimate the blog should not be down more than an hour sometime either after 1AM Saturday morning or 1AM Sunday morning. One of the great things about being linked by Instapundit is it gives me a great opportunity to examine the server under a heavy load, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the filesystem we’re using is both badly fragmented, and using a slower journaled filesystem than we could be using.
Unions Smearing NRA on Flimsy Evidence
A union shop is trying to paint NRA as being anti-union on some pretty flimsy evidence. Their argument essentially goes like this: John McCain votes against unions, and NRA supported John McCain. NRA endorses politicians. National Right to Work Committee endorses politicians. NRA often endorse the same candidates as NRTWC, therefore NRA must be anti-union:
McCain is the NRA-endorsed candidate for president. He supported a national right to work law, which the fiercely anti-union National Right to Work Committee has wanted for years.
The NRA is cozy with the NRTWC, which also pushes hard for state right to work laws.
The NRA claims it is pro-gun rights, not anti-union. Yet the NRA and NRTWC often back the same candidates. Almost always, those candidates are anti-union like McCain.
Union leaders have generally resented the influence of the NRA over union rank-and-file. As someone who lives in a pretty heavily unionized area, I can tell you that influence is real. I can also tell you there are plenty of union member gun owners who will vote against their Second Amendment rights, and work to keep pro-union, anti-gun Democrats in office. But I’ve never met one of those who felt like it was an easy choice for them.
The great irony is, I’ve never heard of NRA being all that cozy with NRTWC. In fact, because a lot of other right-of-center groups in DC don’t really appreciate how NRA throws its weight around (and usually gets its way), my impression has been that their disposition toward NRA is a bit more hate than love. Maybe instead of smearing the NRA with flimsy accusations, the unions ought to put pressure on the Democratic Party leaders, particularly urban areas, to drop the gun control shtick.
Hat tip to our friends at CSGV, who never met a smear about NRA they wouldn’t repeat, no matter how untrue or ridiculous.
UPDATE: Looks like it’s an old article. A reader pointed out the date on the comments. I figured it might be recent given McCain opening his mouth about his “perfect” record.
Progress on Suppressors
The Michigan Attorney General, Bill Schuette, has issued an opinion that suppressors are legal in Michigan, provided that the NFA requirements are complied with. The demonization of silencers, or more accurately, suppressors, never made a whole lot of sense, especially when you consider noise complaints are the biggest issue shooting ranges face, especially places like around here, which have numerous suburban and exurban shooting ranges, with plenty of neighbors in earshot.
“We thank Attorney General Schuette for this well-reasoned opinion, which will allow Michigan residents to possess suppressors in compliance with federal law,” said Chuck Cunningham, NRA-ILA Director of State and Local Affairs. Â “Noise suppressors are an effective means of reducing hearing loss among shooters, and we are pleased that shooters in Michigan, like those in 38 other states, will now have the freedom to choose these useful safety devices.”
When you put it that way, you’d almost think they were going mainstream, and you’d be right. I think suppressors may very well be the best shot we have at chipping away part of the National Firearms Act. A few years ago I didn’t think it would be possible, but now I think it might be.
USA Today Peddling Contrived Controversy
USA Today is jumping on the bandwagon, reporting about the manufactured controversy over the PIMA County GOP raffling off a Glock 23. Aside from not even being the same model Glock that the nut used to shoot up the Giffords rally, it also happens to be, quite likely, the most common brand of handgun sold today. There’s nothing odd or unusual about it.
Caroline Brewer, spokeswoman for the Brady Campaignto Prevent Gun Violence, said it doesn’t matter that it is legal to raffle a gun. “Where is their moral compass? It boggles the mind,” she said. “This is insensitive to Rep. Giffords and all the families in Tucson involved in the shooting.”
This controversy is one that’s been entirely manufactured by Democratic operatives and Washington DC based groups who don’t have much to do these days except sit around waiting for their organizations to run out of money.
If our opponents want to go back to the days of railing for handgun prohibition, they are welcome. This is a losing issue for them. The implication is you’re a bad person for owning or wanting a Glock, and an awful lot of people own them. So please, Brady folks, keep on marching down that road to irrelevance.
UPDATE: Robb Allen in the comments: “Would these people have a problem with a car dealer on Chappaquiddick Island raffling off a car?”