The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
Only one of them was in the United States, and that was number four of five. The rest were in countries with stricter, in some cases much stricter gun laws.
(If I owe someone a hat tip for this, sorry. It was in my tabs and I lost the source associated with it)
We have made it back home from Nashville. Now that I have feasted on honey ham, and partaken of egg nog and other forms of cheer, The Christmas season is over, and time to look forward to the New Year. For me 2012 was better than 2011, but 2012 has been busier. I expect 2013 to be even busier, and more risk filled. Some of that is personal, but we do have this fight head of us. I plan to celebrate the new year, and get it out of my system. After the New Year, the real battle begins.
Joyce Lee Malcolm has an excellent post in the Wall Street Journal that is well worth reading. Note that Dunblane happened in 1996, and the British didn’t see a handgun ban for another two years. We may be engaged in this that long, depending on what shape this is going to take. There is still much we do not know, and be skeptical of anyone who can tell you for sure what’s coming. The form of the destructor has not yet been chosen.
Still rolling along here with the MiFi, through the highways and biways of the Great Commonwealth of Virginia. Should be home fairly soon, fortunately, and back to real bandwidth. Bitter is busy re-caffienating as we speak to go the last leg.
I’ve noticed while catching up on reading that some are troubled, particularly over at Ace of Spades, about NRA’s School Shield proposal. Some contributors don’t understand why we need a brand new federal program. While I agree with the criticism directed at NRA for demonizing video games (a position I share), I agree with this contributor about the purpose of the proposal:
…whether it was an accident or by intent, the NRA succeeded in forcing the MBM and the left (but I repeat myself) to refocus their attention away from “ASSAULT WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION!” and onto something different. And who cares that the new topic doesn’t make perfect sense. It puts into the public consciousness the idea that maybe gun-free zones aren’t such a good idea.
The ideal solution is not a new federal program, I agree. But it’s a way to deal with the “Something must be done!” voters, who politicians are generally eager to appease (because it’s a huge swath of voters). If there’s one thing a politician fears is that when something must be done, they are not seen as a public figure busy trying to do something.
So is it an ideal program? No. Would it be better with a security solution that had state and local funding and control? Sure. But is it something? Yes. Does the “something involved gun control? No. Does the something reframe the issue culturally? Yes.
It’s something that can be done that’s not gun control, and it may actually help prevent more Newtowns, which I think we can all agree aren’t good for anyone, except gun control advocacy organizations. A new federal program, that in the big scheme of things won’t actually cost much, is a far better result for liberty than major new limitations on our Second Amendment rights.
We all know the Center for Biological Diversity as the group that, before the recent election petitioned the EPA to regulate lead ammunition under the Toxic Substances Control Act, which the EPA politely declined. Well, now it seems they are rallying to the gun control cause as a whole, not restricting themselves merely to the lead issue. From a reader:
From: Center for Biological Diversity <kieran@biologicaldiversity.org>
Sent: Monday, December 24, 2012 5:00 PM
Subject: Take a Stand: Don’t Let the NRA Take America HostageDear Center Supporter:
The National Rifle Association’s extremist agenda has held our political system hostage for too long.
The Center for Biological Diversity has long fought the NRA over the senseless killing of endangered wolves, condors, polar bears and bald eagles. After the horrific, gun-charged killings in Newtown — and seeing the NRA’s sickening refusal to take responsibility or support any gun violence reforms at all — I’ve decided that enough is enough!
We just ran a full-page ad in The New York Times calling out the NRA’s extremist political agenda and endorsing not only the elimination of highly toxic lead from bullets (a longtime Center campaign) but also legislation to end gun violence against people.
[…]
The rest is fairly typical fundraising fare. So I guess the gun control groups aren’t alone in fundraising off Newtown. It does indicate that there is a definite push to put gun control under the purview of the entire left-establishment, and not just something pushed by underfunded extremists groups and rich billionaires.
I would not take this to be the form that is eventually introduced, but I think it’ll be a good indicator on how serious they are about actually trying to pass something. Feinstein is proposing here implementation of a ban worse than California’s. Some salient features:
If this is really the proposal, they are either not serious about passing something, or they are hoping to horse trade their way to to something still stronger than the 1994 ban, but not as bad as their first offer out of the gate. Needless to say, we need to soundly reject this bill, and not agree to compromise on something better. The response to Feinstein needs to be nothing short of total defiance. She gets nothing.
A few days back I heard an old man share a world view that was so simple it made sense. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t heard it before.
He said that if I move my fence 100ft onto your property, you protest and then I move it back to only 50ft on your property, to a politician that was compromise but to anybody else its still theft.
That’s pretty much how they think it works. What’s amusing is that they’ve never even given a try at true horse trading. I can’t think of a better way to get gun owners arguing about who to throw off the lifeboat than offering trading gun show loophole for, say, the Hughes Amendment, or taking suppressors out from under the National Firearms Act. Hell, you could probably find takers for putting semi-auto long guns under NFA in exchange for repealing the 86 ban on full-auto. That would be epic divide and conquer, but as I’ve pointed out in the past, there’s a reason horse trading, practically speaking, doesn’t happen except in smoke filled rooms full of politicians and lobbyists.
Heather from Alaska has an good example of how to personally make a difference on the cultural front:
To be entirely honest, there were several times over the past week when I wondered why I was bothering trying to explain my position to people who felt it was okay to just insult me personally based on my beliefs. Â I kept at it, though, and very recently I realized how much that work had paid off.
I had received several private comments from people supporting me, which certainly helped some but those were mostly from those who agreed with me to begin with. Â Then one of the pro-gun control people made a public post in the forum in my support. Â She thought that I was being unfairly attacked.
Read the whole thing, as they say. Being engaged with ordinary people is important. It not only lets you know what people outside the movement think, but also lets other people out there who are on our side, but might not quite be as vocal, know there are other people out there that think the same way. It offers an opportunity to expand the horizontal interpretive community, and to prevent the left’s strategy of shaming the nation into supporting gun control from working.
Nope, not blogging about cars, but blogging from a car. I got the MiFi set up, an inverter to keep the laptop topped off, and someone else doing the driving. So I guess we’ll see how this works out. I’ve been out of touch for a few days, so, balancing reading with the potential for motion sickness, I’ll be looking for things to write about.
It seems that NBC contacted the DC police about having David Gregory use a 30-round-magazine on Meet the Press and was told that they could not violate the law. However, TMZ reports that NBC appears to have gone to the ATF and they contacted the DC police about the issue. It seems to me that permission to violate the law was suddenly granted once the federal agency stepped into the situation.
Kurt Schlichter thinks the left is losing control of the narrative. I’m not quite as optimistic. The left has four years to wear us down. Remember that the anti-gun folks didn’t have the votes for an assault weapons ban or magazine ban, until they did. We also really have no idea what the President is planning on doing, or how hard he is planning on pushing. So I’m reluctant to suggest the left is in full retreat. It’s too soon to suggest we’ve beaten back the main push, or even seen it.