The Onion has put out some funny stuff over the years, even on our own issue. I can have a pretty good sense of humor about these things. This bit of parody of the NRA, for instance, is hilarious. But this latest bit from them isn’t even parody. It isn’t even funny. in fact, it’s pretty sick, if you ask me. It’s one thing to parody NRA, it’s quite another to make humor out of mass murder.
Year: 2012
Trap Shooting in the Olympics
Our only athlete competing in this year’s Olympic Trapshooting games is a woman, Corey Cogdell. I have to agree with Wyatt, that Olympic Trapshooting will definitely be worth tuning in this year. Best of luck to Ms. Cogdell.
Hat Tip to Mr. Hippiesmite, who’s friend’s with my neighbor — the person that tipped me off to my bird-roosting-in-the-house woes.
Pointing and Laughing
Thirdpower has a hilarious troll of CSGV’s Facebook page. I don’t know who this Chris Conmy guys is, but if he is a reader, well played, sir. Well played.
Good News for RKBA from Louisiana
Sorry for the lack of posting today. In the office for a meeting today to discuss the plan for the final push on my project. But in other news, looks like Louisiana is on track to have the strongest right to keep and bear arms language yet. The bill is now cleared the house, and Governor Jindal supports it. It’s on to the people of Louisiana next.
“The right of each citizen to keep and bear arms is fundamental and shall not be infringed. Any restriction on this right shall be subject to strict scrutiny.â€
This is in response to the Louisiana Supreme Court essentially gutting their own state right to bear arms provision which currently reads:
The right of each citizen to keep and bear arms shall not be abridged, but this provision shall not prevent the passage of laws to prohibit the carrying of weapons concealed on the person.Â
I consider projects like this important for a couple of reasons. For one, it reminds the courts what the people think their right means. Two, it’s batting practice in the event we end up having to do this federally because Obama manages to replace one of the Heller Five, and the Second Amendment is essentially read out of the constitution entirely, or narrowed into effective meaninglessness. Three, it demonstrates to our opponents that we can indeed do this, putting to rest any argument that this is an antiquated right which is unimportant to the people.
Winning! But Not Quite.
The Daily Caller, a conservative leaning news outlet, is giving away one gun per week up until election day, in an effort to get people to subscribe to their newsletters. The fact the the DC is using firearms to promote their business is rubbing the right people the wrong way, such that Soros has his minions poring through everything the owner of the company that makes the gun ever wrote, looking for things to use against the guy. Sadly for the owner, they don’t come up empty, since he seems to have written several race-laced diatribes over at his blog on the topic of Obama.
They paymasters who are bankrolling Media Matters have to understand that mainstreaming of guns in America puts them on a road to utter defeat on this issue. That’s why they are quick to dig to try to discredit those who undermine their agenda. What would be really nice is if people on our side didn’t make their job so easy. I’m not of the opinion that race discussions are never to be had, but I do indeed question someone who seems hung up on Obama in the race department. I’ve never been of the opinion the man’s skin color really needs to be an issue in this debate. That particular fever swamp is really best left to the left.
But I don’t believe this ought to reflect badly on the Daily Caller, who I doubt had the time or inclination to pore through everything the owner of the company ever wrote to see if they could find anything to use against him. I guess the folks over at Media Matters are upset that the owner of that company never offered to give away a gun to David Brock so he could have an assistant illegally tote it around D.C.
Polling on Stand Your Ground Continues Looking Good
In yet another round of evidence that our opponents bet their paychecks on a lame horse, a new Quinnipiac poll is showing that 56% of registered voters in Florida support the law. Along the racial divide, 53% of Hispanics support the law, and 56% of blacks oppose the law. There’s an even more stark division by party:
Meanwhile, support was strongest among Republicans, who supported it 78 percent to 15 percent, while independents supported it 58 percent to 35 percent. A majority of Democrats opposed it: 59 percent to 32
Strong independent support means the law is likely safe from legislative interference, provided gun owners remain vigilant on this matter. But it’s always good to be able to show legislators that polling runs in your favor.
As far as opposition from Blacks goes, I would pose this question collectively to the black community. Who is more likely to end up having to defend themselves with deadly force? A black person who lives in a lousy neighborhood, or a white person who lives in a quiet suburb? Who do you think is more likely to be forced to explain himself in front of a jury, because the prosecutor didn’t want to cut them a break? A middle class white person, who can afford a good attorney, or a poor black person who has to fall back on a public defender? Who’s case of self-defense do you think is likely to be viewed more suspiciously by authorities?
A big reason why I think the Trayvon Martin shooting resonated with the black community is because there’s an underlying, and often correct belief, that blacks don’t get a fair shake from the justice system. But Martin is one case, and I think forming an opinion on one emotionally charged case is short sighted. The fact remains that because of high levels of black-on-black violence, African-Americans are far more likely to need to defend themselves than average. Combine that with a legal system which is reluctance to offer black defendents, particularly poor blacks that can’t afford to hire good attorneys, benefit of doubt, is all the more reason for there to be mechanisms in place to make it more difficult for an ambitious prosecutor to railroad a defendant engaged in a legitimate act of self-defense. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously said in a judicial opinion upholding Stand Your Ground, that “detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife.”
Welcome News for iOS & Mac OS Users
Our regular topic of conservation is looking a little slow today, so I’ve been catching up on my tech blogs. Looks like Google will be making a version of Chrome for iOS, though I’m skeptical Apple is going to open up its walled garden to allow Google to cut them out as a middleman on ad search revenue. With the introduction of Lion, Apple turned Safari into an unmitigated pile of garbage. On Mac OS, there is Chrome, though it does not do reading list or tab synchronization with Safari on iOS devices. If Chrome does indeed come to iOS, I could kiss Safari goodbye for good entirely. I recently tried the 5.1.7 update to Safari, and believe it is a step backwards, after some minor improvement since the launch of Lion. It’s now as unstable, once again, as it was when Apple pooped Lion unto the world. Many of the other initial issues with Lion have been fixed, but Safari is still an unstable piece of crap. All they’ve essentially done is separate the user interface from the actual rendering engine, so if the rendering engine takes a dump, all you notice is that all your tabs refresh. This is great until this happens when you’re in the middle of a post, and suddenly you’re back to the last autosave, and it’s demanding you log in again. In addition, like iOS, Safari starts purging out pages when it runs low on memory, regardless of how much RAM you have free on the box. This is understandable on iOS devices, which are limited in RAM, but on a machine with 8GB RAM, it shouldn’t manage memory this way.
I heard someone characterize Lion as Apple’s Vista. Based on my experience that’s an entirely accurate description. Mountain Lion better be a real improvement or I’m going to seriously consider going back to Linux, despite the fact that I found the Gnome 3 Desktop to be about as unstable as Safari.
Holding Gun Rights Hostage
Thirdpower shows that the Illinois State Police are threatening to further delay FOID approvals, and stop processing background checks if they don’t get a bill they want, which has a number of gun control measures attached to it.
It’s going to take incidents like this to convince the Supreme Court that there can’t really be any licensing of this right. Not when people like Mayor Rahm are out there, and view licensing as a way to limit its exercise. Ironically, I think these kinds of childish tantrums might be able to help move the courts in the right direction over the long term. If they were willing to treat gun licenses like hunting licenses or marriage licenses, I would be worried the courts may uphold them. But they still view licensing as a means of disenfranchising people, and turning a right into a state granted privilege. It shows no more clearly than it does in this case, and I don’t think the Court should stand by it.
A Real War on Women
Apparently the Taliban are poisoning school girls, because girls aren’t supposed to get an education, or something like that. As someone who was initially supportive of both wars, and still believes it was ultimately the right thing to do, I’m starting to become of the opinion that these folks just aren’t all that interested in joining the modern world. My lack of regret is because it had to be tried. The specter of the Belmont Club’s three conjectures is still haunting.
VPC: The Most Irrelevant Anti-Gun Group?
The Violence Policy Center is busy bowling us over with the might of their research, once again. This time telling us that cars are becoming so safe that people killing themselves with guns is becoming a higher cause of death in some states than auto accidents. Eugene Volokh takes apart some of the flawed logic on display here.
I would make a wager that the Violence Policy Center has become the most irrelevant anti-gun group out there. If they disappeared tomorrow, I don’t think the anti-gun movement would notice. VPC is, in fact, in trouble as an organization. One can see from their Form 990 for 2010, that pretty much their sole purpose as an organization is to serve as a jobs program for Josh Sugarmann and Kristen Rand, who compromise approximately 55% of their salary expenses. Also worth noting that public support, a measure the IRS uses to determine whether a non-profit organized under 501(c)(3) is a “public charity” or a “private foundation,” has been in precipitous decline at the VPC. The IRS generally requires an organization to receive one third of its support from public sources in order to be considered a public charity. There are mitigating factors that the IRS considers, but it you look at the total return for 2010, it follows with a letter which essentially begs the IRS not to classify them as a private foundation, which would eliminate certain deductions, and make donor information public. VPC’s 17% of public support in 2010 should be very worrying for them, since below 10%, regardless of mitigating factors, you cannot claim public charity status. Here’s how VPC’s public support has been trending:
| Year | % Donations to VPC From General Public |
| 2007 | 24.19% |
| 2008 | 22.01% |
| 2009 | 17.82% |
| 2010 | 16.93% |
One can see that as VPC has become increasingly dependent on grants from a small number of foundational donors, they are increasingly less and less qualifying to be considered a public charity. In contrast, EFSGV’s public support percentage is 87.5%, and Brady Center’s is 97.41%. Given these facts, it’s amazing that VPC isn’t trying to do more to be relevant. I can’t imagine the good graces of the IRS will last forever, and they are dropping precipitously close to the 10% floor beyond which no one can claim to be publicly supported.
I think it just desserts that the organization behind the assault weapons strategy is now, probably, the most irrelevant gun control group out there, and quickly on its way to even greater irrelevancy as a private foundation no one pays attention or donates to. You have to wonder how long before even their Joyce backers realize their grants to VPC are just good money chasing bad.