2012 – Page 142 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Today’s Random Stupid From the Gun Control Crowd

This is from the Brady Campaign. Sometimes I really wonder where they come up with this stuff?

It’s like they fell in the shower, and hit their head, and this random and completely false thought occurred to them, and since it sounded good they just felt the need to share. Though maybe it’s just Brady getting back to their usual role in making stuff up in an attempt to deceive. Howard Nemerov has some thoughts on Brady’s new President:

The Brady Campaign recently announced their new president, Daniel Gross, an advertising professional turned gun-control promoter. Gallup rates advertising professionals among the lowest for honesty and ethics, and Gross provides a corroborative case study.

Read the whole thing. I’d almost rather think this was more the shower scenario I described rather than a deliberate attempt to mislead. With an Army of Davids ready to fact check on a moments notice, this kind of dishonestly will do nothing but further erode their fading organization’s already damaged credibility.

Castle Doctrine Moving in Minnesota

An officer of 35 years speaks out in favor of Minnesota Castle Doctrine, which passed the Senate this past Thursday. We’re very close in Minnesota to getting Castle Doctrine through the legislature, but it will still face the obstacle of the Governor’s signature, who indicates he’ll veto. Someone more in tune with Minnesota politics will have to chime in with odds on an override. The votes have been pretty lopsided, however, in favor of the bill.

Another thing I’d like to see changed in Minnesota? Reciprocity. Come to think of it, Nevada, Oregon and Maine could use some fixin in that department too. But Minnesota wins are always especially sweet victories, because it’s the home of our favorite Brady board member.

MAIG Getting Ugly?

A Denver Gazette article on MAIG getting nasty, and a failed attempt to get the Mayor of Colorado Springs to join the group. Some of you may know that Dave Kopel’s father, who is a legend in Colorado politics, died recently. This is of note from MAIG’s ED:

Mark Glaze, executive director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, addressed David Kopel on Twitter one day after his fatherâ€™s memorial service.

â€œAs a Colorado native I recall him well,â€ Glaze wrote of Gerald Kopel. â€œWonder what he would think of his son calling electeds liars. #apple fell far from free (sic).â€

As anyone who is active on the Twitter gun community can attest, there’s nothing wrong, in the mind of our opponents, spewing hate at gun owners. We’re not people, you see. We’re monsters. So anything goes.

Stupid of the Year

Apparently no one clued this guy off that it’s bullet resistant armor, as he apparently decided the best way to make sure it worked was to shoot himself in the abdomen with a 10mm Glock. I consider this to be about as smart as testing the airbags in your car by driving it into a concrete wall at 40MPH.

It’s interesting, but in the early days of kevlar body armor, the inventor convinced police the stuff worked by shooting himself with it using a .38 service revolver, which was the standard sidearm of most police at the time. I get it’s smart marketing, even if it’s stupid gun safety, but at least that guy chose a relatively modest round that was unlikely to push the armor to its limit.Â That pales in comparison to testing soft body armor with a round as powerful as a 10mm, though. I think I recall the shooter saying that it was a level II vest. If that’s the case, 10mm is definitely on the upper end of what that vest would have a prayer to stop. I’d say this guy is lucky.

The M.O.D. Squad

While reading “Against All Odds,” I had to laugh about this:

Buckleyâ€™s rationale for [refusing compensation for confiscation] was simple: â€œWeâ€™ve got a right to get poison out of society.â€ He denounced the Springfield, Mass., handgun manufacturer Smith & Wesson as â€œmerchants of death.â€

Anyone else suddenly inspired to watch a comedy tonight?

Learning from the Past

Dave Kopel wrote an article for the February edition of First Freedom that I believe should be mandatory reading for every gun owner in the country. In it, he tells the story of Massachusetts gun owners who faced an all out confiscation measure that was put to the ballot in 1976. There are lessons for every type of political scenario we face in 2012, even if confiscation is currently off the table as long as Heller and McDonald are allowed to stand.

I think some of the tidbits from the article very much relate to the issues we face today. For example, the issue of whether NRA should back pro-gun Democrats:

The leader of the â€œPeople vs. Handgunsâ€ organization was the popular Republican John Buckley, the sheriff of Middlesex County. Buckley was fresh off a 1974 win against a pro-gun challenger. Alongside Buckley was Robert diGrazia, the police commissioner of Boston who was appointed by the staunchly anti-gun Boston Mayor Kevin White.

At the insistence of Buckley and diGrazia, the Massachusetts handgun prohibition lobby did not think small. Confiscation would be total, with no exemption for licensed security guards or target shooting clubs. Even transporting a handgun through Massachusetts (e.g., while traveling from oneâ€™s home in Rhode Island to a vacation spot in Maine or a target competition in New Hampshire) would be illegal, except for people with handgun carry permits (which, as of 1976, were almost never issued by most states).

Buckley had the benefit of “incumbency” in the election for the Sheriff’s office because he was appointed by a Republican governor, according to this history of the office.

Kopel also highlights the plans for anti-gun groups to take the confiscation plan far beyond the borders of the Bay State, and how this plan has still been used in recent history.

A Buckley speech to the Conference of Mayors detailed â€œHow to Circumvent the Legislature for Gun Confiscation in 37 States by the Initiative Petition.â€

Eventually, it was hoped, the mass of state and local bans would provide the foundation for a national ban. …

The tactics of the national gun-ban groups are to use state and local bans as the starting point for national bans.

By 1994, only four states and a handful of cities had passed bans on so-called â€œassault weapons.â€ Two of the states (California and New Jersey) had far-reaching bans, while in Maryland and Hawaii, the ban was only for â€œassaultâ€ handguns. Yet this four-state foundation was enough for the gun prohibition lobbies to be able to push a national ban into law in 1994.

To me, this is one of the biggest problems we’ve faced in the pro-gun movement. While not screaming that the sky is falling at every turn, making gun owners realize just how close we have been to actually dealing with the knock at the door by Dianne Feinstein is something we are really only starting to overcome thanks to the internet.

I recall a story from the 2004 Pittsburgh NRA meeting where I was told an activist from Massachusetts sat down at a bar for a meal next to a guy from Pennsylvania who also came in for the convention. When the Massachusetts resident described what it was like to be a gun owner in the Bay State, the guy from Pennsylvania argued that he was exaggerating because things like that simply can’t happen in America.

Oh yes, they can. They can, and they do. I wouldn’t be shocked if that same Pennsylvania guy was actually floored by the news with Heller that the Second Amendment had never been interpreted as an individual right by the Supreme Court. For many of these types, it’s not that they don’t care, it’s that they find it hard to swallow that other citizens allow governments to act so badly without fixing it at the ballot box.

Go read the entire article. Come back here to discuss it if you like. It’s really eye-opening and worth your time.

When NRA is Laughing at You

A commenter today noted that NRA doesn’t do very compelling writing in its publications, but I’ll note that this take down of the Brady State Rankings for 2012 is most definitely worthy of some of the better snark you’ll see on the Internet.

On a side note, we noticed that the Tides Foundation gave $125,424 to the Brady Campaign and its affiliate, the Brady Center, between 2004 and 2009. But with no contributions in 2010, we wonder whether someone at the Foundationâ€™s grant office had a look at Bradyâ€™s previous scorecards and realized that even when youâ€™re wasting someone elseâ€™s money, there has to be a limit.

I could paraphrase an old Beck’s Beer commercial here,Â “NRA doesn’t do comedy, they do fear,” in that most of their rhetoric is aimed at presenting gun owners with frightening worst case scenarios in an attempt to fire up their single-issue voter instincts. So really, when even the NRA has resorted to just pointing at you and giggling? How the mighty have indeed fallen.

Arrested without Evidence over Accusation of Gun Ownership

There’s a story out of Canada about a guy who was arrested and told by officers that he was being charged with possession of a firearm. Normally, you would expect this to happen after they found someone in possession of a firearm.

He was given an attorney who was informed of the charges and even had a date set with a judge for a bail hearing for this charge. At no point did he ever possess a firearm, but they kept him locked up and moved forward with the charges.

With his wife hauled down to the station and his children taken in for questioning by the relevant agency for possible endangerment issues, he signed a document that allowed police to search his home. They did and there was still no firearm found in his possession. Finally, they let him go free.

The evidence seems to come from a he said/she said scenario because his 4-year-old daughter drew a picture of a firearm and said the guy holding it was her daddy who would fight off bad guys and monsters. Yes, a child who thinks monsters are real was used as evidence for the arrest instead of, you know, actual possession of a firearm.

Sebastian and I were talking about this, and it’s not actually that easy to pinpoint where things broke down beyond what seems to be an irrational fear of firearms and the mandate to report everything to authorities before anyone stops to ask logical questions.

Blame the police? They definitely take the blame for actually arresting the guy without question, but I don’t know the standards of arresting people in Canada.

Blame the social services workers who called police? They have to report it to them if they think a crime may have happened. What if they were told the little girl was drawing graphic scenes of her father killing “bad guys” that came along with a story of how he does this around her? If they didn’t see the drawing yet or actually overhear the interaction with the teacher, then that can sound pretty damn bad and very criminal in nature.

Blame the principal who called the social services workers who were then required to call police? What if she was told something similar to what I outline for the social services worker? Or, maybe it is her fault for misrepresenting what the teacher told her?

Ultimately, I do think that someone should have stopped the process and really inquired just what the hell actually happened in regards to the drawing and how the teacher asked questions about it. However, depending on how stories are passed along, concerns about a potential crime could continue to be blown way out of proportion. Ever played a game of telephone? Yeah, same thing, only with real lives on the line.

But, when we have a bunch of bureaucrats who believe they are there to do good no matter what impact it might have on innocent people and who fear not following an exact protocol that makes no accommodation for stopping to ask questions, then things like this will happen more often regardless of the country. At some point, we have to demand accountability from those who allow these things to get out of hand. Unfortunately, that’s not something that’s easy to do, especially with many protections in place for staff in these various jobs.

How the Tables Have Turned

You know we’re full of win when the anti-gun crowd is crowing that the media is bought and paid for, because, you know, they are reporting the truth about gun sales being up. Hey, what do you know, even the mainstream media figured out the gun control crowd were charlatans, and they aren’t buying it as hook, line and sinker as they used to. No wonder they are angry.

Not Something You See Every Day

Some Greek Entrepreneurs look upon the FDA as a model of efficiency, after trying to set up an olive business in Greece. Their government wanted chest X-rays and stool samples from all the company shareholders.

No wonder the country is broke and no one works.