2012 – Page 143 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Protecting Us For Our Own Good

Mayor Mike doesn’t want us to have guns, because we might kill ourselves with it. Think about where this line of reasoning leads? It’s not to a free society, it’s to a society where you’re not allowed to have anything dangerous, because you might hurt yourself with it. This is a recipe for the few lording over the many. It does not describe the free republic of our founders.

It’s also interesting to note that Bloomberg is only offering an anecdote. That’s like saying none of your friends have guns, and none of them have killed themselves, so clearly not having guns prevents suicides. But the actual data shows otherwise.

Red Jersey?

Well, it’s really looking more purplish, but hey, this is New Jersey:

But thanks to the new map, the [Democratic] party will likely lose its current edge in the House delegation. Unless Democrats can pick off a seat, the new makeup will likely be six Republicans and six Democrats in 2013.

A split delegation for New Jersey? Wow. This is good for the state. If anyone wants to see the end result of continuous, long-running one party dominance, one need look no further than California. New Jersey has at least made it past the first stage of the compulsive spender, which is accepting there is a problem. California is still in denial.

h/t Instapundit

Abe Lincoln Had a Saying …

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

The PA Legislative Strategy

Following up on the last post, I think the real importance of HB1523, which will give real teeth to preemption in Pennsylvania, is that it shuts down one avenue MAIG can use to attack us, namely creating momentum for gun control by getting cities and towns to buck preemption. MAIG has been very smart strategically, or at the least very lucky in how they chose to approach the problem.

MAIG’s strategy is actually somewhat of a trap. It would spread NRA very thin to have to get involved in tens of thousands of local races, in order to make a serious effort to get rid of MAIG mayors. NRA has tried some cheap, half-hearted efforts to urge members to get their mayors to quit, but have, so far, and wisely in my opinion, resisted full blown and expensive campaigns against them. The smart counter-strategy to MAIG is to play whack-a-mole with the Mayors; when they run for higher office, swing the mallet on their political ambitions; make MAIG membership a liability for higher office. When MAIG mayors come into the arena where NRA knows how to play the game well, that’s when we whack the mole.

But using small towns and Mayors as pawns in the chess game MAIG is playing was a brilliant calculation, and if it was a deliberate decision on the part of Mayor Bloomberg, I have to hand it to him for the evil genius of it. That strategy also enabled pushing gun control from the local communities up, as long as there wasn’t any consequence to bucking preemption. But NRA, able to wield significant power in most state houses, can counter MAIGs strategy by shutting down this avenue to Bloomberg.

This is the 10,000 foot view of why I think HB1523 needs to be the top legislative priority we have this year. As much as we might like to see some other things as gun owners, from a strategic point of view, HB1523 will counter a major components of MAIG’s strategy, and prevent them from growing as a threat to the Second Amendment.

MAIG Fighting Back

It’s pretty clear that MAIG has been on a campaign to get media outlets to write about the pending bill HR1523, since they have been parroting MAIG talking points.

According to tracetheguns.org, a project of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the missing gun reporting requirement and allowing local communities to enact gun laws are two of five laws Pennsylvania has not passed out of “10 key state laws that curb illegal gun trafficking.” Pennsylvania also does not require a purchase permit for all handgun sales, does not allow criminal penalties for buying a gun for someone who can’t, and does not permit inspections of gun dealers, the website says.

I think it’s become pretty clear by now that MAIG is a radical gun control group, and not just a coalition of mayors trying to battle illegal guns, which begs the question of how there are still hundreds of mayors who are members of MAIG in Pennsylvania. This is one area gun owners really need to step up and confront their local officials. MAIG is pushing for purchase permits for handguns? Arguing, falsely I might add, we have no penalty for straw buying? Arguing our state should waste law enforcement resources inspecting gun dealers when the feds already do it? If you’re mayor is a member, you should make them own up to what MAIG is doing in their name.

We have a few nearby boroughs that have MAIG mayors (we live in the township, which has no mayor), but I’ve never noticed that any gun owners in those boroughs bother to organize against their MAIG mayor. This is one area you really need borough or city residents to stand up.

NRA Nightmares

I have to imagine the folks at NRA HQ are pulling for anybody but Romney. They could sell Newt, Rick or Ron to their membership as pro-gun. Trying to sell Mitt isn’t going to pass the smell test, even if Mitt’s actual record on guns isn’t as bad as many people assume. But being that court picks are our biggest issue this election, Obama has to go, even if it’s Mitt. So what do you do? Mitt follows his political interests, and sitting out the election could mean Mitt could care less what NRA thinks when it comes to court nominees, but I don’t see Mitt as someone they could credibly endorse. If it were my choice, and it’s Mitt, I’d probably decline the endorsement, but make it clear to the campaign we’ll be beating up on Obama on guns in key markets. Withholding an endorsement has consequences though, and part of me thinks this election is too important to just sit back. There is no good choice here, only bad ones. If Mitt gets the nomination, I’m going to be really glad I’m not Chris Cox.

What Are The Odds? Or How Important is This Election

A commenter from earlier gave us an idea of just how important the 2012 election is for gun owners:

From the perspective of anyone who supports the RKBA, this election should be about, â€œHow much do you want to bet that Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito, and Roberts will all still be living by the end of 2016?â€ By then, their ages would be 80, 80, 68, 66, and 61.

At the risk of being a bit morbid, this begs the question of just what is the likelihood that one of the Heller 5 is going to kick the bucket between now and the end of what would be Obama’s second term. Given this rather morbid site, one can actually make a rough calculation, based on statistics for people that age in the DC area. Scalia, Kennedy and Thomas have roughly the same chance of dying, at 16%. Thomas is younger, but being African-American skews him into the same bracket as the older Scalia and Kennedy. Roberts is only 4%, being the youngest member of the court, and Alito only 6%, being not much older.

But the loss of one of the Heller 5 would result in a failure for the Second Amendment, and for basic failure analysis, you multiply the probabilities of the individual components functioning properly over that time to arrive at a 46% probability that if Obama gets a second term, the Second Amendment is toast. I’m not comfortable those odds, and I sure as hell hope other folks who care about the Second Amendment aren’t either. Reality is that the Justices, being upper middle class and with great health care coverage, will probably beat statistical averages. But that should still scare you. This also only considers death, and not health problems that force a retirement, or a justice just getting old and tired.

The odds of getting a pro-2A Justice from Obama are zero percent, and even if the GOP takes the Senate, I still don’t put the odds up above zero. Any of the Republican field will have a considerably higher probability of nominating a pro-2A Justice, just because the pool of candidates they have to choose from has a much higher probability of containing a pro-gun Justice than the pool Obama can pick from.

On Rhetoric From NRA And Others

This article in the Daily Caller is reflective of the rhetoric you often encounter from NRA and others when it comes to Obama’s record on guns:

As a state senator in Illinois,Â he supportedÂ a one-gun-a-month limit on gun purchases, supported laws making it illegal to use a gun for self-defense, and opposed laws that allow law-abiding citizens to get permits to carry guns on their persons. As a U.S. senator, he supported bans on high-capacity magazines and he supported the assault weapons ban. And at the same time, with a straight face, he claimed to support the Second Amendment.

This is, of course, all true. But there are nine very important issues with Obama left out there, and those issues are named Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Roberts, Kennedy, Kagan, Sotomayor, Breyer, and Ginsburg. Five are in favor of the Second Amendment, and four would likely erase it from the Constitution given the chance. That chance comes down to one of those five, two of which are in their 70s, not retiring or dying in the next four years. To me this is the most important issue we face. Everything else literally pales by comparison.

Let’s turn to some of Wayne LaPierre’s rhetoric at CPAC 2012, laced with words like conspiracy, but I think, unfortunately, without making a solid case as to exactly why Obama is such a threat to the Second Amendment if he gets a second term. I’m glad that Wayne did go on to mention the Court, if only to smear Kagan and Sotomayor, but I don’t think Wayne really got to the true magnitude of the threat. The entire speech is unfortunately unsophisticated and simplistic.

One of my great criticisms of Wayne’s rhetoric is that he’s poor at tailoring it to specific audiences. This speech for CPAC, which is full of highly engaged young conservatives, is something you’d deliver to a room full of blue collar senior citizens at a gun club. The CPAC audience can receive, and is probably eager for, a more sophisticated political message – something I know Wayne is capable of delivering because his roots go back to being a policy wonk.

I’m reminded of a humorous story Bitter tells, when Wayne came to visit her college — the first time that NRA had ever spoken at a women’s college. Her particular school had a very high percentage of international students which, along with many of the domestic students, made International Relations the top major at the school. In addition, more than a quarter of the student body studied abroad for at least a semester during their time in college. Wayne’s speech focused pretty heavily on “faceless, nameless, unelected UN bureaucrats.” That’s a good message for gun owners, but many of the members of the audience called those same bureaucrats Dad or worked for them during their last internship.

The problem with NRA’s messaging lately has been that they are continuing to speak to the membership they had a decade or two decades ago with the same platitudes that have always worked for them, while probably simultaneously wondering why the average age of their membership is so high. NRA needs to reach different audiences, and that means tailoring NRA’s messaging to the specific audience the message is being delivered to. I believe that for NRA to enjoy continued success, it needs to be able to speak to the suburbanite in a business suit as readily as it speaks to the retired farmer. The NRA of the 21st century is going to necessarily look and operate very differently than the NRA of the 20th century. Maybe if I have some time later, I’ll lay out what I think the 21st century NRA should probably look like.

Flurry of Bills in Other States

I have to hand it to Ashley, who is NRA’s State Liaison for Missouri, Indiana and Oklahoma, because there’s been quite a lot of positive activity as of late. In Indiana, she’s working to legalize suppressors in hunting, as well as a bill that would allow for charity gaming (important for Friends of the NRA’s fundraising). Meanwhile in Missouri, there are four bills ready to be considered. Lowering the carry age from 21 to 18, a bill to legalize open carry, another to prevent discrimination in hiring and firing of concealed carry permiteesÂ (the fourth is just technical changes to the license system).

I’m not sure what I think about the last bill, but it doesn’t create quite the instinct to shake the bowcaster like the parking lot bills do. I guess I feel like if the state is going to make me get a permit to carry, well, protecting me from discrimination as a result of it is kind of the least they can do. But it still strikes me as the less-than-ideal solution to this problem.

I don’t know how many of these bills will make it to final passage, but this is an ambitious agenda, and I thought it was worth offering some kudos to Ashley.

Cows on the Loose!

I have to admit that I didn’t feel too happy when I first read the story about Canadian police officers who decided to shoot cows that had other ideas about being lead to slaughter, but mostly because riddling the cow with 9mm fired from a Glock seemed like a waste of perfectly good beef. I guess Canadian cops don’t carry rifles in their patrol cars.