2012 – Page 152 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Making the News in New York City

While I can’t help but laugh at the tagline “Latest Gallup Poll Seems To Suggest Americans Becoming Increasingly Fearful,” it’s interesting that even the media in New York City now are doing stories on the number of women who are buying guns, and the Bradys are still essentially playing the ostrich strategy when it comes to dealing with the news. This is also interesting:

â€œOur membership has just exploded,â€ said Scott Bach, head of the New Jersey Association of Gun and Rifle Clubs. â€œPeople are waking up to the fact that they are responsible for their own safety.â€

Good to hear that not only are new shooters coming in, but they are getting involved. I do hope the sand the Bradys are stuffing their heads in is nice and soft, because they may want to push a little harder and really get their ostrich heads down in there deep. I don’t think the news is going to get any better for them.

Hat tip to Cam & Company

UPDATE from Bitter: I notice that Dennis Henigan is listed as just an “anti-gun activist.” I guess Vice President for Law and Policy at the nation’s traditionally dominant gun control organization isn’t worth mentioning anymore.

Preemption Enhancement Bill Moving in Pennsylvania

NRA reports that the Pennsylvania House Judiciary Committee passed the pre-emption bill today by a vote of 19-4. All of the Republicans who voted went in our favor, and six of the Democrats joined them. Politically speaking, the only name that jumps out at me as odd to want to pick a fight on gun rights in 2012 is Rep. Eugene DePasquale. He’s running for a statewide office, though one that NRA doesn’t grade on (to the best of my knowledge).

In the alert, NRA notes that the bill could be on the House floor as soon as Wednesday. They are asking people to call their state representatives to make sure that no poison pill amendments are added to the legislation.

If enacted, House Bill 1523 would help eliminate the need for litigation by gun owners who have been unduly burdened by local ordinances which violate the current state firearm preemption law. Citizens with no criminal intent should not be placed in jeopardy of running afoul of local restrictions they don’t even know exist simply because they have crossed from one municipality to another.

That would be nice. What a crazy concept that citizens won’t bear such a high burden of pointing out that a government shouldn’t be making illegal laws.

Adam Winkler on the Bloomberg Ad

Professor Adam Winkler has an article in The Daily Beast suggesting that the Bloomberg/Mumbles Super Bowl adÂ will hurt Obama:

Gun-control proponents can only pray that Obama doesnâ€™t take Menino and Bloombergâ€™s bait. Making gun control a more important issue in the election would be a terrible mistake for the presidentâ€”and for the cause of gun control.

Yes, it most definitely would. Obama is playing the game smart, because the biggest threat to the Second Amendment these days is from the courts. The politicians we mostly have in line at this point. Gun issues just not being at the front of people’s minds is going to be the biggest challenge for NRA this election. Those who want to see more from Obama don’t understand just how much of a losing issue gun control is electorally.

Handgun Rationing Dead in Virginia

Dave Hardy notes the Senate passed a repeal of one-gun-a-month. ~~It’s on its way to Governor McDonnell, who has said he will sign it~~. [UPDATE: I’m told the House and Senate passed different versions of the bill, so it will take another vote of the House on the Senate bill before it’ll head to the Governor.] This is a significant victory, since I believe Virginia and South Carolina were the only states guilted by the New York establishment into instituting these useless schemes. South Carolina repealed theirs several years ago, and now Virginia is ~~finally~~ nearly rid of it. Let use review quickly where criminals get their guns from:

Purchased from --           13.9
  Retail store               8.3
  Pawnshop                   3.8
  Flea market                1.0
  Gun show                   0.7
Friends or family           39.6
Street/illegal source       39.2

One can see that the most significant source is friends and family, and sources like that are not going to be affected by any rationing scheme, since they aren’t doing their straw buying in large quantities. It’s also been shown that straw buyers, in states that have instituted rationing, are just forced to rotate their buyers more often. It’s often falsely believed by our opponents that most trafficking of guns are large and organized. Most crime gun sources are not organized sources. Even this relatively hostile study notes:

Multiple sales are probably fairly common, considering that three-quarters of gun owners possess more than one gun (Cook and Ludwig, 1996: 15).17 Yet many who purchase guns in multiple sales are likely to be low-risk buyers (e.g., gun collectors), so the risk that guns sold in multiple sales are used in crime is likely to vary across different groups of buyers.

The study admits there’s no real evidence that gun rationing works as a solution to straw purchasing. I don’t think that’s changed in the past few years. Given that this impacts a fundamental constitutional right, that ought to mean that it’s prudent for Virginia to eliminate this law.

Not Sure It’s Just Open Carry

Lyle notes a problem with OC, namely that the gun can get rusty exposed to the elements. The first gun I ever carried was a Bersa Thunder .380. I carried it for about six months before getting a Glock 19. During those six months the slide started to rust. I have to give Glock credit with their materials and finish; I’ve never found a spec of rust on my Glock 19. I bought a Kel-Tec P-3AT a while back, for moments when Glock carry was just too impractical. That held up well to pocket carry, but once the surface bluing started wearing off, rust rust rust, and it didn’t take that long. With firearms other than the Glock, it’s a constant battle on the carry pieces. I also, for a while, carried a Makarov, and that also experienced rust after a month or so.

Inside pockets and inside waistbands are hot, moist areas. If they weren’t, you wouldn’t have to wash down there regularly, and there wouldn’t be much of a market for Lotramin.

NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund Needs Your Help

I am currently running an ad for the NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund, which you will notice right under my normal ads on the right side bar. We heard they were a bit short on funds during the NRA Board Meeting, so I offered to run an ad for them for free until Annual Meeting. Unlike my other ads, I can encourage you to click on that one to make a donation to CRDF. The work CRDF does is unbelievably important right now. Not all of it is legal trial work. Much of their work is academic in nature, and CRDF has been instrumental in building the scholarship on the Second Amendment, and turning academics around into recognizing the nature of the right as individual. I encourage everyone to give as much as you can. Any donation is targeted, and does not go into NRA’s general fund. It will go directly to support building good case law, and funding the research necessary to lay the groundwork for the next big case.

That Mean Pro-Anti-Gun Jerk Being Mean to Victims

According to CSGV, anyone who questions the strategy of gun control groups lighting candles in order to achieve a political change is just a big old mean person. And a jerk. Well, I look forward to their condemnation of Michael Bloomberg.

In what is otherwise a fawning piece over Bloomberg’s financial and political sacrifices for gun control, there’s an entire section called “NO MORE CANDLES.”

In the past, advocates for stricter gun controls held marches, rallies and candlelight vigils. MAIG has taken a far more activist approach, conducting undercover investigations and sting operations that are then dramatically revealed to the press.

So, now that Bloomberg is publicly throwing CSGV & Brady tactics under the bus, will they condemn him?

A Fight in Oregon

It’s been a while since I’ve seen gun control moving in the states, but now we have a fight on our hands in Oregon, where the legislature is considering banning guns on college campuses. More importantly:

(b) A person who intentionally possesses a firearm or any other instrument used as a dangerous weapon, while on school grounds, commits a Class C felony.

A class C felony? Really? Hey, if it puts more gun owners in prison where they belong, all the better, right? A misdemeanor, or even a petty offense, is enough to deter an honest man, and a person intent on breaking the law won’t be deterred. I’m also not certain, given the way this is worded, that it would be unlawful to drive through a school zone with a pistol in your glove box. Better also hope you aren’t out for a walk and fail to realize a lawn you’ve been walking near is actually property of a school.

Count the Lies

There are a few notes from this USA Today web piece on the new Brady president, and I decided to turn it into a game.

Youth anti-violence advocate Daniel Gross has been elected to head the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the Brady Center, the Washington-based organization promoting gun control plans to announce Monday.

In the opening sentence, we have two already. He was hired, not elected. There may have technically been a vote by the Board on whether to extend an offer, but he was hired. We know this because the Board hired a recruiting firm (multiple times, it seems) to find someone for the job. When a recruiter finds a candidate for a job and that applicant then interviews with multiple people who mutually come to a decision on extending an offer, we don’t say they were elected to do their job. They were hired.

Also, we know they announced last week. Although, to be fair to Dan Gross, it would seem that they didn’t plan to do so, so maybe it doesn’t count as an outright lie. I’ll count it for half.

Gross is cofounder and executive director of the Center to Prevent Youth Violence and was elected to the Brady post by the organization’s board of trustees. He replaces former Brady president Paul Helmke, former mayor of Fort Wayne, Ind., who announced in June he would step down on July 10. Helmke’s resignation followed a five-year commitment he’d made to serve the organization starting in 2006.

This bring our tally to 4 1/2 lies. First, we have the elected crap again. The Board came to agreement to extend a job offer, not hold an election of Brady Campaign members. Second, Paul Helmke & the Brady Campaign were all quite vocal that he wasn’t stepping down, they weren’t welcoming him back. Along those same lines, the third sentence is an outright fabrication that he resigned since it has been reported by mainstream media outlets when Helmke was giving interviews left and right last year that he didn’t want to leave the Brady Campaign, the Board refused to renew his contract.

After this paragraph, the rest of the story is the standard gun control manipulation counting suicides as the same as crime, and talking about how many children (many of whom do not meet any definition that a regular person defines as a child) die by guns. Following that, it’s all about feelings. I’m not exaggerating when I describe his quotes as sounding like Bette Midler in Beaches.

“Policy is a big part of the solution but people have to realize that this isn’t a political issue, this is an issue that’s claiming the lives of 30,000 people every year and eight kids every day and we need to approach it with that kind of urgency,” Gross said.

“The bottom line is making people care about this issue and care about it personally and deeply,” he added.

“Now, tell us the truth. I want you to pull out all the stops. We know the performer. Who is the person? Who is C.C. Bloom?”

“Oh, Marla. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked myself that very same question. Well, first and foremost, I would have to say that C.C. feels things – deeply. C.C. is a deeply feeling person. And, because of this, is deeply emotional. Do you understand?”

I would like to thank Dan Gross for inspiring me to pull out my copy of Beaches which I haven’t watched in far too long. I admit that I teared up even fast forwarding to get to the interview scene.

Back to more serious issues, his comments definitely highlight that the Brady Campaign is likely to make themselves even more scarce on Capitol Hill. It looks like we need to focus on MAIG’s efforts in DC since they are the new and upcoming gun control group looking to pass actual policy instead of just trying to make you feel deeply like C.C. Bloom.

Also of note, he had a random foundation director from Beverly Hills email the reporter about himself. I guess he is trying to highlight that he’s bringing a fundraising network to the table, but those funds are going to be pretty well restricted to the (c)3 that can’t lobby much.

FiOS Trouble

We’re experiencing some pretty serious issues with our FiOS connection. Upload speeds are fine, at 25Mbps, as they are supposed to be, but download speeds are at a crawl… 200Kbps, on average. That’s worse than DSL speed. Blog readers might not notice it too badly, since upload is fine. But I sure notice it. Video is completely non-functional for me. What’s worse for me is that I work from home, so a slow connection could be a pain. Fortunately, I have everything I need to work here, so it should impact my work minimally.

Verizon are sending a tech out tomorrow afternoon to look at it. We might be experiencing some downtime tomorrow, depending on what they find. This is the first time I’ve had a serious problem with FiOS in 6 years of being a subscriber, to the point where they’ve had to send a telecom guy out onsite to diagnose a problem.