Salon is not known for being a right-wing publication. If anything, they lean left. But I find this article about Crossroads of the West to be fairly balanced for a Main-Stream Media article. They do a pretty decent job of talking to both sides of the divide, and also being fair about describing the environment.
Year: 2012
Compare and Contrast, Part II
From the folks at Guns Save Life, in Illinois, who drew approximately 160 people to their event. We’re here, we’re real, get used to it.
Constitution Day at the Local College
Sorry for the lack of posts this morning, folks. We spent our morning preparing for and afternoon attending the Constitution Day Fair at Bucks County Community College. They invited us to set up a table as NRA volunteers, alongside many other groups such as Students for Sensible Drug Policy, Lower Bucks Young Democrats, Bucks County Republican Party, Libertarian Party, Young Americans for Liberty, NORML, and even Occupy Wall Street. (I know I missed a couple of groups, but that just shows the range of organizations invited.)
Not that many people came by the fair, but a few folks came in to check everything out. Interestingly, any group that was either right-of-center or focused on talking about the Constitution had candy to give away. The Democrats and groups that one would normally consider left-of-center didn’t want to share candy with attendees.
We did speak with a guy who said he was writing an article for the school paper. He was mostly interested in confirming what he had heard that NRA endorses both Democrats and Republicans. We talked a bit about that history, and he took notes on the fact that NRA sends questionnaires to new candidates and grades incumbents based on voting records and questionnaires.
Ironically, our visit from a guy who said, “I support the Second Amendment, but…” was actually a Republican. He wants to ban semi-automatics. I assumed he was confused, but he did comprehend that they only fired once with each pull of the trigger. We didn’t pursue the discussion too much beyond that because I don’t know how far you can bring a person who wants a Second Amendment that allows banning guns people actually own. To make it even weirder, he said his dad is an NRA member. While this guy did know that one round is fired with each pull of the trigger, he was convinced that he could do some kind of spray shooting without aiming and hit moving targets even if he didn’t really know much about shooting guns. I guess it just goes to show you that you need to make sure you kids really understand how firearms work.
We also had a visit from a woman who wanted to know where she could get shooting lessons because she views learning the basic handling of firearms to be a safety issue – just like learning how to swim or any other personal safety concern. We, along with one of the Young Americans for Liberty guys, gave her several recommendations.
Perhaps some of the most interesting conversations overheard during the event when our table didn’t have visitors came from the Democratic representatives. Apparently, George Bush is running for President this year. Oh, wait, he’s not? You would not have known that to listen to their pitch. At this point, I wonder if some future history books will actually have mistakes listing either the election of 2008 or 2012 as Obama versus Bush.
As you can see in the pictures, we gave out Twizzlers. Given the pretty sparse crowd of visitors, they were actually pretty popular. College students love candy, and at less than $8 for 180 Twizzlers, it was a cheap and easy way to get people over to the table. A few of the students even picked up the bumper stickers.
We had several students and a couple of the staff come up just to thank us for coming out and representing the Second Amendment at an event like that. In fact, they now have interest in doing more events that feature policy debates and representatives of different sides of political issues.
While this event wasn’t huge for getting lots of new volunteers signed up, it was absolutely useful in reminding folks that the “gun lobby” is people. It’s 4 million NRA members who care about our rights. It’s even college students today who wanted to talk guns, but are still saving up for an NRA Life membership. We are real, and we do vote. We’re not representatives of some gun company as the anti-gun groups want to argue. We’re just average folks who care about Constitutional rights.
Constructing Statutes
Sean Caranna brings up a very interesting issue in Florida, regarding concealed carry. Depending on how your state’s concealed carry statute is put together can depend on whether a police officer can lawfully stop, and sometimes arrest you, if he suspects you’re carrying a concealed firearm. Some states generally outlaw carrying of a concealed firearm, and make an exception for persons licensed to do so. Other states make it illegal to carry a concealed weapon without a license to do so. Pennsylvania’s Uniform Firearms Act is constructed the in the latter manner.
I remember speaking to a lawyer who told me the slight wording in language, even though it seems to be the same, could be used by the courts to determine whether or not suspicion that someone is carrying a firearm could be a pretext for a stop. In the former construction, where concealed carry is illegal except by exception, it could be read as allowing for a stop, because carrying a concealed is a crime, generally, so the officer is justified in the stop to ensure the person falls under the exception. In the latter construction it can’t be a pretext for a stop, because it’s only unlawful to carry without a license to do so, so an additional element is required to make a stop. An officer must not only have reasonable, articulable suspicion that the person is carrying a concealed firearm, but also reasonable, articulable suspicion that the person does not have a license to do so.
New Jersey guns laws are constructed entirely the same way Florida’s carry law is. Firearms in New Jersey are generally illegal. You can only own them under exceptions to the general law. While it’s difficult to see how that can be a proper means of regulating a fundamental constitutional right, it’s one reason New Jersey gets away with abuses that it’s difficult to get away with in other state. Hopefully Florida can change the wording of its statute to fix this.
If It Was Really About The Children
Groups we’d see before the gun control groups we have now, if they were really concerned about saving children:
- Coalition for Better Seatbelts
- Brady Campaign Against Swimming Pools and Large Buckets
- Coalition Against Plastic Bags
- National Coalition to Ban Dangerous Household Chemicals
- Pedestrian Policy Center
- Medical Community Against Bicycles
- Mayors Against Tall Stairs
Why? Because all of these things kill children more often than firearms. Also, I was thinking what’s with the huge surge in poisoning among adults versus children? You’d think kids would be more prone to quaffing poisons than adults. But then I remembered most of us like quaffing a certain beverage that is poisonous in large quantities. Then you also hear stories about drunks on the wagon slamming down rubbing alcohol in a last, desperate act. But I wouldn’t qualify that last one as accidental.
The Partisans Are Lined Up. What’s Next?
Currently we are a nation divided. Everyone would love to think that people think the deficit is currently driving us off a cliff, but while many Americans will agree with that, when it comes to doing something about it, they want low taxes and big government. If we were not a divided nation, this election would not even be close. But it is close.
Ilya Somin notes that this is not a historically unprecedented election, and that Obama and Romney are not doing any better or worse than other elections with similar economic indicators. He also notes:
Some of the models also take account of foreign policy events. While one can certainly make a case against Obama’s foreign policy, he has not presided over a large and obvious failure that can clearly be laid at his door in a way that swing voters – most of whom have very low levels of political knowledge – can readily grasp.
This is why I don’t really get political with events like the fiasco that just happened in North Africa, which resulted in the death of several people including our Ambassador. I don’t think it’s a very useful political club. The voters we need to reach won’t likely pin that on Obama, largely because the media won’t pin that on Obama, and the low information voters don’t care enough to seek out better information. This is a highly partisan election. Those who follow politics are already set in their decision, and the result is still very close. We will be depending on these low-information voters to decide the outcome. Zombie, at PJ Media, calls them Honey Boo Boos:
Honey Boo Boos is a term I just made up for the last remaining undecided voters in America. As you may have read at the time, the infantile and atrocious reality TV show Here Comes Honey Boo Boo either surpassed or tied the viewership totals of both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. That means millions of people are so tuned out of politics and so uninterested in current affairs that they’d rather watch a family of obese rednecks abusing their young daughter than learn even the most basic facts about the next president of the United States. These Honey Boo Boo viewers are what pollsters like to call “low information voters,†but that descriptor is not complete: Honey Boo Boos are also low interest voters whose political ideology is either easily malleable or absent altogether.
As Professor Somin often points out, these aren’t stupid people — their decision not to pay careful attention to politics is rational, since the odds of their vote influencing the outcome of an election are vanishingly small. But they do still vote. Collectively, these are the people who will be deciding the 2012 election. Therefore rhetoric in this election will be more ridiculous than in an election where it wasn’t close, because much of the messaging will be aimed at low-information voters who aren’t persuaded by ideological or policy arguments. You see ads saying, “Obama is a nice guy, but hasn’t done a great job as President.” Those are aimed at those types of voters, who will tell pollsters that they are disappointed in Obama’s job performance, but they still personally think he’s a good man, and so are undecided.
Somewhere along the line we started telling people that voting was a civic duty. That was the wrong lesson. Being informed and educated about the workings of your Republic is the civic duty, and voting follows as a natural consequence of being informed and educated.
Compare and Contrast
Miguel has a link to the latest CSGV protest at the White House. I count twelve people. Meanwhile, last week, we had our Friends of the NRA Dinner for Bucks County:
That’s 81 people, who paid 45 dollars to show up, and then also forked out an average of several hundred dollars a person on games. Granted, this is the non-political branch of NRA — Friends of the NRA raises money to fund grants to support shooting sport programs, particularly youth programs run by groups like the Boy Scouts and 4H. In a single county, we can attract nearly 7x more than CSGV’s White House protests.
And I’d note that our dinner is new, and we’re hoping to grow it. Why? Because 81 is a sad turnout by Friends of the NRA banquet standards. The Liberty Bell Committee puts on a dinner in the City of Philadelphia that regularly attracts 250 or more. Chester County FNRA, hosting their dinner in Kennett Square, attracts 300 people. Montgomery County, also a new committee, but a few years older than ours, is up to 160. Biggest of all in Eastern Pennsylvania is the Lancaster Friends, who put on a dinner with 800 or more, such that they have to run the dinner buffet style, and keep it running all night so that everyone can eat.
The gun control movement in decline (GCMD?) keeps denying they are up against real people. NRA? A toadie for the gun industry who just wants to sell more guns. NRA is an organization that’s brainwashed a small number of extremists. Guns are not a grassroots cause.
But the truth is that a small number of extremists would seem to more accurately describe their movement than ours.
The Mental Breakdown of the Gun Control Movement
Thirdpower has been diving the wreck, and finds a whole lot of crazy. Namely Elliot Fineman of National Gun Victims Action Council:
I wonder how he can claim this being that he’s previously claimed that ‘There is no such thing as a law abiding citizen‘? Is he saying there’s no gun homicides? Being that he’s in Chicago, how does he then explain Chicago Police Dept. reports stating that87% of the homicides committed in the city are by those w/ prior arrest records (pg56/57)?
I can probably clear up the gun control narcosis here. This seems to be a common claim now by the gun control crowd. It’s not true, but those in the gun control movement who’ve now made a hobby of erecting and tear down straw men focus very heavily on the “law abiding citizen,” and we’ve had to endure taunting and mockery from individuals who couldn’t argue their way out of a wet paper bag.
I say the other side is erecting straw men here because no one argues that the proxies we used to try to determine one’s proclivity toward criminal behavior are perfect. Given that the Minority Report was a work of fiction, the best we can do is to use some form of proxy, and there is no form that would be perfect. The only logical conclusion one can come to, based on the rhetoric of anti-gun activists, is that because some people may go on to misuse their guns, that no one should have them. Any time they use this argument, it’s neo-prohibitionism on display. This is the continued de-professionalization of the gun control movement. The professionals have left the building, leaving the people those professional were front for exposed to us. It’s a sad spectacle.
Which then leaves us with MAIG, the only professional gun control organization remaining, and the only one making arguments in a post-Heller world. MAIG’s focus is on the proxies we use. We categorically reject the lack of due process involved with many of their proposals, but they have, so far, avoided the kind of amateurish arguments you see from the groups in decline.
Today is Constitution Day
The day we pay our respects and celebrate a document we’ve never really taken that seriously. It was a radical document when the founders wrote it. Reconstruction era Republicans made it even more radical — so radical our ruling elite starting ignoring the parts of it that didn’t suit them. The progressives hijacked it for a time, and later decided they didn’t need to bother with it anymore.
Perhaps a better way to celebrate this radical document would be actually trying to follow it for once.
Protecting Borough Council
Anyone who’s ever been civically active in a small town, can tell you that Borough Council meetings are often flypaper for the drunk, crazy, or attention starved. Usually switching off their mic is enough to get them to go away and/or sober up. Security can be an issue for Borough meetings, but generally the presence of a few officers, who would be there anyway, is generally regarded by most small Boroughs as sufficient for keeping order.
That is, of course, unless you’re a small borough in New Jersey, in which case nothing less than H&K submachine guns will suffice. I have to agree with Tam this won’t end well.