Lots of hay has been made of David Gregory flashing a 30 round magazine, which is illegal in Washington DC in Wayne LaPierre’s face on Meet the Press. Apparently they contacted the DC police, which warned them it would be illegal. Apparently the DC police are investigating. I agree with Uncle… let NBC and Gregory suffer under the laws they advocate. Ultimately, making this magazines illegal means putting a lot of otherwise peaceful, law abiding people in federal prison. Let David Gregory be first.
Year: 2012
Poor Piers!
Turns out a lot of Americans don’t like being lectured to, and I’m not really sympathetic to Morgan’s whining. While deporting him was never going to be a serious policy proposal, it’s interesting the response to the petition. The article is even out of date; it says there are 45,000 signatures. As of right now, it’s pushing 75,000.
Political Lessons from Charles Durning
If anyone has watched the news today, I’m sure they have seen the sad news that Charles Durning passed away yesterday. When I think of Durning, I only think of one character that he made famous.
It’s particularly relevant to share that famous character on this blog since I think we all need to be reminded that this isn’t a terrible exaggeration of how politicians really work. Well, the booty shaking might be an exaggeration, but not much more. :)
Durning should also be recognized for his service in World War II during the D-Day invasion. He was the recipient of a Silver Star and three Purple Hearts.
Merry Christmas
In these trying times, Merry Christmas for all who celebrate.
A Family that Joins NRA Together…
So it turns out that NRA memberships are the hottest gift of the holiday season – at least in my family. My mother bought my uncle a membership for his birthday today. In a completely separate conversation tonight, my brother asked me to send him a link to sign up. My mom is already a life member, so is everyone in our household. I don’t have a huge family, so this is now a pretty sizable percentage – all of whom vote in every major election.
People in my family who don’t normally concern themselves with Second Amendment issues are concerned about the kinds of proposals that have been discussed in the media. This doesn’t automatically mean that “we win” the debate. This means that we have some new allies. But those allies need to be informed of what’s going on and when we need them to contact their elected representatives.
For those of you looking for extremely last minute gifts, NRA gift memberships are sold online. :)
Illustrating the Term “Idiot Box”
In our holiday travels, I’ve had the opportunity to watch local news in two metro areas that have reduced Wayne LaPierre’s entire speech and NRA’s entire proposed school security program down to the “good guys with a gun” quote.
At first, one might assume that this is because the hostile mainstream media just wants to make NRA look like they only thing they are capable of saying is “more guns!” I don’t think that is true though, or at least I don’t believe that it is the primary motivation.
Watching the rest of these news programs, I was struck by just how much they dumb down all content. I was once told by a lawyer that when speaking to a jury, they shouldn’t speak above about a 5th grade level. I got the impression that the news producers were working with the same advice.
Vacuous would be a generous term for what I have seen in the way of local news programming, and I think that Wayne’s attempts to play the folksy sound bite game actually backfired. It made NRA look like they aren’t thinking above the demonstrable intelligence level of the local anchors – and that isn’t saying much.
Other Loons Looking for their 15 Minutes
A shooter set a fire in upstate New York to lure first responders into a trap. You know, there are folks out there who say there’s no copycat effect, but the loons sure do seem to come out of the woodwork one right after another.
Glenn Reynolds thinks it’s a copycat too, and recommends a book on the copycat effect.
More TV Appearances
Gene Hoffman of the CalGuns Foundation:
A fair treatment of the issue, I thought.
The NRA Appearances on Sunday TV
Wayne was facing an outright hostile interview — one of the worst I’ve seen in recent memory. I think Wayne does a much better job with this interview than he did in the Press Conference Friday, and under much harder circumstances.
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That said, he still looks flustered and tired. He looks like he even may have a cold sore, I’m guessing stress induced. He has a lot riding on his shoulders, and I’m hoping he’s not getting too old to carry a burden like this, and at this pace. David Keene was on Face the Nation, and got a much fairer interview, which is not to say I think it was fair. Keene is a very good spokesman, but I still wish he would have mentioned CT already has the proposed ban, or talked about how quick it takes to change a magazine versus law enforcement response times to these kinds of incidents.
BTW, Mark Warner and Kay Bailey Hutchison were on afterwards, and (I think, because she was a bit incoherent) she went squishy on the magazine issue. In my opinion, this is the issue we are most vulnerable on, because it’s an easy place for cowardly politicians to split the difference and rally around as a compromise. That’s why we need to get everyone in this fight. If you’re an AR shooter, you need to be in this. You need to get every other AR shooter in this.
Supporting NRA’s Policy Proposal for School Security
Yet another White House petition, to demand the White get behind NRA, but unlike the one for Piers Morgan, this one is serious. Some folks are questioning the value of these petitions. Here’s the value:
- It shows the White House there are people out there with passion on the issue.
- It shows the White House we’re organized enough to reach real people, outside traditional top-down communication networks. Think Brian Anse Patrick’s horizontal interpretive communities.
- It’s really not that much effort.
So I think they have some value. Do I expect them to result in a reaction from the White House? Do I expect it to translate into real policy? No. But it at least let’s them know we’re here and paying attention.