Year: 2013

The AR-15 represents 60% of civilian rifle sales. It’s funny, because for a second I thought the Courant was defending Dave Hardy, but it’s a different Hardy. The Court opened the door to a particular standard for dealing with gun bans, and I’m sincerely hoping they are willing to actually walk through it when these issues get to the Supreme Court.

This was to be expected, given the makeup of the committee. Passed with all 10 Democrats voting in favor, and all 8 Republicans voting against. These do not look to me like the votes of a party planning to sell us out. I think if we keep the pressure on, we can stop this crap. Most of those Democrats are very safe, though it still amazes Vermonters tolerate Leahy. Given the level of gun ownership in that state, can’t they find some gun-loving, whacky, anti-corporatist anarcho-lefty to run against him in a primary? Vermont is a strange, strange place, with strange, strange politics, but I think you should be able to gin up some anti-establishment sentiment among their voting public.

Also, it looks like the Feinstein gun ban is pushed off until Thursday.

We’ve been sort of joking about high-capacity soda cups, but a commenter pointed me to this piece by John Hinderaker of PowerLine that actually makes a serious case that the two are very similar. I agree, and I think it’s no coincidence that the architect of the high capacity soda cup ban is also putting his money and capital behind gun magazines he deems to be too large. It’s the same nanny instinct, the same conceit, and the same cultural condescension at work.

Not that I trust the House GOP leadership any farther than I can throw them, but the late stories coming out of Ammoland, Ammoland again, and Breitbart haven’t passed the smell test on further investigation. NAGR and VGOC, the groups highlighted by Ammoland, seem more interested in attacking NRA these days than attacking the gun control crowd, so I give no credibility to anything they say. Ammoland will reprint anyone’s press releases, no matter how poorly sourced. In other words, they don’t do their homework, and they are (or were) run by a PR company in New Jersey, out to make a buck. I wouldn’t, personally, trust any source that is in it for the SEO.

I’m not saying the House GOP definitely has our back, which is why we need to keep writing, but I think what happened here is that the Breitbart article by Ben Shapiro offered a pretext for the other two groups to attack NRA, and bring them into the sellout narrative. Part of the Breitbart article is sourced from this article at The Hill:

House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Sunday would not rule out passage of bills without the support of a majority of the chamber’s Republicans, saying only that Speaker Boehner (R-Ohio) was committed to finding GOP support for major legislation.

Every context they’ve violated the Hastert Rule so far as been a fiscal context. McCarthy was directly asked about other bills like immigration and gun control, and he chose not to answer directly, referring instead to Boehner’s earlier comments. I think that’s weak tea. Could they end up violating the Hastert Rule to pass gun control? Sure they could. Are they planning to do so actively? I think it’s a stretch, quite a stretch, to draw that conclusion from the statements made by McCarthy.

Keep writing your federal Senators (most important) and federal representatives (next most important). My big fear is that stories like this encourage the fatalistic among us, who will then fail to act because they think this is already a done deal, and nothing they do or say will matter. Let’s be focused on the real threats, and not rumors of threats, created by people who are drawing, to be charitable, questionable conclusions.

… why is Obama’s approval rating dropping too? A dirty little secret might be that it’s really not. Take this polls being hawked around Pennsylvania by MAIG. Sure, it shows 95% support for background checks, because people don’t know what a private transfer is. But what they don’t mention is gun control is barely on people’s radar. When presented with a list of what issues are important to people, and told to choose two, the top four issues are the economy, federal budget deficit, health care, and taxes. Protecting children from crime and violence only came in at 15%, but even worse news for meddling Bloomberg is that fixing gun laws came in at a whopping 3%, which was dead last on the poll, behind abortion and same sex marriage. Even “gun violence prevention,” which sounds great, doesn’t it? Comes in at 8%, behind education at 11%. That’s not popular. Even if someone’s willing to tell a pollster they want background checks, they still want a growing economy and balanced budgets more. It is therefore not surprising voters are not approving on the late focus on a topic they don’t care about, at the expense of a topic they do care about.

The Colorado Democrats have shown they have no respect for the Second Amendment. The magazine ban passed 18-17. Remember in 2014. For Colorado, the 2014 elections has to be all hands on deck. No gun owners can remain on the sidelines. If the Democratic Party in Colorado is not punished for this, if Hickenlooper does not veto, and he wins a second term, the message the Democrats will get is that they can push gun control, and we’re powerless to punish them for it at the voting booth. Right now the dam is leaking badly. If 2014 comes without punishment, the dam will break, and Colorado will start the long slog toward being California.

UPDATE: John Richardson has more, including a the Democrats who stood with us. In this environment of relentless attack, I’d put a target on any Democrat who didn’t stick with us on everything.

UPDATE: Just to be clear, I mean target metaphorically, as in, we target these politicians in elections. Not a literal target. I shouldn’t have to explain this, but politics these days is ridiculous, and people are crazy and immature.