The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
You’d think the Republicans could capitalize on this sentiment:
Americans are out of sorts, and increasingly they’re unhappy with the government. According to a Pew poll released last week, more than half of Americans view government as a threat to their freedom.
And it’s not just Republicans unhappy with Obama, or gun owners afraid that the government will take their guns: 38% of Democrats, and 45% of non-gun owners, see the government as a threat.
Read the whole thing.
This looks like a crock, and I hope these people win their case:
In this case, the USDA imposed on the Hornes a “marketing order†demanding that they turn over 47% of their crop without compensation.  The order—a much-criticized New Deal relic—forces raisin “handlers†to reserve a certain percentage of their crop “for the account†of the government-backed Raisin Administrative Committee, enabling the government to control the supply and price of raisins on the market.  The RAC then either sells the raisins or simply gives them away to noncompetitive markets—such as federal agencies, charities, and foreign governments—with the proceeds going toward the RAC’s administration costs.
Their case is currently before the US Supreme Court on the grounds that this constitutes a taking, and therefore is in violation of the 5th Amendment. I can’t see how it isn’t so. Then again, I thought “public use” was pretty clear too.
I don’t understand why more people don’t get worked up over this stuff. To me this is an outrage. Everyone ought to think it’s an outrage. Is it that there are just too many outrages these days? Too many people think you can’t fight city hall? Do people on the left really agree with this kind of nonsense?
When a gun lapel pin isn’t enough, there’s always an NRA tie and “self-defense is a human right” button to help constituents figure out which side of the Second Amendment debate you support. According to the reporter uploading the shot, this is the suit of Minnesota Rep. Tony Cornish, a retired police officer who has an A+ rating on our issue.
I’m kind of with SayUncle on Skeetgate. I can’t get too worked up over it. Everyone knows the guy isn’t a shooter. The real problem is that Obama was trying to disingenuously signal that he’s really one of us, which strained credulity even for the sycophantic press corps. Note that the shotgun being fired is compensated, which is a new “evil” feature. It’s not just about flash hiders anymore.
I’ll give John Richardson the last word on Skeetgate, because that’s just funny.
I don’t ever want to see a spectacle like this happen in my country again:
Via John Richardson, who catches “Who are the police at war with?” A damned good question to all the fools who keep asking why weapons of war belong on our streets. Easy answer, they aren’t weapons of war. If they were, the police would have no business carrying them.
So ponders Glenn Reynolds, and it’s something that’s been on all our minds, I think. Michael Walsh thinks that it’s a hill to fight on, rather than a desk to die under. It was always going to be a difficult proposition, especially since many people normally with us, in the days following Sandy Hook, started lecturing gun owners how we were just going to have to cave on this magazine thing. Like hell we need to.
So why is it that the GOP, who are willing to sacrifice whole election cycles to talk about “legitimate rape,” and espousing absolutist views on abortion that are far outside the mainstream, can’t seem to bring themselves to stand by us when the going gets tough? I mean, we don’t have debates within the GOP that an abortion up to 26 weeks ought to be legal and protection, but at 27 weeks, well, that’s just cold blooded infanticide. But yet you get discussion that 10 rounds is enough for anyone to protect themselves, and 11 rounds is for nothing more than mass murder. They are willing to take the absolutist position, at the cost of disastrous election outcomes, for anti-abortion advocates, but not for us. Why?
I think the problem for our movement is that gun owners, in general, seem to be a lot better at tearing things down rather than building them up, and you need to be able to do both to be successful in politics. Once you find yourself in a race to unseat a politician who turned on you, you’ve already kind of lost, and if you fail, you’ve definitely lost. It’s far better to get someone in office and keep them on your side. In the 2008 and 2010 elections, when we were working phone banks, were the only ones in the game who were there specifically representing the gun issue. Values voters, even in this area, are ubiquitous among the volunteers we talked to on breaks. If you want to know why politicians go to the mat for these people and leave us hanging under the sword of damocles when the going gets tough, this is why. Values voters are everywhere at election time, and even in this area seem to represent the core volunteers on campaigns that are either actively sympathetic, or who have indicated they will be sympathetic. Gun owners are numerous, and highly motivated by fear and anger, which makes us very effective at negative reinforcement. We suck at positive reinforcement, and unfortunately, positive reinforcement is probably just as important, if not more important.
Megan McArdle interviews someone who has actually taken the time to study the issue, and concludes that nothing much will stop mass killings, including gun control. Though I don’t quite understand his assertion that we should do gun control anyway, since it makes sense. Probably some sort of reflexive impulse of academics, to show other academics they are still right thinking people.
The first round of hearings will be in Annapolis this Wednesday, February 6th. Maryland Shall-Issue has the details. They are looking to pack the hearing room, and to make the hearings run overtime. The key is to make it painful for them.
The more and more I am looking at the new civility, as we go through yet another national conversation on guns, the more convinced I am that our original supposition that the prime driver in the gun control debate is a visceral fear of guns is completely wrong. Jeff Cooper coined the term “hoplophobia,” but I think it’s turning out to be way off the mark. Not that I don’t think there are people out there who are afraid of guns, but in the national debate, they aren’t who we’re dealing with.
Take a look at this article from Twitchy on sexist heckling of a woman pro-rights supporter as just one example, or this catch from Miguel of the Coalition to Stop Gun Ownership’s Facebook page. Clayton speaks of the fire eaters. Something I read earlier from Michael Bane sort of tied all this together for me. They aren’t afraid of your guns, they don’t hate your guns. They hate you, or to quote Michael Bane’s article, “It’s not the guns they hate…it’s us.”
I think this is absolutely correct, and everything we’ve been seeing in the media and from the gun control organizations seems to back that up. It fits with the article I did earlier on the cultural changes the coastal elites are seeing being the root cause of this latest backlash. We’ve been too successful for our own good. As long as gun ownership were confined to old, fat white guys (OFWGs), they were content to tolerate it. The changing face of gun ownership worries them, not because of a fear of guns, but for fear and loathing of the people who enjoy them, who increasingly are looking like them. If something isn’t done soon, they may have to take the opinions of gun owners seriously. Gun control is a movement of old white people, but they aren’t going to go down without a fight.
The good news is we’ve seemingly beaten an assault weapons ban, the bad news is they are pushing on magazine limits.
Senate Democratic leaders expect a gun bill to move to the Senate floor that includes most of the proposals backed by President Obama, with the notable exception of a ban on military-style, semiautomatic weapons, reports the Wall Street Journal. A top aide to Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada said the bill would likely seek to limit the capacity of ammunition magazines; expand background checks to include sales at gun shows and other private transactions; and require better record keeping to keep guns out of the hands of those with mental illnesses. It would also try to curb gun sales in states with more relaxed gun laws to buyers in states with stricter laws.
Absolutely not. Magazine bans are just as out of the realm of discussion as the assault weapons ban. If you have not yet called or written your Senator, please do so. Don’t use the form letters by Ruger and Smith & Wesson. These kinds of forms aren’t as impactful as a personalized message, and aren’t given as much weight. In short, this takes real work. I’ve gotten so many people asking me to blog about these form letters, but there’s a reason I don’t. It’s better than nothing, but if it’s easy, it won’t have as much of an impact. There’s no getting around it. Feel free to take letters you see floating around out there and modify them. I’ve made some here. But take the time to personalize them and send them yourself. E-mail is generally best, but a mailed letter to a district office (not DC) is also impactful. We are not out of the woods by far.