Year: 2013
North Carolina Gets Better
North Carolina finally gets HR937 done. John Richardson has the word on the agreement, which is now on the way to Governor McCrory. It’s quite disappointing that they had to leave the Permit to Purchase provision stand, but it probably wasn’t worth sacrificing the rest of the bill over that. One wonders whether North Carolina will ever get rid of that oddity from the era of Jim Crow.
Is MAIG in Hiding from its Own Members?
From the sounds of this story out of Fargo, North Dakota, MAIG is trying to keep their anti-gun rallies so far under the radar that they don’t even tell their member mayors in the cities they are visiting.
Next thing you know …
… they’ll publish a map that puts crosshairs on the districts of “targeted” politicians. And here I thought we were the violent ones.
Mayor Carlos Danger?
That latest Anthony Wiener scandal:Â I couldn’t make this stuff up. Mild mannered politician by day… every woman’s superhero by…. eeew. I wouldn’t want to use the phone booth after he’s changed into that particular alter ego.
Canada’s Registry Closer to Deletion
Quebec just keeps losing at the appeals court level in their quest to preserve Canada’s long gun registry after the federal government voted to get rid of the expensive boondoggle.
After Quebec lost their case to force the federal government to hold on to the data so they could use it for a provincial registry, they asked for a stay to preserve the data while they appeal to the Supreme Court. They apparently argued that it would cost their province quite a bit of money to recreate the database, and that’s why they didn’t want to allow the federal government follow the court decision. According to the article, the judge said that saving Quebec’s money for the program they voted for isn’t a good enough reason to force the federal government to keep maintaining the database.
Michelle Picking Up Gun Control
Looks like she’s dumping the fat kids and picking up gun control as her cause célèbre.
Aides say the first lady isn’t making gun violence a new and distinct issue, but is folding it into her work encouraging youth to focus on getting an education.
Yeah, because not enough gun control is the reason the youth today aren’t getting a quality education.
DRM in 3D Printers?
Jeff Soyer reports on a company that claims it has built in firearm component detection into its software. You can’t stop the signal. I predict this will be about as effective as Digital Rights Management has been at preventing people from copying video games, movies, and music. I suspect 3D printer makers are concerned that hysterical politicians in states like California and New York may enact restrictions on their product if the printer manufacturers don’t act first. This is not an unreasonable fear, given that both these states have an instinct to ban scary things first and ask questions only later, and then not very intelligent questions at that.
Is There Room For Middle Ground?
MPN News asks the question. No, there isn’t a middle ground to be had. Tom Coburn, of all legislators, offered them a middle ground, and because it only included universal background checks and nothing else, it was rejected by those who demanded more controls — controls that would have driven up the cost to transferring a gun to 50 dollars or more and created universal de facto registration. So you tell me: is there a middle ground? The great untold story of this whole struggle was that they were offered a compromise, and they rejected it. It’s not about background checks. It has never been about background checks. It’s about adding as many burdens, traps and expenses as they think they can get away with. Background checks are just marketing — a way to make the bitter pill go down for people who don’t really pay attention to these things.
MAIG Losing Members
Just got back from the biannual teeth scraping and cleaning ritual, which always comes with the a heaping helping of the story about how if I don’t floss more, the skies will darken and toads will rain down on the land. But other than that I didn’t have any issues that required going back and facing the drill. Any checkup that ends with “see you in six months” is a good check-up, no matter what they say about how my gingiva is doing.
So it looks like MAIG, having abandoned any pretext of not being anything other than a gun control advocacy group is apparently losing members. I’ve always been pretty unsure the best strategy for getting MAIG mayors. The purpose of preemption was to help keep uniform laws, but a secondary effect is to keep us from having to constantly do battle at the local level. Bloomberg’s group practically begs for us to engage there again to get rid of some of these MAIG mayors, but I’m not convinced it’s a great use of limited resources. I think a whack-a-mole strategy is most sound when it comes to MAIG mayors: ruthlessly crush them any time they seek higher office in state capitals or Washington, where they can start to affect gun policy. Not all mayors have higher political ambitions, but many do. I think if we make MAIG membership toxic to those who do have those ambitions it might be enough to make many mayors reconsider joining. Ideally I’d love MAIG to become a coalition of big city mayors, and mayors from states where they’ve already largely succeeded in eradicating the gun culture.
UPDATE: I tend to think 50 mayors leaving isn’t a huge blow to MAIG, but the meme is getting out there, for sure. This isn’t good for MAIG. They will have to counter this meme, and that’s good for us. Make them work for it.
UPDATE: This might be an attempt to fight the meme.
UPDATE: Mayors For a Name Change? Stranger things have happened. It’s not like we haven’t seen name changes in this issue before, and I approve of their proposed name. It’s more honest.