The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
As much attention as the downloadable plans for a 3-D printed gun are getting online, I chuckled when I read over the benefits to joining the Miniature Arms Society. One of the perks to membership is: “Access to a library of plans for making miniature arms.”
They have been around since 1973, so the idea of sharing plans for guns a serious hobbyist could make at home with the right equipment isn’t anything new. The previous versions are just…tinier.
With media rumors going around that Jeff Flake was going to switch his vote and support gun control, he is speaking out on the issue:
It was reported by some media outlets today that I am changing my vote on Manchin-Toomey, and that I am somehow linking this vote to a vote on the internet sales tax.
Neither is true. I am not changing my vote on Manchin-Toomey (I voted against it). I voted against the internet sales tax as well. There is no connection between these two votes.
Arizona gun owners should definitely let his office know that they appreciate his stance. (h/t Great Satan, Inc.)
CSGV must be absolutely giddy for tomorrow. They are on the short list of groups selected by the President’s organization to present OFA’s gun control petitions to the Senate & House along with MAIG & Protect Minnesota. This is almost relevancy!
I think it’s quite funny that OFA spent quite a bit of time on their conference call with supporters tonight highlighting how many pieces of paper they plan to print and how many cars they plan to fill with these dead trees to drive in their pollution-generating cars to Capitol Hill to be delivered to all of those Senators who voted against them. Yet, CNN highlights how it is all a silly PR stunt.
Rules prevent the boxes of paper from being delivered directly to lawmakers, so names will be sent digitally…
According to the call leaders, their target states are New Hampshire, Arizona, and Nevada. They also touted the 1.4 million button clicks for the online petition were “unprecedented,” but oddly enough, didn’t let their supporters know that NRA now has 5 million dues-paying-members.
OFA’s only meetings that they announced for tomorrow are with California Democrats – Nancy Pelosi and Mike Thompson. But, you know, bipartisanship. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want Republicans to take their calls, but I do think it makes their claims about being bipartisan just a tad false–a pretty common theme in tonight’s phone call.
OFA is claiming that Sen. Ayotte is a success story of their gun control push because she is supposedly being hit on the issue from both the left and the right. Do any New Hampshire readers have any evidence of the right attacking Ayotte for her gun control vote? I think that may be an outright lie. They also claim that Ayotte has changed her mind on the vote, which is not at all what I have seen.
In the greater scheme of things, their leading topic tonight was immigration. The other big topic was climate change. The first two questions were also about those issues. The single question on gun control was best paraphrased as, “Does all this organizing on gun control actually work or are we wasting our time?”
If you’re a New Hampshire gun owner, the last few weeks and even coming weeks have been a great time to write letters to the editor of local newspapers. It’s a huge help when locals stand up for their own lawmakers supporting their rights.
NRA has gone to air in at least one $25,000 ad buy on WMUR with this ad in defense of Ayotte:
But supplemental letters always help. There’s still time to make a thank you phone call to her offices, too.
We noticed SAF/CCRBKA’s booth on the NRA floor, but decided not to stop. But Think Progress did, and noticed they were handing out literature taking NRA to task over Manchin-Toomey:
But despite the bill’s (perhaps temporary) defeat in the Senate, CCRKBA doesn’t appear to be backing down — The Gun Mag, a Second Amendment Foundation publication, published an “NRA Meeting Special Issue†whose lead article takes apart the NRA’s line on Manchin-Toomey.
So it would seem that SAF/CCRKBA is doing their level best to help revive this bill, along with the Democratic leadership in the Senate. We’ve already started to see Jeff Flake go soft, and there’s rumors about Ayotte. I think both of them are hoping this issue goes away. But not, apparently, if Alan Gottlieb has his way.
If we end up losing on this, and there’s a good chance we will, you can lay the blame squarely at their feet on this one. I have been reluctant to be truly harsh to Alan Gottlieb’s organizations because I understand that lobbying is not a black and white game, and sometimes you get forced into concessions, or make a bad call. But the Manchin-Toomey deal is dead, and we should all be on the same page in trying to keep it dead, and CCRKBA/SAF are not on that page. We do not need this while the Dems, the White House, and Bloomberg are busy twisting arms to try to reanimate Manchin-Toomey.
This has forced me to take the unfortunate step of removing SAF from my side links. As long as they are still trying to make a case for Manchin-Toomey, I will not help promote them.
I thought I’d add some coverage from fellow bloggers who attended, and some who didn’t attend but blogged about the meeting, nonetheless.
I missed this protester. What she calls loopholes, other people call freedom.
The gun control activists are stoked. You’ll notice that there was more interest in the protesters than guns on the floor. Actually, there wasn’t much new this year. I don’t think manufacturers want to introduce new products in the midst of all this madness. Kevin also notes that we’re a different species to them.
From Jennifer: Things I learned at the NRA convention. She also has some coverage of the protest.
Joe notes that Connecticut Senator Blumenthal thinks we had nothing to celebrate in Houston. Joe didn’t make it this year because he was busy with Boomershoot.
Great Satan Inc has more protest coverage.
Rob Pincus made quite a stir suggesting folks keep locked and secured guns in the kids bedrooms. But an anti-gun activist stating in front of reporters that he keeps an unsecured shotgun under the bed with kids in the house didn’t raise any ire at all. Maybe because no one believes any of these people actually are gun owners.
Random thoughts on the NRA Annual Meeting from John Richardson.
JayG has an after action review. He also participated in a story Buzzfeed was working on at the convention.
Overheard at the Annual Meeting. I’d have been impressed if they could deliver a T&A product.
With so many anti-Second Amendment groups rebranding as being for gun safety or for preventing accidents in recent years, you’d think they would have figured out how to be consistent on this front. That should have been part of their initial strategy meetings on the issue.
However, it clearly was not. National Review takes a look at the many different quotes and comments from anti-gun advocates who find every excuse in the book to keep kids from ever learning about firearm safety.
It’s funny that these same people probably would not promote abstinence-only sex education because they would say it does not work. Yet, it magically works on kids when it comes to guns.
One of the protesters actually talked about keeping a shotgun unsecured under his bed while refusing to teach his children how to handle it safely. He’s part of the problem, but it was easier for him to blame NRA instead of taking responsibility and being a parent.
Americans still don’t care about passing more gun control. And it’s not just gun control. Immigration reform, the other big White House and Democratic priority, is also not a big concern. I wonder whether, at this point, Obama is just running back to his inner-city roots. When things aren’t going well, hit on issues that play up to the base, and deflect attention from the real and substantive problems. I’ve noticed this often from Philadelphia politicians: when it comes to crime, their support for gun control is rooted in the fact that it’s easier to blame Harrisburg for a lack of gun laws than it is to discuss the substantive problems facing those communities.
I can’t tell you what the most popular gun was at the NRA convention on the exhibit floor, but I did hear a report about the most popular gun featured on the NRA Foundation’s Wall of Guns.
Contest participants were given a chance to buy one (or more) of 100 tickets in a drawing. The winners of each drawing from each batch of 100 were given their pick of 81 guns. In some cases for lower cost guns, they could pick two selections.
I spoke with another Foundation supporter who reported that before they stopped drawing, they had to pull off a Tommy gun because they ran out. I checked the model they had listed, and I believe it was this one.
Speaking of giving guns away, do we have any readers interested in a Colt LE6900? It’s a $899 gun that our Friends committee will be raffling off in a few short weeks for tickets that are only $20. It’s one of five guns we’ll be drawing for out of a maximum 300 tickets sold. That means if you liked the odds on our committee’s 1911 raffle last year, you should really like these odds.
Mike Bloomberg’s recruitment efforts in Mayors Against Illegal Guns manages to find some real gems to join him in advocating against the constitutional rights of ordinary citizens. The latest to join the ranks of the troubled MAIG members is Pat Ahumada of Brownsville, Texas.
Technically, he was already an Illegal Mayor Against Guns because of his multiple DWI arrests & convictions. However, he was made a member of the “Illegaler” club with his new arrest for illegally operating a gambling establishment.
