2014 – Page 24 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Politics of Personal Destruction

I think the thing that both Sebastian and I hate the most about politics at the moment is that it seems like everyone is so hateful toward everyone else to the point of wanting to see the individuals themselves destroyed. I get that there’s a certain “us vs. them” quality to building political opposition, but in the past, you could still go to the bar and have a drink with someone with whom you disagreed. Now, that seems like something from the past for many folks.

One of the things that brought on my recent frustration with the issue is the Facebook scandal involving Kendall Jones, a young female hunter. She posted pictures from lawful hunts, and Facebook took them down for violating community standards. However, the “Kill Kendall Jones” page is allowed to remain because Facebook says that doesn’t violate any community standards. Now, a Democratic former Congressional candidate is offering $100,000 to anyone who will publish naked pictures of Kendall Jones simply because he doesn’t like that she hunts and wants to see her personally destroyed.

I don’t even know if the political discourse on display can be improved. When someone considers it a reasonable and good idea to start a page calling for the death of someone who simply disagrees with you, I’m not sure there’s much that can be done to bring people like that back to some form of reasonable discussion, even if it still results in disagreement.

Creating Child Porn to “Prove” Child Porn

My outrage meter was off the charts yesterday with something that wasn’t gun-related, but it is related to the issue of freedom and the out-of-control state.

In Northern Virginia, a teen boy’s girlfriend sent sexy pictures of herself and he sent one back. Now they want to charge the kid with felonies for child pornography and are trying to “prove” it’s him by creating their own collection of child pornography to compare it against. When the response by the prosecutor and the cops is to think, “hey, we should haul a 17-year-old boy to a hospital and give him a shot to force an erection so that we can take nudie pictures of him all hot and bothered,” it’s time they need to reconsider their choices in life.

I’d also like to point out that the fact that they aren’t bringing the same charges against the 15-year-old girlfriend appears to be a little sexist.

I’m just curious though why there isn’t someone in the life of DA Claiborne Richardson – a friend or family member – who hasn’t sat down with him and said, “Really? Really? Giving a teen boy a forced erection and taking naked pictures is how you want to be remembered for all of history? Making a kid a felon for showing his girlfriend a video of his d*** that she’s probably already seen in real life many times if she’s sending dirty pictures of herself is what you consider an effective use of the justice system? Don’t you think it’s time to reconsider your life and how out of touch you are with reality if you think this is a perfectly reasonable course of action?”

10 Years for the Bloomberg Model Gun Control Mayor

It’s possible that former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was Mike Bloomberg’s model Mayor Against Guns. Nagin organized a gun confiscation plan that he actually got away with for a little while until they city was taken to court.

Now, underscoring the need that Bloomberg had to get away from keeping his gun control brand associate with mayors, Ray Nagin has been sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for bribery and money laundering.

Responding to Parking Lot Law Critics

Pennsylvania is pushing a parking lot law to protect employees who carry and lock their firearms in their cars while at work, and at least one newspaper editorial writer isn’t too happy with it. Rather than ignoring it, the primary sponsor, Sen. Rich Alloway, is responding directly to the criticism.

Currently, many of our friends and neighbors risk losing their jobs by carrying their firearm with them in their vehicle on their way to work. Twenty-three states have already enacted laws to protect their citizens from losing their jobs, and Pennsylvania should join them.

Today, daily commutes are punctuated by short errands.

Whether at the dry cleaners or at the grocery store, headlines remind us that crime can, and does happen anywhere. Furthermore, many work shifts are during non-traditional hours, when crimes are potentially more likely to occur.

Mr. Major dismisses these concerns as “What if factors” that needlessly frighten people. The irony is that his newspaper is regularly reporting violent crimes, that clearly demonstrate that sometimes the â€œWhat ifâ€™sâ€ do occur.

The Problem with General Gun Bans

Another store is under fire for their gun policy, but this time because they ban firearms and an employee assumed that IKEA meant it. So, when a guy showed up with a firearm strapped to his hip where everyone could see it, the customer was told to leave. That customer happens to be a police chief who was in uniform. Now, corporate is saying that their gun bans, even though they have no written exemption, were never meant to apply to any cop. The employee was simply enforcing their ban, and now he’s in trouble for it.

This is one reason why stores would be better not to post against lawful carry because they either have to make a list of exemptions that will eventually confuse their staff or they’ll have to ban police officers and others from their stores if they won’t create exemptions.

Chicago: Helping Us Keep Parity with Bloomberg

The City of Chicago has been ordered to sign over yet another near million dollar check over to the NRA for the case of Benson v. City of Chicago:

The Benson case was consolidated into Illinois Association of Firearm Retailers v. City of Chicago and that case challenged five aspects of Chicago’s law: (1) the ban on any form of carriage; (2) the ban on gun stores; (3) the ban on firing ranges; (4) the ban on self-defense in garages, porches, and yards; and (5) the ban on keeping more than one gun in an operable state.

Of course, fighting civil rights lawsuits isn’t cheap, so really this is just reimbursement for costs incurred fighting lawsuits that wouldn’t have any reason to exist if the City of Chicago wasn’t determined to evade the Second Amendment by hook or by crook. But it’s always good to hear the City of Chicago being a top NRA donor. Will we need to issue Rahm a gold jacket? He’s been donating at that level.

A Progressive Who Understands the Gun Issue

Sent to me by one of my liberal readers:

What matters isn’t what the public believes. What matters is the issues that the public is willing to get out and vote for. By and large, people don’t care badly enough about gun control to throw out legislators who don’t do what they want. But the small minority of gun nuts do care very badly–and they get out and vote in partisan primaries with that same passion.

This is the nuts and bolts of it, and one reason I’ve always strived not to just be another blog out there reaffirming confirmation biases. When most people don’t agree with you, the only way you can win is to ensure there remains few people passionate enough about gun control to actually vote on it.

We’ve made tremendous strides in this issue over the past few decades, to the point where the number of issues weÂ don’t enjoy at least a plurality of favorable public opinion are few. But one reason I’m always very wary of tactics designed to antagonize rather than persuade is because being antagonized is what causes people to get off their asses and act. There’s always a tendency among our people to believe that there’s more public support for our issue than there really is. The article is correct to note that this doesn’t matter as long as there’s still a big enthusiasm gap, but let’s not pretend the other side doesn’t have a large pool of potential supporters they can draw from if only there’s enough money to reach them.

That’s where Bloomberg comes in, and where he can do the most damage. They are starting small, not asking for much of a commitment. That’s why you see them circulating a lot of petitions and easy stuff which don’t take a lot of thought or effort. We’ve seen when it comes to higher levels of engagement, they take more than *ahem* a little encouragement.

My big concern is money can’t buy happiness, but it can buy elections. Bloomberg can easily outspend us. If we don’t make up for it with our own enthusiasm, we could end up in big trouble, and it could very likely come quickly and without much warning.

Standing Up to The Attacks

As cynical as I feel sometimes about the direction things are headed in with the Second Amendment issue, I do have to give a little credit where it is due to some of the other citizens stepping up to speak out. I’ve noticed several letters to the editor standing up for the NRA and gun rights recently, and even though I don’t agree with every conclusion in every letter, I’m happy to see people speaking out publicly. We need a few more people to stand up to the really absurd accusations about gun owners in the media because it helps inspire others to step up.

Happy Independence Day

I hope you all enjoy celebrating the birth of our nation by blowing up a small chunk of it. I’m going to spend most of today doing as little as possible. My major planned activity is snoozing in my chair and drinking iced tea.

My apologies for the light posting this week, but we’ve been busy tidying up for a house guest this weekend, and yesterday I had problems with the server the blog runs on. I was down a good chunk of Thursday because of a persistent crash involving the Ethernet chip on the board. I switched over to the other interface, in the hopes that it might only be specific to that one. We’ll see. I usually will get a text when the monitoring system detects the machine is down, but the mail relay was coincidentally out on that machine, which is the one thing that could go wrong where I wouldn’t know about it.

It may come time soon to replace the blog server. If I come to that point, I might have a fundraising drive. But I still think this current machine has some life left in it yet. We’ll see if switching to the other port fixes the problem.

Christie Vetos the Magazine Ban

From ANJRPC:

Today Governor Christie vetoed A2006 / S993, legislation (http://tinyurl.com/pxxpja3) that would have banned firearms magazines larger than 10 rounds and would have banned an entire class of popular .22 caliber semi-automatic rifles. The veto marks the end of the road for this legislation for the 2014-2015 session.
“After months of intense battle over this misguided legislation that won’t stop another crime or prevent another tragedy, we are grateful that Governor Christie has heard the voice of the outdoor community and ended the discussion,” said ANJRPC Executive Director Scott Bach. “The Governor clearly recognizes the difference between legislation that punishes violent criminals vs. legislation that targets the rights of law-abiding citizens.”