July 2015 – Page 4 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Newsmax: Here’s a Crappy List of 100 Pro-Gun People We Could Think Of

Newsmax has published it’s list of 100 most influential people in the pro-gun movement. Newsmax is normally on the list of sites I won’t link, because they are the National Enquirer of the conservative news sites. But this was a stupid enough list I had to comment. Â It strikes me more as “Let’s list out 100 people we can think of or Google who are in the pro-gun movement and list them, and we can do it in the order we find them.” It would hardly be wrong to say that, Dudley Brown, for instance, is not influential, but when he actively sabotages progress on our issue, I don’t think it’s wrong to question his priorities. It also seems that all you have to do to get on their list is be a minor celebrity, well-known and own guns, or have once said a kind word.

The list is insulting to the real people who have dedicated their lives to this fight, often out of the limelight and not in the expectation of getting any thanks for what they were doing. So here’s who ought to have made this list,Â in no particular order:

Don Kates
Dave Hardy
Dave Kopel
Robert Dowlut
Clayton Cramer
Nelson Lund
Robert Cottrol
Glenn Reynolds
Stephen Halbrook
Nicholas Johnson

And that’s just ten legal scholars I can think of off the top of my head, who have all done tremendous things for the issue. I could probably list ten more, all of whom belong on that list more than twenty others who have no place on it.

What about Alan Gura and Alan Gottlieb? I mean, I know Alan Gura argued only argued two landmark Second Amendment cases and all, but hey, Bruce Willis once said something pro-gun! Alan Gottlieb, whatever his faults, has still done a hell of a lot more on the issue than Whoopi Goldberg.

Or what about Chris Cox and his whole lobbying team? Everyone thought we were going to get it good and hard in Congress during the 2013 fights, and our opponents walked away empty handed. Not even worth an honorable mention?

This list was written by people with no understanding or appreciation of the issue. It’s one reason I will continue to not link to Newsmax, or take them seriously.

Again, They Are Coming for Your Guns

Another progressive, who totally aren’t coming after your guns, BTW, pens an article praising coming after your guns as a good and wholesome thing. You know what would convince me, as a gun owner, the lefties weren’t after my guns? Not constantly saying they are after my guns, and hoping I somehow don’t notice. Note that today they aren’t really arguing crime anymore. They are arguing suicides. They are going to take them away for your own good, you see. Because “the person most likely to kill you with a gun is yourself.”

This shows the folly of statistics, because the likelihood I will die by suicide is precisely or very near to 0%, and if by some very odd and dire circumstance I ended up going that way, it’s none of anyone else’s f***ing business but my own. I realize that in this is an age where everyone is out and public with their personal problems to any poor schmuck who will listen, but I don’t believe my personal problems are anyone’s albatross to carry but my own, and certainly aren’t any reason for someone to insert themselves into my personal business uninvited.

The gun control movement probably realizes that in this age, speaking out on suicide prevention by taking dangerous things away from people, whether they are suicidal or not, fits the cultural zeitgeist a lot better than the idea that we’d do better as a society if we minded our own business as much as we seem to enjoy minding everyone else’s.

Everytown Coming Out Against Default Proceeds

Bloomberg’s organization wants to extend the waiting period for handguns, essentially. The Brady Act requires a NICS background check, but in the case where the system delays for manual review, the FBI has three days to make a determination, or the sale is allowed to proceed under what is called a “default proceed.” The problem, as they see it, is that the Charleston mass-murderering racist was delayed by the system, and after waiting five days, managed to get the gun on a default proceed.

There is nothing broken about the NICS system itself. It was designed to work this way. Where there was a failure is in the FBI not following through to determine the status of his case. Eugene Volokh took a more detailed look into this issue, and determined that the the racist mass-murderer was arrested previously on a non-felony drug charge, but which was accidentally entered as a felony drug charge. Ordinarily, a misdemeanor charge doesn’t bar you from purchasing a firearm. Only people under indictment or information for felony charges are barred from purchasing (but not possessing) firearms. However, 18 U.S.C. Â§ 922(g)(3) bars people who are “an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance.”

Bob Owens has written two articles already about how this is not a failure of NICS. I agree with him. Even if the drug charge was a misdemeanor charge, unquestionably the FBI had grounds to deny The Racist under 922(g)(3), but it did not follow through. A big of communication between FBI and ATF could have seen The Racist’s gun recovered. That did not happen. This is an inevitable failure of bureaucrats, not a failure of NICS itself.

Trumped

The federalist has a pretty good article making the case against The Donald. Jim Geraghty notes when you consider the full Republican base, he polls badly, and in a head-to-head matchup with Hillary, she creams him. So what is The Donald up to? If you want my opinion, he’s s stalking horse for the Clintons. If Trump manages to do decently enough, by saying outrageous things that channel the base’s anger, I’d bet money he’s going to Ross Perot whoever the eventual Republican nominee is. Even if he could only pull in 6% of the Republican vote, that’s probably enough to throw the election to Hillary.

If I were a big Republican donor, I’d be thinking about kicking some cash to Bernie Sanders’ campaign. If he manages to defeat Hillary in the primary, you won’t have to worry about narcissistic billionaires pulling a Perot, because the idea of a President Sanders will scare the crap out of them enough they won’t want to play games.

A Succinct Explanation of the GOP’s Struggle

Ace of Spades argues that it boils down to a conflict between the “Working Class,” and the “Comfortable Class.”Â Go read the whole thing, and then come back. I’ll wait.Â Keep in mind this is a thought experiment, and that sometimes it helps to make sweeping generalizations when engaged in thought experiments, butÂ I think he’s spot on with his analysis within the context he’s chosen.

I am probably not that unusual, in that I was raised by people who would classify in Ace’s characterization as “Working Class.” My father worked a professional job, but he was never really comfortable in that environment. Today he’ll often say he wishes he had become a plumber. His father was a wood pattern maker for Atlantic Petroleum. My mother, like both my grandmothers, had only a high school education, and were stay-at-home moms. My maternal Grandfather was a machinist for Boeing. My aunts and uncles are steamfitters, nurses, technicians, all the way to the “Comfortable Class” ofÂ corporate executives.Â But one generation prior to my parents’,Â we were all people who punched time cards for a living, and some in my family still do.

The idea that I’d work in anything other than a professional field was not even a thought growing up. I went into engineering, which is admittedly the kind of a professional field that’s acceptable to working class people. If I had studied, say, Medieval English Poetry, or even Music (which I briefly flirted with), the people who I was raised around would probably have mocked the idea, and wondered why I was wasting all that money.

I have moved into the lower ranks of the Comfortable Class, and share a lot of the Comfortable Class’s values. What I don’t share, and what Ace is correct in observing, is the dripping condescension many in the Comfortable Class have for the Working Class. How could I? They are much of my family, and theÂ people I grew up with.

It was “White Working Class” people I spent a lot of time around during summer jobs I held down while of high school age.Â Ace is absolutely correct about the pathologies of this demographic. Racism and xenophobia are a characteristic of some, and there’s no use in denying that truth. One of my part-time jobs in high school, I worked in a union shop which contracted with the Teamsters. Most workers were drivers. I was not a driver, and was therefore a non-union worker. Â The shop did not have any blackÂ drivers. By that I don’t mean they failed to meet their diversity quotient, or other such PC babble: I mean they engaged in very real and blatant racial discrimination. Applications by black drivers went into the trash. That was around 1990 or so, so I hope attitudes in working class environments have become more enlightened, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they haven’t. This experience with very real racism, and the union’s practice of defending deadbeats, is a big reason I’m not fond of unions today.

You can see why some people, once they make it into the Comfortable Class, don’t really want anything to do with the “White Working Class.” But of course, it’s not universally true that everyone in that class is a crude, loudmouth, racist xenophobe. It’s not even a majority. Certainly a minority of people I was exposed to growing up, and not my own family.

But that’s not to let the Comfortable Class off the hook. I agree completely with Ace’s understanding of their pathologies: the dripping condescension and the readinessÂ to make common cause with the left to screw people who work for a living if it benefits their desire for power and status over those they view as beneath them.

The primary struggle within the GOP today is whether or not to expand their base by trying to appeal to blacks and hispanics (the establishment’s plan), or to forget all that and double down on the white vote (theÂ Ann Coulter plan). I don’t believe Coulter’s plan is smart or desirable, but I lack faith in the establishment’s ability to successfully implement their plan. If I were a GOP strategist I would bet my future on this:

Stop making strife within the party. I agree with Ace that this bickering between the coalition partners isn’t accomplishing anything. The Establishment should never have made war on the Tea Party; they should have engaged them. Yes, the Tea Party has its share of kooks and losers, but that wasn’t universally true. Find the people you an work with and develop them. That didn’t happen. Instead, the establishment immediately identified the movement as a threat to its power and tried to destroy it. This was a huge mistake.
Concentrating solely on the white vote is a losing proposition long term. That’s demographic reality. I also believe voting and aligning our politics along racial lines is toxic, and very bad for the country. Rick Perry seems to get this.
Learn as much as you can about middle class blacks and middle class hispanics, which will grow in ranks as the economy gets back on track. Targeting this demographic is no real short term advantage, but you have to start learning how to speak to them, and learn potential wedge issues you can use. Democrats are masters of identifying and exploiting wedge issues within and between demographics, and Republicans are horrible at this. New entrants into the Middle Class are people who are on their way to the Comfortable Class, and you can either let the left own them, or try understand their values, their anxieties, and more importantly their fault lines. Learn how to cater to some of their concerns without abandoning your values. You won’t reach all of them, but you don’t have to. Get some of them and let upward mobility take care of the rest. Police abuses and over criminalization are areas where I think the GOP can start to build bridges.
The term “States Rights” needs to be banished from the Republican vocabulary. Republicans need to be crystal clear that their understanding of federalism includes strong and aggressive protections for the civil rights of all Americans at the federal level. Play up the party’s history of supporting this. There are still plenty of people alive today who remember living under Jim Crow, and when they hear turning more authority over to the states, you create anxiety in a lot of black voters. The GOP does not need to give up on federalism, but Republicans need to be better on civil rights than Democrats, and I think now they can be if they just make a little effort.
Understand aÂ universal value: once people get into the middle class, and I don’t care what color or creed you are, once you arrive there youÂ have something to lose, and youÂ are going to be less likely to support redistributionist schemes because you will be the one paying for them. People vote their pocketbooks first. The rhetoric needs to be how GOP policies support upward mobility. The GOP needs to understand that for many blacks, government jobs are a ticket to the middle class. That doesn’t mean they need to become the Big Government Lite, but it’s something to watch in rhetoric. Once people move up and out of the middle class, they’ll start feeling rich guilt, and will have enough money to buyÂ the left’s indulgences.
Immigration is a sticky issue, but it will have to be confronted. The amnesty well has been poisoned by the establishment. The key thing to remember here is Working Class Whites have to compete with immigrants for jobs, and that’s what breeds resentment and xenophobia. But Working Class Blacks also have to compete with immigrants for jobs, and this is a potential wedge issue. I think everyone is worried about how these new immigrant groups are going to vote, and what the impact of their vote is going to have on the future of America. This is probably the biggest issue that stands to tear the GOP apart.

Again, I’m speaking here in terms of strategy, not what my personal policy preferences are. My personal policy preferences are far more libertarian than what would win elections. But the key is getting things moving in the right direction. If there we are to win, there must be peace between our peoples. If we are to have peace, all parts of the coalition need to be compromise.

They Still Have No Idea What They Are Up Against

New York Magazine has an article which talks about how a lot of leaders of the marriage equality movement are now turning their sights to gun control, thinking the same tactics that got such a drastic change in public opinion will have the same effect on people’s attitudes towards guns. I think this is wishful and misguided thinking.

But guns have a special salience now, after Newtown, after South Carolina, and veterans of the marriage movement see familiar terrain in guns â€” so familiar that they feel optimistic about being able to guide Americans to a similarly radical culture shift down the line.

The reason that culture shift happened so quickly is because the movement played off American’s sense of fairness. On the gun issue, that isn’t going to play. It’s a pure policy issue. If anything, gun owners can play to American’s sense of fairness to argue the gun control movement wishes to treat us unfairly.

Let us also not forget that the gay marriage issue also had a very significant generation gap. The issue won as much because it’s opponents were dying off, and the proponents were all young and energetic, as much as they changed minds. There isn’t any such generational gap on the gun issue. Young people tend not to be gun owners, but that probably has a lot to do with guns being expensive, and young people facing European levels of structural unemployment.

The gay marriage issue also had a large and passionate grassroots. Not only was their community fully invested in the issue, they got their friends and family invested too. They talked to people, and changed minds. Who does that sound more like to you? The answer is not the anti-gun movement. If the anti-gun movement had a patron saint, it would be Gladys Kravitz.

The article goes on to recite left-wing myth after left-wing myth about the gun rights movement.

“Today, fewer households own guns than ever before”
“gun lobby itself, which profits, obviously, by peddling fear.”
“able to mobilize a small but zealous and loyal group of voters”
“especially on background checks, a gun-protection measure which 92 percent of Americans”

First, he’s taking advice from Dan Gross, who runs the Brady Campaign, a group that post-Newtown basically surrendered control of the movement to Mike Bloomberg because of their history of ineffectiveness. The Brady Campaign had not passed any gun control legislation of any real significance since 1994. Dan Gross lives in la la land. Everyone knows it. I’m sure even Bloomberg and Feinblatt would agree.

These people still think “assault weapons” are achievable as an issue. That boat has sailed. Last I checked they were barely holding on to a majority on that issue, and that’s with loaded polling questions. They are still parroting 92% when they know damned well in a very blue state they only got 60% yes. The article ends by speaking of a value that is just fundamentally at odds with how Americans think about personal security.

In this redefining, he hopes to make a point. â€œProtectionâ€ isnâ€™t an individual matter (a canard in any case, because having a gun in the house makes you exponentially less safe) in which individual patriarchs safeguard individual offspring. â€œProtectionâ€ is a communitarian thing, in which the safety of oneâ€™s own children depends on the safe habits of oneâ€™s neighbors.

This is a very European attitude, and one that is completely foreign to the American Experience, which has a tradition of armed, personal defense. This message will play very well with European Immigrants. It’s going to fall flat with Americans, even most liberal Americans. How are these people thinking they are going to make any difference at all when they don’t even understand the fight or who they are fighting?

A Reddit thread on self-defense

Redditors who have had to kill in self defense, Did you ever recover psychologically? What is it to live knowing you killed someone regardless you didn’t want to do it?

Found this on Facebook, and while I can’t say I read all the comments, I did scroll through to the end, so I saw an awful lot of the root-level stories. Unsurprisingly, they were basically all self-defense incidents. Not all were defensive firearms uses, and more than a few ended with an attack hoist on their own petard, with the “victim” getting ahold of an attacker’s weapon and using it on the attackers.

The main thing I noticed? That in a lot of the cases, the attackers were not armed with firearms, but the victims were. So that even the anti-gunners got their way and were able to wave the magic wand and disappear all the guns, it would result in good people unable to defend themselves against bad people.Â These are the people anti-gunners want dead, maimed, or raped. And a numberÂ of them did what their attackers wanted and were still hurt after compliance.

Shotgun Weddings

Las Vegas is the world capital of tacky weddings. You can get married by Elvis and have a shrimp buffet afterwards! So it’s no surprise that someone set up a range to sell “shotgun weddings.”Â It’s all in good fun. But of course, the killjoys over at CSGV and the Brady Campaign are having none of it:

“Responsible gun owners appreciate the risks of having a gun,” says Jonathan Hutson spokesman for theÂ Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “They don’t treat a gun casually like a party favor.”

As long as they are following the four rules, I don’t really see what the problem is. Sure, even as a gunny, this wouldn’t really be my cup of tea, but did I mention this was Las Vegas?

To love guns enough to include them in your wedding vows is a problem with our culture, according to Ladd Everitt, the communications director for theÂ Coalition to Stop Gun ViolenceÂ in Washington, DC. “We live in a society where a certain subset of gun owners fetishize firearms, talking them as something akin to religious idols,” he said. “There is a strong spiritual element here, where commonly embraced maxims of faith, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before me,’ are rejected outright. The gun culture takes great pride in ignoring the risks posed by firearms, and embraces the suffering they cause: ‘That’s the price of liberty.’ Some might describe this philosophy as nihilism.”

I’ll bet Ladd is a load of fun at parties. I’d have left it at “Well, it seems kind of tacky to us,” but I’m not the type of person who wakes up at one in the morning in a cold sweat worrying that someone out there might be having fun.

Correction: Constitutional Carry in Maine

I got sidetracked in yesterday’s post, since one of the Bangor papers headlines their articles with today’s date, making me think I was reading something current. In truth, Maine’s legislature addressed the Governor’s concerns, and Governor LePage is signing the revised bill today. Maine will become the 6th state to adopt Constitutional Carry. Congratulations Maine!

And the ball keeps rolling.

The State of Gun Control Finances

I’ve suspected for a while that the non-Bloomberg gun control groupsÂ had to be in pretty bad shape. Not just because gun control is a losing issue, but because to whatever extent gun control was revived by the President’s exploitation of the Sandy Hook Massacre, most of that benefit has gone to Bloomberg’s organization since everyone else seems to be getting ignored by the media. But to know for sure, we had to wait until the 2013 Form 990s we out. The answer seems to be that everyone in the gun control movement undoubtedly reaped a windfall from the massacre, and their movement’s 501(c)(3) branches continue to do better than they did pre-Sandy Hook.

First, let’s look at the Brady Campaign. In 2012, the Brady Campaign made 4.91 million dollars in revenue, which was up from 2.93 million in 2011. We suspect most of that money poured in during the few weeks after Sandy Hook on December 15, 2012. It was the fight into early 2013 where it became apparent that Bloomberg and the White House were running the gun control agenda, and Brady started falling off everyone’s radar. So it is not surprising that in 2013, the Brady Campaign did not raise as much money as it did in 2012, most of which was probably raised in the first several weeks of that year.

Now for the Brady Center, their 501(c)(3) public charity. It looks to me like they might have shifted their fundraising, and some of their personnel cost over to The Brady Center. The Center didn’t get as much of a windfall in 2012, bringing in 3.82 million versus 2.88 million in 2011. But the Center managed to increase it’s revenue in 2013 to 4.58 million.

I also note that in 2013, salary costs to the Brady Campaign drop by 33%, while the Center’s salary costs increase 31%. I suspect they are shifting more of their personnel costs to the 501(c)(3). Previously, when the Bradys were in really dire straits, it became apparent they were using the Center as a bit of a lifeboat, since the Campaign was nearly out of money. Without a doubt, Sandy Hook saved their asses, and I suspect they are still enjoying some benefit of Obama making gun control cool again.

Coalition to Stop Gun Violence had a similar story to the Bradys. They had raised 333 grand in 2011, and 492 grand in 2012. But again, in 2013, they were down to 484 grand. EFSGV, their 501(c)(3) branch, also tracks the Brady Center. In 2011, 460 grand in revenue, then 638 grand in 2012. In 2013, EFSGV raised 950 grand, almost a million dollars. I guess maybe that foaming at the mouth stuff works! They outperformed the Brady Center in terms of revenue growth.

VPC is largely supported by wealthy foundations, but their revenue was also up in 2013. They managed to boost their public support percentage to 21.50%, which is actually still pretty sad, but better than 2011 when it was 17.28% and 2012, when it was 18.17%. I’m sure they are hoping since their public support is heading in the right direction, the IRS will stay off their backs. They typically have to include a letter explain why it’s so low, and what they are doing to bring it up. They’ve been doing this for a while.

It is without doubt Everytown is now king of the gun control movement, with 2103 revenues of 36 million. Their 2012 revenue was 4.86 when they were MAIG. I’d note that Everytown spends previous little on fundraising, which means most of that money is likely coming from Bloomberg. We all pretty much knew as much. Bloomberg is certainly generous about spreading his organization’s wealth around. Their 2013 990 shows a 47,500 grant to CSGV, 6 grand to CeaseFirePA, 263 thousand to Moms Demand Action, among other groups.

So how does Moms Demand Action look? She raised 890 large in 2013, and we know 30% of that came from Bloomberg through Everytown. She spent a reasonable amount on fundraising. You’ll note in their 990, however, that MDA as a separate entity officially terminated the same year, and merged into Everytown. So Shannon Watts’s operation is entirely Everytown, and not a legal, separate entity. Everytown’s 2014 990s will be very interesting. I doubt MDA was ever really independent from Bloomberg, and the whole thing was a Bloomberg-backed venture from the get go.

So where does that leave things? A gun control movement that probably got most of it’s boost in the weeks after Sandy Hook, but are still largely benefitting from the raised awareness the President and Bloomberg’s money have bought the movement. I would not get despondent over their improved fortunes, however. Why?

Because in 2012, NRA’s revenues went from 219MM to 256MM, and in 2013 they went to $348MM. Get that? Between 2011 and 2013, NRA’s revenue increased by 129MM. That’s more than 3x the amount of every other gun control group’s revenue increase from 2011 to 2013 combined. And that’s just NRA proper. The NRA Foundation went from 29MM to 43MM from 2011 to 2012, then dropping slightly to 41MM in 2013,Â I suspect because people wanted to donate to the political arm since that’s where the threats were coming from.

The President’s and Bloomberg ginning up of gun control post-Sandy Hook has made NRA much stronger proportionally than the gun control movement. That’s because of people out there like you.