The New Resistance to the 2A

You can see the resistance is shaping up around “sensitive places” doctrine and “good moral character.” I remember seeing a comment from Prof. Adam Winkler post-Bruen:

He’s generally on the other side of this issue, but fair criticism! I don’t think licensing can be permitted if the intention is to provide real limitations on government, and I don’t think it fits within the framework outlined in the majority opinion. The Court should have just thrown out licensing altogether, but I suspect Roberts and Kavanuagh didn’t want to go that far (as their concurring opinions saying shall-issue licensing is OK would indicate).

Most long-standing licensing regimes started out relatively lax and then got more and more restrictive over time. Licensing invites abuse from authorities, and future hostile courts will probably use that hook to limit the right. This hasn’t really played out yet, but I think you’re going to see the lower courts go along with a lot of these games.

Hopefully we maintain our pro-2A majority on the court, and Roberts and Kavanaugh will eventually see that licensing is an invitation for abuse. And unlike with marriage or protesting (two other contexts where licensing of a right is permitted), the ruling class are likely to remain completely hostile to the idea of the peasantry being armed. For non-discretionary licensing to work, there needs to be broad consensus that it should be non-discretionary, and you’ll never have that with guns.

Bruen Drops and It’s a Win

This doesn’t portend a return to blogging. Social media and Google have killed blogging as a thing, so I’m not inclined to return to the same level of activity I once had. But I wanted to note Bruen because it’s probably the most important thing to happen to gun rights since McDonald dropped 12 years ago. You can read the ruling here. At this point I have done only a quick skim, but my impression is that it is about as good a ruling as we could have hoped for. Is it ironclad? No. No ruling would be. My impression is that Kavanaugh and Roberts are the weaker of the Bruen majority, but they still joined the majority of the opinion and filed their own concurrence basically saying shall-issue was fine.

Overall it puts the kibosh on the lower courts Second Amendment Two-Step dance. They will have to come up with a more novel means of resisting the Second Amendment, and I suspect they will. But it will get harder for them. The Court pretty clearly wanted to emphasize Heller and signal to the lower court that it is not dead letter. The Court made quite clear that outlying laws were meaningless for 2nd Amendment analysis. So the fact that the Sullivan Law is over 100 years old by now doesn’t mean it’s constitutional because it has a long history: it is an outlier that new other jurisdictions have passed.

Long term it’s probably best not to rely on the Courts for protection. Just ask Planned Parenthood how well that’s working out for them. But we can use these reprieves to help repair the gun culture in these jurisdictions if the restrictions lighten things up a little. This is not over. There will never be a death blow to the desire of the nobility to control the serfs. Nonetheless we should use the circumstances presented to us for maximal advantage.

Breaking Silence Over Gun Control

For the past week since the deal was announced, gun owners have been wondering “What do we get out of this? How is it a compromise if all we’re doing is ceding ground.”

After reading the proposed language, I’m surprised by how much of this looks to me like it’s aimed at Mexican drug cartels. So what you have here is a bunch of Republicans who are probably retiring or will soon announce they are retiring, who love themselves some “law and order,” who are using Uvaldi as an excuse to get a wish list to target the cartels.

There’s also a few cases where they are requiring action from states, which the feds cannot do. The state can literally refuse to pick up the phone and there’s nothing the feds can do about it. This is well-established precedent. So know we know what the GOP worms got out of this: some drug warriorin’. And what flag waving Republican doesn’t love that?

Just go read them trying to define “dating relationship.” Are you kidding me? At least they didn’t apply it retroactively, and limited the prohibition to 5 years, but you know what would have been nice? To do the same thing with all of the Lautenberg Amendment. There would have been a compromise. But no. This just takes. The concessions are only things law and order GOP swamp creatures care about.

This bill is garbage and should be opposed, and any Republican who votes for this needs to be tossed out on their asses in a primary if they aren’t retiring.

Remington Settlement

I have to respond to this, because setting folks straight was my schtick for a while.

Please note that Remington, as a company, filed for bankruptcy. The Remington that’s left is just a brand that’s been sold to other companies, namely the firearms business to The Roundhill Group, and the Ammo Business to Vista Outdoors. Neither of these owners has anything to do with the settlement, or the bankruptcy estate, who is making the settlement offer. The Bankruptcy Estate is basically the dead shell of Remington, and is pretty much now controlled by lawyers. So don’t blame Roundhill or Vista, or anything else Remington if you’re unhappy with the settlement. The Remington that was being sued, and the Remington offering the settlement, is dead Remington, which doesn’t have anything to do with the companies that bought up the various assets in the bankruptcy.

Corrupting Influence of Paying Board Members

NRA’s bylaws do not permit Board members to be paid, but that’s been ignored outright, or done via state associations: NRA makes a grant to a state association, which conveniently pays the board member. A lot of folks are surprised by how compliant the NRA Board has been, but I suspect in many cases that’s being accomplished with the threat that those Board members may be required by the NY courts to pay some or all of that money back. Imaging if you had to pay, say, ten years of back salary? It would financially ruin most people. You’d probably be willing to listen to someone who came along telling you they could help you avoid that eventuality.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years is never to underestimate people’s ability to live in their own reality if the actual reality is too threatening for them. It’s human nature. But human nature is why we have institutional controls to prevent this kind of situation.

I’m a big fan in non-profit of a strict “no compensation for board members” rule. Board members should only be reimbursed for reasonable expenses associated with their service to the corporation. Not too long ago, my club implemented such a rule via board policy, and we did have a director with a landscaping contract. He did a good job. Our new outside contractor is slightly more expensive. I hated to vote in favor of ending that. But it had to be done. At some point, we need to get that in the bylaws so it can’t easily be undone by a future board.

You create systems that are resistant to corruption, so clued-in members have certain processes and procedures they are accustomed to which make graft more difficult. If a future board starts dismantling those systems, it should raise a red flag.

NRA Ballots: What To Do

I fully endorse John Richardson’s ballot. Vote for Owen Buz Mills, and that’s it. Write in Frank C. Tait, Wayne, PA, and R.B. Rocky Marshall Jr, Boerne, TX. The rest of them need to come to their senses and show Wayne and Bill the door, and start reestablishing trust and competence in the Association.

The Health of an Organization

One of my primary objectives as a new club president is to devolve a lot of the Board’s responsibility. The primary mechanism in civic organizations to accomplish this is the committee.

Younger people these days are so unfamiliar with civil society, I often worry about even using the word “committee.” Does it have good connotations? Governments have all kinds of committees, subcommittees, blue ribbon panels, etc and they don’t get anything done. At least not anything of value. Maybe we need a better word for it. We could go all corporate and adopt “team,” but I think that carries a lot of bullshit along with it these days too.

Our club was functionally a one, two, or three man show for a number of years. Sure, we had committees, but they were themselves generally one man shows, and those were often Board members. Until very recently, power was firmly rooted in three to four people at most. The rest of the Board was relatively powerless when push came to shove. Now we’ve devolved a lot of that power to the Board, and I’d like to devolve it further still.

Successful organizations aren’t a cult of personality. Successful organizations have processes. A successful organization is a machine that you can plug people into, and mechanisms are in place to keep the machine running even if the operators change. This is a very difficult task in a volunteer-driven organization. The distribution of power is a way to develop new leadership, and ensure when people step out, there’s other people who can step in. It also doesn’t hurt to ease members into the leadership culture.

This year we’re going to give an actual Annual Report to the members that goes beyond just totals for the year. People aren’t going to volunteer for a black box. If an organization has processes, people have to see where they might be able to pitch in. So you have to be open about things. Any civic organization should be open about its operations. Beware leaders who seem to like hiding things. Sometimes you do have internal matters, but it should be the exception rather than the rule.

Speaking of culture: organizational culture is not an accidental thing. It is deliberate, and one area that can’t be separated from leadership. The leadership of an organization sets the culture. If they don’t, actors (sometimes bad actors) will come in and do that for you.

So what’s the lesson here? NRA has a lot of problems that are frankly familiar to me on a smaller scale. Though my club thankfully didn’t have the massive grifting. But I served on a Board where we were a rubber stamp before a power vacuum changed the dynamics. That power vacuum empowered the Board as a body to step up, and things have gotten better. Not perfect, but moving in the right direction. Like NRA, my club also has an overly large Board. What I’m saying is there can be hope. NRA has a leadership problem. The Board are sycophants, sure, but you’d be surprised how much toxic leadership can hold sway over a Board. From my point of view NRA needs to be rid of two people: Wayne LaPierre and Bill Brewer. Wayne because he’s hapless. I don’t believe Wayne could successfully run a Boy Scout troop. Bill Brewer because he’s correctly identified Wayne as a guy who will believe anything, and pay him anything. I don’t believe Brewer has the best interests of NRA at heart, and if we’re rid of Wayne, but Bill gets to name Wayne’s replacement, we just replaced Ack-Mac with a worse parasite.

The rot often seems to run all the way through, but I can promise you it does not. Toxic leadership is a cancer. The first order of business in enacting a turnaround is to remove it. From there, health will probably improve.

Hated to Do It

I have disabled comments until I can figure out a better solution. I’ve honestly been thinking about this for a while, but I’ve just decided to pull the trigger on it. These days I don’t really even have time to read all the comments, so I’m slow to react if I do at all.

Generally my policy has been one of tolerance provided everyone was being respectful. I’ve only nuked racist shit, and people who just couldn’t control themselves when warned.

I don’t want to get into moderation and picking and choosing which views get aired, so for now it’s just off.

The Californication of Colorado is Complete

All that fleeing from California isn’t going to help things. We want them packed and stacked in one very democratic state. Witness Colorado nuking preemption as an example of what happens when Californians flee their state in large numbers and settle elsewhere. This would have been inconceivable when this blog started in 2007. But it’s reality now: we have an anti-gun mountain state.