Author: Sebastian

More Clubs Need To Do This

The Citizens’ Rifle & Revolver Club has managed to get a piece in the Trenton Times highlighting, in a positive way, their shooting sports program:

If you have been thinking of looking into the shooting sports, there is no better time to do it than on Sundays Oct. 26 and Nov. 2 when Citizens’ Rifle & Revolver Club will be holding its annual open house/fun shoot. Citizens’ has been a fixture at Route 571 in Plainsboro for close to 80 years. Carol Katona, who has been president of the club for 15 years and just won another term as president in the club’s recent elections, told me the basic premise of the club is and has always been to promote safety and enjoyment of the shooting sports.

This is probably the best public relations type program shooting clubs can do.  Even if you don’t make a new shooter out of someone, people at least can come in, and see people enjoying the shooting sports safely, and be relieved of some of their ignorance about firearms, and the people who use them.  If clubs are pulling off successful programs in New Jersey, and getting the media to help promote it, it can be successful anywhere.

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NRA Endorsements for Libertarians

This Libertarian candidate is upset that NRA doesn’t endorse Libertarians:

Throughout this campaign I have let my constituents know that I was a NRA member and supporter and have expressed this on my Web site and my campaign material. This only shows that the NRA is either run by or scared of the Republican Party.I spent 27 years as a Republican only to find out that they had abandoned me. Now it is the National Rifle Association that has also done the same. Who is it today that will represent America?

Well, I wouldn’t say the NRA is too scared of the Republican Party, considering this year they have endorsed quite a number of Democrats, including this latest one in Texas.  But Libertarian Candidate Teddy Fleck needs to grasp some important political realities here.

One, Libertarians don’t win.  If every gun voter voted Libertarian, they still wouldn’t win, and both major parties would quickly abandon gun rights because they have nothing to gain by supporting it.  Gun owners are one interest among many, and we don’t have political power outside of acting in coalition with other interests.  If every gun owner voted as a gun owner, on gun rights alone, we might have something.  But that’s not going to happen.

Two, most gun owners are not Libertarian.  Many have libertarian leanings, but I can count on my fingers the number of philosophically Libertarian gun owners I’ve run into doing my grassroots work.  I’ve run into more liberal Democrats.  I’ve run into one person who is voting for Baldwin, the Constitution Party candidate, and exactly no one who said they are voting for Bob Barr.  Not a scientific study, but if there’s energy and enthusiasm out there for Libertarian and other third party candidates, I’m not seeing it.

Three, most gun owners are not single issue voters, despite my best attempts to make them.  I’ve found more Obama supporters than all the third party candidates combined.  Many Obama supporters are aware of his record on guns, but are voting other issues this election, like jobs and the economy, union loyalties, or various other issues.  Further dividing the gun vote to third party candidates who don’t stand a chance isn’t going to accomplish anything other than weakening our political power.

Did I mention Libertarians don’t win?  When you’re an issue organization, maximizing your political influence is the number one goal.  Ideological concerns take a back seat to that.  You focus on the gun issue, and develop a strategy to maximize your influence, since third parties have little or no influence, there’s nothing to be gained there.  That might piss some people off, but that’s reality.

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Pixels for Pistols

Toronto officials want people to give up their nasty, brutish habit of marksmanship, if you want to point something at objects and pull a trigger, they have an alternative for you:

The amnesty program, Pixels for Pistols, is a joint endeavour with the 26-store Henry’s camera chain, based on Church St. in Toronto. For four weeks, Toronto residents who hand over a gun, legal or not, will receive a digital camera, either a Nikon Coolpix S52 or a Coolpix P60, listed at $230 and $190 on the Henry’s website. The offer includes photography lessons.

Fortunately, some gun owners in Ontario already know they are sad, evil individuals, and are taking steps at cleansing their souls:

Among the callers was John Hope, who keeps a trigger lock on the 9-mm Beretta stowed in his Bracebridge home. He says he’s eager to give up the gun so it doesn’t land in the wrong hands – a criminal or suicidal teenager, say. Since he can’t trade it for a camera, he now plans to throw it into the middle of a lake.

Argh!  Sell that thing to a collector who would value it.  Restricted firearms in Canada are tough to come by.  It would have been like someone tossing a fine pre-ban AR-15 in a lake during the height of our assault weapons ban.

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Weapons Control Japanese Style

They are getting more strict:

The revised firearms and swords possession control law would ban the possession of daggers and other double-edged knives whose blades are 5.5 centimeters or longer, and swords and spears with blades of 15 cm or longer. At present, one is prohibited from owning swords, knives and spears whose blades are 15 cm or longer.

The bill would also expand the scope of a ban on gun ownership to people with such records of such criminal action as stalking and domestic violence as well as bankrupt people and those feared to commit suicide.

American gun owners should note that, despite Japan’s astronomically low crime rate, the government of Japan is not saying “Well, our controls work well — we live in a very safe society.”  No, when the weapons control laws fail, as they always will, the answer will be to squeeze tighter and tighter.

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Article from August 2001 on Ayers

This is an article written more than seven years ago about William Ayers.  I don’t find Obama and his supporter’s deflections on this issue comforting.  If McCain, it turned out, had worked closely with David Duke, and launched his political campaign from his home, would that not be some cause for concern?  If one of my neighbors did the kind of crap Ayers is responsible for, do you think I’d ever set foot in his home, or talk to him?  The fact that Bill Ayers isn’t a pariah says a lot about Chicago high society and academia today, and is the main reason I won’t elect a president who rose through that system, no matter how much he claims his hands are clean.

Hat tip Instapundit

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Quote of the Day

From Patrick Stephens:

[…] Palin is the only candidate in either ticket that seems even mildly conscious of her own ignorance. When foundering in ignorance, Obama reverts to platitudes, Biden makes stuff up, McCain suspends his campaign, and Palin asks for clarification.

Hat tip to The VC.  I think I’d much prefer Governor Palin on the top rather than the Bottom of the ticket, but hey, it’s what we got this election.

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Getting in Their Faces

I’m not sure this is what Obama meant by getting in their faces, but a couple of protesters apparently narrowly avoided being run down by the Straight Talk Express:

Smith said officers saved the protesters from injury because “the motorcade likely would not have stopped” for them. He said “we don’t know what their intentions were” in trying to block Palin’s motorcade.

Even if they had stopped, they would likely have been swarmed by Secret Service agents with submachine guns.  It would have been ugly.  And they better damn well hope that Governor Sarah left the moose rifle back home.

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