Sebastian – Page 1076 – Shall Not Be Questioned

What About McCain?

NRA Grades and Endorsements for 2008 are out.Â Conspicuously absent is the presidential race.Â Three possibilities here:

NRA has decided to endorse and is waiting for a better press cycle where the endorsement will make a bigger splash.
NRA is still not decided on endorsement and is wavering based on McCain’s record.
NRA is still not decided on endorsement and is worried McCain won’t win.

I’m really hoping it’s number one.Â The base is on board.Â I’ve yet to show up to an event and not had a rush on McCain/Palin items.Â Even if NRA is not yet on board the McCain train, gun owners most certainly are.Â Palin is that good, and Barack Obama is that bad.Â I’ve made clear to people that he’s not endorsed yet, but I give the people what they want, and what they want is McCain.

NRA would be understandably concerned about their record on endorsements, which is perfect.Â NRA’s first endorsement was Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter, Reagan won.Â They endorsed Reagan a second time, and he won again.Â George H.W. Bush was endorsed, and won.Â Then his endorsement was withdrawn, and he lost re-election.Â Dole was not endorsed, and lost.Â George W. Bush was endorsed twice, and won both times.Â Some might thing this doesn’t mean anything, but it does.Â If NRA endorses and the candidate loses, the meme around Washington will be NRA has lost its clout.Â Heller took away their scare mongering, and they are now a paper tiger.Â Hunters will feel safe because they know we can’t take their guns, so lets go after the guns we can take, like those dangerous people who buy evil assault weapons.Â And you know, all that lead is bad for the environment, so we better ban it.

The stakes in this election are high, so high I think NRA is nuts if they don’t endorse McCain/Palin.Â McCain himself is nothing to write home about, but it’s a ticket now, and his selection of Plain is a good signal that he doesn’t think we gun folks have cooties.Â I understand NRA wanting to preserve their perfect endorsement record in presidential races, but we can’t afford that this election.Â All stops must be pulled out to defeat Barack Obama.Â This is one of those cases where you fight, even if the chance of victory is remote.Â As it is, I don’t think it’s remote; it’s going to be close… and NRA owes its membership to get behind the candidate they are already behind.

Bill Clinton on Glass-Steagall Repeal

Bill Clinton isn’t blaming the Republicans for deregulating banks.Â I think Clinton is right on this one.Â Also, if you’re looking for a great outline of the current credit crisis, head over to Marginal Revolution.

Another Gun Control Group Goes TU

Joe tells us that the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence is, for the most part, politically dead.Â Seems they had a little cash flow problem.Â Maybe they need to give Paulson a call.

Quote of the Day

From Bruce, who liked Palin’s performance last night:

Now, let’s get to work.

I’ll be doing a little door-to-door campaigning with the McCain people in Exeter on Saturday morning. Shoot me an e-mail if you wanna join us. Also, I was at the Stratham office earlier today. They’ve got some of them honkin’ big McCain/Palin yard signs (think sheet of plywood) if
you want one.

This definitely isn’t the election for complacency.Â Just running down the ways Obama can screw us, without executing a head on attack, is rather frightning.Â And that’s just assuming we’re not looking at another attempt at a new assault weapons ban, which I can promise you will be worse than the last one.

Downrange TV Coverage of Blogger Weekend

Downrange TV has their coverage of our weekend at Blackwater with Todd Jarrett.

Lehigh County Has a Good Prosecutor

Second Amendment supporters need to get in touch with Lehigh County District Attorney James Martin, because he’s standing up for us in fighting Allentown’s violation of statewide preemption:

Martin reiterated his pledge to seek non-enforcement of the law, saying if someone is arrested, he will seek to intervene on the person’s behalf to get the case dismissed. “I certainly have the authority, based on the duties of the district attorney established by the state,” Martin said. “I control the keys to the courthouse.”

Martin also said that he is considering joining the National Rifle Association in its fight to get a similar law in Philadelphia tossed, as well as pursuing his own challenge of Allentown’s law.

“I will be proactive,” he declared.

If you want to contact the District Attorney to thank him for taking this stand, you can find his contact information here.Â It’s good to see an elected official in this area standing up for the law.

The VP Debate

I had to watch it on time delay because the club had our first Indoor Silhouette match of the year last night.Â Joe Biden delivered a stellar debate performance by Joe Biden standards, meaning he didn’t say anything stupid, outlandish, or at any point insert his foot into his mouth.Â He deserves a round of applause for that, and for putting up with the myriad of botox injections he looks like he received before his performance.Â That shit is painful.

But Joe Biden has been running for President for twenty years, and despite his experience at being on the national stage, Sarah Palin kept up with him pretty much every step of the way.Â Expectations of her set by the media were so low, I would actually be willing to argue she was the winner of the debate just by virtue of the fact that she showed the public she can play with the big boys.Â Say what you will, she’s deserves to be on that stage, and she’s every bit as qualified as Barack Obama.

We Have To Return to the Goldfish Standard

The Mackerel standard is just too inflationary.

Gun Shows Don’t Cause Sky to Fall

This has to be a pretty awful thing for the Brady Campaign to read:

A new study finds no evidence that gun shows lead to substantial increases in either gun-related homicides or suicides.

The University of Michigan and University of Maryland study also shows that tighter regulation of gun shows does not appear to reduce the number of firearms-related deaths.

That makes sense, since most of the people at gun shows are people like us.Â Speaking of gun shows, I have the machine built with Ubuntu 8.04 that will run our touchscreen version of O-Match at the Allentown Gun Show this weekend.Â It’s unfortunate, but the O-Match application phones back to the mother ship in order to download the questions.Â I’m guessing NRA set it up this way so that if Obama said anything else stupid, it could be added to the mix.Â Hopefully they have a standalone shockwave version that could run on my machine without a network connection. If not, I’ll have to figure out how to tether the machine through a cell phone connection, and hope they have cell phone reception in the hall.

Back to the original topic, I’ve been convinced that the reason the gun control people target gun shows, is because it’s one of our cheif organization and outreach tools.Â They have to know that very few crime guns are traced to shows.Â They can read the statistics as well as we can.

The Blogging Community

Bitter thinks more hook and bullet writers who are trying to break into blogging need to be reading other blogs, and participating in the community as a whole:

If you click through, itâ€™s to a NewsMax article about Obama trying to get NRA ads booted off the air. Petzal is not clear if heâ€™s questioning the existence of the threatening letters, the accuracy of NRA, or NewsMax. I was a little perturbed by this when I left a comment outlining numerous sources that link the letters and responses.

But then I realized that I was actually a little short because of a slightly related beef with the outdoor media and the blogosphere. I applaud these forms of dead tree media for encouraging their writers to blog. However, Iâ€™m not sure that they really understand what a community the blogosphere is, and how that community makes the blogosphere as great as it is, especially in the gun world.

I would agree.Â Read the whole thing.