Sebastian – Page 209 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Could be a CSGV Press Release

A little history this Thursday. Of course, CSGV are not nearly as eloquent as the Earl of Dunmore, but the whole treason against legitimate government, and woe be any who resist the iron will of the state it is alive and well in this proclamation:

As I have ever entertained Hopes that an Accommodation might have taken Place between Great Britain and this Colony, without being compelled, by my Duty, to this most disagreeable, butÂ now absolutely necessary Step, rendered so by a Body of armed Men, unlawfully assembled, firing on his Majesty’s Tenders, and the Formation of an Army, and that Army now on their March to attack his Majesty’s Troops, and destroy the well-disposed Subjects of this Colony: To defeat such treasonable Purposes, and that all such Traitors, and their Abettors, may be brought to Justice, and that the Peace and good Order of this Colony may be again restored …

This day on 1775, John Dunmore’s Proclamation declaring martial law in Virginia and freeing the slaves to serve in the British Army. We’ve been looking in my family tree for ancestors who fought in the Revolution. So far I’ve found one possible veteran I am descended from. Unfortunately he forsook his Quaker peace testimony in order to enlist in the British Army, which is to say he really despised the American cause. After the war he and his family fled to Canada. A few generations later, my 2x great grandfather returned to the United States. Not quite the Revolutionary War connection I was hoping for, but you don’t get to pick your family. Rest assured if I ever develop a time machine, I will go back and hang my ancestor for treason, paradoxes be damned!

How to Save Virginia

It’s hard to deny a growing federal government isn’t seriously altering the landscape of formerly red Virginia. So how would we go about saving it? I’d suggest a compromise. In exchange for DC earning representation in Congress, Arlington County and the City of Alexandria gets returned to the District of Columbia. Representation is essentially solved by treating it as part of the state it was carved out of for purposes of federal representation (this is how it was originally.). Â That would take a nice chunk of reliably Democratic voters out of Virginia.

But would it be enough to swing the state back? I don’t have time to run the numbers to see whether it would work, but it’s worth looking at. You’d also have to presume GOP control of Virginia and Congress for this to work. Downside? No more carry in Arlington or Alexandria, and they’d get DC’s crappy gun laws, but we came very close to fixing DCs gun law as part of a voting rights deal once, so I don’t see why that couldn’t also be part of a potential deal to re-expand DC, or at the least only solve that issue for the part of Virginia granted back to DC.

Of course, this is in the realm of ideas that just might be crazy enough to work, but probably too crazy for the GOP. But if the Democrats could gain advantage through a maneuver like this, they’d do it in a heartbeat.

Justice for Armed Robbers

Hey, he was just a family man, you know, a family man that went around robbing people. If you don’t want to risk getting shot by someone in self-defense, there is an easy solution. Don’t rob people. Robbing people is wrong, and a person is within his right to defend himself against someone pointing a deadly weapon at them and threatening their lives. It’s amazing there are people in society who need to be told this. But he was just doing it to pay back child support!

Creating a Pro-Gun Insurgency Within the Democratic Party

Another topic people have been speaking about lately is “How do we create a pro-gun insurgency within the Democratic Party.” This is a great, worthwhile topic, because if the gun issue enjoys bipartisan support, our fortunes won’t rise and fall with a single party. So what drives success? What’s driven our success, and this works regardless of party affiliation, is the single issue voter, and it is through the single issue voter that we can win among Democrats too.

Reality is that most of us here aren’t single issue voters, but I think most of us are near single issue voters. In other words, I’d be hard pressed to vote for anyone who’s a hard core Bloomberg-backed gun control supporter, regardless of party. But I’d also be hard pressed to vote for a true communist, fascist, socialist, or theocratic candidate just because I agreed with him on gun rights. I voted for Bob Casey in 2006, despite Santorum carrying an NRA endorsement in that race, and knowing that Casey’s A rating was a promise (at the time, now we know it was a lie) rather than a record, because Santorum had pissed me off on too many other issues. So the single issue has its limits. But nonetheless it ranks very high in my political calculus, as it does most of yours. We have to have these folks in both parties in order to win, and that means getting more people to politically identify as gun owners.Â It doesn’t matter worth a damn whether someone owns a gun or not, what matters is whether they politically identify as gun owners. One of my biggest fears is that we continue to improve our standing in polling and public opinion, but start losing the single-issue voters necessary to keep winning elections. The former doesn’t mean squat if you can’t keep the latter growing too.

In truth we’ve already seen how a pro-gun insurgency works in the Democratic Party, because it happened between 2004 and 2006 with the Blue Dog wave that swept the Democrats into power. The Democrats had been in the political wilderness for some time, and gun control got much of the blame from Democratic strategists, so they started running candidates whose views on gun rights reflected those of the districts they were running in. Combine that with broad dissatisfaction with the GOP, and you had a recipe for the Democrats taking the House and Senate. We actually did quite well in the 2006-2010 Congress. Better than we’ve done since, in fact. The problem is that the Democratic strategists thought they could piss off their districts on every other issue and that gun rights would be enough to save them. They were wrong.

So how did we get from a Democratic House and Senate being willing to pass things like National Park Carry to where we are now? Well, because the Chicago political machine are talented snake oil salesmen who have convinced Democrats that gun control is a winning issue rather than a losing one. Additionally, conventional wisdom in progressive-left circles is that Obama has created a new progressive-left coalition that is destained to forge a permanent majority, so they no longer have to care what those cousin humpers in flyover country really think. This delusion is believable, because the Republicans have been floating some spectacularly awful candidates, and have been weakened severely by infighting between the tea party and the establishment. But the Democrats can’t count on that to go on forever. Part of making the Democrats pro-gun again is just to create a perception that gun control is a losing issue by continuing to defeat anti-gun Democrats, and to do that, we need single-issue Dems that are willing to cross the aisle when it counts. I think the overwhelming defeat of Angela Giron in Colorado is strong evidence that such folks exist.

So that’s what we ultimately need: single issue voters in the Democratic Party willing to vote in Democratic primaries for pro-gun candidates, and become involved enough in their local party races so that the people in the party know that there’s a gun vote to be pandered to. More importantly that those party leaders know that that gun vote will cross the aisle in a heartbeat if an anti-gun candidate wins. There really isn’t any insurgency involved. It just takes winning elections.

Self-Defense Case in Maryland

This is many gun control advocates ideal law of self-defense. A man shoots another man who allegedly broke down his door, faces 2nd degree murder charges:

The state has charged Matthew Pinkerton with 2nd Degree Murder. Their sole basis for this charge is that he should have called 911.

Here’s the original news article that came out after the shooting. It looks like this started as a domestic situation. If the facts here are true as presented, I doubt they’ll find a jury that will convict this guy, and it will be a disgrace that he was made to undergo the cost and mental anguish of a trial.

Legal costs for the Pinkerton family have been mounting. According to Michael, â€œthey already had to take out a loan for 25k to get him out on bondâ€ and â€œnow is lawyer fees are another 25k; all for defending his home and family.â€

That said, I’d like to see the Bill of Indictment, Information, or the Bill of Particulars his attorney has filed for if you look the case up online. I do believe that prosecutors can often be overzealous, and prosecute in cases that are legitimate self-defense. The Gerald Ung case comes to mind in Philadelphia. But prosecutors generally don’t like to take hopeless cases to trial. If the facts are as presented, this a likely loss in a jury trial. I’m willing to be outraged, but I suspect there’s more to this case than is being told, and I’d like all the facts before passing full judgement. But I agree on the surface, this doesn’t look good. If anyone can find me public records that describe the particulars, I’d be grateful.

Does the GOP Need to Give Up Socially Conservative Positions?

I’m going to wander a bit off topic here for a bit, because I think figuring out the future of the coalition, so to speak, has an impact on gun rights.

There’s been a lot of talk in the comments about where the GOP needs to go on social issues, and a lot of talk about how the GOP just needs to give up on all that SoCo mumbo jumbo and focus exclusively on fiscal and liberty issues. Given that I am probably more socially liberal than your average Democrat, I find this position to be emotionally pleasing, but setting that aside, and looking at things as a careful observer of politics, I don’t think that’s true. I think the GOP needs to moderate its position on social issues, but I don’t think they need to piss away the SoCo vote entirely to win. A lot of our troubles lately have been that the GOP is just fielding awful and often underfunded candidates. But I do think there are some political realities SoCos need to understand, and the GOP needs to understand.

The first is that the gay issue is lost. To younger voters, speaking against gay rights and gay marriage Â sounds like burning witches at the stake levels of Â backwardness. This issue is changing very quickly in favor of social liberalism. Where the GOP needs to focus is on SoCo fears that churches will be forced to marry gays, or that religiously-owned businesses will be forced to accommodate gay lifestyles, despite religious objections. While I generally believe homosexuals should enjoy the benefit of living in a society free of discrimination, again, looking objectively, I think the GOP could stake out a narrow position that religious freedom trumps anti-discrimination laws under some circumstances. But this is a tightrope, and it’s a fine line between standing up for freedom of conscience and favoring discrimination against homosexuals. I don’t know if I trust the GOP to walk that line in what is a complex issue.

The abortion issue is not lost. There are still plenty of voters out there who believe abortion should be unlawful in some circumstances. But only a minority of people believe abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. SoCos need to accept they can only move the needle on abortion at the margins. This is a fact of life for just about every other issue, but for some reason social conservatives expect not only complete philosophical purity on this matter from candidates, but expect them to be vocal about it. All this without expecting it to carry any electoral consequences. That’s not true for any other issue, and it’s not true for abortion either. If you’re loud and proud that you reject abortion in all circumstances, you’re going to lose in swing states, and apparently even in some red states. If you reject the morning after pill, it’s going to be successfully spun as rejecting contraception, because that’s how most voters view it. The GOP should stay far away from anything that even smells like restricting contraceptives. They can make a case the public shouldn’t have to pay for it, but beyond that, stay away.

Now, the gun issue gets lumped into the tent of “socially conservative” quite often, but I don’t really think it belongs there. Guns are a liberty issue. To the extent that one wants to consider it a “socially conservative” issue, I don’t think it’s a losing issue for the GOP. We’ve seen repeated evidence that the anti-gun position is a losing issue for Democrats. My last headline on this topic was a bit of a joke, because that’s what Bloomberg is going to spin, but the truth is if we’d have given Bloomberg another few weeks to sink another few million into campaigning for McAullife on gun control, I think Ken Cuccinelli would be the next governor of Virginia. Somewhere between the time Bloomberg stepped into the race in a big way and the election, this race went from a blowout for McAullife to a nail biter. And I’m not the only one who noticed this. But even with all that, we can still only move the needle on the margins, it’s just that after years of doing that, we’re making steady progress.

Immigration is the other big social issue, though I believe that whole area is fraught with land mines. I don’t envy any political strategist trying to figure out how to navigate through it. I personally tend to favor easy immigration law, but more restrictive laws on earning citizenship. I tend to think the GOP should work out a deal where all the illegals who have been here for years have a path to a green card, but not citizenship. But would that be cutting the GOPs own throat? I don’t know. Like I said, it’s a tough issue politically. I tend to have faith that hispanics will integrate just as well as Italians and other formerly disfavored ethnic groups did. But I do think there should be long term consequences for entering the country illegally, and that consequence is you never get citizenship, or get to vote.

Bloomberg Successfully Buys the Virginia Governorship

But just barely, it’s looking like. A few weeks ago it looked like Cuccinelli was going to go down hard, probably by double digits. I don’t honestly think Bloomberg did McAuliffe any favors, since it was during his big gun control push that he started losing ground. But a win is a win, and hopefully the GOP does well enough in the down ticket races that we won’t have much to fear from McAuliffe. We shall see. But I think this is another indication that strong social conservatives aren’t viable candidates in swing states.

UPDATE: More on Bloomberg not helping.

Another “I’m a Gun Owner But…” Article

This time in “Runner’s World” of all places. I’m not sure why Runner’s World needs to stake out a position on gun control, but it does.

On Friday, I was booked to fly from Los Angeles to Eugene, Oregon. That morning, a gunman walked into LAX with a semiautomatic assault rifle and opened fire, killing a TSA officer and wounding several other people. Fortunately, I was lucky enough to be booked on an afternoon flight.

So he walked into a place where guns are banned, being from a state that banned the gun he was carrying, being in a state that banned the gun he was carrying, and what we clearly need are some more laws?

I propose:Â Ban assault rifles and handguns for everyone except police and military personnel.Â These weapons are made to kill humans and should be strictly limited.Â At the same time, allow responsible citizens to own rifles and shotguns.

If you think they are going to let you keep your rifles and shotguns for deer hunting once the rest of us are out of the fight, you have no idea what you’re up against, and I can’t help you achieve reality. The truth is those kinds of firearms work just fine for mass killing. Just look at the guy who shot up the Navy Yard in DC.

And I’d note I went through a similar thing in the Houston airport right after we arrived, and it didn’t scare me enough to advocate taking everyone else’s freedoms away, because I don’t believe in punishing the sane for the acts of the insane.

This guy is taking a beating on the Facebook page, and he deserves to.

What’s at Stake in Virginia

The Democrats are already spinning that this a great victory for gun control, to be able to elect someone like Terry McAuliffe in Virginia. I will make no bones that I absolutely can’t stand Ken Cuccinelli’s positions on a range of social issues, but gun rights are sinking along with the Republican brand, and we can’t honestly afford too many losses before this whole game will be up. We can make a statement in other races. Bloomberg is spending dollars by the millions to buy elections in swing states. Take this article from the New York Times.

â€œI donâ€™t think youâ€™ve seen any Democratic candidate run in Virginia as rabidly anti-gun as McAuliffe has in the last two weeks,â€ said David Adams, legislative director for the Virginia Shooting Sports Association, the state affiliate of the NRA.

Cuccinelli reminds me a lot of Santorum, only without having a Bob Casey at least talking a good A rating as was the case in our 2006 Senatorial race. I would reluctantly vote for Cuccinelli were I in Virginia. Especially given that it’s coming out that a big Obama Donor is bankrolling the Libertarian ticket, and that the Libertarian candidate isn’t very err… libertarian.

So to Virginia gun owners, close your eyes and think of England. I’d be sure to get out and vote for Cuccinelli. You’ll only have to deal with him for four years.

Tuesday: The News Links

It’s Tuesday, and time to clear the tabs. The news cycle is all about the collapse of Obamacare, and not guns. I guess we got our time in the sun pooping on the Obama Administration for a while, and now it’s other issue’s turn.

I’ll lead off with a non-gun story, just because it’s cool. Apparently someone shattered the cannonball run speed record, and cracked the 30 hour mark doing it.

Virginia Tech is not liable for failing to warn students about the shooter. The government won’t let you protect yourself if you’re a college student, but they’ll absolve themselves of any responsibility if they fail to protect you.

The last lead smelter in the US shuts down. I guess we’ll be importing all our lead from now on, or more accurately recycling most, and importing some. But no more lead manufactured from ore in the US.

Simple ideas for Simple Minds.

How NRA became ATF’s biggest enemy. But the fact that we can have some input into ATF’s operations, director and budget is one reason you don’t see a huge move to abolish the agency. Gun owners wouldn’t get that kind of input into the FBI, and the FBI will very competently violate your rights.

Facebook is become some lame thing old people use.

Government is magic. Highly recommended, though off topic.

Looks like Newtown might just want to be left in peace as the anniversary approaches, but the gun control groups and Obama Administration aren’t going to let that happen.

John Lott also takes down the new study showing owning a gun makes you a racist.

Ted Cruz speaks about Stand Your Ground.

More zero tolerance nonsense.

Landowner liability act finally passes the PA Senate.

Serving the people.

The media is still getting it wrong about assault weapons.

This is how we spell e-n-t-r-a-p-m-e-n-t

Billboards advertising jury nullification. More of this please.

Piracy has dropped significantly since ships are being armed. Who would have guessed?