One of the biggest lies the gun control crowd ever told was to proffer the meme that guns were less regulated than teddy bears. Lately they prefer the comparison of guns to cars, which doesn’t strain credulity as much, but they gloss over the fact that you can buy a car without a background check, license, or training, and haul it off to keep or drive on private property. Charles W. Cooke takes a look at these claims.
Author: Sebastian
ATF Could Get a Director
The Senate is close to a vote on B. Todd Jones who’s been nominated by the Obama Administration as ATF director. He’s not, by any means, a good pick, as he’s shown he’s willing to carry Holder’s water and retaliate against whistleblowers. NRA has decided not to pick the fight. Given what’s being arrayed against us, I’m not sure a confirmation fight over ATF is worth picking either. What would be the end? Either Jones never gets a hearing, in which case he continues to serve as “acting” director until Obama’s term runs out, or you force the White House to put up another nominee who will likely be just as bad. If we’re going to pick second term confirmation fights, I’d rather reserve them for federal judges, or, God forbid, a Supreme Court confirmation.
New Group of Charlatans?
A few weeks ago we highlighted the American Rifle and Pistol Association, touting itself as an alternative to the NRA, but with leadership that seemed to have some sympathies toward gun control. A reader tipped me off to a new group called the Sporting Rifle Association of America, also touting itself as a “The Sensible, Modern Alternative to the NRA,” which raises alarm bells straight away. Also raising alarm bells? The site has a private registration, and is hosted off HostGator. Nowhere can you find a mailing address for this “company.” Even ARPA was pretty open about who its leadership were.
I’m not sure this is a false flag group, in the mold of American Hunters and Shooters Association. I think this may very well be an outright scam; an attempt to gather up credit card information. I’d never give out information to a site not really willing to identify itself. To be honest, I’m surprised this doesn’t happen more often in this issue. I think the first place I’d start, if I were any of those gun companies who’s logos were presumably jacked, would be to contact the ISPs, unmask them, and send a cease and desist in regards to use of their logos. Actually, just contacting the ISPs may be sufficient to get them to do a takedown.
UPDATE: Seems they’ve taken down the gun company logos, set up a secure web site. I still wouldn’t give money to people who aren’t up front about who they are. I’d note they only have “Domain Control Validated” certification from GoDaddy. They don’t appear to have obtained any kind of extensive organizational validation, only demonstrated control the domain. I have gone through organization verification for an SSL cert before, and it’s fairly thorough. Not something you could set up in a few hours. Domain control, however, is easy.
UPDATE: Clicks from this site are being redirected to a placeholder page. I’d note this is very strange behavior.
UPDATE: I have received an e-mail from this group:
Hello there —
We noticed your recent blog post regarding our group. We would love to
talk to you and help clear up some of the questions and issues you may
have.Thanks.
—
Sporting Rifle Association of America
http://www.SRAAHQ.com
If we’re going to deal with these folks, we’re going to deal with it out in the open. Clearly they are paying attention, so before I have any dialog, I want an answer to the following questions:
- Where is your organization incorporated?
- Are you filed or do you plan to file with the IRS as a 501(c)(4) or (c)(3) non-profit?
- Who are on your Board of Directors?
- What’s your corporate mailing address?
- You were using gun company logos. Are the companies you listed sponsoring you? Did you have permission to use those logos to promote your business or non-profit?
- Who processes your credit card transactions? And why were you accepting transactions over an unsecured link prior to other groups on Facebook pointing out that your page wasn’t secured?
- Why even in this e-mail are you not identifying yourselves? Who am I speaking with? What is your title?
You want to clear this up? Answer here. I’ll be happy to post the answers. Then maybe we can get to the bottom of what they may be actually doing that makes them a viable alternative to NRA.
Mini News Links
It’s going to be a high caffeination day, because my rear is dragging. Sunday night I got woken up by Comcast Internet at work bouncing up and down like a pogo stick for an hour, which shoots texts to my iPhone. Last night we had a power outage here that lasted 40 minutes, starting about 3:30AM. The sudden disappearance of white noise from the fan and the beeping of all the equipment down here got me right up. Thank God for coffee and Coke Zero. Now the links:
Over at the NRA-ILA column in the Daily Caller, a handy guide to anti-gun propaganda.
Subway stabbing victim can’t sue NYPD for failing to protect him, despite New York prohibiting most effective means of self-defense.
A good reason not to have a firearms registry.
Massachusetts is taking up more gun control, similar to New York’s.
Losing self-defense rights if you refuse demands to abstain from conduct.
We put our money and votes where our mouths are. “Gun rights supporters donate four times more and are more politically involved than gun control advocates, according to a poll from the Pew Research Center published this weekend.” RTWT
California seems to be engaging in their own nullification law.
Why gun owners need to take fire danger bans on shooting seriously.
Nanny Bloomberg’s soda ban goes down on appeal 5-0. He didn’t even get one judge.
What caliber for Brown Bear? 5.45×39 would not be my first choice.
Bob Owens has a different take on the “guns are for white people” article. I would agree that we can probably do better. A lot of gun rags are pretty “Gun Culture 1.0” centric, which is I don’t read them.
Tam has gotten around to reading the Heidi Yewman piece.
Well, OK, I guess that wasn’t too “mini” was it?
Racists!
Bloomberg View, over at Huffpo, takes a look at a couple of gun rags, sees no minorities, and declares gun owners racists, and guns being for white people. What kind of person buys magazines and goes through tallying people up by race? A racist maybe? I think these people need to look in a mirror, and then read some of the scholarship we’ve used to support gun rights in the courts, a good deal of which revolves around attempts by radical Republicans to ensure Blacks were free to exercise their right to keep and bear arms.
Court Won’t Hasten Concealed Carry in Illinois
Earlier I had mentioned that motions were filed to enjoin the State of Illinois from enforcing its prohibition on carry until such time as the new law was implemented. It seems the District Court judge has denied the motion and agreed with Illinois that the case is now moot. It looks like this will be appealed, but I don’t know what the timeline will look like.
Self-Defense Law in Pennsylvania Changing?
Eugene Volokh highlights how the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has opened the door to redefine Pennsylvania’s self-defense standard from one which requires the state to disprove a claim of self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt, to one where the defendant has to prove self-defense by a preponderance of the evidence. This would essentially shift the burden from the state to the defendant. Prof. Volokh notes that the legislature can codify the standard and settle the issue, which we might need to start pushing. A burden shift like this is going to mean more ambiguous self-defense cases are going to end up going to trial, even if the state doesn’t have a remarkably strong case.
Looks like we’re not finished on this subject yet in Pennsylvania. Looking at the opinion here, it would seem to me that there might be the votes to change the standard, since three justices joined in the Chief’s opinion, while only two filed concurring opinions that took issue with the self-defense statements. Note that Orie Melvin did not participate in this case because she was on leave from the court, and eventually convicted of several felonies.
Pennsylvania conducts Supreme Court elections in off years. A lot of people, including gun owners, don’t vote in these elections. These are the wages of that belief. Or perhaps I should say the continuing wages of that belief, because we’re still living with de facto registration in Pennsylvania thanks to the ruling in ACSL v. Rendell. I’d note that opinion was handed down in 2004, and we’re still hearing nothing but promises from legislators in terms of fixing that, nearly a decade later. I would not hold out hope they’ll fix the self-defense issue if the Supreme Court acts there in any kind of timely manner. Supreme Court elections are very important.
Gun Control in US Territories
It looks like some lawmakers in Saipan are looking to tighten their gun control laws, already likely unconstitutionally strict. I doubt even most people could point where Saipan is on a map, or even know it’s an unincorporated territory of the United States. The Supreme Court, in the Insular Cases, ruled that fundamental constitutional rights are to be enforced even in unincorporated territories of the United States. Therefore the ruling in McDonald v. Chicago has applied the Second Amendment to the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands. Their current laws are such:
The Commonwealth Weapons Control Act forbids the manufacture, purchase, sale, possession or carrying of firearms other than as provided by law. In order to carry a firearm, the holder must have a license.
Shooting galleries are allowed, exempting patrons from the licensing requirement. 6 C.M.C. 2251.
.22 Caliber rifles and .223 caliber centerfire rifles and .410 gauge shotguns and their appropriate shells are allowed. All other firearms are considered contraband and are not allowed in the Commonwealth. 6 C.M.C. 2301.
The CNMI is assigned to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. It seems hard to imagine that prohibitions this strict would pass constitutional muster even under today’s relatively early Second Amendment case law. It would seem that some local politicians are aware of that.
Some Tragedies More Tragic than Others
The Daily Caller notes Bloomberg’s coalition has been surprisingly silent on some recent mass shootings. On the surface, I suppose we shouldn’t consider this a bad thing. But the reason neither of these was so readily exploited by MAIG is because neither of them really work for accomplishing their goals.
One goal is keeping wealthy political elites engaged with the issue. At this point, MAIG probably realizes a broad grassroots movement isn’t possible with this issue, or at the least realize building one is a decades long effort. In the mean time, they have to motivate their base. Most wealthy elites don’t live in crappy apartments with seedy tenants. In order to stoke the fears and insecurities of elites, they have to be able to imagine they, or others like them, could be the victims. That’s one reason Sandy Hook was so ripe to exploit for political purposes, it struck at their very heart. Humans are tribal creatures, and for better or worse, we’re more concerned about what happens, or what could happen, to our own tribe than we are about people who are perceived as not being one of us. In the short term, MAIG needs political elites in the fight, both for funding and for political support.
The second shooting mentioned happened in California, where the weapons used were quite illegal. That doesn’t really fit the narrative either. Do you really want the risk the media will start the discussion of how California’s strictest-in-the-nation gun control laws aren’t effective at stopping mass killers? The killer illegally built a banned-in-California AR-15, and converted a black powder revolver into a cartridge firing revolver. We’ve always mentioned that these people are more resourceful than they are often given credit for, and strict gun control isn’t likely to offer much of an obstacle. This is proof of that. Bloomberg is already aware how quickly our side can snatch the media narrative if they aren’t careful. I wouldn’t want to touch this one either if I were them.
But of course, these are cold, hard strategic calculations we’re talking about here, and gun control advocates would never engage in such things. They care: about you, about the children, and most of all about victims. No more names! It’s certainly not about using the news cycle in a strategic manner to further a political agenda. No. That’s only something the evil corporate gun lobby would do.
Monday News Links
The weekend is over, and as we look ahead to the next week, it’s time to dump all the stories I didn’t have time to say anything about and hope some fresh ones come by. I’ve noticed the news cycle on our issue is picking up a bit over the weekend.
Jim Geraghty notes that Obama has seemingly stopped talking about gun control. US News wonders when the gun fight is coming back to Congress. It’ll be yesterdays news until there’s a fresh tragedy to exploit. In the mean time, there’s surely something else he can find to play up division.
Have some Reasoned Discourse(TM) with your afternoon coffee. But I thought we were supposed to have a national conversation? Miguel has ever more from people who just want to have a conversation.
The media in New Jersey is starting to pressure Chris Christie to sign the gun control bills into law. This is but just one example. I’ve passed on several other NJ media stories along the same vein.
Why gun sales are falling. I think it’s good that the panic is ending, but it’s not a good time to get complacent, especially when there’s now going to be real money arrayed against us.
The New York Times has a double standard when it comes to recall elections. They are only good when it’s to get rid people who the Times editorial staff don’t like.
Speaking of media narratives, once again we see the drunk gun owner meme popping up in North Carolina. Any time we allow restaurant carry with a prohibition on consuming alcohol, this comes up.
Don’t bring a bat to a gunfight. This guy was apprehended, so no Darwin Award for him, but he definitely out-dumbed this guy.
Megan McArdle doesn’t think we need tougher standards for self-defense.
Larry Correia takes a look at Profiling and Stand Your Ground.
Charles Cooke notes that Stand Your Ground is nothing new. No, it’s not. It’s been the law in most western states since they’ve been states.
Publicola:Â Women and Children first.
Tactical mythbusting: revolver brass in the pocket. I’ve always been suspicious of the story of the police trainer who took a mugger’s gun and gave it back to him. He had spent his days teaching retention, which involved repeatedly taking guns and giving them back. The lesson is you do what you train, but I’ve always been suspicious of the story.