This is getting ridiculous. Apparently her excuse is that their poor Solicitor General is just such a busy guy. You know how this could have been avoided? Not running this whole thing down to the wire. I think at some point they just need to get slapped with an injunction preventing them from enforcing the current law. It’s time to stop playing games.
Author: Sebastian
All it Takes is Parents Standing Up
A school in Virginia has reversed its zero tolerance policy after parents got up in arms when two 7 year olds were suspended for pretending pencils were guns. Local politicians tend to want to avoid controversy like the plague. One might think it might takes hordes of parents to make a difference, but really one or two determine sets of parents can often be more trouble than local elected officials want to deal with.
Testing out New Twitter Plugins
The Twitter plugin I use has gone the way of the Dodo and the Passenger Pigeon, and to make matters worse, it has finally broke with Twitter’s latest API change. I am testing out a new plugin to do Twitter integration, so bear with me. In addition, the social media icons on the blog were handled by the Twitter plugin. I’ll be looking for a replacement there too.
Manchin Clamoring to Counter NRA Ads
Forcing Manchin to have to spend money defending his anti-gun position is a good idea:
But for Manchin and his top aides, the dispute with the NRA has become increasingly personal. Manchin’s chief of staff, Hayden Rogers, a lifetime NRA member, has let his membership to the group lapse. Rogers even pulled the pro-NRA sticker off his own truck.
Oh no. Joe Manchin’s top aides are abandoning the NRA! What matters is what West Virginians think, and our voters have long memories, and we love giving the boot to traitors. Meanwhile, MSNBC argues NRA darkened Obama, bringing out one of the leading defenses of the left: when all else fails, accuse your opponent of being racists.
Court Tosses Out Colorado Magazine Restrictions
On Sending Weapons to Syria
I’m a little puzzled why we’re going to give small arms to Al Qaeda in Syria without requiring universal background checks on each one of those so-called “rebels.” I mean, it’s for all those little Middle Eastern children, isn’t it? And is there gong to be a registry of the serial numbers of all those small arms so we can trace them back to the individual terrorist we gave the guns to when those guns are used against Americans — as they inevitably will be? And I’m concerned that those containers full of small arms being shipped Al Qaeda Syria may all feature magazines with a magazine capacity greater than 10 rounds! And real assault weapons!
And here we’ve been told, again and again, by Obama’s supporters that small arms are useless in the face of a government armed with airplanes, tanks, artillery, and weapons of mass destruction. This is pretty good evidence that none of these people actually believe their own bull.
A Response from MSNBC
MSNBC has quoted us on an article, based on my Thursday post on the topic. This article was actually released Thursday night, but I have not honestly had time to link it until now. It’s actually a pretty balanced article, on the whole. But I never know ahead of time when contacted by a reporter whether it’s something looking for some balance, or whether it’s going to be a hack job. Unfortunately, when it’s MSNBC, my gut tells me hack job. In this case that wasn’t the case.
No doubt MAIG is going to try to drive that 1.5 million number as hard and far as they can. The question is whether any politicians will buy it. Regardless of whether it’s real grassroots or not, it’s likely MAIG has accomplished more here than the Brady Organization has, even in the past.
Yes, Gun Control is Still Pretty Much Astroturf
An MSNBC contributor e-mailed me looking for a statement. As a policy, I don’t return e-mail from the Administration’s propagandists, but I figured a public response would do just fine:
You have accused Mayor Bloomberg of being “Astorturf-in-Chief” and the gun control movement of being “astroturf” instead of a grassroots movement.
Mayors Against Illegal Guns now has 1.5 million supporters, and they organizing events in ten cities. The Newtown Action Alliance also held an event today on Capitol Hill.
Does the mean the “astroturf” efforts are becoming a grassroots movement for control? Or does it still just amount to “astroturf”?
What Bloomberg is likely defining as “supporters” are people who have gotten on his e-mail list. How one defines a supporter is quite flexible, but that’s a vastly different animal than a dues paying member. NRA actually has one of the strictest standards for membership of any interest group that plays in DC.
NRA has 5 million members. That’s 5 million people who forked over money, usually 25-35 dollars to become members, and who have to keep paying that every year to remain on the rolls. Voting members, which includes life members (who forked out anywhere from 300-1000 dollars) and people who have been members for 5 unbroken years, number 1.72 million by the number of ballots that went out for the last Board election.
But it’s not just that. Where are the anti-gun blogs? Where’s the anti-gun convention that turns out 82,000 people like NRA did in Houston last month? Why are we able to mobilize bigger protests ad-hoc than they can manage even with professional organizers and slick ad campaigns. If Bloomberg has grassroots why is his bus tour schedule not being made public? Perhaps because he is well aware our people will show up and risk MAIG not getting the media’s undivided attention?
If I wanted to play Bloomberg’s game, just doing a quick query on the blog’s database, I have 7139 supporters in just my small corner of the pro-2A universe. That’s how many unique people have ever commented on this blog. We’ve had 1.9 million unique people who have visited this blog since I’ve been keeping stats. Of those, about 260,000 have returned to the site at least once. The metric I use to determine how many regular readers I have comes out to about 2300 now, and 7000 over the years if I take the data back far enough. We have 520 Facebook fans, and between Bitter and I, we have 2500 followers on Twitter. I am a blog about gun politics, and that’s all I generally blog about. That’s a pretty niche topic, as things go, and I’ve never spent so much as a dime on an ad campaign, or made any effort to compile a list of “supporters.” What could I have accomplished if I had sunk even a million of Bloomberg’s money into marketing?
So yes, I believe the gun control movement is still mostly Astroturf. I am sure millions of Americans are willing to say they support gun control, and some might even be willing to sign up for an e-mail list. But it takes more than that to win in politics. Bloomberg’s 1.5 million doesn’t matter if none of those people are willing to act or vote on the issue. NRA’s 5 million people will act, and will vote, and largely on that one issue. We will crawl over broken glass to defend the Second Amendment. In fact, most of us would do more if necessary.
Bloomberg Peeing in a lot of People’s Pools
There’s been a lot of people getting upset at Bloomberg’s insistence in taking his fight a bit too far. Even Chucky Schumer seems to be getting a bit peeved with Bloomberg’s antics. It’s pretty simple to see why. If you count up the number of states that went blue in 2012 you get 25. If the Democrats are going to hold a majority in the Senate, they need to be able to appeal to red state voters. Even Chuck Schumer is more interested in holding onto power (and being Majority Leader someday) than he is in advancing gun control.
But that’s a separate issue from whether Bloomberg’s strategy is a smart one, if you concede Bloomberg is actually a true believer when it comes to gun control. Over the short term, I think Bloomberg’s strategy is disastrous. At best it weakens red state Dems with their base, and throws the seat and possibly the Senate to pro-gun Republicans. That lays the groundwork for us to take National Reciprocity, and make Bloomberg eat it (along with plenty of salt and a 20oz Coke). At worst for Bloomberg the ads have no effect, or actually help, in which case we can probably count on that Democrat to be a solid vote for us in the future. Not only that, but it would make Bloomberg appear impotent politically at a critical time for the Democratic Party.
Over the long term, Bloomberg’s strategy could be beneficial if he can make Democrats afraid to cross his money and influence. If he can win, he could succeed in cementing the Democratic Party as the anti-gun party, with gun control as a lasting major party plank. Will it work? It’s a bit of a long shot, but there’s only so much you can do when you’re just one rich asshole. Keeping the Dems anti-gun, and then waiting for the inevitable political winds to shift in their favor might be a strategy that can pay off eventually. But given the force disparity between the pro and anti camp, I think gun control being front and center will make it much harder for the Democrats to crawl their way back to a majority. Bloomberg needs to be careful. NRA is always careful not to pee in too many people’s pools. If you threaten to upset the apple cart too much, even your allies will turn against you.
The LTC Process in Philly
Despite the state making an effort to standardize the LTC application process, Philly is still wants to do things their own way.
The application itself is 4 (four) pages if you print some of them front/back. Doesnt that go against what is outline in:
18 Pa.C.S. § 6109: Licenses (c) Form of application and content.–The application for a license to carry a firearm shall be uniform throughout this Commonwealth and shall be on a form prescribed by the Pennsylvania State Police. The form may contain provisions, not exceeding one page, to assure compliance with this section. Issuing authorities shall use only the application form prescribed by the Pennsylvania State Police.
Or am I just dense?
You’re not dense, no. But the law doesn’t honestly mean anything to these people, and it’s always just been cheaper to go get yourself a Florida license that to try to challenge the system. Kathy Kane might have just changed that equation, however. In every jurisdiction except for “cities of the first class,” which Philadelphia (and only Philadelphia) is under PA law, the issuing authority is the sheriff. For Philadelphia it is the Chief of Police. One bill I’ve seen would allow applications to be made to neighboring jurisdictions. This would be a useful first step, on the way to fixing this issue by not requiring permits, and may be useful for people who live in sprawling counties where the neighboring sheriff may actually be closer.