Sebastian – Page 332 – Shall Not Be Questioned

NRA v. BATFE

Steven Halbrook notes that the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals got the history wrong, but I hadn’t considered this one silver lining:

The government thus asserted that the plaintiffs were not injured and lacked standing. The court disagreed, finding the inability to purchase a handgun from a dealer to be a concrete, particularized injury.

So the Second Amendment protects some right to purchase a handgun in the 5th Circuit. We think such things are obvious, and they should be, but these are the courts we’re talking about. Halbrook also points out the skewed logic of the decision:

Now for the irony of this exercise, the law allows a person aged 18 to 20 to buy a handgun from a non-dealer and allows a person aged 21 or over to buy a handgun and give it to a person aged 18 to 20. Thus, since persons aged 18 to 20 are too untrustworthy to have Second Amendment rights, they do not have to go through a background check when obtaining a handgun. However, anyone purchasing a firearm from a dealer is subject to a background check for criminal convictions, mental commitments and other prohibited categories giving rise to a denial to purchase firearms. The court rejected the argument that this undermines the reasonableness of the fit between the restriction and the objective to keep firearms out of the wrong hands.

The courts have been basically looking for any excuse not to toss any laws out under the Second Amendment. What other right should work this way?

Brady Campaign in California Fighting Small Business

A California FFL is facing opposition from the Brady Campaign because he wants to work as a gun broker out of his home. Neo-prohibitionists at The Brady Campaign suggest that “unlicensed dealers,” are a horrible and dangerous bazar for criminals who want guns. Then, when someone decides to seek a Federal Firearms License to become a licensed dealer, they turn around and argue that licensed dealers are dangerous. So which is it? Or is it just that selling guns, a constitutionally protected right, I might add, is an unqualified evil? I think neo-prohibitionist is a fitting term to describe them.

Why Are Gun Control Advocates So Racist and Sexist?

I guess it’s not just violent too. Recently a Brady Board member opined “Angry white men are losing their influence,” and then proceeds to go on a racist and sexist diatribe the likes of which is hard to be believed. Is Tam an “angry white man?” Is Jennifer? Is my co-blogger? The cornered cat? Are the large percentage of my fellow NRA Election Volunteer Coordinators who are women? Is Pastor Ken? On the academic side of the Second Amendment, is Professor Johnson? Professor Cottrol? And let’s not forget about our women who toiled tireless on behalf of the outcome in the Heller decision.

I am sure some on the gun control side will be shocked and offended at my suggestion that Joan Peterson’s epic tome on the racial aspects of this issue are, in fact, racist and sexist. If someone said that Free Speech is an issue of angry males, how are you not implying free speech isn’t important to blacks or women? If this election had gone the other way, and one of us had said that this result was an indication that, to turn it around, angry black women were losing their influence, would you not decry such a response as racism and sexism? What if someone said the 4th Amendment, which protects from unreasonable search and seizure, was among these “angry white male” rights Joan speaks of. Oh wait.

The fact of the matter is that President Obama won re-election based on traditional political metrics that have long been at play in this country. What does the election say? It says when you run a challenger against an incumbent President, unless you really have your act together as a candidate, and fortune and circumstance smile upon you, you’re likely to lose. President Obama won the election because he did a better job of holding his base together, and his turnout machine was better than Mitt Romney’s. Period. It doesn’t speak of the rise or ascendancy, or descendancy of race or gender, and I think to suggest otherwise is to attempt to throw poison back into the well of racial animosity we’ve spent many decades trying to clean up. And which side is doing that here? Which side is dragging race into this, and constantly trying to paint 1/10th (1/5th if you’re Bloomberg) of the Bill of Rights as only being important to white males? They ought to be ashamed of themselves. Is this what living up to progressive ideals means?

Secession Rumors

Apparently the White House is getting flooded with secession petitions, and this is making its way around the boomersphere (those long e-mail chains you get from your parents). It made its way onto a private group I’m in on Facebook. I find this rather disappointing, not because I don’t think the discussion needs to be had, but because I’d rather these people putting energy into petitioning their state legislatures (who can do something to this effect) rather than petitioning Obama (who can do nothing even if he wanted to, which he does not).

I don’t think the time for breaking up the United States is here right now, but I think it’s healthy for the discussion to happen. Here’s a map of places one candidate or another carried the vote by 20% or more.

Can a house so divided stand?

Veterans Day

Today is Veterans Day, also known as Armistice Day, remembering the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, when the guns fell silent. In honor of those who served, a link to this excellent photo series of street scenes from D-Day overlaid with the modern day view.

Passing the Boot

Volunteer Firemen have a tradition of raising money by asking passing motorists at stoplights to make a donation by holding out their fire boots. Bloggers have a similar tradition of the tip jar, and sometimes a blogger runs into some difficulty, and we pass the tip jar around. View from the Porch is a daily read for me. She has unfortunately run into a medical issue thats starts with “c,” ends with “F*ck!,” and has a bunch of doctors in the middle that cost money. Even if, as Tam puts it, that skin cancer is more like cancer’s farm team, it’s still a horrible thing to go through.

So if you like her work, “hit the friggin tip jar,” as another blogger is fond of saying. Help her get well and not worry about expenses.

Still Irrelevant

I’ve been busy the past few days and I haven’t checked my Google Alerts for a bit. I noticed this:

Well, well, look who the media’s been talking about in post-election week. more than 3x the number of outlets talking about a gun rights organization as opposed to a gun control organization. Even if the media thinks we took a shellacking in the recent election, they certainly aren’t crediting the win to the irrelevant gun control groups.

Tannerite Scare

Apparently a State Senator in Indiana is all concerned about tannerite. I’m no expert on explosives, but isn’t tannerite a binary explosive? So what is he going to do? Regulate the precursors? All are common chemicals, and at least ammonium nitrate is already regulated if purchased in large amounts. No one is ordering tannerite mixed; that requires hazmat transport, which is expensive. People are ordering the precursors then mixing. The feds love regulating everything, and I think the reason even they haven’t made a move against tannerite is the understanding that such a move would be completely pointless for someone actually intending harm.

And So It Begins

Didn’t take long for Obama to get started on retribution for our opposition. I also hear ATF is very interested, suddenly, in meeting with NSSF. And let’s not forget that Bloomberg handed the Administration a 40 point plan on how to screw us without needing a damned thing from Congress. Elections have consequences. We’re not going to have much choice other than to bend over and take it.

Holder May Be Out

According to CBS DC. I couldn’t really understand why Obama stood by Holder, given what a liability he was. But if we’ll have a new Attorney General second term, at least that will be some improvement in the Administration.