Sebastian – Page 340 – Shall Not Be Questioned

A View of Legislation

Again, drawing from Tam’s post on last night’s third rail licking by President Obama, I want to highlight a random comment that I think is illustrative:

Lets face facts on the actual possibility of a re-introduced AWB.

1. It will either have a sunset, or be overturned. In the current political climate EVERYONE has bigger fish to fry and no matter what you do you cannot regulate crazy.

2. As callous or shocking as this may sound, an AWB would be nothing short of lucrative for pretty much every member here.

What makes the poster here think that, once the legislative sausage grinder starts to turn, that surely it would have a sunset, or be overturned? Why did the original AWB have a sunset in it? Because ban proponents had to include it to win votes. We were damned lucky we got that sunset. It was a product of the unique circumstances in place when the ban was considered, and there’s no guarantee a new ban would have one. None of the state level bans have included sunsets (Massachusetts’s ban was always permanent). None have been repealed. Unfortunately, statements like this express a grave naivety about how the legislative process works.

If you’re a gun lobbyist, and you’re fighting an assault weapons ban and losing, you may be able to use wavering legislators to help make a bill less bad. But the exact nature of how that works out is very much going to be dependent on circumstances and individual legislators. What would a new assault weapons ban look like? We honestly don’t know. The best course of action is not to find out.

And the Press Goes Wild

The Google Alerts on “assault weapon” is lighting up like a Christmas tree this morning since the President came out and said what he really thinks. Papers from the Washington Post to the Chicago TribuneÂ are atwitter on the subject. From Tam:

What I love about this is how every time he gives the gun control issue the most tentative touch with the tip of his tongue (what he actually said was “Part of it is seeing if we can get an assault weapons ban reintroduced,”) the media grabs him by the back of his head and turns it into a great, big sloppy slurp (“Obama Calls for Renewal of Assault Weapons Ban” blares the headline.) These guys are writing the NRA’s ad copy for them.

I tend to agree this is a good thing. We want Obama talking about this issue and the media playing it up as much as possible. The worst thing Obama ever did to NRA was to do and say nothing. It’s hard to demonize someone who really hasn’t gone after you, except for “under the radar.” Well, he’s not flying too stealthy anymore, and I’m going to bet there are people in Fairfax editing copy of that statement as we speak.

A Bit on NRA’s New Media Efforts

NRA is running a Magpul raffle on Facebook. Obviously you’re not paying anything to enter the raffle, but you’re giving them your contact info, which helps increase NRA’s reach. They are also, with the upcoming election, they have announced a new Facebook App, which is roughly the social media equivalent of a bumper sticker, in that it’ll dress up your Timeline banner. I give NRA a lot of crap for technology disfunction, but this is a pretty good effort, and innovative. Certainly you don’t see any of the gun control groups doing anything like this.

Our Friends of the NRA Raffle

For those who bought tickets for our Bucks County Friend of the NRA 1911 raffle (and we thank each and every one of you who did), we did have our drawing last night for the three 1911s, and I am pleased to report that someone who got their ticket through our blog won the Kimber. This makes sense since we sold about 1/3rd of the 200 tickets in the raffle though the blog. In the interest of privacy, we won’t announce the winners names, but we will announce the winners had ticket numbers 25, 87, and 129. I thank everyone who played, because you really made an impact. As a new Friends of the NRA Committee, we have certain fundraising goals each year, and because of you all who entered, we exceeded that. Without you, we would have come in under our goal.

Our dinner, plus this raffle, allowed us to raise approximately $7600 for the NRA Foundation, half of which will stay in Eastern Pennsylvania, where it will be used to fund grants, most of which are related to youth shooting programs. Remember that every kid who learns to shoot, and learns proper and safe gun handling makes the anti-gunners cry, and that’s worth the price of entry even if you didn’t win.

We may do another raffle next year, or possibly one head of our dinner in spring. It has yet to be determined by our committee.

PLCAA in New York Courts

Earlier this month a New York appeals court overturned the dismissal of a lawsuit against Beemiller, Inc, the maker of the Hi-Point 9mm, which is being sued because of criminal misuse of their product. The lower court, correctly, cited the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. Law.com has a very good article with some background. John Richardson has more, including an NRA News interview with Steven Halbrook. The actual opinion cites the exceptions to the PLCAA as a reason for allowing the case to go forward, particularly the text which allows, “an action in which a manufacturer or seller of a qualified productÂ knowingly violated a State or Federal statute applicable to the sale or marketing of the product, and the violationÂ was a proximate cause of the harm for which relief is sought.”

The complaint is against the dealer, the distributor, and the manufacturer. The case is actually quite interesting. The dealer in this was licensed from his home, and did business at gun shows. There’s nothing unlawful about this arrangement, but it’s alleged that the dealer knowingly facilitated straw purchases in violation of federal law, which, if true, would indeed put the suit outside of the PLCAA. Where it gets interesting is that the dealer in question was a high level officer, and is now the President of the distributor that’s being sued as well. Said distributor is the sole marketer and distributor of Hi-Point firearms. The court essentially ruled that the plaintiffs are entitled to discovery, given these facts.

The Brady Center is touting this as a major landmark victory. They have been attempting to poke holes in the PLCAA virtually from the moment it passed, since it has effectively ruined their strategy to sue firearms manufacturers, distributors, and dealers out of existence. I haven’t been able to find all the pleadings in this case to know for sure, but the circumstances here look fairly unique and narrow, with someone who is a dealer and also part owner of the sole distributor of a firearms manufacturer. Nonetheless, the Bradys would love to carve a PLCAA exception wide enough such that any firearm sold by a dealer to a straw buyer can result in a potential lawsuit at least reaching the discovery phase. All it takes is for this to happen in a single jurisdiction, and it’ll be open season on firearms dealers.

Specter Dies

Regardless of the fact that he was never conservative enough for conservatives, and never reliable enough for liberals, Arlen Specter was an icon on Pennsylvania politics. He was diagnosed with late-stage Hodgkin’s lymphoma several years ago, but it seems he recently got a non-Hodgkin’s form of the disease and succumbed to it at 82.

Quote of the Day: Felix Baumgartner Edition

I had a lot to do around the house today, but I took the time to watch this live:

â€œThe exit was perfect but then I started spinning slowly. I thought Iâ€™d just spin a few times and that would be that, but then I started to speed up. It was really brutal at times. I thought for a few seconds that Iâ€™d lose consciousness. I didnâ€™t feel a sonic boom because I was so busy just trying to stabilize myself. Weâ€™ll have to wait and see if we really broke the sound barrier. It was really a lot harder than I thought it was going to be.â€ – Felix Baumgartner, October 14, 2012

He made it look like it was easy. You could see the spinning on the long range infrared cameras, and it was worrysome, but it didn’t look bad enough to appear that he was in real trouble. And then he recovered. He broke a several records, including highest manned balloon flight, highest jump, and fastest speed without benefit of a vehicle. But I was happy Joe Kittinger‘s record on longest free fall still stands. The dude deserves to hold at least one record. I suspect Baumgartner shot into the atmosphere like a bullet, and just covered the extra distance that much faster.

UPDATE: From Tam, who also watched the live event on Al Gore’s Internets:

I just used a global communication network to watch video footage and telemetry streamed in real time from the edge of space, where a man privately sponsored by an energy drink company leaped into the black sky and went supersonic without an aircraft.

What a fascinating modern world we live in!

Yep. The next time man lands on the moon, it’ll have a sponsor. Who’ll sponsor the Mars Shot? Probably whichever company corners the moon tourism market.

UPDATE: Another thought. I don’t think the many Americans that tuned in to the live jump thought too much about the fact that an Austrian was gunning for, and eventually beat several world records held by an American. This is still a country where we celebrate individual achievement — one that doesn’t care much whether you’re Austrian, English, Turkish, Armenian, Russian, Chinese, Kenyan or Indonesian. Joe Kittinger helped the Austrian beat all but one of his own records — people who were 70 years ago a mortal enemy. No one thought anything of it. Think about that when you consider the bullshit being flung far and wide over the Sekaku Islands.

We Were Protested

Back from the legal seminar. Heeding God’s Call apparently decided they were going to protest, since I guess God doesn’t like Second Amendment law seminars. Throngs of people showed up, with tons of enthusiasm and energy. We were overwhelmed by their presence. Or not:

One woman is wielding a sign that says “Stop Shooting People,” which is a serious problem when you bring academics and lawyers together in one place. Perhaps they thought the seminar happening in the Ormandy Ballroom was just a clever cover for the arms bazaar that was no doubt occurring in the Mogadishu Ballroom on the next floor. But what was going on inside?

Clayton Cramer talking about the history of California’s Concealed Weapons laws. Seated to his right is Professor Nick Johnson of Fordham University, who had just given a talk on firearms and the black experience. Seated to the right of Professor Johnson is John Frazer, Director of Research for NRA-ILA who spoke himself, and also moderated the forum. Clearly very dangerous people who’d make a regular habit of “shooting people” if not for protesters holding signs.

Law Seminar in Philadelphia This Weekend

NRA is hosting a legal seminar this weekend in Philadelphia, which Bitter and I will be attending. There are people coming in from all around, so if you’re going to be there, we’ll see you there. I don’t know who is and who isn’t coming, but later tonight I’ll be giving Clayton Cramer a lift from the airport to the hotel where the seminar is hosted, so I know he’s coming at least.

Also, sorry for the light posting the past several days. I’ve been in the office, which kills two to three hours of my day on the commute, and because I’m not in the office all the time, I have to use my time here judiciously when there’s things I have to get done on site. We will return back to our normal schedule shortly.

We’re Getting a New Firewall

After an upgrade failed to fix the problem with my router/Firewall/WiFi Access point, I have decided to order one of these to serve the blog. This will allow me to put the blog server on a DMZ nework, and handle all the VPNs I need to connect my network to our offices. The little Buffalo WAP unit does a fine job of servicing the blog and most other things, but I’m now at the point I need a Firewall with a more professional feature set, and the Buffalo running dd-wrt isn’t cutting the mustard.