Strictly on content, I thought it was a draw. Biden held his own and managed to get through the debate without saying anything supremely stupid. That’s a big accomplishment for Crazy Joe. I think much of what was debated is beyond the knowledge of low-information voters. But on likability and demeanor, which I think probably matters more to the low-information voters the campaigns are trying to reach now, Ryan came out ahead on that one. Biden was getting boorish, and I don’t think that comes off well to the voters the campaign needs to reach. However, I suspect the Dem base ate up Crazy Joe’s performance, so when it comes to getting morale back on track, I think Biden did a respectable job.
Author: Sebastian
Ready for the Debate
I have pre-mixed some Manhattans and put them in the freezer for the Vice Presidential debate tonight. Gotta crack out the hard stuff for Crazy Joe. This is kind of like watching race car driving. Ordinarily watching a bunch of guys drive cars around in a circle, to me at least, is about as exciting as watch the grass grow. But there might be a wreck, and that is exciting. When Joe Biden is involved, there’s a pretty high likelihood there’s going to be a wreck.
Two Wolves and a Sheep
Remind Me Never to Really Piss off Linoge
The truth about The Truth About Guns, or the 95 Theses against Robert Farago. Get a drink and pull up a chair. It’s long reading. In truth, I’m with Bob Owens in that I don’t mind the occasional lifted photo or post. I’m more concerned about boorish behavior toward people like Emily Miller and Alan Gura, and the general lack of ethics and sensationalism. Like I said before, many of us took to blogging in order to start a conversation without having to deal with that nonsense.
Is Bloomberg Funding the Whole Gun Control Movement?
Dave Hardy has some excellent reporting on how Bloomberg may be secretly funneling money into the gun control movement. Dave mentions a reason for this could be so that Bloomberg can fund other more radical projects, but continue to appear to be moderate on the issue. Dave posits that the reason Joyce hasn’t donated much to the Brady Campaign is because they are too moderate. If that is indeed the case, it might explain why they’ve been turning up the crazy lately. It could be the Joyce mothership, and Bloomberg, not only dig the crazy, but benefit from it. Dave also notes that the Brady organization has been hemorrhaging money. This has been going on for a while now, actually, and I’m surprised they can still function. Not only function, but they felt they had the money to hire a new President, rather than just continuing with Dennis Henigan. It’ll be interesting to see if all the crazy talk coming out Brady these days is intended to signal to mama Joyce that they’re as serious about lunacy as all the other gun control groups.
And if Joyce is really looking for crazy, why? It’s a reasonable question to ask, so put yourself in Bloomberg’s shoes. He has his Mayor’s organization. They are the moderate face of gun control, when their members aren’t busy getting arrested, indicted or sent to prison. They are the ones proposing serious policies and trying to move the middle. But moving the middle is tough, because you run into the problem of the NRA, and people who are active in the gun rights community. In fact, if there’s one thing Media Matters and CSGV have in common it’s an attempt to discredit the National Rifle Association, and harass and intimidate those who support them. The CSGV outing of gun bloggers, along with taking our quotes out of context and spinning them as racist, lunatic, or worse, may actually be part of a coordinated strategy funded largely out of Bloomberg’s pockets. This way he has the lunatic groups, who have no bearing on the policy debate anymore, do his dirty work for him. If he were to do this directly with the MAIG organization, we’d use it to attack his mayors, and destroy his credibility when he tries to move the policy debate, and he knows that.
I could be far off base here, and giving the gun control groups way too much credit, and the lunacy we’ve witnessed the past few years might only be anger and resentment as they slip farther and farther into irrelevancy. But I don’t think Bloomberg is to be underestimated. I could easily see a cohesive strategy here at work that would make perfect sense. Bloomberg can’t move the issue without discrediting NRA, and too a much lesser degree other parts of the new media and horizontal interpretive communities established in the gun rights movement. MAIG will do that (with the help of Frank Luntz) on the up-and-up, and the Joyce grantees, funded indirectly with Bloomberg money and with no credibility left to risk, get to do the dirty work.
I Have Been Elected
I have been elected tonight to another two year term as my as Club Secretary. I would savor this victory, if I had actually had someone running against me. Of course, if someone really wanted the job, I’d probably have stepped down and let them run unopposed. I make a poor politician. If only we could get people into political office who viewed public service as a burden rather than a prize, we could probably fix a lot of what’s wrong with this country. I sometimes wonder if we treated service in Congress and State Legislatures much the same way we treat jury duty, if it wouldn’t have better results. I suspect it probably wouldn’t be better, but I’m not convinced it would be worse.
Josh Horwitz’s Wookie Suit Allergies
You have to know Cody Wilson, of the WikiWeapon Project, is doing something right if Josh Horwitz is writing an entire article which is nothing less than an anaphylactic reaction to the thick and luxuriant fur on Cody’s wookie suit. The more I look at the WikiWeapon, the more I think this looks like Reagan’s “Star Wars” program strategically. The “Star Wars” program was about as much of a technological pipe dream as a pistol you could make on a 3D printer, but it scared the Soviets enough that they were forced to spend a lot of time and energy thinking of ways to counter it; money they could ill afford to spend. The fact that our opponents are having a cow over it is good enough reason to push the technology and continue to democratize it. Gun control has always been ineffective, but now it is to be obsolete as well, as we’ve demonstrated on our blog.
Colt and Remington Threatening to Relocate
Over microstamping. I’m sure there are plenty of other states that would be happy to have them. You know, the North won the Civil War largely because all the manufacturing and arms making industries were located in the industrialized areas, mainly of the Northeast. If the South were ever to rise again, where’s all the manufacturing and arms making in the country now? More importantly, where does all our nuclear material come from? What city makes rockets? Just something for Northeastern elites to consider. What does the Northeast manufacture these days other than financial crises?
Six Reasons Gun Owners Should Care About This Election
Remember, Barack Obama is the best pro-gun President of all times, according to the media, and these paranoid gun nuts are just a bunch of moronic hicks brainwashed by the NRA. This article in Forbes lays out the case for why that’s as big a lie as virtually anything else they’ve parroted this silly season:
More recently in a move unprecedented in American history, President Obama quietly banned re-importation and sale of 850,000 collectible antique U.S.-manufactured M1 Garand and Carbine rifles that were left in South Korea following the Korean War. Developed in the 1930’s, the venerable M1 Garand carried the U.S. through World War II, seeing action in every major battle.
I had kind of forgotten about this, because Presidents screwing us on importation rules has been a grand bipartisan tradition, but it’s certainly something to count against the President.
An Obama reelection presents an extreme risk of replacing at least one of five Supreme Court justices who have vindicated Second Amendment protections in the precarious Heller and McDonald decisions. If this were to happen, our right to bear arms might become a lost historical memory for future oppressed generations to read about.
This point needs to be pounded on until gun owners start to get it.
Still, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence continues to wage war on several fronts, most particularly attacking the constitutionally-sanctioned Second Amendment right of law-abiding citizens to carry guns for protection outside their homes, a right the vast majority of state governments acknowledge. According to their director of legal action, Jonathan Lowy, “this battle is far from over.â€
I think the Brady Campaign has largely beclowned itself under Gross, and is sliding further down the slope into irrelevance. Bloomberg and MAIG are the big threat now, and that’s another reality I think gun owners need to be made to understand.
UPDATE: First comment on that article illustrates an attitude you find often among gun owners who are ill informed:
No one…not even the President of the United States…can *legally* impose any restrictions on a citizen’s right to keep and bear arms. Until the Bill is Rights is abolished that right is just as important as any other right in the Bill of Rights. Can you imagine the uproar if some silly woman senator suggested “Common Sense restrictions on the right to free speech? The Second Amendment is the ONLY amendment to specifically state that the “right to KEEP and BEAR arms shall NOT BE INFRINGED.
So…what PART of “Shall NOT be INFRINGED†do these people not understand? No one has the right to tell *anyone* that they cannot only KEEP but also BEAR arms anywhere at anytime. Why? Because the Second Amendment does not have ANY provision for that. It’s really simple. But some law breaking “government officials†believe that they can force people to do what *THEY* deem as right. Well, it AINT gonna happen.
The unfortunate fact is the Second Amendment only means what 9 unelected men and women in robes say it means. Beyond that, it does not protect you. A great many gun owners don’t understand the existence and recognition of this right by the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, doesn’t mean squat unless the courts enforce it. I think this is an understandable, if naive view, that people in the government will act in good faith. They won’t. I think a good reason the Court argument may not be effective among gun owners is that they don’t really understand the magnitude of the threat. “It’s in the Constitution, and I can read,” they likely think, probably also remembering back to civics class about what it takes to amend the document. But while Judges can read too, judges also have agendas.
What seems clear can be unclear. I can remember being this naive once, back when I was first getting into this issue in a serious way, and someone told me the Second Amendment was ruled not to be an individual right. I couldn’t believe this was the case, so I looked up the Supreme Court cases on it, and couldn’t find anything that lead to that conclusion. But this did lead me to the collective rights work of Saul Cornell, and I was outraged enough by it to seek deeper knowledge, which was part of my transition out of that space. Sometimes I think when ordinary gun owners find out how this really works, they are going to be pissed.
Firearm Brass Art
This is pretty cool. Apparently the dark parts are done by burning gunpowder over the brass.