As I had speculated last week,, it would appear the City of Chicago has decided to revise its ordinance rather than appeal. I didn’t think Mayor Rahm would be making noise about protecting Chicago’s gun laws if he wasn’t planning a strategic retreat. The proposed ordinance revision will bar anyone from a gun license who has a violent misdemeanor conviction in the past five years. I would imagine the courts would uphold temporary prohibitions on violent misdemeanants, but that’s not completely certain. It will take some time, to bring cities like Chicago and New York into compliance with the Bill of Rights, but it’ll be a bit, metaphorically, like sculpting marble. We will make precedent one hammer strike at a time, hopefully without striking poorly and having to start all over again.
Author: Sebastian
Anti-Virus Triggering on Gun Bogs?
John Richardson’s blog, “No Lawyers, Only Guns and Money” seems to have gotten blocked by Norton’s anti-virus software. I use ClamAV when I use anti-virus at all. It’s not as critical in the Mac and Linux world except to scan file servers for stuff deposited by Windows users. If anyone notices this blog on such a list, let me know. Let John know too. Could be that perhaps this is only blogspot. And stop using Windoze :)
The Lame Deflections of the Anti-Gun Crowd on Fast and Furious
A common deflection by our opponents in the gun rights movement is that we Second Amendment supporters are making a big ado about nothing, considering Fast and Furious only represented a fraction of the overall number of guns trafficked into Mexico unlawfully. Let me take this analogy to another form of crime, and show why the anti-gun groups are phony baloney when they speak about their desire to reduce gun violence (rather than just wanting to reduce gun ownership).
Let’s take this to another form of crime, and to a smaller scale. Let’s talk about a neighborhood that has a problem with home break-ins. The community is small enough that people have a pretty good idea of who the bad apples are, and the local police have worked with the hardware stores in the town to ensure that they don’t crowbars or other burglary tools to the bad apples in town until they solve the rash of home break-ins. The local police catch a few burglars, all of which got in with crow bars, but the burglaries generally continue.
Let’s say that the state police then decide to sweep in, and announcing this is all part of a much bigger burglary ring, not only tell the hardware stores they should sell as many crowbars to the bad apples as they can, but actively encourage them to do so, so that they can infiltrate the ring and bring it down. So the only result is that burglaries in town shoot way up. This raises the question:
- Are the citizens of the town correct to be angry at the state police?
- Would it be paranoid and unreasonable to suggest the state police might have had selfish reasons, like boosting their own budgets, to inflate the crime problem?
- Because burglars still get a hold of crowbars, is it correct to blame the hardware store?
- Is it correct to blame the manufacturer of the crowbar?
- Would you say citizens that are concerned greatly about the police facilitating a rise in crime are just misdirected from the overall problem of burglars getting crowbars? Or the fact that hardware stores sell them?
Smuggling guns to Mexico is illegal. Buying guns from federal dealers to smuggle guns into Mexico is illegal. We expect the police to catch people who are doing it. Aside from disagreements we may have with anti-gunners about mutli-sale reporting requirements, of gun show loopholes, etc — is it not rational and healthy, when the police are found to be facilitating an illegal activity, to apparently no rational end, to be outraged and demand answers? What The Brady Folks, CSGV, and other anti-gun people are disingenuously suggesting, is that because we care about law enforcement not facilitating crime, that means we don’t care about crime. This is a ridiculous leap in logic, even for our opponents. Their reaction to Fast and Furious is further evidence the whole gun violence shtick is just that. If you have a situation where law enforcement is facilitating crime, if you’re interesting in fighting rime, the first order of business is to get the government to stop facilitating crime. Then we can talk about what to do next.
More on Commercial Blogging
A reader took some exception to my post previously on commercial blogging, and I just wanted to clear up some things. As a supporter of Capitalism, I don’t blame anyone for trying to make money, and therefore I don’t blame anyone for the mere act of making money off their blog. I’ve linked to plenty of commercial blog content, and I still link to The Firearm Blog, even though that is now pretty clearly a money making venture. So I don’t particularly have a problem with the idea of people making money off blogging, writing, etc. On balance I’d say that commercial blogs actually do a better job of generating quality content than the many if not most hobby bloggers. But the techniques one uses to optimize a blog for the purpose of maximizing monetary return is going to lead to a very different blog experience.
The main area of concern I have with commercial blogs, is that a core philosophy behind blogging, which is linking to other blogs and content, is in direct conflict with making money off running a web site. It’s never a good idea, from a money making standpoint, to give your readers a reason to click off your content and onto someone else’s. But that’s exactly what blogging is as a matter of core philosophy. There are commercial blogs out there that still make good money, and still largely follow the core tenants of the medium. Most of those started out as hobby blogs and went commercial. Many newer entrants into commercial blogging try to make their blogs communities unto themselves, which is great for keeping an audience, driving loyalty, and in the end, making money, but my fear is the community as a whole will suffer for it. For instance, I’d take Tam‘s advice on an old Smith or other curio any day over most of the commercial gun reviewers out there. I consider Tam’s expertise well and above most other gun writers out there on that subject, and most blog readers won’t get too far in the amateur community without being exposed to some of Tam’s writing. By the same token, Dave Hardy is my go-to source when I have 2nd Amendment legal questions. Clayton Cramer has forgotten more on early American history than most of us know, and I’m not convinced there’s much he’s forgotten. Being in the same community with these minds has greatly enhanced my own knowledge, and through the community of blogging, we’ve all been enriched. My fear is that the spread of commercial blogging will results in the dilution or destruction of the community that’s an important part of what Brian Anse Patrick calls “Horizontal Interpretive Communities.”
So my concern with commercial blogs is not that they make money. I have no problem with the idea of making money. It’s that in order to make money efficiently, your commercial venture has to make like it is the source for gun information online, and that by nature is going to weaken what has, I think, become a key part of our success as a movement.
Quote of the Day
From a TN Count of Appeals:
There is no economic sliding scale for the right to engage in constitutionally protected activities. The richest and poorest among us, as well as those individuals in-between, all have the same rights under the constitution.
 This was in a First Amendment context, which caused SayUncle to ask the obvious question.
The Theory That F&F Was a Pretext for Gun Control
“Bill – can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same (licensed gun dealer) and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks.”
Of course, evidence that they used Fast and Furious to make the case for the multi-sale reporting requirement is not evidence that the entire purpose of the operation was to gin up support for gun control. It’s hard for me to see why they’d request wiretaps if the sole purpose was driving up trace numbers. I think when all is said and done, we’ll discover that driving trace numbers from Mexico was just the icing on the cake. If I had to take a wild eyed guess on what the President is hiding, it’s probably evidence of perjury, and it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a some talk about how the higher trace numbers will just provide more evidence to support gun control efforts, whether the multi-sale requirement or a new assault weapons ban. Was the purpose of F&F only to make a case for gun control? Who knows. It wouldn’t surprise me, but I also wouldn’t be surprised to find out that this literally was an underpants gnome strategy of an investigation.
- Let straw purchasers traffic lots of gun to Mexico.
- ???
- Take down cartel kingpins!
I mean, it’s ridiculous, but it’s also Government. But if all this was is a botched operation, the politically sensible thing to do would be to throw a few people under the bus and come clean about it. This was obviously something bigger, or none of the coverup makes sense. But what is the White House hiding? It’s hard for me to understand how people on the left aren’t interested in that question. If this was still the Bush Administration, I’d sure as hell be curious, and would want answers.
Fast and Furious Explained
Dave Kopel does an excellent job of describing the scandal from the very beginning, starting off with Operation Wide Receiver under the Bush Administration, and continuing through to the current scandal, just based on the facts we know so far. This is vastly different from the spin you’re seeing in the media. The Philadelphia Stinkquirer is not exception here, carrying the water for the Administration by making this out to be a GOP witch hunt rather than legitimate oversight. You’re also seeing a lot in the papers about this originating under the Bush Administration, as if somehow that makes it better. Fine. Let’s get Bush Administration officials up before Congress. Get Gonzalez up there and hold him to account. I thought Bush’s DOJ was a cluster under Gonzalez too. What kind of morons do the media take us for that if they say “Bush did it too!!” we’re just going to slink back into our dumb, stupid redneck gun nuts bunkers and shrug it off.
Obama probably would never have claimed Executive Privilege if he didn’t have his lapdogs at the Washington Hoax, the Philadelphia Stinkquirer and the Paper of Making up the Record ready to try to make the scandal disappear for him.
Fact Checking
Caleb offers some good advice to check your facts, using a recent Guns.com mistake as an example. I haven’t found commercial blogs to be any more thorough in terms of getting facts right than amateur bloggers. If anything, because amateur bloggers link more readily within the community, error is more likely to get pointed out by someone who has the correct facts, noticed and corrected. If your goal is to make money, Google won’t ding you for bad facts or rumor mongering. It may even be beneficial.
Dip in the Polls for Obama?
Looks like the electorate didn’t like the assertion of Executive Privilege. Given Obama’s struggles recently, this leads me to believe whatever is being shielded by the White House is worse than what he’s going to suffer for shielding it. Either that or he’s good enough friends with Eric Holder he’s willing to take the White House down to help him. Or Eric Holder has enough dirt on people. Who knows.
Mayor Rahm Vows to Protect Chicago’s Gun Laws
By maybe, or maybe not, appealing the decision by a Federal District Court tossing out gun prohibition in Chicago for non-violent misdemeanants. The fact that he’s making such noise about protecting Chicago’s gun laws tells me his office is seriously considering not appealing. This particular issue might not be a hill the Mayor’s Office wants to die on.