The Hill is claiming the NRA endorsement for Montana’s Senate seat is up in the air. It will be Tester against Denny Rehberg. Tester should generally benefit from NRA’s incumbent friendly endorsement policy, even though Rehberg has a very pro-gun record in the House. The only thing I could see complicating things for Tester is that he voted to confirm Sonya Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. Other than that, I would be surprised if Tester doesn’t get the endorsement, unless NRA is looking to send a strong message to Senators that votes for Court nominees that don’t support the Second Amendment won’t be tolerated. I would agree with that course of action, because I don’t think there’s anything more important that Senators can vote on right now than Court appointments.
Author: Sebastian
Winning
More women taking up shooting for fun and self-defense. Clearly they must be compensating for something.
The GOP Field
Tam wonders whether the GOP is trying to deliberately throw the election. By all historical accounts, given how poor the economy is, and how high unemployment is running, there should be no way that Barry wins a second term, yet I’m quite worried that’s exactly what’s going to happen. I’m normally willing to get behind someone in the primary by this point — in 2008, before he dropped out, it was Fred Thompson. Policy and temperament wise, Rick Perry actually seems to be the best of the lot, but his performance so far has just been disappointing.
I’d be willing to cast the “not-Obama” vote in the general election, and get behind the eventual candidate, even if it’s, and it pains me to say this, Mitt Romney. I don’t expect much from the next President, since I think the economy will still pretty much suck, and people still won’t have jobs. The next guy is likely to be a one termer too if Obama gets the boot, and I’d almost hate to waste someone good on a doomed presidency. So if Romney has to be the sacrificial lamb, so be it. We get to roll the dice again in four years with the Democrats, and maybe there’s a chance they’ll field someone who isn’t a total disaster. There are two things that are true, however, if Obama is re-elected:
- Scalia and Kennedy will be 80 by the end of Obama’s second term. Thomas will be 68. The chances Obama will get to replace one of these justices is extremely high, and if he does, it’ll be a bloody miracle of we can save the Second Amendment. Best case scenario is that you’ll, at the least, be able to keep a gun in the home, but with all DC and Chicago’s ridiculous regulations being upheld.
- Secondly, while Romney is responsible for socialized medicine in Massachusetts, as a Republican President he’ll be facing an awful lot of party pressure to sign an Obamacare repeal if it hits his desk. I don’t see any scenario where Romney could veto and not have a revolt within his own party on his hands. Obama will almost definitely veto a repeal, and the Republicans aren’t likely to have enough votes in the Senate to override.
So that’s kind of how I’m looking at it. To me the two things we want out of the next President are to put someone on the Supreme Court who will be a vote in favor of the Second Amendment, and to sign a repeal of Obamacare. The majority of Obamacare does not go into effect until 2014, but once it does, you’ll never get rid of it. I think the candidates we have now in the GOP field are going to be reasonable vessels for trying to achieve both those goals. It’s not perfect, but I can deal with a disaster of a GOP Presidency as long as those two goals have a reasonable chance of being achieved. Under Obama, there’s almost no chance of that.
More on the New Funding Riders
Dave Hardy has the details on some of the other provisions. Evan Nappen has more details on the shotgun regulation, including the language of the appropriations restriction in that regard:
SEC. 541. None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to pay the salaries or expenses of personnel to deny, or fail to act on, an application for the importation of any model of shotgun if–
(1) all other requirements of law with respect to the proposed importation are met; and
(2) no application for the importation of such model of shotgun, in the same configuration, had been denied by the Attorney General prior to January 1, 2011, on the basis that the shotgun was not particularly suitable for or readily adaptable
It doesn’t completely eliminate enforcement of “sporting purposes” for shotgun importation, it basically just kills ATF’s proposed rule. If a shotgun has already been determined to be not particularly suited to sporting purposes, ATF will still be able to keep it out of the country. They just won’t be able to do any reclassification on the basis of a sporting purposes test.
This has now been signed into law, by the way. I have to say that NRA has gotten very good at playing this game. While everyone was busy getting themselves all worked up about HR822, and Bloomberg and Menino were having their dog and pony show in the Senate, NRA was quietly pushing funding riders that would go unnoticed by our opponents until it was too late. I consider getting Congress to take a whack at the Gun Control Act’s “sporting purposes” language, even if it’s just a modest funding restriction, to be a significant achievement, and certainly a step on the road to possibly getting that provision removed at some point in the future.
The Irony
I’m glad I’m not the only one that’s noticed:
Interesting District Court Development
Looks like a Section 1983 civil rights suit, involving the Second Amendment, will be able to proceed in California. The case involves people open carrying in compliance with California law, while handing out leaflets. They were detained by police.
Message to the Gunnie Internet
From SayUncle. If you’ve been around enough, you’ve probably heard everything he’s lamenting.
Iraq Government to Disarm Population
Now that we’re no longer going to be there, I guess they want to be able to impose whatever government they can get away with on the Iraqi people. That’s a lot easier if you don’t have to worry about them shooting back. Under US occupation and provisional government, Iraqis were permitted to have one AK-47 and a reasonable amount of ammunition for personal defense.
I don’t think this will end well.
Misplaced Grief
Joan Peterson talks about rude gun guys. I’m sympathetic in regards to running into rude assholes on the Internet. I can believe it. We have a lot of bozos in the gun movement on the Internet, same as any movement that generates real passion. But I have to take serious issue with this:
There were a lot of claims about concealed carry permit holders and the inconvenience of not being able to carry their guns into every state in the nation. I’ll tell them about inconvenience. My family was inconvenienced when we had to plan a funeral for my sister, shot to death on an August day. The inconvenience of sneaking to the back of the church in a rented bus to avoid the press shouldn’t have to be, but it was. It was inconvenient to watch my mother deal with the death of her first born child. It was inconvenient to watch my own children deal with the awful death of their favorite aunt. It was inconvenient to watch my sister’s grown kids and step children deal with each other and with their grief. So really, I just don’t feel sorry for these guys who can’t carry their guns everywhere they go.
My mother died an untimely death at 43 when I was 20. I spent most of my adolescent childhood watching her slowly die. I am not unsympathetic to what a family goes through when they lose a loved one in an untimely manner. My aunt (her sister) still has a lot of difficulty with it, and my grandmother did as well until she died too eight years ago. We all had to go through that, and still have to go through that together. You never get over it, you just learn to live with it, as best you can.
But I am absolutely not able to understand the sentiment expressed in Joan’s quote above. None of the people reading this post had anything to do with what happened to Joan’s sister. In fact, none of the many millions of individual who have concealed carry permits from the 41 states that issue them do either. So I quite seriously question Joan on this issue.
Why take your grief out on all these individuals who, quite frankly, have nothing to do with your sister’s death? I’m really not trying to be cold or callous. I really want to understand this. You go on further:
Do they care about victims? Are their gun rights more important than the public’s right to be safe from shootings of family members or friends? Are their rights to carry their guns more important than jobs, health care, housing, and other pressing needs? I believe that most Americans know the answer to this.
This is a horrendous accusation to make against your fellow citizens. If we lived in world where drivers’ licenses weren’t universally recognized by all states, and your sister was killed by a drunk driver, would you suggest that folks who just want to be able to drive freely in other states didn’t care about drunk driving? This is not a rational argument.
People don’t take kindly to being made to own up to the sins of the insane and criminal, and accept collective punishment. We want to be able to freely travel in other states while exercising our Second Amendment rights. Making those of us who feel this way somehow responsible for the death of your sister is insulting. When you insult other people, is it so surprising some of them decide that lashing out is the best course of action?
Can We Dispense With This “States Rights” Nonsense
I really only ever hear about “states rights” from history books, and when the media drags out the specter in an attempt to convince the American public there’s hypocrisy afoot. The term I often hear used by actual conservatives and libertarians is federalism, which is distinct from “states rights.”
For the most part, the media hasn’t been engaging in a whole lot of hysterics about the passage of HR822 in the house. The exceptions are in the anti-gun states like California and New Jersey. It shouldn’t be a surprise that we have two articles from those very places yammering on about states rights. First from New Jersey:
There is nothing in the Second Amendment prohibiting states from regulating who can carry a concealed weapon. That isn’t being debated. The issue is whether the gun regulations of one state must be recognized by another.
Funny, I thought the whole keep and bear part was pretty clear. It’s amazing such a simple phrase has been so twisted around by people who just don’t want to accept the plain language. Now the LA Times in California:
It’s no surprise that highly urban states susceptible to gang, drug and gun crimes tend to put more restrictions on firearms than more rural states. When the streets of cities such as Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland are flooded with guns and the blood of gun-violence victims, there is a strong public interest in regulating firearms, an interest that is far weaker in states such as Utah and Montana, where guns are used mainly for hunting and self-defense.
And guns aren’t used for self-defense in big cities? Just doesn’t happen, eh? States rights simply are not a concern here. The concern is the right of individuals to enjoy their fundamental right to have arms to protect themselves, both in and outside the home. States have no more a power to restrict that than they do to suggest out of state individuals obtain a publishing license before printing books, or have the power to demand whites and blacks drink from separate fountains, or use separate bathrooms.