Sebastian – Page 725 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Here We Go Again

Will someone please explain to me why NRA, after allowing carry at their meetings in the past at venues that allow it, such as the Kentucky Expo Center, and the Phoenix Convention Center,Â that they would deliberately not make an effort to letÂ attendeesÂ carry in Charlotte?Â Keeping in mind that with the Phoenix Annual Meeting, they went to great lengths to get the Arizona Department of Liquor Licenses and Control to suspend the liquor license of the convention center for the duration of the Annual Meeting (except for the banquet, whichÂ traditionallyÂ serves beer and wine) so that attendees could carry at Annual Meeting.

Now, in terms of site selection, I am going to agree with everyone that Charlotte, from what I’ve seen so far, is less than ideal, and not just on the issue of carry. I’m going to be an opponent of NRA going back there unless they fix their carry laws, among other things. But NRA has hosted its Annual Meeting in a lot of places, for reasons that I’ve mentioned before. Some of those venues are more friendly to carry than others.

NRA’s official statement about this issue goes as follows:

The claim that NRA does not want members to carry is flat out wrong. Both Phoenix and Louisville allowed concealed and open carry in the convention center. In fact, NRA fought to make sure attendees could carry at those locations.

In Charlotte, just like in every city that we have held our annual meeting, NRA is bound by legal and contractual obligations. We were unable to remove the prohibition due to state, city and convention center regulations.

Some people have mentioned an exception under the law for “A person participating in the event, if a person is carrying a gun, rifle, or pistol with the permission of the owner, lessee, or person or organization sponsoring the event.” This exception has two prongs. First, the person must be a participant. Second, the person must have permission.

While some may suggest that NRA could be the one giving permission, the reality is that NRA would not be the one who would determine whether or not someone is a participant. A prosecutor, judge, and jury would be ultimately making that determination.

Even if NRA declared all attendees participants, a prosecutor could argue that he/she was an attendee, spectator, guest of a member or a ticket holder, so that could not be relied on for a legal defense. And, in the end, it is the person with the gun who would be prosecuted. This is indeed a gray area, but without a clear exception there is a serious risk of arrest and prosecution, and NRA does not want our members risking prosecution.

The fact is if NRA only went to places that allowed CCW in convention centers, we would be limited to 2 or 3 choices. Because of the size of NRA’s conventions, we already are limited with our choices of cities that can accommodate us. We also strive to have regional balance to allow members from all over the country to attend. People should also be mindful that NRA has worked to change laws all over the country. With incremental wins, those who may not be able to carry in a certain location today may be able to do so down the road. After all, Arizona’s gun laws have come long way since we were there last year.

I am hoping this puts this issue to bed. I have no problem with reasonable, informed criticism of NRA, or the site selection committee. There’s a lot of valid points to be made for why Charlotte is less than an ideal site. But in the big picture, I think it’s a waste of time and energy to fret over this particular issue in this particular context. We’d be far better served working to change the laws and the political climate, much like happened in Arizona after the Annual Meeting was held there last year.

Not Backing Metcalfe on This One Either

As a civil libertarian, I have some real issues with what Daryl Metcalfe is trying to bring to Pennsylvania. This sounds great, but the only way to do this kind of thing in a racially neutral way is to have everyone prove immigration status if there’s some reasonable suspicion. Imagine the following traffic stop:

“What the problem then officer? I don’t think I was doing over 100k an hour”

“License, registration and proof of insurance, please.”

“Let me get it oot of the glove box then, eh.”

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask to provide some proof or documentation that you’re in the country legally.”

“OK officer, here’s my Minnesota drivers’ license, registration and proof of insurance.”

“I have reasonable suspicion that you’re an illegal Canadian sir. I’m going to have to ask you step out of the vehicle.”

“But I’m from Minnesota.”

“You sound like a Canadian sir. We’re going to have to sort this out downtown.”

I am by no means in favor of amnesty for illegal aliens, nor against increased border protection, I don’t favor “haven cities,” and definitely not against cracking down on human smuggling. But I do not wish to turn the United States into an “Ihre Unterlagen, bitte.” police state in order to not really fix the problem.

I don’t agree with Dayln Leach on much, but I agree with him on this. It’s disturbing to me that so many lawmakers who recognize importance of the Right to Keep and Bear ArmsÂ as an important individual liberty don’t also recognize the basic right to a presumption of innocence by the government. That’s not just a right for the fair skinned. It’s a right of all people.

Quote of the Day

From Marko, who notes that people are giving Major Caudill a major case of the gay phobia:

Iâ€™m rightly confused, I am.Â If you think that the right to self-defense is a human right, and you donâ€™t like the idea of a gay person exercising it, then it necessarily follows that you donâ€™t think gays should be afforded the whole set of human rights.Â If thatâ€™s the case, then please stay the f[**]^*k off my side.

If you donâ€™t support the same freedoms for everyone, then you donâ€™t support freedom.Â Being in favor of freedom only for yourself and folks mostly like you is no virtue at all.Â It requires no sacrifice, no tolerance, and no brainpower.Â It will also cost you your pet freedoms sooner or later, once you find yourself as a member of the 49% whose cornflakes the other 51% vote themselves the right to pee on.

In the sameÂ veinÂ there’s plenty of people out there who don’t give a whit until it’s their liberty on the line, even though they say they value liberty. I’ve met a few people who areÂ adamiteÂ about both legalizing pot, and socializing the medical profession, all in the name of human rights, of course.

* Note the censorship of the language was mine. Not because I give a s**t about it, but because I understand it trips some people’s web filters who are reading from work, and causes the site to block until the offending word is cleared from the page. I will try in the future to be better about this. It’s also why I have the word p0rn in gun p0rn set with a zero in the categories. BTW, if your work uses those kinds of filters, I have sympathy for you. As an IT professional, I’ve refused on a few instances to censor web pages based on keywords. There are good business reasons not to do so.

Getting Rid of POC Systems

There’s been talk among pro-gun voices in Pennsylvania about eliminating PICS, the state point-of-contact background check system. It looks like there’s an active effort in Colorado to do just that. It’s being touted as a cost saving measure, because the state would save approximately 1.7 million dollars by relying on the federal system. In this time of tight state budgets, the money argument is probably the winner. The only difficulty we have here in PA is that our PICS system is being used for a number of different reasons, including conducting background checks for teachers. That complicates the issue a bit more for using the cost saving argument, at least here in Pennsylvania.

The main reason for doing this here in PA, is that the state system has more downtime than the federal system, and when the system is down all gun sales are halted, and we revert to the Brady waiting period. Since very few dealers are willing to do default proceeds after the waiting period, this essentially halts all gun sales for the duration of the outage. The other reason is that it would interfere greatly with the State Police using PICS to keep a registry of all guns sold in the Commonwealth. The legislature intended to prevent this eventually, but the State Police found a legal argument around it. If you’ve bought a gun in the past decade, they know about it. We’ve had individuals have guns seized from them in traffic stops because local policeÂ erroneouslyÂ believe the State Police database is a comprehensive registry. This has been difficult to remedy legislatively.

Open Carry Victory in Oklahoma

It’s won house approval. I support this bill. I don’t personally like open carry, but I believe it should be legal. You still need a concealed carry permit, but if you have one, you have a choice. As the article mentions, which is true, very few people, practically are going to choose to do it.

Now We’re a Cancer

According to the Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed, who was recently sold to creditors. They got a veteran to do the op-ed, because who can argue with a veteran, after all.

Bloomberg Grandstanding

He’s appearing before a committee urging that we deny constitutional rights without due process. The funny thing is theÂ committeeÂ he’s appearing before can’t do anything about the legislation he wants. Normally that kind of thing goes through the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is chaired by Leahy, who seems to be kissing up to gun owners these days, with Sessions as the ranking member. I’m going to guess they aren’t going to give Bloomberg’s favored bill a hearing, and Reid certainly wants to keep that bill off the floor.

So it’s the Homeland Security and Government for Bloomberg, which is chaired by Lieberman, with Collins as the ranking member. Â Neither true friends of the Second Amendment. Fortunately for us, Coburn is on that committee, and I think he’ll be having none of Bloomberg’s crap. Interesting to see will be how Scott Brown acts. I expect McCain to be tough on Bloomberg as well, since he’s in a tough primary race this year, and he’ll wants to look more conservative than thou, so to speak.

Making Sausage in Illinois

The Chicago establishment, in a last ditch attempt to keep the gun issue alive, are trying to run numerous bills in Springfield. Thirdpower has some video of NRA’s Illinois Liaison,Â Todd Vandermyde giving as well as taking at the state house. Todd has done a very effective job at helping keep the Chicago establishment at bay on the gun issue, and it’s been quite a while since they’ve been able to score a major victory there. Watching this unfold is a lot like watching sausage be made. It’s not pretty, and when legislators get it in their heads to do something, your best bet is to try to herd the cats in a more productive and less damaging direction.

Militias Less Popular than Socialism

More Americans have negative associations with the word “militia” than the word “socialism.” And it’s not like socialism is a popular idea among Americans. I doubt this matters to most militia leaders, except maybe the ones who are getting better at public relations, but it would seem that for a vast majority of Americans, preaching against socialism from the militia soapbox is just going to drive more people toward the socialists.

There’s a thread within the movement that would like to suggest we’ve moved this issue from the fringes. I think that’s largely nonsense, because it mischaracterizes political struggle. We’ve moved the movement forwards because we’ve been very successful at reframing our ideals and ideas in a manner that the vast unwashed masses can relate to. Instead of talking gun control, we switched the subject to criminal control. Instead of speaking of preserving hunting, we speak of preserving the right to self-preservation. Instead of talking about jailing ATF agents, as Larry Pratt did at the rally last week, we speak of reforming the agency.

It’s not as emotionally satisfying as righteous battle against the dark forces of evil on the other side, but it’s effective. The vast majority of voters are not ideological. They don’t make up their minds until right before the election (the PA Dem primary is two weeks from now, and 1/3rd are still undecided), and there’s vast political ignorance among many voters. Winning in politics is bringing these folks along, little by little, either into your camp, or at least not in opposition to you. This allows your issue to work its base in order to swing close elections. If you want to do this, you need to reach them with a message that doesn’t turn them off. What this poll shows is the militia ideas turn them off.

Chest Beating

So much in politics can really be explained as the same reason a Gorilla beats his chest. It’s a display, intended to scare rivals or assert dominance. Since it’s primary season we can expect to see a lot of that. Paul Helmke’s latest bit on the Indiana primary, which is today, falls into that category. Helmke notes the NRA favored candidates are expected to lose, noting:

Tomorrow’s results in the Indiana GOP primaries could tell us how strong the anti-DC mood is with the GOP in the heartland, and whether the NRA’s opposition or support makes any difference.

For another perspective on the Indiana primary race, you can look at Jim Geraghty’s summary here. My feeling is that it’s a three way race, which always complicates things. The pro-gun vote will be split between two candidates. But this is far from a race where there’s a wide open lead. NRA generally won’t waste money on a lost cause, so this will indeed be interesting to see. All three candidates have wide open leads over Brad Ellsworth, so in this instance, the primary is pretty much the general election for theÂ Hoosiers.

Look for Brady to play this card often. They are beating their chests to show that NRA is not so tough. This will be fertile ground too. NRA is going to be getting behind some pro-gun Democrats who are likely to lose their seats because of their votes on other issues. Oddly enough, the 2010 elections I think will not be a good year for NRA, in terms of their win percentages. The biggest loss is likely to be Harry Reid, who is the only reason we’ve accomplished anything in the 111th Congress. His likely successor is either Dick Durbin of Illinois or Chuck Schumer of New York. Either of those two leading the Senate, we better hope we don’t replace these pro-gun Dems with squishy Republicans. I hope all the Hoosiers get out there today to vote.