The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
Tam details a malfunction with a .22 rifle, and notes:
Of course everybody was wearing eye protection, and nothing bad happened to the gun, but be careful when saying “Oh, it’s just a .22.” While its powder charge may be small, the modern high velocity .22LR chamberings operate at higher chamber pressures than .38 Special or .45ACP. SAAMI maximum allowable pressure specification for the .22 Long Rifle is 2,500 PSI more than .380, and 3,000 psi more than .32 H&R Magnum.
Be careful out there.
Looks like the FBI is worried about “lone offenders.”
The effort, known as the “Lone Wolf Initiative,” was started shortly after President Obama‘s inauguration, in part because of a rising level of hate speech and surging gun sales.
“Finding those who might plan and act alone, the so-called lone offenders … will only be prevented by good intelligence, the seamless exchange of information among law enforcement at every level, and vigilant citizens reporting suspicious activity,” said Michael Heimbach, the FBI‘s assistant director for counterterrorism.
Because rising hate speech and surging gun sales always go hand in hand, don’t they?
Hate groups have multiplied across the USA, from 602 in 2000 to 926 in 2008, reports the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups and works to limit their activities. Mark Potok, director of the center’s Intelligence Project, said the lone attacker is an extension of the “leaderless resistance” concept of activism advocated by white supremacist Louis Beam.
Yes, here we go. The SPLC report. No doubt in this tough economy the SPLC is having difficulty raising money just like every other non-profit, and what raises money better with left wing donors than a good scare story about bubbas with guns playing army? As SayUncle points out, it never went away. It just fits within their narrative again.
I understand the FBI and Secret Service have a job to do, and as I’ve said in the past, I hope they do their job well when it comes to protecting the President. But that ought not to extend to spying and profiling of American citizens, just because they hold the “wrong” opinions. The type of threat the FBI proposes to defend against would only be possible with a pervasive police state, and that should scare anybody.
Virginia Shooting Sports Association notes that Creigh Deeds is trying to manufacture a controversy over a confederate flag being shown in the background of a Bob McDonnell booth at the Virginia Outdoor Sportsman Show. The flag is pretty clearly behind the booth, not in it. Dave notes that the big story is that Deeds wasn’t even there:
Deeds missed an excellent opportunity to reach out to over 20,000 sportsmen and women. I don’t recall even seeing a booth. Both Tim Kaine and Mark Warner had a campaign booth at the show when they ran for Governor and Warner had a booth last year when he ran for the U.S. Senate.
I was looking for whether Deeds would return back to being more friendly after moving left for the Democratic primary, but that does not appear to be the case. Given that, it’s looking like Bob McDonnell is going to be the pro-gun candidate for this fall in the Virginia gubernatorial election. It doesn’t say good things about you when even Tim Kaine tried harder to at least go through the motions.
Next up we have the latest accusation from the Corzine campaign over in New Jersey. The accusation being that Christie may, at some point in the past, talked with Karl Rove about running for Governor. Corzine’s camp seems to be arguing that this is clearly the case of Christie being a Bush toadie, and that even speaking to the evil Mr. Karl Rove poisons your soul forever. One wonders whether all the conversations Governor Corzine has had with his Wall Street buddies might have rubbed some evil off on him? Sounds to me like Corzine is desparate to try to get something, anything to stick to Chris Christie.
As constituents, we should be thankful that Arlen Specter has consented to gracing us with his presence:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TuG4du23dw[/youtube]
He forgets who it is he works for.
Over at Crooks and Liars, a story about a man who dropped a gun at a Town Hall that he was carrying in his pocket. Presumably the guy is licensed. All modern pistols have internal safeties that prevent them from going off unless the trigger is pulled. I’ll give that the guy should be more cautious. It’s certainly not within the realm of sound gun handling to drop a pistol. But I’ve done it twice. Never in public, but I’ve dropped guns. It’s a faux pas, but it’s not dangerous with modern pistols. Everyone can calm the hell down and go back to your regularly scheduled hysteria.
Almost as if they took my advice from this weekend, an armored car driver gets into a shootout with an armed robber in South Philadelphia. I guess armored cars aren’t quite the soft targets I thought. I figured there’d be no way those drivers would get into a gun fight if they could possibly avoid it, because they don’t get paid much, and the money is insured. Since criminals seem to be following my advice, and getting shot at, my next suggestion is to try to hold up a police station. Yeah. That’s the ticket.
The hysterical media is always going to find the one jackass in the crowd to point out and smear all gun owners everywhere with his stupidity. This is New Hampshire. I can promise you that he’s not the only person in the crowd who is legally carrying a firearm. But they found the one who had a vaguely threatning poster to point out. I’ll be the first to agree that people like this aren’t helping anything, and I don’t agree with his message, but this is America folks. It’s a free country.  I know some people hate that, but it is.
That’s the message that Josh Horowitz is spinning:
The nation is transfixed this month on a series of tense, contentious town halls that are taking place in states across the country. Determined to derail President Obama’s health care reform plans, right wing activists have stormed these meetings en masse to shout down speakers (including Democratic members of Congress) and derail all attempts at meaningful dialogue. Reports indicate that “Tea Partiers” are also carrying concealed handguns into these events — yet few in the media have commented on the distorted view of the Second Amendment that is driving this call to arms.
What follows is absolute pant shitting hysterics over the fact that protesters are choosing to carry firearms for personal protection from union thugs who beat people. Josh doesn’t seem to understand the difference between a person committing an act of political violence, and an American exercising the right to defend themselves from being beaten by a gang of union thugs.
Exhortations to the right wing base to take armed political action against the Obama administration are far from idle talk–but instead reflect a deeply developed ideology that has been actively promoted by the National Rifle Association and other gun lobby groups for the past 30 years.
This is just a lie. No other way to spin it. There’s no gun rights out there who promotes political violence.
It looks like we’re getting health care backlash even in New Jersey and Massachusetts. I question whether health care reform is really possible at all given that we already have Medicare. If we do nothing, Medicare is headed for a train wreck anyway — but I don’t think the solution is to nationalize health insurance for everyone, which is what Obama’s plan will eventually do.
I don’t blog on this issue much, because aside from working in the pharmaceutical industry, I don’t have much specific expertise in the issue. But politically, this would seem to be a tough fish to fry. I used to think socialized health care was inevitable. Now I’m not so sure. Everyone says they want reform, but when you talk specifics, people start getting upset over the details.
It’s been ten years, according to this Brady press release, since the Million Mom March popped onto the scene, spured by a mass shooting at a Jewish community center in 1999. That got me to thinking what some of the missteps the Brady organization had made, mostly under the leadership of former Maryland congressman Michael Barnes.
The first was the name change from Handgun Control Inc to the Brady Campaign. Changing the name from Handgun Control Inc was probably a necessary move for them, given the changing scope of their mission. But I think it made about as much sense to change the name to the “Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence” as it would for NRA to change their name to the “Charlton Heston Campaign for the Second Amendment.” Sure, we like Heston, and they like Jim and Sarah. But no one under 30 remembers the Reagan assassination, and at 35 I barely remember it. That’s not to say that Jim and Sarah Brady didn’t make major contributions to the gun control movement, they certainly did, considering that the Act of Congress that bears their name enacted a third generation of federal gun controls. But if you name your organization after a person, your brand really only lasts as long as their celebrity.
That brings up the second mistake I think Barnes made, which was absorbing the failing Million Mom March, which I think succesfully feminized their movement, and lead to awkward emasculating moments like Ladd Everitt wearing a Million Mom’s t-shirt at a rally. I’m sure Mr. Everitt would argue it was not an emasculating moment, but think about it: what about dads for gun control? Regardless of how secure someone might be in their sexuality, the implication is that gun control is a woman’s issue. Some of the great advances we’ve made in the past decade has been breaking out of the good old boy stereotype and getting women involved in the shooting sports. It puzzles me why Barnes thought it was a good idea to take his movement and run in the opposite direction with it.
I’m always reluctant to publicly discuss the failures and missteps of our opponents, but I’m sure it’s something they’ve likely thought about, and even if they haven’t, there’s not a whole lot they can do to shed that baggage now anyway. The more I think about it, the more I think Bloomberg is shaping up to be our cheif opponent in the coming decade. He has an enormous amount of money, the New York City elite and political establishment behind him, and he’s managed to assemble an impressive array of allies, good enough to twist the arm of someone like Arlen Specter. But I also think Bloomberg’s organization has some fundamental weaknesses too, which I will outline in a later post.