Author: Sebastian

The Guardian went through all the police records for England and Wales and put them in a spreadsheet.  Looks like there are about 129 thousand rifles, and about 549 thousand shotguns legally owned in those two countries.  That’s a very low level of gun ownership considering the combined population of England and Wales is 53 million.

You also see this in states that have licensng of gun owners, such as New Jersey and Massachusetts, which have very low levels of gun ownership by American standards.  Once you get that nose under the tent, it reduces our numbers, and thus reduces the constitutency willing to fight for more reasonable gun laws (reasonable by our standards, not theirs).

Try getting someone into shooting when it requires dealing with the police for months in order to get approved.  You can do it, but it becomes a lot harder.  We have one air gun shooter who’s been borrowing other people’s guns.  He’s from New Jersey.  To get one there, you have to go through the whole permitting process, including getting permission from the police first.  It takes months, fingerprints, and a lot of paperwork and hassle.

Even the agents are calling for it now.

From Clayton Cramer over on Volokh’s comment thread about the VPC deception:

I have this fantasy of a world where gun rights scholars get to work full-time at it, and gun control advocates have day jobs to slow them down.

I’m sure Clayton has even less free time than I do.  I say this still at work at close to eight because taking a day off on Tuesday to go to Harrisburg put me way behind at a critical time for our company.  I’m missing Silhouette tonight, which doesn’t make me happy.

Yesterday we covered the incident with the Milwaukee Police Cheif in Wisconsin.  Now it looks like we have another media relations issue brewing here in Pennsylvania with some of our open carry activists over a planned picnic.  Reporting in the Hazleton Standard Speaker:

The gun rights group that held a picnic in Hazle Township Community Park last year in a public demonstration of their right to openly carry firearms is planning a spring picnic at the park.

This time, they’ve selected a date that they believe will guarantee a large public crowd.

Members and supporters of the Pennsylvania Firearm Owners Association have scheduled their picnic for May 16 – the same date as the local American Red Cross’ Celebration of Life Walk, which is held annually at the township park on American Armed Forces Day.

The double date is not a coincidence, the gun owners say.

They make it sound like it was intentional, but it wasn’t.  I confirmed on the thread at PAFOA that they scheduled their picnic that date before they knew about the Red Cross.  The problem is, once they knew about it:

The small and large pavilions are both being rented by the American Red Cross, as it seems they hold an annual run/walk at the park every Armed Forces day. This is one of the reasons I decided to go ahead and take the other pavilion, as it will give us some great exposure to the many people who will no doubt be there for the other activities going on.

And then this:

Red Cross Walk/Run… Yep… they walk through the entire park, but when they pass by the middle pavilion, they run!

Which was dutifully picked up on by the media, and reported.  They also reported this:

Do I have to carry, or open carry if I come?
No. There is no requirement that you carry, or to carry in any particular manner if you do. However, because of the holiday (Armed Forces Day), and The Red Cross walk/run in the park, we believe this will be an excellent opportunity to portray gun owners and carriers in a positive light to the general public. Because of this great opportunity, we are encouraging folks to open carry if they are comfortable doing so, but again, you are absolutely welcome regardless of your decision on if/how you carry.

It would seem that when this story hit the media, a lot of groups participating in the Red Cross walk freaked out and said they would pull out.  Red Cross is now suggesting they will cancel the event.

Whatever the intent of this picnic, and I do believe the intent was originally just to have a picnic, the story now in the media is “Gun owners distrupt Red Cross veterans benefit event.”  It’s not fair, but that’s the situation, and things said on a public forum fed right into that narrative.  Being a gun rights activist will make you enemies, especially in the media, and if you don’t have a plan, they’ll pretty quickly make you look like jackasses.

Open Carry needs to be a casual thing.  If a bunch of PAFOA members want to get together and plan a picnic, great.  If someone people want to carry openly, no problem there.  It’s not illegal in this Commonwealth.  You have a right to do it.  But as soon as you make Open Carry into a form of overt activism, as soon as you being salivating over the chance to expose your guns to a bunch of kids and veterans, you’re going to give the media a chance to smear you, and by association all gun owners.

They gay rights movement didn’t succeed because of gay pride parades (NSFW, or anywhere really).  If anything, it succeeds despite the fringes of its movement, not because of it.  Gays won acceptance because they came out of the closet and started talking to people about it.  Not because they got half naked and put on leather and got in everyone’s face.  I am generally supportive of equal rights for gays, but I don’t like having someone’s sexuality waved in front of my face.   Most people feel that way about this and other issues.

If this had just been a picnic, there never would have been a controversy, even if it was known by organizers and attendees that people would show up open carrying.  My stance on open carry is just do it.  Making plans to shove it in people’s face isn’t going to make you friends, and gives plenty of ammunition to our enemies, as we have seen here.