Bitter – Page 43 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Gabby Giffords PAC Caught Accepting Illegal Donations

The Center for Public Integrity took at peek at donations flowing into the Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly gun control PAC, and they found several thousand dollars in donations from at least two private foundations and a church that cannot legally donate to political action committees.

The PAC’s defense is that they aren’t doing wrong to take the money, but that they are issuing refunds since they have suddenly learned that these illegal donations are “not appropriate” for the donors to make.

The highest profile non-profit to violate these donations laws is Bette Midler’s family foundation. Her publicist says that it was an accounting error, and the Center’s conversation with an accountant at the firm handling the foundation account merely said they needed to research the laws themselves. (Seriously? They handle this stuff for a living, and the staff don’t even know the basic laws on non-profit giving?)

The other non-profit to violate the donor laws is the Rupa and Bharat B. Bhatt Foundation, but neither one is willing to answer questions from the Center about their donations. The New England Congregational Church in New York also submitted an illegal donation, and the office manager merely confirmed that it was returned. It would seem from the article that she didn’t provide any information on why a church was trying to make political donations in the first place.

Criminals & Cops Sue

Here’s a case of dueling cops and robbers, only they are duking it out in the court of law – and not against one another. Instead, they are each targeting law-abiding citizens.

In New Mexico, the wife of an armed robber is suing the man who shot her husband because she claims that her husband, after pulling a gun on the victim, didn’t really intend to kill him. The innocent victim was apparently supposed to somehow know this and just turn over the cash he had and assume all would be well. The widow’s attorney claims that regardless of the fact there were two robbers against one victim, and robbers pulled a gun first, the victim has no right to assume his life might be in jeopardy.

The widow is not only suing the victim who had the nerve to defend himself, she’s also suing the victim’s boss because he apparently never should have allowed the victim to work since he owned a gun. She is also suing the city, claiming that she was held against her will for the act of being questioned the crimes her husband committed. The city has taxpayers to pay legal fees to get the lawsuit thrown out. The man whose life was threatened has to pay his own legal fees against this baseless lawsuit.

Meanwhile, in Texas, a deputy is suing the family of a man he shot and killed because they called 911 for help. He believes the widow owes him $200,000 because he suffered minor injuries in the scuffle and mental anguish for doing his job.

So, in New Mexico, you’ll be sued for not calling the police fast enough when a gun is being held to your head, and the cops in Texas will sue you for calling the police to help deal with a perceived threat. I guess that just being a law-abiding citizen is the only way to lose these days.

Is He Really Off Base?

In an interview with Talking Points Memo, a top-tier NYC mayoral candidate says that his vision for gun possession policy is this: “We want to see gun use eliminated.”

We may want to chuckle and assume that’s just silly in light of Heller and McDonald, but is it so absurd?

Think about the fact that he only has to wait out any single one of only 5 justices on the Supreme Court, and it’s really not so absurd. The fact that candidates for mayor are still campaigning on the concept that they can eliminate all firearms use is proof that we still have quite a ways to go on even the fundamentals recognizing a right to gun ownership by law-abiding people.

Upcoming Action Day for Gun Control

Most folks have heard that President Obama’s Organizing for Action group has declared August 21 to be their gun control day. But have most of you actually looked at the schedule around you to see who they are targeting?

Here in suburban Philly, we have some highlights. They start tonight with a phone bank in Solebury and tomorrow night in Bethlehem targeting the entire area of Southeast PA.

They really want to cause problems for Rep. Jim Gerlach judging by the Trappeand Exton rallies planned. Most gun owners probably assume that Rep. Joe Pitts has no major election concerns, but they are targeting his district with two rallies and a phone bank effort. Even Rep. Charlie Dent who managed to defeat a MAIG mayor in a recent election will be facing pressure.

If Republicans who signed on to co-sponsor a few bills thought that would make the left go away, they were sorely mistaken. Rep. Patrick Meehan will be subject to two rallies attempting to keep gun control the issue alive in his district. Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick is also slated for a rally to keep the divisive issue on the front pages.

Gun owners need to make sure that gun control voices aren’t the only ones that these lawmakers hear from next week. Even if some have already signed on to bills we don’t like, don’t give up. If they hear silence from our people, they’ll think it’s okay to sign on to even more extreme gun control.

Colorado Recall Elections Get Complicated & Weird

The recall elections targeting anti-gun state senators in Colorado just got a little more interesting for the major parties because the courts are forcing a change to allow Libertarians on the ballots. A judge ruled that the timelines the government set for gathering signatures violated the state’s constitutional provisions.

On one hand, this makes it more likely that elections will be held in person and that’s bad for the Democratic incumbents. On the other hand, with at least one of those seats being held by a guy who won because of a split vote, it could make it tougher to actually unseat them with one candidate. To make the election nice and messy, hundreds of ballots have already been mailed that are now likely incorrect.

For the weird factor, a former candidate in the recall races is demanding $54 million from various Republican officials and committees in Colorado and a gun shop owner because she seems to claim that breaking the news that she writes dirty books was slander – even though she admits writing the books. Her rambling accusations against party members also say they are capable of hurting her pets and committing terrorism, which is almost weirder than the claim that they owe her tens of millions of dollars. The claim also appears to accuse these folks of election fraud for the acts of trying to influence opinions of who might make a better candidate.

We Do Police Our Own

It’s interesting to listen to gun control advocates describe gun shows as largely a Wild West kind of atmosphere where anything goes and no law actually exists. It seems quite at odds with what I have experienced spending many days camped out behind various volunteer tables working at gun shows.

Today, I heard about a dealer who was, on one hand, doing a great job of policing his own sales. On the other hand, he was apparently a jerk about it and just lost future customers over a pretty innocent mistake.

See, it was a father-son team from New Jersey. The father is a longtime gun owner who is fully up-to-date on all required paperwork, and even has a pistol purchase permit waiting to be used. The son just came of age, but is facing usual delays of getting everything he needs processed. Shocking from New Jersey, the state where gun ownership is really only legal under exceptions to the laws.

Anyway, the son found a rifle he wanted at the show, and the father asked him if he wanted it bad enough for the father to buy it and then later sell it to him through another documented transaction once he can finally be a New Jersey-approved gun owner. The dealer over heard this, and apparently got very bitchy about it. He refused the sale. I don’t really understand why he apparently also bitched out the two guys for making a pretty common and honest mistake of assuming that a dealer is really only prohibited from selling to someone who is going to give it away or sell it to a criminally prohibited person. The father made clear to his son that the firearm would not be available to him until they could lawfully sell it between the two of them, so they assumed that the dealer wouldn’t have an issue with it.

The dealer still has the gun and hasn’t lost anything at all in this interaction. Yet, rather than using the opportunity to make it a teachable moment on the law and maybe offering up a business card to the duo in order to encourage future business once the son does have his paperwork, the dealer got an attitude and just blew off the chance to sell guns to two men in the future.

So, good job on the dealer for following the law. Bad job on being polite while educating people who clearly have no criminal intent on their misunderstanding.

One thing to add about today’s show: There were many, many women there buying guns all on their own.

Gun Magazine Sales Up

It looks like sales of magazines for firearms are on the rise. You might assume that I mean the firearms parts that go into guns, but it’s actually the paper product that lands in your mailbox or on store shelves.

In fact, the double digit increases are pretty much the only bright spot in the publishing world, according to AdWeek.

From the highlights of the research, it looked like Food Network’s magazine was also on the rise. I’m sure the combination of rising popularity of firearms & food magazines is enough to give Mike Bloomberg some heartburn as he chows down on his dinner tonight.

An Exercise in Futility

Here’s some great advice found at Gun Nuts Media to so-called gun store “lawyers” who don’t really know anything about the law, but still use their lack of knowledge to scare off new gun owners: “shut the ***CENSORED*** up.”

Seriously, the entire post is worth a read, even though encouraging these people to shut their traps may ultimately be an exercise in futility. He highlights a story from a friend who “learned” from his local gun shop “expert” that in all circumstances, pulling a gun on anyone more than 21 feet away is a felony in Virginia. This may be news to Virginia legal experts who know nothing of this mysterious 21-foot statute.

Another instance he cites is a concealed carry class instructor who scared off his hairdresser who is sometimes alone at night with her young children from ever keeping a gun accessible. One of the tips that the hairdresser learned from her oh-so-helpful instructor is that she should not pull a gun on an armed intruder who successfully breaks into her house since it’s a possibility that even though he’s armed and has broken into a house with a woman and children home, he might not actually be there to do them harm. He might just want to steal the TV, so she should just let him do that and not get her gun.

There are other good examples in refuting these claims by so-called experts, so just read the entire thing. But I might suggest that before you do, you put a pillow on your desk because you’ll need it to cushion the blow when you want to beat your head against it – repeatedly – to make the stupid go away.

Rhetoric in the Gun Control Movement

While Sebastian was reading the anti-gun communication playbook that others have posted, he was rather shocked that making tiny distinctions in language was apparently tested and showed different results. The pollsters & marketing staff warn the gun control advocates:

DO advocate for â€œstrongerâ€ gun laws. DONâ€™T use the term â€œstricterâ€ gun laws.

He asked me if one word change like that while talking about the same policies would make a difference. Yes, it can to a low information voter.

Take away the topic at hand – gun control – and just think about how you think about the words “strict” and “strong.” If we played a word association game, you’d probably name pretty negative things with the word “strict,” but mostly attribute positive things with “strong.” They know that gun control isn’t a positive thing, so they want to candy coat it with positive words.

Related to that instruction is their explanation that women will likely to pay attention to them if they use the phrases “reducing gun violence” and “reducing gun crime” interchangeably. However, they found that men really only come around to their ideas when they are presented “reducing gun crime.”

I suspect that’s because lower information male voters are more likely to hear their policy proposals as something related to punishing criminals if you frame as a gun crime reducer. However, women seem to view the ideas as solutions for everything bad in the world. I do think this is related to the above issue of “stronger” versus “stricter.” It’s the similar process of candy coating something, but it’s also because being seen as standing up against crime is viewed as a good thing.

Now, we can learn from this, but you really should already know the lesson I’m about to mention. Where we really make inroads with fence sitters and low information gun voters is by talking about the ways that specific legislation will turn them or people they know into criminals. People want to stand up against criminals when they think it is some masked dude hiding in an alley, but they get pretty pissy when they find out the definition of criminal is simply being changed to include them and their buddies.

It’s a simple lesson in making the political personal, and it’s something you should all try to do in every discussion about the issue.

It is the same thing I do when I try to make signs and lists at gun shows that highlight the types of guns the attendees are likely to own or know people who own them that anti-gunners are currently trying to ban. I use the scarier language, but I also frame it in a way that people understand that it will impact their lives.

Attacking the Shooting Sports in Colorado

With so many major gun control legislative battles happening around the country in the spring, it was easy to miss the local level stories that reflect just how far gun control proponents really wanted to go in their crusade. Sebastian & I both missed the story recounted on this Friends of NRA committee page from Colorado Springs.

I donâ€™t know how many of you heard about it on the news, but the Board of County Commissioners, every year, declares the banquet day to be â€˜Friends of NRA Dayâ€™ in El Paso County.

Nobody has ever cared one way or the other â€¦ until this year. Someone decided to raise a stink and it made all the papers and the local news. Protestors showed up at the BoCC meeting and it took them several hours of testimony before they could vote. They UNANIMOUSLY agreed to declare it â€˜Friends of NRA Dayâ€™ despite the opposition, misinformation, and general ugliness.

Keep in mind that this a resolution simply recognizing a single event for a non-profit organization that doesn’t engage in lobbying or politics and simply supports the shooting sports. Yet, that was still unacceptable to anti-gun leaders in Colorado. When they say that we can keep our shooting sports, it sounds a bit hollow when they turn around and try to banish all recognition of them, even when it’s not a political fight.

The good news is that not only did they win the resolution vote, but they managed to turn it into an opportunity to raise some more money for shooting programs in Colorado:

The original, signed Resolution was read by the sponsoring Commissioner and then donated to the committee for live auction. Before we sold it, Sheriff Terry Maketa (who received a HUGE standing ovation for all his efforts on our behalf) signed it at the bottom, and Congressman Doug Lamborn did the same. It went for $2000!!!!!!! Then the back up bidder asked for a second signed copy for $1200!!!!

I’m really glad to hear that this local group of activists managed to turn a nightmare battle into a positive for the cause.