Bitter – Page 46 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Shooting-Related Craftiness

I recently found a vintage Friends of NRA committee member pin on Etsy for a steal, and I’d like to clean it up and do something cute with it. For this year, I’ll stick to just wearing it as-is. I’d like to do something crafty with it, but I don’t actually know how to make jewelry, nor am I particularly creative.

In the meantime, I went surfing on Etsy again for a little gun jewelry inspiration and found some pretty stuff worth sharing.

Right now, I’m thinking charm bracelet for my new (old) pin. I suspect that’s something I could manage to make on my own without too much effort.

In other antique gun news, the city of Harrisburg is having an auction to rid itself of all the crap that a former MAIG mayor bought on the city’s dime while claiming it was for a museum. (Last year, the Department of Justice opened up an investigation into his questionable spending, so he’s another misbehaving Bloomberg ally.) Part of the collection is a series of antique firearm advertisements, plus several historic guns.

Shifting Policy by Ignoring Reality

As much as we often mock anti-gun advocates when they are just blatantly and laughably wrong about facts, it would appear that some groups are actually using this as a strategy. The crazy thing is that I’m not sure that it won’t prove effective over time.

Theodore Bromund shares an email received by a Congressional office from eight gun control groups that were opposed to Rep. Mike Kelly’s amendment to the Defense Department budget to ban using funds for implementation of the UN Arms Trade Treaty. What’s interesting about it is that they really approach the entire debate as though the US has already signed on and ratified it. They also get many basic facts wrong, but many of those misstated “facts” add up to creating the perception that the Arms Trade Treaty is the law of the land. How many Congressional staffers will know they are wrong? Very few.

Throughout their email, the NGOs completely fail to distinguish between the ATT and the authority of Congress: as they see it, everything the U.S. does in the realm of arms export control is already regulated by the ATT.

In fact, thatâ€™s the NGO strategy: Set up the ATT as the controlling moral and legal authority for U.S. policy, then slowly reinterpret the ATT to drag U.S. policy into alignment with their preferences.

Just to add some icing to the cake, Bromund also notes that UN is setting up a program to fund these anti-gun groups to provide “legal or legislative assistance” in expanding the Arms Trade Treaty to more countries.

Another Misbehaving Mayor in MAIG

He hasn’t been arrested or charged with a crime at this point, but San Diego Mayor Bob Filner admits that he has been sexually harassing female employees who work under him and then trying to intimidate them. He claims that his continued sexual harassment and intimidation efforts against his victims can be cured with a little bit of “help” and some more sexual harassment training.

In the meantime, Filner would like you to know that joining MAIG and standing up against law-abiding gun owners is one of his top accomplishments in his term. Oddly, I don’t see a mention on that list of his effort to create a sexually hostile work environment for women and trying to intimidate those who think they have some “right” to not be harassed by their employer, but that certainly seems to have been a priority for him!

Mayor Mike Bloomberg really does surround himself with some quality folks in Mayors Against Guns.

What did Arkansas Actually Pass?

Clayton Cramer wants to know more about what kind of bill Arkansas actually passed to address carry issues. There were questions even in the comments of Sebastian’s post on the issue of Arkansas going constitutional carry, and it looks like the Attorney General is saying that open carry under the new law isn’t legal. Obviously, there can be differences between the two topics, but many gun owners view them as directly connected. Make sure you know the law wherever you plan to carry a gun – whatever that law may or may not be since there seems to be some debate in Arkansas at the moment.

Scary Headlines vs. Not-So-Scary Facts

As gun owners, we’ve seen many cases where headlines and teasers for news stories involving firearms or perceived threats are played up in order to attract more eyeballs to a story or viewers to a newscast. It’s not something new to us.

But, a couple of recent observations have made me wonder if this is actually going to get worse across all issues and news outlets in order to compete for traffic and the possibility of going viral.

One great example of this is @HuffPoSpoilers. The description lays out the exact point of the account: “I give in to @HuffingtonPost click-bait so you don’t have to.” I follow because I think it’s pretty funny most of the time. But reading the original HuffPo teasers and headlines has really floored me about just how much of a stretch they take to make the most mundane sound interesting in order to get people clicking on their site.

The reason I wonder if this effort to stretch relatively run-of-the-mill stories into even more over-the-top headlines came from an incident today from one of our local news outlets. This is the headline: “Arrest Warrant Issued For Alleged Wedding Crasher”

Now, if you’re like me and have actually crashed a wedding, this gets attention. Is this a case of insane prosecution? Do we have a new breed of Bridezilla that would actually file charges against that person who stumbled onto her dance floor and maybe had an appetizer or drink? My wedding crashing story involves no eating or drinking on the wedding party’s tab. However, my friend did end up in some reception photos. Still, as a person who has technically met the definition of crashing a wedding, this gets my attention.

It turns out that the story gets far less titillating in the second paragraph where we find out a closer version to the events: “…he allegedly crashed a local wedding reception and stole thousands of dollars worth of wedding gifts.” By the third and fourth paragraphs, we find it’s more accurately described as a man who simply broke into a car visibly stuffed with valuables. Somehow, the story of a pretty typical car break-in becomes a headline about arresting a wedding crasher.

I guess the reason I bring this up here is because I think it’s an interesting phenomenon to address as news viewers/readers. I think as gun owners, we’ve actually already been through the worst of it. Even when we still see bias in the media, it tends to be less over-the-top than in the 90s or earlier. I suspect part of that is because gun owners have managed to jump all over the really inaccurate stories and writers. The fact is that many reporters don’t want the hassle of many gun owners correcting their stories, so they’ll tone down the tendency to exaggerate claims. But does this trend to making other news even more overly sensational than it was before signal that maybe we’re headed back down that path? What do you guys and gals think?

National Review Cover Story on Guns in America

The current issue of National Review’s print magazine is centered around this piece by Charles C.W. Cooke – Remington, USA.

I’m actually still reading it, but it’s quite interesting so far. For example, I didn’t realize this tidbit of history:

It is thus fitting that the longest continuously operating manufacturer in North America is a gun maker. The Remington Arms Co., which has been in business for just shy of two centuries now, is also the oldest company in the United States that is still making its original product.

I guess now I’m curious about what the oldest company in the US is that isn’t making their original product anymore.

The second page of the article is basically a showcase of how Remington is exactly the kind of manufacturing set up that Democrats say they want – long-time loyal union employees who are largely promoted from within without much outsourcing. Yet, for some odd reason, they keep trying to hurt the industry that is supporting these jobs. Funny how that logic works – or, rather, doesn’t work.

As I said, I’m still reading. So far, it’s a very interesting profile in a magazine that’s not normally big on covering the nitty gritty of the gun issue. Check it out.

UPDATE: Okay, so this section may be the best part and makes it worth reading the entire article:

â€œDo you want to go full auto?â€ he asks me, with a grin. Of course I do. … After firing a couple of test shots, I flick the switch to automatic and empty the magazine into a nearby target. I laugh: â€œI can see why these are so popular!â€ â€œFun, huh?!â€ asks Paul Merz, watching from the next room. Youâ€™re damn right it is.

Another Public Employee Funded by MAIG

Open records requests on government actions are very handy when uncovering the network of anti-gun funding going to pay city employees to do research and take action on behalf of Mike Bloomberg’s pet projects. One such worker has recently been uncovered in Milwaukee, and the records show the money coming from Joyce and actually being funneled through MAIG-associated organizations.

All Nine Yards had come across this name before in their MAIG/public official funding research, but the direct funding details are more evident with local public records requests that know the local government connections.

Raising questions about local spending and how cities use funds from the Mayor of NYC or other politically controversial groups is a great way to raise the political costs of doing business with the self-declared ruler of your food and guns in smaller communities across the country.

Joe Manchin Lied, Gun Rights Nearly Died

Okay, so maybe the slogan in the title is a bit over-the-top and not really that catchy. Regardless, it sort of sums up the content of a letter that NRA is mailing to 200,000 voters in West Virginia.

The letter will outline why NRA opposed Manchin-Schumer-Toomey, and it will also highlight that Manchin intentionally mislead voters on his views on this very specific policy when he was running for office.

I guess this shows that Sen. Manchin really is allowing Obama to rub off on him. It looks like his election promises are now reaching their expiration dates.

Shooting Ranges & Anti-Gun Political Activism

Reader Chris from Alaska pointed us to the local angle on the Mark Kelly anti-gun tour of pro-gun states and how an Alaskan gun club is coming under fire when it was disclosed that they hosted Kelly with his anti-gun media entourage.

Although, it turns out that hosted may not quite be accurate. It turns out that the club member who invited the gun control group to his range to use for their media tour lied to the staff and members of the range and told half-truths at best when challenged. Unfortunately for the club, there were reports that named the club and the perception that they invited an anti-gun group to use their ranges for their photo ops that hit gun communities.

It would be interesting to know if the PR firm hired to run this tour* by Giffords & Kelly actually asked the club member to purposefully misrepresent their names and purpose or if the member took such misrepresentations on himself. It’s not out of the question that the Kelly-Giffords group may be specifically asking local organizers to keep the mention of Mark Kelly’s full name and media attendance with the rest of the entourage out of such requests in an effort to keep their requests for range use secret. (Of course, even if they ask the local contacts not to mention the nature of the visit in terms of the message they’ll be pushing, they may not mean they actually expect them to misrepresent their party to the degree as may have happened in Alaska in a way that violates range rules.)

Grassroots North Carolina tried to find out more about the supposed shooting events and “roundtables” with gun owners that Kelly claimed to have scheduled in North Carolina after the press highlighted that the tour events were being kept secret, but it’s not clear they ever discovered what range they supposedly visited. In fact, keeping the media narrative focused on the fact that Kelly refuses to meet with actual local gun owners when he makes these stops proved fruitful in North Carolina. By making that the message, even sympathetic coverage for Giffords still had to highlight that their supposed roundtables were with handpicked volunteers already on their side and were closed off to members of the public and other gun owners. It takes the wind out of their sails when that becomes the story of their trips.

Back to the issue of gun clubs being used for these handpicked media photo ops. If a club or gun range doesn’t already have a policy in place to ban these kinds of dog and pony shows without prior approval of the board, then they need to get one fast. Now I realize that in Alaska, Mark Kelly’s local contact may have lied to the on-duty management in order to gain access to the club according to the online remarks. There’s not much you can do to actually stop that other than to have a strict guest policy that’s applied the same way regardless of who the guest is or what title they might hold. However, having a rule in place about dealing with such press events does mean you have grounds to kick that member out and cut off their access to the club.

I’ve mentioned before how we have these resources for fast grassroots organizing, and they don’t have “anti-gun ranges.” Because they are without such resources, these new anti-gun groups are trying to use our ranges and resources to give themselves false legitimacy for the media who don’t know that they are there without invitation or approval. Their experience in North Carolina now demonstrates that if the media are informed that they are only receiving their “invitations” to shoot by misrepresenting who they are or that not a single attendee to their roundtable isn’t someone handpicked because they already agree with the message, then they will be outed. The media may not turn hostile, but it will undermine their narrative that pretends gun owners love their policy proposals.

*A commenter on one of the local threads discussing the club’s actions who attended the “round table” said he was contacted by a PR firm arranging the events. He also verified that everyone is handpicked.

Lawfully Arming Yourself isn’t Menacing in Alabama Now

I blogged about a case back in October where an Alabama landlord was dealing with trespassers on his commercial property and then was charged with menacing after getting a shotgun from his truck which he never pointed at anyone. The state’s Supreme Court ruled last week that merely possessing a firearm lawfully does not constitute menacing.

Menacing is defined in Â§ 13A-6-23(a), Ala. Code 1975: “A person commits the crime of menacing if, by physical action, he intentionally places or attempts to place another person in fear of imminent serious physical injury.” (Emphasis added.) The Commentary to Â§ 13A-6-23 states that menacing encompasses the situation where “‘physical injury’ is neither inflicted nor intended.” There is no statutory definition for the term “physical action.” In this case, the trial court found that getting the gun was sufficient “physical action” to constitute the offense of menacing. …

Consistent with the foregoing and applying the principles of statutory construction, we conclude that Pate’s getting the gun, without more, was not sufficient to establish the physical-action element of menacing. Therefore, we conclude that the Court of Criminal Appeals erred in determining that there was sufficient evidence of the physical-action element of menacing.

The Supreme Court’s review of the facts of the case show there was only one witness who claimed that the landlord actually held the firearm up, but it was the guy who not only trespassed once, but continued to do so even after police ordered him to leave the property. But police who were on site agreed that while the landlord was clearly pissed off, they never saw him actually point a firearm at anyone. Oh, and security cameras also show the gun was only ever pointed at the ground in direct conflict with the trespasser’s claim. In fact, the entire story the trespasser gave as to threats made by the landlord while he was driving away were proven completely false by the video cameras.

While one of the officers did take possession of the firearm for a time, the landlord was never arrested on site or accused of breaking any law while the police were there with him. They only arrested him a week later for this supposed menacing because the repeat trespasser who violated police orders and then made up a completely false statement insisted on charges, and then the trial court also tried to claim that legally possessing a firearm around the presence of police officers is enough to warrant a menacing conviction.