Anti-Gun Folks – Page 101 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Bloomberg Influencing Elections in Virginia

I find it interesting that Bloomberg is concentrating on making Virginia more anti-gunÂ while New York City’s crime rate skyrockets. I’ve tried to figure out why he’d pick Northern Virginia to make a stand. Is it because he wants to attack NRA in its own backyard? Is it because MAIG’s campaign in Pennsylvania in 2010 failed spectacularly? Or is it because the anti-gun groups that are located in DC provide feet on the ground that MAIG doesn’t honestly have to do the heavy grassroots political lifting. I have to wonder if it’s the latter, based on this video where where Josh Horwitz and another gun control advocate uncover the unbelievable scandal of Caren Merrick volunteers walking into a building, and then acting shocked because the volunteers seem to have no idea who these two people are, or what they’re talking about.

I admit to not following Virginia politics very closely. Any ideas what Bloomberg is doing? Is this a particularly important election?

The Straw Men Builders

I’ve been sitting on this post by Cliff Schecter for a couple of days, trying to figure out how to comment on it. As I mentioned the other day, the media has gotten a lot better about presenting our issue, but you still have some in the media who just can’t help but look down on us and denigrate our views. Cliff Schecter is such a person. I’m always torn between whether or not to deal with ridiculous nonsense perpetrated by ridiculous people. Is Schecter anyone of consequence who is even honestly worth responding to? Am I just beating my head against a wall? Ultimately, I think it’s worthwhile to point out to readers that many of the people who oppose us politically are ignorant fools masquerading as learned pundits.

Schecter is committing the common fallacy of our opponents by constructing a caricature of gun owners and Second Amendment advocates, and denigrating the straw man, rather than arguing with what we actually believe, and acknowledging who we actually are. What he presents here is more mental masturbation than a serious argument.Â When you want to feel better about yourself by looking down on other people, it helps if you can convince yourself they are rubes and dolts, rather than lawyers, engineers, scientists, business executives, and financial analysts (we have them all in the gun blogging community).

Schecter begins his post by imaging an advanced alien species looking at our gun culture from afar, presumably aliens who are also smug, left-leaning public relations professionals, just like he is:

Had this alien arrived on this planet six months ago and paid attention to reports about guns in the news since, he/she/it wouldâ€™ve been consistently confronted with a literal clown-car cast of cartoon characters who are responsible for deciding and passing what amounts to our gun policies. Weâ€™re talking here about people who shouldnâ€™t be allowed to make their own beds, much less public policy.

Schecter no doubt would like to imagine himself in the same camp as an advanced alien race. Surely the aliens wouldn’t side with the people who “shouldn’t be allowed to make their own beds, much less public policy.” It’s not every day you see people going through the effort of using aliens to help build a smug sense of self-satisfaction. It takes real effort to go as far as Schecter has here.

But our alien friend would watch these hucksters on TV, telling us to ignore that states with lower gun ownership on the whole are much safer, and those with the highest gun ownership rates and weakest lawsâ€“Alaska, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama and Wyoming, have the highest gun-death rates.

Pointing out the fact that gun-death rates include suicides, which is not something I think has any impact on my safety, it can be shown that his claim is just not true. I’ve run the numbers, and he’s just plain wrong. But I suppose I should not expect my primitive statistical skills to measure up against a race of advanced aliens.

First, you can watch a Youtube clip of Waldo-impersonating NRA honcho, Wayne LaPierre, getting up and making a speech to conservatives in Florida, where he warned them he had proof that President Barack Obama was going to take their guns away, if re-elected.

Just look at who Obama put on the Supreme Court. We’re one vote away from Heller and McDonald being overturned, and if that happens, it is doubtful that DC and Chicago would not re-instate their complete prohibitions on handgun ownership. Schecter also completely glosses over the fact that there’s quite a lot to worry about between no regulation, and confiscation, but it always helps to simplify your opponents argument when you’re trying to look smarter than they are.

You see, certain statesâ€“about a dozen or 15â€“think itâ€™s a swell idea to allow people to get concealed carry permits even if they have a record of domestic abuse, misdemeanor assault with a firearm, known drunkenness and a lack of any training with a gun whatsoever.

Someone with a misdemeanor domestic violence conviction is federally prohibited from possessing firearms and not covered by HR822. I also can’t think of any state where assault with a firearm is a misdemeanor. Assault with any deadly weapon is generally known as “aggravated assault” and is a felony. It is true that some states don’t require training, or don’t consider whether you’re a drunk, but I can’t think of any constitutional right where we take either into consideration. This isn’t a privilege we’re talking about, it’s a right, and that has consequences.

Finally, because carrying concealed weapons in grocery stores and parks just wasnâ€™t enough, the NRA decided to start pushing bills to allow concealed weapons in barsâ€“which makese sense because nothing I can think of goes better together than six shots of Jack and a loaded Glock. Of course, â€œtechnically,â€ only non-drinking customers are allowed to take their guns into bars.

In most states the law makes no distinction between a bar and a restaurant — they only issue liquor licenses to establishments for on-premsis consumption. It seems perfectly reasonable that a person who is trusted to carry a gun everywhere else in public ought to be allowed to carry in a restaurant provided he does not drink. In many states that have passed restaurant carry bills, the penalties for violating the law are “technically” quite severe, often more severe than a DUI conviction, despite the fact that operating a motor vehicle while intoxicated is far more hazardous than being in possession of a firearm.

To be honest, I’m getting bored with gun control advocates these days. While their recent descent into utter ridiculousness has been a good source for posts, I actually enjoy public policy discussion with reasonable people who can make challenging arguments. While it is good for our movement that the supply of reasonable people on the other side is in precipitous decline, when you’re a blogger, you start feeling like you’re just refuting the same, tired mischaracterized arguments over and over again. I’ve seen dozens of Cliff Schecters over my nearly five years as a gun blogger, and while I can appreciate that feeling superior to your fellow Americans is a powerful motivator for our opponents, it’s tiresome. Ultimately the Schecters of the world either have to start acting like intelligent, reasonable people, or face being ignored in political obscurity. Their inability to make quality arguments I believe has played a role in the decline of gun control in this country. As a shooter and Second Amendment supporter, I am glad for that. But it certainly doesn’t make it easy to run a blog about gun policy when the only arguments you ever get to refute are ridiculous and clownish.

Quote of the Day on Wisconsin Carry

From Sean at NC Gun Blog:

I felt a great disturbance in the Anti-Gun force, as if 10, maybe 15 voices suddenly cried out in terror and were basically ignored.

How Being Stupid Changed His Life

Plaxico Burress speaks at Brady’s New York Gala:

“I never thought my gun would accidentally discharge”

Really? I think that’s an entirely predictable result of carrying an unholstered Glock in a pair of sweat pants. He says he no longer owns a firearm. That’s good, since I’m pretty sure he’s a prohibited person at this point.

Common Ground With Bigots

The gun control crowd are quick to call us radicals, despite the fact that yesterday we showed they are indeed the radicals. But apparently Crockett Keller (the TX certified instructor discussed here and here) is someone they’ll look to find common ground with:

Are there really any of us who would argue that a gun is not dangerous in the wrong hands? The problem here is that Keller thinks the wrong hands are anyone who doesn’t share his political beliefs and religious outlook.

The implication here also is that Brady agrees Keller is wrong not to offer CHL instruction to Muslims or Obama supporters. In that case I’ll find myself pleased that Brady is taking a position that runs contrary to what seems to be their normal position; that the more people we disenfranchise of their right to bear arms, the better.

Our Opponents Really Are Un-American

I don’t really require someone to buy into much to consider themselves a good American. As long as you accept our basic tenants of human liberty, and foundational principles of our nation, I’m pretty open to the idea that we may disagree, but we disagree as fellow Americans. But one of those foundational principles, I think has to be that the Declaration of Independence is the moral justification for this country’s entire being. If you don’t accept the Declaration, well, then we really aren’t anything more than some misguided subjects of the British Crown. You might be an American in the sense that you were born here, but pardon me if I don’t agree you’re a good American. Such is the case with some of our opponents:

I am having a really difficult time figuring out what is so controversial about what Herman Cain is saying. Here’s the video they are so roundly criticizing:

It seems to me that Cain is speaking of “alter and abolish” in the terms of our normal democratic process of putting our government up before the people every 2 to 4 years and the people deciding whether they want to keep it or toss it.

Pardon me, but if you can watch this segment here, and think Cain is calling for every member of that audience to take up arms, and March down to Washington, and overthrow the government, you not the ones that should be calling us paranoid. You are, in fact, delusional, or just very much out of touch with the kind of crowd Cain is speaking to.

I am also comfortable in saying that if you don’t believe that Americans have the power to “alter or abolish” their government, even if it’s through peaceful means, through the ballot box, and through the hearts and minds of fellow Americans, this isn’t the country for you to be living in. If the Declaration of Independence makes you uncomfortable, I am quite fine with saying you’re a poor American. I think some of our opponents need to think long and hard about which country they belong in.

MAIG Mayor Makes Ridiculous Argument Against HR822

The Mayor of Milwaukee, and MAIG Mayor Tom Barrett says that HR822 is a bill fit for the nation’s gun traffickers:

Gun traffickers with a permit to carry concealed weapons from another state would be able to easily travel to our state with a variety of firearms in tow, and police would be unable to stop them until they actually witnessed an illegal gun sale.

Do we have evidence of a wave of gun traffickers are getting concealed carry permits? And since when can the police in Wisconsin “stop” someone for transporting a firearm with no other probable cause to believe a crime is being committed. Last I checked transporting firearms was not a crime.

This just goes to show the utter ridiculousness of MAIG and our opponents. It’s like Bloomberg is asking all his flunkies to do op-eds and the Mayor of Milwaukee decided to phone it in instead of spending any time making a serious argument.

Polishing the Turd

Looks like Media Matters is doing their best to try to make the latest polling results not seem so bad for them (or perhaps I should say their anti-gun paymasters) as they really are.

Ladd Everitt Responds to Racial Issue

Ladd Everitt speaks about his confrontation with Professor Adam Winkler on his own blog. I think you can surmise from Everitt’s tone that the one aspect of Winkler’s book that really gets his goat is that it lent us credibility on an argument that Everitt finds abhorrent, which is that some gun control laws, even some still on the books today, originated for racist or xenophobic reasons. He runs around in circles trying to come to terms with Winkler’s book, rather unsuccessfully, when he sort of awkwardly stumbles into what I think Â is probably the meat of his argument:

It is therefore confusing that Winkler would assert, â€œI do think that gun laws historically have been tied to race and racism and we should take that seriously when weâ€™re thinking about a gun control law today.â€Â Why?Â If African-Americans have moved beyond the past and strongly support contemporary gun control proposals (which even Winkler acknowledges are not motivated by race), why should it be an issue?

Except the latest polling shows that support for gun control even among the black community has been slipping, and now stands at about 30% of blacks believing that supporting gun rights is more important than supporting controls (in contrast to 53% of whites). Everitt misses the point of enumerating rights, which is to put them outside the scope of the political process, and leave them retained where they belong and from whom they originate; the people. 65% of the population simply can’t get together and vote away the rights of the other 30%. So when some Americans have greater access to their rights than other Americans, this concerns me, regardless of whether or not a majority of people having their rights trampled on support it or not.

But EverittÂ actually misses the main reason why I think exposing the racist and xenophobic history of many of our guns laws is important — because we’re still living under many of them. The history of the Sullivan Act has been well documented, and is still active law in New York. A source in the previously linked law review article cites that it was meant to:

strike hardest at the foreign-born element . . . . As early as 1903 the authorities had begun to cancel pistol permits in the Italian sections of the city. This was followed by a state law of 1905 which made it illegal for aliens to possess firearms ‘in any public place’. This provision was retained in the Sullivan law.

It’s very important to discredit these laws as being abhorrent, and outside our tradition when it comes to how we treat constitutional rights. If the motivation for many gun control laws was disarming disfavored groups, rather than a heart-felt desire to improve public safety and lower crime, the courts may be more inclined to look skeptically on them. Indeed, as we have noticed with the latest Heller II case, where the Sullivan Act was cited, shows the importance of discrediting it and other laws on the books which share its history.

And that, folks, is probably what really has Everitt up in arms; our idea that many of these laws have racist origins is getting mainstream acceptance from the legal establishment. If Ladd is an astute observer, he will notice that this happened previously with the notion that the Second Amendment is an individual right rather than a collective right, and he is well aware how that ended for his cause. So here we go again, with another idea he finds abhorrent, gaining mainstream acceptance. Let us hope this ends the same way for him.

UPDATE: For the curious, the picture featured in this post is that of Big Tim Sullivan himself.

Racist Motivations vs. Racist Outcomes

It looks like this past week was a busy one for the gun control crowd, busy giving us insights into their thinking, and windows into their minds. Professor Adam Winkler has been on a book tour to promote “Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America,” in which he brings up the subject of many early gun control efforts having racist roots. This infuriates Ladd Everitt, who confronts Professor Winkler at one of his events:

This is another example of the gun control crowd failing to understand our positions, or even really grasp the core of what we argue. I don’t think anyone who’s an opinion leader in this issue, that has discussed the racist roots of gun control, has suggested that Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, the Brady Campaign, or any of its supporters, are pushing gun control because they are racist, or that their efforts are motivated by a desire to racially discriminate. All we’re suggesting is that the racist motivations of past gun control efforts should be acknowledged and openly talked about. That is the Professor’s position as well, and it is also mine.

But I will go slightly farther than perhaps Professor Winkler would be willing to go, and suggest that even today, gun control, in effect, can have racial consequences, even if it is not motivated by racial considerations per se. I will give you an example, in using the issue of “Florida Loophole,” in Pennsylvania. The City leaders have lamented that people in high-crime neighborhoods are being issued Florida licenses, presumably because they have been turned down for a license by the City of Philadelphia.

Pennsylvania law allows police to deny a license to “An individual whose character and reputation is such that the individual would be likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety,” which the City of Philadelphia has interpreted quite broadly, even going to far as to suggest unpaid parking ticketsÂ are sufficient to deny permits under this clause. Philadelphia will also deny your license if you have ever been arrested, even if the arrest was minor and long ago. There is an appeal process to contest a license revocation, but it costs time and money. A typical suburban resident has sufficient access to the legal system to be able to successfully challenge an unfair denial, so suburban jurisdictions, even ones who probably would not issue licenses at all if they had a choice, tend to use this criteria fairly. Philadelphia routinely gets away with unfair denials because its residents are poorer, and don’t have the same access to the legal system. A Florida license, for which Florida only counts convictions, rather than arrests, is a cheaper alternative for being able to legally carry for self-protection. But City officials have been champing at the bit to get the “Florida Loophole” closed, leaving those residents with no recourse.

It’s worth noting that suburban applicants are going to tend to overwhelmingly be white and middle or upper class. City applicants stand Â better chance than not of being African-American, given they are the city’s predominate ethnic group. It is outrageous to me that some Americans have better access to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms than other Americans. I have no doubt the motivation to close the “Florida Loophole” is not racial. Indeed, many proponents of closing the loophole are African-American, including Mayor Nutter and Commissioner Ramsey. But the end of result of what they advocate is that African-Americans in Philadelphia, who live in high-crime areas and who may be lower-income, will have less access to their constitutional rights than the white folks in the suburbs. This is what I mean when I suggest the law has racial implications, even if it is not racist in its motivations. The implication should concern any American who believes in the Bill of Rights, and equal protection under the law.

Ladd Everitt proposes we airbrush this from the debate, probably because it makes him uncomfortable. To be sure, I don’t think Everitt is a racist; i’m sure he’d be happy to disarm both black and white equally. But we don’t live in a country where a gun ban is possible anymore. Given that, I think it’s important to ensure that all Americans, regardless of color or income, have the same access to exercise their rights as everyone else.Â The Florida issue has uncovered a fundamental unfairness in the way Pennsylvania law is written, and how it is being implemented. It should be fixed. I’m willing to talk about the Florida issue as part of that solution, but I am absolutely not willing to airbrush the racial implications of the current status-quo. All law-abiding Pennsylvanians should have equal access to their right to carry a firearm for self-protection. I would like to think that’s a base principle we could all get behind, and leave the disagreement limited to whether the standard needs to be tougher, more lenient, or just less subjective.

Professor Winkler and I may be at opposite sides of that particular debate, but his willingness to take our side seriously, and make serious arguments in return, is a breath of fresh air in an issue dominated by the Ladd Everitts, Joan Petersons, and Abby Spanglers of the world. And that’s not even speaking of the boneheads on our “side.”