Anti-Gun Folks – Page 50 – Shall Not Be Questioned

MAIG Losing Members

Just got back from the biannual teeth scraping and cleaning ritual, which always comes with the a heaping helping of the story about how if I don’t floss more, the skies will darken and toads will rain down on the land. But other than that I didn’t have any issues that required going back and facing the drill. Any checkup that ends with “see you in six months” is a good check-up, no matter what they say about how my gingiva is doing.

So it looks like MAIG, having abandoned any pretext of not being anything other than a gun control advocacy group is apparently losing members. I’ve always been pretty unsure the best strategy for getting MAIG mayors. The purpose of preemption was to help keep uniform laws, but a secondary effect is to keep us from having to constantly do battle at the local level. Bloomberg’s group practically begs for us to engage there again to get rid of some of these MAIG mayors, but I’m not convinced it’s a great use of limited resources. I think a whack-a-mole strategy is most sound when it comes to MAIG mayors: ruthlessly crush them any time they seek higher office in state capitals or Washington, where they can start to affect gun policy. Not all mayors have higher political ambitions, but many do. I think if we make MAIG membership toxic to those who do have those ambitions it might be enough to make many mayors reconsider joining. Ideally I’d love MAIG to become a coalition of big city mayors, and mayors from states where they’ve already largely succeeded in eradicating the gun culture.

UPDATE: I tend to think 50 mayors leaving isn’t a huge blow to MAIG, but the meme is getting out there, for sure. This isn’t good for MAIG. They will have to counter this meme, and that’s good for us. Make them work for it.

UPDATE: This might be an attempt to fight the meme.

UPDATE: Mayors For a Name Change? Stranger things have happened. It’s not like we haven’t seen name changes in this issue before, and I approve of their proposed name. It’s more honest.

Fixing the Legislative Process

I see this op-ed is a bit of a back-handed compliment.

It acknowledges NSSF’s legal concerns about the abuse of the emergency certification by lawmakers seeking to avoid accountability to concerned citizens, but then basically says that it is really only a problem when such a process is abused for their pet concerns – like restricting pictures available to the press.

It argues that while it may not be ideals, it’s ultimately okay to abuse it for screwing those damn gun owners since that’s clearly a real emergency and it’s not important to actually discuss details of gun laws that could land innocent people in jail.

Reasonable Conversations

NRA is opening a new museum in Springfield, Missouri that highlights historical sporting firearms. (It will be located inside the Bass Pro Shops flagship store, hence the focus on arms used for sporting purposes in history.) Anyway, I caught something from a few days ago that shows Talking Points Memo picked up the story.

Knowing their extreme anti-NRA bias, I couldn’t help but wonder why they might be going after a freakin’ museum that focuses on the shooting sports.

Turns out that the actual blogger didn’t really add much in the way of anti-gun commentary, but the readers sure did. I think it’s useful to see that the same masses claiming they aren’t after your guns used for sport really aren’t even willing to truly accept a museum dedicated to sporting arms where the guns aren’t even available to individuals. Here are some of the highlights:

“The NRA’s National Sporting Arms Museum” better known as The Tower Of Death! Bring the kids for a unique family experience tracing the history of bloodshed in America! …

Are the floors spotless marble or are they covered in blood? …

What’s next? A NRA amusement park where people go in but don’t come out. Where “Stand Your Ground” is a shooting gallery for the Zimmermans of the world so they can shoot young unarmed black teenagers.

Of course, there are plenty of assumptions that NRA members are ready to shoot hippies, minorities, gay men, and atheists. Oh, and don’t forget the assertion that all NRA members are men who need to hire hookers to prove how manly they really are.

This is just the response to news that there will be a museum on inaccessible firearms that have a place in our nation’s sporting history. Imagine how these same people really feel about the concept of owning a firearm for actual self-defense. And these people want me to believe they are open to good-faith compromise? Yeah, right.

Zimmerman Roundup

One thing I have to say is that I’m glad the Zimmerman case is over, because I’ve grown tired of this whole case. Of course, it’s over, or is it? The feds are deciding whether they want a stab at him too. Jonathan Adler has an excellent write up of that possibility over at Volokh. He seems to think the feds will take this Very Seriously, and then pass.

Meanwhile, Eugene Volokh suggests if the Zimmerman case suggests there should be anything changed in regards to Florida’s law, perhaps they should look at the six person jury law. In all but one other states, for serious crimes, juries are composed of 12 people.

Massas Ayoob has his say on the case, and will have more to say. He’s been silent because he’s been involved in the case.

Apparently people on the streets have more measured opinions than many in the media. That’s probably why there hasn’t been much in the way of rioting that a lot of people feared. Though, I’ve seen my share of people on Facebook who still think this was about 13 year kid who was hunted down for buying skittles, and who obviously didn’t follow the case or the trial one iota since they heard the initial narrative. But that jury, who actually heard all the evidence, how could they get it so wrong??

Mike Bloomberg thinks we need to stop with these “shoot first” laws, even though this was a pretty run-of-the-mill self-defense case where stand-your-ground never entered into the equation.

Michael Bane thinks it’s a huge victory for self-defense, and offers some useful advice.Â Tam has some similar thoughtsÂ about getting involved. I’m not your sheepdog. If it’s not my ass on the line, I’m not getting involved. The powers that be don’t want to see anymore of this. They’re from the government, and there to help, OR ELSE!

The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence has a predictable reaction to the Zimmerman verdict. They don’t believe in self-defense. To them, Hitler was a victim of tragic gun violence.

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.

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.

I Don’t Know Why They are Surprised

Many on the left have been angered at Diane Feinstein’s reaction to the NSA surveillance scandal, as evidenced by this New York Times article here. Is it any surprise? One reason I like the gun issue is that it’s such a great political proxy. You can tell a lot about how a politician thinks by whether or not they believe you ought to be permitted to have some parity with the government, in terms of application of force, and the means to do so.

Really, the whole notion of popular sovereignty ceases to have any meaning of the people can’t meaningfully withdraw their consent to be governed. Feinstein has Napoleon-like tendencies? The devil, you say. One thing I’ve never understood is the shock so many left-of-center voters display when they find out some of their heroes are nothing more than Napoleon wannabes. A little careful thinking about how Feinstein believes citizens and government ought to relate should reveal that in a hurry.