Category: Anti-Gun Folks

Looks like the anti-gun folks in Colorado are busy seeking allies in the fight, but it looks like the Boulder City Council is hesitant to get involved. Our experience here in Pennsylvania has taught us that local political bodies are a poor ally in a statewide legislative fight. It hasn’t really helped the anti-gun folks here with their agenda very much. If the anti-gun groups in Colorado are looking to city councils for allies, they are probably having a hard time finding allies to get behind them in this fight. That’s good news for us.

Schumer has been an anti-gun leader in the Senate for years, and he’s obviously playing the long game on guns, defending Obama against attacks on his gun record from Bloomberg,. The best chance the other side has of erasing the Second Amendment from the Constitution is to give Barack Obama a second term. I’m really surprised more of them aren’t seeing that.

The Brady folks often can’t talk about this issue without spinning a tale. I think what often surprises me is that sometimes the data can make a case for them, even without the tale. It’s like they are so strongly committed to the deception, that they can’t break their mental mindset. Such is the case with this latest article, guest written by Griffin Dix, Ph.D, talking about how wonderful California’s gun laws are. A model for the nation:

Before 1997 California’s firearm mortality rate was consistently higher than that of the rest of the nation. But as California’s gun laws took effect the state’s gun death rate dropped lower. Of course many factors besides gun laws affect firearm mortality rates.

There’s that sleight of hand again, discussing firearms mortality rates, of which the vast majority of which will be suicides. But if you look at overall violent crime and murder, from the data appearing at this source here, and here, you can see that California still has a violent crime rate significantly higher than the nation as a whole, despite the fact that the vast majority of the rest of the population lives under what Brady would classify as unacceptably weak gun laws.

Perhaps it is a desire on the part of the Bradys to make gun control look more miraculous. Maybe they feel it doesn’t make for so compelling a case to suggest that California’s murder and violent crime rates are indeed dropping faster than the rest of the nation, without controlling for other factors. Or perhaps they recognize the number of potential donors impacted by suicides is larger, and wish to cultivate that potential donor pool more than victims of criminal activity?

UPDATE: I used a stacked graph by mistake, so the numbers were shifted. It is corrected now.

In at least one Brady supporter’s mind, what would be required for gun carrying and ownership gun? I point this out because it’s very rare for gun control advocates to elucidate detailed views of what policies they actually propose, once you get past whatever “common sense gun safety measures” that happen to be the cause du jure they feel like they might have a chance to ram through Congress. Instead of policy discussions, you get a lot of NRA evil, blah blah blah, for the children, blah blah blah, we have to do something, blah blah blah. So I tend to appreciate it when I see some honesty.

I have advocated for regular testing, including physical ability to be steady with a gun, eye testing the way we do for driving that would require someone to be wearing their glasses if they use their firearm – or even just carry it. Regular renewals, not a for life permitting (or non-permitting in the case of AZ). Peformance testing annually. Drug testing, including for alcohol abuse because of the links between violence and aggression, poor impulse control and judgment impairment. Some sort of psychology screening to keep the obvious, known dangerously mentally ill from acquiring firearms – like Ian Stawicki, Jared Loughner, James Holmes. A requirement of insurance for gun ownership and for carrying, so that there is guaranteed compensation for anyone shot in error or by accident or even by an evil intentional shooting. Repeal of all shoot first laws, and a reinforcement that if you shoot someone, and you are wrong, you are held fully legally accountable for doing so, not given an exemption from criminal or civil court proceedings.

Until that didn’t work, and then there were so few gun owners left, they didn’t have any power to stand up to outright prohibition. Which still wouldn’t work, just like prohibiting things people want has never worked anywhere it’s been tried, but hey, it makes people feel good.

We treat no other constitutional right this way, so my only offer on compromise here is to say “No f**king way!” and fight them every step of the way down that slippery slope, and continue to try to push the gun control movement back up, and then hopefully down the other side to somewhere around Carrie Nation Gulch. It’s a constitutional right. It has to be treated like one. Because of how we treat other constitutional rights, that still leaves a lot of room for measures I probably won’t like, just like I don’t agree with all the 1st Amendment or 4th Amendment jurisprudence. But most people, and the courts, still treat these Amendments as serious limits on governmental power, which by their existence proscribe certain policy choices (though that’s getting iffy for the 4th, but I digress). If you don’t like the implications of that, you can work to change the Constitution. But you have to start from there. There is no negotiating on that. You can’t just pretend that is not the case, and you can’t just reinterpret it, absent any historical evidence and against the understanding of the vast majority of Americans, to suggest it has no meaning.

A few weeks ago I pointed out we seemed to have a new anti-gun blog in our midst. Thirdpower is reporting that Reasoned Discourse(TM) has already broken out. You’d think there would be at least one pro-gun control person out there dedicated enough to their point-of-view to actually, you know, argue it, and make their case. But it seems squashing opposing opinions is easier for them. Maybe that says something about the strength of their point of view.

More evidence that’s just a sham. Not that we really need more evidence that the whole “gun violence” and “peace” facade is a fraud designed to cover the fact that they just hate guns and the Second Amendment, but here you go anyway. Looks like yet another case of pacifist-agressive.

CSGV is lambasting it as serious. You know, I think if you put these folks in a dourness contest with a bunch of Puritans from early New England, the Puritans would have some pretty stiff competition.

And, oh, Guns and Ammo? The Zombie thing stopped being funny a while ago.

UPDATE: From the people who don’t want to ban your guns:

Yes, the Mossberg 500, one of the most common sporting pump-action shotguns in existence, and you have a CSGV loyalist who suggests the fact that these are sold is “Disgusting.” Yet they aren’t ever going to come for your guns. You can trust them on that. You’re paranoid for thinking that.

If anti-gun groups ever wonder why we are single mindedly dedicated to their political existinction, they need to look no further than the ridiculous hate they themselves promote. Comparison America’s 4,000,000+ NRA members to a terrorist group like Al-Qaeda is pretty much a recipe for remaining on the fringe, and for no one to take you seriously. That even tops the SPLC. Additionally, it’s a recipe for keeping our people stoked and ready for a fight, which gets harder the more and more gun control groups become politically irrelevant.

Rhetoric being echoed by the likes of Jack Dunning here are not that of a group trying to seriously engage in political activism. If you’re activism starts out with comparing your opponents to the group that murdered 3000 Americans on 9/11, you’ve lost before you even start. This is just more trying gather mouth foamers among the left in an attempt to, what Sean calls it, if I recall, “save their phoney baloney jobs.” Otherwise, the would be no reason for several prominent gun control leaders to be promoting the likes of Jack Dunning. But hey, never interrupt your enemy in the midst of making a mistake, and of Oregon Ceasefire and Brady Campaign want to associated with rhetoric like this, who am I to stop them?

Every Monday, Joe Huffman highlights examples appearing in the media of people violating Markley’s Law. What is Markley’s law?

That has to be some kind of variant of Godwin’s Law: As an online discussion of gun owners’ rights grows longer, the probability of an ad hominem attack involving penis size approaches 1.

This week’s example is pretty egregious. I’m wondering how Mr. Auslander thinks this is going to work for Bitter.