Category: Gun Rights

One of our local communities, Lower Makefield, is misbehaving on gun rights. I’m planning to show up and to be prepared to speak on behalf of my club, who have many members in that township. They are preempted, so the potential for damage is minimal, but it’s a Republican and former state rep who’s the Chairman of the Board of Supervisors, and I don’t want the County GOP to start thinking they can push us around. If you live in the area, consider stopping by tonight at 7:30PM.

UPDATE: A good number of my fellow club members showed up, and early on the Township Board of Supervisors rescinded their earlier resolution supporting gun control, much to the disgust of the two anti-gun speakers present. Sometimes victory is sweet indeed. But more importantly, the message was sent.

Counties are starting to pass resolutions opposing the New York SAFE Act. Niagara County has passed a unanimous resolution, along with Ulster County, and Schoharie County. Resolutions will be considered soon in Sullivan County, Delaware County, and Greene County.

BTW, Sullivan County is named after this guy, and not this criminal. Also notable is that not all of these counties are upstate. Sullivan and Ulster County are both considered part of the New York metro area, and a few are swing counties in terms of Democrat v. Republican.

UPDATE: Here’s a complete picture of the current county government resolutions. Looks pretty good.

Justice Scalia thinks we’ll be hearing more Supreme Court cases on guns soon. I think Scalia would vote to give us a strong and robust Second Amendment, but he needs four more votes to win cases. I’m glad to hear he’s softening up Kagan. Who would have thought in the 70s and early 80s we’d be primarily fighting long gun bans because handgun bans were off the table? I actually think it would benefit even a very urban and very gun weary Democratic Party to have the courts largely settle the issue in favor of gun rights. That opens the door to the Democrats using gun control the same way Republicans use abortion. Republicans love to talk a good talk on abortion, but the fact is the court protections preclude most of the policy options they advocate, and they are then left nibbling around the edges, and mostly failing at that, when it comes to policy. But it’s a good issue to drag out at election time and dangle in front of important constituencies. I’d be tickled pink of the gun issue ended up like abortion, and with similar levels of protection from the courts.

Amicus briefs have been filed in Kachalsky. I don’t think all this late gun control nonsense is going to change the fact that carry will be the next issue before the Court, and we can hope the Court will clear things up a bit when it comes to standards of review.

Rahm is looking for help from suburban lawmakers for gun control. People often make the mistake of thinking the core of the gun rights movement is rural. It is not. It’s largely a suburban phenomena, if you have ever taken a serious look at studies that have looked into who the gun culture is really comprised of. In my experience, people in rural areas are less aware of what a contentious issue guns are. A lot of people from my generation who became active in this issue came out of the tech industry.

TFB notes that  “Guns are the new golf,” linking to a story about a reviving of the shooting culture in Silicon Valley, and noting some famous gun wielding techies, like Eric Raymond. It’s worth nothing that ESR is from around here, rather than Silicon Valley, and the Philadelphia suburbs still has a fairly healthy gun culture, whereas California has taken extensive measures to destroy its own legal gun culture. This makes reviving a gun culture difficult, but the seed is there if we can fix California.

Among Gen Xers, tech people tended to be pretty libertarian in their thinking and political orientation. The Millennials who are coming up to replace us are culturally just as tolerant as we were, but identify more with the left on economic issues and on the role of government. I’ve often wondered how much of the current push was to try to pull Millenials, who think quite highly of President Obama, into being the next generation of gun control advocates by using Obama’s cool factor to help make gun control seem cool. As Glenn Reynolds notes, gun control is a movement of old white people, and old white people die off.

All the news that’s fit to dump:

More fun with headlines, and the media spin. BTW, that Vermont story came out right after Sandy Hook, so I took some time to watch this guy’s videos, and thought it was something Clayton Cramer might be interested in. I’m not sure that concerns this guy had mental issues are unfounded.

Are Governor Cuomo’s Presidential ambitions ruined? Well, jumping on the gun control bandwagon isn’t going to help win Democratic primaries in the South.

Chris takes a look at the dominoes. Once they start to fall it’s going to be hell to stop them. He notes: “‘Pack up and move’ seems to be a dwindling option at the rate the infection is spreading.” The anti-gun folks are raising the stakes. You do realize that works both ways, right? We need to work hard. We need to regain momentum and crush them.

Would new gun laws spark widespread civil disobedience? I’d hope so. If we ever get to the point where we stand idly by and allow our civil liberties to be taken from us, we’re not Americans anymore.

It’s another Markley’s Law Monday.

So you want to ban magazines, eh? Do you even know where all yours are? I always find them when I go digging through my bins.

Democrats have a full blown Aiken on theirs hands. I think all sides can probably agree that if you’re a politician, and the word “rape” comes into your wormy little brain, zip your trap. Resist the temptation. More here.

Maybe we need magazine limitations for cops.

The real danger lurking in David Frum’s ignorance.

Colorado Democrats think you should consider alternatives to defending yourself with a gun, like ball point pens.

Chicago has no space for more “gun criminals,” but yet we need more gun laws.

Trying to make progress in other states. We’ve actually been winning battles, if you pay close attention. Our enemies are focused on other things.

This is all part of the plan to destroy the Second Amendment. What’s scary is that he might succeed.

UK legal pistols by exploiting the “steel counterweight loophole.”

Lawmakers predict Congress will OK new gun laws. They want to make you think this is inevitable, so why bother lifting a finger? Don’t listen to them.

California-approved handgun safe.

Guns are really boaring. But I thought if you shot an animal with an AR-15, it exploded?

Guns are not a defensive weapon. Really? So Police Chief Ken James’ officers carry them for offensive purposes like murder? Remember that police chiefs are politicians. Actually, in some cases they are worse than politicians. They are usually appointed by politicians, which means chapping your lips on an awful lot of asses to get there.

NRA is noting that it’s starting in Pennsylvania. We have the advantage of a friendly House, a so-so senate, and a friendly Governor. Even though the GOP controls all three, their fortunes here over the long term don’t look good. Pennsylvania should absolutely not be taken for granted. Bloomberg is putting a big target on all of us.

Glenn Reynolds goes over the Taxonomy of gun control in response to the CSM article about Obama’s divide and conquer strategy. Remember, the real enemy is ignorance, not anti-gun folks. The anti-gun folks just garden in that manure. The problem our opponents have is, while there are certainly moderate gun owners out there, you’re not going to convince the vast majority of them to push gun control. Their best bet is finding lefty apparatchiks that have some plausible claim to be gun owners. You know, like this tool.

Over at Washington Times, they take a look at the study on gun control that NRA uncovered from the Administration’s DOJ. I like the reaction of Glenn Reynolds, who notes: “The science is settled. You can’t argue with science. You don’t want to be a science-denier, do you?“

34-31, with all Republicans and 3 Democrats voting against it. Some of those Democrats who voted for it will be in tight districts, and this is was a tough vote for them. They need to be targeted in the next election. There is no room for sitting on the sidelines now. Now it’s time to take the fight to the Senate.

UPDATE from Bitter: The vote is the same for HB 1226, the ban on concealed carry by licensed individuals on college campuses.

Surrender your Fourth Amendment rights to exercise your Second Amendment rights. How does something like that end up in a bill by mistake? That’s not something you get through poor definitions:

“In order to continue to possess an assault weapon that was legally possessed on the effective date of this section, the person possessing shall … safely and securely store the assault weapon. The sheriff of the county may, no more than once per year, conduct an inspection to ensure compliance with this subsection.”

In other words, come into homes without a warrant to poke around. Failure to comply could get you up to a year in jail.

“I’m a liberal Democrat — I’ve voted for only one Republican in my life,” Palmer told me. “But now I understand why my right-wing opponents worry about having to fight a government takeover.”

Gee, ya think? That was deliberate, and no accident. There’s nothing that’s too draconian for these people when it comes to gun ownership. Get the message: “you should not be a gun owner!” They will abuse you to no end until you get that message.

UPDATE: It would seem it’s also been an “accident” in past legislative sessions.

Caleb asks whether it’s a waste of time talking to anti-gun people. It’s a broad spectrum. For truly anti-gun folks, I would say yeah, it’s waste of time. You’re never going to convince those people, and a lot of them are mouth foamers of the highest order. I’d talk to them only for entertainment value. Beyond that there are people who believe in gun control, but for whom it would be a stretch to classify as anti-gun. Those people might be reachable, but it depends on their level of dedication to their belief. But neither anti-gun types or gun control advocates are the real enemy. The real enemy is ignorance.

Rational political ignorance is something you can read a lot about, and guns as a political topic is no exception to the rule. We have always lost when the gun control proponents are more successful at reaching the ignorant and manipulating them than we are at trying to relieve ignorance. The real threat of highly publicized mass tragedies like Sandy Hook is the re-energization of their own base, and a greater willingness on the part of the ignorant to be manipulated. In terms of talking to people, the best thing we can do as gun owners is try to relieve ignorance, and you can find it everywhere. You can even find it at places like your local gun club or gun shop. It runs especially rampant among people who don’t guns, aren’t familiar with them, and have put very little thought into the topic.

A lot of people on our side often get complacent and cocky because we greatly outnumber the people dedicated to gun control, and the gun control advocates don’t bring much to the table. The former is true, but the latter is not. What gun control advocates bring is a talent for manipulating ignorance in their favor. More importantly, they once again have the willing assistance of the media, and now bring the vast monetary resources of Mike Bloomberg to the table as well. All the focus on demonizing the NRA is part of this manipulation. The goal is to destroy the NRA brand in the eyes of the public, and to damage any lawmaker or policymaker who associates with it. How many people do you think choose who to vote for based on vague impressions and gut instinct about a candidate, rather knowledge actual knowledge of the issues and position? It’s not a small number, and if you wonder why NRA tries hard not to go too far out ahead of public opinion, and why politicians pay any heed to gun control at all, here is your answer.

Unfamiliarity is the soil in which the gun control seed grows, and ignorance is its fertilizer. We have been successful as a movement because of our numbers, and because we’ve evangelized the issue through our own horizontal interpretive communities, and through good old fashioned word of mouth. Instead of having a fake national conversation that only involves political elites and the media, we went and talked to people, took them shooting, and relieved a lot of ignorance in the process. What really keeps people like Mike Bloomberg up at night is the idea, that through more court victories, and further cultural progress, we may be able to begin mission work in his very city, and begin converting the heathen. When we talk, we win.