Category: Gun Rights

Robb speaks Truth about culture being very important, and we’re ahead of the game than we were in 1994 on that front. But one has to understand the dynamic here. What a cultural fight involves is essentially the people who care about and follow an issue getting their message out there in an attempt to influence people who are only peripherally involved.

There are plenty of Americans who believe you should be forced to give up your rifles and magazines. They are out there. Most of them aren’t very committed to it, which is why they’ve traditionally struggled politically. They might say that if asked, but they don’t give much thought to it, don’t vote on it, and don’t typically act on it. What puts us in danger now is that if these people were motivated to act, there are a lot of them. Many of them are types that let the perfect become the enemy of good. They don’t vote because they can’t stand the choices, and don’t write lawmakers because they either don’t think it matters, or just hate the whole process.

Most of us are very committed to our position, and will vote on it, and do what we have to. But that’s not everyone in the gun community is political. In fact an uncomfortably large number are not. When I say political, I don’t mean they read gun blogs, or get involved in activism. I mean that they even vote. You’d be surprised by how many people are into shooting, buy guns, and care about the issue, but don’t vote and don’t write lawmakers. If we had all those people in the fight, we’d have nothing to worry about. But we don’t. All we can do is try to reach them. That’s largely what we need to do in the short term. In the long term, we still need to influence opinion makers, especially on the right.

We are going to be in for some tough times. If Obama seriously puts the full weight of the White House behind gun control, it will be difficult to stop it. Obama would love to see the right arguing amongst itself about who needs to get thrown under the bus. This whole thing is meant to stress the center-right coalition to the breaking point. That’s what the second term is going to be about.

It’s very true, I think, that there isn’t much common ground to be had between opponents of RKBA and its proponents, but this?

A short drive away, at the New Pittsburgh Courier newspaper, editor and publisher Rod Doss pondered how to tell gun enthusiasts about his belief that assault weapons should be banned.

“I don’t know that they would hear me,” Doss finally said. “Their culture is totally different. They’ve grown up around guns. It’s part of their life and their lifestyle. It’s second nature. Hunting, shooting, it’s the love of guns.”

You know, our culture is not really “totally different.” Other than the fact that I blog and shoot for fun, I’m a pretty typical suburban dweller. The only difference is that I am familiar and comfortable with guns. And why shouldn’t I be? I don’t intend to murder anyone with them.

Wilson, a Roanoke College political science professor, would like gun control advocates to know: “Gun owners are not idiots. Gun owners are not in favor of gun violence. Gun owners are in many ways like them, and would genuinely like to see gun violence reduced. Obviously they have a different solution. But they’re people too, just with different perspectives.”

“And what I would want gun owners to know is, the large majority of people in favor of gun control don’t really want to take all of your guns.”

I also get annoyed with this idea that we shouldn’t worry our pretty little heads until confiscation is seriously proposed, as if no policy short of confiscation is anything to worry about. If you don’t confiscate my rifles, but still charge me a $200 dollar fine, and let’s not mince words here, it’s a fine, for owning them, and demand I register them, and demand anyone I sell to also pay the same fine, then screw you. It’s not confiscation, but is it not an infringement?

I appreciate this article from Eugene Volokh, comparing the people who suggest we (we being gun owners, and RKBA) have to “do something,” to someone who would ask adult responsible drinkers why they don’t do something about the social problems caused by alcohol. The reason we speak different languages is because we do not see ourselves as potential murderers. I think a big problem is that a lot of people do, and that’s their problem, not ours.

Note that in New York, you need a permit to own and possess, not just to carry. Gannett company is going to out every single one of them. This is war, folks. Here are the newspapers Gannett owns:

1. USA Today
2. USA Weekend
3. The Arizona Republic (Phoenix, AZ)
4. The Indianapolis Star (Indianapolis, IN)
5. The Cincinnati Enquirer (Cincinnati, OH)
6. The Tennessean (Nasheville, TN)
7. The Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY)
8. Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, NY)
9. The Des Moines Register (Des Moines, IA)
10. Detroit Free Press (Detroit, MI)
11. The News-Press (Fort Meyers, FL)
12. The News Journal (Wilmington, DE)
13. Asbury Park Press (Asbury Park, NJ)
14. The Journal News (White Plains, NY)
15. Pacific Daily News (Guam)

See link for more

Gannett is also the largest owner of NBC affiliates out there. NBC is also owned by Comcast. Comcast is an enemy too. Do you do subscribe to any of these papers? Have cable or Internet through Comcast? Time to starve the beast and cut the cord. Unsubscribe from these papers. Stop buying them. By feeding these companies, you’re only helping them piss away you’re own freedom.

Piers Morgan will self-deport if Americans don’t embrace gun control. Well, if that doesn’t motivate you to action, I don’t know what will.

Obama will put the full weight of the White House behind new gun control legislation. This was something to watch for, in terms of how serious this threat was going to be. To put it in other terms, this reduces our DEFCON level by at least a point. Why? Look at how quickly the Republicans in the House folded like a cheap deck of cards on the fiscal cliff negotiations. When the President gets in the way of getting anything done until he gets gun control, we’re going to start looking like dead weight on the lifeboat to GOP lightweights.

UPDATE: So do you think any of the left-leaning folks that told us that there was nothing to worry about with Obama and guns are going to apologize to us now and admit they were wrong? :) I remember a few months ago left-leaning outlets saying NRA was paranoid and crazy for saying Obama was a gun banner.

I’d like to thank the folks who have sent this to me, for being on the ball. I’ve been trying to use the holiday week to make some progress on my home office renovation, and to get ahead of things at work at bit. So here is what House Democrats are proposing:

House Democrats will introduce legislation to ban the production of high-capacity magazines on the first day of the next congressional session, the office of Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), one of the lawmakers sponsoring the bill, told The Huffington Post.

The Large Capacity Ammunition Feeding Device Act will mirror a failed bill introduced during the 112th Congress. Its authors hope that in the wake of the shooting deaths of 20 first grade students in Newtown, Conn., there will be heightened political urgency to act when it is reintroduced on Jan. 3.

RTWT. I’m actually rather torn between what’s worse: an “assault weapons” ban or a magazine ban. I came into this issue during the 1994 assault weapons ban. It is what “radicalized” me, I guess you could say. I didn’t know much about the true nature of the ban when I first bought, but I had to live under it for the first 3 years of becoming a gun owner. The 1994 had both an “assault weapon” and magazine components, and it’s hard to say which was worse.

My first firearm was a semi-auto AK-47 clone, that I bought right after the New Year in 2000, when the Y2K scare went bust and gun dealers were unloading. That rifle is still in a “pre-ban” configuration. I bought my first AR in 2001, and I had no problem finding a lot of cheap 30 round magazines for it, even then. I bought my current carry piece, a Glock 19, in 2002 during the federal ban. It came with two ten round magazines, even though it was designed to carry 15 rounds. I knew ahead of time that I could buy a “New In Box” 15 round Glock factory magazine for 130 dollars, and soon ordered one. I carried that magazine daily until September 14, 2004, the day the ban lifted. That day I went to the local gun store and bought two “Law Enforcement Restricted” 15 round Glock 19 magazines for 20 dollars each, and which I still include in my rotation. A few days later, I ordered a bird cage flash suppressor, and front gas block with bayonet lug for my AR-15. Why? Because I could, and that was reason enough. I converted my “post-ban” AR-15 into a “no-ban” AR-15, if only to mock the absurdity of it. It was the same rifle, but it would have been a felony to do that just days ago. I also converted my Ruger 10/22 into a “no-ban” configuration, despite the absurdity of that as well.

I do not wish to return to those days. While emotionally, the “assault weapons” part of the 1994 ban pissed me off the most, I have to admit that paying 130 dollars for a single 15 round magazine probably had a more practical impact. The 30 round AK and AR magazines were ubiquitous and cheap during the ban; there were just so many of them out there. Post-ban, the price has only improved modestly, but the quality of magazine has improved. The improvement in magazine quality is mostly in the design of the follower, and it was never illegal to replace those on existing magazines during the ban, so it’s hard to say how that would have evolved if the ban had not sunset.

While the absurdity of banning telescoping stocks (very useful to adjust for differently sized shooters), flash suppressors (not all that useful for us or criminals) and bayonet lugs (not very useful to anyone these days) annoyed me for the stupidity of it all, I think the magazine ban is the greatest threat for the largest number of gun owners. Connecticut still has the federal ban, essentially, and clearly AR-15s could still be had (though without flash suppressors and bayonet lugs).

The magazine ban will affect a very large number of shooters. We have to watch everything closely, because there’s no guarantees every bad bill will look like what came before, we can’t let the media and the politicians spin the magazine ban as some kind of false compromise. Both are just as bad. Both must be resisted fully. A magazine ban is just as bad or worse than not being able to have bayonet lugs and flash suppressors on your carbine (and hell, my carbine, because of the 16″ barrel can’t mount a proper bayonet anyway). You don’t get to claim 100 feet of my property, then draw the line back to 20 feet and claim it’s a compromise. You’re still stealing from me.

There is indeed some excellent conservation happening in Tam’s comments, in regards to an MSNBC roundtable. I’d like to highlight a few things, because I think, overall, we’re pretty bad at talking to people outside the gun culture. I am guilty of this too. I’ve been surprised by analogies and arguments, which I thought were spot on and effective, fall completely flat when presented to a non-initiated person to the gun culture. Over at Tam’s, commenter staghounds makes this point:

For example, gun practice being “creepy” and “paranoid.” Think for a minute, and listen. Ask, not defiantly but to learn, what makes it creepy and paranoid? Is it different from practicing with other tools of daily life?

Yes, it is. What other tool do people do special practice and self training with? Musical instruments are the only ones that come quickly to mind. The other tools of life- cars, pens, hammers- we train with by constant doing.

It would be pretty unusual to meet someone who practiced jump starting his car for two hours every other week end.

Or who had four sets of jumper cables.

Maybe even creepy and paranoid.

That’s the real issue, but I think the answer is simple, and is provided by Yrro, the next commenter:

I think that’s where gun owners often *sound* insincere to anti-gun people. Because as much as I think effective self defense is a right… I go to USPSA because its fun. As much as I think that we need military weapons for the philosophical purpose of protecting ourselves from government… that’s *not* what I’m thinking about when I’m shooting 3-gun. Even general preparedness like carrying a knife or a flashlight is as much because I like being the guy who is prepared as I expect to get into a situation where I couldn’t deal without them.

Yrro is completely correct here, and the reason I believe we tend to avoid the “fun” line of argument is because it’s difficult to argue that our recreation ought to be preserved at a social cost. We stress the self-defense aspect because it makes for (we think) a stronger argument, and I generally agree that it does. But the fact is we do what we do because it’s an enjoyable form of recreation, and I don’t think we should be afraid to say that.

I got into shooting because it was fun. It’s fun in the same way video games are fun, and you get more exercise shooting. While I believe the fundamental reason our right exists (self-defense either from street criminals or state criminals), is hugely important, I also don’t think we should be afraid to admit it’s also an entertaining pastime. Most Americans who don’t have anything to lose won’t hesitate to offer up solutions that won’t affect them, and that they don’t imagine will affect anyone else. But few Americans really want to deprive other people of things important to them. If you can get most people to say “I can see both sides of the issue,” then the victory goes to the side with the largest number of energized people. That will typically be us in a struggle with the forces the favor gun control.

Higher than both the media and Congress. There was a concerted effort from NRA during the 90s to enter the mainstream, and by virtue of that, bring the issue with it. Clinton, and George H.W. Bush before him,  were very successful in the late 1980s and early 1990s at painting NRA as a whack job of an organization. From “jackbooted thugs”, to laying the blame for Oklahoma City square at the feet of extremist gun rights supporters, it was one blow after another. A lot of the gains we’ve made since have been the result of gun rights becoming credible a mainstream issue, and taking action to attempt to blunt the media assertions. That’s one reason NRA promoted a popular idea of putting armed police or security in schools; it’s a mainstream alternative to gun control, and it’s mainstream in a way that “arming teachers” is not yet.

The media and the anti-gun groups spend so much time demonizing NRA because they know they need to force it out of the mainstream and to the fringe. This has gotten to be much more difficult for them because there are plenty of new outlets people can turn to in order to not feel alone. Alienation and shame are the primary weapons our opponents have to affect a successful divide and conquer strategy. The media campaigns to smear NRA are largely intended to shame marginal gun owners into not associating it, or its opinions. The media and anti-gun groups openly tout other gun owners with pro-gun control attitudes, because they want to offer marginal gun owners an identity outside of gun rights movement, and offer those people acceptance from polite society (for the time being).

I think blogs, forums, social media, etc in our community offer those marginal gun owners a place to find other similarly minded people. I’m personally quite comfortable being on a fringe, but most people are not; they want to belong, and shame can be a powerful weapon in convincing people they are alienated, and not accepted by mainstream society. If it did not work, our opponents would not employ this tactic in such a heavy handed manner. NRA has always had the burden of having to defend gun rights, but having to do so while not fighting and arguing too far ahead of where the culture currently is.  In any political battle, you need to be able to form a large enough coalition to get the attention of policy makers, and not every member of that coalition is going to be someone engaged in this issue on an constant and ongoing basis.

When I first started reading this article at CNN, I thought it was a joke; a sort of a tongue in cheek call to Bloomberg to put his money and reputation where his mouth is. But no, this is a serious article suggesting that Bloomberg and all the other billionaires (who have their own armed security) for gun control buy up The Freedom Group and essentially neuter their product line and make it politically correct.

This is honestly how naive these people are. Seriously, I really wish more journalists would at least make a half hearted effort to truly understand the gun culture before pontificating about it. This would result in the utter destruction of the Freedom Group, because, as one of my fellow bloggers mentioned last week during the Cheaper than Dirt blow-up, gun nerds love to knife a traitor more than most other pastimes. This is truth. Any journalist who doubts that can ask Smith & Wesson’s former owners, or even Cooper Arms, whose CEO I attacked back in 2008 when he decided no one had anything to worry about when it came to Obama and guns, and offered his endorsement (How’s that working out now, Dan?). As the link to TFB mentions, they were bought by Wilson back in 2009.