Category: Gun Rights

“Police and other first responders arrived on scene about 20 minutes after the first calls.” Can someone explain to me how a magazine ban is going to matter worth a damn?

I’m not as fast as Joe, but over the course of twenty minutes, even 10 reloads (that’s 100 rounds) is not going to amount to more than 1/40th of that time. The problem isn’t that these guys don’t have time to reload.

UPDATE: I keep thinking about 20 minutes in my head, and how long a period of time that is. It’s just mind blowing. Did we learn nothing from Columbine about needing a fast and immediate response? The murderer could have taken a break for a cigarette and a beer, let alone a handful of magazine changes, or loading up a second gun.

Kurt Schlichter, who occasionally appears on Cam & Company, has this to say about having a conversation:

For once I agree with liberals. It’s high time to have a conversation about guns. Let’s start with the problem that there are far too few guns on our streets.

Wait, we can’t have that conversation. In fact, we’re not supposed to have what people might commonly describe as a “conversation” at all. We’re supposed to shut-up and listen as liberals, barely masking their unseemly delight at the opportunity, try to pin the murder rampage of one degenerate creep on millions of law-abiding Americans who did nothing wrong.

Read the whole thing. There’s a lot of anger out there on our side, and I think we need people out there being our cheerleaders. I generally tend to be a happy warrior, and after seeing so many “friends” on the right head for the hills in the wake of this, even I could use a pep talk. I’ve seen plenty of gun owners who basically say they aren’t going back to the 1990s. I believe them. I worry where this road is going to take us. More Americans, I think, should be worried too.

The overall big picture, the 30,000 foot view, to borrow a cliche, is that the huge election loss was utterly demoralizing for the center-right coalition. The left now believes they have a majority coalition, that they do not need to appeal to moderates, nor do they need to compromise. The November result has unleashed terrible forces, and after this tragedy, they are smelling the blood in the water. They see a path to cut us away from the center-right coalition and sweep us from the field. Those NRA assholes will finally get what’s coming to them! I don’t for a minute believe this is about grief. Grief is what we’re all going through. Grief is why many of us are late to this fight. Grieving people do not threaten to murder other human beings. At some point, we need to get our s**t together and start punching back, as Glenn Reynolds says, twice as hard, or we may see the terrible places this ends up going.

I think we’re going to get it shoved you know where. I think it’s only a matter of how far it get shoved you know where. Why? Erstwhile friends are running for the hills. Corporate folks are well known cowards, and it’s hardly surprising that Dicks is going to stop selling evil black rifles. More surprising is Cerberus selling Freedom Group, though I seem to recall they were looking for a buyer before. Freedom Group made substantial investments in the State of New York, an investment they probably figure is now going to be a bust, either because of state action, or federal action.

It is now the case that our backs are to the wall. Many will likely not want to hear this, but our choice is likely between bad and worse. But we have to fight. Our current struggle will determine whether we live to fight another day, or whether in the next several months, we watch everything we’ve built for the last decade fall apart. That is what is at stake now. The more we fight, the less we have to just bend over and let the other side savage us. We can push them back, if we show the resolve, and bring others to the fight.

Plans are shaping up for a protest of Sen. Joe Manchin who promised West Virginia’s law-abiding gun owners that he would respect their rights, and has now declared that he wants to ban guns that aren’t relevant to his interpretation of the Second Amendment – the right to hunt.

The organizer suggests that people do not open carry because of legal concerns, and another attendee has suggested some good ground rules: “No camo, no bullhorns, no sticks, no burning in effigy, we will get TV coverage… We need to be normal, just like at the meeting in the rotunda.” They are also encouraging the state’s gun owners to call his office because he’s apparently already feeling pressure.

Things are going to moving at a fast pace probably all this week, as the political struggle of our lives takes shape. There is a counter-petition at the White House petition site that’s up to 18,000 signatures. Surely we can do better than the gun control movement.

See here from VSSA. Warner’s up for election in 2014, and I think it would be wise for gun owners in Virginia to remind Senator Warner of that fact.

UPDATE: Click here to send him a tweet if you oppose gun bans.

One of our state representatives in the area, Steve Santarsiero, has proposed the state completely outlaw “military-style” weapons. My response can be found in the comments below, but I thought I’d reproduce it here:

I live just outside your district, but I know many gun owners who are constituents. Like you, we were shocked and horrified by what happened last Friday, and many of us are still trying to come to terms with the magnitude of evil we saw on display. We are friends, neighbors, and parents, and our hearts go out to the people in Connecticut, as we cannot imagine what they must be going through. 

But the politicization of this act, and the scapegoating of lawful gun owners only makes this pain more difficult for us. Instead of grieving along with the nation, we’re told we should feel shame. We’re told we should surrender our rights. I do not understand how any member of the Pennsylvania Legislature proposes to ban millions of commonly-owned rifles, when, according to Mayor’s Against Illegal Guns, Pennsylvania has reported ZERO mental health records to the federal background check system. As you may know, true military weapons, those that are capable of fully automatic fire, have been heavily restricted for civilian use for sometime. The problem isn’t the guns, it’s our mental health system. The de-institutionalization of dangerously mentally ill persons has not only failed society, but failed the mentally ill, many of whom often become homeless, or end up in the prison system. Gun owners are willing to talk about solutions, but we want to see solutions that have a prayer of working. Connecticut is one of the small handful of states that already bans the kind of guns you propose outlawing. It is ranked number five in the nation by the Brady Campaign for having strict gun laws. Those laws failed to protect those children. Perhaps getting the mentally ill the help they need would actually help to enhance public safety.

Feel free to use this as a template in your dealings with lawmakers. I think it’s important to humanize ourselves first, and then propose solutions. We’re not going to be able to depend on the Second Amendment and constitutional arguments to win this one. When the chips are down, no one except us really cares about Constitutional rights, and those arguments never win.

We have to win by counter proposals that deflect attention away from guns, and into areas, that, quite frankly, may actually have a prayer of making a difference. Something will be done, and we’re going to have to work very hard to ensure that the “something” is not more feel-good laws that have no prayer of actually working, and only will lead to a new round of restrictions at the next horrific shooting.

A worthwhile thing to remember. Don’t think just because your Congressman is a Republican, that he’s automatically going to be on your side. Only constituent pressure will keep him there. Here’s what we have going for us:

1. People are seemingly open to a discussion of the sorry state of mental health treatment.
2. The rest of the center-right coalition is not seemingly headed for the hills. Most generic folks in the coalition I follow on social media seem primed for a fight. We have more and stronger allies this time.

What we don’t have going for us? I think a lot depends on what President Obama does. He’s going to be facing a great deal of pressure from his own party to do something. There are some factors at play. One is we’re in the middle of “fiscal cliff” negotiations. Obama may not want to pick a fight with the GOP on the gun issue in the middle of delicate negotiations on this topic. The other side of the coin is he might revel in trying to pile on with the GOP. Knowing Obama’s personality, I think the latter is quite likely. He’s been trying very hard to get the GOP to throw the anti-tax constituency under the bus by having on tax hikes. He could also think it wise to try for a twofer, and get them to throw the gun vote under the bus at the same time.  The White House strategy in all this seems to be to make the GOP thoroughly screwed no matter what door they decided to walk through. The risk is that it would only cause the GOP to dig in their heels and not budge at all, being attacked on multiple fronts. But I’m not sure Obama thinks that is a bad result either, because then he gets to blame the GOP when we go off the “cliff.”

Time will tell, but one of the reasons you see the gun control folks pushing Obama so hard is because the “bully pulpit” is important. Clinton was a master of its use, even for causes that hurt Democrats, like gun control. The presidency is a powerful office for trying to steer the public conversation. If President Obama still had to protect a large number of blue dog Democrats, the political calculus would be different, but given that blue dogs are now an endangered species, it would be hard to believe that the Administration’s reaction is going to be to do nothing.

A few people seem to be offended that I’m not jumping right into the fight, in regards to a previous post I have done suggesting that going around advocating we arm teachers isn’t really going to win any hearts and minds, especially in the immediate aftermath of a horrific event like this. While we have made a lot of advances in the culture in regards to our issue, we have not yet made quite enough progress that such a thing can be seriously proposed. Diving right into the fight does not feel instinctively right to me, nor does it seem like wise strategy.

Why do I think this? How many states have successfully passed laws easing restrictions on permit carriers in Universities? In the wake of Virginia tech, this was tried, in several states, and we got our asses handed to us in notorious anti-gun legislatures such as Texas and Virginia, and a gubernatorial veto in Arizona by the same governor who signed the right-to-carry without a permit. We’re talking here about schools full of adults, and we can’t get it done. Removing gun free school zones for primary and secondary schools is up there with legalizing machine guns in terms of “culture just isn’t there yet” issues.

When I speak of now not being the time for politics, that’s not a capitulation. It not only makes us look decent, it’s a smart strategy. The big issue you have in the wake of a tragedy like this is that the “something must be done” crowd is going to demand that, well, something be done. Remember that in the wake of Virginia Tech, the gun control organizations were shouting from the rooftops and pushing their whole agenda, but before the (then Democratic) Congress could really get any momentum on it, the “Something must be done” crowd was appeased by what, on balance, was able to be made into a pro-gun bill. That bill  encouraged states to report more mental health adjudications to NICS (which most of them haven’t lifted a finger to do for various reasons, including state privacy laws) in exchange for turning mental health prohibitions on gun ownership from lifetime prohibitions to prohibitions one could petition to have lifted. I can promise you that the Bradys were less than happy with that bill, but they had no choice but to get behind it. It offered Congress a way to please the “Something must be done!” crowd, and go back to their shocked and horrified constituents and tell them what a wonderful thing they did. A lot of people were upset with NRA for floating that bill, but it staved off the possibility we were going to get something far worse as a result of Virginia Tech. In my opinion, it was a brilliant maneuver on NRA’s part to keep the bad bills from moving in a Democratic Congress whose leadership was hostile to civilian gun ownership.

So what is going to be the issue to hit the “Something must be done” crowd this time? I spent a lot of time looking through posts on social media, seeing what my family is saying, seeing what my former schoolmates are saying, childhood friends, coworkers, etc. Most of these folks are ordinary people, and not activists or bloggers, or political junkies. There are some talking about gun control, but I don’t see people shouting from the rooftops. The vast majority are just shocked, horrified, and upset. If you hit them with “Arm teachers!” you’re going to turn them off. They’ll stop listening to you. But one message is definitely out there, and that’s the colossal failure that is our current mental health system. If you want people not thinking gun control is the solution, that’s the policy point to make. I know a lot of libertarians are uncomfortable with this, but it’s going to come down to a choice: either we hospitalize the most seriously mentally ill, or we turn the rest of the country into a low level padded cell where no one can have dangerous or sharp objects. The vast majority of the population who are not libertarian will likely force this choice.

Plus, fixing the mental health system, unlike gun control, has a prayer of actually making a difference. This guy committed his horrific act in Brady #5 ranked state Connecticut. Connecticut requires a permit to purchase a handgun and has a statewide assault weapons ban. Connecticut also has a safe storage law. I also heard that the shooter tried to buy a gun and was denied by NICS. Neither of these laws stopped the shooter, because he murdered his mother and stole her guns. Many of us responsibly keep our guns under lock and key, but if someone murders us and gets the key, there’s no gun control law in the universe that’s going to prevent those guns from falling into the wrong hands. If lunatics are going to keep getting a hold of guns, and as long as lunatics roam the streets, they will, we have to have solutions, and win over the public, most of whom think “something must be done!” from those who will propose more gun control as the solution. In this vein, I think every gun owner needs to read Clayton’s book, My Brother Ron. We do not live in a world where people are going to watch 20 kindergarteners brutally murdered, along with their teachers, and the response is going to be “C’est la vie.” Events like this, in one day, can erase years of cultural progress if we don’t play our cards well.

The problem is, once they start smelling blood in the water, the sharks come out. For people who live in Colorado what are you going to do about it? Because sitting back and believing someone else will step up is going to result in this coming to pass:

Hickenlooper said the issues that merit discussion include “things like, do we all need assault weapons?” which he said are “designed for warfare” and “designed to pierce bulletproof vests and body armor.”

You’re going to get an assault weapons ban if people don’t step up.