Over microstamping. I’m sure there are plenty of other states that would be happy to have them. You know, the North won the Civil War largely because all the manufacturing and arms making industries were located in the industrialized areas, mainly of the Northeast. If the South were ever to rise again, where’s all the manufacturing and arms making in the country now? More importantly, where does all our nuclear material come from? What city makes rockets? Just something for Northeastern elites to consider. What does the Northeast manufacture these days other than financial crises?
Category: Gun Rights
Six Reasons Gun Owners Should Care About This Election
Remember, Barack Obama is the best pro-gun President of all times, according to the media, and these paranoid gun nuts are just a bunch of moronic hicks brainwashed by the NRA. This article in Forbes lays out the case for why that’s as big a lie as virtually anything else they’ve parroted this silly season:
More recently in a move unprecedented in American history, President Obama quietly banned re-importation and sale of 850,000 collectible antique U.S.-manufactured M1 Garand and Carbine rifles that were left in South Korea following the Korean War. Developed in the 1930’s, the venerable M1 Garand carried the U.S. through World War II, seeing action in every major battle.
I had kind of forgotten about this, because Presidents screwing us on importation rules has been a grand bipartisan tradition, but it’s certainly something to count against the President.
An Obama reelection presents an extreme risk of replacing at least one of five Supreme Court justices who have vindicated Second Amendment protections in the precarious Heller and McDonald decisions. If this were to happen, our right to bear arms might become a lost historical memory for future oppressed generations to read about.
This point needs to be pounded on until gun owners start to get it.
Still, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence continues to wage war on several fronts, most particularly attacking the constitutionally-sanctioned Second Amendment right of law-abiding citizens to carry guns for protection outside their homes, a right the vast majority of state governments acknowledge. According to their director of legal action, Jonathan Lowy, “this battle is far from over.â€
I think the Brady Campaign has largely beclowned itself under Gross, and is sliding further down the slope into irrelevance. Bloomberg and MAIG are the big threat now, and that’s another reality I think gun owners need to be made to understand.
UPDATE: First comment on that article illustrates an attitude you find often among gun owners who are ill informed:
No one…not even the President of the United States…can *legally* impose any restrictions on a citizen’s right to keep and bear arms. Until the Bill is Rights is abolished that right is just as important as any other right in the Bill of Rights. Can you imagine the uproar if some silly woman senator suggested “Common Sense restrictions on the right to free speech? The Second Amendment is the ONLY amendment to specifically state that the “right to KEEP and BEAR arms shall NOT BE INFRINGED.
So…what PART of “Shall NOT be INFRINGED†do these people not understand? No one has the right to tell *anyone* that they cannot only KEEP but also BEAR arms anywhere at anytime. Why? Because the Second Amendment does not have ANY provision for that. It’s really simple. But some law breaking “government officials†believe that they can force people to do what *THEY* deem as right. Well, it AINT gonna happen.
The unfortunate fact is the Second Amendment only means what 9 unelected men and women in robes say it means. Beyond that, it does not protect you. A great many gun owners don’t understand the existence and recognition of this right by the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, doesn’t mean squat unless the courts enforce it. I think this is an understandable, if naive view, that people in the government will act in good faith. They won’t. I think a good reason the Court argument may not be effective among gun owners is that they don’t really understand the magnitude of the threat. “It’s in the Constitution, and I can read,” they likely think, probably also remembering back to civics class about what it takes to amend the document. But while Judges can read too, judges also have agendas.
What seems clear can be unclear. I can remember being this naive once, back when I was first getting into this issue in a serious way, and someone told me the Second Amendment was ruled not to be an individual right. I couldn’t believe this was the case, so I looked up the Supreme Court cases on it, and couldn’t find anything that lead to that conclusion. But this did lead me to the collective rights work of Saul Cornell, and I was outraged enough by it to seek deeper knowledge, which was part of my transition out of that space. Sometimes I think when ordinary gun owners find out how this really works, they are going to be pissed.
Telling Evidence from the Clinton Years
Dave Hardy has been browsing around the Clinton Presidential Library online, and finding some interesting gun control items.
Taxing a Right
This would seem to be the latest scheme of Illinois Democrats, in Cook County. If you can’t ban it, tax it. Unfortunately for them, taxing a right for the purpose of discouraging its exercise is unconstitutional. Even taxing a right for the purpose of raising revenue is probably unconstitutional, which could end up being a problem for Pittman-Robertson funding. There are other contexts where taxation of a right is completely impermissible, such as in free speech, per the case Arkansas Writers Project, Inc v. Ragland, or in the case of marriage, the Illinois Supreme Court already rejected a 10 dollar fee on licenses to fund services for victims domestic violence (ironically also implemented by Cook, “We’ll Blame the Law Abiding,” County). (Source: Implementing the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Volokh, Page 1542).
So Cook County is skating on very thin ice here. Thirdpower notes:
It’s funny that while the Democrats are screaming about voter ID laws ‘disproportionately effect poor and minorities”, their leadership are pushing laws that disproportionately effect poor and minorities.
That’s because they don’t really care about rights as a concept, and nor do they care about the poor or minorities. They are rhetorical bats with which to beat one’s opponents over the head with. The reality is pure power politics, where we revere and uphold rights which we find pleasing, and abridge and trash rights that we find unpleasant. The GOP and many on the right are just as guilty too, especially in and near Chicago, where power seems to be wielded for power’s sake a lot more than in other places in this country.
Military and Personal Arms for Soldiers
A few years ago there were military commanders that were hostile to the idea of their soldiers having private arms, and tried to do everything in their power to discourage their soldiers from keeping their private arms, or outright forbade it in some circumstances. NRA got language inserted into a budget bill to prevent army commanders from maintaining records of private arms, or asking about them. That also prevented  commanders from inquiring about firearms ownership for soldiers that were suicidal. There’s a move to alter the language to allow military commanders to inquire about private arms for cases where they have reasonable grounds that a person is high risk for suicide, provided there is no power to confiscate said private arms. Extrano’s Alley thinks all this fuss is to miss the point that the high suicide rate among members of the military is due to low morale. I tend to agree, but I don’t frankly have a problem if military personnel ask about personal firearms in the context of suicide risk, provided they can’t order confiscation of them.
History of the Louisiana RKBA Ballot Measure
Declining Accountability
I have a problem with candidates who don’t respond to NRA questionnaires. Regardless of how you might feel about individual legislative and political decisions by NRA, the fact remains that they are a known major interest group with hundreds of thousands of members who vote in Pennsylvania. An unwillingness to even acknowledge questions from such a grassroots organization doesn’t speak well for for their responsiveness to constituents – especially those with whom they might disagree.
So, imagine my surprise when I browsed the NRA-PVF grade listings last night and discovered that almost none of the races had grades for both candidates.
In the PA-13 Congressional District, I have 3 State Senate races and 14 State House races. Of the Senate races, only one has a challenger to the incumbent and the Republican refused to return the questionnaire. In the 14 House races, 11 feature challengers. In 3 of those 11, neither candidate was willing to respond to gun owner questions. In 1 of those 11, the GOP candidate alone remains ungraded. In 6 of the remaining races, the Democrats refused to answer questions. In only one race is there a grade for both candidates.
In the PA-8 Congressional District, Sebastian has 1 State Senate race and 14 State House races. His Senate race is the same as the one in PA-13, so it’s the same situation with the GOP candidate refusing to answer questions about his positions. In his 14 House races, only 10 have challengers. In those 10 races, only 2 of the races feature candidates who both earned grades. In the remaining 8, 1 race has both candidates refusing to answer questions. The final 7 are broken down in failures to be graded as 2 Republicans who refuse to answer and 5 Democrats who won’t be held accountable.
This is a rather disturbing trend of politicians who feel they don’t need to worry about answering to constituents.
If you’re in either of these Congressional Districts (or another area where you see the same trend), get in touch with the candidates at the local level and let them know that their refusal to answer even basic questions of policy disturbs you. Trust me, it makes an impression when voters let candidates know that they won’t support candidates who refuse to answer NRA questionnaires. Even going into his third election, our state representative has never forgotten to respond to NRA ever since his campaign manager screwed up his questionnaire in his first race. He did actually meet a voter who walked out of the polling booth and said he refused to vote for him because he wouldn’t even give a response to NRA. Now, that representative is always responsive to us as gun owner constituents, and he also happens to be A- rated and endorsed.
#WhatIfChicago…
It looks like the city of Chicago thinks they can solve their crime problem with Twitter. Of course, being city bureaucrats who are convinced that just one more gun control law will solve all of their problems, they only want to hear about more gun control proposals.
The City of Chicago is asking residents with ideas on how to get illegal guns off the streets to share their thoughts — in 140 characters or fewer on Twitter. …
Those who think they know how to cut off the flow of illegal guns into Chicago are being asked to tweet them with the hashtag (hash)whatifchicago.
The best submitted ideas will be debated at an Oct. 11 panel discussion.
This sounds like a fun little hashtag for gun owners to join. #WhatifChicago prosecuted criminals? #WhatifChicago allowed the law abiding to defend their lives?
I’m sure you guys can come up with many more…
Hey, We Know That Guy
Going through my Google Alerts, I notice Miguel’s face staring back at me, urging folks to “Keep Calm and Carry.”
Otis McDonald Sick in Hospital
John Richardson notes, and asks for thoughts and prayers.
UPDATE: John has an update. Looks like he’s out of the ICU and doing much better.