Category: Gun Rights

Sean in North Carolina has a link on how folks can help with the effort. Restaurant carry bans are particularly annoying, and only result in guns getting left in cars. It’s not a net public safety enhancement. The correct way to do this is directly regulating drinking while carrying, which the North Carolina bill does.

Short of this case is, a guy from South Dakota, with a South Dakota permit, takes a gun to New York City. Upon checking his baggage to go back home, he’s arrested, so he’s suing Delta Airlines, suggesting they should know the law and inform him. That’s a bit of a leap for me. You’re responsible for understanding the law. You can’t expect the airline to do that for you. By the same token, can you blame the guy for assuming New York City was part of America?

The are repealing the requirement to have a concealed weapons permit to carry in a business or a home. Pretty ridiculous for a state like Kentucky that was ever a requirement. But clearly we are reeling under the newfound momentum of our opponents. They have stopped the “gun lobby” in its tracks. Florida was their Battle of Midway.

In discussing the Seattle mass-murderer, he notes that the shooter had an assault case that was dropped when the victims recanted, and that his family thought him mentally ill, but never had him formally committed. The point that he nails is this:

These two points show how important citizen participation is for society to work. Perhaps those not pressing charges are also responsible?

We’re confronted with crime stories regularly where people think “he never should have been on the streets.” But in this country, we don’t deprive people of life or liberty without due process of law, and due process can only work when the people insist on making it work.

Looks like former Brady head Richard Aborn has been raising the gun control issue in a few op-eds appearing around the country. Dave Hardy notes that when it comes to claims that banning guns was never a goal of the movement, neither Aborn nor the rest of the gun control movement have any credibility. Joe Huffman takes a look at Aborn’s claim that NRA success was driven largely by convincing gun owners that any small gun control measure was a step on the road to confiscation, suggesting exciting anti-gun people would be difficult if their movement didn’t approach the issue from a prohibitionist standpoint:

Since framing the issue as a total ban is a motivator for the base of both sides why did the GCM shy away from that but the gun freedom movement (GFM) embraced it? From a merely logical/symmetric perspective shouldn’t it be just as damaging/beneficial to whichever side framed it in that manner? There may be more than one reasons why that is not true but the most obvious one to me is that the GFM has a much larger base than the GCM. Hence for every “unit of motivation” the GCM were to gain by framing the issue as a total ban they realized the GFM would gained, perhaps, 10 units.

It’s kind of funny to me they didn’t realize they were dealing with a losing issue as soon as that particular bit of information infiltrated its way into their reality. Though many in the gun control movement have constructed alternate realities, I think most in the movement recognize what Joe is saying is true.

The only places that the gun control movement has ever found any success are when they’ve succeeded in playing divide and conquer tactics with gun owners (and by gun owners, I mean people who politically identify as gun owners, not someone who keeps an old family heirloom in the attic, or squired away a revolver in a shoebox years ago “just in case.”) Why do we have machine gun bans? Because gun owners largely support it. Why do we have background checks? Gun owners largely support them. Why did we have an assault weapons ban? Because Josh Sugarmann is an evil genius and found a way to drive the machine gun wedge to get another similarly looking guns banned. Why do groups like MAIG limit themselves to supporting universal background checks and No-Fly-No-Buy? One are exploits an already known, existing wedge, and another supports the national defense and anti-terrorism instincts of our people, who don’t really understand the issue. A little bit of hammering on the wedge, especially combined with ignorance, is a potentially winning strategy. Fortunately, for us, we can correct ignorance, and at a much faster pace than has been possible in the past. Joe concludes, “Aborn’s position is nearly hopeless. He has nearly insurmountable obstacles at almost every step.” There is no real grassroots movement of any consequence to put severe nation-wide restrictions on gun ownership. The restrictions the public-at-large is willing to support have already been passed. As for the states they have built real movements? Our side has ample opportunity now to pick away at outliers from the generally consensus, as Dave Kopel concluded in his latest paper. It’s definitely a sad time for the gun control movement. I hope to see more signs of desperation, such as Mr. Aborn’s op-ed, in the near future.

Venezuela has banned guns for civilians. Rumor has it that dictator Pugsley is near death, and I suppose those who pretend to be successors to his throne, don’t wish any little people interfering with those ambitions.

Remember that this is what our opponents want; a world without the right to have the means for self-defense. Any horrors that happen to the Venezuelan people as a result of this decree is blood on our opponents hands. Don’t let them forget it.

Dave Hardy reports that the Alameda County, having previously backed down, and suggested the gun show could continue provided that the guns in question were adequately secured when on display, it looks like the 9th Circuit, en banc, has accepted that capitulation. This looks to me like mostly a win for our side, even though it could have been much better by setting strong precedent. I have not yet read through the entire opinion.