Category: Gun Rights

Both Baucus and Tester have spoken out against the requirement, arguing that such a regulation being proposed as the prerogative of Congress, not of ATF.

UPDATE: Denny Rehberg, Montana’s Congressman, has joined with a letter to ATF, co-signed by 33 other house members. You can find that letter here.

Worth noting that Montana’s Senators are both Democrats, and probably have the most to lose if the Democrats are visibly seen as pushing a gun control agenda.

NRA announced today they are shooting for the moon in Wisconsin, and going for constitutional carry:

Past legislative efforts to secure the Right to Carry always assumed that a veto override would be necessary.  Attempting to secure two-thirds majorities required the NRA and other proponents to accept amendments during the legislative process that sought to place additional restrictions on the good citizens of Wisconsin and would have impeded their ability to protect themselves.  With the makeup of the incoming legislature, these unnecessary concessions should no longer be necessary.

The NRA will strive to make Wisconsin’s 2011 Right to Carry law one of the strongest in the country.  The experience of 40 other Right to Carry states has eliminated any question as to whether citizens can be trusted to act safely and responsibly.  The laws of Vermont, Alaska and Arizona will be used as the model.  The latter two, in particular, will set the standard with systems that recognize the citizens’ constitutional right to carry firearms for self-defense along with a provision that will provide for the streamlined issuance of a state permit that can be used for reciprocity purposes in other states while traveling.

This is good news. The Courts appeared to be ready to toss the carry law anyway, and it would be a shame not to help that process along. Also, I think this puts to rest any of the accusations that NRA was never committed to constitutional carry.

So says Brian Aitken on his legal matters. This indicates he’s planning to move forward with his appeal. Good news.

He’s home. Best of luck to you Brian, and I hope you enjoy your holidays back home with your family where you belong. It’s worth noting that ANJRPC is asking people to call Governor Christie and thank him. I agree this is very important. We need to be good at the positive as well as negative reinforcement. You can find contact info for Governor Christie here.

Dave Hardy notes how the Firearms Owners Protection Act has specific protections against what ATF is trying to implement, and urges people to contact their legislators. Congress can take action against this, and should. Out of control bureaucrats are a specific pet peeve of mine, and if there’s one things the Republican Congress could do that I think would be popular among the people is start calling these agencies before it and reminding them they do not have any power beyond that which Congress authorizes.

Looks like there’s a growing Right to Keep and Bear Arms movement in India. The second most populous country on the planet:

A 38-year-old software engineer, Singh founded the web forum, Indiansforguns.com, which brought these Sunday afternoon firearm fans together. But in late 2009, his hobby took on a new urgency when the home ministry proposed several amendments to India’s 1959 Arms Act that would make it much more difficult to get a gun license and harder to buy ammunition. Already an old hand in disseminating editorials and raising petitions, Singh soon joined forces with another group — the National Association for Gun Rights India (NAGRI) — that’s modeled on America’s National Rifle Association and led by Haryana’s Naveen Jindal, a member of parliament who studied in Texas.

This has to have IANSA crapping their pants. I think it’s funny it’s a software engineer behind it. Computer people seem to have a particular disdain for nanny state policies in my experience, though that’s not as true today as I think it was a decade ago.

I keep looking at our opponents, and I see the same ideas turned around and around again on the turntable like a skipping old 78. Calling for “common sense,” calling for “sensible legislation,” to an audience, like that of some washed up rock star that continues to tour, that increasingly just isn’t there, or isn’t listening.

Our opponents are beyond arguing for action, and they don’t even realize it. The philosophical basis for their movement was largely based on the possibility of achieving prohibition, and with prohibition off the table, rather than rebuild their movement around different philosophical assumptions, they keep pushing the same old in the hopes that a some point, maybe someday, the fans will come back and the seats will be filled. Even MAIG, which is certainly ripe with novel tactics, and new ideas, is still no more than a second rate cover band.

The reason they have not rethought their movement is that any new assumptions will be deeply dissatisfying to those who support the gun control agenda. I think being hemmed in by Brady’s post Heller contradictions is driving poor Joan Peterson nuts, because it represents the best they can do, not what she’d ideally like to advocate. I can’t believe she’s an atypical supporter either, because I’ve run into a lot of Joan Peterson’s out there. But how many will keep with the issue in the face of the ever evolving reality working against their viewpoint?

Prohibition, or a near prohibition, was a necessary goal for their movement, and it’s necessary because of the nature of gun control. Gun control only affects criminals at the margins. In a regulatory regime where law abiding people are relatively free to purchase firearms, criminals are going to fairly easily obtain them. I think that’s a fundamental truth against which the gun control proponents have no valid argument. A background check, a form, or rationing is only going to stop an idiot or someone who’s really not determined. Given that there are undetermined idiots out there who want to commit crimes, I have no doubt background checks have stopped some potential crimes, but because this happens at the margin, it doesn’t show up in overall violent crime statistics, and doesn’t really do a whole lot to make society safer.

The only way you can expand the margins is to make guns harder to get for law abiding people, and as we’ve pointed out repeatedly, even total prohibition isn’t going to stop smart, determined criminals. It’s certainly not going to stop gangs and drug dealers who are responsible for most of the violent crime in this country, and who already traffic in contraband. But one could argue with credibility that prohibition would make it harder for certain classes of potential criminals, who don’t have black market connections, to get guns. One could counter that it would also make it much harder for ordinary people to get guns and defend themselves from the criminals, and there will be many, who will still get them anyway. But my point is that when prohibition is the philosophical root, there’s a lot more room to speculate, posture, and debate. It may be an unachievable, Utopian idea, but it’s an idea that’s deeply satisfying to those who blame the gun for societies ills.

I would posit that without prohibition, the gun control movement is nothing. The ironic thing is, from my readings, a lot of the the old school members of the movement to ban handguns understood this. Everything to them was an incremental step designed to break the back of the gun culture in this country so they could get to their eventual goal. The post Heller movement has, on their face, accepted the implications of a real Second Amendment right, but in their souls I don’t believe they have. So they are stuck arguing pointless measures that have no prayer of doing a damned thing to stop people who want to commit crimes from getting guns. Their predecessors understood this stuff to be pointless, if it wasn’t getting them farther to the goal. The remaining gun control supporters cling bitterly to the remnant scraps of what once was. How long before the gig is up, and even the die hards realize it?

They find it hard to believe NRA members would support assault rifles being smuggled to Mexico. Except this is all a manufactured issue. And even if it wasn’t, guns are already illegal in Mexico. The violence happens there, not here where they are largely legal (though not assault rifles). It’s their problem, not ours. You’re not going to disarm criminals who traffic in contraband.

Don’t want contraband smuggled into your country? Work with us to secure the border. It’s quite simple, really.