Category: Gun Rights

The Belmont Club has an interesting piece covering how Chicago political elites game the public education system, and how Daley uses this as a means of consolidating power.

Daly discovered the great rule of demagoguery. Convince those who’ve never eatenpâté de foie gras that the swill they are eating is it. Serve the real pate to those who already know what it tastes like. It was a system that would have been instantly familiar to former Soviets. World class academies for the nomenklatura, shacks on the banks of the Volga for those on the outs. Mayor Daley has indignantly denied the special list was used for playing favorites. He argued that just because there was a VIP entrance doesn’t mean anyone actually used it. The Chicago Sun Times reported that “Daley said there was nothing wrong with former Chicago schools chief Arne Duncan’s office maintaining such a log because ‘no favoritism’ resulted from it.” One official, Office of Compliance Chief Anthony Boswell, whose children qualified for a magnet school after moving in from Denver said that while it made him look bad, he didn’t actually know if he received preferential treatment.

As Richard Fernandez points out, these are the same people who just took over our Health Care System. God Help us! All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

First the bad news. The Democrat controlled house in New Hampshire appears to have defeated an initiative to repeal the ban on firearms in the State Capitol. The headline is “House sends gun ban repeal packing.” I say gun owners in New Hampshire ought to send the Democrats packing in November.

Good news, though, is that Kansas is moving a relaxation of carry laws along:

The House voted 65-57 in support of a bill that would allow the carrying of concealed weapons in municipal and state agency buildings unless the facility has enough security measures in place to ensure no weapons are permitted in the building. The bill would exclude school districts and would require that the carrier have a concealed-carry permit.

Sounds a lot like my “Three S” strategy.

Pew just released a poll on gun control, and it shows support for restricting gun ownership keeps dropping, and is dropping precipitously among women. Support among blacks and hispanics continues to be high, but those groups are dropping as well. Half of Americans believe that local communities should not be able to ban handguns. The number of supporters of that is under half. Other good news is Independents are with us on the general issue, and Democrats are increasingly coming around as well. In fact, across the political spectrum, you notice a sharp spike post-Heller.

This is bad news for us:

In an unexpected vote [after the defeat of the Lost and Stolen ordinance], council decided 4-3 to look into putting a referendum on the May or November election ballots to ask the voters if Hatboro should support the legislation at the state level.

Truth is we would have been better off if Hatboro had just passed this. Why? Because if you put it on the ballot, it’s probably going to pass, and probably pretty overwhelmingly. This fact will then be used to further weaken preemption, and put pressure on Harrisburg do something. Voters are generally inclined to approve ballot items, and you’d probably get something like “Should residents be required to report Lost or Stolen house keys to the police.” it would probably pass too.

If this ends up on the ballot, it will be a bigger victory for MAIG than if Hatboro had just been another town to pass an ordinance. This will cost us to fight it, we’ll probably lose, and they will use this against us in future battles.

I agree with Councilwoman Nancy Guenst. This is a total waste of local dollars. It amazes me that so many local towns are signing up to spend money they don’t have as part of Bloomberg’s plan to end preemption in Pennsylvania piecemeal.

Very good news:

The Senate gave preliminary approval to legislation that would make Arizona the third state, after Alaska and Vermont, allowing people to carry concealed weapons without a permit.

The Senate approved the measure in a voice vote, setting the stage for a formal vote in the Senate. Passage would send it to the House.

The measure would make it legal for U.S. citizens 21 or older to carry concealed weapons in Arizona without permits now required.

Currently, carrying a concealed weapon in the state without a permit is a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $2,500.

Looks good, but we’ll see how it does on a formal vote and then in the house. But this is pretty far along in the process.

This time West Conshokocken and Bridgeport. This was another case of not being aware, though neither of these boroughs publish an agenda online that could even be monitored. It’s like like living in Scotland and Northern England during the Viking raids. You never know where they are going to strike next. You just wake up to find a neighboring village on fire.

UPDATE: Hatboro rejected even the resolution compromise measure. When we have time and room to act, we win.

Eric over at Classical Values seems to hate the fact that Health Care is going to make the culture wars explode like we’ve never seen before. I too am not looking forward to that:

It used to be that the term “Culture War” meant — for one “side” — being against gays simply for being gay (supporting discrimination and favoring sodomy laws), wanting to imprison women for having abortions, favoring censorship (of pornography, “anti-family” TV shows, Howard Stern, etc.), and engaging in all sorts of personal attacks on people for things like having long hair, wearing the wrong clothes, or smoking pot. For the most part, many of those on the other side wanted to be left alone, laissez-faire style. The majority of gays, for example, would like to be left alone. However, the situation has been compounded by activists who don’t want to leave anyone alone. They believe in identity politics, in-your-face lifestyle activism, inquisitory behavior like “outing” people, and in many cases their tactics have exceeded anything the other side has done.

Sounds all too familiar. Those of us active in the Second Amendment community are immersed in a culture war issue as well. I remember Eric once writing that he couldn’t stand activists. As an activist in the pro-2A issue, you’d think I’d take exception to that, but I know exactly what he means. I’m firmly in the “leave me the hell alone” category. I involve myself in this game (and make no mistake about it, it is a game) because no one is going to leave me alone just because I shout it loudly enough. You have to make them leave you alone, and that means fighting collectively as a community. Your ends might be individual, but you can only achieve goals through the political process by collective action. Even the revolutionary elements of our movement don’t escape the collective action problem, though that type of collective action is more emotionally appealing to many people.

Saul Alinsky says you need to paint the struggle in terms of black and white to be an effective organizer. Your side has to be on the side of the angels, and the other side is evil incarnate. I think he’s correct in that. There’s a deep need for people to feel they are on the side of the angels in a righteous struggle against pure, unadulterated evil. I think that is the essence of the culture war, and it’s become that on both sides. It’s tough business for someone who just wants everyone to agree to leave everyone else in peace, and not hijack the political process or cultural institutions to impose one way of living over another. I’ve never been able to bring myself to adopt Alinsky’s tactic, even though I know it can powerfully motivate people to action. To me, once you unleash that kind of thinking, it’s very difficult to get the genie back in the bottle. There are plenty of historical calamities that have resulted from it. Too many to name.

Before the Democrats took control of Congress again, NRA was pushing a bill in Congress to prevent exactly this kind of thing from happening. That bill was known as the Veterans Heritage Firearms Act, which would grant power to the Attorney General to offer a very limited amnesty to allow new registration for machine guns so that historic pieces like this Lewis Gun, and the German machine gun captured by Sergeant Alvin York, could find their way into museums and firearms collections where they belong, rather than having to be destroyed, or held by police departments indefinitely. I would think this is the kind of reasonable gun law we can all get behind. There’s effectively zero chance these firearms are going to end up in the wrong hands. They will only end up in museums and private collections, which you’d expect of valuable historical relics.

Jacob suggests with the passage of Health Care ReDeform, that we in the pro-2A community need to be ready to be next. For various reasons, I think it’s unlikely, but I also thought Scott Brown’s victory woud have killed ObamaCare. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that Obama and Pelosi want to tangle with us, so we should be ready.

Daley and his Chicago machine are going to be eager to pass this to get back at gun owners. How dare we stand up for our rights! He’ll make the downstate rubes pay for this one! Todd Vandermyde is making the argument, and it’s a good argument, that the several firearms manufacturers that are located in Illinois will leave the state if this passes. It’ll also shut down high-power competition in the state. Hopefully this can be defeated, but it’s amazing to me the IL legislature is willing to ignore a seven thousand plus rally at the State Capitol. If we turned out those kinds of numbers at our Harrsiburg rally, our politicians would crap themselves in fear. I guess when you’ve been gaming the system as long as the Daley crew have, you get a certain amount of arrogant cockiness about you.