Category: Gun Rights

In the previous post, I mostly concentrated on the hearts and minds consequences of this latest guns at rallies controversy.  Namely that a lot of folks who have little or no familiarity with the issue, but aren’t generally hostile to gun rights, are going to be turned off by seeing people use firearms in this matter.   There’s another side to this coin though too, and that’s motivating the opposition.

The gun rights movement has benefited greatly from the fact that no one on the left really has much passion for gun control these days.  We have a lot to credit in that regard, but it’s mostly driven by the fact the there’s a perception among many on the left that they’ve lost on a lot of important issues because of their past pro-gun control positions.  Credibility was lent to this perception by none other than Bill Clinton himself.

That could change greatly if left-progressives think gun rights means armed people showing up to, in their minds, intimidate the public out of agreeing or acquiescing to their position on issues that are important to them.  There’s some anecdotal evidence to support this already.  See the comments at Josh Horowitz HuffPo blog, or Paul Helmke’s.  Early on in the commenting, before pro-gun people arrived in force, I was noticing a lot more than the usual yawn most of Josh or Paul’s posts illicit form the left there.  That tells me this issue resonates.   That’s bad news for us if these incidents keep happening, and considering the people responsible for them are getting the attention they seek, I think that’s a guarantee.  If appearances of armed people at rallies turn guns back into a left/right issue, with the left motivated to stick it to us, it’s going to make our jobs of advancing gun rights a lot harder, and the anti-gun groups may even find a constituency to help push some of their agenda.

… who do not own guns.  What are the implications of that?  The implications are that you have to care what non-gun owners think about you, and think about gun owners and gun rights, because if you lose the support of the 240 million Americans who do not own firearms, the Second Amendment will be no more than a 200+ year old ink blot on a piece of old parchment.  I can’t think of any better way to lose the support of the majority of Americans that do not own guns than to make those people think the people that own them are not above using them as a means to gain political influence.  This has third world banana republic connotations to a lot of people.

Now, I suspect the gentleman involved in this last incident did not have making an implied political threat on his mind when he went to the protest with an AR-15 slung over his shoulder.  If I had to wager, I’d wager he was looking for media attention.  But it will be spun in the media to the 240 million Americans who do not own gun as a political gesture, and many will take it as a threat.  If Americans think that expanded gun rights means turning this country into a banana Republic, they will stop favoring expanding them.

Understand this, because it’s important: we are outvoted.  We only succeed when the vast majority of American believe in the right to bear arms.  We only beat back gun control because the vast majority of Americans aren’t passionate about gun control, and don’t vote on the issue.  We do vote on the issue, but we’re a minority of voters.  Compared to the electorate as a whole, we’re a small minority of voters.  There is no escaping that we have to convince others to support, or at least not oppose our position.  So you have to care about how gun owners, as a group, fare in the Court of Public Opinion.

Some might suggest I believe we ought to get back into the closet.  That’s not really accurate.  I don’t sugggest that.  But part of breaking down stereotypes and misconceptions about gun owners being deviant or abnormal is to act normal.  Normal people do not walk around with AR-15s slung over their shoulders.  You might have the right, and I don’t think it should be illegal, but you won’t get people to see gun owners as normal by engaging in that activity.  It would be roughly akin to trying to get the public to accept public nudity by running around in public nude.  It’s not liable to change anyone’s mind.

UPDATE: It’s been suggested that 240 million is a bit much because I’m includind every American and not just registered voters.  I think this is a valid point.  Number of registered voters is 170 million.  Others point out that the numbers are likely understated,  I also agree with that.  Even arguing the numbers are more like 70 million gun owners rather than 57, you’re still not at a majority until you’re over 85 million.  That’s also assuming all gun owners are registered to vote, which they aren’t.  That’s also assuming that gun owners all vote like gun owners, which they don’t.  NRA has run studies on this issue, and figures it has influence with about 33 million Americans.  That’s nothing to sneeze at, certainly, and it’s why we even had a vote on National Concealed Carry at all, but it’s not enough to guarantee our political fortunes.

AARP has 35 million members, and backs nationalized health care.  If AARP can’t ram through ObamaCare with 35 million members, why is that?  Why do we think we can get away with doing whatever the hell we want, and damn what the public thinks with 4 million?

The Tennessean ran a hit piece on concealed carry over the weekend:

But not touted, and often ignored, is a persistent group of Tennesseans with violent pasts who carry gun permits through loopholes, administrative mistakes and the realities of a court system where charges based on violent incidents can be reduced or eliminated in plea bargains.

The loophole?  You have to be convicted of a disqualifying offense.  It seems to me this article serves as an example of what’s wrong with the criminal justice system rather than the permit system.  In Pennsylvania, Sheriffs are given more leeway in denying someone a license because they are of a “character and reputation such that you would be likely to act in a manner dangerous to public safety.”  This guy probably would be denied a permit in PA.

However the police routinely abuse this clause to revoke permits, and I consider eliminating it to be a top priority.  Police routinely revoke permits because the user was carrying openly, a practice that’s completely legal in Pennsylvania.  Philadelphia routinely revokes permits for having your house broken into and having gun stolen.  Philadelphia has revoked permits for people legitimately defending themselves.

Gun control folks want these clauses to be in here, but in Pennsylvania we’ve shown that the authorities can’t be trusted to exercise the discretion responsibly.  That’s why most states leave the authorities with little or no discretion, and I think that’s the right way to do it.  For borderline cases, like what’s highlighted in this article, it’s not clear they wouldn’t carry without the permit anyway.

Via Instapundit, it looks like we’re going to have an anti-gunner as the head of OSHA.  I’m sure your imaginations can think up the potential consequences of that.  Imagine NRA not being able to allow employees to carry to work because it’s considered a workplace health an safety issues.  Don’t get me wrong, there might be cases when this is the case, such as working around explosives or volatile chemicals, but this guy would seem to think it’s a universal prescription, because guns are inherently dangerous, after all.

Father Snuffy had a gun buyback this weekend, along with a lot of other groups across the country.  Thirdpower lets everyone know what Fr. Snuffy’s buyback is all about.  The buyback in Philadelphia this weekend was giving out gift cards to a supermarket, and not even really that much.  They have learned better than to give out cash in this area.

Gun buybacks are a Cash for Clunkers program for gun nuts.  My only moral problem with the programs is that it entices people to turn in items that have significant historical value, which are then destroyed and lost for history.  If anti-gun groups and big city politicians want to raise the market floor on junk guns, I have no real problem.  It’s their money, and I’d rather than dump it into worthless, feel good programs like this than actually use it to challenge gun rights.

Guns and Hunting looks at some inconsistencies in the ACLU of Massachusetts position on guns and weapons.

MikeB makes a point I’m honestly surprised anti-gun people don’t make more often, namely that we constantly make the point that machine gun crime is extraordinarily rare, yet argue that gun control doesn’t work.  Shouldn’t the controls on machine guns act as an example gun controls do work?  I’m not all that convinced, but I will admit that there’s a lot of room for bias here, and little data to go on.  But I will postulate, nonetheless.

I’m not that convinced that, outside of a few high profile criminals and high profile crimes, that machine gun crime was all that normal, even at the height of prohibition era.  One could argue that since mortars aren’t common in crime, that obviously mortar control must be effective, but mortar control did not effectively exist in this country before the Gun Control Act if 1968, yet it’s obvious mortar crimes have been uncommon to nonexistent. The reason you don’t see much crime involving mortars or machine guns is because neither is that remarkably useful for furtherance of criminal activity.  Machine guns aren’t easily concealed, and the ones easily concealed aren’t easily controlled.  All machine guns, except for crew served weapons, exhaust ammunition very quickly. It’s for that reason I don’t think machine gun crime has ever been all that common among criminals, who carry their weapons mostly for self-protection against other criminals.

During the 1920s and 1930s, machine guns made headlines, because along with the automobile, were relatively new technology that law enforcment and the public didn’t have much experience with, and that notorious criminals were quick to exploit.  But if we look, notorious machine gun crime hasn’t exactly been absent from the headlines since.  During the 1980s, Miami was known as the “machine gun mecca” even though less than 1% of crimes were actually committed with machine guns.  I’m sure we all remember drive by shooting hysteria, and who can forget the North Hollywood shootout.  I think it’s pretty clear that the media focuses on dramatic and rare crime largely because it attracts eyeballs to their story, and I don’t see any reason to assume that was any less true in the early part of the 20th century than it is today.

To speculate even further, I would argue that the presence of higher quality pistols that are more practical alternatives to machine guns actually reduce the use of fully automatic weapons in crime a great deal.  The reason being that if you’re going to make makeshift firearms, the open bolt submachine gun is actually among the simplest firearms to manufacture.  See stories form the UK about submachine guns being made out of bicycle pumps.  Or stories about how easy it is to obtain automatic weapons in the UK.  It’s probably not all that much harder here, but if all you have available is either expensive or crude, you’re probably going to have more full autos coming into the mix being used by common criminals.

That’s not to say the public is going to soon be in any mood to run the experiment of lesser restrictions on fully automatic weapons, to prove my theories correct, even though I suspect you wouldn’t see much of an uptick in violent crime if allowed to proceed.  But you could be practically guaranteed the few crimes that were committed would make headlines, just as they did in the 20s and 30s when the issue first appered.  Would that end the experiment?  Hard to say.

The hysterical media is always going to find the one jackass in the crowd to point out and smear all gun owners everywhere with his stupidity.  This is New Hampshire.  I can promise you that he’s not the only person in the crowd who is legally carrying a firearm.  But they found the one who had a vaguely threatning poster to point out.  I’ll be the first to agree that people like this aren’t helping anything, and I don’t agree with his message, but this is America folks.  It’s a free country.   I know some people hate that, but it is.

PA2010.com is reporting that this issue is heating up.

Sestak joins several other Congressmen and high-profile Pennsylvania lawmakers who have called to reinstate the ban, including Gov. Ed Rendell and Congressman Patrick Murphy (D-8).

The push to ban assault weapons has elicited strong reactions from Pennsylvania’s pro-gunners, who believe that the ban is too expansive, containing too many guns to make it reasonable. Sestak’s ban calls to reassess the definition of “semi-automation weapon” to include conversion kits, which are used to convert firearms into semi-automatic weapons, as well as any semiautomatic rifle or pistol that can accept a detachable magazine clip.

It’s bewildering to me that in a county with as many gun clubs as ours has, and who has such a strong contingent of people in it who work in the trades, and other types of skilled blue collar work, typically the type of people who tend to support gun rights, that we’re represented by a leftist Nancy-boy like Murphy.  Let us not repeat the mistake, and impose someone like him on the rest of the state.