SayUncle has a link to some very interesting proceedings on the Firearms Registration and Transfer Record, which is the database of all the Title II firearms that are circulating in the country. You know one way they could clean up the database? Have a general amnesty. It’s within the Attorney General’s powers to do this. Advertise that anyone with an NFA firearm can either confirm they have an existing NFA firearm in the NFRTR, or if it’s absent, be able to register it. Sounds fair to me.
Category: Gun Rights
Electioneering
Bitter did some phone banking for GOP candidates last night for our county. I am going to be talking to folks at my club about a few things election related. I also need to start reaching out to forums. Here’s a problem we have:
- Most young people aren’t tied to land lines. Phone banking is only really reaching voters over 40. In fact, a lot of traditional outreach we do as gun owners is only really reaching an older demographic. Granted, these are typically your largest and most reliable voting base, but we also need to reach young people or we’re in trouble over the long term.
- The Internet is a great way to reach young people, but they are geographically very dispersed. I can reach a lot of young people through this blog, I can even reach a lot of Pennsylvanians, but I can’t reach very many people in my own county, which is where it counts for having the most impact.
I’m actually fairly concerned that people getting most of their information and organization from the Internet will actually hamper some forms of traditional political activism, because while it’s very easy to organize on the Internet, it’s hard to organize locally. One of the reasons the Religious Right in this country is such a powerful voting bloc is because they have one of the few localized community organizations that people are still participating with in large numbers: churches.
Our churches are the gun clubs, the gun shops and the gun shows. We need to think up ideas on how to translate Internet activism into local political action, and we need to reach our churches. Otherwise you can’t defeat anti-gun incumbents with pro-gun challengers and support pro-gun incumbents, which I’ve become convinced is basically the core of the gun rights movement’s political power. To the extent that gun rights becomes a political movement in cyberspace only, I think it will become ineffective. If we can’t figure out a way to use the Internet as a tool to organize locally, we’re doomed.
More Obama Fact Checking
Apparently CBS news is now jumping out there with the notion that Obama isn’t just better on guns than NRA says, he’s actually better than John McCain. Must be hard putting in all those long hours at CBS News to ensure electoral victory.
More Fact Checking
See Dave Kopel’s excellent article here. SayUncle also has another round up.
End of Handgun Sports in Finland?
Looks like Finland, one of the few countries left in Europe with a healthy shooting and sportsmen’s culture, is considering banning handguns in response to the latest mass shooting there. Finlands laws for handguns are already rather strict, and would be a dream for gun control advocates here. My understanding is that licenses for them are on a may-issue basis, and police will only generally issue permits for .22LR pistols. Any other pistols not suitable for “sporting purposes”, with the police getting to define what that means, are denied.
Notice you don’t see the Brady Campaign dancing in the blood of these victims? Curious isn’t it? Maybe because Finland already has the restrictions the Bradys dream of, and it goes to prove that when gun owners agree to them, it’s only a matter of time before politicians, faced with a tragedy like this, say “That’s it folks, time to turn them in.” It also doesn’t fit their narrative that this is a strictly American phenomena, because of our lax gun laws.
And they keep telling us we’re paranoid.
California Hunters Coping With Lead Ban
Looks like California hunters are attempting to cope with the lead ammo ban, but it’s costing them. No doubt it will drive a lot of people out of hunting due to the higher prices for ammunition:
Another development, which Baker found “a little disturbing,” is hunters who don’t sight their rifles for copper bullets, which have different properties than lead.
“Any time you change ammo, you should always go out and sight it, even different brands (of ammo),” said Jeff Bettencourt of Ceres, who has been a hunter for 35 years.
That’s true, and it will drive the cost of hunting up even more. Copper based ammunition is twice as expensive as lead based ammunition, so this is really going to hurt sportsmen in that state. Do sportsmen in other states like Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio trust that Obama will put their concerns over these people? I don’t.
FactCheck.org’s Bad Facts Go Mainstream
National Review has more to say about FactCheck.org lack of facts. Apparently the Washington Post is joining in the deception as well. You can’t really blame them, they do have an election to win, after all.
UPDATE: CNN Joins in with the same nonsense.
UPDATE: The Washington Independent too.
UPDATE: Firearms and freedom sums it up:
I can sum up factcheck.org’s “check†of the NRA material in 5 words: “Obama says that’s not true!â€
Like I said, they have an election to win.
More on FactCheck.org’s Bad Fact Checking
I will go into some more detail on FactCheck.org’s claims. It may very well be that they don’t understand the gun issue. In fact, I would say that’s so. Let’s take a look at some of their claims:
Letting the owner of an unregistered firearm escape the penalty for failing to register is one thing, but it’s another thing entirely to make it a crime to use any firearm – registered or not – in self-defense.
I agree with them on this one, that it’s a bit of distortion. But what they fail to mention is that you can’t register a gun in a lot of these communities because handguns are banned. You have to have a registration certificate to own one, but you can’t get a registration certificate because they are banned. The end result is, if you use a gun in self-defense, you go to jail. Obama voted for that. It’s not bullshit.
The amendment applied only to handgun ammunition “capable of penetrating body armor” and to rifle ammunition that is “designed or marketed as having armor piercing capability,” however.
The problem here is there’s no such thing as a handgun cartridge. There are handguns made for hunting and target sports such as Metallic Silhouette which fire rifle cartridges, which will penetrate soft body armor. Handguns have been made for virtually every rifle caliber. There are also rifles which shoot ammunition that are generally considered handgun rounds. But there is no set definition of a handgun round or a rifle round. The amendment in question was badly worded enough, and poorly thought out enough, it would have had the effect of banning hunting ammunition. When that was pointed out, the Senate properly defeated it. But Obama and Kennedy knew exactly what the were trying to do, which was enact a back door gun ban.
As we wrote previously, an amended version of the questionnaire was later submitted to the group, with Obama’s handwritten notes on it providing more detail on some of the answers. Obama clearly saw and handled this version personally and did not alter the question about banning the sale and manufacturing of guns. Nevertheless, his aides maintain that the gun-ban answer was a mistake and didn’t reflect Obama’s true position.
Sure, that’s what his aides say now. But there it was. He reviewed the questionnaire and added notes, and he did not change his stated position on the gun ban. Whether his aides wrote that or not is immaterial. That’s the position his office took. He might be singing a different tune now, but he has supported banning handguns. There’s no rescuing him on this one.
Obama indeed has spoken in favor of licensing handguns, but so far as we can determine he hasn’t called for registration of hunting weapons. And he’s said a national gun registration law isn’t politically possible: “I just don’t think we can get that done.”
Can you explain exactly what hunting weapons are please FactCheck.org people? I’d really like to know. Because there is actually such a thing as handgun hunters out there. You knew that didn’t you? There are also a lot of handgun shooting sports, which are fast becoming the most popular shooting sports due to the fact that you don’t need a lot of real estate to build a pistol range.
I’ll give FactCheck.org a pass on the assault weapons issue, and on judges. That’s based mostly on how we know the politics will play on this issue. Let me ask you this, do you believe Obama will appoint pro-second amendment judges after refusing to sign onto the Heller brief and saying he thought DC’s law was constitutional? It might be a lot of circumstantial evidence, but I think it would be enough to take to court.
It’s also interesting to note that FactCheck got no response on the questions of increasing ammunition taxes by 500% and on the 5 mile gun shop exclusion zone he one proposed.
I would encourage folks to contact FactCheck and tell them of some of their oversights here. Be factual. It very well may be, and probably is, that they don’t understand the gun issue that well, and NRA’s publications are meant more to rally gun owners than they are to educate the masses. That’s often going to be our job.
UPDATE: SayUncle has a lot more too.
UPDATE: Also The Other Sebastian.
FactCheck.org Needs to Check Their Facts
Is FactCheck.org really nonpartisan? Because here’s what they say about NRA’s attacks on Barack Obama:
Much of what the NRA passes off as Obama’s “10 Point Plan to ‘Change’ the Second Amendment” is actually contrary to what he has said throughout his campaign: that he “respects the constitutional rights of Americans to bear arms” and “will protect the rights of hunters and other law-abiding Americans to purchase, own, transport, and use guns.”
The NRA, however, simply dismisses Obama’s stated position as “rhetoric” and substitutes its own interpretation of his record as a secret “plan.” Said an NRA spokesman: “We believe our facts.”
Except if you look at Obama’s record on guns, he’s proposed all these things! If you’re going to call yourself “Fact Check” the first thing you should do is check your facts, and if you do that, you’ll see that Barack Obama’s record on The Second Amendment is absolutely atrocious. They actually expect gun owners to believe what he’s saying now to get elected, and pass that off as “Facts”
Non-partisan my ass, they are shills out to get Obama elected.
The Union Machine Fights Back
Unions leaders have been pretty upset at the gun issue pulling votes away from Democratic candidates. But rather than push the party to embrace gun rights, they’ve decided to try to pull the wool over the eyes of their membership.
Now apparently they are trying to make a stink over the fact that some of their members talked to an NRA film crew, and said bad things about The Chosen One.
The United Mine Workers will call for the stoppage at Consol’s Blacksville No. 2 mine next week, union President Cecil Roberts said Monday at a news conference with representatives of Obama’s West Virginia campaign in Charleston.
Apparently it’s an unpaid stoppage too, per their contact. Apparently there’s no depth to which union leaders will sink to fool their members into believing Barack Obama is anything other than a gun banner.