It’s a telling statement that when gun control folks actually come on to debate us seriously, it’s worth a link, since it happens so rarely, even across hundreds of gun blogs. Robb has that going on over at Sharp as a Marble.
Category: Guns
Academics for the Second Amendment
Several other bloggers have pointed this out, and I feel I should as well. Academics for the Second Amendment are a group of second amendment scholars that have been working hard to secure your gun rights for years to come. They will be filing an Amicus brief with the US Supreme Court. Needless to say, filing a brief with the Supreme Court costs a significant amount of money, so they really need your support.  I just sent a little bit of cash their way, and I hope you all will as well.
There is truly no fight in our life times that will matter to gun rights more than this one, and we must stand by the people who are standing by us.
A Tale of Two Attitudes
Ahab points out how the difference in attitudes towards allowing arms in schools created a very different result when terrorists paid a visit to an Israeli school.
All of Southeast to go “Shotgun Only”
It looks like there are plans afoot to make both Lehigh and Northampton counties “shotgun only” for hunting:
Currently, the restriction on rifle hunting applies only in Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties. However, a proposal on the agenda for the commission’s Tuesday business meeting would prohibit deer hunting with a rifle throughout Wildlife Management Unit 5C, which also would be significantly expanded to include the Reading area and all of Lehigh and Northampton counties except a small sliver adjacent to the Blue Mountain.
If the measure is adopted, the only rifles that would remain legal for hunting use in the territory would be less powerful .22-caliber rimfires, which could be used for small game such as squirrels or furbearers such as foxes and coyotes.
I guess the PGC decided the study that showed shotgun hunting isn’t any safer was without merit.
First You Have to Decide Goals
Uncle is asking for some help:
So, there’s a lot of pro-gun activists on the Internet. I mean, there’s a ton. We’re just not all in the same place what with message boards, live journal, face book, etc, etc. If everyone actually got together, we’d be pretty influential, I would venture.
Any ideas on how to do that?
First you have to decide what your goal is, because online organizing is good for certain things, and not entirely good for other things. If the goal is grassroots mobilization, forums and blogs are effective, but I question whether we have the numbers to turn elections, which is the root of all political power. Politics is all local. A large percentage of my readers live here with me in Pennsylvania, so in a state wide race, I may have some very small effect on election outcomes. Online gun rights organizations like PAFOA, with many thousands of readers, could have even more. But could I mobilize my readership to defeat my local state representative? Probably not. A congressman? Probably not. You need a different kind of organization to affect those types of political outcomes, and for gun owners, they are, and will remain for the foreseeable future, local clubs and associations, along with NRA’s considerable election mobilization machine that works through a network of EVCs on the ground locally. This is why I think it’s important to have a debate about what we want a blanket online gun-owner project to accomplish. I don’t think online gunnies can’t affect political outcomes at all, but we have to play to our strengths, and understand our weaknesses.
Not Everyone Will be a Shooter
Uncle relays a story from one of his readers. I agree with Tam‘s assessment in the comments:
You know, not everyone is going to be a shooter, for whatever reason.
I don’t hang out on any golf-specific web forums, but are guys there as worried about getting their wives to come golfing with them as male shooters are to get their S.O. to the range?
I’ve only known a couple of women who were shooters and who had beaux that weren’t at all interested, and neither one really wrung her hands about getting her fella to the range.
She’s right that not everyone is going to be a shooter, but I think I can explain the male mind here. Golf players don’t sweat their sport. No one repeatedly accuses golfers of wanting to murder children, or causing inner city crime. There’s no strong political movement dedicated to the eradication of their “barbaric sport”. I think for a lot of guys they are seeking a bit of affirmation that the significant other really is OK with what they are doing, and won’t someday join with the chorus of people who look down on him because he likes to play with baby killing bullet hoses.
Anti-Gun Protests in South Carolina
We’ve been seeing a lot of this logic lately:
Hafter’s daughter, Lizzy Hafter, a Dean’s List graduate of the University of Virginia, was murdered in September 2006 on the Blue Ridge Parkway near Charlottesville, Virginia. The killer had stolen the gun weeks earlier. The gun had not been reported stolen. Lizzie’s mother is advocating for a law in South Carolina, Lizzy’s Law, to require gun owners to report to police a gun that has been lost or stolen.
How would this woman’s daughter have been saved if the gun had been reported stolen? It’s a violation of federal regulations to have a firearm on the Blue Ridge Parkway in the first place, but does reporting the firearm magically remove it form the hands of the criminal?
New Hampshire Gun Free Zone Bill
Looks like some Democrats in Concord want to make the state house a gun free zone.
Nancy Robinson in the News Again
It’s relatively easy to keep up on the activities of anti-gun bloggers, since there are so few of them. Remember Nancy Robinson? Who showed up at Yearly Kos whining that lefty bloggers wouldn’t pay attention to her pet issue? She did start a web site Where Did the Gun Come From, but it looks like it doesn’t get updated much.
She’s back in the news in Boston:
“That created a sense of urgency,” said Nancy Robinson, a Newton resident with a teenage son who will serve as the coalition’s executive director. “We needed to move ahead.”
In 1990, the year Citizens for Safety was first formed, Boston had 152 homicides, the highest number on record. The group helped create after-school programs and jobs for city teenagers. They focused on compelling gang members to get together for basketball matches. They were among several grass-roots organizations whose work with police helped lead to the so-called “Boston Miracle.”
Color me skeptical that basketball can solve violent crime, but I’ll give kudos for the effort here. Â I will take issue with this, however:
Robinson said she wants the group to have a national effect and be able to pressure federal authorities to enforce gun laws and urge legislators to pass new laws that would force stricter background checks on gun purchasers.
Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis and Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who are expected to attend the announcement, said they welcome the group’s return.
“We have a new start and new emergency and renewed commitment,” Menino said.
The group’s goals do not please everyone. Andrew Arulanandam, spokesman for the National Rifle Association, said new gun laws would not be effective.
“The reason that gun control laws don’t work is that they require the cooperation of a very unlikely source, and that is the criminal,” he said. “A criminal intent on committing a robbery or assault or whatever is not hindered by that law. He will do whatever, she will do whatever to get a gun.”
Nancy Robinson’s problem is that from the early 90s until now, background checks have been instituted nationally, and Massachusetts has passed numerous gun laws. Why did crime go down in the 90s, but it is going up now, when gun laws nationall have not substantively changed, and gun laws in Massachusetts have just gotten more strict? Maybe it was the basketball.
Chris Carney Joins Second Amendment Caucus
It would appear folks in the tenth congressional district have elected my kind of Democrat:
“As an avid sportsman, I value the time I spend taking my own children hunting. As a Member of Congress, I know that we must fight to preserve the Constitutional right for individual citizens to keep and bear arms. Hunting and shooting sports are valued traditions in Pennsylvania, and I will always fight to protect the Constitutional right to bear arms,†said Congressman Carney.
The Second Amendment Caucus is opposed to the banning of firearms, their accessories, their manufacture and their importation, and recognizes the right of lawful citizens to carry a weapon both at home and while traveling the nation.
“I have been vigilant to the assaults hurled upon the Second Amendment during my time in office and I joined the caucus to continue the fight,†continued Carney. “The Constitution is clear on this—Americans have the right to bear arms, and I will fight to protect it.â€
Good. Via SayUncleÂ