Guns – Page 130 – Shall Not Be Questioned

More on the I-594 Loss

The reason why 594 passing is bad news for gun owners everywhere is because it validates Bloombergâ€™s strategy. This is a new kind of gun control game, theyâ€™re smarter than the Brady Campaign and they have functionally unlimited resources. Yes, they played it smart in Washington. They picked an issue thatâ€™s easy to misrepresent in universal background checks; they played that issue to a strong blue voter base, and then they spent a ton of money on marketing and GOTV. Thatâ€™s textbook â€œWinning Ballot Questions 101â€³ and itâ€™s really hard to fight against.

I think Caleb has it right. The reason states with the ballot need to worry is because ballot fights almost always come down to money, and Bloomberg and his other billionaire asshole friends can afford to outspend us in state after state. The amounts involved are big money for us and pocket change for him and his buddies.

It’s mostly the western states that have the ballot. Pennsylvania does not have it, except for Constitutional Amendment, and before that can happen, a measure must pass two consecutive sessions of the legislature. I had hoped that we could get the margin narrow enough to Washington to tamp Bloomberg’s ambition in other states, but I don’t think that happened. This will be tried again, it’s only a matter of where.

This is likely why Alan Gottlieb was so eager to get a federal compromise on this issue. I can understand his desire to do that, even if I strong believe that Manchin-Toomey was the completely wrong thing to push. In the long run, the public largely supports the concept of background checks. Overwhelmingly so. We have to figure out a way to deal with that, and unfortunately, something that’s going to involve losing small over losing big.

So what can you do? The biggest issue is to educate gun owners. This is not about background checks. It’s about backdoor universal registration, and extinguishing the gun culture by eliminating the ability to even shoot with a friend and try each other’s firearms. The restrictions on transfer (not just change of title or sale) in the Washington initiative would essentially make it impossible to bring new shooters into the gun culture. Washington gun owners only hope now is that the authorities won’t actively go after marginal cases. But now, as gun owners, you’ll constantly be at the mercy of prosecutors and law enforcement any time you let someone else shoot your guns outside of the very narrowly defined exceptions.

UPDATE: Bloomberg is already working on several more states. Remember, there is no way he won’t be able to outspend us.

Everytown for Gun Safety is gathering signatures for a similar initiative in Nevada, and future campaigns are being planned for Arizona and Maine, according to Feinblatt.

So what do we do other than do our best to educate?

Elections 2014: How Did We Fare?

For me the big prize was Hickenlooper, and that race is still too close to call. Same with Malloy in Connecticut. I’m pessimistic, because close races almost always resolve in favor of the Democrat. Still, I’ll take giving them a close shave. Malloy especially, is a deep blue state incumbent Governor. That race should have been a cakewalk for him and it wasn’t. Hickenlooper also should have sailed to re-election. Things are still close in the Colorado Senate race. We won in Maryland, which was an open seat. That was surprising. Cuomo handily won re-election, but that was not a surprise.

We did not do well on the Background Check initiative in Washington. It passed about 60/40. The competing 591 got voted down outright. Billionaire assholes can buy elections folks. That result means they will try that again elsewhere where they have the ballot as a weapon. Oregon gun owners: I’d be getting nervous.

All in all, I don’t think it was a bad night for gun owners, but it was not as good as it could have been, when compared to how the GOP did as a whole. The GOP would do well not to take this election as a mandate. This was a vote repudiating Obama, not a vote for the GOP. They just happened to be lucky enough to be the not Obama.

Monday Mini News

Now that I am firmly back from our trip to Oklahoma, I’m sorry to report I still have the client to deal with. That is, however, starting to wind down. So I should have a little more time for blogging, though I’m hoping the news cycle gets more interesting.

No tears for corrupt tyrants: Co-founder of MAIG, Thomas M. Menino dies at 71. I won’t celebrate, but I can’t say I’m sad to see him depart this earth.

“Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure… than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”

Why the Washington State school shooting incident seemed to fade so quickly. Remember that the I-594 vote is tomorrow as well, if you live in Washington State.

Tam laments the destruction of so many M14s. Personally, I think they’d even be safe handing them out with the auto sears still in place and working. I’ve fired an M14 on full auto. About the only thing you’d accomplish firing that rifle on full auto is emptying the magazine quickly.

Good news department: people are giving up on gun control.

More gun control advocates get busted for doing “research” only using Google.

Shooting .22 pellets out of a rifle with nail gun cartridges. Looks like it moves that pellet pretty fast.

A settlement has been approved in the Class Action suit against Philadelphia for disclosing License to Carry records.

Imagine where their movement would be if it wasn’t for rich assholes.

Also, Tom Corbett is probably going to be toast tomorrow. I actually place most of the blame for that on the Senate Republicans, who are wed to the establishment and special interests. The Sandusky scandal certainly is a large factor as well, but perhaps that could have been overcome if Corbett actually managed to accomplish something. He’s been good for gun owners. Wolf will not be. Republicans in this state need to do some hard reflecting, because the establishment here is killing the party.

CSGV Silencing the Voice of our Nation’s Veterans

Both Thirdpower and Miguel have been covering the latest unfolding saga involving the mouth foamers at the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. I headed over to their Facebook page, and boy, there is an awful lot of one sided conversations going on in that thread, because the other side has been deleted. At least our veterans forced the CSGV intern to work through the weekend deleting comments instead of doing whatever it is interns do these days. Screen caps are forever though.

They can’t really claim to be deleting flames and trolls, since they seem to be quite content with leaving flames and trolls that agree with their point of view. Remember that these groups were on the ropes before Sandy Hook. Every nut job on their Facebook page is a potential donor, and it’s donors they need to save their phony baloney jobs.

Tomorrow is the Day

This is an unusually good piece with Wayne LaPierre. He often comes across as kind of wooden and teleprompted. But this is pretty good:

And I can’t argue with the message. This election is the first major election where we get to express our disapproval of the politicians who sided with Bloomberg and conspired to punish us for the actions of a madman in Newtown, CT. There’s a good chance we can get both Hickenlooper and Malloy tomorrow, but that isn’t going to happen unless we vote.

Candidate X or candidate Y may not be ideal, but punishment first. We’ll deal with the new boss’s issues in time.

Headlines You Don’t See Anymore

One day of our trip involved arguing with the Oklahoma State Department of Health for access to family death certificates and a much more exciting stop at the Oklahoma Historical Society’s Research Center. Looking for obituaries seems a little morbid, but it’s actually kind of fun to read the old newspapers while you’re searching.

This is one headline from the 18 Jan 1912 edition of The Leedey Times of Dewey County, Oklahoma that you’d never see today.

Before anyone jumps on the editor for using shotgun and rifle like they are the exact same thing, I suspect that was more for the visual space in the headline. I think rifle would have been too short and left too much whitespace. I find it hard to believe that a newspaper editor in rural Dewey County wouldn’t know the difference.

Hump Day Mini News Links

I keep saying I want to wrap up with this current client, but things keep coming up. So I’ve been in “I think I can wrap this whole thing up in the next few weeks” mode for the past two months. So I dare not say things should be returning to normal in a few weeks, but maybe! At some point, the project will end and I’ll be on to other things. Anyway, here’s some news links. Not too many this time, because to be honest, I haven’t even had time to gather links:

Don’t bring a knife to a gun fight.

What’s wrong with Oregon Republicans?Â Oregon is dominated by the Portland Metro area, so there’s not much hope for the GOP there. The GOP’s weakness in Pennsylvania, however, is almost entirely the fault of the GOP. The party in this state is sclerotic.

Holder: gun control among biggest failures. Happy to disappoint ya there Eric. I would imagine it was a tough thing to weigh his greatest failure.

John Richardson points out some other players in the I-594 initiative in Washington State.

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a gun forfeiture case.

Glad to see Clayton Cramer has been doing better, but he’s still having some ups and downs. Hitting the tip jar would probably help. Money may not buy happiness, but the lack of it can certainly bring on a lot of misery.

Just another Everytown grassroots spokesperson who happens to work pretty high up for the Mayor’s office in New York City. It’s astroturf as far as the eye can see!

DC gets smacked down by the judge who ruled their carry ban was unconstitutional, but their new ordinance still has to have a hearing. Let’s hope the judge has read this.

A civil rights victory in Idaho! Ban on carrying guns on Army Corps of Engineers land is struck down. Right now this only affects the District of Idaho.

Mass shooting in Canada. Multiple shooters would seem to suggest terrorism.

Veteran Stands Up to Antis in Illinois

This comes by way of Legal Insurrection:

Confront them everywhere they appear. Never let them own the field.

The PA Supreme Court Controversy

Ace has a pretty decent write-up on the controversy on the Pennsylvania Supreme Court surrounding Justice Seamus McCaffery, who got in trouble for sending around raunchy e-mails on state computers. Apparently Justice McCaffery and the Chief Justice Castille don’t get along too well with each other. At the end, Ace notes:

Philadelphia Magazine says the war is partly about the power to supervise all of Pennsylvania’s state courts — power Castille doesn’t trust McCaffery with.

I don’t really have much of an opinion on the controversy, and perhaps Chief Justice Castille has legitimate reasons to be worried about Justice McCaffery. But I should note there’s a gun angle to this, in that Justice McCaffery is friendly to the Second Amendment, and Chief Justice Castille, a former Philadelphia District Attorney, has not been.

Supreme Court justices are elected in Pennsylvania, and McCaffery has carried an NRA Endorsement, and has spokenÂ NRA Annual Firearms Law Seminar. I thought his talks were entertaining and funny, as Supreme Court justice presentations go.

Educating Our Opponents

It would appear that Pennsylvania gun owners may need to work a little harder to educate our opponents.

I don’t mean that we need to educate them on how firearms actually work or on the historical lessons of the Second Amendment – they’ll never listen to those messages.

What our opponents need is a return to elementary school spelling classes, perhaps with a mix of middle school civics to supplement their lessons.

.@SenTomlinson Vote no on Alloway emendment to HB 80 #PAgunsense

— CeaseFirePA (@CeaseFirePA) October 16, 2014

This tweet, with the creative spelling of amendment, went out to at least 26 Senators. I get that typos happen (don’t even get me started on how many people I see who add an extra ‘m’ to the word), but in a call to action tweet sent from a professionally staffed organization to over one half of the members of a legislative body, that’s a pretty sad mistake.

I hope that people on our side of the issue will remember to double check your tweets and messages before you start writing to lawmakers.