Category: Guns

Another topic people have been speaking about lately is “How do we create a pro-gun insurgency within the Democratic Party.” This is a great, worthwhile topic, because if the gun issue enjoys bipartisan support, our fortunes won’t rise and fall with a single party. So what drives success? What’s driven our success, and this works regardless of party affiliation, is the single issue voter, and it is through the single issue voter that we can win among Democrats too.

Reality is that most of us here aren’t single issue voters, but I think most of us are near single issue voters. In other words, I’d be hard pressed to vote for anyone who’s a hard core Bloomberg-backed gun control supporter, regardless of party. But I’d also be hard pressed to vote for a true communist, fascist, socialist, or theocratic candidate just because I agreed with him on gun rights. I voted for Bob Casey in 2006, despite Santorum carrying an NRA endorsement in that race, and knowing that Casey’s A rating was a promise (at the time, now we know it was a lie) rather than a record, because Santorum had pissed me off on too many other issues. So the single issue has its limits. But nonetheless it ranks very high in my political calculus, as it does most of yours. We have to have these folks in both parties in order to win, and that means getting more people to politically identify as gun owners. It doesn’t matter worth a damn whether someone owns a gun or not, what matters is whether they politically identify as gun owners. One of my biggest fears is that we continue to improve our standing in polling and public opinion, but start losing the single-issue voters necessary to keep winning elections. The former doesn’t mean squat if you can’t keep the latter growing too.

In truth we’ve already seen how a pro-gun insurgency works in the Democratic Party, because it happened between 2004 and 2006 with the Blue Dog wave that swept the Democrats into power. The Democrats had been in the political wilderness for some time, and gun control got much of the blame from Democratic strategists, so they started running candidates whose views on gun rights reflected those of the districts they were running in. Combine that with broad dissatisfaction with the GOP, and you had a recipe for the Democrats taking the House and Senate. We actually did quite well in the 2006-2010 Congress. Better than we’ve done since, in fact. The problem is that the Democratic strategists thought they could piss off their districts on every other issue and that gun rights would be enough to save them. They were wrong.

So how did we get from a Democratic House and Senate being willing to pass things like National Park Carry to where we are now? Well, because the Chicago political machine are talented snake oil salesmen who have convinced Democrats that gun control is a winning issue rather than a losing one. Additionally, conventional wisdom in progressive-left circles is that Obama has created a new progressive-left coalition that is destained to forge a permanent majority, so they no longer have to care what those cousin humpers in flyover country really think. This delusion is believable, because the Republicans have been floating some spectacularly awful candidates, and have been weakened severely by infighting between the tea party and the establishment. But the Democrats can’t count on that to go on forever. Part of making the Democrats pro-gun again is just to create a perception that gun control is a losing issue by continuing to defeat anti-gun Democrats, and to do that, we need single-issue Dems that are willing to cross the aisle when it counts. I think the overwhelming defeat of Angela Giron in Colorado is strong evidence that such folks exist.

So that’s what we ultimately need: single issue voters in the Democratic Party willing to vote in Democratic primaries for pro-gun candidates, and become involved enough in their local party races so that the people in the party know that there’s a gun vote to be pandered to. More importantly that those party leaders know that that gun vote will cross the aisle in a heartbeat if an anti-gun candidate wins. There really isn’t any insurgency involved. It just takes winning elections.

This time in “Runner’s World” of all places. I’m not sure why Runner’s World needs to stake out a position on gun control, but it does.

On Friday, I was booked to fly from Los Angeles to Eugene, Oregon. That morning, a gunman walked into LAX with a semiautomatic assault rifle and opened fire, killing a TSA officer and wounding several other people. Fortunately, I was lucky enough to be booked on an afternoon flight.

So he walked into a place where guns are banned, being from a state that banned the gun he was carrying, being in a state that banned the gun he was carrying, and what we clearly need are some more laws?

I propose: Ban assault rifles and handguns for everyone except police and military personnel. These weapons are made to kill humans and should be strictly limited. At the same time, allow responsible citizens to own rifles and shotguns.

If you think they are going to let you keep your rifles and shotguns for deer hunting once the rest of us are out of the fight, you have no idea what you’re up against, and I can’t help you achieve reality. The truth is those kinds of firearms work just fine for mass killing. Just look at the guy who shot up the Navy Yard in DC.

And I’d note I went through a similar thing in the Houston airport right after we arrived, and it didn’t scare me enough to advocate taking everyone else’s freedoms away, because I don’t believe in punishing the sane for the acts of the insane.

This guy is taking a beating on the Facebook page, and he deserves to.

The Democrats are already spinning that this a great victory for gun control, to be able to elect someone like Terry McAuliffe in Virginia. I will make no bones that I absolutely can’t stand Ken Cuccinelli’s positions on a range of social issues, but gun rights are sinking along with the Republican brand, and we can’t honestly afford too many losses before this whole game will be up. We can make a statement in other races. Bloomberg is spending dollars by the millions to buy elections in swing states. Take this article from the New York Times.

“I don’t think you’ve seen any Democratic candidate run in Virginia as rabidly anti-gun as McAuliffe has in the last two weeks,” said David Adams, legislative director for the Virginia Shooting Sports Association, the state affiliate of the NRA.

Cuccinelli reminds me a lot of Santorum, only without having a Bob Casey at least talking a good A rating as was the case in our 2006 Senatorial race. I would reluctantly vote for Cuccinelli were I in Virginia. Especially given that it’s coming out that a big Obama Donor is bankrolling the Libertarian ticket, and that the Libertarian candidate isn’t very err… libertarian.

So to Virginia gun owners, close your eyes and think of England. I’d be sure to get out and vote for Cuccinelli. You’ll only have to deal with him for four years.

It’s Tuesday, and time to clear the tabs. The news cycle is all about the collapse of Obamacare, and not guns. I guess we got our time in the sun pooping on the Obama Administration for a while, and now it’s other issue’s turn.

I’ll lead off with a non-gun story, just because it’s cool. Apparently someone shattered the cannonball run speed record, and cracked the 30 hour mark doing it.

Virginia Tech is not liable for failing to warn students about the shooter. The government won’t let you protect yourself if you’re a college student, but they’ll absolve themselves of any responsibility if they fail to protect you.

The last lead smelter in the US shuts down. I guess we’ll be importing all our lead from now on, or more accurately recycling most, and importing some. But no more lead manufactured from ore in the US.

Simple ideas for Simple Minds.

How NRA became ATF’s biggest enemy. But the fact that we can have some input into ATF’s operations, director and budget is one reason you don’t see a huge move to abolish the agency. Gun owners wouldn’t get that kind of input into the FBI, and the FBI will very competently violate your rights.

Facebook is become some lame thing old people use.

Government is magic. Highly recommended, though off topic.

Looks like Newtown might just want to be left in peace as the anniversary approaches, but the gun control groups and Obama Administration aren’t going to let that happen.

John Lott also takes down the new study showing owning a gun makes you a racist.

Ted Cruz speaks about Stand Your Ground.

More zero tolerance nonsense.

Landowner liability act finally passes the PA Senate.

Serving the people.

The media is still getting it wrong about assault weapons.

This is how we spell e-n-t-r-a-p-m-e-n-t

Billboards advertising jury nullification. More of this please.

Piracy has dropped significantly since ships are being armed. Who would have guessed?

Why people own guns. If someone asked me that, I’d have to ask “Well, which gun are you talking about?”

I’m wondering who floated this piece to the San Francisco Chronicle. It essentially says the reason that Fast and Furious happened was because the agency isn’t well funded enough. It takes an increase in federal funding to realize that deliberately allowing firearms to be trafficked to drug cartels is wrong? Really? The alternate message is that since the NRA apparently controls ATF’s funding, it’s really NRA’s fault that ATF can’t do its job.

The NRA’s efforts to control the ATF have ended up costing the bureau millions. An NRA-supported congressional appropriations provision prevents the agency from building a national gun registry. As a result, the 375 contract employees at its National Tracing Center in Martinsburg, W.Va., work largely without computers, relying on phone calls and scanned or microfilmed paper records to connect crime gun serial numbers to original purchasers.

Because if you put them into a computer, you have a searchable, national registry of what guns people own, that would actually have very little little missing information, given the number of dealers that go out of business. If the ATF and government are so concerned about what the West Virginia facility is costing, it’s always an option to shut the doors and destroy all the records. I’d feel a lot better if we weren’t always one hostile appropriations bill away from having a national gun registry, wouldn’t you?