Category: Guns

Professor Adam Winkler has a pretty good analysis. Let me quote a bit:

Focusing on assault weapons played right into the hands of the NRA, which has for years been saying that Obama wanted to ban guns. Gun control advocates ridiculed that idea—then proposed to ban the most popular rifle in America.

Gun control advocates have told me the assault weapons ban was intended to be a bargaining chip. Ask for the moon, settle for less—in this case, universal background checks. If that was the strategy, it backfired.

This is all stuff I didn’t want to talk about before a vote, because you don’t interrupt your enemy when he is in the middle of making a mistake. This was a ridiculous strategy, because by putting gun and magazine bans on the table, it made it possible to wake up millions of gun owners and getting them to paying attention. Traffic on this blog has been at record levels the past several months, even on search traffic for specific bills.

The Democrats then poisoned their own well even when it came to things like expanded background checks, by putting forth Schumer’s ridiculous language that moved to cover even temporary transfers, making handing a gun to someone in the wrong circumstances a 5 year federal felony. Now the meme is out there in the heads of a lot of gun owners “When they talk about background checks, that’s not what the bill is really about.” Those of you who are regulars, and not new to these parts, have known that for some time. But now we’ve educated a lot of people. The next time they come at us, we’ll have more allies than we did before.

Megan McArdle has more on Winkler’s piece, including why the “asking for the moon” strategy was never going to work:

In fact, by demanding too much, you can often worsen the chances for a deal.  That’s why negotiators typically start off with a price that’s outside the [Zone of Possible Agreement], but not so far outside that you shut down negotiations.

The Senator from West Virginia notes:

“If people want to blame, I guess you blame me,” Manchin told reporters at a Wall Street Journal breakfast. “I just never knew how hard it was to get the facts out. I think there is a lot more I can do to get the facts out.”

Getting the facts out isn’t the part that’s hard. It’s writing a bill that actually does what you say it does that’s hard. Every I must be dotted and every T must be crossed. Gun owners have zero faith in “just trust us,” or how certain statutory language is going to be interpreted by those who enforce the laws, or how it’s going to be interpreted by the Courts. Manchin-Toomey was a sloppy bill, no matter how you look at it. The unfortunate thing for us is that Manchin-Toomey will be the basis of the next attack as soon as they have a pretext.

“His universal base bill is gone. That bill’s gone,” Manchin said. He said that if Manchin-Toomey had appeared shortly after the Newtown shooting, it would have passed easily.

The President and his allies completely poisoned the well on this issue, by coming at us with everything and the kitchen sink. They insulted us, dismissed our concerns, and tried to screw us in every way their warped minds could dream up. Gun owners woke up like I haven’t seen since I’ve been involved in this issue. I think he’s right. If they had been politically saavy and understood where the center of this issue had really moved to, I’m not sure we could have beat a Toomey-Manchin like bill out of the gate. What we have to be cognizant of is that they will not make that mistake again.

It’s inevitable, according to her:

“It’s a matter of time,” Pelosi said Thursday during a press briefing in the Capitol. “It might be inconceivable to the NRA that this might happen; it’s inevitable to us.”

As soon as they have the next pretext, they will be back standing on the graves of the dead. You can count on that. And next time, they might not make the same mistakes. We have to be vigilant.

I’ll start off with Joe, who reflects pretty much how I feel:

Yes. It was shameful that so many people put so much effort into attempting to infringe upon a specific enumerated right. This forced millions of other people to put their own effort into stopping that attempt. The entire country, especially the politicians, had important other things to do and we had to take time out to fight the statist scum.

I’ve wasted a lot of time outside the blog fighting this. I’ll keep up the fight for as long as necessary, but I honestly have better things to do with my time. Thanks, Mr. President, you asshole.

Jacob notes the anti-gun meltdown. Their tears are sweet.

Investors Business Daily: Exploiting the Families of Sandy Hook Victims Backfires.

Instapundit: Anger has always been their hallmark. Also: “This sort of politics may be emotionally satisfying to Obama’s base, but Obama’s base wasn’t big enough to pass the bill.”

Robb: A brief respite. They will be back, you can count on it.

Tam: “Team Gun Control is positively frothing on Facebook. If I had a car that ran on hippie tears, I’d be set for years.”

SayUncle points to another sad clown.

Dave Hardy has some headlines, notes an amusing Christian Science Monitor headline from three days ago. Also, “But no, the antigunners couldn’t win, even going for a very small victory and paying a very big price, and with the media cheering section in full play and the Executive applying every tool it had. (For those not experienced in DC, that includes private offers of big grants and pork to legislators, and denial of favors to those who oppose).”

Krauthammer thinks the emotional blackmail didn’t help their case.

Miguel is feeling the love, and notes Obama is a sore loser.

The responses of the increasingly irrelevant old-line gun prohibitionists.

Obama and OFA already planning for round two. One thing we can all be proud of is that we’ve shown we can beat Obama’s machine.

We’ll cover the one amendment vote. Blumenthal is up on the stage emotionally blackmailing the Senate and American public by standing on the graves of dead children. He’s also saying they won’t give up. They will keep pushing for gun control laws that would have done nothing to prevent Newtown. He’s thanking a lot of people for their efforts, but he pretty clearly is acting like he’s been beaten. We have to keep beating these people. Now is not the time to go back to sleep.

Vote on the Barrasso Amendment

This is the amendment that would make information private. Looks like a carrot and stick approach with federal funding. From Thomas.gov: “To withhold 5 percent of Community Oriented Policing Services program Federal funding from States and local governments that release sensitive and confidential information on law-abiding gun owners and victims of domestic violence.”

Wow, Pat Leahy is suddenly a federalist.

Barrassoo Amendment, by 67-30, is Agreed To

Vote on the Harkin Amendment

Tom Harkin (D-IA) is speaking for his amendment, noting it would reauthorize certain Department of Education programs in regards to mental health services, intervention, and suicide prevention.

Lamar Alexander (R-TN) notes that this bill was unanimous in committee, and urges a yes vote.

Harkin Amendment, by 95-2, is Agreed To

The Senate is now in recess. This concludes our coverage. I should note that I don’t think either of these amendments were replacement amendments, meaning they are still attached to a gun control bill that doesn’t really have a chance of passing.

Many thanks to all of you who called, wrote, or otherwise got involved in this fight. If you had told me back at the beginning of the year we’d be where we are right now, I’m not sure I would have believed you. I thought we were going to have to bend over and take something. Also, a big thanks to Bitter, for taking over covering the Senate when I was unable to. That coverage was a joint effort, even if I started the post, and I could not have done all that on my own.

While we are not out of the woods yes, I think we can all give ourselves a big pat on the back for winning round one. They will be back for more, and there will be 2014, which will be critical. We cannot allow the gun community to return to their slumber. The gun rights machine is fired up and engaged, and it’s important to keep everyone involved so that we can not only push our opponents back, as we have done today, but drive them to political extinction. We came very close, once again, to achieving National Reciprocity in the Senate. We won today because millions of gun owners woke up and did something. Let’s hope we can keep that up.

No vote on either gun bans or magazine bans cracked a bare majority of a Democratically controlled Senate, with the full weight of the White House and Bloomberg driving the anti-gun effort. We have succeeded in moving the center of this issue to the point where gun bans are practically a third rail. That is a great victory.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go get a nice bottle of champagne to celebrate with over dinner. I think that’s worth celebrating.