Category: Guns

Did I sound a bit down in this post? I will admit to being a bit exhausted. I was up until past 3AM last night, because I spent all day following things that were coming in, talking to people on the phone, and getting my club into the fight, and various other things. That meant I had to make up time for work from after dinner into the wee hours. I was up early this morning just from poor sleep. Today will be a bit easier. Daily Pundit takes a look at the polling, and while it’s shifted a lot more than I’m comfortable with, it’s not time to preemptively give up… and I certainly wasn’t trying to say it was. At the same time I do try to be realistic about what we’re up against, though perhaps I should not do it out loud :)

Some folks have said it’s like 1994 all over again. I disagree. There are many factors that are different. Some play in our favor, and some don’t. But the ones that do:

• We have better access to the media than we did in 1994, such as this Dave Kopel article in the Wall Street Journal illustrates.
• Back in 1994, the standard competition rifles were the M1A, the M1 Garand and M1 Carbine. If people owned a semi-auto, it was probably more likely to be a Mini-14 than an AR or AK. Today those have largely been replaced by the AR-15, except for specific Garand or Carbine competition.
• That leads us to numbers. We have more far people that would be affected by a ban today than yesterday. My fear is that many of these new owners are not politically initiated, and will likely spend their time panic buying rather than trying to stop the predators of their rights.
• Anti gun groups are much weaker, relatively, than they were in 1994. They fought us for a decade on the Brady Bill, and when the dam finally broke, they were very strong, and NRA was at a weak point. I think part of the urgency you see how is that many on the left know if they can make no headway in the aftermath of this, they are finished. Keep in mind the stakes for them are every bit as high as they are for us. This works both ways.
• The media, overall, is less influential. We have plenty of new outlets to express ourslves and communicate.

Gun owners need to be quietly influencing things on social media. I generally don’t do politics on my FB page; it’s a way to keep in touch with friends, family, and coworkers. I am open about being a gun owner and a shooter. I have been making a personal appeals on this topic since yesterday, without making it overtly political. Are you going to be around family these holidays? Talk. Don’t shout about your rights, and get angry. Make personal appeals. We have to talk our way out of this, not shout our way out. Make your family, friends, co-workers, etc know how much some of these proposals would affect you. Most people don’t know what it’s like to be a gun owner and a shooter, if they aren’t one themselves. Frame it as being like someone demanding you turn over your car, without being compensated for it. Or suggest you can’t ever buy the car you like again, or sell or trade your car in, because some drunk plowed into a bus full of kids and killed them. Imagine if when you said that wasn’t fair, you were told the whole thing was your fault anyway for for being a driver and having a car fetish. Don’t let them get away with, “but cars aren’t meant to kill people,” dodge. Make them imagine that reality as a hypothetical. Make them think about how that would make them feel. When they reach that understanding, if they are capable, you follow up with

“That’s what it’s like being a gun owner. I had nothing to do with this, but I am told I am to be punished because of the actions of a psychopath. It is not conceivable that this could ever happen with cars, because everyone owns them and is familiar with them. But this happens all the time to gun owners.”

I think even the most hardened, but thoughtful person, could be made to understand that.

From Joe Huffman:

Clarke was an advocate of human rights. He was active in the abolition movement and and the education of women.

Today the basic human right of self-defense is under attack. We have strong conviction but in some people they have been trampled so hard and so deep for so long that they have not been expressed. Now it is essential to find your voice, find your convictions, and stand up against a great evil that is attempting to destroy our right to keep and bear arms.

Don’t let that happen. Don’t let the last decade of progress be swept away because of one mentally ill young man and a million mental midgets who think yet another restriction on guns would have made any difference in the Newton, Connecticut tragedy.

We are better than this.

Kudos for turning the Brady slogan back around on them. Joe doesn’t think a lot of us are being firm enough. I don’t think people are listening to reason right now. I don’t think they are in a mood for reason. As much as I appreciate someone suggesting I’m a Sam Adams figure, I do not have the temperament or style to be the kind of person who’s going to sound the charge and lead people into the fight, nor am I an effective agitator, like Adams or the late Andrew Brietbart. I got into activism because, frankly, I just wanted to be left along to pursue happiness in my own way. I’ve never considered myself particularly gifted at motivating people.

I should note that I do not believe we should preemptive surrender anything, but if I seem glum it’s because what I see coming in from the horizon looks dark and ugly. I don’t revel in the fight or conflict. Two weeks ago I was complaining to Bitter that it was difficult gun blogging these days because no one seems to give a shit about our issue anymore. Careful what you wish for, I guess.

“Police and other first responders arrived on scene about 20 minutes after the first calls.” Can someone explain to me how a magazine ban is going to matter worth a damn?

I’m not as fast as Joe, but over the course of twenty minutes, even 10 reloads (that’s 100 rounds) is not going to amount to more than 1/40th of that time. The problem isn’t that these guys don’t have time to reload.

UPDATE: I keep thinking about 20 minutes in my head, and how long a period of time that is. It’s just mind blowing. Did we learn nothing from Columbine about needing a fast and immediate response? The murderer could have taken a break for a cigarette and a beer, let alone a handful of magazine changes, or loading up a second gun.

Kurt Schlichter, who occasionally appears on Cam & Company, has this to say about having a conversation:

For once I agree with liberals. It’s high time to have a conversation about guns. Let’s start with the problem that there are far too few guns on our streets.

Wait, we can’t have that conversation. In fact, we’re not supposed to have what people might commonly describe as a “conversation” at all. We’re supposed to shut-up and listen as liberals, barely masking their unseemly delight at the opportunity, try to pin the murder rampage of one degenerate creep on millions of law-abiding Americans who did nothing wrong.

Read the whole thing. There’s a lot of anger out there on our side, and I think we need people out there being our cheerleaders. I generally tend to be a happy warrior, and after seeing so many “friends” on the right head for the hills in the wake of this, even I could use a pep talk. I’ve seen plenty of gun owners who basically say they aren’t going back to the 1990s. I believe them. I worry where this road is going to take us. More Americans, I think, should be worried too.

The overall big picture, the 30,000 foot view, to borrow a cliche, is that the huge election loss was utterly demoralizing for the center-right coalition. The left now believes they have a majority coalition, that they do not need to appeal to moderates, nor do they need to compromise. The November result has unleashed terrible forces, and after this tragedy, they are smelling the blood in the water. They see a path to cut us away from the center-right coalition and sweep us from the field. Those NRA assholes will finally get what’s coming to them! I don’t for a minute believe this is about grief. Grief is what we’re all going through. Grief is why many of us are late to this fight. Grieving people do not threaten to murder other human beings. At some point, we need to get our s**t together and start punching back, as Glenn Reynolds says, twice as hard, or we may see the terrible places this ends up going.

I think we’re going to get it shoved you know where. I think it’s only a matter of how far it get shoved you know where. Why? Erstwhile friends are running for the hills. Corporate folks are well known cowards, and it’s hardly surprising that Dicks is going to stop selling evil black rifles. More surprising is Cerberus selling Freedom Group, though I seem to recall they were looking for a buyer before. Freedom Group made substantial investments in the State of New York, an investment they probably figure is now going to be a bust, either because of state action, or federal action.

It is now the case that our backs are to the wall. Many will likely not want to hear this, but our choice is likely between bad and worse. But we have to fight. Our current struggle will determine whether we live to fight another day, or whether in the next several months, we watch everything we’ve built for the last decade fall apart. That is what is at stake now. The more we fight, the less we have to just bend over and let the other side savage us. We can push them back, if we show the resolve, and bring others to the fight.

Plans are shaping up for a protest of Sen. Joe Manchin who promised West Virginia’s law-abiding gun owners that he would respect their rights, and has now declared that he wants to ban guns that aren’t relevant to his interpretation of the Second Amendment – the right to hunt.

The organizer suggests that people do not open carry because of legal concerns, and another attendee has suggested some good ground rules: “No camo, no bullhorns, no sticks, no burning in effigy, we will get TV coverage… We need to be normal, just like at the meeting in the rotunda.” They are also encouraging the state’s gun owners to call his office because he’s apparently already feeling pressure.

Things are going to moving at a fast pace probably all this week, as the political struggle of our lives takes shape. There is a counter-petition at the White House petition site that’s up to 18,000 signatures. Surely we can do better than the gun control movement.