Over microstamping. I’m sure there are plenty of other states that would be happy to have them. You know, the North won the Civil War largely because all the manufacturing and arms making industries were located in the industrialized areas, mainly of the Northeast. If the South were ever to rise again, where’s all the manufacturing and arms making in the country now? More importantly, where does all our nuclear material come from? What city makes rockets? Just something for Northeastern elites to consider. What does the Northeast manufacture these days other than financial crises?
Category: Guns
Six Reasons Gun Owners Should Care About This Election
Remember, Barack Obama is the best pro-gun President of all times, according to the media, and these paranoid gun nuts are just a bunch of moronic hicks brainwashed by the NRA. This article in Forbes lays out the case for why that’s as big a lie as virtually anything else they’ve parroted this silly season:
More recently in a move unprecedented in American history, President Obama quietly banned re-importation and sale of 850,000 collectible antique U.S.-manufactured M1 Garand and Carbine rifles that were left in South Korea following the Korean War. Developed in the 1930’s, the venerable M1 Garand carried the U.S. through World War II, seeing action in every major battle.
I had kind of forgotten about this, because Presidents screwing us on importation rules has been a grand bipartisan tradition, but it’s certainly something to count against the President.
An Obama reelection presents an extreme risk of replacing at least one of five Supreme Court justices who have vindicated Second Amendment protections in the precarious Heller and McDonald decisions. If this were to happen, our right to bear arms might become a lost historical memory for future oppressed generations to read about.
This point needs to be pounded on until gun owners start to get it.
Still, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence continues to wage war on several fronts, most particularly attacking the constitutionally-sanctioned Second Amendment right of law-abiding citizens to carry guns for protection outside their homes, a right the vast majority of state governments acknowledge. According to their director of legal action, Jonathan Lowy, “this battle is far from over.â€
I think the Brady Campaign has largely beclowned itself under Gross, and is sliding further down the slope into irrelevance. Bloomberg and MAIG are the big threat now, and that’s another reality I think gun owners need to be made to understand.
UPDATE: First comment on that article illustrates an attitude you find often among gun owners who are ill informed:
No one…not even the President of the United States…can *legally* impose any restrictions on a citizen’s right to keep and bear arms. Until the Bill is Rights is abolished that right is just as important as any other right in the Bill of Rights. Can you imagine the uproar if some silly woman senator suggested “Common Sense restrictions on the right to free speech? The Second Amendment is the ONLY amendment to specifically state that the “right to KEEP and BEAR arms shall NOT BE INFRINGED.
So…what PART of “Shall NOT be INFRINGED†do these people not understand? No one has the right to tell *anyone* that they cannot only KEEP but also BEAR arms anywhere at anytime. Why? Because the Second Amendment does not have ANY provision for that. It’s really simple. But some law breaking “government officials†believe that they can force people to do what *THEY* deem as right. Well, it AINT gonna happen.
The unfortunate fact is the Second Amendment only means what 9 unelected men and women in robes say it means. Beyond that, it does not protect you. A great many gun owners don’t understand the existence and recognition of this right by the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, doesn’t mean squat unless the courts enforce it. I think this is an understandable, if naive view, that people in the government will act in good faith. They won’t. I think a good reason the Court argument may not be effective among gun owners is that they don’t really understand the magnitude of the threat. “It’s in the Constitution, and I can read,” they likely think, probably also remembering back to civics class about what it takes to amend the document. But while Judges can read too, judges also have agendas.
What seems clear can be unclear. I can remember being this naive once, back when I was first getting into this issue in a serious way, and someone told me the Second Amendment was ruled not to be an individual right. I couldn’t believe this was the case, so I looked up the Supreme Court cases on it, and couldn’t find anything that lead to that conclusion. But this did lead me to the collective rights work of Saul Cornell, and I was outraged enough by it to seek deeper knowledge, which was part of my transition out of that space. Sometimes I think when ordinary gun owners find out how this really works, they are going to be pissed.
Firearm Brass Art
This is pretty cool. Apparently the dark parts are done by burning gunpowder over the brass.
Telling Evidence from the Clinton Years
Dave Hardy has been browsing around the Clinton Presidential Library online, and finding some interesting gun control items.
Taxing a Right
This would seem to be the latest scheme of Illinois Democrats, in Cook County. If you can’t ban it, tax it. Unfortunately for them, taxing a right for the purpose of discouraging its exercise is unconstitutional. Even taxing a right for the purpose of raising revenue is probably unconstitutional, which could end up being a problem for Pittman-Robertson funding. There are other contexts where taxation of a right is completely impermissible, such as in free speech, per the case Arkansas Writers Project, Inc v. Ragland, or in the case of marriage, the Illinois Supreme Court already rejected a 10 dollar fee on licenses to fund services for victims domestic violence (ironically also implemented by Cook, “We’ll Blame the Law Abiding,” County). (Source: Implementing the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Volokh, Page 1542).
So Cook County is skating on very thin ice here. Thirdpower notes:
It’s funny that while the Democrats are screaming about voter ID laws ‘disproportionately effect poor and minorities”, their leadership are pushing laws that disproportionately effect poor and minorities.
That’s because they don’t really care about rights as a concept, and nor do they care about the poor or minorities. They are rhetorical bats with which to beat one’s opponents over the head with. The reality is pure power politics, where we revere and uphold rights which we find pleasing, and abridge and trash rights that we find unpleasant. The GOP and many on the right are just as guilty too, especially in and near Chicago, where power seems to be wielded for power’s sake a lot more than in other places in this country.
NRA Ads
Jacob doesn’t think too highly of this particular NRA Ad:
While I am sympathetic to the fact that 15 second spots are cheap, and that’s not much time to get the message through, what is the message here, other than our Second Amendment rights are under attack? And we don’t get to that until we cover a bunch of things that have nothing to do with the Second Amendment.
And why is NRA having such a difficult time this election talking about the real issue, which is who Obama will put on the federal bench, particularly the Supreme Court? Do focus groups show no one cares about the Second Amendment this election? Even among people who supposedly care about the Second Amendment? Do they show that no one understands or cares about the courts? I’ve heard Court arguments coming from Chris Cox, the head of ILA, but I don’t hear it coming from anywhere else in NRA. It’s like we’re “All In” this election, but only that Obama is bad. And why? Well, you’ll just have to take our word for it. It wouldn’t convince me if I wasn’t already convinced.
UPDATE: Here’s the 30 second spot:
Military and Personal Arms for Soldiers
A few years ago there were military commanders that were hostile to the idea of their soldiers having private arms, and tried to do everything in their power to discourage their soldiers from keeping their private arms, or outright forbade it in some circumstances. NRA got language inserted into a budget bill to prevent army commanders from maintaining records of private arms, or asking about them. That also prevented  commanders from inquiring about firearms ownership for soldiers that were suicidal. There’s a move to alter the language to allow military commanders to inquire about private arms for cases where they have reasonable grounds that a person is high risk for suicide, provided there is no power to confiscate said private arms. Extrano’s Alley thinks all this fuss is to miss the point that the high suicide rate among members of the military is due to low morale. I tend to agree, but I don’t frankly have a problem if military personnel ask about personal firearms in the context of suicide risk, provided they can’t order confiscation of them.
New York Times Covers 3D Printing for Guns
I was surprised to see something like this in the paper of making up the record, but I have to admit, the publicity Cody Wilson has generated with the WikiWeapon has been stellar. The Times overstates what the technology is currently capable of, but it’s getting better and cheaper. I think it will be some time before you can print a barrel. But the Times basically admits this technology will be impossible to control, though stop short of suggesting gun control is obsolete. As I mentioned, Wilson does run into the issue of the Undetectable Firearms Act, when it comes to making a firearm solely from plastic, or even mostly from plastic. But criminals will not be so encumbered, and the technology will continue to progress regardless of what the American government has outlawed.
Chicago Tribune All But Accuses NRA of Stabbing Obama in the Back
When he ran in 2008, Barack Obama sang from the National Rifle Association hymnal: “I believe in the Second Amendment. I believe in people’s lawful right to bear arms. I will not take your shotgun away. I will not take your rifle away. I won’t take your handgun away.”
It’s not surprising to see an interest group oppose a politician who breaks a promise. But the NRA is punishing one who kept his. This week, the group endorsed Mitt Romney.
So Obama never threatened to re-impose the ban on semi-automatic rifles disingenuously known as the “assault weapons ban?” He didn’t jeopardize the most important project we face right now, to define the scope of the Second Amendment in the courts, by appointing one justice who already voted to redact the Second Amendment from the Constitution, and another who likely will follow along as well? And the Obama Administration has certainly not worked with the UN to lay the groundwork for UN control over international trade in small arms? The Tribune acts like we’re insane to think anything other than confiscation matters.
OK, so Obama promised not to start a bloody civil war over by promising not to unlawfully confiscate private arms. That was never even on the table as a possibility, and it’s not a promise that was remotely hard for the President to keep. This is a straw man. It’s not the issue. The issue is that, objectively, Obama has put the Second Amendment in grave jeopardy though his court appointments, and is still on record as supporting banning the sale of a broad category of popular and common firearms. The case could be made that perhaps Romney didn’t deserve an endorsement either (given the Court risks, it’s not one I’d make this election cycle, but the case can be made), but that’s not what the Tribune has argued here. Sometimes I wonder if the media are just so many fools, or whether they think we’re fools.
The Space Cadets of the Gun Control Movement
Much like how satellites can be launched into various orbits, from low earth orbit all the way up to geostationary orbit, the gun control movement kind of works the same way. In the low orbit, you have MAIG, who mostly operate near to earth reality. The Brady Campaign have quite recently been firing their boosters to increase their orbital radius to more closely match that of CSGV. But there’s one group who just kept firing their booster, and is now headed out into deep space. That group is National Gun Victims Action Council, and Miguel has the latest coming back from the outer limits, and so does Thirdpower. No intelligent life to be found yet.