Guns – Page 334 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Constitution Day at the Local College

Sorry for the lack of posts this morning, folks. We spent our morning preparing for and afternoon attending the Constitution Day Fair at Bucks County Community College. They invited us to set up a table as NRA volunteers, alongside many other groups such as Students for Sensible Drug Policy, Lower Bucks Young Democrats, Bucks County Republican Party, Libertarian Party, Young Americans for Liberty, NORML, and even Occupy Wall Street. (I know I missed a couple of groups, but that just shows the range of organizations invited.)

Not that many people came by the fair, but a few folks came in to check everything out. Interestingly, any group that was either right-of-center or focused on talking about the Constitution had candy to give away. The Democrats and groups that one would normally consider left-of-center didn’t want to share candy with attendees.

We did speak with a guy who said he was writing an article for the school paper. He was mostly interested in confirming what he had heard that NRA endorses both Democrats and Republicans. We talked a bit about that history, and he took notes on the fact that NRA sends questionnaires to new candidates and grades incumbents based on voting records and questionnaires.

Ironically, our visit from a guy who said, “I support the Second Amendment, but…” was actually a Republican. He wants to ban semi-automatics. I assumed he was confused, but he did comprehend that they only fired once with each pull of the trigger. We didn’t pursue the discussion too much beyond that because I don’t know how far you can bring a person who wants a Second Amendment that allows banning guns people actually own. To make it even weirder, he said his dad is an NRA member. While this guy did know that one round is fired with each pull of the trigger, he was convinced that he could do some kind of spray shooting without aiming and hit moving targets even if he didn’t really know much about shooting guns. I guess it just goes to show you that you need to make sure you kids really understand how firearms work.

We also had a visit from a woman who wanted to know where she could get shooting lessons because she views learning the basic handling of firearms to be a safety issue – just like learning how to swim or any other personal safety concern. We, along with one of the Young Americans for Liberty guys, gave her several recommendations.

Perhaps some of the most interesting conversations overheard during the event when our table didn’t have visitors came from the Democratic representatives. Apparently, George Bush is running for President this year. Oh, wait, he’s not? You would not have known that to listen to their pitch. At this point, I wonder if some future history books will actually have mistakes listing either the election of 2008 or 2012 as Obama versus Bush.

As you can see in the pictures, we gave out Twizzlers. Given the pretty sparse crowd of visitors, they were actually pretty popular. College students love candy, and at less than $8 for 180 Twizzlers, it was a cheap and easy way to get people over to the table. A few of the students even picked up the bumper stickers.

We had several students and a couple of the staff come up just to thank us for coming out and representing the Second Amendment at an event like that. In fact, they now have interest in doing more events that feature policy debates and representatives of different sides of political issues.

While this event wasn’t huge for getting lots of new volunteers signed up, it was absolutely useful in reminding folks that the “gun lobby” is people. It’s 4 million NRA members who care about our rights. It’s even college students today who wanted to talk guns, but are still saving up for an NRA Life membership. We are real, and we do vote. We’re not representatives of some gun company as the anti-gun groups want to argue. We’re just average folks who care about Constitutional rights.

Constructing Statutes

Sean Caranna brings up a very interesting issue in Florida, regarding concealed carry. Depending on how your state’s concealed carry statute is put together can depend on whether a police officer can lawfully stop, and sometimes arrest you, if he suspects you’re carrying a concealed firearm. Some states generally outlaw carrying of a concealed firearm, and make an exception for persons licensed to do so. Other states make it illegal to carry a concealed weapon without a license to do so. Pennsylvania’s Uniform Firearms Act is constructed the in the latter manner.

I remember speaking to a lawyer who told me the slight wording in language, even though it seems to be the same, could be used by the courts to determine whether or not suspicion that someone is carrying a firearm could be a pretext for a stop. In the former construction, where concealed carry is illegal except by exception, it could be read as allowing for a stop, because carrying a concealed is a crime, generally, so the officer is justified in the stop to ensure the person falls under the exception.Â In the latter construction it can’t be a pretext for a stop, because it’s only unlawful to carry without a license to do so, so an additional element is required to make a stop. An officer must not only have reasonable, articulable suspicion that the person is carrying a concealed firearm, but also reasonable, articulable suspicion that the person does not have a license to do so.

New Jersey guns laws are constructed entirely the same way Florida’s carry law is. Firearms in New Jersey are generally illegal. You can only own them under exceptions to the general law. While it’s difficult to see how that can be a proper means of regulating a fundamental constitutional right, it’s one reason New Jersey gets away with abuses that it’s difficult to get away with in other state. Hopefully Florida can change the wording of its statute to fix this.

If It Was Really About The Children

Groups we’d see before the gun control groups we have now, if they were really concerned about saving children:

Coalition for Better Seatbelts
Brady Campaign Against Swimming Pools and Large Buckets
Coalition Against Plastic Bags
National Coalition to Ban Dangerous Household Chemicals
Pedestrian Policy Center
Medical Community Against Bicycles
Mayors Against Tall Stairs

Why? Because all of these things kill children more often than firearms. Also, I was thinking what’s with the huge surge in poisoning among adults versus children? You’d think kids would be more prone to quaffing poisons than adults. But then I remembered most of us like quaffing a certain beverage that is poisonous in large quantities. Then you also hear stories about drunks on the wagon slamming down rubbing alcohol in a last, desperate act. But I wouldn’t qualify that last one as accidental.

Compare and Contrast

Miguel has a link to the latest CSGV protest at the White House. I count twelve people. Meanwhile, last week, we had our Friends of the NRA Dinner for Bucks County:

Bucks County FNRA

That’s 81 people, who paid 45 dollars to show up, and then also forked out an average of several hundred dollars a person on games. Granted, this is the non-political branch of NRA — Friends of the NRA raises money to fund grants to support shooting sport programs, particularly youth programs run by groups like the Boy Scouts and 4H. In a single county, we can attract nearly 7x more than CSGV’s White House protests.

And I’d note that our dinner is new, and we’re hoping to grow it. Why? Because 81 is a sad turnout by Friends of the NRA banquet standards. The Liberty Bell Committee puts on a dinner in the City of Philadelphia that regularly attracts 250 or more. Chester County FNRA, hosting their dinner in Kennett Square, attracts 300 people. Montgomery County, also a new committee, but a few years older than ours, is up to 160. Biggest of all in Eastern Pennsylvania is the Lancaster Friends, who put on a dinner with 800 or more, such that they have to run the dinner buffet style, and keep it running all night so that everyone can eat.

The gun control movement in decline (GCMD?) keeps denying they are up against real people. NRA? A toadie for the gun industry who just wants to sell more guns. NRA is an organization that’s brainwashed a small number of extremists. Guns are not a grassroots cause.

But the truth is that a small number of extremists would seem to more accurately describe their movement than ours.

The Mental Breakdown of the Gun Control Movement

Thirdpower has been diving the wreck, and finds a whole lot of crazy. Namely Elliot Fineman of National Gun Victims Action Council:

I wonder how he can claim this being that he’s previously claimed that ‘There is no such thing as a law abiding citizen‘? Is he saying there’s no gun homicides? Being that he’s in Chicago, how does he then explain Chicago Police Dept. reports stating that87% of the homicides committed in the cityÂ are by those w/ prior arrest records (pg56/57)?

I can probably clear up the gun control narcosis here. This seems to be a common claim now by the gun control crowd. It’s not true, but those in the gun control movement who’ve now made a hobby of erecting and tear down straw men focus very heavily on the “law abiding citizen,” and we’ve had to endure taunting and mockery from individuals who couldn’t argue their way out of a wet paper bag.

I say the other side is erecting straw men here because no one argues that the proxies we used to try to determine one’s proclivity toward criminal behavior are perfect. Given that the Minority Report was a work of fiction, the best we can do is to use some form of proxy, and there is no form that would be perfect. The only logical conclusion one can come to, based on the rhetoric of anti-gun activists, is that because some people may go on to misuse their guns, that no one should have them. Any time they use this argument, it’s neo-prohibitionism on display. This is the continued de-professionalization of the gun control movement. The professionals have left the building, leaving the people those professional were front for exposed to us. It’s a sad spectacle.

Which then leaves us with MAIG, the only professional gun control organization remaining, and the only one making arguments in a post-Heller world. MAIG’s focus is on the proxies we use. We categorically reject the lack of due process involved with many of their proposals, but they have, so far, avoided the kind of amateurish arguments you see from the groups in decline.

NYSRPA Beats a MAIG Mayor

I’m starting to think the best way to deal with Bloomberg’s illegal mayors is to play whack-a-mole with them. When they express ambitions for higher political office, we squash them like bugs. We’ve have a reasonable amount of success spoiling the political aspirations of MAIG mayors here in Pennsylvania, and it looks like Jacob is managing to play whack-a-mole with MAIG mayors successfully in New York as well. This would be the strategy of waiting for the enemy to come to you, rather than engage in a costly and tiresome campaign of search and destroy. If we can make MAIG membership poison for seeking higher office, especially Republicans looking to win primaries, it’s one way to weaken Bloomberg substantively. *

* A note for our anti-gun friends, who seem to freak out on Twitter when I blog in metaphor: I am not speaking of literally going to war with Bloomberg’s Mayors, nor am I litterally speaking of search and destroy missions. I don’t even have the choppers for that (though I do have some loudspeakers that could blareÂ WalkÃ¼renritt).Â Also, I am not literally speaking of poisoning anyone, nor do I think Bloomberg’s Mayors are small, burrowing rodents with poor eyesight who need to be beaten over the head. I do not mean to insult moles, which are fine and honorable creatures, by suggesting that.

I Guess I’m Building Another AR

I’ve been itching to build another AR for a while, but our Friends of the NRA Dinner last night got me the parts to get started, even though I didn’t quite win everything I wanted. The fine folks at Geissele Automatics, who are a local business right down the PA Turnpike in Norristown, donated a few free-float modular AR handguards, and three AR triggers, including one of their match triggers. Those items went to silent auction, except one of the triggers which went to the stretch raffle. I put bids in on all of them, and flooded the stretch raffle with tickets. I also bid on an AR-15 lower in the live auction, but that got Â bit rich for me. So I ended up with the hand guards. The triggers got bid up and I ended up out. I was pleased there were enough AR guys there to keep the bidding going in the right direction for the dinner.

So now that I have a start with the handguards, I guess I should think about a barrel. I’m looking for a 20 inch barrel that will shoot military spec ammo decently, but can also do reasonably well with heavier, longer bullets. I realize these things are tradeoffs, so I’d be looking to trade to shooting lighter, shorter bullets. I’m thinking perhaps that has a Wylde chamber would be beneficial too, though I’m not sure about that yet. I’d probably be best off going with a stainless barrel. I’m not looking for super top of the line, because I don’t want to fork out 400 or more for a barrel. So if anyone has suggestions for how to proceed, I would be grateful for the advice.

H&K Distances itself from Recoil Magazines

Maybe you don’t suck, and perhaps we don’t hate you.

Report Release on Florida Stand Your Ground

Via Dave Hardy, who notes “Not too surprising, since as I recall Florida never had a retreat requirement in the first place.” If I recall, Florida followed more closely to common law. Someone committing a felony you could shoot dead, which is going to be most cases in which a citizen defends themselves. You were required to retreat if you could do so safely otherwise.

The article is here, and of course, the best part is:

Gun control advocates immediately criticized the report as “disappointing,” saying it did not go far enough to determine the true impact of the Stand Your Ground law.

“If the state wanted to work with a real data analysis, then fund it. It became pretty clear that they are going to fail to do that,” said Ginny Simmons, director of the Second Chance on Shoot First campaign.

That’s Bloomberg’s group, for those of you wondering. The fact is that Stand Your Ground just doesn’t have much impact. The number of cases where duty to retreat would even have come up in Florida before the law are vanishingly small, and despite the fact that gun control groups lied their way into making SYG and issue in the Trayvon Martin case, it never would have been at issue either before or after the law went into effect.

Gun Polling in New York State

Someone sure wants to know what deep blue states think of gun control. Consider this Quennipiac poll:

52. Do you think the laws covering the sale 
of guns in New York State should be made more strict, 
less strict, or kept as they are now?

                     Tot    Rep    Dem    Ind

More strict          61%    40%    79%    55%
Less strict           8     14      4     11
Kept the same        28     44     16     31
DK/NA                 3      2      2      3

                     Men    Wom    Wht    Blk    Hsp

More strict          50%    72%    56%    83%    78%
Less strict          14      3     10      4      8
Kept the same        34     22     32     13     13
DK/NA                 2      3      3      1      2

Of course, if you want to know where that attitude comes from in New York:

                     UpStat NYC    Sub

More strict          49%    74%    62%
Less strict          12      5      7
Kept the same        35     19     29
DK/NA                 4      2      1

The same poll also shows overwhelming approval for gun rationining, once again, mostly from NYC. I’ll bet if you excluded Long Island and the other downstate counties, New York would look a lot different in terms of its attitude on gun laws.