Guns – Page 380 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Differences

I’ve been to every NRA Annual Meeting since 2004, save Houston in 2005 when I was starting a new job the week prior. At nearly every convention, businesses and staff typically welcome NRA members with open arms. Residents may not love the extra traffic, but they usually tolerate things for purposes of the millions of dollars NRA infuses into the local economy. (The exception may be Pittsburgh last year where, from what I was told, horrible is too kind for describing the traffic.)

There is one group that always seems to fret about the arrival of so many NRA members coming to town – bureaucrats. No Lawyers has a great illustration of that effect in St. Louis that appears to have just happened this morning. I guess that is the government worker’s version of a welcome sign.

UPDATE: According to a staffer here on the ground who saw the signs after they went up today, he says that not only are they new, but they are insanely huge. In other words, it leaves me wondering if, based on his description of how absurdly large some of these signs are, some bureaucrat seems to have been trying to send a message that gun owners aren’t welcome.

Justice Scalia’s New Hunting Partner

Justice Kagan? Perhaps this portends some positive news for the Second Amendment, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Consequences of Canadian Long Gun Registry Demise for Americans

Arma Borealis, an Alaska blog, has some pretty good discussion on the effects of the Canadian Long Gun Registry for Americans traveling through Canada. Apparently the long gun registration requirement had a very negative effect on Americans traveling to the great white north for hunting trips, into the 4 to 5 billion dollar lost range.

Keep in mind that the requirement did not ban Americans from hunting in Canada, they just had to register their long arms and obtain a 50 dollar license. The license fee is peanuts compared to the cost of a Canadian hunting trip, so if that many hunters, to the tune of billions of dollars, were unwilling to register their hunting guns, it should offer our opponents an example of why they will have such a hard time getting registration. There are certainly hunters out there who meet the classic definition of “fudd,” but there are also many, probably more, who have no more enthusiasm for registration than most hard core gun rights activists.

Challenge to Self-Defense Law

There’s an activist in Georgia who supposedly challenging SYG in federal court. In reality he’s challenging centuries of common law, and attacking the very core of self-defense:

“It is not clear what actions would create â€˜reasonable belief’ that deadly force is necessary,” said the suit filed in U.S. District Court in Atlanta. “An individual seeking to stand their ground and assert self-defense has no way of knowing if their â€˜reasonable belief’ comports with the standards protected by the law and [they] want to ensure that they do not subject themselves to criminal penalties.”

Reasonable belief has always been the standard. This case is pretty obviously a publicity stunt, and I don’t believe the federal courts are going to overturn centuries of common law and statutory law. Besides, after Heller, there’s arguably a constitution right to self-defense. But it’s worth noting that there are enough hucksters out there capitalizing off this case, that they’ll try anything, even attacking the very foundations of the rule of law, to make a name for themselves.

Back in the Black

Cemetery tries to shoot an IPSC match with black powder:

Shot a local USPSA match yesterday, signed up for Single Stack in Minor, since real black canâ€™t deliver the power factor needed for major.Â Maybe, just maybe, SWISS 3f can squeak byâ€¦..and what about Triple Seven?Â Triple Seven is noted to be 15% hotter than any black powder in each grade, so thatâ€™s a possibility, but thatâ€™s a black powder substitute, and we donâ€™t need to discuss such things here.

I once joked with Cemetery at a local blogger gathering, that he ought to carry cartridges loaded with pepper, and at meals unseat the bullet and sprinkle it on food, offering up “a little seasoning” to the folks around him to see if anyone accepts. I thought it would be a nice touch.

Our Money: As Good As Anyone’s

Local businesses are apparently quite excited to have the NRA in town this coming weekend in St. Louis.

That event, which drew 64,562 in 2007, stands as the convention center’s second-biggest ever. The expectation is for more gun enthusiasts this time, in big part because of presidential politics.

Republican candidates Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich all plan to pump their Second Amendment pedigrees during a forum Friday. Other speakers include NRA favorites Oliver North and Glenn Beck.

I’m guessing Santorum won’t be there now, but perhaps we will break some more records this year. My concern about topping the record would be gas prices being so high. But our people often surprise me.

I have no idea what I’ll be doing at Annual Meeting this year. I haven’t really thought that far ahead, and head is only a few days. Too much has been going on here to think much about it.

“With so many of our members within a four-hour drive, St. Louis is a target-rich environment for us,” Arulanandam said. “We had a very positive experience in St. Louis five years ago.”

St. Louis won that chance by default. The NRA had planned to meet that year in Columbus, Ohio, but the Columbus City Council voted to ban assault-type weapons. That’s also why it won’t patronize the home of the Cubs, the team the Cardinals are hosting this weekend at Busch Stadium.

I had forgotten about this. St. Louis was a last minute change of plans. It would be impossible to have the convention somewhere that banned “assault weapons” since the exhibit hall will be full of them. I’d like to make it a goal, in that case, to host the NRA Annual Meeting in Chicago. I want to hear Mayor Rahm say nice things about us because he wants our money, and there’s not anything he can do about our guns. It would be glorious. I’ll also make it a goal, before I shuffle off the old mortal coil, to attend an NRA Annual Meeting in New York City, because we’ve fixed enough laws to make it viable.

The Dreams of Bloomberg

He wants to build a rival to the NRA. Unfortunately, for that, you’d need actual grassroots, and I don’t mean a handful of mayors that have a higher rate of criminality than concealed carry permit holders. That said, MAIG is now the only gun control group out there who can give us a run for our money.

By way of illustration, a spokesman for the mayor sent over some examples of the group’s public lobbying efforts aimed at swingable officials, includingÂ a full-page adÂ in theÂ Cleveland Plain Dealer inwhich 50 Ohio mayors implored then-senator George Voinovich to fight a provision very similar to the concealed-carry reciprocity now under consideration in Congress.

Voinovich subsequently votedÂ against the amendment.

And Vionovich was forced into retirement because polls were showing he was going to lose. Was that all guns? No. But politics doesn’t work that way. As long as your coalition can swing close races then politicians will pay attention to you, because most races are close.

I’ve always been frustrated because our grassroots seem to be slow to wake up and slow to anger, but when something really hits a nerve, it leaves even me, who pays close attention to the issue, pretty surprised. On the issue of national reciprocity, the number of permit holders in the United States is roughly 5 to 6 million and climbing. There’s no politician in the world that wants to write off the votes of 5 to 6 million Americans out of the gate.

Effects of Civil Unrest on Guns Laws

Generally speaking, civil unrest is good for opponents of the right to keep and bear arms. The National Firearms Act came largely as a result of a perception of increasing lawlessness, and the Gun Control Act of 1968 most definitely came about after some serious civil unrest.

But Uncle notes that permits are up, and we’re looking at ammo shortagesÂ amid new fears of civil unrest. This raises a question. Has the dynamic changed? Is the public response to threats of civil unrest going to result in more gun owners and fewer people calling for strict gun control? Has the civil unrest pendulum swung in the other direction from what it was in the late 1960s? If that is the case, I’d really like to understand the driving factor that created this change in attitudes.

Assault on Pennsylvania RKBA

The media has been in full force lately trying to foil our agenda here in Pennsylvania. This article in the Scranton Times Tribune speaks against preemption enforcement. The surprising thing is they don’t mention the Martin shooting at all. However, The Daily Pennsylvanian, the newspaper of the University of Pennsylvania manages to get things mostly right, with only a few aspects of the legal issues surrounding SYG misstated, which is a better track record than most of the media is doing in this case. They do, however, continue to propagate the myth that Zimmerman was not arrested.

An environmental group is suing a gun club over lead shot pollution in the Delaware River. They are also suing because they do pigeon shoots there, and dead pigeons end up polluting the river as well, alleges the suit. I’ve looked at that club’s layout, and I’m doubtful that much shot is ending up in the river. Pigeons I can’t speak to.

The Express-Times of Easton, PA things our SYG law needs to be reviewed. Not surprising, given they know nothing about the law and continue peddling ignorance to the public about self-defense laws. Meanwhile the Times Leader of Wilkes-Barre runs an abysmal editorial that is very hateful of gun owners.

I’ll reiterate my call again to starve the beast!

A Gift For Our Side, Really

TBCKADOOT blogs about pant loads of PSH. It’s kind of like someone green lighted everyone in the media to say “It’s OK to hate on gun owners again.” One of my big fears headed into 2012 was that gun owners would be mostly asleep, and not really concerned about threats to their gun rights, since there weren’t any obvious and apparent threats, only subtle ones. Additionally, the media really did get better about the issue for a while.

Well, that’s not the case anymore. This has been a stern reminder for people on our side that they hate you. They hate everything about you just for the fact that you have a hobby and a philosophy that they find objectionable. That’s why I’m a big fan of pulling the plug and canceling your subscriptions to the local partisan rags. Starve the beast. I’ve even researched whether I could report the Bucks County Courier Times for littering on my property when they deposit one of their uninvited promotional copies on my lawn (still not sure the answer there). There are plenty of other publications and news sources out there that do a good job of reporting and analyzing the news.

Next is to show up at the polls and vote for pro-gun politicians in 2012. Our opponents are re-energized, and believe they can now beat us. I think they are counting their chickens before they hatch. They just don’t understand what a force our people can be when they get scared.