We’re all familiar with it, but Kevin shows an example of how it’s done. And he’s right. It probably does terrify our opponents.
“That’s the smile you get from a new shooter – Every. Single. Time.”
Yep… and CBS is plastering all over now.
Category: Guns
The UK Slippery Slope
Apparently authorities in the UK are freaking out because a licensed gun owner killed his family with guns he was licensed for. It’s making Irish newspapers too. You hear our insufferably dimwitted opponents, who aren’t looking to ban guns, by the way, constantly making hay out of incidents like this as well.
In any pool of people, you’re going to have some who, despite the best efforts of the powers that be, defy the odds and act out spectacularly. It’s going to be rare, but it’s going to happen. There is no way to allow legal gun ownership and stop every misuse of legally owned guns, absolutely 100%. This inevitably leads to slippery slope where, unless someone steps up and accept that this is part of the cost of freedom, guns will eventually just be eventually outlawed for everyone.
Our opponents deride us for believing in the slippery slope. But I’m here to tell you now they are dimwitted people. I have run out of patience for them. In the past I have been more diplomatic, but I think now, we’re at a position where we can start calling spades spades. That’s not to say that every person who believe in some gun control is a thoughtless fool; I think reasonable people can disagree on some measures. But now that the reasonable folks have been swept out of the gun control movement, that leaves only the zealots, and I’ve been spectacularly unimpressed with them. I feel absolutely confident in calling them dimwits who we should not take seriously, and can successfully convince others not too either. Mockery, I think, should now be the order of the day, rather than serious engagement and persuasion.
Are These People Stupid?
You really have to wonder with some people. While the man who went on a rampage, killing some of his friends, then fled, and killed a park ranger, decided to save the taxpayers the cost of a trial, you still have people making dim witted statements as if the National Park rule allowing guns has anything to do with this:
Sunday’s fatal shooting of a Park Service ranger Margaret Anderson could have been prevented, said Bill Wade, a former superintendent of Shenandoah National Park, just outside Washington, D.C., who started his career as a professional ranger at Mount Rainier.
“The many congressmen and senators that voted for the legislation that allowed loaded weapons to be brought into the parks ought to be feeling pretty bad right now,” said Wade, whose term as chairman of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees ended Dec. 31.
Didn’t this guy end up shooting the ranger in question when he tried to run a road block? Is Bill Wade so thick in the head that he actually thinks this guys as going to notice a “No guns allowed in the park” sign and turn around, or turn his gun over to the cops rather than shooting them?
This has nothing to do with the law that allows people to carry guns in a National Park, subject to state laws. This incident would have happened just as readily had the previous rule been in place. I don’ think this is a debatable point, and anyone who tries is either being deliberately deceitful, or is a cosmic fool. I will leave it to the reader to decide which is the case in regards to Bill Wade. Neither of the possibilities are commendable.
Protecting Technology
The Second Amendment is a bit unique among our constitutional rights. In order to protect some rights, our Constitution places obligations on the government, as is the case in Fifth Amendment, which requires to government to indict via grand jury, and the Sixth Amendment, which requires the government to provide “a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury.” The rest of the Amendments generally forbid the government from doing things, like infringing on speech, quartering troops, or inflicting cruel and unusual punishment. The Second is not different in this regard, but I’ve heard some of our opponents in the gun control movement try to argue the Second Amendment has to be a unique case because it protects dangerous objects, and no other amendment protects objects. In that context, I find this recent law review by Eugene Volokh interesting, in regards to what constitutes “the press.”
But other judges and scholars—including the Citizens United majority and Justice Brennan—have argued that the “freedom . . . of the press†does not protect the press-as-industry, but rather protects everyone’s use of the printing press (and its modern equivalents) as a technology. People or organizations who occasionally rent the technology, for instance by buying newspaper space, broadcast time, or the services of a printing company, are just as protected as newspaper publishers or broadcasters.
Professor Volokh’s review takes a look at early case law, and demonstrates that protection of the press as a technology is the predominant one in American jurisprudence. It is actually surprising how much the early media resembled what’s grown organically from the Internet.
But it shows that the Second Amendment is hardly unique among rights in protecting the right to own an object. Implicit in freedom of the press is the right to own one, or the modern equivalent, which would be a computer, and an Internet connection. Computers and Internet connections can certainly be subject to heinous abuses, such as distribution of child pornography. One could even imagine it possible to kill many people by hacking into the right public works systems and disrupting them.
Yet, in most cases, the Government is quite limited in how it can restrict access to the press. Could the government ban child molesters from owning a computer? From an Internet connection? Actually, this is an active issue, currently. But far from being an extreme point of view, it’s completely justifiable to question whether the government can require a license for owning a firearm, when it can do no such thing for a printing press or a computer. Could the government even subject computer buyers, or Internet subscribers, to an instant background check? That’s probably of dubious constitutionality. So why is it to radical to suggest guns be treated in the same manner? It is only radical because our opponents, who are extremists, say it is. But in the realm of constitutional law, it’s a legitimate question.
The NRA App
I’ve been bugging folks at NRA that they need to do apps for iOS and Android apps for a while now. Looks like they’ve gotten around to producing one. Essentially it acts as a portal to NRA News, ILA alerts, and a lot of NRA’s social media efforts. As a just out of the gate app, I’d give a B-. Some things I’d change:
- Make a version that is iPad/Tablet enabled.
- Allow live viewing of NRA News, though it may do that. I’ll have to see when the show rolls around. But judging from what I see now, it does not have such a feature.
- Donate/Join/Vote/Contact should happen either in app, or go to highly mobile optimized sites. It looks fine from my iPad, but from my iPhone it’s not something that could be done easily.
- It should be using iOS push to get critical time sensitive information out to members. Members have to approve this on their devices.
- The “Near Me” feature is a good thing to have, and probably the best feature of the App, but the information provided is very raw. It needs a bit more refinement. For instance, when I search on clubs and associations, I get a lot of police clubs. Those aren’t relevant to me. Some of the information seems to be incomplete, such as local Friends of the NRA events, and I don’t see a complete list of matches in the area.
- Rep Finder should also be under “Take Action”
In short, I think this is a good start, but it could be a lot better. In general, I feel the app could be better organized. It makes some assumptions that you understand how NRA is structured. For instance, the uninitiated aren’t going to know what “ILA Alerts” are, and that the NRA Blog is only run by a subset of NRA, and is generally non-political.
I’d think a lot bigger on an app than just to act as a portal for various efforts NRA is already doing. It’s essentially a portal, but I don’t really feel it’s engaging.
Love for the XD
I’m interested in the poll linked over at Extrano’s Alley, asking which gun Emily Miller, a Washington Times reporter who jumped through all the flaming hoops to get a gun in DC, should buy. One thing I can say for sure is that on the Internet, there a lot of fans of the Hrvatski Samokres 2000, more widely known as the Springfield XD.
I’ve never really caught the XD fever. I’ve never seen what the advantage to an XD was over a Glock, except for being a little bit cheaper. When I’ve tried XDs, they feel pretty much the same, in terms of grip, as the Glock. They look like a Glock. And they have certainly borrowed some design features from the Glock.
But the Glock is much more widely issued both by major police departments and the militaries of several NATO members. This means parts are widely available, and the design has been proved by people who are hard on guns.
So what’s behind the XD love? Why would someone choose and XD over a Glock? Why would someone choose an XD over a Smith & Wesson M&P, which is seeing widespread adoption by major police departments?
Free Meredith Graves
By now you’ve all heard the story of the woman from Tennessee who made the unfortunate mistake of believing that New York City was part of America. I am late to this story, largely because I wanted to gauge the reaction, and think about how to use this story for the greater good. There’s now a Facebook group dedicated to freeing Meredith Graves. Amazingly, some New York politicians are speaking of changing the law:
State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Democrat whose district includes the 9/11 Memorial, wants to hold hearings on how New York City’s stringent gun laws are being enforced. Silver wants to find out if changes to the law need to be made.
We already have a proposed change to this law, and Mayor Mike is fighting it every step of the way. Perhaps a solution is to tell Hizzoner to withdraw his snout from other people’s business, and back off opposition to HR822. This problem will be easily remedied with HR822.
I think this woman is an excellent poster child for what’s wrong with how we’re treating a constitutional right in this country. We should rally behind her. It puts our opponents in the awkward position of having to explain how justice and public good are served by throwing a felony charge at a woman who is no threat to society. Their reaction will expose them for the extremists that they indeed are. Let us lead them there.
UPDATE: Over at NRO’s The Corner, Robert VerBruggen thinks this is a states rights issue. States rights is generally code word for states being able to flout their obligations under the 14th amendment not to “make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” So I strongly disagree. This is a federal issue and Congress is within its Section 5 powers to protect the exercise of this right from state and local interference.
UPDATE: Bloomberg libeled her by suggesting she had cocaine. According to Graves she had a crushed up aspirin in her purse she took for migraines. People like Bloomberg really shouldn’t be trusted to wield the power the voters have given them.
Even The British Papers are Noticing
A story about record gun sales, in the UK’s Daily Telegraph. The Brady folks are sticking with their story that gun ownership is really in decline. Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt, folks.
More Evidence of Brady Decline
Apparently they are trolling gun blogs and gun related sites anonymously. What’s more sad is that they didn’t realize that kind of thing can be tracked.
Bloomberg Bashing NRA With His Media Empire
I’m not surprised to see a piece in Bloomberg Businessweek, trying to dig up dirt on NRAÂ probably to try to discredit HR822, and maybe help push the IRS to investigate his claims:
A toaster that burns the National Rifle Association’s logo onto bread fetched $650 at an auction last month, just one reflection of the money-making power in the gun group’s brand.
The NRA, which began as a grassroots organization dedicated to teaching marksmanship, enters the 2012 election season as a lobbying, merchandising and marketing machine that brings in more than $200 million a year and intends to help unseat the incumbent president. From 2004 to 2010, the group’s revenue from fundraising — including gifts from gun makers who benefit from its political activism — grew twice as fast as its income from members’ dues, according to NRA tax returns.
The gifts from the gun makers do not go to NRA political activism. The toaster money raised don’t go to political activism (ours raised $400 from a reader who bought it). They go to the NRA Foundation, which does not participate in political activity. Indeed, it cannot participate in political activity.
More than 50 firearms-related companies have given at least $14.8 million to the Fairfax, Virginia-based group, according to the NRA’s own list for a donor program that began in 2005.
Again, mostly to the NRA Foundation to support shooting sports programs. What they fail to mention is that the amount donated by NRA’s 4 million members is orders of magnitude larger than what’s donated by the industry. That’s why this quite is insulting:
“Unlike organizations which start out controlled by industry and created by industry, like lobbying groups for coal or oil, they really started out as a grassroots organization and became an industry organization,â€Â said William Vizzard, a former agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms who’s now a professor of criminal justice at California State University in Sacramento.
They became an industry organization in Professor Vizzards mind, and that’s about it. If he can back this up, which he can’t, I’m all ears. I think the NRA’s response to requests for comments are highly appropriate:
“The NRA will not participate in agenda journalism driven by a news organization owned by an avowed enemy of the Second Amendment — a politician who has been aggressively working against the interests of the NRA, our members and the nation’s gun owners for years.â€
Bloomberg can keep this smear campaign up all he wants, but I’m here to tell him his nightmare is true. We’re going to hammer New York City’s gun laws on the relentless anvil of civil rights legislation and litigation. We’re going to beat Bloomberg into submission to the Bill of Rights.