We had a pretty good narrative going there about our opponents using 9/11, and then someone at NRA had to jump in and ruin the party by doing something stupid. The anti-gun groups are busy shaming NRA for using the 9/11 anniversary to fundraise for itself, and they are right to. If you’re going to do a fundraising mailer, or e-mailer, using 9/11 as your catch, you ought to at least make sure it’s clear that money is going to be earmarked for programs that benefit our soldiers and/or first responders. Otherwise it’s just poor taste.
Category: Guns
Another Open Carry Dust-up
I think Open Carry is a poor choice in populated areas when you have other options (CCW) to be armed for personal protection. I vehemently believe that you should NOT carry a gun for political reasons, but solely as a means of defense.
Snarkybytes doesn’t like Pincus’s statement at all. Uncle is somewhere in the middle. I’m not willing to say that carrying for a political purpose is wrong. My message has generally been to just be smart about how you go about it. That only part of Rob Pincus’ statement I really agree with is that OC is a poor choice in populated areas looking at it strictly from a tactical point of view, unless you’re carrying in a holster with proper retention and have had some level of retention training. That’s not, IMHO, a justification for banning the practice, but personally, it’s not something I’d be comfortable doing absent retention training.
Here’s my real problem with suggesting that carrying for political purposes is wrong. It could end up being that the Supreme Court rules that open carry is constitutionally protected, but not concealed carry. There are a few state right to keep and bear arms cases that mirror this position. While I think it’s probably more likely the Court will just protect carry, and leave to the states the manner in which they choose to regulate the practice, there is a chance they could adopt the position that only open carry is protected activity, and that as long as it’s allowed, the states can ban concealed carry.
If that’s the case, we’re going to need people to carry for political reasons, while state and local authorities in hostile jurisdictions are taught a lesson in exactly what “right” entails. Those early individuals are going to be carrying more for political reasons than reasons of self-protection. It’s hard for me to see, however, why that would be wrong.
A Futile Attempt to Become Understood
Joe Huffman has spoken at great lengths about our opponents inability to distinguish Truth from Falsity. To be fair, I don’t think that applies to all our opponents, but certainly many of them we’ve encountered in the wilds of the Internet. This has me wondering if they can even comprehend our arguments at all. I’m not sure how there can be a dialog when there’s not even a basic grasp of the subject matter at hand, or any real understanding of what we believe at all:
And so, dear readers, I have argued that someone with a loaded gun in a public place will not be able to save the day to protect themselves or others for some of the very reasons expressed in the comments above. I mean, the shooter might have an overwhelming arsenal making your pistol ineffective; people freeze up and can’t believe it’s happening; this is a perfectly normal human reaction; the police are actually trained to deal with situations like this and permit holders are not necessarily, etc. etc. It is amusing to watch these folks turn themselves into pretzels to argue with common sense and then saycommon sense things themselves.
The problem is, our dear Brady Board member has erected all manner of straw men in her head about what gun owners believe, and virtually none of it is fact. She believes in a caricature of gun owners, and desperately wants to cling to that caricature, no matter how often the fairly rich tapestry of our lot walks by her virtual playground on a regular basis. Understand that most of us are not trying to be mean, nor do we expect that she’ll come around to agree with us. I think the reason people waste their hours attempting to comment on Common Gunsense is that they want to be understood. They don’t expect agreement, or capitulation, rather they are looking for that point where each side understands the other, and there at least is agreement to disagree. The great frustration with so many of the folks on the other side of our issue is, there’s not really any hope of reaching that point.
I have come to the conclusion that trying to get to that point of understanding with her, and people like her, is a futile act. They are either incapable, or unwilling to come to that understanding.
9/11 No Big Deal
Our opponents seem to be continuing the meme of “9/11 was really no big deal. Those icky guns have killed way more people than box cutters and well-fueled jets, so you should be paying attention to our issue,” even on the anniversary of 9/11 itself. What a winning PR message.
Let the Hysterics Begin
Looks like the powers that be, owned by certain a egomaniacal Mayor, are nervous as hell about HR822, as can be seen in this article. It’s a really good mix of both hysteria and misinformation. For instance, the bill would not allow a resident of New York City to carry on a Florida license, only people who resided out of state. This won’t help people in may-issue states carry in those states.
The bill “effectively prevents a state from controlling who has guns within the state, which has always been a core police power function of state government,†said John Donohue, a professor at Stanford Law School, who said he thinks it would be held unconstitutional. “It is so ironic that it is the conservatives who are trying to push this encroachment, since they usually are very active in championing states’ rights.â€
Segregating schools used to be a core police power function too, you know. How about coming up with an argument that’s actually compelling, professor. Here’s some other interesting opinions:
While the Constitution’s commerce clause gives Congress authority to regulate commerce between the states, the reciprocity bill probably wouldn’t fall within that power, said Weisberg, the law Stanford professor who serves as faculty co- director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center. Nor would it fall under Congress’ power to enforce such existing constitutional liberties as the right “to keep and bear arms,†he said.
That’s funny because the federal law barring felons from possessing firearms and ammunition is based on the exact same commerce power that the reciprocity bill is based on. So why is it constitutional for the federal government to prohibit possession by felons, and unconstitutional for it allow possession by the law abiding on the public streets?
Buy One Get One Free
Thanks to the generosity of some fellow bloggers and NRA friends in Arizona, we have three tickets for our Friends of the NRA dinner this Thursday to give away to the first three people who buy a ticket. So for the first three folks, if you can make it, and buy a ticket, you can bring a spouse, child, or friend with the freebie. If you bought a ticket in response to my previous post, feel free to chime in to the comments if you want one of those tickets. I’ll announce if/when the three tickets are spoken for.
More on the Guns Laws of the Old West
A quite excellent post from Extrano’s Alley that quotes several books which suggest that gun control in the old west was, at best, selectively enforced, and generally speaking not enforced at all. I think that would suggest, again, at best, that law enforcement in those towns used it as a tool to lock up troublesome outsiders.
I’ve also heard, anecdotally, from people who lived in the South prior to the advent of shall-issue laws, that carry laws were generally not terribly well-enforced there either, and it was common practice for law enforcement to look the other way if the gun you were carrying wasn’t some cheap piece of crap more commonly carried by criminals rather than respectable folks. It would be interesting to study, given that gun control laws were mostly passed in order to keep undesirables (who varied a bit depending on where you were in the country) from carrying, whether the advent of the shall-issue concealed carry movement came about when those laws started to be more more equally and fairly enforced.
Brady Jobs Program
Kaveman notes they are looking for a few good (wo)men. Concentrating on building grassroots is the top priority of their next President. I hate to break to the Bradys but grassroots are generally a bottom up thing, not a top down thing. NRA exists from the bottom up. It did not create its grassroots, it’s grassroots created it (or took it over, more accurately). I don’t predict Brady will have much success in this, because they are going about it wrong. The big disadvantage they have over us is that anti-gun is not a hobby. Shooting is, and one that is practiced by millions of Americans. That gives a natural base of support on which you can build a grassroots-based movement.
What, strategically, are the Brady’s are facing? They need grassroots, but they are also desperate for funding. There are communities who would probably be natural sources of anti-gun activism and energy, but those are going to tend to dwell in inner cities and aren’t going to be worth much as sources of funding. The natural source of funding for anti-gun groups are going to be upper middle class to upper class urbanites and suburbanites, who honestly don’t have much in common with the folks who will end up being the organization’s public face when it comes time to put people on the ground. Brady’s natural funding reservoirs are more interested in gun control as a means of battling other elites, who’s political attitudes and lifestyles they find revolting, than they are interested in allying with inner city leaders to combat violence in those communities. To maintain themselves, the Brady Campaign will have to seek fewer donors with deeper pockets, probably drawing heavily from the issue friendly foundations, who would be happy to fund an inner city grassroots anti-gun/peace movement. There may even be a few wealthy individual donors out there who’d be willing to contribute money. But my feeling is the Brady Campaign is not going to be any more successful with this new strategy than they were under Paul Helmke. If anything, I think they will be less successful.
Gun Control in the Old West
Professor Adam Winkler is one of the true moderates on our issue, and though I think comes at this more from the other side, at least takes pro-gun arguments seriously, and makes serious arguments in favor of his position. Such is the case with his observation that some towns in the old west had some fairly serious gun control laws. The professor concludes with:
Even in the Wild West, Americans balanced these two and enacted laws restrictin
Âg guns in order to promote public safety. Why should it be so hard to do the same today?
Who is to say we haven’t? I don’t think there are too many serious arguments that the prohibitions on felons or the mentally ill possessing firearms are unconstitu
I don’t find the argument to be that remarkably compelling that because some towns in the Wild West enacted prohibitions on carrying firearms that such prohibitions must therefore be constituti
Castle Doctrine Hysteria
When Gov. Corbett signed a law June 28 expanding the right to use deadly force outside the home, gun-control proponents predicted every thug would have a new defense to pulling the trigger.
It didn’t take long.
Just eight days after the new “castle doctrine” law took effect, it has been raised in the defense of a North Philadelphia man charged with killing a neighbor over $100 owed in the purchase of a pit bull puppy.
Of course, they are going to raise self-defense, since that’s one of the main defenses used against the charge of murder. That was true before castle doctrine, and it’ll be true after. The way they continue to describe the case, it looks like a pretty run of the mill self defense claim. In this case, Johnson was threatened by several men:
Cruz testified that Jetson Cruz asked Johnson why he threatened Samantha, then shoved him, and that “Lydell pulled a gun from his waist and started shooting.”
That’s likely going to hinge on whether he had a reasonable fear of imminent death or grave injury, rather than a duty to retreat. Multiple attackers against one can be reasonable under certain circumstances. The Inquirer is making mountains out of molehills here. This is a fairly ordinary self-defense claim, and I don’t think Castle Doctrine is likely to pay a big role in it, or a role at all.