Guns – Page 476 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Playing the Political Game

NSSF recently issued a report on their 2010 election activity with the recently founded NSSF PAC. It’s nothing too exciting – they gave to equal number of Democrats and Republicans in both the House and Senate. But, what I find relevant about the report is that this is a PAC that just started taking donations last April. While it only existed for the last 8 months of the two-year election fundraising cycle, NSSF donations topped what the Brady Campaign PAC raised in the entire cycle. NSSF was also able to contribute nearly as much as the Brady Campaign’s PAC.

Now, I know that the Brady folks have been winding down their PAC. It’s clear if you look at the history that they don’t make raising money for it a priority, and that’s understandable if they are shifting their strategy away from political fundraising. But, they’ve still been around for years and clearly still have some donors who consider it important and worth a donation. NSSF just started and is already putting up comparable numbers.

I find it funny since the line from anti-groups has always been that the gun industry is buying Congress. Heh. The NRA money is from gun owners. Now the gun industry is finally officially coming to the table. And we’re still winning.

NSSF Responds to McCarthy

They set the record straight here. I’m surprised they didn’t say anything about living in gated communities. Given what a cottage industry most firearms manufacturing is, the accusation by Chicago’s top cop was risible. Hell, I’d be surprised if the Cerberus Capitol people, who own Remington, a large manufacturer, and many other smaller ones, are still living high on the hog given all the money they lost with Chrysler.

What Does it Take to Win an NRA Board Seat?

I’ve been told by successfully elected NRA board candidates that the data & explanations I provide about how NRA elections work and what it takes to win are actually pretty useful. So, if you’d like to see a change made to the NRA Board of Directors, here’s a peek at what it takes to help your preferred candidate win.

For those of you who are a little confused by my terminology, it is based on how directors are elected. Â There are 25 seats up every year on the mailed ballot. Â There are typically around 30 or so nominees, but only the top 25 of them will receive a seat on the board. Â (There were 37 nominees this year, a higher number than usual.) Â By “top winner,” I mean the person who earned the most votes. Â By “last winner,” I mean the person who had the least number of votes, but still enough to win one of the 25 seats available.

This year, the top vote-getter was on 91% of the valid ballots. Â Considering that exactly 3 years prior, the number was similarly high, it’s not hard to guess that this year’s top winner was once again Tom Selleck. Â The final person to actually win a board seat was on almost 56% of the valid ballots. In raw numbers, that means that in order to serve on the board, candidates had to earn at least 53,029 votes this year. (This is actually the second lowest number of votes needed to win since I’ve been keeping track, typically the number is closer to 60,000 votes.)

The difference between the last winner and the “first loser” (for lack of a better term) was just 866 votes this year. Here are the candidates who did not win a seat and the number of votes between them and the next person in line.

“Losing” Candidates	Vote Tally	Difference from Previous Candidate
Timothy W. Pawol	52,163	866
Harold W. Schroeder	51,566	597
David G. Coy	50,611	955
Carl B. Kovalchik	50,244	367
Steven C. Schreiner	49,952	292
James L. Wallace	45,157	4,795
Eddie Newman	45,154	3
Joel Friedman*	43,906	1,248
Dennis DeMille	37,970	5,936
Marion Townsend	36,744	1,226
Anthony J, Chimblo III	36,722	22

*Elected as 76th Director to serve a term of one year. The election process for this seat happens at Annual Meeting & is open to all NRA members.

You can see where encouraging any friends and family members who can vote to support your favorite candidates can easily pay off in boosting numbers. You don’t have to convince all 4 million members of NRA to support your guy or gal in order to make a difference in the election.

Garry McCarthy is Slime, Just Like His Boss Rahm

By now we all know the story of Garry McCarthy, the Chicago Police Commissioner who recently went on an anti-gun tirade at Father “Snuffy” Pfleger‘s St. Sebastina Chucrh:

McCarthy has a history, and it’s not exactly good. Take this article from the New York Times which details a previous arrest, and his being disciplined by the NYPD:

Mr. McCarthy does not come without some baggage. Some critics have described his demeanor as occasionally gruff, and there has been much talk in New York about a confrontation last year in which he was arrested by two officers with the Palisades Interstate Police at a gas station on the parkway.

In March, a judge fined him and his wife $200 each for blocking traffic with his police-issued vehicle while they argued with the officers, who had issued a summons to their 18-year-old daughter, who was driving another car. At the hearing, the officers testified that Mr. McCarthy had been drinking and that he used profanities during the confrontation, which started after his daughter parked in a handicapped zone.

In an interview last night, Mr. McCarthy was unapologetic about the incident, saying he was simply protecting his daughter. â€œI will stake my career and reputation against any of the people involved in the incident,â€ he said.

In 1983, Mr. McCarthy was disciplined by the New York Police Department for an incident in the Bronx on St. Patrickâ€™s Day, during which he was off duty and drinking when he and his brother, then a state trooper, were confronted by a group of men with a growling dog on a leash. During the dispute, Mr. McCarthy gestured to his gun, he told officials at the time. Mr. McCarthy acknowledged that his conduct was inappropriate, but that it was accepted practice at the time. â€œThat was 23 years ago,â€ he said. â€œI think the more important thing is that crime in New York is down 40 percent since I became deputy commissioner.â€

McCarthy was previous Police Commissioner for Newark, New Jersey, when the department was investigated by the feds for what the New York Times reports as “brutality, baseless searches, intimidation and false arrests.” Second City Cop reports that McCarthy and his brother were also allegedly shooting out streetlights and hurling racial slurs in the 46th precinct in New York City after they left a cop bar intoxicated. Here’s even more dirt on the guy.

This is someone we supposedly can trust with a gun, but the rest of us? Not to be trusted. This guy is a thug with a badge. I’d like to see those int he gun control movement try to justify this a**hole.

We Don’t Need Castle Doctrine or High Cap Magazines

The city politicians who believe this title need to explains the bands of feral teenagers wandering their city and beating people to the point of hospitalization. Given that we know the city will prosecute you for defending yourself against people intent on just giving you a thorough beating, it’s yet another reason not to go into the city.

According to the police report of the incident, Guendelsberger was “jumped” by 30 to 40 men who punched and kicked her numerous times. Police said they checked the area for surveillance but had no luck.

Shortly before Guendelsberger’s assault, police said, they responded to another assault, about five blocks away at Broad Street and Fairmount Avenue, of a 20-year-old man who said that he was attacked by a large group of men and women.

Police said that he was treated for a bruise and abrasion under his right eye.

Twitter users said that the mob ranged from 50 to 100 people and that participants not only assaulted people but also threw trash cans and lit fireworks.

I’ll be honest with you, it’s getting to the point I don’t know if you can carry enough gun in that city. The politicians who run the city should be ashamed. Green St. and Broad isn’t exactly the ghetto.

Fast and Furious All NRA’s Fault

That would appear to be the conclusion of the Washington Post.

Now, the very critics who have tied the bureauâ€™s hands are expressing outrage over a novel, and we would agree questionable, ATF operation intended to curb gun smuggling into Mexico.

If they get any deeper in the tank for this Administration, they are going to need one of these. Their conclusions do not fit what’s come out so far in the hearings. We know, for instance, that ATF did not “lose track” of these weapons. They did not bother to track them at all.

NRA Election Participation

Ah, it’s time for the annual peek at how NRA members are participating in their elections. And this year, the data gets a little more interesting. But just a little. It’s still ridiculously easy for members to get their ballots in and actually influence elections. Let’s get on with the pretty charts.

The y-axis should say that the numbers are in the millions, but after battling with Excel and Google which have both altered their charts just enough to make it a pain in the neck, I figured you fine folks were smart enough to figure that out.

So, why were fewer ballots mailed out? Is NRA shedding massive numbers of life members or 5+ year members? While I don’t have direct access to data, I’m going to go ahead and rule that out. The fact that an even number of ballots went out indicates at least the beginnings of a membership list cleaning operation – putting real effort into finding out who is alive, who moved, etc. Every organization has to do it periodically, and timing to when you have to mail out ballots makes the most sense. One of NRA’s biggest expenses is mailing out the magazines to nearly 4 million members, it gets more expensive when you add stuff to it like the ballots.

I make my assumption with some evidence to back it up. The number of ballots that came back was actually the third highest since I started keeping records, and the number of invalid ballots (those with mistakes) is on par with previous years as well. Those numbers did not see a proportional drop.

Because of the drop in number of mailed ballots, the participation rate went up. Since it’s unlikely the dead people were voting, this makes sense. This isn’t Chicago, after all.

When I emphasize that it’s, in theory, ridiculously easy to influence the election, it’s totally based on the fact that so few eligible members actually vote. If the majority of Snowflakes in Hell readers are voting-eligible members of NRA and every one voted, they alone could throw the participation rate up to 10% based on this year’s numbers. In that spirit, if you do receive an NRA ballot and choose not to vote, I’d be curious as to why you don’t vote in the association election.

Erik Estrada and the NRA Election

Because I couldn’t find the voting statistics outside of the NRA Annual Meeting this year (had to run out early to cover the protest), I didn’t do much follow up on the new board members beyond who was actually at the board meeting the following Monday.

I assumed, very wrongly, that Erik Estrada was a top vote-getter who was simply blowing off the organization once he won. I’m not as opposed to celebrities on the board as others, but I do believe that part of what they “bring” to the board in that case is a willingness to at least be known as an actual sworn-in member of the board. (Unlike, say, Karl Malone who, as I understand it, has never even shown up to be sworn in as a board member, never mind even try to symbolically attend a meeting and pretend to give a damn since I’ve been going to these things.)

Anyway, I’m glad I never posted about it because it turns out that Estrada did the right thing. He would have come in sixth place by votes, however, according to the report from the Secretary, he contacted NRA to let them know that his schedule would no longer allow him to participate. So he actually withdrew from the election. Seriously, kudos and applause all around for him doing the responsible thing.

This year, that effort is especially noteworthy because we lost some very experienced board members who bring unique skills to the board. I cannot tell you how many people on the board, on staff, and who are just highly involved in the organization were lamenting the loss of seriously dedicated and talented board members, partially due to the sheer number of celebrities up in one year. With Estrada actually withdrawing from the election, it means that the next highest vote-getter was elevated to the top 25 winners. It helped ease some of the displacement issues.

I figure it’s worth mentioning when someone does the right thing. Tomorrow’s topic: how NRA members participate in the elections. There were actually measurable differences this year, but not for reasons you might think.

Ray Nagin is as Crazy as a June Bug

It turns out Ray Nagin is completely off his rocker, at least according to his new book:

â€œAnd after several rounds of going back and forth, our unwelcome visitors got the message that we were not going to allow them to take over or gain access to my room to plant bugging devices.â€ […]

â€œI thought to myself, â€˜Iâ€™m a dead man! I have just publicly denounced the governor, U.S. Senators, FEMA and the president of the United States,â€™â€ he writes. â€œI started wondering if during the night I would be visited by specially trained CIA agents. Could they secretly shoot me with a miniature, slow-acting poison dart? […]

Nagin admits he also suffered pangs of paranoia on the Monday after the storm, when he visited the USS Iwo Jima, an amphibious assault ship that docked near the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center and served as a base of federal operations.
There, he was escorted to an infirmary where two medical staffers â€œhad orders to examine me and give me shots.â€

â€œI was still a little paranoid and again started imagining a secret CIA plot where in six months I would be gone,â€ he writes. â€œAfter thinking for a minute, I said to them, â€˜Okay, you can give me shots, but I want you to do the same for my two security guys.â€™

â€œMy thinking was it would have been easier to spin that stress ultimately took me out, but it would be much harder to explain all three of us suddenly dying mysteriously,â€ writes Nagin, who said during Wednesdayâ€™s briefing that his sense of suspicion abated shortly after his visit to the ship.

And this is before he goes into the conspiracy to rid New Orleans of black people. Now I understand why this guy doesn’t trust anyone with firearms. It’s projection. He probably doesn’t trust himself, and assumes everyone else is as much a loon as he is. He has good judgement for himself. I’m not sure Ray Nagin is the kind of guy I want having a gun either, let alone running a city.

Isn’t it amazing how off balance so many of our opponents are? At least he was kind enough to document his delusions for posterity.

Reasoned Discourse^TM, Part CCXLII

I can sympathize somewhat with Joan Peterson here, because I remember when I first decided I needed to implement some basic ground rules for comments. My one paragraph ground rule basically amounts to, “Don’t be a jackass,” and those of you who have been around for a while know I probably tolerate a good bit more jackassery than could be classified under my guidelines. I probably only remove or partially redact, at most, ten posts a year, and the majority of those are rambling nonsense from people who I think found me on Google and have mental health issues.

But Joan’s comment policy reads like a Hammurabi’s Code of blog commenting. What’s more, my, and most of our default is to allow comments generally, and only remove or redact ones that cross the line. It’s hard for me to understand how facts that are in dispute can be corrected if they aren’t published and discussed. There’s an old saying that you’re entitled to your own opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts. One thing I’ve learned from observing Ms. Japaete is that she often thinks she is, in fact, entitled to her own facts. Common Gun Sense has been much more open to dissenting ideas than many other blogs run by folks on the other side of this issue, and she deserved credit for that, but it seems as time has worn on, there’s been more and more Reasoned Discourse^TM going on. One of the other side’s greatest weaknesses has been not forming a credible response to our grassroots new media efforts, and their unwillingness to engage in open debate has been one of those.