John Richardson notices something about LA’s Police Chief, that makes this move relatively unsurprising. Police chiefs are politicians more than cops. It’s utterly ridiculous and supremely hypocritical to argue magazines that hold more than ten rounds are “clips transform a gun into a weapon of mass death,” and then out of the other side of your mouth argue for your officers to be exempted from the ban.
Category: Guns
Quote of the Day
From the “Can’t have a reasonable conversation file,” courtesy of Dennis Henigan:
Ultimately, this is not just a campus safety issue. It also is an issue involving the core values served by institutions of higher education. It is difficult to imagine anything more destructive to an environment of academic freedom – in which controversial issues can be passionately debated free of fear and intimidation – than students or professors “strapped†as they participate in those debates.
Because, you know, armed people just can’t have a passionate debate without someone pulling out a gun and shooting the place up. This is what these people think about you. How can anyone possibly believe they are fine with the right to bear arms?
Open Carry in Florida
More Magazine Bans
Now introduced in New York State as well. This one also has no grandfathering, just a blanket ban on possession. As I mentioned before, these bans are absolutely useless, because you’re essentially talking about banning a box with a spring. Jilted at the federal level, our opponents are resorting to pushing in the few state legislatures that will actually still listen to them.
Thoughts on Guns on Campus
“What kind of classroom situation is productive if you have students thinking about shooting the person that comes in the door?”
What kind of productive classroom situation is it if the person coming through the door has a gun and plans to shoot? And how did hiding under a desk and playing dead work out for you in that situation, Colin? This article points out:
“So many people have told me to my face, ‘If I was there with you that day, I would have saved the lives of students all around you,'” he said. “That almost offends me.”
[…]
“You don’t think rationally,” he said. “You don’t understand what’s going on – it’s absolutely terrifying and crazy.”
I’m afraid I’m almost going to offend Colin here as well, because not everyone reacts that way in high stress situations. I’m not going to beat my chest and suggest that I wouldn’t; that’s not something you know until you’re in a life and death situation, but not everyone reacts by cowering in fear, and many people are completely capable of making correct decisions in those circumstances.
Goddard seems to be fond of saying guns wouldn’t have helped in his situation. He even notes in this article that “his class was slow to realize what was happening. They attributed the bangs they heard from the hallway to construction noise from an adjacent building,” but we know from the Virginia Tech report that room 211, which housed Goddard’s French class, was the third classroom on the second floor that Cho entered. If Goddard was so sure what he was hearing was construction noise, why did he call 911? Why were his classmates barricading the door? Afraid of rampaging construction workers? From the report:
She and her class hear the shots, and she asks student Colin Goddard to call 9-1-1. A student tells the teacher to put the desk in front of the door, which is done but it is nudged open by Cho. Cho walks down the rows of desks shooting people. Goddard is shot in the leg.
Is Goddard twisting the tragedy to suit his agenda, or are we not to believe the Virginia Tech report? It comes down to this: there was time to call 911, and there was time to barricade the door. But there wouldn’t have been time to land several good hits on Cho from concealment or cover? That sounds rife with an agenda to me, rather than a serious assessment of the situation. I can accept that Goddard’s assertion that we ought to do other things, but I don’t see any reason why students who would be able to legally carry off campus, shouldn’t be able to carry on campus.
New MAIG Polls
MAIG sure does love themselves polls. The latest from the Mayors group is being spun favorably, but I think it doesn’t really look all that good for them, mostly because polls don’t matter worth crap in politics. Polls show you what a person is willing to tell a pollster. They don’t give indication of where passion is.
The goal in all this polling is to put themselves in the mainstream on this issue and to put NRA on the outside of the mainstream. The goal is to get mainstream gun owners to stop listening to NRA and start listening to them. This is the only way they’ve been able to win in the past. We’ve done a good job getting more gun owners on board and educating them on Second Amendment issues as a general concept, as the poor showing for gun and magazines bans in this poll show, but we still have a lot of work to do in regards to educating them on what these specific MAIG proposals mean for them.
What Do We Do Now?
So Castle Doctrine managed to get to the Senate floor as a clean bill – one of the biggest hurdles we will likely face with this legislation at this point in the game.
Federally, nothing that the gun controllers are pushing seems to show much sign of life at the moment. Obama still hasn’t made his big speech on gun control.
This year’s elections are mostly county seats, with a few judicial spots, & some municipal offices. (That reminds me to go check which MAIG mayors are up this year. Maybe we can clean house a bit.)
Well, now that it’s time to sit down & get serious about planning for Pittsburgh, I also decided to attend a meeting to start a Friends of the NRA dinner in our area. The last committee was one family & they always asked for assistance, but never wanted any help. The dinner was never very full, and it finally died last year. Last night’s meeting had more than 20 people at it, though I’m sure we’ll be lucky to get half of that at the next meeting. But that’s okay, because there was at least some energy in the room. Energy is good. We’ll have to pitch to a lot of cantankerous old men to get people out to the dinner, so we’ll need energy.
It’s nice to be able to focus on the fun part of the issue again. Most of us did not get involved in the movement on the political and philosophical arguments alone. Most of us got involved in the issue because shooting is fun. Whether you are poking holes in paper, knocking little steel animals over, or busting clays, few people can do it without a smile on their face. Even though the program is for a fundraising dinner, it’s to raise money to expand the programs that introduce that joy of shooting to even more people. And who can be against joy for the people?
Battle in Connecticut
A bill has been introduced in the Constitution State to ban any magazine that holds more than ten rounds. There is no grandfathering. People in possession will have to turn them in for destruction or transfer them out of the state. This means if you have a firearm that doesn’t have a magazine available that holds 10 rounds or less it’ll become an expensive paperweight.
This is different from federal law in that it requires that the magazine be detachable, but there is not even a pretense of grandfathering. It does allow for a high capacity magazine to be “permanently altered so that it cannot accommodate more than ten rounds,” but there’s no language present as to what would fulfill that requirement. The penalty is a Class D felony, so they are treating possessing a box with a spring in it like you robbed a bank.
As always, police are exempt, because presumably they need to be able to murder a large number of people in a short amount of time, which is all we’re told these magazines are useful for.
Senator McClure Dies
Some of you might recall the Firearm Owners Protection Act, which as Dave Hardy has reported, is one of the landmark achievements of our movement (despite the Hughes nonsense). That act is also known as the McClure-Volkmer Act, named after the bills sponsors in each house of Congress. Jim McClure has passed away at 86.
Congressman Harold Volkmer was the bill’s sponsor in the House. At 79 he continues to serve on the NRA Board of Directors.