Someone in the DC area might want to infiltrate this gathering and take notes. I should note that Mike Castle, one of the hosts, is running on the GOP ticket for Joe Biden’s senate seat in Delaware, and is no friend to the Second Amendment. This is a stacked forum, meaning none of the panelists are pro-2A.
Category: Guns
Why We Won’t Negotiate
“Will it solve the problem?” Grace said. “No, but it is a step in the right direction.”
That right there is why we won’t give an inch. He really wants a mile. If he had to take it an inch at a time, that’s fine by him. The Brady Act was considered reasonable by many gun owners as well, and was quickly followed up with Brady II. Fortunately gun owners helped vote that Congress out before it could go anywhere. Dan Onorato seems like Joe Grace’s best buddy, in terms of supporting his agenda, and I’ve been less than impressed with what we’ve been able to accomplish in the PA House with the Democrats running things. If we don’t teach them a lesson this fall, the lesson is going to be that being in favor of gun control Pennsylvania doesn’t hurt you.
Caleb Gets Eaten by the Drama Llama
While I was happy that in the last episode of History Channel’s Top Shot, Caleb seemed to have finally learn his lesson about hostage shooting, it would seem that this episode caused Caleb to be eaten by the Drama Llama, having been eliminated after being compared to several species of the order Rodentia, and possibly the Mustelidae family as well (I’d have to go back and watch again).
Several people have stepped up to defend Caleb. Chris Byrne makes some very good points. Les Jones also makes some good points. I will stake out a middle position of saying Caleb is neither rat, nor fink, or any member of the Mustelidae family for what transpired on last night’s Top Shot. But I don’t agree he took the high road, because I’m not sure there’s much high road to be had. It’s not a shooting competition, where sportsmanship and excellence play the biggest role. It’s reality TV. Shooting is relatively incidental; a backdrop for the drama. Caleb was trying to survive the game, same as Adam. Any fan of reality TV shows knows that the nice guys often finish last. I’m not going to blame anyone for setting up voting blocks or otherwise thinking strategically about how to get to the end of this game. Adam probably figured he needed a voting block to get rid of some of the top shooters on his team if he wanted to have any prayer of winning. Caleb probably figured he was better off currying favor with the top shooters on the team. Unfortunately for Caleb, that turned out to be a bad political move, and you only get to make one of those, unless you’re a really good elimination shooter, which Caleb almost was.
On to the shooting. Â In the last episode before this one James made me cringe where in a shooting style that called for a more tactical stance he took a traditional high-power style offhand shooting stance — very good for accuracy, not very good for speed. In this episode I cringed when Caleb chose a tactical stance for what was looking like an accuracy game. I think the fact that the target was basically rotated 90 degrees threw them both off from what they practiced on, and evened things up a bit. I think a more traditional stance would have worked out better, because you would have been more stable, and still been able to work up a reasonable volume of fire needed to sever the rope. But this is arm chair stuff… if Caleb ever hosts the gun blogger competition he’s talked about, I totally want to try traditional vs. tactical stance and see which one works better for the rope shot. I suspect that kind of game is something a silhouette shooter would be good at — we don’t have all day to aim at our targets like slow-fire standing in high-power shooting, but we still have to hit with reasonably good accuracy at long distances.
In other news, I think I really need to get a flintlock muzzle loader. It looks like fun. Anyone know a decent brand? I know little about smoke poles.
Run Its Course?
This is the first news article I’ve seen about a drop in concealed carry permit applications from anywhere, but I guess like you eventually run out of other people’s money, you also eventually run out of gun nuts. Of course, this means we need to make more. Don’t forget, our opponents tell us we stand for a gun for every hand, everywhere, anywhere, no questions asked.
The Michael Bellesiles Saga Continues
Jim Lindgren is continuing to research Bellesiles news claims over at Volokh:
I have now read through every DoD casualty report from last fall for both Iraq and Afghanistan and news obituaries for most of them, and I have found none that was even remotely possible as the case that Bellesiles wrote about in the Chronicle. This post discusses the serious questions this raises for the veracity of Bellesiles account.
Go read the whole thing. Lindgren boils it down to this:
That leaves two Iraqi War deaths by hostile small arms fire during his course, one on Nov. 4 and another on Nov. 22. The newspaper accounts of both deaths do indicate a sniper as the killer, but both deaths are reported as occurring on the same day as the soldiers were shot, so they cannot be the source of Bellesiles’s tale of a wounded soldier languishing for weeks, at one point perhaps too injured to be flown to Germany.
I’m still finding it difficult to believe he’s crazy enough to still be spinning tales from whole cloth, but I don’t rule out the possibility that he is a pathological liar.
Joyce Foundation Reduced to Persuasion
They are trying to convince Chicagoans not to buy guns. This convinces me they don’t have much confidence they are going to be able to throw up much in the way of obstacles. But it’s a free country, and Joyce is free to mislead people about the dangers of guns. The real victory is that they would seem to no longer believe they can count on force of law to do this for them, and must now fall back to how we’re supposed to do things in a free society: persuasion.
Gun License Fees in Bucks and Montgomery Counties
Some are upset at the $46 dollar fee our sheriff charges. Apparently they still offer the state standard license, for the state fixed price:
Both Donnelly and Ricci said they give residents the option of paying $25 for a paper license, but applicants must provide their own photographs if they choose the cheaper option.
“If you want to upgrade that license we provide another service,” Ricci said. “If you want a plastic one that looks like a driver’s license, you pay $46.”
I should note that if the end result of this is that we all have to go back to the big paper licenses, I’m going to be pissed. I’m happy to pay extra for the credit card sized plastic license. I do believe the Sheriffs need to make it clear the paper license is available, and make sure everyone knows that. They do mention it on their web site, but it seems that the satellite offices are unaware.
NRA Runs Anti-Kagan Ad
Looks like NRA is running an ad on the Kagan issue (warning, ad will auto play on that link):
This would seem to refute those who claimed their opposition to her would be half-hearted or insincere. Producing and running ads isn’t a cheap business.
Attacking Reciprocity – Again
The anti-gunners here don’t want to lose a battle, so they just keep delaying votes on bills. By not formally taking a vote, the bill stays alive. If it has a formal vote and they lose – even by the slimmest of margins – it’s done. I guess they are taking their lessons from New Jersey.
That said, fall is a dangerous time to have this come up. I would assume if the Pennsylvania legislature operates anything like our neighbors to the east, there’s a possibility for lame duck sessions. (This is my first full session living here, so don’t get angry if I’m wrong.) That’s always when lawmakers who have been booted out like to send one last “screw you” vote to their constituents. It’s one reason why we need to make sure that the pro-gun forces at all levels – federal and state – stay in office to help keep gun control off the table during those times.
How We Win
Even impartial observers are noting that we dominate the Internets:
Last week’s Second Amendment ruling limiting cities’ and states’ ability to prohibit gun ownership split the Supreme Court by a 5-4 margin along conservative-liberal lines. But there was no such divide in the blogosphere where gun rights supporters dominated, applauding the ruling as a victory for both gun owners and the Constitution. Many of them also connected the split decision to Obama’s nomination of Elena Kagan, expressing fear that the president would be able to tip the Court’s makeup and reverse similar rulings in the future.
Gun control advocates opposing the decision seemed almost completely absent from the online conversation.
There’s never been any serious grass roots opposition for us. Most of what we’ve seen come and go online have been jokers or hacks. The fact that there’s never been any grass roots passion for gun control has been one of the major reasons we’ve been a able to make progress on this  issue.