Category: Guns

This is bad news for us:

In an unexpected vote [after the defeat of the Lost and Stolen ordinance], council decided 4-3 to look into putting a referendum on the May or November election ballots to ask the voters if Hatboro should support the legislation at the state level.

Truth is we would have been better off if Hatboro had just passed this. Why? Because if you put it on the ballot, it’s probably going to pass, and probably pretty overwhelmingly. This fact will then be used to further weaken preemption, and put pressure on Harrisburg do something. Voters are generally inclined to approve ballot items, and you’d probably get something like “Should residents be required to report Lost or Stolen house keys to the police.” it would probably pass too.

If this ends up on the ballot, it will be a bigger victory for MAIG than if Hatboro had just been another town to pass an ordinance. This will cost us to fight it, we’ll probably lose, and they will use this against us in future battles.

I agree with Councilwoman Nancy Guenst. This is a total waste of local dollars. It amazes me that so many local towns are signing up to spend money they don’t have as part of Bloomberg’s plan to end preemption in Pennsylvania piecemeal.

Very good news:

The Senate gave preliminary approval to legislation that would make Arizona the third state, after Alaska and Vermont, allowing people to carry concealed weapons without a permit.

The Senate approved the measure in a voice vote, setting the stage for a formal vote in the Senate. Passage would send it to the House.

The measure would make it legal for U.S. citizens 21 or older to carry concealed weapons in Arizona without permits now required.

Currently, carrying a concealed weapon in the state without a permit is a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $2,500.

Looks good, but we’ll see how it does on a formal vote and then in the house. But this is pretty far along in the process.

This time West Conshokocken and Bridgeport. This was another case of not being aware, though neither of these boroughs publish an agenda online that could even be monitored. It’s like like living in Scotland and Northern England during the Viking raids. You never know where they are going to strike next. You just wake up to find a neighboring village on fire.

UPDATE: Hatboro rejected even the resolution compromise measure. When we have time and room to act, we win.

Eric over at Classical Values seems to hate the fact that Health Care is going to make the culture wars explode like we’ve never seen before. I too am not looking forward to that:

It used to be that the term “Culture War” meant — for one “side” — being against gays simply for being gay (supporting discrimination and favoring sodomy laws), wanting to imprison women for having abortions, favoring censorship (of pornography, “anti-family” TV shows, Howard Stern, etc.), and engaging in all sorts of personal attacks on people for things like having long hair, wearing the wrong clothes, or smoking pot. For the most part, many of those on the other side wanted to be left alone, laissez-faire style. The majority of gays, for example, would like to be left alone. However, the situation has been compounded by activists who don’t want to leave anyone alone. They believe in identity politics, in-your-face lifestyle activism, inquisitory behavior like “outing” people, and in many cases their tactics have exceeded anything the other side has done.

Sounds all too familiar. Those of us active in the Second Amendment community are immersed in a culture war issue as well. I remember Eric once writing that he couldn’t stand activists. As an activist in the pro-2A issue, you’d think I’d take exception to that, but I know exactly what he means. I’m firmly in the “leave me the hell alone” category. I involve myself in this game (and make no mistake about it, it is a game) because no one is going to leave me alone just because I shout it loudly enough. You have to make them leave you alone, and that means fighting collectively as a community. Your ends might be individual, but you can only achieve goals through the political process by collective action. Even the revolutionary elements of our movement don’t escape the collective action problem, though that type of collective action is more emotionally appealing to many people.

Saul Alinsky says you need to paint the struggle in terms of black and white to be an effective organizer. Your side has to be on the side of the angels, and the other side is evil incarnate. I think he’s correct in that. There’s a deep need for people to feel they are on the side of the angels in a righteous struggle against pure, unadulterated evil. I think that is the essence of the culture war, and it’s become that on both sides. It’s tough business for someone who just wants everyone to agree to leave everyone else in peace, and not hijack the political process or cultural institutions to impose one way of living over another. I’ve never been able to bring myself to adopt Alinsky’s tactic, even though I know it can powerfully motivate people to action. To me, once you unleash that kind of thinking, it’s very difficult to get the genie back in the bottle. There are plenty of historical calamities that have resulted from it. Too many to name.

Before the Democrats took control of Congress again, NRA was pushing a bill in Congress to prevent exactly this kind of thing from happening. That bill was known as the Veterans Heritage Firearms Act, which would grant power to the Attorney General to offer a very limited amnesty to allow new registration for machine guns so that historic pieces like this Lewis Gun, and the German machine gun captured by Sergeant Alvin York, could find their way into museums and firearms collections where they belong, rather than having to be destroyed, or held by police departments indefinitely. I would think this is the kind of reasonable gun law we can all get behind. There’s effectively zero chance these firearms are going to end up in the wrong hands. They will only end up in museums and private collections, which you’d expect of valuable historical relics.

Jacob suggests with the passage of Health Care ReDeform, that we in the pro-2A community need to be ready to be next. For various reasons, I think it’s unlikely, but I also thought Scott Brown’s victory woud have killed ObamaCare. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that Obama and Pelosi want to tangle with us, so we should be ready.