Guns – Page 705 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Wisconsin AG Gets Permission to File Brief

Oddly, in Wisconsin, the elected Attorney General is not allowed to sign on to briefs without permission from another branch.

In Heller, he did not get permission or did not seek it soon enough. In the effort to get the Chicago case to the Court, he also did not sign on to an effort by many other AGs, and gun owners finally called him out on it. He said it wasn’t his fault.

Interestingly, after that pressure, Van Hollen has secured permission early enough to actually get a brief into the Court for McDonald. That’s good for gun owners, good for Wisconsin, and good on Van Hollen for getting around to asking permission in time.

Bradys Spin as Predicted

A few days ago I said:

Now when NRA candidates in Virginia win in a landslide, Brady will no doubt claim itâ€™s because of other issues.

Right on cue:

For better or worse, guns didnâ€™t play a prominent role in the outcomes of any of the four high-profile races yesterday â€” Virginia Governor, New York-23, New Jersey Governor, and New York City Mayor.Â By almost all accounts, theÂ bad economy andÂ high unemployment were the key ballot-box issues.

The thing is they are right, largely. The gun vote is only a component of McDonnell’s landslide victory, and Christie certainly isn’t our guy, but nor is he a sworn opponent to our point of view.Â I said the same thing about the 2008 election, and its funny to see Brady using my spin only a year later. But there’s a difference.

We can at least point to some evidence that we can affect elections to a large degree on the margins. Where is the Brady equivalent? What is the Brady margin? No single issue group can swing an election under all circumstances, but we at least have some idea what our margin is.

UPDATE: I suppose I should thank Doug, or whoever is doing the Brady Blog these days, for the link. We’ll have to see how much traffic a Brady link drives these days. Good thing I performance turned my server. I await the hordes to arrive!

MAIG in PA Just Lost 16 More Members

After last night’s results came in, Bloomberg’s anti-gun group is down another 16 mayors in Pennsylvania – and that’s the minimum number. Unfortunately a few of the rural counties (and at least one not-so-rural county) don’t seem to have heard of this new-fangled internet thingamajig. They don’t post their results online. Another has a weird thing of not posting municipal races online even though at the county level, they still have to count those votes.

Most of Bloomberg’s losses in Pennsylvania actually came through attrition. Most of those mayors opted not to run again. Some lost in their primary elections, and others in the general election last night.

Overwhelmingly, Bloomberg will claim success though. The reason? Most of his mayors won re-election with more than 90% of the vote! (Because they had no challengers.) But don’t you know, his lobbyist that he shares with Handgun Control, Inc. – Max Nacheman – will no doubt claim that it is an overwhelming mandate for more gun control in the Commonwealth.

Of course, Nacheman has also been claiming that he has tons of new mayors in Pennsylvania who signed up with Bloomberg just to spite NRA. Funny, those dozens he claimed to Monica Yant Kinney – a whooping one. And he’s from a Philly suburb. There’s a shocker. So Nacheman’s claims are, at best, dubious until he shows his hand.

There were less than a dozen contested races for MAIG mayors in Pennsylvania. Most were won by the incumbents because their challengers weren’t serious candidates based on returns. However, there were a few who were very close to being knocked out – by 4 or 5 points. To think, NRA’s Pennsylvania liaison wasn’t even involved in these local races and yet MAIG sent CeaseFire PA out to endorse in those close races. (That’s a reasonably safe assumption since Nacheman is also connected to them through his previous political work.) Can you imagine if NRA had stepped in to those towns? That could have been a fun game to play.

NRA doesn’t really play at this level of politics. So whether we like it or not, Bloomberg has a leg up on us at this point. He’s got a paid lobbyist that he shares with a national gun control group and who has a long relationship (and sway) with a state gun control group on the ground here. We rely on volunteers for most of these battles. This is a brand new challenge for us, and it will bite us in the ass in Harrisburg if we don’t cut it off right now. For the Pennsylvania readers, that means work to do over the next 2-4 years. It won’t be fun work. But on election night, it will feel damn good.

Good Night for the Second Amendment

Another good night for the Second Amendment, according to Dave Kopel. This is considering higher profile races, where we did indeed succeed. Bitter is currently researching, and will be posting later, how MAIG mayors faired in the elections. NRA did not get involved in mayoral races in Pennsylvania, but by now gun owners are aware, and while we got rid of a lot of MAIG mayors, not all of them we got rid of in head-to-head races. I will let Bitter give you the more informed view of our ongoing battle against MAIG.

One good thing about last night, Bloomberg paid something like $180 dollars for every vote he got, and he didn’t win by a huge margin. If Bloomberg has to keep dumping this kind of money into getting re-elected, we have to wonder how long it will be before he doesn’t have any money left over for MAIG!

On Establishments That Post

Kevin got a reply back from the establishment that prohibited carry in Arizona, which basically revealed the proprietor isn’t the biggest fan of ordinary citizens carrying guns around. That’s making me wonder if there might be a technique that would be more effective for gun owners to try. I live six miles outside of a major city who’s culture and population are not too friendly to the idea either, but I’ve only ever into one place that’s got a sign. I think the reason establishments aren’t quick to post signs is twofold, one is that most of the guns walking around this area are out of sight, meaning businesses and proprietors aren’t really all that aware people are walking around with guns. Two is that they don’t want to risk the signal that their establishment is that kind of place. It’s to the latter that this idea is geared. Let me give you a hypothetical conversation or e-mail:

You: I notice the no guns sign outside. What kind of place is this? Do I have to be worried this is the kind of establishment people want to bring guns to?

Them: Oh no, it’s perfectly fine. There was a chance in state law, and we have to put that there to keep people with guns out.

You: It makes me uncomfortable that you think you have to put a sign up like that. What does it say about the kind of place? They don’t have a sign up at <pick your own competitor here>, maybe that’s a safer place.

Now they will likely try to explain it away, but they will wonder how many customers think the same thing and don’t say anything. Maybe I’m totally nuts here, but I’m suggesting that based on the fact that someone putting up a sign likely isn’t really likely to budge on the issue in terms of philosophy, unless a lot of gun owners complain. Probably not enough will to make a difference.

But if you can make the manager fear that the no guns sign is making customers wonder if their business is kind of a rough place, or that the sign is reflecting poorly on their business, they might rethink it. Obviously that’s not a prescription for every circumstance, but I have to wonder if that could work on some proprietors who aren’t going to be persuaded by pro-gun arguments.

Straw Buyer Problem

The Philadelphia Daily News actually has a reasonably well balanced article on the subject, and it highlights one of the problems dealers have with straw buyers:

“People asking for Glocks, because they hear about them in rapper songs,” said O’Brien, who has worked in the gun industry for 12 years. “I try to steer them back to models more suited for first-time buyers, but they say: ‘No, I want a Glock.’ And they don’t know anything about Glocks or guns at all.”

But red flags trump profit.

“If I don’t feel right about a sale, I won’t sell it,” O’Brien said. “Because I’m white, bald and tattooed, they think I’m racist when I refuse a sale.”

And that, folks, is why a lot of dealers will go ahead with the sale even if they don’t feel comfortable with it. No one wants to get accused of being a racist. On top of that, refusing to serve people based on race is illegal. Yet the crime statistics from Philadelphia show that the violent crime in Philadelphia is mostly young black males with other young black males as the victims. Even if your criteria are completely objective, statistics are likely going to mean if you’re selling guns in Philadelphia, a lot of the customers you turn away for attempting straw buys are going to be African-American. A dealer ought to be condemned if he’s turning people away based on race, but as long as they are using objective criteria to identify a potential straw purchase, he or she ought not have anything to fear.

On that count, It looks to me like O’Brien is doing a bang up job with Delaware Valley Sports Center, and is objective about how he’s picking out straw purchasers. Dealers should realize as long as they are following objective criteria for identifying straw purchasers, there’s nothing wrong with denying a sale. If every dealer was as careful as he was, the Brady Campaign would have a lot less ammunition to use against us.

More Local Governments Turning to Hunters

Looks like Solebury, not far from me, is also opening up to using hunting as a method of reducing deer population instead of the “sharpshooters” typically employed for such a task. Not only is using hunters cheaper, but safer too. Most of the sharpshooting companies hire people that are neither sharp, nor shooters.

This is the culmination of the work of the archers at my club, who put in a lot of time and effort to convince Lower Makefield Township to open up to the idea of thinning out the deer population using bow hunters. So far the township has been very pleased with the hunt. I think more local communities will adopt this model. It’s even getting traction over in New Jersey. It’s a good thing for hunting, since one of the chief causes of its decline is lack of places to hunt.

Terror Watch List

Sixteen hundred names a day are added to the list, and no one has any idea how they end up on there or who they are. Yet MAIG, Brady, and other gun control groups, want to use this list to deny people their constitutional rights.

Fail?

Jacob points out that the Brady Campaign is really stretching it to say NRA has shown its political weakness in NY-23. Bitter was also saying Creigh Deeds was down in Roanoke trying to talk up his NRA bonafides like he was the one carrying the endorsement. Now when NRA candidates in Virginia win in a landslide, Brady will no doubt claim it’s because of other issues. They would be right. But elections are often won on the margins, and research shows we’re quite a margin.

How to Make Something More Popular

Ban it! From an article about how animal rights whack jobs are infiltrating hunting groups over in England:

Hunting was banned in 2005 but since then the number of people taking part in the sport has continued to increase, with 50,000 mounted followers expected this year compared to 40,000 in 2004.

This year there are expected to be a further 50,000 supporters following the hunt on foot or in cars in order to put pressure on any new Government to overturn the law.

The Tories have said that if they win the election, they will allow a free vote on repealing the ban.

The same thing happened with assault weapons in this country. Not many people owned them in 1994, but once the government said you couldn’t have one, it got people interested. Much like hunters in the UK, gun owners in the US managed to work around the ban.

If it hadn’t been for the Assault Weapons Ban, I may never have become a gun owner myself. My first gun was a Romanian Kalashnikov, that I got specifically as f— you to people who said I shouldn’t have one. Then I remembered I really used to enjoy shooting as a kid, and it was downhill from there. I think a lot of other people my age have similar stories.