The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
From Bruce, on the fact that Obama is going to get away with campaign finance shenanigans, because the FEC will be too busy auditing McCain’s publicly financed campaign books:
Ain’t that a sweet kick in the ass? How’s that campaign finance reform horseshit working out for now, John? Would you like some fries with that irony?
From ANJRPC:
On Monday, November 17, the New Jersey Assembly is scheduled to vote on A2116 — legislation banning most firearms over .50 caliber. Though previously amended in an attempt to address gun owner concerns, the legislation still bans many popular hunting guns, historical firearms, and large bore target firearms, based on alleged public safety concerns. Ironically, the legislation bans many of the guns that won the very freedoms the bill seeks to destroy, including some Revolutionary War and Civil War guns and their replicas.
A2116 makes the fundamental mistake of banning guns based on the size of the hole in the barrel rather than punishing criminal behavior. It treats law abiding citizens who choose to exercise their Second Amendment rights like potential criminals.
Please immediately email, call, and/or fax your Assembly Members and urge them to oppose A2116! Their contact information is available here.
While the rest of us are worried that gun control is back, it never really left in New Jersey. The relentless hammer pounds on in The Garden State.
Megan McArdle thinks not. I agree. The chief problem libertarians have is that we don’t get involved much beyond voting. Social conservatives work hard for the candidates that support them, and they do great get out the vote efforts. They are also reliable donors. I agree that the Republicans need to embrace more libertarian ideas, but this notion that we can still have a winning coalition without social conservatives is bunk.
Clayton Cramer looks at some polling questions and ponders whether the Obama administration is testing the waters to decide on his agenda. Count me among the readers who thinks that it’s Republican push polling. Democrats would never ask a question like this:
Do you agree with Barack Obama’s interpretation of the Second Amendment, where gun control is permissible, or do you think the Second Amendment is an absolute individual right that shall not be infringed?
Zogby has done polling like this before. I think this is either the GOP, or probably more likely a Republican associated interest group trying to figure out how to frame their opposition to Obama. One thing I would say though is, can we lay off the constitutional amendment crap? It’s really hard to do, and we ought not be altering our constitution to deal with the political battles du jour. Why don’t they ask that polling question?
For those who are worried that we’re reliving the 1930s, whether you think we’re about to repeat nazi Germany, or even be dealt another “New Deal”, you should take a look at this electoral map of 1932:
Roosevelt defeated Hoover by a margin of 57 to 40 percent. With the exception of Pennsylvania, Delaware, Connecticut, and rural New England, which were traditional Republican strongholds at the time, FDR won every other state, including all of The South, The West, and the Midwest. His win in 1936 was even more spectacularly lopsided. The last time we saw wins of this magnitude? Ronald Reagan.
Folks, this is not a country that is about to embrace socialism, or yield to a new Obama dictatorship. They are not about to send their sons and daughters off to join a paramilitary secret police force. We are not living in that world. The left pulled out all the stops, and played every play in their book, and the best they managed was 53%.
What do we have to watch for? The things we know progressives like doing. More government entitlements. More gun control. We have to be prepared to fight this national service corps, not because it’ll become the next SS, but because it’s a bad idea. We will definitely have a tax fight on our hands. We have to be prepared to wage the political fight of our lives to stop these measures, especially new entitlements, which are almost impossible to get rid of once you have them. But we’re not in a death match to stave off Soviet or Nazi America. Not yet, at least.
Dave Hardy reports that David Keene, who’s NRA’s 2nd Vice President, thinks Obama is going to overreach. I think it’s a safe assumption. Let’s hope we’re well beyond arms length for Obama.
This seems like a welcome development. I hope he gets the job.
This article in The New York Times focuses on my local district, and of course the gun owner has to be the racist one:
Early on Election Day morning in the Philadelphia suburb of Levittown, Pa., Joe Sinitski, 48, stood in a long line inside a school gymnasium, inching his way toward three blue-curtained voting machines. He wore jeans, a sweatshirt and a National Rifle Association baseball cap. He said he would vote for Barack Obama, a choice that some months earlier he could not have imagined.
[…]
“For a long time, I couldn’t ignore the fact that he was black, if you know what I mean,†Mr. Sinitski, the heating and air-conditioning technician, told me. “I’m not proud of that, but I was raised to think that there aren’t good black people out there. I could see that he was highly intelligent, and that matters to me, but my instinct was still to go with the white guy.â€
But he voted Obama anyway. As much as I want to blast the New York Times for pointing this out, it’s a fact that many of the NRA members in this area are working class tradesman and Union members. It’s also a fact that many of them reflexively and habitually vote Democrat. In this area, it makes my job very difficult, because I have to appeal to them to vote on the gun issue. I’ve had difficulty getting cooperation with clubs, because, if you can believe this, supporting NRA endorsed candidates is controversial, because here they are pretty much universally Republican. In a place like Texas, this might not be so appalling, but here, Democrats running at the federal level, and in the Southeast at the state level, are typically reflexively anti-gun. I can bet you that Joe the Racist here voted for Patrick Murphy too.
If you want to understand why Pennsylvania, which has a per-capita gun ownership rate that is close to Texas, and who issues 1 million hunting licenses per year, and 600,000 concealed carry licenses, can consistently vote for anti-gun Democrats at the federal level, I give you Joe Sinitski. It’s not pretty, but it’s the truth, and it makes the life of gun rights activists in this state very difficult. Particularly in my area.
This article in the Missoulian quotes me:
“I don’t think Dan’s ousting is fair or right, it just is. I didn’t ask for people to call for his ousting. I did tell people to write Cooper Firearms and express displeasure, and encouraged them to not purchase the company’s products. It was Cooper Firearms and the Board that ousted Dan in response, because they felt that was the best thing to do for their business. Both sides in this case were acting separately in their own self-interest.â€
Read the whole thing. Bob Ricker is still saying the NRA boogeyman is behind this. Having once worked for NRA, you would think Bob would know that NRA has difficulty moving at Internet speed, except that he has a vested interest in painting this picture.
One interesting thing is it looks like Cabelas and Sportsmen’s Warehouse cancelled orders with Cooper Firearms. They said that was a business decision though, because the rifles weren’t selling. I’m wondering, at this point, if perhaps we just gave the Board of Directors of Cooper Firearms the excuse they needed to get some better business management at this company.  Read the whole thing.