Politics – Page 58 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Attention NRA…

This story needs to be told at next year’s annual meeting.

â€œIâ€™ve never been politically active before,â€ Victor Head, the man behind Pueblo Freedom and Rights, tells me. â€œIâ€™ve never done anything beyond voting. I never went to rallies, never went to protests, never wrote a letter to a senator or anything like that. But as soon as these gun-control laws started being talked about, my brother and I were like, â€˜we should do something.â€™â€

Make that happen. Please. (Actually, I’m not asking that nicely. I’m kind of demanding.)

In the meantime, everyone should go read the whole story of a guy who just got concerned that his local lawmaker wasn’t listening to him.

Oh, and in case anyone needs a reminder that when women come into the movement, we really get involved, there’s this little note:

The six- or seven-person phone bank is almost exclusively staffed by retired women, each working from a cell phone. Running methodically down the lists of recall signatories, the callers politely ensure that each and every one has voted â€” and, if not, that they know where to go.

High School Rifle Teams Targeted

An Emmaus High School sports team went undefeated last year, but there’s no mention of the record in the yearbook. In fact, the fact that there was a school rifle team at all was left out. The photographer for the yearbook provided a photo to the staff, but the yearbook advisor is so far not answering questions from parents about why their children were left out of the yearbook while other teams were featured. It’s great that the parents are taking this issue all the way to the top and demanding public accountability for why the yearbook staff appears to be picking on some kids by leaving them out of the yearbook even after being provided pictures and a story.

I actually came across this story by chance when I was looking up the school because they are in need of a new rifle coach – pronto. They aren’t the only school in the area in need, as Freedom High School nearby also needs a rifle coach. If you know anyone who would be interesting in coaching a high school rifle team in the Allentown region, please shoot me an email and I’ll connect you with the people looking to help these teams out.

It would be a shame if the yearbook staff who may have decided that competitive shooters aren’t even worth acknowledging as their fellow students won by not only successfully ignoring the team’s existence, but then also got to celebrate the fact that the team was forced to disband.

Waiting Periods are Back

It looks like Washington, DC wants to institute new waiting periods. The reason?

â€œThey canâ€™t be responsible for themselves, as well as the person doing the work on them,â€ [Council member Yvette M. Alexander] said. â€œWeâ€™re making sure when that decision is made that youâ€™re in the right frame of mind, and you donâ€™t wake up in the morning .â€‰.â€‰. saying, â€˜Oh my God, what happened?â€™â€

The new waiting periods are for tattoos and piercings. The people cannot be trusted to make decisions with their own bodies, so the government must restrict it.

I love how the tattoo artist interviewed notes that if the concern is regulating regret, then they could just restrict serving clearly intoxicated patrons. Instead, the new regulations will likely drive business underground where they won’t even honor basic regulations that actually have to do with public health concerns. Everyone will be more at risk to health problems because the DC City Council wants to institute a waiting period to stop even perfectly sober people from being pierced or inked on a whim.

For what it’s worth, I’ve had multiple piercings done on a whim. When I decided that I regretted one, I didn’t need a government bureaucrat to solve the problem for me. I managed to allow the hole to close completely on my own without an overbearing nanny state holding my hand. I’m sure that somewhere a bureaucrat is weeping to know that a citizen managed to make a decision without them.

Just One Man vs the Entire NRA

You know what’s always fun in politics? A little class warfare. Okay, it’s not really fun, but it does work for quite a few low information voters.

And while NRA could only afford to spend about $5.72 per member on lobbying, PAC spending & contributions, and direct campaign contributions during the last campaign cycle, Mike Bloomberg spent nearly $26 million himself. If you do much in the way of trying to motivate voters who aren’t the most active, that’s a great little fact to drop.

Colorado Recall Elections Under Way

If you’re in one of the Colorado districts, or you’re nearby and have been on the ground locally, then please let us know what you’re seeing. Those of us in other Bloomberg target states are watching to see how this plays out.

On one hand, high turnout of actual voters to the polls seems like a good sign for us since that indicates a particular motivation. So, yay!

On the other hand, there are already people asking questions about sketchy ballot drop-offs that they claim aren’t right.

I don’t know enough about the details that were actually decided on for this election since it seems like every little aspect has been litigated and often decided from the bench or on a whim to know whether the claims in the video are truly a concern or not. Hopefully, it’s nothing. But it does go to show that people from both sides will likely be all over this race to squeeze out every single vote.

Pennsylvania Politics Gets Worse for Gun Owners

If you’re a gun owner in Pennsylvania, you need to be worried about 2014. You need to be very, very worried. Gov. Tom Corbett was amazing about putting down all talk of getting Pennsylvania to pass more gun control back in December that would bring us closer to the nightmares of neighbors New York and New Jersey. But his poll numbers are in the toilet, and the Democrats smell lots of blood in the water.

That wouldn’t be the end of the world if we had a serious pro-gun Democratic candidate, but we don’t.

Today comes news that a Bloomberg ally currently serving with MAIG has taken the legal steps to announce a run for governor. So far, every MAIG mayor in Pennsylvania who has tried running for higher office has lost. However, that doesn’t mean that trend will continue. I mean it was the supposedly pro-gun middle of the state that really ran up the numbers for Attorney General Kathleen Kane who has been doing everything she can to screw with reciprocity agreements for concealed carry. She also refuses to back any pro-Second Amendment briefs on federal cases.

However, the other issue is that the alternatives aren’t looking good, either. The leading candidate is F-rated Rep. Allyson Schwartz. There is no gun control idea she hasn’t backed – banning many semi-autos, effectively closing down gun shows, magazine bans, mandating “smart guns” that don’t exist – you name it, she’s backed it. She has no apologies for these positions, and she thinks she can win Pennsylvania on such a platform. She might be right.

Some other names in the running include Katie McGinty who is reportedly running on a “tighter gun control” platform, and Tom Wolf who is a possible slight improvement running on only “some gun control.”

The sad part is seeing just how much the Pennsylvania media will do to try and cover up any extreme positions on this subject so that it can never be a controversy. In 2010, a major local political news site at the time reported that the Democratic gubernatorial candidate was on the “right flank” of the party on guns and supported gun rights. A look at his policy proposals actually showed he was more extreme than even many F-rated lawmakers out of Philly.

It’s up to gun owners to spread the word about these candidates. Unfortunately, I’m not sure they are that excited to do it over the course of the next 14 months. Too many times, we hear people who don’t take the threat seriously because the GOP holds the House and Senate, too. Unfortunately, when we are losing seats in these chambers, they tend to flip from A to F-rated. When the switch is finally flipped in Pennsylvania, there’s a very good chance that the transition to New York & New Jersey-style laws will not be gradual. It could happen very quickly.

Free and Clear to Carry at Bloomsburg Fair

I’m a bit late to this story, where Bloomsburg, PA had banned firearms from its fairgrounds, but it seems they have reversed their policy.

“Proper permits with a firearm will be allowed on the fairgrounds – even though I’m going againstÂ the recs from homeland security,” said Bill Barrett, the Bloomsburg Security director.

DHS can shove their recommendations where the sun don’t shine. Is it any surprise the Obama Administration is peddling anti-gun advice under the banner of Homeland Security? Either way, the people who run the fair are wise to act quickly, before the preference cascade kicks in. That’s the big mistake that the Eastern Sports and Outdoor Show made.

A Prime Opportunity

There’s good news and bad news out of Colorado. A court is throwing details on how the recall elections will function into disarray once again. At this point, I can’t keep up with understanding exactly how the election – scheduled for less than two weeks from now – will even work in Colorado. It looks like this latest decision impacts how absentee ballots will be distributed and how residency proof will be recognized.

At this point, Colorado gun owners shouldn’t be looking for election details here anyway. NRA is certainly trying to assist in the last minute push by gathering activists for grassroots events on the 3rd, 4th, and 5th.

I will say this about the headlines about the confusion and bickering, it turns many low information voters off. That means it’s easier for highly dedicated activists to make a difference with their own votes.

At least they have the ballots figured out…finally.

Some Are More Equal than Others

No special privileges for government officials. I like the assertion that this amounts to Titles of Nobility, forbidden by the Constitution.

Surely the creation of two classes of citizens, one more equal than the others, isn’t the sort of thing the Framers intended. Why didn’t they put something in the Constitution to prevent it?

Well, actually, they did. Article I,Â Section 9Â of the Constitution prohibits the federal government from granting “titles of nobility,” and Article I,Â Section 10Â extends this prohibition to the states — one of the few provisions in the original Constitution to impose limits directly on states. Surely the Framers must have considered this prohibition pretty important.

Read the whole thing, as they say. Now all we need is to find federal judges who’d be willing to go for this idea. Of course, many of them probably like their special privileges.

More on the Colorado Recall

From a round-up on the election news from Jim Geraghty, we see the Democratic Party is apparently resorting to making the recalls all about the supposed war on women as the recall against Colorado’s Senate President John Morse continues to not look so good for him. Basically, they hope to out single-issue the traditional single-issue voters.

But, perhaps more interesting is the fact that the way the recall is planned may well be unconstitutional. Looking at how election officials have handled this, it is pretty clear that Colorado’s election laws are an absolute mess of conflicting orders and requirements. That is to blame on lawmakers, but you’d think that election officials would have prepared for it.