Politics – Page 77 – Shall Not Be Questioned

The New Jersey Bills up Tomorrow on the Floor

Despite 500 people showing up during a snowstorm on Wednesday to protest, the committee went ahead with a vote anyway, and passed 20 or so horrible bills out of committee. ANJRPC notes:

Bills set to move to full Assembly VoteÂ On Thursday, February 21.Â Please start contacting both of your Assembly MembersÂ and urge them not to support any new anti-gun measures.Â Thank you to the 500 Second Amendment supporters whoÂ attended todayâ€™s hearings and held legislatorsâ€™ feet to the fire!

Those bills areÂ listed here. Let me translate this for you. In order, they would:

AB588 – Ban most rifle ammunition.
A1116 – Must report lost and stolen firearms to police. Fines and a 180 day firearm purchase prohibition for violators.
A1329 – Reduce magazine capacity from 15 to 10 rounds. No grandfathering.
A1387 – Weapon free “safety zones” within 1000 feet around public property like schools, parks, public housing, or other public buildings. Specifically applies to unknowingly being within 1000 feet.
A1613 – Bullshit task force.
A3510 – Requires training to purchase a firearm and for FID cards.
A3583 – Another bullshit task force.
A3645 – Requires face-to-face transactions for ammo.
A3646 – Licensing for ammunition vendors.
A3659 – Weapons 50 caliber or larger are destructive devices.
A3666 – Mail order of ammunition prohibited.
A3668 – Prohibits state investments in companies that make so-called “assault weapons.”
A3687 – No guns for people who are on a secret government list.
A3717 – Submit mental health records to NICS.
A3748 – End private sales. There were private sales in NJ?
A3750 – All ammunition sales registered and reported to the State Police.
A3754 – Allows mental health professionals to order firearms be seized form patients. This will ensure no one who owns guns seeks mental health treatment, even if they may need it.
A3772 – Require picture ID on FID cards.
A3788 – Abolish access to firearm records. This one actually looks good.
A3796 – Allows 90 days to dispose of unlawful firearms.
A3797 – Requires reporting of ballistics data for seized guns to federal system.
ACR180 – Bullshit resolution urging feds to shit on your rights.
AR143 – Bullshit resolution supporting gun buybacks.
AR144 – Bullshit resolution on mental health.

Illinois Can Beat Back Bloomberg

Illinois gun owners are organized in a way that you don’t see in pretty much any other state. So when I see that Debbie Halvorson is telling the media that Bloomberg’s anti-gun ad buy in Chicago is actually giving her a boost in the parts of the district outside of the city, I see a huge opportunity for gun owners in Illinois to send a message to Bloomberg and the Chicago political machine.

This is a special election, which means that turnout models will be very different than a general election – certainly different than a presidential election year.

Illinois gun owners from anywhere within driving distance should be in that district for each of the next two weekends helping with GOTV efforts. Knock on doors, make phone calls, do whatever is necessary to help turn out the vote in the areas where Halvorson is strong. Most voters really don’t care about gun control, they want to hear answers on the economy. Don’t let Bloomberg’s millions buy this race for an issue that most voters really don’t care about.

The Usefulness of Gun Control

Anti-gun lawmakers from Philadelphia are speaking out on Pennsylvania’s new concealed carry reciprocity restrictions. What are they saying?

“I donâ€™t think itâ€™s going to drastically affect violence in Philadelphia.” – Rep. Kevin Boyle (D-rated by NRA)
â€œItâ€™s not the people with legitimate guns, itâ€™s the people with the street guns who are destroying the neighborhood.â€ – Rep. James Clay (refused to answer NRA member questions during his election)
â€œWe have to be realistic. This isnâ€™t a panacea thatâ€™s going to solve all of our problems.â€ – Rep. Brendan Boyle (D+ rating from NRA)

In other words, this served absolutely no purpose even though many of the Philadelphia lawmakers previously claimed that “closing the Florida Loophole” would absolutely make a huge difference to solving Philadelphia’s crime rates. Now that they have it, these lawmakers are calling for more laws and restrictions.

New Local Anti-Gun Groups

Reasoned Discourse breaks out in just about every corner of anti-gun activism. The same is true for local groups that are popping up in Southeast Pennsylvania.

The first example, found via PAFOA, is Bucks County Against Gun Violence. What’s item one of tonight’s anti-gun agenda?

Facebook – changes that have been made to safeguard the facebook page

Yes, shut down dissent! Based on what I see, they appear to report all pro-gun comments as spam on Facebook. This group is so extreme that they support an idea that would ban gun owners from purchasing and transporting firearms across city lines. Yes, city lines.

Then there’s Bucks Safe which is run by a public official, and his meeting announcement informs us that he’ll only allow you entrance if you agree to his mission statement. Since he’s holding his meeting on private property, he can have them turn away anyone he deems unsuitable or with opinions that don’t match his sufficiently. This is the same Pennsylvania lawmaker who called continued ownership of semi-automatic rifles a dangerous loophole that he plans to close by declaring possession illegal.

These folks don’t want a serious discussion about what measures might actually reduce gun violence. They just want to make the laws complicated enough that gun owners who think they have some kind of “right” to own firearms are put in jail or disarmed. They don’t want to hear debate, nor will they tolerate the presence of gun owners who might have different ideas in their midst.

A Report from New Jersey

After the pre-planned rally in Trenton managed to turn out about 1,000 people even with an impending blizzard hitting New Jersey, lawmakers decided to suddenly scheduled hearings on 24 gun control bills the following week (today) so that gun owners would be less likely to attend given the time they took off of work the week before.

One report I saw pop up on Facebook appears to show that they aren’t keeping gun owners from speaking out against more gun control:

So many Pro-2A people showed up to testify against new gun control in NJ, that they can not all fit in the building. An emergency demonstration permit has been issued to allow them to gather outside the Capitol.

Bing Measures the SOTU Gun Control Debate

Much of the State of the Union was going up and down in the Bing audience live ratings that allowed viewers to vote every five seconds during the speech. But I noticed a very interesting trend among all parties and both genders when President Obama started talking about gun control.

SOTUGunControl

The average rating during his gun control rant was -75, and I never saw it drop lower at any other time during the speech.

UPDATE: Commenter Tim adds important context to the dramatic drop in support from viewers:

Fox News just stated that the largest spike in votes for the â€œBing Pulse Trackerâ€ occurred when the President began talking about gun control (+ 1 million). To see the highest spike in votes turn into highest dislike rate during the entire address is very telling of how Americans really feel.

Aimless Politicians

Jacob notes that Andrew Cuomo is considered “adrift” in his second term. Yet another example of the fact that gun control is a refuge for scoundrels. It is a way to look like you’re doing “something” without actually having to do anything. It pleases those rationally ignorant who demand that something be done, and the rabid dogs who demand gun owners be punished for their backward ways. But there’s one thing they don’t count on, as Jacob notes:

A lot of people still do not understand what was passed into law and when they find out they getÂ veryÂ angry. Â It is going to bite Cuomo and the GOP in the ass eventually.

Our people are at their most powerful when they are scared and/or pissed off. Even I’m sometimes surprised by the scale of the reaction. I’ve often told our opponents that you can’t weigh polls too much, because many of our own people are also quite rationally ignorant of the ins and outs of gun policy. When they come to understand the actual consequences, unintended or otherwise, they are often quote opposed to the very thing they may have said they supported out of ignorance.

The Manchin Waffle

First he supported an assault weapons ban, then he kind of backed down, then he supported one again, and now he’s backed down… again. This is why the experienced politicians have all remained non-commital, and waited for the political dynamic to play out a bit before taking any firm position. I’m really not sure what Manchin thought he’d gain here. It’s not like he’s going to suddenly become a darling of the progressive left, and even if he does, West Virginia is full of working-class Democrats who don’t go for that.

Making the Gun Confiscators Upset

Rep. Steve Santarsiero believes that federal gun ban proposals that allow grandfathering of currently owned lawful firearms are “limited bill[s]” that he believes “leave a considerable loophole” of continued ownership and possession that “we here in Pennsylvania should and, indeed, must close.” That’s part of his pledge to justify legislation that will “outlaw both the purchase and possession” of modern semi-automatic sporting rifles.

So, as you can see, Rep. Santarsiero has pretty much deemed himself among the most extreme gun control advocates in the state of Pennsylvania. The fact that the government hasn’t just come for your guns yet is a dangerous loophole to him. Yet, it turns out that he is worried about the support that another bill in Pennsylvania is getting at the moment. He posted this call for action for gun control supporters on his Facebook page and that of his new anti-gun group, Bucks Safe:

One of my colleagues in the PA House, Daryl Metcalfe (R-12), has proposed a bill, House Bill 357 (a number that he chose intentionally) that would prohibit Pennsylvania from enforcing any new federal measures aimed at curbing gun violence. Please write to Representative Metcalfe (Hon. Daryl D. Metcalfe, 144 Main Capitol Building, PO Box 202012, Harrisburg, PA 17120-2012, (717) 783-1707, Fax: (717) 787-4771), and let him know that his proposal is both bad policy and unconstitutional.

I admit that I haven’t focused on this bill much because it’s really only relevant to any discussion at all if we’ve lost the fight politically at the federal level. I’d rather focus people’s efforts on not losing in the first place. However, given Santarsiero’s reaction to the bill, I think it’s worth highlighting. If you have the political enthusiasm for one more letter, go ahead and write to your Pennsylvania state representative and encourage them to sign on to the bill. Let’s see if we can’t increase the sponsor count so that Rep. Santarsiero feels a little more defeated in his quest to confiscate firearms from Pennsylvania gun owners.

More on the Democrat Shift on Guns

An interesting Salon piece speaks of the dynamic that’s making the Democrats think gun control is a new winner:

The question is what message about guns Democrats â€“ and Republicans, for that matter â€“ decide to take out of next yearâ€™s midterms. If action is taken this year and a bunch of incumbent Democratic senators from pro-gun states lose their seats next year, the party will likely conclude that the renewed gun control push was the reason; a new round of post-â€™14 reforms would be unlikely. But what if new laws are passed this year and most or all of those Democratic incumbents survive? And if the same thing happens at the House level? Or if some anti-gun control Republicans from swing districts are voted out? Under that scenario, Democrats might emerge from the â€™14 midterms emboldened to press for more new laws, and Republicans from competitive districts might believe thereâ€™s no choice but to go along.

There’s a lot of bluffing that goes on in politics. What Biden, Obama and the far-left that now controls the Democratic Party is counting on is that NRA has been bluffing for years, and doesn’t really hold any cards. They are calling what they think is a bluff. It is way too early at this point to know what the 2014 election is going to look like for us, but if two years from now, friendly lawmakers have held the line, we need to work like hell, to do some positive reinforcement, for a change, to keep those lawmakers in office who helped hold that line, and be seen as a vital constituency in their coalition.