Shall Not Be Questioned

If the Great Obama Gun Rush were just a phenomena of us die-hard gun owners stocking up on a few extra AR-15s to tuck away, you wouldn’t see stories like this:

Instead of waiting, more people are exercising their right to personal protection.

“I know Obama said he wouldn’t take away any of our gun rights but that remains to be seen,” said Glen Hirsch, who was buying a gun on a recent day.

In Springfield, concealed carry courses are booked full through April.

“I want to be able to have it when I need it,” said Kevin Hale of Aurora.

Instructors even added Sunday sessions.

“The demand for this course has pretty much tripled over what it was a year ago,” said Randy Gibson, a concealed-carry weapons class instructor.

The demand increased from 381 applications in 2006 to more than 1,100 last year; 12 percent of the applicants are women.

We die-hards already have our concealed carry licenses.  This means Obama is minting new gun owners.  That stands to reason.  Before Bill Clinton, I expressed passing support of the Second Amendment, but I was not a die hard, nor an activist, had little exposure to firearms, and did not own one.  Bill Clinton made me a gun owner, and an activist for the cause.  Obama will make the next generation if he’s not careful.  It’s already happening.

Stu Bykofsky, who deserves our thanks for getting the other side of this story out to the newspaper reading public, has a column in the Philadelphia Daily News defending Colosimo’s Gun Shop:

Colosimo; his wife, Mary Elizabeth; and his lawyer, Daniel Del Collo Jr., had two four-hour meetings with the group at Colosimo’s shooting range.

Mary Elizabeth baked cookies and the protesters cooked up a “10-point voluntary code” that they wanted Colosimo to sign. Gathering’s laudable goal is to reduce “straw” purchases, by which guns are bought legally by someone with a clean record, then illegally sold or bartered to criminals.

At the first meeting, Gathering brought along someone from CeaseFire New Jersey. At the second meeting, it brought along a couple of lawyers from the office of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Colosimo says that the group portrayed itself as “faith-based,” and that he felt backstabbed when it dragged in out-of-town lawyers.

Well, a while ago, I said that no good would come of any gun shop meeting with this group.  Now you know.  It’s not a negotiation, it’s a shakedown.  Colosimo already did 9 out of their 10 points.  But he refused to sign on to a database to track his customers.

The number is high, Colosimo says, not because he has done anything wrong, but because he has sold “hundreds of thousands” of guns over the decades. An infinitesimal fraction were used in crimes.

Blaming Colosimo for gun crime is like blaming Mayor Nutter for more murderers in Philadelphia than in Narberth. The larger the pool, the more likely you’ll find bad people in it.

Gathering, which picketed Colosimo’s for several days, boasts that Wal-Mart, the mammoth merchandiser that sells more guns than anyone, signed the 10-point code. That’s a red herring because Wal-Mart sells no handguns, except in Alaska. Everywhere else it sells rifles and shotguns, which are not the problem firearms.

If you want to know why I called for a Zumboing of Wal-Mart and any other gun shop that caves to these thugs, this is why.  Wal-Mart will be used as the stick to beat other gun shops into submission.  “You will submit, because Wal-Mart did.”   Colosimo is principled enough to tell them to get lost, but not all gun shop owners are so willing.  A warning to any gun shop owner: do not meet with these people.  Direct all correspondence from them to your attorney.  They are not out to negotiate, they are out to shut you down.