Shall Not Be Questioned – Page 137 – The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …

Jonah Goldberg on “The Donald”

From his column over at National Review:

His biggest fans disappoint in other ways as well. I marvel at how they can simultaneously despise Obamaâ€™s arrogance but revel in Trumpâ€™s. (I chuckle at all of the people who tell me heâ€™s a heroic truth-teller for â€œtelling it like it isâ€ and â€œcalling it as he sees itâ€ but who at the same time fume at me when I tell it like it is about Trump and call it as I see it.)

I’ve learned over the years that you get in trouble for actually calling things as you see them. Where you are on safe ground is being in the business of telling people what they want to hear and emotionally validating them. That’s the business Trump is engaged in.Â Jonah then lays out the case for Trump being a fraud. I’ve said before, he’s a stalking horse for Hillary.

Look, these are rough times for conservatives, for reasons too lengthy, and all too familiar, to go into here. But none of our problems â€” demographic, political, cultural â€” can be solved unless conservatives take the cause of persuasion to heart. All of our problems can be fixed by convincing people to join our cause. That is what politics is about â€” persuading people that their interests and concerns are better addressed by coming to our side. And, given the degraded nature of our culture, I wonâ€™t deny that having a celebrity on our side has its utility. But itâ€™s only helpful if that celebrity convinces people to switch sides. As a purely mathematical proposition, it is insane to believe that Donald Trump will convert more voters than he will repel.

Rhetoric matters. It takes more than emotional validation to win elections. The candidate I’m looking for in 2016 will be the one who can manage things well behind the scenes to destroy the bureaucratic monstrosity the left has built, and restore constitutional government, while publicly smiling to the camera, charming reporters, and convincing the country what a swell guy (or gal) he or she is. It’s a rare talent, especially among Republicans, but it’s what I’m looking for.

Gunblog Variety Podcast: Oversight On My Part

I have four different devices I use for trolling for news and keeping track of what I want to post about. I hate it when I find a tab with something I meant to post about, but overlooked until the news was stale. Ordinarily, I usually just write that story up as a loss, but I’d feel bad if I did that in this case.

Several weeks ago I was on an episode of the Gunblog Variety Podcast, talking about this post. I had the episode open but didn’t find it until yesterday when I did my gun news postÂ and went through all my tabs on every device. Checking my history, sure enough, I never did the post. You can listen to their latest podcast here.

I tend to feel that there’s an obligation to engage in cross promotion, so I didn’t just want to let this go. It takes a lot of work to do vlogging and podcasting, and I dropped the ball here. If you ever looked at my desk, yeah, the computer side of things isn’t much more organized.

NRA Instructor Wins Fight Over Hat

Apparently during the elections in Georgia last October, an NRA instructor was asked to remove his “NRA Instructor” hat at a polling station. Georgia’s law is not uncommon, in that it does not allow campaigning or election materials at or near polling stations. Bundy Cobb was made to take off his hat, but later decided to fight. It appears that he won.

I often wear some kind of NRA hat or shirt soÂ the local politicians can see that we show up and vote. I’ve never had a problem with it, but this isn’t the first story I’ve heard of people being asked to take off NRA paraphernalia. On the other side of the issue, I’ve been scolded before as a poll stander for helping an elderly NRA member who was legally blind find his way into the polling place, and I forgot I had put campaign materials (for a candidate) on my hat. That was my fault, and I apologized to the poll watcher, but once they realized the voter was blind, the presumably Dem watcher didn’t seem to mind so much.

UPDATE: The title originally said lawsuit, but he did not sue. He appealed to the State Department and County Election Board.

The Eloiification Continues

Tam recounts a story from the TODAY show, where a grown man admitted on television, in front of the nation (or well, at least about 1.6% of the nation) that he was afraid of using a fire extinguisher. Not in the panic of a house fire, mind you, but in a controlled environment, meant to teach people how to use fire extinguishers. If I had done that, my father (a volunteer firefighter for 45 years and counting) would have disowned me. I’ve had a few pan fires, and never really thought much about dumping baking soda or going to the fire extinguisher. Putting the lid on the pan does the trick. Oven fires will generally go out on their own if you turn off the oven and just leave the door closed.

If Jeff Rossen and Savannah Guthrie are intimidated by an ordinary household fire extinguisher, I wonder what they would think of mine?

Sometimes I don’t think it’ll be that long before we’re all buying Brawndo.

Weekly Gun News – Edition 7

I’m sorry to tell you that it’s been a pretty slow week for gun news. I didn’t post anything on Monday, not because I was pressed for time, but because I just didn’t find anything interesting to write about. It’s that slow. But I’ll give a gun news post a try and see how it goes. Hopefully this won’t leave me dry tomorrow:

Clayton Cramer: “Close the Police Car Loophole!” It’s more common than people think. The San Francisco shooting was just a particularly high-profile case.

Miguel: CSGV hits every branch of the bigot tree on their way down. It’s not Markley’s Law Monday, but plenty of dick jokes in there. Though, it does seem that becoming a hate group has been more successful for CSGV than being a gun control group. I just wonder what their religious peace-loving coalition partners would think if they knew?

Joe Huffman thinks I was a little off using Gladys Kravitz as a patron saint for the gun control movement, because Gladys was honest, and everyone around her thought she was a nutcase. Not so with the gun control movement. A valid point!

Winning the Culture War: The return of High School shooting sports.

Dave Hardy is celebrating diversity. 14% of Illinois carry permits are issued to women, and in many minority neighborhoods. Imagine what it would look like if costs weren’t driven up beyond what many poor folks can afford? This was a big enough issue, Bloomberg’s mouthpieces felt the need to pooh pooh the article.

Looks like Cuomo has been experiencing difficulty implemented his beloved SAFE Act. Plus, this.

I love people who claim to be NRA members, but have no idea what the organization does. Hint: it already has a substantial training program, and it even puts out “video discs,” or whatever it is the kids are using these days.

The UK Daily Mail: African-Americans still favor gun control, but views are shifting. The other side is terrified of this.

Charles C.W. Cooke: “‘Better Ideas’ Are Nothing without Guns to Back Them Up, Mr. President.”

New Jersey’s draconian gun laws strike again.

Gun control advocates are extremely butthurt over the fact that we’re successfully using the budget process to thwart executive gun control. I sincerely hope NRA’s lobbyists can keep disappointing them. They have gotten pretty good at playing this game.

The Washington Post throws down on Hillary and her gun position. It’ll be very important for us that Sanders gives Hillary a run for her money. Sanders is far from perfect on the gun issue, but the bet among progressives is that the gun issue will hurt him.

Glenn Reynolds: The Donald and Bernie Show. Both candidates are entirely a result of the establishments of both parties not listening to their voters.

You know the old retort that the attacker will just take the gun away from you? Well, it finally happened.

The Rifle that almost became the M1 Garand.

Apparently you collect firearms and drive to Canada at your own risk. Note how ATF spend resources going after a collector. Probably because real criminals might shoot back.

Funny: Fast and Furious ain’t just a movie anymore.

Kids today! In truth people have always been ignorant, but I think the difference is this generation seems to combine profound brilliance without profound ignorance in a way my generation didn’t.

Apparently another SYG fight is coming in Florida.

New Study: You’re Better off Running Away

Now that Bloomberg has put some real money back into anti-gun research, the studies appear to be flowing. Bloomberg’s mouthpieces, Evan DeFillippis and Devin Hughes (yes, those guys, who I now speculate were paid shills all along)Â point to a new study out that shows you’re really just better off running away. Notice how all their studies are published behind paywalls, while our researchers upload their studies to SSRN where anyone can read and dissect them?

Anecdotally, I only know two people who have ever had to use a gun in self-defense. In one case, the friend was in an attempted robbery. Attempted because he drew a gun on the robbers, and they retreated posthaste. The incident was reported to 911, but the dispatcher asked if the friend really wanted a car sent out to take a report, and he answered no. The second was in a rural home, before the days of 911, and was just never reported to police. Both of these were absolutely and unambiguously self-defense.

I’m not surprised they are picking these studies apart, because just about every study has shown a fairly significant amount of defensive gun use. I would expect more studies on how ineffective firearms are at protecting people. But here’s a question for Mr. DeFillippis and Mr. Hughes: if firearms are so ineffective at self-protection, when will Mr. Bloomberg, your patron, voluntarily disarm his security detail? Or are guns only effective when they are protecting rich billionaires?

I’ve Officially Seen Everything

Behold the majesty of the DildAR:

I think the funny thing is, it looks like it shoots pretty flat.

Newsmax: Here’s a Crappy List of 100 Pro-Gun People We Could Think Of

Newsmax has published it’s list of 100 most influential people in the pro-gun movement. Newsmax is normally on the list of sites I won’t link, because they are the National Enquirer of the conservative news sites. But this was a stupid enough list I had to comment. Â It strikes me more as “Let’s list out 100 people we can think of or Google who are in the pro-gun movement and list them, and we can do it in the order we find them.” It would hardly be wrong to say that, Dudley Brown, for instance, is not influential, but when he actively sabotages progress on our issue, I don’t think it’s wrong to question his priorities. It also seems that all you have to do to get on their list is be a minor celebrity, well-known and own guns, or have once said a kind word.

The list is insulting to the real people who have dedicated their lives to this fight, often out of the limelight and not in the expectation of getting any thanks for what they were doing. So here’s who ought to have made this list,Â in no particular order:

Don Kates
Dave Hardy
Dave Kopel
Robert Dowlut
Clayton Cramer
Nelson Lund
Robert Cottrol
Glenn Reynolds
Stephen Halbrook
Nicholas Johnson

And that’s just ten legal scholars I can think of off the top of my head, who have all done tremendous things for the issue. I could probably list ten more, all of whom belong on that list more than twenty others who have no place on it.

What about Alan Gura and Alan Gottlieb? I mean, I know Alan Gura argued only argued two landmark Second Amendment cases and all, but hey, Bruce Willis once said something pro-gun! Alan Gottlieb, whatever his faults, has still done a hell of a lot more on the issue than Whoopi Goldberg.

Or what about Chris Cox and his whole lobbying team? Everyone thought we were going to get it good and hard in Congress during the 2013 fights, and our opponents walked away empty handed. Not even worth an honorable mention?

This list was written by people with no understanding or appreciation of the issue. It’s one reason I will continue to not link to Newsmax, or take them seriously.

Again, They Are Coming for Your Guns

Another progressive, who totally aren’t coming after your guns, BTW, pens an article praising coming after your guns as a good and wholesome thing. You know what would convince me, as a gun owner, the lefties weren’t after my guns? Not constantly saying they are after my guns, and hoping I somehow don’t notice. Note that today they aren’t really arguing crime anymore. They are arguing suicides. They are going to take them away for your own good, you see. Because “the person most likely to kill you with a gun is yourself.”

This shows the folly of statistics, because the likelihood I will die by suicide is precisely or very near to 0%, and if by some very odd and dire circumstance I ended up going that way, it’s none of anyone else’s f***ing business but my own. I realize that in this is an age where everyone is out and public with their personal problems to any poor schmuck who will listen, but I don’t believe my personal problems are anyone’s albatross to carry but my own, and certainly aren’t any reason for someone to insert themselves into my personal business uninvited.

The gun control movement probably realizes that in this age, speaking out on suicide prevention by taking dangerous things away from people, whether they are suicidal or not, fits the cultural zeitgeist a lot better than the idea that we’d do better as a society if we minded our own business as much as we seem to enjoy minding everyone else’s.

Everytown Coming Out Against Default Proceeds

Bloomberg’s organization wants to extend the waiting period for handguns, essentially. The Brady Act requires a NICS background check, but in the case where the system delays for manual review, the FBI has three days to make a determination, or the sale is allowed to proceed under what is called a “default proceed.” The problem, as they see it, is that the Charleston mass-murderering racist was delayed by the system, and after waiting five days, managed to get the gun on a default proceed.

There is nothing broken about the NICS system itself. It was designed to work this way. Where there was a failure is in the FBI not following through to determine the status of his case. Eugene Volokh took a more detailed look into this issue, and determined that the the racist mass-murderer was arrested previously on a non-felony drug charge, but which was accidentally entered as a felony drug charge. Ordinarily, a misdemeanor charge doesn’t bar you from purchasing a firearm. Only people under indictment or information for felony charges are barred from purchasing (but not possessing) firearms. However, 18 U.S.C. Â§ 922(g)(3) bars people who are “an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance.”

Bob Owens has written two articles already about how this is not a failure of NICS. I agree with him. Even if the drug charge was a misdemeanor charge, unquestionably the FBI had grounds to deny The Racist under 922(g)(3), but it did not follow through. A big of communication between FBI and ATF could have seen The Racist’s gun recovered. That did not happen. This is an inevitable failure of bureaucrats, not a failure of NICS itself.