Coverage of VCDL Rally in Richmond

Sailorcurt went, and has some pictures.  This commentary I think is pretty telling:

 One final observation. The VCDL estimates that there were about 400 gun rights supporters lobbying in the General Assembly building and about 200 that attended the “lie in.” I would assume that a good 80 to 90 percent were armed.

All of those guns around amongst all of those people who disagree on the issues so fundamentally (and, in the case of the anti-gunners, so rudely and with barely concealed anger), and NOT ONE PERSON was shot. NOT ONE FIREARM was brandished. The Anti-gunners were perfectly safe even when outnumbered by armed individuals by a factor of two or three to one.

Curious counterpoint to their argument that “guns kill people” now isn’t it?

Yep

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Fred Quits

Dammit to hell:

“Today, I have withdrawn my candidacy for president of the United States. I hope that my country and my party have benefited from our having made this effort,” Thompson said in a statement.

I’ll be taking down the Fred ’08 banner.  This is a real bummer.  Who to support now?   Mitt, Rudy and Preacher Mike are unacceptable.  Ron Paul is a waste at this point, of more than just a vote.  That leaves McCain.  Can I get behind this man who I swore on more than a few occasions I’d never vote for?  If he can beat Obillery, which I think he can, I’ll get on board the McCain Train, but I’m not going to enjoy the scenery.

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Government Information Gathering

Joe Huffman has a good post up on government information gathering on its citizens.  I think this is indeed something we have to be wary of, but only to the extent that the government can compel me to give them information.   The government, for instance, knows my income because they will lock me up for failing to file an income tax return.

But in an information based society government will be able to know a lot about its citizens.  Our government probably knows more about its citizens than any other government in history.  There won’t be much means to avoid that.  Conversely though, information technology also makes it possible to know more about our government than any other people in history.  I would encourage and recommend anyone who’s interested in this topic to read David Brin’s The Transparent Society.  Brin’s argument is essentially that technology is going to make information and surveillance technology ubiquitous, and there’s not much we’ll be able to do about it:

While this has the makings for an Orwellian nightmare, Brin argues that we can choose to make the same scenario a setting for even greater freedom. The determining factor is whether the power of observation and surveillance is held only by the police and the powerful or is shared by us all. In the latter case, Brin argues that people will have nothing to fear from the watchers because everyone will be watching each other. The cameras would become a public resource to assure that no mugger is hiding around the corner, our children are playing safely in the park, and police will not abuse their power.

No simplistic Utopian, Brin also acknowledges the many dangers on the way. He discusses how open access to information can either threaten or enhance freedom. It is one thing, for example, to make the entire outdoors public and another thing to allow the cameras and microphones to snoop into our homes. He therefore spends a lot of pages examining what steps are required to assure that a transparent society evolves in a manner that enhances rather than restricts freedom.

It’s a good read.  I don’t always agree with the book, but it makes you think.

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From Our Side in New Jersey

Scott Bach talks about some of the recent changes in New Jersey that Bryan Miller and CeaseFire New Jersey are suggesting target only criminals:

So what’s the problem, you ask? The problem is that the Garden State’s gun laws are a tangled web of hypertechnical, complex, and frequently incomprehensible regulations that often have the effect of ensnaring otherwise law-abiding citizens and turning them into inadvertent criminals.

New Jersey regulates firearms by banning everything first, and then carving out extremely narrow, limited, and stingy exemptions. Fall outside those exemptions, and you’re considered a criminal, no matter how upstanding a citizen you may otherwise be.

Read the whole thing.  This is what the anti-gun folks want to bring to the rest of the country.  These are what they consider “reasonable” and necessary gun control laws.  Yet Bryan Miller has the audacity to claim:

Why do I care? Not because of any disdain or dislike for hunting or sport shooting. Although I do neither, I don’t oppose either. Hunting is a traditional American pursuit dating back to the first settlers, and I see no reason to seek its demise, as long as it is pursued lawfully and meets the demands of the community in which it occurs. I feel similarly about sport shooting.

Furthermore, hunters and sportsmen are generally not responsible for the unacceptably high rate of gun violence we face in this country, so I have little interest, frankly, in their guns.

If Bryan is sincere in this, would he be willing to agree to re-engineer New Jersey’s gun laws so that they won’t so easily entrap honest sports shooters?   You can bet the answer is no.  Bryan cheers Joyce funded studies that show declining gun ownership.  If gun ownership is on the decline in New Jersey, which I would bet it is, it’s driven largely by the laws which make owning a firearm for lawful purposes a hazardous legal undertaking.  It’s hard to get into the shooting sports in New Jersey without talking to a lawyer, and that’s just fine by the gun control groups there.

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Ruger Getting All PC Again?

Apparently Ruger doesn’t want to include evil black versions of its venerable 10/22 in their photo contest.  I’m not believing they don’t have any, since there are several stocks out there for doing such a thing.  Ruger doesn’t exactly have a stellar history of standing up (see “Controversy” section) when the anti-gun groups get uppity.  If Ruger wants to remain politically correct, that’s fine, but they will continue to lose money in that case.  They’ve put out some impressive products lately, but gun owners support companies that support them.  By pretending black rifle shooters aren’t doing mods for the 10/22, they are feeding the notion that these types of rifles aren’t normal, and that does no one a favor.

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Virginia Gun Show Bill Still Alive in Senate

Armed and Safe has a roundup of the situation there. I’ve heard turnout in Richmond was something like 3x that of the anti-gunners. VCDL has quite the grass roots fast reaction force, and it’s good to see it at work here.

UPDATE: Bitter has more.

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Good Advice on Teaching The Parties

Via Instapundit:

Some people think it’s time to teach the party a lesson. Fine, but I thought 2006 was supposed to do that. Did they learn anything? Seems to me that things are about what they were when I put up my pre-mortem post that had Limbaugh exercised. (For that matter, did losing in 2000 and 2004 improve the Democrats? What, exactly, have they learned that led to the Hillary/Edwards/Obama offering? Are political parties capable of really learning?)

People will make up their minds closer to the date. Meanwhile, here’s a suggestion: If you care about saving the Republican Party, don’t blog about it. Get to work at the local and state level. Push your views, and find and promote candidates you like. Meanwhile, my earlier thoughts about culture and politics are still relevant. If you feel that way, then focus your energies there. But either way, don’t expect a candidate to be all you want. They seldom are, in my experience.

Read the whole thing, because it’s very true.

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