A few New York assembly folks are calling on social media companies like Instagram to crack down on gun sales. This is quite likely an overblown problem, but it’s worth noting that the gun control movement is still pushing the “OMG! People are selling guns on the Internets!” meme. It’s capitalizes on the fact that most people don’t know the law, and reinforces the notion that our gun laws amount to an unregulated wild west. While it is technically legal to ship, via common carrier, to a non-licensee in your own state, practically none of the common carriers will accept firearms that aren’t being shipped by or to an FFL, and the U.S. mail is only an option for FFLs. So really, these are face-to-face transactions at the end of the day.
Every Issue Has Its Center
In any political struggle, there’s going to be extremes. Most people lie somewhere in the middle between two viewpoints on any given issue. Electoral success can generally be determined by how well you manipulate that vast middle into supporting your position, or at the least not getting too enthusiastic about opposing you. This is something folks in the conservative movement need accept if they want to start winning elections.
What success gun rights have enjoyed has been achieved by fielding large numbers of single-issue voters, while simultaneously not motivating the vast middle to do much of anything in opposition. Whether this is because they share vague agreement or tepid disagreement is of little consequence; the point is we offer an upside to politicians for agreeing with us that has very little downside. We certainly face extremists in the gun control movement, but in terms of numbers, the passion is on our side of the issue, and anyone who is honest about it will acknowledge that.
Now lets bring in in the “War on Women.” The “War on Women” is largely a dog whistle from the left to the vast middle about control of reproductive choices. The calculation is that they are closer to the center of the issue than social conservatives, and they can sway the middle on this kind of rhetoric. The message is that the evil Republicans don’t want you to have any reproductive choices, while Democrats are all for whatever floats your boat. What concerns me about the “War on Women,” is even Bloomberg is jumping on that bandwagon (article highlighted in yesterday’s post). The question a lot of socially conservative voters need to ask themselves is why this is a winning formula lately. I think it’s a winning formula because reproductive choice is an issue that sways the middle in favor of the left.
The middle has shifted on a lot of social conservative issues. I don’t think this means social conservatives need to accept the radical pro-choice position of Democrats on this issue, but they do need to accept that abortion being either legal or illegal in all circumstances is a minority position and work within that framework. Coming out and saying abortion is wrong in cases of rape or incest is an extreme position. It’s like arguing that we ought to completely deregulate machine guns, or stand firm on gun rights for bank robbers. You can come up with beautifully constructed moral and ideological frameworks for why this ought to be truth, but that truth has exactly jack to do with winning elections, and winning elections is in the only way you get to set policy in a republican system of government. In most cases, a viable candidate is only going to carry some of your ideology. If you’re very lucky, he or she will successfully carry a lot of it, and how much of that they can carry depends on factors hardly related to your moral, ideological, or philosophical, views. It’s much more related to likability, marketability, and an ability to break down complex and difficult topics into soundbites that appeal to the instincts of people who barely pay attention.
Four years ago a fairly strong pro-gun social conservative, Bob McDonnell, handily defeated a moderate Democrat, Creigh Deeds to win a four year term as Governor of Virginia. Today, a very strong pro-gun, social conservative, Ken Cuccinelli, is looking likely to lose to a very strong anti-gun progressive, with numerous skeletons in his closet. The Democrats are playing straight from the “War on Women” playbook, and they are winning. Even Bloomberg is joining that bandwagon because he knows gun control won’t motivate anybody. That’s saying something. Whether we who oppose the left want to listen or not is another matter, but it bears directly on whether we’re going to start winning the important elections again. Social conservatives don’t need to give up all their issues, but it’s high time they started thinking about the same tradeoffs other issues have had to deal with in order to actually win.
Bigger Money in Virginia
Mike Bloomberg is putting nearly $3 million into Virginia’s elections across different races now. Politico is also reporting that Bloomberg has made smaller investments in lower level legislative races.
For those gun owners who say that they aren’t concerned about the gubernatorial winner because the legislature will keep the gun control threat at bay, this may possibly change your calculations.
Weekly White House Gun Control Meetings
The White House Office of Public Engagement, which is under Obama’s favorite aide, Valerie Jarrett, is still somewhat on top of gun control as a primary goal of this Administration.
They are hosting weekly meetings with Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, Moms Demand Action, the Center for American Progress, Organizing for Action and Americans for Responsible Solutions in order to plan out the future of more gun control in the next 3 years.
Interestingly, it would seem that Vice President Joe Biden has either been sidelined for not getting “the job” done before, or he’s just lost interest in it since there is no path to federal legislation. The gun control groups have now made it very clear that they are steering clear of federal gun control and focusing on the states.
Obamacare & Gun Registries
The same company that built the nightmare that is Healthcare.gov is also responsible for the boondoggle that was the Canadian long gun registry. Mark Steyn does a great job at highlighting what their previous “success” means the American people can expect from just the website fiasco in Obamacare:
The registry was estimated to cost in total $119 million, which would be offset by $117 million in fees. That’s a net cost of $2 million. Instead, by 2004 the CBC (Canada’s PBS) was reporting costs of some $2 billion — or a thousand times more expensive. …
That works out to almost $300 per gun — or somewhat higher than the original estimate for processing a firearm registration of $4.60. Of those $300 gun registrations, Canada’s auditor general reported to parliament that much of the information was either duplicated or wrong in respect to basic information such as names and addresses.
He continues to explain that there was supposed to be a helpful toll-free number to support the database, but it was never used or really useful. Then, the company said that they just needed to start over, so they were given an additional $81 million, on top of the $2 billion already lining their pockets, to build a second registry. About 4 years beyond their deadline for the new registry, they still didn’t have a functioning product.
Interestingly, the gun registry isn’t the only other high profile failure of this company. Apparently, the Ontario government gave up a diabetes registry that the company was contracted to do after not meeting deadlines and being over budget, but the taxpayers were still out $46 million for a database that was never used.
Steyn also points out that despite these very spectacular and very public failures, the company’s executive brags, “[w]e continue to view U.S. federal government as a significant growth opportunity.†Your money, and now every detail of your healthcare decisions, are in the very best of hands…
Anyone want to bet that another “growth opportunity” they see for the federal government is another gun registry? It would be interesting to know if they have ever hired any lobbyists to push that type of legislation. If they could make more than $2 billion on the last attempt to simply register 7 million long guns in Canada, think about how much they would stand to make trying to register all of the guns in the U.S.
We’re Number 7
A lot of bloggers are talking about Guns and Ammo’s ranking of states according to concealed carry. Pennsylvania ranks in at number 7. John Richardson is surprised North Carolina is only 27, and Kevin is proud Arizona is ranked number one. I have some issues with their ranking criteria. There are many shades of may-issue, and some states which are may issue routinely do issue either depending on jurisdiction. For instance, I would never rank California below Hawaii, or Delaware ahead of Connecticut. There’s also states, like California, for instance, which do have preemption but get no points for it.
Surf’s Up, Dude!
Apple is now run out of cat names with which to brand Mac OS releases, so now it’s being named after all things California. The first is the famous surfing location The Mavericks. I will look forward to future OS X releases 10.10 “Overtaxed,” and 10.11 “This Mac OS X release contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.”
I never used to sweat Apple releases at .0 level, but since Lion, their rollouts have been less than smooth. Nonetheless, since I have to support other people who might upgrade, I figured I should take the plunge early. I installed Mavericks on two of my machines this weekend. Had some issues with Mail hogging the CPU on my laptop for a while, and had to blow away my mail configuration and redo it. The other machine did not have that problem. Mail 7 seems to have serious issues other than that, so if you use Apple Mail, this new version sucks, just to warn you.
People with multiple displays will notice Mavericks handles this differently. It now treats each monitor as a sort of independent display. If you use full screen apps, you’ll probably like this. I don’t use many apps in full screen mode. The downside to the new multi-display regime is that you can’t have a window straddling the two displays. Apple does a little effect when you drag a window between displays so that it looks like it’s moving in between, but once you release the window it has to be on one screen or the, just cutting off the part of the window that overhangs the display.
If you’re thinking about upgrading, I’d wait. While not nearly as troubled as Lion (so far), there’s no real compelling reason to switch to Mavericks. There is no “must have” feature. I use a multi-headed workstation, and for me the new functionality rates a finger twirl; it’s just not all that cool and it has a downside. The new Maps application uses Apple Maps, which is worse than useless, and does anyone actually use iBook over Kindle? I’d wait until at least 10.9.1, possibly 10.9.2 if you’re thinking about doing the upgrade.
I have a real concern Apple is headed into trouble without Steve Jobs. Being an Apple customer in the early-to-mid 90s was depressing, and I fear they may be returning to that state of things.
UPDATE: More concerns about Apple.
Happy Monday and the News
Lots of stuff in the tabs this week:
Talking to your kids about gun safety. I can find little to argue with here, unlike this event which looks like a political agenda disguised as common sense, despite their assurances.
Slate is disappointed more people who have gun accidents don’t go to jail. Well, the one guy was a felon, so he wasn’t legally allowed to have a gun to begin with. The problem with a lot of these “common sense” laws is that they are difficult to enforce.
Is the Obama Administration the cause of the gun and ammunition shortages?
For squirting a water gun at her boyfriend, this woman is now stripped of her Second Amendment rights. That is the law. Don’t you feel safer? (h/t Instapundit)
Obamacare visualized. If you can’t get on the exchanges, try ehealthinsurance.com. Though I notice individual plans have more than doubled in price for crappier coverage.
Price Law Offices takes a look at Commonwealth v. McKown, and also talks about dispatching injuries deer.
“These people appear to genuinely believe that some law or set of laws will actually prevent school shootings from ever happening.” And at least one anti-gun blogger we all know and love seems to think that if something happens, that means it’s legal.
Californians are getting into the recall game.
He’s the only one responsible enough.
Sarah Palin got invited to appear on Piers Morgan, but she’s a little busy.
Remember, be careful when leaving America.
Favorite Friends of NRA Merchandise
This morning, Friends of NRA posted on their Facebook page that they wanted submissions from supporters to talk about their favorite Friends of NRA product and how they use it.
You have no idea how tempted I was to jest about the tobacco walking stick that Sebastian won a couple of years ago. I mean, it is a walking stick. No one knew what to think of it, and that’s why Sebastian won it since pretty much no one entered the raffle for it.
But then, I started thinking it could be more fun to come up with creative claimed uses for the branding iron set we won this year. I’m sure that I could make up some stories there that would have the poor staffer choking on their coffee. I can’t tell you how many people picked up the NRA branding iron at gun shows and pretended to brand their significant others, particularly on the backside.*
Continue reading “Favorite Friends of NRA Merchandise”
Changing the Tone of the Argument
VSSA looks at a comment that Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe made during a debate where he basically said he doesn’t care about what NRA or its members think about his positions. He’s running on an openly hostile platform for guns, a switch from what most Virginia Democrats have had to do in the past in order to be competitive.
Now, I realize at this point that the Virginia race was largely polling in one direction before the gun control groups really started pouring money in so they can claim the result is a verdict on gun control. However, it’s important to understand this shift in rhetoric from the candidate himself.
I think you’ll see more Democrats really run on outright hostility to gun owners and the most popular firearms in America because they’ll look at facts like Barak Obama winning two elections, Terry McAuliffe possibly winning purple Virginia, and the fact that gun owners couldn’t stop legislation in purple Colorado. Even with some high-profile consequences in Colorado, the Democrats are still in charge. It sent a message, but a limited one.
So, while some people may embrace the honesty of anti-gun people speaking out about their disdain for gun owning voters, is it really a “good” thing if we end up losing those elections?