Shall Not Be Questioned – Page 279 – The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …

It’s Evolution! You Can’t Argue with Science

Over at Common Gunsense, Joan Peterson has been breeding a special batch of extremist ramblings lately. Like a train wreck, you can’t help but look. In this episode, she takes a position against teaching kids gun safety. She notes:

Little boys in particular seem to love shooting noises and pretend shooting at an imaginary animal or toy. It must be something in the DNA of male children ( or testosterone?). But real guns are not toys.

It’s evolution, and who can argue against evolution? It’s science! You’re not a science denier, are you Joan? I thought that was for the kinds of people who support the corporate gun lobby.

See, without weapons, humans make pretty tasty cat food, and our early ancestors and cousins wereÂ regularly preyed upon by big cats, birds and other predators until hominids evolved large enough brains to fashion weapons.Â Like most other species, our young instinctively engage in play that aids in honing critical survival skills, just like you notice in kittens. Even typical youth past times like baseball have an evolutionary angle revolving around weapon employment. If our species’ most sophisticated weapon was still the spear, young boys would still be picking up sticks and engaging in play that involved throwing them, probably at each other. It’s instinctive behavior, because humans whose children engaged in this behavior survived better than those whose didn’t, and that’s evidenced by the fact that our species, the weapon making species, is the only hominid species to survive.

The first step in bringing those aggressive instincts under control is to first acknowledge that they exist, and then teaching the young the discipline and responsibility necessary to control them, and use them in a socially responsible manner. For many boys and girls, the discipline required by shooting is a healthful outlet for what they are naturally are drawn to. Denying them the opportunity to explore that part of themselves under proper supervision would be a grave disservice, especially to appease a paranoid and fearful prohibitionist movement, that would rather pretend such things just aren’t true.

The Other Gun Debates…

Sure, we highlight the legal and political debates on guns, but we all know the internet was created by Al Gore so that we could debate such topics as 9mm vs. .45.

NRA is hosting a somewhat similar debate on fan favorite long guns over the next two weeks. Today’s face-off is the Springfield M1A SOCOM II vs. the Kimber 8400 Patrol. With 2.5 million fans, this could be like an internet gun debate on steroids. I bet the staff there are sitting back with the popcorn to see how this topic drives discussion in comments.

My vote is for the image on this post – cake gun.

Then ExUrban Kevin decided he wants to open discussion on what kind of gun should James Bond really be carrying. From one of the points made in the post, I had no idea that Princess Anne was nearly kidnapped once.

Profile Piece of NAGR/RGMO’s Dudley Brown

This is a very interesting article for people who like politics, essentially describing one viewpoint on how Colorado was lost. I don’t know enough about Colorado politics to have any insightful commentary, but the state, like many other western states, strikes me as having a pretty strong libertarian streak, much of which I’d imagine is incompatible with Brown’s very strong social conservatism. There’s a strong current in the GOP base, and especially in the Tea Party, that if we just run candidates that are conservative enough, we’ll never lose. I’ve never believed that to be true, and Colorado is evidence. You can run candidates that alienate other parts of your coalition, and hand the election to your opponents. That if we just run someone conservative enough is a myth peddled by talk radio hosts that making their livings telling people what they want to hear. The reality is getting to enough votes to win an election is not so simple.

Brown may be correct that the Democrats in Colorado have really stepped in it with the gun issue. I hope he’s correct in that. But for gun rights to be secure in Colorado, or anywhere, over the long term, you have to have a workable governing majority, and sometimes that involves making compromises. That would seem to be something Brown has trouble with.

Gun Ownership Actually Regulated

One of the biggest lies the gun control crowd ever told was to proffer the meme that guns were less regulated than teddy bears. Lately they prefer the comparison of guns to cars, which doesn’t strain credulity as much, but they gloss over the fact that you can buy a car without a background check, license, or training, and haul it off to keep or drive on private property. Charles W. Cooke takes a look at these claims.

ATF Could Get a Director

The Senate is close to a vote on B. Todd Jones who’s been nominated by the Obama Administration as ATF director. He’s not, by any means, a good pick, as he’s shown he’s willing to carry Holder’s water and retaliate against whistleblowers. NRA has decided not to pick the fight. Given what’s being arrayed against us, I’m not sure a confirmation fight over ATF is worth picking either. What would be the end? Either Jones never gets a hearing, in which case he continues to serve as “acting” director until Obama’s term runs out, or you force the White House to put up another nominee who will likely be just as bad. If we’re going to pick second term confirmation fights, I’d rather reserve them for federal judges, or, God forbid, a Supreme Court confirmation.

New Group of Charlatans?

A few weeks ago we highlighted the American Rifle and Pistol Association, touting itself as an alternative to the NRA, but with leadership that seemed to have some sympathies toward gun control. A reader tipped me off to a new group called the Sporting Rifle Association of America, also touting itself as a “The Sensible, Modern Alternative to the NRA,” which raises alarm bells straight away. Also raising alarm bells? The site has a private registration, and is hosted off HostGator. Nowhere can you find a mailing address for this “company.” Even ARPA was pretty open about who its leadership were.

I’m not sure this is a false flag group, in the mold of American Hunters and Shooters Association. I think this may very well be an outright scam; an attempt to gather up credit card information. I’d never give out information to a site not really willing to identify itself. To be honest, I’m surprised this doesn’t happen more often in this issue. I think the first place I’d start, if I were any of those gun companies who’s logos were presumably jacked, would be to contact the ISPs, unmask them, and send a cease and desist in regards to use of their logos. Actually, just contacting the ISPs may be sufficient to get them to do a takedown.

UPDATE: Seems they’ve taken down the gun company logos, set up a secure web site. I still wouldn’t give money to people who aren’t up front about who they are. I’d note they only have “Domain Control Validated” certification from GoDaddy. They don’t appear to have obtained any kind of extensive organizational validation, only demonstrated control the domain. I have gone through organization verification for an SSL cert before, and it’s fairly thorough. Not something you could set up in a few hours. Domain control, however, is easy.

UPDATE: Clicks from this site are being redirected to a placeholder page. I’d note this is very strange behavior.

UPDATE: I have received an e-mail from this group:

Hello there —

We noticed your recent blog post regarding our group. We would love to
talk to you and help clear up some of the questions and issues you may
have.

Thanks.

—
Sporting Rifle Association of America
http://www.SRAAHQ.com

If we’re going to deal with these folks, we’re going to deal with it out in the open. Clearly they are paying attention, so before I have any dialog, I want an answer to the following questions:

Where is your organization incorporated?
Are you filed or do you plan to file with the IRS as a 501(c)(4) or (c)(3) non-profit?
Who are on your Board of Directors?
What’s your corporate mailing address?
You were using gun company logos. Are the companies you listed sponsoring you? Did you have permission to use those logos to promote your business or non-profit?
Who processes your credit card transactions? And why were you accepting transactions over an unsecured link prior to other groups on Facebook pointing out that your page wasn’t secured?
Why even in this e-mail are you not identifying yourselves? Who am I speaking with? What is your title?

You want to clear this up? Answer here. I’ll be happy to post the answers. Then maybe we can get to the bottom of what they may be actually doing that makes them a viable alternative to NRA.

Mini News Links

It’s going to be a high caffeination day, because my rear is dragging. Sunday night I got woken up by Comcast Internet at work bouncing up and down like a pogo stick for an hour, which shoots texts to my iPhone. Last night we had a power outage here that lasted 40 minutes, starting about 3:30AM. The sudden disappearance of white noise from the fan and the beeping of all the equipment down here got me right up. Thank God for coffee and Coke Zero. Now the links:

Over at the NRA-ILA column in the Daily Caller, a handy guide to anti-gun propaganda.

Subway stabbing victim can’t sue NYPD for failing to protect him, despite New York prohibiting most effective means of self-defense.

A good reason not to have a firearms registry.

Massachusetts is taking up more gun control, similar to New York’s.

ABC misleads yet again.

Losing self-defense rights if you refuse demands to abstain from conduct.

We put our money and votes where our mouths are. “Gun rights supporters donate four times more and are more politically involved than gun control advocates, according to a poll from the Pew Research Center published this weekend.” RTWT

California seems to be engaging in their own nullification law.

Why gun owners need to take fire danger bans on shooting seriously.

Nanny Bloomberg’s soda ban goes down on appeal 5-0. He didn’t even get one judge.

What caliber for Brown Bear? 5.45×39 would not be my first choice.

Bob Owens has a different take on the “guns are for white people” article. I would agree that we can probably do better. A lot of gun rags are pretty “Gun Culture 1.0” centric, which is I don’t read them.

Tam has gotten around to reading the Heidi Yewman piece.

Well, OK, I guess that wasn’t too “mini” was it?

Racists!

Bloomberg View, over at Huffpo, takes a look at a couple of gun rags, sees no minorities, and declares gun owners racists, and guns being for white people. What kind of person buys magazines and goes through tallying people up by race? A racist maybe? I think these people need to look in a mirror, and then read some of the scholarship we’ve used to support gun rights in the courts, a good deal of which revolves around attempts by radical Republicans to ensure Blacks were free to exercise their right to keep and bear arms.

Court Won’t Hasten Concealed Carry in Illinois

Earlier I had mentioned that motions were filed to enjoin the State of Illinois from enforcing its prohibition on carry until such time as the new law was implemented. It seems the District Court judge has denied the motion and agreed with Illinois that the case is now moot. It looks like this will be appealed, but I don’t know what the timeline will look like.

Self-Defense Law in Pennsylvania Changing?

Eugene Volokh highlights how the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has opened the door to redefine Pennsylvania’s self-defense standard from one which requires the state to disprove a claim of self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt, to one where the defendant has to prove self-defense by a preponderance of the evidence. This would essentially shift the burden from the state to the defendant. Prof. Volokh notes that the legislature can codify the standard and settle the issue, which we might need to start pushing. A burden shift like this is going to mean more ambiguous self-defense cases are going to end up going to trial, even if the state doesn’t have a remarkably strong case.

Looks like we’re not finished on this subject yet in Pennsylvania. Looking at the opinion here, it would seem to me that there might be the votes to change the standard, since three justices joined in the Chief’s opinion, while only two filed concurring opinions that took issue with the self-defense statements. Note that Orie Melvin did not participate in this case because she was on leave from the court, and eventually convicted of several felonies.

Pennsylvania conducts Supreme Court elections in off years. A lot of people, including gun owners, don’t vote in these elections. These are the wages of that belief. Or perhaps I should say the continuing wages of that belief, because we’re still living with de facto registration in Pennsylvania thanks to the ruling in ACSL v. Rendell. I’d note that opinion was handed down in 2004, and we’re still hearing nothing but promises from legislators in terms of fixing that, nearly a decade later. I would not hold out hope they’ll fix the self-defense issue if the Supreme Court acts there in any kind of timely manner. Supreme Court elections are very important.