Snowflakes in Hell

Looks like the federal courts aren’t going for it. I really don’t like this reason:

The federal district court bought their argument that the state law conflicted with the federal 1970 Occupational Health and Safety Act, which requires employers to minimize workplace risks.

The Supremacy Clause reigns, I suppose. So now the OHSA requires employers to ban guns in the workplace? That’s what this would appear to be saying. Someone needs to explain to me what all this has to do with interstate commerce again.

I don’t mean to make it seem like I’m suggesting we ignore the machine gun issue, pretend it doesn’t exist, and not talk about it.  Far from it.   There’s a big difference between talking about the issue, and getting on CNN or another national news outlet and saying “Why yes, we support in legalizing machine gun ownership.”

All I am saying is that it’s not time right now to have a national debate about this.   That is step 32, and we are on step 4 or 5 at most.   So if we want to move the ball forward, what do we do?

I’ll leave the comment section of this thread for folks to offer constructive suggestions on how we can get from our current state, up to being able to seriously petition congress and the public to agree to liberalize the current Title II machine gun provisions.  Remember that the starting state is the vast majority of the public, and Congress, being hostile to your idea.

Countertop made a comment over at Uncle’s that I wanted to highlight here, because he’s so very right:

Because if you don’t message well, then you risk throwing the whole thing in the toilet.,

don’t get greedy. don’t read into what Cox said. don’t think anyone outside the gun culture things you have any right to machine guns.

If it becomes a debate about access to machine guns, we all lose.

You class 3 folks need to get over it, get off your high horse, and realize we are all in this together and its going to take baby steps to get it all back. We are close. We are real damn close, but somehow for ever 5 steps forward we take the nuts (at the urging of GOA I suspect) insist on pushing us back 6.

I try to be a bit more diplomatic than that, but he is right, and sometimes it takes spelling out in harsh terms to get it out there to folks. There’s just no way to win on this issue right now. It’s “hearts and minds” time on the issue.

UPDATE: More wisdom from Bitter.

I agree with Uncle over at his post on NRA and machine guns. Just for the record, here’s the context:

BECK: We’ve already had that. We don’t put NASCARs onto highways and we don`t put machine guns into the hands of people, either.

HELMKE: That’s an interesting issue because there was a machine gun in effect ban that was passed by the federal government in 1934. What’s the NRA’s impression of that?

BECK: Chris, Chris.

HELMKE: How about the Brady Bill?

BECK: Chris, are you for fully automatic machine guns?

COX: We’ve never advocated fully automatic machine guns and Paul knows it. But, again, Glenn, this is very basic. It’s –

HELMKE: How about Brady background checks?

COX: Paul, let me finish.

You guys supported waiting periods. You didn’t support instant checks. So let me finish. The basic question is do you support an individual, a good honest person, and their right to own a firearm for self-defense? Sarah Brady has said there’s no reason to own a gun, you can`t own a gun for self-defense. Paul, and his group have filed –

(CROSS TALK)

COX: Paul, your group filed in this Supreme Court case briefs saying that the Second Amendment was not an individual right. That honest Americans did not have the right to own a firearm.

(CROSS TALK)

COX: You’re wrong, Paul. And you’re wrong to go on national TV and suggest that you somehow support the Second Amendment, when your actions speak louder than your words.

If you want my opinion, Helmke was deliberately trying to get Chris to go on record as being for a gun control law. I know the Brady’s read gun blogs, including this one (I’ve seen them in the logs). They keep track of the arguments we have within our community. Recently they are pushing HR2640 heavily on their blog. We know that they have been trying divide and conquer tactics in the past, and I believe this is part of that.

The machine gun issue is a touchy one. Touchy because it’s fraught with political land mines. For one, the vast majority of the population doesn’t think they ought to be legal. For two, there would be a lot of NFA collectors who would oppose changing the law, because it would send the value of their collection into the toilet. For three, there’s no way in hell you’ll ever get a repeal of the 1986 Hughes Amendment out of congress, unless the NRA suddenly gets a lot more political clout.

We have a long long way to go on the machine gun issue. Right now, it’s going to be about winning hearts and minds. But I agree with Uncle that we can’t throw machine gun collectors, and people who want to be machine gun collectors, under the bus. We have to find a way to deal with this issue publicly, and mold the debate so that a future step can be taken if there’s a favorable change in the political climate.

Now, some of you aren’t going to like this, but the public rhetoric needs to be that we support the National Firearms Act. The only way, you’re ever going to convince the public and the politicians to repeal the 1986 Hughes Amendment is to convince them that the NFA was just fine, and that the 1986 ban went too far, and is too restrictive. Even this is going to be a hard sell, I’m sorry to say. But if you just say “repeal it all” the public and politicians are just going to say “no” and dismiss you.

Politicians, and sadly most of the public, don’t think your second amendment rights extend to legal ownership of machine guns, and they aren’t going to be swayed by an abstract argument about resisting government tyranny or the natural rights of man. Step one is convincing people that repealing the 1986 ban isn’t really a big deal. We’ll burn the other bridges when we come to them.

UPDATE: David Codrea disagrees.

Someone pointed me to this story describing a sorry situation that a Pennsylvania LTC got himself into:

Mr. Gittens said the fight started at Tink’s Night Club in Scranton, where Mr. Padilla was fighting with a woman and Mr. Gittens thought he was not treating her with enough respect.

A group of people left Tink’s and traveled to Denny’s. About 3 a.m., Mr. Gittens and Mr. Padilla began to argue in the parking lot. Blows were exchanged and Mr. Padilla lunged at him with a screwdriver, Mr. Gittens said.

“He stabbed me in the arm; there was blood,” Mr. Gittens said. “I couldn’t believe he stabbed me. So I went after him again.”

Pretty soon, others stepped in and separated them. Mr. Belmonte was holding Mr. Padilla back, and pulled out his .40-caliber Glock pistol when Mr. Padilla took another swing, Mr. Gittens said.

Looks like this guy stepped in to separate his friend and Mr. Padilla.  His friend was the aggressor in the situation, having initiated the confrontation.  This was bad move number one.  I don’t like my friends this much.  If I were out with a buddy and he got himself into a fight, at worst it wouldn’t be the other guy I’d be restraining.   At best I’d call the police and let them deal with his sorry ass.

Charges have not been brought against Mr. Padilla, because “it was pretty clear he was not the aggressor in all this,” Ms. McCambridge said.

There’s a lot of missing information here.   Was someone restraining Mr. Gittens as well?  Had Mr. Gittens broken off the fight when Mr. Padilla resumed it and was shot?   Was he armed with the screw driver when he was shot?

Mr. Belmonte is claiming self-defense, which it could be, depending on whether hostilities had broken off and Mr. Padilla resumed them, and whether he was still armed with the screwdriver.  But I can see why the ADA would bring charges in this case.  There are probably multiple stories in this altercation and alcohol was supposedly involved, so she will leave it up to a jury to decide whether this was justifiable self-defense.

This illustrates the dangers of getting involved in the affairs of others.  This is really a matter that Mr. Belmonte should have stayed out of.  He definitely shouldn’t have been drinking and carrying, if that turns out to be the case.  Even if he is found not-guilty on these charges, he’ll probably never get another LTC in Pennsylvania.

Late last week a commenter by the name of Lynn Hoffman came to comment on Bryan Miller’s blog. It would seem that Mr. Hoffman, a fellow Philadelphian, is a food and wine critic, and author. Now, the comment was bad enough, but it would also seem that Mr. Hoffman is the author of an anti-gun work of fiction called “bang BANG”.

Being the curios fellow I am, I decided to look up what this book was about. Here’s part of a review I found:

Enraged by the use of her words and picture by a pro-gun US Senator, and after seeing herself in an ad for gun rights in Telescopic Sight Digest, she takes to the streets of her Center City Philly neighborhood–with a BB gun. Her first target is a Jeep Wagoneer, chosen for the UGA (United Gun Association) decal on its rear window. Her ensuing spree is highlighted by a “Valentines Day Massacre” of at least forty UGA-stickered windshields in the city.

This is fiction from the gun control folks; glorification of vandalism against gun owners who stand up for their constitutional rights. Unbelievable. Just more Reasoned Discourse^TM, I suppose.