Snowflakes in Hell

Other people are doing a really good job of covering this.  I’m constantly listening to complains by folks that gun owners don’t care about other rights, that we’re lap dogs of George W and his goons.  Well, how come it’s gun bloggers and other sympathetic people who are most outraged by these kinds of law enforcement tactics?  Does anyone think this Hmong gentlemen, who was the victim in all this, make no mistake, was treated gently after having shot and wounded two officers after they unlawfully invaded his home?

There are cases where you have to do raids like this, but it shouldn’t be, in any case, so routine that we hear these stories pop up so often.  Maybe I’ll have an easier time taking some folks on the left as being anything other than babbling baboons when they wake up and realize that there are very real civil rights abuses going on under their noises that have nothing to do with George W. Bush.

Dave Hardy reviews Richard Feldman’s book, and doesn’t find it to be as bad as it is made out to be.

It isn’t. He plainly thought the world of Harlon Carter (as do I), feels that gun laws do harm rather than good, and that NRA’s objectives are correct. He plainly dislikes Wayne and former ILA head Jim Baker, and their financial decisions, and dislikes Neal Knox. There’s some bias there, since Jim Baker got him essentially fired. But the dislikes take up maybe ten pages of the book — it’s just that the reviewers, who hate the progun cause, focus on quotes from those pages.

I think the book will actually help the firearms rights cause. Given the reviews, there will probably be a lot of people buying it who are antigun. But to find the ten pages of criticism, they will have to read about 280 pages on why gun laws (including assault weapons bans) are nonsense, Harlon’s brilliance in creating the modern NRA, how sleazy or foolish antigun politicians are sleazy or dumb (priceless case: NY governor Mario Cuomo tries to defuse tension during a meeting with Feldman and others, by intentionally sitting on a whoopee cushion and then showing it to them), how pro-gunners are honest and decent, etc., etc..

Read the whole thing. I’m not sure Feldman’s book is intended to be subversive, in the manner of enticing anti-gun people to buy it, and then hitting them with a pro-gun message, but if that’s the end result, I’m not going to complain.

UPDATE: Countertop Comments:

Frankly, complaining about people driving Mercedes in Northern Virginia/Washington, D.C. to people in Northern Virginia/Washington, D.C. is a bit ludicrous.  Sure, folks in the heartland might be offended, but its no different than any place else.  Thats what the average person here drives, so thats what your going to see.

Even the marketing arrangements and nepotism that Feldman complains of, it isn’t any different than what you would see anywhere else in D.C.

And the salary’s too.  Last time I checked, Wayne LaPierre was making around $600k a year.  Its nice, but not a lot. Not by D.C. standards, not when the heads of much less powerful (and smaller, and poorer) organizations are making millions a year in salary in addition to all the perks and bonuses they all get (and they all get them).

If the NRA wants to continue to be successful, and its phenomenally successful (GOA complains that every piece of gun control legislation has its finger prints on it, well yeah. Thats cause nothing gets by without the NRA’s sign off.  But remove the NRA and everything gets by.  You have to pick your battles, and considering where we’ve been, we’re doing pretty good right now) , its going to have to continue to hire the best.

I don’t disagree.  I don’t honestly think we’re doing too badly as a movement right now.  We have our opponents on the ropes.  Get rid of the leaders?  I’m not going to consider it until I’m convinced they are doing the wrong thing.

Ahab talks about a program in California to stop drivers and give them Starbucks gift cards to reward them for good driving.  I think a very interesting legal question centers around whether this practice is actually even legal.

I won’t pretend to be an expert in this field, but I’m fairly certain that the police can’t seize a driver for any old reason.  They have to have a reasonable suspicion that the occupants of the vehicle were engaged in some kind of criminal activity.  Even if it’s not strictly illegal, it’s definitely an abuse of authority.

Hollywood’s latest hit, “I am Legend,” is still a rehash of older movies that were supposed to be cinematic versions of a book.  Anxious, I suppose to rehash more old movie ideas, it seems they are coming out with a new version of the movie Real Genius, once again starring Val Kilmer.

Don’t get me wrong, the original movie is an 80s classic, but please don’t tell me they are going to try to pass Val off as a college student?

Man, this editorial is filled with so much ignorance, I can’t even begin to pick it apart.

Such extraordinary firepower is not meant for hunting animals or target shooting. We see only one other purpose. And so did Murray.

The gun control debate is tricky, and emotional. But Congress should move quickly to re-enact a federal assault weapons prohibition.

If I had a dime for every time someone said that a rifle firing a medium power cartridge, is too “extraordinarily powerful” for civilian use, I’d be a rich man.  The .223 is indeed unsuited to deer hunting, because it’s not powerful enough.  Of course, there are AR-15s that are built in calibers suitable for deer, and people use them.

[...] state lawmakers, in Colorado and elsewhere, ought to follow the example of Maryland, which just enacted the Assault Weapons Ban of 2007. (It would mean amending a law now on the books.)

Maryland passed an assault weapons ban in 2007?  That’s news to me.  I’m pretty sure the correct fact is that one was propsed, and second amendment activists in Maryland defeated it.  A little research never hurts, unless you’re an “authorized journalist”, in which case it must be obviously painful, since they never do it.

During the ban, the number of assault weapons linked to crimes dropped. The proportion of banned assault weapons traced to crime dropped by two-thirds from 1995 to 2004.

It did?  I could swear the actual facts from a CDC study done on the issue showed it to be ineffective.

Frankly, we can’t figure out the benefits of having assault weapons easily available. Law enforcement officers universally agree that people wanting self protection don’t carry assault weapons. But criminals do.

If they are so ineffective for self protection, then did they ever think maybe they should ask the police why they carry them?  Well, it’s not the only bit of logical analysis that’s missing fro this piece.

Jon Lowy, Senior Attorney for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Ownership:

Courtesy of Jacob

Senator David Vitter joins Senator Crapo and Craig and also places a hold on Sullivan’s confirmation. No doubt Sullivan is paying attention now. Write your senators and tell them how you feel about this matter. Also, letting Senator Vitter know you appreciate his support can’t hurt either.

CBS 3’s news anchor Alycia Lane, was arrested for assaulting a New York City police officer. According to John Lott, she was looking to get a little help from Fast Eddie. He was making excuses for her on sports talk 610 apparently. You know, whether a police officer is involved here or not, if someone calls you a name, and you haul off and hit the person, it’s still assault. There’s not really any excuse for that.

But yeah, Ed Rendell doesn’t like you having a gun to protect yourself. Think you can count on the governor to make excuses for you if you were to run afoul of all the new gun laws he wants? Doubt it.

Thirdpower takes the VPC to task for arguing that DC’s gun laws are a model for the nation.  VPC has never hidden the fact that their agenda is to end civilian ownership of firearms in this country.  One thing Thirdpower quoted:

Likewise, after 112 people were killed in 11 mass shootings in a decade, Australia collected and destroyed 700,000 firearms determined to be designed to kill many people quickly. Australia has not seen another mass shooting while its firearm homicide and firearm suicide rates have declined.

Of course, many of those firearms designed to kill as many people as possible were semi-automatic shotguns, commonly used in the shotgun sports, and the veritable Ruger 10/22, semi-automatic target rifle that fires a .22LR.  Australia did pass a firearms ban based on function; all semi-automatic firearms are illegal there.

Club for Growth’s President Pat Toomey has a pretty good bit that strikes some chords with me on Ron Paul:

“Ron Paul’s record contains some very laudable components,” said Club for Growth President Pat Toomey. “On taxes, regulation, and political speech, his record is superb. His spending record is impressive, though Paul has recently embraced pork-barrel projects in direct contradiction to his vociferous opposition to unconstitutional appropriations by the federal government.”

Unfortunately, his stubborn idealism often takes Ron Paul further away from achieving the limited-government, pro-growth philosophy he advocates. This is certainly the case with school choice, free trade, tort reform, and entitlement reform, in which he votes against vital free trade agreements, competitive school choice initiatives, and tort reform proposals.

“While we give Ron Paul credit for his philosophical ideals, politicians have the responsibility of making progress, and often, Ron Paul votes against making progress because, in his mind, the progress is not perfect,” Mr. Toomey continued. “In these cases, although for very different reasons, Ron Paul is practically often aligned with the most left-wing Democrats, voting against important, albeit imperfect, pro-growth legislation. Ron Paul is, undoubtedly, ideologically committed to pro-growth limited-government policies, but his insistence on opposing all but the perfect means that under a Ron Paul presidency we might never get a chance to pursue the good too.”

Pat Toomey is the man the Pennsylvania GOP threw under the bus to save Arlen Specter (the wisdom of which I question almost every day). Pat understands politics is not a game of principle, but a horse trading game, the key being always making sure you’re getting a better horse than you had before. Ron Paul is holding out for the winning thoroughbred, which though admirable, isn’t likely to help much when you’re riding a mule.

UPDATE: War on Guns has a different take on it:

I guess if you allow the Club for Growth to be the arbiter of what is “good,” they might have a point. But if “good” is defined as allowing government to assume undelegated powers just because they’re doing your bidding, it should be obvious to all what a dangerous and destructive path that is. How much more evidence–aside from the sorry mess we’re in now–do we need?

Given the Club for Growth praised Ron Paul’s impressive record in many areas, I didn’t really take their report to be a huge ding against him.  As I said, I admire Ron Paul’s dedication to his principles and the constitution, but the politicians people keep voting to send to Washington have created a political culture where people like Paul are marginalized.  I’m an advocate of working within that system the voters in this country have given us, to move to a more classical liberal order, but that’s not to say I like having to do things that way.

A fun post over at Breda’s.