Snowflakes in Hell

Dave Kopel talks about some inaccuracies the Brady’s have put forth in the ABC News article.  Namely the statement:

“For John McCain to be the political candidate of the NRA shows how things have changed,” Helmke said.

First off, the NRA hasn’t endorsed McCain’s candidacy, and I don’t have any reason to believe that such an endorsement is forthcoming, though nothing would surprise me considering how stunningly bad Barack Wolfgang Amadeus Obama is on this issue.  Secondly, as Dave points out, McCain on the gun issue is really no worse than Bush, who indicated in 2000 that he would sign a renewal of the assault weapons ban.  Bush apparently has also supporting closing the gun show loophole.  McCain at least opposes renewing the assault weapons ban.

Joe Huffman relays a funny story about working with the Pink Pistols in Idaho, and a fun sounding IPSC match meant to make fun of Fred Phelps .  It just goes to show what a bunch of backward queer hating rednecks we all are doesn’t it?  Joe says:

The big lesson I would like for people to learn from this story is that gun owners can get favorable press. Boomershoot with all the potential hazards of  “assault weapons”, “snipers”, “sniper rifles”, and “bombs” has been successfully pitched to the public as what it really is. People from all walks of life who are, in essence, having an early 4th of July celebration of freedom. In the same way with all the hazardous of “vigilante justice”, “cowboys”, and “angry red-necked white guys” potentially associated with a pistol match where people shoot at human shaped targets we were able to get it portrayed, as it actually is, just ordinary people having fun and practicing to defend innocent life from bodily harm.

It wasn’t that hard, it didn’t take that much extra work, and the positive media coverage reached 100s of thousands of people.

It gets the message out, and hell, maybe people might even think it’s fun and give it a try.  Be sure to read the whole thing.

Dave Hardy has further insight into the ABC News article from yesterday that stated the Brady Campaign was bracing for a loss on the Second Amendment:

Brady Campaign goes on to cite what they could push for, and could hope to pass constitutional muster: universal (i.e., private sale) background checks, AW bans, “curbing large volume sales,” i.e., one gun a month.

Leaving aside whether those would pass muster … how does the Brady Campaign hope to survive on them? I’d wager that a LOT of its contributors give only because they believe those are stepping stones to things more significant, a “good start” rather than an end. If they faced a reality in which everything would stop with background checks, an AW ban, and one gun a month — that they’d never get beyond that — they might well bail out.

I would say a lot of their constituency is in it in order to ban guns.  You might get people casually saying “Oh yeah, that sounds reasonable,” to a lot of their agenda, but the folks who care enough to send money and get involved either hate guns, or are scared to death of them.  Either way, if the courts take their eventual goal off the table, I don’t see how they stay in it, unless the Brady’s want to start a movement to repeal the second amendment (good luck with that one).

If I were Peter Hamm or Paul Helmke, I’d be thinking there surely has to be other places in the D.C. establishment where they can put their skills and talents to more effective and creative use.

UPDATE: More here and here.

Apparently Father Snuffy was much missed at a recent gun control rally in Chicago.  I guess gun control rallies in Chicago just aren’t that fun unless someone’s there to threaten to murder gun shop proprietors.

SayUncle tells the Brady Campaign to stay classy.  It’s for the children.

I don’t really get the objections to it either.  The best arguments seem to be preserving a tradition that’s nearly as old as man.  Seems to be that for most of man’s history we’ve also fed other human beings into live volcanos to appease some god or another, and held others as slaves.  Tradition can be a poor reason to keep doing something.