Snowflakes in Hell

Phil Goldsmith has been running around Pennsylvania trying to get to know gun owners, and looking for some allies.

Goldsmith hopes to leverage the unsuspected moderateness of our citizenry. CeaseFire PA has formed a PAC and this year will try to “pick off” — electorally, not violently — a handful of legislators whose opposition to gun control seems out of step with their constituents. Goldsmith’s goal is to make officials as fearful of crossing CeaseFire PA as they are of tangling with the NRA — and his trip makes him hopeful it can happen. “In Elk County, I saw more elk than people,” he says. “And the elk are on my side.”

What a great pro-hunting message.  The Elk are on your side?  I guess because those rural cousin humping rednecks keep insisting on shooting them eh?  Good thing Sarah Palin isn’t around!

Get involved Pennsylvanians.  These guys aren’t going to give up.  They can bring money to the table, but what they can’t bring are votes and volunteers.  We have to bring those.

If Larry Pratt took your post here and reprinted it on GOA letterhead, it would be entirely believable.  Is that really the kind of company you want to keep?  Is the Brady Campaign becoming the “no compromise” Second Amendment group?  Well, GOA probably makes money money and has more dues paying members than the Brady Campaign.  Maybe we should let Larry know he might have some competition.

UPDATE: Man, Larry really is going to have his work cut out for him.  Now it’s AHSA getting into the game too.  Those releases are so similar, you’d almost think they coordinated their message or something.

Sensibly Progressive takes a look at the American Hunters and Shooters Association, and notices their positions are exactly the same as the Brady Campaign.

Joe tells us that the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence is, for the most part, politically dead.  Seems they had a little cash flow problem.  Maybe they need to give Paulson a call.

SayUncle has a great round up of American Hunters and Shooting Association that’s in response to this article appearing in the New West.  Dave Hardy hit AHSA hard last week on the same article.

… because the DC gun law reform bill didn’t include a provision to let her carry concealed.

Now that the Brady’s have chosen to mention at least one aspect of DC law that they were concerned about, it’s possible to actually evaluate their concerns without interference from all the hype and hysterics.

The Brady’s were actually correct to point out that the changes to the DC law would have allowed open carrying of long arms, but there’s a catch.  Technically speaking, it’s never been illegal to carry a long gun on or about your person in DC provided you had a trigger lock on it, and it was properly registered according to DC law.  So even before Heller, you could have slung your evil 50 Caliber Sniper Rifle and walked down Pennsylvania Ave with it, provided you had it properly registered and either taken the bolt out and put it in your pocket, or placed a trigger lock on it.

HR6691 would have repealed the registration requirement, the trigger lock law, and The District’s blanket ban on semi-automatic firearms.  When it repealed the ban on carrying firearms in the home, it did so this way:

SEC. 9. REMOVE CRIMINAL PENALTIES FOR CARRYING A FIREARM IN ONE’S DWELLING OR OTHER PREMISES.

Section 4(a) of the Act of July 8, 1932 (47 Stat. 651; sec. 22-4504(a), D.C. Official Code) is amended–

(1) in the matter before paragraph (1), by striking `a pistol,’ and inserting the following: `except in his dwelling house or place of business or on other land possessed by that person, whether loaded or unloaded, a pistol,’; and

(2) by striking `except that:’ and all that follows through `(2) If the violation’ and inserting `except that if the violation’.

If you look at the section of the DC Official Code that’s being modified here, you would see that it only adds an exception for one’s home and place of business.  The amendment passed the other day, which was to HR6842 is modified thusly:

SEC. 9. REMOVE CRIMINAL PENALTIES FOR CARRYING A FIREARM IN ONE’S DWELLING OR OTHER PREMISES.

(a) In General- Section 4(a) of the Act of July 8, 1932 (47 Stat. 651; sec. 22–4504(a), D.C. Official Code) is amended–

(1) in the matter before paragraph (1), by striking `a pistol,’ and inserting the following: `except in his dwelling house or place of business or on other land possessed by that person, whether loaded or unloaded, a firearm,’; and

(2) by striking `except that:’ and all that follows through `(2) If the violation’ and inserting `except that if the violation’.

(b) Conforming Amendment- Section 5 of such Act (47 Stat. 651; sec. 22–4505, D.C. Official Code) is amended–

(1) by striking `pistol’ each place it appears and inserting `firearm’; and

(2) by striking `pistols’ each place it appears and inserting `firearms’.

So the Brady claim that the bill would have allowed the open carrying of long guns was actually true, but what they failed to mention was this was always DC law.  Their claim that the eventual bill introduced on the house as an amendment to Norton’s bill fixed this “problem” is also true.  But that didn’t stop opponents of this bill from continuing to dishonestly claim all manner of hysterics.

Also not mentioned is that in most US states, it’s perfectly lawful to carry a long arm openly without any kind of license or registration.  I would challenge anyone from The Brady Campaign to attempt to openly carry a loaded AR-15 past the Pennsylvania Capitol Building in Harrisburg, or any other state capital where it’s legal, and see if the police don’t stop to ask you a few questions.

In Helmke’s latest diatribe he finally reveals the NRA’s treachery in making sure terrorists can roam DC armed to the teeth:

Only just before the bill was introduced on the House floor did the NRA fix their “mistake” and amend the legislation to prohibit open-carrying of assault weapons. This shameless effort should have been the final nail in the coffin of whatever credibility the gun lobby had left.

Except that even after it was introduced onto the floor, you guys were still claiming it was allowing terrorists to openly carry all manner of military weaponry openly in public, even though it was apparently “fixed”.  I will look into this later, to see whether there is any merit to these claims at all.  It would be much easier to judge if the Brady Campaign would learn to speak in a language other than raving hysterics.

SayUncle:

Shorter Paul Helmke: Waaaaaah!

From Dave Hardy, quoting Mary Ester of the Brady Campaign:

Seven years later, we still use [Handgun Control Inc.] on the outer envelope of our mailings because responses drop when we don’t.

That tells me that most of Brady’s donors want to ban guns.  Now that a handgun ban is off the table, how does the Brady Campaign propose to survive?  Brady has survived being the voice for reasonable gun control, but if there’s no passion in that, what do you do?  I’d say they’d have to go radical, but Josh Sugarmann isn’t raising much money these days either.

Ray Schoenke is running ads for Barack Obama, saying McCain’s plans are a “Fake to Hide the Ball”.  Well, Schoenke is certainly an expert on that topic!  Here’s the entire text of the ad:

This is Ray Schoenke.  I played football with the Washington Redskins.  Now I’m president of the American Hunters and Shooters Association.  It’s important to me that our next president protects our Second Amendment rights to own guns, and to defend ourselves.  Barack Obama and John McCain will both make sure we keep our guns.

But what about keeping our jobs?  Barack’s got a real plan that invests in creating jobs here at home and cuts taxes a thousand bucks for working families.  John McCain?  I saw a lot of cheap shots in my day, but McCain’s false attacks on Obama are just a fake to hide the ball.  His plans sells out American workers.  McCain will keep giving tax breaks to companies that ship our jobs overseas.  And he’ll look the other way, while China breaks our trade deals.  It’s the same old Bush playbook.  Look, when the coach loses eight years in a row, you don’t bring him back for a ninth season.  We just can’t afford more of the same.

Sounds to me like the Obama Campaign was more interested in Ray Schoenke’s professional football credentials than they were about the message of American Hunters and Shooting Association.  But this speaks to AHSA’s lack of seriousness as an organization representing hunters and shooters, that their president would go on the air shilling for a candidate on issues that are completely unrelated to their core mission.

Schoenke and AHSA are basically shills for the Democratic Party.  Nothing more, nothing less.  This ad should prove that to anyone who thinks otherwise at this point.  Be sure to tune in to Caleb’s show this evening for what I’m sure will be a lively discussion.

UPDATE: Bitter has more here on political surrogates.

The Brady Blog has now returned to their regularly scheduled hysterics:

H.R. 6691 is a disaster of a bill, and the House should have the good sense to toss it in the trash, and its NRA sponsors out on their noses.

Except we’re still waiting for an explanation about how it does any of the things that Brady is falsely claiming it does.

Carl in Chicago points out a Brady presser that would seem to indicate that if HR 6691 is passed, that the mass of guns flooding into our nations capital will produce such an immense gravitational field that it will collapse into a singularity that will consume the city, followed quickly by the rest of the nation, planet, solar system, and known universe.

In short, they are freaking out because the laws in Washington D.C. will be substantially identical to most of the 50 states, with the exception that carrying a loaded firearm on your person will still be unlawful.  This is the press release of an organization struggling to find relevance in a political climate that’s not favorable to their message.  I can’t imagine how much it must worry the Brady’s that the original Republican bill was tabled, because the Democrats wanted to take credit for getting this done.  And the Democrat bill was more pro-gun than the Republican bill!  The Brady’s have to find relevance in this election, and they haven’t been able to so far.  The best they’ve been able to get is “don’t tell me that we can’t uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals.” from Barack Obama, who also keeps insisting he’s not a gun banner.  While there’s no doubt Obama is their man, most sensible Democrats are now aware that this is a losing issue for them.

UPDATE: Cam wants to know where the evidence is that this bill would change anything about carrying of firearms?  Maybe the evidence went back to school with the Brady intern.

We bloggers have been noticing more than a few stories of children being the victims of stupid parents evil baby killing guns in the Google Alerts, and yet it’s like crickets over at the Brady Campaign Blog, which has all summer been running all manner of stories highlighting dead or injured children, law abiding gun owners, and concealed carry permit holders engaging in various acts of stupidity.

We speculated that their prolific blogging was perhaps the product of a talented new intern, who may have gone back to school.  Or perhaps Doug Pennington was on extended vacation.  Or maybe the Bradys just got tired of paying their staff to produce blog material that was only read by gun bloggers.  Either way, it seems quite possible we’ve seen another Brady new media effort fall flat on its face.

When are reporters going to learn that the Brady Campaign does not provide them with accurate or clear information?

According to the Brady Campaign, Washington state has some of the most lax gun control laws in the country. There is no license, permit, or registration required to buy or own a handgun, and background checks are not automatically required for gun sales.

Zamora surrendered to police Tuesday and is being held on $5 million bail. How much grief could have been spared had this rageful man been saved from himself?

The Boston Globe makes it sound as if you can walk into a gun shop in Washington and not have to go through a the background check.  Washington’s gun laws are not vastly different than most states.  From reading this, you’d almost believe that there was some kind of loophole.  There was no legal way for Zamora to get a gun in Washington, or anywhere in the United States.  He would have had to get it illegally.  So the solution to that is to pass more laws that crazy people won’t obey?  Murder is already about as illegal as you can get.

More anti-gun folks who can’t control their rage.  And yet they think they are qualified to control us?

Why do I get the feeling that Ray Schoenke at the Democratic National Convention is the fat kid in the school cafeteria that no one wants to sit with.  And for good reason:

Schoenke is in Denver this week making the rounds. He mingled with fellow sportsmen at Wednesday afternoon’s briefing with the National Wildlife Federation at the Curtis Hotel and admitted that his big idea — that a pro-conservation gun rights group can supplant the NRA — remains a tough sell to Democrats who’ve seen the fury of NRA members at the ballot box.

“The NRA is a formidable opponent, and people are concerned about that,” Schoenke said.

“The reaction is positive, but the idea is still new.”

Yeah, Ray, because we’re not stupid, and neither are most Democrats.  Maybe you could get traction if you weren’t, you know, a gun control group.  And where’s your outrage that your fellow Democrats arrested a hunter?  Schoenke and American Hunters and Shooters Association is more interested in selling the Democrats on his false flag operation than he is in sticking up for actual hunters.  That should tell you something.

So the Obama/Bayh bumper stickers were a leak to distract folks. It looks like it’s Joe Biden. So, like I did with Bayh, let’s look at Biden’s record. We don’t have to go far. Remember the YouTube debates where he said a gun owner was not “mentally qualified” to own guns for simply asking a question.

1. He takes pride in writing gun bans.
2. He’s F-rated with NRA - the worst among almost all of the most talked about candidates.
3. NRA highlights his recent threats to gun owners via his work on his Senate committee:
   

   NRA has been tracking the U.N.`s gun-ban activities for well over a decade, and thanks to the Bush administration`s appointees to the U.N., the U.S. position on any global gun-ban treaty has been consistent and uncompromising: Hands off the Second Amendment rights of American citizens!

   However, all that could change, now that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee–which approves or rejects our U.N. representatives and assesses international treaties for possible ratification–is chaired by anti-gun U.S. Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware.

   Like Schumer, Biden is rated “F” by the NRA Political Victory Fund (NRA-PVF) for his countless votes against firearm freedom. Like Schumer, Biden voted to expose the lawful firearm industry to crippling lawsuits; to extend and expand the Clinton gun bans; to allow a ban on most hunting-rifle ammunition; and to deny the free-speech rights of groups like the NRA during elections.

   Now, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden can use his power to sabotage pro-freedom nominees for U.N. ambassador–as he did with Second Amendment defender John Bolton–and bully fellow senators into accepting whatever gun-ban treaty the U.N. concocts in the name of fighting international terrorism.

4. Needless to say, he didn’t sign on to the Heller brief and doesn’t support efforts to reform DC’s gun laws.

Biden is bad news all around for any gun owner. Pair him with Obama, and it’s a far left gun ban ticket.

Now that Drudge has likely leaked the identity of Obama’s running mate, there are a few things gun owners should know about him.

1. NRA rated him as D- in his last election.
2. One reason is because he’s a liar. Take this example:
   

   Sen. Bayh pledged last year [2004] to support legislation to block frivolous lawsuits against the firearm industry, and NRA sent a letter to Indiana members encouraging them to thank him. Sen. Bayh failed to honor his pledge and voted for the Reed amendment to completely gut S.397. When the Reed substitute was soundly defeated 63 to 33, Bayh voted against final passage of the bill.

3. Bayh refused to sign on to legislation that would honor the Second Amendment rights of Washington, DC and would not sign on to an amicus brief in Heller with more than 54 of his colleagues in the Senate. It would seem he considers some to be more equal than others - a theme I’m sure Obama loves.
4. He doesn’t support concealed carry reciprocity across the country, as evidenced by his refusal to sign on to S.388. Nor did he join a majority of his colleagues in supporting honoring state laws on firearms possession in National Parks through letters to the Department of Interior.
5. He beat Paul Helmke’s ass in a landside - the largest a Democrat has ever won in an Indiana statewide election. No word on if that speaks to Paul’s suckitude or Bayh’s appeal. Based on what we see in the gun world, likely the former.

Bryan Miller seems to be taking the Mary McFate thing pretty hard.  I can’t really blame the anti-gun folks who feel betrayed.  I mean, imagine if you found out SayUncle was really a mole for Sarah Brady.  But none of us are really pissed at NRA over the whole “spy” incident, and it has nothing to do with wanting to preserve gun industry profits.  I worry about gun industry profits when I’m going to buy a new gun, not when I’m wearing my activist hat.

No, this is about preserving our Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  Are any tactics too despicable to prevent someone from undermining the very basis of natural and civic rights of the American people?  Would it be wrong to try to gain insider knowledge on a group of people who were intent on silencing newspapers, and ending all publishing in the United States?  What Bryan doesn’t understand, or perhaps he does understand and merely doesn’t want to acknowledge, is that we hold the Second Amendment right up there with the First in importance for maintaining a just and free society.  We demand the Second Amendment be respected.  We’re quite serious about it.  Serious enough that we’ll condone our own advocacy groups doing opposition research, even if it means being a little underhanded.  If that makes you upset, if that makes you paranoid, that’s not my problem.  My problem is the fact that you want to trash the Bill of Rights.

So says Marsha McCartney:

“When I first read about this, I couldn’t believe it was legal,” said Marsha McCartney, president of the Texas chapter of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “It turns out it wasn’t.”

No, turns out that it is legal.  They are depending on school regulations governing the hiring of security personnel, which require them to be sworn officers if they are to be armed.

If a board of trustees authorizes a person employed as security personnel to carry a weapon, the person must be a commissioned peace officer.

Teachers are not hired security personnel, and the Texas state concealed carry statute is pretty clear on the matter.  Harold School District policy is a problem for the gun control movement, because we all know what’s going to happen if this policy is allowed to move forward: “A whole lotta nothing.”  They must convince the public the world will end if guns are allowed in schools — all it takes is a few contrary cases for the gig to be up.

I like the way David is thinking here.

Remember that the guy who pays for this billboard helped the found and was president of an organization that claims to represent hunters and shooters.

UPDATE: More from Robb.

From Dwight Lewis of The Tennessean:

Gun advocates can make me sick to my stomach.

Glad to oblige.

Robyn ran one of the few anti-gun blogs out there.  But she got tired of the Reasoned Discourse and quit blogging.  Jacob found an interview with her by CSGV.  She said blogging:

… was one of the most disheartening experiences I’ve ever had. Most of the comments I received were so mean and lacking in compassion and empathy it was hard to believe people would write such things. Death threats were common. When I wrote about children dying from gun violence, responders wrote that inner city children were not really children, but rather thugs and monsters. Racism and prejudice seemed to motivate a lot of the comments.

I recall the comment section there, and I recall a lot of facts being brought forth to refute her emotionally driven nonsense.  I also don’t recall any racism in the suggestion that, yes, some children, particularly the ones that belong to gangs, are indeed monsters.