Snowflakes in Hell

A British couple gets arrested for possession of a suppressor.   The proper thing for the AUSA to do here is to exercise discretion and not bring charges.  A grand jury should refuse to indict.  These aren’t people who belong in jail.

I’d say they’d make a great Second Amendment case in order to chip off part of the National Firearms Act, but their not being American citizens would needlessly complicate things.

Does anyone from the Brady Campaign want to come on and defend this application of our “reasonable common sense gun laws?”

We’ve had a few responses to Bill Schneider’s column in The New West.  First, at The Ten Ring.  Ride Fast also has a pretty good fisking of it.  Bill is actually someone I wouldn’t mind having a debate with, because I’d really like to understand his thinking.  I mean, I get that some people aren’t single issue gun voters.  What I don’t get is why guys like Schneider deride the voting choices of people who do feel that way.

It’s Bill Schneider’s right to think the Second Amendment is not important.  That is what he is saying, despite what he says.  When you aren’t voting on it, that means it’s not that important to you, and if you voted for Barack Obama, you voted against the Second Amendment.  Here’s Schneider’s conclusion:

Don’t alienate the majority of gun owners. Don’t automatically dismiss gun owners with sincere suggestions because they don’t perfectly match your doctrine. Don’t instantly shoot this commentary full of freedom holes, which I’m sure you can do, at least until you think about it. Have you just read a mainstream strategy for growing the constituency willing to help you protect our right to bear arms?

I have.  I’ve thought about it a lot Bill.  But how do I build a coalition with someone like yourself who is not willing to actually do the things necessary to preserve it?  I mean, pretty clearly we agree on some things, especially if you think there shouldn’t be a new Assault Weapons Ban.  But you voted for a guy who advocates passing exactly that.  How do I build a coalition with you if you vote against our interests?  I’d really like to understand that.

If this is how Barack Obama respects the Second Amendment, I’d sure hate to see how he’d disrespect it.  I suspect that would involve a trip to the National Archives, a match, and some lighter fluid.

There’s going ot be a runoff election on December 2nd in Georgia to determine who’s going to be the winner of the Senate seat there.  The incumbent is Republican Saxby Chambliss.  The NRA is backing him in this election.  Personally, I don’t care what Jim Martin’s stance on guns is at this point — his party is anti-gun, and if we don’t preserve a filibuster for the Republicans, there will be no opposing Obama’s gun control plans.

If you’re in Georgia, Election 2008 is not over, and it’s not lost.  Now is the time to volunteer.  Scroll to the bottom of this page to find out information for your local EVC.

I’m going to make a prediction, because I think a picture might be shaping up here.  Given who Obama has nominated for his AG, and the things he said, I think we can expect gun shows, and in particular private sales, to be a prime target of the new administration.  Why?

• Gun shows are a locus of organization for the gun community.  We’d be far weaker without them.  The other side has to know this too.  If you’re a recruiter or an activist, you go where the fishing is good, and the fishing is very good at gun shows.
• They are easily demonized.  Few people have attended them, and the media has done an excellent job of making sure people think gun shows are a bunch of Nazi white-power types looking for a few extra boxes of grenades to defend the bunker from the blue helmeted hoards.
• They are easily confused with the separate issue of private sales.  While shutting down private sales won’t, in and of itself, make gun shows disappear, they are an effective vehicle for pushing the issue and getting to gun shows.
• John McCain supported regulating private sales, and the NRA endorsed him.  This was a signal that NRA wasn’t all that afraid of private sale regulation, and the number of gun owners who voted for McCain suggests they weren’t either.  This was always the risk of getting behind McCain.

My prediction is that when they move on gun owners, they will move on this issue.  They will reach farther than McCain ever would have ever done, and we will have to fight them.  I expect private sales regulation will be the main push, but expect gun shows themselves to be in the crosshairs, with the aim of destroying them.

Winnetka, IL has repealed its gun ban.  The decision was unanimous.

“Somebody else wakes up.“

Kurt Hoffman finds some ridiculous assertions about the New Jersey ban on .50 caliber firearms.  The vote that was scheduled for last night has been postponed to December, according to ANJRPC:

In response to your calls, faxes, and emails, the New Jersey Assembly on November 17 delayed passage of A2116 (banning most firearms of .50 caliber or larger) and instead amended the legislation in an attempt to respond to gun owner concerns. The amended bill could be considered by the full Assembly as soon as December.

The amendments are currently under review and further alerts will be forthcoming. However, no amount of tinkering can “fix” a gun ban, and A2116 remains fundamentally flawed legislation because it bans handguns and long guns based on the size of the hole in the barrel instead of punishing criminal behavior.

Please continue to contact your Assembly members and oppose A2116. Their contact information is available here.

Hopefully they’ll find better things to do, like fixing the gaping holes in the state’s budget.

There are literally hundreds of bills that get introduced in Congress, or thousands if you count the legislatures of the several states, each legislative session.  Most of them aren’t going anywhere.  Every Congress since the Assault Weapons Ban expired have had a bill to renew, and an even worse bill.  They are typically introduced by the usual suspects, and will languish in committee, never to see the light of day.  The mere introduction of a bill means nothing.

When to start worrying is if you see a sudden surge in legislators co-sponsoring a bill.  When you start approaching a majority, or large majority of the house co-sponsoring a bill, that increasing the likelihood that the bill will get a hearing in committee.  The time to start worrying about a new assault weapons ban is if one of the introduced bills gets a committee hearing.  If there was going to be a time I’d suggest buying, that would be the time.

Even if a bill gets a hearing, it doesn’t mean it will be passed out of the committee on to the floor.  The committee chairs decide what gets a hearing, and what does not.  The Chairman of the Committee that handles things like assault weapons bans is John Conyers, and probably will be in the 111th Congress as well.  The composition of the committee makes it challenging for us, but we have yet to see a bill get a hearing in this Congress.

We do keep track of this stuff, and if it looks like things are going against us, you’ll hear it on the blogosphere first.

Yesterday, Wayne LaPierre spoke at Ashland University about the very real dangers that await gun owners even after our SCOTUS victory.

Historic victories for gun rights occurred in 2008, but the fight for firearm freedoms must continue to preserve the Second Amendment, National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre told a crowd on Monday at Ashland University. …

“Seventy-five years ago in his first inauguration as president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,’ ” he said. “Today, I would argue almost the exact reverse is true. The greatest thing we have to fear in many ways is not enough Americans are afraid, because not enough realize what grave dangers are out there to our freedoms.”

There is a lot of truth in that statement. To back up his words, he highlighted interviews with Katrina victims who were then victimized by government officials who took their guns and comments from Rebecca Peters encouraging a limit to the kinds of guns hunters are allowed to own. There are still many gun owners out there who don’t know these things happened and who would find it hard to imagine even if you told them about it.

Rustmeister and Peter comment on the term “fudd.”  It’s hard to slur just one subset of a group with a term that’s really insulting to the whole group.  There will always be hunters who don’t get it.  Anyone who’s been around shooters enough knows there are some that also don’t get it.  But there are plenty that do, and for those that do, I think we ought to have the courtesy of not smearing the whole group.

Tam tells a story of how a military ID won’t cut you any slack if you’re from Illinois. Obama’s version of “reasonable gun laws.”

I have to admit a bit of a dirty old man moment after seeing this picture, and only reading the caption after.  But I can’t think of a better birthday present, personally.

It would appear that the anti-gun crap on Obama’s transition website has returned.

Scott Bach opines on New Jersey’s A2116, .50 caliber firearms ban:

Many hunting and historical firearms fall into this category, so A2116 would ironically ban Revolutionary and Civil War flintlocks and muskets that won the very freedom that the legislation seeks to take away, not to mention popular hunting rifles. It could also ban a truly evil scourge of society that shoots 100+ caliber projectiles: marshmallow guns.

Read the whole thing.

Want to work for the Obama Administration?  Here’s one of a long list of personal things they want to know about each of their employees:

Do you or any members of your immediate family own a gun?  If so, provide complete ownership and registration information.  Has the registration ever lapsed?  Please also describe how and by whom it is used and whether it has been the cause of any personal injuries or property damage.

I guess they don’t know that in 99% of the country there is no registration of firearms.  Unless, of course, they only intend to hire people from Chicago.  Either way, if I had an employer put this before me as a condition of employment, I’d be out the door so fast I’d leave a vapor trail behind me.  The New York Times has more.

UPDATE: You know, it says a lot about people who would subject themselves to this kind of rubber glove treatment.  How are we expected to build a competent government when this is what it takes to vet someone?  Who would do this except to wield power?  Who does not have some skeletons in their closets, or family secrets they don’t wish revealed.  Who has not said too much?  Either we’re going to have to develop a sense of perspective as a society, or we’re doomed only to have Barack Obamas, Hillary Clintons and Rahm Emanuels in the cooridors of power.

Add John Patrick Williams, former Congressman from Montana, to the list of Democrats who are pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes:

The bad news? Groups such as the NRA have been hoodwinking you about that very issue — wastefully spending your hard-earned dues money on politics, and useless protesting by having people like Charlton Heston give that phony “pry it from my cold dead fingers” speech. A case in point is the recently publicized rush by some gun owners to “stock up” on assault weapons before they are banned by the NRA’s latest boogey man, Barack Obama.

The urge to blame President-elect Obama is a transparent example of how utterly partisan the gun groups and far too many of their adherents have become.

Pat, you might want to ask Barack Obama why renewing the assault weapons ban is still part of his platform before you start accusing NRA members of being paranoid of the boogey man.  We’re going to remember all these Democrats who falsely assured us that Obama is a man of the Second Amendment when 2010 rolls around.

Apparently City Council is once again headed to court to try to prove the Pennsylvania Constitutional actually says:

The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State shall be questioned by Philadelphia City Council.

Rather than what it actually says.  One thing from the article:

The NRA is challenging all five ordinances, although attorneys focused on the proposed assault-weapons ban in court Tuesday.

“Most of my clients have machine guns,” Shields said. “They are absolutely lawful.”

Police already have the authority to seize weapons if they are being used unlawfully, he said.

Way to go doing Josh Sugarmann’s legwork in helping confuse the public that the assault weapons issue has anything to do with machine guns.  Your clients may have them, and they may be legal, but that’s not what’s at issue here.

From ANJRPC:

On Monday, November 17, the New Jersey Assembly is scheduled to vote on A2116 — legislation banning most firearms over .50 caliber.  Though previously amended in an attempt to address gun owner concerns, the legislation still bans many popular hunting guns, historical firearms, and large bore target firearms, based on alleged public safety concerns.  Ironically, the legislation bans many of the guns that won the very freedoms the bill seeks to destroy, including some Revolutionary War and Civil War guns and their replicas.

A2116 makes the fundamental mistake of banning guns based on the size of the hole in the barrel rather than punishing criminal behavior.  It treats law abiding citizens who choose to exercise their Second Amendment rights like potential criminals.

Please immediately email, call, and/or fax your Assembly Members and urge them to oppose A2116!  Their contact information is available here.

While the rest of us are worried that gun control is back, it never really left in New Jersey.  The relentless hammer pounds on in The Garden State.

Looks like the woman who open carried to the kids soccer game is going head to head with Bryan Miller.  My advice to her is to be prepared.  Bryan is a ruthless debater, and he will corral you, then go in for the kill if you’re not prepared.  Get your talking points together, and stick to them.  Bryan will try to change the debate to grounds that are more favorable to him.  Play the nice soccer mom who just wants to protect her kids.  Let Bryan’s overly aggressive tendencies work against him in the public eye.

This is the big time.  When you talk to the media you represent all gun owners, and will be judged accordingly.

Just in time for Congress and Obama to ban them!

50,000 signed the petition:

The petition, calling for a total ban on private ownership of guns with barrels shorter than 600 millimeters (23.6 inches), was handed over to Interior Minister Anne Holmlund.

Finnish defense minister Elisabeth Rehn was among those who signed the petition.

Pardon me, but wouldn’t that ban most rifles too?  I own only a handful of rifles that have barrels that long, including my .22LR Kimber target rifle.  It’s good to see we’re not the only country plauged with anti-gun activists that like to tell the public they are banning one thing, when they are really banning another.

Fred Lebrun asks the question again:

Well, if it’s true, why in the world would you go out and buy something the government is going to take away from you anyway? Of course, the idea of confiscating our legally owned and permitted handguns is totally insane and flies in the face of where we’re at nationally.

Confiscation is not the real fear driving this.  The fear is that Obama will reenact a broad based manufacturing or sales ban on a large number of commonly used firearms.  His transition team has already called for it.  At this point it’s not paranoia.

And I for one say amen to that. I’m a handgun owner, and rifle and shotgun owner, and an avid hunter.

Avid hunter?  How do you feel about this?  Of course, he goes on to call for more gun control.

UPDATE: Joe Huffman has more.

Michael Bane talks about moving on.

Part of our moving forward battle plan depends on how things play out in Washington. In light of the challenges out there, the most logicial thing would be for guns to be back-burnered, which would be a best-case for us because it gives us more time to prepare.

I agree that now is not the time to panic, but to organize. President Obama will have other priorities heading into the new year.  It took Clinton a while to get around to screwing us too.  If we play our cards right, we might be in a good position heading into 2010.  Now is the time for organization.  We also need to be thinking about how to raise money in an organized way to help candidates who support our issues.

This article in The New York Times focuses on my local district, and of course the gun owner has to be the racist one:

Early on Election Day morning in the Philadelphia suburb of Levittown, Pa., Joe Sinitski, 48, stood in a long line inside a school gymnasium, inching his way toward three blue-curtained voting machines. He wore jeans, a sweatshirt and a National Rifle Association baseball cap. He said he would vote for Barack Obama, a choice that some months earlier he could not have imagined.

[...]

“For a long time, I couldn’t ignore the fact that he was black, if you know what I mean,” Mr. Sinitski, the heating and air-conditioning technician, told me. “I’m not proud of that, but I was raised to think that there aren’t good black people out there. I could see that he was highly intelligent, and that matters to me, but my instinct was still to go with the white guy.”

But he voted Obama anyway.  As much as I want to blast the New York Times for pointing this out, it’s a fact that many of the NRA members in this area are working class tradesman and Union members.  It’s also a fact that many of them reflexively and habitually vote Democrat.  In this area, it makes my job very difficult, because I have to appeal to them to vote on the gun issue.  I’ve had difficulty getting cooperation with clubs, because, if you can believe this, supporting NRA endorsed candidates is controversial, because here they are pretty much universally Republican.  In a place like Texas, this might not be so appalling, but here, Democrats running at the federal level, and in the Southeast at the state level, are typically reflexively anti-gun.  I can bet you that Joe the Racist here voted for Patrick Murphy too.

If you want to understand why Pennsylvania, which has a per-capita gun ownership rate that is close to Texas, and who issues 1 million hunting licenses per year, and 600,000 concealed carry licenses, can consistently vote for anti-gun Democrats at the federal level, I give you Joe Sinitski.  It’s not pretty, but it’s the truth, and it makes the life of gun rights activists in this state very difficult.  Particularly in my area.