I know it’s been quite some time before we had a news links post. Things are just slow. Not that I’m complaining. No sir. Bad things happen when I complain. But lets see how clean I can get my tabs:
I’d note this dude is writing a book about his indoctrination into America’s gun culture, yet he admits in this article he’s not a gun owner. If you want to write a book on gun culture, maybe you should treat it as something more than an anthropological study, like we’re some kind of remote tribe in Papua New Guinea that’s never seen Europeans before.
NSSF responds to that latest lead study I linked to a few weeks ago.
NRA and CRPA are suing California over their newest ban on “assault weapons.” Even if changes to the Supreme Court are coming, it takes a long time for a case to make its way up.
San Francisco is suing magazine seller who don’t make it clear you can’t ship to California.
John Lott: Murder isn’t a nationwide problem.
Looks like I’m not alone in having anti-gun relatives.
Bearing Arms: “Progressive Rapper Explains Why he is a Gun Owner, NRA Member”
Not gun related, but good news: “Court strikes down rule forcing toy drone users to register with govt”
Mark Warner comes out against concealed carry reciprocity.
April gun sales were still pretty strong, which goes against the media narrative of a severe slump in gun sales. I’ve been shooting more again, given that prices have come down. So clearly there has been some cooling. I did not stockpile during the Obama years, and even I’m still shooting off the stock I bought years ago.
“Why Do Gun Haters Want Shooters To Lose Their Hearing?” I think we know the answer to that. Suppressors have started showing up at my club. A suppressed AR-15 is still too loud to shoot without hearing protection under a covered shooting line. But you can get away with much less hearing protection!
Inside Manhattan’s Lone Gun Range.
Bloomberg is engaging professional lobbyists. I’ve seen rhetoric turned up too, which is making me wonder if the Hearing Protection Act and/or National Reciprocity will be moving soon.
“Daily newspaper columnist who defended NRA quits after suspension.“
In that first link, I didn’t find much that I didn’t think was true; my reading would be that, to be offended, what would have to offend you was, uncomfortable things being called out.
I found the statement “the connection between guns, God and conservatism remains a bit of a mystery to me, and — as I found at my first NRA convention — balancing on only one leg of that triad can be stressful” fascinating, because to my perception, that “triad” didn’t always exist, but does exist now. Perhaps the “gun culture” always leaned that way, but it’s not the image I embraced when I joined the NRA more than 50 years ago, or when I became a Life Member roughly a decade later. So, how did it come to evolve?
As I recall one of the complaints about “anthropology” is that it treats “cultures” too objectively, making no judgments about cultural practices. It seems to me if the guy is going to write a book about the “gun culture” that is exactly how he should approach it. Otherwise, it seems what you are hoping for is a book celebrating the gun culture — the alternative being, to treat it with disdain — and with either example, it’s been done.
Before anyone calls me on it:
Someone else just pointed out to me, that I had completely overlooked the author’s conclusion, that by our mere existence we are responsible for firearms crime and tragedy. Which of course is wildly off base and plain stupid; sort of like how the authors choice to be a member of the “car culture” makes him responsible for all the injuries and deaths that occur in automobiles.
John Lott’s “Murder isn’t a national problem” is good stuff, assuming it is objectively true. But I noticed that eventually he shifted from referring to “counties” to calling out “urban areas.” That too may be objectively true, but at that point my dog started whining and pawing at his ears.
It would be interesting to carry the study one more step, and correlate murder not just with urban status, but with population concentration and income. Yesterday I visited a small town in Pennsylvania that my immigrant grandparents had some connection to, that in its day was referred to as “the only Wild West town in the East.” I am under the impression that town still has a disproportionate level of violence, though with only several thousand people concentrated in the town itself, any violence it produces does not contribute much significant to the statistics for its county. But the rate of violence based on its own concentrated, low-income population possibly compares to that of “urban” areas.
“I did not stockpile during the Obama years…”
Me neither — though I was already pretty well stockpiled — but I started again after Trumpakov was elected.
But, as the saying goes, “that’s what make markets.” Different perceptions of where danger lies, in this case.
Adam Weinstein is an interesting contradiction. A typical lefty professional journalist, and therefore of course anti-NRA and anti-Gun Rights, yet one who enjoys shooting and supposedly owns a revolver with hollowpoint ammo.
Of course that hypocrisy is easy enough for him to indulge in while living in Florida. Would he change his tune if subjected to the “reasonable gun safety” legislation of New Jersey or NYC? Considering his corpus of anti-gun writing, I think he would gladly give up his revolver; or even more likely presume his ascension to the upper classes which get gun “privileges” which are denied the rest of us in the servitor classes.
https://www.thetrace.org/2016/12/nra-conspiracy-theory-fake-news-boom/
Well, that certainly was an ugly letter to put out, in public, to someone who is family. Especially given that the author is a pastor.
The couple of extremely anti-gun folks in my own family are, I’m sad to say, genuinely not very nice people. I avoid them on the gun topic, because it brings out the worst in them, but I also avoid them on general principle.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/38
Cosponsors (193) as of this post, and 218 Yea votes are needed to pass. I imagine a few sphincters are passing bricks at Bloomberg Anti-Gun. That’s 193 Representatives willing to put their John Hancock on “Screw you uppity bicoastal elites and your snooty may-issue regimes” before knowing if it will pass or not.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/367
Cosponsors (141) as of this writing. Not as many, but still enough to give sleepless nights.
And I have no insight into the scuttlebutt on the Hill, either.
“I imagine a few sphincters are passing bricks at Bloomberg Anti-Gun.”
In anticipation of our cheering for the federal fox as we beg him to come into our hen house?
I know we’ve had lots of posts on that subject before, but I’ll stand firm in my belief that, that’s all we’re doing.
It’s only a poor analogy, but I’m reminded of how the NRA et al would gig candidates for being anti-gun, if they opposed Instant Background Checks, which were going to be the salvation of the gun rights movement and provide every gun owner the keys to Nirvana. Now we spend a lot of time fighting new restrictions that those background checks will use to deny us access to firearms, and fighting to keep them from being applied to private transfers. For gun owners, it should be the poster-child for “beware what you ask for,” but it’s been what, 35 years since the idea was proposed, and more than 20 years since implementation? It could also be a poster-child for how gradualism works.
As I seem to say with increasing frequency anymore, “Mark My Words.”
A hostile congress can enact federal requirements regardless of whether federal reciprocity passes or not; there’s no federal strings attached to it. If anything, it’s forcing all the states to accept the lowest threshold of whichever state requires the least stringent requirements for their non-resident permits; since the bill is allegedly supposed to force reciprocity for non-resident permits.
“A hostile congress can enact federal requirements regardless of whether federal reciprocity passes or not…”
But they won’t have the excuse and propaganda foundation that every state is required to accept the standards of the the least restrictive state; right now it remains the business of the individual states. When you think of it, the half of the states that by definition are more restrictive than average, will have a propaganda foundation for portraying themselves as victims of the half who have less restrictive standards; and how will their populations = congressthings in the House play into that?
In terms of self-interest: I confess that as a resident of Pennsylvania, arguably with one of the least restrictive “shall issue” standards in the country (short of Constitutional Carry) I am quite concerned about that. Among other things, I don’t want our “pro-gun” element who like having permits, influencing our congressthings to accept the dictates of foreign states, because they want to be able to carry in some other state that they may or may not be able to find on a map.
No one can reliably predict the future, but I will stand by my prediction that national reciprocity will be something Pennsylvanians, especially, will come to regret. In particular, if Constitutional Carry fails to prosper here, in part thanks to those activists who like their permits and get off on reciprocity. (For example, training requirements are something that fall into the classification of “some shit I will not eat,” for me.)
This will be an issue where we have to agree to disagree, as I apparently do with the majority of gun rights activists.
I forgot to add, at the start of this thread, that rather than sphincters-passing-bricks at Bloomberg, Inc., I suspect they are, if not rubbing their palms together, at least outlining their plan for how they will take advantage of national reciprocity for their own purposes. It may not be the best metaphor, but my thinking is “we” are the flies right now on the march to conquering the flypaper.
Honestly, I’d prefer that the reciprocity be limited to resident permits, and congress simply force the states to implement their own procedures to move to shall-issue permits to anyone not prohibited from possession, requiring that “self-defense” be acceptable for “need,” and require issuance upon passing NICS/equivalent check, with the SLA being that of NICS itself, and states being free to be less restrictive.
My guess is we would be on a sounder footing for what you’re looking for (and that I agree with) through an appropriately favorable SCOTUS decision, strengthening the individual right to keep and bear arms, than through congressional action. But let’s see if an appropriate case comes along, and then Gorsuch delivers.
On the subject of national reciprocity, I have an additional concern about the current timing. When the Trumpakov Administration collapses, if the collapse is accompanied by a popular backlash to everything that has gone down during his tenure, our gun rights babies could go out with the bathwater. If national reciprocity has been enacted during the Trumpakov tenure, it could be hard to say what it could lead to in a time of marginally rational reaction.
I don’t know what to make of it as a barometer, but it’s being reported that the ratings of TV cable “news” networks has recently reversed, with MSNBC reportedly in top place, and Fox News at the bottom. The point being, who is the population listening to, now, and why?
193 Cosponsors isn’t a passing fad, politically. That’s 192 House Members who can be called out in attack ads for “pushing reciprocity on the nation,” even without a vote ever happening. They see an upside for their careers by putting their names on the silly thing, or they wouldn’t do it.
And House members plan to be in the House until it comes time to make a Senate run; they’re not all that interested in nailing their colors to the mast of Trump.
Since SCOTUS won’t do it, it’s up to Congress to exercise their powers under the 14th amendment to guarantee the rights by appropriate legislation.
“193 Cosponsors isn’t a passing fad, politically.”
True, but time will tell; time will tell.
You are reasoning as if we are all still in times approximately like those we all grew up with. They are not. At this very moment we’re living the fallout from a “fad” in some ways.
Remember, I’m envisioning a “backlash” that will include many irrational elements, and a population in which a huge percentage of people will have reversed their thinking, while denying (including to themselves) that they thought differently yesterday. Hell, I’ve seen gun owners do that, in the past, though with more minor issues. When it came to mass psychology, George Orwell was an optimist.
My point about the reversal in cable news ratings is, it’s a measure of where the masses are going to seek information that they want to hear. Don’t take continuity of popular reasoning for granted.
Incidentally, I hope you are right on every point. But there is no need to prepare for the best outcome.
And in the category of “too quiet to be not-news,” there is still no news on Peruta. The suspense is agonizing.
The news is that John Roberts is still on the court.
Sure, but you’d think they’d have denied cert already if it was status quo.
Also, rescheduled AGAIN. Now for the conf of 25 May. Great gods and little boarlets
Why Do Gun Haters Want Shooters To Lose Their Hearing? Because they can’t have us taken out and shot, yet.