I have to admit, it’s getting hard making this even a biweekly feature. Let me throw out a theory: the worst thing in the world that could happen to the National Rifle Association is for their opponents and the media to ignore them, following the late Brian Anse Patrick’s book on the subject. NRA has certainly gotten a lot of negative media attention, but almost none of it related to guns. The media isn’t writing much about the subject these days. In fact, the best gun news coverage out there is done by Guns.com, owned by the name Chicago-based media company that does Cracked.com. None of this is good news for the NRA.
Tamara Keel: How to Carry Concealed In a Purse (If You Must).
What universal background checks really mean. It’s one of those things that sounds good, so it polls well, but when the rubber meets the road, it’s a lot more complicated. Technically loaning a firearm is illegal in Pennsylvania too, but we except loans to LTC holders.
Carry permit holders up to 14.5 million. You have to wonder how much the spread of constitutional carry is going to put a damper on these numbers… not that I’m arguing that isn’t a good problem to have.
Everytown is winning at the state level, according to themselves. If you get enough media to share, maybe it’ll be true!
This is the kind of garbage the media is putting out these days. What is even the point here?
Same kind of trash. Seriously, this stuff isn’t even worth linking. And it’s not because it’s taking a contrary point of view, or pointing out something uncomfortable. It’s just bad, as in not good.
From the same source, you’re also starting to see progressives question gun control again: “For all the root causes of gun violence, the history of gun control research has never conclusively shown evidence of progressive gun legislation working.”
Kevin has shared my disdain of Carry Guard, and I’m glad he’s writing about it. He believes NRA is throwing its own training and instructor program under the bus. I think he’s right.
Gun control folks seem to have a fondness for armed guards these days.
What do you know: the PSP actually have to back up their assertions with verifiable facts to deny someone an LTCF.
Jury nullification hampering feds efforts to prosecute Bundy supporters. It would probably help if the federal government hadn’t blown its legitimacy with the locals.
Guess who’s getting $2,000,000 from Google? I first saw this over at Clayton’s, and at first I was thinking they were only funding the interruptor model, which isn’t gun control. But further investigation shows they are donating to a coalition of groups that includes Everytown and the Brady Campaign. I miss the days when corporations feared taking political stands and risking alienating customers, but when you’re a monopoly, that’s less of a concern.
Constitutional Carry: One Year Later.
“These Charts Help Explain NRA Politics”
Larry Keane of NSSF: “Unpacking The Pew Research Center’s Latest Gun Survey.”
The Akins Accelerator 2. The only thing it lacks from the first one is the spring. If you recall, ATF classified the spring as a machine gun.
It’s goal of passing the SAFE act having been achieved, New Yorkers for Gun Safety seems to be closing its doors.
“Black woman writes about getting a gun for protection. NY Times readers don’t like that one bit.”
“…the best gun news coverage out there is done by Guns.com, owned by the name Chicago-based media company that does Cracked.com.”
Maybe because, as Sebastian has alluded to, the NRA has now completed its transition from being a “gun” organization, to being a social conservative/nationalist/populist/police/culture wars organization.
“The NRA As Church”
The author attests to being an “evangelical,” and while I don’t know enough to know what faction he belongs to, I would think he would be aware enough of evangelical phenomena to know what some of the factions do; and the NRA very clearly has been heavily infiltrated by one of those factions.
From there, if the author has the history he claimed in his first few lines, he should know what to expect next.
[…]the PSP actually have to back up their assertions with verifiable facts to deny someone an LTCF.
on the one hand, if the police actually are telling the truth in this case, then that does sound like the kind of guy who probably shouldn’t carry guns.
on the other hand, if they’re telling the truth about his past history of violent and just plain strange behavior, why on earth can’t they produce solid evidence? because that sounds like just the sort of thing that ought to generate a paper trail.
and on the gripping hand, the court is absolutely correct; we can’t have rights denied just because the cops say so. due process has to amount to more than that.
“[…]the PSP actually have to back up their assertions with verifiable facts to deny someone an LTCF.”
No they don’t. To turn the statement around, the person denied needs the resources and sophistication to hire an attorney and go to court to challenge them. Or, the sophistication to know how to scare up the resources to do that. Not to mention, the chops to stand up to Authority, which most people don’t have. Absent any of those factors, “the constitution [law] means what the cop on the beat says it means.”
When I took our sheriff to court in the situation I described in the earlier post, he had been acting illegally for some months before my number came up, and no one did anything about it. When it did, and I filed suit, most local clubs required some serious brow-beating and shaming before they got on board supporting the case.
Afterward, the next sheriff did some things like, collect the state-mandated cost for sending out renewal notices, and then didn’t send them out, and charge nearly twice the state-mandated cost for applying for a LTCF. If most people did anything more than grouse about those violations, I didn’t hear about it, and most I met didn’t even do that. Having learned my lesson the last time, it wasn’t going to be me to attempt heroics.
So the point is correct, that the authorities can do anything they damn see fit, with impunity, because few people if any are going to call them on it, and the odds of prevailing in court are not 100 percent, no matter how clear the law seems to be.
“What universal background checks really mean.”
What they mean is, the NRA got what it indoctrinated us to want, between 25 and maybe 40 years ago — even before it was technologically possible.
I’m sure I’ve recited before, how back in the day candidates who answered questionnaires, and said they opposed “Instant Background Checks,” were gigged as being “anti-gun.” The NRA did not entertain the thought at all, that some of us opposed background checks as prior restraint of a constitutional right. If it was for the cops, and Tough on Crime, it had to be good. “CrimeStrike” and all that good stuff, doncha know.
We might quibble about the word “universal,” but as some of us argued at the time, there has never been a technology that once developed, was not eventually applied to its fullest extent. So relax, and enjoy getting what your pro-gun parents asked for,
If the nra wants attention, how about throwing some actual effort into the silencer and reciprocity legislation.
The truth is, the NRA doesn’t do proactive stuff well. They do defense. Passing silencer legislation will not get them new members. Screaming about socialists coming for your guns does.
“The truth is, the NRA doesn’t do proactive stuff well.”
The checks roll in anyway. Why should they mess with a winning strategy? They could stop doing defense, too, as long as they excoriated “liberals” from time to time.
I never studied psychology in any great depth, but I seem to remember from Psych 101, that after sufficient conditioning, Pavlov could get his dogs to slobber over the mere suggestion of a bell ringing.
Beat beat me to it. Do PRO-active stuff and get media attention while pleasing your members.
I would argue that there are plenty of believers who are waiting for the church to preach the Word. When the NRA stops acting like a bunch of televangelists and starts actually living what they preach, the believers will come.
As to the Pew survey, what it really proves is that NRA members are more engaged with and informed about gun issues than demographically similar non-NRA members. Surprise.
As for Google, they are not only a monopoly, they are an evil one that seeks to dominate all aspects of our lives. Standard Oil back in the day just wanted to bankrupt its competitors and rake in some extra profits. Google delenda est. And I don’t care how. Anti-trust, IRS, any number of other things that I oppose in the abstract. Google is an existential threat.
“What universal background checks really mean. It’s one of those things that sounds good, so it polls well, but when the rubber meets the road, it’s a lot more complicated”.
We kept informing Maine voters about the following two aspects of Bloomberg’s UBC referendum:
1. A background check would be required for most PHYSICAL TRANSFERS of a gun — not just the CHANGE OF OWNERSHIP of a gun.
2. Since all gun transfers must go through a gun dealer — and gun dealers can not transfer a handgun to anyone under 21 — a stealthy de-facto handgun ban would be imposed on 18-20 year olds.
There were numerous other problems with Bloomberg’s UBC referendum, but these two were egregious and turned off a lot of voters.
Maine voters defeated this referendum in November 2016.
Yes you did, and in a lot of ways if I had the choice of which state to beat Bloomberg in, if I could only have one, I would have preferred Maine to Nevada. So you guys definitely deserve a pat on the back.
Thankfully, Bloomberg’s UBC attempt ultimately failed in Nevada as well because Nevada is a “point of contact state” for background checks.
The State of Nevada does the background checks, but Bloomberg’s UBC referendum specified that the Feds do the checks — and when presented with this task — the Feds said “no way can your state-level referendum impose this requirement on us”.
Bloomberg’s UBC agenda also lost earlier this year in the New Mexico state legislature.
In my opinion, so-called “Universal Background Checks” are now hopelessly tainted at just another attempt at more gun control.
I agree with Sebastian and KevinC regarding NRA’s gold shield Carry Guard attempts to rewrite self defense standards. The NRA is making a huge mistake.
I’ve stated it before here:
‘The NRA is the big gorilla in the room; they currently have the most political pull in 2A issues. This is fine if it’s directed toward constitutional 2A issues.
But then I saw that USCCA ejected from the NRAAM this year. I think it was evident that they are looking into and maybe co-opting new markets already covered by voluntary private business.
I fear the NRA might be opening discussion for mandatory carry insurance or any firearm ownership insurance mandate. This is completely unacceptable.’
There should never be qualifying standards for using tools in self defense. Is the NRA trying to capitalize on leftist attacks on firearms training issues? One’s rights are independent of any .org or .gov entity. Please don’t fall for statist arguments.
“The NRA is the big gorilla in the room…”
What most gun owners need is the experience of seeing how viciously they will tear apart little gorillas, who are their natural allies in terms of gun rights, but who get in the way of their other agendas.
As much as I’m happy to see all those green Constitutional Carry States, it still annoys me greatly that Utah isn’t yet among those States.
Ah, heck, I’m still a little annoyed that there are still non-green States! But we’re making progress, which is good, and maybe someday, we’ll get there…