September 2008 – Page 15 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Obligation to Be Informed?

I’m glad Ilya Somin has clarified that he’s sympathetic to the idea that voters do have a moral duty to be informed, even if they are, as he has suggested, rationally ignorant of politics.Â I think voters do have some obligation to be informed, but my bar is not set very high.Â When I think about a voter’s moral obligations, I have to take into account the fact that I don’t believe the the single issue voter is shirking his civil responsibilities.

If someone is, for instance, well informed on the gun issue, and vote specifically on that issue, I have no issue with their going to the polls and casting a ballot.Â But how far is someone obligated to be informed on their single issue?Â I tend to take the position “trust, but verify.”Â Don’t just vote a certain way because your buddy told you candidate X would take all your guns.Â Do some research.Â See if other people are saying that too.Â Check with organizations who advocate on behalf of your issue and see what they say.

I think there’s little problem with general political ignorance provided that the voter is reasonably informed on the issues that bring him or her into the voting booth.Â They don’t have to be experts, but they should be well enough informed and engaged as to make up their own mind.

I view my job as an activist for this issue to be making sure gun owners have the right information and are asking the right questions.Â I won’t hide McCain’s record on guns, but nor will I exaggerate it.Â I’ve heard way too many other activists claiming there’s no difference between McCain and Obama, which just isn’t true.

Media Bias?

ABC News edited key parts of Charlie Gibson’s interview with Sarah Palin.Â Now, I’m not a professional journalist, but I would think if you need to edit a segment for length, you cut out questions, along with the answers.Â It appears to me that all the answers that reflected the depth of her understanding of issues ended up on the cutting room floor.

But hey, ABC News has an election to win.Â All is fair in politics right?

Headed Home

I’m in the car on the way home from the NRA Board Meeting.Â Bitter and I didn’t stay for the whole meeting.Â We decided to head over to The Nations Gun Show in Chantilly, VA to meet up with reader AughtSix.Â I bought some primer, powder, and bullets while I was there, and then AughtSix was gracious enough to treat Bitter and I to some BBQ.

It’s good for us to go to the meeting to represent bloggers.Â NRA has really put themselves out there with the outreach, and there’s a lot of interest in bloggers and blogging among staff and board members.Â They have shown themselves to be serious in reaching out to us, and I think it’s important for us to show we’re serious about being part of the NRA.Â It helps validate NRA’s effort in this for board members and staff to see us there.Â Hopefully this is a relationship that will continue to develop.Â The NRA/Blogger relationship has come a long way since the 2007 Fall Board Meeting when Chris Cox and I sat down to figure out how we could work together.

Thank You

Last night Bitter and I had the honor of attending the President’s Reception.Â My iPhone camera isn’t the greatest, but I managed to snap a couple of blurry photos.Â One of them is President Sigler thanking Alan Gura for his work on the case, the other is of David Young with his book marked up with all the citations that he’s gotten on the various court cases, including Heller.Â Alan Gura said I should promote David’s book, and I couldn’t agree more.Â They are:

The Origin of the Second Amendment (paperback here)
The Founders’ View of the Right to Bear Arms

We owe a great deal of gratitude to David, and to all attorneys and scholars who were recognized by President Sigler.Â Without them, we would not have had victory in Heller.

Friday Committee Meetings

We started out going to the Public Affairs Committee.Â Nothing of note really happened there, and it was relatively uneventful.Â Susan Howard, of the TV show “Dallas” fame chairs that committee.Â Main topic was on increasing membership numbers, through reaching out to younger people.Â NRA is focusing efforts to attract more members from our police and military, who will tend to be younger.

Wayne LaPierre mentioned that a lot of young shooters have parents and grandparents who are NRA members, but have not joined themselves.Â He also mentioned that the latest polling shows that the public perception of NRA has never been more favorable.Â Wayne mentioned NRA traditionally hasn’t had a lot of money to do advertising, but they are setting up funds to address that, and get the NRA message out there.

Chris Cox’s report to the committee stressed the upcoming elections, saying “at five to four, it’s frightening.” in reference to the fact that the next administration will likely pick two or possibly three of the next Supreme Court justices.

After the Public Affairs Committee, Bitter and I made our way to the Civil Rights Defense Fund Committee.Â Although what goes on there isn’t, strictly speaking, privileged information, it wouldn’t be a good thing for me to spread details to the four corners of the earth.Â But Civil Rights Defense fund is the committee which funds the legal defense for gun owners who have their second amendment rights violated.Â One thing about CRDF is they never have enough money to fund all the cases they would like to take.

CRDF also funds the research of Dave Hardy and Dave Kopel, who both gave reports on their research to the committee.Â Dave Hardy, in particular, has done some really outstanding work in the past few months.Â I’ll leave it up to him to elaborate on that if he wants to, but hopefully he’ll get it published soon, because it’s good stuff.Â Dave Kopel has been working hard on research on the international front, which we’ve talked about a lot on here.Â Funding their research is money will spent, as far as I’m concerned.Â The CRDF also recognized attorney Steven Poss, who convinced his firm to donate hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of legal work to help us win the Heller case.

Fun

I was sitting in a chair in the hotel where the NRA Board Meeting is being held, and heard David E. Young joking “I guess they let bloggers in here.”

I looked over to see who was with him, and it’s Alan Gura! Looks like he’ll be at the Presidents Reception. The fun thing is so will Bitter and I.

UPDATE: Talked to Alan Gura for like 15 minutes about various cases! Cool! He called me Sebastian, so he’s at least an occasional reader. The second amendment is in good hands. All the scholars including the blogosphere’s own Dave Hardy were recognized for their contributions to Heller.

Bryan Miller Lambasting Pat Murphy

Looks like the anti-gunners might be getting upset with Pat Murphy.Â Either that or Bryan Miller is behind on his marching orders.Â See this Philadelphia Inquirer news roundup, and scroll down to “Under the Gun”:

U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy, whose Bucks County district includes a sliver of Northeast Philadelphia, is taking flak from gun-control groups for his support of a bill loosening gun regulations in the District of Columbia.

[…]

Bryan Miller, executive director of Ceasefire NJ, expresses outrage. “As I understand it, Murphy is joined at the hip to [U.S. Rep.] John Murtha, and Murtha is a tied-at-the-hip NRA [National Rifle Association] guy,” Miller said. “I don’t see any other reason why a suburban Philadelphia Democrat, with Philadelphia going through the horrible throes of gun violence, would sign onto a bill making the availability of guns so much greater in D.C. I think, frankly, [Murphy] should be ashamed of himself.”

So by Bryan’s logic, since he hangs around Murtha a lot, surely he must be pro-gun right?Â That’s not entirely true.Â He is a supporter of Congresswoman McCarthy’s ban on most semi-automatic firearms, and never signed on to a Congressional Amicus brief to end the ban.Â It’s hardly surprising that Congressman Murphy, close to an election, is signing onto pro-gun bills in an effort to placate Bucks County’s numerous gun owners, hunters, and shooters.Â If this represents a turnaround on behalf of the Congressman, I welcome that, but until he takes his name off McCarthy’s bill, forgive me if I suggest Bryan Miller has no clue what he’s talking about when he tries to paint Patrick Murphy as too pro-gun.

I suspect, though, that the Brady Campaign is probably wondering what they are getting for their 5000 donation to Congressman Murphy in the last election.

Two Hunting Issues

From Today’s Outdoor Wire.Â First, it looks like Texas is going to be conducting a study of the effects of lead vs. non-lead shot on Dove populations.Â It should be nice to have some real scientific data on this, considering the push to use non-lead ammunition because of the benefits to wildlife.Â Next is an issue that was talked about at the NRA committee meeting.Â Move to the bottom and you’ll find the featured article about the US Department of Fish and Wildlife winning a lawsuit brought by environmental groups to prevent the creation of water resources for wildlife in wildlife refuges.Â Yeah, you read that right.Â The dirty hippies were suing the federal government over making sure there was sufficient water for wildlife to drink in wildlife refuges:

The ruling is a significant win for federal and state wildlife management authorities in their ongoing efforts to improve habitat conditions that help support healthy wildlife populations on the refuge. The Arizona Game and Fish Department was granted intervener status by the court and is a partner with the FWS in restoring the desert bighorn sheep herd found on the Kofa.

[…]
Wilderness Watch and several other groups had filed a lawsuit in June 2007 in an attempt to prevent the continued operation of the wildlife water tanks. The groups argued that the FWS had followed an existing refuge management plan rather than the Wilderness Act in allowing the construction work. But the court ruled that the FWS considered both the plan and the act, and was correct in issuing a “categorical exclusion” as permitted by NEPA.

Teddy Roosevelt has to be turning over in his grave about these groups aiming to protect wilderness by ensuring that no animals can survive there.

NJIT Continuing with Development of Smart Gun

The New Jersey Institute of Technology has recieved another quarter million dollars of your hard earned tax dollars to keep researching “smart gun” technology.Â Senator Lautenberg and Menendez are responsible for this earmark.Â As I mentioend on Cam’s show last night when we talked about this, as an engineering problem, smart guns are a folly.

With current technology, it’s just not really possible to get a solid biometric reading from a firearm except under very controlled conditions.Â Far more controlled conditions than someone breaking into your house at 2AM.Â That’s why when smart guns are declared “ready” under New Jersey law, that police will be exempt from the requirement for sales of smart guns only.Â This was never about safety, but is entirely about passing a gun ban that most people in that state would not recognize as such.

UPDATE: More from Robb here.

Appearance on Cam & Company

Bitter and I had a surprise appearance on Cam & Company.Â Surprise to us, because we went there to say hi to Cam and ended up doing two segments on the show in studio.Â I think I did pretty well!Â Despite the fact that I can’t shut up here, I am not a talkative guy in real life, so having to be the social butterfly at these things is not a natural act for me.

At least until 9:00PM tomorrow, you can catch us on the rerun at nranews.com.Â Just click through the introductions, and a link to the last show will appear.Â Let me tell you, it’s thrilling to be on Cam’s show.Â But it’s even more thrilling to have people sending talk backs for me on his show.Â For you readers who have sent me stories, I will get to them.Â It’s tough to blog with the NRA committee schedule, and catching up with people I know.Â A lot of NRA people are reading gun blogs now, and they know who we are.Â It’s quite a difference from a year ago, when NRA was just touching their toes into the bloggy waters.Â Now they are in for the swim.