There are a lot of people in the shooting community who frown on ARs because they are not the traditional steel and wood a lot of people have come to love. NSSF is reaching out to outdoor writers to try to educate them about the platform.
Month: September 2008
Crazy Joe Strikes Again
Here’s a great quote from Biden:
When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, “look, here’s what happened.”
Well, except for the fact that FDR wasn’t president when the stock market crashed in 1929. Herbert Hoover was president. The first president to appear on Television was actually Franklin Roosevelt, but that was at the 1939 World Fair.
The other funny thing is, I doubt Joe Biden could even explain what happened. I’ve been reading for days on this crisis, and I can’t exactly say I understand completely how all these financial instruments that are in play here all interact with each other.
More on FactCheck.org’s Bad Fact Checking
I will go into some more detail on FactCheck.org’s claims. It may very well be that they don’t understand the gun issue. In fact, I would say that’s so. Let’s take a look at some of their claims:
Letting the owner of an unregistered firearm escape the penalty for failing to register is one thing, but it’s another thing entirely to make it a crime to use any firearm – registered or not – in self-defense.
I agree with them on this one, that it’s a bit of distortion. But what they fail to mention is that you can’t register a gun in a lot of these communities because handguns are banned. You have to have a registration certificate to own one, but you can’t get a registration certificate because they are banned. The end result is, if you use a gun in self-defense, you go to jail. Obama voted for that. It’s not bullshit.
The amendment applied only to handgun ammunition “capable of penetrating body armor” and to rifle ammunition that is “designed or marketed as having armor piercing capability,” however.
The problem here is there’s no such thing as a handgun cartridge. There are handguns made for hunting and target sports such as Metallic Silhouette which fire rifle cartridges, which will penetrate soft body armor. Handguns have been made for virtually every rifle caliber. There are also rifles which shoot ammunition that are generally considered handgun rounds. But there is no set definition of a handgun round or a rifle round. The amendment in question was badly worded enough, and poorly thought out enough, it would have had the effect of banning hunting ammunition. When that was pointed out, the Senate properly defeated it. But Obama and Kennedy knew exactly what the were trying to do, which was enact a back door gun ban.
As we wrote previously, an amended version of the questionnaire was later submitted to the group, with Obama’s handwritten notes on it providing more detail on some of the answers. Obama clearly saw and handled this version personally and did not alter the question about banning the sale and manufacturing of guns. Nevertheless, his aides maintain that the gun-ban answer was a mistake and didn’t reflect Obama’s true position.
Sure, that’s what his aides say now. But there it was. He reviewed the questionnaire and added notes, and he did not change his stated position on the gun ban. Whether his aides wrote that or not is immaterial. That’s the position his office took. He might be singing a different tune now, but he has supported banning handguns. There’s no rescuing him on this one.
Obama indeed has spoken in favor of licensing handguns, but so far as we can determine he hasn’t called for registration of hunting weapons. And he’s said a national gun registration law isn’t politically possible: “I just don’t think we can get that done.”
Can you explain exactly what hunting weapons are please FactCheck.org people? I’d really like to know. Because there is actually such a thing as handgun hunters out there. You knew that didn’t you? There are also a lot of handgun shooting sports, which are fast becoming the most popular shooting sports due to the fact that you don’t need a lot of real estate to build a pistol range.
I’ll give FactCheck.org a pass on the assault weapons issue, and on judges. That’s based mostly on how we know the politics will play on this issue. Let me ask you this, do you believe Obama will appoint pro-second amendment judges after refusing to sign onto the Heller brief and saying he thought DC’s law was constitutional? It might be a lot of circumstantial evidence, but I think it would be enough to take to court.
It’s also interesting to note that FactCheck got no response on the questions of increasing ammunition taxes by 500% and on the 5 mile gun shop exclusion zone he one proposed.
I would encourage folks to contact FactCheck and tell them of some of their oversights here. Be factual. It very well may be, and probably is, that they don’t understand the gun issue that well, and NRA’s publications are meant more to rally gun owners than they are to educate the masses. That’s often going to be our job.
UPDATE: SayUncle has a lot more too.
UPDATE: Also The Other Sebastian.
FactCheck.org Needs to Check Their Facts
Is FactCheck.org really nonpartisan? Because here’s what they say about NRA’s attacks on Barack Obama:
Much of what the NRA passes off as Obama’s “10 Point Plan to ‘Change’ the Second Amendment” is actually contrary to what he has said throughout his campaign: that he “respects the constitutional rights of Americans to bear arms” and “will protect the rights of hunters and other law-abiding Americans to purchase, own, transport, and use guns.”
The NRA, however, simply dismisses Obama’s stated position as “rhetoric” and substitutes its own interpretation of his record as a secret “plan.” Said an NRA spokesman: “We believe our facts.”
Except if you look at Obama’s record on guns, he’s proposed all these things! If you’re going to call yourself “Fact Check” the first thing you should do is check your facts, and if you do that, you’ll see that Barack Obama’s record on The Second Amendment is absolutely atrocious. They actually expect gun owners to believe what he’s saying now to get elected, and pass that off as “Facts”
Non-partisan my ass, they are shills out to get Obama elected.
The Union Machine Fights Back
Unions leaders have been pretty upset at the gun issue pulling votes away from Democratic candidates. But rather than push the party to embrace gun rights, they’ve decided to try to pull the wool over the eyes of their membership.
Now apparently they are trying to make a stink over the fact that some of their members talked to an NRA film crew, and said bad things about The Chosen One.
The United Mine Workers will call for the stoppage at Consol’s Blacksville No. 2 mine next week, union President Cecil Roberts said Monday at a news conference with representatives of Obama’s West Virginia campaign in Charleston.
Apparently it’s an unpaid stoppage too, per their contact. Apparently there’s no depth to which union leaders will sink to fool their members into believing Barack Obama is anything other than a gun banner.
McCain/Palin Rally in Media
Bitter and I attended the McCain/Palin rally in Media, Pennsylvania today. Media is the County Seat of Delaware County, located about 12 miles west of Philadelphia. I live in Bucks County, but Delaware County is where I grew up. Delaware County used to be a place of Republican machine politics. Where the City of Philadelphia had machine Democratic politics, when people came out into the suburbs, you had the opposite. The communist party in its heyday didn’t enjoy the same level of dominance in the Soviet Union that the GOP had in my home county. My how things have changed. Don’t get me wrong, it was a rally with a lot of energetic Republicans, but there are signs of trouble. At the very least, the Delaware County GOP doesn’t have their act together. At worst, the state GOP is utterly unprepared for a drawn out ground battle with the Obama campaign. Bitter has documented this in a lot more detail. I told her to do the analysis, and I’ll do the pictures. Click on the pictures to see my comments.
McCain’s message was basically one of economic populism, with a lot of talk of cleaning up Wall Street along with Washington. Populism doesn’t particularly resonate with me, but it’s probably the right message to run on if he doesn’t want this financial crisis to hand this election to the Lightworker. One thing that I was happy to see was a large number of young women in the crowd. There were also more than a few younger guys. This gives me at least some hope. But in terms of political theather, which is what these rallies are really about, I think the GOP dropped the ball on this one.
Pennsylvania Values
Looks like NRA is spending some money on advertising this year. Good:
We Laugh at 1 in 35
SayUncle, Robb and Dave Hardy report that Florida’s licensing rate is up to 1 in 35 residents. Pikers! All of them. Pennsylvania issues about 550,000 – 600,000 licenses to carry in total, which comes out to about 1 in 20 Pennsylvania residents with an LTC. And you can’t even open carry in Florida! Of course, even in states where open carry is legal, you still have some places that aren’t getting the message.
Some Questionable Claims by GOA
Bitter looks at some claims GOA is making in regards to its membership and influence, and the numbers just don’t add up.
AHSA Round Up
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.