Armed Canadian outlines the utter absurdity of some of our firearms laws, complete with pictures. Can people seriously look us in the face and say this crap is reasonable?
Year: 2008
Gutted
Via Dave Hardy, the bill in Georgia for Parking lot carry has been largely gutted. Concealed Weapons Permit holders will be pleased though, as it removes the ban in State Parks. I still question whether the Parking Lot issue is worth spending all these political resources. It may have passed in a few states, but I think it could be a real coalition splitter in many states. Georgia would appear to be one of them.
The Candidate on a Mission from God
Ahab explains why I don’t like Huckabee either, and can’t vote for him. If Fred can’t pull a South Carolina win, I will start taking another look at McCain. Not a perfect choice, but I can’t abide by this statement:
“I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution,†Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. “But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that’s what we need to do — to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view.â€
Thomas Jefferson would be rolling over in his grave. Christian political activists are beginning to become as big a force for reducing liberty as the left was in the 20th century, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult for people like to me to abide by being in coalition with them. I agree with Ian Argent in the comments, who said:
I do believe, though, that we are on the cusp of a major realignment of the political parties – with parts of each coalition bolting their current party for the opposition. But it may take the Baby Boomers becoming inactive in politics first. And while they are, look out…
I think so too, but I think this realignment is going to be dangerous to gun owners. People like me won’t be in a God and Guns coalition, but nor can I vote for elitist progressive weasels like this. I suspect a number of other gun owners are in the same position. Many of us are Christian, but we aren’t going to be happy with folks who want to monkey with the Republic because they think it doesn’t please God. It’s not meant to please God, it’s meant to preserve liberty and limit government power. It’s a good thing most of these people are OK with me keeping my guns, because if they get real power, I might need them.
Beware
Hillary is being all pussy cat with the gun issue, but beware:
And we need to enforce the laws that we have on the books. I would also work to reinstate the assault weapons ban. We now have, once again, police deaths going up around the country, and in large measure because bad guys now have assault weapons again. We stopped it for awhile. Now they’re back on the streets.
Of course that’s patently ridiculous to anyone who understands what the federal assault weapons law did and didn’t do, but she’s convinced that it worked, despite the fact that it banned nothing, and studies show it was useless. Obama has decided to stake his flag on the Tiahrt Amendment:
I don’t think that we can get that done. But what I do think we can do is to provide just some common-sense enforcement. One good example — this is consistently blocked — the efforts by law enforcement to obtain the information required to trace back guns that have been used in crimes to unscrupulous gun dealers.That’s not something that the NRA has allowed to get through Congress. And, as president, I intend to make it happen.
Of course, he’s completely full of shit too. Tiahrt doesn’t prevent law enforcement from tracing guns in criminal investigations. It never has. Breck Boy has stakes his flag pole on the assault weapons issue as well:
I don’t believe that means you need an AK-47 to hunt. And I think the assault weapons ban, which Hillary spoke about just a minute ago, as president of the United States I’ll do everything in my power to reinstate it. But I do think we need a president who understands the sportsmen, hunters who use their guns for lawful purposes have a right to have their Second Amendment rights looked after.
You don’t need any type of rifle to hunt, but Kalashnikovs get the job done effectively. Given that the AR-15 is the most popular sporting rifle in the United States today, I don’t think John Edwards, despite him being from “the rural South” has any understanding of sportsmen at all.
Nonetheless, this is a very defensive stance, and has to frustrate the Brady Campaign to no end. All candidates are willing to restore Brady’s recent lost ground, but that’s as far as they dare go. We are winning folks, and we have to defeat these clowns in 2008 in order to keep winning.
The Lead Strategy
Gun owners in New York appear to be in for some of the same types of crap that California gun owners recently got stuck with.  The lead ammo issue is one the anti-gun people, with the exception of the VPC, have been reluctant to go after for some time. It’s hard to argue that you support people owning firearms for hunting and “sporting purposes” when you’re simultaneously calling for a ban on lead ammunition.
The culture in California and a few other states have gotten to the point where a confluence of anti-gun, anti-hunting, and environmentalist concerns have merged to make pursuing the lead issue politically feasible. Of little concern to most of these groups is the fact that the shooting community has been aware of the lead issue for years, and have been actively taking steps to deal with the problem. It was the shooting community that worked with the EPA very closely on a paper regarding best practices for managing lead at shooting ranges.
This should be a major wakeup call to hunters. Unlike sport shooters, who use ranges where lead management practices can be put into place, hunters are easily painted as environmental menaces, who are poisoning fragile ecosystems by their wanton discharging of highly toxic lead into the environment. The lead ammunition hunters use was an easy target when California Condors started showing up with lead poisoning.
We have to keep on top of the lead issue, because it’s very difficult to make high performance ammunition out of other metals, and federal law on armor piercing ammunition actually interferes with that in many cases.
Savor It
Hillary, going up against… nobody… was only able to garner about 60% of the vote. That means 35% of the votes would rather have anybody but Hillary. I don’t think this speaks well for her. If I were her campaign, I wouldn’t be too happy about this, and wouldn’t get too cocky.
NRA’s Position on DOJ Brief
In a move that’s sure to make my next wheelbarrow a bit less laden with crisp, unmarked bills, I felt the NRA statement on the DOJ Brief was weak. I feel I should further elaborate here.
First, NRA’s detractors are bound to tout this as a prime example of everything they think is wrong with the National Rifle Association. Based on what I’ve been seeing various places, that’s already happening. I’m not going to join that camp, but I am going to lay out why I think a more strongly worded statement was needed here.
The NRA needed to be diplomatic about how it went after the issue, and as much as people might want to see it, they can’t afford to attack the Bush Administration in a big and public way. In short, they have to be nice. But they didn’t have to just roll over, which I think is what they did. Former NRA President Sandy Froman goes into more detail in this article as to where exactly the Bush Administration has let us down:
But it does not ask the Court to affirm the DC Circuit Court judgment in favor of Heller, either. Instead, it asks the Court to vacate (or throw out) the lower court opinion, and send the case back for a rehearing applying a lesser standard of review to the rights embodied in the Second Amendment than are typically applied to other amendments in the Bill of Rights, like the First and Fourth Amendments.
Read the whole thing. If you read the brief in its entirety, the Solicitor General is not only asking for a standard that would, presumably, uphold a number of federal gun laws, but contains language that suggests they would want to leave the door open to even further restrictions, such as a new assault weapons ban or a ban on certain other types of firearms.
The gun vote was a primary driver for making sure Bush won the White House in 2000 and 2004, and the NRA endorsements he received played a big role on that. The Heller case is arguably the most important struggle gun owners have ever faced, and I don’t think its unreasonable to demand something greater than lukewarm support from The Administration on this matter. I think a proper response would have been to praise The Administration for what they got right, but make it clear that the level of review called for in this brief is unacceptable to the NRA. Sandy closes out with some good language in her article:
Each presidential candidate must speak out on this brief. The Justice Department has not gone far enough to support the fundamental rights guaranteed under the Second Amendment, and so those who aspire to lead our nation must step up and call on the Supreme Court to affirm the judgment of the DC Circuit striking down the ban.
This is a chance for all the GOP candidates to show what they’re made of, distinguishing themselves from the Democrats.
In short, had I been charged with writing a statement for NRA, mine would have looked more like Sandy’s. Praise what the Administration got right, explain what they got wrong and why it does not please us, explain how important this case is for our gun rights, invite the GOP presidential aspirants to talk about how they could do better.
I think there were ways to let the GOP know we are displeased, without jeopardizing relations. I don’t think we got that, and I worry that rolling over will cheapen NRA’s endorsement, and send a message to the next President that there’s no risk in upsetting the gun vote, because where else are we going to go?
UPDATE: Joe isn’t surprised. To be honest, I’m not really surprised either. But I do want to do better in 2008 than we did in 2000. Bush is a reflection of the politics we had to settle for in 2000. It wasn’t too long ago when candidates were arguing for licensing of gun owners. The political climate is much more favorable now, and I want to ensure that the GOP candidates for 2008 understand we expect more of them than we did of Bush.
Mitt Takes Michigan
Michigan had a grand opportunity to end Mitt Romney’s campaign tonight, but it appears they were not in the mood to do the rest of the country a favor and sink this ship.
UPDATE: Bitter notes some disrespect Mitt paid to John McCain.
Educating The Media
Dustin is on a roll today, now with some video on NSSF’s program to educate the media. Without the media scaring and misleading a public that’s largely ignorant of firearms, we’d have a much easier time getting our side of the story out there. No doubt few reporters bother to attend this type of seminar, and that’s a shame, but we have to try. If the gun control movement loses its parrots in the media, it’s over for them.
Why I Am Not a Libertarian
Libertarianism was something I flirted with in college and in my early post college life. I decided it wasn’t a political movement, so much as a religion, and it’s why walked away from it. I’m not interested in being pure, I’m interested in being an advocate for causes that I think enhance personal freedom and limited government meddling in private affairs, and advancing those causes politically.  Libertarians, in my experience, are not interested in seriously advancing their ideas politically, because to do so, you have to build a “tent” that’s big enough and comfortable enough for enough people to get under to win. Libertarians, in my experience, tend to spend more time about arguing over whether someone belongs in the tent than they do trying to grow it.
I would consider Megan McArdle a fellow traveler, and someone who belongs in our tent of people interested in promoting liberty. But Megan McArdle has spent a lot of time lately criticizing Ron Paul, and recently suggested that Ron Paul’s demise is good for libertarianism. Read the comments. If you want to know why I can’t abide by “movement” libertarians anymore, read her comments.  I’ll pick out some choice ones:
Don’t think that we will forget this treasoness behaviour. What you do now will be with you for ever more. ‘When the time comes Megan,… when the time comes’.
And yes, that is a thinly veiled threat.
As the ‘Revolution’ grows, You have no idea.
I guess it doesn’t matter how many dissidents they have to put down in the name of liberty.
I am an anarchist and to me a statist, even a minarchist, is much worse than a racist.
Because a rule by the strong over the weak is guaranteed to have positive outcome for individual freedoms!
I don’t think we did lose big in NH. If you look at the towns that just didn’t count Paul’s votes and consider the lop-sided contridictions of the electronic vote versus the hand re-count … Obama probably beat Hillary and Paul probably took 3rd or 4th.
It’s a conspiracy! I point this out not to poke fun at anyone but as a warning, because we have folks in the gun rights movement who also think this way, and who would place our movement far outside the mainstream. Gun rights must be a large tent as well, and we also have folks who are interested in driving the insufficiently pure out of the movement. Once we become that, it’s over. The last thing we want the gun rights movement to look like is the Libertarian Party.