February 2009 – Page 3 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Does Obama Have the Votes?

Not even looking at the house, I’m not honestly sure that Obama has the votes in the Senate to pass an assault weapons ban.Â I mostly agree with Countertop’s list, so we’ll use that.Â Here’s some likely no votes from the Democrats, italics mean they are up in 2010:

Baucus, Max (D – MT)
Bayh, Evan (D – IN)
Begich, Mark (D – AK)
Casey, Robert P., Jr. (D – PA)
Landrieu, Mary L. (D – LA)
Reid, Harry (D – NV)
Tester, Jon (D – MT)
Warner, Mark R. (D – VA)
Webb, Jim (D – VA)
Feingold, Russel (D-WI)

I will make one change from Countertop’s list.Â I think Feingold is a maybe.Â He’s not been a great supporter lately, but he did vote against the ban in 1994. SayUncle notes that Feingold voted against the renewal in 2004, so he’s a likely no.Â Countertop’s original judgment has been reinstated.Â The following Democrats are maybes:

Dorgan, Byron L. – (D – ND)
Johnson, Tim – (D – SD)
Gillibrand, Kirsten E. – (D – NY)
Lincoln, Blanche L. – (D – AR)
Nelson, Ben – (D – NE)
Pryor, Mark L. – (D – AR)
Udall, Mark – (D – CO)
Udall, Tom – (D – NM)

Even if a lot of those maybes would be nos, many of them will not want to have to cast a vote on this issue, and will probably apply pressure to the leadership to not bring up a bill so they don’t have to.Â Even if you lose a few Republicans, and I think Snowe and Collins are possible defectors (Specter I think we keep.Â The politics don’t work for him voting yes.), you still have a strong possibility of defeating this in the Senate.Â Remember, that in 1994, this started in the Senate.Â Despite the fact that we have more Democrats this time, the makeup looks different from a gun rights point of view.Â Obama will have to burn considerable political capital to get his assault weapons ban.Â If your Senator is on that maybe list, contact them about Holder’s remarks, and make sure they understand you expect them to vote no on any assault weapons bill before the Senate.

Not a Moment Too Soon

Oklahoma Democrat, Dan Boren, is forming a Second Amendment Task Force in The House, which “will be charged with monitoring legislation regarding the Second Amendment during the 111th Congress.”Â Jason Altmire, from the Pennsylvania delegation, is also in the group.

The group is bipartisan.Â Might be a wise idea to contact your Congress Critter and ask him to join Boren’s task force.Â This sends a message to the Administration and Pelosi that this is not an issue to bring up in the 111th Congress.

Mexico Roundup

Since Obama’s Administration advocates curtailing the constitutional rights of Americans because Mexico can’t control their border, or get their criminal cartels under control, I thought it would be useful to round up some of the news on the topic.

From the New York Times today:

The gun laws in the United States allow the sale of multiple military-style rifles to American citizens without reporting the sales to the government, and the Mexicans search relatively few cars and trucks going south across their border.

Sorry, but that’s just not true.Â I can show you the form you’re supposed to use to report it.Â Multiple sales are reported to the government.Â No wonder the NYT are bankrupt. Justin points out in the comments it’s for handguns.Â I didn’t register the rifles part.Â I’d dock myself a day of pay if I got paid to do this :)

Once again, from the paper of making up the record.

Officials in Arizona this week said a gun battle last November in Nogales, Sonora, just across the border in Mexico, left the police there running out of ammunition. A top police official was also killed there that month one day after attending a cross-border law enforcement conference in Tucson, while Ciudad JuÃ¡rez, just across from El Paso, has emerged as one of that countryâ€™s bloodiest towns.

Maybe the Mexican police haven’t been attending enough US gun shows.Â From the sounds of media articles, you can apparently buy all the grenades, rockets, mines, and mortars you could need!

Holder Calls for New Assault Weapons Ban

According to MS-NBC:

At a press conference announcing the arrests, Holder also suggested that re-instituting a U.S. ban on the sale of assault weapons would help reduce the bloodshed in Mexico, where last year 6,000 people were killed in drug-related violence.

U.S. officials have a responsibility to make sure Mexican police “are not fighting substantial numbers of weapons, or fighting against AK-47s or other similar kinds of weapons that have been flowing to Mexico,” Holder said.

So we are going to lose our gun rights because our government can’t secure its borders, and the Mexican government can’t secure law and order and weed out corruption in its military, which is no doubt a large source of firearms for drug cartels.

Interestingly enough, it was not in his prepared remarks, so it must have been in a question. This is from the Administration, folks.Â Obama may be willing to burn political capital on this issue.Â Get ready.

UPDATE: Exact quote [previous article changed, quote now can be found here] “As President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons,” Mr. Holder said. “I think that will have a positive impact in Mexico, at a minimum.”

Remember 1994.Â That’s all I have to say.Â We’ll do it again.Â Don’t believe us?Â Try it.

UPDATE: Wayne LaPierre will make an appearance on Cam and Company in a few minutes to talk about this.Â Tune in to NRANews.com

Losing the Internet Generation

Texas Republicans need to stop this crap:

“While the Internet has generated many positive changes in the way we communicate and do business, its limitless nature offers anonymity that has opened the door to criminals looking to harm innocent children,” U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said at a press conference on Thursday. “Keeping our children safe requires cooperation on the local, state, federal, and family level.”

Joining Cornyn was Texas Rep. Lamar Smith, the senior Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, and Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who said such a measure would let “law enforcement stay ahead of the criminals.”

Two bills have been introduced so far–S.436 in the Senate and H.R.1076 in the House. Each of the companion bills is titled “Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today’s Youth Act,” or Internet Safety Act.

Each contains the same language: “A provider of an electronic communication service or remote computing service shall retain for a period of at least two years all records or other information pertaining to the identity of a user of a temporarily assigned network address the service assigns to that user.”

Technologically, that’s next to impossible to enforce, since user information is not currently built into any of the technologies.Â It would require businesses and providers to add an extra layer of authentication onto their networks.Â In other words, this is an IT nightmare of epic proportions, not even mentioning the civil liberties implications.Â Republicans have been driving educated voters from their party in hoards, and it’s especially true in the Philadelphia Suburbs, which even a decade ago was considered a Republican stronghold.Â Measures like this is part of the reason why.Â I believe the Texas delegation ought to seriously rethink the implications of this bill on the party as a whole.

Kiddie Porn is becoming the new drug war.Â There’s no civil liberty or aspect of commerce that where federal meddling can’t be justified in order to stamp it out.Â Next time Steele comes soliciting for funds, I might have to send a copy of this bill back in the envelope with “no thanks” written on it.

Hat Tip to War on Guns for the link.

Showdown with the Feds

Montana is getting closer to the idea, via SayUncle:

Under a proposed law before the Legislature, firearms, weapons components and ammunition made in Montana and kept in Montana would be exempt from federal regulation, potentially releasing some Montanans from national gun registration and licensing laws. The legislation could also free gun purchasers in the state from background checks.

I don’t see how this gets past Gonzalez vs. Raich, where The Court ruled that Congress may regulate intrastate commerce in items where such a scheme of regulation is meant to control the national market in a certain good.Â But that’s not really the point.Â States shouldn’t feel they have to accept every ruling that comes down the pike.Â They should undertake more measures like this to assert their interests as separate sovereigns in our federal system.Â The Supreme Court does not have a monopoly on interpreting the constitution.

Remember the Alamo

Why does Mexico want to ban Americans from having guns today?Â No doubt they remember what happens when you let a bunch gringos settle part of your country, bring their rifles with them, and then try to impose corrupt government upon them.Â Blackfork has a multi-day feature running of “Remember the Alamo”:

Keep reading throughout the week.Â He’s doing a post for every day of the siege.

Pikers

Some NYU students took over part of the school the other day.Â The video is not to be believed.Â By the end of the video, you’ll just be begging to see the NYPD come in and bash some skulls in.Â Â Sadly, that does not happen.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Q6KAg6qEGY[/youtube]

Somehow I have to believe that even radicals like Bill Ayers have to be shaking their heads and wondering what the hell is wrong with kids today.

Harder Questions on Political Disputes

Joe Huffman makes the legitimate observation that most of the issues I mentioned in the last post were pretty easy, but mentions they can be harder:

How about question such as banning all semi-automatic firearms? Or nationalization of the banking industry? Nationalization of the oil/energy industry? Nationalization of telecommunications industry? Nationalization of health-care? Nationalization of the software industry? Nationalization of all corporations? Confiscation of all real property?

With the exception of the banking industry, and possibly health care, most of those aren’t currently on the table, and I was more attempting to frame the issue in what we’re dealing with today.Â Even Obamacare doesn’t go as far as nationalization of health care (so far), and governments have been so heavily involved in banking since modern banking emerged, that I’m not as concerned about the prospects of some banks being nationalized, especially if it’s under the auspices of the FDIC process for insolvent banks.

But there’s little doubt we’re slowly moving toward many of these things.Â I don’t think there’s an easy answer to the problem. Unless there’s some majority, or even a sizable minority, I’m not sure how you have an organic “people” who can offer legitimacy to a government through their consent to be governed by it.Â If a majority of people are happy or indifferent with a slow creep toward social democracy, I’m not sure what can be done to stop it. In other words, I don’t think the Second Amendment provides a solution for the boiled frog problem.Â The idea being if you want to cook a frog, if you throw him into boiling water, he’ll just jump out.Â If you put him in cold water, and slowly turn up the heat, he’ll never realize he’s being stewed.

I heard it suggested tonight that John Edwards is actually right, and that there really are two Americas.Â I sometimes wonder if our political discourse is devolving to the point where the two Americas won’t be able to tolerate being in one America with the other.Â Last time that happened, things got ugly.

The Boundaries of the Second Amendment

SayUncle brings up a post from a blogger who is unhappy about some of the stuff appearing on the Free Republic.Â Â Stuff which is pretty tame by Internet standards.Â SayUncle comments:

Any way, I donâ€™t mind so much. The Bush years turned a lot of lefties into gun nuts. In fact, the picture that Mr. Fifth Of November Poser used was prominent on a lot of lefty, pro-gun sites. Looks like the Obama years will get a lot of righties back into the gun rights movement.

I agree with Uncle to the extent that it’s making people understand, in an abstract way, why the Second Amendment is important, but I can sympathize with concerns about people speaking of revolution as a means for resolving disputes among political factions.Â When I think about the Second Amendment philosophically, at least its collective purpose rather than its personal one, I think of it as a means for ultimately enforcing Popular Sovereignty as the source of government legitimacy.Â It restricts the government’s power only to those actions which embody a will of the people as a whole, and seriously raises the cost of defying that will.Â In other words, you “vote from the rooftops” because you can’t, in a meaningful way, vote from the ballot box. I’m less sanguine about arms as a means for resolving domestic political disputes between quarreling factions.Â Down that road lies disaster, and the end of our Republic.Â Political disputes should be resolved with words, ideas, activism, organization, campaigns, and civility.Â Arms are for extreme circumstances.

I am sympathetic to those that believe Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what’s for dinner, and the Second Amendment was meant to allow the well armed sheep to contest the vote.Â I do not believe we ought to worship at the altar of Popular Sovereignty to ridiculous levels.Â If a majority of Americans ever vote for a government that advocates exterminating an unpopular minority, I will agree we ought resist it, with violence if necessary.Â If a majority acquiesce to Congress unilaterally dissolving our Republic and reforming it around a Parliamentary model, I would agree that should be a deal breaker as well.

But no one is seriously proposing these things, and what is being proposed is in the realm of peaceful partisan politics.Â I’m not going to machine gun my fellow man over medicare, or take out a tank over taxes.Â I won’t shoot it out with a subgun over the stimulus, nor defend my construction of the commerce clause with continuous cannonade.Â We have a system that allows us to redress that peacefully, and without annoying, aggravating alliteration.Â While I share Uncle’s sentiment about making more people see the importance of the Second Amendment, I worry greatly about what people are thinking it’s actually for.