The rule that forces National Parks to comply with state law on concealed carry is now in effect. For how long remains to be seen, but we can expect the legal fight on the matter to continue. For now, however, the rule is in effect.
Year: 2009
Time for Action!
Bitter and I are on our way back from Arlington, our business with NRA nearly concluded. I say nearly, because I have considered many of the accusations of my half-hearted devotion to gun rights, and my cowardice in the face of the enemy. I decided the time for talk was over, so we are traveling back to Pennsylvania with Chris Cox tied up in the back of the car. It was a bold, but necessary move.
It wasn’t easy. We tried to get Wayne too, but let me tell you, he might look like he’s getting old, but the guy can still move like the wind. Bastard got a way. I managed to take Chris by surprise, though. Ollie North grabbed me from behind while I was hog tying Cox on the floor. Ollie was giving me a good bit of trouble until I smashed him over the head with the tray of cucumber hors d’oeuvres that no one was eating. With Ollie put into a pickle, we managed to get Chris out to the car, and hide him under our Friends of the NRA blanket. So he wouldn’t make too much noise, we decided it would be best to knock him out cold with the handy NRA Custom Deer Lamp.
Once we get home, he will be held tied up in my basement, and fed on a diet of Old Milwaukee and our Banana Crap Pie, until he finally agrees to our condition that NRA fight the nomination of Eric Holder, no matter how slim the chances of victory, and no matter how great the damage to NRA’s political power. If that doesn’t work, well, let’s see how you like Keystone Light my friend. He’ll crack in no time. This is the new face of the NRA/Blogger relationship. Kidnappings and crappy beer. Now they will hear our collective voice. Let’s all celebrate this new era!
Gun Rights Theme Song
Sandcastle Scrolls has an idea of what our theme song needs to be for the next four years.
Public Affairs
Sorry for the lack of posting, spent the morning in the NRA Public Affairs committee meeting. Not much really to report, except what we largely already know here. There’s great concern about the growing media story, particularly on assault weapons. NRA is considering doing ad buys and “earned” media activity to try to counter a lot of the disinformation being propagated by the media. More pressure ramping up on the international front, particularly from Mexico. We all are aware of the stories being generated about all matter of weapons, assault rifles, grenades, and various other things that are largely illegal or tightly regulated in this country, being bought freely at gun shows and being smuggled over the border. Now the Mexican government is putting pressure on us on the matter to do something about our gun laws. Until Jan 20th, we have a President in the White House who is less likely to cave. Will Obama tell the Mexican Government our gun laws are none of their business?
Got a presentation from Advancement, who are a division of NRA that solicits large donations to the NRA Foundation. They have launched a Ring of Freedom initiative focusing on larger donations. The idea of NRA Foundation is to raise money for an endowment that pays for much of the ongoing operations of NRA through grants from the foundation. The foundation is considered a public charity for tax purposes, so donations are deductible. This allows NRA to spend more of its income preserving the Second Amendment than running all the shooting sports programs and various other activities which are actually the NRA’s core mission. The good news is, in 2008, despite a soft economy, they raised a record amount of money, and they are expecting 2009 to be challenging, but seem to be optimistic about it being a good year. Apparently donations spiked in December. Apparently this a normal pattern for charities, because of tax issues, but I have to wonder if a lot of that was the election.
BTW, Ken Blackwell spoke at the committee meeting about a few topics, because he’s on the Public Affairs Committee. I was favorably impressed by him, so he ought to have our support for his bid for the GOP Chairmanship.
Why There Can Be No Peace Between Our Peoples
When it comes to threepers and the prags, the reason peace between our peoples is not likely is because so many folks are flaming douchenozzles:
“Bitter and I are in Arlington. NRA Board Meeting are going on right now. We don’t have much of an agenda, except for discussing some details of the Second Amendment Blog Bash.â€
Yeah,no agenda you say? You have a chance to do something big with the Holder Debacle while you’re THERE,and show your leadership abilities.
And all you care about is the “blog Bash†later in the year.
I would never call you a coward because I don’t know you,but man,you sure do know how to disappoint..
Personally,you showed your true colors to me when you disarmed to be in the same room with McCain at the “NRA Convention.â€
Be well…..
I would never call you a coward, Sebastian, so I’ll just all but imply it, and imply you aren’t doing anything for gun rights while I’m at it. No, that’s not weasley at all! There are plenty of threepers that I merely disagree with, but otherwise think are decent people. But the reason you guys have no place at the table is because it’s intolerable to even be in the same room as a lot of you, even if it’s a virtual room, such as the one we all occupy here on the blogosphere. I would propose from this point out, we agree to adhere to dinner party rules. What do I mean by dinner party rules? Dave Barry has a good idea:
You know what I miss? I miss 1960. Not the part about my face turning overnight into the world’s most productive zit farm. What I miss is the way the grown-ups acted about the Kennedy-Nixon race. Like the McCain-Obama race, that was a big historic deal that aroused strong feelings in the voters. This included my parents and their friends, who were fairly evenly divided, and very passionate. They’d have these major honking arguments at their cocktail parties. But unlike today, when people wear out their upper lips sneering at those who disagree with them, the 1960s grown-ups of my memory, whoever they voted for, continued to respect each other and remain good friends.
What was their secret? Gin. On any given Saturday night they consumed enough martinis to fuel an assault helicopter. But also they were capable of understanding a concept that we seem to have lost, which is that people who disagree with you politically are not necessarily evil or stupid. My parents and their friends took it for granted that most people were fundamentally decent and wanted the best for the country. So they argued by sincerely (if loudly) trying to persuade each other. They did not argue by calling each other names, which is pointless and childish, and which constitutes I would estimate 97 percent of what passes for political debate today.
So what I’m appealing for, on both sides, is that we follow dinner party rules. I think, for the most part, the last disagreement over NRA’s proper role, has been passionate, but civil. No matter what has happened in the past, and it’s been on both sides, let’s treat this like a dinner party. This is the standard I’m going to be enforcing from here on out, because I pay for this forum, and I’m not going to tolerate assholes anymore. Disagreement is fine, but it’s a dinner party from here on out. You can assault people’s ideas all you want, but that’s as far as it goes.
In Virginia Meeting With The Gun Folks
Bitter and I are in Arlington. NRA Board Meeting are going on right now. We don’t have much of an agenda, except for discussing some details of the Second Amendment Blog Bash with some of the staff who will be here. This is also a about the one place we can meet up with other bloggers and people we know around the country who are in the gun rights movement.
We will be attending the Public Affairs Committee meeting tommorow, then going to NRA Studios to say hi to Cam. Not sticking around for the actual Board Meeting this time. Meeting up with Countertop and Ravenwood later tonight.
Brady Christmas List to Obama
Don’t know how I missed this, but here is the laundry list of issues the Brady Campaign presented to the President Elect back before the holidays. Just because they ask doesn’t mean they will receive, but needless to say, they have a more receptive President and Congress than they’ve had in two decades.
Thanks to reader RuffRidr
ATF Running Low on 4473s
Due to unprecedented demand, apparently. It’s almost like we’ve done gone and elected a gun banning President and Congress, or something.
Political Capital: How It’s Spent
In the last post, we talked about what constitutes NRA’s political capital. This post is meant to look at how NRA engaging in fights on Capitol Hill both uses and spends that power, using the factors of its capital that we outlined in the previous post.
Beacause of the election results, NRA is starting out this new political season with considerably diminished capital. They staked quite a lot of their political reputation on McCain, and when he lost, their reputation was damaged. You can see that in all the media stories that talk about NRA being dead. We might understand that this election wasn’t much about guns, but driving perception is what these media article are about, and perception matters just about as much as reality.
Any time NRA engages politically, and sending an alert to its membership that they need to contact their representatives, is engaging politically. When you do this, you are spending political reputation, and political alliances. You are spending reputation, because if you alert, and switchboards don’t get lit up, political actors start wondering whether your membership is credible. You have to make sure the issue is one that will generate widespread concern. You spend political alliances because getting pressure from constituents means something. It is a form of arm twisting. When you ask a politician to do something for you, or you ask your membership to ask politicians to do something for you, you’re asking a favor.  Politicians have a lot of interests they have to consider, and if you’re constantly asking for favors, you better be able to deliver a lot of support in return at election time. NRA can deliver more support at election time than most, but it can’t work miracles. Not enough of its members are willing to do much to support politicians who support us other than vote.
Ultimately, if you try to spend more political capital than you have, you will lose both credibility and alliances. Politicians who pay attention to you because it’s good politics, which is most of them, might just decide you’re not worth the trouble, essentially daring you to challenge their seat. If they do that, you better be able to hand them their electoral head on a silver platter next election.  The reason NRA has high political reputation is because they actually can do this to a lot of politicians, because their membership and influence among gun owners to vote a certain way is high. But in many instances, and under many circumstances (competiting interests, again) NRA does not actually have the power to cause a politician to lose his seat. That was the case in my district this past election, where we failed to defeat Patrick Murphy. I can promise you that Patrick Murphy is now less frightened of the gun issue than he was. If a politician thinks you’re bluffing, and calls you on it, that’s highly damaging to your reputation if you can’t defeat him.
This is the reason the National Rifle Association has to choose its battle carefully. If it had more members, or more money, it would have enhanced political capital, and could fight more often, which is why NRA is always recruiting members and asking for money. Don’t get me wrong, NRA is a powerful interest organization in D.C., some regard it as the most powerful, but in a country with a lot of competing interests, its power is limited. It does not have the resources to fight everything, everywhere, regardless of what the chances of a positive outcome are.  That is why NRA won’t fight every battle. Some argue that fighting itself is made of win, but it’s not. Fighting and losing has severe consequences in politics, and should not be undertaken lightly. Sometimes you will have to. But the reason NRA probably won’t go after Holder is because there’s no path forward that doesn’t involve an anti-gun Attorney General, and defeating Holder will consume resources and capital that would be best used fighting new gun control.
Concealed Carry Permit Holder Saves Clerk
The customer, who was only identified as Chris to protect his identity, said he walked into a Kangaroo convenience store on Franklin Street and noticed at least two suspicious men.
The customer said he walked out to his car to get his phone and heard the clerk inside screaming for help. He said he grabbed his gun and went back inside and saw the suspected robber beating a female clerk with a beer bottle.
The customer said he told the assailant he had a gun, but the man turned toward him and the customer fired two shots, killing the suspect.
Sounds like a clean shoot to me. One wonders whether any Brady folks here want to come advocate he should have called 911 and waited for police to arrive. This is one of those situations that if I found myself in, having to listen to a woman scream while I waited for police to arrive, because I did not have my pistol on me, I would have a difficult time forgiving myself. I suspect most of us would feel that way.