August 2010 – Page 7 – Shall Not Be Questioned

The Stupid Things Politicians Say

It’s always a good thing when politicians brag about their NRA grades, but this is pretty funny right here:

Long time Pro Gun, NRA Member and now Congressional Candidate, Don Browning receives the NRA â€œAâ€ rating with the coveted â€Qâ€ added. ( Emails messages are buzzing about the value of the NRA â€œAâ€,â€Qâ€ Ratings awarded to lifetime members of the NRA) Apparently Cliff Stearns was not awarded the valued â€œQâ€ because of incumbent status.

You see, the “Q” means the guy has no record, so his grade is based solely on his answer to the questionnaire. He’s spinning it as a special endorsement they give to lifetime NRA members. Politicians will do anything to get elected I guess. I’m sure Cliff Stearns is missing the “Q,” because he has a voting record.

A Useful Firefox Plugin

Clayton Cramer points to a Firefox plugin that blocks all Stevens Media (the people who make the Las-Vegas Review Journal) sites. That’s cool, but I use Safari.

The G3

Shooting Illustrated has a nice article out on the G3 and its many variations.

ARs for Self-Defense

Defensive Handgun Blog e-mails to highlightÂ a post about whether the AR is a decent for home defense, pointing to the Harold Fish case as an example of any gun that can be successfully demonized. Â He highlights two cases, one where someone was prosecuted for a case self-defense because he used a machine gun to kill his attacker. He was ultimately acquitted by a jury, but not until after spending a small fortune to defend against a politically motivated prosecution focusing heavily on the machine gun. The second case is that of Harold Fish, who was convicted of murder after a prosecution that focused on his 10mm pistol being too powerful and on his hollow point ammunition. Fish was ultimately convicted largely because he shot an unarmed man under dubious circumstances, however, not because of his gun.

I think it’s probably good advice to keep in mind that you’ll ultimately be judged by a jury of your peers if the state attorney for your jurisdiction decides to bring charges. The prosecutor, in addition to generally being an elected office, is going to have an idea of what a jury in his area will and won’t convict on. If you live on a ranch on the border with Mexico in Arizona or Texas, I’m pretty sure you could get away with defending yourself with light artillery if you had to. If you’re living in a townhouse in Alexandria, you might be complicating your defense if you shoot an attacker with an AR.

Drunken Regrets

I’m just glad that a tattoo has never been one of mine. Â Via Radley comes this site that will translate various Asian character tattoos for people who don’t know what they really have inked on their skin. Â It was only mildly amusing until I came across this one that made me laugh out loud:

A coworker of mine has a tattoo he got while he was out partying a couple a years ago and has absolutely no idea what it means. Can you tell us?

Thanks,

Tim

Why would anyone be proud of tattoo that says: “to commit any imaginable evil”?

Some of the other examples include a woman who thought her tattoo meant beauty, but found out it means sheep, and a girl who thought her tattoo said Princess, but it wasn’t quite accurate – more like palace. Â It makes me very happy that even in my drunkest moments, having someone stab me with a needle never fell on my “list of things to do tonight.”

Getting to Know Your NRA: Organization

It’s a common complaint to hear “I hate NRA, because one time they did X, and I just couldn’t stand it. They lost my support.” where X is any generic minor transgression you can think of. I’ve also heard people get upset for major transgressions, like losing world record filings, and for something like that I can understand. But much if it is trivial, which is why I found Miguel’s post so amusing. My suggestion to most people is that you can’t treat NRA as it if were a monolithic entity. Much like any workplace, there are people in it who are competent, people who are incompetent, people who are great people, and people who are bozos, or any combination of those traits. I feel that too often people who have encountered the dysfunction (and believe me, it’s there) fail to understand that dysfunction may be the result of encountering one dysfunctional employee, or perhaps a dysfunctional division. It doesn’t have to reflect the Association as a whole.

Wayne’s Office

Wayne is essentially the CEO of the NRA, and Wayne is either the big rock star of the issue, or the biggest snake to come along since the Garden of Eden, depending on who you talk to. For better or worse, what people love and hate about NRA gets attributed to him. But LaPierre is really no different than any other CEO, in that he is dependent on underlings to run the day-to-day operations of the organization. He is the highest executive staffer in the organization, and the public face of the National Rifle Association. Critics of the Association very often focus myopically on Wayne, as if he’s NRA’s biggest problem, but this misses the boat. I’m not even sure it’s the right port, to be honest.

NRA-ILA

ILA is the legislative arm of NRA, and it’s headed up by Chris Cox. The existence of ILA is in NRA’s bylaws. ILA is not as large as most people assume it to be. If it were its own organization, they would be considered a small company. ILA has about 80 people on staff, compared to about 500 NRA employees in total. Most people are surprised by that, because ILA has such a high profile in terms of NRA’s public mission, that many people assume it’s the largest division of NRA.

General Operations

Most of NRA’s traditional functions, in terms of competitions, shooting sports programs, law enforcement training and competition, the regular NRA training programs, and so on. The head of General Operations is Kayne Robinson. You’ve all doubt noticedÂ NRA Blog, and its emphasis on shooting sports, competitions, etc. NRA Blog is run by the staff in General Operations, and their focus represents the mission of General Operations.

NRA Secretary’s Office

This is an office also stipulated in NRA’s bylaws. The Secretary’s office does a number of things, in addition to keeping the records for the Association. They are responsible for planning the Annual Meeting, which at this point is not a minor feet in event planning. This is one of the largest events in the country, it’s put on every year, and generally speaking, for as big as it is, goes pretty smoothly. The Secretary of the NRA is Major Ed Land, who’s military accomplishments you can read about here.

NRA Office of Advancement

These are the people who seek out donors for the NRA Foundations, and the numerous programs it supports. No, Advancement aren’t the person who sends you all the letters asking for money you used to heat your house last winter, Advancement seeks out bigger donors — people donating money into the thousands of dollar, and up to millions of dollar amounts. You can find out more about the type of work Advancement does at nragive.com. This is a relatively new office at NRA, created to help specifically help NRA seek out larger donors, and fully endow much of its non-political function. NRA has historically been dependent on small donations from its membership in order to fund all their programs. The problem with that is that donations fluctuate with the number of NRA member, with the economy, and the constant begging for money annoys membership. Most people I’ve spoken with understand that’s a problem, but NRA can’t fund itself on membership dollars alone.

NRA Board of Directors

The NRA Board is composed of 76 members. 75 of them are elected for a three year term on the general ballot which is send to voting members of the NRA (lifers, and people with 5 unbroken years of membership), with one elected to a one year term at each Annual Meeting also by voting members. In theory the NRA Board controls the overall direction of the Association. In practice it sometimes works that way, and sometimes doesn’t, for reasons I’ll get into later. Board positions are not paid positions. In fact, most Board members sacrifice a good deal to serve in their positions.

NRA Publications

These are the folks who produce your magazines, the flagships being American Rifleman, American Hunter,Â and America’s First Freedom, but in addition to that they have other worthy publications like Shooting Illustrated, and Shooting Sports USA, which members can subscribe to in addition to the publication that comes with their memberships. In addition to providing something that feeds their interests, NRA’s publications are also a critical means for the Association to communicate with its members, and also serves as the vessel for getting ballots out to people.

NRA Office of General Counsel

These are NRA’s lawyers. Every corporation of any reasonable size has counsel, but consider NRA’s lawyers have be well versed in a very broad area of law, and have a considerably more significant role to play within NRA than your ordinary corporate lawyers would in a conventional corporate structure. Office of General Counsel is headed up by Robert Dowlut. But they are not solely responsible for legal issues within NRA. NRA-ILA is actually charged with controlling NRA’s legal strategy, and then you have the Civil Rights Defense Fund, which is controlled by a Board Committee. But obviously Office of General Counsel plays a pretty significant role in all of these endeavors.

Things Get a Little More Interesting

Charlie Cook just updated his congressional race rankings, and our district was one of the changes issued. Â Sebastian & I are hopeful for this race, but we also look at the reality of the situation. Â Our district is attracting a significant number of Jersey & New York transplants – unfortunately, the types who bring their voting habits with them. Â Even in the years of Tea Party excitement & serious organization here locally, the Democrats have the registration advantage and have consistently delivered more new voter registrations than the GOP since at least 2008. Â Reality doesn’t bode well for us, especially when you factor in that the Democratic incumbent is a very good liar & fantastic fundraiser.

However, the political reporters have consistently labeled this a very competitive district for 2010. Â I have questioned them about it, and pointed out that even Charlie Cook kept it rated as a “Lean Democrat” district even when others were considering it a top competitive race. Â Well, that changed late yesterday. Â Cook now considers this district to be “Toss Up.” While I won’t put all of my eggs in one basket when it comes to believing one political analyst over another, I guess this cements that they are seeing signs of life here that we just haven’t witnessed on the ground.

Interestingly, Cook also moved the ratings for several other Pennsylvania races to the right. Â We have more competitive Congressional races by sheer number & percentage of districts according to some I’ve talked to about the state of politics here. Â If you’ve got a few bucks burning a hole in your pocket, there are a lot of candidates who could use the help here in Pennsylvania to shake things up nationally.

Add in the fact that our State House could flip with just a handful of seat changes, and Pennsylvania is going to be a very interesting state to watch.

Leave the Gun Lessons to Us

Now Paul Helmke is getting in on it too, speaking about a force-on-force training exercise Phil Van Cleave went through in West Virginia. The kind of training Van Cleave was describing is more appropriate for law enforcement officers, who have to confront armed criminals and take them into custody, rather than citizens trying to defend themselves. The main lesson Van Cleave is stressing here is that it’s a bad idea to go on the offense with an opponent who is or could be armed, because we have police, who can arrive with overwhelming force, and who also have the advantage of body armor. I think most sensible people understand this. Paul Helmke, however, draws inappropriate conclusions from Van Cleave’s wisdom:

I know Phillip Van Cleave is still a strong believer in gun rights.Â But his story should be a cautionary lesson. After tragedies like the recent one in Manchester, Connecticut, when aÂ disgruntled employee shot and killed eight coworkers, there are usually comments from the gun love community about how the tragedy could have been avoided if only someone else there had been armed.

The problem, Paul, is the defender would have been in the opposite position Van Cleave was in with his training. The active shooter would be the one in Van Cleave’s position. In this kind of scenario it’s the aggressor who has the disadvantage. No one believes no-win scenarios don’t exist. If someone rounds the corner of my office door with a drawn gun, and with intent to kill, I could have a flame thrower right next to me and it’s not going to do much good. But that doesn’t mean there’s no situation where having a gun isn’t helpful.

If there’s a raging fire upstairs blocking my exit, using one of my fire extinguishers is going to be about as effective as pissing on it, but just because a fire extinguisher can’t put out all fires, isn’t a reason not to have them around. People can still be killed in automobile accidents despite the presence of seat belts and air bags too, yet we mandate both be in automobiles. Helmke is obviously worried about people carrying guns for the wrong reasons, as is evidenced by his description of “many” who carry guns who “think they are ready for a showdown, and ready to be a hero.” It’s a legitimate concern. But is that a many? Is it most? Is it even few? No doubt there are some, but I would think most people carry because a) they are comfortable with firearms, and b) want to be able to protect themselves.

Again, it boils down to “Do you trust your fellow citizens to do the right thing most of the time.” We say, “yes.” They say, “no.”

Asking the Important Legal Questions

Is it legal to eat your cat? In New York State, the answer is apparently no:

When police in Western New York pulled over Gary Korkuc for blowing off a stop sign on Sunday, theyÂ found a live cat in his trunk, covered in cooking oil, peppers, and salt. Korkuc told authorities that his pet feline was “possessive, greedy, and wasteful” and that he intended to cook and eat it. Korkuc has been charged with animal cruelty. Is there a legal way to cook and eat a cat?

Maybe in some places, but not New York.

I think in Pennsylvania this would likely also be illegal unless you slaughter it according to state law, which stipulates methods that animals can be slaughtered (firearms are among the methods permitted for taking animals). It certainly could be possible to legally eat your cat in Pennsylvania, but I’m pretty sure slathering your live kitty with cooking oil, pepper and salt isn’t the beginning of a legal slaughtering method, and itself might be considered cruelty.

Personally, I think salt and pepper is a really unimaginative seasoning mix for Felis Catus. I would think at the least, a marinade is called for.

UPDATE: It would seem it was chili peppers and red peppers, from the more detailed article. Better, at least.

The Right to Practice

I’m very pleased with this new SAF and ISRA lawsuit against Chicago. Though the earlier NRA-backed Benson v. Chicago lawsuit takes a kitchen sink approach, which would include this question, SAF seems to be taking a more narrow strategy. I think this is smart. Depending on what happens, on appeal the court it ends up before might not want a kitchen sink case, and I believe it’s beneficial for us to have a narrow case available as well.

Randy Graham, vice president of Action Target, said, â€œWe believe that citizens have a constitutional right to use and train with firearms in a safe and controlled environment. As a leader in the firearms training industry, Action Target is committed to standing up for these rights.â€

And we want the courts to say that the right to keep and bear is also the right to practice with arms. That opens the door to many possibilities in terms of expanding this right. The First Amendment angle on this is also interesting. It would appear that they are essentially arguing the ban on public ranges prevents education in firearms, which violates free speech. It almost sounds like a stretch, but when you think about it, would a ban on, say, chalk boards be constitutional if it interfered with teaching English Literature? What if there was no reasonable substitute? What if you could show the law was specifically intended to frustrate teaching of English Literature? In a different context it’s very plausible.

UPDATE: John Richardson notes that the Benson complaint has been amended, and is now less of a kitchen sink approach. He also notes which counts they dropped. This looks sensible. A lot of the dropped complaints still made sense, but probably not all for a single case.