Chris from Arma Borealis notes that the Canadians are cracking down, and notes how difficult this makes it for Americans to get their guns to Alaska.
UPDATE: See this Canadian legal resource for a guide to Canadian gun laws for Americans.
Month: August 2011
Promotions for Fast and Furious Personnel
Dave Hardy is reporting that ATF would appear to be handing out promotions for those involved in Fast and Furious. This is bad news for the whistleblowers, since Dave points out, “One of the men directly culpable for this project is now in a position to slit their throats (a la OPR). They seem to be telling their agents to be very careful what they say, and to whom.”
Stratfor’s Lessons on Norway Attack
Reading through this, one thing that stands out is this is not a guy who was going to be stopped by a few extra gun control laws:
Unlike many lone wolves, Breivik demonstrated that he possessed the intelligence and discipline to plan and carry out an attack that spanned several years of preparation. For example, he joined a pistol club in 2005 just in case he ever needed to buy a gun through legal means in Norway, and was able to rely on that alternate plan when his efforts to purchase firearms in Prague failed. Breivik was also driven, detail-oriented and meticulous in his planning. His diary documents that he was also extremely patient and careful during the dangerous trial-and-error process of manufacturing explosives.
This guy would have kept trying, even if it meant going back to the black market. It seems like he did have the contacts if he had really tried. One thing that’s kind of scary is the fact that there seem to be, at least according to the Norwegian killer, at least fifteen other people throughout Europe who shared his philosophy, and who may be planning attacks of their own.
Faith in Government
When my company’s 401k plan got cancelled, I had to roll everything over into a Traditional IRA. I thought the transfer of money would happen through ACH, since I had to give them the financial institution’s information. But a few days ago I got a check in the mail, made out to the bank I got the IRA with, for an amount larger than I’d ever seen on a check before. So I found out what address to send it to, filled out the deposit slip, and went over to the Post Office to get it where it needs to be.
I got every piece of tracking on that thing that they would allow with a PO Box destination. I don’t trust the Post Office with that kind of responsibility. It made me think whether people like Obama and his supporters on the left would feel nervous putting most of their retirement savings into the hands of the US Postal Service. If the answer is yes, then why do they trust them with our health care? Does the government magically become more competent when they are asked to manage the health care system as opposed to delivering the mail? The latter tasks seems to be a lot simpler to me, yet I’m still nervous entrusting them with my life’s savings.
New Study out on Gun Control Support
There will be much our opponents can latch on to in this study, but the results are interesting, nonetheless. The authors imply cultural inclination, while a factor in whether you support gun control or not, is not as causative as many studies have shown.
Our CAS allowed us to compute a direct measure of the respondent’s attitudes on egalitarian, libertarian and moral traditionalist issues. We then used those indexes to test whether they had any predictive value in informing opinion on gun control. While the egalitarian and libertarian indexes played some role in influencing opinion, our results indicated that demographic factors play as equally important a role. Moreover, when we included policy issues in our analysis, we found that our cultural indexes lost all significance.
The more I read studies like this, the more I think of rational ignorance of voters. Most people don’t know the issues, and don’t think about the issues in any consistent way. I don’t particularly like how they framed the issue here “banning ownership of assault weapons and semi-automatic weapons,” since assault weapon is a fictional category, made up by our opponents to confuse the public. Better to say ban semi-automatic weapons. I would also be interesting to see how it would poll if you used self-loading weapons, instead of throwing the word automatic in there. There was a tendency in this study to let one issue ride on another. So we speak of background checks and registration, allowing registration to ride on the back of background checks, or perhaps the other way around.
Americans are most united in their support for registration requirements/background checks, with 93% of respondents in our survey supporting such restrictions. Though there is more dissention, a majority of Americans also favor restrictions on assault/semi-automatic weapons and bans on carrying guns in public places. Sixty-three percent of respondents in our survey supported bans on assault/semi-automatic weapons and 57% favored bans on concealed weapons. Our survey revealed the most opposition to handgun bans, with only 22% of respondents in our survey favoring such bans. These opinions, of course, should be seen in the context by which respondents in our survey viewed the Second Amendment. The results indicated that 74% viewed the Second Amendment as intending to protect the right of an individual to own a gun, with only 26% viewing the Amendment as protecting the right of citizens to form a militia.
This is consistent with other polling I’ve seen on the issue. It has to drive our opponents nuts they can’t get traction on these specific issues, but the problem is the cultural identification part, I’d be willing to wager. When you get to specific policies, no one wants to come off as extreme, but none of those people saying they want to ban assault weapons, or want universal background checks, are motivated to turn it into a political movement. I’d be willing to bet in the gun owner demographic, it might even be possible to get some of the folks that support bans out to vote against a candidate who’s bad on the Second Amendment.
Here’s an interesting experiment. Take the same people, and have one surveyor tell them they represent a gun owners rights group, and another that they represent a gun violence prevention group. I’ll be given the same set of people you get wildly fluctuating numbers. I find these kinds of social studies interesting, but I don’t lend much credence to them. People are irrational beings, and tend toward ignorance when you start speaking on political topics. As much as people might say they vote based on issues, most do not. It is an emotional decision making process for most.