February 2012 – Page 3 – Shall Not Be Questioned

When NRA is Laughing at You

A commenter today noted that NRA doesn’t do very compelling writing in its publications, but I’ll note that this take down of the Brady State Rankings for 2012 is most definitely worthy of some of the better snark you’ll see on the Internet.

On a side note, we noticed that the Tides Foundation gave $125,424 to the Brady Campaign and its affiliate, the Brady Center, between 2004 and 2009. But with no contributions in 2010, we wonder whether someone at the Foundationâ€™s grant office had a look at Bradyâ€™s previous scorecards and realized that even when youâ€™re wasting someone elseâ€™s money, there has to be a limit.

I could paraphrase an old Beck’s Beer commercial here,Â “NRA doesn’t do comedy, they do fear,” in that most of their rhetoric is aimed at presenting gun owners with frightening worst case scenarios in an attempt to fire up their single-issue voter instincts. So really, when even the NRA has resorted to just pointing at you and giggling? How the mighty have indeed fallen.

Arrested without Evidence over Accusation of Gun Ownership

There’s a story out of Canada about a guy who was arrested and told by officers that he was being charged with possession of a firearm. Normally, you would expect this to happen after they found someone in possession of a firearm.

He was given an attorney who was informed of the charges and even had a date set with a judge for a bail hearing for this charge. At no point did he ever possess a firearm, but they kept him locked up and moved forward with the charges.

With his wife hauled down to the station and his children taken in for questioning by the relevant agency for possible endangerment issues, he signed a document that allowed police to search his home. They did and there was still no firearm found in his possession. Finally, they let him go free.

The evidence seems to come from a he said/she said scenario because his 4-year-old daughter drew a picture of a firearm and said the guy holding it was her daddy who would fight off bad guys and monsters. Yes, a child who thinks monsters are real was used as evidence for the arrest instead of, you know, actual possession of a firearm.

Sebastian and I were talking about this, and it’s not actually that easy to pinpoint where things broke down beyond what seems to be an irrational fear of firearms and the mandate to report everything to authorities before anyone stops to ask logical questions.

Blame the police? They definitely take the blame for actually arresting the guy without question, but I don’t know the standards of arresting people in Canada.

Blame the social services workers who called police? They have to report it to them if they think a crime may have happened. What if they were told the little girl was drawing graphic scenes of her father killing “bad guys” that came along with a story of how he does this around her? If they didn’t see the drawing yet or actually overhear the interaction with the teacher, then that can sound pretty damn bad and very criminal in nature.

Blame the principal who called the social services workers who were then required to call police? What if she was told something similar to what I outline for the social services worker? Or, maybe it is her fault for misrepresenting what the teacher told her?

Ultimately, I do think that someone should have stopped the process and really inquired just what the hell actually happened in regards to the drawing and how the teacher asked questions about it. However, depending on how stories are passed along, concerns about a potential crime could continue to be blown way out of proportion. Ever played a game of telephone? Yeah, same thing, only with real lives on the line.

But, when we have a bunch of bureaucrats who believe they are there to do good no matter what impact it might have on innocent people and who fear not following an exact protocol that makes no accommodation for stopping to ask questions, then things like this will happen more often regardless of the country. At some point, we have to demand accountability from those who allow these things to get out of hand. Unfortunately, that’s not something that’s easy to do, especially with many protections in place for staff in these various jobs.

How the Tables Have Turned

You know we’re full of win when the anti-gun crowd is crowing that the media is bought and paid for, because, you know, they are reporting the truth about gun sales being up. Hey, what do you know, even the mainstream media figured out the gun control crowd were charlatans, and they aren’t buying it as hook, line and sinker as they used to. No wonder they are angry.

Not Something You See Every Day

Some Greek Entrepreneurs look upon the FDA as a model of efficiency, after trying to set up an olive business in Greece. Their government wanted chest X-rays and stool samples from all the company shareholders.

No wonder the country is broke and no one works.

Protecting Us For Our Own Good

Mayor Mike doesn’t want us to have guns, because we might kill ourselves with it. Think about where this line of reasoning leads? It’s not to a free society, it’s to a society where you’re not allowed to have anything dangerous, because you might hurt yourself with it. This is a recipe for the few lording over the many. It does not describe the free republic of our founders.

It’s also interesting to note that Bloomberg is only offering an anecdote. That’s like saying none of your friends have guns, and none of them have killed themselves, so clearly not having guns prevents suicides. But the actual data shows otherwise.

Red Jersey?

Well, it’s really looking more purplish, but hey, this is New Jersey:

But thanks to the new map, the [Democratic] party will likely lose its current edge in the House delegation. Unless Democrats can pick off a seat, the new makeup will likely be six Republicans and six Democrats in 2013.

A split delegation for New Jersey? Wow. This is good for the state. If anyone wants to see the end result of continuous, long-running one party dominance, one need look no further than California. New Jersey has at least made it past the first stage of the compulsive spender, which is accepting there is a problem. California is still in denial.

h/t Instapundit

Abe Lincoln Had a Saying …

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

The PA Legislative Strategy

Following up on the last post, I think the real importance of HB1523, which will give real teeth to preemption in Pennsylvania, is that it shuts down one avenue MAIG can use to attack us, namely creating momentum for gun control by getting cities and towns to buck preemption. MAIG has been very smart strategically, or at the least very lucky in how they chose to approach the problem.

MAIG’s strategy is actually somewhat of a trap. It would spread NRA very thin to have to get involved in tens of thousands of local races, in order to make a serious effort to get rid of MAIG mayors. NRA has tried some cheap, half-hearted efforts to urge members to get their mayors to quit, but have, so far, and wisely in my opinion, resisted full blown and expensive campaigns against them. The smart counter-strategy to MAIG is to play whack-a-mole with the Mayors; when they run for higher office, swing the mallet on their political ambitions; make MAIG membership a liability for higher office. When MAIG mayors come into the arena where NRA knows how to play the game well, that’s when we whack the mole.

But using small towns and Mayors as pawns in the chess game MAIG is playing was a brilliant calculation, and if it was a deliberate decision on the part of Mayor Bloomberg, I have to hand it to him for the evil genius of it. That strategy also enabled pushing gun control from the local communities up, as long as there wasn’t any consequence to bucking preemption. But NRA, able to wield significant power in most state houses, can counter MAIGs strategy by shutting down this avenue to Bloomberg.

This is the 10,000 foot view of why I think HB1523 needs to be the top legislative priority we have this year. As much as we might like to see some other things as gun owners, from a strategic point of view, HB1523 will counter a major components of MAIG’s strategy, and prevent them from growing as a threat to the Second Amendment.

MAIG Fighting Back

It’s pretty clear that MAIG has been on a campaign to get media outlets to write about the pending bill HR1523, since they have been parroting MAIG talking points.

According to tracetheguns.org, a project of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the missing gun reporting requirement and allowing local communities to enact gun laws are two of five laws Pennsylvania has not passed out of “10 key state laws that curb illegal gun trafficking.” Pennsylvania also does not require a purchase permit for all handgun sales, does not allow criminal penalties for buying a gun for someone who can’t, and does not permit inspections of gun dealers, the website says.

I think it’s become pretty clear by now that MAIG is a radical gun control group, and not just a coalition of mayors trying to battle illegal guns, which begs the question of how there are still hundreds of mayors who are members of MAIG in Pennsylvania. This is one area gun owners really need to step up and confront their local officials. MAIG is pushing for purchase permits for handguns? Arguing, falsely I might add, we have no penalty for straw buying? Arguing our state should waste law enforcement resources inspecting gun dealers when the feds already do it? If you’re mayor is a member, you should make them own up to what MAIG is doing in their name.

We have a few nearby boroughs that have MAIG mayors (we live in the township, which has no mayor), but I’ve never noticed that any gun owners in those boroughs bother to organize against their MAIG mayor. This is one area you really need borough or city residents to stand up.

NRA Nightmares

I have to imagine the folks at NRA HQ are pulling for anybody but Romney. They could sell Newt, Rick or Ron to their membership as pro-gun. Trying to sell Mitt isn’t going to pass the smell test, even if Mitt’s actual record on guns isn’t as bad as many people assume. But being that court picks are our biggest issue this election, Obama has to go, even if it’s Mitt. So what do you do? Mitt follows his political interests, and sitting out the election could mean Mitt could care less what NRA thinks when it comes to court nominees, but I don’t see Mitt as someone they could credibly endorse. If it were my choice, and it’s Mitt, I’d probably decline the endorsement, but make it clear to the campaign we’ll be beating up on Obama on guns in key markets. Withholding an endorsement has consequences though, and part of me thinks this election is too important to just sit back. There is no good choice here, only bad ones. If Mitt gets the nomination, I’m going to be really glad I’m not Chris Cox.