So many things open in my browser, it’s slowing the machine down. First, let’s start with this:
David Keene, President of the NRA, writes about the AR-15 in Human Events and includes a number of very interesting stats. For those who think NRA is a fuddy organization that doesn’t really dig black guns, consider this: most NRA staffers trend younger than many workplaces. NRA is often a first job out of college. Most of the staff I’ve gotten to know at NRA are GenX, GenY or Millennial. Now, do yo think NRA staff, given their age distribution, is going to be more Gun Culture 1.0 or Gun Culture 2.0?
Bloomberg is definitely up to something, which could be very difficult to counter. We should all be up to something too, to counter it.
Senator Bob Casey is a liar. If he doesn’t think we’ll remember his turning on us in 2018, he’s kidding himself. I actually voted for Casey in 2006. Never again! In fact, I will work very hard for whoever his opponent is next time.
Not Very Green. Burning plastics give off all kinds of toxins. I have to agree with Robb Allen: “I’m just happy people are using ‘deodand‘ more.”
It would appear that the gun ban is causing some interesting things to occur. We are all banding together in a coherent and very politically powerful way. I could try to explain all the psychology, sociology, and all that other boring crap, or just use a cool movie reference:
Remember when Darth Vader was fighting Obi-Wan? He ‘killed’ Obi-wan….and a few years later, the Empire fell.
Ever notice how the Obama “O” and the Empire symbol are both a stylized “O”. I sure did, let’s make this one fall too.
–Matt
Voted for Casey? A little taken aback
Santorum started saying shit about the government belonging in people’s bedrooms. His views got way too socially conservative for my tastes. I appreciated his position on guns, but ultimately the rest of his views bothered me sufficiently to overcome my feelings on the gun issue. I did not vote for Casey this time around. I voted for Tom Smith.
Well, ok
“Senator Bob Casey is a liar. If he doesn’t think we’ll remember his turning on us in 2018, he’s kidding himself.”
2018? WTF?
He was just re-elected. We don’t have an opportunity to unseat him again until 2018.
“Santorum . . .got way too socially conservative for my tastes. . .”
Me too. But having had experience with Casey previously, I couldn’t vote for him, either. I knew whoever I voted for, I’d be laying my hand on the rope to hang our freedom, while sending the false signal that that was what I endorsed. The only question would be, what freedoms I chose to abandon first. I forget whether I just didn’t pull the senate lever, or if there was a minor party candidate who wasn’t such a loon, so that I could bring myself to vote for them, but I know I voted for neither Santorum nor Casey.
Sometimes we are confronted with choices that are a lot more complicated than “the perfect being the enemy of the good.”
We either hang alone or hang together, and they don’t have enough rope for us all. The bond between social, fiscal, constitutional conservatives must stand to win on this issue in congress.
I can tell you countless times about my CPAC trips when Wayne LaPierre always got a standing ovation. Not everyone there cared abut guns like folks here, but it was common knowledge that you’re going to support the NRA if you call yourself a conservative. Being a card carrying member of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” means standing for the second amendment. Ideologically, the GOA gets it more than the NRA when it comes to “conservative culture”, but the NRA has the votes and the numbers. That’s all you need to know when voting if you are voting for gun rights first. Is Casey anywhere near right of center on guns? He never seemed that way to me. I don’t even remember him running on gun rights at all.
Bad choice, sir. We all make them. But I was not fooled on this one, sorry. I’m more upset about my last minute “cave” vote for two-faced weasels like Romney.
Beware. The next elected official that says something boneheaded, goaded by the media (like Murdoch), may be quoted as saying something equally damning about second amendment rights next time.
Rest assured that my trip to visit my elected officials in Washington during the annual March for Life this month will also include a “national conversation” with them on the importance of second amendment rights as well.
Just because I support gun rights doesn’t mean I’m a conservative. I’m radically liberal on a number of issues.
Casey turned in an A questionnaire in 2006, and though there’s always a risk with a politician that he’s lying, I was willing to roll the dice that maybe he was for real. The Democrats, at the time, seemed to be surrendering on the gun control issue.
You’re “radically liberal” on every issue of consequence I can remember except fiscally, and there it’s clear you’re not willing to accept that you can’t have sane fiscal policies without “social conservatism”. Since we as a nation won’t accept the concept of starving children, which means ever more support for an ever higher proportion of unmarried mothers. Who of course by and large vote for those promising them the best benefits and, oh, protection for their “lady parts”. These politicians are generally anti-RKBA and of course government dependency this deep is corrosive towards the attitudes that tend to make one pro-RKBA.
That your general liberal politics can override your good sense on the RKBA (witness Casey) means we have to take your advice with a big grain of salt, not that we shouldn’t be doing that anyway as a general principle. This is, I suspect, one of the reasons your blog the most interesting and I strongly suspect the important political RKBA one, perhaps because you aren’t coming to this from where most of us are.
Hmmm, and “liberals” tend to be more defined by their politics than “conservatives”, you and your SO are very much political animals, to our great benefit.
In my personal life, I am fairly socially conservative. I just don’t think the government has a place in fixing what socially ills us. In fact, I think government spending programs have largely created the problem, because instead of being dependent on community, churches, and family, we can be dependent on Uncle Sugar, who won’t shame you like those other groups will. So I think the spending problem drives the social problem.
I think a mistake a lot of social conservatives make is thinking we can legislate our way out of this problem by legislating “family values.” It’s an attempt to use more government to solve a problem too much government caused in the first place.
[…] I think government spending programs have largely created the problem, because instead of being dependent on community, churches, and family, we can be dependent on Uncle Sugar, who won’t shame you like those other groups will.
Bingo.
The problem is, once the nation got wealthy and ambitious enough, post-Great Depression and WWII, and of course with the latter’s showing big government can accomplish amazing things, our unwillingness to let children starve inevitably lead to these programs that subsidized single parents. Add feminism’s successful campaign against men/fathers and marriage, and, well, from what we’ve heard, that directly feeds into Newtown: from all reports the shooter’s mental state significantly deteriorated after his parents divorced.
Can you make an even vaguely credible claim that we’re going to eliminate these government programs … and let the children of single parents starve? In some hypothetical much more severe US we could posit alternatives where they’re taken away from their mothers … I don’t see that happening, can’t even think of a modern historical example besides the one I mention below. Making them wear scarlet letters … don’t see that either.
Anyway, you have a very hot button of ‘legislating “family values.'” But what about starting by simply reversing all that’s happened with divorce, and most especially reversing the default of who gets the children to the father (there was a reason for that incentive structure). And since marriage has gone out of fashion, making common law marriage, at least WRT children, a lot more common and enforceable. Could you buy into that?
Note that this is somewhat a partisan argument as well; this is not a cause that all that much of the Republican establishment buys into (mostly the almost universally hated “social conservatives”), but it’s now part of the Democratic Party’s identity. The Life of Julia, vote as if your Lady Parts are on the line, etc.
If you, or rather the nation, doesn’t buy into something credible that reverses the strong trend of proportionally more single parents and ever higher proportions of children born to them, the American experiment, almost certainly along with our RKBA, is going to end very badly.
I think current divorce policies that favor custody by the mother are wrong, and ought to be changed. I’m not opposed to making divorce more difficult, but keeping unhappy marriages together I don’t think is good for kids either. I think you have to take things like divorce on a case-by-case basis. Jim Geraghty had something interesting about social decay in today’s Morning Jolt. I don’t know if you subscribe to that, but I’d be happy to forward it to you if you don’t.
And I’d note that’s one reason I support NRA being as single issue as possible. I don’t want them tied up with the DC right-establishment any more than they have to. It needs to be a bipartisan issue. We win when it’s a bipartisan issue.
On the gun issue, considering your overall political persuasion as espoused you’re in the cultural minority. I’m sure I’m telling you nothing you don’t already know. Leftists in politically organized groups (either R or D, regardless) do not, generally, in numbers, bode well for gun owners. I understand what you’re going to say here: that you’re ideologically against nanny state policies, therefore you’re socially libertarian, “hands off” guns, soft drinks, bedrooms, etc.
Lots of positions win on issues when they’re bi-partisan issues. That doesn’t mean there is a lack of political reality when it comes to building constituencies. I also happen to think the right-left paradigm can span both parties as well. It doesn’t happen much, but it happens. That one party claims a monopoly on one or the other means something when it comes to numbers, the same thing frequently cited when someone has gripes with the NRA about this issue or that.
The pro-gun numbers come from the culturally right-leaning types (either R or D), and the alliances matter. I don’t know of any social conservative that doesn’t see the urgency to preserving second amendment rights. All of the folks I would affiliate with left-leaning groups are predominantly anti-gun in PA. One of my leftist friends actually did surprise me and didn’t want an AWB or mag ban, though she voted for Barack Obama.
My experience in Lancaster County is not the way the country goes, I realize, but I would challenge anyone to show me that any culturally left-promoting organization is going to be our allies on this one.
Partially. But…
The NRA has won and lost, but that doesn’t mean they succeeded a majority of times because they were a one issue group. They won because of their numbers, money, and the political costing by their opponents.
The GOA, comparatively, is really not aligned with any establishment at all because their donations are really not tied to their legislative successes. Their effectiveness has less to do with their perceived wins in congress and more to do with their ideological purity. We can always count on them to take the “right” no-compromise stance. Whether that stance has any chance of passing congress is another thing that we all readily concede.
NOTE: I did not intend on turning this into an NRA vs. GOA debate at all. I intend to send them both money, as well as SAF in this fight.
The problem is, the GOA’s “ideological purity” causes them to go off on non- or not at all RKBA tangents, which, if they had any influence, would be very damaging to the cause. Witness their incessant trashing of Reid, a gun grabber who saw the light after Gore’s loss in 2000. It’s a particularly blind posture right now when he’s as good or better a bet for stopping any gun grabbing legislation than Boehner.
Ah, another example, from the Instapundit: Democrat Says Obama’s Gun Control Proposals Are Extreme. That would be brand new North Dakota Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp, although from the article she’s at least implicitly leaving gun control on the table.
Is she going to make many votes we don’t like? Yes. If, given a chance, is she going to vote for new Supreme Court justices who will nullify the 2nd Amendment? That’s the way to bet. Are we better off not alienating her, accepting what we can get from her? I say yes, the GOA would tend to say no.
On the gun issue, considering your overall political persuasion as espoused you’re in the cultural minority. I’m sure I’m telling you nothing you don’t already know
That’s why I’m willing to coalition more than most libertarians, but I can coalition with liberals too on some issues, and could do it on guns for liberals who are supportive (and not greatly offensive on other issues). Casey struck me as more moderate. I have been disappointed he has not been.
History hasn’t yet been finalized about Harry Reid’s position on gun control. Before the NRA is vindicated I would like to see him show that he can put the brakes on something as monstrous as the AWB ban is. I’ll withhold judgement until then.
Harold I don’t see how it would be possible to support Heidi’s re-election if she did any of those things, but I agree winning hearts and minds is key. I took that perspective when crafting my snail mail letters to congresscritters.
Errr, I think I’ve failed to communicate my point.
The GOA’s posture is to wage unending total nuclear warfare against such a politician, even after he “grows in office” and starts supporting us (e.g. just in the Obama era, off the top of my head concealed carry in National Parks, Amtrack carriage of guns and the Obamacare provisions).
Perhaps he’ll fold on this issue, although he shows no sign of it yet. But wouldn’t he be less inclined to support us now if when he started to previously, he got slapped in the face and we continued to make every possible effort to turn him out of office?
In the context of most national politicians not giving a damn about the RKBA, how could we afford such a policy?
And of course our support, or lack of a jihad against him, is contingent on his continuing to support the RKBA and right now not letting a gun control measure pass the Senate. I’m not interested in any historical judgements, we know he’s a gun grabber, we’ve just changed the Zeitgeist so that this bit of wisdom from Milton Friedman comes into play:
WRT to the latter, for many of us our support for the Republican party will be over if Boehner allows a nasty gun control bill to pass in the House.
I hope you’re right about Reid’s Machiavellian tendencies on guns.
BTW I must clarify something you said… The Amtrak thing to me is pretty bogus. Does anyone realize how much of a non-victory that is who rides the train? Concealed carry is NOT allowed on an Amtrak train or on a station that is fully o/o by Amtrak Passenger Rail (i.e., 30th Street Station in Philly). You may only check a firearm at a station with checked baggage options. Anyone care to guess exactly how many Amtrak stations that includes in PA? Three (PGH, HBG, PHL). Which means most folks who pick up Amtrak at a commuter station still have zero possibilities to concealed carry (legally). To me the Amtrak thing shouldn’t even be counted as a victory.