Month: January 2013

Reid doesn’t seem too crazy about the idea of gun control, and is signaling so publicly. I think it’s good to get a little breathing room, but it’s not time to stand down yet. Not by a long shot. This still hasn’t even really started yet.

Apparently Biden is recommending nineteen actions Obama should take through executive order. I want to talk briefly about executive orders, because there’s a lot of FUD floating around on the Internets about them.

For one, it’s not an end-run around Congress. Under the Gun Control Act, Congress has already granted authority to the executive branch to execute certain aspects of federal gun laws. The President’s power on this is, unfortunately, fairly broad, but it is not unlimited. For instance, only firearms and ammunition that are “particularly suitable for sporting purposes,” are permitted to be imported into the United States. The executive branch gets to decide what determines that.

We already likely know what some of those 19 recommendations will be because Bloomberg spent all that time and money hiring consultants to hammer them out ahead of time. They can do serious damage without any action from Congress. This is truth. But it’s not some kind of crazy power grab. We’ve benefitted, since the Gun Control Act, from having Presidents who were not that disposed to use the executive power to really screw us.

It’s a little known fact, but almost all shotguns in the United States would be classified as destructive devices except for the fact that most shotguns have been classified by the Attorney General as particularly suitable for sporting purposes. That classification can be changed. The Striker-12 was reclassified along these lines by the Clinton Administration, and is now a destructive device.

It’s quite possible that President Obama will enact sweeping and wide ranging changes to our firearms regulations and policies, and force us to spend millions of dollars suing the Administration in court over every separate issue. We could be in for a rough ride, indeed.

It seems almost hard to believe. On the Tuesday before the horrible tragedy in Newtown, we were celebrating a significant court victory, where a three judge panel on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a ruling which said that Illinois blanket ban on carry was unconstitutional. The following Tuesday, we would be returned to the 1990s, in terms of where we are on the issue. What happened? There are a lot of unspoken agreements in politics. Often times it’s that each side really doesn’t want to go through the pain of antagonizing the other, and the recognition that often times in politics, once certain forces are put into motion, they can be difficult to stop. There are still many places in the country where gun control can move if proponents of it are antagonized. The reason we have gotten here is largely due to our own success.

We are threatening the unspoken agreement that you rednecks in flyover country can have your guns, but we sophisticated people in New York and Chicago get to have “enlightened” gun laws so we don’t ever have to associate with people like you, and don’t have to be around your icky guns or listen to your icky gun talk. But the writing is starting to appear on the walls, and the powers that be in those two bastions of gun prohibition don’t like what they are reading. Despite losses here and there, when it comes to the battle in the federal courts, we’re winning on the big and important stuff.

Coastal elites, for the most part, absolutely hate the idea of civilians with firearms, and there’s plenty of bipartisan consensus on that in certain areas. The Second Amendment has almost always been a movement of ordinary people standing up for their rights and that too is more bipartisan than many people often acknowledge. Who are our elites? Wayne LaPierre may have a graduate degree from Boston College, but he’s from Roanoke, Virginia. I doubt most New Yorkers or Chicagoans could even tell you Roanoke is in Virginia, let alone where. Chris Cox is from West Tennessee and a graduate of Rhodes College in Memphis, in the heart of what coastal elites dub flyover country. Harlan Carter, who founded the modern NRA, had a law enforcement background. Neal Knox, who was right there with him, published a gun magazine, and before that was a journalist. The elites on our issue often have credentials that don’t look vastly different than yours or mine.

To the extent that the fight for gun rights is lead by ordinary people from far away, unknown places, I don’t think the costal elites were all that concerned about it. After all, they didn’t know anyone in their circles who practiced such barbarity as owning guns, or shooting guns. If someone did carry one, well, they are the right kind of people after all, and the city can be a dangerous place. But it’s not something spoken of in polite circles. But stand up for that right? For the common man? Well, civilized people just don’t do that. But it’s not political advocacy that’s really tipped the scales. The legal advocacy is what has brought us here. We have plenty of great contributions in the legal fight from people of no great pedigree, and who live and practice in flyover country, but then we also have Harvard Grads, Yale men, and other folks with Ivy degrees, who have been instrumental in bringing this issue to the forefront of law. It’s the legal side of the movement that’s most threatening to elites like Mayor Rahm and Bloomberg, and even President Obama, because the legal side is what is bringing these ideas into their cities. The people who are leading that charge aren’t pot bellied rednecks, but people with pedigree. People who don’t fit the stereotype.

We’ve shown tremendous success in the cultural war in the past several years. More women are learning to shoot than ever. More minorities than ever before are standing up for their rights and demanding they be permitted to legally exercise them. It was starting to be OK to be a liberal Democrat, own a gun, and enjoy shooting. Urban foodies are taking up hunting. The face of the gun culture looks less and less like the beer gutted OFWG of costal elite lore every day. We are being successful evangelists, and broadening the appeal of the issue.

Victory in the culture war provides a foundation for the gun culture we know and enjoy to enter places like New York and Chicago. They know this, and at some level, I believe the ultimate goal of the current attack isn’t necessarily to get legislation passed, though they will certainly try. No, the current attack is meant to shame people out of the idea of supporting gun rights, because gun rights are what those people do. I believe many coastal elites have a deep anxiety that not only will those people start to spring up like dandelions in their fair cities, but more importantly, they may have to do business with them, to socialize with them, and to hear talk of AK v. AR, 9mm v. .45, or to have to listen to someone who should, by all rights, be one of them, talking about their new carry piece, and the thought of that drives them crazy.

The messaging in this current attack is that those people are monsters, who don’t care about dead children. There’s a reason for that, and it says a lot more about who they are than it says about who we are. We are ultimately here because they have nothing to lose. If they awaken the sleeping giant, and only make him angry and determined, they have lost nothing, since they were losing anyway. If they achieve some victory, well, that’s something. Perhaps it can slow or stop the inevitable. But even if we beat them back everywhere, if they can achieve some measure of shame, if nothing else, they can remind the right kind of people who the wrong kind of people are, and maybe they won’t have to worry about having those kinds of people at their dinner parties.

Next up is how we got here politically.

Obama has been answering questions about guns in his latest press conference. He was asked directly about the gun sales boom, and he essentially said it’s basically just paranoid loons who’s fears have been ginned up by the likes of NRA, and who think the federal government is coming for their guns. He said there would be executive action on the issue, and spoke specifically of tracking guns as one of the issues that could be taken through executive action.

People must be hearing all this talk about weapons of war and military weapons not belonging in the hands of civilians and freaking right the hell out. I would have said this is paranoid, but anything is possible now. Who knows? Now the 10/22 I can understand, because if some of these proposals play out, the 10/22 is doomed. Does anyone even make a 7 round magazine for it?

Governor Cuomo is apparently in talks with the GOP to pass the toughest gun ban in the nation:

“They’re arguing over nothing, little nuances,” that source said of the Republicans. “But the bottom line is the governor is going to get the toughest gun laws in the nation.”

The emerging proposal would expand the state’s existing assault weapons ban and limit ammunition magazines to a maximum of seven rounds, down from the current ten.