January 2013 – Page 18 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Kopel on Gun Free Zones

Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Dave Kopel opines on real gun free zones, and fake gun free zones. I wrote a similar article on how gun free zones might be constitutionally created back in 2010, borrowing the term “Practicing the Three S’s,” which in the usual context means “Shoot, Shovel, and Shutup,” an old saying coined by ranchers about how to deal with wolves (which were protected). In my substituted context, it stands for “Substitution, Screening, and Storage.”

(this post is called how we recycle content on a Friday when I’m in the office working the day shift) ;)

Left Attacking NRA Discounts

You know all those discounts we get as NRA members from hotels and rental cars? Apparently in the wake of Sandy Hook,Â those were attacked by the left. The Board is also not being considered off limits. These links are a bit old, but were ones I missed. I thought the left attacking NRA discounters was interesting enough to be worth a mention. They are attacking on all fronts. This isn’t any kind of probing action. These people mean to destroy us.

Dishonest Turds

That’s what I’d call Joe Biden, Obama and his panel. See this Tweet from Larry Keene of NSSF. Apparently they promised no media, and when NRA and NSSF showed up, there were cameras and media. You know, if you follow certain theories floating around out there, that can work two ways, Joe.

These Kabuki rituals are tiresome. I’d would be nice if we were the kind of country that valued honest interaction, and it was considered socially acceptable to drop a fresh deuce right there on the conference table, in response to what American gun owners thought of the Administration’s ideas. We used to be a country whose lawmakers would challenge each other to duels, and fist fights on the House floor were commonplace.

MAIG’s Response to NRA Member Increase

They got 400,000 people to sign a petitionÂ since Newtown. Did those people fork over $25 bucks for the privilege of signing up? How many would have signed up, do you think, if you had asked for that? MAIG has nearly 13,000 people on Facebook following them. NRA is starting to lick up on 1.9 million followers. So stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Bloomberg!

Tab Clearing

As usual, I get more stuff built up than I can possibly comment on, and I want to keep my posts more proactive and less reactive. But here’s what’s going on:

Hey, a mass killing stopped by an armed security officer you won’t hear anything about in the media. It’s partly bias, but also partly “No slaughter, no story.”

Here’s how do to an incremental backup with xtrabackup for MySQL. See, I hate it when I get work and blog tabs mixed up ;)

On Guns, like other issues, liberals are out of ammo.

John Richardson has a good line of argument to use against Obama. This guy has never given a rat’s ass about the American Economy.

A reader sent a link to this rule making petition, asking me about it. This is from Fall 2011, originally. It’s not new. It has to do with NFA trusts, and requiring individuals on trusts to go through background checks. It also would eliminate the CLEO signoff for individual NFA for making or transferring an NFA firearm or suppressor.

There are 18 gun control bills introduced in the New Jersey legislature. Some of them are predictably awful.

Call Wal-Mart!

White House Misfires on Gun Control, from the… wait… the Boston Herald?

Time for a Counterattack

Generals and Gun Control. I guess military brass isn’t that different from police brass.

Tom Corbett has always had problems with Pennsylvania conservatives. Yeah, I’ve been too, but his refusal to politicize Sandy Hook, and standing firm against gun control erases any disappointment I might have been feeling. I’ll crawl over broken glass to help him out in 2014. Not having to worry as much about Pennsylvania is a tremendous help right now.

Who needs more than X rounds? Good thing there wasn’t two intruders. People who say that you don’t need more than 10 rounds watch too many movies and don’t understand how poor pistol rounds are at stopping bad guys. More here. Also, some people think shooting home invaders is horrible.

The guy on Biden’s task force had a son that was convinced of plotting a school shooting. Well, I guess he can at least claim direct experience with this sort of thing.

How people that aren’t David Gregory get treated when they get caught in DC with an ordinary magazine.

That was a lot, I know, but news is coming so fast I can’t really comment on it all, and I have a few more posts brewing in my head about how we got here, and what the left is hoping to accomplish and how.

NRA Statement on Biden Meeting

From the press release:

We were disappointed with how little this meeting had to do with keeping our children safe and how much it had to do with an agenda to attack the Second Amendment. Â While claiming that no policy proposals would be â€œprejudged,â€ this Task Force spent most of its time on proposed restrictions on lawful firearms owners – honest, taxpaying, hardworking Americans. Â It is unfortunate that this Administration continues to insist on pushing failed solutions to our nation’s most pressing problems. Â We will not allow law-abiding gun owners to be blamed for the acts of criminals and madmen. Â Instead, we will now take our commitment and meaningful contributions to members of congress of both parties who are interested in having an honest conversation about what works – and what does not.

What’s kind of laughable about it, is that I don’t think any of us seriously thought the Administration was interested in serious dialog. The “national conversation” was a farce from the beginning. This was planned “under the radar” to be executed the first pretext they had after the election. The only remaining option is to fight. Get writing your reps (and make them as sick of hearing form gun owners as I am of saying to badger them, and you probably are of hearing it).

In The Event Of Legislative Defeat, Next Steps

Wyoming is paving the way:

In fact, under the proposed bill, anyone who tried to enforce a federal gun ban could be charged with a felony. The Wyoming Attorney Generalâ€™s office would also be permitted to defend any state resident against a federal gun ban.

What worries me is that I hear talk of civil war from otherwise sensible people if much of what is being spoken of comes to pass. I’m a firm believer in the rule of law, and I think actions should have the legitimacy of law, which means acting through state legislatures, and not a bunch of lone wolves shooting it out with the feds. This is still a union of 50 separate sovereigns, and there are further actions that can be taken even if the face of a devastating loss at the federal level.

But all law is ultimately force. Men with guns will be sent to enforce those laws. This isn’t any symbolic Firearms Freedom Act. Wyoming lawmakers here are proposing a law with penalties. Felony penalties. Penalties that will have to be enforced. Like all law enforcement actions, how it plays out depends on how serious the players are. What happens when the Wyoming State Police decide to go enforce this law against other men, men with guns, who think they are also the law? This doesn’t have to escalate to violence, but it could. People underestimate how much of our federal system is built upon willing cooperation. The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution doesn’t mean jack if the states are unwilling to enforce federal law, and not willing to allow the feds to enforce it. I fully support this idea as a next step in the event we take a devastating loss. But let us not let it come to that.

He Will Gladly Screw You Tuesday

USA Today notes that the assault will come Tuesday.

Holder will also hold a separate meeting with some of the nation’s top gun sellers, including the megaretailer Wal-Mart, to discuss the issue. Wal-Mart had initially turned down an invitation from the Obama administration to participate because the company said senior executives were unavailable to travel.

We must keep the pressure on Wal-Mart. I can easily stop shopping there. I know it’s hard for a lot of you folks, but Amazon Prime is pretty damned good, and there’s also Target. If Wal-Mart decides they don’t need us, I say screw them, we don’t need them. At the very least, if you can’t boycott Wal-Mart if they play ball with Obama, don’t buy guns or ammo there.

We need to beat these bastards back, and turn turn around and continue to free New York and Chicago. Don’t just beat Bloomberg and Rahm, they have to pay for this. They will pay for this by being forced to respect the Second Amendment. You’re part of America, whether you like that or not.

100,000 Is Not Enough

The NRA reports to Politco that they have gained 100,000 new members in the last 18 days. This is not enough. They really need to hit 5 million members, and fast.

NRA has been at 4 million members since Heston was NRA’s front man. If we want to send a message that the culture really has changed, 5 million NRA members would send that. 10 million NRA members would send that even more.

Why This is Serious

How well we fare is going to depend on a lot of factors, but one of those is how serious the White House is, and this is not a good sign:

The White House is working with its allies on a well-financed campaign in Washington and around the country to shift public opinion toward stricter gun laws and provide political cover to lawmakers who end up voting for an assault-weapons ban or other restrictions on firearms.

One reason they’ve struggled over the past 12 years is that they haven’t had someone in the White House willing to push gun control. You have a President who is very popular with a segment of American society now pushing it in a big, big way.

A lot of people seem to think I’m overreacting, maybe because I live in a blue state. I think even people in deep red states with solid representation need to be heard from, because we might need their courage if the GOP leadership starts to look weak. I might also need your legislator twisting the arm of my legislator, to hold the Republican caucus together. If your letters focused on general anxiety about the Republican Party, and an expectation that your representative will be a leader in fighting gun control, that would be very helpful to those of us in blue states in Republican-held districts.

You know everything we’ve laughed at the gun control movement about? No money? No supporters? All that has changed:

Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs, and Ron Conway, a leading Silicon ValleyÂ angel investor, are helping finance the Giffords group and will co-host a fundraiser in San Francisco this week, an organizer said. Two wealthy Texas lawyers, Steve and Amber Mostyn, told news outlets Wednesday that they had given $1Â million to the organization. Giffords was shot in the head two years ago inÂ a mass shooting outside a supermarketÂ in Tucson.

It’s a different world. Welcome back to the 90s. Now you know why they were so desperate to get leadership from the White House. Because leadership from the White House is, to quote our Vice President, “a big f**king deal.” A lot of folks don’t know how much we’ve benefitted by having no PAC money in gun control for the past 12 years.

If you know someone sitting this one out because they think the anti-gun groups don’t matter, slap them silly. We’re not facing the anti-gun groups, we’re facing the White House and the whole Obama coalition, and if you think that doesn’t matter, just ask Mitt Romney whether he agrees with you.