January 2013 – Page 20 – Shall Not Be Questioned

The New Brady Competition – Americans for Responsible Solutions

It looks like Gabby Giffords’s husband, Mark Kelly, has decided that the other high profile tragedy-created gun control groups just aren’t cutting it since he launched a new PAC today that is jumping straight into the political battle on restrictions to our rights. The goal is to oppose what they refer to as “the gun lobby’s political contributions, advertising and lobbying.” In other words, it’s designed to oppose that pesky grassroots force that keeps calling lawmakers and donating to candidates with both time and money.

The big focus in the launch seems to center around magazines and background checks, but they do also plan to target some vague reference to “weapons designed for the battlefield.” Calling the defense of our rights by NRA as “defiant and unsympathetic,” Mark Kelly did make sure to give some free advertising to Bloomberg’s partner Wal-Mart by telling the press that it’s where he buys his guns. It makes me wonder if that was part of Kelly’s meeting with Bloomberg came with a request that he pitch Wal-Mart as the place to buy guns. Since we already know that crony capitalism is likely going to be on table for any gun control measures, it’s not out of the question.

An interesting question that I have is how this new PAC will work with Gabby PAC which Kelly & Giffords launched in September. That PAC only backs Democrats, so it seems like that could be the likely direction of this new effort.

Photo of the Week

Illinois State Rep. Edward Acevedo (D-Chicago), sponsor of the gun bans, discovers the fate of his bills, which were pulled from the agenda and not voted on. Standing next to him, busily texting, is NRA’s lobbyist for Illinois.

The Brady Campaign Drinking Game Conference Call

For anyone who follows the Brady Campaign on social media sites, they know that the Brady camp has been pushing a conference call for supporters for several days now. As tempting as it was to make it a drinking game, I decided to instead tune in while I made dinner. Both Sebastian and I are happy with that decision since a) dinner smells delicious, and b) we’d both be drunk beyond comprehension if we took a shot each time that a Brady staffer repeated the slogan of “we are better than this.”*

That said, there were a few things to learn what the other side is focusing on at the moment. Here are the things I thought were worth reporting:

While they repeatedly discussed an effort to ban semi-automatic firearms and magazines, their real focus was clearly on background checks/gun show loophole/private sales bans. Every single Brady staffer & recruit mentioned this and made this the focus of their speech. I suspect that this means they are going to go the Illinois-style of trying to get everything they can possibly get, but will fall back on so-called background check legislation if they don’t get the gun bans they want.**
Anyone who said that just because Joe Biden is involved in the White House’s public relations effort meant that we could not take the White House threat seriously, you’re very shortsighted. Dan Gross told everyone that the point person at the White House is actually Valerie Jarrett. I think we’ve seen enough stories out the kinds of plans the White House has, so people shouldn’t be thinking that the mere mention of Biden means it’s all a big joke.
They are extremely concerned about acting now and acting quickly. They acknowledge that the farther they get away from the 24/7 media coverage of dead people, they lose start to lose support for blaming guns. They begged people to set up meetings in the district offices of their Congressmen and Senators who are back in the district right now. They told their supporters not to wait on any specific bills that might be moving forward, but just to write, call, and demand any form of gun control.

*They totally knew we were on the call since they said that NRA members were on it. Maybe they didn’t know that the bloggers were listening, but they definitely knew that many folks would be tuning in from the pro-gun side to see what they are up to.

**I call this so-called background check legislation because we have seen that their version of gun show loophole has very little to do with background checks, but seeks to shut down gun shows.

March on Washington for Gun Control

Facebook page here. This isn’t looking like the Million Mom March yet (which was really only a few hundred thousand and only succeeded because the Clinton machine got behind it), but it’s worth keeping an eye on. We can’t let them control the narrative.

Smart Guns Are Back

Now we’re going to be dealing with this stupid argument again. I’ve been listening to this crap since the 1990s. It didn’t work then, and now in the days of iPhones and Androids, and pocket other pocket supercomputing, it still doesn’t work. Why? Because anyone in IT knows biometric security isn’t reliable enough to use on firearms. I might also have legitimate reasons why I might want to hand my firearm off to someone else in the unfortunate event things go pear shaped in a hurry.Â We also want guns to go bang when we pull the trigger. Even if it fails one time out of one-hundred, the reliability isn’t even good enough. We don’t want a gun that won’t function with dead batteries.

This issue will continue to be bullshit until you see police willingly choosing these types of firearms. As it is, they are exempted in the one state that has a smart gun law, New Jersey. This is basically just a nerd’s argument for trigger locks. It plays well to the educated technophiles, who really know nothing about the topic.

They Forget Our People

Woe to anyone considering working with the Obama Administration. One of our favorite pastimes as gun owners is, as a fellow blogger mentioned once to me, “knifing traitors.” To all the big firearms manufacturers and retails out there: remember Smith & Wesson. Remember Ruger struggling for a long time for cooperating. Remember killing several industry groups who turned. Remember countless other turncoats we’ve destroyed too. It could be you. Cooperation will be punished. You can count on it.

Hat tip to Instapundit, who comments, “Which is funny, because itâ€™s the gun-control fanatics who are always accusing the NRA of being a stooge for the gun industry.” Yeah, funny it’s always the gun industry we have to be worried about getting soft, cutting deals, and throwing us under the bus. Maybe one day they’ll realize the gun industry and the NRA are manifestations of us, rather than the other way around. This is popular sovereignty at its finest.

Senator Feinstein’s Gun Control Alchemy

The title of an article by Professor Nick Johnson:

A friend said to me, â€œWell [a ban] couldnâ€™t hurtâ€.Â And this actually advances the point. First, it actually might hurt. But that hurt is remote from what we are feeling now.Â It is a bundle of concerns about stormy days of public unrest; people on the margin who can operate a carbine, but not a shotgun or a handgun; civic militia values; and whether the legislation will just drive millions of the guns into the black market or provoke militant resistance.Â For many people, those concerns do not fit on the same table with the pain of Sandy Hook.

More important for now is that Feinsteinâ€™s proposal marks point of profound disagreement.Â Surely most gun owners, but perhaps many others will acknowledge that when seconds count, government is minutes away.Â This means that in those critical moments when violence sparks, you are on your own.

RTWT. I think more importantly, many people buy ARs not for the moment when police are only minutes away when seconds count, but for situations where hours count, and police are days away at best. Such is a situation following a hurricane, earthquake, or other natural disaster. It can often be the situation in times of civil unrest. It can certainly be the case in the event government turns criminal altogether. Help for the Jews of Europe in 1939 was years away. I will return to the famous quote from founder Tench Coxe, a delegate from Pennsylvania to the Continental Congress, writing in the Pennsylvania Gazette in February of 1788:

Their swords and every terrible implement of the soldier are the birthright of Americans. The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments but where, I trust in God, it will always remain, in the hands of the people.

I think the great anxiety faced by many of us is that we fear we are raising whole generations of Americans who have completely lost touch with what it means to be an American, who have no understanding of where we came from, or where we’re going. We are concerned we are losing the country to these people.

Dem Anti-Gunners: “Don’t Call it Gun Control”

Well, when I see a spade I call it a spade. When I see a a spade, I don’t call it a rake. But how telling is it that the Dems think the term “gun control” is so toxic that it is to be banished from the vocabulary? It’s also not like they haven’t tried this charade before. It went from gun control, to gun safety, and then to gun violence prevention. This is not news to anyone who’s followed this issue. I don’t care what they call it. We will defend the Second Amendment at the end of the day.

Details of Sandy Hook Shooting

Via SayUncle, there are some surprising things, now that actual truth is coming out, as opposed to the circus the media created. First, I’m not sure why the fact that the killer wore hearing protection is surprising. Shooting a firearm indoors without it is loud enough to daze you. It’s painful. Second, he did frequent tactical reloads, leaving most magazines on the ground with many rounds still in them. He had 20 minutes. Total shots fired by the killer were 150. That’s ten magazine changes if you empty them all, but let’s say it’s 20, because this guy thought he was tactical or something. First, if he’s wearing molle, which is seems he was, carrying 20 mags is no problem. I am not remarkably proficient on a rifle, but just timing myself with my Bushmaster AR carbine, I can do a magazine reload in about 2.5 seconds on average from a magazine strapped to my chest. To do 20 magazine changes would take approximately 50 seconds out of the 20 minutes the killer had to do his murdering. Just in timing it a few times to get a good average, I went from around 3 second the first time down to under 2 second by the time I had done it a few times. I’m sure if I spent a few hours, I could get it down to about a second. So how is reducing magazine capacity going to matter? And is it really going to be better if you encourage mass killers to switch to far more lethal shotguns? Are you going to outlaw high-capacity bandoliers? I’ve seen some gun control advocates suggesting we ought to restrict clothing like molle wear. When you outlaw clothing, only outlaws will have clothing. This whole farce gets more ridiculous by the day.

So How Was Gun Show Weekend?

Record numbers of people are going to be learning to sing the fun show song. But not all is well. A gun show in Stamford, Connecticut, by what looks to be an antique collectors association, was protested by twelve or so whole people. The great irony of all the signs being hoisted by the folks here, demanding we ban automatic weapons (you’re almost 30 years too late for that folks. Been there, done that) and “assault weapons” (which I’m betting none of those intrepid folks could define if you asked them) is there probably wasn’t an “assault weapon” in that show, except the kind that were primarily designed for killing large numbers of indigenous people quickly. But have no fear, those have been classified as “assault weapons” in past bills too!

Meanwhile, around the country, gun show attendance is at record levels. I’d add to that mix, Morgantown, West Virginia. You know something you can do to help the cause? Become an NRA recruiter. Call your local gun show promoters, and find out if they know if any NRA recruiters will be working the floor. We’ve worked gun shows before and most promoters are happy to give NRA a table gratis. When you’re a recruiter, you get something like $5 for every person you sign up. We have a lot of first time buyers out there, and people who haven’t been buying guns for a while. We need those people in this fight, and joining NRA is a first step.

UPDATE: Here’s another gun show in Pennsylvania that was sparsely protested (thanks to reader Dave). My point here is that their numbers dwarf ours, but I would not discount the fact that you’re seeing any energy at all, for the first time. I’ve always believed when we see gun shows being protested regularly, that’s when we’re in trouble. Is this all top-down controlled? I think we’d be making the same mistake our opponents make in believing so. The anti-gun people are starting to show some energy and organization, and with the media and White House behind them that makes the current situation very dangerous for us. They have a top-down organization that, in terms of organizational discipline, beats our regular cat herding any day of the week if they really throw down. We have to turn ourselves into a well-disciplined political machine very quickly if we’re going to get through this. There needs to be less herding of cats.

UPDATE from Bitter: I found an interesting report from a gun show promoter here in Eastern Pennsylvania. Many readers of this blog have been to an Eagle Arms show somewhere in this part of the state, so they might find this interesting on how things are going locally:

Joel Koehler, a Pennsylvania gun dealer, said a few dealers have dropped out of a show this weekend in the Pocono Mountains, but only “because they have nothing to sell. They are out of inventory.”