A computer tech in Colorado apparently, upon hearing that Obama was spinning off OFA as “Organizing for Action,” went out and registered the .net domain and redirected it to the NRA. Someone else, a Florida Republican, grabbed .com and .org. I’m guessing perhaps the machine is not so well oiled as we have been lead to believe. First they botch the launch of the gun control effort, and apparently also never bothered to preregister the major domains before they made the announcement. That’s amateur hour stuff right there. That’s the kind of mistake I’d expect a gun control group to make. Maybe once you embrace gun control, all competence goes out the window?
Month: January 2013
Carolyn McCarthy on Women and AR-15s
A woman shouldn’t use an AR-15, because “A rifle is more accurate.” This woman has no business pontificating on guns, let alone legislating on them.
Ted Cruz Writes to Rahm
Sen. Ted Cruz sent a letter to the CEOs of TD Bank, Bank of America, Smith & Wesson, and Ruger with a copy sent to Rahm. It’s your typical political grandstanding meant to do two things: 1) show constituents that you are paying attention to their issues, and 2) promote his home state. However, I have a beef with his closing line: “In the future, I would ask that might keep your efforts to diminish the Bill of Rights north of the Red River.”
As a native Oklahoman, I absolutely object to Cruz’s statement. North of the Red River is my home. If he was going to tell Rahm to keep his gun banning ways to himself, he should have limited it to like the shores of the Great Lakes or something.
Getting Shooting Sports Back into Schools
As much as we’ve seen in the way of bad news in the political world of the Second Amendment, there are still good reports in the cultural battles that sometimes get overlooked. Consider this tweet from the news outlet covering Kenyon, Minnesota:
Trap Shooting as a school sport is coming to KW! #kwschoolboard 40 kids signed up as interested in the program.
— KenyonTerri (@KenyonLeader) January 29, 2013
According to Wikipedia’s out-of-date numbers, this seems like it represents a pretty sizable percentage of their entire high school.
NRA Polls its Own Members
The results look vastly different than Frank Luntz’s bogus poll. It all depends on how you ask the question. The more I see of polling, the more I think polling is a refuge for scoundrels, and yet it unfortunately plays a large role in political battles, which is why NRA is doing it. The more important part is many of us will crawl over broken glass to oppose politicians who favor gun control.
The Goal Is Not Disarmament?
Tell that to the San Diego Police Chief. The anti-gunners keep telling us that’s not the goal, and we’re crazy, paranoid rednecks for thinking so. But then people keep coming out of the woodwork saying that is the goal any time they start to feel the slightest wind at their back. But we know the end game.
A Test Case on School Carry?
School carry has always been a gray area in Pennsylvania. The law on weapons in schools is less than clear:
(a) Definition.–Notwithstanding the definition of “weapon” in section 907 (relating to possessing instruments of crime), “weapon” for purposes of this section shall include but not be limited to any knife, cutting instrument, cutting tool, nunchuck stick, firearm, shotgun, rifle and any other tool, instrument or implement capable of inflicting serious bodily injury.
(b) Offense defined.–A person commits a misdemeanor of the first degree if he possesses a weapon in the buildings of, on the grounds of, or in any conveyance providing transportation to or from any elementary or secondary publicly-funded educational institution, any elementary or secondary private school licensed by the Department of Education or any elementary or secondary parochial school.
(c) Defense.–It shall be a defense that the weapon is possessed and used in conjunction with a lawful supervised school activity or course or is possessed for other lawful purpose.
I’ve followed lawyerly advice and considered schools to be off limits, but I tend to think that if you faithfully interpret this statute in the best light for the defendant, carrying with an LTC for self-defense is a “lawful purpose”, and thus a valid defense.
Well, it looks like someone in Confluence, PA carried a gun into a school and got caught, so we would seem to have a test case. Prosecutors are prosecuting. The guy apparently was trying to make a point. I guess the Somerset County District Attorney felt the need to do the same. Another story here. PAFOA thread here.
Promoting our Second Amendment Scholars
Not paid promotions, just some boosting for people who have done a lot of great work on our issue. Here’s the summary:
Bob Cottrol has a new book out. It’s not released yet, but you can now preorder from Amazon.
Students of American history know of the law’s critical role in systematizing a racial hierarchy in the United States. Showing that this history is best appreciated in a comparative perspective, The Long, Lingering Shadow looks at the parallel legal histories of race relations in the United States, Brazil, and Spanish America. Robert J. Cottrol takes the reader on a journey from the origins of New World slavery in colonial Latin America to current debates and litigation over affirmative action in Brazil and the United States, as well as contemporary struggles against racial discrimination and Afro-Latin invisibility in the Spanish-speaking nations of the hemisphere.
Ranging across such topics as slavery, emancipation, scientific racism, immigration policies, racial classifications, and legal processes, Cottrol unravels a complex odyssey. By the eve of the Civil War, the U.S. slave system was rooted in a legal and cultural foundation of racial exclusion unmatched in the Western Hemisphere. That system’s legacy was later echoed in Jim Crow, the practice of legally mandated segregation. Jim Crow in turn caused leading Latin Americans to regard their nations as models of racial equality because their laws did not mandate racial discrimination— a belief that masked very real patterns of racism throughout the Americas. And yet, Cottrol says, if the United States has had a history of more-rigid racial exclusion, since the Second World War it has also had a more thorough civil rights revolution, with significant legal victories over racial discrimination. Cottrol explores this remarkable transformation and shows how it is now inspiring civil rights activists throughout the Americas.
Professor Cottrol is fluent in Portugese and Spanish, so is uniquely suited for a work like this.
David E. Young is the author of “The Founder’s View of the Right to Bear Arms” and “The Origin of the Second Amendment.” His work was cited by the 5th Circuit in the Emerson case, and by the Supreme Court in DC v. Heller. He also blogs at “On Second Opinion:”
Fact checking modern opinions and assertions regarding Second Amendment history and development by direct comparison with Founding Era facts
If you’re looking to develop a greater understanding of the Second Amendment, it’s a great resource.
An Interview with President Obama
In the New Republic, and they ask him about gun control. From part of his non-answer:
So much of the challenge that we have in our politics right now is that people feel as if the game here in Washington is completely detached from their day-to-day realities. And that’s not an unjustifiable view. So everything we do combines both a legislative strategy with a broad-based communications and outreach strategy to get people engaged and involved, so that it’s not Washington over here and the rest of America over there.
No, Mr. President, the problem is that Washington is intruding way too much on our day-to-day reality, and that is the problem! We don’t fix this problem with more government. We certainly don’t fix it with more gun control. If Washington were detached from my day-to-day reality, I’d honestly prefer it over what we’ve been going through for the last four years, and appear to have four more years of in our future.
Common Enemies
From TechDirt, it looks like Gamers are having about as much problem with State Senator Leland Yee as gun owners. This is one reason I wasn’t too keen on alienating gamers. Though, I have to consider I got out of activism on nerd issues because nerds are horrible at political organizing and understanding politics. The gun issue is a relative paradise of political sense and action by comparison.