The Denver Posthas live coverage of the debate & upcoming votes in the Colorado Senate on the package of anti-gun bills.
It’s interesting that they say the campus carry ban may be pulled today partially because of the national negative attention associated with the outrageous comments by lawmakers about rape victims. It’s not officially pulled yet, but several Democrats are trying to pressure the sponsor by telling the press that it’s dead. However, the sponsor is running around to the press saying that he’s got 10 hours to find votes.
One of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s top gun-control lobbyists in Colorado appears to enjoy firing the very guns he is working to restrict.
Denver-based Headwaters Strategies lobbyist Adam Eichberg participated at a “watermelon shoot†in September 2012 at the farm of Colorado state Sen. Greg Brophy (R.) where he fired a semi-automatic rifle with a high-capacity magazine.
A picture obtained by the Washington Free Beacon shows Eichberg smiling broadly as he shoulders a DPMS .308 rifle with a 20-round magazine.
Specifically, the lobbyist who appears absolutely overjoyed to be shooting off his 20 shots is calling for a ban on those same magazines. In fact, to top it off, the host of the shoot claims that Gov. John Hickenlooper begged for an invitation to come out and shoot “assault weapons” with those “high capacity” magazines he’s so eager to ban now that Bloomberg & Obama have promised political support.
The lawmaker who released the information about the shoot said he’s doing it because he has a problem with the way that they are calling for bans on mere citizens, while enjoying the same benefits of using these firearms in shooting sports:
Brophy said he is a friend of Eichberg, but could not let him or Hickenlooper slide.
“You wonder if they’ve had a change of heart, or if they’re being hypocritical like we see in so many politicians where they don’t want to live under the laws they’re pushing,†Brophy said.
Good for Sen. Brophy. I get that there’s business and there’s politics. But when you’re talking about restricting the right of average people who don’t benefit from police protection or Bloomberg’s billions making their way into your wallet, the typical divide between politics and personal goes out the window. These people are talking about abusing fundamental rights and putting lives at risk.
NSSF released three commercials they produced with Colt, Stag Arms, & Mossberg that focus on the jobs angle of the gun debate. They are nearly identical, but here’s the Colt version which I liked best for the blue dome visual:
I’m almost ashamed to admit that as often as I drove by that blue dome when I was just getting involved with Second Amendment activism, I had no idea it was associated with Colt.
While gun control group leaders who react very emotionally to the debate may find this angle absurd, it’s really not. When MAIG polled Pennsylvania districts with Republicans they plan to attack (Reps. Fitzpatrick, Meehan, and Gerlach), they didn’t jump right into the gun issue. Instead, they asked “Which of the following issues will be most important to your vote for Congress inthe next election [first and second choice selected]?” Given the option to list two answers, not just one, the top issue was by far the economy. Nearly 70% of respondents (69% to be precise) said it was the big issue heading into 2014’s races. Where did gun control fall? It depends. When they worded it as “fixing gun laws,” it was at the very bottom with 3% – a particularly notable number since that’s a solid 2 percentage points below the poll’s margin of error. When they worded gun control as “gun violence prevention,” the number of people who say they’ll consider it in 2014 skyrocket to a whooping 8%, just two spots higher than “not sure” of any issue they’ll care about in the election. In other words, people care about jobs, they don’t care about gun control.
They are encouraging people to call Congress, so feel free to call…
Bloomberg is going to spend far more money than the gun industry and the pro-Second Amendment grassroots could ever spend, so it’s important we out-organize them. But still, it’s nice to see attempts to get more ads out there on our side that address serious issues voters care about.
We’ll try to keep up to date on the voting as it happens.
First up is the trafficking bill, as reported by the LA Times. Vote was 11-7. Grassley was the only GOP defector, due to a promise that the bill contain a provision to stop gun walking. Hey, Senator Grassley, you know what makes gun walking illegal? Existing federal laws. Not everyone is fooled by what this bill is about:
“My concern is this bill is a solution in search of a problem,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). “Straw-purchasing for purposes of directing guns to people who cannot legally obtain them is already a crime. And so we double down and say this time we really mean it, when in fact the real problem in many instances is the lack of prosecution of existing crimes by the Department of Justice.”
One key theme of Sen. Rand Paul’s filibuster speeches was that the filibuster was about reinforcing the advise and consent function of the Senate against the Executive. There was quite a bit of discussion going on in my social media corners about how Congress should stand up to the President more – regardless of who is in power. In general, it got people talking about the limitations of government and how government should be effectively run. It was all rather refreshing to watch.
But that got me thinking about another nomination process issue that has been overlooked. The last couple of weeks, folks have been talking about the fact that unlocking your cell phone is now a felony with a penalty of up to 5 years in jail. Yes, 5 years in jail for wanting switch cell phone carriers. Who the hell made that decision? Well, the Librarian of Congress, James Hadley Billington, is ultimately charged with the task.
That got me looking up just who the hell the Librarian of Congress thinks he is if he is ultimately tasked with making regulatory decisions that make people who want to switch cell phone companies into felons. He was nominated in 1987, more than 10 years before the DMCA would even become law and leave such decisions up to the Library of Congress. He was approved on a voice vote, and the issue of his nomination has never been revisited again as far as I can tell in a few searches of Thomas. I would argue that once a man is given such power, it would probably be wise to haul him in for questions about how he plans to do with his new authority to make Americans using common technology into felons, and maybe revisit who should have this role.
Of course, some might argue that because I was using a pretty handy tool of the Library of Congress to do some digging on the Librarian of Congress, maybe the Library just stepped out of bounds on this one issue. Well, as Reason highlighted this week, a retired guy with just a high school diploma and some computers has created a database of historic newspapers with 22 million newspaper pages with just the expense of some equipment he bought himself and an internet connection. Meanwhile, the project to do the very same thing that Billington has created costs taxpayers $3 a page and only managed to archive 5 million newspaper pages. Even with the credibility of the Library of Congress behind it, Billington’s historic newspaper project sees less than half of the traffic of the archive of an amateur.
I guess with all of the enthusiasm that accompanied Rand Paul’s reminder of Senate checks and balances, I wonder if questioning past appointments who haven’t faced nomination scrutiny in more than a quarter of a century will ever be on the table. In the case of the Library of Congress, there are clearly questions about their copyright policies if Americans can become felons for wanting to unlock the cell phones they legally purchased and there are also clearly some questions about smart spending of resources. Maybe it’s time to again question the authority of someone who has been in power with little oversight for 26 years.
Another good article in Politico about the coming floor fight. They make the mistake of thinking the NRA is a singular behemoth, rather than an organization backed up by millions of concerned Americans. They note, “Gun control groups are also prepping for a longer fight.” I’m really quite tired of every election being the most important ever, but you can see from the recent escalation after the 2012 loss, the 2014 elections are shaping up to be exactly that. In losing many past “not to be lost” elections, we’ve squandered quite a bit. We can’t afford to squander anymore. If we go down in 2014 and suffer heavy losses in key races, it’s going to be the end of us. It’s going to be an all hands on deck situation, or we’re going to suffer losses that make the 90s look tame.
The White House knew its post-Newtown effort would require bringing key gun control groups into the fold. So the White House offered a simple arrangement: the groups could have access and involvement, but they’d have to offer silence and support in exchange.
The implied rules, according to conversations with many of those involved: No infighting. No second-guessing in the press. Support whatever the president and Vice President Joe Biden propose. And most of all, don’t make waves or get ahead of the White House.
Bloomberg has been quite vocal in all this, but I’m going to guess he’s likely working very closely with the White House, and the other groups are pretty much not in a position to do anything other than shut up and get in line.
Losing Coburn from the background checks talks increases the likelihood that the only gun control measure that can pass the Senate is on gun trafficking, a far less sweeping proposal than background checks or the doomed bans on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines. Schumer, Manchin and Kirk will try to attract other Republicans to replace Coburn in their coalition.
That’s the asset forfeiture bill I spoke of earlier. I still would not count the ban on private transfers out. The votes might be there. Also interesting is that VPC has been relegated to the “kids table.” VPC outlived its usefulness quite a while ago, and it’s been rather surprising to me that the big foundations continue to fund that charade.
The Senate Judiciary Committee will likely vote on the gun control measures today. Given the makeup of the committee, I think we’re very unlikely to be able to stop any of the bills from hitting the floor. We have Easter recess coming up shortly. A vote can happen at any time, but it’s likely to happen after the Easter Recess. I hope everyone written their Senators by now, and will make phone calls. We’re going to have a floor fight over major gun control proposals folks, and this hasn’t happened in a long time.
John Richardson mentioned one particular threat, S. 443. I’ve read the bill (text here), and I still can’t figure out what it’s making illegal that isn’t already illegal. It also includes a huge expansion of civil asset forfeiture, which I’m sure ATF is drooling over. That’s probably the true purpose of this bill, and why ATF has been pushing for it. I’m not really amenable to giving ATF the power to seize property and ask questions later. This will be abused.
It would seem to clarify what constitutes a mental health adjudication, but does not concede any ground on private transfers. From the article, it would appear to create a prohibition for someone that uses the “not-guilty by reason of insanity defense” (I didn’t even realize that wasn’t considered an adjudication under current law) and if a person is found by a federal court to be a danger to themselves or others (another thing I thought would have already constituted an adjudication). This doesn’t look to me like it concedes much of anything, since all of these things still require due process, but I’ll hold my judgement until I see an actual bill.
In the mean time, keep calling those Senators, and just tell them no new gun control. I know the negotiations over expanding the background checks broke down earlier, and the Judiciary Committee is voting tomorrow on the other gun control bills. Given the makeup of the committee, I think it’s likely a lot of the bad stuff we’re very worried about is going to hit the floor, and this may end up being used to keep the floor fight going in a direction that doesn’t involve bans on guns, magazines, or private transfers.
