The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
If you’re a New Hampshire gun owner, the last few weeks and even coming weeks have been a great time to write letters to the editor of local newspapers. It’s a huge help when locals stand up for their own lawmakers supporting their rights.
NRA has gone to air in at least one $25,000 ad buy on WMUR with this ad in defense of Ayotte:
But supplemental letters always help. There’s still time to make a thank you phone call to her offices, too.
We noticed SAF/CCRBKA’s booth on the NRA floor, but decided not to stop. But Think Progress did, and noticed they were handing out literature taking NRA to task over Manchin-Toomey:
But despite the bill’s (perhaps temporary) defeat in the Senate, CCRKBA doesn’t appear to be backing down — The Gun Mag, a Second Amendment Foundation publication, published an “NRA Meeting Special Issue†whose lead article takes apart the NRA’s line on Manchin-Toomey.
So it would seem that SAF/CCRKBA is doing their level best to help revive this bill, along with the Democratic leadership in the Senate. We’ve already started to see Jeff Flake go soft, and there’s rumors about Ayotte. I think both of them are hoping this issue goes away. But not, apparently, if Alan Gottlieb has his way.
If we end up losing on this, and there’s a good chance we will, you can lay the blame squarely at their feet on this one. I have been reluctant to be truly harsh to Alan Gottlieb’s organizations because I understand that lobbying is not a black and white game, and sometimes you get forced into concessions, or make a bad call. But the Manchin-Toomey deal is dead, and we should all be on the same page in trying to keep it dead, and CCRKBA/SAF are not on that page. We do not need this while the Dems, the White House, and Bloomberg are busy twisting arms to try to reanimate Manchin-Toomey.
This has forced me to take the unfortunate step of removing SAF from my side links. As long as they are still trying to make a case for Manchin-Toomey, I will not help promote them.
I thought I’d add some coverage from fellow bloggers who attended, and some who didn’t attend but blogged about the meeting, nonetheless.
I missed this protester. What she calls loopholes, other people call freedom.
The gun control activists are stoked. You’ll notice that there was more interest in the protesters than guns on the floor. Actually, there wasn’t much new this year. I don’t think manufacturers want to introduce new products in the midst of all this madness. Kevin also notes that we’re a different species to them.
From Jennifer: Things I learned at the NRA convention. She also has some coverage of the protest.
Joe notes that Connecticut Senator Blumenthal thinks we had nothing to celebrate in Houston. Joe didn’t make it this year because he was busy with Boomershoot.
Great Satan Inc has more protest coverage.
Rob Pincus made quite a stir suggesting folks keep locked and secured guns in the kids bedrooms. But an anti-gun activist stating in front of reporters that he keeps an unsecured shotgun under the bed with kids in the house didn’t raise any ire at all. Maybe because no one believes any of these people actually are gun owners.
Random thoughts on the NRA Annual Meeting from John Richardson.
JayG has an after action review. He also participated in a story Buzzfeed was working on at the convention.
Overheard at the Annual Meeting. I’d have been impressed if they could deliver a T&A product.
With so many anti-Second Amendment groups rebranding as being for gun safety or for preventing accidents in recent years, you’d think they would have figured out how to be consistent on this front. That should have been part of their initial strategy meetings on the issue.
However, it clearly was not. National Review takes a look at the many different quotes and comments from anti-gun advocates who find every excuse in the book to keep kids from ever learning about firearm safety.
It’s funny that these same people probably would not promote abstinence-only sex education because they would say it does not work. Yet, it magically works on kids when it comes to guns.
One of the protesters actually talked about keeping a shotgun unsecured under his bed while refusing to teach his children how to handle it safely. He’s part of the problem, but it was easier for him to blame NRA instead of taking responsibility and being a parent.
Americans still don’t care about passing more gun control. And it’s not just gun control. Immigration reform, the other big White House and Democratic priority, is also not a big concern. I wonder whether, at this point, Obama is just running back to his inner-city roots. When things aren’t going well, hit on issues that play up to the base, and deflect attention from the real and substantive problems. I’ve noticed this often from Philadelphia politicians: when it comes to crime, their support for gun control is rooted in the fact that it’s easier to blame Harrisburg for a lack of gun laws than it is to discuss the substantive problems facing those communities.
I can’t tell you what the most popular gun was at the NRA convention on the exhibit floor, but I did hear a report about the most popular gun featured on the NRA Foundation’s Wall of Guns.
Contest participants were given a chance to buy one (or more) of 100 tickets in a drawing. The winners of each drawing from each batch of 100 were given their pick of 81 guns. In some cases for lower cost guns, they could pick two selections.
I spoke with another Foundation supporter who reported that before they stopped drawing, they had to pull off a Tommy gun because they ran out. I checked the model they had listed, and I believe it was this one.
Speaking of giving guns away, do we have any readers interested in a Colt LE6900? It’s a $899 gun that our Friends committee will be raffling off in a few short weeks for tickets that are only $20. It’s one of five guns we’ll be drawing for out of a maximum 300 tickets sold. That means if you liked the odds on our committee’s 1911 raffle last year, you should really like these odds.
Mike Bloomberg’s recruitment efforts in Mayors Against Illegal Guns manages to find some real gems to join him in advocating against the constitutional rights of ordinary citizens. The latest to join the ranks of the troubled MAIG members is Pat Ahumada of Brownsville, Texas.
Technically, he was already an Illegal Mayor Against Guns because of his multiple DWI arrests & convictions. However, he was made a member of the “Illegaler” club with his new arrest for illegally operating a gambling establishment.
I am on OFA’s mailing list, and it’s amazing how much they enjoy scolding people for not supporting Obama’s agenda.
The first email I received yesterday reminded me that they would consider it to be a huge shame if I did not sign their petition. They said that yesterday, “The gun lobby is pretty happy with itself.” Yup, I have to admit that the many, many individual Americans who were at the NRA convention were happy that 86,228 members showed up to stand up for our rights.
Shortly after that email landed in my inbox, they sent another reminding me that I haven’t signed their petition yet.
I do find it interesting to see the kind of language that OFA supporters appear to respond to when it comes to action. As over-the-top as NRA can sometimes be in order to motivate some on our side of the issue, I can’t fathom that this style of language would encourage our base to act.
I noticed during the convention the Defense Distributed folks had a successful test firing of their 3D printed gun. I had expected a plastic barrel to be a 3D printed grenade, and while it sounds like the barrel won’t last long, they got their 3D printed gun to spit out something, at least. The anti-gun folks are going insane, and Schumer is already moving to try to put the cat back in the bag. Sorry Chuck, but you can’t stop the signal. It’s over. Gun control is now pointless. Without controlling information, you can no longer control guns, and controlling information has never worked out well. From that article:
The current fully plastic gun isn’t a great weapon but it’s the first. Any objections to it being a big deal because of how crude or clumsy it is, is kind of like looking at the Wright Brothers’ Flyer and saying it doesn’t matter because no one is going to want to fly 120 feet. Wait and see.
Yep. It’s not going to get better for advocates of gun control from here. Welcome to the future.
I don’t spend much time on the show floor these days, but I was pleased to get to fondle an IMI Tavor for a bit.
I’ve never been a big fan of bullpups, because I find the ergonomics on most of them border on sadistic. The Tavor was one of the best laid out bullpups I’ve handled. Let me compare it to another, somewhat new bullpup, like the Kel-Tec RFB, and to the AR-15 platform most of us are familiar with.
The Tavor’s magazine is released easily, and removed from the magazine well. It is simple to accomplish this with one hand without losing your sight picture. The RFB’s magazine rotates into place, somewhat similar to an FAL or AK. Except in the RFB, my shooting hand gets in the way of the magazine coming out. The Tavor is vastly better for magazine changes than the RFB. But the Tavor is not better than the AR-15. With an AR, I can drop an old magazine out with my shooting hand while my support hand has already fetched a fresh magazine. The Tavor requires the support hand to engage the magazine release and remove the old magazine.
The safety selector on all three is pretty ergonomically positioned, but there’s a great deal of difference in the bolt release. Both the RFB and Tavor put the bolt release toward the rear of the weapon, at the butt of the stuck. Both also feature ambidextrous bolt releases. But the Tavor’s bolt release in a lever located at the bottom of the stock, and only requires a quick slap to send the bolt forward. The RFB has small nubs on either side of the stock which requires a finer motor skill. I find the RFB’s bolt release is harder to actuate instinctively. The AR-15 bolt can be slapped home too, but the AR-15 lacks ambidexterity here.
Triggers on bullpups are generally awful, and a big reason I don’t like them. I don’t have great things to say about either the Tavor or RFB in that area. The AR-15 stock trigger beats both, and there are excellent custom trigger options on the AR platform. I’m also not to keen on systems that have limited options for open sights.
So I won’t be trading in my AR for a Tavor any time in the near future, but the Tavor is one of the only bullpups I’ve tried I would even think of buying.
