Given we only cover the gun fight, I haven’t spoken too much about Obama’s scandal woes, with the IRS harassing political enemies, Benghazi, and now this AP/DOJ scandal. But that’s not to say there’s no gun rights connection at all. The weaker this Administration is, the safer our gun rights are going to be. An embattled Obama Administration is not going to have the political clout to twist arms in order to flip votes. It will have less time, energy, and political capital to spend pushing any gun control agenda. So let us hope this Administration remains embroiled in scandal. It can only help our gun rights.
Month: May 2013
MAIG Mayor Defeated
Someone sent me this article that the Mayor of Omaha, Nebraska, a MAIG mayor, has been defeated. Any defeat of a Bloomberg Mayor is good news, but the question is whether his involvement was a factor in the election, and whether the new Mayor of Omaha, Jean Stothert, won’t also be joining. Targeting MAIG mayors would actually be somewhat easy, since a lot of these small town elections can be swung by only a handful of votes. Unfortunately, while a lot of our folks know the villain Bloomberg well, they don’t pay close attention to what their mayors are doing when it comes to guns. Does your town have a MAIG mayor? If so, you and a handful of friends may be enough to sway the election.
Sorry Again for Posting Delays
Been sitting in our new space all day waiting for PECO to show up to fix our power. After a few problems with a bad fiber splice to our building, FiOS is now up and running. But we still have no power. I’m having to run everything off my deep cycle marine battery and an inverter. Apparently PECO installed the meter, and it’s been spinning happily since they installed it two weeks ago. The only problem is that it’s not powering our bay, so we’ve been kindly providing power to another tenant for two weeks now. PECO says we’ll need to call an electrician, because all they care about is that we have power, but I’m pretty sure they activated our account with the wrong meter. It may be a bit of a fight to make them understand it’s their problem, and not ours. Then I suppose they’ll need to figure out who’s supposed to be paying for the electricity they are charging us for.
I guess the government isn’t the only bit of frustration when it comes to starting up a new business.
Guns are Good Fundraisers
We all knew this, but apparently it’s still a bit of a surprise to the media. The Chester County Sheriff’s Department managed to raise around $20,000 raffling off an AR-15 and a bolt-action rifle.
This particular raffle drew the ire of the anti-gun crowd even after the Sheriff’s Department made very clear in the media that winners would undergo background checks. It really just goes to show that they aren’t about legal gun ownership at all.
Yeah, Been There, Done That
Joan Peterson, our favorite Brady Board Member, brings up the topic of concealing while bowling. Been there, done that.
Would you expect that there would be people at the local bowling alley carrying guns for self protection? I mean, what could possibly go wrong? There’s a lot of moving around when you bowl and a lot of families with kids at a bowling alley, depending on the time of day. Also, most often, beer and other alcohol is served at most bowling alleys.
Personally, I don’t drink when I bowl. Bitter will tell you that I take my bowling very seriously. It’s a family thing. I learned to bowl from my mother and grandmother. I even have a big trophy in my living room I won with my mother. I think I cracked 200 in the only game I’ve ever bowled with Bitter, and I hadn’t bowled for a while. I sometimes miss it, but just don’t have the time. But I have been bowling several times since I started carrying, and I don’t find it to be a particular challenge.
Either way, the story Joan links to tells the tale of a man who hit his pocket revolver with a bowling ball in it went off. To our opponents, guns are just bad, you see. There’s no way to do anything with them that’s responsible, especially not carry them. If you carry a gun you are being reckless. That’s just all there is to it. They regularly point to “trained” people who also do stupid things. What they don’t accept, and will never accept, is that there are people on this planet to revel in ignorance, and that no amount of training will relieve them of. To our opponents that means no one should carry, but how is that any way to run a free society? By that standard, we should absolutely, positively never give anyone a license to operate a motor vehicle on public roads. Just today, Bitter and I were on our way to a meeting, and noticed a guy swerving wildly on the road. I figured it might be a drunk, but upon very cautiously passing him, we noticed he was reading a magazine — literally staring down at a magazine he had propped open on the steering wheel. At that point we both were so very glad that our state legislators, in their infinite wisdom, chose to protect the public from the dangers of texting while driving. What Joan Peterson wants is the same kind of “every problem is a nail that requires the hammer of legislation,” that lead to our legislators trying to outlaw a symptom of “some people are morons and there’s just not a whole hell of a lot you can do about it.”
Going to Need a Bigger Gun
I might need to start carrying my Smith & Wesson 629 if this kind of headline keeps appearing in my neighborhood. Maybe open carrying long arms in the ‘burbs isn’t such a bad idea after all.
On Federal Preemption
It’s hard to work through the news of the day to find something to write about waiting for the Verizon guy to run the fiber connection into our bay. But typing a post out on the iPad I can do. A topic that was discussed with some of the academic folks at NRA Annual Meeting is saving the folks in Blue America using the federal government. At this point, it’s mostly wishful thinking. National reciprocity is the only preemptive measure NRA has put on the table, but that is a measure that benefits Red America more than Blue America. In the long term, as I’ve said in a previous post, we can’t tolerate two Americas.
There are several powers of Congress under which this can be accomplished. The familiar ones are the commerce clause and Congress’ Section 5 power of the 14th Amendment. But the Supreme Court has slowly been taking a more narrow information of the commerce clause, and any exercise of the 14 Amendment power runs squarely into the case of City of Boerne v. Flores, which essentially says that the federal courts, and not Congress get to determine the scope of a right.
But when it comes to preempting state bans, and other state restrictions, I think there maybe a power of Congress upon which such an action may most firmly rest:
To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;
To provide and maintain a navy;
To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;
To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
I would argue that it is both necessary and proper for Congress to execute laws that preempt state laws that prohibit or frustrate the ability of ordinary citizens to own, transport, and practice with ordinary small arms, such as, but not necessarily limited to, the AR-15, Beretta 92F, M1911, etc. Congress needs individuals familiar with arms and shooting, in order to have an effective militia from which it may draw to raise an army. I even think in this age of terrorism, National Reciprocity could be plausibly based on Congress’ militia powers.
We ought to be skeptical of federal power, which can used for ill as readily as good, but I don’t see any other means to prevent the spread of this cancer of ignorance. Either we restore a healthy shooting culture to Blue America, or we watch the cancer slowly spread. Colorado was a real wake-up call that we may need to rethink our priorities. If they can beat us in Colorado, it won’t be long before we start losing in other swing states. It wouldn’t be long before they had the votes to screw the rest of us federally anyway. It’s something to think about.
Congressional Shoot-Out
Yesterday was the annual Congressional Shoot-Out by members of the Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus. I haven’t seen an official report yet, but word of somewhere around 3 dozen members of Congress took time out to hit the gun range.
Interestingly, not a single member of Pennsylvania’s delegation mentioned anything about attending on Twitter or Facebook. This is a shame because Pennsylvania native Olympic gold medalist Jamie Gray attended, and members of Congress from other states bragged about getting a photo with her.
It’s such a disappointment to see so little support outside of the House chamber for our sports. We’re not even talking a politically contentious side of the issue. With multiple Olympians in attendance, including a Pennsylvania gold medal winner, there are ways to make this event a completely positive photo opportunity that gets a few points with gun owners while creating no media headaches.
However, I’m tempted to give Rep. Glenn Thompson a pass since, during my search this morning to confirm the lack of Facebook posts about attending, I did stumble across an announcement for a trap shoot fundraiser on his campaign page.
UPDATE: Well, good news for some Pennsylvania gun owners. According to a comment, Rep. Glenn Thompson was actually in attendance. It just hasn’t been promoted by his office as of today.
UPDATE II: A formal report is now available:
Current CSC Co-Chair and team captain Representative Bob Latta (R-OH) was joined by his co-captain, CSC Vice-Chair Representative Rob Wittman (R-VA) as they accepted the trophy on behalf of team Republican, who edged out the Democrats by a score of 242 to 201 to take the Member Trophy for a second consecutive year. Team Democrat was lead by current CSC Co-Chair, Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and Vice-Chair, Representative Tim Walz (D-MN). …
In the individual category, Representative Jeff Duncan (R-SC) was named the overall Top Gun Member of Congress. The Top Gun from team Democrat was Representative Collin Peterson (D-MN) and the Top Gun from team Republican was Representative John Kline (R-MN). The Top Skeet shooter was Representative Bill Huizenga (R-MI); Representative Steve Southerland (R-FL) won the Top Trap competition and Representative Steve Pearce (R-NM) won Top Sporting Clays.
Busy Day
I didn’t have any time to queue anything up for this morning last night, and today we’re getting an Internet pipe delivered to our new location for our spinoff business. I’ve been waiting for the telco to show up to run the circuit, but got tired of waiting. I figure it was better to wait in the cafe of the nearby Wegman’s munching on sushi and drinking beer than wait in an empty space with no Internet all day. Wegman’s has WiFi, so let me see if I can find anything to write about while I wait for the telco to call me and tell me they are enroute.
Our current offices, for the main business, are located in an old mansion that’s been converted to office space. It’s nice that some of the offices have ornate fireplaces. Other offices have ornate fireplaces that’s been hidden behind drywall. We even have a dumbwaiter whose shaft is handy for running ethernet cabling through the building. I general, our offices looks like a place where you’d kill Colonel Mustard with the lead pipe. It’s a cool space. The neighborhood is a pretty rich estate community. We’re not far from Radnor Hunt Club, and on calm nights I can hear the dogs from the office. Lots of horse and hobby farms of the rich. It’s not unusual to see people on horseback decked out in whatever rich people wear when they get on horses. Something like this. The big downside is it’s in the middle of nowhere, and Comcast is pretty much my only bandwidth options, short of the ones that cost a small fortune.
The new location for the side business is located next to a junk yard, and our immediate neighbor is an auto mechanic. But for this spinoff we are going to be using it for, it’s perfect, discrete, and more importantly, I can get bandwidth. Speaking of bandwidth, the telco just called and they are on their way. I guess I’m going to have to pack up and head over.
Trying to Tie Chris Christie to the NRA
Based on the task force’s report, Christie made anti-violence recommendations that gun control advocates said didn’t go far enough. Around that time, two donations came in to Christie’s gubernatorial re-election campaign from NRA lobbyist Randy Kozuch, campaign records released yesterday show: $2,000 on March 5, as the task force was completing its work, and $1,000 on April 23, a few days after Christie issued his final gun proposals.
Randy used to head up State and Local Affairs, which is essentially NRA’s state lobbying effort. All the NRA State Liaisons report through State and Local Affairs. When James Baker came back to ILA several years ago, he was put in charge of ILA’s Federal Affairs team. Chuck Cunningham, who at the time headed up Federal Affairs, moved to head up State and Local Affairs. Kozuch went to work for the Office of Advancement, which is outside of NRA’s political arm (ILA). He donated to Christies campaign privately. In short, maybe Randy Kozuch “isn’t mad at Christie,” but it’s completely factually inaccurate to suggest “NRA sent cash,” as the Philadelphia Inquirer has done here.