The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
You’d think that pro-gun control folks would be happy any time a gun is purchased through a federally licensed dealer because it means there was a background check conducted and records will be kept.
But, no, that’s not good enough. The fact that someone is able to buy a gun at all is a problem for them.
That’s the message sent to us with a bill introduced in Virginia to ban all FFLs from selling rifles and shotguns to out-of-state residents who pass the background checks.
After the Colorado recall success, I got the impression that some gun owners online thought that pro-Second Amendment forces could tackle any anti-gun effort anywhere. As any reader of this blog knows, we’re fans of political reality, so cheering on a recall effort should be done only after careful consideration.
There was a minor recall attempt in Exeter, RI that went badly for gun owners there, and now the leaders feel vindicated.
This is just one more reminder that it’s absolutely vital that activist gun owners get involved in their local communities so that they can factor in feelings on the ground about lawmakers and consider all of the details that may make a difference between victory and defeat that might embolden anti-gun forces.
We were both pretty cautious about the latest Colorado recall effort, but then a state resident pointed out important factors (like the length of her term and district makeup) that made the case for recall. And, even though the Democratic replacement is still anti-gun, we won that since it still sent a political message that just like your healthcare plan, you can’t keep your seat.
While being tuned into the gun debate around the country is handy to see what other people do to successfully promote the Second Amendment, it’s more important to be involved locally so that you remind your own lawmakers that you are watching their votes before there’s a need to recall them.
Link here. It’s a very in-depth article, and there are a lot of potential takeaways, including how remarkably dumb our opponents were. But I would note I’m rather skeptical of the sources of some items in this report, as I suspect they are mostly Joe Manchin’s office, and other people who have a vested interest in discrediting NRA. Generally speaking, NRA won’t speak to investigative reporters, so if there’s a source for, say:
In their conversations, Cox told LaPierre that he did not yet have a clear sense of how their congressional allies were reacting to the Newtown shootings. Cox’s instinct was that the N.R.A. should stay quiet for the time being, as it had done following past shootings. Instead LaPierre decided to respond forcefully, without consulting the N.R.A.’s lobbyists or its full 76-member executive board. One week after the shootings, he stood behind a lectern at the Willard InterContinental hotel a few blocks from the White House and broke into a blistering attack on the news media, the movie industry and video-game manufacturers while defiantly declaring, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.â€
It would be interesting to know who’s talking to the enemy (The NYT is the enemy). I suspect a leak from a member of the Board. A lot of people are upset that the report states they were working with Manchin’s office. I would note the source for this is likely Joe Manchin’s office, who aren’t exactly enamored with NRA these days.
But I’ll accept that it’s true, for the sake of argument. Even if it’s true that they were negotiating over the bill, I would kind of expect NRA to be sure, if there aren’t votes to stop it, that what passes is less of a disaster for gun owners. Note this from the article:
The N.R.A. declared war on those who helped pass the 1994 assault-weapons ban, most of whom were Democrats, but while the bill was being crafted, the N.R.A. worked with two of its House Democratic allies, John Dingell and Jack Brooks of Texas, to weaken it so that if it did pass, it would apply to only a limited number of firearms and would expire a decade later. (It did not pass again.)
As it was this time, we had the votes to kill the Manchin-Toomey deal outright, so it was done. Did GOA have anything to do with that? I’m sure they believe they did, and I’m also sure they likely told that to the author of this article. But does anyone seriously want to argue that we’d have been better off if Dingell and Brooks hadn’t negotiated to get important element like the sunset provision? Does anyone feel confident after failing to outright repeal the bill in 1996, we’d have had any luck now?
Too many people think politics is all binary choices. It’s not that kind of game. If you can buy yourself a little insurance, in case the vote goes badly for you, you do it. If we hadn’t done that in 1994, we’d all still be living under the federal assault weapons ban, and that ban would have looked more like California’s than what eventually passed.
From Tim, over at Gun Nuts Media:
Right at the anniversary of Newtown somebody tried to up the score, but because one good guy armed with a handgun was around we instead got a beautiful contrast between the worthlessness of the policy proposals of media figures, politicians, and celebrities and the very effective solutions proposed by the NRA and others who actually have a damn clue on what they’re talking about. Nothing the elites proposed stopped or would have stopped the little coward who went into that school intent on murder prior to the act, but a policy we as the gun community wholeheartedly support proved VERY effective at stopping him dead in his tracks before he could soak the ground with innocent blood.
Yep. The problem is there’s a certain segment of the population, and it’s probably much larger than any of us would be comfortable with, who will never accept it, no matter how much evidence is presented that we’re right.
Happy Monday. On Wednesday Bitter and I head down to the National Archives to do some research, so posting may be scarce Wednesday. We’ll see. But for now, here’s the news:
I’ve seen gun clubs who can raise more money than this in a single fundraiser.
60% of Americans believe it should be illegal to hit “print” if what you’re printing is a gun. People fear what they don’t understand, and what people fear they usually want to make illegal. We still have a lot of work to do.
Remember, the American Academy of Pediatrics is the enemy. If you’re a doctor, and a gun owner (and there are a lot of you out there) I wouldn’t associate with these groups. Here’s more on the left-wing medical establishment and guns from Howard Nemerov.
Why are anti-gunners so violent?
The most loved and hated gun in America. If it’s a popular gun, they will hate it.
NRA Board aspirant Brandon Webb gets a warm AR-15.com welcome, along with some speculation about who’s backing him. Anyone who thinks America has a “gun problem” has no place on the NRA Board. Fortunately, I don’t think he stands much of a chance.
More recalls over guns, this time in Rhode Island.
The Heller II case is still proceeding.
ATF contemplating more regulation changes? As Prince Law notes, even the act of considering such a thing is a crime. But who’s going to prosecute? Certainly not Holder’s DOJ. This Administration doesn’t follow any of the usual rules.
Joe asks a good question when it comes to ammunition.
Cuomo is a non-factor for 2016. Now his people are acting like he was never interested in a run. Everyone knows that’s not true. He flushed his political ambitions away on gun control.
Jason managed to finish, after much frustration, the complete buildout based off his CNC milled M1911 receiver. It was unusual, in that he took a standard M1911 CAD model for an aluminum receiver, cleaved it in two, and then added screws so it could be easily bolted together after milling. By cleaving it in two, it allowed for easier machining. Today we decided to head out, despite the generally awful conditions, and give it a test fire. The results surprised me:
I should note that Jason was TCWing to keep his hand away from the ‘splody parts, should something go badly wrong. I couldn’t help making the joke in the video. I expected it to go bang, but I didn’t figure we’d empty the 50 round box of .45 without trouble, given how much frustration went into fitting it, and given that it was a cheap parts kit. Seriously, the magazine looked like it could have been manufactured near the Khyber Pass.
Jason brought his 7 year old daughter along, because good parenting should involve stoking your children’s curiosity about experimental home firearm building. Jason brought his .22LR AR-15 pistol along to keep the girl amused, and I do have to say she’s an excellent shot! I had never considered the utility of an AR-15 pistol for teaching kids, but it works a lot better than you might expect. It’s long enough that muzzle discipline is easy to enforce, like a rifle, but you don’t have the issue of badly sized stocks. She also seemed to do quite well with the EOtech sight.
But aside from that, while it wasn’t the most accurate 1911 I’ve ever fired, it certainly did well enough for a 1911 that cost a few hundred bucks. The project still isn’t totally complete, since he plans on attempting home anodization, which apparently involves a nice bath of acid, a high voltage power supply, and a wife who is remarkably tolerant about what you are doing in the kitchen.
… was outspent 7 to 1 by gun control groups, according to Adage.com. I’d wager good money the vast majority of that money came out of Bloomberg’s pockets. We can’t outspent Bloomberg; 14.1 million dollars is the change in his sofa cushions. But we can defeat him with real grassroots energy.
Despite no longer being a mayor in 2014, Bloomberg says he will still be a part of MAIG and continue funding the group.
This isn’t too shocking since MAIG has already been trying to pass off other non-mayors as mayors.
This is veering off topic, but while I have the makings of another tab-clearing news link, everyone is all atwitter about the Ryan budget deal. I haven’t been able to get all that worked up about it, to be honest, because it seemed another case of the grassroots conservatives wanting to fight on every front all of the time rather than picking battles carefully. I see this quite often in the gun issue. A lot of people got worked up over UFA renewal, but it’s the wrong battle to fight at the wrong time. The bill has nearly zero impact on every day gun rights, and for a lot of reasons I think it’s fine to kick that fight ten years down the road for now.
Megan McArdle wrote an article today I think is correct in term of analyzing the Ryan deal.
But if they do nothing at all, many reason, they get all the sequestration cuts. Why trade them away?
To avoid another showdown. Though I, too, would like government to shrink, I think this is the right policy trade-off; shutdowns are making it harder and harder to talk about rational budget policy in this town. And tactically, I think this is a clear win for the Republican Party. The last thing they need right now is to take the focus off the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and revive Obama’s flagging poll numbers with an ill-timed budget battle. Their best shot at a budget they really like is, after all, to retake the Senate in 2014.
RTWT. From my reading of it, the Ryan deal is meant to avert another government shutdown, which the Democrats have been preparing to do. Another shutdown would be a disaster for the GOP, because as Megan says, it would take the focus off the flaming train wreck that the ACA is turned out to be. That’s why the Dems would love to precipitate another shutdown in order to distract the low-information voters from their own failures and focus everything back on how awful the GOP is.
Of course, the GOP won’t say that, because they would rather piss on your leg and tell you it’s raining, and that, I think, pretty much sums up the GOP’s problem, which is messaging and communication. That gets back to what Glenn Reynolds noted:
I think that’s right. I think the problem is that a lot of the grassroots don’t trust the GOP leadership to do that. The leadership might want to think about what it can do to build such trust.
No one trusts them because a) the 1994 revolution turned into a non-revolution, and b) the GOP sucks at communicating. The Ryan deal may be necessary, but the GOP leadership would rather kick the grassroots in the teeth and offer platitudes than talk to them like actual adults. Want to understand the popularity of Chris Christie? Because he communicates, and treats voters like adults. Corbett, by contrast, just hiked my gas taxes and then has the nerve to send me a fundraising letter bragging about how he eliminated the retail gas tax (failing to mention that he accomplished this through a massive hike in the wholesale gas tax). Maybe we had to hike the gas tax. Maybe that was the only way to get a transportation bill funded. But don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining. Level with me. The GOP might be playing a bad hand the best they can right now, but you’d never know it, because they have no idea how to communicate to voters. If you ask me, that’s the GOP’s number one problem.
The 1911 frame I made on the CNC machine has been sitting on my workbench for way over a year now. I decided that over Thanksgiving vacation I would finally finish the gun. I only had a couple of small machining operations to do on the top of the frame and then it would be finished. When I made my own AR-15 lowers, once I finished machining the lower receivers according to the CAD model it only took 10 minutes or so to install the parts. I figured I would be able to finish up the frame on Friday, and by Sunday, I’d be ready to go to the range.
It turned out to be not so easy.
The first problem was that the slide didn’t fit. The slots in the frame weren’t deep enough. After milling out the slots a bit, I was able to fit the slide.
Next came the trigger, which, like the slide, didn’t fit at all. I had to widen the trigger area, again made easy by the fact that the frame can be split into two halves.
Luckily the place where I drilled through isn’t where the tab on the magazine catch lock normally sits, so while the hole doesn’t look all that nice, the magazine catch is still functional.
