Year: 2015

A watered down gun bill is headed to the North Carolina Governor, but the Jim Crow era pistol permitting scheme will remain in place. The opposition in this case were the Sheriffs themselves, who are responsible for issuing the purchase permits. It’s always hard to overcome law-enforcement opposition to something when dealing with “law and order” Republicans. I don’t know the politics of North Carolina all that well, but I suspect if North Carolinians really want to be rid of this remaining vestige of Jim Crow, it may be necessary to buy off the Sheriffs. Remember that Clinton got his Assault Weapons Ban by buying FOP support in the form of federal money to hire 100,000 new police officers. Perhaps it’s possible to buy the support of the Sheriffs by throwing them a bone on another issue that’s important to them, or buying their support with cash to their departments from the state coffers. Without the sheriffs railing against the bill, a lot of those “law and order” Republicans will likely drop their opposition as well.

The 11th Circuit has lifted the injunction on enforcement starting Tuesday. When this idea was originally proposed, I was against it, believing it would be a slam dunk First Amendment case. But as the medical establishment becomes more and more in cahoots with the ruling elite, to push gun control on the peasantry,  screw ’em. This is how the peasants punch back twice as hard. There’s one way doctors can prevent the proliferation of these laws, and that’s by getting the medical establishment out of political issues that have nothing to do with the practice of medicine, and have everything to do with using the stature and prestige of their profession to shame their patients into the adopting the progressive-left orthodoxy on how to live the good life. To the extent that these bills threaten the autonomy and speech rights of doctors, they have invited this on themselves.

So say Americans. We are winning this culture war, slowly but surely. My primary worry is increasingly becoming that we’re going to lose the White House in 2016, and thus lose the Supreme Court, in which case Heller and McDonald, if not outright overturned, will go the way of the Lopez and Morrison federalism cases. But other than that, I think things look pretty good for for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Unfortunately, I think everything else in this country is going to hell in a hand basket, so perhaps we are indeed to become a European style social democracy with guns. Well, at least until we run out of other people’s money. Then it will get…. interesting.

A new poll shows that Colorado voters oppose tougher gun laws. Opposition pushes to 70% for men, with women barely getting a majority of 51%. That’s still a pretty significant gender gap, but support is still dropping among women, it’s just dropping much faster among men. This is good news. The article does note that Hickenlooper enjoys a 51-40% approval rating, which is pretty good. But there is significant hope that is Colorado activists can get ahead of Dudley Brown, there’s a pretty good chance they can get the 15 round limit raised to 30 rounds, and then get rid of it if the legislature can become more favorable.