I’ve been too busy to do much posting. I’d feel bad about that if there was much gun news to post about. Things will stay very busy until mid October, when they should return to a more even keel. But as always, there always a little bit of gun news:
Alan Gura: “The Court after Scalia: The next “conservative” Justice may not save the Second Amendment.” I don’t know, George H.W. Bush was pretty culturally and temperamentally pro-gun control, but he still gave us Thomas, and his son gave us Alito and Roberts, without which Heller and McDonald would never have won. Though I suspect Roberts’ minimalism is a big part of our problem trying to bring greater security for the Second Amendment.
Speaking of SCOTUS: “Joe Biden to Lead New Push for Senate Vote on Merrick Garland.”
Sex Offender laws violate Ex Post Facto Clause, says 6th circuit. Relation to guns? Lautenberg by all rights should have been declared Ex Post Facto as applied to past convictions, but that was argued pre-Heller. A court willing to enforce the Second Amendment would take another look at that ruling.
In depth article about a guy who open carries a rifle to Wal-Mart. Fair coverage?
“How to smash the gun lobby.” Well, first you need to understand the “gun lobby,” which you clearly don’t, so good luck with that.
Schumer: “Progressive Supreme Court #1 Goal.” Schumer if probably the shrewdest politician in public office today. He’s also probably the number one enemy of the Second Amendment in public office today.
Yeah, I haven’t noticed George Takai’s new gun control group dominating the scene either. Actually, I haven’t even noticed them.
NYT: “Gun Control Groups Divide Their Loyalties in Senate Race.” CeaseFirePA is funded by Bloomberg, so if you ask me, they are trying to create a “Head, I win. Tails, you lose.” type of situation by doing competing endorsements. For what it’s worth, I’m becoming more convinced by the anti-Toomey folks that he needs to go down.
Yes, let the hate flow through you. Your hate only makes us more powerful.
They are really intent on building that “West Coast Wall,” trying to get all the west coast states to ban semi-automatic rifles that look scary.
Eugene Volokh: “Can some people who have finished their felony sentences recover their Second Amendment rights?” Like I said before, we’re doing better in this area than I thought we would.
Off Topic:
Age discrimination in my industry is real, and I’m getting to the age where it’ll start becoming more of a problem. I’ve tried very hard to keep my skills up, and it’s letting them fall behind that’s a big driver. But the struggle is real, especially if you live in the Valley.
This: “One of the things that Trump’s candidacy has done is shown that the political consultant/advertising business is largely a racket, and I suspect that this accounts for much of the visceral hostility that so many people in that business display toward him.” I’m not a fan of Trump, but one silver lining if he wins is that the consultants will be exposed for the con men they are. Maybe it takes a con man to spot another con man.
Hoover Institute: “An Era of Tenuous Majorities.”
Yes, this drives me absolutely batty, and I see it on the left and the right pretty equally.
Perhaps you mean it takes a thief to catch a thief/??? ;)
The “How to smash the gun lobby”, besides missing the point on where their support comes from, also irks me in other ways. Blaming the violence in Chicago on guns — and ignoring that they have a murder problem, not a gun problem (indeed, the gun laws there were “supposed” to limit gun violence!) — and blaming suicides on gun ownership as well.
I would propose that if we want to end murders, we need to take steps to end those murders, and that involves changing the culture. If we were to make guns disappear from Chicago overnight, the murder rate will likely stay the same, but it would involve knives, clubs, rocks, fists, rope, and myriads of other things that are impossible to ban.
Similarly, if we made guns disappear overnight, but did nothing to address the causes of suicides, those 20,000 people will still find ways to kill themselves.
The fact that these guys want to ban guns, and not change our culture and provide outreach of some sort, indicate that they don’t care about spilled blood at all; they just want to get rid of icky guns (and probably want to rule us as well).
““Joe Biden to Lead New Push for Senate Vote on Merrick Garland.—
Another sign they’re worried about Trump winning. If they were sure Hillary were going to get elected they’re probably just let this lie and wait for Hillary to put a hard core lib in place. From what I could tell this got no traction in terms of changing minds in the electorate so all those self righteous speeches were in vain.
Re: West Coast Wall
It astonishes me that the anti-gunners keep shouting the Big Lie that they only want “reasonable” gun-control while they are simultaneously pushing extremist gun-control legislation.
Of course the anti-gunners only get away with this because of the willing collusion of the Ruling Class News Media.
But have they?
This election year will be the proof of whether the country really is at a “tipping point” over gun-control, or whether the anti-gunners have catastrophically miscalculated.
Re: Senator Murphy & ‘smash the gun lobby’
There is a tremendous amount of economic illiteracy they share. As if the gun-industry makes profit from crime! Whereas the real driver of gun-industry profits is reaction to anti-gun politicians.
But that illiteracy is really just a drop in the sea of illusion they indulge in to rationalize their fear and hatred of us. Truly the gun-control movement is slowly evolving from the modern equivalent of the Anti-Saloon League into something more sinister like the KKK.
Re: ‘fair story?’
I think the blurb about the writer of that story says it all…
Terrence McCoy covers poverty, inequality and social justice. He also writes about solutions to social problems.
What is really horrible about that story, isn’t even that it is intended to show the whole gun-culture in a bad light. Or that it is intended to inflame hatred of us and hatred of Trump voters. But that an obviously harmless old man who has suffered a hard life is made an object of fear and hatred and blamed as symptomatic of “gun violence” around the nation.