It’s time for some tab clearin’. We’ve actually had some positive developments in the past week, namely that the SHARE Act passed committee, and rumor has it a floor vote will be held in October. Time to put pressure on the critters.
Breyer: Second Amendment not about the right of an individual to keep a gun next to his bed. Notice Kennedy didnt’ retire this summer? Nothing changes. I had worried those rumors were meant to push him out, but it looks like he’s staying on at least another year.
The press went absolutely nuts that NRA did a concealed carry fashion show. I saw this all over my news alerts when the Carry Guard Expo was happening. Foreign press particularly covered it.
Science Alert: “Here’s Why Gun Violence Research in The US Is About to Come to a Grinding Halt.” As Glenn Reynolds notes: “Because it’s been a cesspit of politicized pseudoscience for decades.”
Breitbart: “Moms Demand Action’s Secret War on Concealed Carry for Law-Abiding Citizens.” I’m not sure it’s all that secret, but then I suppose that wouldn’t generate clicks.
New Jersey is moving to legalize tasers in light of Caetano.
Yehuda Remer: “The National Rifle Association is the Jews’ Safest Place.”
John Lott: “Apply background checks for gun purchases to voting.”
Tam: “Review: SIG Sauer P320 X-Carry Pistol.”
Kopel & Greenlee: The racist origins of gun control.
Scam Artists in the Firearms Community.
California is disarming people who commit misdemeanor hate crimes. Eventually, getting a speeding ticket will be a disqualifying offense. It’s not like the courts will stop it.
LEO Weekly: “Black People Should Arm Themselves NOW!”
Dave Hardy on Heller’s common use test. It’s not perfect, but if it was actually followed, we’d have far broader protections than courts now are willing to offer.
Kennedy didn’t retire, so not going to happen: “Supreme Court Urged to Overturn Maryland’s ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban” Cert will be denied.
Police brass comes out against Constitutional Carry in Indiana.
Everytown boss in New York Times: Ban open carry of firearms.
You don’t say: “N.J. in line for tougher gun laws if Democrat wins governor’s race.” Christie has his faults, but he’s been the most pro-gun New Jersey governor of my lifetime, which should give you an idea of what sorry shape that state is in.
“Eventually, getting a speeding ticket will be a disqualifying offense.”
Couldn’t that be accomplished simply by making the crimes “punishable by” prison sentences long enough to disbar the convicted persons from firearms ownership?
Remember that there was a window of time, in the early 1970s I think, when a DUI/DWI was punishable by a disbarring prison sentence. (I forget whether MADD was around yet, but there was a period of anti-DUI hysteria.) In any case, people convicted of a single DUI in that period were disbarred from firearms ownership. I don’t know whether anyone was ever actually sentenced for that long, but that didn’t matter.
Whst offense couldn’t that principle be extended to?
(If you ever wonder why I’m not on the Law and Order, Crimestrike bandwagon, there you have it — even though my own record is pristine.)
“… a DUI/DWI was punishable by a disbarring prison sentence.”
That was in PA, of course.
Really hoping SHARE can pass. I’d prefer reciprocity over that, but I’ll take what I can get.
“. . .he’s been the most pro-gun New Jersey governor of my lifetime.”
Remind those of us who aren’t NJ residents what exactly he did for gun owners? The only thing I can think of is, pardoning that woman who inadvertently carried a gun into NJ on a PA permit.
Falling in love with someone who simply doesn’t hurt us as much seems like it could be a variation of that psychological phenomenon commonly referred to as the Stockholm Syndrome.
Vetoed a crapton of feel-good legislation, liberalized the existing concealed-carry permit system as much as he could without enabling legislation.
Would have been nice if he directed the NJSP to follow the letter of the law for BG check times, I suppose.
“Scam Artists in the Firearms Community.”
If you’re black, the “Concealed Carry Trained” sticker comes with a target patch to pin over your heart, to further help out the cops.
It’s my understanding that the target patch is useful for whites, too, to further help out the cops.
I think it was Massad Ayoob (among other people, I’m sure) who explained that when you are required to inform a police officer that you are carrying, the *last* think you want to say is “I have a gun!”. He advised handing over your carry license with your driver’s license; I would suppose that, if Constitutional Carry is legal, but you are still required to disclose, you should say something like “Officer, I’m armed” or something to that effect…
“…the SHARE Act passed committee…”
As a casual student of propaganda techniques, I was confused whether that New American column was intended to,
o Promote the NRA,
o Attack the Washington Post,
o Elevate Dana Milbank to uber-demon status, or,
o Inform readers about the SHARE Act.
If the last, did it also intend to suggest the congress might actually move forward with it?
I was bemused by the credit that the author is an “Ivy League graduate.” So is Dana Milbank, so I’m not sure what we’re supposed to make of that. ;-)
(Sorry, I’m just feeling bitchy today. But I do remember when the New American was good at propaganda. Or maybe I was just less discerning.)
Weatherman… 5/6 ( now 5/7) of the comments here are yours.
And it’s not just this thread but seems to be happening more and more.
I makes it fel like you love the sound of you own voice and, worse, treat Sebastian’s site like your personal blog
There’s a lot of subjects above, and I thought we were supposed to care about this stuff. Or are we just supposed to go forth and be good little echoes?
Besides, I asked one dumb question that I shoulda known the answer to, and Ian supplied a good answer. I stand humbled. I thought that was among things comments were intended to accomplish.
Also, not to disparage the blog, but there are an increasing number of days when we have nothing but dead air.
And as I’ve said before, anytime Sebastian asks me to back off, I will. Whether you are happy does not concern me a great deal.
BTW, Jack, if you want to start commenting more, I won’t complain. I may argue with you from time to time, but I won’t complain.
Heh “good little echos” when pointed out how you had, at the time, the vast majority of the posts… kinda ironic.
Also ironic that you had to have /two/ replies to me.
And, I honestly didn’t know that your posting rate is something that you’ve had to explain in the past before. I mean, yeah, it’s all Sebastian’s.
Interesting. I guess I’m not the only one to bug you about it… And I can see why you had that reaction then.
“I honestly didn’t know that your posting rate is something that you’ve had to explain in the past before.”
Sorry, I thought it was you who had raised the issue before.
I replied to you twice (above) because the first time I pushed the button and went to eat supper before remembering to include the courtesy of saying I don’t mind how many times you post.
I’ve have never wanted to get in the business of censoring comments or commenters. I can count on one hand the number of people I’ve banned from commenting. In fact, that number is one in 10 years, and he was just a nasty troll who insulted everyone and had nothing to contribute otherwise.
I’ve deleted a small handful of overtly racist comments and were not in any way contributing to the conversation. Other than that, the comments are pretty much open and I don’t really want to change that.
I have no idea whether this is still a thing or not, because this entire medium has changed radically since I started blogging and I haven’t kept up with the social mores: but years ago there was a concept of that once you got to the point where you were “wasting your best material on an away game,” it was time to start your own blog. Thats kind of how I got started in the genre, back when I was very active in comments of other blogs… like… uh… Bitter’s. And SayUncle’s.
Though Bitter will swear she didn’t encourage me to start my own blog to get rid of me. Which is probably good, because it didn’t work. Like, really didn’t work.
In fairness to Whetherman, while we might scoff at some of his overstatements, he does provide a good reminder to be sure we hold the GOP to their promises of gun rights reform, as well as the dangers of tying in closely with social conservative agenda items.
I have sometimes made the analogy of, online comments (ideally) being like the bar banter in a friendly pub. Every now and then a real argument can break out, but that’s the nature of discussions. Eventually it will come around to “politics and religion” so to speak.
IMO to blog “opinion” requires a baseless certainty that you will agree with what you are saying today, forever, because things live forever on the internet, and it’s not possible to blog all that anonymously without taking extraordinary measures. Trying to explain why you thought the way you did, twenty years later, is a wasted enterprise. (Of course Trump got away with it vis-Ã -vis gun control, but neither you nor I are capable of buying opinions.)
As an extension to my caution, I greatly cut back on my “circulation” through other media last November 9, after a lot of what we took for granted about our culture and “system” was proven false, and I realized that opinions might become deadly in an uncertain future. Even this blog I need to simply trust to maintain its shallow level of screen-name anonymity.
But I think about Rev. Martin Niemöller, and his famous “first they came for. . .” quote, condemning the cowardice of German intellectuals as the Nazis consolidated their power in Germany. Not to style myself as an “intellectual,” nor compare myself to Rev. Niemöller, but given that it’s my “firearms rights community†that contributed to our current national scenario, I probably feel compelled to “speak” too often, because I regret my silences in decades past, when with hindsight, I already should have seen what was coming.
I fail to see the problem. Whetherman either replies to Sebastian’s posts, or he responds to other people’s comments. He rarely throws in an off-topic comment.
To further complicate matters, Sebastian has observed more than once that gun news has slowed down over the last couple of years. In addition to that, I have noticed that comments here have also slowed down.
To me, the question isn’t “Why is Whetherman commenting so much?” It’s more, “Why aren’t there more people commenting?” Whetherman’s comment ratios will drop if more people would step up and comment.
And finally, Whetherman is doing something I’ve done myself, more than once, for one of Sebastian’s Weekly Gun News posts: make a comment for every story that was linked to, that deserves its own comment. Since these posts are conglomerates of a lot of different subjects, it actually makes sense to make several different comments for each of these different topics.
As stated, Breyer’s not wrong.
I mean, the 2A was not intended to protect the right to mere self defense, if only because the Founders had no idea it’d ever come under attack.
I mean, even George III didn’t try to take colonists’ personal weapons and pistols!
(But Breyer is also simply wrong if he imagines that self defense and thus “bedside guns” is not protected by the Amendment.
I mean, one imagines the read the Heller decision, and knows it’s binding precedent, even if he refuses to accept the logic of the decision and read the damned Amendment.)
Breyer — “”You know, Scalia probably likes rules more than I do. He tends to find clarity in trying to get a clear rule…”
Aren’t “laws” somewhat similar to “rules?”
And recently retired Appeals Court judge Posner also recently stated, “I pay very little attention to legal rules, statutes, constitutional provisions. A case is just a dispute. The first thing you do is ask yourself — forget about the law — what is a sensible resolution of this dispute?â€
Hard to believe these guys actually studied “law.”
Thought regarding SHARE Act and Reciprocity – when Ryan said “now is not the time” earlier, he could have meant “I’m not done twisting arms backstage.”
If you have control of the House, and you want to show, you hold show votes that you expect to lose, and you do it a lot. If you want things to happen, you don’t vote until you already know you’re going to win because you have the votes lines up, and you rush the bill to a vote before your votes change their mind. What we’re seeing could an example of that. The quieter and farther in shadows the arm-twisting happens, the less warning Bloomberg and Pelosi get.
Rattling a saber is loud. Drawing it is quiet.
Let’s hope you are right. I have a hard time trusting Ryan at all but he has historically been pro-self defense.
The best I’ll do with a politician is trust but verify. And I really don’t get to that level with Ryan. I want to see the proof, myself.