I’ve been very busy, so please forgive the light posting. On top of being busy with a project at work, it’s dues time for my club, and I’ve been dealing with banks to get ready for online invoicing and payment by credit cards for the first time. It’s not as bad as closing on a house, but it’s easier to buy a new car. Banks want you to sign over your first born for all this stuff. In fact, if they put that in some of the fine print, I might not notice.
I need to clean my tabs out though, so here goes:
Jimmy Kimmel called out for “White Privilege” on gun control. Make them live up to their own rules. And yes, gun control disadvantages poor minorities more than it disadvantages middle class white people. In the past, and arguably still today, that’s been its primary purpose.
Canada doesn’t have enough gun control, according to the people who advocate for gun control.
Tam: “Misunderstanding Self-Defense: Practical”
Clayton Cramer has some video of Bloomberg Bloomberging. Smartest strategic move Everytown has made is pushing him into the background and using him as a wallet rather than a face. What we need to do, conversely, is make sure everyone knows Everytown is Mike Bloomberg. I won’t mention them without his name if I can help it.
Minneapolis Star Tribune: “Liberal Maplewood millennial isn’t your typical gun rights advocate: ‘We’re normal people’” Note: “She left the NRA when it created ads she felt were polarizing, alienating and ‘extreme right wing.'” I’m not convinced that NRA is going to rethink the Angry Dana strategy, as long as their membership keeps growing. I think that has more to do with the shrillness of our opponents, but it’s hard to convince a civic organization to change course when they aren’t hurting for members.
Well, this will certainly harsh some narratives. The FBI: “Armed and unarmed citizens engaged the shooter in 10 incidents. They safely and successfully ended the shootings in eight of those incidents … Their selfless actions likely saved many lives.”
Boulder passed an assault weapons ban, and are now being sued in federal court. Colorado seems to have preemption, but my understanding is that the courts there have weakened it severely.
Reason has a pretty good article on “Assault Weapons,” most of it old hat to most of us, but some interesting bits I hadn’t heard, but are hardly surprising: “According to a Reason-Rupe survey conducted around the time that Feinstein introduced her 2013 bill, about two-thirds of Americans mistakenly thought ‘assault weapons’ fire faster than other guns, hold more rounds, or use higher-caliber ammunition. The respondents who harbored these misconceptions were especially likely to say such guns should be banned.”
It was disappointing to see a lot of assholes on our side of the issue giving this reporter shit in the comments: “Shooting an ‘assault weapon’ helped me understand the gun debate”
The Detroit News: “Dick’s walks risky line on guns.” I’m not big on boycotting as a tactic, but I’ll never set foot in another Dick’s again. I’ll cheer when they finally finish circling the bowl.
The Federalist: “Our rights aren’t contingent on a cost-benefit analysis. Whether guns are risky isn’t the point, but whether guns are a reasonable means of self-defense.”
The Swedes are preparing for war, with Ivan getting frisky again: “[W]e will never give up. All information to the effect that resistance is to cease is false.†There’s an old story, maybe it’s true, that during WWII the German Ambassador said to the Swiss Ambassador: “You have half a million men under arms. We could send a million men over the pass into your country, and what would you do then?” The Swiss Ambassador responded: “We’d tell our men to shoot two Germans before going home.”
Yes, the Reason article on AW is so good, it is worth keeping for future reference.
Yes, we should always remember and also remind anyone who hears us that that Billionaire d*ouchebag Bloomberg is the true power behind the Gun-Control Movement.
And yes, some of the GCM may be trying to push Bloomberg to the background, but we have just as perfect a figurehead to spotlight who will not retreat from publicity: Alyssa Milano and her nutty NoRA group. Find all their craziness at noranow.org
I can’t think of a better example of everything the GCM truly represents than #NoRA. How ignorant they are. How entitled they are. How authoritarian they are. They don’t just want gun-control, they also disrespect Free Speech rights too in their goal to suppress the NRA.
And Milano herself is a perfect example of who the real core of the GCM is: a rich, influential, middle aged white woman, who is punching down.
We should not overlook what an amazing gift to our side that is Milano’s anti-NRA group.
Alyssa Milano can’t be middle aged. That means I’m middle aged :)
An awful lot of people on our side shouldn’t ever post a comment.
Another version of the supposed Swiss retort is that pre WW1 the Kaiser was observing Swiss maneuvers and asked an old grizzled Swiss noncom that question.
Doesn’t Illinois have preemption, too? My understanding was that right after McDonald v. Chicago was settled, the “compromise” bill passed also grandfathered existing local gun laws, but did not allow for new ones. Anyway, local gun laws are basically unenforceable.
You are correct: it does have preemption. But it grandfathered any municipality who had an existing ordinance. Deerfield had an ordinance about safe storage of assault weapons, but they altered it to be a ban. Their argument is that the ordinance already existed and so is grandfathered. The plaintiff’s argument is that preemption prevents them from changing the ordinance in place to effect new restrictions.
I the Swiss would not take kindly to the slightest comparison to Swedes. I think Russia is the least of their problems. If anything Ivan setting up shop there might be an improvement over the coming matriarchy or caliphate.