The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
On Friday, Bill Mahr complained to Democratic Congressman Keith Ellison that “your party come out against the Second Amendment.” Ellison’s response? “Bill, I sure wish they would. I sure wish they would.”
After talking about how much he wished the Democratic Party he is a member of would come out and actually oppose the very existence of the Second Amendment, Ellison finished up the segment with some false figures to make the case for gun control – figures debunked today by Andrew Johnson.
The pre-order page is now posted for the Charlton Heston stamp from the Post Office. It says that pre-orders will be available April 9, and the launch is set for April 11. You know I’m so going to get some when they come out. In fact, I think I’ll find excuses to mail some letters this summer just to have an excuse to use them.
If the Post Office is interested in making some money off of these, they should ask if NRA would put up promotional posters at the NRA convention in Indy and note that the post office downtown is only a 15 minute walk from the convention center. They might try to claim that it’s only honoring his Hollywood work, but they really need to look at the fact that they need to make money. This event happens to provide a very targeted audience – regardless of the motivation to buy.
If I was a Democratic party insider, I would almost wonder if Sen. Dianne Feinstein is actively trying to cause the party to lose the Senate this year. She is circulating a letter to gather signatures on a message to President Obama that calls for him to bring up the topic of gun bans this election year and use executive powers to cut off imports of any semi-automatic rifle that might possibly accept a magazine of more than 10 rounds or could possibly be converted to accept more a magazine of more than 10 rounds.
The first veto from Virginia’s Governor McAuliffe was on a gun bill that sought to clarify wording on transport by gun owners without concealed carry permits. Even the media notes that this veto is meant to signal to gun control advocates that he’s taking a hardcore anti-gun line rather than addressing some legitimate concern on gun possession.
Reader Adam Z. sent along the news that one of Pennsylvania’s open Congressional races where the current A rated congressman is retiring got a little more interesting with the announcement that the perceived more moderate candidate with no record has dropped out of the race. He didn’t want to fight it out in a Democratic primary against his farther left opponent who is running for the same seat for a third time after already losing twice.
This is one of those cases where it’s great news that the race seems more promising for the candidate who will likely (though far from assured) have the better Second Amendment positions in a tight district. On the other hand, the fact that a more radical candidate is now the only opposition makes it a bigger nail-biter.
Needless to say, it will be interesting to see polling when this race gets closer to election day.
With about 3 weeks for ballots to be returned, we’re doing a bit of a late overview of who we’re voting for this year. Neither one of us is voting for more than 10 people. There’s no need to feel like you need to fill in 25 circles just because you can. Here are a few of the names who might otherwise be overlooked.
First up our ballots (which happen to be exactly the same, which isn’t normally the case – maybe because we’re both digital subscribers?) is William H Dailey. He’s chair of the Civil Rights Defense Fund which often funds cases that have the opportunity to set precedent. Even if the bigger court cases on carry are generating mixed results, the CRDF is often involved with cases that rarely make major headlines.
We also backed Dan Boren because he does show up to participate, and politically I think keeping moderate Democrats involved in the issue. Representing the Left Coast, we’re voting for Joel Friedman who we’ve mentioned before.
Coming back east, we also both voted for Patricia A Clark from Newtown, Connecticut. She’s very involved in the shooting sports side of the issue, and I think that’s particularly important in places like Connecticut right now. In the same column on our ballots, there’s Todd J Rathner from Arizona who is actively involved in state legislatures pushing bills for both gun and knife rights. At the very bottom of the column is Linda L Walker who has been very good at being accessible to many gun owners on the ground.
Finally, we both voted for Antonio Hernandez of Puerto Rico who currently serves as a non-board member on the Legal Affairs and Urban Affairs Committees and has pushed to promote a pro-gun culture there by establishing the first Friends dinner and getting the island’s state association authorization renewed. In addition, I also cast a vote for Allan D Cors for his work with the NRA Foundation, as well as his involvement with ILA. I’m a fan of board members who have been involved in multiple aspects of the organization.
As always, we’ll highlight the results of the votes at the Annual Meeting.
I can’t help but laugh at this story that promotes all sorts of negative political stereotypes, and all because neither the writer nor the interviewees appears to have done any homework on the issue.
So a Colorado shooting range is having problems maintaining & improving their facilities on membership dues. Becoming a 100% NRA club will make them more likely to qualify for grants from NRA that can pay for some of these improvements. Not to mention, NRA sanctions many shooting competitions, they provide firearm safety training programs, club insurance, and they are a pretty helpful resource for information for gun ranges looking to expand or improve. All of this falls into the category of General Operations and/or the NRA Foundation. None of it is the territory of NRA-ILA, a separate political entity with its own funding and another separate political action committee in NRA PVF.
Yet, Democratic members are complaining to the media that with a new requirement to join NRA as part of your membership to the shooting range that they are being forced to join “a fringe right-wing political organization” without actually making any effort to learn about the apolitical side of the organization that the club is turning to for help. But the advocates of the membership requirement aren’t exactly working to educate people when they are touting that they agree with NRA on politics, so it’s all okay.
A little education on both sides would go a very long way in minimizing hard feelings on the decision…
In New Jersey, anti-gun lawmakers are dismissing all gun owner concerns about reducing magazine capacity limits, but they want the media to highlight just how generous they are willing to be this legislative season. They are offering up a bill that will allow gun owners who are running out of gas in their car on their way home from the range to stop and get some. Isn’t that nice?
Sebastian has been really busy the last couple of days, but he noted that quite a few people shared links to Dave Hardy’s explanations for the actions of SCOTUS in regard to the Sunnyvale mag ban.
It has started. Petitions have been filed and the campaigns are officially launched with a place on the ballot for the primary, and possibly, general elections.
With that deadline passing, a new post just went up at PAGunRights.com looking at all 18 Congressional races in Pennsylvania for this year.
There’s the candidate who wants to force all gun owners to carry liability insurance that doesn’t exist (that’s in our district – yay), and there’s a candidate who tells the media that gun control laws will be one of her top priorities if she’s elected. Then you have a Bloomberg-ally gun control-supporting former mayor running for Congress who holds the distinction of leading her city to the first ever municipal SEC securities fraud charges for misleading investors on the state of public finances.
Future posts, which I’m sure I’ll link here, will focus on the statewide races and state legislative races which feature quite a few retirements of pro-gun votes.
