Bitter – Page 6 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Olympic Shooting Snub

USA Shooting has been pitching the story of Kim Rhode to mainstream media because she’s broken some pretty unique Olympic records during her years of competing. She’s the only American to win individual medals in five straight Olympics – only American at all, not just the only American shooter. Her presence in Rio also makes her the only American Olympian to compete on 5 continents. Beyond American records, she is the only woman to win three Olympic golds in shooting.

In addition to holding records, she’s overcome challenges that many Olympians would find it hard to overcome – like having her specialized sport discontinued and being forced to take up a new one. Her prized equipment was stolen at one point. Yet she makes news for keeping such an upbeat attitude about her sport and life’s many challenges.

With these kinds of records, this news story from May highlighted that the US Olympic team members have never recognized Kim Rhode with the honor of carrying the American flag during opening or closing ceremonies.

Instead, news came today that US swimmer Michael Phelps will carry the flag. He was chosen because he has won multiple medals in various swimming sports that are largely just swimming different distances in the same discipline. Oh, and the other headlines he has generated for the US Olympic team include an underage DUI arrest to which he pled guilty and being photographed with drug paraphernalia. And then there’s the second DUI arrest since he apparently didn’t learn the first time. As this article notes, after every single medal-winning games Phelps has competed in, he follows up with headline-making illegal activities.

Sure, let’s choose that guy because he holds an Olympic record to represent the United States in the ceremonies.

That said, I’m going to try and watch the Olympic shooting events if I can figure out how to stream it. (I think the NBC sports channel on Roku may have all the sports airing if I have read things correctly.) It’s a fairly minor show of support, but our Olympic shooters could probably use a little more support.

Bob Casey’s New Gun Control Plan

Sen. Bob Casey who ran a campaign to get the support of gun owners changed his tune quite a while ago. He’s on board with the sweeping semi-auto bans, private sale bans, and magazine bans.

Now he wants to make gun owners a felon if they are even suspected of potential crimes – beyond the standard “terror watch list” restriction which could end your right to possess firearms just for having the same name as some person who may not have even visited this country.

Convictions, evidence, and watch list status are no longer required under the plan he announced today. Let someone give your name as a suspect in some crime that happens to include a victim in a protected class, and you lose your Constitutional rights.

“The Hate Crimes Prevention Act would prohibit the purchase, possession or shipment of a firearm by anyone convicted of a misdemeanor hate crime or who received a hate crime sentence enhancement, and prohibit the sale of firearms to anyone reasonably suspected to be guilty of a misdemeanor hate crime. “

(Link via Reason.)

Guide to the Gun Nut Vacation

I was pleasantly surprised to catch a link on Instagram from Colonial Williamsburg advertising “A CW Guide for Gun Enthusiasts.”

What? A general family vacation spot specifically advertising they would be happy to host people who enjoy the shooting sports? Love it.

If you’re looking for a family vacation spot this year, then maybe check out their entire daily itinerary geared just for gun nuts. It sounds like an enjoyable day. (I’ve never been, so I can’t vouch for it.)

Local Good Guy with a Gun

An armed robber who had a shotgun and zip ties targeted a local pharmacy this morning. Fortunately, the owner takes security seriously and has a video surveillance system that allowed him to see the shotgun before the robber got into the store. The owner also had a gun that he pulled, and he fired at the surprised bad guy.

I think the best part of this encounter is that the owner quickly called the police who could catch the getaway driver who was still waiting outside since he figured his buddy would be a while – trying to clear out the entire pharmacy after at least taking the owner hostage, if not killing him. Easy arrest, and hopefully easy clean-up inside.

UPDATE: And our really, really local outlet reports that the van was stolen out of New Jersey.

UPDATE II: And now we have the folks coming out that says the shotgun-toting robber with zip ties was engaged in a non-violent offense and didn’t deserve to be shot despite his willingness to shoot his victim. When I looked at the rest of the page, it didn’t appear to be a parody account. He seems to really believe that the pharmacist defending his own life committed murder.

And for the record, my right to bare arms is my right to wear sleeveless shirts and dresses. My right to bear arms, however, protects my right to defend myself from armed robbers ready to kill over access to drugs.

UPDATE III: And this is why I voted for our DA:

District Attorney David Heckler wholeheartedly agreed.

“There is no thought that we would prosecute the shooter in this case. He was entirely justified in his conduct, and frankly should be commended,” Heckler said.

“From what I can see, he performed a public service in taking out this fella,” Heckler continued. “The fella asked for what he got and he got it.”

UPDATE IV: And, it gets even better. The getaway driver admits he’s a criminal on probation – driving a stolen car to an armed robbery. It will be curious to see how long his record is back in New Jersey, as well as that of the dead thief who has yet to be identified.

Begun, These Ice Cream Wars Have

When Sebastian was telling me the tales of different types of ice cream trucks he had available to him growing up based on whether he was at home or visiting an aunt or grandmother, I joked that there were ice cream truck turf wars that kept those boundaries in line.

I was joking because in America the idea that one would get violent over ice cream – especially when trucks often sell different types of ice cream novelties and cones – is just completely absurd. It’s insane.

But, apparently, the NYT reports that it’s the typical business model in New York City. It started out with trademark infringement that resulted in more than $765,000 in legal awards (that haven’t been paid by the offender), but then it elevated to surrounding competing trucks and beating on them. A driver for New York Ice Cream, the offending company, admits that they get physical with other drivers in an effort to enforce “turf” illegally. There’s apparently a decades-long history of violence among other companies, too. One driver in 1969 was kidnapped and had his truck blown up. More recently, a couple was beaten to critical condition with a wrench.

Talk about New York Values. It’s amazing that the city wants to leave the victims unable to defend themselves. Well, it’s not shocking since we’re not talking about America here.

NRA Member Engagement – Voting

One of the best reminders that NRA really does represent a real grassroots movement is that members directly elect the board of directors. There’s a clearly defined way to become a voter and the results are published openly.

I’ve added this year’s numbers to my collection of NRA voting data. There are a few interesting differences this year over previous years.

The number of voting members who were sent ballots has increased 36.5% since I started keeping track in 2006. Most of that growth has happened since 2011 when there appears to have been a cleaning of the rolls.

The yellow bar is how many were mailed back vs. how many were mailed in red.
2016S represents the special recall election of 2016.

The number of voters actually participating in the elections is, unfortunately, not very high and not growing substantially. But given that we have a growing problem of too many celebrities and are losing activist leaders with diverse skills, this may not be a great number. It would probably be better to see more informed voters rather than increasing numbers of people voting for any name they vaguely recognize from popular culture.

Perhaps one of the most interesting statistics is the fact that “last winner” was on a fewer percentage of ballots than ever before. The same was almost true for the top vote getter as well. (Technically, last year’s top vote winner, Ronnie Barrett, was on a lower percentage of the ballots, but not by much.) Those two numbers indicate to me that more voters are more likely bullet voting – voting only for a handful of candidates instead of all 25 slots. That’s actually a much smarter way to vote if you’re interested in getting key candidates on the board. Increasing the votes of those who you care about less could end up hurting your favorites on the ballot.

Another good number from this election is that the percentage of invalid ballots is still low – 2.79%. That’s compared to a high of 8.71% from the years I’ve been tracking. The most common mistake is marking too many candidates. But the next highest mistake is an easy one to fix – remembering to sign the envelope before you seal it and mail it. A whooping 723 voters didn’t have their ballots counted because of this authentication error.

Perhaps the most important thing to consider is what a difference only a few votes makes. The difference between the candidate who did make the 25th seat and the one who did not was only 841 votes. That’s a number smaller than some 100% NRA clubs. Votes do matter, and I loved that NRA started giving out buttons to members who took the time to vote in the 76th director race. If they keep doing that, you know I’m going to start a collection and wear them on my pass each year. :)

NRA Attendance – The Bigger Picture

While I was driving all the way from Louisville to Philadelphia-area yesterday, Sebastian handled the reporting of what so many always want to know – how many freedom lovers came out to hang out with fellow NRA members.

Beyond the fact that it’s the 2nd largest convention, how does it really compare? Fortunately for you all, I like data that no one else seems to keep.

I’ve been keeping track of the attendance ever since my first meeting in 2004, or as I call it, Pittsburgh #1. Since that first meeting I attended out of college, this year’s meeting was about 1/3 bigger (31.2%). Over last year, the growth was nearly 2,000 people, but only about 2%.

In that time, we’ve had 4 repeat cities – Louisville, Houston, St. Louis, and Pittsburgh. Aside from Houston which is kind of an anomaly, Louisville actually saw the greatest same city increase in attendance (21.5% compared to Pittsburgh at 16% and St. Louis at 14.3%).

Most of the dips you see in the early columns are simply location issues. That has become less of an issue since I started attending, as more people are willing to make this an annual or nearly annual tradition regardless of how far it is. In this article on Indianapolis securing two more years, they note that Houston’s last convention saw 43% of attendees coming from 200 miles away or more. You can see this reflected around the floor and in the member meeting where this year’s family of the youngest life member was from Chicago and the oldest life member traveled from Ft. Smith, Arkansas.

And while I don’t have firm numbers since the other side is against such measures, I can tell you that you can largely flip this chart around and chop off many zeros on the numbers to represent the anti-gun side presence at each event. There were actually a good number of protesters at Pittsburgh #1. They were pretty good spirited folks, too. There was a chanting contest and someone who shipped a Million Moms banner up from their Atlanta chapter. The biggest downers at the event were the ACLU volunteers who were trying to convince NRA members that they had no right to photograph protestors on the street, presumably in an effort to keep us from highlighting how few there were compared to the 61,319 NRA members. There was an uptick for Pittsburgh again in 2011, but otherwise, the protests just keep getting smaller.

It will be interesting to see the future. The event is getting large enough now that many cities simply cannot handle it. Even though Louisville has some of the largest event space in the country, the logistics just don’t work well. The Expo Center didn’t open enough gates for getting people into the parking lot, and there parking attendants weren’t on top of making sure spaces were filled in an orderly manner on their busiest days. They also apparently did nothing to try and direct traffic on the main roads to under-utilized gates. The gate we used (6) had very little wait on Friday based on the Google traffic report and very little on Saturday, too. That’s on the city hosts, and not on NRA. However, since NRA has to look at the bottom line of member experience, Louisville could lose future business by their unwillingness to manage traffic in a reasonable manner for an event they knew to be huge. Interestingly, it looks like Louisville is losing other conventions of similar sizes like the FFA which is close to 60,000 people. That article actually notes that new hotel space is only going up downtown, away from the Expo Center. That only compounds the traffic concerns.

As for the immediate future, the dates and locations are:

2017 – Atlanta, Georgia

2018 – Dallas, Texas

2019 – Indianapolis, Indiana

2020 – Nashville, Tennessee

2021 – Houston, Texas

Media Lying About NRA – Again

Usually when a reporter wants to spin against the NRA and its millions of grassroots members, it’s a lot more subtle than outright fabrication of things that did not happen where cameras and thousands of people are present. I mean, let’s face it, that’s just bold to think you won’t get caught in that kind of lie.

However, that’s what Louisville Business First‘s Baylee Pulliam tried to pull off in her Twitter coverage of the NRA Annual Meeting.

Pulliam tried to claim that NRA was dubbing dog noises over video of Hillary.

Except they didn’t. It’s a complete lie that NRA dubbed barking noises over Hillary. NRA simply played the video of Hillary herself barking like a dog.

Even though I was in the law seminar during the political event, I checked with multiple people there, and I watched the video which NRA News helpfully streams live and posts after the event.

But don’t let that stop the narrative that must be told that NRA and its members hate women. No, Pulliam needs to help push a narrative, so false accusations of dubbing must fly around social media.

Since at least one person has called her out, Pulliam tried to delete her tweet. But was there any kind of correction or apology posted? Nope.

Acknowledging such an accusation means it gets documented that the reporter doesn’t actually keep up with current events and somehow missed the news of Hillary barking, doesn’t do research before throwing out claims against innocent organizations, or she really is simply willing to unfairly accuse NRA of actions they did not take until someone publicly calls her out. With more than 20,000 videos on YouTube and nearly 500,000 Google links when searching “Hillary Clinton barking,” I find it doubtful that someone covering political events would miss that kind of news. It’s certainly possible that she just throws out accusations and doesn’t do research before doing so, but that seems a little reckless for a reporter at a business-focused media outlet. Sadly, that leaves the third option as a very real possibility.

Encouraging the Hatpin Menace

As we planned our route through various states on the way to Louisville based on their carry laws, I was just thinking about how many laws I could break if I decided to wear more hats.

I didn’t have time to see if the states we’ll be traveling through still have hatpin restrictions on the books, but I was just thinking about this while digging out my American flag pin and admiring my great grandmother’s (1890-1986) hatpin that my mother gave me that resides in the same holder.

As you can see, this one isn’t very stabby anymore, so it may be fine under some ordinances. However, some of the bans were written based on how far the pins protruded from the hat (not the brim) rather than how sharp the ends might have been.

This one got its first test with me during a memorial service last month, and I’m happy to report that it was stabby enough to get through my hat and my hair. If I needed to, I’m sure it could have been sufficiently stabby enough to get through an attacker’s hand with some force. (Maybe. I’m not about to risk the heirloom pin to find out how much force it can take.)

It’s very tempting to see if any future cities for NRA conventions still have highly restrictive hatpin laws on the books that were specifically passed to keep women from defending themselves and find some lovely new hats that warrant wearing pins to secure them in place. A little civil disobedience can be fun. I checked, and I don’t see any newspaper accounts or Google hits for anti-pin ordinances in Louisville. Being the home of the Kentucky Derby, I would imagine that a ban would be more fiercely fought there than other places.

So whether your self-defense tool of choice is a handgun or hatpin, women are well protected in Louisville.

Obama’s Scalia Replacement

President Obama will announce his nominee to replace Justice Scalia shortly. The press reports that it is Merrick Garland.

Not surprisingly, he’s got a record that does not point to a positive future for the Second Amendment if he is confirmed.

This article from Dave Kopel in 2008 warned of Garland on a short list to be appointed, and he cited red flags from Garland’s role in Parker v. District of Columbia and NRA v. Reno. Kopel summed it up this way:

Merrick Garland is a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He could be counted on not only to oppose Second Amendment rights in general, but even to nullify explicit congressional statutes that protect those rights.

More recently, even National Review noted that Garland’s positions on the Second Amendment were enough cause for worry since the White House indicated they might choose someone “moderate,” and these aren’t signs of moderate positions on the right to keep and bear arms.

Media Matters had a post up early this morning trying to claim that these previous moves are “myths,” and that he’s not really anti-Second Amendment. I guess that means the White House knows it will be a problem. Now would be a great time to call your Senator and let them know what you think about this nominee.