Category: Anti-Gun Folks

… of those gun control advocates who’s keepin’ it classy:

As an advocate who debated gun control supporters, Hain was well aware of the facts presented in opposition to her views. Yet she parried them as irrelevant to her world, in the same way that the concerns of her fellow Pennsylvania soccer moms were dismissed as the intellectual flotsam of the anti-gun mind. To this mindset, gun homicides, unintentional deaths, and suicides were events that happened to other people who lacked the temperament, training, or personal fortitude to own a gun. In essence, Hain, like many of her fellow pro-gun advocates, lacked an ability to think in the abstract: Her gun experience was positive and whatever negative effects others felt from firearms, the gun, and gun owners like herself, were never to blame. Is it too bold to think that if she had survived her husband’s attack by shooting him to death she would have offered his killing as proof of the effectiveness of the self-defense handgun? Based on 25 years in the gun control debate I don’t think so.

Look, Josh, it’s not any secret that I was not a fan of Meleanie’s activism, but I won’t presume to assume what she did and didn’t dismiss, and smear her with all the standard bugaboos anti-gun folks have for pro-gun folks. But you’re right about one thing Josh, if would have been an example of the effectiveness of self-defense had she been able to successfully defend herself against her husband. Because she’d be alive, and her three children would still have a mother. Surely that would not be a tragedy in your world view just because we would get to make a point? Sometimes I wonder.

There’s not many anti-gun people I would say I truly despise. Most of them are good Americans with a different opinion about how to deal with the problem of violence, and maybe some phobias to go along with it, but Bryan Miller is not among people I count in that category. A good person’s reaction to someone being killed in a domestic violence incident is not “Well, you know, I was right and she was wrong, clearly.”  But here’s what Bryan said:

“Ms. Hain’s position was that guns make people safer. I thought at the time that she was incorrect. I’m very sad to say events seem to have sadly shown that I was correct,” Miller said.

Asshole.

The Freedom States Alliance tries to make the point I figured anti-gun groups would try to make. The Brady Campaign deserves kudos for tastefully staying out of it, rather than try to score political points.

But one wonders what political point the Freedom States Alliance is trying to make?  Scott Hain was a law enforcement officer. He is the kind of person who would have guns even if FSA got their dream of total civilian disarmament.  Does FSA want to argue that battered spouses of law enforcement officers are better off with no protection at all?

According to forum accounts from people who knew her, Meleanie Hain did indeed understand there was a “danger lurking inside her own home”, but that danger was Scott Hain. There is a lesson here, but it’s not the lesson that FSA is trying to sell by exploiting the Hain murder.

By now I’m sure everyone has seen the video that Mayor Mike has put out:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQEDvqmAfqg[/youtube]

Apparently this was filmed at shows in Tennessee, Ohio and Nevada, using much the same method that got Bob McDonnell to threaten Bloomberg if he came back to Virginia, and got ATF pissed off too.

What’s really disgusting about Bloomberg’s tactics, is none of these transactions and dealers shown here have anything to do with gun show loophole. It’s illegal to operate as a gun dealer, for livelihood and profit, without a Federal Firearms License. It’s illegal to knowingly sell guns to criminals. In all of these cases shown, they could be prosecuted under current laws. But he’s not going to tell you that, because the goal is to get rid of gun shows.

Mayor Bloomberg, founder of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, is lambasting gun shows with misleading statistics, and with video footing showing people committing something which is already a federal felony. Yes, when you knowingly transfer a firearm to a prohibited person, it’s already illegal, it has nothing to do with gun shows, and is something these individuals could be prosecuted for under current law.

Plus, Bloomberg claims that ATF data shows 30% of illegally trafficked. This is misleading. First off, the study he’s citing is nearly a decade old at this point, and secondly, only looks at a subset of illegal gun trafficking. More recent studies have found that gun shows, or lack thereof, do not have a significant impact on crime.  But as long as we’re using decades old studies, what about the study in 1997 by the National Institute of Justice that showed only 2% of crime guns originally came from gun shows?  Or the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2001 report, surveying prison inmates, that found only 0.8% of offenders reported getting their guns from gun shows? If we’re going to have a public debate about this, the public needs to know the full context of the debate. Bloomberg is deliberately obfuscating the nature and scale of the problem in hopes of pushing through regulations that will destroy gun shows.

All I have to say to Mike Bloomberg is that we’re already coming after your Mayors, and we’ll get more of them out, either through convincing them to leave, or through booting them out of office, as time wears on. The more you speak about this issue, the more evidence we’ll gather that MAIG is a gun control group. But we’ll also be coming after your gun laws next, through the courts. Bloomberg is trying to fight a Battle of the Buldge, a last, desperate offensive against the forces allied against him. He might have some successes here and there, but ultimately, like the German Army, New York’s gun laws finished. I think that’s what he’s really afraid of.

From MikeB:

He’s stated that the “bullying tactics” of the NRA simply did not work on him. One of those tactics is to continually describe the so-called gun-show loophole as something other than what it is.

The whole gun show loophole language is not a creation of the NRA or its members. We much prefer to argue on the topic in terms of private transfers. The gun show loophole language is entirely a creation of the gun control movement, because the purpose of the proposed law, the proposed law endorsed by MAIG, goes beyond just banning private sales. I have outlined what the proposed bill on the table actually does on my blog before.

This is not an irrational move on the part of the gun control movement, because they know what we know, that gun shows are an important and vital organizing tool for our community, because it’s a central place where you can expect to find a lot of gun owners. Wouldn’t it make sense, if you were an avowed opponent of homosexuality, to try to outlaw or demonize gay bars?

Mayors Against Illegal Guns is calling on the Obama Administration to push for a 40 point “reform” on federal gun control laws. Notice MAIG still claims 450 members, even though we dropped them to under 400. I will endeavor to find you all a copy of these “recommendations.” It’s very interesting that MAIG isn’t publishing them on their web site.