When I wrote yesterday about a new study that shows mass shootings are not on the rise, I told Bitter, “I’ll bet you Bloomberg’s mouthpieces are going to seize on the raw numbers and ignore the part about controlling for population growth.” And sure enough, right on cue. They have to deceive and distort in order to win, because the facts are not on their side. The fact is that when controlled for population, there’s no trend. But they ignore that, and rather than pointing out flaws in the study, they just leave off key facts and hope their readers don’t notice. I guess Everytown do want to be science deniers!
Category: Anti-Gun Folks
CSGV Encouraging 911 Abuse to “SWAT” People Carrying
Bearing Arms lead the weekend news cycle with a story about the Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence Ownership encouraging their followers to SWAT people who carry firearms and abuse the 911 system. This does not surprise me, given that CSGV are the rabid dogs of the anti-gun movement, and their followers are even more rabid. It’s interesting that one of their followers notes that the police department “laughed at me”, and CSGV encourages her to “call them again.”
They do realize that abusing 911 is a crime, do they not? In Pennsylvania it’s a third degree misdemeanor. They do realize that 911 is for emergencies, and not for political revenge against people they don’t like, do they not? Do they think tying up the resources of our first responders over something that is not a crime is really responsible behavior? They don’t care. They are zealots and extremists. They try to call us those things, but don’t let them get away with it.
Derision of the “Good Guys With Guns”
I’ve been watching the story of the Marine and Navy Officer using personally owned side arms, carried against military regulation, to return fire against the active shooteer. I’ve been reluctant to report on it, because I would hate to find out later, like so much of what is reported in a mass shooting, that it wasn’t true. It’ll probably be a while before we really know. What has interested me in talking about this story is how often I’m seeing in comment sections of news articles about this story, variants of: “Well, so much for that ‘good guy with a gun’ myth the ammosexuals keep babbling to us about.”
Aside from being highly disrespectful to the fallen Marine’s service and sacrifice, no one ever argued that a gun is a guarantee that you’ll prevail over a bad guy every time. We know gunfights can be lost. We know that people die in war, despite having the ability to shoot back. This is a straw man argument, because no one on our side ever made it. The shooter in this case was indeed stopped by good guys with guns, when enough of them showed up to overwhelm him (presumably, we really don’t know much yet).
I’ve found myself saying this to anti-gun folks over and over again: “Can you please argue against what we actually believe, rather than the caricature you’ve constructed in your head about what we believe?” It would also be nice if they’d pay a little respect to the “good guys with a gun,” who if all this pans out, acted heroically in defense of their fellow soldiers and sailors, with one giving his life. I’m half expecting the gun control crowd to demand a court-martial of the naval officer for violating the regulations on carrying guns.
Moms Demand Claiming Fake Victories?
John Richardson notes that Bloomberg’s Moms Demand Action has been claiming victories that probably aren’t. A lot of FFLs, especially big box retailers, have traditionally refused sales under default proceeds. We had talked about this even before Bloomberg’s people latched onto the issue, in the context of getting rid of POC states. I could totally see Watts calling up these outfits, which have never done default proceeds, and after confirming they didn’t, declare victory to her supporters. This is also likely part of the plan to energize her supporters to put pressure on Cabela’s, which apparently will do default proceeds. Hopefully Cabela’s is wise and smart enough to know who butters their bread, and it’s not Shannon Watts or any of her foaming-at-the-mouth supporters. They will no doubt remember gun owners nearly killing Smith & Wesson for conspiring with the enemy, and will be wise enough to completely ignore this Bloomberg funded non-issue.
The reason default proceeds exist, and need to exist, is because without them, all the a petulant Administration would have to do to shut down gun sales entirely is take the NICS system offline.
Bradys Drop Suit Against Lucky Gunner
They had appealed the judgement against them originally, but now they are dropping the case entirely. I am very disappointed that the Brady Center has decided against donating more money to pro-Second Amendment causes, but I thank them for the $100,000 they are already pledged to donate. If the Brady Center had decided to just donate that money to the NRA directly, well, $100,000 isn’t enough to get you the gold jacket, but it would have been enough to get them into the Alexander Hamilton Society. As it is, with the way the voting is going, the Brady Center’s donor dollars will only get them as far as the Thomas Paine Society, and hell, even I rated for that one year.
Hardly Surprising: Everytown Favors Disarmed Military Personnel
Bloomberg’s mouthpiece tells about the dangers of our military personnel being armed. Every argument against military personnel being armed are the exact same arguments they used to fight concealed carry for civilians. None of those chicken little predictions have come to pass anywhere it’s been tried. If the military brass are so worried about their soldiers carrying, how about a compromise: any soldier who holds a concealed carry permit from any state is permitted to carry a firearm in federal facilities or military bases openly or concealed.
Bloomberg’s mouthpiece brings up the Posse Comitatus Act, but we’re not talking about arming soldiers to act as law enforcement, we’re talking about allowing them to be armed for their own protection and for the protection of those around them.
State governors are already starting to act, while the federal government is responding that recruiters should step up security by closing blinds. These days it’s really hard to tell the difference between real news and parody.
More on Everytown’s Efforts to End Default Proceeds
Everytown is apparently seeking a large ad buy ($12 million) in order to push what they are now calling the “Charleston Loophole.” This is very dishonest. First of, the bureaucrats had five days to act, and they did not. Secondly, there’s supposed to be follow up on default proceeds. There was not. This was entirely a failure of government. Default proceeds were intended to prevent people exercising their rights from having those rights held hostage to bureaucrats who refused to act. All it would have taken was a phone call. Default proceeds are not a “loophole.”
I’m also amused by Everytown’s attempts to inflate their numbers. Their claims of membership are laughable: “Everytown for Gun Safety says it has more than 3 million members and 40,000 donors.” I’m sure they have 3 million people who signed a petition, or had any other contact with their organization, like signing up for an e-mail list. I’m signed up for their newsletters, so I probably count as a member. If they were to use something closer to NRA’s standard, they have 40,000 members. They have 780,000 followers on their Facebook Page (who I’d bet count as members), and I’d wager a good number of them are pro-gun people keeping tabs. NRA has 4.2 million.
Nonetheless, Bloomberg’s money is the biggest threat we face. The gun control movement has never seen this kind of cash put behind it. We’re probably quite lucky that we’re dealing with Bloomberg now, after all our cultural gains of the last decade, and not dealing with him back in the 90s. I shudder to think what his money would have done to us back in the 1990s.
Again, They Are Coming for Your Guns
Another progressive, who totally aren’t coming after your guns, BTW, pens an article praising coming after your guns as a good and wholesome thing. You know what would convince me, as a gun owner, the lefties weren’t after my guns? Not constantly saying they are after my guns, and hoping I somehow don’t notice. Note that today they aren’t really arguing crime anymore. They are arguing suicides. They are going to take them away for your own good, you see. Because “the person most likely to kill you with a gun is yourself.”
This shows the folly of statistics, because the likelihood I will die by suicide is precisely or very near to 0%, and if by some very odd and dire circumstance I ended up going that way, it’s none of anyone else’s f***ing business but my own. I realize that in this is an age where everyone is out and public with their personal problems to any poor schmuck who will listen, but I don’t believe my personal problems are anyone’s albatross to carry but my own, and certainly aren’t any reason for someone to insert themselves into my personal business uninvited.
The gun control movement probably realizes that in this age, speaking out on suicide prevention by taking dangerous things away from people, whether they are suicidal or not, fits the cultural zeitgeist a lot better than the idea that we’d do better as a society if we minded our own business as much as we seem to enjoy minding everyone else’s.
Everytown Coming Out Against Default Proceeds
Bloomberg’s organization wants to extend the waiting period for handguns, essentially. The Brady Act requires a NICS background check, but in the case where the system delays for manual review, the FBI has three days to make a determination, or the sale is allowed to proceed under what is called a “default proceed.” The problem, as they see it, is that the Charleston mass-murderering racist was delayed by the system, and after waiting five days, managed to get the gun on a default proceed.
There is nothing broken about the NICS system itself. It was designed to work this way. Where there was a failure is in the FBI not following through to determine the status of his case. Eugene Volokh took a more detailed look into this issue, and determined that the the racist mass-murderer was arrested previously on a non-felony drug charge, but which was accidentally entered as a felony drug charge. Ordinarily, a misdemeanor charge doesn’t bar you from purchasing a firearm. Only people under indictment or information for felony charges are barred from purchasing (but not possessing) firearms. However, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(3) bars people who are “an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance.”
Bob Owens has written two articles already about how this is not a failure of NICS. I agree with him. Even if the drug charge was a misdemeanor charge, unquestionably the FBI had grounds to deny The Racist under 922(g)(3), but it did not follow through. A big of communication between FBI and ATF could have seen The Racist’s gun recovered. That did not happen. This is an inevitable failure of bureaucrats, not a failure of NICS itself.
They Still Have No Idea What They Are Up Against
New York Magazine has an article which talks about how a lot of leaders of the marriage equality movement are now turning their sights to gun control, thinking the same tactics that got such a drastic change in public opinion will have the same effect on people’s attitudes towards guns. I think this is wishful and misguided thinking.
But guns have a special salience now, after Newtown, after South Carolina, and veterans of the marriage movement see familiar terrain in guns — so familiar that they feel optimistic about being able to guide Americans to a similarly radical culture shift down the line.
The reason that culture shift happened so quickly is because the movement played off American’s sense of fairness. On the gun issue, that isn’t going to play. It’s a pure policy issue. If anything, gun owners can play to American’s sense of fairness to argue the gun control movement wishes to treat us unfairly.
Let us also not forget that the gay marriage issue also had a very significant generation gap. The issue won as much because it’s opponents were dying off, and the proponents were all young and energetic, as much as they changed minds. There isn’t any such generational gap on the gun issue. Young people tend not to be gun owners, but that probably has a lot to do with guns being expensive, and young people facing European levels of structural unemployment.
The gay marriage issue also had a large and passionate grassroots. Not only was their community fully invested in the issue, they got their friends and family invested too. They talked to people, and changed minds. Who does that sound more like to you? The answer is not the anti-gun movement. If the anti-gun movement had a patron saint, it would be Gladys Kravitz.
The article goes on to recite left-wing myth after left-wing myth about the gun rights movement.
- “Today, fewer households own guns than ever before”
- “gun lobby itself, which profits, obviously, by peddling fear.”
- “able to mobilize a small but zealous and loyal group of voters”
- “especially on background checks, a gun-protection measure which 92 percent of Americans”
First, he’s taking advice from Dan Gross, who runs the Brady Campaign, a group that post-Newtown basically surrendered control of the movement to Mike Bloomberg because of their history of ineffectiveness. The Brady Campaign had not passed any gun control legislation of any real significance since 1994. Dan Gross lives in la la land. Everyone knows it. I’m sure even Bloomberg and Feinblatt would agree.
These people still think “assault weapons” are achievable as an issue. That boat has sailed. Last I checked they were barely holding on to a majority on that issue, and that’s with loaded polling questions. They are still parroting 92% when they know damned well in a very blue state they only got 60% yes. The article ends by speaking of a value that is just fundamentally at odds with how Americans think about personal security.
In this redefining, he hopes to make a point. “Protection†isn’t an individual matter (a canard in any case, because having a gun in the house makes you exponentially less safe) in which individual patriarchs safeguard individual offspring. “Protection†is a communitarian thing, in which the safety of one’s own children depends on the safe habits of one’s neighbors.
This is a very European attitude, and one that is completely foreign to the American Experience, which has a tradition of armed, personal defense. This message will play very well with European Immigrants. It’s going to fall flat with Americans, even most liberal Americans. How are these people thinking they are going to make any difference at all when they don’t even understand the fight or who they are fighting?