Anti-Gun Folks – Page 35 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Brady Center Sues to Implement NJ Smart Gun Law

ANJRPC is reporting:

This afternoon, the Brady Campaign and the Million Mom March (Mercer County Chapter) announced that they are filing a lawsuit to force the New Jersey Attorney General to formally report on the public availability of so-called “smart guns.”Â The lawsuit is intended to trigger New Jersey’s 2002 smart gun law, which could eventually outlaw the transfer of handguns that do not incorporate the technology.

Â “New Jersey’s smart-gun law is a dumb as it gets,” said ANJRPC Executive Director Scott Bach. “It forces you to use an unproven technology to defend your life, and then exempts the state from liability when the gun goes ‘click’ instead of ‘bang.’ If it’s such a great idea, then law enforcement shouldn’t be exempt, and the free market should be able to determine its viability.Â ANJRPC will spare no effort or expense to prevent this gun ban from going into effect.”

Â There will be a media frenzy covering this event.Â The first stories available online as this alert was prepared include the following:

NorthJersey.com

NBC40

yubanet.com

ANJRPC will provide additional details when they are available.

Just when you think it’s safe to start ignoring the Brady Campaign as irrelevant, something like this happens. But it does show why Armatix’s technology has to be killed with fire and the earth that bore it salted. Brady chose the more forthright path of just forcing the technology down our throats now, rather than repealing the law first, lulling us into a sense of security, and then reimposing it later.

Moms Demand Pressures Chipotle Mexican Grill

After some open carry protesters in Texas organized an open carry walk in Victory Park, near American Airlines Stadium in Dallas, Moms Demand took notice. From the organizers of the walk:

For those who want to eat after the walk, there is a Chipotle and an Italian place just down the road that are fine with Open Carry.

Accompanied by a picture, Shannon Watts immediately zeroed in to ChipotleÂ with the hash tag #BurritosNotBullets, and began bullying the company into following in the steps of Jack in the Box and Starbucks, presumably meaning, “Please make some vague statement about guns being icky, and not wanting them in your stores, so we can declare victory.”

But, to their credit, Chipotle isn’t budging so far. I say so farÂ becauseÂ the rifle OCers are doing their level best offer Shannon Watts another victory. This is exactly how OC activists “gave thanks” to Starbucks, and burned us. It wasn’t just in their stores, but all over social media as well. These companies don’t want their brands associated with open carry, gun rights, anti-gun hysteria, or gun control. Chipotle just wants to sell burritos and not be inserted into a contentious debate, just like Jack-in-the-Box wanted to sell burgers, and just like Starbucks just wanted to sell coffee. The problem is, many on “our side” don’t leave well enough alone, and keep taking actions that ignorantly draw the company further into a debate they want no part of.

Bitter and I went today and were sure to float a tweet that corporate would notice. I wore an NRA polo with a nice pair of khakis, but not AR-15. My pistol was concealed. The way to show Chipotle appreciation is to spend money there, and quietly let corporate know you did and why. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with sending them a tweet or two either (given that Chipotle markets organic, local food, to the kind of people who like that sort of thing, I couldn’t resist this tweet). But that’s going to be about the extent of our activism on this. I think we need to be very wary of attaching their brand to our cause.

Any reasonably high-profile company is well-acquainted with astroturf activist groups like Watts’s. That’s why they usually have the right instincts out of the gate in terms of telling them to get lost. Let us hope that Chipotle continues to stay out of the debate, but if they are to succeed in doing that, we have to let them out. If we show our “appreciation” by taking ARs and shotguns into their establishments, I think they will likely cave into Moms Demand, not because they really want to, but because they just want their branding nightmare to end.

NBC Sports Not Doing Well After Canceling Firearms Programming

Many of you may remember that in the wake of Sandy Hook, NBC Sports (which I would note is owned by Comcast who have very close ties to the White House) cancelled 3-Gun Nation and any other firearms programming. Exurban Kevin takes a look at how that move has worked out for NBC Sports. Apparently they replaced the gun shows with soccer, and it’s not going well. Score one for gun moms over soccer moms!

The best thing we can do to help our cause is to just tune out. Stop watching the crap companies like Comcast spew. Meanwhile, Republicans would do well to understand that the Cable TV magnates are not friends, and should work to deregulate their market and open it up to competition.

WaPo Freaks Out About 80% Lowers

Resident pearl clutcher Sarai Horwitz penned an article in yesterday’s WaPo talking about the latest “loophole,” meaning thing that is perfectly legal that we don’t like:

Zawahriâ€™s assault became one of the most notorious cases involving unfinished receivers, which are unregulated and have become readily available for purchase online and at some gun stores.

One of the most notorious? It’s the only one I’m aware of at all. But of course, they have to make this appear to be a bigger problem than it really is.

ATF officials say gun enthusiasts are effectively exploiting a loophole in the law designed to regulate firearms. Under the Gun Control Act of 1968, it is illegal for an unlicensed person to make a firearm for sale or distribution. Vendors, however, say that because the receivers are not finished, they are not firearms and therefore are legal to sell and distribute.

It’s not a loophole. The law has to define what a firearm is, so any firearm boiled down to its components will always have one serial numbered part that ATF considers “the firearm,” usually the receiver. ATF also makes determinations on what is and isn’t a receiver, so I find it interesting that ATF is classifying this as a loophole when it’s ATFs own determinations that make it so. What goes unmentioned is that you have to define what a receiver is. If you get ridiculous with it, hunks of metal and plastic suddenly become illegal.

But I suspect the target is home gun building. Before the gun control supporters and their helpful lapdogs in the media can make any progress toward making home building and home gunsmithing completely illegal without a license, they first have to demonize it, and make it appear to the uninitiated to be some kind of shadowy underworld rather than people engaging in a hobby.

Are There Grounds to Sue the Attorney General?

After doing a bit of research with the Wayback Machine, and reading over the letter Kane’s office sent to her counterpart in Utah, it looks like Kane actually revoked statutory recognition, rather than altering a reciprocity agreement. There are two ways to grant reciprocity under Pennsylvania law, the first is by formal agreement with the reciprocal state, and the second is by any state that both recognizes our LTC, and that “[t]he Attorney General has determined that the firearm laws of the state are similar to the firearm laws of this Commonwealth.”

Tom Corbett, who is now Governor, determined that both Idaho and Utah’s laws were substantially similar, and granted both Utah and Idaho statutory recognition. Along comes Bloomberg’s bought-and-paid-for Attorney General, Kathleen Kane, and without any change in either statesÂ law, she decided that because they issued to non-residents, they were not similar. It should be noted that Pennsylvania issues to non-residents as well, so this should not be a reason to deny statutory recognition underÂ 18 Pa.C.S. 6106(b)(15). I would argue that the statute in question does not offer the Attorney General the power to deny or rescindÂ recognition merely because she disagrees with policy, but requires her to articulate where the incompatibility lies.

The question then is, would this be actionable in court? I’d argue that she simply does not have any power, absent a change in the reciprocal state’s law, to rescind statutory reciprocity with another state merely over a political beef with the existing recognition? If this is not actionable in Court, then 18 Pa.C.S. 6106(b)(15) is essentially meaningless. In that case, we should remove the Attorney General’s discretion, and offer blanket recognition to any state that recognizes us, or even better, just recognize permits from any other state by statute.

How Many More Losses Will it Take?

By now most of you have probably heard the story of a Texas Open Carry incident involving long guns in a Jack-in-the-Box that reportedly came with an “enthusiastic” police response. It turns out the fact that employees were terrified and hid in the freezer appears to beÂ a lie by the Bloomberg gun control organization, but a lie can often get around the world before The Truth has a chance to get its pants on. (This goes double when you have an unquestioning media that likes a good story and is institutionally hostile to civilian gun ownership and the Second Amendment.)

The actions of this local group have apparently caused a rift in the movement. In truth, I think rifle OC is a bad idea generally, but I appreciate statewide group is at least sensitive to not causing panics by making it policy to notify police. But you have to choose tactics understanding the limitations of your people, and one problem I’ve long had with OC activism, is even while many people are smart about how they do it, it’s a tactic that is inherently attractive to attention whores, and it only takes a small number of bozos to ruin things for everybody.

As to be expected, Moms Demand Action began immediately pressuring Jack-in-the-Box to ban firearms in their restaurants. Â Yesterday, Jack-in-the-Box went full Starbucks, releasing a statement:

Creating a warm and inviting environment for all of our guests and employees is a top priority for Jack in the Box. The presence of guns inside a restaurant could create an uncomfortable situation for our guests and employees and lead to unintended consequences. While we respect the rights of all of our guests, we would prefer that guests not bring their guns inside our restaurants.

To be equally expected, Moms Demand Action quickly declared victory. Maybe it’s a good time to bring up my post from September of last year: “What Can Starbucks Teach Us as a Community?” Â So I’m now asking: how many more cracks and fissures in our gains in the culture wars are we going to see? How many more losses are we going to have to endure before these types of “activists” understand that they are only serving to erase gains we’ve made rather than build on them. I get that I’m one voice, on one blog, but I’m asking you rifle OCers, pretty please, with sugar on top, think before you act.

Protest / Counter-Protest

When all has been said and done, our side did pretty well for only having a few hours to put a counter-protest together. I counted 42 people in our group, and 25 people in theirs. Except they had their act together a bit more. They marched in from the center of Langhorne Borough, to Frank Farry’s office, while our group was already gathered outside the building. The CeaseFirePA folks immediately monopolized the area in front of traffic, which was smart on their part. Our group mistakenly went to join them, which only served to make their group look bigger than it really was, and given that many people on out side did not have signs, that wasn’t going to be a winning tactic.

Eventually our side kind of figured things out and spread out along the street to make our point to passing traffic. The good thing there is when people drive by and honk, you can’t be sure who they are supporting. This denied the other side the emotional self-satification of thinking everyone supports them.

Because there was only a few hours notice, few in our group had signs, whereas almost all the CeaseFire people had signs, and they also had a large banner. They had more time to plan. One thing it taught us to have signs on hand and ready to go at a moments notice. Folks honored the request not to open carryÂ long guns, and both our people and their people were sending people inside the office to make ourselves heard.

One thing I’d note is that a lot of people want to argue with the other side. I tend to think this is rather pointless. The folks that show up to these rallies are going to be true believers, and not amenable to having their minds changed. All it accomplishes is making their group look bigger. I’m a big fan of staying in two different areas. Our group was bigger, and that could have been very apparent to any person driving past, or to any reporters covering the events.

The purpose of counter-protest is a) denying your opponents the emotional satisfaction of believing they own the field, and b) making sure the media covers both sides of the issue, and c) demonstrating organizational effectiveness to the particular lawmaker targeted. I believe we accomplished a) and c) pretty well, and probably b) too, but we’ll have to see how the media spins it. If they end up misreporting the numbers, that’s because it was really hard to tell once this got going. I counted out our folks before they arrived, and counted their folks as they marched in.

As soon as they moved in, they occupied the prime real-estate.

They used bill numbers on a lot of their signs. I don’t think people tend to remember bill numbers.

Leadership Changes at MAIG/MDA/Everytown

Mark Glaze is announcing that he’s stepping down in June:

The executive director of the gun control group founded by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, which has emerged as a leading counterweight to the National Rifle Association, said on Wednesday he would step down from the organization in June.

Mark Glaze actually works for a DC-based PR firm called The Raben GroupÂ (which you can find out from the poorly redacted E-mails from the NYC FOIA dump). My guess is there isn’t a whole lot to read into this. The Bloomberg organizations have been staffing up, and my guess is they want their own hired staff doing most of the day-to-day work. It almost never makes financial sense to keep using consultants for long term needs, unless they have knowledge so specialized you can’t really hire in for it.

I would imagine another client would be a welcome change of pace for Mark Glaze, regardless of what’s going on. If I had Bloomberg as my client, talking about how his ticket to heaven was assured, and various other missteps, I’d probably quickly develop a serious drinking problem. It’s not just Bloomberg either. Shannon Watts is a walking PR disaster in her own right, as her very ill-considered response to Slide-Fire over the photobomb indicates. Her smartest option was to shrug it off, and she chose to go 180 degrees in the other direction. There’s just a lot of bullshit that goes along with being high-profile in any controversial issue.

As much as I might oppose Bloomberg organizations, they haveÂ displaced our previous opponents and set themselves up as the leading opposition in a very short amount of time, which is no easy accomplishment. When Glaze says he “planned to do some consulting,” I’m guessing he’ll be working for another client. As we always do with our opponents who decide to move on, we wish him the best of luck in future endeavors.

Slide Fire & Shannon Watts

In the case of dealing with Slide Fire, Shannon Watts just cannot let their slights against her go and she’s launching yet another hashtag to make her point that she really doesn’t like gun companies.

First, Slide Fire puts up a billboard and she’s offended that they announce their products are as American as apple pie which offends her as a mother. So, she starts a campaign to end it that doesn’t seem to go anywhere and it kind of fades away quietly.

Second, the billboard comes down and she proclaims victory, only to have the company come out and show that they only rented the space for a set period of time that had come to an end. Her campaign had nothing to do with it, and her “victory” is mocked just as she’s making a similar misstep with Staple’s.

Third, a company staff member showed up, took a picture with her, and then introduced himself. She wasn’t happy with that, but when Slide Fire wanted to publicly share their thanks to her for promoting their brand and making the single, local billboard campaign a nationwide viral success, well, she’s really unhappy now that people actually know she posed with a company representative.

Her unhappiness takes the form of a Twitter hashtag and a Facebook post where she tries to blame every uncomplimentary word online about her on the company that rents billboard space.

The Requisite Pearl Clutching Over #NRAAM

Bitter and I arrived back late last night, and had to return the rental car early this morning. So things are running a bit behind. I have some more thoughts on NRA that have been developing since Annual Meeting, but it’ll take a bit to figure out exactly what I want to say. Indy was a good convention. But it seems that no NRA Annual Meeting can be complete without the requisite article by a pearl clutching reporter who is shocked, shocked, about what’s going on behind those doors. This year’s award has to go to Cliff Schecter, Bloomberg stooge, and all around vile human being.

I’m pretty certain the only one who is terrified of the NRA Annual Meeting is Cliff Schecter and his fellow travelers. It seems odd that NRA would credential media known to be hostile, but as anyone who’s read Brian Anse Patrick’s book on NRA media coverageÂ can tell you, NRA feeds off this kind of hate. If anything, NRA is better off leaving friendly media to their own, and giving hostile media the “Right this way Mr. Schecter. We’ve prepared a tour of the floor for you that we sincerely hope willÂ fulfill your every prejudice and stereotype about NRA members, and make the hate flow from your fingers with ease!,” treatment.

As I walked past a row of AR-15s mounted on the wall on my right, I noticed a J.Crewed-out family who might have come from Bethesda or Greenwichâ€”two parents and their son, 12 or soâ€”checking out the action on the wall. I looked around for more like them and started to notice that while in the minority, they were definitely there, wandering the halls looking at the merchandise. For a moment it was comforting, but it suddenly occurred to me that their nonchalance about taking their kids to an arms bazaar might be even more eerie than the shaved-headed, ZZ Top-bearded guys who smelled like month-old cheese and looked like theyâ€™d been locked in their bunkers the past week making love to their antique Lugers.

The condescension there is so thick you could plant a flagpole in it. First is the surprise that people who looked “J.Crewed-out” would be in some third world backwater like Indianapolis, which can’t even support a proper art gallery! And not only does it seem Indianapolis has cultured and upper-middle-class looking people, but they bring their kids to NRA Annual Meeting.Â Sacrebleu!

Of course, as much as Mr. Schecter might want to think we’re the short bus rejects, I’d just like to point out that one thing I did not do this weekend was wander around the show floor sniffing other men’s beards, and I’m pretty certain that was the case for probably all of the 75,200+ other attendees. Talk about weird.