Category: Anti-Gun Folks

This is pretty thin gruel, if you ask me. Gun control folks are really clinging to hope for a Christie signature on the magazine bill.

“It is a very emotional issue on both sides,” said Christie, who is almost certain to have a bill on his desk this spring to sign or veto. “Gun control and the Second Amendment are enormously emotional, combustible issues. My job as governor is to be the adult in the room.”

Come on folks. He might as well have danced a little sidestep with that statement. I hold out the possibility he might sign it, but that statement doesn’t say anything. If he does sign it, he’s finished on the national stage.

Remember the Sandy Hook riders from a few weeks ago? They had to change their venue to a church because of complaints to the school that they were using it for a political rally. The school agreed. Looks like someone showed up at the church trying to hand out literature. The smart thing for our opponents to do would be to get the church to ask the person to leave. A refusal would be a trespass, and the activist would have known this. Instead, one of their people went into full-on rage mode and started going around acting like everyone’s psychotic den mother:

It all could have been over in a second if he had just been asked to leave by someone who had the authority to do so. Instead, she chose to make a spectacle of it, and came off looking like the crazy person in the situation. They make mistakes too. The key, I think, is for us to make fewer of them than they do.

For once I agree with an anti-gun person in terms of strategy. I think this is brilliant. He suggests economic sanctions against pro-gun states:

We can do that by using economic sanctions against states that allow the gun lobby to write the laws. How? By never moving to these states, by moving out of these states and by never vacationing in these states.

You want all those transplanted New Yorkers to move out of Eastern Pennsylvania and back to New York? Oh please, oh please, oh please, YES! Do it. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. This is strategic brilliance. Please implement forthwith.

There isn’t any failure Moms Demean Action isn’t willing to turn around and spin as a huge win. From Emily Miller:

Mothers Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, an organization funded by billionaire Michael R. Bloomberg, is falsely claiming a victory for forcing a billboard company to take down a Slide Fire advertisement in Chicago.

The truth is that the manufacturer contracted for the billboard to stay up for only two months.

And now that the two months is over, and the billboard rotates to another customer, as billboards are wont to do. Moms Demand Action declares victory! I know why they do this: because they recognize most of their followers don’t know the difference between a real victory and a shit sandwich, and hope they’ll keep donating and contributing enough to keep the organization relevant.

I can’t blame them for trying, because it’s not like our side doesn’t peddle in a lot of BS. But at least we’ll have open discussion about it, as grassroots. The fact that they can get away with such organizational discipline in the first place, shows this to be the hollow hull it really is.

I know many people think I should ignore the Brady Board member from Minnesota, but as a leader in their movement, I think it’s worth pointing out how they think. Earlier this week she managed to put together a coherent argument, even though the analogy fails on every level:

The truth is that only some gun sales require background checks and others not. They are all selling the same products. Guns are all potentially dangerous. They should all be treated the same as say cigarettes where store clerks ask for IDs for anyone who looks too young to legally buy them. In addition, cigarettes are now behind counters where someone has to ask for them. Why? Because we have decided that they are bad for your health and not good especially for kids and teens. Alcohol sales are regulated as well. IDs are required for purchases if the buyer looks too young to be legal. Why? Alcohol can be bad for people as well. But all alcohol sales are treated the same. All cigarette sales are treated the same.

All gun sales are treated the same by this analogy. At retail, I have to present ID, fill out federal and state forms, and submit to a background check to determine my eligibility to make the purchase. That’s the same everywhere a gun is purchased at retail. Similarly, I may have to flash ID to buy cigs or liquor if there’s a question about my eligibility (being 21 or older, which is pretty obvious). Now, in most states, it’s illegal for me to transfer liquor or cigarettes to someone who isn’t eligible (under 21 or 18). But there’s nothing to prevent me from transferring or selling either to someone over those ages, and the only thing preventing me from doing so is the law itself.

We do not make it a felony for me to take a bottle of wine to a friends house for him to try out. When I bring a friend over, I can let him have a bottle of beer. I can even pay a friend who helps come over for some home improvement with a case of beer. For smokers, it’s not illegal to bum a cigarette off someone. If I decided to quit drinking, I could still sell my wine collection to someone in most states. Now, you can’t sell your homemade wine, but you also can’t sell your homemade gun. You can’t make moonshine legally without a license, but nor can you make a machine gun without the same. You can’t be in the business of selling alcohol in most states without a license, but you can’t be in the business of selling guns without a license either. So aren’t alcohol, tobacco, and firearms already regulated quite similarly? Actually, firearms are regulated more severely. I don’t have to fill out forms to buy booze or cigarettes, and I don’t get carded much these days.

What Joan proposes is that the only people who can transfer a firearm are federally licensed dealers. If we treated tobacco and cigarettes the same way, you wouldn’t be able to transfer any alcoholic product to another except through a liquor store, where the store would charge you a significant price of a bottle of wine. Only the liquor store could legally determine eligibility. Someone bumming smokes off you would have to go to a licensed cigarette outlet, and they’d have to authorize the transfer of the cigarette, which of course they’d charge for since you’re wasting using up their valuable time.

I point this out not because I expect to change Joan’s mind on this, but to show how shoddy their thinking is on these things. They act like it’s just common sense, when we treat no other consumer product, even dangerous consumer products, that are restricted from certain persons, the same way Joan proposes we treat firearms. It could be argued that you can’t see a criminal record as apparent as someone age, and they might have a point. But that doesn’t necessarily translate into prohibiting all transfers that don’t go through a retail dealer.

Bloomberg on whether he can outspend the NRA: “Oh sure!” But then he backtracks and notes he’s not the only funder of this. OK then, pull all your money out, Mike, and lets see how well these groups survive on their own. There’s more to this issue than money, and Bloomberg has yet to learn that. He has also yet to learn when he says that he can outspend NRA, we hear that he can use his money to drown out our non-billionare voices. NRA isn’t funded by a rich patron.