Category: Anti-Gun Folks

Shannon Watts doesn’t like people exposing her as a former corporate spinmeister. Apparently that’s bullying. The reason we keep beating her in legislatures is because there’s no real depth to Moms Demand Action. That must be why she’s decided to go corporate, but even there, she has no real track record.

What lost Starbucks was the OC nonsense from our side, and in a sense we didn’t really lose Starbucks, since you can still carry a firearm there. Staples has held firm and are obviously tiring of Watt’s antics. Facebook didn’t really give them anything they were asking for, but offered them a way to back down and save face by claiming a victory when none existed. That was such thin gruel that even the Brady Campaign, who pioneered the declaring victory from defeat move, couldn’t join the spin.

There was some discussion on Facebook among gun blogger folks about this article, which shows that Colin Goddard has made the leap to the MAIG train:

He’s transformed the traumatic experience into a drive to action. He is now a senior policy advocate for Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG), a national, bipartisan coalition of mayors, founded in 2006. The organization’s central mission is to keep illegal guns out of dangerous hands.

Previously, Colin Goddard was Assistant Director of Legislative Affairs for the Brady Campaign. This is further evidence that there’s a great deal of shake-up continuing to happen within the Brady organization. Before Sandy Hook, finances at the Brady Campaign weren’t exactly peachy. which you can even see on this summary from Foundation Center:

They had lost, or let go, some of their long time employees, including Dennis Henigan, and appeared to be starting to use the Brady Center for a lifeboat for those that remained. Colin Goddard, given that he was in the legislative arm of the Brady Campaign, really wouldn’t have any place in a 501(c)(3), which are much more limited in their ability to fund political activity.

Now we are able to access the Form 990s where the impact of the Sandy Hook massacre can be seen. See their 2012 Form 990 to understand what I’m speaking of. The 2012 990 shows a massive uptick in fundraising. I’d be willing to bet that Brady raised most of that amount in the period between December 14th and the end of the year, because they didn’t really have time to spend any of it. The Brady Campaign income increased by 2MM in 2012, but their spending had actually decreased. It looks, in fact, like Sandy Hook saved the Brady Campaign from ruin. We’ll have to wait for the 2013 990 to find out whether the Brady Campaign spent any of that windfall, or whether they pocked it to keep the outfit going a few more years.

The Brady Center, their 501(c)(3) entity, also did better in 2012, but not nearly as dramatically as the Brady Campaign. The Center only did about 1MM more in revenue for 2012, and again, I suspect most of that came between December 14th and the end of 2012. Again, they were positioning themselves to reduce spending in the center that year as well.

If the Brady folks are smart, they would have spent most of 2013 sitting on that money, trying to keep spending down, to keep the organization afloat for a few more years. It will be interesting to see 2013 and 2014 numbers, when they are filed, to see if contributions and other revenues from both the Brady Campaign and Brady Center returned to their normal levels, or even continued declining. It’s been pretty clear to me that to whatever extent there is a future for gun control, it rests with the Bloomberg funded efforts, and not the Brady organization. Brady is now, at best, a second string player in the gun control movement. The ultimate question is whether they’ll find a few foundational patrons to keep them alive as a shell of their former selves, much like what has happened with the Violence Policy Center, who did not get nearly the windfall from Sandy Hook in 2012 as other groups. To some degree, I have to wonder if some of the bigger financiers of the gun control movement are trying to stave off long time stalwarts of the movement from dying out, for fear the media stories will ruin the movement as a whole. The next three years will give us a much clearer picture of what the post-Sandy-Hook gun control movement looks like financially.

He was quoted in the ABA law seminar just one post ago, and now I find Prof. Chemerinsky in the OC Register. Now keep in mind this was a law professor that was being sold as a legal expert on this topic:

California law generally prohibits individuals from carrying concealed weapons. Such laws are common throughout the United States.

Excuse me? This isn’t true in California, and it’s not true at all in the rest of the country. A total prohibition was not the issue in Peruta, it was the interpretation of what constituted “good cause” to apply for a carry license. Illinois remained the last hold-out on the issue for several years, and they recently started allowing licensed concealed carry when the 7th circuit court of appeals struck down the prohibition. How can an “expert” on the Second Amendment not know this?

From 1791 until 2008, the Supreme Court always had held that the Second Amendment means what it says and that it protects only a right to have firearms for purposes of “militia” service.

Name the case where the Supreme Court said this? There isn’t one. Even the Miller Court did not go this far. I’m not going to rehash all this, because all the relevant scholarship on the matter was presented to the Heller court, and we prevailed. This is now settled law, and Chermerinsky is on the other side of it.

Moreover, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the court clearly indicated that laws prohibiting concealed weapons are constitutional. Justice Scalia, writing for the majority, used laws prohibiting the carrying of concealed weapons as an example of the type of regulations that are permissible under the Second Amendment.

Read Heller. Please dear God would you people read the f**king opinion honestly? In Heller, the issue of concealed weapons was discussed several times, and every time in the context of the state having the power to regulate the manner of carry. In every one of those cases, concealed carry was allowed to be prohibited because open carry was the more socially acceptable method of carry, and was readily available to people “carrying for a particular purpose—confrontation.” In Heller, a right to carry a firearm for self-defense outside the home was assumed. The other side continually cherry picks a few sentences out of the decision without any willingness to consider the decision as a whole. Unfortunately for us, there have been plenty of federal courts that have all too willingly embraced this cherry picking approach.

In the ABA Journal: How to tackle gun violence without violating 2nd Amendment rights? Legal leaders share strategies. Let me fix that for you: “How to tackle gun violence by nibbling at the Second Amendment around the edges. Anti-gun leaders share strategies.” It shows how delusional the other side is:

The challenge of crafting a legal response to gun violence without violating Second Amendment rights was tackled by the next panel. Juliet Leftwich, legal director of the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said that public revulsion over the 2012 Newtown, Conn., tragedy, in which a gun-wielding assailant killed 20 children and seven other adults, may have reversed a 30-year trend of weakening gun regulation.

Really? You passed new laws in a few states where you always had the power to burn us any time you generally wanted. The only real pickup was Colorado, and that started a backlash that would effectively kill the gun control movement post-Newtown. And even if the states friendly to gun control, they failed in New Jersey, and they failed in California. There’s such a thing as making lemonade from lemons, but there’s a fine line between that and outright delusions.

Chermerinsky noted that in general, courts tend to uphold laws regulating guns. “I can probably count on the fingers of one hand the number of decisions that have struck down gun regulations,” he said.

It’s not a numbers game. We can lose all decade long in the lower courts, but if we win key appellate cases, that has real impact. Illinois now issues concealed carry licenses, and the first are being mailed out as we speak. That was a direct result of the 7th Circuit ruling. California and Hawaii are inching ever closer to shall-issue due to a major win at in the 9th Circuit. Sure, we haven’t one in every circuit, but Illinois, California and Hawaii going shall-issue is what Joe Biden would call a “big f**king deal” and there’s honestly no other way you can spin that. The gun control people might win more cases, but we’re winning some very important ones.

UPDATE: I’d note that they held their conference at the National Constitution Center. I’ve reported on this organization before and their questionable stances on the Second Amendment. I won’t necessarily ding them for hosting an event, but since NRA has been known to do legal seminars in Philadelphia, I look forward to the National Constitution Center hosting one of those as well, just as a demonstration they are open to the view of the Second Amendment accepted by the Supreme Court.

They are starting to pick up some more press coverage, but the vast majority of it was at the starting point in Connecticut. They did draw some coverage from the NY Daily News when they passed through Harlem.

Originally they were scheduled to rally at Central Bucks West, but CGOPA had people call  CB West school district and ask them to reconsider allowing their high school to be used for a political event, and the school district agreed and booted the event. That forced them to, at the last minute, search for a new venue. They moved their event to a church.

Since I earlier criticized CGOPA, I at least owe them some praise when they do something I think is good. Leaning on the school district and forcing them to scramble at the last minute, sowing confusion among our opponents, was a smart thing to do. Also, deciding to cancel the counter-protest was also the right thing to do, since they moved their rally to a church.

UPDATE: Some coverage of the event in New Jersey, that just appeared.

Moms Demand Illegal Mayors, or whatever the two merged groups are called these days, are declaring total victory in the Facebook/Instagram policy statement that any reported post featuring an offer to sell any regulated product privately will generate a reminder to sellers that they shouldn’t violate the law.

But the Brady Campaign swiftly sent out a letter to their supporters highlighting that the anti-gun groups didn’t get anything they demanded at all, and this is not in any way a victory. The thing is, the Brady Campaign is right on this, at least coming from a gun banner’s perspective.

Remember that what the Moms/Illegal Mayors were demanding was a total ban on any kind of speech/photo that might result in a gun sale. Here are a few screen caps from their campaign:

The result is a clear invitation by Facebook and Instagram to sell & promote firearms using their platforms, just with reminders that they ask their users to follow the law. They also outline very specific language that they will look for and interpret as signals that show sellers may be trying to avoid the law so that sellers have a clear picture of what kinds of promotions Facebook will agree to host and those which it won’t.

The Brady Campaign is clearly pretty pissed off that Facebook has actually spelled out that gun sales, even private transfers that may not require a background check, are okay by Facebook and that their supposed “allies” in this movement are calling the continued sale of firearms, now with guidance from corporate, a victory.

Facebook has released their statement on the effort by anti-gun groups to ban speech & photos by gun owners. The other side is going to declare a win because they are recognized by Facebook for their efforts. In reality, the only impact is that if a post gets “reported” as being any kind of regulated product (not just firearms) for sale, the poster will be reminded that they should follow applicable laws.

That’s it. Facebook will pop up a message reminding you that you should follow the law if you post a gun for sale and someone complains to them about it. They won’t ban the speech. They won’t ban the images. They won’t even ban promotions of guns for sale at all.

The only speech-related restriction is that they say they will interpret phrases like “no background check required” as being a possible tip off that the seller may be willing to help others evade the law. They don’t require that private sellers agree to run a background check, just that they don’t make “no background check” a selling point of their firearm.

Under these rules, NRA can still do their gun contests, and local Friends committees can still promote the guns they’ll be giving away to FNRA dinner attendees. You can even still post that you’re going to sell a gun privately. The only thing is that Facebook can tell anyone who complains about the posts that they sent a reminder to follow the law.

If the anti-gunners had truly gotten what they wanted – a ban on firearm images or promotions of any kind – we would have completely pulled our personal and community Facebook accounts and no longer visited the site. I suspect that many of the millions of gun owners on the site would have done the same, and that’s not something Facebook can afford. It is, at best, a pyrrhic victory for the other side.

Staples apparently asked Mom’s Demand Action to leave their property, as they tried to deliver a petition to the CEO to ban guns from their stores. They claim successful delivery because they managed to deliver it to the security guard. I kind of got a kick out of that tidbit. A real problem that Shannon Watts and MDA have is that they are mouth foamers, and their overly aggressive tactics are likely to turn people off to their message. No one likes to be bullied, or feel bullied. Corporations, quite properly, generally don’t want to wade into controversial political issues, and that’s exactly what Shannon Watts demands of them.

Having given up on convincing legislatures to commit political suicide, she now turns to the biggest source of moral cowards in America, corporate board rooms. With that, she’s been pressuring Facebook to become more anti-gun. I say more anti-gun, because as the article points out, they already do not allow legitimate federally licensed gun dealers to advertise on Facebook.

I’m honestly not sure what she expects them to do? Set their systems to trigger on the word gun, or pictures of guns, and make sure no one is trying to sell something? Put something in their policy about not allowing people to sell guns illegally? I get these people are big on thinking pieces of paper and words can stopped psychopaths and sociopaths, but I have to believe she’s looking for a little more bigotry out of Facebook than that. Shannon Watts is a world class fanatic, after all.

If Facebook ends up banning pictures of guns, or talk about guns, I’m through with it. It’s already pretty much ruined itself. The only downside for the big is that Facebook is now in my top five sources of traffic. Maybe NRA should direct its 3 million followers on Facebook to call the company and tell them to tell Shannon Watts and her 147,000 rabid mommies to go to hell. Facebook has a lot more to lose if we leave.

UPDATE: Caleb with basically the same post. Shows what happens when I don’t have time to check in with the other bloggers.

I always become suspicious anytime someone talks about “building understanding and trust” with the firearms community. That is usually someone who is out to take something from you, but who thinks they’ll have more success being nice about it and fooling you. That’s the vibe I get from these “Evolve” guys, who are hawking this video:

On the surface there’s not really anything objectionable, since I don’t really support people being dumbasses with guns. But I think it’s the idea that they need to get this message the rubes, who clearly don’t know any better, and need their betters to guide them. They fail to recognize our own community has been preaching a safe and responsible behavior for as long as we’ve been a community, and that as a result, gun accidents are at all time lows.

We already have strong evidence that this group is a fraud that’s pushing gun control, given that one of their leaders was out after Sandy Hook lamenting the demise of gun control. We don’t need this group. They are snakes who take us for fools.