Kind of like the guys fighting over the pretty chick at the prom. No doubt some folks in Fairfax are probably annoyed with this kind of stuff, but it’s a good situation to be in if you look at the bigger picture.
Category: Gun Rights Organizations
GOA Not too Cozy With Pink Pistols?
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In an interview, GOA executive director isn’t feeling too lovey dovey with the Pink Pistols, a GLBT gun rights group:
Stallard told me that the “Pink Pistols has good relations with national gun rights groups.† Larry Pratt did not think so.  His views can be summarized thusly: they should not have any rights; but, they do not deserve to be stoned to death.
Pratt began the discussion of gays by stating that “homosexuality is wrong.  So is adultery.† He objected to gays pushing gun rights just as he would object to “Adulterers for Gun Rights.† But, Pratt stated that while he objected to Pink Pistols “pushing it in my face, they do have a right to be offensive.â€
In the man’s defense, down the page he at least states for certain he doesn’t believe gays should be stoned to death. Regardless of what Pratt may personally think about the Pink Pistols or homosexuality, it’s not really relevant to his organization’s mission, so why talk about it?
Brady Campaign: Please Don’t Believe the NRA Democrats, Pretty Please!
It looks like Paulie is begging Democrats to ignore history, the advice of their past (successful) leaders, and scholarly research. In his post yesterday, he skirts around the truth in a plea begging Democrats not to go running into the arms of the NRA.
This myth that promoting and passing strict gun laws can be political suicide has its roots in the 1994 elections, when Democrats lost control of both houses of Congress. Bill Clinton was president and earlier in his term he supported and signed the laws restricting the sale of assault weapons and the Brady bill requiring that federally licensed dealers conduct background checks. In his 2004 autobiography he wrote, “The NRA …could rightly claim to have made Gingrich the House speaker.â€
But as Clinton also pointed out, there were a lot of other reasons for the game-changing defeats. The party in control almost always loses seats in off-year elections. It was to be no different in 1994.
Let’s look at the mid-term elections prior to 1994 to see if we can see just how true that is:
| 1982 | 1986 | 1990 | 1994 |
| 26 seats | 5 seats | 8 seats | 54 seats |
At no point in my lifetime was there anything close to the election of 1994. You can’t compare losing 5 or 8 seats to losing 54 seats. You can’t even begin to compare 26 seats – the previous record of my lifetime. So, yes, Paul is telling the truth. But, he’s hiding the fact that you’re talking about a handful of people losing their seats to more than 10% of the House changing hands. To paraphrase Joe Biden, that’s a big freakin’ deal. Paul can try to downplay it all he wants, but he can’t escape those pesky contextual facts.
Even beyond the numbers game, there is a little bit of truth in what Paul argues – NRA’s support can’t make or break every race in every election. If leaders piss off grassroots members of 20 other interest groups, it’s going to be tough for the members of one single group to outnumber the members of so many others. Not to mention, now that Democrats have done all they can to piss off not only Republicans, but a majority of independents, well, there’s only so much we can do as one single group.
However, the power of the NRA is at the individual district level. An Independence Institute study found that for every 10,000 NRA members, an endorsement will add about 3% to a candidate’s total. I think our own congressional race is a great example.
When the two current candidates ran against each other in 2006, the difference was a mere 1,518 votes across the entire district. Most of the district is made up of Bucks County, so I’m looking at their license to carry information to give estimates on just how many votes gun owners can provide. In 2006, nearly 4,500 people of voting age got a carry license in Bucks County. Add in the “current” licenses of people at the time, and you’re talking about 17,194 potential votes in the district. There’s no way to figure it up for the portion of Philadelphia included in the congressional district, but that portion of the city has a large number of firefighters and police officers who are frequently pro-gun. (Believe me, we’ve had lots of cops calling to find out who is endorsed by NRA this year.) Let’s safely say 20,000 potential voters.
Every single one of those votes matters, and NRA has had an active voter registration drive going the last few years. If we can pull a couple of thousand more votes out of those numbers, then the endorsement & promotion will make a difference.
As mighty as the NRA is perceived to be by overly cautious politicians and their advisors, thanks to the courage of leaders, scores of victims, and supporters of sensible gun laws, the gun lobby doesn’t make much of a difference on who wins and loses elections.
The Brady Campaign can’t point to a study of the impact of their endorsements in elections. They don’t have voters walking up to candidates with a voter guide in hand saying that the group’s support guided their votes. They can’t actually point to any races where their support did make a difference. In a year like this, NRA’s endorsement is likely to help boost the numbers by just enough to put some challengers over the top and possibly protect some incumbents.
Again, Paul is correct in that NRA doesn’t exactly get to handpick all of Congress. But, what they can measurably do is impact enough races that politicians clamor to us in order to pick up our votes in hopes that their race is one to benefit. So, once again, context matters.
More on GOA’s Grades
A commenter last night pointed me to GOA’s Political Victory Fund and this web site here where t offer a voting guide. But it still does not shed light on how GOA justifies such low grades for pro-gun Democrats. Thirdpower brought up the matter of Debbie Halvorson last week, and yesterday we had an attack on Walz. Halvorson has a longer record than a lot of newer Democrats. But what does GOA have on her?
- She voted for the bailout, which has exactly nothing to do with guns.
- She voted for three motions to recommit, which has about as much to do with voting against guns in national parks as the “no” votes on the final bill of GOA favorites Tom McClintock, Ron Paul, Michelle Bachmann, and Paul Broun and  vote against the final bill did. These people are all legitimately pro-gun, but it makes no sense to count Democrat procedural votes on the bill, and not count these votes on final passage.
- She voted on Obamacare, which has exactly nothing to do with guns, especially after Harry Reid (another favorite GOA whipping boy) got language inserted that protected the interests of gun owners.
- She voted for DISCLOSE, which I’ll give GOA dinging her on, since they weren’t exempted from it. But I will point out the only pro-gun organization that would have been affected by DISCLOSE is the NRA had it not gotten itself exempted. GOA spends practically nothing on independent expenditures, and groups likes SAF have a tax status that does not allow for them to participate in elections. This isn’t a big enough gun issue to throw all the other pro-gun Dems under the bus for. If you’re willing to sacrifice those relations to preserve an activity you don’t participate in materially, I question your political judgement as a single-issue organization.
Taken together, this says that GOA is not strictly a gun rights organization. It is a conservative organization that markets itself as a gun rights organization. It’s fine if that’s how they want to play the game, but I don’t consider it an effective way of protecting the Second Amendment.
As a citizen, I am certainly not happy with Obamacare, bailouts, or DISCLOSE, but as an NRA member I’m very pleased they are seeking a bipartisan consensus on the Second Amendment that works across ideological lines. Ultimately, that’s the only way to protect rights in the long term, and it’s been very successful to date. I’m hoping to see the Bradys bashing their heads against the wall for a long time to come.
NRA-PVF Starting to Spend Money
Even the New York Times is saying a favorable word this year. The bill is going to be fifteen to twenty million this election cycle. One of the ads they are running is against Joe Sestak:
In a year that most people aren’t too concerned about guns, this ad doesn’t give it more than a passing mention. The messaging works out in Pennsylvania because we have pro-gun conservative Republicans running against anti-gun leafy Democrats, in both our major state-wide races. Dems here haven’t gotten the message that being anti-gun is uncool yet.
The great challenge this year is that everyone is worried about big government, deficits, spending, and the economy. A message that Joe Sestak is a wild-eyed gun grabber isn’t going to carry as much water as saying he’s an out of touch big government politician, who, by the way, doesn’t care much for your Second Amendment rights.
Maybe We Need an ROA
Maybe we do need an organization to defend all of the Bill of Rights, and to defend traditional republican (small r) values. If so, I eagerly await Gun Owners of America to change its name to Republicans of America. It would be a more accurate description if this post at Red State is to be taken seriously:
While I don’t know enough about the Gun Owners of America yet, it is interesting to note that (contrary to the more liberal-leaning NRA) the GOA has given Tim Walz a “D†rating.  Perhaps the GOA is looking at the other nine Amendments to the Constitution and realizes that a politician who is good on one Amendment, but despises freedom in so many other ways, isn’t all that he portrays himself to be?
That’s great for GOA. But I have to wonder why this doesn’t look like a record of support on our issue. If GOA wants to become a generic freedom organization, I think that’s great, but they should give up all pretense of being a gun rights group if they want to go there.
Magical Falling Grades
Days of Our Trailers notices another case of questionable grading on the part of GOA. A common theme seems to be that they are Democrats.
Incumbent Friendly Policy
A lot of folks have questioned why NRA has a policy that’s incumbent friendly. This article pretty much nails the reason:
If 2010 is an “anti-incumbent” election, how can it be that 80 percent of the incumbents will be re-elected?
And as Glenn Reynolds points out:
Though based on the last several decades, an election where only 80 percent of incumbents survive is actually a big deal.
Yes, it is. The reason for an incumbent friendly policy isn’t because we should love incumbents for incumbency sake, but that they have a significantly high likelihood of winning their election, even this year, and that incumbency brings with it seniority, which brings with it the power to drive the agenda of the legislative body. From a lobbying point of view, once you find a friend, the last thing you want to do is toss him.
I’ve never bought into the notion of tossing lawmakers, because, like diapers, they need to be changed often. I’m in favor of tossing lawmakers when they stop serving liberty and start serving themselves. If we got a libertarian majority in Congress this November, I’d want to keep the incumbent re-election rate as high as possible as long as Congress were serving that end. The article points out:
Here’s a valuable piece of historical fact – Prior to the Civil War, it was not unusual for half or more of each new Congress to be freshmen. It was only after World War II that America’s incumbent re-election rate skyrocketed to its present 90+ percent level.
I would argue the primary driving factor behind a high incumbent re-election rate that people are rationally ignorant of politics, and as we’ve expanded the voting franchise, and increasingly consolidated the power of the media into the hands of the few, incumbent re-election rates have gone up. They probably should not be as high as they are, but perhaps the Internet has the potential to balance the media situation out sufficiently, so that better information on just how bad your current legislative critter is has more of a chance to come to the attention of your average Joe who barely pays attention.
In the mean time, NRA’s policy preferring incumbents is the smart thing to do.
Once Again, With Energy, the “R” is for Rifle
Red State is getting their panties in a bunch again because the “R” in NRA doesn’t stand for “Republican.” It’s no secret that NRA is endorsing many pro-gun Democrats. NRA seems to have gone out of their way this year, on the PVF web site, to explain their endorsements, especially for Democratic candidates. Obviously Red State is pushing GOA as an alternative, because GOA has never met a Democrat who is pro-gun enough for them. Does GOA want to explain why a solid pro-gun guy like Dan Boren (Democrat) has an A- while the rest of the (Republican) Oklahoma delegation gets solid As? Where did Dan go wrong? Do they want to explain why Markey, despite a solid voting record on our issue this Congress, is getting a D?  How do they justify a low grade of C for solidly pro-gun Jason Altmire? Or the same grade for Chet Edwards in Texas.
I maintain that GOA’s grades are a shameful scam on the American gun owner, as is their entire organization. NRA is coming around to being more transparent about their grading system. To the extent that NRAÂ can be transparent (and they are limited with how much they can be because of political considerations), that’s a good thing. Where is GOA’s transparency? Why is it, seemingly, that Democrats can’t be pro-gun enough for them?
The Second Amendment Post 2010
Jim Geraghty has pointed out a serious issue with the 2010 elections, from a gun rights perspective:
[…] it seems like a lot of rural Democrats who represent districts that voted for Bush and McCain have figured out that when they’re accused of being liberals, as long as they never vote wrong on guns, they can always point to their NRA endorsement and use that as cover. […]
This is the primary mistake many of these Democrats have made. Voting the right way on the gun issue can offer you some cover, but it’s not absolute protection if you get all the other voters out there angry at you. This means you can’t run in right leaning districts, vote for deficit busting government takeovers of health care, and expect to stay in office because you voted the right way on the gun issue.
The big question is what effect is this going to have on the Democrats disposition toward the Second Amendment going forward? Certainly after November, our opposition will be hammering on the point that, because NRA could not offer perfect protection, Democrats obviously have nothing to gain by being pro-gun. I worry that 2010 will undo many of the bipartisan gains we have made in this issue.
But it is worth pointing out, at least for Democrats, that adopting pro-gun views did lead to electoral success in rural districts before the Obama/Pelosi Health Care Reform Express started barreling down the tracks, with little concern over what political careers might get run over in the process. The lesson for Democrats is not that they have nothing to gain by being pro-gun, but that you can’t piss off multitudes of voters on other issues, then expect the single issue gun vote to save you. Even if all our people voted in lock step this election, we can’t stop an anti-incumbent tidal wave this big.