Caleb lobs a grenade into the lubrication wars. I’ve never been convinced by the fancy oils either, but I do like to clean my guns with Gunzilla, because it has very little odor, and works well. I’ve done the brake cleaner thing, and while it’s quick, effective, and easy, I thought I could hear my brain cells crying in agony and dying every time I caught a whiff of the fumes. I agree with Caleb on motor oils though. If it’s good enough to keep a car running it ought to be good enough to keep a gun running. A common mistake people make with oil is using too much. ARs are especially sensitive to over-lubricating.
Category: Gun Rights
Wisconsin Carry Files Suit Over Training Requirements
I’ve long had a gut feeling that the courts would uphold training requirements as constitutional, but that once this would happen, training would quickly become the means by which hostile jurisdictions attempted to prevent people from exercising their Second Amendment rights.
This has been happening in Wisconsin, with the Department of Justice making unlawful training requirements not sanctioned by law. Wisconsin Carry is filing suit over this these practices, specifically over class size mandates.
In other civil rights struggles, the Courts have often tried to be conservative in their ruling, and later realized they had made a mistake. “Separate but equal,” probably being the most famous court-invented fallacy to attempt to avoid doing the right thing. Hopefully, like other civil rights struggles, once it becomes apparent to the courts the states can’t play with their ruling toy nicely, they’ll take the toy away from them entirely. That will depend, over the long term, how committed the courts are to protecting the right seriously.
Connecticut Gun Makers Being Wooed
They are meeting with not just one governor, but two governors. Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, and Dennis Daugaard, Governor of South Dakota, will be the suitors. Not that their job is that hard, when you’re currently stuck in an abusive relationship. How’s this for battered spouse syndrome:
“It’s nice to see someone come and say, ‘We like your jobs, we welcome your business,'” said Joe Bartozzi, senior vice president and general counsel at Mossberg. “It’s nice to be liked. It’s nice to be wanted.”
Leave that zero and get with the hero.
From the State that Bought You the Lautenberg Switcheroo
They get a Mulligan on gun control. From ANJRPC:
Today, the New Jersey Assembly Budget Committee passed Senate President Stephen Sweeney’s “centerpiece†gun legislation (S2723 / A4182) in a “do-over†vote, following the embarrassing failure of the bill to pass a roll-call vote of the Assembly Law & Public Safety Committee on June 6.  Assembly Democratic leadership brazenly rigged the system by moving the legislation to the Budget Committee, where they could better control the outcome and ensure the bill’s passage.
The bill passed along party lines, with 8 Democrats voting yes, and 4 Republicans voting no.
The Sweeney legislation throws out existing FID cards and replaces them with either a privacy-invading driver license endorsement or other form of ID; suspends Second Amendment rights without proof of firearms training; imposes a 7-day waiting period for handgun purchases; ends all private sales; and effectively creates a registry of ammunition purchases and long gun sales. Democrats have touted the bill as a “national model.â€
The bill now moves to the Assembly for a full floor vote, which is likely to occur on Thursday, June 20.  Please immediately call both your Assembly members and tell them to oppose all new anti-gun legislation, including A4182.  If passed by the Assembly, the bill could go back to the Senate next week for concurrence with Assembly amendments.
There was testimony from gun rights activists at today’s hearing, including ANJRPC Executive Director Scott Bach, who sharply criticized the Sweeney bill and ripped the process of swapping committees in violation of legislative rules.  “Anywhere else in the country that would be called vote-rigging,†Bach said. “Here, it masquerades as ‘legislative process’.â€
A recording of the hearing will be posted here within 24 hours. Scroll to Monday, June 17, 2013, then click “listenâ€).
Please watch for future ANJRPC alerts and updates.
Usually when you bring a bill up for a vote, if it loses, that’s too bad — it’s the end of the bill. Not in New Jersey, where apparently you can pull it in the middle of a vote when it becomes apparent it’s not going to go the way you want.
IL Attorney General Asking SCOTUS for Yet Another Extension
This is getting ridiculous. Apparently her excuse is that their poor Solicitor General is just such a busy guy. You know how this could have been avoided? Not running this whole thing down to the wire. I think at some point they just need to get slapped with an injunction preventing them from enforcing the current law. It’s time to stop playing games.
Yes, Gun Control is Still Pretty Much Astroturf
An MSNBC contributor e-mailed me looking for a statement. As a policy, I don’t return e-mail from the Administration’s propagandists, but I figured a public response would do just fine:
You have accused Mayor Bloomberg of being “Astorturf-in-Chief” and the gun control movement of being “astroturf” instead of a grassroots movement.
Mayors Against Illegal Guns now has 1.5 million supporters, and they organizing events in ten cities. The Newtown Action Alliance also held an event today on Capitol Hill.
Does the mean the “astroturf” efforts are becoming a grassroots movement for control? Or does it still just amount to “astroturf”?
What Bloomberg is likely defining as “supporters” are people who have gotten on his e-mail list. How one defines a supporter is quite flexible, but that’s a vastly different animal than a dues paying member. NRA actually has one of the strictest standards for membership of any interest group that plays in DC.
NRA has 5 million members. That’s 5 million people who forked over money, usually 25-35 dollars to become members, and who have to keep paying that every year to remain on the rolls. Voting members, which includes life members (who forked out anywhere from 300-1000 dollars) and people who have been members for 5 unbroken years, number 1.72 million by the number of ballots that went out for the last Board election.
But it’s not just that. Where are the anti-gun blogs? Where’s the anti-gun convention that turns out 82,000 people like NRA did in Houston last month? Why are we able to mobilize bigger protests ad-hoc than they can manage even with professional organizers and slick ad campaigns. If Bloomberg has grassroots why is his bus tour schedule not being made public? Perhaps because he is well aware our people will show up and risk MAIG not getting the media’s undivided attention?
If I wanted to play Bloomberg’s game, just doing a quick query on the blog’s database, I have 7139 supporters in just my small corner of the pro-2A universe. That’s how many unique people have ever commented on this blog. We’ve had 1.9 million unique people who have visited this blog since I’ve been keeping stats. Of those, about 260,000 have returned to the site at least once. The metric I use to determine how many regular readers I have comes out to about 2300 now, and 7000 over the years if I take the data back far enough. We have 520 Facebook fans, and between Bitter and I, we have 2500 followers on Twitter. I am a blog about gun politics, and that’s all I generally blog about. That’s a pretty niche topic, as things go, and I’ve never spent so much as a dime on an ad campaign, or made any effort to compile a list of “supporters.” What could I have accomplished if I had sunk even a million of Bloomberg’s money into marketing?
So yes, I believe the gun control movement is still mostly Astroturf. I am sure millions of Americans are willing to say they support gun control, and some might even be willing to sign up for an e-mail list. But it takes more than that to win in politics. Bloomberg’s 1.5 million doesn’t matter if none of those people are willing to act or vote on the issue. NRA’s 5 million people will act, and will vote, and largely on that one issue. We will crawl over broken glass to defend the Second Amendment. In fact, most of us would do more if necessary.
Bloomberg Peeing in a lot of People’s Pools
There’s been a lot of people getting upset at Bloomberg’s insistence in taking his fight a bit too far. Even Chucky Schumer seems to be getting a bit peeved with Bloomberg’s antics. It’s pretty simple to see why. If you count up the number of states that went blue in 2012 you get 25. If the Democrats are going to hold a majority in the Senate, they need to be able to appeal to red state voters. Even Chuck Schumer is more interested in holding onto power (and being Majority Leader someday) than he is in advancing gun control.
But that’s a separate issue from whether Bloomberg’s strategy is a smart one, if you concede Bloomberg is actually a true believer when it comes to gun control. Over the short term, I think Bloomberg’s strategy is disastrous. At best it weakens red state Dems with their base, and throws the seat and possibly the Senate to pro-gun Republicans. That lays the groundwork for us to take National Reciprocity, and make Bloomberg eat it (along with plenty of salt and a 20oz Coke). At worst for Bloomberg the ads have no effect, or actually help, in which case we can probably count on that Democrat to be a solid vote for us in the future. Not only that, but it would make Bloomberg appear impotent politically at a critical time for the Democratic Party.
Over the long term, Bloomberg’s strategy could be beneficial if he can make Democrats afraid to cross his money and influence. If he can win, he could succeed in cementing the Democratic Party as the anti-gun party, with gun control as a lasting major party plank. Will it work? It’s a bit of a long shot, but there’s only so much you can do when you’re just one rich asshole. Keeping the Dems anti-gun, and then waiting for the inevitable political winds to shift in their favor might be a strategy that can pay off eventually. But given the force disparity between the pro and anti camp, I think gun control being front and center will make it much harder for the Democrats to crawl their way back to a majority. Bloomberg needs to be careful. NRA is always careful not to pee in too many people’s pools. If you threaten to upset the apple cart too much, even your allies will turn against you.
Dean Heller Says No to Manchin-Toomey
Dean Heller, Republican Senator from Nevada, has said he’s unlikely to support any ban on private transactions by gun owners under any circumstances.
“What we’re doing is criminalizing any private transaction by gun owners,†Heller said. “…If we can get the onus off the law abiding citizens and make it a responsibility of those who have committed felons or adjudicated mental health issues, then I’m open for discussion, but not until then.â€
I’d agree with the author of the post that it would seem Manchin is barking up the wrong tree in trying to influence Heller’s vote. They need to switch six Senators to get to 60.
Serious Improvements in Carry Laws in North Carolina
Sean Sorrentino has the low down on what the bill would do. It’s not just carry either. It will eliminate the purchase permit requirement that’s a throwback to the era when they were trying to prevent the wrong kind of Americans from exercising their enumerated right to keep and bear arms. It should be up for a vote today. Let us hope this passes. This would be a major improvement for North Carolina.
Because People Might Repair Evil “Assault Weapons”
California is going after makers of repair kits, notes Dave Hardy. I really think at some point we’re going to need pre-clearance for some states, like we’ve had for the voting rights act. Congress needs to being these states into line. Most civil rights in our history haven’t been all that well protected by the courts. I has often taken congressional enforcement to actually do most of the heavy lifting, and I think some of these states may, in fact, require something like that. Just look at how hard it was to drag the Illinois legislature kicking and screaming in the face of a court order to modify their unconstitutional law?