Category: Gun Rights

Surfing Etsy for some any interesting antique NRA memorabilia, I came across someone selling old magazine advertisements, including one of an old “I’m the NRA” ad that featured a sitting (at the time) Governor of what is now a deep blue state.

Governor Victor Atiyeh was a Republican governor of Oregon who served out two terms and also, according to Wikipedia, the first elected governor of Arab descent in the US. According to an index of archived materials about Gov. Atiyeh, the ad was apparently created between 1983-1985 during his second term. The index also mentions some interesting collections:

Clippings, correspondence (including copies of outgoing letters from Atiyeh), and a preliminary drawing of a gun case Atiyeh commissioned for one of his guns. Case of medals Atiyeh won during shooting competitions, as well as one Dolores Atiyeh won.

The Dolores mentioned is his wife. That indicates that they both enjoyed competitions. Based on the years mentioned in that index, some may even be from after the years he was first elected to the Oregon legislature.

The legislature has passed a bill to end private transfers in Nevada. They are already attacking the Governor on the issue. It is essentially backdoor registration. If you live in Nevada, call the Governor and demand he veto the bill.

A reader had a good question in the comments yesterday that I thought would warrant a separate and hopefully not too rambling post. He asked, given that the “readily restored” language is nothing new, why we’re concerned about this in Colorado right now. There is, starting out, a slight difference in the language between the Colorado ban and the now expired federal ban. The federal ban covers “readily restored or converted to accept, more than 10 rounds of ammunition,” while the Colorado bans any magazine “that is designed to be readily converted to accept, more than fifteen rounds of ammunition.”

When it came to the federal ban, what the term meant was generally something left up to the regulating agency, which for federal purposes would be BATFE. The Courts will generally defer to the agencies interpretation of what these terms mean. Courts will also look toward legislative intent, as in what did the legislature intend to do, when determining the meaning of specific language. During the federal ban, the ATF never took the position that “readily restored or converted,” meant that any magazine with a detachable floor plate would be contraband. I don’t think, under the federal ban, there was ever a case of someone getting busted for a magazine extension, but to some degree during the federal ban you possessed these things at your own risk. It’s just that the feds never chose to pursue an interpretation of the ban that covered magazines with detachable floor plates.

Anyone looking to understand the issues at hand in Colorado ought to read the federal complaint challenging the Colorado law. The issue in Colorado is somewhat different, because the legislature did not give any regulatory body the power to make regulation as to what was or wasn’t covered. If you look at the law itself, regulatory power was only granted to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation for the purpose of regulating the marking of magazines. That means whether a magazine is contraband or not is going to be up to individual prosecutors and law enforcement agencies, and then the courts will have to sort out the meaning. In addition, both Governor Hickenlooper and the chief sponsor of the Colorado magazine ban have stated that magazines with detachable floor plates are covered by their ban. This means that anyone prosecuted for having, say, a Glock 19 magazine, which has a detachable floor plate and holds 15 rounds, would have a steep hill to climb to argue in Court that it would not be covered under the ban.

It should also be noted that the federal ban would likely have been vulnerable to the kind of challenge currently being waged in the federal courts in Colorado right now, it’s just that we did not have a remedy under the Second Amendment at any time during which the federal ban was in place, because Heller had not yet been decided in favor of an individual right.

Apparently Obama didn’t send anyone to sign us on, but the Administration is hinting that it will sign on later after the translation.

“We look forward to signing it as soon as the process of conforming the official translations is completed satisfactorily,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said today in a statement.

We’ve been closely following the activities of OFA, and it’s telling that gun control hasn’t been on the agenda now for several weeks. Makes you wonder just how dedicated Obama is to his gun control agenda. If he feels like he has bigger fish to fry, that’s fine with me.

Since I was pretty busy late last week, I have some stories building up in the tabs I meant to have something to say about, but for now better just link before things get too stale:

Maine Senate rejects gun control.

Five reasons Forbes is wrong on 3D printing. I have some disagreements with Jacob on this topic, but he’s mostly right. Absent a serious revolution in 3D printing, you won’t, for instance, be able to make hardened parts like barrels through additive methods. At least not any barrel that would survive long.

Pennsylvania gun control advocates are delivering petitions to call for background checks. Except we already ban private transfers of handguns in this state. Despite the fact that long guns are hardly ever used for criminal purposes, and despite the fact that we’re constantly hearing that background checks just aren’t enough when it comes to pistols.

One problem with challenging gun control laws that only affect 18-20 year olds is that you constantly have to keep hunting for plaintiffs.

How the NRA never ends, by someone who pretty clearly doesn’t understand this issue at all, nor its political dynamics.

Democrats still aren’t being ruthless about gun control. The reason for that is we are, in opposition to it.

Another “I’m a gun owner, but…” story. He’s looking for a gun rights group that supports gun control. Good luck with that.

Looks like a deal was reached in Illinois. Hopefully it’ll provide a base for improvement, but I’m not happy about how lawmakers behaved in this whole thing. John also has a rundown of the bill’s key points.

The latest poll shows that 62% of the American public wants the Senate to move on from gun control. Only about 33% want them to have another vote. But I thought gun control was popular? I thought 90% of Americans were demanding gun control now? Also:

Data collected since 1993 by the Pew Research Center show that Americans are more closely divided on gun policy now than they were in the 1990s.

Respondents indicated 50 percent support for “gun control” and 48 percent for “gun rights” in May 2013, according to Pew. By contrast, the polling firm found 67 percent support for “gun control” and 29 percent support for “gun rights” in March 2000.

Even less popular now than it was a decade ago. That’s not a mandate for what people like Bloomberg want to do, no matter how they try to spin the polling.

The California Senate passes a draconian gun bill, which, according to the Firearms Policy Coalition, will effectively bans all semi-automatic firearms, and requires registration of those remaining. No more bullet buttons, no more anything. No state that’s ever managed to pass a certain number of gun laws has ever done anything except get worse. Once they have broken gun owners as a voting bloc, they’ll do what they please, when they please to us. Colorado is starting to tip, but it is not too late for Colorado. The rest of the states are either going to be saved by the courts, or by federal preemption. For approximately 1/3rd of the US population, they effectively don’t have a Second Amendment right.

I can believe a lone story about NRA’s demise, but when two sources write essentially the same story, someone is shopping this meme around. The first question is who, and the second question is why. As Joe points out, NRA has had a banner year, and so did other groups. Who’s passing these articles around to media outlets is hard to say, and speculation wouldn’t accomplish much. But I will speculate on the motive. No one wants to sink time, resources or money into a cause that they think is lost. This is aimed more at convincing the supporters of gun control than it is anyone else. If they are to build a grassroots movement, they first have to convince people that the cause is not lost, and that it is winnable. I suspect a lot of groups are seeing interest in the topic fade. The media certainly seems to have moved on to other issues, given that I’ve seen a precipitous drop in news stories about gun control. This is worse news for our opponents than it is for us, so you get the Baghdad Bob routine. This is probably a good sign things in the gun control movement are not as swell as they are making things out to be.

Bloomberg’s money can still certainly do a lot of damage, but only in the sense that the ads he finances can help paint candidates and politicians as being out of touch with the mainstream, and only as far as he can conceal who’s financing the ads. What they need genuine grassroots activism, but that’s hard to come by when people think gun control is a lost cause.

UPDATE: The Philadelphia Daily News throws in their two cents as well, on the demise of NRA meme: “Have six sweeter words ever been uttered?” I can think of six words to describe this article, but none of them are sweet.

UPDATE: The Guardian joins the meme.