The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
March for Our Lives is funded by a small number of rich assholes:
The group’s 990 tax form shows another 38 donations totaling between $5,000 and $100,000, which together accounted for an additional $876,114 of revenue. The remainder, just 0.5 percent of total receipts, came from those giving less than $5,000.
It’s organized as a 501(c)(4), which aren’t required to disclose public support percentage, which I’m sure would be abysmal.
Attorney General is often a good stepping stone to Governor. So if you have those kinds of ambition, you’ll want an issue that isn’t liable to get a Virginia-sized revolt going, but that will please your party’s paymasters. Shapiro has found his issue. Bloomberg has a huge hard-on for stopping “ghost guns,” so if you ask me, that’s what this is about. It’s a good old fashioned moral panic among the right kind of people, and these days, thanks to social media, we do love ourselves some moral panic.
Granted, this is just about the most useless thing in the world: literally the only person this is going to deter is someone who has no ill intent. The only thing I can think of that’s more useless are “no guns allowed” signs where the sign is basically the security plan. Shapiro has decided that hunks of inert metal need to be regulated. I suppose you could throw it at someone and cause a decent head injury.
Shapiro’s opinion hinges on the definition in the UFA of “may readily be restored.” OK then. How much machining is needed to qualify? Notice he doesn’t say 80% lower. Is a block of aluminum now a firearm? I have literally no idea how to comply with this opinion. It’s essentially nonsense.
Attorney Josh Prince is of the opinion that if taken to court, it would not end well for the commonwealth, and I hope he’s right.
James Michael Curley, a four-time mayor of Boston, used wasteful redistribution to his poor Irish constituents and incendiary rhetoric to encourage richer citizens to emigrate from Boston, thereby shaping the electorate in his favor. Boston as a consequence stagnated, but Curley kept winning elections. We present a model of the Curley effect, in which inefficient redistributive policies are sought not by interest groups protecting their rents, but by incumbent politicians trying to shape the electorate through emigration of their opponents or reinforcement of class identities. The model sheds light on ethnic politics in the United States and abroad, as well as on class politics in many countries including Britain.
Gun Control is effectively being used for this purpose by the Democrats, and it’s probably not as destructive to a blue enclave as redistributive policies would be, since gun owners are generally less common in the upper classes, and those that are can afford to get around gun control laws anyway. Sure, you’ll loose skilled trades, but you can import replacements, and they will also conveniently vote the right way.
I’ve been saying the boogaloo will probably start in Oregon, but I might need to rethink that prediction, since it seems Oregon Democrats are smarter than Virginia Democrats.
Democratic Virginia Rep. Donald McEachin suggested cutting off state funds to counties that do not comply with any gun control measures that pass in Richmond.
“They certainly risk funding, because if the sheriff’s department is not going to enforce the law, they’re going to lose money. The counties’ attorneys offices are not going to have the money to prosecute because their prosecutions are going to go down,†he said.
McEachin also noted that Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam could call the National Guard, if necessary.
Call out the National Guard to enforce gun control? That’ll turn out well, I’m sure. That move totally has never sparked a revolution at any point in our past. These people are absolutely out of control.
So how does Governor Blackface think this works? How do you determine whose funding gets cut off? If a county prosecutor exercises discretion to not charge an otherwise law abiding person with violating these unconstitutional laws, does that trigger the funding cut? What triggers the funding cut?
This seems to be going viral in the shooting community on social media. So much so that a reader from Colorado on Facebook sent me a message asking if it was my club. Then I noticed Illinois folks I know commenting. It is not my club. We were never this Fuddy at our Fuddy-Fudd Fuddiest, and we’ve gotten rid of a lot of the rules like this. This is a club up in Lycoming County, PA:
The rifle rule won’t even allow for high-power practice, and even bullseye rapid fire is 5 shots in 10 seconds. I suppose you could do your rapid fire string, and wait 50 seconds, and then shoot another one. But this does show this is not a club for actual shooters of shooting sports people are shooting today. Despite the fact that we’ve had our share of dumb rules, my club has always had the advantage of having membership that, for the most part, love the shooting sports. That’s not the case everywhere.
Yes, this club will likely die with the generation promulgating rules like this. The comments I see on social media are correct on that count. But I also think it’s incumbent on younger shooters to do what it takes to save places like this. Once we lose a place to shoot, we will never get it back. The club culture is also something unique that is worth saving. You won’t always succeed. There are clubs that are too far gone. But I found this advice seen on Facebook to be telling.
Fudds. I get it. But complaining will not help. Showing up at membership and board meetings will help. Showing up with a lot of guys helps more. Letter writing helps. Running for office helps. Being professional about it all helps. And if you “walk in the Fudd’s shoes” for a month you may discover the new policy may not be as stupid as you think. Sadly… 99% of rules exist only for the 1% that seems to mess things up for everybody. I would not put up with the new rules either and there may be an intelligent solution around it. Fudd’s do not care about complaining. They hear it all the time. You have to become a force.
That’s absolutely spot on, except for the part about “not be as stupid as you think.” I’d bet it’s about as stupid as you think. But that was clearly written by someone who has been very involved in club life. In most cases, club leadership is not as Fuddy as the caricature you’ve built in your brain suggests. Just in that position, you see a lot of idiocy, and it becomes temping to deal with that idiocy by rules. It’s the same temptation lawmakers face: when the only tool you have is a hammer…
The drive to do something, is huge. It’s not restricted to anti-gun people. There’s plenty of that attitude to go around.
Bitter has been watching coverage of this possibly foiled mass shooting from her old neck of the woods. Once the local news mentioned the shooter was confronted by an armed citizen, the Facebook Live feed was cut. I’m not kidding I heard that and shouted out to Bitter, “Kill the story! Kill the story! Priority one! The rubes must not know!” Not a minute later, Facebook cut the feed.
It’s looking like a domestic. So possibly the armed intervention wouldn’t have mattered. The local news is covering the armed intervener, but I can promise you this will not make any national news.
… Gun control advocates: “We have to pass more gun control, like they have in California, to prevent the kind of tragedy that happened in California.”
Look out, The Inquirer is op-eding! Seriously, this displays so much ignorance about guns and ammunition, it’s astounding. This is the kind of stuff I’d expect children to come up with. But this was vomited onto paper by an adult and put up as an op-ed by presumably adult editors:
Today, one can walk into a gun shop and purchase, for instance, a .22, .38, or .44-caliber handgun. Most firearms are built to accommodate one size round only. So here’s what would happen if the manufacture of today’s standard-size rounds were outlawed, and .23, .39 and .46-caliber rounds took their place: Eventually, gun owners would run out of the old ammo, and their weapons would become paperweights.
Oh my God. Seriously? I don’t even know where to begin. But I’ll hit a few points:
For most firearms, this would be a barrel change, and that’s about it. Criminals will have no trouble obtaining new barrels for old guns.
Ammunition can be manufactured in basements. At this point the only parts I order out for are primers and powder. I know someone who casts and polycoats bullets in his basement, with a machine that makes thousands at a time. This very very stupid proposal by a very very ignorant person isn’t going to change that. I have enough brass to keep shooting for a decade or more. And for new brass? Presumably the police and military aren’t going to be made to retool, so there will still be plenty, and you can’t regulate it. It would be more pointless than regulating pot, which at least smells bad.
Lastly, does it matter if someone gets shot with a .22 or a .23? Seriously. Grow up. Even after this law is passed, what have you accomplished? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Mexico has restrictions on ammunition similar to what this guy proposes, and Mexican cartels have no trouble obtaining restricted firearms and restricted ammunition, and a .38 Super will kill just as readily as a 9mm.
The Supreme Court has denied cert in the Remington case. At issue is whether Remington violated Connecticut’s Unfair Trade Practices Act. From the Connecticut Supreme Court ruling that was on appeal to SCOTUS:
Specifically, if the defendants did indeed seek to expand the market for their assault weapons through advertising campaigns that encouraged consumers to use the weapons not for legal purposes such as self-defense, hunting, collecting, or target practice, but to launch offensive assaults against their perceived enemies, then we are aware of nothing in the text or legislative history of PLCAA to indicate that Congress intended to shield the defendants from liability for the tragedy that resulted.
The end result will likely be that states pass laws that eliminate or frustrate the firearms manufacturers ability to market. Much like happened with tobacco. Clearly now there’s significant legal hazard in marketing firearms.
UPDATE: Dave Hardy, who actually practices appellate law, has a take on this as well. He seems to suggest the plaintiffs still have quite an uphill climb. But discovery will now proceed.
Gun control groups massively outspent Second Amendment organizations in the Virginia elections that brought Democrats control of the state legislature, dropping at least $2.5 million into more than a dozen races in suburban swing districts. Yet we hear all the time about the NRA’s spending, and how politicians who support the Second Amendment are really just “in the pocket of the gun lobby.†Why shouldn’t the same be said of politicians who rake in even more cash from anti-gun groups?
Because it’s OK when they do it. I’ve said before, they aren’t against money in politics. They are against your money in politics. The issue for Bloomberg was that in his early efforts, it became apparent Virginia would only be bought at a higher cost. All Bloomberg had to do was boost spending and wait for the demographics of Northern Virginia to tip the state.
What demographics, you might add? For 40% of people in Fairfax County, English is not their first language. It has been flooded by new immigrants. Most of those immigrants are going to be working in service jobs for federal workers and government contractors who are the main source of income for the areas. Other than the defense industry, those demos aren’t exactly rich farming grounds for Republicans. And the Dems have historically owned immigrant communities. These aren’t favorable demographics for gun rights. Sorry, but that’s just the truth.
The bluing of the Philadelphia suburbs is another beast. One factor is the ring counties are also dealing with out-migration from cities where Dems routinely get 80% of the vote or more. The other is the shifting political coalition plays against the GOP here.
Blue collar workers are traditionally the democratic voters in the ring counties. Educated upper middle class households used to form the GOP’s core base around here, and that has shifted to being the core Dem base. That trend started with Bill Clinton. While the blue collar vote is changing, it’s not changing fast enough to offset losses. Upper middle class voters are leaving the GOP faster than blue collar workers are coming over to it. The GOP leadership that have held power here, really since the Civil War, have also not adapted well; they are still partying like it’s 1985 and running candidates that appeal to their old base. Fitzpatrick held on because the Dems ran an awful candidate against him. That luck likely won’t hold.
“But Western PA has almost all gone red!” That’s great, but Western PA is also depopulating. Pennsylvania’s demographics haven’t changed even a fraction of what Virginia’s has. But gun owners are going to have to get their acts together to fight off what’s coming, because the fact is when elites decide they prefer a certain policy, say, gun control, they will usually get their way eventually. I don’t for a minute believe gun rights is a lost cause, but we can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing and expect to keep winning.