The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
The naive credulity these people have towards the power of government, their blind faith that they can tamper with the machinery without it hurting anybody, differs in kind nor quality not one lick from the most snake-handlin’ Pentecostal’s faith that Jesus will keep the serpent from biting.
They look down on people of faith, but they are just as much the same. Even worse, because they put their faith in men.
Colorado voters are mobilizing for the signature-gathering phase of another recall election, and Democratic interests groups are getting quite dirty and nasty with their tactics to keep from losing additional seats. The Democrats backing Evie Hudak are taking to scare tactics by “warning” voters that people asking for their signatures on recall petitions may be sex offenders or criminals coming to the homes. The organization listed on the warnings say that attacks and fake warnings are justified in order to keep the Democrats in power.
The door hanger warnings came back in October, but they have stepped it up this month with an official-sounding robocall telling voters that if they sign the petition, they are releasing their personal information to possible criminals. The media has picked up on these stories when worried voters called them asking to know why the police aren’t doing something about these supposed criminals going door-to-door.
According to a grassroots report out of Colorado, several signature gatherers for the recall were told by a supporter that he would be going home to get a gun to shoot them.
Democratic Senate leaders are doing their level best at making the people lobbying for Brady feel better about the current state of things, by telling them that the issue isn’t dead. It’s just a matter of getting the House to pass it first.
“I believe if the bill were taken up in the House that it would pass. And when it passes the House, some senators … would no longer have the excuse, ‘It’s no use my risking my political career because it’s not going anyplace in the House,'” Pelosi said. “Let’s turn that around, pass it in the House and just put the pressure on to take up the bill. Why not?”
This is just posturing for the base ahead of the 2014 election. Holding out the possibility that a fresh tragedy can always alter our position relative to our opponents, I doubt there is going to be much enthusiasm to take up the issue again in the Senate, and the House isn’t likely to bother with it, but it does have an uncomfortable number of co-sponsors.
The Thompson-King bill has 185 co-sponsors, including three Republicans, but Pelosi said there are “at least 30 more” House lawmakers who would support the measure if it came up for a vote.
BTW, the two Republicans who signed onto Thompson-King, the House version of the Manchin-Toomey senate bill, are my Rep, Mike Fitzpatrick, and PA-7’s rep Pat Meehan. Both had NRA endorsements. We’ll see whether or not they keep them.
Perhaps they heard the news that a 3D printed gun was made out of metal, using Selective Laser Sintering. This is an expensive process, outside the where the technology is as far as the hobbyist is concerned, but technology always gets cheaper. Though, Perhaps Philadelphia City Councilmen just sit around thinking of ways to screw the Second Amendment, when they aren’t busy allowing the city to continue to circle the bowl. Regardless of the motivation, Philadelphia City Council is looking to outlaw the 3D printing of guns.
“The prohibition that city ordinances can’t overcome as it relates to state legislation is primarily ownership, transfer of a firearm. This goes to manufacturing,” he said. “We’ve spoken with the Law Department. We believe that if there is a challenge in the court system, it will be something we’ll be able to defeat.”
This is true, but there’s another element of the UFA they are ignoring:
No political subdivision may bring or maintain an action at law or in equity against any firearms or ammunition manufacturer, trade association or dealer for damages, abatement, injunctive relief or any other relief or remedy resulting from or relating to either the lawful design or manufacture of firearms or ammunition or the lawful marketing or sale of firearms or ammunition to the public.
It could be argued that this only means that subdivisions can’t sue manufacturers, but I would argue this is further evidence the state intended to reserve this body of law for the state legislature. Another question is whether a prosecution would be considered an “action at law.”
Regardless, I would not expect this ordinance to necessarily to go down. As we’ve seen, Pennsylvania courts will do what they can to screw gun owners. We’ve seen it with the law against firearms registries that the courts have ruled does not actually prevent the state from running a registry, as long as they call it a record of sale. We’ve seen the courts ignore plain meaning when it comes to reciprocal licenses. So I don’t exactly have great faith the courts will do the right thing here.
As Terry McAuliffe was starting to poll into the double digits in the Virginia gubernatorial race, gun control groups decided that it was a great time to throw their resources into the election so they could claim it was all about gun control.
However, the serious political observers disagree. The Washington Post actually declared Bloomberg the political loser of the day since his big last minute gun control ad investments could have been a factor in an assured Democratic victory whittling down to a 2% victory. US News is also on this story of how the shift to gun control as a campaign focus appears to have put the election at risk.
So while the gun control groups claim that this is some sort of mandate for gun control, the serious political class sees it very differently, and many also noted that the gun control groups cost Colorado lawmakers their jobs earlier this year. I guess we’ll see next year whether Democrats up for re-election think the Bloomberg money is worth the political risk.
A little history this Thursday. Of course, CSGV are not nearly as eloquent as the Earl of Dunmore, but the whole treason against legitimate government, and woe be any who resist the iron will of the state it is alive and well in this proclamation:
As I have ever entertained Hopes that an Accommodation might have taken Place between Great Britain and this Colony, without being compelled, by my Duty, to this most disagreeable, but now absolutely necessary Step, rendered so by a Body of armed Men, unlawfully assembled, firing on his Majesty’s Tenders, and the Formation of an Army, and that Army now on their March to attack his Majesty’s Troops, and destroy the well-disposed Subjects of this Colony: To defeat such treasonable Purposes, and that all such Traitors, and their Abettors, may be brought to Justice, and that the Peace and good Order of this Colony may be again restored …
This day on 1775, John Dunmore’s Proclamation declaring martial law in Virginia and freeing the slaves to serve in the British Army. We’ve been looking in my family tree for ancestors who fought in the Revolution. So far I’ve found one possible veteran I am descended from. Unfortunately he forsook his Quaker peace testimony in order to enlist in the British Army, which is to say he really despised the American cause. After the war he and his family fled to Canada. A few generations later, my 2x great grandfather returned to the United States. Not quite the Revolutionary War connection I was hoping for, but you don’t get to pick your family. Rest assured if I ever develop a time machine, I will go back and hang my ancestor for treason, paradoxes be damned!
It’s hard to deny a growing federal government isn’t seriously altering the landscape of formerly red Virginia. So how would we go about saving it? I’d suggest a compromise. In exchange for DC earning representation in Congress, Arlington County and the City of Alexandria gets returned to the District of Columbia. Representation is essentially solved by treating it as part of the state it was carved out of for purposes of federal representation (this is how it was originally.). Â That would take a nice chunk of reliably Democratic voters out of Virginia.
But would it be enough to swing the state back? I don’t have time to run the numbers to see whether it would work, but it’s worth looking at. You’d also have to presume GOP control of Virginia and Congress for this to work. Downside? No more carry in Arlington or Alexandria, and they’d get DC’s crappy gun laws, but we came very close to fixing DCs gun law as part of a voting rights deal once, so I don’t see why that couldn’t also be part of a potential deal to re-expand DC, or at the least only solve that issue for the part of Virginia granted back to DC.
Of course, this is in the realm of ideas that just might be crazy enough to work, but probably too crazy for the GOP. But if the Democrats could gain advantage through a maneuver like this, they’d do it in a heartbeat.
Hey, he was just a family man, you know, a family man that went around robbing people. If you don’t want to risk getting shot by someone in self-defense, there is an easy solution. Don’t rob people. Robbing people is wrong, and a person is within his right to defend himself against someone pointing a deadly weapon at them and threatening their lives. It’s amazing there are people in society who need to be told this. But he was just doing it to pay back child support!
I’m going to wander a bit off topic here for a bit, because I think figuring out the future of the coalition, so to speak, has an impact on gun rights.
There’s been a lot of talk in the comments about where the GOP needs to go on social issues, and a lot of talk about how the GOP just needs to give up on all that SoCo mumbo jumbo and focus exclusively on fiscal and liberty issues. Given that I am probably more socially liberal than your average Democrat, I find this position to be emotionally pleasing, but setting that aside, and looking at things as a careful observer of politics, I don’t think that’s true. I think the GOP needs to moderate its position on social issues, but I don’t think they need to piss away the SoCo vote entirely to win. A lot of our troubles lately have been that the GOP is just fielding awful and often underfunded candidates. But I do think there are some political realities SoCos need to understand, and the GOP needs to understand.
The first is that the gay issue is lost. To younger voters, speaking against gay rights and gay marriage  sounds like burning witches at the stake levels of  backwardness. This issue is changing very quickly in favor of social liberalism. Where the GOP needs to focus is on SoCo fears that churches will be forced to marry gays, or that religiously-owned businesses will be forced to accommodate gay lifestyles, despite religious objections. While I generally believe homosexuals should enjoy the benefit of living in a society free of discrimination, again, looking objectively, I think the GOP could stake out a narrow position that religious freedom trumps anti-discrimination laws under some circumstances. But this is a tightrope, and it’s a fine line between standing up for freedom of conscience and favoring discrimination against homosexuals. I don’t know if I trust the GOP to walk that line in what is a complex issue.
The abortion issue is not lost. There are still plenty of voters out there who believe abortion should be unlawful in some circumstances. But only a minority of people believe abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. SoCos need to accept they can only move the needle on abortion at the margins. This is a fact of life for just about every other issue, but for some reason social conservatives expect not only complete philosophical purity on this matter from candidates, but expect them to be vocal about it. All this without expecting it to carry any electoral consequences. That’s not true for any other issue, and it’s not true for abortion either. If you’re loud and proud that you reject abortion in all circumstances, you’re going to lose in swing states, and apparently even in some red states. If you reject the morning after pill, it’s going to be successfully spun as rejecting contraception, because that’s how most voters view it. The GOP should stay far away from anything that even smells like restricting contraceptives. They can make a case the public shouldn’t have to pay for it, but beyond that, stay away.
Now, the gun issue gets lumped into the tent of “socially conservative” quite often, but I don’t really think it belongs there. Guns are a liberty issue. To the extent that one wants to consider it a “socially conservative” issue, I don’t think it’s a losing issue for the GOP. We’ve seen repeated evidence that the anti-gun position is a losing issue for Democrats. My last headline on this topic was a bit of a joke, because that’s what Bloomberg is going to spin, but the truth is if we’d have given Bloomberg another few weeks to sink another few million into campaigning for McAullife on gun control, I think Ken Cuccinelli would be the next governor of Virginia. Somewhere between the time Bloomberg stepped into the race in a big way and the election, this race went from a blowout for McAullife to a nail biter. And I’m not the only one who noticed this. But even with all that, we can still only move the needle on the margins, it’s just that after years of doing that, we’re making steady progress.
Immigration is the other big social issue, though I believe that whole area is fraught with land mines. I don’t envy any political strategist trying to figure out how to navigate through it. I personally tend to favor easy immigration law, but more restrictive laws on earning citizenship. I tend to think the GOP should work out a deal where all the illegals who have been here for years have a path to a green card, but not citizenship. But would that be cutting the GOPs own throat? I don’t know. Like I said, it’s a tough issue politically. I tend to have faith that hispanics will integrate just as well as Italians and other formerly disfavored ethnic groups did. But I do think there should be long term consequences for entering the country illegally, and that consequence is you never get citizenship, or get to vote.
Unfortunately, the two Supreme Court justices who did not deserve retention were retained. However, with 99% of state precincts reporting, the favored judge of Superior Court won, Vic Stabile.
Locally, our elections were a mixed bag. On the one hand, the lesser of two evils won the county-wide offices. However, a MAIG mayor managed to retain his seat by a stinking 8 votes.
This is why gun owners need to at least look at what’s happening right in their backyards. I’m not saying you need to track every little borough happening or know every little piddly fight going on between township and county or whatnot. As I told folks yesterday, simply look up the page to see if your mayor is in MAIG. If s/he is, vote for the opponent. It’s a simple strategy. In Pennsylvania, mayors aren’t legally allowed to make gun policies, so you don’t need a “pure” candidate, just send a message by voting people out if they back Bloomberg.
