The other Sebastian says some very interesting things about the hearing for the MD Assault Weapons Ban. For one, the anti-gunners mentioned the Zumbo statements. For two, he says in the comments about 210 people turned out. That’s a good turnout for a committee meeting! State legislature committee meetings usually don’t attract any attention. That’s likely to get the politicians nervous, and that will work in our favor. I anxiously await PGP’s full report, and will link when it goes up. Good job Marylanders!
Transformational Weapons
High powered lasers have the potential to completely change the nature of the battlefield. A few years ago I read about the MTHEL – Mobile Tactical High Energy Laser, and later Northrop-Grumman’s SkyGuard. This is a system meant to shoot down rockets and artillery shells on the battlefield before they have a chance to reach their targets. The problem with the current systems is that they are powered by a chemical reaction, and are difficult and expensive to operate in the field. They can also not maintain a very high rate of fire.
That’s why it was very interesting to read a few days ago that they’ve developed a 67kW solid state laser at Lawrence Livermore. Solid state lasers would have the potential for more rapid and sustained fire, and would be vastly more practical to use on the battlefield.
This kind of thing is a transformational technology though. If you can deploy it in sufficient numbers, it has the power to make conventional ballistic ordnance obsolete on the battlefield.
Dave Hardy Warns of False Flags
Of Arms an the Law has some thoughts about “false flag” operations:
The problem here is that folks who like the first may assume (as traditionalists) that traditional values apply. People may be taken at their word. The other side is not obsessive, but has rational limits. If they say they only dislike AR-15s and certain handguns, they must mean it. There are no “false flag” operations. A group with shooters and hunters in their name is a group of shooters and hunters, and a blog named “The Gun Guys” must be run by gunnies.
That’s an interesting observaton I hadn’t thought about before. It’s my hope with “Gun Control and Hunting Day”, I’ll be able to unmask some of this. It’s not my intention to drag out the whole Zumbo thing. As far as I’m concerned that’s water under the bridge now. But I would like to get a collection of writing out there that associates gun control with its effects on hunters. Hopefully this will turn out. I’ll be working on it a bit more tonight.
Working on A New Feature
Back when I got the blog started, I decided to do an all day feature called Full Auto Day. The entire Jim Zumbo affair, and the shooting and hunting communities response to it, has prompted me to start work on another all day feature called “Gun Control and Hunting Day”, where it’s my intention to highlight how gun control laws, both on the books and proposed, in the jurisdictions the anti-gun folks uphold as their models, has harmed the hunting communities in those states by making firearms difficult, or very risky to own.
I’m hoping that the feature will be seen by hunters, and help them understand that the same culture of urban sophisticates that wants to take away our black rifles, doesn’t really care what it does to hunting. It’s all part of a lifestyle, way of thinking, and philosophy, that’s utterly repugnant to these types of folks. None will be spared in the end.
Posting might be a bit light, as working out all the posts, along with the research, will take some time. By all means, if you think you have something I should cover here, let me know via comment or e-mail.
Over at HuffPo…
…they pick up the Zumbo story. Not really that postworthy in itself, but check out the comments. I have to wonder, is there’s any other group of people the left looks down upon more than shooters? Even the religious right doesn’t seem to draw this kind of vitriol.
It’s pretty clear to me that the left fails to understand guns or the gun culture, because they are wholly ignorant on the subject. I’ll extend an open offer to any left thinking people who come across this to introduce them to shooting, or offer some respectful dialog, either in the comments, or through other means, if you’d like to be better informed about these issues.
A Reminder to Maryland Blog Readers
Tommorrow is the day the state wide assault weapons ban, Senate Bill 43, will be heard before the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. If you can, it’s important to show up in Annapolis to make your voice heard. I don’t think I need to tell you all how important it is to stop this, and not just for folks in Maryland.
Since when is it extreme …
… to believe the government ought to respect the Bill of Rights? That’s what I’d really like to know from all the people tossing around accusations that we ruined Jim Zumbo because he deviated from the NRA orthodoxy.
And as someone who could be regarded as “liberal” on more than a few issues, and who’s vote is generally up for grabs for either party, how do the Democrat types expect me to identify with them when they like to argue that it’s extreme to shout down those who would disparage the Constitution, or give ammunition to those intent on doing so?
Again, the Zumbo thing wasn’t because he argued that “assault weapons” were a bad choice for hunting. I think most of us would have been happy to debate him on that point without trying to shout him down. The issue was that he said things the anti-gunners would happily latch onto and make sure policy makers knew that “even the top outdoor writer thinks these guns have no sporting use and should be banned”.
On a personal level, I feel bad for what happened to Jim. I do hope that Jim will work with us in the future, and that we can welcome him back into the community of shooters. But I don’t apologize for what happened to him. What he said was so potentially damaging to our community that we had to react, and react strongly. I don’t mess around when it comes to the Bill of Rights, and I would have hoped that was something we all could agree on. Maybe not.
When Hunters Attack
Anyone else noticed the large number of comments from hunters on our blogs defending Jim Zumbo, while at the same time being rather derogatory toward our community? I can’t blame them for being a little angry given how some in our community have been behaving, but a lot of them seem to be pretty ill informed about the issues. So I have a message for them.
A Message To Hunters
We’re not pissed off at Jim Zumbo because we think hunting with “assault weapons” is great (though, if someone wants to, I don’t see what the issue is, if the game is appropriately small for those calibers). We’re pissed off at Jim Zumbo because he a) called our rifles “terrorist rifles” (the anti-gun folks will love to use that one), and that he suggested they be banned from the prairies (another great gem for the anti-gunners). It’s not so much we’re pissed off about the insult, though that is part of it, it’s that this gives a tremendous boost to the anti-gun organization who want to ban scary looking rifles.
Hunting is already in decline, and if you think the image of a guy chasing after a deer with an AK-47 might not be the best image for hunting, I think you’re entitled to that opinion, and I can see your point. But poor image is not the most serious problem for the hunting culture. The declining number of people who participate in the sport is, and that has more to do with fundamental demographic issues than image. But one sure way to make hunting go into a population free fall is for the anti-gunners to end up back on the offensive.
Oh sure, they claim they aren’t coming after your hunting rifle, but if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. Take a look at two states that the anti-gunners hold up as their examples of states that have gun laws closer to what they would like: Massachusetts and New Jersey. There are others, but these are states I know. Ask anyone in these two states how healthy their hunting culture is. Ask them how they like spending hundreds of dollars on the licensing that’s required to own a gun, even an air gun (in the case of NJ). Ask them how much they like having to ask the police permission to possess, or continue to possess, their deer rifle or duck gun. In Massachusetts, let a cartridge slip out of your case after a weekend of hunting, your wife takes the car the next day and doesn’t have the appropriate licenses, gets into an accident, and the police discover the round: say goodbye to your wife for a year. She’s now a felon, and there’s a one year mandatory minimum in Massachusetts for even very minor violations of their insane gun laws.
The anti-gun folks aren’t done in either of these states by far. So don’t believe them when they tell you they just want reasonable gun laws and are concerned about violence. That’s what they tell you to buy your acquiescence.
What happened in these two states, and others, is the future that the anti-gunners want to bring to hunting. If you hunters are OK with that, well, don’t cry to hard when most of your fellow hunters decide it’s not worth the hassle, and groups like the Humane Society of the USA and PETA get the political clout to ban hunting. Don’t think it would ever happen? Ask hunters in New Jersey how well their bear hunt went this year. They will ask, “What bear hunt?” Governor Corzine, under political pressure, stopped the bear hunt, despite a burgeoning bear population in The Garden State, and successful and safe hunts happening in previous years.
Understand one thing, hunters, we black rifle shooters are willing to stand with you on these hunting issues, because we recognize that hunters are a part of our community, and we need every man we can get. We understand giving even an inch of ground to the anti-gun and anti-hunting people is an inch closer toward prohibition on each of our respective sports. I’m sorry so many in the black rifle community are so angry that they are insulting hunting and hunters. It’s time for both sides to calm down and start figuring out how to work together.
Mystery MySpace Blogger Surfaced
From the comments:
Hi.
Long distance murder rifles? Ban .22s and shotguns for the children?
That was me.
I settled on this board by the complicated algorithm of flipping some coins. Now that the Brady Campaign has gotten myspace to return the /bradycampaign blog to their ownership, there’s no reason for me to not come out with what I have to say, and I have a lot to say.
For example, the amount of messages and comments I got stunned me. Thousands apon thousands. The blog itself was getting 10,000+ views every day. (I regret not screenshotting this)
I want to make some comments about how we have to accomplish standing together, “fudds†and EBR owners, as long as you guys want to hear me out. Oh, I’d have gone to ar15.com since they had 5+ threads about it, but the registration never emailed me. So you guys are stuck with me.
So it would seem Kevin Baker was right all along. It was one of our own. Now I feel kind of bad for screwing up his scheme :)
UPDATE: I didn’t realize my commenter was not the actual MySpace dude. He was quoting a post you can read over here. For future reference, you can quote sections using the <blockquote></blockquote> in the comment area, if you want to make a quote of something else.
Further Thoughts on “Zumboing”
I started a comment in the last thread and decided it would probably be a more effective post. Sailorcurt mentioned in a comment:
I disagree with the big picture conclusion however: the implication that we can’t be more effective if we mobilize on Washington Politics like we did on Zumbo.
I wouldn’t really assert that conclusion. I think Zumboing does make us more effective, but it’s just another tool, and we’re not at the point yet where we can expect that tool to have as much of an impact on Congress as it did on the industry as a whole, for the reasons I pointed out. I will never discourage people from writing their Congress Critters on the gun issue, and I think it’s a good idea to do that often. But the points I was trying to make, sorry if they weren’t clear, were:
- We have to continue bringing more people into the RKBA community.
- We have to continue traditional forms of political lobbying, and that is going to still represent most of our political muscle in Congress.
- We can’t count on Zumboing tactics to have the same effect on Congress they had on the industry.
But the more I’m thinking about it, the less I think we can talk about Zumboing as if it’s something we have under our control. The community saw an issue and, collectively, decided to go after it. It’s not like we had a leader sitting in an ivory tower, announcing “Smithers, release the hounds!”. I’m not sure that would even be desirable. When the next big thing comes down the pike, we’ll know, and will spontaneously organize.
I’m not saying it’s a bad thing at all, or that we shouldn’t do it. Just that we shouldn’t expect too much of it, and figure that other forms of activism (I hate that word) we’ve traditionally used are now less important, because this form will be effective.