Ask him to prove that he 'supports the Second Amendment'

Now that H.R. 6842 (which, by virtue of House Amendment 1171, now contains the language of H.R. 6691) has passed in the House, the next (very unlikely) step is to get it passed in the Senate this month.

As I mentioned Monday, not only do I not see this going anywhere in the Senate, I don't think it was ever intended to go anywhere--the intent, as I see it, is merely to give the impression that pro-rights forces are fighting the good fight.

Still, as Sebastian points out (also here), some good can perhaps be gotten from this. The following point, in particular, would seem to have some promise:

2. Harry Reid protects Obama by keeping it off the floor, in which case you now have that as an election issue to use against Democratic leadership, including Obama.

Obama is, of course, eager to reassure gun owning voters that he is not a threat, and that he supports an individual right to firearm ownership.

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison is apparently trying to muster enough signatures to pressure Harry Reid to being the bill up for a vote. She evidently needs the signatures by tomorrow.

Again, I'm not convinced this is going anywhere, but a refusal on Obama's part to sign the letter gives us one more piece of evidence to point to, to refute AHSA's lie that Obama supports gun owners.

My message to Obama follows.

Dear Senator Obama,

Congratulations on your nomination as the Democratic candidate for President of the United States.

I am writing to urge you to consider the fact that perhaps the greatest threat to the freedom of the American people is posed by the U.S. federal government itself, and as head of that government, perhaps the president's greatest responsibility is protecting the people from that threat.

More specifically, I am concerned that the Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental human right of the individual to keep and bear arms is at risk. Although the Supreme Court's Heller decision now makes it a settled point of law that outright bans of handguns are unconstitutional, creative citizen disarmament advocates are finding plenty of ways to regulate that fundamental right out of existence. Measures enacted by the Washington D.C. city council are a prime example (although there are many more such examples, in other jurisdictions).

Recently, you have, in a rather dramatic contradiction of your voting record in the Illinois state senate (as an Illinois resident, I am familiar with that record) and as a United States Senator (not to mention your leadership position with the very anti-gun rights Joyce Foundation), expressed support for the Second Amendment, and your belief that American citizens have an individual right to own firearms. I imagine that you are aware that I am far from the only gun owner to view this seemingly new position with a great deal of skepticism.

The good news is that you have an opportunity to go a long way in allaying that skepticism. As you are probably aware, the House of Representatives has passed H.R. 6842, as amended by House Amendment 1171, which would, if enacted, greatly help in the protection of Washington D.C. residents' gun rights. Unfortunately, time is quickly running out for bringing this vital measure to a Senate vote before the end of this Congressional session. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison is leading an effort to persuade Senator Harry Reid to bring H.R. 6842 up for a vote. By cosigning that letter by Friday, September 19th, you could do much to calm the suspicion, held by a great many gun owning voters, that you remain opposed to private ownership of firearms.

Please do so, and help convince gun owning voters that your words of support for the Second Amendment are not merely empty rhetoric.

Sincerely,
Kurt Hofmann

Come to think of it, with a few alterations, it would be worth sending to McCain, as well--it's not as if he has earned a free pass, either.

Philadelphia to get some partners in crime

It seems that several Pennsylvania mayors, encouraged by Philadelphia's defiance of state law (which I've discussed before) prohibiting municipalities from arbitrarily enacting citizen disarmament laws of their own, have pledged to follow Philly into criminality.

Members of the coalition, PA Mayors for Gun Safety, pledged to introduce legislation in their cities that would require gun owners to report lost or stolen weapons or be subject to possible fines and/or jail time.

The announcement was made at a news conference at City Hall here. The group includes Mayor Nutter and the mayors of Allentown, Bethlehem, Easton, Lancaster, Reading, Pottsville and York.

What makes this illegal, of course, is that Pennsylvania law preempts local power to enact gun laws--authority to infringe on that which shall not be infringed belongs solely to the state (what gives the state the right to control the Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental, absolute human right of the individual to keep and bear arms is a discussion for another day).

As the quoted passage indicates, the "law" in question here is the requirement for victims of theft to report the theft of their guns, or face prosecution themselves.

Philadelphia's Mayor Nutter explains why he thinks preemption doesn't prohibit such laws:

Nutter argued that the state legislation that limits the power of local governments to pass gun legislation governs "lawful weapons." The legislation proposed by the mayors' coalition involves "lost or stolen weapons," Nutter said.

This is clearly idiotic--a lawfully purchased and owned weapon doesn't suddenly cease to be lawful if it becomes lost. Likewise, if such a gun is stolen, its lawful owner is still the owner (and by the way, this law could only be enforced against people who owned guns legally--to require someone who owns a gun illegally to report that fact would violate the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination).

When a governing body enacts laws illegally, the rule of law is clearly dead. That makes it a bit difficult to imagine how these cities can expect their "laws" to be respected.

Snowflakes in Hell has more.

More AHSA obfuscation

As I mentioned last Thursday (and as has been discussed in great depth, for months, by many other people), Obama considers the gun rights vote important enough to be worth pursuing. He also apparently thinks gun rights advocates lack the wit (and the memory) to realize that Obama and Biden probably constitute the most rabidly pro-citizen disarmament major party presidential ticket in U.S. history.

Running interference for him is the "American Hunters and Shooters Association" (AHSA), a phony "pro-gun" group that advocates draconian gun laws, and which the Brady Campaign sees as an ally:

Unfortunately for Schoenke, the Brady Campaign basically agrees with the NRA [that AHSA is an anti-rights group]. "I see our issues as complementary to theirs," Paul Helmke, president of the Brady Campaign, says about Schoenke's association. "They're a positive group."

Helmke even contends that the two organizations are not far apart in approach. Helmke says he, too, shot guns as a boy and is as Middle American as he can be -- a former Republican mayor of Fort Wayne, Ind. "The Brady Campaign is not just East Coast liberal Democrats," he says.

The latest round of Obama's AHSA-abetted claim to be a "defender of the Second Amendment" is a radio ad being aired in New Hampshire, featuring AHSA president Ray Schoenke.

"It's important to me that our next president protects our Second Amendment rights to own guns and defend ourselves," Schoenke says in the ad. "Barack Obama and John McCain will both make sure we can keep our guns. But what about keeping our jobs? Barack's got a real plan that invests in creating jobs here at home and cuts taxes a thousand bucks for working families."

Schoenke then criticized McCain's economic policies.

"It's the same old Bush playbook," he says. "When the coach loses eight years in a row, you don't bring him back for a ninth season! We just can't afford more of the same."

Click here to listen (QuickTime format).

Obama and McCain "will both make sure we can keep our guns"? That's funny, I thought Obama voted to ban shotguns (without even the courtesy of a "grandfather clause"), and that McCain has voted to ban so-called "assault weapons." It looks to me as if neither can be trusted to keep their hooks out of our gun safes, although at least with McCain, disarming America hasn't been a signature issue throughout his political career, and in choosing Governor Palin as his running mate, he is running with someone clearly vastly better with regard to gun rights than Senator Biden is.

As to Schoenke's claims about who would be better for the economy, I'll acknowledge that my understanding of economic issues is somewhere between thin and anorexic, but I do know that it's not the president's place to "create jobs," and that the less the feds interfere with the economy, the less they'll screw it up.

I won't urge anyone to vote for McCain (I myself won't be doing so), but a vote for Obama is a vote for forcible citizen disarmament.

No right to violate rights

I haven't written, so far, about H.R. 6691, which would, if enacted, invalidate most of Washington D.C.'s most egregious violations of the right to keep and bear arms, and also preempt local officials' ability to set gun policy in the future. The reason for my reticence has been that even if, as expected, the bill passes in the House, I think it very unlikely to go anywhere in the Senate. Such an outcome (House passage, followed by quiet oblivion in the Senate) would be, for politicians, the best of both worlds--the people remain disarmed, but ostensibly "pro-gun" legislators can claim to have done their best (as could the NRA). I am not alone in seeing this as mere political theater, designed to keep the pro-gun natives from getting restless.

I hope I am wrong about the foregoing, and as often as I'm wrong when I don't want to be, it certainly wouldn't be a man-bites-dog situation if I blew this call, too.

Anyway, the reason I decided to write about this today is to rebut a claim that the citizen disarmament crowd is making a lot these days--that H.R. 6691 is wrong because it is an attack on local authority. The New England Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence, for example, charges that it is hypocritical for Congresspeople representing New Hampshire (the "Live Free or Die" state) to support the bill.

But the gun lobby is not satisfied with the D.C. Council’s efforts and is taking this opportunity to encourage Congress to meddle in local legislation. They are pushing hard for H.R. 6691, a bill that would not only repeal D.C.’s current gun regulations but also prevent the D.C. City Council from enacting any gun-related legislation in the future. It is an obscene attempt to prevent the residents of Washington, D.C. from governing themselves. How ironic that the only two congressional cosponsors from New England come from the state with the motto Live Free or Die.

Columnist Tom Teepen (whom I have mentioned before) makes a similar argument, whining that the bill "would strip the district of its right set its own firearms regulations . . . ."

The Brady Campaign says:

Can anyone imagine citizens in St. Augustine, Florida or Marion, Indiana or Clemmons, North Carolina standing by while Congress erased any of their laws?

Of course not.

Well, the people of the District of Columbia don't like it either.

. . . And the Washington Post:

HOUSE DEMOCRATS make much of their support for the right of the District to self-government. Too bad they are willing to sacrifice this basic tenet of American democracy to the political self-interests of members cowed by the powerful gun lobby. How else to explain a planned vote on legislation so extreme it would strip the District of all power to regulate guns?

. . . And the New York Times:

The bill is a gross trampling on the right of the district to govern itself, but it is far more than that.

Etc., etc.

The point missed by all these people is that what would be "trampled" by H.R. 6691 isn't a right, because there is no right to deprive others of their rights. Residents of Washington D.C. have, like all Americans, a Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental, absolute human right of the individual to keep and bear arms, and if the D.C. city council chooses to violate that right, then the federal government is obligated to thwart them.

Those lamenting the "trampling" of D.C.'s local authority tend to claim that the people of D.C. overwhelmingly support such draconian gun laws. Perhaps that is true; perhaps not, but such claims are irrelevant. If one person wants to exercise something approaching the full extent of his Second Amendment rights, the majority have no right to stop him from doing so. As has been pointed out innumerable times before, we do not live in a democracy, in which 51% of the people can vote away the rights of the other 49%; we live in a Constitutional republic, in which the rights of the minority are to be protected from the whims of the majority.

The recent activity with regard to H.R. 6691 might be nothing more than a cynical bid to mollify gun rights advocates without actually doing anything, but it is not a hypocritical attack on anyone's rights.

Brady Campaign eyes another Illinois General Assembly seat

I've been trying to get away from being categorized as a specifically Illinois gun rights advocacy blog, but I should probably just learn to accept the fact that that's, to some degree, what this is. I live (unfortunately) in Illinois, and thus can't really help but be smacked upside the head with the forcible citizen disarmament tyranny that characterizes this state, and that being the case, I'm gonna talk about it.

So, although I've pretty much avoided Illinois-specific politics for a while, today I feel compelled to talk about a Brady Campaign endorsed candidate for the Illinois House. Gary Nowak has received the Brady Campaign's endorsement, as a candidate who will "Fight To Keep Dangerous Weapons Out Of The Hands Of Dangerous People."

I have few problems with that, right from the get-go. First, just about anything can be used as a weapon, including a bikini top. Second, once something becomes a weapon, it is--pretty much by definition--"dangerous." A "non-dangerous" weapon is basically no weapon at all (as Texas Ranger Charlie Miller would no doubt have agreed).

Therefore, a promise to "fight to keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of dangerous people" is basically a promise to keep everything out of the hands of "dangerous people"--which sounds more than a little unlikely. Then, there's the little problem of defining "dangerous people," and the citizen disarmament advocates' tendency to approach that problem by making everyone's acquisition of firearms more difficult, apparently on the grounds that we must assume that everyone is a "dangerous person," until they can prove otherwise. "They hate us because we're free," indeed.

Nowak's opponent is incumbent Representative Dennis Reboletti, who most recently incurred the Brady Campaign's wrath, and earned freedom loving Illinoisans' (yes, there are a few of us) gratitude, by voting against HB 758, which would have outlawed private handgun sales in Illinois. (From the Nowak endorsement announcement):

Nowak’s opponent, Dennis Reboletti, has repeatedly sided with the gun lobby and has opposed strengthening Illinois gun laws. Rep. Reboletti cast a “no” vote on HB 758 earlier this year that would have extended Brady background checks to all handgun purchasers. The bill lost by two votes. Mr. Nowak has pledged to support the legislation. The Brady Campaign sent postcards to constituents in the 46th district urging them to call Rep. Reboletti to express their outrage regarding his vote against the bill. The Brady Campaign plans to let voters know about his “no” vote on HB 758 before the November elections.

Rep. Reboletti stood up for Illinois gun owners, and for freedom, and the citizen disarmament advocates want to punish him for doing so. If we allow that strategy to work, we'll lose the few friends we have in the General Assembly.

As for Nowak, what do we know about him, aside from what the Brady Bunch tells us? Nothing about guns here. I guess we don't know much about him at all:

Gary Nowak repeatedly refused to provide any responses to citizens on the issues through the 2008 Political Courage Test when asked to do so by national leaders of the political parties, prominent members of the media, Project Vote Smart President Richard Kimball, and Project Vote Smart staff.

On second thought, we know the Brady Campaign likes him, and that he seems to be lacking in political courage. I think I know enough.

By the way, the Brady Bunch is also running a similar campaign for a candidate for the 15th District seat of the California General Assembly, Joan Buchanan. I know nothing about California politics, or Buchanan's opponent, the incumbent Representative Guy Houson, but I can't help but imagine that California's dire environment for freedom would be made even worse by the election of another Brady Bunch endorsed candidate.

What I would like to see is for a Brady Campaign endorsement to be the kiss of death for a candidate. Helmke and Co. are already scrambling for relevance, but I would like to see them become political pariahs.

So would this 'attack on Senator Obama's stand on the 2nd Amendment' be considered 'unfair'?

Obama, interestingly enough, has tried for the last few months to portray himself as, if not exactly a friend to gun owners, at least not a mortal enemy. Obama likes to talk about "audacity," and I have to acknowledge that he has no shortage of it. Few things could be more audacious than to claim, with a legislative record like Obama's, that he is no threat to private gun ownership.

Perhaps the most telling example of his rabidly pro-forcible citizen disarmament voting record can be found here.

Yep--any shotgun larger than .410 (28 gauge shotguns have a bore diameter of about .550 inches) would be banned, and there would be no "grandfather clause." If you owned a shotgun for dove hunting or trap shooting, Obama voted for legislation that would require you to turn it in. So much for "I'm not going to take your guns away."

What I would like to know, though, is what the American Hunters and Shooters Association has to say about this. The AHSA has, you'll remember, endorsed Obama, and have gotten their little knickers in a twist over the fact that some nasty folks would dare claim that Obama is a threat to private gun ownership.

We believe recent attacks on Senator Obama's stand on the 2nd Amendment and his commitment to our hunting and shooting heritage are unfair and American Hunters and Shooters Association is stepping up to set the record straight.

Their "setting the record straight" consists of pointing out that Obama voted for Senator David Vitter's amendment to HR 5441 (a 2007 appropriations bill), protecting against government confiscation of firearms during emergencies. Left unmentioned is the fact that if Obama has his way, the government wouldn't need to wait for an emergency to confiscate guns--they could do it right away.

That one vote is what AHSA is hanging Obamam's "pro-gun" hat on.

Of course, I guess it's no surprise that AHSA supports a candidate who tried to ban shotguns because their bores are "too large"--they're quite open about wanting to throw .50 caliber rifle owners under the bus.

The AHSA--the Brady Campaign in (ineffective) camouflage.

Not 'the time or the place to show your rights'

Somehow, I had missed, until now, this account of a man arrested at an Obama rally in Pennsylvania while openly (and utterly legally) carrying a handgun.

Beaver County District Attorney Anthony Berosh said the issue isn’t whether Noble was legally carrying a gun. State police said Noble did not violate the state’s open carry law, under which you don’t need a permit to carry a weapon in plain sight.

But in the U.S. these days, one doesn't have to--you know--break the law to get arrested.

Instead, Berosh said, it’s a battle between two constitutional rights: The right to bear arms and the right to assemble peaceably and without fear.

OK, Anthony--I'm familiar (obviously) with the right to keep and bear arms, and I'm also on board with the Constitutional protection of the right to peaceably assemble, but the "right" to do so without fear? My copy of the Bill of Rights must be defective. Actually, how would protection for such a "right" work? People have all kinds of fears, some rational, many not. Some people have a fear of crowds. Tell me, Anthony, how do you protect that person's "right" to peaceably assemble "without fear"?

Berosh said Noble did not have the right to alarm anyone around him attending the Barack Obama rally in Irvine Park.

So if someone "alarms" me, I can have him arrested? Or does that only work at Barack Obama rallies (and do such rallies have to be in Irvine Park)? Hmm--I find it rather alarming to see people go into quasi-religious swoons over political candidates--can I have most attendees of Obama rallies arrested?

Beaver County Sheriff George David, a self-proclaimed "gun advocate," kindly provided me with the title for this blog post:

“I don’t think this was the time or the place to show your rights,” David said.

So he acknowledges Noble's right to be armed, but this wasn't "the time or the place" to exercise that right. If one can be arrested for exercising a right (because it's not "the time or place" to do so), I can't help but wonder how much of a right it actually is. There's also the little problem of the fact that there wasn't a law (even an unconstitutional one) against what Noble did.

Berosh then helpfully makes this observation:

Berosh said, “You have a right to strike a match, unless you’re in a TNT factory.”

Then again, striking a match in a TNT factory is in itself a grossly, irresponsibly dangerous action that can lead directly to death and destruction, while carrying a holstered firearm at a political rally is not. Work on your analogy, Anthony.

In a society that supposedly places a premium on personal liberty, it is always the right time and place to "show your rights."

Woman 'caught' . . . doing nothing illegal (aside from tailgating)

From Texas, we hear of a woman pulled over for tailgating. The Sheriff's Office corporal who pulled her over apparently found her behavior suspicious, and decided to have his drug sniffing police dog partner check her vehicle.

Right away, the dog found . . . no drugs.

The woman was shaking and started telling Kirkpatrick a story that didn’t make sense, he said. The woman wouldn’t let Kirkpatrick search her car, so he got the help of his partner Rocky, a 4-year-old Belgian malinois police dog.

Rocky smelled something near the back door of the SUV, O’Connor said. When Kirkpatrick looked inside, he found duffel bags filled with parts of AR-15s, 200 rounds of .50-caliber ammunition, 40 magazines and a bullet-proof vest that can stop assault-rifle bullets.

Rocky isn’t trained to sniff for weapons, Kirkpatrick said, so the guns were likely covered with residue from drugs. No drugs were found in the vehicle.

Of course, if people are to be held responsible for anything they might be transporting that has "drug residue" on it, we had all better stop carrying cash in denominations larger than $10 bills (and I'm not sure that would be small enough to avoid the danger of being inadvertently caught with "drug residue").

There’s not an outright ban on anything found inside the car, [Victoria County Sheriff Michael T.] O’Connor said. Deputies questioned the woman, but she wasn’t arrested. Her name was not released because she’s being investigated.

Not an "outright ban," and presumably, not a "conditional ban," either. In other words, there is no evidence that she was committing any crime more serious than tailgating.

The wise sheriff has other thoughts, though.

Sheriff T. Michael O’Connor suspects the assortment of rifle parts and ammunition was headed to Mexico and could be used by drug cartels, he said.

“I don’t regard this as a hunting trip,” O’Connor said as he stood behind three tables loaded with guns and ammo Monday afternoon. “We felt that this was a significant find.”

However the Sheriff "regards" what the woman was doing, there is exactly ZERO legal requirement for hunting to have had anything to do with it, and however the Sheriff's department "felt" about the find, if there's no evidence of a crime having been committed, they have no legitimate authority to detain either the woman or her property.

I'm not saying that the Sheriff is necessarily wrong in his theory about what the woman was up to, but are we "innocent until proven guilty," or not?

Gun ownership debate

My attention was recently brought to a debate on a discussion forum called Opposing Views. The basic idea is that a question about an issue of our times is asked, and various groups and individuals who have been involved with that issue weigh in with their opinions. The specific debate to which I refer is titled "Does Owning a Gun Make You Safer?".

Arguing for the "Yes" side are the National Rifle Association (NRA), Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA), Gun Owners of America (GOA), and the Second Amendment Sisters.

Arguing that "Just because hundreds of millions of Americans exist with hundreds of millions of privately owned firearms without being shot doesn't mean that firearms aren't horribly dangerous," are Ceasefire PA, my favorite Joyce Foundation funded forcible citizen disarmament advocates--the cynically misnamed "Freedom States Alliance," and States United to Prevent Gun Violence.

To be honest, a more relevant question, in my estimation, would be "Does owning a gun make you freer?" I certainly believe that a person equipped for effective self-defense is significantly safer than one who is not, but it's my belief that the Constitutional guarantee of the fundamental, absolute human right of the individual to keep and bear arms exists primarily to equip the people to resist tyranny, and that the ability to fend off Joe Meth-addict or Johnny Rapist is just a nice side benefit. Even if gun ownership did somehow constitute a net danger for the owner (a point I am wholly unwilling to concede), I would argue that freedom is worthy of the sacrifice of some degree of safety--"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety . . . " and all that.

I also believe that whether my ownership of a gun makes me safer, or (by some odd mechanism) less safe, is my business, and public policy need not concern itself with my personal decisions about my own self-defense.

Still, it's a discussion worthy of one's time to check out, if only for the fact that the anti-rights crowd rarely dares enter a two-way discussion of the issue.

Yeah--that's the country I want to emulate

Satire rarely reaches the heights(?) seen in this (apparently serious) praise of forcible citizen disarmament in Cuba.

Guns tend to scare away tourists and keep locals in their homes after dark. There are few capitals left in the hemisphere like Havana, where you don’t feel like the nighttime is your enemy.

I can certainly understand why it would be unpleasant to believe that "nighttime is [one's] enemy"--nightfall occurring, as it does, on a pretty regular basis. The thing is, I don't fear the night in the U.S. As far as nighttime not being the enemy in Havana, that's great, but I don't imagine that people living under a dictatorship need any more enemies than they already have.

Following sharp cutbacks in state budgets during the 1990s, many other countries of the Americas made deep reductions in their law enforcement budgets as part of the IMF and World Bank recommendations to reduce government spending. The de-funding of public services directly affected citizen safety, as well as health and education.

So that's the key to public safety--give the government more money. How, exactly, does this differ from paying money to a gang for "protection"?

Unfortunately, many countries (including the U.S.) haven't caught on to the joys of submitting to extortion:

In countries from Colombia to Brazil, Jamaica to Guatemala, as in the USA, people’s response to fear was to purchase weapons for self-defense. And in many places this meant not just having a gun, but a high powered one with loads of ammunition.

Don't get me wrong--I'm not saying that to "purchase weapons for self-defense" is the only viable option, but I'm morally opposed to stealing weapons, and lack the mechanical skills to fabricate them myself (although for other, less mechanically incompetent people, that's certainly an option).

Cuba has taken a different approach.

Now there's an understatement!

Firearms are not sold on the island in any store and are only legally held by authorized security personnel, police and armed forces and a limited number of hunters. Illegal weapons possession is considered a very serious offense.

Perhaps even as serious as saying impolite things about the "Maximum Leader."

Citizen safety as well as security for visitors is a top priority in the country. The law enforcement budget allows for sufficient foot and car patrols and a considerable number of traffic cops on motorcycles.

Yeah--I don't think anyone will accuse the Castro brothers of failing to spend enough on "security."

Of course the rightwing Miami crowd asserts that the reason the Cuban government doesn’t allow people to own hand guns is that it fears an uprising against the Revolution. Such an accusation is easy to make from afar, but clearly lacks a basis of fact on the island.

Oh, that crazy "rightwing Miami crowd"--where do they get these ideas?

I get the idea that "Circus Robinson" (the apparent name of the author) would agree with Garen Wintemute's idea of "ordered liberty."

I don't know, maybe he's on to something--there's got to be some reason people are so desperate to escape the mean streets of U.S. cities that they're willing to brave a dangerous crossing in insanely overcrowded, rickety boats, to reach the safety of Cuba's worker's paradise.

Wait--you mean that's not how it works?

Irony of the day

Once again, it looks as if I won't have much time for blogging today, but I do want to take a minute to point something out. Wednesday, in my "Doctors for Defenselessness" post, I quoted "PalMD" mentioning a link to what is, according to "Pal," evidence that guns pose a "public health problem" that cannot be debated.

I got so caught up in the breathtaking arrogance of someone who would presume to dictate what can, and what cannot, be debated, that I didn't really get around to talking about the the New England Journal of Medicine article that was linked to. As mentioned above, I don't have time for a detailed look today, either, but I am pronouncing the following statement, by Garen Wintemute, the Irony of the Day.

As noted by Wintemute, a court decision that broadened gun rights "could weaken the framework of ordered liberty."

I wonder if he also said "War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength."

Constitutional rights--not 'necessarily good ideas'?

I was planning to write a follow-up to yesterday's blog post about "Doctors for Defenselessness," but this bit of commentary by Lino A. Graglia (a "Catholic conservative," according to Wikipedia) demanded an immediate response. The very first sentence sets the unbelievable tone.

In striking down the District of Columbia's gun control law, the U.S. Supreme Court raised the question whether constitutional rights are necessarily good ideas.

"Raised the question" among whom--people who think tyranny has gotten a bad rap?

Graglia then goes on to criticize the notion of examining the Second Amendment by exploring late 18th century attitudes about gun ownership--apparently, people have far less reason to fear a power-hungry government now than they did then--the people of Burma (or Myanmar, if you insist) will be pleased to hear that, I'm sure. Then, he goes into the obligatory plug for the (now officially discredited) "collective rights" interpretation of the Second Amendment.

It is arguable — as the 5-4 split on the Supreme Court indicates — that the Second Amendment does not guarantee an individual right to possess guns; "bear arms" has a military ring.

And how about "keep arms," genius? I still can't believe there was ever serious discussion about the possibility that 10% of the Bill of Rights was dedicated to protecting the government's right to have an armed military. By the way, in my reading of the Heller decision, the "collective rights" interpretation lost 9-0. The four dissenting justices acknowledged the individual right--they just apparently think it's a right that can permissibly be rendered meaningless.

If democracy is the norm, only policy choices clearly precluded by the Constitution should be struck down by the courts. The view of elected legislators should prevail in cases of doubt. The court might well, therefore, have refrained from taking the gun control issue out of the political process.

I don't know what "the norm" is, but I do know that the United States was founded as a republic--not as a democracy, in which 51% of the population can vote away the fundamental rights of the other 49%. As to "clearly precluded by the Constitution," what more would the Second Amendment have to say to make it clear to you that citizen disarmament is not an option? Should the original twenty-seven words of the amendment be followed up with another sentence--something along the lines of "We're really serious here, guys; no f***ing infringing, damn it!"?

Graglia disparages constitutionalism on the grounds that it "takes policy options off the table." That's what it's supposed to do, Einstein. Certain policy options have no business being brought to the table, and a government monopoly on force is definitely one of those.

Oh, by the way--Graglia is a law professor at University of Texas--just gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling about the future, doesn't it?

Doctor's advice: defenselessness

Sorry for the silence of late--been a bit busy the last few days.

Anyway, today I want to look at the ever-expanding trend of physicians jumping on the forcible citizen disarmament bandwagon, citing as their reason for doing so that it's a "public health" issue. Specifically, let's look at a blog post written by someone who calls himself "PalMD" (sounds friendly enough).

One such question came up in a comment recently. The question revolved around whether doctors should ask patients about firearms.

It is the policy of my professional organization to inquire about firearm ownership and safety. Is this a valid position, and if so, why?

"Pal's" response? You're darn tootin' it's a valid position! (As if there had been any doubt what the response would be).

First, physicians are charged with prevention and treatment of human disease/injury. Prevention encompasses screening for risk factors, and preventative treatments such as vaccination. It also includes counseling regarding important health behaviors, such as seat belt use.

So, we must ask, "are firearms an important, preventable health problem?" Then, "if so, how do we intervene to prevent firearm injury and death?"

Are firearms a health problem? Well, no. Getting shot poses some pretty obvious problems for one's health, but until firearms start loading themselves, pointing themselves at people, and pulling their own triggers, the firearms clearly aren't the problem. In the same vein, falling off a mountain tends to be bad for one's health, too, but that doesn't mean that mountains are a "health problem."

Let's ignore all that for a minute, though, and momentarily concede, for the sake of debate, that firearms are a health problem--is it a "preventable" one? Well, some of the strictest laws pertaining to gun ownership and use in the world haven't prevented it. As another example, Mexico's gun laws are notoriously strict (you can be thrown into a Mexican prison for accidentally carrying a single round of ammunition across the border), but that hasn't prevented the drug gangs from gunning down thousands of people. So, "Pal," is that your idea of "prevention"--emulating Mexico's stunning success?

"Pal" then goes on to tell us that "[t]he data regarding firearms and preventable injury is unassailable." You know what? No data is "unassailable"--it might be correct, but that doesn't put it in a position that it must never be questioned. He goes on to say something even more annoying:

The exact magnitude of the problem can be debated, but its health significance cannot.

It "cannot" be debated? Who the hell are you, Pal, to tell people what can and cannot be debated? What do you plan to do if we decide to go ahead and debate what "cannot" be debated, anyway? By the way, the above quoted link is to a New England Journal of Medicine editorial from April, the gist of which seems to be that the Supreme Court, in the (then pending) Heller decision, should ignore pesky details like the Constitution, and instead read Garen Wintemute's proof that guns cause global warming (I'm kidding . . . mostly).

The bottom line is that if I have an illness or injury that I need diagnosed and/or treated, I'll go to a physician, but when it comes to securing my person and my freedom, I'll look to someone with more expertise on the subject than is generally taught in med school--these folks, perhaps.

Should have done this before

I've written a bit before about the hideous miscarriage of justice that is the BATFE's persecution (and yes--"persecution," and not "prosecution" is the word I want) of David Olofson. Mr. Olofson is now serving a thirty month sentence in federal prison, for the "crime" of owning a malfunctioning rifle, while his family struggles to make ends meet without his income (you can help, by the way).

I've been remiss, though, in keeping readers updated on more recent developments. Specifically, an appeal has been filed, and oh, what an appeal it is.

When American citizens get in the way of the federal government's anti-gun jihad, I've learned not to place a lot of faith in the courts. With this appeal, though, I may be in for a pleasant surprise.

The federal government allegedly suppressed evidence and edited a legal definition in a Wisconsin case against a man who ultimately was convicted of transferring a machine gun, according to an appeal document.

I would like to think that everyone who reads what I write also reads War on Guns (daily), and so my neglect of these developments isn't a major problem. Still, a successful appeal (and the accompanying smack on the BATFE's nose) would be huge news, and for me to ignore the possible lead-up to that is inexcusable.

Besides, I can't very well risk missing the opportunity to approach the supposed "gun rights advocates" who self-righteously spout that Olofson got what he deserved, and pour them a big, steaming cup of STFU.

National Post writer upset because Democratic candidates aren't talking about Columbine (9 years later)

The National Post is apparently considered (by Canadian standards, at least) to be a "conservative" newspaper, but if so, that apparently doesn't extend to conserving fundamental rights, at least in this article.

The long, low halls of Columbine High School are lined with blue lockers and crimson history, decked with hand-drawn posters for Bible Study and the Knitting Club, cruised by laughing teens in Hollister and Aéropostale, then eerily silent when the classroom doors swing closed. We are nine years removed from the mass murder-suicide that happened here, and 10 miles south of a national political gathering at which the quieting of America's guns has never been mentioned.

I had a brief moment of hope (no--not that kind of hope) that "quieting of America's guns" was a reference to repealing the ridiculously draconian (not to mention unconstitutional) laws regulating suppressors ("silencers," in common parlance), but that was just foolishly excessive optimism on my part.

Ignored entirely in the electoral battlespace, yet unforgettable at Columbine and wherever else innocent life has fallen to a weapon fired in anger or insanity or accident, the issue of America's abundance of guns has made only a brief and semi-comical intrusion into Barack Obama's festival of Hope.

That last bit, of course, refers to the drug-addled, neo-Nazi, would-be assassins whose tiny, reptilian brains had conceived delusions of killing Obama. I have to disagree with the author's assertion that "America's abundance of guns" is being "[i]gnored entirely," though--both halves of the Obama/Biden ticket have made über-draconian gun laws central elements of their platforms. If they play that fact down at the moment, it's because they know that to fail to do so is to fail to get enough votes to win (and what does that say about the will of The People regarding gun rights?).

The author then went on to catalog (even including, bizarrely enough, the serial numbers) the "terrifying arsenal" the clowns had assembled for their "plot." The author, apparently, wants an explanation, or an apology (?!) for the fact that these doofuses had managed to acquire their "arsenal."

But this did not explain - or apologize for - a state or a country in which three stoned stooges with no jobs or fixed addresses can stuff their trunk . . .

Well, Allen, at least some of that (including at least one of the rifles) was stolen--you do realize that people without jobs or fixed addresses do manage to steal things sometimes, don't you? Is that enough of an "apology" for you?

The author then points out that neither candidate's website has much to say about gun legislation (don't worry Allen--they'll get to that after the election), and makes this melancholy observation:

So there is no looking to the candidates to end the carnage.

What kind of idiot even hopes to go "looking to the candidates" to somehow stop psychopathic punk kids from being . . . psychopathic punk kids?

Highlight of the article, hands down:

We were 11 miles from Columbine High when I asked [gun shop owner] Warren Marshall how he would feel if a weapon he sold legally were used by a Klebold or a Harris.

"How would you feel with a stump up your ass?" he replied.

The article ends, unfortunately, on a massive clunker of emotion-based hysteria.

"It's safe here," their principal tells them. In a land of rage and rifles, that may be the most hopeful audacity of all.

"Land of rage and rifles," eh? I'd much rather take my chances here than move to some land of sheep and servility.

So . . . what does the VPC think of Joe Biden?

When it comes to those involved with either side of the gun rights vs. citizen disarmament debate, what Joe Biden is most known for is his obsession with banning so-called "assault weapons." By boasting of being "the guy who originally wrote the assault weapons ban" of '94, and by introducing (last fall) a S. 2237, with a word for word reprise of the '94 ban language, Biden leaves little doubt that he is bound and determined to ban vast numbers of some of the most popular firearms in the country.

For the VPC, though, that might not be enough. The VPC believes that the reason the "assault weapons" ban accomplished nothing is that it didn't go far enough.

Mr. TOM DIAZ (Violence Policy Center): If the existing assault weapons ban expires, I personally do not believe it will make one whit of difference one way or another in terms of our objective, which is reducing death and injury and getting a particularly lethal class of firearms off the streets. So if it doesn't pass, it doesn't pass.

Tough crowd, eh, Joe? You write a ban, get it passed in a bill, get the bill signed into law, getting the hell kicked out of your political party in the process, and people say you're still not doing enough to disarm the citizenry.

By the way, speaking of the VPC, is there some kind of "citizen disarmament writer's strike" going on without my knowledge? Their website is recycling materiel from 1999. Isn't there enough stuff to talk about from this millennium, without resorting to advocating the end of hunting with rifles*?

Maybe Biden will get on that.

* The VPC claims a material difference between hunting rifles and "sniper rifles," but even if there is such a difference, and it can be identified legislatively, they want to ban all ammunition that can penetrate police body armor--all centerfire rifle ammo, in other words. Sounds like the end of hunting with rifles, to me.

Making amends; GunVoter.org

Last Friday, I wrote about my having, earlier that week, become a life member of the NRA, despite my numerous misgivings about the leadership. I explained why I decided against allowing those misgivings to prevent me from becoming--for life--a member of The Enemy's most hated and feared nemesis, the NRA. I mentioned my dream of the NRA returning to the kind of organization it once was, with men like Neal Knox (the kind of "SNBI extremist" I can only aspire to becoming) leading the way.

I also talked about some other gun rights organizations with which I am involved. Most, if not all, of these are considered much more "extremist" than the NRA.

In a comment responding to that blog post, Jeff Knox (son of Neal Knox), gently chastised me for failing to mention another gun rights group--the Firearms Coalition (founded by Neal Knox)--that is just as highly principled and unwilling to accept some new, arbitrary definition of shall not be infringed as an "extremist" like me could ask for. Here's an excerpt of his comment (be sure to read the whole thing--it's worth it):

I appreciate the hat-tip to my father, Neal Knox, but I was a little disappointed that you didn’t mention his organization, The Firearms Coalition, as one of the groups that you support. The Firearms Coalition has been in the trenches lobbying Congress and the NRA for almost 25 years. We have been providing thoughtful, reliable information, without hype, bluster, and manic fund raising pleas, since the 4th of July, 1984.

Aside from the fact it should have been accompanied with a good, swift kick to my rear end, I fully agree with Jeff's message. I honestly don't know why it didn't occur to me to mention the Firearms Coalition--I've been a member (if a rather inactive one) for years, so I can't claim ignorance of the organization. The best I can do is to claim cerebral flatulence--not an excuse I'm proud to use.

The Firearms Coalition is indeed an essential resource for gun rights advocacy, and one that, speaking personally, I have all but ignored for far too long. I haven't yet taken more than a cursory look at their project (mentioned in Jeff's comment), GunVoter.org, but I am definitely going to correct that deficiency.

Maybe if enough of us "SNBIs" do so, we can refute the accusations of being unwilling to do the hard work of real political activism within the system.

News flash: Newsweek still supports forcible citizen disarmament

In a development that should shock no one, Newsweek is pushing a citizen disarmament measure. This time, it's the "Disarm Anyone the Attorney General Designates as a 'Terrorist'" bill (either H.R. 2074 or S. 1237). Specifically, the article takes Senator McCain (himself no friend to private firearm ownership) to task for not specifically endorsing the bill.

But does that extend to gun rights for suspected terrorists? His campaign won't say where he stands on a bill to eliminate a gun-control loophole that even the Bush administration wants closed: a gap in federal law that inhibits the government from stopping people on terrorist watch lists from buying guns.

I love, by the way, that reference to "even the Bush administration"--as if this administration has a proud record of standing against statist power grabs. I've made no secret of what I think of attempts to give the Attorney General--an unelected official--the power to unilaterally voiding an American citizen's Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental, absolute human right of the individual to keep and bear arms, without a conviction, without an arrest, without even criminal charges being filed. Then, of course, there's the little fact of the "terrorist watch list" having ballooned to something like a million names by now. Yeah--that sounds like a list that constitutes a reliable grounds for denying fundamental rights.

Frankly, I don't think Newsweek writer Mark Hosenball has much to worry about--I imagine McCain would sign such a bill without much of a second thought. Ah--the "land of the free."

Attempt to satirize 'Only Ones' mentality falls short

I don't usually do "Only Ones" posts, but I spotted something the other day that I found interesting.

I like satire as much as the next guy, and tend to read The Onion regularly. Certainly I've been put off more than once by Onion articles that I found to be in rather poor taste, but for the most part, I find them quite funny. The article in question here, "Cop Vows To Hunt Down Punk Who Successfully Pressed Brutality Charges Against His Partner," isn't offensive, but it still doesn't work very well as satire.

Christopher O'Dell, a 16-year veteran of the Detroit Police Department, told reporters Monday that he will not rest until he exacts revenge on the man who got his long-time partner, Officer Rick Noonan, 38, suspended for using excessive force during an arrest at a peaceful demonstration last March. "That punk is going to get what's coming to him again," O'Dell said. "If it's the last thing I do, I'll make sure that scumbag is taken off the streets, not properly informed of his Miranda rights, chained to a radiator beneath the station, and kept awake for days of interrogation without being formally charged."

This kind of satire works by exaggerating reality to a ridiculous extent, but the problem is that this is no exaggeration, as demonstrated here, here, here, here, and especially here--and these are all from the past week, and I only picked the "best" among those available. I'm not sure that Onion article would even have made the cut in that collection.

I'm not accusing The Onion of being deliberately misleading, to serve some kind of agenda--I think that like most Americans, the writers there are simply unaware of how pervasive is the problem of "a few bad apples" among the government's hired muscle.

And that's why the "Only Ones" posts are needed.

Life

Well, I did it. On Tuesday, I paid the final installment on my NRA life membership. That's right--you can now only get my NRA membership card away from me when you pull it from my cold, dead hands.

This was not easy for me--and I'm not referring to the anorexic quality of my finances, after my purchase of the "SNBI Militia CQB Special" ( ;-) ). No, what made it difficult for me to consummate my relationship with the NRA (speaking figuratively here--get your minds out of the gutter) is that I am rarely happy these days with the direction in which the NRA seems to be headed. I won't bore anyone with the details now--I've aired my complaints about the NRA often enough that all three of my regular readers must have the gist by now.

There are more than a couple people for whom I have enormous respect who actually see the NRA (or NRA leadership, anyway) as traitors to the cause of gun rights advocacy. I'm not ready to go that far--I see Cox and LaPierre more as Neville Chamberlain types than Vidkun Quislings. Then again, a Neville Chamberlain or two can do a hell of a lot of damage, too.

And still, I did it. While on the subject of "still," I'm also still not sure if I've done the right thing. In my defense, I'm also a life member of GOA, CCRKBA, and SAF. I'd probably do a life membership to JPFO, if they offered an installment plan (why don't they, anyway?). As mentioned yesterday, I'm also intrigued with the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR), who seem to share my unhappiness with the NRA, and it would probably be more surprising if I don't end up soon joining them, than if I do. I figure my support of those less "polite" groups might help (to some degree) to offset the hypocrisy of becoming a life member of a group that I have a habit of "bashing," according to some people.

The real reason I completed the process (aside from inertia, and the fact that I didn't particularly want the money invested in the membership, before my disillusionment, to be wasted) is that it wasn't that long ago that with guys like Neal Knox at the helm, the NRA was the kind of organization that could warm even the cold, black heart of an "SNBI" zealot like me. I'd like to think that it can be restored to that kind of organization . . . and now I have a vote.

And to think that I've been accused of being unwilling to work within the system.

Heller analysis; new (to me, at least) gun rights group

When the Heller decision was announced on June 26th, I confess that I was among those gun rights advocates who saw it as a "victory" for gun rights. Not that I ever saw it as anything like a death knell for citizen disarmament, but it did seem to me that a significant move forward for gun rights had been taken, and I certainly didn't see much in the way of danger in the decision. Some others within the gun rights movement, less susceptible to the siren's song of wishful thinking than I, were far less enthusiastic. As I listened to them, and became less drunk on "victory," I began to perceive the outlines of the minefield of potential new threats to gun rights contained in the decision.

I was never able to articulate those misgivings very well, though, thus perhaps opening myself up to accusations that I was denigrating the decision, "because it wasn't everything, RIGHT NOW!" That was never my position, and I'm still not sure how anyone formed the impression that it was, but I should perhaps accept some responsibility for leaving enough ambiguity in my position to leave room for that mischaracterization. To be clear, my misgivings about Heller are due not at all to the fact that it failed to make the literal meaning of the Second Amendment the recognized law of the land, but to the potential danger of it being used to justify further attacks on gun rights.

I am still not able to articulate that position very well, but stumbled yesterday on an analysis that does. Here's an excerpt:

Or for destroying those rights entirely. For on the theory that firearms that are “highly unusual” and not “in common use at th[is] time” can be banned, rogue public officials could make any type of firearm “highly unusual” simply by banning private possession of it, and then using the effect of the ban as a reason for saying the Second Amendment does not apply! Just as they have removed fully automatic firearms from the possibility of “common use” by the National Firearms Act and other statutes. So, on the basis of the loose language in Heller, Americans can expect, not only that fully automatic firearms such as M-16s will continue to be banned from “common use,” but also that political hucksters will attempt to revive the Clinton-era prohibitions of semiautomatic “assault weapons” that merely resemble M-16s, and of high-capacity magazines; then to enact new restrictions on highly accurate, long-range “sniper rifles” in .338 Lapua, .50 BMG, and other supposedly “unusual” calibers; and even to impose draconian regulations on possession of many types of ammunition, so that the firearms chambered for such rounds will be rendered effectively useless.

Exactly.

Read the whole article--it's not short, but is well worth the time.

Something else I got from the article was a reference to a gun rights group with which I had not been familiar--the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR). That looks like my kind of group. Know anything about them, anyone?

UPDATE: Upon further reflection, I found a passage from the article that I think would have been a better choice than the one I quoted originally. Hopefully, the author won't object to me quoting another paragraph.

Most importantly, Heller poorly serves the core purpose of the Second Amendment. In isolation, an individual’s right to possess firearms for the purpose of self-defense in his own home can only minimally deter rogue public officials from attempting to impose a police state on this country. Without thoroughgoing organization, sufficient arms, and legal authority for collective action, Americans cannot expect to deter, let alone to resist, large-scale para-militarized police forces and other instruments of oppression. Because the militia are the constitutional institutions that provide all three — and always under control of “the people” — the Second Amendment declares them to be “necessary to the security of a free State.” The most perceptive “gun controllers” — all of whom, in the final analysis, intend to impose something other than “a free State” upon common Americans — know this, and therefore bend their every effort to prevent true constitutional militia from functioning in this country.

Interesting choice of quotes, Mike

I've mentioned Mike Beard before, and the fact that his organization (Coalition to Stop Gun Violence) openly advocates a government monopoly on force. In a way, I had to (grudgingly) respect that--at least, I thought, CSGV wasn't trying to hide it's liberty-suppressing goals behind talk of stopping with "reasonable restrictions."

This week, however, in exhorting his fellow advocates of forcible citizen disarmament to take a more active role in working to undermine the Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental, absolute human right of the individual to keep and bear arms, he seems to borrow heavily from Big Brother's "War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength" slogan.

I refer specifically to Beard's audacity in quoting Frederick Douglass to inspire attacks on freedom. The particular quote at the end is especially bizarre:

Otherwise, our fate has already been written by Douglass: "Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them."

One problem here is that Beard has cut the quote off unfinished. In fact, he didn't even finish the sentence, and a look at the part he omitted makes clear why he felt compelled to pretend that that part was never said.

Let's look at the whole thing, shall we?

Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

Obviously, as president of a group that advocates a government monopoly on force, Beard can't very well talk about resisting tyrants with blows--he wants to destroy the people's ability to strike those blows.

At one point in Beard's call for action, he states that to succeed in disarming America, the citizen disarmament advocates "will have to get [their] hands dirty." I would say that if they succeed, nothing will ever remove the stain from their hands.

Guess who likes McCain!

At risk of giving the (badly mistaken) impression that I would not be very unhappy with an Obama presidency, I still can't bring myself to shut up about how little enthusiasm I would have for the alternative.

We know about McCain and the "gun show loophole," McCain and the Lautenberg lifetime gun ban, and I'm doing my best to not allow anyone to forget about McCain's vote to extend the AWB. What I was not aware of (but perhaps should have surmised) is the degree to which everyone's favorite Mayor for Forcible Citizen Disarmament respects McCain.

At a press conference with U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk [him again] on gun-control, Bloomberg spoke positively about Barack Obama's position on guns, but he also praised John McCain.
"I have known John McCain a lot longer than I have known Sen. Obama," he said. "I can say nothing but good things about Sen. McCain."

Obama or McCain. No wonder Bloomberg, Helmke, et al. are so pleased about the upcoming presidential election. It's hard to see how they could lose. Maybe the Kool-Aid guzzler David found can explain how I'm mistaken.

That means, of course, that it's equally hard to see how liberty advocates can win--at least under these rules. Hope everyone has plenty of ammo.

Freudian slip?

I've not been shy about expressing my dislike (most recently here) of programs like Richmond, Virginia's Project Exile, whereby whenever possible, offenders of the myriad draconian gun laws are prosecuted under federal law, in order to maximize the sentence. This article is about a similar program in Pueblo, Colorado.

I don't have much to say about it that I haven't said about such programs before, but one sentence, quoting Troy Eid (U.S. Attorney for Colorado), grabbed my attention:

He said [Pueblo Police Chief Jim] Billings has told him Pueblo criminals now less often take guns to their drug deals. "They've learned you might go to federal prison if they do."

Hmm--"you might go to federal prison if they" conduct illegal drug transactions while armed. I'm familiar with the well established tradition of punishing responsible, peaceable gun owners for the actions of criminals, but I hadn't expected it to be so casually admitted to by one of the practitioners.

I actually realize that it was just a clumsy misstatement, but one could argue that it holds some (accidental) truth.

Maybe we just like making you sick to your stomach, Dwight

Dwight Lewis starts a column titled "Why do we make it easy for killers?" by claiming a very odd medical condition.

Gun advocates can make me sick to my stomach. And not far behind are those who still can't get over the fact that the South lost the Civil War.

He goes on to explain that last Wednesday, he received notice (via an email from Hillary Clinton's press office) about the shooting of Arkansas Democratic Party chairman Bill Gwatney. Then, just over an hour later, he got another email, this one from the Second Amendment Foundation, promoting their book, America Fights Back: Armed Self-Defense in a Violent Age. This offends Dwight. Not, we're apparently expected to believe, because of the message (despite the pretty clear implication that he strongly disagrees with that message), but because of the timing.

Give me a break, please. Just an hour or so earlier, it had been reported that a gunman had burst into the state Democratic Party headquarters in Little Rock, Ark., and shot Gwatney, the party chairman.

Apparently, no one should promote gun rights advocacy literature shortly after someone gets shot. Keep in mind that as far as I know, SAF doesn't send email to people who don't subscribe to their email alerts, so it's not as if they're SPAMming his inbox uninvited.

That incident wasn't the end of Dwight's stomach troubles Wednesday.

It's not only the Second Amendment Foundation that makes me sick when it comes to gun advocates, it's the National Rifle Association, as well.

What did the bad old NRA do to his poor stomach (beyond the mere fact of their existence, which I suspect is nearly enough to put him off his feed by itself)?

Last Wednesday, the NRA claimed Sen. Barack Obama's campaign is trying to mislead voters in Montana about his past support of gun control, calling Obama "a poster child of the extremist, elitist gun control movement.''

America needs more "extremist, elitist gun control'' people to help stop the killing of such people as Bill Gwatney, not laws that will enable more people to own guns and then kill people with them.

The last part of that last sentence is kind of interesting, I thought: " . . . laws that will enable more people to own guns and then kill people with them." I'm having trouble coming up with many laws that "enable more people to own guns," (and especially "and then kill people with them"). You don't need laws to enable gun purchases, you just have to have an absence of laws preventing it (or trying to prevent it, as if prohibition laws ever accomplish their stated goals). Pretty indicative of the statist mindset--they always think in terms of passing more laws, even if the goal is decreased regulation.

Read the column to see his . . . interesting objections to people who wish to wear items commemorating the Confederate States of America. The best part is probably this:

Yes, I'm a free-speech advocate, but for an 18-year-old to claim he is fighting for "my heritage and my rights as a Southerner and an American'' is a bunch of bull.

A "free-speech advocate" who apparently will let you know what you can and cannot freely say. I'm not a big fan of Confederate flag clothing, but people wear lots of things that I find offensive.

I happen to be aware that the right to never be offended is one that I don't have. I can live with that.

The dreaded .50 caliber 'assault pistol'

Nearly a year-and-a-half ago, I announced my plans to get an AR pistol chambered for .50 Beowulf. Some day, perhaps, I would come up with a practical application for it, but actually, practical applications aren't the point here. The point is that as a handgun (technically), an "assault weapon" (making it the dreaded "assault pistol"), and a .50 caliber gun, this single firearm constitutes a three-pronged attack on the tender sensibilities of the forcible disarmament advocates. I know, by the way, that the .50 Beowulf is vastly less powerful than the .50 BMG cartridge that so terrifies the other side, but most of them don't--they hear ".50 caliber," and visualize me knocking down jumbo jets at 30,000 feet.

One of my favorite statist civilian disarmers, Commissar . . . er, Illinois State Senator (and former executive director of the rabidly anti-gun Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence) Dan Kotowski, has made going after .50 caliber guns, magazines with capacities of eleven or more rounds, "assault weapons," etc., a signature issue of his. It is he, in fact, who I credit with inspiring me to get such a firearm. There's just something about being told that one must be prevented from owning some item, that makes that item all that much more desirable.

Actually turning my ".50 caliber protest" into reality was a long road, with numerous twists and detours, but the destination has now been reached. I present (drum roll, please) . . . Kotowski's Lament:


Clearly, I'm no photographer.

Here's another shot, with the dreaded "high capacity" magazine (designed to hold 90 rounds of .223/5.56mm, but can be used to hold 34 rounds of .50 Beowulf--although it's not full in the picture).



Well, do you like it, Dan? Come down to this part of the state and go to the range with me--I'll make a shooter out of you yet.

Nothing today

No substantive blogging today. Anything I wrote today would be unlikely to be helpful. I realize I don't have much of a history of letting that stop me, but maybe it's time to step back a bit.

Tomorrow is looking kind of busy, so I might not have anything then, either. By Sunday, though, I hope to have some kind of fun stuff (with pics) to post.

Methodists for unopposed church massacres

It seems that at the North Georgia Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, a resolution has been adopted to attempt to maintain the state-mandated defenseless victim zone status of Georgia churches.

"Whereas bringing concealed weapons into the church sends a message that is at odds with what the church wants to communicate and violates the religious character of religious property, and;

Whereas the work of the church does not involve or require weapons;

Now be it resolved that the delegates to the 2008 session of the North Georgia Annual Conference oppose any attempts by the state legislature to allow anyone other than law enforcement officers to carry concealed weapons in houses of worship;

And be it further resolved that we invite members of other churches and faiths in Georgia to join us in this effort."

I'm not sure of the exact date of this conference--it may have been before the butchery of congregants at a Unitarian Universalist church in Knoxville, Tennessee, late last month. Even if so, though, there are plenty of other examples of what happens when the evil person is the only one armed.

There are, of course, also examples of what happens when evil does not have a monopoly on force. The courageous defense of her fellow parishioners by concealed carry permit holder and private citizen Jeanne Assam comes to mind.

Apparently, though, North Georgia Methodists prefer outcomes like the one in Tennessee to the one in Colorado. It's disgusting, inexplicable, and just plain twisted that they would wish such defenselessness on their own congregants.

What is evil, though, is that they would impose it on every other church in the state, as well.

Time for some fence mending, Senator?

An article in Politico yesterday tells us that while McCain has more support from gun owners than Obama does, the margin is not all that great.

According to a Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation poll to be released Wednesday, John McCain leads Obama by a 45 to 31 percent. That’s only about half the 27-point edge respondents say they gave George W. Bush over Kerry four years ago and far short of the 65-to-15 percent margin gun owners gave to Bush over Gore in 2000.

It could, of course, be convincingly argued that events have shown gun owners' faith in the "Vote Freedom First President" to have been (badly) misplaced.

Still, when the opposition is Obama, with his record of extremist opposition to private ownership of firearms, how can a Republican candidate fail to be anything less than a vastly better alternative? Gee, I don't know--could it be McCain's support for ending private sales at gun shows--a position on which he is in exact agreement with Obama, Bloomberg, and the Brady Campaign? Or is it perhaps his vote to extend the federal ban of so-called "assault weapons"? Has even Obama ever placed such a vote?

People who care about gun rights should be a sure bet for the Republican Party, but the party instead managed to nominate someone who can't even significantly separate himself on the issue from Obama . . . Obama! That's like a hen running for leadership of the hen house, and finding herself barely leading the fox in polls among the hen house population.

If McCain wants enthusiastic gun owner support--and I would think he does--he has a lot of explaining to do. I can't really begin to imagine what kind of explanation would do the trick, but I suggest he come up with something. Sending this back, after having used it for toilet paper, might be a good start.

Mayor Daley's kind of law professor

Bernard Bell, a law professor at Rutgers, advocates imposing liability on gun owners--even those who have done nothing wrong.

Perhaps it is time to think about handgun ownership as the type of activity that should give rise to liability without fault. Thus, while those unlawfully threatening gun owners obviously could not recover damages for their injuries, innocent bystanders and others injured by gun owners would be compensated.

When Bell says "injured by gun owners," by the way, he doesn't really mean . . . "injured by gun owners," he means injured by (for example) someone else, who stole the gun from its rightful owner.

We then get to the part Mayor Daley should really like:

A move toward absolute liability would ideally be accompanied by private insurers' willingness to insure gun owners against such liability. Such insurance should be separate from standard homeowners' insurance, so that homeowners who do not own guns are not required to subsidize those who do.

The cost of insurance would reflect the expected cost of compensating gun injuries to innocent people. Individuals would then have the incentive to weigh the cost of injuries to others in deciding whether to purchase or keep firearms.

Daley hinted at something similar (among other things) a few weeks ago.

. . . Do you have to have insurance if you have a gun?

Bell even goes on to acknowledge that his idea may price the poor (who tend, incidentally, to live in the kinds of neighborhoods where self-defense is most necessary) out of the self-defense market. That, apparently, doesn't bother him.

Not very "progressive" of him, is it?

The line needs to be before that

I'm still not quite ready to drop discussion of the rather . . . spirited disagreement around the gun blogosphere about Mike Vangerboegh's letter to the editor. The thrust of the main argument, if I understand correctly, of the side that objects to making overt public reference to violent resistance to government infringement of that which shall not be infringed is that we have not yet reached the point of the infringements becoming intolerable, and thus it is too early to refresh the tree of liberty.

What this ignores is that Mr. Vanderboegh did not advocate crying "Havoc!" and letting slip the dogs of war--yet. The letter made clear that the danger would come only with further attacks on the Constitutionally guaranteed fundamental, absolute human right of the individual to keep and bear arms. To avert that danger, the government need only do . . . nothing. The shouting down of Mr. Vanderboegh came not in response to his advocacy of civil war--advocacy that never happened--but in response to his merely warning of what would provoke it.

In discussing where to draw the line in the sand, Sebastian quotes Judge Alex Kozinski's Silveria dissent:

The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed — where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees*. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.

I agree with Sebastian that Kozinski's dissent is indeed eloquent, but I don't know that it makes a very useful guideline as to when fighting back becomes necessary.

For me, the "line in the sand" has to be drawn at citizen disarmament. The horrors outlined by Judge Kozinski are unlikely to occur until the people are disarmed. If we wait that long, we've missed the boat.

I am fully familiar, and in full agreement, with Jeff Snyder's superb Walter Mitty's Second Amendment, by the way. I know that the right to keep and bear arms is no guarantee of liberty, and is in fact useless in preserving freedom without the will to use it. Still, if the right to keep and bear arms is not sufficient to safeguard liberty, it is necessary for that purpose.

To word it one more way, having the right to keep and bear arms does not guarantee freedom, but losing it guarantees tyranny.

Bloomberg's Congresspets serving their master well

War on Guns today points out that the reason an op-ed in the Three Village Times newspaper (New York) is so fawningly supportive of another of Carolyn "What's a barrel shroud" McCarthy's attempts to set the Constitution on fire is that it is a word-for-word reprint of her press release. McCarthy's bill (H.R. 6676) would require criminal background checks simply to work in a gun store.

WoG also mentions that one of McCarthy's partners in unconstitutionality is one of my perennial favorite neo-con citizen disarmament advocates, Mark Kirk. He's been a busy little wannabe tyrant this summer, introducing a bill to ban so-called "assault weapons" a couple months ago, and following that up recently with H.R. 6664.

The purpose of H.R. 6664, apparently, is that it gives us more things we can refer to as "loopholes"--the better to scare Suzy Soccer Mom with, my dear. The "loophole" in question this time is--I'm not making this up--the "fire sale loophole." The idea here is that after a gun dealer loses his license (for "willfully" having forms filled out with the letter "Y," instead of the word "Yes," for example), he would, under Kirk's bill, be prohibited from selling his guns as a private seller--even though, without a Federal Firearms License, that's exactly what he would be. Hopefully, this will solve the problem of not enough gun dealers starving to death once the BATFE has wantonly crushed their livelihoods.

Kirk's press release describes it this way:

“If a gun dealer loses its federal firearms license, we should be more vigilant about the connection to criminal activity – not turn a blind eye and open a floodgate of guns on our streets,” said Congressman Mark Kirk, co-chair of the Congressional Task Force on Illegal Guns. “We should not give a pass those who would arm violent gang members and threaten the safety of our communities. In the northern suburbs of Illinois, there are now more than 2,000 documented drug gang members. Through ATF trace data [that would be the ATF trace data you and your puppet masters claim is made unavailable, right?] , we clearly see a relationship between these gangs and certain gun shops. By closing the fire sale loophole, we’ll prevent those gun dealers who flaunt [I believe the word you're looking for is "flout," genius--I don't guess it would be reasonable to ask that those who presume to write laws we must obey know something of the English language] our laws from arming violent drug gangs that threaten the safety of law enforcement and our communities. I’m honored to have the backing of Mayors Bloomberg and Menino and the Mayors Against Illegal Guns coalition for this vitally important common-sense legislation.”

I don't guess I had better complain too loudly to Kirk about this, though--his pal McCarthy has probably taught him how to deal with that.

Must read from Mike Vanderboegh

Go. Read.

III

What say you now, South Florida Sun-Sentinel?

Nearly a year ago, I wrote about an editorial in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that praised the decision to equip police officers with AR-15s (so called "assault weapons"), while simultaneously railing against the fact that we lowly private citizens could also obtain them.

People shouldn't be opposed to cops having these weapons.

What people should oppose — strongly — is the guy across the street having one.

I've made pretty clear what I think of that position, and I think that on that (if not on much else), the gun blogging community as a whole is pretty well in agreement.

What I'm curious about now, though, is what the South Florida Sun-Sentinel editorial board thinks of that position in light of this information:

At the end of July a thief stole an assault rifle like this one from the unmarked SUV of Broward Sheriff's Sergeant Richard Lacerra. According to documents from BSO, it was just one of a number of items stolen from the deputy's car.

And . . .

While that theft may be a concern, CBS4 News has learned that twice in the past month South Florida police officers have lost control of high powered weapons like these.

So let me make sure I have this right--the editors doesn't want peaceable, responsible private citizens to have these firearms, but they do want such firepower in police cars, from which they are promptly removed by people who are by definition criminals--is that about right?

Time to reexamine that "plan," maybe?

Something is indeed 'scary' here

I haven't really been following case of Kenneth Webster, who was arrested in Massachusetts with what the media is (predictably) describing as an "arsenal," or "massive cache" of weapons, in defiance of Massachusetts law. One article breathlessly describes his "massive cache" as including "more than 1,000 live rounds" (should he have stocked up on dud rounds, instead?).

As stated, I haven't really been following the story, but according to the above-linked article, he doesn't sound like any kind of terrorist or mass shooter I've ever heard about. That's not really what I'm writing about today. Instead, I want to look at this column:

When he was arrested on July 1 Webster reportedly told police that he had a constitutional right to own those guns. If that sounds scary, here's something scarier. There are a lot of people out there who agree with him.

I think columnist Joe Burns is talking about "extremists" like me, here. But wait! It gets even better.

Second Amendment literalists have long held that the phrase "the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed" means just that.

Imagine! People thinking that the Constitution means what it says, rather than what Joe Burns and Sarah Brady tell us it means--simply terrifying, isn't it?

"Second Amendment literalist"--I kind of like that term, but I don't want to give up my "extremist" creds--"Second Amendment extreme literalist," maybe? Kinda awkward, I guess. I'll keep working on it. I wonder if Burns is a "First Amendment literalist." That, of course, would be perfectly alright--thinking that the First Amendment is just a figure of speech is plainly ridiculous.

I have to wonder--would those who oppose publicly speaking about the purpose of the Second Amendment prefer to be called "Second Amendment figurativists"?

Brady Campaign looking for NRA/Vanderboegh axis? What are they smoking?

I recently pointed out that, gun blogger histrionics notwithstanding, the reaction to Mike Vangerboegh's letter to the editor of the (Madison, WI) Capital Times outside the gun blogosphere had been nil. Until today, that had been the case.

Now, however, the Brady Campaign is making a bizarre attempt to conflate the Vanderboegh letter with the NRA's alleged espionage efforts.

I tend not to be very shy about pointing out when I was right, but in implying that the Bradyites would just ignore Mr. Vanderboegh's letter, I was clearly wrong. Certainly not a new experience for me, and in the end, not something I see as a problem. In fact, I find myself wishing, for perhaps the first time, that the Brady Blog had more readership outside the gun blogging community, to help get Mike V.'s message out there.

Now that would be some Unintended Consequences.

War on Guns has more, as does Snowflakes in Hell, and probably others that I've not spotted yet.

III

About last night . . .

The podcast debate discussed here went reasonably well, I thought, aside from the fact that I didn't have a very good phone connection. For those who missed it last night, it can be downloaded here.

In the end, though, I doubt it resolved much of anything--and there is at least one thing that I think is very much in need of resolution. The gun bloggers who reacted with such outraged indignation over Mr. Vanderboegh's letter seem to demand that we treat overt enemies of private firearm ownership with vastly more courtesy and respect than some of the more conciliatory gun rights advocates are willing to treat us hard liners. Building bridges is great, but do you have to burn bridges to do it?

Ironically, the vituperative howls of indignation from the "pragmatics"--the calls to silence us less "polite" gun rights advocates (good luck with that, by the way) are what kept this issue on the front burner, and provoked us to dig in our heels. It's "gun rights advocates" volunteering to shoot us, who make us all the more determined.

So--if the pragmatics are convinced that the battle for gun rights is so close to being won that they need a new set of enemies to replace the ostensibly vanquished citizen disarmament advocates, I suppose we of the Merry Band of 3% can fill that role.

I still think it's an odd--and not especially "pragmatic"--choice of battles.

III

Project Exile: 'keeping an eye on' Richmond

I am not, and have never been, a fan of Project Exile, whereby the entire weight of the federal government is thrown against "gun criminals." I could go into a long explanation of why I oppose enforcement of unconstitutional laws, even against the scum who tend to be the targets of Project Exile, but the arguments are made better than I could do so here.

I bring this up because of a Wall Street Journal article that states that both the NRA and the Brady Campaign support Project Exile and similar efforts (yeah--that makes me feel better about the idea), and that more cities are looking into the idea.

Although the NRA is challenging gun laws in various cities such as San Francisco and Chicago, it supports Richmond's efforts.

"By prosecuting them they prevent the drug dealer, the gang member and the felon from committing the next crime," says NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre. "Leave the good people alone and lock up the bad people and dramatically cut crime."

Although it wants more done to tamp down the supply of guns, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence also supports Richmond's efforts, says Peter Hamm, Brady spokesman. The organization supports any measure that reduces violent crime, which the Richmond effort is doing, he says.

The BATFE is enthusiastically on board with the idea, of course ("Yeah--I guess we'll accept more power and a bigger budget.")

North of downtown, Mr. Swann and fellow ATF agent James Panos cruise in an unmarked car. While the agents conduct investigations, they also patrol like city police, engaging citizens and talking to potential suspects, "just to let them know we're here and keeping an eye on them," Mr. Swann says.

Frankly, I'm more concerned about the need to keep an eye on Mr. Swann. It's interesting, though, that just as more and more police departments are becoming increasingly militarized, we also have federal agents driving around playing street cop. One big, happy, police state family.

Project Exile, the NICS "Improvement" Act--the NRA and the Bradyites (not to mention the BATFE) are getting downright chummy, aren't they?