Monthly Archives: February 2011

Game, Set, Match

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Brady Campaign board member Joan Peterson just gave us the win. She says she would rather our society had any violent crime rate than allow there to be just one death by gunshot wound.

Linoge and Heather have the details.

Action item from FirearmsCoalition.org

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Via email from Jeff Knox:

Immediate Action Needed – Window Closes Today!!

Copy the text of the email below or rewrite it in your own words and email it to:

barbara.terrell@atf.gov

The comment period has been extended for the ATF’s proposed “temporary,” emergency regulation requiring firearms dealers to file reports every time someone purchases more than one semi-auto long gun, but that comment period closes this Tuesday, February 15.

The ATF claims the reporting is necessary to combat the flow of firearms across the border into Mexico, but recent revelations and accusations raise significant questions about ATF’s motives and the efficacy of such a reporting requirement.

In what has been dubbed “Project Gunwalker” ATF is accused of allowing hundreds of AR and AK- type rifles to be sold in questionable sales and smuggled across the border – including two rifles recovered after a shootout with bandits on the border in which Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was killed.

The implications of the Project Gunwalker scandal are that ATF has already been receiving significant, voluntary cooperation from gun dealers in the border states, but that the agency has used that cooperation more to build support for their Project Gunrunner interdiction program and justify the need for the emergency reporting regulation by inflating the numbers of illegally “trafficked” weapons tracked across the border.

Beyond the complications of Project Gunwalker, the idea of requiring reporting of multiple long gun sales is clearly in conflict with established congressional mandates and restrictions on ATF’s authority.

Back in 1968 when the federal Gun Control Act was passed Congress included a requirement that multiple sales of handguns be reported to ATF and local law enforcement.  At that time, and several times since, Congress has had the opportunity to include multiple sales of long guns in the reporting requirements and they have chosen not to do so.
Congress has also passed several resolutions and included language in laws restricting ATF and other government agencies from instituting any sort of registration program or collecting detailed information from firearms sales without a direct connection to a specific criminal investigation.  By attempting to push through this major regulatory change without congressional approval, ATF is seriously overstepping their legal authority.

Here is a sample letter which we ask you to copy and paste into an email or use as a template for writing a letter of your own to email in response to this proposal.

To: barbara.terrell@atf.gov
Subject: Oppose Regulation Expanding Multiple Sale Reporting

I am writing to oppose the so called emergency regulation to register multiple sales of certain rifles with BATFE as described in FR Doc.
2010-31761 from the 12/17/2010 Federal Register.
http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2010/pdf/2010-31761.pdf

This regulation is both illegal and unnecessary.  Further there is no justification for any “emergency” implementation as reported by the Washington Post:
White House delayed rule meant to stop gun flow to Mexico, Washington Post, Dec. 17, 2010, On-line edition:
( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/17/AR2010121706598.html).

*  The regulation proposed is outside the statutory grant of authority to record information about multiple sales of firearms.  Title 18 U.S.C. § 923(g)(3)(A) specifically grants the authority to collect multiple sale information on handguns and revolvers.  Other firearms are excluded and there is no implied authority to extend this reporting requirement to rifles or any other type of firearm.

*  “FFL” holders are already required by law to respond to BATFE requests for information on firearms distribution pursuant to criminal
investigations:  Title 18 U.S.C. § 923(g)(7).

*  The regulation contains no provision for the destruction of information collected, which establishes a nationwide registry of “certain types of firearms” as proposed. Because of this the regulation as proposed is illegal under Title 18 U.S.C. § 926(a).  “No such rule or regulation . may require that records required to be maintained under this chapter or any portion of the contents of such records, be recorded at or transferred to a facility owned, managed, or controlled by the United States or any State or any political subdivision thereof, nor that any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions or disposition be established.”

There is a grave potential for this regulation to unduly burden citizens who are collectors or must obtain purchase permits at the local or state level to possess firearms. The proposed regulation does not say what the agency intends to do with the information but ostensibly it would be for criminal investigations. Subjecting law abiding gun owners to this type of investigation under the guise of “information collection” is an overt attempt to prevent them from exercising their 2nd Amendment rights to purchase and own firearms.

*  This regulatory action has not allowed the public sufficient time to comment.

This regulatory action should not be approved.

# # #

Whether you use this specific language, edit it, or compose a letter of your own, please take action immediately!  Do not put off sending a comment!

Comments must be received by Tuesday February 15, 2011.

Please Send Your Comments Immediately!

Thank you for your Action!

Jeff Knox

Director, The Firearms Coalition

www.FirearmsCoalition.org

—
Now available!
Neal Knox – The Gun Rights War
A compilation of the best of Neal Knox’s writing from 35 years in the trenches http://thegunrightswar.com/

Quote of the day—Evan F. Nappen

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Claiming New Jersey in 2011 needs stricter anti-gun laws would be like saying Alabama in 1961 needed stricter laws against blacks. Both gun rights and racial discrimination are constitutional, civil rights issues. Alabama eventually respected civil rights and maybe one day New Jersey will respect civil rights, too.


Evan F. Nappen
February 13, 2011
DOES NEW JERSEY NEED EVEN TIGHTER GUN CONTROL?: Abusive gun laws make felons of state’s law-abiding citizens
[Read it all. I have nothing further to add.


H/T to Sebastian.—Joe]

She’s back

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If you don’t remember Robyn Ringler, here the outline of the refresher course:

She is back spreading her hate on the web again. This time she says she supports efforts to limit accessibility to what the U.S. Supreme Court says is a specific enumerated right:

As a member of The League of Women Voters (LWV), I encourage you to show strong support for these efforts. The LWV believes that the proliferation of handguns and semi-automatic assault weapons is a major health and safety threat. The LWV supports strong federal measures to limit the accessibility and regulate the ownership of these weapons by private citizens.

If she were advocating the limiting of accessibility to religion, books, or trial by jury do you think a newspaper like The Saratogian would publish her opinion? Why is it they let her spout her hate when it’s a different part of the Bill of Rights she is attempting to destroy?

She should create her own blog again and be left to whine by herself in some obscure corner of the Internet.

Update: From Barron in the comments:

As a member of The League of Women Voters (LWV) National Rifle Association (NRA), I encourage you to show strong support for these efforts. The LWV NRA believes that the proliferation of handguns and semi-automatic assault weapons Women’s Suffrage is a major health and safety threat threat to freedom and morals. The LWV NRA supports strong federal measures to limit the accessibility and regulate the ownership of these weapons by private ability of female citizens to vote.

And, like Barron, I do not support the restriction of women voting but the word substitution is very useful to illustrate the bigotry.

Weapons of mass destruction

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I can see why his name is “Nutter”:

Bad people will do bad things, but we can and must take steps to deny these criminals the weapons of mass destruction that have ripped apart families across the country.

…

President Obama has called for “common sense” regulation. Regulating magazine size is surely common sense. Large-capacity magazines can turn a semiautomatic pistol into a weapon of mass destruction, with some spitting out six shots per second.

Actually, as I demonstrated last week, even on an off day a middle-aged computer geek can do close to six rounds a second with only ten rounds in the magazine. The size of the magazine has nothing to do with rate of fire and no matter how many rounds are in the magazine it doesn’t turn the gun into a WMD.

Or is Nutter saying we really did find WMDs in Iraq?

Headspace

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Headspace is simple.  It’s the distance from the gun’s bolt face to the surface inside the chamber that stops the forward motion of the cartridge as it’s inserted.  In a bottleneck cartridge, the case headspaces on the shoulder.


Many shooters, and all reloaders, know that.  But I think there’s a misunderstanding of case length (maybe it’s just my misunderstanding).  We’re told in all the manuals to carefully check the length of our cases before reloading, and to trim them if they’re beyond a certain specified length.


Actually there are two important case lengths to a bottlenecked case.  The distance from the head to the shoulder, and the distance from the shoulder to the case mouth.


My Winchester has what I regard to be excessive headspace, which means that if I fire a factory load, the case will stretch backward, to fill the extra space.  I suspect most of the stretching is between the shoulder and the bolt face.  If I neck size the case, or size it so the shoulder is pushed back only a thousandth or two, the case is now “too long” and I am told, in all the loading manuals, to trim it.  That would be shortening the neck in response to stretching behind the shoulder, and it would accomplish nothing.


Sure; the cases being loaded should all be the same length so they’re crimped equally, but I won’t know how far the case’s neck extends into the chamber by just measuring the overall length of the case.  Once I have a case that’s fire-formed to my rifle’s chamber, the neck may or may not need trimming.


Are there case gauges that make it easy to take a measurement of the mouth-to-shoulder length as well as the headspace?  Should I just shut up and full-length size all my cases, trim them to spec, and wait for the cases to deteriorate from excessive stretching and sizing? (the rifle was checked by a “gunsmith” and declared to be within spec, BTW)

Popularity contest

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It’s not the way I think it should be done but in essence politics is a popularity contest. A politician wins by being popular. They become popular in a number of ways. They can “buy” votes via advertising, and/or having friends in the media. They can belong to a rich and/or famous family like the Kennedy’s. Or they can align their political plans (as near as I can tell no politician has a significant chance of election with a consistent political philosophy) that resonates with a significantly large segment of the voters. This last method frequently consists of buying votes with taxpayer money but that is a different story.

I find it very interesting that in this Internet age a single individual can measure the popularity of public figures and ideas without paying for a survey. It may not be as accurate as an actual survey but it can give some clues.

The anti-gun blogs are either so out of touch or so low on the totem pole they don’t even show up on the tools I use for measuring relevance but there are other measures of the opposition.

My most recent measure of the popularity of our opposition is to look at the views of the Brady Campaign videos on YouTube.

There are four videos of the Brady Campaign President on YouTube since the Tucson shooting. The titles, dates, and number of views as of the evening of February 13, 2011 are:

  • Brady President Paul Helmke’s thoughts on the Tucson Shooting, January 10, 2011: 124 views
  • Paul Helmke Video Blog on HB308, to Ban High Capacity Magazines, January 20, 2011: 114 views
  • Paul Helmke at the Intro of H.B. 308 to Ban High Capacity Mags, January 20, 2011: 685 views
  • Paul Helmke on the Resurgence of Support for Gun Regulation, January 28, 2011: 310 views

That is a total of 1233 views.

In the same timeframe and on essentially the same topic I have posted two YouTube videos:

That is a total of 2968 views. And the second of those videos has only been up for less than 70 hours and is still getting a fairly high rate of hits.

I expect that by the middle of this week I should have about three times (it is currently 2.4 X) the number of views for my message as Paul Helmke has for his. And my videos were crudely done with video glasses and edited on my laptop while I was in bed instead of professionally scripted, produced, and edited.

If Helmke were to get paid by his popularity he should be getting about 1/3 of what I am receiving for my videos. This makes Helmke worth about one third of zero. I know the anti-gun people have a problem with arithmetic but it still should be pretty obvious Brady Campaign donors are not getting their money’s worth.

Brady Campaign is hiring

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I’m surprised the Brady Campaign has any money to hire someone but it appears they do:

Associate Director, Communications

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and its sister organization, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, are the nation’s largest, non-partisan, grassroots organizations leading the fight to prevent gun violence. For additional information and a full job description, please visit www.bradycenter.org. We are searching for a talented Associate Director, Communications!

The Communications Department develops and implements the public education and message strategy for all organizations (Campaign/MMM,Center, VEF) through print, video, audio and television outlets. The Department plans press conferences, writes press releases, op-eds, articles and editorial reports and supervises content and design of the organization’s website ensuring that legislative, outreach, fundraising and message delivery are as effective as possible.

Reporting to the Director of Communications, the Associate Director is responsible for developing strategy and materials for use with the press and the public to advance goals of the organization.  The Associate Director will represent the organization in national and local media and public forums.  The Associate Director assists in message and media training for staff and activists, identifies and recruits new constituencies to the organization as experts and/or local spokespeople. The incumbent keeps abreast of all new developments, trends in the gun control movement, and develops countermeasures.  The Associate Director assists in managing content and design of the organization’s Web site.

The Associate Director should maintain daily contacts with national and local editors, reporters, columnists, producers, correspondents and communications directors of health and education organizations. This position works closely with staff, board members, and membership. The Associate Director handles last minute/after hours press deadlines and is available to the press after hours and on weekends/holidays when the Director is not available. The Associate Director must be able to fill in for the Director of Communications at any time.

Qualifications for this role include:

·         Bachelors degree or equivalent in communications or public relations background desired. 5-7 years of progressively responsible experience in a similar position performing communications responsibilities. Non profit experience strongly preferred.

·         Excellent communication (both verbal and written) skills.

·         Must have experience in planning and implementing media campaigns.    

·         Must have news-style professional photography, broadcasting, and videography skills, which include taking and editing photographs, taping, editing, and storytelling with video and audio, and writing scripts. Must have experience in the use of video and audio for the Internet, and social media marketing and promotion. Strong graphic design skills required.

·         Ability to juggle competing projects and shift priorities quickly.

·         Demonstrated ability to facilitate and maintain relationships with influential media outlets and players.

Please submit your resume and letter of interest to Expand HR Consulting, the organization’s Human Resources Consulting Firm, at jobs@expandhr.com. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence is proud to be an equal opportunity employer.

NOTES:
Local Residents Preferred (No Relo)

Requirements

·         Bachelors degree or equivalent in communications or public relations background desired. 5-7 years of progressively responsible experience in a similar position performing communications responsibilities. Non profit experience strongly preferred.

·         Excellent communication (both verbal and written) skills.

·         Must have experience in planning and implementing media campaigns.    

·         Must have news-style professional photography, broadcasting, and videography skills, which include taking and editing photographs, taping, editing, and storytelling with video and audio, and writing scripts. Must have experience in the use of video and audio for the Internet, and social media marketing and promotion. Strong graphic design skills required.

·         Ability to juggle competing projects and shift priorities quickly.

·         Demonstrated ability to facilitate and maintain relationships with influential media outlets and players

Once their new person comes on board and begins to “facilitate and maintain relationships with influential media outlets and players” I think one of the first set of people they need to meet is the gun blogger community. I plan to invited him or her to Boomershoot 2011 (there should be at least 10 bloggers there this year) and I’m pretty sure I could get them an invitation the Gun Blogger Rendezvous in Reno too.

As Winston Churchill said, “When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.” I have no intention of causing anyone physical injury but I don’t see any harm in being polite as we declare “war”. And after meeting us they might just surrender on the spot and join the winning team.

Update: After an email discussion with Sebastian I went looking for the previous person in this position—Doug Pennington. I found him at the Constitutional Accountability Center. I find it interesting that the CAC filed a brief in the McDonald case supporting incorporation of the Second Amendment under the Privileges or Immunities clause. It’s almost as if Pennington came over to our side of the issue. I would like to think that I helped convince him of the righteous of our cause but that is probably just wistful thinking.

Quote of the day—Pete Cunningham

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It’s a big win for Microsoft today. Windows Phone 7 is no one’s priority. But now Microsoft has a leading vendor committed to use the platform.

Pete Cunningham
An analyst with Canalys, a research firm in Reading, England.
February 11, 2011
Together, Nokia and Microsoft Renew a Push in Smartphones
[It’s a big bet. But when we had an all-hands meeting about it on Friday morning everyone seemed pretty pleased about it. There will be lots of work in involved but the rewards should be large too.—Joe]

Conspiracy

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Have you noticed that the very word “conspiracy”, like so many words, no longer means what it means?


Last night as I was listening to a conservative talk show, the host demonstrated this by saying; “This isn’t a conspiracy– it really happened”.


I may have to add an entry to the Left-Speak Dictionary.  Conspiracy – that which does not exist.  Something unreal.  Any irrational assertion.


The transformation is so advanced that even mostly rational, well-educated people are using it in the left-speak form.


It’s no longer necessary to include the “theory” afterward, either.  You use “conspiracy” by itself and it means the same thing; “Oh, that’s just a conspiracy” is now proper English in some quarters, for describing a ridiculous theory.  What are we to call a collaboration between two or more people then?  How about “fred”?  “It’s a fred, I tell you!  A fred!”  What are we to call an assertion that there may be a collaboration between two or more people?  A fred blop.  “I do not subscribe to your fred blop, Mr. Wilson, for the following reasons….”


Insurance against financial hardship in the event of an expensive medical emergency is how “healthcare”.  “Yeeahh; it’s a bummerrr, Dude– I don’t have healthcare.”  If healthcare is now insurance, what do we call insurance?


Make that two new entries.


I’d like to have a lot more gay (formerly cheerful and/or exuberant) intercourse (formerly any interaction, often especially conversation) with you here, but sometimes it’s difficult to get in the mood.  All the hope (formerly communist revolution) that’s been breaking out is getting me down.  I believe the evidence suggests that there is a greater-than-zero probability that it is the result of a collaboration between two or more people.  Does that make me “paranoid”?


Make that three.

Quote of the day—Plato

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False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

Plato
[The Brady Campaign and other anti-gun ownership advocates would do well to keep this in mind. What they think of lies of necessity destroy their integrity, believability, and ultimately harm innocent life.—Joe]

Inception

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I watched the movie the other night.  It’s silly in a lot of ways, but it is interesting, not least because I once woke up from a dream after I realized I was dreaming, but it then turned out I was still dreaming.  I “awoke” right where I should be– right there on the couch where I’d fallen asleep, looked around, and got up.  “Wow, that was a weird dream” I thought.  What tipped me off was that I started floating up from the floor after I got up to go to the bathroom.  That’s a dead giveaway right there, see.  I could identify with the story in a way.  But this post isn’t about that.


An inception the way it was used in the movie, is the seed of an idea that, once it’s planted, cannot be stopped.  It sprouts, takes root, grows and eventually bears fruit.


I remember quite clearly an inception experience I had during my dark days of believing in leftist garbage.  I had what I’ve since referred to as the “Default Mentality”.  It was natural.  Everyone had it.  It was just the way things were.  School teachers, professors, friends, the talking heads on NPR and PBS– everyone thought that way but for a few idiots dredged up and brought in just to make the discussion more interesting and prove to us that we were the smart ones.  I was listening to a crazy, extremist right wing talk show (to see just how stupid it was, and gloat over it) and one of the callers gave his definition of a “liberal”; “The kind of person who will give you the shirt off of someone else’s back.”  I could not refute that.  Hmm.  That set the snowball in motion, though it had already been building on top of the hill by that time.


There was another one that happened long before.  A girl (yes, girl– we were in our tweens) I was dating just set it out there all by itself; “About the only things the federal government should be doing are commanding the military and maintaining the interstates.”  I guffawed, naturally, and she let it be, but that inception of an idea never left me.  Now I question why they should be involved in the interstates (if we need some way to get around, we’ll come up with the solution without being forced by someone else).  Obviously she was a Progressive.


The left has used seed planting for generations.  It’s why they’ve always used “rights” to describe coercive redistribution, “regulation” to describe coercive restrictions, “democracy” as though it is synonymous with freedom, “hope and change” to describe communist revolution, and so on, redefining all the important words and concepts.  Just the misuse of one little word– one single word over here, another little word slipped in over there while you weren’t paying attention, to reverse the meaning of life itself.  Eventually the students are rioting in the streets and taking over the campus, and the Jonestown inhabitants are all dead– men, women and children.  The untimate in “shared sacrifice”.  Why, don’t the good Christians believe in sharing?  Don’t they believe in sacrifice?  Of course they do.  Shared sacrifice can be wonderful.  But see how it was turned around into something ghastly.


We have it much better though, because we have reality on our side.  My challenge to you who advocate the American Principles of Liberty is to plant seeds of your own.  It’s very easy.  Seeds are very small, light, and very compact.  Here’s one that I think just qualifies;


Gun restrictions are not only an affront to the ideal of liberty; they are counterproductive in practice.


Simpler yet; substitute “gun restrictions” with “prohibitions”.  Same thing, you see, but it’s a bit lighter.


Redistribution and restriction do not equal freedom.


Freedom means one thing– the protection of rights.


It isn’t a right if it demands something of someone else.


You know? People, when left alone, are capable of some really cool things…


Try to take it from there if you like.  This is somewhat new to me, and I’m sure others can do better at it.  There are perhaps thousands of them you could come up with– Simple, very small, resilient ideas that can sit around until the conditions are right.  Find some soil and plant them.  Scatter them to the wind and they’ll sprout if they find the right conditions.  Too often we’re tempted to try to convert someone with a protracted back and forth argument until we’re out of breath.  If the conditions for that little seed aren’t right, don’t flood it with more and more water and wash it away.  Just plant it and let it sit there.  You don’t pound seeds into the ground.  You just sort of drop them there, and wait.  When things warm up after the snow melts, when the next rain comes in springtime, they will germinate.

Quote of the day—Dave Workman

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Yesterday’s announcement that Seattle-based Starbucks’ fourth-quarter 2010 earnings were up again – as reported in this morning’s Seattle Times – is evidently driving gun prohibitionists nuts.

Why else would Chicago-based anti-gunner Elliot N. Fineman make the absolutely crazy public demand that Starbucks donate $10 million annually to the gun prohibition lobby and change its policy of catering to legally-armed private citizens? Fineman, like the Brady Campaign and Washington CeaseFire before him, is promoting a boycott of Starbucks until the coffee giant hands over the money.

This sounds an awful lot like blackmail. Some might suggest it borders on racketeering.

…the bottom line to this argument is Starbucks’ bottom line. That has looked much better in a down economy ever since the anti-gun-rights lobby tried to intimidate the company with its campaign of political thuggery.

Dave Workman
January 27, 2011
Time for a hard January lesson in economics, public sentiment, common sense
[I guess that “buycott” by gun owners is working out okay for Starbucks.—Joe]

Hmm

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When I heard of “ghost cities” I first thought of places like Detroit– a city essentially bombed out by leftist policies.  Instead there are all these stories of empty cities being built in China.


I don’t know what to think.  On one hand the stories could be a hoax, but then I realize that communists do the stupidest things imaginable already, over and over, and they never seem to learn anything.  Why not build an empty city?


That’s always the problem, isn’t it?  It’s hard to tell when a leftist is making fun of himself or being serious, or when someone parodying leftists or telling the truth about them.  There really isn’t any clearly definable difference.

No surprise

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The new (anti-) gun blogger (Baldr Odinson at New Trajectory) on the block is running a poll to “gauge the philosophy of visitors to New Trajectory”.


When I last looked at the poll results the voting was 70 to 3 (95% to 5%) “very much against stricter gun legislation” versus “very much for stricter gun legislation”.


This is consistent with the impressions of nearly everyone I have talked to and read on the blogs. About the only people listening to the anti-gun message are gun rights activists. If it weren’t for the traffic we give them they wouldn’t have any traffic worth talking about. Any one of the top 10 or 20 gun bloggers has more traffic than all the anti-gun bloggers combined.


Online life for them must feel a lot like showing up alone at a NAACP convention dressed in their whitest sheets and pillow cases—as it well should.