Colin and Andy Goddard posting on the Brady Campaign blog admit something I have been saying for a long time:

The laws on the books aren’t working…

Yup. And the CDC agrees with us.

Then they should have no problem agreeing that we should repeal those laws and try something different, correct? Let’s look at what does work. For example what happened to the murder rate in Washington D.C. when the gun ban was declared unconstitutional? Oh, yeah! Within one year it dropped to the lowest level since 1985 – a 24 year low. What about forcible rape? That turned out different. Within one year it dropped to the lowest level since 1967—a 42 year low. Just maybe strict gun laws are not the solution to increasing public safety.

But then we know that the Brady Campaign has no real interest in public safety so don’t expect them to agree with me anytime soon.

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.

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/

If you are Catholic John Snyder, founder of the St. Gabriel Possenti Society, has a request:

This year the society plans to mark St. Gabriel Possenti’s feast day, Feb. 27, by urging Catholic firearms owners to put one of their website coupons (www.gunsaint.com) in the collection basket. The coupon states: “Millions for charity but not one cent for gun-grabbing church bureaucrats.”

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

• Quote of the day–Robyn Ringler
• This could be fun
• Quote of the day–Robyn Ringler
• Sensible restrictions
• Like a child
• Straight into the bit bucket
• Sympathy for Robyn Ringler
• Robyn Ringler stopped by a few times
• Robyn Ringler stopped by again

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.

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:

• Reload Time, January 11, 2011: 1979 views
• The Fallacy Of Magazine Capacity Limitations, February 11, 2011: 989 views

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.

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.

This is my response to the Brady Campaign saying, “In Tucson, the shooter fired 32 bullets in only 16 seconds.” I shoot 35 rounds in less than 16 seconds and clear a malfunction with 10 rounds magazines:

What they propose is at best a minor hindrance to criminals. But it is potentially lethal to people attempting to use a gun for legitimate self-defense.