Via the Idaho Sport Shooters Alliance:
Shooters:
H222 (the campus carry bill) will be on the House floor tomorrow for a final vote. Please contact your representatives ASAP and ask them to vote for the right of faculty, staff, students, and the public to have the means to defend themselves in the current gun-free university zones.
Find your representative here.
Contact info here.
Executive Director/General Counsel
Idaho Sport Shooters Alliance
www.idahossa.org
Passing a law like the assault weapons ban is a symbolic — purely symbolic — move in that direction. Its only real justification is not to reduce crime but to desensitize the public to the regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation.
Charles Krauthammer
April 5, 1996
Disarm the Citizenry. But not yet
Originally in The Washington Post on April 5. The above link is in the Seattle Times from April 8, 1996.
[Via email from Ry who said, “Lots of qotd material here”. This was like saying, “Nukes make lots of dust.”
This was part of the overreaching the anti-gun people did in the mid and late 1990s. They were on a roll in September 1994 and thought they were unstoppable and openly announced their intentions. They thought there were no obstacles. They thought at most there were just speed bumps causing them to slow down on their way to total domination. And they were wrong.—Joe]
There has been a fair amount of discussion recently about the Illinois attorney general ruling that the names of people with Firearm Owner Identification (FOID) cards can be made public.
Some people are saying the release increases the risk a gun owner will have their home broken into by a criminal wanting a gun. Others say it gives a different type of criminal knowledge that they are unlikely to be shot at if they break in while the resident are home. Still others point out less obvious risks and concerns:
“There is some prejudice against gun owners and a perspective employer says, ‘This guy who shows up is on a list, I’m not going to hire him, I don’t want a gun nut,’” he said.
“It kind of resembles the sex offender registry in many ways,” he said. “To create this list feels like the same thing.”
I think those are all valid arguments. But I have not seen anyone make the argument that I would like made.
What if the state required all active homosexuals to be registered and there were HID cards issued? What would the reaction be if someone wanted those people’s names released? I can just hear the Brady Campaign screaming now (they did it before—check out the update), “It’s not the same thing!” Perhaps being a homosexual isn’t something under an individuals control but actually engaging is homosexual acts arguably is something under individual control. If you want to be active as a homosexual sign up for your card and then be outed by the state. After all, don’t your neighbors have a right to know? And don’t parents have a right to know those sort of things about their children’s teachers?
Okay, they are probably right. Being a homosexual isn’t a very good analogy to being a gun owner—because being an active homosexual isn’t specific enumerated right protected by the U.S. Constitution. It’s more like being Catholic, Jewish, or Muslim since exercising the religion of your choice is also a specific enumerated right protected by the U.S. Constitution. Shall we have a little discussion about requiring Jews to get their ID cards from the state and then being outed to people who claim “a need to know who their neighbors are”?
I’m beginning to think that pushing for gun control is a good idea, if only because there’s nothing else that will nauseate and terrify Tea Partiers more. To me, the right-wing fascination with guns is such an obviously Freudian phenomenon that it’s almost embarrassing; real and very justified fears of creeping political impotence, idiotically and self-defeatingly expressed in passionate defense of their right to shoot themselves in tragic domestic accidents. Going after Republicans’ gun rights has always seemed to me needlessly provocative and cruel, sort of like removing the tinfoil helmet your local schizophrenic thinks is protecting him from space rays.
But now the paranoia has now gone so far, it’s just too tempting not to tweak. There’s got to be some way to pursue a new gun-control law that would maximally freak out this growing population of people who literally sleep with their guns at night.
How about a new law requiring all registered handgun owners to wear white Kevlar Clockwork Orange-style jockstraps? Or how about a new campaign – and this one I actually like – in which all of us who do not have guns voluntarily send in letters to the ATF, cheerfully informing them of our unarmed status (“Dear Government Agent: In case you were keeping a database of such information…”).
Matt Taibbi
March 10, 2011
Time For Gun Control — If Only to Tweak the Tea Party
[I wonder what Taibbi would think of laws requiring journalist to be licensed and registered?
Gun owners need to know what these people think of them and Taibbi comes through. Not only is Taibbi adhering to Markley’s law he is willingly exposing his bigotry.—Joe]
According to CBS the ATF Chief Public Affairs officer sent out a memo early on the week of February 28th to all their “Public Information Officers” with the instructions:
Please make every effort for the next two weeks to maximize coverage of ATF operations/enforcement actions/arrests at the local and regional level. Given the negative coverage by CBS Evening News last week and upcoming events this week, the bureau should look for every opportunity to push coverage of good stories
It just so happens I have an subscription to some of the ATF news updates. For the entire month of February I received seven updates. During the three days of February 28, March 1, and March 2 I received eight updates. Here is a typical update.
So it appears they have Public Information Officers that can deliver when asked to. It’s good to know our government has quality people in their employee even if it is in the spin department. If they could only engage the “wash” cycle before the “spin” we would all be much better off.
CBS is reporting that the ATF has been deliberately letting gun runners take guns into Mexico since 2008! I find that very interesting.
If I were a paranoid person I would be tempted to say it was all an elaborate plan to justify making U.S. gun laws more restrictive to “solve” the problem the U.S. government created.
Yesterday Say Uncle posted about a cable network post for “Gun Control Campaigners” all over.
We can add, to no ones surprise, Boston to the list of places they are advertising.
I thought the phrase “Gun Control Campaigners” was a little odd. In our country those people would typically be called “Gun Control Activists”.
A little bit of Bing searching hints that phrase is common in the U.K.
Handgun Control is pleased to announce its participation in FreedomChannel.com, a new nonpartisan political internet website. FreedomChannel.com, which launches on November 8, features the first-ever video-on-demand issue statements from presidential candidates and representatives of advocacy groups.
Handgun Control President Bob Walker is featured in the FreedomChannel.com’s “Views-on-the-News” video-on-demand program, speaking about the need for common-sense measures to reduce gun violence in this country.
Handgun Control Inc.
November 4, 1999
HANDGUN CONTROL PARTICIPATES IN LAUNCH OF NEW POLITICAL INTERNET SITE, FREEDOMCHANNEL.COM
[With Handgun Control, now The Brady Campaign, being featured on “Freedom Channel” it is no surprise FreedomChannel.com no longer exists. They either had crap for brains attempting to associate freedom with an anti-freedom organization or it collapsed from the weight of the irony.—Joe]
The Violence Policy Center (VPC) today released The Endgame, a report detailing three areas that must be reformed within the gun industry in order for a settlement of lawsuits filed by major cities against the industry to have any significant effect in reducing firearms violence. Public statements by some involved in ongoing talks with the gun industry indicate a growing desire to quickly reach a settlement.
…
A meaningful settlement must include:
Violence Policy Center
December 21, 1999
New VPC Report Lays Out Minimal Terms for Settlement of Litigation Against Gun Industry
[In 1999 they still had fair amount of power. Probably not as much as they thought they had but still they had inflicted a fair amount of damage in the recent past and wanted to get another whack in before Clinton left office. The problem was that they overreached and struck out. We won that fight as a result of their grasping for something beyond their reach.
This was the same problem the Brady Campaign had with initiative 676 in Washington State in 1997. The local Washington Ceasefire anti-gun organization wanted to put a much more limited and realizable initiative on the ballot. But the Brady Campaign said they would provide support only if was made much broader. They bit off more than they could chew and lost 29% to 71%.
I remember the concealed carry fights of 15+ years ago. There were a lot of people that wanted “Vermont Carry” rather than licensing. It was believed there was no path to “Vermont Carry” once we had “Shall Issue” carry. It was believed that we were giving up too much by allowing the government to license a right. That we now appear to be on a roll to “Constitutional Carry” in many states proves that fear was unfounded. We are winning because we were willing to accept what we could get rather than what we believed was due to us.
There is something I learned in chess a long time ago which holds true in the gun games I play and it’s true in politics as well . It’s more important to not lose than it is win. Let the other guy take the chances and you win when they screw up.—Joe]
Handguns are a menace to society and whenever sanity returns to our courts, we will ban them.
rfkolbe
March 6, 2011
Comment to Gun rights groups to test political strength–Concealed carry debate picks up steam with testimony before Illinois House committee this week
[Do not think for a second that our opponents merely want “reasonable regulation”. For them “common sense” is a code phrase with a very clear meaning.—Joe]
The “gun nuts” don’t think anything is going to happen really. They haven’t thought about anything. They are just wackos and conspiracy theorists who need a cause to latch onto. They need a justification for their paranoia. It’s like a religion to them.
Melissa Me
March 5, 2011
Comment to What do American gun nuts think will happen if the government takes the guns away?
[I think the more correct answer to the question is that there would soon be a new government in town.
But getting back to Melissa Me’s answer. I think I’m okay with her position. Religion is protected under the First Amendment. So that means she thinks the specific enumerated right to keep and bear gun is doubly protected by the Bill of Rights. I think I can live with that regardless of what her personal opinion of me is.—Joe]
I love exploring questions like this. “Common sense” laws that nearly everyone agrees with end up being in conflict with each other:
The Oregon Supreme Court Thursday debated whether a state statute is at odds with federal law in a case involving a Medford marijuana patient who was denied a concealed weapons permit.
Appearing before nearly 200 law school students, the seven justices convened at Willamette University College of Law in Salem and focused on whether the statute conflicts with the intent of the federal Gun Control Act of 1968.
I ran across a blog post advocating for the banning of normal capacity magazines today. I left a comment. It immediately showed up but I fear he might engage in some “Reasoned Discourse” so I’m posting my comment here as well:
It’s called a Bill of Rights. Not a Bill of Needs.
There are probably 100 million or more of these normal capacity magazines of greater than 10 round capacity in private hands in the U.S. Because they are “in common use” these magazines are protected by the Heller Decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. Repealing the common use test would require a new ruling from the Supreme court.
The pointer to this article came via email from Chris M. who says, “I recommend that this be tested first on government employees who carry guns and on those who give them orders.”
Several areas of the brain have been shown to be implicated with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), commonly known as psychopathy or sociopathy. The frontal cortex is the large part of your brain that is responsible for higher reasoning and behavioral traits, and is one of the areas that has been looked at. It’s smaller than normal in individuals with ASPD. Although there is a difference in crime rates between men and women, 77 percent of that difference goes away once you control for frontal cortex volume.
Dysfunction or abnormalities in other brain regions have also been associated with higher rates of crime and ASPD. The septum pellucidum is a region of brain tissue that separates the brain’s fluid-filled spaces, called ventricles. During fetal development, there is an opening inside this tissue that usually closes up within the first few months after birth. Individuals for whom this doesn’t happen have higher rates of arrest and conviction, and score higher for ASPD.
A key center of emotion activity in the brain, the amygdala, is another important region, and a study comparing ASPD and normal brains found deformations and a significant reduction in volume in the ASPD cohort. These were centered on the basolateral nucleus, which is responsible for fear conditioning. This suggests that one possible source of differences (or one of several interweaving mechanisms) is that ASPD-affected individuals don’t form the same sort of response to fear as normal people.
Via email from Idaho Sport Shooters Alliance (I’m on the Board of Directors):
From: Michael C. Brown
Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2011 1:44 PM
Subject: Alert: Campus Carry Reform on the move!Shooters:
The Idaho House State Affairs committee voted 16-3 to print H222 which will clarify that the colleges and universities can only regulate firearms in dorms. Currently the U of I and other state colleges and universities have policies that ban all firearms from campus, even ones stored in a private automobile. Some colleges even restrict off-duty and retired law enforcement officers from carrying on their campuses. This much needed legislation was drafted by Idaho Sport Shooters Alliance in conjunction with Idaho Students for Concealed Carry. This will probably come up for a full hearing next week– we’ll keep you informed!
Mike
Michael C. “Mike” Brown
Executive Director/General Counsel
Idaho Sport Shooters Alliance
208 835-3737
208 835-3744 Fax
www.idahossa.org
This is particular important to me because I have a daughter (with a concealed weapons license) attending the University of Idaho and frequently walks to and from classes from our home a mile or so off campus.
Giving federal agents a tool to trace guns isn’t going to solve the problem of violence at the border, but it may help identify those who are supplying brutal drug gangs like the one that killed a U.S. immigration agent and injured another one this month in Mexico. As modest as the ATF’s plan is, it’s far better than what Congress is offering: the continued flow of instruments of death across a dangerous border.
Los Angles Time
February 28, 2011
Editorial: Tracking the gun-runners
[The “layers of editorial oversight” in this paragraph is a vacuous as deep space and the irony packed into this approaches the density of a neutron star.
If Congress wanted to do something about those that continue the “flow of instruments of death” which ended up being used to kill the U.S. immigrations agent I would be all for it. Congress disbanding the ATF and turning the agents responsible for this over to prosecutors would suit me just fine.—Joe]
My niece Lisa will be 23 years old in a few months and is getting her Masters degree in Atlanta. She recently posted this on her blog:
Atlanta is a scary place and I would appreciate being able to carry on campus. One night I could not avoid walking across campus in the dark by myself and let me tell you, I had my switchblade in one hand and my keys in the other. Luckily for ME, nothing happened, but there are plenty others who haven’t been so lucky, even in broad daylight.
Would carrying a firearm have made me feel safer? Yes, indeed, it would have. I’m pretty sure a girl pulling out a handgun would make a “bad guy” run faster than seeing her with a knife, which is really only effective for self-defense in extremely close proximity.
I know there are a lot of people who are scared of guns and think that making carry legal on school campuses would increase crime, but let’s be honest: the ones who are going to commit a crime aren’t scared to break another few laws. At least give me a fighting chance against them.
She can carry her handgun essentially everyplace else in Georgia (or Idaho) why does the state think she should not be allowed to protect herself while on campus? When, where, and how do they think they were granted the power to demand she ask for them for permission? And who made them god(s) and allowed them to deny her that permission?
Various news outlets have been repeating what Virginia Tech shooting survivor and Brady Campaign staffer Colin Goddard says:
But Colin Goddard, who was wounded in the Virginia Tech shooting and now works with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, says that allowing guns on campus won’t provide a defense to students in emergency situations.
You have no idea what a situation like this is like. There was never a time that I thought I could have saved the day or defended myself. I didn’t know what was going on until I got shot.
It occurs to me that the Brady Campaign is promoting Goddard as an expert and the media is accepting that. But does he have any training or expertise as a shooter? I’ll grant that he is an expert at getting shot. But I don’t think that takes a whole lot of practice or that his experience is something that we can use a guide for how to handle the situation he experienced.
Truth be told, I’d like to see all guns — from small handguns and Glocks to rifles and semi-automatic types — melted down and used for scrap.
Tra-la-lah! Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world that found no need for guns at all?
Diane Dimond
February 27, 2011
Will guns make college campuses safer?
[Truth be told, when she puts her feelings put aside she appears to be reluctantly on our side. She realizes that her feelings are not realistic. She appears to be very conflicted about it but realizes that the utopian ideal of no need for guns isn’t achievable.
I found myself spending quite a bit of time pondering her last sentence I quoted above. It’s a big leap to imagine that type of world where there was “no need for guns at all”. But yeah. I think she is right. If there was no need for guns at all the world would be a better place. No violent crime to be defended against, no wars to fight, you could hunt wild game with bow and arrow or easily trap them. I wonder if we were to admit to the vehement anti-gunners their utopian world sounds nice to us too but utopia isn’t an option. We are realists and if they had a plan by which their utopia was achievable we would work towards that goal with them and then when we reach utopia we would give up our guns. Would they accept the deal, put the gun restrictions aside and work on their utopia? Or do they believe the guns have to go first before their utopia can be achieved? I’m betting it is the latter but I think it would be an interesting conversation.—Joe]
Do I or the other co-sponsors believe that the state of South Dakota can require citizens to buy firearms? Of course not. But at the same time, we do not believe the federal government can order every citizen to buy health insurance.
Rep. Hal Wick
State Representative in South Dakota
Arizona shooting has little effect on national gun debate
[I’m not familiar with the constitution or laws of South Dakota but if they require you to have liability insurance before you can drive your car on their roads then it would seem to me they could require you to have road flares, a fire extinguisher, and a gun in your car before you can use their roads. That does not necessarily expand to all South Dakota citizens but it sure would cover a lot of them. And it would amuse me greatly that before Joan Peterson, Brady Campaign board member living next door in Minnesota, could visit she would have to have a gun in the vehicle.
The health care requirement the Feds are attempting would appear to be something completely different. Driving on public roads is a privilege granted by the state, mere existence is not.—Joe]