See Notes on Lethal Logic for links to all my posts on Dennis Henigan’s book Lethal Logic.

Chapter 2 of Lethal Logic is titled: “When Guns Are Outlawed Only Outlaws Will Have Guns.“

In response to this “bumper-sticker” Henigan, page 38, claims this:

… seems unresponsive to most proposals for strengthening our guns laws that have dominated the gun debate for at least the last two decades. Instead, the argument often functions as a classic “red herring”.

The basis for this claim is there is virtually no support in public polls or the legislatures of the states or the Federal government for a ban on handguns. But notice, pages 37 and 38, how he words this in terms of handguns. Then he goes on to day (page 38), “This is not to say that the proposal to ban handguns, or even all guns, is not worthy of public debate.”

What about “assault weapons” Mr. Henigan? Or “.50 caliber sniper rifles?” Or “Saturday Night Specials”? Or the support for banning the future sale of guns which don’t met their criteria for safety? Or depriving people of their specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms without due process (they call it the “Terror Gap“)? And don’t forget their support the the “safe handgun lists” of California and Massachusetts. And furthermore he doesn’t mention the Brady Campaign supported the D.C. ban on handguns. With all the bans which he and his organization do support it can hardly be considered a “red herring”. How many guns types would have to be remaining before it would stop being a “red herring”?

It stops being a red herring the instant he proposes the banning of just one gun. And we are way past that threshold. Yet he words things very carefully to try and make it sound as if his claim is still valid. He says the following in discussing the Heller decision (page 40):

If a handgun ban is “off the table,” this may make it more difficult for the pro-gun advocate to change the subject when the issue is reasonable gun laws, like background checks at gun shows, that fall far short of a handgun ban. How can the gun lobby argue as if the issue is whether to allow guns for self-defense, if the issue now cannot be whether to allow guns for self-defense? If the argument is, “When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns,” now a new response is possible: “Not only are we not talking about outlawing guns, but guns cannot be outlawed. So let’s talk about ways of strengthening our laws to keep guns out of the wrong hands, while abiding by the new Constitutional right created in Heller.”

When all the anti-gun organizations give up bans of all types of guns, and making law abiding people jump through oppressive registration, licensing, and training requirements then we can talk about dropping the “When Guns Are Outlawed Only Outlaws Will Have Guns” slogan.

And what is this about “the new Constitutional right created in Heller”? We have quotes, papers, and even state constitutions that go back to the founding of this republic all saying it was the right of individuals to keep and bear arms. It was just in the last few decades that some people started claiming it was a “collective right”. We have been telling them all this time it was an individual right. Now that all nine justices on the Supreme Court agreed with us they act as if it’s a surprise to them.

Even ignoring outright bans Henigan acknowledges the slogan has wider application (page 41):

The core of the argument is that because gun control laws, by their very nature, are obeyed only by the law abiding, they cannot possibly be effective in curbing violent behavior by criminals. “Criminals will always break the law and obtain firearms illegally,” says NRA President Sandra Froman.

…

The success of gun control laws in curbing access to guns by dangerous people is not at all dependent on the willingness of hardened criminals to obey them.

…

Were it not for gun control laws barring gun possession by certain categories of high-risk people, the police would not have this enforcement tool at their disposal.

What it boils down to is that Henigan is a proponent of creating numerous victim-less crimes that can be used by the police to arrest and prosecute people. Usefulness to the police is not a criteria that should be entertained when we are speaking of a specific enumerated right. Do we want to create categories of “high-risk people” that should be denied access to religious materials? Or certain categories of “high-risk people” who do not enjoy a right to trial by jury, or the right not to incriminate themselves? Wouldn’t those too be useful law enforcement tools?

I don’t have the time to go through all the half-truths and mistaken conclusions and proposed violations of an inalienable right in this chapter but here is a slightly expanded version of my notes on the chapter

Page 45. Figure 2.1 baseline is not 0.

Time to crime is greater than zero.

By using a baseline very close to the average value changes that small effects appear to be amplified. The effect he exaggerates is the drop in crime rates after passage of the Brady Act. The same Brady Act that the CDC says insufficient evidence exists to credit it with a drop in crime. Furthermore the “time to crime” for a gun is greater than zero but his graph shows a drop nearly exactly coincident with the Brady Act. And even that is misleading because the crime rate actually started dropping in 1992 before the Brady Act was passed. If there was a correlation between the crime rate and the Brady Act any causation must be that the crime rate caused the Brady Act rather than the other way around.

Page 46. Iron Pipeline.
Strong gun law states will probably have their laws thrown out. Strong law argument can be used against cell phones and cars.

The laws against gun ownership/recreational-drugs/alcohol/pornography/whatever create black markets. The just because a black market exists does not mean it is in the best interest of society to expand those bans. There would exist a black market in cars and cell phones if some states made it expensive and/or difficult to acquire those tools. Cars and cell phones are used in crimes all the time too but that doesn’t mean they should be banned or heavily restricted.

One gun a month requires some sort of registration.

Page 52. Registration fails The Jews in the Attic Test. People will not register. 100s of millions unregistered in Europe and Canada.

Page 58. Machine guns legal.

Henigan claims the low use of machine guns in violent crime shows that strict registration and licensing work. No. His base assumption that machine guns give “an enormous advantage in a gunfight with police” is wrong. I’ve fired machine guns, I’ve seen other people fire machine guns. When it comes to putting rounds on a few targets quickly a semi-auto is a far better tool. Even Jeff Cooper said, “As I have often stated, if someone wants to shoot at me, I sure hope he does it on full-auto.” (Jeff Cooper’s Commentaries Vol. 1, No. 9 October 1993). If criminals have any gun experience at all they will arrive at the same conclusion and realize that there are no advantages for the types of uses they have for firearms and don’t bother to acquire one. Even the police who have legal access to full auto firearms do not carry them on a regular basis and do not have much, if any, training with them. The absence of full auto firearms in crime does not mean the highly restrictive laws reduced violent crime or had any other benefit to society.

Page 63. Suicide reduced by waiting periods.
A right delayed is a right denied. How many lives lost because of waiting periods and storage laws?

Page 65. Accidental shooting data is old.

He does not use data past 2000. The accidental shooting rate continued to drop despite vastly more guns being in circulation.

Page 68. Ten states. Six states.

By “cherry picking” his data (ten states the highest rates of death by gunshot versus the six with the lowest rate of death gunshot) he skews things to support his conclusions. Furthermore this measure “death by gunshot” is of little interest to people like me who care more about “violent crime”. By choosing the metric he did he can ignore things like the high violent crime rates in jurisdictions where people do not have ready access to guns to defend themselves. It also lumps justified and praiseworthy homicide where the good guy used a gun in with criminal homicide with a gun. He may be giving accurate numbers but he is very selective in how he present them such that he can conclude “gun restrictions are good”.

Regardless of which point Henigan attempts to make he completely fails to “explode the myth”. The best that can be said about Henigan in this chapter is that figures don’t lie but this liar does know how to figure.

I have been negligent and I’ve been reminded of this in email from Mike:

Are you aware of any efforts to counter the Brady Starbucks petition? They claim to have 25k signatures. Money talks and bullshit walks, though. I think it would be a lot more effective than an online petition to designate a “Thank Starbucks Day”, where people would be encouraged to go into their local Starbucks, buy a coffee, and hand the manager a card thanking the company for their enlightened policies. Or send the CEO a photo of oneself holding a latte. Or ??? This might not be a bad idea to put into practice regularly with other companies. Why complain about bad policies? Let’s reward companies with good ones (and make a lot of noise doing it). What do you think?

“I’d like to thank Starbucks for standing up for the safety of its customers and allowing lawfully carried firearms in your retail establishments. Thank you for your wise decision and for helping us keep our families safe. I will be recommending your products to all my coffee drinking friends.”

Yes. This must be done.

Sebastian has more on the topic here and here. Send your email by following this link.

It is really, really important for the Brady Campaign to win something. They aren’t winning in the legislatures. They aren’t winning elections. They aren’t winning in the courts. They aren’t winning in the polls. They aren’t winning in donations. They aren’t winning in members. They have sunk to the level of doing battle with a few guys in their pajamas which they can’t win either.

Such a major losing streak can become a fatal downward spiral. It demoralizes them and their supporters. As Chris Cox, NRA-ILA Executive Director, said in regards to politicians, “They don’t fear me. They fear you.” If the Brady Campaign can only bring a small fraction of the people to the party that gun activists can they will be less influential. The less influence they have the less notice people will give them. The less notice the less influence.

It’s sort of like something barely floating on the surface of the ocean. As long as they are less dense than the water they float and are visible. The visibility changes day to day with the density. As long as they are visible they have influence and have hope of becoming more visible and influential the next day. But this is only true while their density is less than water. There is a threshold which cannot be crossed. Very shortly after their density increases just a very small amount above water they start their journey to the very bottom of the ocean. Their visibility while on the surface is a linear function of their density. But as soon as the density of water threshold is crossed it’s like a switch was turned off.

We know how dense they are. It won’t take much to get them started on their journey to oblivion. Send Starbucks your email and your business. Tell them when you buy your coffee (or pastries, tea, and hot chocolate for people like me) that you are a gun owner and you appreciate them not discriminating against people exercising their specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.

Via Instapundit (via Sean):

FIRST THEY IGNORE YOU, then they laugh at you, then they smear you, then you win. An updated version for the 21st Century . . . .

UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch writes: “And if they had simply stuck with the ignore you part they would have come out so much better. But then stupidity and evil have always been a noxious brew especially when it is topped off by arrogance.” Yeah, imagine how much less powerful Sarah Palin would be if they’d just given her the usual amount of attention received by losing VP candidates. But they just can’t help themselves.

In my scaled down version “they” becomes the Brady Campaign. See further elaboration on this line of thought by Greg.

Brady Campaign week continues here tomorrow with another chapter in Lethal Logic.

Via The Second Amendment Foundation press release:

A King County Superior Court judge has ruled in favor of a lawsuit filed by the Second Amendment Foundation and National Rifle Association, striking down a ban on guns in city parks because it violates Washington State’s long-standing preemption statute.

Judge Catherine Shaffer ruled from the bench that the gun ban, adopted under former Mayor Greg Nickels, violates Washington’s law, which placed sole authority for regulating firearms in the hands of the State Legislature. That law was adopted in 1983 and amended in 1985, and has served as a model for similar laws across the country.

SAF and NRA were joined in the lawsuit by the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, the Washington Arms Collectors and five individual plaintiffs.

“This is a great victory for the rule of law and Washington citizens,” said SAF Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “Greg Nickels was so blinded by his personal hatred for firearms owners and his own arrogance that he imagined the city under his control could simply ignore state law. That arrogance cost Nickels his job last year. We repeatedly warned him not to push a gun ban, but he refused to listen.

“It is also a victory for the Legislature,” he observed, “because this case affirms the intent of lawmakers in 1983 to prevent cities like Seattle from creating a nightmare patchwork of conflicting and confusing firearms regulations. The ruling solidifies the legislature’s authority and sends a message to city and county governments to stop meddling with the rights of Washington citizens.”

Gottlieb suggested a review of local ordinances may now be in order, so that city and county governments can be compelled to remove old gun regulations or face legal consequences.

“This ruling puts anti-gun local officials on notice that legally-armed citizens have rights, too,” Gottlieb stated.

See also:

• Judge’s ruling ends Seattle parks gun ban
• Judge: Seattle gun ban is illegal
• Judge in Seattle case: ‘Plaintiffs have right to carry under federal, state constitutions’ (the most and best details are in this article)
• UPDATE: Seattle Parks Gun ban vacated
• West Seattle Blog (includes link to the judges order here)

Gun carrying residents of Washington State are protected from discrimination by the counties and cities yet the Brady Campaign wants businesses to discriminate again them. That is going to be a losing battle too. It’s time for them face the music. They should quietly be sending out their resumes and preparing for the end. If they can’t find honest work there are probably a few more years left in the global warming hoax.

I’m listening to Down Range Radio where Michael Bane talks about anti-gun bigotry. He gives me a fair amount of credit for bringing the topic up and agrees with me. This blog is listed as a reference link.

He also talks a little bit about Boomershoot.

Thank you Michael.

Still trying to persuade Starbucks into banning people exercising the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign made a blog post on the topic today (the same post is here as well). As is usual he choses his words carefully when he says things like:

Studies show that the more guns there are, the more gun violence there is in that location. In addition, 80 percent of those who don’t own guns say they would feel less safe if more people in their community acquired guns; only eight percent would feel safer. Even among gun owners, roughly equal proportions would feel less safe if more people had guns versus those who would feel more safe.

There are three things to make note of here.

1. He says “the more gun violence there is”.
2. The study he cites was published in 2001.
3. The emphasis on feelings.

As is usual Brady supporters seem to only concern themselves with criminal violence rates if a gun was involved. Total criminal violence rates are used by gun rights supporters because we care about people that are injured by criminals no matter the method. When using total crime rates even Brady Campaign staff acknowledge, at best, it is difficult to show more guns means more crime.

In regards to the second item that study is old. When the CDC did their study of dozens of papers in 2002, one year after the study cited by Helmke was published, they concluded, “The Task Force found insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of any of the firearms laws or combinations of laws reviewed on violent outcomes.” Essentially the same conclusion as Helmke’s co-worker acknowledges.

By choosing his words carefully Helmke misleads his readers in an attempt to further his agenda to justify his abnormal fear of gun owners lawfully exercising their rights.

If feelings were adequate reasons to exclude people exercising their rights from coffee shops and restaurants we would still have a multitude of Jim Crow laws on the books.

It is clear he doesn’t acknowledge or respect those rights. From that same post notice that he says:

Welcome to the “open carry” movement, an effort by “gun rights” extremists to foist their interpretation of the Second Amendment on the rest of us by openly carrying handguns in public places.  While virtually all states have at least some minimal restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons, few states do anything to regulate the “open carry” of firearms.

Did you notice that he puts “gun rights” are in quotes? Apparently in their minds they are still fighting the battle they lost with the Heller decision.

He acknowledges these people are not breaking any laws but that’s not good enough for him. I suspect he knows the open carry of firearms was clearly recognized as a fundamental right at the time of the writing of our Bill of Rights. Concealed carry was considered suspect and over time became banned in many locales. But the open carry of weapons, as demonstrated by the near universal lack of laws against it, has always been recognized as a fundamental right. I believe the Brady’s are desperate to slow down and/or kill the open carry movement because they know they will loose that battle in the courts. And ultimately open carry will normalize the right to keep and bear arms.

As I said earlier today, respect isn’t really in their vocabulary when discussing the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. And the Brady’s will use half truths and any other deception needed in their futile attempt to remain relevant in a world where their tactics no longer work. It’s time for Helmke and friends to acknowledge the facts and get some counseling for their inappropriate feelings. The world has changed and in todays world they are just as backward as George Wallace in 1970 and just as despicable in their tactics as when Wallace ran ads that showing a white girl surrounded by seven black boys, with the slogan “Wake Up Alabama! Blacks vow to take over Alabama”.

There have been some questions as to the origins of the anti-gun people as bigots meme. There have been occasions when I have been given credit for starting it. While I may be the most outspoken blogger of this I cannot claim credit for being the first to make this observation.

The Brady Campaign people seem to think it was the NRA:

In fact, the notion of “bigotry” is perhaps the pillar upon which the National Rifle Association itself has built its whole bogus empire.

This is particularily amusing since they link to the Ammoland website while saying “National Rifle Association”. Say Uncle pokes fun at them for this better than I can.

In the comments MikeB302000 also suspects the NRA is behind it.

A Bing search of the NRA and NRA-ILA websites only shows one instance of the term bigot being used (a Google search resulting in zero hits). This was on January 18, 2008.

My somewhat limited research shows that it goes back as far as 1994 with the following speech by Don Kates in Sacramento:

From: MWUEST@alhrg.wpafb.af.mil (System Manager Wuest)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns
Subject: Speech by Don Kates
Date: 3 Aug 1994 10:10:00 -0500

(Text of a speech by Don B. Kates, renouned criminoligist at the Sacramento rally, 2 JUL 1994 MEW).

In this speech I am going to set out unfamiliar concepts and facts. I shall explain and defend the concepts and I entreat anyone who wants citations for the facts to ask for them.

BIGOTRY

The first of my unfamiliar concepts is that the gun control debate is not really about criminology but rather about bigotry and the effort of an influence group to force its morality on everyone by having it adopted as state and federal law. To see this it is necessary only to review some unfamiliar facts: the average gun owner is better educated and has a better job than non-owners; attitude surveys find gun owners neither racist nor sexist; liberals are only somewhat less likely than others to own firearms; liberals who do are no less willing to use them to defend their families; the only violence gun owners endorse is willingness to come to the aid of crime victims. Gun owners do not approve of police brutality, violence against dissenters, etc. Also, good Samaritans who actually come to the aid of crime victims are twice as likely to be gun owners as the general populace.

Though these facts have been uniformly established by numerous sociological studies, they will doubtless surprise you almost as much as they would the anti-gun movement and the media. After all the former (which is actually a gun BAN movement), with the enthusiastic aid of the media, have succeeded in stereotyping gun owners as violence-oriented yahoos — educationally, intellectually and morally retarded.

There is a word for people who inaccurately, unjustly ascribe negative characteristics to a whole group of others they dislike: that word is BIGOT.

Let me approach the matter from another direction. A couple of years ago right here in Sacramento some nuts who happened to be of some kind of Asian extraction — I don’t recall which and, of course it doesn’t matter — took a bunch of hostages in the course of a robbery and ended up shooting them. Now if I were to attribute that conduct to Asians as a group I would rightly be thought a bigot. But denouncing “gun owners” as a group and attributing such crimes to that group is commonly thought entirely appropriate.

Suppose I were to call gay leaders who oppose banning gay bath houses callous, selfish collaborators in the spreading of AIDS. The same public health leaders who support banning bath houses would nevertheless denounce such bigoted language. Yet such vituperation is commonly aimed at gun owners and gun leaders for opposing gun bans without anyone (except perhaps the targets) seeing anything wrong or even exceptional about it.

ORDINARY GUN OWNER AS MURDERER

Of course the difference is that, as we all know, owning a gun the ordinary average person puts family and friends at risk; as the Coalition Against Gun Violence puts it, most murders “are committed by law-abiding citizens who might have stayed law-abiding if they had not possessed firearms.” Except that, as a criminologist I know no such thing. Criminological studies uniformly find that murderers are NOT ordinary citizens, but extreme aberrants with life records of serious crime. The typical murderer has a prior adult criminal history of six years involving at least four documented major felonies — plus uncounted juvenile felonies. He is also a substance abuser with a history of car and/or gun accidents. Indeed, the life histories of those who cause fatal car and gun accidents resemble the life histories of murderers: in each case they tend to be young MALES with records of felony, violence against those around them, substance abuse and dangerous accidents.

In short, quoting a recent review in the AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY: “fewer than 1% of all guns, and fewer than 2% even of handguns will ever be used in a violent crime” and “more people are killed in swimming pool accidents than firearms accidents.” In short, blaming all gun owners for the crimes and irresponsibility of a tiny, highly aberrant minority is bigotry. In addition to being criminologically false, it is a false issue, a diversion from the true basis of anti-gun sentiment.

At this point I have to draw a fundamental distinction which is, once again, unfamiliar. That is the distinction between anti-gun and pro-control. CONTROL implies what the great majority of Americans, including most gun owners, believe: that law abiding, responsible people have a right to possess arms to defend their families, but that society has a right to reasonably control arms — and the issue is working out an accommodation between these two things.

But the so-called gun CONTROL movement is really a gun BAN movement dominated totally by people I call anti-gun. Anti-gunners see no objective need for accommodation because they do not see self-defense as a legitimate desire. Their ultimate objective is first the banning and confiscation of all handguns and then of all guns. Given the state of public opinion there is a subjective, or current, need to soft-pedal this for the present. Thus when they say that the Brady Bill and banning so-called assault rifles (i.e. rifles and shotguns designed primarily for self-defense) are “just the first steps”, they go on to say, as Sarah Brady now does, “the only reason for guns in civilian hands is for sporting purposes”, and to advocate, as Handgun Control, Inc. now does, a nationwide permit requirement to own a gun under which only those desiring guns for sport qualify — those desiring a gun for self-defense need not apply.

To understand the anti-gun view we must review the origin of the earliest anti-gun group. Founded as NCBH, it now calls itself the Coalition Against Gun Violence. It was and remains an outgrowth of the Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church seeking to impose on American society the Board’s moral position which is that armed self-defense is immoral. The Board actually teaches that it is a woman’s Christian duty to submit to rape rather than do anything to imperil her rapists’ lives. Let me give you the citation for that: It is an article entitled “Is the Robber My Brother” (and, no, robbery may not be resisted either) by the editor of the Board’s magazine ENGAGE/SOCIAL ACTION an article which appeared first there and then in a pamphlet available from the Board under the title HANDGUNS IN THE UNITED STATES.

Another member organization of the Coalition Against Gun Violence, the Presbyterian Church, USA advocates, federal banning and confiscation of handguns on the express ground that they are designed for self-defense. The Church’s representatives emphasize that its General Assembly “has resolved, in the context of gun control, that it is against the killing of anyone, anywhere FOR ANY REASON.” Among other places you will find that testimony is v. I at p. 127 of the Hearings of the House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Crime 1986.

This epitomizes the views and goals of the anti-gun movement, including its non-religious supporters. The distinguished cultural historian Garry Wills reviles “gun fetishists”, “gun nuts” as “anti-citizens”, “traitors, enemies of their own patriae”, who are arming “against their own neighbors.” “The need that some homeowners and shopkeepers believe they have for weapons to defend themselves” represents “the worst instincts in the human character” according to the WASHINGTON POST. According to Ramsey Clark, defensive firearms ownership is barbarism, “anarchy, not order under law.”

I have already quoted Sarah Brady’s view that “the only reason for guns in civilian hands is for sporting purposes” and Handgun Control’s proposal for a national licensing requirement to exclude anyone who wants a gun for self-defense. An additional “step” is to have Congress pass the law HCI and the Coalition got D.C. to enact: no one may buy any kind of handgun and, while long guns are allowed, they too must be kept unloaded and disassembled so that they may never be used for self-defense. The ultimate goal, once again, is that expressed by Harvard public health professor Deborah Prothrow-Stith: she frankly avows that she “hates guns and sees no reason why anyone should ever own one.”

In the few minutes which remain to me I want to discuss what is to be about done all this. One reason gun owners are in such a terrible fix is that they are politically unsophisticated. That is implicit in the fact that they are the targets of a vast campaign of bigotry. Gun owners are not politicians. They are just ordinary people wanting to go about their business. They have been ambushed and are being subjected to a systematic campaign of hatred and lies by an elite cadre of bigots who largely control the media and have disproportionate influence throughout our society. Naturally all too many gun owners react in mindless outrage. They leap to the conclusion that disarmament of the American public is being promoted by “liberals” — it used to be “communists” — for some sinister, ulterior reason involving making people helpless against tyranny. NONSENSE. Insofar as liberals support that — and I must note so do many conservatives — it is just out of hypocritical bigotry. They cannot see this because they view themselves as fighters against bigotry and so imagine that they are themselves incapable of it and of attempting to impose their morality on others through law.

And I want to briefly list other gun owner errors: First are the people who play into the media’s hands by wearing camos when they make presentations against anti-gun proposals. Similar are the gun owners who take pleasure in extreme and intemperate statements — at terrible cost to the cause in general. And then there are liars and buffoons like Linda Thompson and her “armed march on Washington.” Demented is the best one can one say about an “armed march on Washington.”

A particular pathology of gun owners is the idea that the bigotry will all go away if some particular lawsuit is brought or a strident manifesto screamed out. The simple fact is that the bigots are not going to go away. Gun owners are going to have to settle in to politics for the foreseeable future, smarten up, learn how to make politically sensible statements.

Most important, gun owners must learn the necessity and art of horse trading. By that I do NOT mean giving important things away in the absurd hope that it will satisfy the bigots and they will go away and leave us alone. I repeat, they will not go away regardless of what we do! I am not talking about compromises of principle. I am talking about things about which reasonable people can agree or disagree. For instance, raise the fee for a concealed carry license to $150.00 and the duration of the license to five years. Require that anyone who wants such a license show that they have the same legal knowledge and competence about shooting as a police officer — but issue licenses as in Oregon and Florida to every responsible law abiding applicant.

The fact is that there are rational, non-bigoted people in the middle who can be compromised with. They cannot be convinced by the yahoo approach of “just say no to gun control.” But, even as they are open to new control approaches and initiatives, they are also willing to recognize that old approaches may be unsound, or have unsound aspects, which need to be abandoned. We are in the pickle we are now in because the “just say no” attitude has allowed the bigots to paint us as mindless obstructionists who are blind to compassion and common sense. These people in the middle are open to arguments that many control proposals don’t make sense in terms of crime control and to arguments based on the right and need to defend of self and property. The future of gun ownership will depend on whether we are willing and able to reach out to these middle people and convince them that the misnamed gun control movement is under the control of moralistic bigots.

-end-

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The Brady Campaign has now directly engaged us on the bigotry meme I started pushing several years ago.

Sebastian has addressed most of their points but I would like to pile on as well.

They say:

The truth, of course, is that guns and gun carrying are obviously not immutable characteristics of people, and that the whole cultural framework around the issue of gun violence prevention is a sham. (Brady Center Vice-President Dennis Henigan has exposed this most recently here and here.)

“Immutable characteristics” is a straw man argument I addressed in an update to the post that got their attention as follows:

By that logic banning interracial couples, Catholics or Muslims from Starbucks or Woolworths wouldn’t be bigotry either. I’ve got news for the Brady Campaign Staff–they’re wrong and I think they know it.

As long as they held on to the falsehood that the 2nd Amendment did not protect an individual right they might have made a thin case for that. But as soon as the right to keep and bear arms was on the same level as the freedom of association and freedom of religion they lost that crutch. Via D.C. v. Heller we have, and the Brady Campaign acknowledges, a specific, constitutionally protected, right to keep and bear arms. With that decision they became a gentler version of the KKK. No white sheets or burning crosses in our yards but they still attempt to segregate us and ban us from parks, buildings, and businesses. The only difference between them and the KKK is the KKK was sometimes willing to take the law into their own hands. The Brady Campaign attempts to get the government, Amtrack, and Starbucks to do the yucky work of infringing on the rights of others for them. They are now on a slippery slope into obscurity and revulsion and they are grasping at straws with their denial of bigotry.

And their advocacy for public bans of us exercising that right is more than just bigotry. It is just a hairs breadth away from a felony:

If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; or

If two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured—

They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.

I addressed the claim that the cultural framework is a sham here using a paper published in the Journal of Criminal Justice. In that same post I pointed out that Dennis Henigan of the Brady Campaign admits in his book that causation between higher rates of gun ownership and crime are, at best, “difficult to show”. I also pointed out they no longer insist the 2^nd Amendment is not an individual right.

So if it isn’t bigotry just what does the Brady Campaign claim as a basis for their continued insistence that the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms be infringed? From their post they claim, “It has everything to do with public safety, public health and common sense.”

Ahh… I see.

But they already admitted that public safety and health correlating negatively with gun ownership rates are at best “difficult to show”. So all we have left is “common sense”.

So tell me–Is that the same “common sense” used by whites that didn’t want their children in the same swimming pool with black children unless it was cleaned afterward? Or maybe the same “common sense” used by some to insist their white daughters not be near black men or enter into interracial marriages. No. I’m sure that’s not it–that would be bigotry. How about the “common sense” and documentary films that claim Jews are the vermin of the human race? Oh, that would be bigotry too? Then just what is this “common sense” justification for infringing upon this right and how does it differ from these obvious examples of bigotry?

Perhaps they haven’t seen the definition of “bigot” recently. Here is the Merriam-Webster definition: “a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices”.

I have a challenge for Brady Campaign supporters–What evidence would it take for you to change your mind in regards to gun ownership and the public carry of firearms? Tell me and I’ll give serious consideration to dropping the bigotry meme.