From the looks of this video there were as many people open carrying as there were with candles at the anti-gun event in Seattle yesterday:

Our USPSA match yesterday in North Central Idaho probably had as many participants (only a fraction of them were in our video) as the Brady Campaign supporters were able to muster in Seattle.

The Brady Campaign asked that we light a candle today in memory of the victims. But candles don’t stop violence. Guns in the hands of intended victims do.

I note with a great deal of pleasure that Rep. Gabrielle Giffords attended a candlelight vigil today and apparently did it without mentioning gun control and even the media did not mention the Brady Campaign. That must have really stung them!

My contribution to today will be in a different post when Barron gets the video (coming soon he says) up on YouTube.

Here are some of the candles that were lit in opposition to the Brady Campaign:

From Ryan.

From Maura.

From Wendy.

From North.

From Dan.

Barron and Janelle have a bunch of pictures as well.

Kevin has his up.

Say Uncle is a bit cynical but participates.

Robb uses a gun that was used defensively.

Linoge has quite the collection of links as well as his own pictures and his thoughts on the topic.

Roberta says, “The good guys don’t start fights – but they can end them“.

Tam gives lip service.

Brigid does more than a picture. She gives us history and tells a story.Thirdpower lights a candle for #toomanyvictims.

And credit for the idea goes to Weerd.

As widely reported the Brady Campaign will be lighting candles on Sunday as their meager effort to remain relevant.

The response of the gun world is to light a candle and show how you can prevent violence. Take a picture and post it on the net. If you don’t have a good net outlet for it send the picture to me (candle@joehuffman.org) or any one of many other gun rights activists offering to do the same.

I keep thinking I should create an image involving Boomerite, gasoline, a rifle, and a highly exothermic reaction instead of an ordinary candle. But I probably won’t have time for that and will have to settle for something much more mundane. Sunday I probably will be attending a USPSA match and I’ll try to get them to incorporate a candle into one of the stages.

And for people that will be in the Seattle area on Sunday it would be nice to have someone take a few pictures of the Washington Ceasefire turnout. Here are the details:

10:30 AM – 11:30 AM – Westlake Plaza, 501 Pine Street
(Downtown) Seattle, Washington 98101
Host: Washington Ceasefire
Note: Take the Union Street exit off I-5 in downtown Seattle and go straight for three blocks and north for one block to Fifth Avenue and Pine Street.

This turns out to be just across the street from where I work. I could view the event from a window in my office if I were in town. Since I won’t be in town I would really like to have information about their turnout from someone who will be here.

Author Paul M. Barrett (Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun and American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion) has another article on gun control in Business Week (a Bloomberg publication). The gist is that the gun rights movement is winning big time. Here are some excerpts from Gun Control: A Movement Without Followers:

The inaction, especially President Barack Obama’s passivity on the topic, demonstrates that gun control has expired as a national political issue. If Democrats can’t sell stiffer restrictions after a midday attack on a congresswoman, when can they?

…

Closing gaps in the background-check system would likely have only a modest effect on crime rates. But for gun control advocates struggling to stay relevant, the push for such changes represents a noteworthy shift—and a concession to reality. Having decisively lost the decades-old political and cultural argument over whether Americans should have the right to pack heat, they need to adapt to meet the demands of a public that wants to reduce the number of crimes—not the number of guns.

Overall the article is pretty good—especially coming out of New York City from a Bloomberg publication. But I vehemently disagree with the first sentence of the last paragraph. The CDC was unable to find compelling evidence that any gun law reduced crime rates at all. An extremely minor change such as proposed cannot possibly have a measurable positive impact.

Another point of contention I have is this sentence:

Some might argue that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms would not be threatened by an absence of 33-round magazines. The National Rifle Assn. nevertheless opposes the legislation on the debatable theory that it would lead to a slippery slope ending in mass gun confiscation.

Perhaps Barrett has a source for the NRA “slippery slope claim” that I was not able to find (I have his email address and will ask him) but I have never heard of it before. But I did find this opposition from the NRA:

The ban interferes with the ability of people to protect themselves against criminals. Police officers don’t use reduced-capacity ammunition magazines, because it would limit their ability to protect themselves against criminals. Why should private citizens be forced to use them?

I fully agree with this and would also like to add that magazines of greater than 10 rounds are clearly protected by the Second Amendment because they are “in common use”. The phrase “in common use” is straight from the Heller decision and provides a constitutional block to efforts restricting normal capacity magazines.

Update: I received a response from Barrett. The response applicable here is:

Here’s the source:”With H.R. 308, Rep. McCarthy is pursuing the agenda of banning guns and magazines that she brought to Washington 14 years ago.” — NRA ILA
Full cite: http://www.nraila.org/Legislation/Federal/Read.aspx?id=6139

My response was:

Thank you for the cite.

I have read both the page you refer to and the detailed fact sheet it links to. The closest information I can find to support your claim of the “slippery slope” is this paragraph:

With H.R. 308, Rep. McCarthy is pursuing the agenda of banning guns and magazines that she brought to Washington 14 years ago. In 2003, 2005 and 2007, Rep. McCarthy introduced bills that, like H.R. 308, would have banned magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. Those bills would also have banned all firearms that were subject to the federal “assault weapon” ban of 1994-2004 and all firearms made specifically to comply with the 1994 ban. They would also have banned all semi-automatic shotguns, commonly owned semi-automatic rifles that don’t use detachable magazines of any size, and other commonly owned firearms.

This is hardly the basis of their objection to H.R. 308. While it could be characterized as a slippery slope argument I would have said it was to show the character (or lack thereof) of Rep. McCarthy.

The main basis of the NRA objection was clearly spelled out as being a violation of the “in common use” constitutional barrier, it would make self-defense more difficult against multiple and/or determined attackers, and it would not affect those with criminal intent.

Update2: Barrett responded with:

The NRA asserts that a law that would restrict magazine capacity is part of a campaign to ban guns. Classic slippery slope logic. I think “debatable” is a very polite way of expressing my skepticism that restricting mag capacity to 10 leads to a gun ban. In any event, as the piece indicates, the debate about magazine capacity, at this juncture, is a waste of everyone’s time. It’s not happening. There are millions of large cap mags out there, and no one is going to ban them. We should focuse energy on getting criminals off the street. While we’re at it, we could also focus on making sure convicted felons and the mentally ill don’t get guns in the first place. On that, I think, a large majority of us agree.