Given the lip service that politicians on both the right and the left pay to the Second Amendment, I thought this week’s quote from Proclaiming Liberty was particularly apt.
Every time an advocate of gun control promises not to impair the recreational activities of hunters, he demonstrates his contempt for the values underlying the Second Amendment, implying that the issues at stake are trivial.
The Complementary Spouse and I got tired of being cooped up in the house by the cold weather and went junking this afternoon. By junking, I mean we went to a bunch of thrift shops and antique malls in Asheville.
One of the places is a combination bookstore and interior design/art/antique mall called the Screen Door. At one booth, I found a dish full of used rifle and pistol brass.
The prices were $1.50 for used 7.62x54R brass and $1.00 for the pistol brass. That is per piece! They made a big deal over the rifle brass being “Russian” as if it was some sort of exotic thing. The brass wasn’t made into jewelry or some other trinket. It was just used brass that could have been picked up at any range.
Given those prices, I think we gunnies must be sitting upon an immense fortune with all the empty brass we have!
Michael Luo of the New York Times wrote an article that claimed more than 2,400 people holding Concealed Handgun Permits from the State of North Carolina had criminal convictions. He says he came up with this number by comparing the names on the state’s database of CHP holders with criminal records.
After much back and forth, Luo told Sean he’d give the data to either a legislator or to NC law enforcement officials. This was the opening Sean was looking for and he contacted Paul Valone of GRNC seeking a friendly legislator to call Luo’s bluff. The bluff was called with the result you’d expect.
So what do you say to an author who refuses a State legislator the data needed to do his job? When that legislator asked for the data, with a mind to crafting new and better legislation along with demanding answers from the State Bureau of Investigation, Luo refused.
Paul Valone, President of GRNC, has now responded to Luo’s accusations with a point by point rebuttal. Somehow I doubt the “paper of making it up” as SayUncle calls it will respond. They are good about making claims about gun owners but not so good about making corrections.
NRA CEO and Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference being held in Washington, DC yesterday. In his speech, he served notice that the NRA and gun owners will make a difference on whether Obama wins a second term or not.
All of our Second Amendment liberty, all of the rights we’ve worked so hard to defend, all of what we know is good and right about America — all of it could be lost if Barack Obama is re-elected.
It’s all or nothing and I’m here to announce that gun owners, everywhere I go, are
signing on, joining up, and donating to our cause.
The fight is on and the NRA is ALL IN!
Let me put that another way.
Time after time, election after election when freedom is at risk, gun owners step up and make a difference. We’re stepping up again. We’re not backing down, and mark my words: when the sun goes down on Election Day, Barack Obama will have America’s gun owners to thank for his defeat!
He goes on to conclude his speech saying:
If you don’t remember anything else I say today, write this down: This is the most dangerous election in our lifetime. If Obama wins, we’ll go to our grave mourning the freedom we’ve lost.
This election is All In — all of our freedom, all of our rights. And that means all of you, ALL IN.
No one sits this one out. So stand up right now and you tell me, will you defend freedom with all your heart and might? Come on, stand up and let them hear you at the White House!
Will we fight to preserve our liberty and keep our nation strong and safe and free? Will we save America and our freedom? Will we save the Second Amendment from a second Obama White House?
We will not be denied our destiny, our place in the history of preserving American liberty! This is our time. Our election to rise up and fight for our rights!
We will defend our nation because we must.
We will prevail! We will prevail and we will stand for who we truly are.
WE ARE THE NRA.
WE ARE AMERICANS.
WE ARE PATRIOTS.
WE WILL DEFEND FREEDOM, AND IN THIS ELECTION WE ARE, BY GOD, ALL IN!
The Today Show ran a new feature called The Rossen Report where their so-called investigative reporter Jeff Rossen was shocked(!) to find that people used the Internet to advertise guns for sale. Tam applies a industrial-grade smackdown as only she can do.
I demand that we close the Going Wherever You Want Loophole! If we checked everyone for government issued photo ID as they walked out their front door, we could prevent sidewalks from being superhighways for criminals, but the ACLU has vowed to fight any such legislation.
That’s about the level of logic on display here, wherein some de-beaked, cage-raised Manhattanite makes the discovery that the barbarians in far-off free-range America, ‘way across the Hudson, are allowed to sell their personal property to each other without going through an orgy of forelock-tugging and Mother-may-I down at the cop shop.
Suck it, media boy. I know this may come as a shock to you, but hardly anybody’s even listening to you anymore. Maybe the steady hemorrhage of Nielsen ratings has caused an hypoxia-inducing vacuum in the studio, but even non-president Al Gore can tell you that you’re on the wrong side of history on this one; I’m sure you have him on speed dial down there at msnbc, so call him and ask him.
For another fisking of this (non) story, can be found on YouTube here. The last time anyone paid any attention to Jeff Rossen was when he appeared in Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine. Of course, it wasn’t serious attention.
If you are a regular reader, you will note that I always say to thank Aaron for doing this. I mean it. It takes time to ferret out all these contests and post them.
Sorry for the light blogging for the last couple of days. I had to attend a company regional meeting in Baltimore.
With Maryland’s uber-restrictive carry laws, I knew concealed carry was out. Moreover because I only had carry-on luggage, the next level of protection – a knife – was out as well. Thus, I was restricted to a tactical pen that I thought I could get past the oh so vigilant eyes of TSA.
I went with one of the new Sharpie stainless steel bodied pens. They are a bit slimmer than their markers but still seem substantial enough without screaming tactical. I have a couple of pens marketed as tactical but wasn’t sure they would get past TSA. I’d rather lose a $4.57 pen to them than one that cost $25 or more.
The Sharpie pen actually writes fairly well and is comfortable for writing. Some tactical pens in my opinion are just too heavy for constant use.
As to TSA, they were actually easier to deal with in Baltimore than in Asheville. In Asheville, I had to go through the screener 3 times stripping off my belt and then my watch before I didn’t set it off. I guess I should be thankful that I wasn’t groped. The one thing that did creep my out a bit was seeing Big Sis Janet Napolitano playing on a video over the “security” check-point in Baltimore. A little bigger screen and it would have been right out of Apple’s 1984 Superbowl ad.
Emily Miller just wanted a gun for protection at home. The District of Columbia still wants to delay the process as long as possible and put up as many bureaucratic roadblocks as possible the Heller decision notwithstanding. The end result is that as of today Emily Miller is officially a gun owner as she picked up her Sig P229 pistol and took it home. She is also now a gun rights activist.
Now, this series is far from over. As I’ve found, the hurdles placed before gun owners do not end here. I need to figure out the laws on getting ammunition and transporting the gun to a state that allows practice shooting.
Most of all, I intend to keep pushing the Council of the District of Columbia to rewrite the its laws to make them fair and constitutional for law-abiding Americans.
Emily has already testified before the DC City Council about her experience in obtaining her gun permit and her Sig P229. I fully expect that she will keep pushing the DC City Council to bring their gun laws in line with the rest of America.
There is an old saying that says politicians shouldn’t pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the ton. This is exactly what DC just did as Emily is a senior editor at the Washington Times and I think that they will rue the day that they made it difficult for her to defend herself.
While the picture of Alan Gottlieb holding the check from the City of Chicago is wonderful in its own right, these “demotivators” take it just that one step further. They were done by Brandon Combs of the Calguns Foundations and are used with his permission.
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