Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
The Mainstreaming of Gun Rights
You’ll be forgiven for not appreciating the extent to which gun-rights advocates have enjoyed success comparable to that of same-sex marriage and marijuana decriminalization advocates over the past decade.
With each mass shooting — most recently the racist massacre in Charleston – progressives show a mix of arrogance and disdain: arrogance aboout their own virtue and disdainful of Americans’ exceptional attitude toward guns. But everyone involved knows that when the gun grabbers’ moment in the sun passes, it’s the gun nuts who eventually carry the day.
And they always do.
A quick google of “sweeping gun legislation” and you might be surprised how many links lead to stories of state legislatures – ahem – liberalizing access to guns.
Guns are increasingly seen for what they are: cool. According to Glenn Reynolds, spirits are higher than they’ve been in 20 years among self-described gun nuts. All fifty states have passed laws allowing qualified individuals to carry certain concealed firearms in public, either without a permit or after obtaining a permit from a designated government authority.
Increasingly, people like actor Vince Vaughn and playwright David Mamet are asking, as the latter asks in his book The Secret Knowledge, why shouldn’t we go the same lengths to protect our schoolchildren that Manhattan jewellery stores go to as a matter of routine to protect their treasure?
Advocates of widespread and stricter gun control laws are expressing the same “I can’t believe we’re actually having this debate” sentiment that social conservatives have expressed in the marriage and marijuana debates. Unthinkable to most twenty years ago, today the notion of arming every school principle in America with a shotgun and training in its use and safekeeping sounds like darned-good common sense.
Social conservatives fret over losing ground on marriage and marijuana – New Jersey governor Christie having called the latter a gateway drug to carbs (just kidding). This should not prevent them from learning what they can from the major conservo-tarian victory for liberty and public safety.
Published in Guns
I think Barack Obama realizes that it’s a hopeless battle for his side. He no longer speaks as if he can pass stringent gun control legislation if he can just get a little more support. So after each highly publicized shooting he will complain about the lack of gun control but he pretty much acknowledges that the people (outside of a few progressive strongholds) just don’t want it.
Advocates of widespread and stricter gun control laws are expressing the same “I can’t believe we’re actually having this debate” sentiment which social conservatives have expressed in the marriage and marijuana debates.
For the same reasons. And, I hope, with the same outcome. That’s very encouraging, on all three fronts. Like facts, liberty is a stubborn thing.
“a gateway drug to carbs”
Best laugh of the day!
Still, Obama goes for the petty and vindictive means of restricting guns. He cannot get what he really wants, so he goes after antiques, ammo, import restrictions, and other such. The libs are learning that frontal assaults are not wise, but flanking actions through federal agencies can, if not outrightly succeed, at least cause harm. Witness their latest attempt to classify any internet discussion of firearms as illegally trading in arms and thus a violation of ITAR.
Say what?
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/nra-gun-blogs-videos-web-forums-threatened-by-new-obama-regulation/article/2565762
Scary article. Thanks skipsul. If this ever happens it opens the door for regulating all internet communication.
We may be better off treating this as a frontal attack on both first and second amendment as there are may on the left that do not want their right to tweet and blog constrained.
Since when has liberty been defined as getting something from the government?
Notice, if you will, that the ITAR regulations are coming without legislative appeal or adjustment. We can’t vote these idiots out of office because they reside in the “Vast Left Wing Conspiracy” formally known as the Federal Bureaucracy. The tide for our political thought (libertarianism, conservatism, civil libertarianism) rises and falls with each election. But the tide of the progressive bureaucracy only rises. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. But it always rises.
Now, that said, would this prior restraint of speech stand up to a Supreme Court challenge? Well, the odds are greater that it wouldn’t than that it would. But consider, for a moment, how long it would take a lawsuit like this to wind its way up to the Court. 5 years? 8 years? More? Now consider the damage that ITAR can do to the 2nd Amendment as it winds it’s way to the Supreme Court. Can you see the strategy? Death by a thousand cuts is still death. We keep wanting to fight the big battle, win the big vindication. The other side in this contest is not competing. They’re quietly moving forward while we shadow box an opponent that has largely passed us by.
And then look at the massive amount of discretionary latitude granted to these bureaucrats in the Fed by Obamacare. If you like your Doctor you can keep your doctor. Hardly. Don’t want to pay for maternity care because you’re in your 60’s. Get over it. And Obamacare at least come up to vote despite the “we have to pass it to know what’s in it” acknowledgement from the progressives. Same deal, we make big noises about repealing Obamacare while they have quietly changed the health insurance landscape…. permanently.
Don’t get too smug over the state legislatures passing laws supporting the 2nd amendment that can be largely ignored by the Feds. It’s all just a show. The real action in is the bureaucracy.
Thanks for your your considered comments, Jim.
Well… that last paragraph was a bit harsh. I should learn to have my second cup of coffee before I post. My apologies to anyone that may have been offended.
Having said that, I still believe that the progressives have largely moved on to the next phase. They’ve relegated the Constitution to the past as an ancient document made by old white guys trying to protect their self-interest. I still remember when Pelosi was asked for her Constitutional foundation for Obamacare and her reply was “you’ve got to be kidding me!”. Pelosi, I now believe, wasn’t amazed you wouldn’t know that the Constitutional foundation for Obamacare was self evident. She was amazed that you would even consider asking the question in the first place. Like being asked if you would like to have marinara sauce on your ice cream. So complete is their belief in their regulatory power.
Consider ITAR as an example. Or consider the ATF’s failed attempt at banning public sell of surplus 5.56 mm ammo (also known as AR-15 ammo). Ostensibly the ban would have made it illegal to sell to the public surplus 5.56mm ammo made for the military. The ammo would be surplus either because of production overruns or because the ammo is not up to the exacting spec’s that the military puts forward (but still safe for public consumption). Ask anyone that does a lot of shooting and they will tell you the same thing about reloading the 5.56: the bullet is so small as to make it a genuine pain to reload it. The solution, if you want to have fun shooting an AR-15, is to go buy some surplus ammo, it’s far easier to buy the 5.56 then to reload. Ban the surplus 5.56mm sales to the public and you will have effectively extinguished recreational shooting of the AR-15; all by fiat and not legislation. So they failed with the ammo ban. There’s always tomorrow with these guys and never will anyone ask “what is your Constitutional foundation for that regulation?”..
As Paul Begala said during the Clinton administration: “stroke of the pen, law of the land, pretty cool”. I don’t mean to be a cynic but I’m far more concerned about regulatory threats than legislative. Not just with the 2nd amendment but the 1st and others as well. It’s the progressive way. The bureaucracy is where it is at….
Jim, it’s even worse than you’ve indicated. The libs have been pressing for years to sign on to a UN arms control treaty that would effectively ban even hobby level reloading or gunsmithing as unlicensed manufacturing. We can reload because we can buy powder, brass, slugs, and primers. Imagine if these guys took even one of those out of circulation by reclassifying it through bureaucratic means.
A bit of good news for us nuts. This just in: The SC shooter got his gun at a store, passing the usual background check. Not that such a fact will dilute the grabbers’ narratives much.
No, they’ll just push for stricter background checks, broader definitions of “mental illness”, and of course waiting periods.
http://dailycaller.com/2015/04/21/va-sends-veterans-medical-info-to-fbi-to-get-their-guns-taken-away/
This is why for the last few years there have been calls, using the nationalized health care databases, to disclose mental health records to the FBI. New York State has been engaged in actual gun confiscation from people who have sought mental health assistance.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/nyregion/mental-reports-put-34500-on-new-yorks-no-guns-list.html?_r=0
Be wary folks, be wary.
Jim Flennikan – No apology necessary. I agree that second-amendment advocates shouldn’t grow smug – only that they should they and other conservatives should learn from their broad success.
God bless America!
Ever since the government started “giving you” rights that were yours to begin with.
Beautiful…and she doesn’t look bad either :)
That’s not even her main shooter. She’s a marksman with a .50 at long range too.
This isn’t entirely related to the points of this discussion, but for those who missed it, here’s an excellent article from Charles C.W. Cooke about the deadly consequences of the red tape that restricts gun ownership in New Jersey. More specifically, waiting periods.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/419400/deadly-consequences-draconian-gun-laws-charles-c-w-cooke
Indeed, she is!
For those who are new here, the woman in those pictures is long-time Ricochet member Andrea Ryan.
I wasn’t able to discover by Googlizing, but in your posting those pictures, has she met the LaRoche Rule – is she a former cheerleader?
Why is it good news that the shooter purchased his gun legally and passed a background check? That’s terrible news.
By the way, over on the thread about crazy people (mostly) and guns (a little) we’ve been talking about our own experiences with relatives with acute mental illnesses. My own beloved relative has been hospitalized twice for psychosis, is on multiple medications to control auditory and visual hallucinations and delusions, and she could walk into a gun store today and buy a weapon, no problem.
That doesn’t worry you just a little?
I seem to remember that O was trying to get the Arms Trade Treaty to be considered ratified without the Senate, ‘cuz it’s not like a Treaty treaty; it’s, ya know, like an agreement within the International Community of which we need to be a much more participatory member.
Ha! Andrea is not a former cheerleader, but she has a younger cousin who is.
It worries me greatly. The problem comes in on who is drawing the lines, and how those lines are drawn. I do not trust the government to draw the lines correctly or dispassionately. New York State is a case in point, as is the VA – there are thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of gun owners who now face the prospect of a police or FBI visit to confiscate their guns. With our current administration, I’d expect them to draw the lines very broadly so as to ban as many people as possible.
It’s like dealing with the NLRB right now, with it stacked with very pro-union guys. If
Were those hospitalizations voluntary? Federal firearms regulations deem a person ineligible for firearms purchase if
Once that has happened, the person will pop up in the NICS check as prohibited.
When the killer says he chose the target because he thought no one would be armed…