Votes Are Shaping Up?

NRA seems pretty confident they can stop the worst of what’s coming at us, or at least David Keene is. I would not let this lull us into any complacency. We still have a fight ahead of us, and numbers like what we’re seeing out of some recent polls are concerning. If Obama piles on, these numbers are bound to shift more. Complacency is our worst enemy. Like many of us gun bloggers have been saying, if every person panic buying guns and ammo also wrote their reps, we’d have nothing to worry about. But they won’t, so those of us willing to do something have to make up for those who won’t. They can’t be given any victory, because any victory given will be used to build upon the next victory when they get their next pretext. The snowball will begin to roll. A lot of people will ask why we just won’t be reasonable, well, because in politics, being reasonable is what gets you squashed.

Wal-Mart Rumors

There’s some rumor going around the Internet that Wal-Mart isn’t planning on ordering more ammo, and plans to exist the business after running out of current stock. Extranos Alley links to a CNS News piece in that regard. Wal-Mart is denying it. We have the manufacturers largely too scared to join in with the Administration on anything. Now they seem to be identifying certain retailers as the weak link, and Wal-Mart, because they’ve cooperated with Bloomberg before, seems like a ripe target. I’m not going to suggest any of them are actively planning to sell us out, but if it happens, keep a close eye on where they are opening new stores. If suddenly you start to see new stores opening in cities, like New York and Chicago, where they’ve had issues getting the right permits and zoning, you’ll know what kickback they were promised. It’s the Chicago way.

How Did We Get Here, Part I: The Culture War

It seems almost hard to believe. On the Tuesday before the horrible tragedy in Newtown, we were celebrating a significant court victory, where a three judge panel on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a ruling which said that Illinois blanket ban on carry was unconstitutional. The following Tuesday, we would be returned to the 1990s, in terms of where we are on the issue. What happened? There are a lot of unspoken agreements in politics. Often times it’s that each side really doesn’t want to go through the pain of antagonizing the other, and the recognition that often times in politics, once certain forces are put into motion, they can be difficult to stop. There are still many places in the country where gun control can move if proponents of it are antagonized. The reason we have gotten here is largely due to our own success.

We are threatening the unspoken agreement that you rednecks in flyover country can have your guns, but we sophisticated people in New York and Chicago get to have “enlightened” gun laws so we don’t ever have to associate with people like you, and don’t have to be around your icky guns or listen to your icky gun talk. But the writing is starting to appear on the walls, and the powers that be in those two bastions of gun prohibition don’t like what they are reading. Despite losses here and there, when it comes to the battle in the federal courts, we’re winning on the big and important stuff.

Coastal elites, for the most part, absolutely hate the idea of civilians with firearms, and there’s plenty of bipartisan consensus on that in certain areas. The Second Amendment has almost always been a movement of ordinary people standing up for their rights and that too is more bipartisan than many people often acknowledge. Who are our elites? Wayne LaPierre may have a graduate degree from Boston College, but he’s from Roanoke, Virginia. I doubt most New Yorkers or Chicagoans could even tell you Roanoke is in Virginia, let alone where. Chris Cox is from West Tennessee and a graduate of Rhodes College in Memphis, in the heart of what coastal elites dub flyover country. Harlan Carter, who founded the modern NRA, had a law enforcement background. Neal Knox, who was right there with him, published a gun magazine, and before that was a journalist. The elites on our issue often have credentials that don’t look vastly different than yours or mine.

To the extent that the fight for gun rights is lead by ordinary people from far away, unknown places, I don’t think the costal elites were all that concerned about it. After all, they didn’t know anyone in their circles who practiced such barbarity as owning guns, or shooting guns. If someone did carry one, well, they are the right kind of people after all, and the city can be a dangerous place. But it’s not something spoken of in polite circles. But stand up for that right? For the common man? Well, civilized people just don’t do that. But it’s not political advocacy that’s really tipped the scales. The legal advocacy is what has brought us here. We have plenty of great contributions in the legal fight from people of no great pedigree, and who live and practice in flyover country, but then we also have Harvard Grads, Yale men, and other folks with Ivy degrees, who have been instrumental in bringing this issue to the forefront of law. It’s the legal side of the movement that’s most threatening to elites like Mayor Rahm and Bloomberg, and even President Obama, because the legal side is what is bringing these ideas into their cities. The people who are leading that charge aren’t pot bellied rednecks, but people with pedigree. People who don’t fit the stereotype.

We’ve shown tremendous success in the cultural war in the past several years. More women are learning to shoot than ever. More minorities than ever before are standing up for their rights and demanding they be permitted to legally exercise them. It was starting to be OK to be a liberal Democrat, own a gun, and enjoy shooting. Urban foodies are taking up hunting. The face of the gun culture looks less and less like the beer gutted OFWG of costal elite lore every day. We are being successful evangelists, and broadening the appeal of the issue.

Victory in the culture war provides a foundation for the gun culture we know and enjoy to enter places like New York and Chicago. They know this, and at some level, I believe the ultimate goal of the current attack isn’t necessarily to get legislation passed, though they will certainly try. No, the current attack is meant to shame people out of the idea of supporting gun rights, because gun rights are what those people do. I believe many coastal elites have a deep anxiety that not only will those people start to spring up like dandelions in their fair cities, but more importantly, they may have to do business with them, to socialize with them, and to hear talk of AK v. AR, 9mm v. .45, or to have to listen to someone who should, by all rights, be one of them, talking about their new carry piece, and the thought of that drives them crazy.

The messaging in this current attack is that those people are monsters, who don’t care about dead children. There’s a reason for that, and it says a lot more about who they are than it says about who we are. We are ultimately here because they have nothing to lose. If they awaken the sleeping giant, and only make him angry and determined, they have lost nothing, since they were losing anyway. If they achieve some victory, well, that’s something. Perhaps it can slow or stop the inevitable. But even if we beat them back everywhere, if they can achieve some measure of shame, if nothing else, they can remind the right kind of people who the wrong kind of people are, and maybe they won’t have to worry about having those kinds of people at their dinner parties.

Next up is how we got here politically.

Obama Presser

Obama has been answering questions about guns in his latest press conference. He was asked directly about the gun sales boom, and he essentially said it’s basically just paranoid loons who’s fears have been ginned up by the likes of NRA, and who think the federal government is coming for their guns. He said there would be executive action on the issue, and spoke specifically of tracking guns as one of the issues that could be taken through executive action.

$800 Mosins?

People must be hearing all this talk about weapons of war and military weapons not belonging in the hands of civilians and freaking right the hell out. I would have said this is paranoid, but anything is possible now. Who knows? Now the 10/22 I can understand, because if some of these proposals play out, the 10/22 is doomed. Does anyone even make a 7 round magazine for it?

Blood in the Streets

Chicago’s top cop says there will be, because his guys will shoot armed citizens. And now a President whose home is that corrupt sewer of a city thinks he gets to tell the rest of us what our gun laws need to look like.

Bill Clinton Lies

I don’t think anyone is surprised by this, especially if the topic is guns. As Glenn notes, they can’t sell their ideas without them.

Republicans Selling Out In New York?

Governor Cuomo is apparently in talks with the GOP to pass the toughest gun ban in the nation:

“They’re arguing over nothing, little nuances,” that source said of the Republicans. “But the bottom line is the governor is going to get the toughest gun laws in the nation.”

The emerging proposal would expand the state’s existing assault weapons ban and limit ammunition magazines to a maximum of seven rounds, down from the current ten.

Blast from the Past

People of the gun was a project of Jeff Soyer, who has been blogging for a long time. By “long time,” meaning I was reading Jeff before I blogged. He stopped blogging for a while, but came back to it. I’m guessing someone else picked up People of the Gun. He started this years ago, back in 2007. I am among those people, Second row, linked under the old blog name. That picture was taken in West Texas, out near Jayton, not long after I started blogging. I have a friend whose family has a ranch out that way. Good times. Damn, that was a long time ago, or so it seems now.

The List

This! I’m pretty much screwed if this shit gets real. I’ve been outspoken and vocal, and have not taken much effort to hide who I am. But it can’t make us afraid to speak. They don’t have the money or the resources to put all of us in prison. If you’ve bought a gun in the past 40 years, you’re in “the list.” Get over it. Get active.