Wednesday, December 30, 2009

You Gun Nuts are Crazy

You Gun Nuts are crazy and no one should listen to a word you say. You keep saying Obama is coming after your guns. But Obama said he wasn’t gonna come after your guns, and hasn’t done anything to come after your guns. So shut up.

At least that’s what many hoplophobes have said time and again since Barry got elected.

We gun enthusiasts are a bit leery of this sentiment. What with Obama being a major muckity-muck for the Joyce Foundation. It says it right there on his resume, 1994-2002. And Joyce is major funder of anti-rights causes.

Right now, the biggest political mover of the anti-gun cause is Mayors Against Illegal Guns or MAIG. (The Brady Campaign is but a shell of its former self.) It is so active because Mayor Bloomberg of NYC is the active pusher of MAIG, and presumably has a bit of the President’s ear.

Well Bloomberg sent up some suggestions on restricting gun rights that Obama can do without having to get Congress to DO anything.


So I guess that whole “Obama isn’t gonna come after your guns” is a lie. Well, IF the president has his ATF come down on the gun culture with both feet it’s a lie.

~~

As an aside, what’s so unreasonably heinous about Mayor Bloomberg’s MAIG recommendations? He even brings up that nigh everyone wants to enforce the laws already on the books, and these suggestions would just go towards that, so?

Good question…

Well, a ban on non-sporting firearms and ammo is a recommendation ATF could do, suggested my MAIG, just for an example. But most all imports are used for sporting purposes. People SHOOT imported Mosins or SKSs or Glocks in a target competitions. It’s not the big events like those held at Camp Perry, but it is still a sport. And that’s if we ignore the Heller decision that said restrictions on the grounds of ONLY sporting purposes utility are unconstitutional. An imported firearm and ammo has a possible use under the other protected purposes of firearm ownership… militia use, and, most importantly, SELF DEFENSE. How is a restriction of 60 year old bolt action rifles and the most popular police sidearm reasonable?

Most importantly, this one restriction is a BAN by administrative fiat, instigated by MAIG (who claimed to never want to BAN guns), associated with an administration whose followers insist that the President would NEVER EVER want to BAN any guns.

The other 40 recommendations are geared to nibbling away at the periphery, making gun ownership and operation more expensive and more of an administrative hassle and more invasive of lawful gun owner’s privacy. It erodes the gun culture. And once eroded more ambitious rights infringing statutes can be emplaced. None of the recommendations seem to seek to reduce illegal gun activity like murder and assault and robbery except for marginally. It's interesting that the 40 suggestions were purposely picked to be the most inconvenient for lawful gun owners and the least inconvenient for what should be the true target of the sentiment "enforce the laws we already have." The actual criminals. [What if 40 suggestions were made by the NRA to a pro-gun President and an overwhelmingly conservative Congress to have ATF enforce the laws it already has on the books? Could the NRA offer up the same suggestions? Maybe. So why the worry? It's a matter of trust and the wiggle room written in to the rules. Plus there are easily 40 BETTER recommendation out there than these that target legal owners as well as actual criminals.]

Here’s a reform that MAIG didn’t recommend. How about, when someone is convicted of unlawfully shooting someone they don’t let that person out of prison after a couple years so they can unlawfully shoot someone again?

~~

Here’s another issue. MAIG wouldn’t disclose that report. Why keep it secret? The Washington Post got a copy back in September and reported on it, but failed to report the actual details. Why? It is only after Calguns put in a FOIA request did this information get promulgated. Why does the Executive branch of the US Government have to have a veil of secrecy over this issue? It’s not National Security related. Why can’t THIS policy wrangle be exposed to the sanitizing light of day? Thank goodness for FOIA.

Anyway, like I said, you Gun Nuts are crazy thinking the President is contemplating some secret plan to ban your guns. You all need to calm down. Here. Have some Kool Aid. It’s delish.





[and, full disclosure, the President does have to institute these recommendations. he hasn't yet, and might not. let's give poor, struggling Obama the benefit of the doubt, shall we?...]















[AND... you know, as the day wore on yesterday and I composed this blog, EVERYTHING I said was said by someone else...]

Ooo! Thought experiement! What 40 recommendations to enforce the existing laws would we gun bloggers recommend to the President to direct his ATF?

5 comments:

New Jovian Thunderbolt said...

Have you noticed that that post was a bit ADD? Yeah, I need to get ahead on the blog fodder again.

Paladin said...

What 40 recommendations to enforce the existing laws would we gun bloggers recommend to the President to direct his ATF?

Here's my list:

1. If someone actually uses a gun to commit a crime, punish them for commiting that crime just like you would if they had used a chainsaw, axe, spoon, or feather.

2. See rule #1

3. See rule #1

...

40. See rule #1

New Jovian Thunderbolt said...

Good list.

Any other ideas?

Anonymous said...

Bring back Judge Roy Bean, or a Judge with common sense.

elmo iscariot said...

The "paranoid gun nuts vs Obama" meme strikes me as even dumber than the usual anti-gunner alternate reality assumptions.

A Chicago politician with a history of hardcore antigun statements who's served on the board of a hardcore antigun organization dedicated to changing the fundamental structure of American culture is elected President. Gun owners and gun rights advocacy groups go on alert and watch like hawks for any move toward more restrictions on our rights. Huge numbers of ordinary Americans buy their first guns, gun owners buy more, and the buying habits of Americans shift solidly away from sporting guns to defensive guns. And gun control turns into be a radioactive topic that smart politicians refuse to touch, and dumb politicians fail to get traction with even in the most antigun enclaves in the country. The liberal, antigun President (at least so far) doesn't push for any more restrictions, and seems to have told his cabinet to shut the hell up about gun control.

And antigunners think there's no causal relationship there at all?