Michael R. Weisser's Blog, page 82

What Will Happen If Hillary Abolishes The 2nd Amendment? Nothing Will Happen.

Every time that Schmuck-o Trump-o gets up in front of one of his Ku Klux Klan rallies, sooner or later he promises the crowd that he’ll  ‘protect’ their 2nd-Amendment ‘rights.’ And lately, this seems to be about the only thing he can say without getting into trouble, so he makes sure to say it every time out.  Of course he always gets a response from the crowd because if we know one thing for sure about Hillary, we know that she’s an enemy of the 2nd Amendment and if she becomes Number 45, then 2nd Amendment goes bye-bye.

           I bought my first real gun in 1956 when I was 12 years old.  It was a Smith & Wesson 6-inch revolver in one of those blue cardboard boxes and it was sitting on a table in the middle of a big flea market somewhere in the Glades outside of Fort Lauderdale near Highway 441. Old boy wanted fifty for the gun, I had fifty on me, he got the fifty, I got the gun.  Of course thirty minutes later my great-uncle Nat grabbed the gun away from me and probably sold it in a pawn shop the next day.  But it was still and always will be my very first gun.

Between 1956 and 2008, that’s more than fifty years, I probably owned more than 500 different guns.  That may sound like a lot but actually it’s only ten guns a year which is pretty light for a gun nut like me. I also probably sold 450 guns over that same period because, on average, I usually kept around 50 guns at any one time. Always had a couple of Colt 1911s, a Smith 39 and a Smith 52; I was also partial to Walther, particularly the P-38 and never passed up the opportunity to own a Browning Hi-Power, aka the Model P-35.  Those are for starters.

Between 1956 and 2008 I probably bought, sold and traded one thousand guns, and not a single one of those transactions was protected by the United States Constitution at all. Because when I first started fooling around with guns the 2nd Amendment was defined as only protecting guns that could or would be used for military service of one kind or another; this was the gist of the 1939 United States vs. Miller decision which basically said that the 2nd Amendment only protected the ownership of guns that would be used in a militia-type of activity like the National Guard.  And of all the guns I had owned since 1956, not one of them could have been regarded as useful only for military or militia service, not one.

The 2008 District of Columbia vs. Heller decision changed all that.  Because for the very first time the SCOTUS gave Constitutional protection to civilian gun ownership, but also explicitly gave Constitutional protection to a very specific kind of civilian ownership, namely, the ‘right’ to keep a loaded, unlocked handgun in the home. Meanwhile, in the years since I bought and briefly owned that S&W revolver in Florida, virtually every state began issuing licenses to carry a concealed weapon outside the home, and some states even now allow guns to be carried openly in the public space.

I hate to break the news to Schmuck-o and his band of merry followers, but carrying a gun outside your house, concealed or in open view, is not protected by any Constitutional ‘right’ at all.  And when various jurisdictions have been challenged for limiting the carrying of guns outside the home, these challenges (e.g., Peruta vs. San Diego) haven’t gone anywhere at all.

So when Schmuck-o Trump gets up there and says he’s going to ‘protect 2nd-Amendment rights,’ he’s just embellishing a noisy fiction that without the 2nd Amendment, we would all fall prey to gun-grabbers like Hillary who would quickly and easily take away our guns.  It’s not true, it never was true, but since when is truth a defining criteria for what tumbles out of Schmuck-o Trump’s mouth?

A Brief Response To Josh Horwitz Whose Op-Ed Is A ‘Must Read.’

I earlier posted a thoughtful and sober editorial by Josh Horwitz, Executive Director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, about what he considers Street Thug Trump’s embrace of ‘insurrectionist rhetoric’ which, according to Josh, has been promoted by the NRA for years.  I watched Trump’s North Carolina speech several times and I wasn’t sure that he was so much consciously pushing a violent threat as he was just doing what he seems to always do, namely, say something really nasty, hateful and angry but in a snarky and mealy-mouthed kind of way. But my opinion is neither here nor there, the bottom line is that the prevailing narrative has Thug exhorting gun owners to get what they want politically through force of arms. Which is fine as far as I’m concerned, because anything that causes Street Thug to lose even more credibility than what he has already lost is a good thing for me.

            I have to say that I’m not terribly impressed by the fact that Media Matters has reported Street Thug’s embrace of ‘on the verge of Armageddon’ statements from the usual crew at Fox News. Fox is also the venue which carries endless advertisements for freeze-dried food that can be stored in your underground bunker for twenty-five years; investments in gold and silver because currency is going to disappear; maybe the next thing they’ll push are luxury condos across the highway from Area 51.

This whole insurrectionist thing is an offshoot of the so-called militia movement which gained notoriety after it was revealed that Timmy McVeigh and Terry Nichols attended several meetings of the Michigan Militia before they blew up the Murrah Federal Building in 1995.  Actually, what made the Michigan group famous was when they were later featured in Michael Moore’s documentary, Bowling for Columbine which, like all Michael’s films, consists of artfully-edited interviews with every loony, wacko and freak he can find.

In fact, the Michigan bunch aren’t loonies or wackos at all.  They are basically a bunch of guys who like to get together, blast away with their AR rifles to their heart’s content, then sit down and eat a lot of food, particularly the food.  I wrote a column about them back in 2014 and pointed out that there is about as much chance that this hardy band could lead an insurrection against the government as they could get through a weekend shoot without a good supply of doughnuts from the local Dunk.

Come to think about it, the food issue never seems to be far away from whatever these militias groups try to do.  Remember when back in 2016 there was a brief takeover of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon that was led by Cliven Bundy’s sons? I know about all those militia guys who showed up and vowed to protect the Bundy idiots with their lives, and in fact one person did get shot because his car was stopped by law enforcement and then he pulled out a gun.  But the last guy to abandon the siege, forty days after it began, surrendered in return for a free exit and the delivery of a pizza which he promptly consumed.

Look, I have been saying again and again that Street Thug Trump is a danger and a threat because he appeals to fear, openly advocates violence, and the most damaging personal violence is violence caused by using a gun.  But to my mind what was concerning about the Thug’s 2nd Amendment remark in North Carolina was the fact that if he were actually to become President, he would owe the 2nd-Amendment gang big-time.  Know why he blurted out that comment about the 2nd Amendment?  Because both he and the audience were beginning to fall asleep.  But he can always get a rise out of the Gun-nut Nation contingent if he yanks their chains which gets him back on track.

The problem isn’t the insurrection rhetoric, the problem isn’t the militia members with their hots dogs and beer.  The problem is one thing and one thing only – getting every last person to the polls on November 8.  Let’s not forget that.

 

Guest Editorial By Josh Horwitz – And I Reserve The Right Of Response.

“The imagined need to reserve the option to use force against the government is a central justification invoked by gun rights advocates in opposing legislation or regulation that would place any restriction, no matter how mild, on access to firearms.”

I wrote those words seven years ago in Guns, Democracy, and the Insurrectionist Idea, a book I co-authored with Casey Anderson. In that publication, I highlighted the dangerous anti-government rhetoric espoused by the fringe extremists of America’s pro-gun movement and warned that if this idea became widespread, it would threaten our democracy. Over the last eight years, the gun lobby has made this mindset mainstream. This week, violent revolution became a new talking point for the Republican presidential nominee — Donald Trump.

Trump’s statement, which seemed to suggest that gun owners could or should assassinate Hillary Clinton, is horrifying. Politicians, journalists, and commentators of all political ideologies were quick to condemn or distance themselves from Trump’s words. Even Bob Owens, editor of the pro-gun website Bearing Arms, tweeted that what Trump said was “neither nuanced nor clever” but a “threat of violence.” Owens, presumably under pressure from pro-gun extremists, later deleted the tweet and posted an editorial titled “No, Donald Trump Did Not Suggest Hillary Clinton Should Be Assassinated.”

Outside of Trump’s own campaign and surrogates, there was one group that unequivocally backed Trump’s statement — the National Rifle Association. Though it is shameful, this should not come as a surprise. The NRA has been promoting violent uprising against a tyrannical government for years; Trump has simply taken their message to its largest audience yet.

A month prior to 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, the NRA sent out a fundraising letter that read:

“It doesn’t matter to them that the [federal Assault Weapons Ban] gives jack-booted government thugs more power to take away our constitutional rights, break in our doors, seize our guns, destroy our property, and even injure or kill us. Not too long ago, it was unthinkable for federal agents wearing Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms to attack law-abiding citizens.”

The NRA’s attack on federal workers led former President George H.W. Bush to discontinue his lifelong membership.

You would think such a public rebuke would cause the NRA to back away from this unsettling language. Not so. Over the last two decades, they have doubled down on their insurrectionist philosophy and continued to bring this violent language into the mainstream.

We saw it in 2010 when Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle called for “Second Amendment remedies” to settle political arguments.

We saw it in 2011 when Sarah Palin published a map with crosshairs over elected officials who supported President Obama’s Affordable Healthcare Act, including Congresswoman Gabby Giffords.

We saw it in 2012 when Iowa Senate candidate Joni Ernst said that she believed in the right to carry firearms for protection “whether it’s from an intruder, or from the government, should they decide my rights are no longer important.”

We saw it in 2016 when presidential candidate Senator Ted Cruz stated in a fundraising appeal that the Second Amendment is the “ultimate check against government tyranny.”

We saw it yesterday when the NRA released a $3 million ad buy — the largest the Trump campaign has received to date — mocking Hillary Clinton’s protection by the Secret Service. The ad aired only one day after Trump’s comments demonstrated the very need for such protection.

The idea of an armed rebellion has made its way onto the national scene. At the NRA’s annual convention, presidential candidates and elected officials address their rabid gun-loving constituency and promote insurrectionism as a real possibility. Donald Trump did not invent this insurrectionist idea — he just provided its largest platform.

While some might dismiss Trump’s statement as “a joke” or “just words,” such language has real-life consequences. Gunmen have assassinated four United States presidents. Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was injured in an assassination attempt by a gunman who railed against the government. The NRA and Donald Trump are not joking — they are actively encouraging violence.

For weeks, Donald Trump has been baiting his followers by telling them the fall election will be rigged. In doing so, Trump is sowing seeds of discontent. Coupled with his suggestion that an assassination attempt is within the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, Donald Trump and the NRA have led our country into dangerous territory.

Addressing a crowd in 2009, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said, “Our Founding Fathers understood that the guys with the guns makes the rules.” This is a gross distortion of the ideals that shaped our nation. Despite what the gun lobby has told us, the Founders never advocated the NRA’s toxic philosophy; in fact, they actively worked to suppress insurrectionists. State militias acted quickly to quash insurrectionist movements like Shays’ Rebellion and the Whiskey Rebellion.

The NRA has led us to believe this is the America the Founders envisioned. History tells us a different story. George Washington referred to the leader of Shays’ Rebellion — Daniel Shays — as a “subject fit for a mad house.” We can only imagine what the father of our nation would have to say about Donald Trump.

It’s Time For Gun Violence Prevention To Get Together And Make It Happen – Together.

Yesterday I posted an editorial on my website by Ladd Everitt, which is a Gun Violence Prevention ‘must read.’  Ladd’s statement is both important and true; namely, that a new age is dawning for GVP thanks to the work, energy and commitment of a host of organizations that have sprung up over the last several years.

            Ladd has been promoting GVP for 16 years, my involvement with guns and thinking about gun violence goes back to 1965.  And everything Ladd says about the recent growth of GVP is truer than he knows.  If he believes there’s been a GVP groundswell recently compared to twenty years ago, why not push the needle back another 30 years and compare then to now?  In the mid-70s the estimate for the yearly number of gun deaths was 30,000, roughly the same number we have today with a national population one-third less in size.

But in recognizing what Ladd calls a “constellation of new individuals and groups emerging to assume a bolder posture” on GVP, he also has to acknowledge the lack of coordination and the fact that many important GVP issues (licensing, buybacks, etc.) still do not have organizational champions whose voices can compete with the pro-gun noise.  What he wants is a more aggressive, more vocal, more passionate movement that will push the envelope and make use of the growing intensity that he sees emerging within GVP.

I applaud and support Ladd’s desire to see a more aggressive GVP movement and an advocacy strategy that reflects the cultural outlook of the new generation of GVP activists along with their new-found allies in Black Liberation and LGBTQ.  But what Ladd didn’t say (and this is in no way a criticism) is that we still have to figure out how to get from here to there.  It’s one thing to call for a ‘bolder posture’ in response to the threat posed by Gun-nut Nation and their newly-anointed leader, a.k.a. Street Thug Trump. But it’s quite another to spell out exactly how this posture will move GVP forward from an organizational and tactical point of view.

We need to think of GVP like the United Nations whose membership is comprised of independent organizations that come together, develop and implement an agenda whose goal would be supported by all.  It could be run by a Security Council with a Big 5 or Big 6 as permanent members and other members serving on a rotating basis, chosen by votes of everyone else.  The organization could be headed by a Secretary-General – I nominate General David Petraeus to start.  There could be a Secretariat to produce all the information and data – the Gun Violence Archive is already in place.  And we would invite the NRA and NSSF to be observers, they can watch but can’t talk.

Membership in this body would not compromise the independence of any member group.  Individual organizations would still continue to map specific agendas, take on GVP issues close to home, continue to do what they do. But utilizing the infrastructures of multiple organizations would allow GVP to define issues in terms of measurable goals, and would bring a weight and presence to the battlefield that would far outweigh the NRA.

In exactly 90 days there will be a watershed event that will transform the landscape for the GVP. Either she will be President and will ask GVP to help craft a serious gun bill because, after all, that’s what her campaign was all about. Or he’ll be President in which case the Oval office will quickly become known as a place that celebrates and promotes gun violence in all ways, shapes and forms.

So we can sit here and talk about this and talk about that, but if we don’t create an organizational structure that translates the this and the that into something tangible and real, we’ll be sitting here a year from now still talking and frankly, I’m too old for that.

 

This column is a joint effort of myself and Mark Bryant. This is a call to action. We would appreciate your feedback.

 

 

A Guest Editorial From Ladd Everitt

I’ve been working in the gun violence prevention field for 16 years now as a volunteer and professional. As reflected by the events at the recent Democratic National Convention, there is no doubt the movement is in the best shape it’s ever been in.

The convention dedicated an entire program to gun violence prevention (GVP) on its most electrifying night, Wednesday. DNC 2016 included emotional appearances by gun violence survivors like Mothers of the Movement (the surviving mothers of Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Jordan Davis and Dontre Hamilton) and Erica Smegielski from the Everytown Survivor Network. It also featured riveting speeches by the likes ofReverend William Barber (a powerful nonviolence icon) in favor of an Assault Weapons Ban (AWB). “You heard, you saw, family members of police officers killed in the line of duty because they were outgunned by criminals,” saidDemocratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in her acceptance speech. “I refuse to believe we can’t find common ground here.”

It was a defining moment for a movement that has built significant capacity since the awful tragedy that happened on December 14, 2012 in Newtown, Connecticut.

Much of that progress has been led by the movement’s two most powerful groups, Everytown for Gun Safety and Americans for Responsible Solutions (ARS). Their PACs have dramatically changed the political calculus of legislators across the country. And Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America (under the Everytown umbrella) has been an ever-present grassroots force in states across the country.

But important questions hang in the air…

With so many gun violence survivors and gun violence prevention champions in elected government now aggressively calling for an Assault Weapons Ban — after having seen the Orlando gunman decimate a civilian population with the MCX rifle designed for members of our Special Forces — why are the two most powerful groups in the GVP movement, Everytown and ARS, still refusing to even mention the issue, much less support a ban? Shouldn’t the GVP “Bigs” be setting the agenda for their elected (and cultural) champions, much like the NRA does on the pro-gun side? What does the movement lose by pursuing a more moderate agenda — i.e., overwhelmingly popular policies like expanding background checks and prohibiting suspected terrorists from purchasing firearms — that fail to motivate its most ardent supporters?

We are now seeing a constellation of new individuals and groups emerging to assume a bolder posture on the issue. They are less rigid on policy and willing to embrace solutions from the ground up. They are acting aggressively to confront our nation’s degenerate gun culture. They are totally unapologetic. [And they are just the tip of the spear. With the cultural tide on the issue shifting, more will soon follow.] Among them are:

· Celebrity hairdresser Jason Hayes has crowd-funded more than $40,000 (average contribution $21) to put on a “Disarm Hate” rally on the National Mall on Saturday, August 13th. The rally will endorse a renewal of the Assault Weapons Ban.

· Po Murray and David Stowe of Newtown Action Alliance have done phenomenal work to organize a coalition of 97 different organizations that support an Assault Weapons Ban renewal. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence (the third and final “Big”) is part of that coalition.

· Anonymous men and women from across the country have created “The Betsy Riot,” a social norming project with a suffragette theme that aggressively confronts gun idolatry and gun culture at large.

· Gays Against Guns has stood up in response to the Orlando massacre and is building chapters across the country. They are conducting in-your-face protests at a number of high-profile venues, such as Trump Tower.

Taking it to the Streets, GAG Style

· The National Action Network is preparing an August 27th rally at the DC lobbying offices of the NRA that will launch 72 days of action. This will involve civil disobedience.

· Marylanders to Prevent Gun Violence got a handgun licensing law enacted in their state and are the policy’s strongest proponent in the movement today.

· Actor/LGBTQ rights activist George Takei has launched One Pulse for America [I’m their director], a rapidly growing Facebook group with 70,000+ members. Members, described as “the folks who have been dying to turn up the volume and just needed to find the right muse,” are asked to take action on gun violence prevention on a daily basis.

The goal of these groups will be to close the oft-discussed “Passion Gap.” You can imagine what it looks like in practice. When a legislator hears from the pro-gun side, most often he/she is hearing the message, “I’m a single-issue voter. If you support any gun reform — no matter how modest — and fail to pass permissive gun policies, I will do everything I can to end your political career.” When they hear from the gun violence prevention side, it’s typically, “I care about reducing gun violence in our country. Please vote to expand background checks today.”

There’s no comparison. And when compromises are hammered out by legislators on gun legislation, pro-gun activists are almost invariably successful in “moving the middle” to their side and making those policies more favorable to the gun lobby.

I also think there is an opportunity to reach out to people who feel like they don’t have a home in the contemporary gun violence prevention movement. I see these folks on social media all the time. I meet them at rallies.

Remember, we’re living in an era of daily mass shootings. There are many people who would like to live in a society without guns; or at least with dramatically fewer guns and far tougher controls. Controls that you would typically see in every other free nation on the planet. They haven’t had a voice in the GVP movement since the late 1980s, when Handgun Control and the National Coalition to Ban Handguns changed their names to the Brady Campaign and Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, respectively, and began arguing for more moderate policies.

Currently, there is no advocacy in the movement for the following policy options:

· Licensing and registration laws, which have proven enormously effective at denying firearms to dangerous individuals in states that have implemented such laws. Virtually all other democracies have licensing and registration laws at the national level. They have astronomically lower rates of gun death, and there has been no loss of individual freedom whatsoever. [See Alan Berlow’s excellent article on the topic.]

· Larger gun buyback programs at the state and/or national level.

· Computerizing records of gun sales maintained by federally licensed firearm dealers and the ATF (out-of-business dealers).

· Comprehensive updating of the prohibited categories for gun buyers defined in the (amended) 1968 Gun Control Act, based on the best evidence/research currently available in 2016.

· Mandated requirements for smart guns and crime-solving technologies (microstamping).

· Outright opposition to private citizens carrying firearms in public, except under “May-Issue” systems that give law enforcement discretion to deny permits to individuals with a history of violence.

Nor is any organization in the movement really challenging the legitimacy of the controversial 2008 D.C. v. Heller decision, in which the Supreme Court’s conservative wing rewrote 200+ years of judicial interpretation of the Second Amendment, declaring a newfound individual “right” to keep a handgun in your home. [Contrast this with the approach taken on Citizen United.]

This is about the time where some anxious critic stops me and says, “Fine, but Ladd — If you advocate for things like gun bans — even one as limited as the federal AWB — you’re going to be feeding into NRA confiscation rhetoric and we’ll be doomed!”

But listen. The NRA has been promoting confiscation propaganda for decades now with no provocation whatsoever. The NRA’s www.gunbanobama.comwas up and running long before President Obama ever addressed the GVP issue during his second term. And look what the gun lobby has to say about Everytown founder Michael Bloomberg, a guy politely calling for modest policies.

I’d say we’ve suffered about as much as we’re going to suffer from gun ban propaganda. And it’s not like truth is an antidote for the Trump crowd these days, either. We need to begin embracing what they consider to be a weakness as a strength. Why not start harnessing some intensity among our own base by advocating for more aggressive policies? Let’s move the middle on this issue toour side.

The result will be a win-win for everyone: a more vocal, passionate movement that will push the envelope and make space for the more moderate policies favored by GVP Bigs. And most importantly, we will create a safer America with far less human suffering.

And If You Are Worried About What Trump Would Mean To GVP, Here’s What You Might Do.

Apropos of the previous column I just posted about the election, one of the really energetic GVP activists just sent me a link to the page on Hillary’s website where you can find out, join and otherwise get involved in a grass-roots election event near where you live.  Here’s the link:  https://www.hillaryclinton.com/events/.

            Then I asked myself the following question: Self, what kind of a ground game do you think the two candidates really have?  And I figure that I can get some kind of answer by putting some search zip codes into Hillary’s events list to see what comes out.  So the first state I stuck in was Georgia, which listed a few events in Atlanta and Savannah, but then a whole load of events in Jacksonville which, if you live in Atlanta, is really not that far down the road.

Then I stuck in Florida, and another very impressive-looking list came up, but most of the events are actually invitations to come and work at phone banks that are located in various campaign offices throughout the state.  What surprised me about the listings for Florida was the underrepresentation for Dade and Broward Counties, which happen to cover Miami and the large Hispanic populations whose votes was what made Florida into a blue state in 2012. On the other hand, the neighborhood canvassing operation in Orlando looms pretty deep.

Now let’s take a look at Utah which, according to this morning’s newspaper is another red state that may be ‘in play.’  There are only 3 events listed for that state and they all happen to be taking place in Colorado, one of which happens to be in Vail. I like Vail in the Summer when there’s nobody around and rooms that go for three hundred a night during the Winter months can be had right now for fifty bucks or less.  But if I lived in Utah I wouldn’t be driving right now to Vail.

Finally, another ‘in play’ state is North Carolina which a month ago was solidly in Street Thug’s camp but now but now, like everything else he had going for him appears to be slipping away.  Lots of events in the Tar Heel state too, but almost all of them right now in Durham and Chapel Hill. Gee, what a surprise that Hillary should have strong support in The Triangle, but it’s the rest of the state that really counts.

So the Hillary ground game has some strong spots, some weak patches, but at least there’s a game.  On the other side, the Official Street Thug website lets you register for text messages, donate from ten to one hundred bucks, and request tickets for his upcoming events, all of which over the next 3-4 days are taking place in North Carolina, Florida and PA.

If I were able to be objective and detached from this whole campaign, I could view it not just as a contest between tone and content, but a contest in which one candidate seems intent on grinding it out through a combination of big-crowd events, smaller, community-size activities and the traditional neighborhood canvassing and telephone banks; while the other candidate appears convinced that mega-sized crowd venues and social media posts is all that he needs.

As I said earlier today, I believe that most if not all the folks who usually vote Republican will vote Republican again; even if they hold their nose while they are pulling that red lever their vote for Street Thug will still count.

So GVP, it’s time to get it on.  Time to get to work.  Time to go to an event, help plan an event, help host an event and most of all, talk to as many people as you can.  Here’s the link in case you need it again: https://www.hillaryclinton.com/events/. And again: https://www.hillaryclinton.com/events/.  And again: https://www.hillaryclinton.com/events/.

 

 

There’s An Election In 91 Days And The Gun Violence Prevention Community Better Get Out And Work.

Know what?  Utah and Georgia are in play. And if those two states go blue, there goes the Deep South and the Far West.  Which means that Trump-o the Shlump-o might not win a single state.  And the more he tries to act ‘Presidential,’ the more he’s going to sink in the polls, because if he had behaved like any other politician from the git-go, he wouldn’t have won anything.  Not a single primary.  Nada.

           Now the latest turn of affairs in the campaign is important for the Gun Violence Prevention community because the whole Trump craziness started – remember when? – he was endorsed by the NRA.  An endorsement that in every single Presidential campaign that I can remember always occurred in late October, and this time around took place before the end of May.  Trump the Shlump wasn’t the ‘presumptive’ Republican candidate when he appeared at the NRA shindig in Louisville; he was well ahead in the delegate count but Cruz and Rubio were still viable candidates, at least in their own minds.

And the decision by the NRA leadership to put their weight behind Street Thug didn’t exactly excite everyone in the crowd at the NRA show; there were some boos, some jeers, Chris Cox had to quiet the crowd by telling them that if they wanted someone else to be endorsed, it was ‘time to get over it,’ and Trump’s appearance didn’t exactly signal the beginning of a love-fest, especially when just one month later his comments about armed citizens shooting back in nightclubs was described by Cox as defying ‘ common sense.’

You see, the problem with this particular New York landlord is that no matter how much people may not like Hillary, they seem to like Street Thug even less.  Forget the national polls which are now beginning to give her a seven-point edge; forget the swing-state polls where she’s up by more than ten points; take a look at the most important poll of all, the poll that tracks whether a candidate is liked or not.  Hillary’s numbers are bad; she’s disliked by 11% more than she’s liked.  But Trump’s numbers, to quote Chris Cox again, defy common sense. Try 63.1% to 31.8%, and I’m not talking about favorable to unfavorable – I’m talking the other way around.

So here we have the Dems running the most unpopular candidate they have ever found and the red team produces a candidate who’s even worse.  And he’s so much worse that every day another Republican office-holder comes out and says, sorry, not for me.  And the announcement by Senator Collins was made directly after Street Thug made an attempt to behave ‘presidential’ in his speech on the economy delivered in Detroit.

So what does all this have to do with guns and GVP?  I’ll tell you what it has to do with.  It has to do with the fact that most gun owners are like everyone else.  They dress the same, they work at the same jobs, they watch the same shows and they think the same way.  Are some of the idiots who show up at Trump rallies with ‘fuck Hillary’ t-shirts the same idiots who march into Starbucks with an AR slung over their backs?  I wouldn’t doubt it for a sec.

But I know lots of gun guys; after all, it’s what I do for a living, and a lot of them tell me they don’t like Trump.  Will they vote for him even though they don’t like him?  Probably will because old habits die hard.  No matter what else, Trump’s a Republican and gun guys know that the GOP may no longer be the party of states’ rights, but it’s still the party of gun rights. Which means that there are 91 days until the election and between now and then the GVP folks better not think about anything else.  Better not.

 

Let’s Get Some Good Numbers On Police Use Of Lethal Force And Then Figure Out What To Do.

Tuesday night Street Thug got a big roar out of the Crowd in Jacksonville when he said that he would make America “safe” for the cops. Now I was always under the impression that the cops were supposed to make America safe, but obviously the shootings in Dallas and Baton Rouge have changed all that. Or at least changed it in the minds of the crowd that showed up to chant about building a wall in front of their beloved Mister Trump.

           How bad is the problem of cops getting killed on the job?  According to the FBI, 51 police were feloniously killed in 2014, of whom 46 lost their lives to assaults involving guns. After Dallas and Baton Rouge, the number of cops shot to death this year jumped to 37; last year at this point only 20 officers had lost their lives to gunfire. But 2015 was an exceptionally safe year; in fact in 2011 there were 73 fatal law enforcement gun deaths, in 2010 it was 60 police gun deaths. Notwithstanding recent events, the number of cops getting shot has been drifting downward over the last ten years.

I wish I could say the same thing about civilians who are shot by cops.  This number appears to be going up.  According to the CDC, which tracks gun deaths attributed to the actions of law enforcement as ‘legal intervention,’ the average yearly toll between 2005 and 2009 was 340, from 2010 through 2014 the yearly average was 440 – a yearly increase of 30%! The CDC data also shows that over the last ten years, African-Americans were 26% of the toll of legal interventions, which happens to be twice the percentage of African-Americans in the population as a whole.

So what we have when we look at the trends of gun violence involving police is that the number of cops getting shot on the job, this year’s tragic events notwithstanding, has been going down, the number of civilians shot by cops has been going up. Meanwhile, police deaths from accidents, which along with shootings comprises more than 95% of all on-the-job police mortality, have also been declining, the result of better training.  So what’s up with guns?

Not only can’t I answer that question, but I’m not sure that the numbers produced by the FBI or the CDC on police use of lethal force bear any resemblance to reality at all.  And if they don’t, then how can we even begin to talk about what needs to be done, or should be done, to bring this situation under control.  Street Thug can scream out from today to next year that under his rule cops will be protected and safe.  But you can take that statement about as seriously as you can take anything else he says, except when he admits that he was always looking for an ‘easy’ way to be awarded a Purple Heart.

According to our friends at the Gun Violence Archive, 168 people were shot and killed by police between June 25 and August 3 of this year.  That’s more than 4 a day.  At that rate, the yearly total of cop shootings would come to more than 1,460.  Is that possible?  Can the number of people killed by cops amount to three times the number given by the CDC? Not only is it possible – it’s probable because The Washington Post also tracks police shootings through media reports and says that the 2016 number is up to 564.  Another online tracker says the number stands at 690 for this year.

I’ll be the first person to say that police deserve all our support.  But supporting the men and women in blue is one thing, dealing properly with the issue of aggravated assaults by cops is something else.  And if we don’t even know the scope of the problem, how are we going to deal with it at all?

 

Think Trump Is A Friend Of The Gun Business? Think Again.

The FBI just issued its monthly report on NICS background checks, and while the good people in West Virginia who take the calls processed 65,000 more calls in July then in June (which is when calls usually drop off since gun sales tend to be lowest during Summer months) and also saw a year-to-year July increase of 37% (from 1,589,462 in 2015 to 2,187,190 this year.) Yet to my utter astonishment, we haven’t yet gotten the usual celebratory announcement from Gun-mob Nation about how Americans just can’t wait to get their hands on all those new guns.

            Go back to 2012 and you’ll see that NICS checks in the Summer months dipped well below what they were in the Spring; this was also true in 2013 and again in 2014 when background checks in June and July were more than 100,000 less than what was registered in May.  In 2015 Summer checks actually increased slightly over the late Spring months and Spring-Summer increase occurred this year as well.  So how come Gun-mob Nation hasn’t been beside itself with joy?

I’ll tell you why.  Because most of the increase in NICS from July, 2015 to July, 2016 was because of background checks for new or renewed gun licenses, not for purchases of guns.  In July, 2015, there were 1,589,462 checks, of which 642.934 were for licenses or permits, and 877,775 were for transfers of guns.  In other words, 55% of the July checks a year ago were for guns; 40% were for licenses (the remaining 5% of the calls were for other administrative tasks that NICS carries out.)  In the July that just ended, 52% of the NICS were for guns, 43% were for permits; the proportion of gun transfers for all NICS went down, the proportion of permit checks went up. Gun transfers did increase from one July to the next by 30%; permit checks from July to July went up by 50%. But let’s remember that NICS doesn’t distinguish between checks for guns purchased out of a dealer’s inventory as opposed to gun checks for transfers between individuals, so we have no idea how the spread of private-transfer NICS to states like  Colorado, Washington, New York and Connecticut has augmented totals for NICS.

Want to know how to figure out the health of the gun business?  Simple.  Check out the prices for guns.  Right after Orlando the usual stories started popping up about how AR guns were ‘flying’ off dealer’s shelves.  Well I just checked some prices online, and I can still get an AR for under $1,000 bucks; I remember that in 2012 the higher-end ARs were selling for twice that price.  And last week when the Massachusetts Attorney General, Maura Healey, gave gun shops 24 hours to get rid of their ARs, the story floated around that 10,000 ARs were sold in 24 hours; meanwhile the entire number of NICS checks for all long-gun sales in the Bay State last month was 5,108.  Yea, 10,000 guns were sold in a day. I also stayed on my diet yesterday even though before I went to bed I somehow managed to eat a bowl of chocolate ice cream.

Now don’t get me wrong.  I’m not saying that the gun business is about to collapse.  What I am saying is that the great Obama gun surge has definitely slowed down.  And the reason it has slowed down is the same reason that gun sales fell off in the last months leading up to the 2012 election, namely, that most gun-buyers were Romney supporters and polls to the contrary, they all believed their man was going to win. Retail gun dealers like me couldn’t give the guns away in August, September and October of 2012.  And I think the same thing is happening today.  After all, have you met one Trump supporter who thinks their man won’t win?

Don’t Ask Me How, But The Great Trump-NRA Love Affair Seems To Have Cooled.

Now that Donald Street Thug Trump figures he can’t win anyway because the whole system is ‘rigged,’ it didn’t take him very long to start throwing the people under the bus who got him there in the first place.  And I am referring to the rather interesting state of affairs that appears to be developing between the Trump campaign (if you can call it a campaign) and the NRA, in which it’s beginning to look like the hail-fellow-well-met tone of the initial connection is being replaced with a vague sense of discomfort on both sides.

           For starters, take a look at the NRA-ILA website and scroll through the videos that start right up when you go to the home page.  Last week the montage included, indeed was kicked off with a video and picture of Street Thug himself, now Trump no longer appears.  And while you can still view the 30-second campaign plug by Mark Geist about Benghazi, you really can’t tell whether the NRA has endorsed a Presidential candidate at all.

Trump made a big deal out of the fact that he received the NRA endorsement back in April at the national confab, in previous campaigns the NRA usually waited until the last several weeks before the actual election to endorse the candidate whom everybody knew they were going to endorse anyway.  But let’s remember that it was Trump’s shout-out about his support of CCW after the mass shooting in Paris which forced all the other Republican Presidential wannabes to line up and fervently bless the 2nd Amendment as well.

But then the love affair started to cool down because Trump as usual couldn’t keep his mouth shut and declared himself in favor of prohibiting people on the ‘no-fly’ list from getting their hands on guns while the NRA was, as usual, hewing to its standard line that the government couldn’t deny anyone gun access without due process, which in case you didn’t know what ‘due process’ means to the NRA it basically means no process at all.  Then there was supposed to be a kiss-and-let’s-make-up meeting to straighten things out which never took place and finally the whole thing was forgotten because no doubt Trump stuck his foot in his mouth off about something else.

You can put that whole episode down to just a misunderstanding except that right around the same time an incident occurred that changed the whole tone of the Trump-NRA love affair because in response to Trump’s statement after massacre at the Pulse that things would have ‘turned out different’ if patrons inside the club had been armed, the NRA sent its chief political honcho, Chris Cox, onto to ABC-Television to say that the NRA would never support carrying guns into nightclubs and that such an idea ‘defied common sense.’ Woops! The guy the NRA endorsed for President didn’t possess common sense?

But things got even better this past week when the Trump campaign sent out a fundraising letter that was received by gun owners in which they were asked to rate the importance of different items which together comprise the ‘Trump Agenda’ or what he will do after he takes office on January 20, 2017.  And while the agenda contains the usual bromides like tax reform, fighting Islamic terrorism and negotiating better trade deals, protecting the 2nd Amendment is completely missing from the list.

Of course the argument can always be made that the Trump mob doesn’t need to be reminded about their guy’s fervent love of gun ‘rights’ because, after all, look who’s running for the Dems.  But I have watched numerous Trump rallies on YouTube and today I saw yesterday’s rally in Columbus, Ohio at which Street Thug spoke for an hour and didn’t mention the 2nd Amendment even once.  So the bloom is off the rose and it will be interesting to see if the two sides can recapture the passion that emerged when they first began their affair.  On the other hand, the NRA would hardly be the first Trump supporter to jump ship.