How the mighty have fallen

Today is the 17th anniversary of the Brady Law and the Brady Bunch are celebrating.  They are clearly hoping to relive their glory days.

Back then gun control was in vogue and the Brady’s (under the Handgun Control banner) were riding high.  They just passed their signature legislation and would follow it up a year later with the ugly gun and magazine ban.  Jim & Sarah were welcomed to the White House for signing ceremonies.  They were clearly on a roll … right up until the ’94 elections …

So, where is the gun control movement today?

  • The Supreme Court affirmed that the 2nd Amendment is a fundamental individual right, ending the antis ultimate dream of total firearms prohibition.
  • No new federal gun control laws have passed in years despite there being a Democrat in the White House and Democrat supermajorities in both the House and Senate for the past two years.
  • No new state gun control laws have passed in New York over the last decade.
  • Antigun members of Congress like Carolyn McCarthy won’t reintroduce proposals to reinstate the expired Clinton gun ban even as a symbolic gesture.
  • Antigun members of the state legislature stopped trying to advance all but one gun control bill this year for the first time in I don’t know how many years.
  • The national agenda has shifted from passing legislation to boycotting Starbucks and that’s not working either.
  • Money is drying up.
  • Their loudest supporter Mayor Bloomberg senses trouble on the horizon for his fiefdom, while another, Governor Ed Rendell, has surrendered.
  • The Assembly Republicans are inviting gun owners to come to Albany to lobby in January and actually putting some effort into getting people to show up.

How the mighty have fallen.

Bloomie’s bucks

He’s spreading it around:

Assemblyman Joseph Morelle got a $3,800 donation from Mayor Michael Bloomberg, his latest campaign finance reports show. The donation arrived Nov. 5, three days after the election, records show. The donation was prompted by Morelle’s support of microstamping – legislation meant to enhance prosecution of gun violence …”

More like persecution of gun owners.

Johnson-Martins race

I think it’s time for Craig Johnson to give it up too.  He has lost his re-election bid in SD-7 to Jack Martins.  All the ballots have been counted an Martins is ahead by 400+ votes.

Gee Craig, perhaps supporting microstamping wasn’t such a good idea considering this got you bupkiss from both NYAGV and the Brady’s.  Showing up at the Sportsmen’s Caucus breakfast after co-sponsoring microstamping didn’t win you any friends either.

Bloomie’s bodyguard behaving badly

What will Mayor Mike say in response to this?

“NYPD officer Leopold McLean, who had long worked on security detail for Mayor Bloomberg, has been charged with attempted murder after allegedly shooting his girlfriend’s ex-lover and then trying to cover it up … Other charges against McLean include assault, criminal use of a firearm and reckless endangerment …”

Breathtaking B.S.

The New York Times is upset that the NRA filed a lawsuit to allow 18-20 year olds to purchase handguns.  Today’s op-ed, “Handguns for 18-Year-Olds?“, has this gem:

“… Beyond the dubious legal claims, the idea that young individuals ages 18 to 20 have a constitutional right to buy weapons and carry them loaded and concealed in public is breathtakingly irresponsible …”

But it’s ok for them to exercise other civil rights like voting, at least as long as its for the right person:

“… Two years ago, the University of Miami could not get enough Barack Obama. The campaign rally he held here felt like a rock concert, his face appeared on T-shirts all over campus, and pro-Obama volunteers registered 2,000 new voters … Mr. Obama won two years ago with 66 percent of the 18- to 29-year-old vote, a historic proportion. Americans under 30 also worked on campaigns at a greater rate than the general population did for the first time since 1952, or possibly even earlier …”

Given that Obama’s political fortunes have been reversed, how long before the NYT writes an op-ed calling for raising the voting age.

The future of microstamping

Good article over at The Capitol on the future of microstamping legislation, “Taking another shot.

Some highlights:

“… Andrew Cuomo, has come out strongly in favor of microstamping as well, calling it “a common sense and low-cost method of expanding the ability of police to identify guns used in illegal activities.” …”

While this is technically true, what Cuomo actually did was bury his support inside his 200+ page political manifesto.  I didn’t see him try to campaign on the issue.

“… [Eric] Schneiderman is not leaving the issue to the governor. Already, he said, he is planning to wield his new authority to support legislation in any way possible … Sources close to Schneiderman say that his advocacy for the technology could take the form of a program bill introduced in the next legislative session …”

No surprise here.  I knew he wasn’t going to let the issue drop.

“… But if the recounts end with a Republican Senate majority hostile to gun control legislation, the prospects of passage are dim …”

Good news:  Prospects of passage are dim.

The coming battle

It looks as if Andrew Cuomo is preparing for battle with the legislature and interest groups (see here and here.)  It appears that public sector unions are his primary target as the state is a financial mess.

I am wondering how much effort he’s going to put into promoting gun control?  Microstamping was buried in his manefesto.  It would not surprise me if he largely ignores the issue himself and lets Eric Schneiderman be the point man.

Grasping at straws

Anyone who has been involved with gun politics for a long time will have noticed that every few years or so the antis try inventing some new crisis as an excuse to push for more gun control.  They do this not just to keep the issue fresh in peoples minds, but because inevitably whatever they got excited about in the past turns out to be a big pile of crapola.

Their latest bugaboo comes courtesy of Samuel Hover from the Legal Community Against Violence, an antigun lawyers group which drafts and distributes model gun control laws around the country.

Hover’s op-ed is titled, “Easy Access to Guns Fuels Hate Groups,” and it’s got lots of nuttery in it:

“These are dangerous days. In our uncertain political and economic times, the U.S. is experiencing a surge in right-wing violence and intimidation … the Southern Poverty Law Center issued a report detailing the rise in anti-government militias and right-wing hate groups that have been resurrected, in part, with the support of right-of-center elected officials and certain mainstream media outlets …”

The SPLC is an extreme Left group which sees the Ku Klux Klan, Nazis and other “hate groups” hiding behind every tree and bush.  They may have started out with the best of intentions years ago, but all I’ve ever seen them do is fear mongering and promoting far-Left causes.

“… Firearms and ammunition are too easily accessible in this country, and flaccid federal and state gun laws are primarily to blame … private firearm transfers at gun shows and elsewhere, allowing [criminals] to evade background checks and recordkeeping requirements and obtain guns … Alarmingly, private gun transfers account for an estimated 40% of all firearm transfers each year.  Such loopholes keep us awash in guns and allow the public to be easily victimized by a prohibited possessor carrying a firearm.  In 2007 alone, FBI statistics show that 385,178 crimes were committed with guns …”

Prohibiting private firearms sales is something the antis have wanted for a long time and it took him a full paragraph to get to the point.  Note the statistics he quotes too.  They don’t actually back up his assertion that private sales are a problem.

“… States with strong laws designed to reduce gun deaths and injuries are undermined by traffickers who use the laws of weaker states to obtain guns and then pour these guns into the “strong law” states … A growing body of evidence indicates that stronger firearm regulations may be having a positive effect at deterring gun violence …”

If that’s the case, then why don’t those states with “weak” gun laws have higher crime rates than states like New York with “strong laws”?

“… Legal Community Against Violence (LCAV) recently completed its own review of gun laws, gun death rates and crime gun export data … LCAV’s analysis reveals that many states with the strongest gun laws have the lowest gun death rates, and vice-versa …”

Just skimming their report raises questions as to it’s validity.  Right off the top they are labeling people 25 and under as children.

“… Our notoriously weak gun laws are not inevitable: extensive regulation of firearms and ammunition are the norm in most developed – and many developing – nations across the globe …”

Other norms around the world are societies broken down according to ethnic/religious lines, institutional corruption and discrimination, mass murder and genocide.

“… Look no further than the experiences of some of our closest allies to see that strong gun laws work …”

Like Switzerland and Israel?

“… Our lenient laws and under-funded, defanged law enforcement agencies charged with enforcing our weak laws actually help fuel the gun violence rampant across our borders with Mexico …”

Mexico’s corrupt and ineffectual government is the primary source of Mexico’s problems.  Our useless drug laws are a prime cause of criminal violence in this country.  A “Government is God” philosophy has never worked anyplace.

“… The confluence of armed violence as a perceived solution to our political, social and economic woes, and lax gun laws that make firearms readily available to anyone in our society, produce a recipe for disaster … It also provides an easy opportunity for a home-grown terrorist eager to target government, ideological opponents, immigrants, members of certain religions, or any entity or individual that person perceives as a real or imagined threat …”

Except that it hasn’t happened and you don’t see gun groups calling for applying gun rights to anyone less than the whole population.  It’s really hard to victimize your opposition when they have the ability to defend themselves.

“… home-grown terrorists aren’t naturally grown, rather they are nurtured into existence by right-wing politicos and pundits … Incitement to violence as perpetrated by these pundits is not a virtue of civil society or the individual, and hardly indicative of “reclaiming the civil rights movement” or promoting civil liberties – values these pundits claim to represent …”

The NRA and other gun groups are hardly inciting violence when advocating that the specifically enumerated civil right enshrined in the 2nd Amendment be treated with the same respect as the others outlined in the Bill of Rights.

Give it up Maffei

It’s time for Congressman Dan Maffei to give it up.  He’s lost to challenger Ann Marie Buerkle in CD-25.

It’s another loss for the Brady Campaign too.  Out of 29 Congressional races, there were seven which I considered very competitive: CD-1, CD-13, CD-19, CD-20, CD-23, CD-24 and CD-25.  Of those, Brady’s candidates lost outright in districts 13 and 19 and are losing in districts 1 and 25.   They made no endorsements for districts 20, 23 and 24.  Despite their claims to the contrary, they did not win big on election night.