Roll Call’s At The Races Blognotes that Arkansas Democrat Mark Pryor did not react to Bloomberg’s ads as planned:
“I’ve gotten a lot of questions about NYC Mayor gun ad. My response? I don’t take gun advice from the Mayor of NYC. I listen to Arkansans,” Pryor tweeted Monday afternoon.
Good response Senator. Bloomberg is likely to get similar responses from the Senators in Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona, which are also states with pro-rights Senators to which he hopes to apply pressure. The fact that a “vulnerable” Democrat has already dismissed Bloomberg’s powerplay does not bode well for his tactics.
Roll Call reported yesterday after New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre appeared on Meet the Press that the two are headed for a showdown over legislation now pending in the U.S. Senate:
Mayors Against Illegal Guns hopes to be a counterweight to the NRA in the weeks leading up to Senate action on legislation that would require more background checks for gun buyers and an amendment that would ban some assault weapons, Bloomberg said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He and LaPierre appeared in separate segments of the program.
Bloomberg told Meet the Press Host David Gregory that opinion polls show strong support, even among gun owners, for extending background checks on purchases at gun shows or other venues. He even repeated the now discredited “40 percent of gun purchases occur in private sales” number.
On those polls, they tend to be push polls to generate a specific response. I’m a little more interested in polls like this Gallup Poll that show only 38% of those polled are dissatisfied with current gun laws and want stricter laws while 43% are satisfied with current laws. Granted, those dissatisfied are higher than it was before the Newtown shooting, the fact that even after Newtown (the poll was conducted Jan. 7-10, 2013) almost half of those polled thought that the nation’s gun laws were fine.
So, let Bloomberg delude himself there is this massive outcry for gun control that will result in political payback if legislators vote against them. Gallup showed just ahead of the President’s State of the Union Address that the public is more concerned about the economy and jobs. Gun control ranked 6th on the list of concerns with 6% of respondants saying it was the most important issue, well behind the Economy at 25% and Jobs/Unemployment at 19%.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s gun ban group Mayors Against Illegal Guns is launching a campaign in states with senators considered to be persuadable on a package of gun control legislation making its way to the Senate floor in April. Bloomberg confirmed on today’s Meet the Press that he plans to spend $12 million to run ads in at least 10 states. He is trying to make them believe there will be a political price to pay for opposing gun control. The ads are more of the recent attempts to drive a wedge between segments of gun owners and the NRA with the ads featuring what are supposed to be hunters who support gun control. This from Fox News:
In one ad, the man says he’ll defend the Second Amendment but adds “with rights come responsibilities.” The ad then urges viewers to tell Congress to support background checks.
In the other ad, the man, a hunter, is shown with the rifle and children playing in the background.
“I believe in the Second Amendment, and I’ll fight to protect it. But with rights come responsibilities,” he says. “That’s why I support comprehensive background checks.”
NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, who also appeared on the program was not impressed:
“He can’t spend enough of his $27 billion to try to impose his will on the American public,” LaPierre said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “He can’t buy America.”
NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam went further:
“What Michael Bloomberg is trying to do is … intimidate senators into not listening to constituents and instead pledge their allegiance to him and his money,” said spokesman Andrew Arulanandam.
Bloomberg all but admitted this is nothing but exploitation of the Newtown shooting and its victims:
Bloomberg defended the ad buy Sunday , speaking on the same program as LaPierre, saying it would be a “great tragedy” if the momentum for gun control generated after the Newtown mass shooting withered. At the same time, Bloomberg said “I think we are going to win this.”
We was blunt about the purpose of the ad buys. “We’re trying to do everything we can to press upon the senators this is what the survivors want.”
We need to keep the pressure up on our U.S. Senators. Both Mark Warner and Tim Kaine cast their first anti-rights votes this past Friday when they voted against an amendment that would prevent the United States from entering into the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty in order to uphold the Second Amendment.
Now, when you go to the article the title is not quite that provactive but the point is still the same.
The Senate Judiciary Committee’s vote Thursday approving an assault-weapons ban was a sham—if you think the purpose was to ban assault weapons. If you think the committee’s vote offered an opportunity for lawmakers to parse and deliberate complicated and unresolved questions about the Constitution, guns, and violence, then it was a highly productive 90 minutes.
You can’t read an article about Feinstein’s bill without reading that it is doomed to failure. If I was a tin foil hat type of guy, I would swear the fix is in to lull gun owners to sleep then surprise the crap out of them when a ban passes.
But National Journal does have a point that we got to see what a sham the proposed ban really is. Take amendments sponsored by Texas Senator John Cornyn:
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, made a point of highlighting the “absurdity” of Feinstein’s bill by offering several amendments carving out exceptions—for rural residents, residents near the U.S.-Mexico border, women victims of domestic violence, and recipients of protection orders. Even if any of Cornyn’s amendments had passed (they didn’t), he still would have had no intention of voting for the assault-weapons ban. His theatrics in committee were “designed to show the flawed logic in their bill,” said Cornyn spokeswoman Megan Mitchell. “Why have exemption for retired police officers, but not for veterans? Why not victims of domestic violence, et cetera?”
And of course there was the great questioning by Texas Senator Ted Cruz that really got under Senator Feinstein’s skin.
So, while I might not call it a sham, the vote was useful to see which of our representatives stand for Liberty and which stand for statism.
The New York Times reports that the House and Senate appropriations committees have made permanent four formerly temporary pro-rights provisions. They are part of a spending bill that would keep the government running through Sept. 30.
The provisions, which have been renewed separately at various points, would prohibit the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from requiring gun dealers to conduct annual inventories to ensure that they have not lost guns or had them stolen, and would retain a broad definition of “antique” guns that can be imported into the United States outside of normal regulations.
Another amendment would prevent the A.T.F. from refusing to renew a dealer’s license for lack of business; many licensed dealers who are not actively engaged in selling firearms can now obtain a license to sell guns and often fly under the radar of the agency and other law enforcement officials, which gun control advocates argue leads to a freer flow of illegal guns.
A final measure would require the bureau to attach a disclaimer to data about guns to indicate that it “cannot be used to draw broad conclusions about firearms-related crimes.”
Regarding that last one, the likes of NY Mayor Mike Bloomberg often misuse ATF data to promote their anti-rights agenda. Not that a disclaimer will discourage the lapdog “mainstream” media from continuing to misuse the data. You can read more about it here. Hat tip to NRANews.
President Obama says it. Mayor Michael Bloomberg says it. The gun ban lobby says it. Amazingly enough, only Joe “Shotgun” Biden has been honest enough to suggest the number may not be accurate but that does not stop him from using it too. Ask any pol trying to enact a so-called “universal” background check and they will tell you we have to do it because 40% of all firearm sales don’t undergo background checks. The Washington Guardian is the latest to throw cold water on that argument:
The claims that gun sales made without background checks comprise “more than,” ”as many as,” ”nearly” or “about” 40 percent of all gun sales are rooted in a poll looking broadly at gun ownership in America. Sponsored by the Justice Department through a grant to the Police Foundation, the poll’s principal relevance today is as a snapshot of the way things were when it was taken — 1994.
Economist John Lott has addressed this in great detail recently:
But the high figure comes primarily from including such transactions as inheritances or gifts from family members. Putting aside these various biases, if you look at guns that were bought, traded, borrowed, rented, issued as a requirement of the job, or won through raffles, 85 percent went through FFLs; just 15 percent were transferred without a background check.
If you include these transfers either through FFLs or from family members, the remaining transfers falls to 11.5 percent.
We don’t know the precise number today, but it is hard to believe that it is above single digits.
It’s no wonder polls show a large number of the public support background checks for “all gun purchases” because they think a lot of sales escape checks. Which explains why Obama et al keep using the 40% number – it fits their narrative and helps mislead the public.
If you saw this picture, would you think that the room included members of the press asking questions of the speaker?
Well, you would be wrong. That is actually one of the paid staff members of the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR) in a staged photo taken after today’s event at the Commonwealth Park Hotel in downtown Richmond. NAGR scheduled a press conference to unveil their new advertisement charging 7th District Congressman and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor with supporting a large portion of Obama’s gun control agenda. But no press showed up. Four members of the public (who it can be presumed received an email invitation), and six staff members of NAGR were all that showed up. Apparently for the purposes of sending the late afternoon email inviting their subscribers to a similar event in Virginia Beach on Friday, they staged this photo to make it appear as if the press actually showed up.
It would be charitable to say the ad that was unveiled is misleading. Cantor has not expressed support for any of Obama’s stated agenda and the statements he has made are related to improving the mental health information that is reported to the NICS. Cantor has used Virginia as an example of what other states could do to keep firearms out of the hands of those who are a danger to themselves and others without infringing on the rights of law-abiding gun owners. That apparently is his crime in the eyes of NAGR.
Here are the facts:
Cantor has a long record of supporting our rights in Congress over the last 12 years including
Voted YES on prohibiting product misuse lawsuits on gun manufacturers. (Oct 2005)
Voted YES on prohibiting suing gunmakers & sellers for gun misuse. (Apr 2003)
No lawsuits against gun manufacturers. (Jan 2001)
Rated A by the NRA, indicating a pro-gun rights voting record. (Dec 2003)
National cross-state standard for concealed carry. (Jan 2009)
Ban gun registration & trigger lock law in Washington DC. (Mar 2007)
Allow reloading spent military small arms ammunition. (Apr 2009)
Cantor voted for the NICS Improvement Act in 2007 which was signed into law by President George W. Bush on January 8, 2008. The NICS Improvement Act includes numerous protections prohibiting the very things that NAGR accused Cantor of supporting in their ad. Those protections that Cantor supported include:
Requires all federal agencies that impose mental health adjudications or commitments to provide a process for “relief from disabilities.” Extreme anti-gun groups like the Violence Policy Center and Coalition to Stop Gun Violence have expressed “strong concerns” over this aspect of the bill—surely a sign that it represents progress for gun ownership rights.
Prevents reporting of mental adjudications or commitments by federal agencies when those adjudications or commitments have been removed.
Provides a process of error correction if a person is inappropriately committed or declared incompetent by a federal agency. The individual would have an opportunity to correct the error-either through the agency or in court.
Prevents use of federal “adjudications” that consist only of medical diagnoses without findings that the people involved are dangerous or mentally incompetent. This would ensure that purely medical records are never used in NICS. Gun ownership rights would only be lost as a result of a finding that the person is a danger to themselves or others, or lacks the capacity to manage his own affairs.
There is absolutely no proof to support the charge that Cantor supports “key parts” of the Obama gun ban agenda. In fact, if Cantor did support “key parts” of Obama’s gun ban agenda, House Judiciary Charmian Bob Goodlatte would not be able to say this. But accuracy has never been a strong suit of NAGR anyway.
In 2009, Sebastian at Shall Not Be Questioned posted this about Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Yesterday, Bloomberg was taking a victory lap claiming credit for his chosen candidate winning the Democratic Primary in Chicago’s 2nd District. Note, this was not a pro-rights district, but that does not matter to the anti-rights crowd.
Their messaging is slick. The trick in getting the public to accept a more radical agenda is to wrap it up in something that’s non-controversial. That illegal guns, what the public thinks of as guns in the hands of criminals, are bad isn’t something there’s much disagreement on. On the surface, they package largely the same agenda as the Brady Campaign, as a policy package to combat guns in criminal hands. Anyone willing to look at the specifics can clearly see it as hogwash, but most people don’t bother to look at specifics.
Read Sebastian’s entire post linked above. It is definitely relevant today. Now is the time to Stand and Fight.
That DOJ internal gun control memo that NRA obtained is get more and more coverage. Business Week has this take:
Earlier this month, the NRA ferreted out an internal Justice memo (PDF) in which a leading Obama administration crime researcher mused about the limited potential effects of the president’s main proposals to “ban” so-called assault weapons and large ammunition magazines and make the existing criminal background check system more comprehensive. (The highlighting in this copy appears to come courtesy of the NRA.)
That memo is the one that says that Obama’s gun control proposals will do nothing to stop mass shootings and would have very little impact on crime. It goes further by saying the only way they could have an impact is to do something few politicians are willing to do – universal gun owner registration and gun confiscation.
The author of the story, Paul Barrett uses some snarky editorial throughout the article but the conclusion is pretty sound:
The Newtown (Conn.) elementary school massacre reignited the gun-control issue. Whether it will result in any meaningful changes will depend in large part on whether President Obama can convince fellow Democrats facing tough reelection campaigns why it’s worth taking politically costly steps that his own experts concede won’t accomplish much.
This is your one-stop shop for discount NRA Memberships and the latest political news for gun owners in Virginia. 
Virginia Gun Rights 
