Newsreports are already surfacing talking about an increase in gun and ammo sales in the wake of the Oregon Community College shooting.
In Huntington, guns shop owner John Ray Rice said every time the conversation pops up, guns sales go up in suit.
“It’s just common human nature; I need to protect myself and my family,” Rice said.
Much of the common sense legislation proposed in Congress involves stricter background checks, a ban on assault style weaponry and capping magazine size, making it harder for gunmen to kill in large crowds.
“I don’t think that’s common sense,” Rice said.
Look for the monthly NICS reports to show an increase in background checks when the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) shares the information on October sales next month.
The Hill newspaper reports that President Obama will use the 100 day anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting to rebuild momentum for his gun ban agenda. With Congress and recent polls indicating that few of the proposals still have support wide support, the White House is battling the perception that the move is out of fear none of their agenda is going to pass.
Earnest also disputed the notion that Obama was pressing now over fear that momentum on a gun bill had stalled as time passed since the Newtown shooting. He noted that by the White House’s count, the president and vice president had held 20 events on gun violence since the shooting, and he said the decision to appoint Vice President Biden as the point man on the issue underscored the importance of the issue.
Time is not on their side. Obama new the longer the country moved away from the shooting, the public would also move on and support for any proposals would drop with it. That is why he wanted to roll out something within a month. What he could not control was the timeline of Congress. By the time the Senate takes up its bill we will be into mid to late April.
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.
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.
Sebastian over at Shall Not Be Questioned has coverage of today’s Senate Judiciary Hearing on Diane Feinstein’s bill banning so-called “assault weapons.”
It appears from most of the coverage I’ve read, the comment of the day was Feinstein referring to our rights as “personal pleasures.” Sebastian picked up on that too.
He also noted that the fact the anti-rights folks in attendance were overtly rude to the pro-rights witnesses may be an indication that we are winning on this issue.
I echo Sebastian’s call to keep up your contacts with your legislators.
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.
Who would have dreamed given the story CNN did on the Clinton Gun Ban in 2004 that you would see a story like this from CNN now. Of course the new story was done on the Lou Dobbs Tonight program and Dobbs has been good on our issue.
Or so it seems based on commentary from folks close to the firearms industry. The best information on all of this came last Sunday when a number of knowledgeable people were guests on Tom Gresham’s Gun Talk radio program. These experts included The Shooting Wire‘s Jim Shepherd (by far the best segment of the program), and The War on Guns‘ David Codrea. Shepard is a longtime veteran of the media and he has well placed sources who tell him that the new administrationwill move on the so-called assault weapons ban sooner rather than later. Shepard was on the program for the entire second hour with the most important parts of his analysis coming in the last ten minutes. I can’t do it justice here so I recommend you listen to his comments yourself.
Codrea’s comments were made during the first hour of the program. Today he also linked to a post by Michael Bane that talks about how the administration will multi-task by taking on the recession and guns at the same time.
Basically, Bane says his insider source explains due to the fact Obama has taken such a beating from the “moonbats” on the left over the Rick Warren inaugural invocation and the fact Obama is installing a third Clinton administration, he has to “rebuild his left-wing creds.” Taking on the assault weapons ban so soon will burn a huge amount of political capital, but it will “drive a stake in the ground” to prove Obama means what he says about “change” regardless of the consequences. Plus, the Republicans are so disorganized and the Blue Dogs in his own party are less likely to band together early in his administration that striking early makes sense. The source also posed that the “gun lobby” is as weak now as it is ever going to be.
After the reaction to his economic stimulus plan by members of his party in the Senate I don’t know if I completely agree with the Blue Dogs not rebelling this soon but the reasons for a quick strike given by Bane’s source (there were a total of six) make sense to me.
Needless to say there are storm clouds on the horizon for gun owners and they are getting darker as January 20th approaches.
On of the hottest items in the increase in gun sales the last couple of months has been AR style semi-automatics. Many dealers are reporting they are sold out and manufacturers are trying to fill orders as quickly as possible.
Jim Shepherd over at the Shooting Wire reports today that:
…the gorging on AR-style rifles and semiautomatic pistols continues unabated. In fact, some retailers tell us that consumers upon hearing there are no AR-style rifles available (a commonly heard story growing even more common daily) are immediately snapping up semiauto pistols and ammunition.
Sebastian told Ahab on Gun Nuts Radio earlier this week that buyers can take a long view. Obama does not take office until January 20th. It’s not like on January 21st that he signs a gun ban. The bills will not be introduced until the new congress convenes and then they have to wind there way through committee before making to the floor for a vote. “We are talking weeks if not months after Obama takes office,” Sebastian said. He’s right. If you don’t have the money right now to make a purchase or your favorite dealer is out of the firearm you want to purchase, you have some time before you have to worry about a ban becoming law.
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