A Little Reading for the AM

(Courtesy 1791apparrel, who have the coolest t-shirts in the world!)

The demonization campaign against gun owners continues apace, but I don't think it's generating that much heat. Read this story from James Taranto at WSJ Online on Bill Clinton's recent statement:

Oh, these people, these poor misguided hicks! All they've got is their hunting and their fishing! Clinton isn't doing a very good job of following his own advice not to "look down your nose at them," is he?

Here's a comforting, albeit overly optimistic, piece from Guns Save Lives on the attention span of American popular culture:

Leftist gun haters are in denial that Americans, absent hysteria, recognize that gun bans aren’t best for their personal security and well-being, and that the only thing that stops evil men is good people with guns. Gun control proponents are angry that America has moved on to discussing President Obama’s inauguration, the next “fiscal crisis” in Washington, Roe v. Wade’s anniversary and so forth. So where are the gun control advocates now? They are bargaining, offering all sorts of legislative proposals. It’s symbolism over substance, and that’s only because of a very sympathetic mainstream media. Why is that, you ask? Everyone knows the votes aren’t there to pass these flawed schemes through Congress.

The net here is that we are having an effect! A powerful effect. KEEP IT UP! The next piece is from the ever-thoughful Thomas Sowell writing for NRO on the 30 round mag cap:

Anyone who faces three home invaders, jeopardizing himself or his family, might find 30 bullets barely adequate. After all, not every bullet hits, even at close range, and not every hit incapacitates. You can get killed by a wounded man. These plain life-and-death realities have been ignored for years by people who go ballistic when they hear about how many shots were fired by the police in some encounter with a criminal. As someone who once taught pistol shooting in the Marine Corps, I am not the least bit surprised by the number of shots fired. I have seen people miss a stationary target at close range, even in the safety and calm of a pistol range. We cannot expect everybody to know that. But we can expect them to know that they don’t know — and to stop spouting off about life-and-death issues when they don’t have the facts.

Amen to that! Based on some of my conversations at SHOT, this may be a direction the Administration may go in when the legislative "initiatives" fail...that damned U.N. small arms treaty! From Fox:

A more subtle flaw, notes Bromund, is that any badly designed treaty that the U.S. agrees to at the negotiations, and that the President signs, can have an effect on U.S. laws and regulations even though it would still need to be ratified by the Senate, which must approve international agreements by a two-thirds majority. The reason: once a treaty is signed, the parties must respect its “object and purpose” even before ratification—or if ratification does not occur—which is “completely in the eye of the beholder,” Bromund says.

In short, if BHo doesn't get what he wants — and that's looking more and more likely with each passing day — he can turn to the U.N., an institution that all progressives worship, for "relief." This has HUGE political downsides.

This story from The Daily Beast is worth reading because it at least makes an attempt to understand the bitter divide between the two sides, and shows very clearly how the middle ground — if it ever existed — is long gone:

There’s no way to split the difference between the two extremes, but President Obama could have defused the most polarizing aspects of the debate by focusing more specifically on a few small areas of potential cooperation. All parties agree that it should become more difficult for criminals and the mentally ill to get firearms and that enhancements in school safety are necessary and appropriate. 

Before framing his own multifaceted program as a noble crusade and suggesting that any disagreement counted as immoral and demagogic, the president could have reached bipartisan consensus on a few practical, uncontroversial changes to reassure the public. Instead, he rushed to use the firearms issue as one more tool to bludgeon and discredit his Republican opposition. His moral fervor on gun control looks suspect at best, given his refusal to even address the issue during his first four years—when statistics showed violent crime rates looking considerably worse than they do today. In the current battle, the rage from all sides has already led to soaring sales of guns and ammunition. The angry charges and counter-charges will ultimately do nothing to bring further reductions in violence but have already made a major contribution to perpetuating the polarization, puerile posturing, and stalemate from federal leaders of every faction. 

I do want to make it clear that we didn't start this war, we didn't make the decision to demonize fellow Americans who choose to exercise their Constitutional rights, we didn't call for violence against our enemies even as our enemies called for violence against us. We may not have started this war, but I believe we sure as hell will finish it!

KEEP WRITNG, CALLING, EMAILING, FAXING! WE ARE UNITED!