The "No Guns" Insult
How does it make you feel when you
start to walk into a business and see a "No Guns" sign prominently posted? Are you angry? Offended?
Indifferent? How do you
react? Do you just turn around and take
your business elsewhere? Complain to the
management? Just ignore it and go on
with your business? The members of the
Virginia Citizens Defense League take "No Guns" signs as personally offensive
and they let their offense be known - to the business, to fellow VCDL members,
and anyone else who'll listen - or read a web page. VCDL maintains a list of anti-rights Virginia
businesses on their web site, www.VCDL.org, and encourages gun owners and rights
supporters to avoid these businesses except to let them know that their policy
is offensive. VCDL has actively pursued
this position for several years while they have simultaneously grown to become
the most politically active and effective rights organization in the state.
So when the 7th
District Republican Committee decided to hold a major fundraising rally in a
location which is prominently posted "No Guns," VCDL let the Republicans know
they weren't happy. When the Republicans
held the annual event in the same anti-rights location every year for the next
several years, disregarding VCDL's repeated objections, many at VCDL began
taking the Republicans' choice as an insult.
When the Republicans refused to change venues - even though VCDL offered
to help sponsor the event at a different location - VCDL got mad... (Read More)
Prosecution as Punishment
The Troubling Case of Albert Kwan
People who "have nothing to hide" are often
quite happy to answer any questions and consent to any intrusion a police officer
might ask of them. They may even invite
officers to "look around" if they want to.
If you ask a good defense attorney how much you should cooperate with
police, particularly when they are conducting an investigation in which you
could possibly be a suspect, he will tell you "Not at all." Don't give them one word more than you must
and never give them permission to search your car, look through your home, or
examine any of your guns.
David Olofson took the "nothing to
hide" approach. When the police
confiscated one of his firearms from a friend he had loaned it to, Olofson
freely chatted with police about how many guns he had, how many he has built,
how he helps people to buy and assemble their own AR-platform rifles, and quite
a bit more. David Olofson's loquacious
ways probably helped to put him in prison for 30 months for illegally
transferring an unregistered machine gun - that was actually just a
malfunctioning semi-auto - and his case has set a very dangerous precedent
which threatens all gun owners.
On the other side of the coin is
Albert Kwan. A Seattle Class III
firearms dealer and collector, Kwan followed the path of minimal cooperation. When agents asked him about a pair of Makarov
barrels they thought he might have bought and asked to examine any Makarovs or
Makarov parts he might have, Albert told them he had only purchased one barrel
and that they should get a warrant if they wanted to examine it or anything
else he owned. Kwan says he wasn't
trying to hide anything; he just wanted to make sure his rights were respected
and his privacy protected. Unfortunately,
under-cooperating can be as problematic as over-cooperating. (Read More)
Training, Yes - Mandatory, No
At the recent Gun Rights Policy
Conference in Saint Louis, Missouri
I had the privilege of introducing a couple of resolutions that were adopted by
the assembly. The first dealt with the
recent attempt by Customs and Border Protection to classify certain "easy open"
pocket knives as "switchblades," and subsequent efforts to amend the Federal
Switchblade Act. My resolution suggested
that since the problem of switchblades and switchblade crime was primarily a
figment of Hollywood and Broadway,
and since regulating tools is never a reasonable response to bad behavior, that
the rights community should support the outright repeal of the Federal
Switchblade Act and any other such laws which are intended to modify behavior
by restricting tools. This resolution
passed resoundingly with no real discussion.
My second resolution was a bit more
controversial. In it I suggested that,
while training in the safe, legal, and appropriate use of firearms is strongly
supported and should continue to be encouraged, government mandated training is
anathema to liberty. I pointed out that
there is no statistical evidence that firearms accidents, mistakes, or abuses
are any more likely in states requiring little or no training than they are in
states with extensive training requirements.
The resolution put on the record the GRPC delegates' opposition to
government-mandated firearms training and their support for rolling back
existing requirements where feasible. (Read More)
Supremes Take a Second Look
High Court Grants Cert in McDonald v. Chicago
On September 30, the Supreme Court
announced that they were going to review the Second Amendment case McDonald v. City of Chicago and decide
whether the Second Amendment applies at the state and local level. Application of the Bill of Rights to the
states has been a long and convoluted battle with the Second Amendment being
the last major article left out in the cold.
As originally proposed and applied,
the Bill of Rights was an expression of universal, natural rights, but was considered
directly enforceable only on the federal government - except that it was a
statement of principles to which all of the states in the union agreed. Over the years there has been wrangling
between states and the federal government regarding recognition of these
rights, particularly in the years surrounding the Civil War as debates raged
over the definition of a citizen and the rights such citizens enjoyed. Chief Justice Taney presents these rights of
citizenship - privileges and immunities - in a clear and unequivocal fashion in
his infamous decision in Dredd Scott v.
Sanford. Part of the debate was over
whether a person recognized as a citizen by one state was automatically a
citizen of the United States
and fully possessed of the privileges and immunities of such citizenship. Justice Taney described these privileges and
immunities to include, "the right to enter every other State whenever they
pleased, singly or in companies, without pass or passport, and without
obstruction, to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased
at every hour of the day or night without molestation, unless they committed
some violation of law for which a white man would be punished; and it would
give them the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects
upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political
affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went." (Read More)
Clinton Says GunVoters the Key
Bill Clinton says that he does not believe the Democrats
will suffer losses in 2010 similar to those they suffered back in
1994. Clintons reasoning for this statement is that the Democrats have
not "taken on the gun lobby" like they did in '94. He says that the
"gun lobby" (that's you and me) was directly responsible for 15 of the
Democrats lost seats in '94 and he has previously said we contributed
to other losses as well.
Clinton's statement should (but won't) put an end to
claims that the "gun lobby" has lost its clout. It also supports the
position we've frequently stated, that the Democrat leadership is
afraid of GunVoters and is therefore didlgently avoiding anything that
might make us mad. Even without any overt attack on gun rights though,
it is likely that GunVoters will play an important role in the coming
elections as they are generally very upset about the current climate -
overt attack against gun rights or not.
I hope this year, with the statewide elections in Virginia
and New Jersey and the special congressional elections in various
states around the country, GunVoter.org
will reach the necessary critical mass to make it an important resource
and power center for the rights movement. The more people who
regularly visit GunVoter.org and leave questions or comments, the quicker it will reach that power point. If you haven't visited GunVoter.org recently, please make it a point to drop in and post a comment.
Voting is Everything
When football legend Vince Lombardi
famously gathered his team to talk about fundamentals, he went to the most
basic level: "Gentlemen," he said, "this
is a football." Like Coach Lombardi, I
want to get back to basics. In politics,
just as in football, "winning isn't everything, it's the only thing." When it comes to effective political activism
that quote needs to be turned around; "Voting isn't the only thing. Voting is everything." While there are many important things that
rights organizations and activists do, it all boils down to the one thing: The
Vote. The vote is both the object and
the instrument of political power and if we can't wield it effectively, all of
our other efforts are useless.
The ultimate objective of the gun
rights movement is to win legislative victories to keep politics and
politicians away from our guns. To
achieve this goal, organizations like The Firearms Coalition must do three
things: Recruit, Inform, and Activate.
The three are symbiotic, each feeding the other. In its simplest form it translates to: Build a
List of names, Tell them What's Going On, and Encourage them to... (Read More)
History Matters
Neal Knox - The Gun Rights War is History
(August 3, 2009) Most readers of this column knew my late father, Neal
Knox, as a Washington lobbyist and gun-rights hard-liner. And most of you also know that his family -
particularly my brother Jeff and I, along with our mother Jay - continue the
work he started with The Firearms Coalition.
But in my travels, I've been dismayed to discover that many of "our
guys" - from shooters at the range to industry types at the trade shows - don't really know or understand who Neal Knox
was and what a significant impact he had on their rights. More importantly, they don't know or
understand the history of the fight which has brought us where we are
today. Imagine a west-bound wagon train
with no one among them who had ever forded a river with a wagon or crossed a
difficult mountain pass. Neal
Knox - The Gun Rights War is the journal of an experienced guide and
wagon master. He wasn't perfect and he
wasn't always right, but he had a good compass and was always trying to move in
the right direction. Click here to read the full story.
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