Standard Mischief

Update 28apr09: Scrappleface does it better, funnier and less cheesier.

Chris Core mp3 (was first broadcast on WTOP) Wading Into The Gun Issue

I heard his segment on the way home. When I got a second I pounded this out and sent it. I didn’t have the luxury to listen to it again because it had yet to be posted on their site. Now is is.

Hi Chris,

I listened with interest your segment on WTOP today (Tuesday April 21). It’s so rare to get a balanced opinion about our first freedom from what normally gets broadcast on WTOP, so I want to thank you for being almost there. WTOP’s always-lopsided coverage of that bill that would give DC residents an unconstitutional way to elect a senator while forcing the District to recognize their citizens’ Second Amendment rights is but one example. I believe your co-hosts always address that one as a “…bill to weaken DC’s gun laws…”.

One of your points was that President Obama doesn’t seem that anti-RKBA (Right to Keep and Bear Arms). While it’s true that the President has not spoken much about America’s first freedom, the facts still make RKBA supporters extremely wary. Consider the following:

- President Obama has had an existence before running for the President, and during that time he was unashamedly anti-gun.
- He’s even been a Director on the board of the Joyce Foundation for 8 years. Wikipedia and other sources should have the poop on this gang, the way it was subverted from a charitable organization to it’s present form of funding just about every anti-freedom group on the planet. Everyone from the VPC (who’s head guy holds one of the very few Federal Firearms Licenses in the the District) to funding dozens of “objective” anti-gun studies at universities and hospitals
- President Obama had a chance to sign on to a “friend of the court” letter in support of Heller, but declined. When the decision came out for the pro-freedom side last June he then said that he “supported the Second Amendment”, whatever that means. Waffle.
- Even though he supposedly supports the Second Amendment, he’s called on reinstating the so-called “Assault Weapons Ban” in his policy papers on Whitehouse.gov. Think about this for a moment. If the Second Amendment is an individual right, and if it mentions a “well-regulated (well-drilled, practiced) militia”, and if it doesn’t say a thing about hunting, target shooting, or collecting, perhaps it’s possible that those cosmetically-challenged, semi-automatic, self-loading copies of the fully-automatic firearms used and carried by our self-defense forces might be one of the most-protected types of firearms?

Your second point is that somehow the industry has been “whipping-up” firearms sales. I was disappointed that you did not cite any sources, undoubtedly swallowing someone else’s line – hook, line, and sinker. While there may be some industry ads around, by and large the boom in sales spontaneously occurred after the election. No one’s whipping anyone up into a frenzy except Mr “Bitter and Clingy” himself. If it is the industry, perhaps GM and the rest of the economy needs to stand up and take notice of how it’s done.

While our current President may want to ban anything gun-like, I’m sure he’s well aware of the political cost of trying to do so. President Clinton himself blames the “AWB” for his party’s crushing defeat in the following midterm elections. Most of the people with a (D) after their name who have an inkling to ban things know enough that it’s a election-losing issue at the moment. Most of the remainder (Blue Dog or otherwise) are pro-freedom supporters themselves. I’m pretty sure that the President doesn’t want to stall the rest of his agenda by trying to take us back to the days of un-ergonomic stocks, bans on “that shoulder thing that goes up”, and complete and utter bans on firearms with the dreaded cleaning-rod attachment.

Yours in freedom,

Standard Mischief