Over at the Chicago Gun Rights Examiner, I notice that Professor Emeritus of History at Northwestern University, Dr. Thomas William Heyck (who specializes in the study of "radical" British politicians of the last two centuries) seems poised to propose an amendment to Article V of the Constitution of these United States. His might read:
And if you want other viewpoints, check out Sebastian's take on the same op-ed over at Snowflakes in Hell, or visit IllinoisCarry.org and talk it over.
. . . . for a report of a burst forehead vein in the Mayor's Office . . . . . (no, I've never run in Chicago, I have no idea whether they're dispatched by 911 or their hospitals or the CFD or what, nor do I know whether any of them have the call sign "CA69.")
So, Daley's had kind of a weird week. Despite Tamara's lack of confidence in Shortshanks' clout, he threw enough weight to get President Obama to fly to Denmark in an unprecedented Presidential lobbying campaign for the Chicago Olympics. Yay Shortshanks.
But now the Supreme Court is stepping in to decide whether the 2nd Amendment should be incorporated to apply against the states and local governments, such as Chicago and Illinois, and most legal experts predict that this is like having Michael Jordan offer to settle your bet that no one can dunk from the free-throw line. You're not just about to lose, you're about to become the sad part of a highlight reel.
The Chicago Gun Rights Examiner has weighed in, of course, and I'm working on talking to the plaintiffs in the case, though of course they have to take their lawyers' advice as regards public statements.
First, there's finally new content at the Chicago Gun Rights Examiner. I've been busy with some teaching work and other things lately, and I just haven't been able to write much, but this morning I bit the bullet and said to myself, "If you don't steal David Codrea's idea today, when will you steal it?" Head on over there and read the Chicago GRE's open letter to Illinois State Police Director Jonathon Monken. I think it's a nice balance between carrot and stick, with an extra bundle of sticks then thrown on top:
. . . . . Finally, Director, I've enclosed an official "ISP-Approved Self-Defense Weapon" from IllinoisCarry with this letter. Don't be alarmed, it's perfectly safe. It's essentially a tactical, oversized tongue-depressor in a high-visibility color for intimidation value, with the web address of the ISP's "If you are confronted" page printed on the side for easy reference. It's perfect for inducing vomiting in self-defense, and since it's also a "rigid" object, it makes a great backup for a woman's primary defensive rat-tail comb or nail file. Many Illinois shooters have noticed that Illinois State Troopers, even the female ones, still carry firearms with which to defend themselves as they enforce the law, and most even keep their guns at home. Although I disagree that women should not use firearms for self-defense, especially in light of FBI statistics that show that women who use firearms to fight back against violent attackers are 2.5 times as likely to escape without injury as women who don't fight back, we at IllinoisCarry stand ready to supply as many of these alternative self-defense Tactical Tongue Depressors as the ISP needs to equip every trooper on the road. We'll do it for free and even pay a small fee as long as we can emboss our logo on the weapons. The only compensation we ask is to be allowed to videotape the meeting when you inform the ISP union representatives that the troopers will be going out armed with popsicle sticks and nail files per Illinois State Police policy.
Meanwhile, the St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner, after a long absence for health reasons, is back with a vengeance. He's put out four new great articles in the last week, with the latest being "Gun rights are for everyone." If you haven't checked for new content from Kurt lately, it's time to go look and catch up.
Several Gun Rights Examiners will be at the Gun Rights Policy Conference in St. Louis this weekend, as will representatives of the ISRA, Guns Save Life, IllinoisCarry, and the Sangamon County Rifle Association. Will you be there? Let me know; I'm trying to meet as many people/writers/readers as I can.
It's dark out there, but it's time to go clean out my car so I can drive to Chicago in the morning. I'll be heading out at about 4:00 a.m. to make it in time to get started at the 2nd Amendment Legal Symposium 2009, sponsored by the NRA Foundation and the Federalist Society of Chicago.
If you're near enough and you get the urge to stop in, click on that link for all the details, but here's the important one to remember: everything from breakfast to admission to materials is free, so just register and show up and you're good to go.
In June 2008, for instance, the Chicago public school district used over 1200 buses and drivers to bus a reported 30,000 students from all over the city to Soldier Field, where they were allowed to watch a free performance by area musicians like rapper "Ben One." The catch? The performance was part of a political rally. The students had to sit through speeches by Arne Duncan, Richard Daley and Jesse Jackson, and these weren't innocuous pep talks about staying in school.
The man who was in charge of that mess is now the head of education for the federal government, and there's nothing particularly paranoid or racist about pointing it out. Click the big blue button to read the whole thing, and if you like it, please take a moment to pass it on or vote on Digg, Windycitizen.com or Reddit. Meanwhile, David Codrea, Gun Rights Examiner, asks "Can ATF be reformed?" He's not talking about recycling transmission fluid, but questioning the wisdom of an effort to "reform" the BATFE by legislation. I would add the question: "If the ATF can't be reformed, but it can't be abolished at present, is it worth it to pursue partial reforms, even knowing they won't really solve the problem? David's last piece covered the return of Carolyn McCarthy's "No Fly, No Buy" bill, which would bar anyone placed on the naughty list by the government from purchasing firearms. That's a big step to take based on a list you can be placed on without due process or even a reason given!
* Seeing the President of the United States referred to as "Mr. Obama" or "Mr. Bush" in the press irritates me. Maybe it says in some style manual that the President is referred to as "Mister," but screw that.
Illinois Carry is at it again, this time going back into Chicago to spread a pro-gun message at the African Festival of the Arts in Washington Park. The idea here is to get past the gun show and the NRA banquet and start talking to people who aren't getting this message anywhere else. It's a direct challenge to Da Mayor, the Tribune, and the 6 O'Clock News.
If you like the idea of breaking stereotypes, there are two easy ways to help. First, if you live in the Chicago area, consider volunteering your own time to talk to people this weekend; local Chicago grassroots activists have stepped up to take over more and more of the local Chicago events, but more are always welcome. If you can't make it, or you simply live too far away, Illinois Carry is still accepting donations to pay for printing and booth rental. Unlike anti-gun groups who can count on the Joyce Foundation for easy money, pro-gun groups in Illinois operate on shoestring budgets, so donations are always welcome.
I'm not kidding about the donations, folks. There's no one making a salary at Illinois Carry; all the group's projects are funded by passing a hat in its forums. If you can spare a few dollars, you can have a big impact. These local Chicago projects are beginning to be taken over from the usual Illinois Carry suspects by local Chicago activists working in their own neighborhoods. In short, we may be seeing the beginning of a movement.
Meanwhile:
David Codrea fails to be happy that the most important woman in the world, Kate Gosselin, shot a gun on a TV show:Gunning for Jon & Kate Plus 8
Recently, no fewer than four pro-gun groups cooperated to get two informational booths at the Black Women's Expo in Chicago for the second year. We're moving out beyond the gun shows now, folks:
"Anti-gun activists consider Chicago a stronghold. It's supposed to be their base of operations, the place where they can raise money, agitate the public to demand their anti-gun agenda, and rely on ignorance to keep everyone in line while they do it. "Dr. G" noted the effect a few key pieces of information could have: "Many people (maybe 50%) were shocked to find out that the police are not responsible for their individual safety, and that Illinois and Wisconsin were the only two states in the country without concealed carry laws in place." To pro-gun activists reading this article, that might sound like two trite soundbites everyone has heard a million times, but in Chicago, that's not the case. By bringing this information to people who would never have thought of attending a gun show or an IGOLD rally, these volunteers are putting down grass roots through Chicago pavement."
Read the whole thing, and if you like it, tell somebody!
Alan Gura and the Second Amendment Foundation are headed back to court, this time suing the District of Columbia to force it to issue concealed carry permits. They've got four plaintiffs who should all have standing. If you're keeping track, this is three current lawsuits by Gura and the SAF that could all end up back in the Supreme Court before we're through.
And the Gun Rights Examiners welcome a new GRE today, Grand Rapids Gun Rights Examiner Skip Coryell. Skip is an author and firearms trainer who founded the Second Amendment March and is active with MCRGO, the organization that inspired much of the current pro-gun movement in Illinois.
So there you have your daily assignments . . . . go read!
Newest Chicago Gun Rights Examiner piece is up here:
Yet another anti-NRA hit piece misses the mark A Sun-Times columnist apparently figured she'd dash off a little hit piece decrying the NRA for standing in the way of Important Scientific Research on Gun Violence. She killed her credibility in a couple of ways, though:
She quoted Kristen Rand of the VPC approvingly and without questioning Rand's assertion that "information is the enemy for the gun lobby." Coming from someone who falsifies "research" and puts "IMPORTANT STUDY" labels on Google searches for a living--and makes high six figures doing it because the Joyce Foundation isn't selective enough to ask where their money is going--that's risible.
She quoted Todd Vandermyde of the NRA, but she completely ignored what he said and simply stated that it was an admission of guilt, as if saying it made it so. What he actually did was to explain the bias that has been practiced in so-called "public health research on gun violence" for the last 20 years. It may or may not be convincing, but pretending that it was never said is not terribly convincing on her part.
She conveniently didn't mention the numerous examples of troubled public health research ranging from bad methods to outright fraud that took me literally a few seconds to find and a few minutes to confirm. I didn't have room to mention all of them, either . . . . but the link is there. Reading them makes it obvious why the NRA would say that federal funding shouldn't be going to these quacks.
Go read the whole thing and tell a friend, please. I don't make much money on these columns, but I'm finding that they're important in other ways. If you think so too, then spread the word every chance you get.
The Paypal Incident has not escaped the notice of The Chicago Gun Rights Examiner. I'm just waiting to hear back from Paypal's press people. It hasn't escaped the notice of the Armed School Teacher, either, but I figure I'll write about it once.
So far, it appears that we suck, and Paypal hates us . . . . but we haven't heard that from their own mouths yet, just their actions.
E.J. Dionne is one of those guys who's pretty clever but considers himself brilliant (not unlike myself in that regard, actually.) His problem is not that he's not smart; his problem is that he's on the wrong side of history. American citizens are going to carry weapons with them more in the future than they do now. It's coming, it's happening, deal with it.
That's why I decided to have some fun with this one and go crazy with the analogies . . . . because I just love analogies. What do E.J. Dionne and Stephen "The Little Giant" Douglas have in common? Brilliant men on the wrong side of history. Read the whole thing and tell your friends, would you please?
While you're at it, now might be a good time to check out GunVoter.org's forums. They have a forum set up for discussion of all the Gun Rights Examiners and favorite articles; there are 13 or 14 of us now and some have written over 100 articles, so it's nice to have some favorites highlighted. Big thanks to Jeff Knox (hey, there's a name you've heard a time or two) for making this possible.
Also, it's Tuesday, and that means it's time for Gun Nuts: The Next Generation. Caleb and Breda are doing something new and pretty impressive tonight:
That's right guys - tonight on Gun Nuts Radio at 9pm we're going to be talking some Camp Perry, in addition to our news roundup and info session. We'll be joined by the Texas Highpower champion, as well as special guests from NRA, so don't miss out on the show this week.
We go live as usual at 9pm Eastern time at www.blogtalkradio.com/gunnuts - and we want to hear from you! New rule - for every new caller that has never called in before on the show, I'm going to donate $5 to NRA-ILA to help preserve our right to keep and bear arms. So join tonight's show and help keep us shooting for years to come! The call in number is the same as it's always been: 347-539-5436! Tonight at 9pm Eastern, Gun Nuts Radio - The Next Generation of Shooting Sports is here.
I don't think I've ever called in before, so I'm going to call tonight make an Obama Yes We Can donation. (That's where you claim to be donating, but you took the money from somebody else.)
Today's Chicago Gun Rights Examiner column examines one of President Obama's "kingmakers" who has escaped the kind of scrutiny that, say, a "polarizing figure" like Sarah Palin has suffered in the national spotlight. Penny Pritzker's family donated $1000 to the Brady Campaign in Chicago, which got me looking at them, but the rabbit hole goes deeper than that. The Pritzkers took over a huge Chicago savings and loan after it failed in 1988, got hundreds of millions of dollars from the feds to do so, and proceeded to run it into the ground by investing huge amounts into subprime loans (where have we heard this before?) By the time the bank was seized by the feds in 2001, they'd paid themselves $200 million in very questionable dividends and the depositors were left holding the bag (except for their first $100,000 in losses, which you and I paid in federal taxes.)
Then Penny Pritzker became Barack Obama's National Fund-Raising Campaign Chair . . . . .read the whole thing and tell a friend. And don't forget to check back on Monday for more fun facts from the Brady PAC's fund-raising records! And if you like what you read, check out my other pieces and the other Gun Rights Examiners in the widget to the left.
I'd like to add an RSS widget to my Gun Rights Examiner articles to promote the other GREs and, incidentally, give them an easy way to promote my column at the same time. The GREs do something like this now, but manually--they're updating the list of the latest GRE headlines at the end of each post by pasting the list from their last post, then checking all 12 of the other GRE's, then copying the headline and making a new hyperlink for anyone who's got a new article up since last time. It's time-consuming and clunky, but it works.
But in the spirit of "The Man Who Was Too Lazy to Fail" I'd like to use an RSS widget to do the same job. What I want is something like the one that Blogger provides--you can see the "Blog List" off to the left there. It shows the newest title for each of the RSS feeds I've added, and whenever someone posts something new, it goes to the top of the widget. That is exactly what I want, but I can't find it (free is best, of course, but it doesn't have to be free as long as I know it's going to do what I want) anywhere else. Anyone out there know where to find such a thing?
In the meantime, I'm using the closest runner-up here on the blog. This SpringWidgets device is great in most ways (I especially like being able to customize the header image and the colors, although I made my header image exactly the width and height they recommended and it still gets cut off. The only thing that doesn't work for me is that, although this widget says it's meant to display multiple feeds, the reader has to reach up and click the "Menu" button to see the list of feeds, and then click on each feed individually. That is fine for someone who uses it to aggregate feeds he chose himself to read every day, but it's no good for promotion, because the user won't know that they're supposed to do that. HALP.
Go read the good one and leave a comment so I know what you think. Um, please. And don't forget to read the photo captions; I work hard on those:
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois Machine) is seen here peeking out over his desk during a committee hearing. Popular tradition holds that if Durbin sees his shadow, there will be six more years of defenseless citizens in Illinois. AP Photo/Harry Hamburg
Read the whole thing and tell your friends there's someone writing about Illinois for Illinois at Examiner now?
I'm about to go get dressed so we can take 2/3rds of the boys to the St. Louis Zoo for a day of riding trains and looking at giraffes and stuff. But I didn't just skate on you, folks. Check back tomorrow morning and you'll find the story of The Time Grandpa Discovered Something Amiss in the Nunnery. And if that doesn't grab you, check back on Monday when we'll be featuring The Worst. Book. EVAR. Controversial? Sure. Liable to start arguments? I would expect nothing less of you people. But I think when you see the book you'll agree that it's a special blend of snobbery and completely missing the point. Over at the Chicago Gun Rights Examiner (which was #3 among Chicago Examiners yesterday thanks to all of you) there'll be new content up on Monday detailing the trouble the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Existence is having raising funds in Chicago. This does not bode well for them as the 2010 election cycle begins.
And over at the National Gun Rights Examiner today, David Codrea has complete plans for building your own assault weapon using commonly available parts. It's surprisingly inexpensive and I think a practiced hand could do it in one weekend. Take a look.
Hey, look, I did it again. I know everyone else is already talking about Judge Sonia Sotomayor, and I know nothing I write is going to make any difference in the scripted drama being played out in the Judiciary Committee hearing rooms. And yet, I couldn't let her flip comments about the right to keep and bear arms stand without a response.
The right recognized in the Heller v. D.C. decision is the right to keep and bear arms. It was not protected in the Bill of Rights because the founders of this nation thought hunting rights might one day be endangered. It was protected because they believed that it was important for the citizenry of a republic to be on equal footing with its government, and that meant that the citizens needed to be armed. Not so that they could hunt . . . That, Judge Sotomayor, is why the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution protects an individual right to keep and bear arms; because a government should not be allowed to dominate its people by force.
Go read the whole thing, if you would, and tell a friend. Much of the rest of it is unapologetically cribbed from Breda and Caleb, so you know it's quality.
(UPDATE: Now with a button that actually links to the page!)
David Codrea talked Examiner.com into creating the position of "Gun Rights Examiner" quite awhile ago. Since that time, they've added Gun Rights Examiners in cities across the country, including Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Charlotte, Cleveland, Denver, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Seattle, and Washington, D.C., plus my good friend Kurt Hoffman in St. Louis (you might know him better as 45Superman from Armed and Safe.)
The glaring hole in the Examiner's game, from my point of view, was Chicago, which made even less sense since what happens to gun rights in Chicago in the next year or two is arguably going to reverberate across the nation more than anything that happens in other places. So I applied, and yesterday I joined the ranks of the Gun Rights Examiners.To read my first installment, entitled "Chicago: national gun rights battleground" just click on the big blue button.
