Tag: Second Amendment Foundation

Gun Owners of America and Partisanship

I’ve been ripping on Gun Owners of America (GOA) quite a bit recently. My main beef with them is that they seem to spend all of their time bitching about the National Rifle Association (NRA) instead of doing something to eliminate gun control laws. Recently they’ve been going on about the NRA’s potential endorsement of Harry Reid who voted for the Brady Act back in 1993.

The problem? Well Kay Bailey, a Republican, voted for the same act. Why does that matter? Because she has an A rating from GOA. This seems to prove the point that GOA isn’t a second amendment organization but a conservative organization. They spend time talking about non-second amendment related issues and take those into account when grading politicians. The NRA on the other hand usually focus almost exclusively on gun rights.

I wouldn’t have a problem with GOA if they didn’t spend all their time whining and claiming they are the only no compromise second amendment organization out there. But to top it off they do that while bashing the NRA who actually work to get shit done.

Once again I state if you’re disenfranchised with the NRA please send your money to an organization that gets things done such as the Second Amendment Foundation.

I Write Like…

Breda posted a link to a page that analyzes your writings and tells you who you write like. I decided to plug in several of my posts over the last several months and see who I write like. Apparently I’m schizophrenic in my writings.

My post about the recent Detroit Iron Maiden concert nabbed me this:

I write like
Cory Doctorow

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Apparently when I write about the Second Amendment Foundation my style takes on a slightly scarier fashion:

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

And I had a few other random authors pop up but Corey Doctorow was certainly the most popular author brought up by my writings by a wide margin.

Sitting on Your Butt Doesn’t Equal Doing Work

So I’m watching Gun Owner’s of American’s (GOA) feed on Facebook and the following popped up:

Gun Owners of America elosi Trying to Shove DISCLOSE Act through Congress Once Again
— NRA remains on the sidelines – http://gunowners.org/a062210.htm

First of all I notice they couldn’t both proof reading their post as Pelosi has a ‘P’ in it. Second if you click on the link nothing is mentioned about what GOA is doing to fight this. The only two things they state are first asking you to call your representatives (which you already have I’m sure) and second call the National Rifle Association (NRA) and tell them to change their position.

Now I don’t agree with the NRA’s position but alas I disagree with GOA’s constant attacking the NRA while doing nothing themselves even more. I’m sorry I really want to like GOA as they are a pro-rights organization but unlike most organizations fighting for the right to keep and bear arms GOA spends most of their time attacking another organization instead of doing anything to preserve our rights (that I’ve seen and nobody so far has provided me citation of GOA doing anything major).

Once again I ask those of your disenfranchised with the NRA to ignore GOA and look at another organization like the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) who are spending their time and resources fighting bad gun control laws.

A Slight Change

Yeah I made a slight change on the side of the page here. I removed the link to join Gun Owners of America and replaced it with a link to the donations page of the Second Amendment Foundation. After the two previously mentioned fiascos involving the NRA there has been a lot of calling for people to abandon the NRA and join Gun Owners of America. It was this that reminded me that I still had the link for joining Gun Owners of America (GOA) on the side of my page. I’ve been meaning to replace it for a while now but haven’t gotten around to it due to sheer laziness and a memory that doesn’t really remember things.

So why the replacement? Because after being a member of GOA for two years I’ve determined something, they don’t do anything. Well that’s not entirely true they do whine a lot. But in the two years I’ve held a membership I’ve not seen them actually work much for the right to keep and bear arms. Sometimes they send out envelopes with postcards pre-addressed to my representatives that they want me to sign and send. It’s an interesting gesture but I’ve already sent letters to those same representatives about the issue labeled on the postcard. Furthermore those postcards are far and few between. Their RSS feed for alerts almost never updates while the NRA-ILA feed has a rough average of 10 news items a day. The only decent thing GOA has is their rating page for representatives but that’s even tainted by non-gun related issues.

The bottom line is they claim they are the only no compromise group in Washington but don’t actually do anything. This is where people usually tell me GOA can’t accomplish much because they don’t have a whole lot of money. Bullocks. The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) doesn’t have nearly the same number of members as the NRA, nor nearly the same amount of money, but they manage to bring up lawsuits against entities who infringe on the right to keep and bear arms. Heller vs. D.C. and McDonald vs. Chicago were both SAF initiatives. They also hold a Gun Rights Policy Conference every year (where they work with other gun rights organizations like the NRA which GOA seems unwilling to do).

Another gun rights group is the Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership (JPFO). Once again even though they don’t have the membership numbers of money of the NRA JPFO manages to do something. They produce literature and videos dealing with the right to keep and bear arms. They did an English translation of the Nazi’s gun laws and compared them to the Gun Control Act finding them to be very similar. They produced several videos relating to the right of self defense and the roots of gun control, racism (real racism not what the “progressive” liberals accuse pro-rights people of being). Like SAF JPFO is able to do something with less money than the NRA. Also you don’t have to be Jewish in order to join, just thought I’d toss that out there.

So really my point is this, if you don’t want to be a member of the NRA at least put your money somewhere useful. Join SAF or JPFO for instance. Join a local gun rights organization that’s doing something. But please don’t join GOA and then claim your money is being used to fight for your right to keep and bear arms. Unless I’ve missed something in my two years of membership I haven’t seem them do a whole Hell of a lot.

Maybe I’m wrong and my rage is misguided. I would love to be proven wrong on this so if you believe GOA is doing something please comment on what it is. I love being wrong on these kinds of issues. I do believe their hearts are in the right place but their lack of action depresses me.

Results of McDonald vs. Chicago Oral Arguments

A couple of sources are releasing summaries of the oral arguments today. The first one is Business Week’s write up which can be found here. SCOTUS Blog also has a write up.

Both seem to come to the same conclusion. It appears that incorporation though the privileges or immunities clause of the 14th amendment isn’t likely. On the upside it seems likely incorporation will happen but through the due process clause of the same amendment.

Getting incorporation period is a huge victory and I’m not going to be to picky on how we do it.

In Lieu of Real Arguments Violence Policy Center Uses Character Assassination

It seems that Josh Sugarman of the Violence Policy center is on the war path again. And as Days of our Trailers points out his organization, Violence Promotion Policy Center, has no real argument so it’s moving to good old fashion character assassination:

The SAF head is a convicted felon — he was caught cheating on his taxes — who at one time lost the ability to possess guns. He later regained the ability to own guns through the now-defunct federal “relief from disability” program, a multi-million dollar program that re-armed convicted, often violent, felons, at taxpayer expense.

Let me see if I follow this logic. First Alan Gottlieb became a convicted felon, at tax payer expense, for fucking up his taxes. At a later date he was able to get his right to keep and bear arms restored which make sense since his felony has nothing to do with violent behavior. And we’re supposed to be enraged about this? This to me sounds like the “relief from disability” program actually worked correct that time.

So what Sugarman is saying is he doesn’t want to bar only violence criminals from bearing arms but all felons regardless of context. That’s a great idea, in a police state.

Sorry Josh would you like to try again?

Second Amendment Foundation Suing District of Columbia

This is why I love these smaller second amendment groups. The Second Amendment Foundation is taking the District of Columbia to court. The court case is due to the fact the city isn’t issuing carry permits. The crux of the suit:

SAF previously sued the District over its restrictive handgun registration policies, leading the city to amend those policies. This time, SAF is alleging that the District previously had a city code under which the police chief could issue licenses to carry handguns to individuals, including citizens not residing in the District, though the city did not issue such licenses as a matter of policy for several years. That authority was revoked last December by the Mayor and City Council.

It’s certainly an interesting case. I’m doubting SAF will get their desired outcome but if we keep constantly sending suits at the anti-gunners eventually we may get them to crumble.