I was still resonating with the good vibes from the Gun Rights Policy Conference when I ran across this story.

Hmmm…$500 per year to carry concealed. Can we say “unduly burdensome”? Can we say “poll tax”? Can we say “(expletive deleted) outrageous”?

On the other hand, if I lived there in New Jersey, I would pay $1.37 per day for the ability to protect myself and my loved ones. Once the precedent for “shall issue” was set at the ridiculously high price, lowering the tariff could be pursued through the courts or through the legislature. Blog readers, your thoughts?

This sort of thing is the province of our grassroots gun organizations at the state level, which are doing a truly great job. Consider Illinois, one of the last two states where there is no provision at law for honest, law-abiding citizens to get that piece of paper that allows them to carry a loaded, concealed handgun when they’re out and about. For many years, Illinois gun owners considered that situation to be hopeless. But Illinois State Rifle Association head Rich Pearson reports that the state sheriffs’ association is now supporting concealed carry, and the formerly oppositional state chiefs’ association and state police have now gone neutral on the issue. Hopes are high…and the hard work of ISRA and its many members have made that hope reasonable.

In beleaguered California, the CalGuns Foundation is supporting lots of proactive legislation. Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department is reportedly going to a “shall-issue” carry permit policy. That’s nothing less than a great leap forward. The state-of-the-state speech given by Gene Hoffman from CalGuns was encouraging to all of us.

Montana Shooting Sports Association, Gun Owners of New Hampshire, Unified Sportsmen of Florida, Maryland Shall Issue, the Gun Owners Action League in Massachusetts, and many more are doing some heavy lifting “on the ground” at the state level. Your own state’s grassroots gun owners’ organizations deserve your support. They’re doing important work

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So, here I am at the annual Gun Rights Policy Conference, held behind enemy lines – “in the belly of the beast,” as one of our brothers here on the ground in San Francisco puts it – among several hundred activists for gun owners’ civil rights.  The locale is actually appropriate. The Second Amendment Foundation – co-hosting the Conference with its sister organization, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms – single-handedly defeated San Francisco’s attempt to ban private citizens’ ownership of handguns there, many years ago.

It’s the 25^th such conference, and I’ve attended many of them, always feeling the recharging of the batteries that comes with being surrounded by good people from all walks of life who have responsibly applied critical thinking to a situation and come to the same logical conclusion.

At past GRPCs, we’ve been swamped with national and local media. In SF, they’re starkly absent. Almost a news blackout…so much for “fair and balanced.”

Absent too, for the first time, is any official NRA presence. Speculation is that the organization is embarrassed about a piece in one of their magazines in which NRA reportedly takes sole credit for the huge SCOTUS victory in McDonald, et. al. v. City of Chicago. It’s well known that Second Amendment Foundation initiated that lawsuit, with NRA jumping in much later. I’ve been on the road since mid-August and haven’t seen the issue in question, but if that’s true I can only wonder, “What were they thinking?” Still, SAF and NRA are natural allies, and I hope that faux pas soon recedes into history. We gun owners need both entities working hand in hand.

We got to hear details from Alan Gura, the brilliant young attorney who did that case, and is doing many more to follow up, all over the country.

The Conference continues today, with much good exchange between successful grassroots groups, from CalGuns Foundation and California Rifle & Pistol Association to the Gun Owners Action League (GOAL) in Massachusetts. Look for more in this space after things quiet down and I can get some keyboard time.

Alan Gura explains the backstory of the McDonald victory.

From left: Dave Workman and Mas Ayoob from the SAF board, and Tom Gresham of the CCRKBA board, illustrate the media’s approach to the Gun Rights Policy Conference.

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Pretty soon, I’ll be in Tulsa, shooting the IDPA (International Defensive Pistol Association) 2010 National Championships at the awesome United States Shooting Academy facility. I’ll be competing in the Custom Defense Pistol (CDP) division for single action .45 autos such as the Wilson Custom CQB Elite I plan to use.

Do I have high hopes of becoming National Champ? Oh, HELL, no! The guy to beat this year is, I believe, going to be my team-mate on Team EOTAC, Bob Vogel. He has many times been the overall and/or Enhanced Service Pistol division national champ, and is rumored to be switching from 9mm to .45 this year. Now, I’m 62, and Bob is more like 26. He’s a splendidly conditioned athlete, and I’m a fat old couch potato. Bob is a driven competitor committed to excellence, and I’m a burned-out dilettante for whom IDPA really stands for “I Don’t Practice Anymore.” Bob darts like a leopard between the firing points, while I move more like a sloth on Thorazine. Me beat Bob Vogel? The term “snowball’s chance in hell” comes to mind.

So why go at all? Because, dammit, people like you and I CAN, that’s why.  Neither you nor I are ever likely to get the chance to golf against Tiger Woods. We’ll never get a chance to exceed Plaxico Burress on the football field (though we daily exceed him in firearms safety).

The shooting sports are the most egalitarian that you’ll find in this exquisitely free nation. You get to meet the superstars. You get to chat with them “on the field, during the game.” YOU GET TO COMPETE WITH THEM HEAD TO HEAD. Show me another sport where you can reasonably expect to do that.

Am I gonna get my ass kicked? Ain’t much doubt about it.  But I’m gonna get my ass kicked by the best, and probably learn something useful along the way, and have some fun doing it.

Is this a great country, or what?

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Mark your calendar for the Gun Rights Policy Conference (GRPC) the last weekend of September. The event runs Sept. 24 to Sept. 26, and will be held in San Francisco. (Yes, for gun owners’ civil rights activists, that’s a little like having a freedom conference in Teheran. The “behind enemy lines” theme will continue next year, when the conference is likely to take place in Chicago.)

You’ll meet hundreds of like-minded people, and representatives of virtually all the legitimate pro-gun organizations, including the vitally important state-level grassroots groups that get so much of the real work done in the state legislatures, and winning hearts and minds community by community.

It’s an extremely cost-effective experience. Travel and lodging and such are on you, but attendance is FREE OF CHARGE! Leave plenty of empty space in your luggage, because you’ll be issued lots of useful literature: professional journals written by learned scholars, thoroughly researched books, lots of ammunition to use in future debates when arguing for your rights. Hundreds of dollars worth of solidly documented research – ALL FREE OF CHARGE.

The event comes to you courtesy of the Second Amendment Foundation, and is the brainchild of Alan Gottlieb and Joe Tartaro.  It was Second Amendment Foundation that brought you the twin civil rights SCOTUS decisions of the 21^st Century, Heller v. District of Columbia and McDonald v. City of Chicago, that have done so much to quantify and solidify our Constitutional rights. Expect to meet McDonald and his co-plaintiffs, and Heller, and Alan Gura, the brilliant young attorney who argued both of those cases to their successful, landmark conclusions.

In the interest of total disclosure, I can say proudly that I’ve served on the Second Amendment Foundation’s board of trustees for more than a score of years. I hope to meet you there. More info can be found HERE.

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So a pastor in Gainesville wanted to burn a pile of Korans. Never mind that it’s something close to a mortal insult to the belief system of millions of people, some of whom are on our side. This was going to accomplish exactly, uh, what? If you want 9/11 symbolism, burn an effigy of Osama bin Laden, for Heaven’s sake. (Yes, meant just as it sounds.)

Simultaneously on the opposite coast, Los Angeles police have to turn out in riot gear because of violent protests against the shooting of a Guatemalan day laborer who was menacing people with a knife. To his credit, new LAPD Chief Charlie Beck is standing up for his officers. I watch dumbfounded as people scream into news cameras, “Why couldn’t they just have disarmed him?” If people who say that had ever used a knife for anything more serious than spreading peanut butter on bread, they’d know what farmers and other backwoods home folks know: that it takes mere seconds with even a short knife to decapitate a deer or slaughtered livestock the size of a man. Only an idiot would trifle with an advancing knife wielder. Not for nothing did Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously write, “Detached reflection is not demanded in the presence of an upraised knife.” An upraised knife is exactly what the LAPD officer who double-tapped Manuel Jamines was facing. By the way, that officer’s name is Frank Hernandez.

What it comes down to is tribal values that say, “Our kind is special, and sacrosanct!” White guy shoots black guy in self-defense, and Al Sharpton holds rallies in the streets flashing the race card. Cop justifiably shoots Latin guy, and largely Latin crowds set fires in Los Angeles dumpsters. Black guy shoots white guy in self-defense, and the Caucasians don’t pour into the streets and start throwing Perrier bottles, they engage lawyers to file an unmeritorious lawsuit. Different dance, maybe, but just as tribal…and just as ethnocentrically short-sighted.

Sometimes, three generations after my grandparents made it to these shores, I am sad for my country.

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