All of us shooters give lip service to proselytizing: “Take a new shooter to the range!” “Take someone hunting for the first time!” Few actually DO it, however, at least very often.
Once again, US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia inspires us. Just caught this from Eugene Volokh: http://volokh.com/2011/10/23/another-hunter-on-the-high-court/
Kudos to Justice Scalia for taking the time to do this. And kudos to Justice Kagan for being open-minded.
Scalia has obviously been a voice of reason for our side. Kagan has not. Will her new perspective be reflected in her next analysis of these issues on the highest Bench in the land? We won’t know until then.
Scalia has still set an example all of us would do well to follow.

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Thanks to Mark Vanderberg and Doc Wesson of the Gun Rights Radio Network you can see the entire two days of the conference here:

Day One

Day Two

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Sunday’s presentations began with a panel on media bias. Brian Patrick, who teaches communications at the University of Toledo, noted that the concealed carry movement has made more friends for gun owners than any other facet of the firearms world. Malia Zimmerman, editor of the Hawaii Reporter, reminded us, “We’re not all the devil.” She suggests Googling any reporter who wants to interview you to see if they’ve revealed a bias in previous stories. Don Irvine, president of Accuracy In Media, cited a Gallup poll this week which determined that 55% of Americans don’t trust the media. He told of one newspaper story on Florida passing its Stand Your Ground law, which ran under the headline, “Lawless Floridians Shoot First.”

David Hardy, who received the Scholar of the Year award from the host organization, treated us to a legal eagle’s view of the undercurrents in the Supreme Court’s thinking in the odious Dred Scott decision of 1857, and the ambiguous opinion in 1939’s Miller decision. David Kopel, who told me he’s finishing up the first legal textbook on Second Amendment history, discussed the fact that the 2008 Heller decision hinged in part on what guns SCOTUS felt were protected by the Second Amendment. His reading was that fully automatic firearms didn’t make the cut, but the AR15-type rifles, being commonly owned by American citizens, did.

Doug Ritter of kniferights.org explained why anti-knife legislation, notably the current New York City interpretation that almost any folding pocketknife can be interpreted there as an illegal “gravity knife,” is “A back door to gun control.” His organization has been instrumental in creating positive legislation protecting knife owners and users, in states such as New Hampshire.

Nik Clark of Wisconsin Carry, founded in November 2009, told of his state’s hard journey from Illinois-like helplessness to achieving the shall-issue carry law that will go into effect this coming November 1. Some in the gun rights movement were disappointed that Wisconsin didn’t undergo a complete transformation from no concealed carry to permitless carry, and Clark observed wisely, “We’re talking saving lives. Going for Constitutional Carry could have taken another ten years.”

Paula Bratich, Colleen Lawson, Genie Jennings, and Valinda Rowe gave stirring commentary as to the power of women to influence legislators and public opinion on “right to self-defense” issues.  From “Women and Guns” magazine to the group Second Amendment Sisters, female advocacy for the right to armed protection of self and others has greatly strengthened our cause.

My two blog entries only touch the surface of a weekend of networking with the best and the brightest in the gun owners’ civil rights movement. Charles Heller, successor to the late, great Aaron Zelman as head of Jews for Preservation of Firearms Ownership and a co-founder of the Arizona Citizens Defense League, has recorded them all.  Stay tuned, and when I know where and when you can download them, I’ll post the link here.

David Hardy, who has fought for our rights for decades, received the scholar of the year award.

From left: Valinda Rowe, spokesperson for Illinois Carry; Genie Jennings of Women & Guns magazine; Colleen Lawson, whom you met in this blog last year; and Dr. Paula Bratich, Illinois Coordinator of Second Amendment Sisters.

 Alan Gura, left, the hero of the Heller and McDonald cases, receives an AR-15 from Armalite president Mark Westrom.  Gura quipped, “I wonder what the other side gets for awards?”

 Charles Heller, the new leader of Jews for Preservation of Firearms Ownership.

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The theme of the 2011 Gun Rights Policy Conference sponsored by the Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms kicked off today, with several hundred gun owners’ civil rights activists from all over the nation in attendance.

Alan Gura, who won the great Supreme Court decisions in Heller and McDonald has more very important cases in the works, and treated the attendees to a briefing on all of the above. Professor Adam Winkler, author of the controversial new book on the firearms control debate, “Gun Fight,” noted that banning guns would in his opinion increase criminal activity and do little good. “I hate people telling me, ‘we have to get rid of all the guns,’” he said. “They don’t understand the lessons of history.”

David Codrea and old friend Dave Workman are the two bloggers who seem to have done more digging into the ATF’s “Fast and Furious” debacle than anyone else, and both were there to put forth details on something that, in a mass media less protective of the current White House occupant, would have been bigger than Watergate. It was bloggers, said Codrea, who outed the whole ugly matter, and he emphasized, “This is not a partisan issue. This is a basic issue of rule of law.”

Chicago was the scene of this year’s event: symbolically, “enemy territory,” and the last state in the union to have zero provision for a law-abiding citizen to carry a handgun in public. They came close in the past year, though, and Rich Pearson and the Illinois State Rifle Association are still trying valiantly. “It’s the Chicago stranglehold,” says Rich.

At this writing, says Gene Hoffman of CalGuns, there are separate bills on California Governor Jerry Brown’s desk to be signed, one banning open carry of unloaded handguns but another that should considerably ease the strictness with which concealed carry permits are administrated under the current system there.  Jeff Nass of Wisconsin Concealed Carry, one of my Level IV graduates I’m proud to say, told of the great victory in his state some months ago, proceeding from no carry at all to shall-issue permitting, which will take effect November 1.

Jim Irvine, of Ohio’s Buckeye Firearms Association, thanked Alan Gottlieb and his Second Amendment Foundation crew for the GRPC, noting that the Federal Flight Deck Officer program that armed commercial pilots was born at the Gun Rights Policy Conference ten years ago.

The dreaded UN treaty was thoroughly discussed. It turns out that the Arms Trade Treaty draft does not yet exist. D. Allen Youngman, executive director of the Defense Small Arms Advisory Council, commented, “No congressman or senator ever got elected or reelected by doing favors for the UN, and that’s not going to change.”

There was much more, of course, but that’s all there’s room for now.

The event continues tomorrow, a renewal of the spirit and a recharging of the batteries for those of us who have been in this fight for our entire adult lives.

Flanked by co-plaintiffs David and Colleen Lawson, lead named plaintiff Otis McDonald accepts his award for the civil rights triumph of McDonald, et. al. v. City of Chicago.

Jim Irvine of Buckeye Firearms Association.

 David Codrea, a leader in the exposure of the “Fast and Furious” scandal.

 The panel on Personal Defense and the Justice System. From left: Chris Bird, Kathy Jackson, Mas.

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​As I listen to some of the BS from those who want to keep free people from protecting themselves and their loved ones with arms, it gets so weird I sometimes want to say, “Gosh, Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.” I couldn’t have said that ten days or so ago, when I was in Kansas, teaching a MAG-20 course on the rules of engagement for armed citizens. Kansas was one of those states which, not so long ago, had no provision for ordinary folks to carry loaded, concealed handguns in public. Now, thanks to lots of good, committed activists, they have egalitarian “shall issue” carry. There has been no blood in the streets, except maybe now and then the blood of violent criminals who suffered a sudden and acute failure of the victim selection process and attacked intended prey that beat them at their own game.
​Old friend and tireless fighter for gun owners’ civil rights Dave Workman calls to our attention an excellent article in the Detroit Free Press, which overcame what some Michigan gun owners consider to be a long-standing anti-gun prejudice to publish some refreshingly honest journalism. On the ten year anniversary of that state switching from the old “may issue” paradigm, in which the authorities could arbitrarily decide whether or not to issue you a carry permit, to the modern egalitarian “shall issue” protocol that forces the state to grant the privilege to all sane, law-abiding citizens who apply, the Free Press did some digging. They discovered that blood doesn’t run in the streets, and a helluva lot of good people get peace of mind from the safety a defensive firearm affords them and their family.  Some of those good people get more than that: they get to LIVE, when before they might have helplessly died.  Way better than the bad old days when if you lived in Wayne County, the Detroit area, it was said that you pretty much had to contribute to the anti-gun mayor’s re-election campaign if you wanted a carry permit.
​Read it HERE, complete with links.
​Interesting that when the gun prohibitionists make lists of “Carry permit holders who turn killer,” they include suicides and presumably criminals killed in defense of innocent victims by concealed carry permit holders…

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