A Weekend Roundup

The weekend started out with a shooting at Arapahoe High School in Colorado. That it just happened to be on the eve of the first anniversary of the Newtown shootings may be just a coincidence. But like Tam, I doubt it.

The shooter turned out to be a disgruntled student who had a beef with the debate coach. Like all rampage shooters, he intended to wound or kill as many as possible. Again, like many rampage shooters in the past, when confronted by an armed school resource officer, he killed himself after severely wounding Claire Davis.

And the shooter's firearm of choice? A pump-action shotgun legally purchased on December 6th after the shooter went through a background check.

The media has stepped up and performed its usual role of publicizing everything about the shooter. The only thing that they scrubbed from their description of him was a classmate's characterization of the shooter as "a very opinionated socialist." It became just "very opinionated".

With Saturday being the first anniversary of the Newtown shootings, the gun prohibitionists were out in force. It started at the top with President Obama's weekly address calling for more gun control.

So-called stay-at-home mom Shannon Watts and her group of demanding moms were out in force with their No More Silence events. North Carolina wasn't immune to their events. I know we had one in Asheville and one in Durham. At the latter event, Sean Sorrentino was denied entry to Holy Cross Catholic Church by their state director Kaaren Haldeman who didn't want his sort at their event. As Miguel says, once again we are the new negroes.

One of the words we keep hearing is consensus. As in a national consensus for universal background checks or a national consensus to do more to prevent "gun violence" (sic).  The other words are "common ground". This is the line that Richard Feldman of the Independent Firearm Owners Association and Arkadi Gerney of the Center for American Progress are pushing in an op-ed in today's LA Times. In exchange for us giving up on universal background checks, we might get a national carry law - a carry law with nationally-mandated training, etc.

Michael Bane does an excellent job at taking apart this "grand bargain".  As for me, I am immediately suspicious of anything coming from Gerney who is the former executive director of Mayor Bloomberg's Illegal Mayors. Mr. Feldman may have done things to advance gun rights in the past when he was a NRA lobbyist but now seems just to be clinging to anything that will give him relevance.

What Mike Bloomberg cannot achieve at the national level, he plans to try to do at the state level. We saw what he did in Colorado. Kurt Hofmann reports that Mark Glaze considers the $15 million spent previously just dipping a toe in the water and that we should watch what a whole foot will do. David Codrea expands on Kurt's report to discuss efforts by Bloomberg in the states.

An off the wall article in Salon, accuses those of us who believe in gun rights of having a "sick gun fetish" and and "Tea Party fantasies". The article also accuses us of misreading the Second Amendment. I guess the "bitter clinger" here is the author who clings to a definition of the Second Amendment that the Supreme Court said was erroneous in the Heller case.

With the recent death of Nelson Mandela, I guess it isn't surprising that the gun prohibitionists are starting to wax nostalgic about the anti-apartheid divestiture movement and wondering if it could work again. They cite Cerberus and its goal of selling Remington Outdoor aka Freedom Group due to pressure from pension funds. In the meantime, Remington's Ilion, New York plant can't make guns fast enough because sales have surged.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives is coming under fire from The ARC who works with intellectually and developmentally disabled people. This is due to the BATFE's use of mentally challenged persons in their sting operations. The ARC is calling for Attorney General Eric Holder to stop this practice and to have the DOJ Inspector General to start an investigation into it.

And finally, NPR did a report on Thursday about the Maryland Tenth Cavalry Gun Club. They are an organization of African-American shooters who seek to introduce black youth to responsible gun use along with a dose of history. The club takes its name from the 9th and 10th Cavalry Regiments and the black cavalrymen known as the "Buffalo Soldiers".