Keene: No filibuster on guns

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AlexanderA

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NRA President David Keene, speaking Wednesday, said that the NRA wants votes in the Senate on gun measures. In other words, he's taking the filibuster tactic off the table. This is either a sign of confidence, or a sign of foolishness. (This is going to give Reid the cover he needs to bring the Feinstein proposals to a vote.)

Another disquieting development from this speech: When asked what weapons should be illegal, Keene said "fully automatic weapons." To me, this says that he's either speaking in ignorance, trying to pander to the fears of the ignorant public, or else that the NRA is preparing to throw the NFA community under the bus again. We're not going to see any NRA-sponsored proposals to repeal the Hughes Amendment in this cycle.

It looks like the NRA is getting set to compound its error of 1986.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/20/nra-gun-control_n_2729865.html
 
A vote in the Senate would generate a record of where each and every one of them stands on gun control.

If the attempt to pass further restrictions fails, we get a record of where these senators stand.

If the attempt to pass further restrictions succeeds, we get a record of where these senators stand.

In either event, we get a list of who needs to be thrown out of office.

Another disquieting development from this speech: When asked what weapons should be illegal, Keene said "fully automatic weapons." To me, this says that he's either speaking in ignorance, trying to pander to the fears of the ignorant public, or else that the NRA is preparing to throw the NFA community under the bus again. We're not going to see any NRA-sponsored proposals to repeal the Hughes Amendment in this cycle.
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Machine guns are, for all intents and purposes, already banned to anyone but people with large amounts of disposable income.

Expecting Keene to fight for guns that are already nearly impossible to own at a time when we're trying to hang on to the ones we've still got is foolish. The NFA is settled law, the proposed ban on so-called "assault weapons" is not.

Expecting Keene to rail against the injustices of the NFA in order to demonstrate a level of fealty that warms your heart would amount to sending the man on a fool's errand. The NFA isn't going anywhere, and he (and we) have much more important things to take care of.
 
NFA is the ultimate hot potato for antis. While I don't expect it out of Keene or far too many on the board, gun control would be better pushed back from most recent backwards.

Justin - I will disagree on your term "established law", it merely infers the status of our infringement not the legitimacy of it (the law), and yes, I'm one that believes the whole of the system can be rotten!
 
I agree with Justin- the bill will never make it past the house and letting the Senate take a swing at it can only hurt those foolish enough to support it. I doubt that it'll ever come to the floor.
 
The 2nd Amendment was put in place primarily to protect military-style weapons. Today, the exemplars of military-style weapons are fully-automatic arms. If the NRA is not prepared to advocate for the ownership of these, it's not really advocating for the 2nd Amendment.

At least I would expect Keene to be silent on this issue, not to actively agree that machine guns should be banned!
 
Justin, I agree, we are trying to hold on to what we have, it is probably impossible to improve this cycle. Here's the problem I have:

When asked what weapons should be illegal, Keene said "fully automatic weapons."
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Ask me what should be illegal, and I would say: "legislation to ban any type of firearm." In fact, it already is. The purpose of the constitution is to prevent the states from making laws that are prohibited, such as violating free speech or allowing troops to be quartered. The second amendment makes gun legislation illegal - so that is what is illegal.

I totally understand that is not what was being asked of him, but we now have a record for all time that even Keene says fully automatic weapons should be illegal. He didn't do us any favors with that comment, even if he didn't mean it.

You have to watch what you say, because someone will use it against you if you leave any openings. These people will try to come after our boards with nails in them when that is all we have left... we cannot blink!
 
AlexanderA said:
The 2nd Amendment was put in place primarily to protect military-style weapons. Today, the exemplars of military-style weapons are fully-automatic arms. If the NRA is not prepared to advocate for the ownership of these, it's not really advocating for the 2nd Amendment.
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An insightful man once said, "Politics is the art of the possible." Repeal of the NFA is not possible at the moment. Trying to do so would be affirmatively harmful to the credibility of not only the person advancing that view, but everyone else who is generally pro-gun or gun-neutral (allowing those who want guns to possess them, and those who don't want them to eschew them is really gun-neutrality, not "pro-gun").

Sometimes one has to decide whether it is more important to be right or to win. If you care about winning on AWB, mag-cap, and other issues of the moment, it's better to let the NFA sit quietly.
 
Sometimes one has to decide whether it is more important to be right or to win. If you care about winning on AWB, mag-cap, and other issues of the moment, it's better to let the NFA sit quietly.
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As much as I hate to agree with this, I believe it's the right approach.

We're on the defensive as pretty much all the mainstream media, most of the Democratic party, and lots of moneyed interests (including Obama's Perpetual Campaigning Machine) are pushing for "meaningful" infringements on gun rights.

We don't want to shift the discussion toward how irrational the NRA is, in the aftermath of Sandy Hook, to try and change the gunowning environment so the nutjob shooter would have had access to an M4 rather than an AR15.

That's just a great way to nullify the impact the NRA would have. It's ideologically pure, and it might be the logical and reasonable approach from our point of view.

But now is certainly not the time. I say this as someone waiting on 4 tax stamps...
 
Justin said:
A vote in the Senate would generate a record of where each and every one of them stands on gun control.

If the attempt to pass further restrictions fails, we get a record of where these senators stand.

If the attempt to pass further restrictions succeeds, we get a record of where these senators stand.

In either event, we get a list of who needs to be thrown out of office.



Machine guns are, for all intents and purposes, already banned to anyone but people with large amounts of disposable income.

Expecting Keene to fight for guns that are already nearly impossible to own at a time when we're trying to hang on to the ones we've still got is foolish. The NFA is settled law, the proposed ban on so-called "assault weapons" is not.

Expecting Keene to rail against the injustices of the NFA in order to demonstrate a level of fealty that warms your heart would amount to sending the man on a fool's errand. The NFA isn't going anywhere, and he (and we) have much more important things to take care of.
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"Established law" gets overturned, re-interpreted and amended on a regular basis. None of us should ever feel that just because something is memorialized, it is eternal or infallible. If it were, we would not be in this fight right now.
 
How does a tiger eat an elephant? One mouthful at a time.

The NRA does not control what happens with the NFA. Let's be honest, fully auto firearms are but gone the way of the Dodo for the mass majority of us. Now it's about drawing a lasting line in the sand outside the courts.

I'll admit it's a disquieting gamble to not have a fillibuster, but there is intelligence to it. One will have to vote either yea, nay, or abstain. Those whom abstain or say nay will be targets for 2014. If I had to gamble as well. I believe the NRA's legal team may see the holes starting to form in the legal fabric of making idiotically percieved "Assault Weapons" unlawful to won.

At least that's what I hope but I'm always for the safe bet. I wouldn't be pulling this unless I had a bunch of lawyers telling me we could get cases in front of the SCOTUS telling us we could make AWs legal for everyone. But that's me and no one pays me hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to make these decisions.

It's times like these I wish the NRA had a direct legal fund I could donate ten bucks a month to that I knew the NRA was going to use to file lawsuits against anti-2nd Amendment laws. It'd make me feel a lot better.
 
By conceding that the M16 should be banned, the NRA puts itself on thin ice concerning its semiautomatic clone, the AR-15. There's very little difference in the tactical use of these weapons. (The M16's full-automatic capability is only useful in limited circumstances, and is not used routinely. And when it is, it's at the cost of ammunition consumption.)

Gun rights are not divisible -- they cannot be minced and diced. "Salami tactics" are exactly the method of the antigunners. The NRA needs to defend all of the 2nd Amendment.

Keene has said that full-automatics should be banned. LaPierre has said that they already are. Both of them are wrong.
 
My thinking is that he said 'fully automatic weapons' to drive home the fact that the 'assault weapons' that the media keep going on about are not machine guns, despite how they are portrayed on TV.
 
As far as I am concerned, there is no compromising on any legislation regarding the 2A, AWB or NFA. Especially since NO ONE is talking about the real issues of gun related deaths.

It sickens me to see so called legislators talking about new laws of any kind when they don't even enforce the ones that are in place.
 
The question "what types of weapons should be illegal?" was a trap. And he fell in it.

"Unregistered microphones" would have been a good answer, while pointing at the one the interviewer was holding.
 
Every time the NRA backs the NFA I hope they are just doing to it to look more moderate than what the media portrays them to be to people who have no understanding of the firearms culture. I would bet that if the debate was about the legality of the NFA, instead of mag bans and UBC, they would side against the NFA.
 
I would bet that if the debate was about the legality of the NFA, instead of mag bans and UBC, they would side against the NFA.
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I wouldn't be so sure about that. Didn't the NRA back the NFA, when it was first enacted (after handguns were taken out of it)?

It appears that machine gun owners have become the "sacrificial lambs" of the gun lobby. We are expendable since there are so few of us.
 
Automatic weapons are already practically not legal (yeah, NFA and lot's of $$, i get it), and the "assault weapon" is portrayed as a "weapon of WAR", as opposed to... what exactly, I do not know. But by separating automatic weapons, Keene is pointing out one of the most abused portions of the whole gun control crowd's argument: that many think that our AR-15 'assault weapons' (stupid term that everyone uses now, so I guess they won THAT over on us) are automatic weapons.

To say that "even in war, semi auto fire is used more than automatic fire, so blah blah etc etc", is just silly. Semi-auto pistols are used in war as well, so, what? They should be illegal too? Just because they are used in war? People that say that nonsense don't really think about what they are saying. They act like the ONLY thing used are M4's, which we don't even have as civilians, and forget about the SAW's, and 240's that are used.

The whole "weapon designed for war" argument shows great ignorance on the entire subject. Here is another weapon "designed for war": Remington 700 bolt action sniper rifles. Soooo.... what? A bolt action deer rifle should be illegal now too, because it's also used for war? Stupid.

Keene pointing out the 'automatic weapons' was used to point out ignorance among gun control freaks.
 
I'm sure that hunting rifles will be renamed 'Sniper Rifles' when the antis come for them...
 
When asked what weapons should be illegal, Keene said...
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My response would have been...

Look, nobody's arguing that the American public should be allowed ownership of cruise missiles or nuclear warheads. We are simply trying to draw a line in the sand that further disarming the American people is not acceptable. We have to be honest; banning the modern sporting rifle or dictating the capacity of ammunition magazines will not even slightly hinder an evil person bent on mass murder.
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I'm sure that hunting rifles will be renamed 'Sniper Rifles' when the antis come for them
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You are absolutely correct Sir! The E.Fudd Bolt Action, Hunting Rifles are on their List as well, the Fudd's however won't believe it until they come for them.;)

Thank God for Texas!!!!!!
 
the NRA is preparing to throw the NFA community under the bus again.
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The NFA community has been under the bus since 1934. I understand the tactic of "giving up" something you lost three generations ago.
 
Plus, you might argue that automatic weapons are banned.
Some weapons are in circulation because they were grandfathered in, and those weapons can be transferred, but (apart from dealer samples) it is illegal to make new ones or import them.

He's probably just relying on the fact that non gun folks probably don't know about the NFA, so glossing over the few weapons that were grandfathered in isn't going to raise too many eyebrows.
 
My suggestion is that we shouldn't be nitpicking the NRA or trying to trow it under the Bus, every Organisation makes Mistakes, NO ONE is Perfect, we should be sticking together and focus on what confronts us as a Unit!
Just think if every American Gun Owner were a Member of the NRA we wouldn't find ourselves in the Position we are in Today, simply by sheer numbers.:cuss:
 
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