"Guns And Safety: Where We Stand After Sandy Hook" Presentation by the Tenth Congressional District Democrats

At the behest of the ISRA, I, along with probably over 100 supporters of freedom, attended a presentation organized by the 10th Congressional District Democrats at the Glenview Police Station today.  We intended to outnumber them, and that we did.

The purpose of the meeting was to be an "educational presentation" about what gun control measures they could hope to achieve and what their strategy going forward would be.  It's impossible for me to accurately guess how many "antis" were there, but my guess is that the number was fewer than 10.  The ISRA managed to fill the room to capacity; many had to wait outside.

It may be interesting to see how the reports of the conduct of the attendees and presenters goes.  I'll put my perceptions into the record as this:

1. As people began to come in, we gravitated towards the front.  One of the organizers came by and asked us to leave the first two rows (out of a total of five, if I remember correctly) for seniors and the disabled.  I was in the second row, so I smiled and said "no problem" and moved to the third.  Others did the same, except for one person who said that he would move once said seniors or disabled arrived.  As more people came in, they too sat in the front, they too were asked to move, and they did so. This continued several times until the back three rows were full.  At that point, they stopped asking people to move.  Not once did a senior citizen or a person with a disability ask for a seat in the front row that was denied.

2.  The conduct of the attendees was more what you'd expect for a Tea Party town-hall than a presentation, which is to say there was a lot of shouting, interrupting the speakers.  Many in the crowd tried to "shhh" the disruptors; and one gentleman from the ISRA briefly got up in front of everyone to ask the audience to respect the 1st Amendment rights of the speakers by not interrupting, but it was of no help.  To be clear, no one was "shouted down" or prevented from speaking.  All the presentations were able to be given, all points they wanted to make were made---but in the process, a lot of well-intentioned people made their side look rather bad.

3.  The organizers planned a Q&A session for the end of the presentation.  We were told we would be provided with note cards and pencils, and that we could write our questions down so that the organizers could chose some of them to answer.  The cards came, but the pencils did not--no matter, some of us brought pens and were willing to share.  The questions that were read were--predictably--confusing, rambling, and just generally awful.  The troubling thing is that the organizer appeared to be just reading them in order (after making sure to answer a few specially chosen from the antis first, of course), so it's entirely possible that they weren't chosen specifically because they were awful.

4.  One speaker started off with a potentially justified point about NRA members being the NRA's worst enemy, a point that resonated with me due to the lack of tact being shown in the room.  But then he did something that left me with my jaw agape...  I wish I could give you an exact quote, as I don't want to be accused of unfairly characterizing this statement, but the best I can do is to paraphrase.  The statement was essentially that NRA members are harming the pro-2nd Amendment movement because they were getting guns and then going out and murdering school children.  I shit you not, he said that WE were the ones doing the killing.  He then displayed a picture captioned "What a gun show looks like" which contained an image of a display of pistols on tops of a Nazi flag.  Yes, he just made us all out to be murderers and Nazis.  This is a thing that just happened.

Overall, both sides came out with egg on their faces.
Moving onto the content of the presentation, I made several observations regarding their strategy that I think are worth noting:

1.  Unsurprisingly, they believe that Sandy Hook will be an impetus for change. They cited a list of tragedies that had led to action before, such as the attempted assassination on Reagan and Fukushima. I think those are bad examples, as Jim Brady didn't get anything done for a long time after the Reagan attempt, and no one died at Fukushima.  I guess they could have just as easily said the assassinations of King and Kennedy, though, which played into the 1986 Gun Control Act.  Nevertheless, I strongly suspect that they are overplaying their hand here.

2.  One presenter made an interesting argument that the meaning of "infringe" meant something different at the time of the founding than it did now--an argument that parallels our side's argument about the meaning of "regulated."  According to him, an infringement circa 1780 would be a "cancellation" or wholesale abridgement of something; the correct word for something that burdens a right would be "impingement" rather than "infringement."  I don't know if this goes anywhere.  On one hand, we have to take originalist textual arguments seriously; on the other hand, the idea that some burdens around the margin of a right would be consistent with Heller and may end up just meaning that strict scrutiny analysis is OK.  Or, he's probably just wrong.

3.  Another presenter was discussing the Obama executive orders with respect to the issue of "prohibited persons."  She mentioned that persons on the terror watch list should be prohibited persons.  She also advocated for improved communication between the states and federal government regarding persons prohibited due to mental illness and lamented that the standard for prohibition is being "adjudicated as mentally defective."  I think this is an important point, because on this subject there is an opportunity to reach common ground, but also a great danger.  Most Americans, including pro-2A citizens, will accept policies that improve access to mental health care and that make sure that those prohibited by reason of mental illness cannot pass an NICS check.  The danger is in how we go about these things.  The President's executive orders propose that doctors report to authorities on whether their patients may be dangerous.  This is a horrible idea, because it means less people will seek out mental health care when they need it.  We need to guard against policies that will reduce access to care rather than improve it.  Likewise, we need to be prepared to fight any unjustified additions to the categories of prohibited persons.  We cannot allow ourselves to be stripped of our rights just because somebody else thinks we're crazy.  Mental illness is just too malleable a concept.  The standard that we have now -- adjudicated mentally defective because such person is a danger to him/herself or others -- is a good standard.  We need to keep in mind that the 5th and 14th Amendments provide that a person cannot be deprived of liberty without due process of law.  I think this issue may be the most important front line in the years to come, and that the best way to fight it will be through litigation--we need a Supreme Court ruling applying the due process clause to infringements of the 2nd Amendment.

4.  The NRA-members-are-murderers speaker believed the NRA could be defeated politically because it was powerful primarily because of money from gun-related businesses, and once there is sufficient outrage money no longer matters. He argued that the membership was too small to be representative (while leaving out any information about the number of members anti-gun groups have).  Comically, to a room where NRA/ISRA members outnumbered anti-gunners by at least 10 to 1, he said that it was the NRA that was "out of touch."  Is there something to this strategy?  Sure.  But it's easily countered by grassroots activism.  The NRA has power mainly because its members vote, it's members remind their representatives that they vote, and we stay active.  And the money, by the way, comes from us too, because we are the ones buying the guns and ammo.

5.  Finally, you know the stereotype of gun-grabbers not knowing anything about the weapons they are trying to pass laws regulating?  It is completely true!  The same speaker that wants the federal government to be able to keep you from owning a firearm by putting you on the terrorist watch list gave us these gems:   A flash suppressor is used by criminals to prevent people from seeing them (it's actually to minimize the disruption to the eyes of the shooter), that assault weapons have "silencers," that one of the defining features of an assault weapon its that it has "high capacity clips" (as opposed to "the ability to accept a detachable magazine").

That's all for now... keep calm and carry on.