Gary Marbut endorses photo-op candidate

by: Jay Stevens

Mon Oct 25, 2010 at 07:53:34 AM MST

Texas legislator Dr. Suzanne Gratia-Hupp said, "How a politician stands on the Second Amendment tells you how he or she views you as an individual...as a trustworthy and productive citizen, or as part of an unruly crowd that needs to be lorded over, controlled, supervised, and taken care of."

Every election cycle we see candidates with marginal commitment to gun owners doing a masquerade intended to deceive voters....

Don't get sucked in by the photo op candidates who borrow a shotgun for a campaign photo. In Montana we call that "All hat and no cows." Check candidates out carefully or trust MSSA and the NRA to have done a good job evaluating candidates for you. As Dr. Gratia-Hupp implies, a candidate's true attitude about your gun rights is a litmus for much else about that candidate.

The letter's a swipe at progressive gun rights groups that identify access to wilderness as a gun issue - something Marbut and the NRA don't care much about because...well...because those groups aren't Republican. Whatever. We'll get back to that. But this letter immediately made me think of this:

At first glance it's simply a campaign photo of Roy in hunting garb, holding some dead geese. The impression we are supposed to get is that Roy is a sportsman, a big bird-hunter, who will defend the rights of other sportsmen, by wearing his camouflage, his boots and his dorky looking outfit. The photo is now on his state campaign website, where he uses it to imply his "conservative" hunting and gun and outdoor credentials....

But alas for poor Roy, there is an unfortunate fact that has been revealed: Roy never hunted in Montana in recorded history (as far back as hunting license information is obtainable, which is to 1989) until 2006 when, coincidentally, he began preparing for his Governor's run and also faced a rare Senate challenge, from Margie McDonald who had big Dem support.

Now, frankly, I don't give a rat's *ss whether Roy Brown hunts or not, and I'm not getting all light-headed mulling over Kendall Van Dyk's upcoming You Tube video of him gutting and skinning an elk. Yes, I realize that a candidate hunts shows an appreciation for Montana wilderness, etc & co, tho' I think an avid hiker or rock climber or angler would feel much the same way. And doesn't everyone in Montana have a relationship to wilderness in one way or another? I mean, you have to if you life in the state.

But Gary Marbut cares! So, we'd expect him to endorse, not Roy Brown, the borrower of shotguns for photo-ops, but the guy who actually uses firearms, right? You'd be wrong! Marbut endorses the poseur over the hunter.

Why? Because Roy Brown is a Republican, and the Montana Shooting Sports Association, like the NRA is essentially a Republican PAC.

Don't believe me? Consider the NRA 2006 endorsing and fundraising on behalf of Conrad Burns. That was despite Tester's perfect record on the Second Amendment and his support of hunter-friendly conservation issues and opposition to the Patriot Act, unlike the Missouri auctioneer. Tester was clearly more in alignment with the NRA than Burns.

But Burns was a Republican.

Encouraging the crazies

by: Jay Stevens

Sat Apr 04, 2009 at 19:48:08 PM MST

Dave Niewert is all over this story, writing, "We've been reporting for a while on the surge in gun sales, and how the paranoia around guns is making the more unstable elements of the right particularly edgy. Inevitably, that edginess is going to break out into actual violence -- as it appears to have done today."

Of course, it's not ju st extremist rhetoric on firearms -- it's all over the place lately, even extending to calls to arms over sparkly dishes and embodied by the weird rantings that Glenn Beck has engaged in since getting his Fox News gig. But Poplawski obviously had mental issues. Kicked out of the Marine Corps. Arguing with neighbors. Shooting cops in the head. Is it fair to blame talking heads for this incident?

John Cole, in a post entitled "Glenn Beck's America":

...when you point out that certain individuals with all their talk about "revolution" and "armed insurrection" are inciting this kind of behavior in unstable people, you will get howls of protest about the 1st Amendment and what not. Sure, crazy people do crazy things. But that doesn't make it responsible to encourage them, which is what a lot of really foolish people are doing right now for purely political reasons.

And that's a legitimate point, I think. This kind of insane chatter used to be reserved for late-night AM shows and obscure online forums, but mainstream media has abetted, even encouraged this kind of rabble-rousing. Just think of Dan McGee's recent rant over abortion:

McGee said Republicans attempted to work with Democrats on these issues but it did not seem to take. He also compared abortion with slavery and predicted an upheaval comparable to the Civil War. "You bet there will be," McGee said.

Certainly (I hope) this was overheated rhetoric -- start a war over abortion? -- but if a Montanan lays waste to a health-care clinic that provides abortions to women who want them, how responsible is McGee? Wouldn't the senator deserve some censure?

And yet...there is no reprimand for McGee from anyone, neither his fellow legislators, nor the newspapers that are supposedly serving our communities. Shouldn't someone -- besides a partisan hack blogger, I mean -- step forward and let McGee know that a violent solution to a political problem won't be tolerated and demand that he recant his statement? Shouldn't we let these people know that extremism won't be tolerated in a democratic society?

Tester responds to proposed Obama assault weapon ban

by: Jay Stevens

Fri Feb 27, 2009 at 10:22:55 AM MST

"It's baloney."

Tester and Mark Warner's opposition to the bill (and one assumes Baucus' as well?) means that there would have to be crossover Republican votes for the ban to pass.

Guns and states and Obama

by: Jay Stevens

Mon Jan 12, 2009 at 21:44:07 PM MST

Rustic, outdoorsy Montanans and moose-hunting Alaskans love their guns.
Urban areas blighted by drugs and gangs are, in the main, keener on a measure of gun control.

It's always seemed bizarre to me that the same (usually Republican) political forces in the US which prefer no government to big government, and when they have to have it, prefer local government to state, and state to Federal, should nevertheless battle to the political death to impose universal, Constitutionally-guaranteed, Federal diktats on two big issues: the protection of gun ownership, and the outlawing of non-traditional forms of marriage.

Seems to me these are two issues just crying out for the application of a little federalism....The US is a huge and geographically diverse country, made up of densely-populated urban areas that tend to be more liberal, and a vast, often untamed rural hinterland where more conservative values hold sway.

[snip]

Red and Blue State America are not going to agree on these issues anytime soon. But why is the US trying to decide them Federally? There's no real need for Big Government to get involved - unlike for example broad economic policy, or military expenditure. Gun control (or lack of it) and gay marriage (or lack of it) are the States' business. So why not let the state governments decide the right policy for their own (very diverse) circumstances?

The commenter suggests that the Second Amendment be rewritten to support states setting their own gun control laws, which isn't necessary, because it's already happening. Just ask any gun owner, and they'll tell you the difference between, say, California and Montana law when it comes to storing guns, say. And the SCOTUS' Heller decision, which affirmed that the Constitution protects the rights of individuals to bear arms but left the degree and kind of controls up to future rulings, essentially makes gun control not just a states' rights issue, but a local issue, as municipal and county bodies create their own rules for gun use and ownership.

Still, the comment did lay bare the hypocracy of conservatives' states' rights rhetoric. Not that the conservative movement natually came to states' rights; it was picked up and thrown onto the GOP wagon by Nixon (yes, I just read Nixonland!) to woo Southern Democrats to his side by promising, in code, that his administration wouldn't do much to speed along desegregation in Dixie.

But then states' rights has always been less an ideology and more a useful tool to preserve traditional power structures or to hurry along reforms. In the antebellum South, states' rights was an ideological pretext to preserve slavery. After all, it was the Southern states that wrote and supported the Fugitive Slave Act, which gave the federal government the broadest and most intrusive powers over states up to that date. And today, progressives clamor for states' rights -- grumbling that the federal government is standing in the way of, say, California's strict emissions standards. After all, it's easier to institute reforms in a state that's more inclined toward your ideology than at the federal level, where government is banally corrupt, pro-corporate, and gutless.

Whatever. Back to gun control. Obama's awkward gun control proclamation on change.gov seemed to belie his election promises, in which he tried to explain his views on gun control in context of a states' rights issue. During the election, Obama defended his draconian gun control proposals made in the Illinois state house by saying that the problems of inner-city Chicago are vastly different than Montana's, and that he wouldn't propose any law that would strip Montanans of their guns.

But then, who cares? Any talk of gun control from the Obama administration has to be just that: talk. There's no way he gets it done. As I wrote in the Guardian piece, Obama "would have to spend enormous political capital to get the gun control laws passed - capital he needs for healthcare reform, a new energy policy and economic stimulus packages."

'Nuff ced.

On Dwayne Smail, guns, and the too-often toxic tone of the "debate"

by: Jay Stevens

Wed Mar 12, 2008 at 09:04:12 AM MST

Some of the good parts from Stokes' piece:

The question is whether we have any good way to prevent gun sales to the stupid at the policy level, as opposed to, say, harshly punishing the Smails of the world. If gun sales were to become illegal tomorrow, there would of course quickly be even more of a flourishing illegal market in the things than there is right now (and it's already pretty flourishing). I'd refer you to, say, the market in illegal drugs, and point out that a lot of people who would like to see a prohibition on gun sales might be open, on the other hand, to a decriminalization of some forms of currently illegal drugs. Of course there are huge distinctions to be made (pot never killed anyone, but handguns - not so much), and I'm not saying that holding the two views makes anyone a hypocrite, but I do think it would be foolish to ignore the apparently powerful desire of vast numbers of people in this country to own guns, and to fail to consider the evidence from the "drug war" that a lot of people are quite willing to disobey laws they consider unjust.

And of course there is that pesky Second Amendment to the Constitution, which I'm afraid I don't see a way to read in a way that would permit the infringement of the right of the people to keep and bear arms, and I say that not only as a confirmed political liberal but as a professional editor. We can argue about the "well-regulated militia" part, I suppose, but, if your objections to a "personal right" reading of this amendment rest on comma placement, I hope you realize that this boils down to essentially not having an argument to make.

In short, damn good arguments.

Montana secessionists full of sound and fury

by: Jay Stevens

Tue Feb 26, 2008 at 07:37:45 AM MST

AN EXTRA-SESSION RESOLUTION OF INDIVIDUAL LEGISLATORS OF THE 60TH MONTANA LEGISLATURE AND OTHER ELECTED MONTANA OFFICIALS URGING THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT THAT ANY "COLLECTIVE RIGHTS" HOLDING IN D.C. V. HELLER WILL VIOLATE MONTANA'S COMPACT WITH THE UNITED STATES...

Additionally, these fellas say that a decision contrary to their views on the Second Amendment violates the state's compact upon entering the Union, that, if broken, will lead to...what?

Montana reserves all usual rights and remedies under historic contract law if its Compact should be violated by any "collective rights" holding in Heller...

Of course there's no way in h*ll these fellas will ever follow through on this threat. None whatsoever. They neither have the actual ability nor the courage -- if Rehberg is any guide -- to follow through on this resolution. Two numbers:

$1.66. That's the amount of federal money we receive for every $1.00 we pay in federal taxes.

250. That's the estimated number of nuclear warheads the federal government has here in Montana.

Remember, this group's ringleader - Rehberg - has folded each and every time in the face of government authority when civil liberties have been on the line. Patriot Act. Real ID. Torture. Habeas corpus. Domestic spying. Warrantless wiretapping. He supports waging war without a declaration from Congress, and the theory of the unitary executive. In short, his stance on civil liberties was succinctly expressed by our state's Republicans' choice for president:

"Our most basic civil liberty is the right to be kept alive."

Imagine how that will look on Rehberg's battle flag.

No, this isn't a courageous stand, it's a political stunt in an election year. Our state's attorney general has already written a brief to the Supreme Court on the DC Gun Ban, but he's a Democrat. So what's left, but to holler and yell and make big threats you can't follow through on?

Good thing for the Montana secessionists the SCOTUS will probably uphold the status quo, rule the ban unconstitutional, and affirm the individuals' right to bear arms. Otherwise people might expect them to do more than talk.