The intro for today is dedicated to she who posted our last couple Thursday evening/afternoon diaries, Cedwyn. Thanks for throwing this up for us on Thursday evening!
And now, ever onward we go.
Apologies for the late diary.
RKBA is a DKos group of second amendment supporters who also have progressive and liberal values. We don't think that being a liberal means one has to be anti-gun. Some of us are extreme in our second amendment views (no licensing, no restrictions on small arms) and some of us are more moderate (licensing, restrictions on small arms.) Moderate or extreme, we hold one common belief: more gun control equals lost elections. We don't want a repeat of 1994. We are an inclusive group: if you see the Second Amendment as safeguarding our right to keep and bear arms individually, then come join us in our conversation. If you are against the right to keep and bear arms, come join our conversation. We look forward to seeing you. RKBA stands for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
If you'd like to join the RKBA email list, please send an email to dkos.rkba at gmail.com and we can add you to the public (TO: field) or the private (BCC: field) list. Please include your DKos username as well.
TG starts us off this Thursday with a question:
In last week's mention of the questionnaires, there was mention that at least one of the candidates was for restricting firearms for those who had left the military with a dishonorable discharge (I won't go into the specific candidate, I don't think it's necessary for the discussion). That's the first I've heard of such a thing.
Is this a larger movement that I have been unaware of? Don't answer, the number things I'm not aware of is probably higher than I'd like to know.
When I read this, though, my very first thought was that this means we may be restricting the ownership of firearms from homosexuals -- at this point, Don't Ask, Don't Tell still gets people discharged, and not honorably. This may not be the intent of such a restriction, but could easily be a consequence.
That being the case, is this something that should really be supported, or does it fall too closely to the whole idea of restricting firearms for those "suspected" of terrorism, or something similar?
From Shadan7, we have some follow up information.
On Monday evening we heard from RFELDMAN in a diary titled "An intelligent Pro-Gun group - 'for the rest of us'" concerning his new organization "Independent Firearm Owners Association" (IFOA). Richard Feldman is the author of Ricochet: confessions of a gun lobbyist about his experience working for, and then leaving, the NRA.
RFELDMAN is not a new user at dKos - his UID indicates that he has been around at least a couple of years, though he hasn't been very active until recently. But his credentials seem pretty solid, in what little background research I have done on him and his organization. It does seem that the IFOA is just getting started, and even some aspects of their website are wonky.
But it looks promising - perhaps an organization which can support our 2nd Amendment rights without just being the mongrel spawn of gun manufacturers and the GOP.
KV has some random firearm related....items? Items works.
Everyone loves Wikipedia. Here's some sourced information.
North Carolina reports only 0.2% of their 263,102 holders had their license revoked in the 10 years since they have adopted the law.[75] Florida, which has issued over 1,408,907 permits in twenty one years, has revoked 166 for a "crime after licensure involving a firearm," and fewer than 4,500 permits for any reason.[76] Those statistics concerning Florida revocations amount to 0.01%.[70]
There are some statistics that point out the ridiculously low ammount of crime. Enjoy!