USENET Responses to KABA's latest tripe

Haas' Guide to Small Arms Ammunition ^ | 10/16/2003 | Mike Haas

[Mike Haas]

Haas' Guide to Small Arms Ammunition

USENET Responses to KABA's latest tripe

Apparently KABA's "anti-NRA/send me money instead" schtick is getting old. Within a few minutes of KABA's latest pollution of the internet, their attack on Dave Kopel...

> KOPEL CLUELESS:
> Silveira Lawsuit Attacker is Shooting Blanks
> by Roy Lucas
> This is the rebuttal National Review Online's Editor repeatedly said
> they would run, stringing us along for over a week, but now refuses
> to run. This was ready to share over a week ago, but we waited based
> on strong, clear assurances from NRO that they'd give us space to
> defend ourselves and our work. This is the reply that NRO is afraid
> to run. Share it anywhere their smear campaign has taken a foothold.

...the following replies appeared on USENET...

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"...I have to be curious as to why Alan Korwin never turned to Mr. Lucas when compiling his Supreme Court Gun Cases. Maybe that is not Mr. Lucas' field of expertise. An interesting Australian web page on him at : http://www.forerunner.com/fyi/lucas0700.html..."

---

"...I'm not surprised NRO declined to publish the article. The first seven paragraphs are the author's C.V. and the rest of the article is so interspersed with arcane references to prior cases and personalities that the article would make little sense to the average NRO reader.

In the years I've been reading NRO I've seen, maybe, two footnotes. This article has thirty-eight!

In my view, it's not that NRO has a problem with the thrust of the article as much as the style is simply unintelligible..."

---

"...One can expect as much from name-callers...

Let's see, just in the last few days, they've portrayed Halbrook as selling out the Second Amendment and Kopel as "clueless" - all because those respected Second Amendment experts disagree with the KABA klan, telling the truth about their awful Silveira lawsuit.

Can't you just wait, if their awful Silveira lawsuit gets cert, for this band of gypsies to start calling the judges "clueless"?

Maybe blood tests are in order..."

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Learn more about those "alternative" views KABA calls names and attacks others over at:

http://www.nramemberscouncils.com/michel/index.shtml
http://www.nationalreview.com/kopel/kopel200309230925.asp
http://www.nramemberscouncils.com/kates/index.shtml

Mike Haas
NRA Benefactor Member
CA NRA volunteer
Author, Haas' Guide to Small Arms Ammunition
http://AmmoGuide.com/

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Mike Haas is an NRA Benefactor Member and Senior Software Engineer by trade. Volunteer efforts include: creator and webmaster of NRAWinningTeam.com; webmaster, NRAMembersCouncils.com; past member of the NRA Nominating Committee; NRA-ILA Election Volunteer Coordinator (EVC) for CA 7th Congressional district; president of the NRA Members' Council of West Contra Costa County; administrator of the California NRA Members' Councils email list.

[Joe Brower]

[Shooter 2.5]

I don't know who Usenet is but they're on the money with KABA. They've been anti-NRA since they appeared.

One of their largest supporters is the GOA which to me isn't surprising.

[SpellingTroll]

I don't know who Usenet is but they're on the money with KABA.

Usenet is the collective term for the internet news groups which can (usually) be accessed through your e-mail client.

The newsgroup talk.politics.guns is one example of a Usenet newsgroup.

[William Tell]

From the article: "... and the rest of the article is so interspersed with arcane references to prior cases and personalities that the article would make little sense to the average NRO reader. "

This was not the impression I got.

Perhaps someone could be more specific in their criticism. I found the assertion that law-abiding citizens of Kalifornia lack standing to be particularly obnoxious.

I have always hated the concept that I had to be threatened with prison before the courts might hear my claim that my Second Amendment right was being infringed. If such were the case, then I could imagine no bloodless way to restore the Second Amendment.

[Shooter 2.5]

Thanks. I thought they were an owned website.

I stopped looking at KABA and it's a shame I have to see their stuff over here.

I'm still looking for that "ignore button" I was promised. ;)

[Redcloak]

USENET is a system of newsgroup servers. There are a few "official" catagories and a vast array of unofficial alt.* groups. It started as a way of letting academics exchange ideas in a mailing list style, but without tying up mail servers. I'm guessing that Mike culled these remarks from talk.politics.guns or perhaps ca.politics.

[Hoboken]

[coloradan]

In the years I've been reading NRO I've seen, maybe, two footnotes. This article has thirty-eight!

Is this supposed to be a criticism? If so, it comes across as coming from someone not only unfamiliar with scholary research, but opposed to it in his ignorance.

[Dead Corpse]

GOA? Yes... why bother holding a hard line stance like they do when you can compromise at every turn ad still soak gun owners for membership dues.

[coloradan]

The first seven paragraphs are the author's C.V.

Given that the competence of the Silveira lawyers has been raised by Silveira opponents, a CV of the author is appropriate.

and the rest of the article is so interspersed with arcane references to prior cases and personalities that the article would make little sense to the average NRO reader.

This is more an indictment of the "average NRO reader" than of Roy Lucas or KABA.

[jdege]

I'm not at all convinced that Silveira is a wise case, but I get kind of tired of listening to the NRA talk about how important it is to establish a record of narrow cases first.

If that record is so important, where are they, then? All of those narrow cases that the NRA though so important?

We've been waiting 35 years for the NRA to bring these cases, and they've done zilch.

I listened to Bob Levy talk about Parker v. D.C., a couple of days ago. It seems like the perfect case - and the case was handed to the NRA fifteen years ago, and they did nothing.

It wasn't until after Levy had filed that the NRA came up with it's own challenge on the D.C. gun ban, aglomerated with myriad extraneous issues (they sued John Ashcroft, for Pete's sake), and then immediately tried to have the two cases consolidated, so as to take control.

Then the week after the courts refused to consolidate, they had their strongest supporter in the Senate introduce a bill to overturn the ban.

It's like they don't want a pro-2nd ruling, and will do anything to avoid it.

Kopel may well be right, that the Silveira case is a bad idea. Certainly Warin was. But don't try to feed me BS about how the NRA believes we need to follow an incremental approach in the courts, because the NRA's actions prove that a lie.

[coloradan]

Something that bothers me is that the gun grabbers keep the NRA in business. Should a strong pro-2A decision come down from SCOTUS, the NRA-ILA would cease to have a mission, the NRA would cease to have the need to solicit funds from members, the NRA lobbyists would be out of a job, and the whole organization would be relegated to hunting advice and marksmanship training. Its main raison d'etre would vanish.

[Dead Corpse]

If the 2A is ruled on favorably, then half of the NRA's reason for existing goes away. They'd have to go back to being a shooting sports and hardware review club. They'd loose all that money from their lobbying efforts and whatever ineffectual litigation they have managed to bring to court.

Of course KABA would go almost completely out of business, but they don't seem to mind. It'd be like working for a pharmacuetical company and discovering a one pill cure for cancer.

The NRA would rather people continue to suffer until more baby steps had been taken, while KABA folks would retire in the knowledge they done good and a scourge was gone.

[Dead Corpse]

While I was off typing mine, you were posting yours. I gotta learn to type faster....

[Rifleman]

Over the past 40 years the NRA has done a fair to middling job of fighting a rear guard action against the gun grabbers, loosing as little as possible in each engagement. They have almost never attempted a roll back of the oppressive laws.

NRA lacks credibility here. And I might point out that the civil rights movement started making much faster progress when suddenly there were people like Rap Brown and Malcom X and organizations like the Panthers and SNCC to deal with as well as MLK and the NAACP. Martin Luther King looked real reasonable to the politcos, in contrast.

The NRA NEEDS the contrast of the JPFO and the GOA so it can accomplish more. If its leadership really wants to. If all they want to do is keep the rear guard action going and keep collecting money from gun owners, there by preserving their "phony bolonie jobs", well, then they DON'T need groups like JPFO and GOA.

[45Auto]

The Brady Boob loves to see us fighting amongst ourselves over trivial crap. If RKBA advocates do not stick together, then we will lose the right. After all the bickering, NRA did file a very positive amicus brief in support of Silveira. The whole thing is moot if the US SC doesn't grant cert.

[PhilDragoo]

From the article: "... and the rest of the article is so interspersed with arcane references to prior cases and personalities that the article would make little sense to the average NRO reader. "

All that legal stuff just confuses me.

This is a Saturday Night Live or MTV line.

All that legal stuff is what those men and women in black robes do.

Our friends did a brief for a successful prosecution of Hanoi Jane--and it has just skads and oodles of those footnote thingies.

Couple legal savvy with political will and turn back the liberal tide and reinstate the Constitution.

[Frohickey]

Why do both of your posts makes so much sense about the pussyfooting the NRA does with litigating Second Amendment cases?

This is the same thing that I have said in other posts as well.

It would be good if the NRA were back to marksmanship training and out of the business of Second Amendment advocacy. What what means is that a definitive Second Amendment ruling have been decided and it is an individual right not subject to any infringement.

I wonder how many in the NRA are afraid that their cash cow would suddenly disappear if a Second Amendment case were definitively decided, either no RKBA, or full RKBA. Status quo is good for them. Keeps the NRA-ILA contributions coming in and expense accounts going.

[Frohickey]

Don't mean to be confrontational, and I apologize if I am...

But why does the NRA feel that any other Second Amendment litigation or advocacy by other groups other than the NRA is harmful? Wouldn't it be great to be out of the business of Second Amendment advocacy and in the business of going and trying to buy and shoot fun new guns and gear? Wouldn't it be great to not have to go to NRA members council meetings and constantly hear about ammunition bans, 50 caliber bans, high capacity magazine bans, and instead start talking about 1000 lb bear hunts, 1000 yard shooting competitions, and group purchases of 308 ammo?