Bad campaign slogan: Free guns for everyone!

December 22, 2007

Guest Post by Morbo

Maryland’s 4th congressional district is so solidly blue that most Republicans aren’t interested in wasting time or money running for the seat because they know they’ll lose by a wide margin. (In 2006, the GOP candidate got 19 percent of the vote.) This opens the door to candidates who are, shall we say, “eccentric.”

I’m not in the district but live near it and enjoy reading profiles of the GOP hopefuls in the local newspaper. Recently, one of those candidates, Peter James, decided to drum up interest in his campaign by holding an unorthodox event: He announced he would be giving away free guns!

As it turned out, the guns were water pistols. It was chilly day when James held the event, and attendance was not exactly through the roof. No members of the general public came, but four reporters showed up. Some cops also cruised the parking lot of a restaurant that, at the last minute, decided it did not want to be affiliated with James’ stunt and evicted him.

So what does this guy hope to prove by passing out water pistols in December?

James told the local weekly newspaper:

“The guns raise the issue of the erosion of our constitutional rights. The Second Amendment grants us the right to bear arms, but now government requires a license and sometimes a waiting period.”

Horrors!

You actually have to get a license and provide information about yourself before you can purchase a device that can be used to kill people?! My god, what will these crazy liberals think up next?

James is among four people running for the Republican nomination in the district. I don’t know anything about the others, but I’m pulling for James. He sounds like he could be very entertaining and might even manage in the general election to pull less than 19 percent.

Post Script: The district’s current representative, Al Wynn, is facing a primary challenger of his own. Donna Edwards is coming at him from the left, and she has a terrific message. Edwards nearly knocked off Wynn in 2006, losing by only 3 points. (Voters were angry that Wynn voted to authorize the war in Iraq, among other things.) She recently received endorsements from two powerful unions. While Mr. James may provide an entertaining diversion or two, hardcore political junkies know the Wynn-Edwards rematch is the race to watch. The primary is Feb. 12.

Let’s beat the bums, whether they call themselves Republicans or Democrats. Any chance Reid can be replaced?

  • Hey Jen…. Reid doesn’t have to be replaced as a senator, but he should resign from his leadership position – for health reasons – and offer it to Senator Dodd…. He’ll make sure that from that moment on, the republicans will have to do ‘real’ filibusters. That would be a sight to see.

  • GOPers—having to actually filibuster?

    Rats—I KNEW there was something I left out of my email to Santa this year….

  • I need a gun to protect my self from the government. It isn’t so much the US government that scares me but the Trilateral Commission that scares me.

    WHat good is a sissy little hand gun against the governments of the world?

    I need more than a gun. I need lots of guns.

    I need a tank, lots of em

    I need heavy artilary. I need my own air force.

    I need nuclear bombs.

    The constitution says that no one can stop me.

    Can you please put me in touch with people who will sell me some A-1 tanks, a couple of F-22’s and a few nuclear bombs?

    Thanks for your help

  • Morbo – The “Horror” associated with the liberal view of the second amendment isn’t that “the government requires a license and sometimes a waiting period.” The horror is that once the “wimps” and the “do gooders” start hacking away at the Bill of Rights those of us willing to live up to the responsibilities entailed in exercising those right often find we’ve actually got no right(s) at all.

    The District of Columbia’s take on the 2nd is a case in point: Link – http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6381

    For starters, no handgun can be registered in D.C. Even those pistols registered prior to the District’s 1976 ban cannot be carried from room to room in the home without a license. Moreover, all firearms in the home, including rifles and shotguns, must be unloaded and either disassembled or bound by a trigger lock. In effect, no one in the District can possess a functional firearm in his or her own residence. The law applies not just to “unfit” persons like felons, minors or the mentally incompetent, but across-the-board to ordinary, honest, responsible citizens.

    Consequently the true “Horror” is that failure to stand up and protect these rights leave them prey to the pacifists and apologists ( and you sound as though you may be one of them ) out there who are all too willing to render them moot through misguided legislation such as that imposed on the residents of our Nations Capital.

  • Llewellyn: Ok, so what’s your alternative? No registration at all? Let these death wands loose all over the place because that’s what you think the 2nd amendment says?

    If you had something more reasonable in mind, please let me know. But considering that strawman you’ve dug up from a libertarian “think” tank, I’m not really hopeful for anything reasonable.

  • Morbro trivializes the restrictions already placed on the 2nd Amendment with his snarky little “Horrors” comment and when I point out the real world results of being reasonable with folk who define reasonable as: do it my way you come along whining about straw man arguments.

    The restrictions “I dug up” aren’t hypothetical nightmares dreamed up by some libertarian think tank, moron. They are real world. They are draconian. AND they render the 2nd Amendment MOOT.

    So if what DC has been allowed to get away with doing to the 2nd Amendment is your idea of “reasonable” I can only conclude that you have no idea what the word means.

    As for letting these “death wands” loose all over the place, please tell me you really aren’t that stupid, they already are. And in many instances they’re in the hands of people who could give a rats patootie about some stupid law requiring registration.

    Laws dreamed up by bright lights such as yourself restricting the rights of law abiding citizens to own and/or carry just makes their lives easier.

  • Al Wynn most certainly does NOT “rock”.

    He is supportive of nuclear power a la Dick Cheney.
    He has NEVER voted against a corporate welfare package including beekeepers and mohair farmers (poor quality wool used by NOBODY) (His district has almost no farms to speak of much less sheepherders or beekeepers.)
    Many are less than pleased by his voting for the bankruptcy bill.
    He is highly ignorant of environmental issues and gets elected largely through cronyism and public handouts.

    He’s been talking up a good game lately but if he wins again, I don’t expect his actions to match his rhetoric. Alas, because Edwards nearly beat him, 4 other wannabes have joined the race which may split the opposition too much.

  • I thought I would chime in here. Just like the hit pieces on Ron Paul the Gazette did a hit piece as well. I was actual there and know what transpired. The press left before I even started to hand out and guns so how could they know how many people took them?

    The Washington Post owner of the Gazette decided rather than report the news they were going to create and manage it. They sent the press release to the police and contacted the restaurant owner. The political powers (all Dems) in Montgomery County were called on to put pressure on the owner of the restaurant. After repeated calls from the police and the Post, Gazette, et al promising to print bad things about the restaurant the owner or manager pulled the plug 5 minutes before the event. I had just talked to the owner a few minutes prior. But the liberal establishment won’t give up.

    You’d think if the police where really concerned they would have given me a call. One reason there was little turnout is because the press did not publish the event.

    My goal was to begin a healthy discussion of the of the Constitution using the second amendment as a starting point.

    “The guns raise the issue of the erosion of our constitutional rights. The Second Amendment grants us the right to bear arms, but now government requires a license and sometimes a waiting period.”

    If you travel to my website you will find a John Stossel “myth” article on violent crime and gun control. DC has one of the highest murder rates and the stiffest gun laws, while a town in Georgia passed a law requiring all homes to have a gun and crime nearly disappeared.

    I don’t like guns, they kill people. But the framers knew that without the right for citizens to own guns then it would only be a matter of time before we lost our liberty to a government that had the guns.

    The gun thing was just to get the media out which it did. The 2nd amendment being the most inflammatory issue I could think of. My press conference was about loss of Jury trial rights(you go to jail for 6 months without one), loss of freedom from unreasonable search, habeas corpus, only Congress can declare war, set the value of money, free speech, freedom to associate and others.

    Not a word about these issues from the press. There are so many parts of the Constitution that are no longer followed we are reaching a point where government can do anything they wish to us.

    As for the militia, Maryland does in fact have one it is called the Maryland Defense Force and many government officials a purposely restricted from membership. It is being unlawfully prevented from storing arms and using the local Maryland Armies.

    I have asked both Edwards and Wynn to comment on the monetary system and both have refused to. So I needed to enter the race so that the public could learn about what I view as the greatest injustice of our day. Please visit peterjames08.com to learn more.

    • Comments are closed.