All posts by Chris Knox

Chris's Blog

Crowdsourcing gun law information

"Crowdsourced" Table of Gun Laws

"Opposing Views," a debate web site that airs representative arguments on a variety of topics, including gun rights versus gun prohibition, has undertaken a project to "crowdsource" a table of state gun laws. Crowdsourcing seeks to draw on the collective knowledge of a crowd.  

The table, shown in the frame below, provides a way to see a summary of views of state gun laws, not unlike Wikipedia.  The idea has merit, although to become authoritative, it needs much more traffic than it has seen so far.  That’s the nature of crowdsourcing — its most important ingredient is the crowd.  As an example,I looked at Arizona’s gun laws and there were some truly bizarre ideas. 

A second, similarly crowdsourced table of gun rights organizations appears below the gun law table.

We’ll follow this experiment in social behavior to see where it leads. The OV management seems genuinely interested in facilitating a good quality discussion.  We’ll be dropping copy into their site.  It’s a way to get exposure for The Firearms Coalition.  And we encourag our readers to join in as well. 

Opposing Views

 

Along those lines, you might want to drop one of our badges into your blog or forum posts.

HTML suitable for your web site or blog:

<a href="http://firearmscoalition.org/s.php " title="The Firearms Coalition" target="_blank"><img src="http://firearmscoalition.org/fclogo.gif" alt="The Firearms Coalition" /></a>

 

Or BBCode suitable for forum signature blocks:

[url=http://firearmscoalition.org/s.php][img]http://firearmscoalition.org/fclogo.gif[/img][/url]

 

The Firearms Coalition

 

 

 

 

 

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Jeff's Blog

Marching On

Marching on Washington

A small group of us went into DC on Saturday to participate in the 9/12 March on Washington and we had a great time.  Even though planning for the event was almost completely ignored by the major media, the turnout was incredible.  For some reason the organizers kept suggesting that the crowd numbered near 1.5 million, but it didn’t come close to that.  My personal guess is that there were somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 people in attendance, but the numbers aren’t really important.  What is important is that there were a lot of angry people trying to get their voices heard and while they were drawn to the protest by their opposition to government growth, bail-outs, the health care bill, taxes, and other issues, they were almost unanimously pro-gun.  Some of the strongest reactions from the crowd came when speakers commented about the Second Amendment, and everyone we met was enthusiastically in support of gun rights.  There were many NRA and pro-rights ball caps and T-shirts visible and people eagerly snapped up the information we were offering about The Firearms Coalition and www.GunVoter.org.

If Obama, Pelosi, and company had any sense, they would make a big show of "hearing" the complaints of this crowd and slowing their agenda some in response.  I don’t think they’re smart enough for that though so I expect they will continue to try to run right over the millions of Americans who are upset about what is going on and in so doing they will alienate millions more, fueling the anger and frustration and making a dramatic turnover in Congress in 2010 much more likely.

So far this administration and congress have shied away from gun control schemes, but that will change the moment they believe they can get away with something – or the moment they realize that they are going to lose their control.  Either way we must remain vigilant and keep building our ranks and the "Tea Parties" and health care protests are very fertile ground for recruiting support for our cause.  If you get a chance, get involved and make it a point to invite everyone you meet to join our fight.  Point them to www.FirearmsCoalition.org and www.GunVoter.org and we’ll take it from there.

The Knox Update

Not Just 2A

Not Just the Second Amendment

By Jeff Knox

 

(September 9, 2009) The Firearms Coalition is a single-issue organization and GunVoters are a single-issue group, but, while that single issue is generally accepted as being the Second Amendment, the issue is actually the Constitution as a whole.  The Second Amendment stands as a bulwark around the Constitution and "gun groups" in defending the Second Amendment are in fact defenders of the Constitution.

Every government official, from the people who take away your water bottle at the airport, to the members of Congress, to the President of the United States, swears an oath to protect and defend the Constitution and to bear true faith and allegiance to it.  This being the case, how is it possible that a proposal to require a statement of constitutional authority in all proposed legislation languish for more than 14 years in Congress – through Democrat control and through Republican control – without ever getting out of committee?

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Alerts List

It’s the Vote!

Voting is Everything

By Jeff Knox

(August 26, 2009) When football legend Vince Lombardi famously gathered his team to talk about fundamentals, he went to the most basic level:  "Gentlemen," he said, "this is a football."  Like Coach Lombardi, I want to get back to basics.  In politics, just as in football, "winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing."  When it comes to effective political activism that quote needs to be turned around; "Voting isn’t the only thing.  Voting is everything."  While there are many important things that rights organizations and activists do, it all boils down to the one thing: The Vote.  The vote is both the object and the instrument of political power and if we can’t wield it effectively, all of our other efforts are useless.

The ultimate objective of the gun rights movement is to win legislative victories to keep politics and politicians away from our guns.  To achieve this goal, organizations like The Firearms Coalition must do three things: Recruit, Inform, and Activate.  The three are symbiotic, each feeding the other.  In its simplest form it translates to: Build a List of names, Tell them What’s Going On, and Encourage them to…

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The Knox Update

Conflation to Coalition

Conflation to Coalitions

 

There is power in cooperation

 

By Jeff Knox

 

(August 19, 2009) The growing dissatisfaction of more and more citizens with the direction of our government and our nation presents a recruiting opportunity for rights activists.  We are already being grouped together with these folks as objects of ridicule for the talking heads on the television so why not put their conflation to good use?

Here’s how negative conflation works: Some neo-Nazis and KKK’ers oppose taxes, government control of healthcare, and gun control.  Some “fringe groups” like “Sovereign Citizens,” the Constitutional Militia movement, the Minuteman project, and “Birthers” (those who question Obama’s U.S. birth and his eligibility to serve as President,) have some members who have ties with groups like neo-Nazis and KKK’ers.  Some of these avowed racist people and groups agree with and participate in such things as the “Tea Party” protests and the protests which have been taking place at Town Hall meetings around the country.  Therefore, all of the people at the Town Hall protests and all of the people at the Tea Party protests, and all of the people who support, encourage, or agree with the people at these protests, along with all opponents of high taxes, supporters of the Second Amendment, advocates for constitutional government, and opponents of government-controlled healthcare are painted with the broad brush of racism, anti-Semitism, and wild conspiracy theorists, and are declared to be radicals with “ties” to neo-Nazis and the KKK.

Continue reading Conflation to Coalition →

The Knox Update

Sorry Sotomayor

Disappointed with Sotomayor

By Jeff Knox

 

(August 7, 2009) The confirmation of extreme leftist (and unimpressive jurist) Sonia Sotomayor to a seat on the Supreme Court is bad news to supporters of the Constitution in general and the nation’s gunowners in particular.  Judge Sotomayor has demonstrated throughout her career on the Federal Appeals Court bench that she has much more regard for her own "feelings" and "sensibilities" than she has for the Constitution or even court precedent.  Judge Sotomayor has repeatedly dismissed important constitutional questions out of hand, with no constitutional review and total disregard for established precedent or accepted principles of jurisprudence.  Judge Sotomayor has made clumsy attempts to conceal this cavalier behavior behind flawed and incomplete citation of precedents which fall far short of supporting her decisions.  What’s worse, she has routinely been supported in her disingenuous practices by one or more of her colleagues in the Second Circuit where she has served for the past 15 years.  As Federal Appeals Courts standardly operate with three-judge panels, Judge Sotomayor’s erroneous decisions could only prevail if one or both of the other judges on the panel agreed.

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The Knox Update

GRWHistory

History Matters

Neal Knox – The Gun Rights War  is History

By Chris Knox

(August 3, 2009) Most readers of this column knew my late father, Neal Knox, as a Washington lobbyist and gun-rights hard-liner.  And most of you also know that his family – particularly my brother Jeff and I, along with our mother Jay – continue the work he started with The Firearms Coalition.  But in my travels, I’ve been dismayed to discover that many of "our guys" – from shooters at the range to industry types at the trade shows –  don’t really know or understand who Neal Knox was and what a significant impact he had on their rights.  More importantly, they don’t know or understand the history of the fight which has brought us where we are today.  Imagine a west-bound wagon train with no one among them who had ever forded a river with a wagon or crossed a difficult mountain pass.  Neal Knox – The Gun Rights War is the journal of an experienced guide and wagon master.  He wasn’t perfect and he wasn’t always right, but he had a good compass and was always trying to move in the right direction. 

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The Knox Update

Defining Firearms

Defining Firearms

By Jeff Knox

 

(July 30, 2009) When a New York City police officer caught a .32 caliber slug in his ribs last week, Mayor Mike Bloomberg was quick to question how the career criminal and convicted felon was able to obtain the gun.  I’m afraid that the question is going to lead to attempts at broader restrictions on more items in New York and elsewhere because it’s possible that the gun involved in the shooting might not be a firearm.

That might not make much sense, but firearms laws generally don’t. 

Depending on when the gun was made and/or whether the cartridges is considered "obsolete," a .32 caliber revolver might not be legally considered a firearm and might not be illegal for a felon to purchase or possess.  On the other end of the spectrum, a plastic bottle cap can be a firearm as can a shoestring.

Continue reading Defining Firearms →