Monthly Archives: September 2021

When hunting is mentioned near any political conversation today, it is a point of order for those who understand the basis of the Second Amendment to say with conviction: The Second Amendment isnt about hunting.

This statement is a reaction to anti-Second Amendment groups and politicianssuch as President Joe Biden (D) and former senator and presidential candidate John Kerry (D)who have tried to divide and conquer gun owners by going hunting or mentioning hunters and then claiming true sportsmen and women dont need this or that type of gun.

Biden, in fact, still likes to repeat the weird line that deer dont wear Kevlar vests when he argues that hunters dont need some arbitrary number of rounds in a magazine. When he does this, no mainstream news reporter bothers to ask Biden what right protected in the U.S. Bill of Rights is predicated upon the governments subjective understanding of needour constitutional rights are, after all, restrictions on government.

So, given the dishonest politics at play, saying the Second Amendment isnt about hunting is certainly an understandable reaction and a true statement, as hunting is simply an extension of this natural right. The trouble is, this response tends to end the conversation when there is much to say about what hunting does for the Second Amendment.

As many hunting seasons are now in full swing, lets explore this point for a moment.

First of all, about 15 million people in the U.S. went hunting in 2019, according to Statista. Other estimates put the number somewhere between 14 and 20 million, but if its 15 million, this means that only about 4.5% of 328 million Americans went hunting in 2019.

Though this is a small percentage of Americans, consider how much this 4.5% in one yearplus the unknown overall number of people who have huntedaffects American culture.

To get a sense of this hard-to-quantify concept, first realize that when a hunter picks up one of their gunsespecially if the gun was given to them by their father or grandfather and has been in their hands on crisp autumn mornings in duck blinds, upland cover or deer standsthey feel much more than the guns steel, wood or polymer. To a hunter, a gun theyve gone afield with is alive with memories. Maybe it even has memories beaten into it, like a Remington Model 870 Wingmaster I still carry for small game. This pump-action shotgun has a dinged and chipped stock, bluing thats nearly gone, a fixed modified choke, no ventilated rib and a simple steel bead on the end of a 28-inch barrel. Its as battered as a 40-year-old boxer who should have hung up his gloves at 30. But I shoot this shotgun, just as my father did. It is alive in my hands. (Take a breath, anti-gun typesIm using alive metaphorically.)

Hunting is simply a use of our Second Amendment rights; the trouble is, this true statement tends to end the conversation when there is so much more to say.

This is why, when hunters talk about guns, even to non-hunters, these memories are within the beat of their words and in the depths of their eyes. This earned reverence for the tools they use has an infectious influence on how their families, friends and others they interact with perceive guns. Hunters are, to use a modern term, major cultural influencers who are spread out across America. As a result, even non-gun owners who happen to know a hunter might think when they come across a mainstream-media attack on gun ownership: Well, my Uncle Joe is a hunter and he has all of these guns and he is a good guy, so this doesnt ring true to me.

Real thingsand nothing is more real than huntingjust have a way of vaporizing fake mainstream-media narratives.

Indeed, hunting is so earthy, experiential and practical, it even has its own archetypes that help people to grasp who hunters are. Consider, for example, the upland bird aficionado. He might have a shotgun that is a work of art, or the gun might be as beaten and weathered as an old boat oar. Whatever the case, to him (or, increasingly, to her), the shotgun, and how he carries it in the field, has a touch of what the Spanish call gracia in it, a word that deals not with things but with the aesthetics of moving action. Ideally, he might even be trying for a little of what the Spanish call duende, a characteristic the author James Michener said is almost indefinable, as it means something with taste, refinement and elegance in just the right proportion and with no showiness. It is something a person can only manage for fleeting moments when life and art meet before again separating with a bad gesture or missed shot.

The shotgun, after all, is a friend, a trusted companion who comes along as an integral part of adventures in the field. When an upland hunter picks up a shotgun he knows, it points him toward a wild escape. Such a hunter might wear a classic upland coat, pants and vest splashed with orange, or he might be in jeans and flannel. Regardless, a hunter, with a gun in hand, is embodying an established archetype dating back to classic Outdoor Life covers and before. You can find him in the pages of Robert Ruarks classic The Old Man and the Boy and in Corey Fords famed posthumously published story The Road to Tinkhamtown. Though now misunderstood by op-ed writers at The New York Times, even the fashion set is aware of this upland-bird-hunting archetype. Beretta, after all, has stores in Milan, Paris, London and New Yorkand, oh yeah, theres one in Dallas, too.

Different icons can be found for various subsets of waterfowl hunters, for various styles of deer hunting and much more. Hunting also has new and emerging archetypes, such as the high-country big-game hunter in technical clothing that uses innovations from climbing apparel.

Such is why, when anti-gun politicians pretend to be part of this culture, they are quickly seen for the frauds they are; pretenders are just so easy to spot within these complex cultural milieus.

So, no, the Second Amendment isnt about hunting, but one of the reasons the Second Amendment stays relevant in our culture is because of hunting. Whether you hunt or just see sportsmen parked along the rural roadways at this time of the year, understand they are a part of what keeps this right practical and whole. They are doing something real, not virtual. This is culturally impactful. And we havent even touched on the game management hunters do for us or how much they pay for conservation across America.

See the original post:
The Second Amendment Isn't About Hunting, But - America's 1st Freedom

Champions of the idea point to a 1997 law, which in theory would allow the Treasury Secretary to authorize a platinum coin at the value of his or her discretion.

The president could direct the Treasury Secretary to mint a $1 trillion piece that could be deposited in the Federal Reserve and used to cover a big portion of Washington's bills.

Such a maneuver would bypass Congress, which is again flirting with disaster. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned on Tuesday that the government would run out of cash unless the federal borrowing cap is lifted.

Accounting 'gimmick'?

Though it may seem far-fetched, the idea got far enough during the 2013 impasse that the Treasury Department explicitly ruled out minting the coin.

Former president Barack Obama alluded to the internal talks over the concept in a January 2017 podcast, just as he was leaving office.

"There were all kinds of wacky ideas," Obama said on "Pod Save America" of the 2013 discussions with staff.

But the solution has hardly been embraced by mainstream economists.

Critics include economist Paul Krugman, who wrote in March 2020 that the idea was "an accounting gimmick" that "wouldn't even fool anyone."

Laurence Kotlikoff, an economics professor at Boston University, said it was "the kind of thinking of a third world country."

"The essence of the issue here is printing money to pay the government's bills," Kotlikoff said. "And when you print enough money, you get inflation."

Policy makers are already grappling with pricing pressure in the wake of heavy fiscal spending during the pandemic. That marks a break from the anemic inflation seen over most of the last two decades.

Congressional Republicans have opposed raising the debt ceiling, arguing that President Joe Biden's enormous proposed investments in infrastructure and social programs are fiscally irresponsible.

For now, there is no obvious solution to the impasse, raising the possibility that the United States could default for the first time in its history.

But if the trillion-dollar coin draws eye rolls from economist, it is a source of curiosity on social media.

Quadrillion-dollar coin

On Tuesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said senior Democratic Representative Jerry Nadler "wants to have a trillion-dollar coin that doesn't require congressional approval."

Economics professor L. Randall Wray, a Bard College professor who has championed Modern Money Theory, which de-emphasizes the drawbacks of debt, said the special coin is no wackier than other expansionary financial maneuvers enacted by the Federal Reserve during the pandemic that have involved hundreds of billions of dollars of public and private debt.

"It is a work around," Wray said. "It sort of makes it obvious that the debt limit itself is a pretty stupid idea."

Wray and others note that massive infusions of liquidity by the Federal Reserve in the wake of the 2008 crisis did not spur inflation.

For Matthew Gertz of Media Matters for America, the question is not whether the trillion-dollar coin is too big, but whether it is big enough.

"A trillion-dollar coin isn't cool," Gertz wrote on Twitter. "You know what's cool? A quadrillion-dollar coin."

Excerpt from:
'Who wants to tell him?': Trump Jr. mocked for declaring the Second Amendment is 'non-negotiable' even in Australia - Raw Story

Paul Adell stood in the shooting stall wearing earmuffs atop his Chicago Bulls baseball cap. He fired a Canik TP9 Elite Combat pistol a half-dozen times, hitting a target 10 feet away with almost surgical precision.

He pressed the safety on the gun and placed it on a table in the stall before turning to me and the rest of the group.

Praise God and pass the ammunition, he said.

Adell, 30, was a big Black man in his element loading guns, sharing ammo, and dispensing shooting advice at The Firing Pin indoor shooting range in Bergen. He shoots for sport, for fun, and for protection.

The Firing Pin, a busy spot off Interstate 490 on the outskirts of Monroe County, is home to the Rochester African American Firearms Association, or RAAFA, which provides gun and self-defense training mostly but not exclusively to African Americans like me.

The growth in the number of organizations like RAAFA in the United States has mirrored a surge in gun sales to Black people fueled by the uncertainty of the pandemic, skyrocketing violent crime, and polls showing that half of Black Americans feel they cant trust the police to treat them fairly.

These groups are not militant, their organizers insist, but are rather an outgrowth of a conclusion reached by many Black people that they have been left with no choice but to exercise their Second Amendment right to protect themselves, fearing that no one else will.

It is our fundamental belief that the duty of the people is to arm and educate themselves in order to protect and defend themselves, reads a statement on the RAAFA website, which claims the group has received an overwhelming interest and response and is now the largest of its kind serving upstate New York.

Were not criminals. Were not a gang, said Adell, a U.S. Concealed Carry Association and National Rifle Association instructor. Were not any type of militia or military or militant type of group. Were a community-based organization that offers training and education.

The groups philosophy is that not every sign of trouble requires a gun. Its instructors teach de-escalation techniques as well as hand-to-hand combat maneuvers.

Every day is not a gun day. The firearm is the last resort, and thats what we teach people," Adell said. "The best thing to defend and combat the violence is using the mind and using the heart and sometimes the mouth, too.

But for me, that day was a gun day.

After crash courses on gun safety, I signed a waiver and headed to the range floor with five RAAFA members, including an educator, a counselor, and a retired Monroe County Sheriffs Office sergeant, Mark Cochran, who is the groups chief instructor.

There, I held a Ruger Pistol Caliber Carbine rifle and Adell and Cochran helped me adjust my stance. Adell advised me on the importance of repeating my approach with every shot, like a quarterbacks throwing motion or a point guards jump shot.

Within a half-hour or so, I improved, learning to use a scope and to breathe easier with a butt of a rifle lodged against my shoulder. It was tough to not anticipate the explosion out of the barrel, let alone the other gunshots on the range, but I got the hang of it.

If data is any guide, moments like these are happening around the country with greater frequency.

The almost 40 million checks conducted last year represented a 40-percent increase over 2019, and the nearly 28 million checks done through August of this year are on pace to shatter the record.

The checks do not reflect the number of guns sold, but the National Shooting Sports Foundation estimates that slightly more than half the checks done last year were conducted on new gun owners, many of them women and people of color. The group polls firearms dealers and figures gun sales to Black Americans are up 58 percent, the largest jump of any demographic group.

Todays gun buyer doesnt just look like me, a 48-year-old white guy who lives in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., Mark Olivia, a spokesperson for the foundation, said. Todays gun buyer looks like the rest of America, because they are the rest of America.

Demographic data on gun owners is hard to come by in New York, but anecdotal evidence suggests the same trend is playing out in Monroe County.

In the past, getting a permit typically took six to nine months. But the backlog is so great now that County Clerk Jamie Romeo said her staff is telling most applicants to expect to wait a year.

I think 2020 was an unfortunate perfect storm, where there were lots of other outside influences that for whatever reason made people interested in gun ownership, Romeo said. It's created a swell that we are not necessarily seeing dip in at this moment.

[T]heres just a lot of people that are looking for ways to have some personal safety, she went on, and simply owning a firearm won't make an individual safer, especially if they don't know how to use it.

RAAFA has grown as well.

When the organization was founded last November by Adell and fellow small business owner Michael Nix, it served a handful of members. Today, Adell and Nix count a few dozen members, about half of whom are women.

Nix, a 54-year-old Marine veteran, grew up around guns. He said part of the appeal of groups like RAAFA for new Black gun owners is learning from instructors who look like them, like he did.

My grandfather was a hunter, Nix said. I identify (with gun owners) because I grew up in the house and the house was exposed to that type of activity. But the average kid that grew up in a neighborhood with me, doesn't.

Theres the issue of trust, he continued. We tend to be more willing to accept something from someone we trust. When you're here, you're getting educated by someone who can relate to your struggle.

Barksdale said fear kept her away from guns for most of her life, but joined RAAFA after learning about it from a friend. Now, she does community outreach for the group, dubbing herself a 2A person a Second Amendment person.

Like basically most Black women, Barksdale said, I wasn't raised in a home that was firearm-savvy.

Barksdale said she was motivated to pick up a gun by a different kind of fear: Being a single mom of an 8-year-old daughter.

I have a child in my home, and I want to be able to protect her, Barksdale said. I don't want to have to wait for someone else to come and advocate for me or be able to protect my home. I need to be able to do that myself.

Phillip Smith, founder of the 40,000-member National African American Gun Association, said Barksdales sentiment is common, particularly in light of the volatility of the last year.

Citing the long history of gun control laws in the United States that impinged the rights of African Americans to own guns, Smith said that Black people are still maligned for wanting access to firearms.

Images of Black people with guns, he said, have always been negative. That is something that both the national and local gun groups have worked to counter.

Other communities have guns all the time, Smith said. The Jewish community, the Asian community, the white community, and nobody bats an eye. We get questioned. Why is it so different for us?

The last year-and-a-half has seen rapid change lockdowns, mask mandates, civil unrest and a spike in violent crime in cities across the country.

Homicides and aggravated gun assaults hit peaks in the summer of 2020 and continue to hover above pre-pandemic levels, according to the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice.

Shootings and slayings in Rochester are at least at 10-year highs. Last year, the city had its first riot in half a century, followed by months of civil unrest marked by clashes between protesters and police over the way the city handled the death of Daniel Prude, a Black man who suffocated while in police custody.

Adell said these conditions awakened people to their vulnerability and played a role in the rise of gun ownership and growth of his group. He asserted that Black gun groups arent a fad, but rather the latest incarnation of a rarely acknowledged American tradition.

It's been a very silent group, but it has always existed, Adell said. And I think because of the conditions, it has brought people out, and I think because of organizations like RAAFA, people feel a little bit more secure.

James Brown is a reporter for WXXI News, a media partner of CITY.

Originally posted here:
Black, Armed, and Aware - Rochester City Newspaper