EckerNet.Com

Before the 2008 election, there were a lot of warnings and scary platitudes tossed around about Obama.  Now granted a lot of them have come true, but one that hasn\’t is that Obama is going to take away our guns.  You heard it everywhere.  Gun owners started hiding weapons and firearm purchases went absolutely through the roof, so much that the joke was that Obama was the NRA\’s Salesman of the Year.

I heard all these claims and shoke my head at them all.  I knew Obama would never go after guns themselves.  The government confiscating firearms is just too symbolic and high-profile.  Even for non-Second Amendment supporters, it would be a little too Stalinesque to overlook.  I often counseled those that would listen that the danger was not in Obama taking away guns, but the ammunition.  Without ammunition a gun is just a really well engineered chunk of metal.  It\’s an awkward club, or a really cool mantelpiece for the fireplace.  It\’s the Achille\’s Heel of firearms, and there are a million ways to strike it.

Most obvious is placing high taxes upon either the ammunition itself or the components required to manufacture them.  Or imposing artificially high prices by limiting the available materials for ammunition.  This is actually an approach the Obama Administration has already tried….and backed down when they got caught.  But they may be up to their old tricks again….

With the fall hunting season fast approaching, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under Lisa Jackson, who was responsible for banning bear hunting in New Jersey, is now considering a petition by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) – a leading anti-hunting organization – to ban all traditional ammunition under the Toxic Substance Control Act of 1976, a law in which Congress expressly exempted ammunition.  If the EPA approves the petition, the result will be a total ban on all ammunition containing lead-core components, including hunting and target-shooting rounds. The EPA must decide to accept or reject this petition by November 1, 2010, the day before the midterm elections.

Now certainly there exists non-lead alternatives for ammunition, but they are also extremely expensive.  They also aren\’t nearly as effective.  Lead, being a softer metal tends to impart more of it\’s kinetic energy upon it\’s target, rather than the over-penetration problem you can have with other metals.  Lead is also a cheaper metal that keeps down the overall costs of the ammunition, which lends to people buying more of it.  This is important when a vast majority of the monies used for wildlife management and conservation efforts come from either hunting/fishing licenses and the 11 percent federal excise tax placed upon ammunition.

Eliminating one of the most common, and certainly the least expensive elements, in ammunition would necessarily greatly increase the cost of those rounds.  And when even a simple hunting trip can involve the purchase of many many rounds, this has a prohibitive effect on the hunting industry in general.  An industry that employs a lot of people and which contributes vast sums of resources to wildlife conservation efforts.  And when it becomes cost prohibitive to even buy such ammunition, firearms themselves become cost-prohibitive and you\’ve essentially accomplished the same thing a firearms ban would accomplish.

Can you tell the difference between Real or Fake government programs?? According to this man-on-the-street interview, apparently most people can\’t.

Actually the problem with paying attention to politics is I play this game every day.

Well the DFL finally figured out who their candidate is for Governor, and they picked Mark Dayton.  Also know as \”The Blunderer\”….seriously, that\’s what Time magazine called him back when he was in the Senate…they also called him the worst Senator in America.  In response to winning the primary, Mark Dayton got so excited he promptly closed his campaign office for a month.

Well the MN GOP promptly released an ad introducing the new DFL nominee to Minnesota.  That shouldn\’t be a surprise, we\’ve been seeing Mark Dayton\’s family spending millions on anti-Emmer ads for weeks now.  But now the MN GOP is finally answering back with an ad that scored an A- on the KSTP Truth Test….unlike the famous anti-Emmer ad by Alliance for a Better Minnesota (aka Dayton family front group) which scored an F.

Of course Dayton is denouncing this as a smear….not sure what part of quoting past news articles about him, he considers smearing.  Sounds like Dayton is already starting a pattern of running from his past.  And when it\’s pretty true that past performance predicts future performance, that\’s not good for Minnesota.

I love these type of sarcastic predictions.  They are funny to read through but despite their purely snarky intentions, they have an eerie tendency to be rather accurate.  And I suspect that\’s happening already:

1. The response of every Democrat to every Republican question or comment becomes, semantically speaking, “George W. Bush.”  Up to and including “What are the visiting hours for the art gallery?”

Actually hasn\’t this been the basis for every speech in the Obama Administration so far??

2. The Democrats start talking up “scandals” involving Republicans that wouldn’t even get you a verbal reprimand at your job if you did them.

I think it\’s safe to say this qualifies….and allow me to go on record as stating we need more of these scandals in the future.  Lots more.

3. A Democratic legislator snaps and attempts to strangle someone.  On camera.

With Senator Franken around, it\’s only a matter of time.

6. The DSCC starts funding the New York races.
7. The DCCC starts funding urban House races.

I think we\’re there already

8. We see a week of “Will the Republicans try to impeach the President?” stories in the media. Or a month of them.

Well they did freak out for few weeks about Rep. Bachmann and Rep. Issa

9. A convoluted theory appears that tortuously ‘proves’ that the Democrats are actually going to gain seats, really.  It will involve three random trends whose relationship with each other is not immediately obvious.  It will have a buzzword.  Every site on the Left will talk it up for two weeks.  It will then disappear without a trace.

This probably overqualifies but….

10. “Of course we’re going to keep Congress.  GOTV will save us.”

Every time someone let\’s Pelosi ramble she comes up with something like this.  It\’s probably only a matter of time….one of those infinite number of monkeys drafting Shakespeare type things.

[Via Instapundit]