I accept your apology and I think you’re sincere. I don’t think I overreacted, though. I think part of the problem right now is that our side isn’t really apprised of just how serious this is, and how serious it’s going to get. Calling for people to go on organized disinformation campaigns on Twitter and Facebook, that people can trackback to a diary entry on the most prominent Conservative blog in the country, isn’t going to help our side – particularly in the coming weeks. Being seen as the disseminators of misinformation (officially or not) isn’t going to be a feather in our cap.

Michael Bloomberg and all of the people who are convening today in Baltimore at Johns Hopkins University are *not* joking around. And neither was the legislature in New York State yesterday.

Look at the law that was passed yesterday in New York – by both houses of the Legislature – in literally one day, just 140 miles from where I live. It bans all “assault weapons”, enacts sweeping new capacity restrictions, and moreover it’s the beginning of a de facto confiscation system – your existing weapons are “grandfathered in” under the law, but they must be registered – and they can never be transferred or sold. So they will all eventually be surrendered to the State. Read that again: the State is eventually going to seize all of that lawfully owned private property. It has been so decreed. Magazine capacities are now set at 7 rounds. You can keep your 10-rounders but you can only put 7 rounds in them. I wonder how they intend to enforce that? With sting operations at shooting ranges? Undercover agents watching you push the bullets into the magazine and if you miscount and load 8 instead of 7 they slap the cuffs on you and haul you away to jail? And I’ll guarantee they won’t have the undercover agents at the gangbanger crib watching those guys load their magazines.

Also, my reading of the law is that it is ambiguous whether it really actually bans all semiautomatic handguns with a picatinny rail for a light or a laser, too. Because the law says: “One military style feature” makes the gun an “assault weapon” whether it is a *handgun* OR a rifle. So your new Smith & Wesson pistol with a picatinny rail for a flashlight….is that illegal now? In other words – everything other than revolvers and bolt action rifles. I think what they’ve really done, is to enact some hard and absolute restrictions combined with a gigantic grey area where the vast majority of modern defensive handguns could, maybe be classified as “assault weapons” under the law, depending on how the wind blows. Right up to the edge and then extend the grey area over the edge, in other words.

We’ll see when the first prosecution happens, which I expect to be any minute now.

The new Massachusetts laws are coming – I expect the bills to hit the State house in the next 48-72 hours. My guess is that they’re going to be even stricter. Right now in Massachusetts, there are reports that it’s taking between 5 and 6 months for people who already have licenses to renew them. That was supposed to have been a maximum of 40 days with the new electronic systems that Romney ushered in. Now, 150 and even 180 days to renew a license is becoming more commonplace – and during that time, you exist in legal limbo. And the legislators here have their ears all perked up about slapping gun owners with gigantic liability insurance requirements. The goal is exactly what I said: it’s the boa constrictor principle.

They’ll see your “Don’t Tread on Me” rattlesnake and raise you a boa constrictor. It really is the Year of the Snake – and not just in the Chinese zodiac.

There’s no humor in what is going on, unfortunately. Not even gallows humor. It’s gotten to the point that I’m thinking of curtailing my writing about it because I’m giving people ideas – the other side. Instead what we need is a really well-organized campaign of political pressure to respond to these new laws. No jokes, no calls for a “disinformation campaign” on Twitter and Facebook.

Sorry if I sounded harsh, but these aren’t joking matters and we’re not living in joking times. The people who are coming to restrict and/or constrain your right to own guns – or take them away from you completely – are very, very serious about it.

In other words, plumely, I suppose this is one of those (relatively rare) situations where I don’t have much of a sense of humor, and actually I think that making fun of the situation or whatever, isn’t very helpful. And with that I say: “Dont Panic!”