The media correctly portrayed Wednesday’s Senate vote against broad background checks as an enormous defeat for the anti-gun movement, and for President Obama, as he put so much of his political capital into it. His decisive defeat significantly weakens him on every other issue.

What might not be as well known is that the Independence Institute was a key player in this success.

We were the only organization to put out a detailed explanation of how Senator Schumer’s background check bill would’ve turned almost every American gun owner into a felon, because it applies not only to gun sales, but also temporary transfers, like lending your shotgun to a friend or family member.

When the gun control lobby realized they couldn’t pass Schumer’s background check, they then proposed the Manchin-Toomey substitute. It was drafted secretly and hastily, and the plan was to rush it through the Senate. Our Second Amendment scholar, David Kopel, spent long & late nights writing articles on Volokh.com and National Review Online explaining how poorly written it was, making it full of unintended consequences. For example, it supposedly outlawed federal gun registration, but when you look carefully at the statutory language, it actually legalized one form of federal gun registration which is currently illegal.

Kopel’s work helped the Senate see that these bills, which were supposedly just about background checks on sales, were actually laden with many other anti gun provisions.

We were there from the very beginning of this fight. According to Senate aides, Kopel’s testimony before the Judicial Committee on January 30 was crucial in stopping a federal ban on so-called “assault weapons.” And from the very moment President Obama began using the horrible murders in Newtown as pretext to crack down on law abiding gun owners, Kopel was in the national media providing the facts and promoting genuine reforms which would actually help public safety.

Joe Biden lobbied hard here in Colorado to pass a litany of anti gun bills on the state level, which were intended to set the stage for a national ban. Kopel’s expert testimony in the state legislature, along with our broad outreach in social media and on YouTube, helped lead to the defeat of two of the worst bills: the ban on licensed carry on college campuses and the bill allowing lawsuits against gun manufacturers. Our work also helped make the bills that did pass significantly less bad than they were to start with.

For the anti-gun movement, Colorado was supposed to be an easy victory leading them to victories elsewhere. Instead they paid a HUGE price for their limited victories in Colorado, and that price will escalate significantly as we provide pro bono representation to Colorado Sheriffs as we lead the legal fight to declare these bills unconstitutional.

Join us for a book signing with our Second Amendment scholar Dave Kopel on Tuesday, May 14th. He will be giving a presentation on his new book, “The Truth About Gun Control,” and signing copies following the Q and A. For more details and to RSVP, please go here.

We fight for Freedom with a long-term battle plan that works. These victories are even more proof. Thank you for being a part of it.

Dear Senator Guzman,

A recent piece in the Denver Post quotes you as supporting Colorado House Bill 1224, which recently passed out of the House of Representatives and which says, in part, that it is okay to manufacture magazines that hold more than 15 bullets in Colorado and sell them out of state, but not here in Colorado. In other words, a magazine that holds more then 15 bullets is bad (and soon to be criminal) when purchased and owned by a Coloradan, but okay when manufactured in Colorado but purchased and owned by someone outside the borders of our state. As one of your constituents, I am curious how you reconcile that glaring inconsistency to the point you are willing to see the bill made into law?

Regards,

Mike Krause
Constituent, Colorado Senate District 34

Friday night means public affairs with the Independence Institute on Colorado Public Television 12. First catch research director Dave Kopel at 8:00 on the round table show Colorado Inside Out. Then stay tuned for Devil’s Advocate at 8:30 as Independence Institute president Jon Caldara is joined by Fox 31 political reporter Eli Stokols and Denver Post reporter Lynn Bartels to look at the new legislative session thus far, and what big issues are coming down the line. That’s tonight starting at 8:00 on CPT 12.

You can find your local CPT12 channel by zip code here.

Our resident genius and Second Amendment scholar Dave Kopel was in Washington DC this morning to testify on gun violence, public safety, and the right to arms. He was on a panel of five experts who each gave a 5 minute prepared statement and then fielded questions from the US Senate Judiciary Committee.

Here is a PDF of Kopel’s prepared remarks.

Here is the video of Kopel’s testimony and all the questions he fielded from the Senators.

Friday night means public affairs tv excellence with the Independence Institute on Colorado Public Television 12.

First, catch Independence Institute research director David Kopel on on the roundtable show, Colorado Inside Out at 8:00 PM. Then stay tuned for Devil’s Advocate at 8:30. First, incoming Speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives Mark Ferrandino sits down with Independence Institute president Jon Caldara about what to expect in the upcoming legislative session. Then Independence Institute constitutional scholar Rob Natelson comes by to explain how Congress ignored the constitutional requirement that spending bills originate in the House in the recent “fiscal cliff” deal, and why it matters.
That’s tonight starting at 8:00 on Colorado Public Television 12.

Repressing what happened politically this year? Maybe just been too drunk to remember? Well, acceptance is the first step to recovery, so tune in to the Independence Institute’s public affairs tv show, Devil’s Advocate, tonight as host Jon Caldara is joined by Denver Post statehouse reporter Tim Hoover and Grand Junction Sentinel statehouse reporter Charles Ashby for a review of the 2012 political year in Colorado, and some pontification about the 2013 Colorado legislative session. That’s tonight at 8:30 on Colorado Public Television 12.

One of the reasons Freedom is in retreat is that the Left creates the narrative. They tell the stories. They write the songs. They make the jokes. Our culture’s entertainment is almost solely the purview of the Left. And hidden inside those stories and tunes and jokes are the messages of collectivism and political correctness. Artists and entertainers have become the greatest sales force for command-and-control authoritarianism.

For the most part we on team Liberty just suck at entertainment. I mean we stink at it, and for a whole bunch of reasons: our team is prudish, stale, peevish and as easy to be offended as a Women’s Studies professor. We are great in communicating within our own team. We like to sing to our choir. News flash: our choir keeps getting smaller. And we keep losing.

But the biggest reason we can’t sell our message in entertainment is that when we try, we lead with the message and then attempt to make the entertainment fit around it. Think of the failed Fox News’ Half Hour News Hour or the comedy movie An American Carol. If you haven’t seen them or even heard of them, I rest my case.

The Left knows how to lead with entertainment first, not message. The humor and jokes, the compelling tale, and the great music come first. Then they slip in the message, insults and whiny lyrics. “30 Rock” and “Saturday Night Live” go for the yucks first. If that doesn’t work, it doesn’t matter what the message is;- no one will hear it. (By the way, I want to become Jack Donaghy. Damn Alec Baldwin.)

Freedom, however, has at least one outlet in Hollywood that makes people laugh and, maybe by no intentional way, weaves in pro-liberty messages – South Park.

This raunchy animated show on Comedy Central does what almost no one on the Right does: it reaches people who might not consider themselves limited-government fans, then convinces them that they just might be.

South Park‘s creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, like me, survived the fascist political correctness and forced liberalism of the University of Colorado. That compelled me into politics. It drove them into show business. I’d submit they do a better job illustrating the danger of overly burdensome government than I do.

So, here it is, the list of all lists, the one you’ve been waiting for – the top 10 free market, limited government, stop-the-nanny-state episodes of South Park. WARNING: this show is immature, childish, highly offensive, and just plain gross. I wonder why I like it. Did I mention it’s offensive? Watch at your own risk.

The federal budget plan of Rep. Paul Ryan has been repeatedly characterized as “extreme.” (I Googled, “Ryan plan extreme” and got over 43,100,000 hits.) Among those making the charge have been the editorial writers over at the Denver Post.

In reality, several Western democracies have enacted far more “extreme” deficit elimination plans in recent years—and with great success. In the early 1990s, Canada was laboring under about as much debt as the U.S. now is, measured as a share of the economy. In a new article, former Canadian prime minister Paul Martin (a Liberal Party prime minister, no less) tells us how his government cut federal spending in absolute terms, balanced the budget in about five years, and lowered taxes.

The Canadian reforms were preceded by similar successes in places like Alberta, New Zealand, and Great Britain. All required absolute drops in spending, with no sacred cows. Everyone has to feel that he or she is making a sacrifice for all.

Ryan’s plan would only slow the increase in spending, not cut it. It would exempt people over 55 from Medicare changes, a political as well as a budgetary mistake. And it would not balance the budget until at least 2040—if at all.

In other words, a fundamental flaw of the Ryan plan is that it is not sweeping enough.

You can expect Lefty activities to throw dirt on any plan that would curb even minimally the out-of-control welfare state. But the Post editors—who write for Colorado’s newspaper of record—need to exercise more discretion.

I’m sorry that it has taken me nearly a week to share a few of my thoughts about the election, but I have only been recently released from suicide watch. As a complete aside, the Hemlock Society sadly only assists the terminally ill, not those who desire end-of-life services due to politics. Apparently, you have go to the Republican Party for that.

Anyway, thanks to a fair amount of self-medication via scotch and Little Debbie’s Swiss Rolls, I am able to communicate today. Like you I am baffled over the course of human events in our nation conceived in Liberty.

I know there will be months of second guessing about what went wrong and what should have been done. So here’s my quick take, and keep in mind it might just be the scotch talking.

I believe the elections of 2012 sadly proves the very premise from which we work at the Independence Institute – the right loses because they are all-consumed with the “next election.” The left wins because they are consumed with the next decade. And they have been consumed for decades.

The left wins because they control the narrative. They control the narrative because they invest their resources, their years, and a ton of our money, to build systems, organizations and institutions that tell the stories they want voters in the middle to believe. Capitalism hurts the country. Hydraulic fracturing is an environmental danger. There is a war against women. Blah, blah, blah…

As all of us divorced men know, WE HAVE NEVER made any mistakes in our past decisions. So that of course gives me the authority to say what everyone else did wrong in this election. So here we go. The right’s donors invest too often in personality, not political infrastructure. They invest for the short term.

It is so disheartening to think of the billions of dollars and countless man-hours that were wasted in vien to elect Mitt Romney and take back the senate. Only two states switched away from Obama compared to four years ago, and we lost, not gained, in the senate. Imagine if only that amount were put towards building a permanent infrastructure to leap-frog the Left. Imagine if that amount were spent years ago instead of this year. Imagine what could have been.

I find this somewhat baffling. People on the right understand the importance of investing in and building institutions that will pay dividends in the long term future. As you know I lost my daughter and my son has Down Syndrome. He has needed ten surgeries in his eight years of life. If it weren’t for the long-term thinking donors who gave so much so many years ago to build the Children’s Hospital, I would have lost another child. These donors know the importance of building churches, universities, efforts to end sickness and so much more where the real pay-off might not be seen in their lifetimes.

But in the realm of politics, many on the right can’t see farther than about a year. The money goes to candidates or their support systems. By then it is usually too late. The left has built unions, think tanks, media operations, opposition research groups, voter registration machines, legal harassment firms and so much more.

The sex-appeal and excitement for elections years and personalities drives our side. Winning drives their side.

Until we can better convince investors and activists that the fight for liberty, the fight against the constant allure of socialism’s “guaranteed outcomes,” is a long term, never-ending battle. But it is one we most certainly can win.

We at Independence have worked for nearly three decades on that very premise. We know that ideas have the greatest consequences. Politicians come and go, but the principles of liberty are everlasting. It is our goal to market our ideals far better than the left sells their guaranteed outcomes.

We have created a great start. And this election only serves to tell us we are on the right track. Now we need to do so much more.

The path to fixing Washington is to first fix Colorado. We are more determined and committed to that goal than ever in our 27 years.

Let’s shake off this awful hangover and get to it. Be our partner in this fight.