Things You Don’t Want on Your OSHA Incident Report

Apparently there was a death in the workplace at New Berlinville, PA environmental services company back in 2008. Normally this would not be news, except for the “Accident Investigation Summary:”

At approximately 12:35 p.m. on January 3, 2008, Employee #1 picked up a functional test box assembly and hooked the two alligator clips of this tester to his nipple rings. He turned on the power switch, which caused up to 2 amps of current at 110 volt AC to flow through the alligator clips. Employee #1 fell to the ground. The supervisor and coworkers rendered CPR, and outside emergency medical services utilized an AED. However, Employee #1 died a short time later at the hospital.

His occupation is listed as “Painting and paint spraying machine operators,” which makes you wonder if he was sniffing too much of the fumes when he was overcome by a desire to spike 110VAC across the really important part of his cardiovascular system. I think what’s interesting is that it looks like OSHA fined the employer. Is there really any workplace safety regulation that can prevent stupid?

Obama Not to Push Gun Control

Expect to see a lot of article like this over the next few months as we get into the silly season:

Harry Wilson, author of a book on gun politics and director of the Institute for Policy and Opinion Research at Roanoke College in Virginia, summed up the landscape, telling Werner: “Gun control is a fight that the administration is not willing to pick. They’re not likely to win it. They certainly would not win it in Congress, and it’s not likely to be a winner at the polls. … It comes down to one pretty simple word: Politics.”

I agree that Obama is not likely to push gun control overtly, but the best thing he can do for our opponents is to keep putting people on the Supreme Court who will vote against the Second Amendment every time. I know there’s a lot of skepticism out there if Romney is the eventual nominee, but also keep in mind Romney is going to be beholden to very different interests than Obama is. When it comes to judicial nominations, he will be expected by the GOP to pick from the pool of conservative judges. Presidents don’t have as much leeway as you might think on these matters, which is why Harriet Meyers is not currently a Supreme Court justice. In the pool of folks any GOP President is going to have to choose from, there’s a much stronger likelihood of finding a justice who will back the Second Amendment than the almost non-existent likelihood that will be the case in the pool Obama has to choose from.

Remember, for higher court positions, Obama will have to choose pretty exclusively from Clinton appointed judges. His own choices for the lower courts are not likely to be much better, given the pressures he faces to put left-leaning urbanites on the Court. Any GOP candidate, even if it’s Romney, is going to be facing a vastly different political calculus when it comes to court nominations.

Interesting HR822 Legal Questions

Andy from the comments asks, “Does HR 822 allow me to take my “high capacity” magazine to New York? Hmm… hadn’t thought about that.” That’s a good question. From my reading of the language of HR822, That’s rather questionable. Also, it would be questionable whether it would be legal, for instance, to carry hollow point ammunition in New Jersey under HR822. My feeling on both counts is that no, that you would have to abide by both the magazine limits and rules regarding hollow points, as would a resident of  both those jurisdictions.

The other side of that coin would be an argument that the law authorizes the carry of a handgun, regardless of “eligibility to possess or carry” the state may require, provided that you are not prohibited by federal law from gun possession, and have a valid license to carry. Therefore the language makes you qualified to carry a handgun, which would also, naturally, include magazines and ammunition.

I think the argument that you have to abide by rules on magazines and ammunition type is much stronger than the latter argument. If HR822 does pass, you might want to stick with New York, California, and New Jersey law on magazine capacity, and also New Jersey’s law on hollow-point bullets.

The Battle in 1968

Extranos Alley looks at the battle over the Gun Control Act in 1968. Here, Franklin Orth, NRA President at the time, speaks out against it. One of the best articles I think that can be found on GCA ’68 resides here:

The shift, by the leadership of the National Rifle Association (NRA), from cautious support for the original Dodd Bill to modest opposition of Senate Bill 1592 foreshadowed the most significant and lasting change in the dynamics of gun control policy to occur in the twentieth century. The NRA and firearms [Page 81] manufacturers had supported Dodd’s original bill and the subsequent addition of interstate controls on long guns.[18] Although the official organ of the NRA, The American Rifleman, indicated otherwise, the NRA leadership displayed some willingness to compromise with Dodd as late as 1965.[19] Negative response by the membership precipitated a subsequent reversal of direction by the NRA leadership.[20] This uprising by a significant portion of the NRA membership owed much to the development of a specialized gun press that catered to the most avid of gun enthusiasts.[21] The editorial staffs of magazines such as Guns, Guns and Ammo, and Gun Week inalterably opposed gun control in any form and benefited from heightened interest in gun issues.[22] By 1965, the leadership and membership of the NRA divided along a fault line separating those tolerant of moderate increases in gun control from those opposed to any significant change in the law.[23] Although the NRA leadership responded to this internal pressure with increased opposition to new legislation, their policy shift failed to satisfy a powerful segment within the membership. This internal dissatisfaction within the NRA provided the impetus for a 1977 coup by the libertarian faction within the organization and the ouster of the more moderate old guard.[24] Although the relations between Chairman Dodd and the NRA witnesses remained marginally cordial during the 1965 hearings, the atmosphere had begun to chill. Any hope of compromise between advocates of stricter gun control and the NRA ended after 1965.

My understanding is that a big portion of what drove the 1977 Cincinnati Revolt was the fact that NRA leadership was planning to move NRA Headquarters from Rhode Island Avenue in Washington DC to Colorado Springs, not far from a new deluxe shooting facility that would later become The Whittington Center, where it would get out of politics and focus mostly on sports, recreation and conservation. Maxwell Rich was NRA’s Executive VP at the time (Wayne’s job now), and I’ve always been amazed our opponents never made him an honorary Brady Campaign Board Member. If he had succeeded, they probably would have won.

Challenge to Post Office Ban Moving Forward

I don’t expect this to end well. Even though the Post Office is a quasi-governmental organization, the dicta in Heller about “government buildings and sensitive places,” I’m afraid will mean this suit goes no where. I’d like to be wrong though.

New Jersey Bear Hunt

Looks like the animal rights groups are at it again, trying to put a stop to this year’s black bear hunt. They’ve succeeded in the past in getting the hunt stopped through the courts, so it might just be a matter of rolling the dice, and seeing what judge they end up in front of. Unfortunately, when black bears exhaust the food supplies in their natural habitat, and aren’t used to fearing people, people start to look like food. But won’t someone think of the poor bears?

Why Are Gun Control Advocates …

… so violent? Kudos to Scottsdale Gun Club for the Santa idea, as it would appear to have had the intended effect. Might be kind of surprising, but sometimes it’s kind of fun to tweak the ninnies.

Training on Public Ranges

When the Balloon Goes Up has some tips on how to train on public ranges, which often don’t allow draw from holster, or appreciate you getting all IDPA on them. I’m fortunate that my two local commercial ranges, Classic Pistol in Southampton, and Ready Aim Fire in Bristol, both allow shoot from holster. When I go to the range I’m primarily interested in checking that my magazines feed cleanly from full to empty, something I can’t do at my club because of its strange rule limiting shooters to no more than five rounds in a magazine. I’m also interested in timing draw to well aimed fire. For that, there are several timers available for iPhone. Sometimes they don’t work on a crowded range, but often I’ve managed to get the sensitivity high enough it’ll only trip on my own gun.

Too Dangerous to Print

Apparently the UK’s Daily Mail yanked a pro-gun rights piece off its page because the ideas therein were deemed too dangerous. As Joe pointed out in a post just now, you can go read the too-dangerous-for-print post over here.

I’m continuously struck by how radical a document our constitution is. Too radical for us to really follow, apparently, and too dangerous for Europeans to even speak of, or debate. This is 200 years after most of them were dead.

Bulletproof Parchment

It’s no big secret that Dennis Henigan doesn’t like HR822, but it’s amazing how much he thinks pieces of paper stop nut jobs:

Arizona’s gun laws are so nonexistent that Jared Loughner, with his history of mental problems and threatening behavior, was a legal concealed carrier until the moment he pulled the trigger outside that Tucson Safeway. He didn’t even need a permit to carry, though he could easily have obtained one from Arizona authorities. If he had, under H.R. 822 he could have carried his Glock and its 33-round assault clip into Times Square.

Haven’t we had Times Square shootings? I hate to tell you Dennis, but he could have carried his gun to Times Square no matter what the law said, and if his particular form of paranoid schizophrenia had revolved around Times Square, instead of Gabby Giffords, I don’t think words on a piece of parchment, saying he is forbidden from carrying a gun to the scene of his mass murder, were going to stop him. You see, we’re talking about concealed weapons here, Dennis, that means other people can’t see them. Despite what you might believe, police don’t have magic gun seeing powers. Anyone who carries would know that.