Head over to Unc’s site and watch the video of people who’s job I would love to have. Blowing up a dwelling-like structure with everything from an M9 pistol to a 30mm chain gun. Great stuff!
Month: January 2007
Butt Out
I am not nor ever have I been a smoker, nor do I particularly enjoy coming home reeking of cigarette smoke after a night on the town, but I’ve never presumed that I should force my preferences on bar and restaurant owners because I don’t like it. I avoid heavily smoky establishments, as a general rule, and that worked for me just fine. That’s why I’m dissapointed that Philadelphia’s smoking ban went into effect yesterday. There is one saving grace for bar owners in the city:
Private clubs and restaurants whose food sales are less than 20 percent may apply for an exemption.
But I’ve never bought the studies that second hand smoke is really that dangerous, or that public health is anything other than a cover for enforcing the majority’s preference onto business owners. Smoking bans are passing because most people find cigarette smoke objectionable, and for me, that’s never been a good enough reason to allow the government to interfere with a proprietor’s right to control what goes on in his or her establishment.
I know many will argue that there’s a serious public health concern here, but I just don’t trust statistical epidemiological studies that have reason to be politically motivated. I think showing a little tolerance, and accepting a little risk, is worth it for us to continue living in a society where people can still exercise property rights, and enjoy habits that the majority finds objectionable.
An Open Letter to Congressman Fattah
Congressman Fattah,
I read today in the Philadelphia Daily News about your crime plan for Philadelphia which is summarized as:
More cops investigating illegal guns, better rewards for tips about dirty firearms, and extra surveillance cameras to catch gun-toting bad guys.
Those are the basics of mayoral candidate Chaka Fattah’s plan to fight illegal guns, which he will announce today at Mercy Hospital of Philadelphia.
Philadelphia does not have a gun problem, it has a criminal problem. Until you shift the focus away from the guns and toward violent individuals that are committing crimes, you’re going to keep having this problem. I am happy to see that you at least admit this:
The majority of guns used to kill people in Philadelphia and around the nation are illegal,” said Fattah, a Democratic congressman.
Which is true. So why does your Congressional record and public statements contain so much support for restricting lawful gun ownership? Also, how does “targeted gun officers” that “clear firearms off the streets.” help anything? I am in favor of adding more officers to the city streets, but they need to go after the criminals, not the guns. The guns are a symptom, not the cause of your city’s social ills. Even if all the guns could be cleared off the street, if you left the criminals, they will just get more guns and commit more crimes, leaving the city right back where it started.
I’d also like you to explain how “a network of 1,000 police video surveillance cameras throughout the city” would help catch “gun-toting bad guys”. I’m fairly certain that gun toting bad guys aren’t openly carrying firearms around the city, such that they would be caught on camera. I also hope you are aware that there are approximately 32,000 citizens in your city who are lawfully licensed to carry firearms for self-protection, and approximately similar numbers in all the suburban counties. I hope your “gun officers” will treat these people with the respect and courtesy that they deserve.
We all want to see Philadelphia become a safer place, but I’m disappointed you’re perpetuating the myth that guns cause crime. We all know that’s not true. I would encourage you to focus on the criminals, and on finding productive ways to bring jobs and people back into the city. Focusing your energy on inanimate objects is only distracting people from the real problem, and doing a disservice to the city you want to be mayor of.
Sincerely,
Sebastian
Blogroll Additions
I’m making some more blogroll additions here. I’ll be adding:
The Countertop Chronicles
Pro-Gun Progressive
mAss Backwards
Clayton Cramer’s Blog
The Ten Ring
I’m trying to branch out to read more gun blogs for sources of material. Countertop I’ve seen posting on Bitter’s site, so I figured I’d add him. I’ve been an occasional reader of Bruce’s mAss Backwards for a while, so I thought I’d become a more regular reader. Pro-Gun Progressive and Clayton Cramer differ from the libertarian gun bloggers I already read, albeit at opposite ends of the political spectrum, and The Ten Ring seems like a reasonable blog, so it’s on there now.
I will be adding more soon. I have to work on getting a decent RSS aggregation set up. I’m keen to use something in PhP that I can keep local on my server here. Up until now I’ve been using Thunderbird, but it has too many deficiencies for me to continue using it.
When “Shall Issue” Really Isn’t
Jeff Soyer bring us this bit on Colorado, where some Democratic legislators want to make it more difficult to obtain licenses for concealed carry. I don’t have much to add to what Jeff said except to make a point about something he mentioned in his post:
Colorado is NOT a “shall issue” state. As the FAQ says:
Regardless of whether the applicant meets the criteria specified, if the sheriff has reasonable belief that documented previous behavior by the applicant makes it likely the applicant will present a danger to self or others, the sheriff may deny the permit…
Meaning that if the Sheriff doesn’t like you, you’re fucked. Unspoken is the fact that if you voted the wrong way or are black or gay, you might not get your permit. I’m not saying they actually discriminate, simply that your permit approval is at the mercy of someone else’s subjective opinion.
Pennsylvania is also a shall issue state that isn’t really shall issue, since we have the same clause in our law that gives local sheriffs some discrescion over license issue. This was intended for people who might have a string of offenses, that would indicate they may not be entirely responsible individuals, but was not any of the enumerated offenses that would cause you to be denied by the statute. Most Sheriff’s within the Commonwealth do not abuse this discrescion, but the City of Philadelphia routinely does, and the appeals process in the City is stacked against the appelant, and my understanding is they routinely uphold denials by the Philadelphia Police for LTCs.
Fortunatly, for many Philadelphians who have a difficult time getting licenses, Florida is a true shall-issue state, and their license is recognized by Pennsylvania. There were more than a few people in my training class for the Florida CWL who had been denied by the city for minor infarctions. I suspsect what this politician wants to do is close that “loophole”, so that Denver’s abuse of the same clause will hold, and those denied won’t have recourse to seek licenses in true shall-issue states.
Pro-Gun Activists Need Women on Their Side
Today The View from North Central Idaho points us to a story in the media that’s decidedly not flattering to gun owners, but I put this in the category of “they gave us enough rope, and we didn’t disappoint”:
Wives were threats. Girlfriends were threats. They are the new scourges of secular life, hunting down unsuspecting men to get bucks and tear out their hearts. Women who talked too much were threats. And women who held public office and wouldn’t shut up were the scourge of the land. I also have picked up bumper stickers at gun shows that said: “I just got a gun for my wife. It’s the best trade I ever made.” Or handouts detailing the “Top 10 Reasons Handguns Are Better than Women,” ending with the No. 1 reason, “You can buy a silencer for a handgun.” I also had seen some pretty vicious materials on Hillary Clinton and Janet Reno. A new fear floated above some of the gun exhibits: judges, lawyers and voters were giving women too much power, and the women were using that power to take guns away from their husbands, their boyfriends and their constituents. A gun-grabber lurked in the heart of the liberated woman.
Women are the fastest growing segment of the shooting community. Saying and doing things that alienate them, and make them feel unwelcome, is a great way to put our right to bear arms in jeaopardy over the long run. This is bad press, I agree with Joe on that, but it’s bad press that we deserved. Maybe the reporter came to that gun show with a pre-existing bias, but maybe she didn’t and we created an enemy where none had previously existed.
I don’t agree with many of the things this reporter says, and the article is definitely overtly hostile, but it should serve as a lesson to gun folks out there that you have to treat noobs with kid gloves, and not to just assume that anyone you talk to is a fellow gun enthusiast, and has already drank the kool-aid. Getting into the our community can be an intimidating experience for nephytes, and that might mean setting aside a lot of the politics and rhetoric we use with each other, and just try to get the person excited about the sport. We can work on all the other prejudices, stereotypes, and preconceived notions later.
Buy Your Own Country
From my friend and shooting buddy Jason, who isn’t cool enough to blog yet, I get this news item that the Principality of Sealand, an old World War II offshore artillery platform off the coast of Britain, is up for sale by the owner. A few years back the geek community was abuzz over a tech venture that set up a computer data center on the platform for use as a “data haven”. I’ve met some of the people involved with this venture, and Jason has the distinction of once beating Prince Michael at Hydro Thunder. The world would indeed be a poorer place without wealthy British eccentrics.
If you’ve ever wanted to own your own country, now is the chance.
Divorce In Virginia
Bitter has an interesting post up about some people who want to change divorce laws in Virginia that I think is worth a read:
So since a mandatory separation giving them a year to think about it already required, what is Clayton suggesting they change? It would appear from the article that the group really is trying to keep people from leaving a marriage if the other refuses to approve it. It’s not an ideal situation at all, but I think it’s a bad path to go down if we refuse to let them out of it. If they really are just trying to add punishment like making custody rules tighter or something for the person who files, I really don’t see how that does anything to improve a family.
I think Bitter is right here. If there’s a problem with people walking away from marriages too easily, the solution isn’t to pass more laws, and get the government to intrude more into people’s private lives. I don’t have too many issues with the government recognizing marriages, and dealing with the legal mess when they dissolve as a byproduct of that recognition, but I do have a problem, a big problem, with using it as a hook to meddle in people’s personal affairs. If the government ran my life as well as it runs itself, my life would be a mess. I agree that divorce is a problem, and people resort to it too quickly, but that’s not an issue for government to be concerned about.
It’s hard for me to understand how converatives like Clayton understand that the government is bad at running the economy, but somehow think it can be good at managing people’s lives. I don’t want people’s personal affairs becoming a political issue, no matter how messed up they are. People suck, and conservatives need to get over it, and stop looking for the government solutions to that basic fact.
How Not to Win
I’m going to start a category of gun related posts entitled “How Not to Win”. My intention is to point out issues within the pro-gun movement that I don’t think do us any favors politically, that don’t help win others over to our cause, and create barriers toward introducing new people to the shooting sports. These three things are critical, because most statistics are showing the traditional hunting culture is contracting, and if all of us want to keep our boomsticks, we need to work at replacing them with different kinds of shooters. As a community we certainly do a lot of squabbling among ourselves, , which is fine, even healthy, but at the end of the day, to quote Ben Franklin, we must hang together, or surely we will all hang seperately.
Buying Guns on the Internet
Up until now I’ve been pretty much an Evil Black Rifle guy, but lately I’ve been wanting to collect older stuff, since surplus is cheap, and I’m currently dumping a lot of money into remodeling a house. To that end, a few months ago, I obtained a C&R Federal Firearms License (FFL) from the ATF. I don’t notice too many gun bloggers blogging about C&R issues, so I figure I’d post some things about the subject from time to time.
The C&R license basically allows you to recieve and send firearms on the ATF C&R list, or any firearm over 50 years old in interstate commerce, from other licensed dealers, importers and wholesalers. Last night I completed my first purchase under the license; a Mosin-Nagant M91/30 from Century International Arms. I have to admit that it’s pretty cool to order a rifle off the Internet as if you were ordering a DVD on Amazon. It’ll be well worth the 30 dollars the license costs, since I intend to collect a few pieces. Needless to say, prices are lower when you can bypass your local dealer FFL and just order directly.