September 2007 – Page 17 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Gun Blogger Rendezvous Simulcast

A few people have requested that I simulcast the GBR. I think I can probably do this, since I plan to take my MacBook. It appears that Google Talk can handle AV if I use iChat. ~~If anyone wants to give it a try, I’ve set up a GTalk UserID snowflakesinhell. The webcam is on, and we can give it a try.~~

Appearances can be deceiving. Google Talk can only do it with a special plug-in. I’m giving Skype a try. My ID there is SnowflakesInHell. Feel free to connect if you’d like to help me test out whether this will work for GBR.

UPDATE: Skype seems to work pretty well for one on one, but not so well for broadcasting.Â Given that Kevin says wireless coverage at Circus Circus is spotty, I’ll keep looking, but will keep Skype in mind.

Must Read

Legal Bitch points to a great debate hosted by the federalist society between Bob Levy, Alan Gura, Glenn Reynolds, Josh Horowitz, Saul Cornell, and Dennis Henigan.

I Love Reasoned Discourse^TM

Heh, apparently I endorse terrorists now.Â And they wonder why so few these days are taking their arguments seriously.

Mandatory Health Care

For your own good you see.Â Â From Les Jones.Â Everyone has their line in the sand, and this kind of crap that John Edwards is talking about is getting dangerously close to mine.Â Go to the doctor, or we’ll send in the SWAT team to drag you there?

It it comes to that, I’m going to start a secession movement.

Taking a break from gay sex scandals …

… the federal and various state governments really need to put a stop to crap like this.

Suckling at the Teet of Government

Follow this link to see who in your town might be receiving inappropriate ~~welfare payments~~ farm subsidy checks.Â Republicans will never end farm subisides, because the people who receive them are also the people who vote for them.Â Democrats will never end them, because they’ve never met a government program they didn’t love as one of their children.

Couldn’t Handle the Reasoned Discourse^TM

Looks like Robyn Ringler has had about enough Reasoned Discourse^TM, and plans to close down comments:

As I have said before, if I were standing in public and someone said these things to me, I would walk away. And so it is not my style to stand still and allow the abuse to pile up all around me and others I respect. That is why I will no longer accept any comments at all.

I’ve mostly ignored Robyn, so I can’t personally say she’s censored anything of mine, but I’ve seen folks who put up posts elsewhere, that they claimed to have posted there and not had them approved, that seemed eminently reasonable to me.

I have no doubt that Robyn has gotten some pretty nasty stuff. For that I apologize on behalf of our community. People get really passionate and angry when you start talking about taking away something they feel is their birthright, and even on my side of the issue, I find myself regularly dealing with a lot of that passion and anger.

I am sorry to those of you who have sent in such thoughtful, intelligent stories and ideas and to those of you who are really fighting on both sides of the debate to find some common ground. I salute all of you and hold you dear to my heart. You are true heroes.

It’s very difficult to find common ground on this issue precisely because the anti-gun movement categorically denies that we have a constitutional right to bear arms and refuses to agree to treat it like other constitutional rights. If Robyn wants to have a debate on the scope of the right to keep and bear arms, I’m game for that, but I don’t think there’s much common ground when you won’t even recognize the right exists at all.

We will remain an open forum here on the pro-gun side of the blogosphere, but I’ve been surprised at how few advocates of gun control are willing to come here and have an open discussion with gun-right advocates. I does not speak to the strength of the gun control side of the argument that they continually have to shut down debate and discussion for their views to triumph.

UPDATE: Thirdpower has more

UPDATE: More from Robb and SayUncle

Fleeing Criminals

Yesterday’s story from Michigan involved a poorly considered shot at fleeing suspects.Â Â Reader KathyH sent me this story from Pennsylvania illustrates the legal risks involved in doing so:

Police said two masked teens armed with BB guns and baseball bats were in the process of robbing the home of Eraldo Iannitelli shortly before 6 a.m. when he returned home. Grabbing a 12-gauge shotgun, he fired at the fleeing teens.

A 16-year-old boy was hit. Neighbors who heard his cries called 911. Police are searching for the second teen.

According to police, Mr. Iannitelli is being charged with attempted homicide, aggravated assault and reckless endangerment.

The 16 year old will be charged with robbery and aggravated assault, police said.

The gray area comes in when the suspects are not fleeing, but are merely engaging in a tactical retreat, and plan to continue the fight.Â There’s always a possibility this man felt that the suspects were not breaking off the fight, and thus his actions were not inappropriate, but one should always be inherent wary of firing on suspects who are retreating from you.

Black Sunday

Attention Pennsylvanians!

This is the first day of the Pennsylvania Instant Check Outage.Â I encourage everyone within the Commonwealth who cares about gun rights to write your state representatives and make sure they know how hopping mad you are about this.

This goes double if your representative is a Democrat, especially a rural Democrat who normally supports gun rights. I would advise including something along the lines ofÂ “This action by our governor makes me question the Democratic party’s commitment to my right to keep and bear arms.”Â Make all the Democrats concerned that you think their party is abadoning your gun rights.Â Make them want Rendell’s head on the platter for going ahead with this and damaging their party.Â And don’t be afraid to mail the Governor’s office and tell him you won’t vote for his party in the next election.

It’s only by raising a stink about this that we can head off the possibility of these types of outages happening in the future.Â Rendell felt safe in screwing us because he doesn’t have to worry about being up for re-election, but if it looks like this could hurt the Democrats, they’ll be sure to keep the next lame duck governor on a short leash.

Careful Out There

Over at AR15.com, a guy gets into some trouble in Pennsylvania for a non crime:

Told him my .45 is on my hip and my CCW is with my license. He gets me out of the vehicle and takes the pistol to run it to see if it stolen. I am thinking no problem I have had this pistol since 88. Bought it in CA from a buddy in the Marines. The weapon comes back with no history in fact after a four hours search ATF can not find any weapons in my name. They want to know why it is not registered in PA. Told him when I moved to PA, I asked Chester County Sheriff if I had to register my pistols in PA since I bought them in CA. He said no they are in the system.

This wasn’t a lawful seizure.Â The course of action here would be to retain an attorney, and file suit to get the firearm returned.Â Under Pennsylvania law, the state is required to pay attorneys fees for a gun owner who has to file suit to get an unlawfully held firearm returned to him.

Under Pennsylvania law, there also isn’t supposed to be a registry of firearms, but the State Police has been maintaining one “illegally”, well, it used to be illegally, until the PA Supreme Court essentially read the registration prohibition right out of the Uniform Firearms Act and said the registry was a “record of sale” rather than what it actually is.

So it would appear because this officer wasn’t able to find the gun in the registry, he presumed it was illegal, and seized it.Â Â We need a legislative fix for this in Pennsylvania, and it needs to come soon.Â Unfortunately, there’s no chance that we’ll be able to get this through our current Governor.