I have to wonder if Elanor Roosevelt, in her speaking to Hillary Clinton, ever mentioned this whole thing. Of course, I’m not sure I’d say the Roosevelts were champions of gun rights. After all, it was FDR who put his signature on the National Firearms Act.
Month: November 2007
Doesn’t Jibe With the 911 Tape
Apparently the Pasadena man who shot two burglars who were stealing from his neighbor’s house is remorseful about the incident.
Lambright contended that Horn was startled to find the burglars just 15 feet from his front door when he stepped onto his porch. “He was petrified at that point,” the lawyer said. “You hear him say, ‘I’ll shoot. Stop!’ They jumped. Joe thought they were coming for him. It’s a self-defense issue.”
You can hear the complete 911 tape here. I didn’t hear “I’ll shoot. Stop!” I heard “Move, n’yer dead!” followed by shotgun blasts. Syd had a lot more on the event here. John Lott had this to say:
I am however bothered by the advice given by the 911 operator not to go outside to intervene. It appears as if the 911 operator is giving advice that would cover all such cases and I don’t see how that is at all responsible.
Given the circumstances, I’m not sure I disagree with what the dispatcher did. The dispatcher doesn’t know this guy from Adam, and for all you know he might end up causing more problems than he’s fixing, and the dispatcher had reason to believe that was the case.
But he’s a 911 dispatcher, not a family friend offering sage advice. His job is just to keep a lid on everything, and from his point of view, a fella wandering around the scene of a crime with a shotgun is trouble waiting to happen. From my point of view, a residential burglary is a job for the police, but if I’m reasonably confident my neighbors are home, or hear screams or other such, am I going to listen to the 911 guy saying not go outside? We all have to think about what’s right, and keep in mind that agents of the state will act as such, and are more concerned about a good outcome for them, rather than the people directly involved.
I don’t think this guy in Pasadena exercised judgment that was even in the same universe as good, and his lawyer will have quite a job cut out for him. Legally, I believe he’s quite likely a murderer. Whether or not a Texas grand jury will see things that way, we’ll see. I won’t suggest that if they fail to indict it’s a travesty of justice.
Frank Honesty from Frankel
One of our state reps seems to understand why Gun Control has a hard time going anywhere these days:
State Rep. Dan Frankel took note of the e-mails he received last week concerning a package of gun control bills emotionally endorsed by Gov. Ed Rendell.
Unofficially, the count was about 1,000 to 10, with the gun-rights lobby winning that grassroots campaign just as it succeeded in rebuffing Mr. Rendell’s efforts to sway the House Judiciary Committee.
Did I ever mention I love Pennsylvania gun owners? We beat them 100 to friggin one! That’s how to get things done. Frankel goes on to say:
“There’s no political penalty for those that don’t support [gun control] measures, but there is a political penalty if they do,” Mr. Frankel said of the impressive political activism that continues on behalf of sportsmen and other gun owners in Pennsylvania.
That’s exactly what Ed Rendell fails to understand. Polls don’t matter. What matters is we’ll turn out to vote for the other guy if you vote to screw us. The people that you polled barely understood the issue, and won’t be pulling a lever based on it anyway.
“We know based on independent polling that most Pennsylvanians support stronger gun control laws,” he said. “The question is where on those persons’ priority list of issues does gun safety rank, as opposed to where on the list of the gun advocates. … The other side are single-issue voters and that carries a lot of weight.”
Yes, it does. I have said before I’m not always a single issue voter, but gun rights ranks very high on my political calculus, because it tells me an awful lot about how a certain politician views his relationship with those that he governs, and his respect for limits being placed on governmental power. The gun issue is a great litmus test for how much a political candidate cares about liberty.
“This is a marathon, not a sprint,” Mr. Rendell said. “We are not going to go away.”
Yes, it is, and we have a lot more endurance than your folks do, Governor. Do you really want to start this political fight? Because I promise you, we’re very interested in finishing it, and not on terms you are going to like.
In addition to the vigilant NRA, which on its national Web site immediately posted information about the House Judiciary Committee’s votes and each committee member’s position on them, a newer coalition of smaller gun-rights organizations adds to the effectiveness of the gun-rights lobby. They banded together two years ago to win legislative compromise on how gun owners would be affected by a new law concerning protection-from-abuse orders, and were also active on last week’s votes.
“We are more organized now than we’ve ever been in Pennsylvania,” said Kim Stolfer, legislative committee chairman of the Allegheny County Sportsmen’s League, which is part of the coalition.
I doubt this was the effect the Governor was predicting he would have.
Philadelphians scared …
… of guns? Not all of them, but the media and political cultures of Philadelphia certainly promote it.
How to Change Someone’s Opinion on Guns
Take them too the range. In my experience, if you can get them to go, you have a good chance of changing their minds. You might not make a gun rights activist out of them, but they will at least see both sides of the coin.
Pennsylvania Constitution No Obstacle for Ed
Jeff Soyer points to a pretty good editorial in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review. I agree with the editorial that one-gun-a-month and weakening preemption are unconstitutional on their face.  I’m not sure the “Lost and Stolen” bill is, even though I think it’s still bad public policy, and shouldn’t be passed into law. My reasoning is that it’s a regulatory requirement rather than a restraint on anyone’s ability to possess, carry, buy, lend or sell a firearm. The state conceivably has the power to require reporting of a lost or stolen gun under it’s powers to control it’s militia. Nonetheless, the point is a good one:
If a majority of Pennsylvanians deem it necessary to enact Rendell-like gun controls, wouldn’t they agree to amend Article I, Section 21? What those of Rendell’s ilk fear — and why such constitutional end-runs are so routinely pressed — is that a majority of Pennsylvanians likely don’t support such schemes.
I don’t see any serious movement in this direction in Pennsylvania. But then again, if you can just get judges to render the right meaningless, why bother doing it the hard way?
Getting Involved
David Codrea has this to say:
If gun owners would get off their lazy, apathetic butts and consistently and proactively devote time, effort and treasure to the cause, we would be invincible. It’s easy to point the finger at politicians for attacking us, or NRA management for compromising, and I’m not saying that should stop, but put in perspective, politicians wouldn’t betray us if they didn’t dare–and compromises wouldn’t be made if they weren’t perceived as advantageous or necessary.
Yep. If every gun owner were active and involved, we could walk into legislatures around the country and dictate terms. This past week in Pennsylvania we were told, by Ed Rendell I believe, that it was calls to the legislators, spawned by certain interest groups, that had legislators scared.
That’s a great result, but if it was more than a few thousand motivated gun owners, I’d be surprised. If every Pennsylvania gun owner, and I don’t just mean someone who has a rifle up in the attic, I mean people who go out to the range or to the woods to shoot, hunt, what have you, on a regular basis, had called or e-mailed, the staffers would have been overwhelmed, and few legislators would have dared vote against us.
It all comes down to numbers, and sadly, there are a lot more people who are interested in enjoying the shooting sports, and enjoying their right to own a firearm for self-protection, than there are people who are interested in preserving those rights.
Must Read
Thanks to Kevin for pointing me to this excellent Blackfive post on soldiers coming back home.
Parker/Heller Roundup
Mostly “linky-no-thinky” until Monday. I’m busy trying to get all my leaves up this holiday. They were late falling off this year, and I only have a few collection days left before they stop.
Fred Thompson, Moose Chili & Chauvinism
… in Bruce’s neck of the woods. One thing though:
At Skip’s Gun and Sports store, dubbed “Daycare for Men†on their signature red shirts, the GOP hopeful admired different types of guns and talked about his support for the 2nd Amendment.
Daycare for men? That’s so 20th century shooting culture. Get used to it fellas: the times they are a changin.