January 2008 – Page 23 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Trial Day

Today Greg Rotz is going to court to challenge the unlawful revocation of his License to Carry Firearms by Franklin County Sheriff Robert Wollyung. Rotz had his license revoked for carrying openly, an activity not forbidden by Pennsylvania law, in a place he had a legal right to be while armed.

I talked about this story previously here, here, and here. For the sake of all of us in Pennsylvania, we do hope he prevails. I will let everyone know the verdict as soon as I can find out.

UPDATE: It would appear from folks who attended his hearing that Mr. Rotz has had his License to Carry Firearms reinstated. Excellent! Sheriff Wollyung has a lot to answer for in regards to abusing his authority.

New Jersey Approves Photo Enforcement

Photo enforcement is the latest euphemism for using traffic cameras as a way to generate revenue.Â Governor Corzine, who himself has little regard for traffic laws, has signed the piece of garbage into law.

Assembly Transportation Chairman John S. Wisniewski (D-Middlesex) first wrote the measure with a complex set of requirements that would force localities to adopt one camera manufacturer’s specific technology. The initial draft mandated that: “the violation images are captured by a single, digital camera unit which produces a set of two images for each violation.” This would have excluded several vendors who use multiple camera setups and wet film to achieve the same result, but a subsequent amendment dropped the single camera requirement.

Someone check Wisniewskis portfolio or associations, and I’m sure you’ll find a link to the company that made that camera somewhere!

Local governments had lobbied heavily for the legislation as means of shoring up tight municipal budgets. To take advantage of the new ticketing program, they must submit a list of high-volume intersections to the state transportation department which has final approval over which locations can use cameras. Like Arizona, New Jersey’s proposed law would require each ticket to be “served by a law enforcement official.” This means that motorists may avoid paying a citation by dodging process servers for forty business days after the date of the alleged violation.

Tickets should not be about raising revenues for local governments, they should be about public safety.Â Any photo enforcement centered around raising revenues as an argument ought to be rejected, and the fact that the local government openly tout this reason is another example of government being arrogant and out of control.Â Sadly, I wish this was limited to The Garden State, but it is not.Â We have to remind these people who they work for.

I could do my own New Hampshire prediction …

… or I could just agree with everything Uncle says.Â Yeah, I’m lazy today.

Where’s The Outrage From the Left?

I guess it’s hard to get upset about police state tactics when there’s no easy way to blame George W. Bush for it:

“I’ve been (Garfield County Sheriff Lou Vallario’s) longtime supporter, but I tell you what, to send a SWAT team down there was just absolutely over the hill,” he said. “Inappropriate is not nearly strong enough a word. It was gross irresponsibility and stupidity. … Is this Russia? I don’t know what we’re coming to when they think your kid needs medical help and they send a SWAT team.”

You think? Tam has more. So does Uncle.

UPDATE: Other sources are indicating to me that the state isn’t entirely insane here:

A search warrant and order for medical treatment says there was good reason to believe Jon needed treatment. It states that two social services caseworkers tried to explain to Tom Shiflett they believed the boy needed medical treatment after observing injuries including a “huge hematoma” and a sluggish pupil. They offered to pay for treatment, and said they would have to obtain a court order for treatment if they couldn’t get Shiflett’s consent, the warrant says.

That would justify the warrant in my opinion.

“Shiflett shouted at this worker and advised this worker that if he obtained a court order, he better ‘bring an army,'” the warrant states.

A first responder with West Care Ambulance wrote in an affidavit that she and others in an ambulance crew also believed the boy needed medical treatment.

The responder wrote that paramedics left the residence for fear of their safety after Tom Shiflett refused to let them treat his son and became “verbally abusive” to the ambulance crew.

OK, that probably warranted sending out a few officers to serve the warrant, but the SWAT team?

I Wouldn’t Want to Be Ed Either

I pretty much agree with Tony Phyrillas that Ed Rendell has had a bad year.Â Any year that’s bad for Ed is good for us.

None of the governor’s initiatives made it past the Legislature. Rendell sought $2.5 billion in new or expanded taxes to pay for his agenda. He got none of it. Rendell proposed an $850 million energy plan, a multi-billion dollar plan to provide health insurance to the uninsured and a proposal to lease the Turnpike to continue sinking money into the stateâ€™s failed mass transit systems. He struck out on all three.

A personal plea for more gun control was shot down by the Legislature late in the year and Rendell couldn’t even get a smoking ban passed by the time 2007 ended.

Rendell squandered what political muscle he had going into 2007. My theory has always been that Rendell lied too often about property tax relief. While voters still liked Rendell and rewarded him with a second term, they stopped believing anything the governor had to say.

I guess I’m odd.Â I never believed anything he had to say. Â Read the whole thing.Â Also bad news for Ed Rendell’s gun control agenda, Representative Lisa Bennington, who voted against us in the Judiciary Committee last month, had decided to quit after her term ends, because the pace of reform is just too slow for her.

We should all pat ourselves on the back for this one.Â I for one am happy to help contribute to frustrating the anti-gunners out of the Pennsylvania legislature.

Gunning for Obama?

I think Obama’s success has more to do with Hillary Clinton’s deficiencies than Obama’s own strengths. Both Obama and John Edwards lack political and executive experience. Of course, so does Hillary Clinton, but more importantly Hillary lacks the political talents of her husband, and carries all of his baggage too. But that’s neither here nor there. What I mean to bring up is a post from this blogger, which mostly speaks highly of Obama, but tripped over my google alert with this:

Can he still blow it? Yes, he can. The institutional Democratic Party, which has been behind Hillary Clinton, and which destroyed Dean with John Kerry, remains intact. America is filled with gun nuts, and any one of them could turn Obama into Martin Luther King Jr. at any moment.

No one doubts I have strong disagreements with Obama on the topic of guns, as do the rest of us here, but why the implication that us “gun nuts” are out to kill the dark ones? If anything, “gun nuts” have a much stronger disdain for Hillary Clinton than we do for Obama, but I don’t think any of us “gun nuts” want either of them dead. We don’t call people who would do that “gun nuts” we call them plain “nuts”, “murderers” or “assassins”, thank you.

Meaning of “Bear Arms”

Take a look at Clayton Cramer’s and Joe Olsen’s response to one of D.C. major assertions in Heller, that “bear arms” has some kind of military connotation.

Bob Barr on Georgia Issues & Heller

I’m glad to see Congressman Bob Barr, who has done more for gun rights in this country, both in and out of Congress, than a lot of other folks, speaking about the Heller case, and also praising some of the excellent work done by GeorgiaCarry.org:

While the debate over firearms rights in Georgia is often seen as a black and white issue — with gun control advocates lining up against the National Rifle Association (for which I serve as a board member) and other pro-Second Amendment groups, and with various media outlets taking sides reflective of the views of their editorial directors — the fact is, there is probably more that is not known about Georgiaï¿½s gun laws than is known. At least one group — GeorgiaCarry.Org — is working to educate not only lawmakers, but also journalists and the citizenry, concerning the history and extent of our state’s gun laws.

And closes with this:

These and other firearms-related issues likely will — and should — occupy the attention of our legislators during the 2008 session. One hopes that organizations like the NRA and GeorgiaCarry.Org, will continue to proactively educate and advocate on behalf of the inherent Second Amendment rights of all law-abiding Georgians, just as the lawyers representing such citizens in the District of Columbia will be doing in the Supreme Court early next year.

Hopefully NRA and GeorgiaCarry.org will be able to resolve differences over bills and work together.Â HB 915 is mostly a fine bill, with laudable and necessary objectives, but including the provision scuttling the parking lot bill was guaranteed to ensure NRA would not get behind it.Â Sometimes to work together, you have to put minor differences aside.Â Car carry is important to some gun owners, and while I don’t agree with it, if HB 915 is important to you, it’s not exactly a winning move to be selfish about your concerns, while saying someone else’s don’t matter.

I think reasonable people can disagree on the property rights aspects, I certainly have my views, which contrast against NRA’s and more than a few of my readers, I understand that taking that position has its consequences with other gun owners who disagree with me.

More on Georgia Issues

The Rome News-Tribune is covering the HB89, HB 915 controversy, and stumbles across the reason NRA is probably not backing HB 915:

Now for the meat in the coconut. Bearden’s bill – prefiled last week as HB 915 – contains this language: “Nothing in this Code section shall be construed to limit, restrict, or prohibit in any manner the existing rights of a private property owner, unless such private property has been leased to a government entity, and nothing in this Code section shall be construed to limit, restrict, or prohibit in any manner the existing rights of a private tenant, private employer, or private business entity.”

I didn’t see this section of HB 915 upon my first reading of the bill, or rather, what it did exactly didn’t quite sink in:

(c) This Nothing in this Code section shall not apply to competitors participating in organized sport shooting events. Law enforcement officers, peace officers retired from state or federal law enforcement agencies, judges, magistrates, solicitors-general, and district attorneys may carry pistols in publicly owned or operated buildings be construed to limit, restrict, or prohibit in any manner the existing rights of a private property owner, unless such private property has been leased to a government entity, and nothing in this Code section shall be construed to limit, restrict, or prohibit in any manner the existing rights of a private tenant, private employer, or private business entity

So basically HB 915, GeorgiaCarry’s preferred bill, scuttles HB 89, the NRA bill, by design, and you folks are wondering why NRA isn’t getting behind HB 915? Listen, I like the rest of the provisions in HB 915, but this isn’t a way to get things done.

I don’t agree with the NRA bill, but smearing them for not supporting your preferred bill when it undermines their preferred bill strikes me as not only unfair, but underhanded. If we spent half as much time going after the anti-gunners as we spend going after each other, we might get somewhere.

UPDATE:Â GeorgiaCarry.org has responded that HB 915 has nothing to do with HB 89, and that they have been working on this bill long before NRA introduced the parking lot bill.Â I do apologize for the insinuation that this was deliberate, but I’m still not sure I agree that this section doesn’t interfere with the main purpose of HB 89.Â I will have more on this, but be sure to follow the link to hear their side of this issue.

Unhappy Georgians

Both Conservative Scalawag and this guy are unhappy about NRA’s lack of support for Georgia HB 915, which improves Georgia’s carry laws by removing off limits places, and also includes a number of other pro-gun provisions:

Yep, the NRA, in my opinion has completely alienated the Georgia citizens and gun owners. This begs the question, are they even relevant as a pro-2nd Amendment organization any longer, or just another DC lobbyist group with its own interest at heart.

I wouldn’t go that far, but I agree that we should be asking for answers here, and I’m going to try to get one.Â This could be a matter of NRA believing that HB 89 is a more important legislative priority for them, which I think would be a mistake, but I also think it would be a mistake to pick up our toys and go home because we disagree on priority, or in my case, whether HB 89 is desirable at all.

If NRA were ignoring fighting an anti-gun bill in favor of pushing HB 89, then I would agree with a high level of outrage, but that’s not the case here.Â The fact is, HB 89, which prevents employers from firing employees for having a firearm in their vehicle, is important to a lot of gun owners, and I doubt the folks who support that bill feel like NRA is ignoring their concerns.Â Â We all have to be a little patient here.

As I have said before, I don’t agree with the NRA on pushing the parking lot stuff, but I’m not going to agree with the NRA on a lot of things over the course of years. Â Nonetheless, they’ve staked a lot of political capital on this particular issue, so from their perspective, it’s necessary for them to follow through.Â Before we get out the torches and pitchforks, let me see if I can find out what’s going on.