Here’s one church that certainly knows its audience:
Found via Black Bear Blog.
Year: 2009
How Well do the Lost-and-Stolen Laws Work?
In a run up to a memorial event for fallen police officers, reporters watching Harrisburg are waiting to see if Fast Eddie decides to use his speech to honor the officers or use their deaths to push for his gun ban agenda. But in an interesting side note to one of the articles pondering Rendell’s plans, the columnist actually inquired as to the success of Philadelphia’s last gun control stunt – lost-and-stolen reporting.
Philadelphia’s nine month-old lost-and-stolen law, for example, remains under legal appeal that could take another year or two.
Everett Gillison, deputy mayor for public safety, tells me that while 152 guns have been reported lost or stolen since the city law took effect in July, not one has been recovered. Not one.
Not a single result has come from their illegal law that flies in the face of state preemption.
Air Rifle Bleg
PapaDeltaBravo is thinking of getting into air gun shooting and is looking to buy an air rifle. I know some of my readers know a lot of about air guns, and I’m sure he’d appreciate any advice.
How I Spent My Saturday
A few folks were complaining this morning that they couldn’t get on the VPN at work. I checked the phone lines, and they seemed to be out too. I figured it was a telco issue. Got Bitter up, because we were going to head to L.L. Bean because I am in great need of pants (I can’t be stealing Robb‘s gig now can I?). I figured I’d stop by work on the way there.
Once I got there, I realized we had a power issue. Nothing in my data center was on. Called up the facilities guy, and got him out there, along with the landlord. We had to get the subzero freezers out to outlets with power. All the lab plugs were dead, and the subzeros keep things at -40C for a reason. Normally they were powered off the UPS. What happened?
UPS is totally dead. Nothing on the screen. Circuit breakers all tripped. These aren’t small breakers, like you have in a residence. It’s 200 amp 480 volt three phase power. Takes a good bit of force to close them. I try to reset one, and I hear a loud arcing sound. Uh oh. Called up the UPS company. Meanwhile, we went and flipped all the breakers over to bypass the UPS and get everything on PECO. I brought up part of my systems until I could figure out what was up with the UPS. Went to L.L. Bean in the mean time.
Get back to work, and the UPS guy says it blew a transformer. It’ll take some skill and time to repair. Figuring we’ll be on PECO for a while, I brought up the rest of the room. I’m hoping all the lab equipment is OK. Those freezers were off for a while. We also have incubators for cell lines, but those are water jacketed incubators and hold their heat very well. Hopefully everything will be fine on Monday. At least all my systems were fine.
A Special Request
Robert Spitzer is a Political Science professor at SUNY Cortland, he also is the author of three gun control books. He wrote a Letter to the Editor in the New York Times this morning that says this:
Former President Jimmy Carter is right about bringing back the assault weapons ban, including the fact that legitimate hunters and sportsmen have no interest in using such weapons for sport. He mentions the underlying cause that feeds opposition to it: the deep-seated fear among gun owners of anything labeled a “gun ban.â€
Here’s what I’d like to ask my readers to do. Post as a comment, or e-mail me pictures of “assault weapons” being used for sporting purposes. I’m looking at you CMP and NRA HP shooters. I am going to make a collage for Professor Spitzer. Let’s be sure he understands exactly how many people use these for sport all the time, in hundreds of legitimate shooting matches all over the country.
The Best Defense …
… is a good offense. Even if ATF reform is going to be tremedously difficult to get through The House, given the anti-gun leadership there, we can get people on record in the Senate, and that will be worthwhile. I will be watching Senator Specter very closely on this one. Will he sign on to the bill?
UPDATE: You know, I just noticed that Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont, was a sponsor of the bill. He’s not exactly Mr. NRA, with a D rating last time he ran for Senate. What’s up with that? Did someone at ATF piss in his cornflakes? No matter, we’ll take all the help we can get. If Senator Leahy wants to get all kissy kissy with gun owners, I’ll gladly pucker up. Let’s hope this is the start of Senator Leahy looking to live up to his state’s impeccable pro-gun reputation.
NRA Whittington Center
This is an interesting claim here:
“The NRA doesn’t run this facility,†he said. “Our mission is education and outdoor recreation. We are not politically motivated. The NRA doesn’t underwrite us. They don’t fund our operations in any way.â€
What? What’s wrong with pointing out that it’s funded through the NRA Foundation, which is a non-political branch of the National Rifle Association that promotes shooting sport activities and educational outreach? Are they ashamed to be associated with the NRA?
Actually, Whittington Center plays an interesting role in NRA History. Before the famed Cincinnati Revolt, there were plans afoot by the faction of NRA’s leadership that wanted to get out of politics to move NRA’s headquarters from 1600 Rhode Island Avenue, in Washington D.C., to Colorado Springs, Colorado. A massive shooting facility was planned, 37,000 acres, in New Mexico, called the National Shooting Center.
That was not to be long lived, because of a member revolt lead by Harlan Carter at the 1977 Annual Meeting in Cincinnati. NRA’s old, politically fearful leadership was swept aside, and plans for moving the Headquarters from Washington were scrapped. But NRA completed the National Shooting Center, but named it Whittington Center.
So it stands now as a monument to the plans of the old guard to turn NRA into nothing more than a shooting sports organization, which, if they had been successful, would have probably meant the end of legal gun ownership in this country. That’s not to say I believe Whittington Center is something NRA ought to be ashamed of, because I think it’s worthwhile, but I don’t think Whittington Center should be ashamed of NRA either.
Bureaucratic Incentives
I’m not persuaded by this Pajamas Media article that bases a lot of its finding on “ATF official said.”  ATF officials have a great incentive to play up the Mexican gun problem, because Congress has been willing to open the funding spigot full blast in order to help combat the problem.
I’ve seen this political tactic play out locally in Pennsylvania more than once, only with the City of Philadelphia playing the role of the Mexican Government. The City bitches and moans about guns and criminals, and demands Harrisburg pass more gun laws. Pro-gun forces in Harrisburg resist, and there is much whining and moaning. Then, when interest groups see an opportunity, a proposal is put forward to give more funding to some kind of law enforcement, or other pet activity with an aim to reduce crime, and everyone jumps on the alternative proposal to send more cash to Philadelphia, in hopes they will go away happy and will shut up about gun control.
It’s naive to believe Mexico isn’t also embarrassing the United States into sending more aid, and it plays right along with ATF’s bureaucratic incentives, because it means more agents, more inspectors, new fancy computer systems, and all the other things bureaucracies like to have more of.
Mexico could care less whether we pass more gun laws. Like the City of Philadelphia, they know full well the root of the real problem, but as long as they can deflect blame, and keep the money rolling in, their perverse incentive will have them play the gun control card again, and again. Firearms policy is a remarkable political tool, for both sides, in American politics. No doubt folks in Mexico have learned this.
VPC “Public Support”
Howard Nemerov brings us part II of his series on the VPC’s finances.
Two people perform most of VPC’s public outreach: Executive Director Josh Sugarman and Legislative Director Kristen Rand. Between 2003 and 2007, as revenues decreased 49.9%, both Sugarman’s and Rand’s salaries increased 5.9%. But because revenues decreased, these two top earners––each of whom earned $132,894 in salary and $3,987 in benefits in 2007––went from 15.5% of total revenue in 2003 to 32.7% in 2007, more than doubling their slice of the pie (111.3% increase). Having just two employees taking home about one-third of total revenue may not be a long-term success strategy for a normal business, but it works when normal profitability concerns don’t exist. To understand the financial circumstances of VPC, one must understand their definition of “public support,†which accounted for 91.8% of VPC’s total revenue between 2003 and 2007.And to understand VPC’s “public support,†one must understand the Joyce Foundation, because VPC’s primary “public donor†is the Joyce Foundation.
You now the Joyce Foundation. Funny, I seem to recall them being strangely associated with someone of great prominence. You know, the guy who they say we’re nuts for believing is after our guns?
But I guess Robb is right, and Sugarmann is likely putting on his sad clown face trying not to laugh all the way to the bank. Hey, if you can’t beat ’em, you might as well enrich yourself pretending to, I guess. If Josh Sugarmann wants to keep suckering Joyce out of money, who am I to stop him? Better than it going to an effort that might actually accomplish something.
Insurance and Pirates
Dave Hardy tells us about some perspective on allowing crews to arm themselves against pirates from someone in the Insurance business. It’s interesting about the crewman suing Maersk for failing to provide a safe work environment. As much as I wish this would change things, it’s one of the reasons so few merchant vessels are registered in the United States. Safe work environments aren’t a problem for the government of say, Liberia.
But this kind of calculation has always bothered me. You have two entities, the shipowner and the insurer, essentially colluding to declare the crew expendable commodities, just like the ship’s cargo. If the left are really so big on workers rights, this sort of things should absolutely concern them. It’s exactly the same calculation used by most employers to ban any sort of firearm or self-defense enabling device in the workplace — that your personal safety is less important than the possibility the company may be sued.
It’s wrong in both cases, it’s just a much more stark examples when we’re talking about merchant vessel crews who are likely to faced armed pirates.