2009 – Page 172 – Shall Not Be Questioned

National Park Carry Update

It’s being reported around blogs and in the media that the Obama Administration is not appealing the concealed carry rule injunction issued by a DC District Court earlier in the month.Â That doesn’t mean the issue is dead though.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly, who handed down the injunction against implementing the firearms rule change, also granted NRA’s Motion to Intervene, which allows NRA to appeal the ruling independent of the Obama Administration.Â That’s not a guarantee that NRA will prevail on appeal, but the issue is not dead, and it’s honestly probably better to have NRA appealing it than the Obama Administration.

Ed Rendell vs. Wayne LaPierre

On Face the Nation this morning:

Watch CBS Videos Online

I think Wayne did a reasonable job articulating the issue, though no doubt some will be upset over the reference to Project Exile. But the point was that Ed Rendell won’t really address the fact that the City of Philadelphia does not use the gun laws it already has to lock up violent people who misuse guns. Rendell tries to deflect that by arguing we’ve grown the State’s prison population. Maybe it’s not enough? If you only have room for rapists, armed robbers, and murderers, what good is passing more gun laws going to do if there’s no room in prisons for them?

Ed has an idea though. He wants to make the entire Commonwealth a low grade prison, where he gets to decide which sharp and dangerous objects you “need” and which ones you don’t.

Compare and Contrast

We’re told that dissent is the highest form of patriotism.Â I will leave it to the reader to decide which side here dissents more patriotically:

Tea Party – Bucks County, Pennsylvania

Bitter I attended the Bucks County Tea Party today, in Washington Crossing, Pennsylvania.Â This is the historic park where Washington is reputed to have crossed the Continental Army across a partially frozen Delaware River in December of 1776, in order to attack a Hessian garrison at Trenton.Â A great place for a Tea Party, and a great day for one too.Â I’d estimate the crowd on the ground at about 500-600 people, and given that people were coming in and going out the while time, total attendance is probably more like 700 to 800 people.Â Not bad for a tax protest in a quiet suburb outside of Philadelphia.

They had several speakers, and a few politicians were brave enough to speak to the crowd. One of them was Scott Petri, the local Republican State Representative. To be honest, I thought his speech was pretty inappropriate for the event. At a protest aimed at big, intrusive and tax hungry government, I’m not looking for a detailed speech on fiscal policy. I want to understand your philosophy, and I want you to signal to me that you get it.

Petri didn’t do that for me.Â A bit about how the federal government is creating local budget problems by not paying their fair share for special education prompted one Tea Party goer to shout “Education is not a federal mandate!”Â In another sentence he sought more funding for a the park museum.Â Absolutely, this is part of the problem.Â You can’t argue to cut other people’s pet projects, and then say hands off your own.Â You shouldn’t argue that people in places remote to your local community pay for your community’s projects.

I understand the difficulties involved with budgeting, and finding money, especially in poorer communities, but a Tea Party isn’t the place for policy discussions.Â It’s the place to show voters you understand them and their concerns, and to set yourself apart from the same old, same old. Scott Petri failed at that.

UPDATE: Dave Markowitz has pictures of the Philadelphia Tea Party on Independence Mall.Â Looks like about the same size as ours.

One Way GOA Could Make Itself Useful

It seems pretty clear that Obama is willing to push a treaty that would appear to require extensive licensing in order to participate in many shooting activities, including reloading and home building, as well as requiring the United States to share such licensing information with the Mexican Government.

While it would hardly be fair to call John Tester and Brian Schweitzer of Montana anti-gun, after all, Schweitzer just signed a bill that’s a pretty bold midle finger to the federal gun control regime.Â But the fact is that Obama is the change Tester and Schweitzer told Montanans to vote for:

â€œI heard him tell us in Montana that he is not going to take our guns away,â€ the governor said.

The Obama campaign disputed Coxâ€™s comments, saying the candidate has been honest about his position on guns.

â€œThe NRA is wrong to suggest we are misleading anybody,â€ said campaign spokesman Caleb Weaver, adding â€œgun owners have nothing to fear from Barack Obama.â€

– Missoulian

And now for Tester:

U.S. Sen. Jon Tester says Barack Obama is regular guy who is no threat to gun owners. Tester said Thursday that he spoke with Obama “straight up” on the gun issue. The senator says his fellow Democrat understands the issue much better than he used to.

Now we know how Barack Obama understands this issue, and Tester and Schweitzer were both dead wrong to try to pull the wool over the eyes of Montanans about Obama.Â No one who took a serious look at Obama’s record could come to the conclusion that he was “no threat to gun owners.”

NRA is not going to call either of them to account for it, because it wouldn’t be smart politics.Â Tester will vote the right way in the Senate, and Schweitzer will sign pro-gun bills.Â But I can’t really stomach the thought of those two getting off easy for helping bring us to this point with President Obama.Â I know Tester will vote against CIFTA in the Senate, and I appreciate that.Â Gun owners should appreciate that too.Â But if groups like GOA want to do something that would be useful, generating a little embarrassment over their support of Obama during the campaign would be in order.

Gun owners in Montana should be reminded that Schweitzer and Tester campaigned hard for Obama in Montana, and deliberately tried to cover up for his anti-gun record.Â Now Obama has made his positions clear, and gun owners in Montana should make their position clear to the Governor and Senator Tester: we don’t like being lied to.Â GOA would be the perfect vehicle for helping send such a message.Â But will they?

Ed Rendell is Nuts

Fast Eddie took to the airwaves to call all gun owners who own semi-automatic rifles “nuts.”Â If you own one of these firearms, you also hate police.Â The anchors of CNBC didn’t challenge him on anything at all, they agreed that there’s no reason at not to ban guns.

Ed Rendell says these guns have zero purpose because you wouldn’t use a black rifle in a duck blind.Â (Actually, Governor, if that is your new standard, no American could own anything other than a shotgun.)Â The “fact” that they have no purpose might come as a surprise to all of these people.

Eddie also seems to have missed out on the latest talking points – he’s about three months behind. The argument that NRA is worthless was only the popular meme after the election up until Inauguration Day. After that, the NRA suddenly became so powerful that even Dianne Feinstein is afraid to introduce a gun ban.

UPDATE: From the comments:

So the police have need of weapons whose only purpose is to kill and to maim? Has â€œTo kill and maimâ€ replaced â€œTo protect and serveâ€?

Heh.

Dance Mr. Obama, Dance!

You can hear the whip cracking now if you listen closely.Â It seems that Mexican President Felipe Calderon is in the process of writing the White House gun control policy. Given how quickly Obama was to fold on the Inter-American Arms Treaty, we should probably prepare to fight not only that, but the rest of Mexico’s demands following their meeting:

Ban on semi-automatic rifles
Gun owner registry
One gun-a-month
Enact Mexican gun laws in the United States

That bit about applying Mexican gun laws here in the United States is exactly what Paul Helmke called for last month.Â That list is just from one press conference.Â I’m sure if we looked back at his other statements, he’d find even more demands.Â Just like our own President, the Mexican President pays lip service to “respecting” the Second Amendment, but argues that if American citizens could just understand how much of a problem the drug trade is for Mexico, then we should be willing to compromise it away as if that’s simply the neighborly thing to do.

President Obama might dance for you as you crack your whip, President Calderon.Â But we voters will oppose every gun restriction you tell him to introduce.Â We will send his party packing from Congress, and you will get nothing.Â It would be better to get your own house in order instead of telling us what to do and trying to rewrite our Constitution for us.

Home Improvement: The Government Regulation Continues

There hasn’t been much to say about our patio repairs because weather and the government have not been on our side.

With the beams finally in place, the roof on the short side finally extended out, and the new shingles on the entire thing, we were ready for our second inspection this week. What we were not ready for was the verdict.

Even though only about 5% of the actual structure is “new” (the roof extension of a few inches), the inspector refused to grandfather it in. Which means it must be up to today’s code in all ways. What does that mean? Well, hurricane clips and lag bolts to connect it the roof to the house. Now keep in mind that this structure has been sturdy and upright for years before Sebastian ever even moved into the house. Oh yeah, and we don’t get hit by hurricanes here. Or tornadoes. We get some strong winds every once in a while, but that’s it. This thing is not going to go flying down the neighborhood.

Patio Footer 1 But it gets better.Â The inspector decided that the plans his office previously approved were no longer good enough. Remember when I posted the excitement of the replacement beams? You probably didn’t notice the footers.Â They were simple and subtle.Â They would blend in well with anything.

patiobeamfooter2 Well, that footer is no more. The inspector demanded that the posts be completely removed and bolted to to the concrete and more securely to the roof. He said that if I kicked it, the beams might slide out. Talk about bullshit. So our contractor, poor guy, had to buy new materials and take out the beams so they now look like this.

I am not pleased. But, at least they will be covered.

So now we’re back on track and this is what it looked like yesterday:

340,000+ Tea Party Protesters

Jim Geraghty has been researching only the mainstream media reports of tea party protests to get an idea of the minimum number of attendees.Â He took the rather cynical stance of assuming only 200 when an article said “hundreds” or 2,000 when it simply said “thousands” to describe the protesters.Â Based on his research, at least 341,472 Americans took time out of a busy work day to protest irresponsible spending.

The Pajamas Media crew took estimates from both journalists and organizers.Â Their tally so far is 515,919.Â Congress better listen up.Â These events were locally organized and from all accounts in the blogosphere, the attendees were fired up for action.Â We already know from the Louisiana House and Georgia Senate races held after election day that Obama’s coattails don’t extend very far when he’s not on the ticket – which he won’t be in 2010.Â It could be possible to pick off Congressional Democrats in more than a handful of districts.

There are two more events tomorrow in my area.Â There’s another rally on Indepedence Mall, and I would like to feature some coverage of it.Â However, Bitter wants to go to the more local Washington Crossing protest.Â If there are any readers or bloggers in the area who plan to attend the Philadelphia Tea Party on Saturday, email me.Â I will feature your pictures and commentary on the event.

Anti-Gun “Debate” for Philly District Attorney

Last night, CeasefirePA held its heavily promoted forum for District Attorney candidates in Philadelphia. I intended to send Bitter to cover it, but we both forgot about it. It may be for the best since it was described by the Inquirer as “sparsely attended” and questions were only allowed from journalists and anti-gun activists who had to recount the loss of their family members in “heartbreaking detail.” If Bitter had been there, she probably would have been considered an anti-gunner, and she would not have been able to ask any questions. Even the paper called the event “unusual…political theater.”

There are a few points worth highlighting from the report. One is that two of the Democratic candidates seems to realize that there’s a problem beyond blaming guns for Philadelphia’s problems.

“What it’s going to take,” [Dan McCaffery] said, “is someone with enough balls – excuse my language – to stand up to” soft judges. “If I have to go to war with the judiciary, I will.” …

[Brian] Grady said the most dangerous criminals needed to be incarcerated for decades. He faulted a system in which assistant district attorneys prepared hard to win trials, then fell down on the job in the sentencing phase.
“Sentencing is not a day off for the A.D.A.,” he said. “Sentencing day is a day of reckoning.”

Those statements may well have come with plenty of anti-gun rhetoric, but there’s not much in the way of pro-gun choices. Proving once again that the Second Amendment isn’t a matter of partisan politics, the only Republican candidate used the event as an opportunity to push “laser branding” for tracing guns. But the award for the most creative statement goes to Democrat Michael Turner who wants to frame the fight for Philly to end preemption and disregard state gun laws as a “civil rights” debate. Using the term “civil rights” to trample civil rights, that’s a funny one.