The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
Josh Sugarmann is going way over the top again, trying to argue that NRA’s Gadsden Flag T-shirt is fomenting terrorism, along with standing up for the Constitution. I kid you not. One has to wonder whether Josh Sugarmann thinks that the United States Navy is also fomenting terrorism.
VPC is increasingly becoming an irreverent joke. A sad caricature of a dying movement.
We’ve seen people praise Obama like he’s the Messiah. If you want to see that x10, well, just look forward to the 2012 election. I’m not just talking about the campaign workers.
Some are pushing the Department of Homeland Security to do a 2012 apocalypse-themed education campaign. I admit that it’s a witty theme for disaster preparedness. If I sold preparedness supplies, I would probably tap into it – at least based on the marketing data Yahoo mentions. But if the government hops on board with that theme in an election year for a President who has already been labeled a Messiah-like figure, it’s just going to make the crazy folks even crazier. I know I’m already tired of the nuttiness. I just want to get down to business and boot some lawmakers out, not deal with conspiracy theorists.
Eugene Volokh takes a look at the case of US v. Edward L. Brown. The question seems to be whether the Court can order a collection destroyed after the collector is convicted of a felony, or whether the collector is permitted to transfer the collection:
For example, the ordered destruction would seem to raise serious Takings Clause issues. Firearms subject to neither lawful forfeiture nor confiscation as contraband (as in this case) remain valuable tangible personal property belonging to the convicted felon. I doubt the government’s right to simply confiscate and destroy such valuable property without first affording due process and payment of just compensation, even if it is accepted that the felon-owner cannot unilaterally transfer his ownership rights following a felony conviction. In Cooper v. City of Greenwood, 904 F.2d 302 (5th Cir.1990), for example, the Fifth Circuit recognized that even one convicted of illegally possessing firearms does not lose his or her property interest in the firearms by virtue of the conviction alone. That property interest cannot be simply taken by the government without affording the property owner due process of law….
The Court seems to have argued that the government can direct the liquidation of the collection for the convicted person’s benefit. Meaning the government directs the collection to be sold, with the proceeds going to the convict. This would seem to me to be the fair way of going about it.
This is all assuming it’s a case where the firearm isn’t subject to forfeiture, or is contraband. Obviously if a collection of guns is pulled off a drug dealer, those guns are subject to forfeiture, along with other property used in furtherance of the crime. Another case would be an unregistered machine gun, being contraband, could just be taken.
In response to the open carry controversy generated in California, it looks like anti-gun activists there are going to run a bill to ban the practice. Obviously there’s going to be opposition to this, but gun owners in California are at a political disadvantage. Whether you agree with open carry or not, this has to be opposed. Now isn’t the time to point fingers at each other.
There are multiple fronts in the war on free beer in Pennsylvania – free beer in the liberty sense, not in the free sample sense.
First, the issue of grocery stores selling beer was heard in the Supreme Court yesterday. See, grocery stores are banned from selling beer in Pennsylvania. We’re only allowed to buy beer in bars/cafes no more than 2 six-packs at a time or from distributers who can only sell massive freakin’ boxes of the stuff. It’s for the children – and to prevent alcoholism. I’m not sure how forcing people to walk into a bar or buying in bulk reduces alcoholism rates, but it’s a case that has been made by proponents of the current system. But then Glorious Wegmans got all uppity on the distributers. They realized that each of their grocery stores has a cafe. Food and beverages are sold for on-site consumption in one corner of their store, and Wegmans decided they would be happy to allow beer to be consumed as well. No reason you can’t enjoy a good beer with your pizza, right? In order to comply with state bureaucrats, Wegmans put up fences and gates around the new beer sections, and all purchases must be made at special registers, separately from the rest of your groceries.
The Wegmans system is by no means convenient for beer lovers, it’s just one less trip in the car. If you don’t visit the store in the right order, you still have to make multiple trips into the store through special doors. It is stupid, but at least it reduces our carbon footprint or something. But the beer distributers demand higher carbon footprints and mandatory bulk sales or skeezy bar visits for all! And so the Supreme Court will decide we lowly taxpayers can be trusted to buy our beer in a building with unprepared food. John Micek reports that there is no anticipated date for a decision and encourages folks to drink up while they can.
In other news, a hearing on the overzealous “unregistered” beer raids was held this week with some surprising and not-so-surprising results. Because bureaucrats don’t have to pass any sort of literacy test, they actually stole a bunch of beer that was perfectly legal and registered. But there were some bottles which were non registered, so the whole fiasco hasn’t gone away. Oh, and not to mention it involved the state police who were fully armed and acting like it was a drug raid.
Philly Republican Rep. John Taylor went further.
While questioning [State Police Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement chief Major John] Lutz, Taylor expressed support for the state police but said, “In this one you and your unit were wrong . . . they knew when they were going in there they did not need four armed agents. A teenager with a clipboard could have done what they did.”
Taylor called the bust “an over-use of force,” and said, regarding priorities, that “those of us from Philadelphia have plenty [other things] for you to do.”
Lutz shot back that there was unregistered beer.
“So what! So what!” shouted Taylor. “Use a clerk to do that!
I say cut his funding. If he has fully armed cops to spare for a job that could take a recent college grad with no training and a clipboard (who would probably do a better job of identifying beer anyway), then it’s time to start making cuts.
Also interesting is the fact that they were actually questioned as to why state police stole lawful beer from the bars before actually checking to see if it is registered.
Sen. John Pippy, R-Allegheny County, asked why they’d seized brew before confirming it’s unregistered?
“Historically, the beer was always seized,” answered Lutz.
Yeah, or un-kegged with axes.
Got that? They can steal your car before they actually make an effort to find out if you really bought it. And if they screw it up, too bad. It’s on your dime.
Unfortunately, lawmakers being what they are, their solution to avoid this in the future is more regulation. They want breweries (who are supposed to register the beer) to start putting special barcodes on all beer so that they can send in a kid with a scanner who doesn’t have to think to check on beer registration status. For the big breweries, they will wholeheartedly endorse it. They can afford to make the changes without a huge hit to the bottom line. Smaller breweries, not so much.
It’s time to dismantle the entire system. No more regulatory capture, no more favors for unions, no more creating monopoly industries, no more.
I have to apologize to my readers for this, but because of continued work commitments, I never managed to compile the questions to send off to candidates for the NRA elections which end soon (be sure to get your ballots in). I suppose I should also apologize to our endorsed NRA board candidates this round, because my lack of attention has hurt them as well.
I’ve been working seventy hour weeks since the end of last year in a heroic effort to get the company I work for into profitability so we can survive these tough economic times. The fortunate thing is, it looks like it has a good chance of working. But if I’m not blogging, I’m working, literally from the time I get up until I go to bed. If I have any time to do something like, go to the range, it’s a treat. So bear with me. There were some good questions that I will try to get answered for everyone, one way or another.
In the mean time I urge everyone to get their ballots in. We have a lot of candidates this election who deserve your support.
I’m not sure how this happened, because word on the street is that NRA doesn’t give a crap about NFA owners.
Looks like NPR is discovering the militia movement isn’t so nuts after all. Truth is a good part of the movement has always been kinder and gentler, even in the 1990s. It’s just that the media took all the kooky right groups and melted them all into a single, scary conglomeration that never really existed. There was some good, academic treatment of the movement in the 1990s, that got a lot of the distinctions between the various elements of the movement, but to the media it was always the same kind of right-wing quackery.
Amazingly, the world did not come to an end the last time the Philadelphia-area bloggers (plus one we convinced to come from Jersey City) gathered for drinks and snacks. And so, we do it again.
Apparently, Arlen Specter’s vision for the future of Pennsylvania includes lots of unemployed union guys drawing government checks and no modern skills. At least, that’s what you gather from his first commercial.
The company Specter highlights went into bankruptcy nearly a decade ago. It was dissolved shortly thereafter. According to Wikipedia, the company operated with substantial losses from 1982 on, with a one year exception in 1988. Their high point was in the 1950s.
Perhaps Specter wants to make Bethlehem Steel a symbol of his career. It’s high point was decades ago, and he’s been operating as the Senator everyone on both sides of the aisle loves to hate. Only this year, we have a better choice to replace him. So, Senator Specter, you can join those men in your commercial in the unemployment line come January. Although, with a little luck and some serious action by the GOP, hopefully we can turn things around to the point where the four of you can find some job training in a new field and you won’t be out of work for long.