2010 – Page 146 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Mall Ninja On the Job

Looks like a security guard at a Roanoke J.C. Penney’s got a little overenthusiastic trying to apprehend a shoplifter by firing his gun into the air. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that neither J.C. Penney’s or the mall it’s located in hire armed security, so the guy probably packed the firearm on his own.

Now I can’t say a blame a guy for not wanting to take a bullet for a minimum wage security guard job at a mall. Given the job, I wouldn’t say packing a concealed pistol is unwise if he’s legally able to do so. But you’d think if you were defying corporate policy you’d exercise a little more judgement about when it is and when it isn’t appropriate to bring the gun into play.

Virginia has a statute for misuse of a firearm. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this applied to this guy. It should be applied to this guy.

Philadelphia Friends of the NRA Dinner

Last night Bitter and I attended the Philadelphia Friends of the NRA Dinner. Normally I have pretty good luck at these things, but went home empty handed last night. That’s a real shame too, because I absolutely wanted to win the auction for the NRA Deputy Cat — an approximately two foot tall cat sculpture made out of scrap metal. Unfortunately, the bidding got a little too rich for me on that item.

While I think hardly anyone could disagree that the world needs more NRA Deputy Cat,Â a good reason to go to Friends dinners, other than to help out NRA’s shooting programs both nationally and in your state, is the fact that you stand a pretty reasonable chance of walking away with a gun. I’ve generally had good luck at Friends events, and have won both a gun and a locking cabinet. I also picked up a pretty nice wooden NRA branded tool chest at silent auction.

It was very good to see that NRA can still fill a pretty large venue even in Philadelphia. The Philly folks were playing the raffles more than participating in the auction, but everything raises money at the Dinner since all items are donated. I spent about 200 dollars on the raffles, hoping to have a good chance as either a Ruger LCP, a Weatherby Shotgun, a Glock 22, a Kimber 1911, or a Weatherby 12 gauge. But it wasn’t my lucky night. I didn’t win any guns, or the 50/50 drawing. The guy who won that took the 800 dollarsÂ and spent part of the money to buy a Remington 700 in .300 Win Mag at auction, which effectively donates the money back to NRA. Since all the guns they don’t raffle get auctioned, you can actually get some pretty good deals if everyone in the room already blew their money on the raffles, which seems to have been the case tonight. Some of the more expensive stuff was going for a bargain. Not NRA Deputy Cat though. Damn! I had just the place for it too.

FOPA Only Applies to Vehicles

At least that’s what the Third Circuit Court of Appeals says in the case of a Utah man who was arrested in New Jersey after getting stranded in Newark overnight when he missed his connecting flight to Allentown, where the pistol was legal. So says the Third Circuit:

The complaint reveals that Revellâ€™s luggageÂ containing the firearm was, in fact, available to him while heÂ was at the hotel. He alleged that, â€œ[a]fter retrieving his bag,Â because there were no more connections to Allentown until 9:45Â a.m. the following morning … , [he] went directly to, and stayedÂ the night at, the Airport Sheraton Hotel.â€ (App. at 23.) HeÂ further alleged that he returned with his luggage directly to theÂ airport the next day and that a TSA agent, after x-raying theÂ luggage, opened it with a key that Revell gave him. TakingÂ those facts as true, it is clear that the gun and ammunition wereÂ readily accessible to Revell during his stay in New Jersey and,Â thus, by the allegations of his own complaint, he was not withinÂ the scope of Â§ 926A. Dismissal of the Â§ 926A claim was therefore proper.

The end result of this is that if you’re flying with guns, make sure your connecting city is a city where your guns are legal to possess. I’ve generally been careful about this when I fly with guns. So far this only applies to the Third Circuit, which is Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, but other circuits are likely to notice this ruling and use it.

Sorry folks, but it would seem FOPA only applies to vehicles on the highway.

VPC Brings in the Class

VPC seems to want to imply that Thirdpower, a veteran who has served and continues to serve his country, is barely literate. TheyÂ suggest he needs to do “more readin’ and less shootin’ bub.”Â Regardless of the merits of their argument, I find this to be mean spirited and rude, and telling of the stereotypes and prejudices the folks at the VPC apparently have about gun owners.

I might have even been willing to concede VPC’s point on the quote, since they only directly quoted “I’m done,” but their paraphrase of the rest couldÂ conceivablyÂ change the definition of the quote, depending on whether there’s a dropped comma between “away” and “from.” In the context presented, the quote doesn’t make much sense. Thirdpower’s accusation that the meaning was altered is entirely plausible.

Follow up on Iowa Debate

Lobbying a legislature is a difficult task, and something I don’t think a lot of people have an appreciation for. Knowing a few people who do it, across several issues, it’s skill I’ve come to have a lot of respect for. I have no doubt lobbyists often over or underestimate how much they can get. Reading a legislature can be difficult, and plotting a winning strategy through one even harder. There’s plenty of trip-ups and pit falls that can happen along the way.Â That is why I am generally very reluctant to be an armchair lobbyist and second guess their judgements. In regards to Iowa, here are some questions I would ask that are relevant to the current bill. These are not questions I know the answer to, but knowing them is critical for assessing whether the right balance is being struck:

How many anti-gun or pro-gun-control politicians in Iowa voted to bring the Vermont Carry bill to the floor so that they could vote to kill it and put a lot of their political opponents in an awkward spot?
Every legislature has a handful of politicians who are mostly with us, but don’t feel they could vote for something that goes really far. How many of those are in the Iowa legislature?
What other things in the bill could really be improved? You want to propose repealing the 0.08 CWI provision? You think any politician wants to have to hear from his opponent in the next election how he voted for guns for drunks?
What is Governor Culver expecting to be in the bill for him to sign it? Culver has said he’ll sign it. But will he? How certain are you that he’ll sign? Will he find something in the bill that he’ll use an an excuse to veto?
If he does veto, how many votes do you lose on the override vote? Which politicians are going to switch sides to avoid going against the Governor? Do you still have enough for an override?
How many of the “yes” votes on both bill would have been “no” votes if you had, say, removed the training requirement? Does that get you to fall below half? Do you lose the Governor? Do you lose the Governor and lose the override?

Because I don’t know the answer to these questions, I’m going to tend to give NRA and Iowa Carry the benefit of doubt. Both groups have lobbyists on the ground who are in a much much better position to know what’s going on in Des Moines than any of us. Some of these questions even they might not know the answer to, but they will have a better idea than we do. Could we have gotten a better bill in Iowa? Maybe we could have. But what we got is pretty good, and you don’t really exercise finite control over this process even if you’re a great lobbyist with powerful friends in the legislature. You go into something like this having an idea of what you want, what you think you can get, and what you can live with. No matter what the issue, that’s just how this process works.

Settling Some Issues from Iowa

I have another article over at Opposing Views answering this accusation about NRA misbehavior in Iowa. I say contrived controversy, because to me it shouldn’t be a controversy. It would seem to me the accusation of NRA threatening a pro-gun state rep is overwrought, but what would folks expect if a politician votes with the anti-gunners on their right-to-carry bill? To me it doesn’t much matter if he was holding out for Vermont carry (which has no chance of passing.) You vote with the anti-gunners, you get graded with the anti-gunners. Pretty simple if you ask me.

International Gun Deaths

Dave Kopel takes a look at the statistics being used to promote the UN small arms agenda and finds it severely lacking:

Currently, the United Nations is drafting an Arms Trade Treaty to impose strict controls on firearms and other weapons. In support of hasty adoption of the Treaty, a UN-related organization of Treaty supporters is has produced a report claiming that armed violence is responsible for 740,000 deaths annually. This Article carefully examines the claim. We find that the claim is based on dubious assumptions, cherry-picking data, and mathematical legerdemain which is inexplicably being withheld from the public. The refusal to disclose the mathematical calculations used to create the 740,000 factoid is itself cause for serious suspicion; our own calculations indicate that the 740,000 figure is far tooÂ high.

You can find the whole article here. It shouldn’t be any surprise that the gun control community is taking their national deceptions and distortions international. This will be the next big front in the battle for the right to keep and bear arms.

Democratic Disconnect

When you’re a Democratic gubernatorial candidate running in the state with off-and-on the highest number of NRA members, it’s generally a bad idea to endorse gun control. It’s doubly bad to be fighting fights on guns that even the Brady Campaign won’t embrace any more. But Joe Hoeffel is just that kind of man.

We already know that Hoeffel created a wish list of gun control he wanted to bring to Pennsylvania if elected – one gun a month, ending state preemption, rifle bans, mandatory locks, and lost-and-stolen – but his latest attack actually represents an assault on the original Heller decision. This puts him to the left of the Brady Campaign because even they won’t embrace outright handgun bans anymore. But Joe Hoeffel will!

How out-of-touch do you have to be as a politician when the one serious constituency organization you have for gun control even considers your position to be too far? If, God save us, somehow Hoeffel won the Democratic nomination and won the general election, how would he justify supporting such a radical agenda? “Not a single gun control organization asked me to introduce this gun ban, but damnit, I know better than all of them! And the Supreme Court, they can go to hell!” It’s something we’ll never see, but I’d love to try and understand his logic on the issue.

I might add that Hoeffel’s former running mate who signed a joint statement with him on gun control is running for State Senate against a B rated incumbent. If she remains on the ballot through the primary, I might just check in with her to see if she still agrees with Joe Hoeffel on gun control – and whether she plans to try and draw Pennsylvania into a fight that would re-argue Heller.

What’s an Arsenal to New Yorkers?

Apparently this paltry collection is going to bring chaos and mayhem to the good people of the City of New York.

Iowa RTC Bill Passes Both Houses

Passed the Senate 44-4 over the weekend. Today it passed the Iowa House 80-15. Because of an amendment in the House, it had to go back to the Senate for a final vote, which it appears passed 38-4 just a few moments ago. You can see the Iowa legislature’s home page here. This means it’s on to Governor Culver for his signature. This is a good bill, with universalÂ reciprocity of out of state licenses, and is really nothing but an improvement over Iowa’s current law. It also prevents sheriffs from asking for information about your firearms and requesting serial numbers from guns as a condition of getting a permit.

You can find contact information for Governor Culver’s office here, and I would suggest folks contact him. As I mentioned before, GOA’s state group, Iowa Gun Owners are doing everything they can to kill this bill, in the naive belief that they can pass Vermont carry through the Iowa legislature. If they don’t hear from gun owners who support this bill, it’s going to be very difficult for Culver to sign this. Iowa has been long overdue for this reform, and it’s time to get it done.