2010 – Page 52 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Discharge Petition for HB 40, Castle Doctrine

Scott Perry is leading the charge to bypass Dwight Evans, who’s been tying this up in the Appropriations Committee, and get this bill to the floor for a vote. Apparently that could be any minute. From NRA:

A discharge petition has been filed for House Bill 40,Â Pennsylvaniaâ€™s â€œCastle Doctrineâ€ bill.Â In order to get the bill to the House floor for consideration, this petition must be approved.Â That vote could happen as early as tomorrow.

House Bill 40, sponsored by State Representative Scott Perry (R-92), would permit law-abiding citizens to use force, including deadly force, against an attacker in their homes and any places outside of their home where they have a legal right to be.Â Â HB40 would also protect individuals from civil lawsuits by the attacker or the attackerâ€™s family when force is used.

Please contactÂ your State RepresentativeÂ AS SOON AS POSSIBLE and respectfully urge them to vote for the discharge petition and to support HB40 on the floor. Contact informationÂ can be found by clickingÂ here.

We might be able to pass this.

Shooting Rampage

In Germany. Gun ban activists are calling on the government to ban all firearms. They are at the end game in Germany. Apparently the attack included matches and gasoline as well, and police aren’t sure which killed some of the victims. I guess anti-gun activists in Germany are fine with people being burned to death.

Looks Like a Civil Rights Suit

I haven’t commented on the story on the concealed carry holder who was gunned down by Las Vegas police, until all the details came out, but it’s looking like the police definitely have some problems with their story. To be sure, when the guy was confronted by a store employee about the gun, he should have responded by saying “Oh, I didn’t realized guns weren’t allowed in here,” and taken his business elsewhere. But being shot is typically not the penalty for trespassing. Facts and statements made about the incident conflict, and on the surface it appears to me he was likely given conflicting commands by the officers, and was attempting to disarm himself. Normally, this would be something that should be sorted out by a jury in a criminal trial. At least that’s how it would be handled if it were a civilian shooting. But will it go that far? At the least, there will probably be a civil rights lawsuit.

ISRA News

The Illinois State Rifle Association recently was awarded with Outstanding State Association by NRA. Thirdpower has some pics of their recent Annual Meeting. They’ve won a lot for us this year, and they deserve every bit of the recognition they are getting.

Guns and Alcohol

The Brady Folks seem to think we don’t agree that the two should not mix, and use an example of why Virginia was wrong to change its law about restaurant carry. But let’s review the facts. He would have been breaking the law under the old law in Virginia. He also is breaking the law under the new law, which does not allowed permit holders to drink if they are carrying a firearm. He will be facing the possibility of charges, roughly the same charges as under the old law.

So can someone on the other side explain to me what exactly has changed? I’m going to throw out this wild idea out there that this guy probably would have done this whether or not the law had changed or not.

Mexican Gun Traces

Dave Hardy has some great thoughts on the whole topic, noting that the total number of firearms the Mexican government are holding that were seized is far greater than the number of firearms the Mexican government has submitted to the ATF for tracing.

Another thought I had recently is how do we trust all these guns are recovered from actual narco-traffickers, and not recovered from ordinary non-criminal citizens who smuggled, or had a relative smuggle, a firearm back from the United States to protect themselves and their families. Guns are generally unavailable to anyone other than criminals in Mexico.

That’s not the kind of smuggling I’m interested in stopping. As far as I’m concerned, the Mexican government is interfering with a fundamental human right, and I consider guns smuggled for such a purpose no morally different than people who smuggled Jews out of Nazi Germany. That’s not to say we know guns smuggled into Mexico are used for that purpose, but it’s something to think about.

I Have Found Nirvana

Three words. Hunting Friggin Dinosaurs! For the iPad. Very well done game for the iPad and iPhone that takes advantage of the touch screen. Here’s the game trailer:

I’ve been wasting my time with this for a week and have a hard time putting it down. It takes a little bit to get the touch pad sensitivity right where you want it, but they provide a “Survival Mode” where they just keep throwing waves of dinosaurs at you until one of them stomps or eats your twitching almost, but not quite dead corpse. The point of the game is to hunt dinosaurs, and build up an impressive trophy room. You can remove specimens and go try to hunt for better ones if you want. You can wound a dinosaur, in which case you have to follow its blood trail. This is not advisable if you’re hunting carnivores: you have to get more creative in your technique to land those, especially the Tyrannosaurus, which will just take round after round unless you shoot it in the right place. It takes more than one shot to bring one down. Obviously it’s not meant to be a completely realistic hunting simulation, but it’s good enough to be thoroughly addicting. Plus, who doesn’t like the idea of hunting dinosaurs?

The Travel Adventure

Sebastian and I don’t travel much to places we haven’t already been or to places that don’t have 60,000 gun owners descending on them at once (i.e. NRA conventions). Our usual hot spots are DC and wherever the Sight Selection Committee chooses. So planning for a trip to Hawai’i was a bit of an adventure in a) trying not to bust a budget, and b) tolerating travel.

I’ll put it below the jump, but I thought it was worth mentioning some of the tools and people that made planning the trip much easier. I’m doing this because I suspect some of you planning trips (not necessarily to Hawai’i) could benefit and to recognize some good work. If you are headed to the islands, then these suggestions may come in handy. Continue reading “The Travel Adventure”

Bryan Lentz Gets His Poster Child

I’m sure Lentz, who is running for Sestak’s old seat in Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District, thinks this murder in Philadelphia shows the need to remove the so-called “Florida Loophole,” but the reality is it’s another example of the City of Philadelphia’s utter failure to prosecute criminals. Make no mistake, Marqus Hill is not the kind of person who should possess, much less carry a gun. But in this country, we can’t deprive people of rights without due process, and this scumbag, thanks to the City, never got the process he was most decidedly due.

NBC 10 is also reporting on this, and notes that he was acquitted of attempted murder. This is not true. I have his record here. In 2005, he was arrested for attempted murder, aggravated assault, terroristic threats, carrying firearms without a license, simple, assault and reckless endangerment. All these, save terroristic threats, are listed as being “Held for Court,” meaning that the City District Attorney has still not brought an “Information.” In other words, he’s had a preliminary hearing, and a judge has determined there’s sufficient evidence to hold the matter, and await the prosecutors office to bring formal charges. Except the City has yet to bring charges on the matter.

Not only that, but in 2008, as they mention, he assaulted a police officer, which is aggravated assault in Pennsylvania, a felony. That charge was dismissed for lack of evidence. He was also charged with Simple Assault, resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct for the same incident. He was found guilty of disorderly conduct, and beat the other charges. One wonders how you can have lack of evidence for such a charge, since you would imagine all it would take is a cop saying, “Yes, he punched me while I was trying to arrest him,” but that’s what happened.

In short the city missed one clear, blatant opportunity to make this guy a prohibited person, and appears to have missed a second opportunity in 2008. Florida does a background check on every applicant, but that requires that the person actually be convicted of something. Philadelphia, with Brian Lentz’s help, is successfully deflecting blame for their own failings onto the backs of law abiding gun owners, rather than addressing the real problem, which is the City’s inability or unwillingness to get tough on criminals. Marqus Hill is a poster boy alright, but not for changing our guns laws.

Philadelphia Abusing Florida Permit Holders

Many thanks to the blog Vox Michaeli for covering this issue, which I didn’t notice on my vacation. The Philadelphia Daily News, to its credit, is covering the civil rights abuses of the City of Philadelphia on holders of Licenses to Carry from the State of Florida, which are legally recognized as valid by Pennsylvania, no matter the residency of the holder. The City confirms it’s handling eight, get that, eight civil rights suits on this issue. How many people have they harassed that haven’t sued:

Despite following the law, all of the men said that they were treated like criminals by city cops who either ignored their rights or didn’t know the laws.

Lt. Fran Healy, special adviser to the police commissioner, acknowledged that some city cops apparently are unfamiliar with some concealed-carry permits. But he said that it’s better for cops to “err on the side of caution.”

It’s time to get them familiar, because what they are doing is illegal, and it opens up the city, and its officers, to expensive civil rights lawsuits.Â I want the state to do more about this, not reward the city for this behavior by passing Lentz’s law. They need to follow the law. If they won’t follow the law, the state needs to make consequences for refusing to do so. I should note that one of these individuals got a Florida license because he was denied for unpaid parking tickets. That’s not a valid reason. We need to make some changes to the law, but not what Rep. Lentz has in mind.