February 2011 – Page 16 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Philly Bucks Preemption Again

I’ve been amiss in covering what the Philadelphia City Council is doing, mostly because this comedy routine is getting boring. But here it is:

The bill, introduced by Councilman Darrell Clarke, would eliminate the so-called “Florida loophole,” which allows owners here to obtain nonresident licenses through the mail, even without a Pennsylvania permit.

At this point I don’t even really want NRA wasting money to fight this. They would just be pissing money away. Let them try to enforce it, and then we’ll hit the city with a huge civil rights lawsuit. Any enforcement of this would be under color of law, qualified immunity wouldn’t apply because this is established precedent. A suit under Section 1983 would allow any police brass ordering enforcement of this to be sued in their personal capacity as well. Pretty clearly the city has no regard for its street officers who will follow the orders, because they can also be sued personally for acting under color of law.

Let them pass this crap if it makes them feel better. Even someone as anti-gun as Lynne Abraham knew better than to suggest she would ever enforce this nonsense. Is Seth Williams this smart? We’ll see. But my money would be that this gets signed into law and never enforced. It’s just grandstanding on the part of Councilman Darrell Clarke and the rest of City Council.

Quote of the Day

From Timothy Dolan, Chief of Police of Minneapolis Police Department:

Among the impediments are that we view gun ownership as an individual right and that gun violence has not yet become so unacceptable that we would impinge on those rights for the common good. In short, we accept a certain level of gun violence.

Yeah, I mean, heavens forbid we do something crazy like take the Bill of Rights seriously. To the Minneapolis Police Chief, the Bill of Rights is an inconvenience. What other amendments does the Chief think are “impediments?” How about the Fourth Amendment? Not being able to randomly search people for contraband certainly leads to a certain level of violence, wouldn’t you agree?

You’re damn right it’s an impediment. That’s the whole idea, jackass.

Hat tip to our favorite Brady Board member for the link, who laments that our goal is to dismantle gun laws. Why yes, it is. Because they are what you do instead of something.

Hit Piece on WASR-10

From the Center for Public Integrity, which if you check their funding, receives money from the Joyce Foundation, who the article notes paid a grant to fund the article.

RKBA Proposed for Iowa Constitution

This would be the strongest in the nation, I think:

â€œThe right of an individual to acquire, keep, possess, transport, carry, and use arms to defend life and liberty and for all other legitimate purposes is fundamental and inviolable. Licensure, registration, special taxation, or any other measure that suppresses or discourages the free exercise of this right is forbidden.â€

Even stronger than the Second Amendment. It’s very important that this passes.

More on Gunrunner Investigation

From the LA Times. Dave Hardy notes: “The spin is now — this happened because we didn’t have enough resources to do more. In other words, ‘give us more money and we won’t ____ up again.'” Funny how with federal agencies, it always seems to come back to that.

Swiss Gun Culture in Pictures

Sorry for the light posting. Today is one of those days where I have back to back meetings. In the mean time, here’s a link to a slideshow of Swiss shooting which I think you’ll enjoy.

Hat tip to Firearms and Freedom for the gallery link.

Charging People for Services They Didn’t Use

Monopolies & the government regulators who serve them are always able to come up with such creative ways to fleece taxpayers.

Under a little-noticed decision by Maryland regulators, Pepco for years has been authorized to raise rates temporarily to recover money it loses when electricity use drops. The system was meant to encourage energy conservation.

But as an unintended consequence, customers could help make the company whole for outage-related losses next month by paying Pepco more than they would have otherwise. The higher rates would apply to all Maryland customers, including those who shivered in the dark for days.

“They are paying for delivery of electricity they did not receive,” said Eric Friedman, director of the Montgomery County Office of Consumer Protection.

I would say that it’s the law on unintended consequences at work, but we can see that there’s nothing unintended about it.

But in Maryland, the billing adjustment is colliding with a string of outages at Pepco in the past year. Some critics have said that the billing system has removed any incentive for Pepco to reduce outages or to rush to restore service once the lights go out. Either way, Pepco is guaranteed the same rate of return. …

A Washington Post investigation published in December found that Pepco’s day-to-day reliability began declining five years ago and that Pepco ranks at or near the bottom in national surveys of reliability. The average Pepco customer experienced 70 percent more outages than customers of other utilities in major metropolitan areas.

Hat tip to @DonIrvine.

Busted For Nerf Gun

Joan Peterson wants to talk about bizarro world, where everyone worships guns, versus her world of bunnies, flowers, and kittens. I bring you the opposite extreme, which is the State of New Jersey, where having a nerf gun can bring the full force of the state down on your family. In a better world, this would result in parents being called and detention, maybe suspension, for poor behavior, at most. In Joan Peterson’s world, this is a matter for law enforcement and state prosecutors. Which world do you want to live in?

Senate Letter to ATF

Looks like Ken is getting a lot of letters these days on Senate letterhead. This one is protesting the long gun reporting requirement the agency wishes to implement, and reminds them that they do not have the authority. The letter is signed by 17 Senators.

Consider the Source

Glenn Reynolds has heard a rumor circulating that the Democrats are going to try to attach the magazine ban to an FAA appropriations bill. I heard this earlier today, but the source of this would seem to be Dudley Brown from the National Association for Gun Rights, a group I’ve demonstrated before doesn’t even have a presence on the Hill. I would therefore be highly skeptical of this rumor. They’d need sixty votes to pass such an amendment, which I doubt they’d have. I’ll see if I can find more information, and will update this post if I find any.

UPDATE: Source is indeed NAGR.

UPDATE: Lautenberg, the sponsor of the magazine ban in the Senate, has two proposed amendments on the FAA bill, both of which say in Thomas, “Purpose will be available when the amendment is proposed for consideration. See Congressional Record for text,” where all other proposed amendment have text. But when you look into the congressional record, one is a minor edit to the bill, and the other involves expanding smoking prohibitions to charter aircraft. Possibly the odd listing on Thomas was what triggered the rumor. So far there’s no record of any amendment about magazine restrictions or gun control that has been proposed. I will keep trying to find other information on this as I can.

UPDATE: I should mention that whether the rumor is true or not, it certainly can’t hurt to contact your Senators and tell them you oppose Senator Lautenberg’s magazine ban. The Senate Bill is S.32

UPDATE: Are you superstitious? The last Assault Weapons Ban in Congress was HR.1022. The House magazine ban bill is HR.308, the Senate S.32. The FAA bill is S.223. I feel that the universe may be conspiring against us on this one.

UPDATE: It does not appear there was any attempt at gun control, from the Congressional Record.