December 2011 – Page 6 – Shall Not Be Questioned

I Don’t Know How This Could Be

People never can successfully defend themselves with a gun, if you ask our opponents. Remember, for them it’s only a DGU if there’s a corpse. Kudos to the homeowner, but three shots and not a hit? Time to get to the range. Also interesting is that neighborhood is rich. This is not far from where I used to work for ten years, and I could never afford to live in the neighborhood I worked, and I didn’t make bad money.

This means there are two criminals out there now targeting rich looking houses, and will no doubt be moving to what they think is an easier target. I’ll go out on a limb here and suggest society would have been better off if this homeowner had made some well placed shots, even if that only enabled the police to apprehend them when they showed up in the emergency room with gunshot wounds, which, BTW, still wouldn’t have been a DGU if you use our opponents statistical methods.

Something You Don’t See Everyday

A Democratic Congressman asks his constituents to seriously question the authenticity of Second Amendment support of a Republican candidate he’s not even running against. The Congressman? Leonard Boswell. The candidate? Mitt Romney.

Speculate as to the motivation behind this piece to your heart’s desire.

Defining a School “Gun Threat”

One reason I react so strongly to the lack of common sense in school administrators is because I had a personal experience with an expulsion threat over the issue when I was in high school. Yes, the “Goody Two-Shoes” honor student was called in to the principal’s office and threatened with expulsion over an issue regarding guns. It didn’t happen because I knew enough to know that I wasn’t breaking any rules; the situation that sparked the “report” to the administrator was a clear case of protected speech. The fear of a lawsuit and enough bad PR to cost the new principal his job was enough to convince him that he really didn’t want to go down that path.

What was my crime? It was having a discussion about a fairly new (only a couple of years old at the time) concealed carry law enacted in Oklahoma after I was asked to give a speech in class on the topic of gun control. In other words, I was having a reasonable, non-threatening discussion with peers in the library (our “class” for those of us in the academic competition programs) on a timely political topic relevant to assigned school work. (For the record, I read my first Dave Kopel article in preparation for that speech.) Yeah, try throwing me out of school for that.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad he came to his senses. Regardless, I still get pissy over the incident because shouldn’t he have come to his senses when the “report” was made? Common sense would tell a person to ask some probing questions about the incident, especially since the report was coming from a student with some issues getting along with others against one of the top students who had literally never been punished in her entire time at the school.

It bothers me because if the principal had threatened any of the other people at the table in my discussion group, some of them may not have known to fight back. They would not have known that such speech did not give them the right to kick you out of a public school. I don’t believe he would have expelled them, but I do think he would have tried to hold the threat over their heads and left them believing that he was doing them a favor. That bothers me, especially in a public school we were required to attend. It shouldn’t be up to students to stand up to administrative bullying.

Pizza Punishment

Since when it did it become a requirement that school administrators check common sense at the door? Do the job postings state that they prefer candidates consistently overreact and then lie to cover up said reactions when parents respond?

A Tennessee boy has been punished for eating the pizza served at lunch. His friend apparently told him it looked like a gun, and they played with the pizza slice for a bit. The school officials claim he was not punished for actually eating the pizza into the shape of a gun, rather for supposed threats he made to other children. However, the boy’s mother has been told that if his pizza ever takes a shape someone might consider to look like a gun again, he will be suspended. So, the school says they won’t punish kids over how they eat their pizza, yet they also threaten to suspend kids who eat their pizza into certain shapes. Either the school system taking heat from the media is lying now or they lied to his mother with threats of punishments they don’t actually intend to enforce. Again, common sense, where have you gone?

I think what’s appalling about the threats from the school is that most school pizzas I recall were served as rectangles. That means if this child even eats his slice bite-by-bite along one half of the long end, it will end up looking like a gun again at some point during the lunch, and he will face suspension. For eating pizza.

Goals: We Need Them

Glock, for the 125th Anniversary of the Statue of Liberty, made a beautiful engraved model. As a community we need goals, so I would suggest we’re not finished until you can lawfully carry the Statue of Liberty Glock at the actual Statue of Liberty.

We’re a long ways from that, even if HR822 passes. Currently there is a security screen at the Statue of Liberty ferry, run by the National Park Service. There’s no law against the carrying of firearms in National Parks under New York Law, that I know of, but the building they do the screening in is a federal facility, which are gun free zones. So even if HR822 passes, you won’t be able to carry to the Statue of Liberty.

So I guess you could say HR822 is a Statute of Liberty won’t enable you carry at the Statue of Liberty.

Hunters Improving the Economy

You have to love seeing this story in the Wall Street Journal.

Roughly 7,000 hunters turned out [for NJ’s bear hunt] this year, killing 469 bears. Last year, when the state also had a six-day hunt, 592 were shot.

The furry haul has unleashed a bull market for mounted bears, turning New Jersey’s taxidermists into unlikely job creators.

Mr. Clark brought on two extra seasonal workers to help process the trophies and is looking to hire a full-time taxidermist immediately. One of the workers, when not skinning mammals, makes a living as a cookie deliveryman. Bill and Ken’s Taxidermy in Morganville, N.J., also hired more help.

Apparently, the most important question a taxidermist will ask is whether the mouth should be left open or closed. I wouldn’t even know how to decide; there are just way too many cute mounts for black bears. I knew a guy who had three different bear mounts that all looked so different. And then there’s the choice of a rug.

Ultimately, the hunt is important for maintaining healthy population numbers. However, any help to the economy is surely appreciated, too.

Happy Bill of Rights Day!

What are you doing to celebrate?

I think I’ll put on a bottle of wine to chill for tonight. I realize that the 21st amendment isn’t part of the original 10, but those first 10 are worthy of a toast.

Continue reading “Happy Bill of Rights Day!”

King Busybody on Online Gun Sales

Bloomberg is publishing a misleading report about online gun sales, obviously targeting forums like GunBroker, GunsAmerica, and other far off corners of the Internets where people arrange deals. What he fails to mention is that it’s unlawful for private sales to proceed among people of different states without an FFL being involved, and that it’s unlawful for someone who is not a gun dealer to ship Â firearm through US mail. I believe common carrier to someone in the same state as the seller is lawful in a private sale, but that’s a narrow category. Many of the sales Bloomberg claims to have attempted would be unlawful under existing law.

So qualifying this as a “vast and largely unregulated market for illegal guns,” is disingenuous, non-factual, and highly misleading, proving that even though MAIG may be picking up the mantle of gun control from previously failed groups, with an interesting twist and slick marketing, they are still not above sleight of hand and deception to try to make their case. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Readers Sending LTE’s

I always like it when readers get a Letter to the Editor published in one of the major papers in the state. Such is the case here, from the Allentown Morning Call, standing up for Charlie Dent’s vote on HR822, which was lambasted by the former head of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, which is solidly anti-gun. So Kudos to Peter for getting this in and published.

Belgian Mass Shooter

Extrano’s alley has a summary of the guy who went ape shit in Belgium and shot up the place. Not surprisingly, European elites are calling for more gun control laws, even though it seems apparent the weapons was procured and possessed illegally under Belgian law, and was not a type that would ordinarily be legal. He assembled it himself. But, you know, we’re all wacky for suggesting to our opponents that people will do this if you outlaw them.

You would tend to think that if gun control is going to stop anyone, it would be the mass shooter, who has limited access to black market sources, and is more likely to have to rely on the primary legal market to acquire firearms. But given that this happens in Europe, that doesn’t appear to be the case at all.