Representative Bob Gibbs (R-OH) has introduced new legislation that would open up more federal land to lawful carry. Specifically it would legalize carry on lands controlled by the Army Corps of Engineers. There a number of such federals lands in Pennsylvania. To be honest, I didn’t even know carry was an issue on these lands until a few years ago.
Year: 2011
Does not Compute
This article on the analysis of the Bin Laden files is interesting reading. But this does not compute:
The Associated Press reported tonight that some of bin Laden’s writings show him musing over how many Americans he would have to kill to force the U.S. to withdraw from the Arab world and concluding that the body count would have to be in the thousands.
Wasn’t 9/11 in the thousands? And I seem to recall that lead to a justification for invading and toppling one Islamist regime, and one Arab dictator. I’m not sure the math on that one works out too well for you beardy. Plus, there’s only so much you can jack the American body count before we’re getting out of the Arab world because we need to wait for the radiation levels to come down a bit before we move in to pump out the rest of the oil.
Luzerne County Lowers Permit Fee
The new Sheriff of Luzerne County is lowering the fee for License to Carry from $31 to $20. This is good news, because overcharging for LTCs has been a persistent problem among PA Sherrifs. It’s good at least one is doing something about it.
Close the Assault Truck Loophole!
Teams of analysts are combing through a mountain of data recovered from bin Laden’s compound, and one nugget of information they’ve found is a bit surprising; bin Laden was against a proposed plan for U.S.-based Al Qaeda operatives to weld blades to the grilles of pickup trucks and run down pedestrians.
Because, you know, the only way you can kill a lot of people, obviously, is to get a gun at a gun show.
Ten Thousand Rule
From Richard Fernandez, comes my quote of the day:
The only thing worse than having your own business is having a moderately successful blog.
If moderate success if defined as 10,000 readers a day, I fail by that standard. My daily readership averages about 2.5k. But I completely understand everything Richard talks about in his post. That’s why I’ve decided it’s time to monetize this thing. I need an incentive to spend several hours of my day keeping up with everything. I’m working with a friend who has a web business to try to figure out how to make this work, but I’m pretty determined to do it. I might need some supplemental income soon anyway.
Tactical Blackberry Case
Over at the Exurban League, they find some creative uses for an old blackberry case. The only problem with this method is that I actually have this appendage on my belt and it carries an iPhone. The other side, where I’d keep a reload, currently houses a Leatherman multi-tool, which I can’t really live without. But it’s an interesting idea I may have to consider.
Constitutional Carry in Pennsylvania
As much as I’d love to see Constitutional Carry happen in Pennsylvania, there are a few problems associated with getting it done. The chief problem, that I see, is that Senate Judiciary is headed by Stu Greenleaf, who only tends to be pro-gun when he really feels like it. In addition to Greenleaf, there are a number of other weak kneed Republican Senators who would make passage of such a bill problematic. Remember that last year, we did not have the votes on Judiciary to even keep the silly Florida Loophole amendment off HB40. There are ways around the committee, but they can be problematic avenues.
What makes Pennsylvania problematic for Constitutional Carry is that the southeast is becoming less pro-gun. The Democrats here are almost uniformly anti, and the Republicans are precarious enough they don’t want to stake out strong positions on contentious issues. If suburban legislators start voting along with their urban counterparts, it’s over for this issue, and there are a lot of suburban GOP legislators that don’t think there will be much pro-gun cover for their votes in this decidedly anti-gun media market. Just as an example, we tried to knock off Steve Santarsiero this past election by backing the campaign of Rob Ciervo, and failed by a few hundred votes. It’s tough to unseat even the anti-gun politicians around here, let alone unseat the softies. Without some more solid representation on the gun issue in the suburbs, I’m afraid Constitutional Carry is going to be a serious uphill battle in the Keystone State.
When Commenting on Hunting is Just a Comment on Hunting
This was originally going to be a comment over at No Lawyers, but I really hate having to register with new accounts to comment. John posted about the annual Congressional Sportsmen’s Foundation Congressional Shoot-Out, and he noted some of the press release quotes that caught his attention:
It is good to see both Democrats and Republicans supporting the shooting sports. However, judging from some of the comments by the co-chairs, many of these legislators still confuse supporting duck hunting with supporting the Second Amendment.
I don’t think it’s fair to criticize them for making hunting-related comments in a press release from an organization focused on hunting & fishing policy representing a caucus dedicated to hunting & fishing legislative topics.
Considering that Rep. Mike Ross is leading the “Second Amendment Task Force” in Congress and has a consistent A+ NRA rating, I don’t think it’s fair to say that he truly believes the Second Amendment is just about hunting. The same goes for Rep. Jeff Miller who has been a member of the Second Amendment Caucus and has an A rating from NRA.
It’s a shooting event to support a caucus that focuses on hunting policy. A press release quote on that very topic doesn’t show any kind of bias against their understanding of gun rights.
Since I’m making this a full post, I’ll also address one of his other suggestions with a dose of DC-practicality.
Next year I’d propose a little different shooting competition. Instead of trap, skeet, and sporting clays, why not make it a 3-gun competition? You’d still have the shotgun involved but would add both rifle and pistol to the mix. Now that would be interesting! It would also show the ATF Shotgun Study team that 3-gun competition is a sporting use.
As an alternative since so many Members of Congress announced after the shooting of Gabby Giffords that they had a concealed carry permit and planned to use it, make it an IDPA pistol competition. That would let us see how serious they are about self-protection and what level of real training they have.
My standard response to this is similar to what I say to people who think that the NRA meeting should be in their backyard: Where would you propose doing all of this? The PG County Trap & Skeet Center only has shotgun ranges. It is chosen as one of the closest ranges to Capitol Hill. The reason why? It’s tough to line up to two dozen members of Congress at the same time to shoot three-different shotgun events that can all happen on the same range. If you waste hours fighting traffic to get members out to a facility that could host any of those events, they won’t come. And then you don’t have any members of Congress participating in any shooting sport.
The other reason is that sporting clays, trap, and skeet are closely related to hunting, one focus of the Congressional Sportsmen’s Caucus. Instead of lamenting that the hunting caucus is doing hunting-related shooting, perhaps these suggestions might go to the Second Amendment Caucus instead.
Education Cuts
I’m generally OK with cuts to education when the government is legitimately running out of other people’s money, but nonsensical and wasteful proposals like this pretty clearly show many in the GOP still aren’t getting it.
Outing Etiquette
In relation to the recent topic of conversation on the Twit-o-sphere, Facebook and blogs, I thought I’d take a minute to explain my philosophy on “outing,” or rather, revealing personal information about people that they did not purposely reveal. There are instances where I think this passes the fairly low Internet ethics test:
- The anonymity in question is used for the purposes of sock puppetry. Sock puppetry is distinct from operating under a pseudonym. I don’t make any pretenses that Sebastian is a separate and real person from myself. It is merely a pen name. If I was indeed creating a separate identity, that would be sock puppetry. There have been examples of sock puppets having their true identity outed on both sides, and I think it’s acceptable.
- If the person seeking anonymity is well known in the community under which they are seeking the anonymity of a pseudonym, and are using that anonymity to gain some sort of personal advantage. Most of the time this would be sock puppetry, but there are some cases where it isn’t, but unmasking would still be ethical. For instance if someone well known in the community were using a pseudonym to release damaging information about other people within that community, that would be an example of non-sock-puppetry which would still allow the individual to be ethically unmasked.
- The person being unmasked is hiding behind anonymity to make viscous, personal attacks, or to engage in real harassment. I’ve seen some of the Anonymous comments Joan Peterson has approved on her site, and they are vile. I think if she discovered the identity of these commenters and unmasked them, that would be completely ethical.
But I don’t think most blogging under a pseudonym is problematic. Publius, from the Federalist Papers, is a famous example of this. I generally don’t ever consider it acceptable to out personal information in a public forum, when the person has chosen to use a pseudonym. Umasking, i.e. revealing the person’s true identity, is about as far as it should go unless there’s real harassment or something exceptionally vile.
Most of us are blogging under pseudonym’s for professional reasons, and unlike what CSGV may think, not because I work for NRA. They suggest “we now know he works directly with the NRA-ILA,” well duh, I’m a volunteer. I would hope their volunteers work directly with them rather than aimlessly doing their own thing. But, to disappoint CSGV, all my contacts with NRA have been developed through blogging and volunteering. Before that, I was just a number in their database, and someone who kicked in a few extra bucks here and there above membership dues.
Perhaps if CSGV engaged with their active members, and tried to actually organize them for action, rather than just get them frothing at the mouth, they’d actually get somewhere.