The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
Some of you might recall the Firearm Owners Protection Act, which as Dave Hardy has reported, is one of the landmark achievements of our movement (despite the Hughes nonsense). That act is also known as the McClure-Volkmer Act, named after the bills sponsors in each house of Congress. Jim McClure has passed away at 86.
Congressman Harold Volkmer was the bill’s sponsor in the House. At 79 he continues to serve on the NRA Board of Directors.
I think Fred Phelps and his family are disgusting, but I think the Supreme Court made the correct choice here.
The Philadelphia metro area is hot your trail:
During the Revolutionary War Philadelphia served as one of America’s first capital cities. These days, however, Philadelphia could be considered the capital of toxicity, since the city and its environs ranked No. 1 on our 2011 Most Toxic Cities list. One big reason: The sprawling Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), including parts of four states (Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and one county in Maryland), is pocked with more than 50 Superfund sites—areas no longer in use that contain hazardous waste.
I shouldn’t rag on this area too much though. Philadelphia is not prone to big booms, but it’s also not prone to big busts either. Housing prices here have been relatively stable, and we haven’t seen the inflation yet here that we’ve seen in other areas. Unemployment is still high but not as bad as it is in a lot of other areas. Pennsylvania’s government is better compared to that of New Jersey and New York’s.
Babbling in the Congressional Record yesterday from McCarthy (D-NY) and Bill Pascrell (D-NJ):
Nearly 100,000 people are killed by guns every year. Over 260 people will be killed today by a gun.
– Bill Pascrell
That number keeps getting higher and higher doesn’t it? It’s a shame that’s nowhere near the real number killed by guns. In fact, it’s less than a third of that, and that’s including suicides. The number of homicides is about 1/10th that number.
This bill [HR 308] does not take away anyone’s right to own a gun. Let me make that very, very clear.
– Carolyn McCarthy
To me, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in- clude being able to go grocery shopping on a Saturday or attend a public event on a Saturday afternoon without being gunned down.
– Carolyn McCarthy
Funny she should seek refuge in a document that stands as a justification for a violent revolution against the established order, yet I’m sure would condemn anyone who suggest other parts of the document as a source of morality for owning firearms. Her friend Pascrell suggests Congress takes an oath to these words “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” which makes on question whether he knows this is part of the Declaration of Independence, rather than the Constitution that they do take an oath to. Well, considering the Second Amendment is definitely part of that oath, it wouldn’t be surprising if he has no idea.
Lies and ignorance. That’s all they have to offer.
The Senate Judiciary Committee approved legislation today sponsored by Senator Richard Alloway II (R-33) to expand the Castle Doctrine in Pennsylvania to protect gun owners who act in self-defense.
On to the Senate floor. The committee was a problem last session, but the makeup has improved a bit, and obviously it’s good news for the bill to have sailed though. It passed by a vote of 10-3. I’ll let you know who the three were when we get that information. There was an attempt to amend Florida Loophole, but the amendment was withdrawn.
UPDATE: Vote breakdown here.
Dave Kopel, Paul Gallant, and Joanne Eisen take a quite detailed look at the figures being toted by proponents of the International Arms Trade Treaty at the Untied Nations. It is rather long, but I’ll reproduce here part of the conclusion:
To the extent that we have been able to reverse engineer the Geneva Declaration Organization’s calculations, we have found repeated instances where the organization made choices which re- sulted in much higher estimates. Sometimes, those estimates have produced results that are out of line with other evidence.
Until the data and calculations are made available to the public, policymakers and concerned global citizens should give no weight to the unsubstantiated factoid of 740,000 deaths.
Not surprising that they are distorting the true numbers. They’ve never been able to win on facts.
The rationale sounds pretty weak to me:
While broad restrictions might be judged under a stricter standard, Margulies wrote, Heller makes clear that courts will continue to apply rational-basis review to laws barring possession by “disqualified†persons, including misdemeanants and those on pretrial release.
What if the misdemeanor was non-violent? Does rational-basis apply to prohibitions on people convicted of say, reckless driving? Speeding? Spitting on the sidewalk? This seems to be a very broad reading of Heller, which only mentioned felons.
Apparently there’s been a trend of cities bucking preemption:
Unfortunately, upon the passage of Iowa’s new “Shall-Issue†Right-to-Carry law, some local governments began creating a patchwork of illegal gun bans across Iowa.  Most recently, claiming safety issues, Iowa Citypassed a resolution restricting all law-abiding Iowans from carrying in or on all city-owned property including city parks, buses, and even farmer’s markets.
NRA is pushing a bill to fix this problem, HSB 19. Everyone is Pennsylvania should take a look at this bill, because it’s among the strongest preemption statutes I’ve seen. This might be something we need to look at here.
I’m relatively amused by calling Colin Goddard’s “Living for 32” the “Virginia Tech Massacre Movie.” Joe Huffman has an observation about Goddard:
It occurs to me that the Brady Campaign is promoting Goddard as an expert and the media is accepting that. But does he have any training or expertise as a shooter? I’ll grant that he is an expert at getting shot. But I don’t think that takes a whole lot of practice or that his experience is something that we can use a guide for how to handle the situation he experienced.
I agree. I also imagine it’s quite difficult to assess the tactical situation when you’re hiding under a desk playing dead.