The Manhattan District Attorney is apparently working on a plea arrangement for Meredith Graves. If I were in the Manhattan DA’s shoes, offer her a plea to disorderly conduct, and she forfeits the gun. After a few years, she can probably get an expungement for the disorderly conviction, so it won’t show up when employers do background checks. Given the amount of publicity this is getting, the only thing throwing the book at these folks is going to accomplish is to outrage Congress enough to pass HR822 even sooner. If I was the Manhattan DA, I wouldn’t want to poke that bee’s nest.
Month: January 2012
More on the Candles
I’ve noticed the Brady folks keep touting the picture of their vigil from Conowingo, MD. My guess is because it’s their biggest crowd at any of the events, and it photographed well. The rest of the pictures features your prototypical close ups, or one-off snapshots, probably to conceal the fact that there was very low turnout at most events. I mean, the Pittsburgh event featuring CeaseFirePA looks like a pretty decent house party. It’s no surprise that Heeding God’s Call turned out the usual suspects in Philadelphia. Reading wasn’t too bad a crowd.
I count about 33 people in the headlining event crowd in Conowingo. The unescapable fact for the Brady Campaign and other groups is these are pathetic turnouts. Dennis wants to know whether politicians are listening. They are not. They should not. At my club, we get a better turnout for air gun matches when Larry is making his famous New England clam chowder than the Brady’s got at Conowingo. My club this summer had a picnic that turned out four hundred, and that’s only because we capped it. The area gun shows on any given weekend draw thousands.
Whether the antis want to accept it or not, this is why we’re listened to, and they are ignored. There are simply a lot more of us than there are of you. Time to start facing facts.
Officer Harless of Canton, OH Fired
John Richardson notes that the City of Canton has decided to let this particular loose cannon go. I wish I could say this is a case of a town doing the right thing, but I suspect the primary reason is that Daniel Harless was a walking potential 1983 suit just waiting to happen, and I would point out that 1983 allows one to sue all the way up the chain of command.
I’d say justice served, but I have to agree with Uncle on this one. If I threatened to shoot someone dead, who was not threatening me in any way, while I was open carrying a pistol, I’d be in jail already.
Third Circuit Ruling on Housemates of Felons
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which encompasses Pennsylvania and New Jersey, has reversed a dismissal of an indictment that a housemate facilitated a felon’s possession of firearms. The courts argument would seem to be that since the charge was facilitating, not her own possession, the case should go to trial to discover the facts in the case. From a strictly legal reasoning point of view, I can understand where the court is coming from. But I’m uncomfortable with the ruling as the effect it will have on the rights of those who live with prohibited persons. Think about a battered spouse who seeks a firearm to protect herself in an abusive relationship with a convicted felon.
In this instance any spouse, domestic partner, or roommate of a prohibited person runs legal risk keeping a gun in the home for self-protection. If the prohibited individual is ruled to have been in possession, the housemate can also be charged. That seems like a poor way to treat someone’s constitutional rights.
I think in this case the court got it wrong. There needs to be evidence that the person purposefully helped aid in the possession of the prohibited person. Otherwise the housemate is deprived of their constitutional right without due process.
Quote of the Day
From our favorite Brady Board member, in her own comments:
Should we just not do anything? That is not what this country does. When there is a national public health and safety problem, people get to work. They pass laws, they educated, they do something. Seatbelt laws, no smoking laws, breast cancer and colon cancer screenings- all national efforts to get people to take better care of themselves or to mandate things that will make people safer and cut costs to health care, etc. We haven’t even tried with guns so how would we know?
Sometimes nothing is exactly the right thing to do. I don’t get this “We have to do something,” mentality. Especially when something generally involves restricting people’s liberty in the cases of smoking bans and seatbelt laws. I think this is really what probably separates our two sides; we value freedom and they want to be relieved of the burdens of it. I think this more now that we have interacted with them more.
Note the comparison to breast cancer screening and colon cancer screening. Would Joan Peterson favor mandating these? With long prison sentences for failing to show up to your scheduled screening? Because that’s what using gun control to solve the problem of violence means. Maybe she would. It certainly wouldn’t surprise me. But to borrow some of their lingo in a different context, as a cancer victim and survivor myself, having lost my mother to it, I would never advocate mandating such things. Freedom is more important than saving the lives which would be saved by mandatory screening with stiff penalties for non-compliance. I think most other folks would agree.
But there’s one difference here. There’s reliable scientific evidence that early screening greatly increases cancer survival rates. There’s absolutely no evidence at all that gun control reduces violence crime or murder.
Bloomberg = Chavez?
Following up on Bitter’s post about Bloomberg taking up a modern day temperance movement, Rational Gun takes a look at an issue by issue comparison, and I have to say that the parallels are creepy. I notice Rational Gun didn’t take a look at nanny state alcohol laws, but sure enough, Chavez is into that too:
On Monday, the national tax collection agency SENIAT announced changes regarding taxes on alcohol and cigarettes in an attempt to reduce their consumption. SENIAT Superintendent Jose Vielma Mora explained that the new increases in taxes on these goods are aimed at “lessening the moral, economic, and social consequences of their use.” Mora added that the communal councils will be consulted before granting liquor licenses in order to prevent alcohol consumption near schools, churches, or cultural centers.
I don’t know if Bloomberg is consciously trying to keep pace with the Venezuelan dictator, but he’s certainly doing a bang up job. Bloomberg is the kind of person I don’t believe can be trusted with power. Hopefully after this current third term, New Yorkers will be sick of him. The rest of the country sure is.
The Modern Day Temperance Movement Comparison for Gun Control Advocates
Sebastian has often cited the temperance movement as a model that many of the modern gun control proponents seem to be latching on to in an effort to restrict rights. Well, it looks like Bloomberg has decided to go down that path, too.
He plans to use grants from the Obamacare in order to push and agenda with a goal of “reducing alcohol retail outlet (e.g. bar, corner store) density.” He wants to ban advertisements for alcohol products and bars on the transit system, as well as retail settings such as stores and restaurants.
Have They Lost NPR?
NPR does an interview on the Glock, which is very fair to the issue. The interview is with Paul Barrett, author of Glock, the Rise of America’s Gun. They get into how anti-gun groups maligned the Glock by essentially misleading the public about its characteristics. So have the anti-gun groups lost NPR? It’s hard for me to understand why these folks haven’t found more productive careers in other issues.
What is Responsible 911 Use?
Pardon this very off topic rant, but this is something that irritates me to know end.
I was reading up on the Washington state NRA license plate bill, when I noticed an ad sponsored by King County to remind citizens to use 911 responsibly. What does that even mean beyond the obvious stories of idiots?
I pose the question because I’ve had several questionable experiences with 911 over the course of my life, and I try to do the right thing.
One of the first times that I had problems with 911 was when I encountered a massive car fire on the Beltway in Virginia. I slowed down, but continued on to my exit which was very near the fire. I called 911. I had to call six times before I didn’t get a busy signal. When I didn’t get a busy signal, I was told to hold, had to wait through several messages, then I finally had it ring three more times before I got an operator. It’s a damn good thing I saw the people from the car on the side of the road watching their car go up in flames instead of actually trapped in the car. By this time, there were still no emergency vehicles on the scene. In theory, that was an emergency. In practice, the operator acted quite annoyed with the fact that I was reporting a massive vehicle fire on a major commuting route.
Another time, I called the regular operator after discovering I had been shorted change by a Delaware tollbooth worker just as I pulled away. I tried to get the number to the relevant agency, and was finally transferred. After insisting that I was clearly mistaken and was making outrageous charges against their top notch employees, they told me I needed to call 911. It was $10 that I will (giving the benefit of the doubt) assume was mistakenly not included with my change because I paid in an unexpectedly high denomination. I was irritated, but not ready to scream that it was a criminal emergency. They absolutely refused to take my report, and insisted this was a 911 matter. I called 911, apologized, and explained that I was told to call by a state agency even though it was not a life threatening emergency. They actually said that the agency was correct! What the heck? Why is 911 handling these sorts of complaints? So, I gave them the information, and they took it down. A couple of months later, I received a check for $10 from Delaware. I would have rather they kept the $10 and reconsidered appropriate use of emergency numbers.
Various other times, I’ve been told to call in order to report debris in the road and other things. I thought that was the purpose for non-emergency numbers to law enforcement and other related agencies. Apparently, I am mistaken.
So, I guess my question for King County and readers who work in this field, what exactly is responsible use of 911? When there are “flames shooting into the sky” emergencies, I’m treated like it’s burden to answer the phone, and when it’s not, I’m greeted with enthusiastic operators ready to chase down my $10 like there’s no tomorrow.
Arlen Specter Called Bitter by Philly Press
Arlen Specter has largely been quiet since he was sent packing back to Philadelphia by Democratic voters in 2010. While we can at least take some comfort that he’s not blaming it all on Bush as most of his new old party leaders tend to do, now that he is speaking out, he is blaming Obama for his loss. That’s right, it’s not the “party & ideological flip to save my job that I feel entitled to on the taxpayer’s dime” that rubbed Democrats the wrong way. It’s not the fact that his opponent, Joe Sestak, ran as a hardcore liberal in a state where those on the left felt threatened by a shift to the right on many other political fronts. It’s Obama’s fault.
Should President Obama dump Joe Biden as his running mate and replace him with Hillary Clinton?
Arlen Specter was asked that hot-potato question, circulating in some Democratic circles, in a meeting Tuesday with The Inquirer editorial board.
His answer showed that the former 30-year senator hasn’t lost his knack for blunt talk – nor, perhaps, his bitterness over what he feels were slights from Obama during his failed 2010 Senate campaign.
He suggested maybe Obama is the one who should be dumped.
“That’s the second best alternative,” he said of replacing Biden. “A better alternative is to make Hillary the [presidential] nominee. As long as we’re talking about dumping, let’s go to the core problem.”
He complains that Obama flew over Pennsylvania twice in 2010 without stopping to campaign with Specter. I’m just amazed at how Specter can’t see how many on the left would have only held that against Obama as playing politics as usual with a candidate who could not be trusted to carry the flag for the progressive agenda. In a state with closed primaries where only the party faithful can vote to select a candidate for the general election, Specter couldn’t find too many friends on either side of the aisle. It wasn’t because he was some kind of true moderate. Honestly, most people just didn’t think he could be trusted based on his own actions that would throw one party and ideology under the bus so quickly – twice in his career, I might add.