2012 – Page 112 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Vertical Integration

A bit off from our normal topic, but I was quite surprised to hear this morning that the Conoco-Phillips refinery, which has been up for sale, found a buyer, and that buyer is Delta Airlines. The refinery has pipelines going to Philly, JFK and LaGuardia, two of which are Delta hubs. Delta claims this will supply 80% of their domestic fuel needs. Wow. If this works, I wonder if you’ll see other airlines buying their own refineries. Apparently they also have a deal with BP to swap non-jet fuel products for more jet fuel, given that you can’t take crude and make exclusively jet fuel.

It’s partially a fractional distillation process, and you get what’s in the crude, essentially. You can crack your way to lighter hydrocarbons, but can’t go from lighter to heavier. The local angle is, the folks who worked at those refineries will get to stay in business. As the article mentions, refineries have been closing in this area because they are meant to take more expensive sweet crude, and find it difficult to compete with refineries who can deal with heavier, cheaper crude. So what Delta is attempting here is a bit of a risk.

Romney Meeting Bloomberg

A lot of people seem to be making a big deal out of Romney meeting with Bloomberg, and I’ve heard a few speculate that perhaps Bloomberg will be Romney’s VP pick. That gave me a strange sense of Deja Vu. This isn’t something I’d read all that much into. If you’re a Presidential Candidate, and you make a trip to New York City, you’re pretty much obligated to drop in on the mayor. It’s just politeness. Even I wouldn’t turn my nose up at the Mayor, and if I met with him, I’d certainly talk about gun control.

I was initially a lot more concerned about Bork on his judicial advisory committee, but a lot of folks in the comments noted that Alan Gura is also on the committee, and that in DC, these things are mostly a way to signal to different parts of the base. In other words, they are BS.

A New Loophole for the Media: Bullet Buttons

As is well documented in the gun blogosphere a loophole is anything legal that our opponents don’t like. The latest is the bullet button. For those outside of the People’s Republic of California, California’s assault weapons ban defines a magazine as detachable if it cannot be removed, except through use of a tool. The California AG ruled that a punch or screwdriver counts as a tool. Solution? Put a recessed button on the AR magazine release that can’t be depressed except by action of punching it with a tool, or the tip of a loaded cartridge. If a magazine is not legally “detachable,” then it can’t be an assault weapon, no matter how many evil and ugly features you put on it.

â€œIf the bullet button assault weapon is allowed to come into the state then the California assault weapons ban basically doesnâ€™t exist any more,â€ said Josh Sugarmann with the Violence Policy Center.

Yes, Josh, that’s the whole idea. Your ban is a sham and always has been. We just exposed it as a sham, and engineered around it.

All Shooters are Guilty Until Proven Innocent

That now seems to be the philosophy of our opponents.

George Zimmerman Legal News

Looks like his attorneys have set up a site for news in the George Zimmerman case here. They’ll eventually be accepting donations to his legal defense fund. There were rumors that Zimmerman had raised 200,000 dollars himself, but I don’t know how true those rumors were, of if he can touch those funds at all.

Task Force Meets Today in Florida

Governor Scott’s task force is meeting today. We shall soon see how much trouble this task force intends to cause us. NRA has an alert here.

UPDATE: Looks like one of the legislative opponents of SYG has already released recommendationsÂ from his task force. You can view the full report here. What’s interesting is that even staunch opponents of SYG are too fearful of public opinion to put a duty to retreat back in the bill. They mostly recommend chipping away at the bill around the periphery, suggesting legal changes the general public is unlikely to understand.

Romney’s Court Advisor: Robert Bork

This is not good news for gun owners, or Second Amendment advocates, given that Bork is a well known advocate of collective right theory. Of course, this also isn’t the end of the world, given that Bork won’t be choosing himself. There won’t be too many candidates on Romney’s short list that will be embracers of collective rights. There are a few, however, and we have to watch out for them. The big fear is that Romney doesn’t really understand the subtleties of “conservatism:, since he is not one himself, and attempts to pander in a ridiculous and stupid way, using logic like “Reagan appointed Bork, conservatives love Reagan and therefore conservatives must also love Bork.”

Bush bungled a nomination too, with Harriet Meyers, but we had the benefit of other parts of the right-of-center coalition being unhappy. The real risk, and this risk was present with Bush, is that Romney would pick someone acceptable to other parts of the movement, except for gun owners, and we standing alone don’t have the power to scuttle the nominee. But whether we can do that or not is up to us; we certainly have the people power enough to accomplish it.

Alert for New York Gun Owners

Looks like the Assembly didn’t hear that these kinds of “safe storage” laws were tossed with Heller. From Tom King, head of NYSRPA:

YOUR RIGHT TO HOME PROTECTION IS IN JEOPARDY!

Assembly Bill 3292-A is flawed legislation that will make it a crime to leave an unlocked gun in your home. We have a constitutional right to defend our homes and our loved ones. In March, well over a thousand sportsmen rallied in Albany in a demonstration of solidarity for our Second Amendment freedom. If A.3292-A becomes law then an elderly homeowner, a single woman, or a husband defending his family will now have to be worried about where the state mandated key is to unlock the gun cabinet when confronted by an intruder. The intent of the law is to make homes safer for children but far more children are harmed by accidentally ingesting household chemicals or medicines. What’s next – state mandated locks for our kitchen and medicine cabinets?
You can’t [legislate] common sense. Call your local Assemblymember and tell them to vote NO on A.3292-A.

The debate could begin on Gun Storage Bill (A.3292-A) today. Watch the debate here.Â http://assembly.state.ny.us/av/

This ostensibly is “for the children,” but I would note that this applies to any household, such as mine, that does not have children. The purpose it will serve is important, which is more gun owners being in prison. We harp on helping create more law abiding gun owners, they try, as best they can, to make it difficult to own a gun and be law abiding.

Richard Feldman’s New Gun Group

Independent Firearms Owners Association. Feldman was a disgruntled former NRA employee who wrote the book “Ricochet, Confessions of a Gun Lobbyist.” Keeping in mind the book’s point of view, it’s a worthwhile read. But Uncle notes thatÂ his issue seems to be guns and weed, as he’s speaking out against the drug war. I was wondering what the purpose of this group could be. Since it’s close to election time, it’s time to watch out for false flags like the now defunct American Hunters and Shooters Association.

But Feldman never struck me as a tool, since he’s remained pretty faithful to gun rights. Looking over the site I have to come to the opinion that the purpose of the group is further employment for Richard Feldman, rather than any false flag campaign, or for any other nefarious purpose related to the 2012 elections. I’d just be rather curious what IFOA’s strategy and goal is, because it’s not easy to discern what they plan to accomplish that other groups are not already doing.

Is Marissa Alexander a Poster Child for SYG?

There’s been a lot of hubbub about the case of Marissa Alexander, a woman who pulled a gun on her abusive husband and has now been found guilty of three counts of Aggravated Assault on a Florida court, after being denied immunity under the SYG law. A superficial reading of the case in the media, and you might be readily inclined to believe this is a double standard. After looking through as many sources on the case as I could find, including original sources, I don’t believe it’s as conclusive.

There is absolutely no doubt, reading the initial deposition from her husband, that he’s pretty much scum. If she had aided his departure from the realm of the living, I wouldn’t shed a tear for him. But that’s a different matter from whether she’s legally entitled to a SYG defense. Alexander’s husband recanted much of the testimony that appears in that link, and if you read the denial of immunity, you will note that the evidence in the case comports with her having pointed the gun in his direction, and not into the air as both he and she had stated in the beginning.

Furthermore, the sequence of events in the caseÂ (click through to public access) lines up with a lot of the more detailed media reports I came across. She was originally granted bail, and told not to have contact with any of the victims. She violated that, and made contact with them, assaulted the husband, was rearrested and charged with domestic battery. Her bond on the original charge was revoked. Her attorney, at this point, motioned to withdraw as counsel and it was granted.

In any case of self-defense, your credibility is really going to be key to winning your case. Alexander, through her own actions, destroyed her own credibility. In that case, it’s going to come down to evidence, and agreed upon facts, in determining whether she acted reasonably in threatening her husband and his two children with a gun. In this case, those facts seem to point to Alexander not having a reasonable fear of grave bodily injury or death at the time she employed a firearm. When being judged by a reasonable person standard, it is very important for a jury to believe you are a reasonable person. Otherwise, as the Alexander case shows, you won’t be given benefit of doubt when testimony and facts dispute your accounting of things.

That said, Florida imposes a mandatory minimum for aggravated assault with a firearm of 20 years. This seems excessive to me for an act that ultimately did not harm anyone. It’s worth noting that the prosecution offered a plea deal that was ultimately rejected, but regardless, 20 years with no possibility of parole seems harsh. You won’t do that for armed robbery in Pennsylvania.