In From the Cold is wondering if Governor Corzine didn’t hit is head a little too hard in his car accident, based on his call to close to Warren Grove Range.  On the contrary, based on what I know of the Governor, I would say he’s getting back to his normal self.
Author: Sebastian
Legislature Pushing Back
Dave Hardy has some links to the goings on in Pennsylvania right now.
I have written my state representative about the recent antics of the Governor. I think this is actually kind of foolish on Rendell’s part. This is is surprising to me, because I’ve always thought, despite my disagreements with the Governor, he was a rather shrewed politician with a good political sense.
Despite his lame duck status, he’s the primary mouthpiece for the Democratic Party in the state. He’s just been handed a stunning political defeat with voters overwhelmingly rejecting the Act 1 tax shift, and now, with the Democratic Party holding onto a single seat majority in the General Assembly, he’s pushing hard for gun control.
A lot of those new Democrats are from districts where the voters will eat them alive if they perceive them as pushing gun control. Even if the reps themselves are pro-gun, which is the case for many of them, they are still unknown quantities to voters, and Rendell’s rhetoric here isn’t going to do anything but hurt them.
6 More Hours!
Only six more hours before the season finale of Lost! I really hope they don’t let us down.  Based on the previews, it looks like The Others had the whole plan figured out.  Did Juliet betray them? Will John Locke make it?  I think Locke has to live, because if you look at the series, Locke I think is really the central character that the show is mostly about. To me, the main characters are Locke, the Island, and Ben.
It’s sure to be an exciting two hours of a television.
Stockpiling Ammunition
Dave Hardy tell us that Virginia Governor Tom Kaine is troubled that anyone can just stockpile ammunition, because the Virginia Tech nut job had 377 rounds.  The last time I did an inventory, I had approximately 10,000 rounds of ammunition in my basement, in various calibers. I’m pretty sure that many of you out there can beat this handily.  I think Tom Kaine, if this is really his sentiment, needs to get a clue.
Decent article by Lancaster Online, but…
Lancaster Online has a pretty good article on whether or not the Virginia Tech Killer could have gotten his guns if he had been a resident of Pennsylvania. The answer, they say, is no. They do get a few things wrong. For one, you can’t buy a gun on the internet without an FFL. And they are, probably not intentionally, misrepresenting a few statistics at the end.
I’m going to point this out, because this isn’t the first paper I’ve seen make this mistake. They are using the Pennsylvania State Police 2005 Firearms Report. This is accurate to use for gun sales, but it does not show the number of people licensed to carry a firearm in any specific county, it only shows the number of people run through PICS that year for a concealed carry license application. Lancaster Online mistakenly reports the number of people with concealed carry licenses in the county as 3989 people. The true number would be approximately five times this amount, since our licenses renew every five years. One year won’t give you a very good number, because a lot of people got them as soon as the law changed, so some years will be slower than others. To get a true number, you’d have to contact the County Sheriff, and most won’t tell you how many they issue.
Statewide, the last number I heard was 600,000, or thereabouts. According to the 2005 State Police Report, they processed 101,000 background checks through PICS for license applications. I’d say 600,000 is probably about right, but you’d really have to see the numbers over a five year period to know for sure.
Walker County Gunnies Respond
I posted a few days ago about this letter to the editor. It seems that gun owners have made themselves heard in response.  I always like it when that happens.
Brady’s Pushing Microstamping Hard
The Brady Campaign made a press release today urging California to pass the microstamping bill:
Microstamping technology was most recently demonstrated last Friday at the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill. There, the co-inventor of the technology, Todd Lizotte, conducted a successful live fire demonstration of the technology at the building’s shooting range with media
and Hill staff in attendance. Participants were able to see the remarkable clarity and redundancy of the technology when Lizotte projected a microscopic view of a microstamped cartridge onto a projector screen. “All of the questions about microstamping have been answered,” said Joshua Horwitz, Executive Director of the Educational Fund to Stop Gun
Violence. “It has passed test after test. Law enforcement leaders want this. Community groups want this. It’s time to get it done.”
Interesting. I thought guns were illegal in Washington D.C. I’m curious to know exactly how the firearm was brought into the district, and under what conditions this test was conducted. Of course, it’s quite possible and probably that they wouldn’t face prosecution here, because of the Parker decision (which they are against) in any case.  Wouldn’t that be a fun bit of irony?
Of course, it isn’t true that this technology is a panacea:
To test the effects of repeated firing, Beddow fitted engraved firing pins into six Smith and Wesson .40-caliber handguns that were issued to California Highway Patrol cadets for use in weapons training. After firing about 2,500 rounds, the letter/number codes on the face of the firing pins were still legible with some signs of wear. But the bar codes and dot codes around the edge of the pins were badly worn.
They also found that results varied widely depending on the type of firearm used, and the type of ammunition. Of course, there’s also this:
Codes engraved on the face of the firing pin could easily be removed with household tools, Beddow found.
And you can bet, just like criminals remove serial numbers, they’ll remove these as well. And these will be much more easily and thoroughly removed than serial numbers.
I’m not sure this serves any other purpose than to frustrate manufacturers, and drive smaller custom shops and gun makers out of business. That would be fine by most of the groups who are supporting this nonsense.
Ed Rendell Harping on Gun Control
I guess Ed is a little pissed off after voters handed him a stunning defeat over the Act 1 tax shift proposal. He’s scolding the legislature over it’s refusal to pass gun control laws.
Gov. Ed Rendell today bashed the General Assembly for failing to pass gun control laws. “This Legislature, for too long, has been in control of the NRA,” Rendell said at a news conference with mayors from cities across the state and lawmakers pushing bills such as limiting handgun sales to one a month.
The Legislature for decades has resisted significantly tightening gun laws.
Asked for evidence of his statement that the Legislature has been under the “control” of the National Rifle Association, Rendell noted that penalties are tougher for receiving a stolen TV than a stolen gun.
Rendell is either ignorant of Pennsylvania law on this matter, or lying. Receiving stolen property is graded in Pennsylvania as a second degree felony if the property in question is a firearm. If the property is a car, it’s only a third degree felony. Receiving a television as stolen property is a first degree misdemeanor. I suspect Ed Rendell, as an attorney and former prosecutor, is well aware of this, and is deliberately misleading the public.
He said limiting handgun purchases to 12 a year would curb “straw purchases,” in which many weapons are purchased at once and resold to criminals.
Again, show me evidence that this constitutes a majority of trafficking, and show me proof that this law will have any real effect. South Carolina repealed its law because it didn’t. And Virginia weakened its one-gun-per month law. If 12 guns a year is enough, who’s to say that 1 a year isn’t enough? Sorry Ed, that’s not something politicians have any business deciding. Plus, if you only allow one a month, that means you’re keeping track of what I buy, right? Forgive me if I say f**k you.
Frankel said his amendment to make the penalty higher for receiving a stolen gun than a stolen TV failed last year in the House.
Funny, I just read the law, and the penalty is higher. If you want to see for yourself, look here to see how the law is graded. Here is the receiving stolen property law for Pennsylvania. I searched in vain for some evidence of Frankel’s defeated amendment, but couldn’t find it. It does appear in the past he’s tried to clarify the language by defining “firearm” in the state’s theft statute, probably to overcome the fact that a firearm can mean different things in different parts of Pennsylvania law, but still, this is house cleaning.
Politicians lie folks, and journalists don’t bother to check what they say or call them on their bullshit. It’s a sad state of affairs, but it’s part of the reason the blogosphere exists.
Ice Cream Trucks
It’s been a while since I posted a random conversation. It’s spring, which means it’s time for my neighborhood to be treated to the pleasures of ice cream truck music. You know, those sing song tunes that stick in your head to the point where you’re ready to sharpen a pencil and stab it in your ear.
Sebastian: I think it takes a certain kind of person to drive an ice cream truck
Lachrymite: a truly demented one?
Sebastian: They almost have to be. I mean, if I had to listen to the song the one in my neighborhood plays all day long, it wouldn’t be too long before I decide to drive my ice cream truck off a bridge just to end my misery.
Lachrymite: yeah
Sebastian: So I was thinking of what really motivates someone to drive an ice cream truck
Sebastian: I narrowed it down to two possibilities
Sebastian: 1) You really like eating your own inventory
Sebastian: 2) You really like little boys
Lachrymite: yep
Lachrymite: so either your ice cream truck driver is fat
Lachrymite: or he’s a child rapist!
Sebastian: Yeah, that’s basically how I see it
Sebastian: If your ice cream truck driver isn’t fat, I’d pay careful attention to his reaction when your kid orders a fudgesickle.
Lachrymite: haha
Sebastian: You also have to think that the fat ice cream man is eating his own profits.
Lachrymite: so he’ll probably go out of business soon
Lachrymite: which only leaves the pedophile ice cream truck drivers
Sebastian: So really, this could be an entire industry driven by people who like kids a little too much
Sebastian: I mean, anyone else, and they’d be handing the inventory out to the kids, because at the end of their shift, they planned to close the garage door with the truck still running, just so they can get that awful ice cream truck music out of their heads forever.
Lachrymite: hahaha
Sebastian: If I had an ice cream truck, I’d play death metal out the loudspeaker.
Sebastian: It would be the only way to maintain sanity.
Sebastian: And it would drive the hippies away.
Apologies to anyone who might be reading, who ever drove an ice cream truck, isn’t fat, and doesn’t want to touch children. I did not mean to malign your noble, if misunderstood, profession.
Which World I’d Rather Live In
Even though I think some tasks are best left for the police, I’d much rather live in a world where a few people are a little too eager to throw themselves into dangerous situations, than one where everyone cowers in the corner, crippled with fear, and then afterwards complains about how long it took the police to show up.
I think one thing that separates us from other people is we’re a bit more cognizant, and maybe even a little more accepting, of human limitations and failings. I’ve long thought that one of the key features of the left is a belief in the perfectibility of man, whereas we tend to think that’s a fool’s errand.
A person of the left would look at the two citizens, who tried to stop the killer in Idaho, and think “See, that’s exactly why only the police should have guns.” I’m sure many of us at least understand the motives that drive someone to go hunting after a killer, and therefore don’t see things that way. We may think it’s foolhardy, but view it as a consequence of human nature, and not something we can, or really should, try to weed from the population.
The left tends to place a great deal of faith in government, and tend to be the most surprised when it fails. Government failings aren’t simply an inevitable consequence of a system made up of imperfect humans, but are somehow the fault of those in positions of power. Put the right people in charge; people who have faith in, and are competent in the exercise of governmental power, and the world’s problems can be solved. Mankind can be perfected! This attitude, taken to the extreme, leads to Marxism. We deal with a much softer manifestation of that, but I’m convinced it all erupts from the same intellectual well.
It explains why the left is eager to trust police as the only ones with the means and authorization to engage in violence. The police are an organ of the state, which is the left’s primary tool. The idea that the police are just a collection of imperfect humans that we hire to do the job of keeping law and order, well, that idea is giant wrench thrown into the intellectual works. If the police make mistakes, if sometimes they fail to or cannot protect, indeed, if sometimes they actually even harm, then maybe those folks who demand that they have the means to act when the government can’t, or won’t, have a point, don’t they?
But accepting that means accepting you can never end crime, stop foolhardy people from trying to be heroes, prevent the idiot from accidentally shooting himself, or the depressed from doing it on purpose. It means accepting that man is not perfectible, and that’s a tough pill to swallow, especially if you’re, say, a politician or other person of means and influence, that fancies himself as one of those smart, competent people who is just the right person to tug on the levers of power.
Personally, I like living in a world with other imperfect human beings, and where people have the freedom to make decisions and take action, even if in hindsight we find that action foolish or reckless. I think most of the time, most of the people will do the right thing. I’d rather with a government that finds ways to work with its citizens rather than live under a government that just wants to manage them. To me it’s the difference between actually being free, and just saying you are.