Author: Sebastian

It’s All Been Done

Dave Hardy tell us the City of Philadelphia wants to sue the state over gun control:

City Councilman Darrell L. Clarke said last night that the city plans to file a lawsuit today in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court alleging that the General Assembly has failed in its duty to protect the residents of the city.

“It is becoming increasingly clear to me that the General Assembly is unwilling or unable to act,” Clarke said in a telephone interview last night. “We have no choice but to go to court.”

This is a publicity stunt.  A few weeks ago I mentioned the case of Oritz vs. Commonwealth, which upheld the statewide preemption.  The city has sued the state several times over gun laws, and has lost every single time.  It’s well established that the legislature has the sole power to regulate firearms in the commonwealth.  The idea of suing the legislature for not passing laws is just insanity.

In addition to authorizing the suit today, Council intends to approve eight gun-control measures that have been languishing in Council for more than a year, Clarke said.

Among other things, the bills call for limiting handgun purchases to one a month, and for owners to report any guns that are lost or stolen, Clark said.

David Kairys, a professor at the Beasley School of Law at Temple University, said that the laws Council is expected to enact today should be valid because of the city’s Home Rule Charter. But the charter’s power is diminishing, he said.

“The legislature and the Supreme Court have so undercut it that it’s hard to say we have home rule anymore,” said Kairys, who in the 1990s led the city’s legal team in an unsuccessful court challenge against handgun manufacturers.

Try to enforce any of these, I can promise the city a giant lawsuit that WILL have merit in court.  No gun control law passed by the city is valid law in Pennsylvania, so attempting to enforce it will amount to an unlawful arrest.  I would like to see the state Attorney General remind the city that it is illegal for them to do this.

We’ve been down this road so many times with the city.  More on this issue later.

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Ruger Rimfire Challenge

Michael Bane is going to the Ruger Rimfire Challange, and says:

 You guys are going to be kicking yourselves in your sorry butts for NOT signing up for this match…there are, like, 30 — count ’em — guns on the prize table, plus a whole crate of other cool stuff! NOOOOOOOOO, I can’t win anything, except the ever-lasting love of match direction Lisa “Boom-Boom” Farrell, plus a complete collection of Lisa Farrell trading cards…I don’t even get a freakin’ t-shirt, otherwise! Still…

Sounds like a lot of fun, except for the fact that the State of California considers my Ruger 10/22 to be a menace to society…

http://www.pagunblog.com/blogpics/1022.jpg

… and would quickly arrest me and throw me in prison upon arrival.  Ruger should hold the Rimfire Challenge somewhere other than California.   Why would I want my shooting dollars to go to a state that believes I ought to be in prison?

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Light Posting

Sorry for the light posting.  I actually had a job interview today.  The position is contract to full time employment.  Probably not something I’m willing to do, though, and given that it’s an hour and ten minute commute each way, that’s making me think no.  I’m not willing to leave full time employment for a contract job.  Once I quit my job, and start working for them, I have little in the way of negotiating position when it comes to the final package.  If they want to hire me away from my current job, they need to negotiate full time employment with me up front.

I am anxious to get out of my current job.  I’ve been here for six years, and the company’s long term prospects are very doubtful. I’ve also inherited, through layoffs and attrition, the work of five other people.  Some of the work is good, but some if it is awful.  The work environment here is pretty bad.  Employees are routinely debased and disrespected, management is incompetent, and the culture values egos above accomplishment.  Not things that motivate me to get up and go to work every day.

I want to stay in a research environment though, and this opportunity would do that for me.  I like working with scientists, and in that type of environment.  I’d hate to pass it up, then have something happen to this job, and be forced to hastily go for a job in generic corporate IT, where, quite honestly, I’d be bored to death.

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More From the Weird Department

We definitely have some weird people in Pennsylvania, but we don’t generally elect them Governor:

James E. McGreevey, who resigned as New Jersey governor in 2004 after saying that he had had an extramarital affair with a man, has become an Episcopalian and wants to be ordained as a priest in that faith, according to a published report.

The former governor, who was raised as a Roman Catholic, was officially received into the Episcopal faith on Sunday at St. Bartholomew’s Church in Manhattan, said the Rev. Kevin D. Bean, the church’s vicar.

I guess he was impressed that the Episcopal Church has accepted openly gay bishops. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

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Viper Control?

Perhaps certain state legislators in Pennsylvania should enact Snake Control. Check this out:

Jackson picked up two western diamondback rattlesnakes, a pigmy rattlesnake and two copperheads to try to keep police from taking her into custody, authorities said.

Jackson, who was raising the snakes for laboratories, received several bites during the standoff and was taken to a hospital after police subdued her with a stun gun.

The snakes were later donated to a zoo in Hershey.

We have some weird people in this state. Clearly something has to be done about the proliferation of assault snakes within the commonwealth.

Hat Tip: Dave Hardy

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Philadelphia Wants Local Gun Laws

The same people behind the H.B. 760, the statewide registration bill are now pushing for a bill that would allow Philadelphia to maintain a gun registry:

State Reps. Angel Cruz and Rosita C. Youngblood yesterday announced another effort aimed at reducing the flow of guns in Philadelphia, this time by allowing the city to create a gun-registry system. Surrounded by reporters yesterday in his storefront office on North Fifth Street, Cruz said “something has to be done” to ease the wave of gun violence that has gripped the city.

Cruz said that while law-abiding citizens purchase guns, “bad people buy guns, too. This way we will know who has the guns.”

So the drug dealers and gang members are going to register their guns with the police? It would seem that is not likely. So what you’re saying is, you’ll know which law abiding people have guns, which, maybe I’m crazy here, seems pretty useless.

But why do something useful, like locking up criminals, when politicians can keep proposing nonsense like this, and tell the people back home that Harrisburg is really responsible for their own failures.

Hat Tip to Classical Values.

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ATF Director Clarifies Trace Data

Yesterday, we talked about Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign renewing the group’s push to remove the Tiahrt Amendment. Michael Sullivan, director of the ATF, is running this editorial in several national papers.

Let me be clear: neither the congressional language nor ATF rules prohibit the sharing of trace data with law enforcement conducting criminal investigations, or place any restrictions on the sharing of trace data with other jurisdictions once it is in the hands of state or local law enforcement.

So why exactly are the Brady’s so against the Tiahrt Amendment, when law enforcement has said it’s not getting in the way of them catching criminals? Because being able to misrepresent trace data to the public was a great political tool for them to use.

Hat Tip: Dave Hardy

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Magazine Ban in Illionis

The State of Illinois is moving through a ban on standard capacity magazines. It was introduced as an amendment to another bill by State Senator Dan Kotowski of Cook County. It’s called SB1007. Here’s the text of the bill.

7   Sec. 24-1.8. Manufacture, possession, delivery, sale, and
8   purchase of large capacity ammunition feeding devices.
9   (a) As used in this Section:
10   "Large capacity ammunition feeding device" means:
11   (1) a detachable magazine, belt, drum, feed strip, or
12   similar device that has a capacity of, or that can be
13   readily restored or converted to accept, more than 10
14   rounds of ammunition; or
15   (2) any combination of parts from which a device
16   described in paragraph (1) can be assembled.

Of course, Police, Olympic competitors, and folks at the World Shooting and Recreational Complex in Sparta. Odd that anti-gun groups and politicians say these devices have no legitimate use, yet they feel the need to except people who, you know, are using them for a legitimate sporting use.

But I guess Senator Kotowski gets to decide what legitimate sporting uses he approves of. If they don’t like your legitimate sporting use, you’re screwed. And of course, these magazines have no self-defense use either, unless of course you’re a police officer, then they do.

Remember that it only takes a few seconds to change a magazine. This bill will not, of course, affect availability of magazines to criminals. Existing magazines are grandfathered, and there are a lot of them out there.

There is also no exception for people traveling through the State of Illinois. There’s FOPA, but that won’t keep you out of jail.

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Militarization of Police

Everyone should read Radley Balko’s article in Reason, Tanks for Nothing, describing federal government efforts to transfer surplus military equipment to local police departments:

The Pentagon giveaway program began in the late 1980s, and is almost certainly responsible for the dramatic rise in the number of SWAT teams across the country, which led to the 1500 percent increase in the number of total deployments over the last 25 years, and to the increasing use of paramilitary tactics for nonviolent crimes. Many criminal justice experts say the program, along with the fact that SWAT teams and narcotics officers are often trained by former members of elite military groups like the Army Rangers or Navy Seals is responsible for the “cowboy” mentality that pervades many SWAT and narcotics units.

My favorite is this part:

About 3/4 through the book, Wright explains how the full-time Marines were getting increasingly irritated with a reserve unit traveling with them. The reserve unit was mostly made up people who in their civilians lives were law enforcement, “from LAPD cops to DEA agents to air marshalls,” and were acting like idiot renegades. Wright quotes a gunnery sargeant who traveled with the reserve unit:

“Some of the cops in Delta started doing this cowboy stuff. They put cattle horns on their Humvees. They’d roll into these hamlets, doing shows of force—kicking down doors, doing sweeps—just for the fuck of it. There was this little clique of them. Their ringleader was this beat cop…He’s like five feet tall, talks like Joe Friday and everybody calls him ‘Napoleon.'”

I don’t have any problem with the police having the hardware they need to do their job. I don’t wince at the idea of patrol cars having AR-15s. I think every patrol car should have one, in fact. I don’t even have issues with police SWAT teams, provided they are used only in rare circumstances, in situations that call for it.

But this phenomena has gotten out of control. It’s time to start pushing to bring police work back into the civilian realm. Police ought not be super citizens, with special rights, privileges and yes, equipment, that sets them apart from you and I. That engenders an attitude that is dangerous to maintaining a free society. Police are civilians, that we hire to maintain law and order. That’s it. Their attitudes and equipment need to reflect that.

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