The hack job that MSNBC engaged in to disparage Connecticut gun owners was a big topic yesterday on Cam & Company. Now the Daily Caller is covering it, in addition to Twitchy. The purpose here is to make gun owners and Second Amendment advocates look like fringe whack jobs and nasty brutes who bully victims of gun violence. Remember, they do hate you because you’re a gun owner, and stand up for your rights.
Author: Sebastian
Joe Donnelly Comes Out Against Gun Bans
INDIANAPOLIS — Freshman Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly is opposing a ban on assault weapons sought by President Barack Obama.
How many other Democrats will stand against the President, and the progressive-left wing of their party? Donnelly deserves credit for doing so.
New York Can’t Even Properly Identify Firearms
Bob Owens has the story, where numerous firearms are misidentified. These are the people who decide what we can and can’t own.
Also, many thanks to Bitter for sitting through all four hours of the Dog and Pony show in the Senate today, so we don’t have to. I listened to a good bit of it through my cell phone in the car. If you haven’t contacted your Senators yet, please, please do so.
Obama and Skeet Shooting
This is certainly taking off in the media. I’m not sure what that skeet shooting move is called.
Messing With the Wrong People
A computer tech in Colorado apparently, upon hearing that Obama was spinning off OFA as “Organizing for Action,” went out and registered the .net domain and redirected it to the NRA. Someone else, a Florida Republican, grabbed .com and .org. I’m guessing perhaps the machine is not so well oiled as we have been lead to believe. First they botch the launch of the gun control effort, and apparently also never bothered to preregister the major domains before they made the announcement. That’s amateur hour stuff right there. That’s the kind of mistake I’d expect a gun control group to make. Maybe once you embrace gun control, all competence goes out the window?
Carolyn McCarthy on Women and AR-15s
A woman shouldn’t use an AR-15, because “A rifle is more accurate.” This woman has no business pontificating on guns, let alone legislating on them.
NRA Polls its Own Members
The results look vastly different than Frank Luntz’s bogus poll. It all depends on how you ask the question. The more I see of polling, the more I think polling is a refuge for scoundrels, and yet it unfortunately plays a large role in political battles, which is why NRA is doing it. The more important part is many of us will crawl over broken glass to oppose politicians who favor gun control.
The Goal Is Not Disarmament?
Tell that to the San Diego Police Chief. The anti-gunners keep telling us that’s not the goal, and we’re crazy, paranoid rednecks for thinking so. But then people keep coming out of the woodwork saying that is the goal any time they start to feel the slightest wind at their back. But we know the end game.
A Test Case on School Carry?
School carry has always been a gray area in Pennsylvania. The law on weapons in schools is less than clear:
(a) Definition.–Notwithstanding the definition of “weapon” in section 907 (relating to possessing instruments of crime), “weapon” for purposes of this section shall include but not be limited to any knife, cutting instrument, cutting tool, nunchuck stick, firearm, shotgun, rifle and any other tool, instrument or implement capable of inflicting serious bodily injury.
(b) Offense defined.–A person commits a misdemeanor of the first degree if he possesses a weapon in the buildings of, on the grounds of, or in any conveyance providing transportation to or from any elementary or secondary publicly-funded educational institution, any elementary or secondary private school licensed by the Department of Education or any elementary or secondary parochial school.
(c) Defense.–It shall be a defense that the weapon is possessed and used in conjunction with a lawful supervised school activity or course or is possessed for other lawful purpose.
I’ve followed lawyerly advice and considered schools to be off limits, but I tend to think that if you faithfully interpret this statute in the best light for the defendant, carrying with an LTC for self-defense is a “lawful purpose”, and thus a valid defense.
Well, it looks like someone in Confluence, PA carried a gun into a school and got caught, so we would seem to have a test case. Prosecutors are prosecuting. The guy apparently was trying to make a point. I guess the Somerset County District Attorney felt the need to do the same. Another story here. PAFOA thread here.
Promoting our Second Amendment Scholars
Not paid promotions, just some boosting for people who have done a lot of great work on our issue. Here’s the summary:
Bob Cottrol has a new book out. It’s not released yet, but you can now preorder from Amazon.
Students of American history know of the law’s critical role in systematizing a racial hierarchy in the United States. Showing that this history is best appreciated in a comparative perspective, The Long, Lingering Shadow looks at the parallel legal histories of race relations in the United States, Brazil, and Spanish America. Robert J. Cottrol takes the reader on a journey from the origins of New World slavery in colonial Latin America to current debates and litigation over affirmative action in Brazil and the United States, as well as contemporary struggles against racial discrimination and Afro-Latin invisibility in the Spanish-speaking nations of the hemisphere.
Ranging across such topics as slavery, emancipation, scientific racism, immigration policies, racial classifications, and legal processes, Cottrol unravels a complex odyssey. By the eve of the Civil War, the U.S. slave system was rooted in a legal and cultural foundation of racial exclusion unmatched in the Western Hemisphere. That system’s legacy was later echoed in Jim Crow, the practice of legally mandated segregation. Jim Crow in turn caused leading Latin Americans to regard their nations as models of racial equality because their laws did not mandate racial discrimination— a belief that masked very real patterns of racism throughout the Americas. And yet, Cottrol says, if the United States has had a history of more-rigid racial exclusion, since the Second World War it has also had a more thorough civil rights revolution, with significant legal victories over racial discrimination. Cottrol explores this remarkable transformation and shows how it is now inspiring civil rights activists throughout the Americas.
Professor Cottrol is fluent in Portugese and Spanish, so is uniquely suited for a work like this.
David E. Young is the author of “The Founder’s View of the Right to Bear Arms” and “The Origin of the Second Amendment.” His work was cited by the 5th Circuit in the Emerson case, and by the Supreme Court in DC v. Heller. He also blogs at “On Second Opinion:”
Fact checking modern opinions and assertions regarding Second Amendment history and development by direct comparison with Founding Era facts
If you’re looking to develop a greater understanding of the Second Amendment, it’s a great resource.