The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
They find it hard to believe NRA members would support assault rifles being smuggled to Mexico. Except this is all a manufactured issue. And even if it wasn’t, guns are already illegal in Mexico. The violence happens there, not here where they are largely legal (though not assault rifles). It’s their problem, not ours. You’re not going to disarm criminals who traffic in contraband.
Don’t want contraband smuggled into your country? Work with us to secure the border. It’s quite simple, really.
Dave Hardy points out Sanford Levinson’s “Protestant” and “Catholic” views of the Constitution. The irony being it’s the Catholics on the Court who seem to take the more “Protestant” view of the Constitution. It would be even more ironic of the Protestants on the Court took a more Catholic view as well, but at this point there are no Protestants on the court. It’s basically six Catholics and three Jews. I’m surprised this isn’t driving the tin foil hat crowd completely nuts. It’s a papist conspiracy!
Shelly Rae opines on offering the little lady a nice .38 revolver. I’ve noticed, perhaps too anecdotally, that this advise is far more likely to come from older men than it is younger men.
So a convicted felon managed to get a gun anyway and went to a school board meeting with the idea of shooting himself some people. Only his plans were thwarted by someone else with a gun and he decided to shoot himself before someone took away all his glory:
District security chief and former police officer Mike Jones ran in and shot Duke, ending his shooting spree. At that point, Duke pointed the gun on himself and committed suicide. SWAT officers stormed the room soon after.
And yet we’re constantly told a gun wouldn’t have mattered at Virginia Tech. But I forget, this is a highly trained police officer with magical gun powers the rest of us can’t possibly possess. Apparently Jones is pretty torn up over shooting the guy. It’s understandable. But I’m glad he was there, and did what he did. Superintendent Husfelt acted valiantly too, trying to calm the gunman down, and buying time. Also valiant was Ginger Littleton, who tried to disarm the man (though quite ineffectively).
Littleton would have been more effective if she had grabbed a nearby fire extinguisher, or some other object, and bashed the guy’s skull in, but what she tried to do is commendable. In the end what was needed was someone else with a gun. Most of these murder-suicide types are acting out a fantasy, as soon as that fantasy gets interrupted by a gunfight they didn’t expect, they usually give up and off themselves before someone else gets to do it. These types aren’t fighters. I have no doubt our opponents will latch on to this, but it proves our points more effectively than it does theirs.
In this instance, people didn’t behave the way the shooter wanted, and refused to play the part in the fantasy, and in the end only the shooter was the dead guy. Resistance works. Passivity is what racks up the body count for these whack jobs.
Recognizing his vulnerability in swing states, Obama began to run an alternate campaign to calm the worries of gun owners, said Ray Schoenke, a former Washington Redskins lineman who founded a moderate gun rights group, the American Hunters and Shooters Association, as part of the Obama effort.
The Obama campaign paid for Schoenke’s travel to 40 events in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida and Colorado to address pro-gun voters.
So Schoenke was basically on the payroll of Obama’s campaign. That’s spelled “shill” with two ls Ray, just in case you weren’t aware. No wonder this guy had no credibility.
So the WaPo has finally done their bit on the NRA, and reveals this bit of information:
In the past few days, the plan [to require multiple long gun purchases to be reported] has quietly gained traction at Justice. But sources told The Post they fear that if the plan becomes public, the NRA will marshal its forces to kill it.
I also love this:
The fate of the Mexican gunrunning rule is only the most recent example of how the gun lobby has consistently outmaneuvered and hemmed in ATF
The mexican gunrunning rule? Instead of the “we get to hire additional bureaucrats to process all this extra paperwork, and thus grow our empires” rule? I will say this, and say it proudly: I’m not willing to give an inch to deal with Mexico’s problem. Guns are largely illegal in Mexico, and largely legal here, and they are the ones with the violence problem, and not us. In addition, and we’ve said this until we’re blue in the face, the cartels are not getting machine guns, grenades and rocket launchers from legal sources in the US. Also, let’s take a look at this:
Don Davis, 77, has run Don’s Guns and Galleries in Indianapolis for 37 years and says he is one of the highest-volume dealers in the region. A big supporter of the Second Amendment right to bear arms, Davis resigned from the NRA many years ago. “They used to be an organization for the hunter and the fishermen,” he said recently. “Then they got into politics. They’re so political, that’s what they do with their money. Today if you say anything about a gun, they use their money to run against you.”
That’s this Don’s Guns. I seem to also recall that this guy is a major source of crime guns. Hey Brady folks and Bryan Miller: why don’t you go protest Don? I promise, I won’t lift a finger to help him, and I think everyone else will probably agree.
The WaPo article then goes on to speak of NRA as a powerful, evil force, blocking these very nice people at ATF who just want to fix this whole nasty gun violence thing. I mean, how can you argue with unbiased reporting like this:
Obama never said anything about banning handguns or closing gun shops. His campaign platform promised to pursue long-standing proposals to address urban violence: reinstating the assault weapons ban, outlawing “cop killer” bullets and closing the “gun-show loophole” that permits firearm sales without background checks.
Except he did. He has supported both in his past, and that fact is well documented. And how do you square that any of those other measures will do anything to address urban violence? The CDC studied the assault weapons ban and found it did nothing. I also doubt that the WaPo reporters involved in this piece have any idea what a “cop killer” bullet is. But it exists. Trust them. They are gun experts, right?
It’s days like this that make me happy fewer and fewer people are paying attention to print media.
Currently our state’s preemption statute says this:
No county, municipality or township may in any manner regulate the lawful ownership, possession, transfer or transportation of firearms, ammunition or ammunition components when carried or transported for purposes not prohibited by the laws of this Commonwealth.
This has been interpreted by some to mean local municipalities have some power to regulate guns, despite the Courts saying otherwise. I would propose Pennsylvania adopt a variation on Washington State’s language, which is unambiguous:
The General Assembly hereby fully occupies and preempts the entire field of firearms regulation within the boundaries of the Commonwealth, including the registration, licensing, possession, purchase, sale, acquisition, transfer, discharge, and transportation of firearms, or any other element relating to firearms or parts thereof, including ammunition and reloader components. Codes and ordinances enacted by counties, cities, townships, other municipalities or political subdivisions are preempted and repealed, regardless of the nature of the code, charter, or home rule status of such city, town, county, or municipality.
And we also have Rep. Metcalfe’s proposed bill which adds some teeth to the preemption language:
Remedies for unlawful regulation.–Notwithstanding any other provision of law, upon finding that a county, municipality or township in any manner regulated the lawful ownership, possession, transfer or transportation of firearms, ammunition or ammunition components in violation of subsection (a) or 53 Pa.C.S. § 2962(g) (relating to limitation on municipal powers), a court shall direct the county, municipality or township to pay actual damages and reasonable attorney fees and costs to a party who successfully challenges the regulation.
I think we need both Rep. Metcalfe’s bill and a rewrite of the preemption language to make it crystal clear to local governments that they may not touch the area of firearms. Sadly, I don’t think attorneys fees will be any deterrent to Philadelphia, who will be happy to waste city taxpayer dollars on challenges, and then run poor mouthing to Harrisburg for more of our taxpayer dollars. I would like to see appropriations from Harrisburg to Philadelphia be contingent on them not passing unlawful ordinances.
The NRA has in the past sued over the city’s ability to pass its own gun legislation. Clarke joked about that likelihood, telling Gillison, “Look forward to being with you in court again.â€
At this point they know it’s illegal, they are just doing it to be pricks. Hopefully we can get real teeth to preemption so we can penalize the city for doing crap like this. I’d settle for an unambiguous preemption statute, with state funding cut for cities who have gun laws on the books. I don’t even care if they aren’t enforced, time to remove them. This crap has to stop, and stop now.
Quite a counter protest was had in Maryland against Heeding God’s Call, Bryan Miller’s conjured up “faith group” that supports gun control. I thought the Armored Personnel Carrier was a nice touch. I know I’m normally perception sensitive, but sometimes you have to have some fun. As the photos show, as much as you might want folks to show up who don’t fit the stereotypes, a few will, and you can bet they are who the media is going to photograph.
Every once in a while, something comes along that will convince me to venture into the City of Brotherly Mayhem. This is one of those things. My high school chorus generally did one bit from the Requiem each year, and at one time I could have translated the latin. All skills long lost to disuse. Actually, there are more than a few Requiems out there, but if you say “The Requiem,” one generally means that which was written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
The historical fiction Amadeus, one of the great movies of all time distorted a lot of the history of this piece. While much of the play and movie were faithful, there was a lot of fanciful embellishment of the story. Mozart’s Requiem was actually commissioned by Count Von Walsegg, who had the odious habit of commissioning works from famous composers, and then passing them off as his own. That didn’t seem to work in this case, though it is true that Mozart died before the Requiem could be completed. Constanze Mozart had lesser known composer finish the work.
I am not familiar but with one other composers Requiem, and that’s the one written by Hector Berlioz. That piece was written to commemorate the dead in the French Revolution of 1830. Not to be confused with the French Revolution of 1832, on which Victor Hugo based his novel Les Miserables, which was later written into a musical of the same name.