The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
SB 249 has been pulled from committee. The bill is dead for the year. I can’t remember the last time we stopped a major piece of gun control legislation in its tracks in California, but I guess we made enough noise. For those who haven’t kept up on what SB 249 is, see this site created by the CalGuns Foundation.
UPDATE: Not so fast. It still has the rest of the week to live. This could be a feint. Continue making noise.
I’m glad to see outdoor writers clearing the air in regards to AR rifles, and telling the truth about them, including explaining the recent surge in sales. Looks like they interviewed State Rep. Bryan Cutler for this article, speaking of his bill, H.B. 347, which would open the door to legal semi-auto rifle hunting in Pennsylvania:
State Rep. Bryan Cutler, of Peach Bottom, is one hunter and gun enthusiast who joined the AR craze. Cutler built his own .223-caliber AR by getting the various parts and creating a custom gun. “That’s something I just always wanted to do,” he said. Cutler uses his AR for target shooting, and hopes to one day shoot it competitively. “I’ve always had an interest in the three-gun competition, so maybe I’ll get into that somewhere down the road when my schedule allows it.”
In a three-gun competition, shooters work through a tactical course, firing a handgun, shotgun and AR rifle at targets. Cutler also hopes to someday be allowed to use his AR for hunting varmints and predators in Pennsylvania. He’s a co-sponsor of House Bill 347, which would legalize the use of “any semi-automatic rimfire rifle, .22 caliber or less, for the taking of coyotes, foxes or woodchucks,” the bill states. The bill is intended to crack the door for using semi-automatic rifles for hunting here.
I’d work hard to keep any politician that was actually interested in three gun and built his own AR. That’s a rare breed in politics. His bill only legalizes semi-auto rimfire in .22 or less, and obviously we’d eventually like to see centerfire semi-automatic rifles hunting legal in Pennsylvania, but baby steps. Read the whole article. It’s pretty refreshing to see something like this in the main stream media.
Sean took a visit to a temple in North Carolina, and found some fellow gun nuts. I’m not an expert on the Sikh religion, but the way I understood their dedication to peace, among all peoples, was that it was backed up with a healthy, “but don’t f**k with us,” philosophy on the virtue of self-defense. That’s the kind of peace I can believe in.
From Miguel, who kindly translated some parts of their law from Spanish:
If you own a restaurant where alcohol is served, you must force your clientele to be searched & probed before going in. So basically you have to go through a TSA screening every time you go wanna eat something or choose a restaurant that does not sell alcohol which in Venezuela, other than fast food places, there are very few.
Sounds like the kind of common sense approach to gun laws that our opponents believe in.
Frank W. James on the mass shootings:
Combining the two tragedies in Aurora, Colo., and Oak Creek, Wis., into a single question about gun control is tantamount to asking if we should make it harder for consumers to get the make and model of the automobile driven by a drunken driver after he crossed the center line and killed a family of four.
Yep. In most other contexts I think your average person would think the gun control crowd’s prescription was sheer madness and hysteria. But we treat guns differently. Probably because the mentality that lead to thinking like this is still alive and well in the public mind.
For the past several weeks, it’s just been wall-to-wall hysteria in the media about the need for more gun control. If my Google Alerts are any indication, the media is predictably moving on to other topics that generate more eyeballs. Move along. Nothing to see here. At least until the next sensationalist story comes along. I obviously have not covered much of the hysteria. It’s not changing any minds anyway.
I think we may have come to a stability in terms of public opinion on the gun issue, where we’ve pretty much convinced a majority that gun laws are not the solution to social ills. This is a good place to be, but we still need to do more. How? The Second Amendment, that you have some, if perhaps ill-defined in the public mind, right to own a firearm for self-defense, is now greater than an 80% issue. That you have a right to a handgun is approaching an 80% issue. I’d like to get the need for new gun laws to an 80% issue as well, and increases the number of folks who think maybe we ought to repeal a few. But how?
I suspect we’ve reached a stability because we’re not able to penetrate into the cities very effectively. New York and its entire metropolitan area is gun hostile. That’s close to 20 million people right there we can’t effectively reach. There’s another 13 million in the Los Angeles Metro area, and 10 million in the Chicago metro area. That’s 43 million people, the vast majority have no exposure to firearms, shooting, or hunting, and more importantly, 43 million people who are extremely unlikely to even know someone who does these things. If you total up all the hostile metro areas in this country, 5 million in the Boston area, 5 million in the bay area, 5 million in the San Bernardino area, and 3 million in San Diego, you’re starting to talk about a sizable chunk of public opinion.
I’ve always thought the fight in the Courts was important, but now I’m becoming convinced it’s of the utmost importance. If we’ve truly reaching a stability on the gun issue, the only way we’re going to make any further significant strides is to be able to re-establish a healthy shooting culture in these metro areas where it’s been extinguished because the anti-gunners control those legislatures or city councils. I also think it’s going to become more important for Congress to exercise it’s Section 5 powers under the 14th Amendment to eliminate state and local outliers in terms of gun laws. In fact, this is probably safer option than the states. If we can do that, I think you’ll see public opinion on this issue swing quite rapidly in our direction. If we can get most of the basic concepts of gun rights to 80% issues, most politicians won’t dare even speak the word gun control, no matter what the media and our hysterical opponents say.
Fifty-three percent of Coloradans oppose tougher gun laws. But the other side is building momentum. We’re finished. Through. Just ask them. Our day in the sun is over. The time for debate is over. They are coming for our gun rights.
I’ve gone to the L.L. Bean store in Allentown a few times, but I don’t make a regular habit of looking up a mall’s policies before going. If they want to keep people from carrying, they can conspicuously post. Some folks on the PAFOA forum dug up the policy on the Promenade Shops of Saucon Valley, where the L.L. Bean is located, and discovered  policy number 13:
“Any weapon such as guns, knives, swords, laser pointers, and any other items that can harm the customer will be confiscated and given to proper authorities.”
OK, so I can legally carry a sword in Pennsylvania, or a knife (that isn’t a switchblade), a laser pointer, and my LTC allows me to carry a firearm. So the response from the authorities is going to properly be that these items are legal to carry in Pennsylvania. In this case, can the retailer take it? I’m fairly certain the answer is no. They can ask you to leave. They can use force to make you leave if you refuse, or call the cops and let them use force on your behalf. But taking something off you is theft, plain and simple. This is s ridiculously unenforceable policy, and I’m surprised their corporate lawyers gave the nod to this. At first I wondered if this was drafted by a New York based, where pretty much anything that’s dangerous or fun is illegal, and people have a tendency to think the rest of the country is just like New York, but no, the company is based in Tennessee. WTF?
And what’s with calling a strip mall a “Lifestyle Center.” Clearly these people need a hearty dose of get the f*** over yourselves.
Looks like there’s been a jump in permit applications for the county (my the county), and for neighboring Montgomery County. From the Bucks County Courier Times:
Days after the Colorado shooting, applications for concealed weapons permits in Bucks County jumped 20 percent compared to the previous week …
… A total of 28,057 concealed weapon permits were active in Bucks as of July 1, an increase of 2,706 from a year earlier. That number represents about one permit for every 22 residents.
Now if every one of those individual who had a permit did something to help their gun rights, we’d be cruising smooth. But most of them don’t. How do we reach these folks? Clubs have traditionally been a big part of the pro-gun ecosystem, but as I mentioned in a previous post, the shooting culture at clubs isn’t keeping up with the overall gun culture, and young people aren’t joiners. So how does it work moving forward?
A majority of Wisconsinites either want weaker gun laws or want them to stay the same. The same is true of voters in Colorado. This doesn’t look like a groundswell of support for our opponents, nor does it represent a major shift in public opinion. One also has to wonder if folks answering that it’s OK to ban high-capacity magazines realize it’s the magazine in their Glock that’s being banned.
There was a lot of this in the past. Thirdpower is talking a bit about manipulating polling. Our opponents have long pointed to polling numbers to try to convince politicians that the American people were with them, only to get their asses handed to them at election time. The difference is there’s a substantial motivation gap when it comes to voting on the issue between our side and theirs, and the politicians know that.