I’m doing a little guest blogging over at PAFOA, particularly on the New Jersey related issues that are at a head right now. Aside from the fact that PAFOA’s site and forums reaches New Jersey people, keeping Miller tied up fighting for his bills in Trenton is far better than fighting him in Harrisburg.
Category: Gun Rights
We Had to Ban the Rights, in Order to Enhance Them
We have yet another news story from New Jersey, taken to task by Armed and Safe, selling the .50 caliber ban as an enhancement of gun rights, because it would allow reenactors to carry large caliber muskets, which are now illegal in New Jersey.
Sorry no. An enhancement would just be repealing the ban on large bore muskets, which is stupid to begin with. An enhancement doesn’t involve trading one stupid gun ban for another stupid gun ban.
Ammunition Encoding and the First Amendment
[Ammunition encoding] is no different than trying to circumvent the First Amendment’s guarantee of a free press through a discriminatory tax on ink. Believe it or not, as recently as 1983, the First Amendment was so poorly understood that a challenge to just such an ink tax went all the way up to the Supreme Court. When it got there, in the famous case of Minneapolis Star & Tribune Co. v. Minnesota Commissioner of Revenue, the Court appropriately swatted the tax down as undermining the First Amendment.
Of course, our opponents will tell you it’s all about crime control, but it’s not. On it’s face it’s about making the people who developed the encoding technology rich, but no doubt people in the gun control movement also see it as an opportunity to destroy the gun culture, and with it, our political power. Fortunately, Heller might give us some tools to fight it.
Time to Get on Board with Gun Rationing
The Philadelphia Inquirer, who’s editorial staff know nothing about guns aside from what Bryan Miller tells them, and who don’t seem interested in learning, think it’s high time Pennsylvania jumped on board the gun rationing bandwagon:
As soon as next month, the state Senate could vote on a measure approved by the state Assembly that would impose a one-handgun-per-month limit. At the same time, the Assembly’s calendar contains another smart gun-safety measure that would ban .50-caliber sniper rifles capable of targeting a plane.
It is ridiculous to believe that criminals in New Jersey are submitting themselves to extreme scrutiny by the police to get purchase permits in order to feloniously sell their purchase to criminals. It’s even more ridiculous to think that someone with a 24lb rifle could successfully shoot down a plane. The Inky should send one of their reporters to a range to shoot, and it could be shown that even some .22 caliber rounds easily penetrate aircraft aluminum. All a .50 does is make a bigger hole. That’s it. The serious anti-material and armor piercing rounds are not available to civilians.
That effort deserves the full support of lawmakers from South Jersey, including Senate Majority Leader Stephen Sweeney (D., Gloucester). But Sweeney is not yet on board with the proposal, and seems to be quoting from the NRA’s bullet points about the need to enforce existing gun regulations more fully.
My hat is off to you Stephen Sweeney, for realizing what the real solution is to criminal gun use. Everyone should contact Senator Sweeney here, and thank him for not supporting this nonsense.
In stark contrast to New Jersey, the rules for handgun purchases in the Keystone State are shockingly lax. As such, handgun trafficking is more widespread, since it’s so much easier for straw buyers to acquire weapons. That’s why many of Philadelphia’s toughest neighborhood streets are awash in illegal handguns.
Except it’s a felony to illegally transfer a handgun in Pennsylvania without going through an FFL and passing a background check. Anyone who seriously checks into Pennsylvania’s gun laws cannot conclude they are lax. The Inquirer editorial staff want you to take their word on that. To them, apparently lax is being able to go to a gun shop and buy a gun.
For a state that has such widespread gun trafficking, and such lax gun laws, we seem to have a violent crime rate that’s awfully close to New Jersey’s. New Jersey’s violent crime rate is actually remarkably high for a state that has no major cities.
Don’t Worry Your Little Heads
We gun owners have nothing to worry about, says David T. Konig, who is described as a Second Amendment expert:
“My sense is that Obama does not want to interfere with an issue that will, for the time being, be left up to the states,” says David T. Konig, Ph.D., professor of history and director of the Legal Studies Program, both in Arts & Sciences, and professor of law. “The issue will turn to controls, such as sales at gun shows or other limited restrictions on purchases.”
Sales at gun shows and other limited restrictions on purchases? Perhaps this is among the very things we are concerned about. What the article doesn’t mention is Konig is a Second Amendment expert who filed an Amicus with The Court on the losing side of the argument.
We “Ought to be Content”
So says the Lt. Governor of Georgia, in regards to folks who want to continue to improve Georgia’s carry laws, which doesn’t make Robb Allen too happy.
San Francisco Preparing to Settle with NRA
Looks like we might get another win. This doesn’t get us incorporation, but this is why multiple suits were filed.  A win is a win, even if it doesn’t set precedent.
Those Nasty Assault Riffles
AP’s typo, not mine. Note that Assemblyman Reed Gusciora believe that this is an assault rifle.
Target Switzerland
Peter has a pretty good review of Steve Halbrook’s book “Target Switzerland: Swiss Armed Neutrality in World War II“Â Just a reminder, the Second Amendment Book Bomb is still ongoing, and you can now get copies of Steve Halbrook’s current book, “The Founders’ Second Amendment,” from Amazon.
A Harbinger of Things to Come
Nancy Pelosi is stacking the deck, and changing the House Rules to shut out the GOP. This will make it much harder for Republicans to kill gun control bills. Giving Pelosi such a solid majority was going to have consequences. A lot of people gave me grief for fighting with the lesser of two evils last election, well, this is the evil I was fighting. The Bush years are going to look positively rosy compared to what’s coming.