Guns – Page 489 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Outing

Coalition to Stop Gun Violence has been outing a number of gun bloggers on its Facebook and on Twitter feed today, including yours truly, Thirdpower, AntiTango, and Linoge. While I have never taken great pains to hide my true identity, given that I’ve generally kept a policy of removing individual, personal information if posted, especially if it was from someone on the other side, I find stooping to this tactic particularly childish and petty. CSGV posted fairly detailed information about Linoge. This to crosses the line between political opposition and something quite nasty and personal.

I should note to CSGV that this is a line you probably do not want to cross with us. There’s an old saying that you don’t want to pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel, and we buy ink by the freight car full compared to you guys. Google has become a powerful tool, and this would not be a pretty fight. I believe it’s best not to go here. We all have a lot of personal information we’d prefer to not be broadcast all over public forums, on both sides. So I am going to call for a truce, at least when it comes to releasing personal information.

Welcome Instapundit Readers

If you’re following here after seeing my interview on PJTV, you can find all the posts related to our 3D printed magazine project here.

By the Numbers

As I’m preparing for a planning meeting for our Friends of NRA banquet, I’m going through the notes I took during the NRA board meeting on programs that often benefit from those fundraising grants. If you’re a fan of our dinner, you’ll see a few of the facts and figures appear on our Facebook page in coming months. Still, I thought I would share some of them here with everyone.

There are more than 75,000 NRA-certified instructors.
There’s a new program being launched to specifically target & recruit female instructors. Â (Yay! That’s me!) When it comes to teaching women, more than 75 grants have been awarded from Eastern Pennsylvania Friends dinners to run Women on Target programs.
There have been 57 Youth Hunter Education Challenge events this year.
This year, there have been more than 400 Boy Scout instructors trained. In Eastern Pennsylvania, the Boy Scouts have received 101 grants for shooting programs that total nearly $190,000 since the Friends program was launched.
NRA has run more than 20,000 youth through their various programs in the last year. For our region, various youth programs have benefited to the tune of $1.3 million through the Friends program since 1992.
In two years, 50 ranges have been built with the help of NRA programs. With the assistance of grants from our area, more than 450 grants have been given to clubs & ranges for improvements and developments through NRA Foundation money. The total assistance since the Friends program launched? More than $1.1 million for those facilities.

SAF Filing Suit in Virginia on Behalf of DC Resident

A few weeks ago it became impossible for residents of DC to purchase firearms because the only FFL in the city has stopped doing business. That created an opportunity which SAF is now exploiting with a lawsuit. Dave Hardy wonders where Alan Gura finds the energy.

Puerto Rican Court Recognizes Right to Carry

Over at Volokh, Professor Bob Cottrol reports on the ruling, which would appear to turn Puerto Rico into a shall-issue jurisdiction. Professor Cottrol notes that it will likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico. If the case prevails there as well, that would be the end of it. If it does not, it could be appealed to the US Supreme Court. He also notes that the case looks pretty good, with a good plaintiff.

Banning Dog Training in Indiana

HSUS is pushing to ban a form of dog training known as penning. I don’t honestly know much about this, but dogs, being a certain variation of canis lupus, sort of naturally do this:

Penning involves releasing hunting dogs in enclosed areas to chase foxes and coyotes that have been taken from the wild through trapping. The intent, supporters say, is not to capture or kill the wildlife but merely to train the dogs to hunt.

So if a pack of dogs chases down and kills a fox just generally, that’s just mother nature, but if people do it, it’s wrong? These people have a warped sense of morality. Nature is brutal and cruel. Comparing training a hunting dog to dog fighting is ridiculous. Dog fighting is banned largely because of the crime that tends to go along with it, and also because the only way you can generally train dogs, which are social animals, to maul each other to death, is by severely mistreating them. It takes some training to get a dog to hunt, but chasing animals down is kind of what they do instinctively.

I’m going to guess the purpose of this exercise that HSUS wants to ban is teaching the dogs not to rip the hell out of whatever they manage to capture. That would make me believe that the supporters are correct… that killing the prey is not the goal. But I also wouldn’t be surprised if that doesn’t happen from time to time. Then again, I’m not sure why I should care any more than when a pack of wolves successfully takes down a Bison.

An Update on Antler (Non-)Thieves

I blogged about the seemingly very bold thieves who tried to swipe some very large antlers from the NRA annual meeting while the vendors were cleaning up. It turns out that charges have been dropped.

The men’s attorney said the two are union carpenters who were working to dismantle dozens of booths at the convention. Freddy Rabner said at the end of the convention they saw the antlers lying on the floor as they were about to get crushed by a fork lift. …
Rabner said the men brought the antlers to the registration table in an effort to find the rightful owners. According to the carpenters, the antlers never left convention center property. …
The judge dismissed the case because of lack of evidence.

If all they have is security footage of them walking inside the convention center in plain view with the antlers, I think this is a good call. You can’t prove one way or the other what their intent was in that case. If they were getting them out of the way of potential damage, then they should be thanked.

Campus Carry Movement in The Atlantic

The author is not sympathetic to our cause, but doesn’t deny the momentum. I’m particularly amused by this:

If the bill in Texas becomes law, some professors there have said they plan to include a clause in syllabi stipulating that students are not be permitted to carry guns into their classroom — and then simply refuse to teach classes where students don’t assent.

There is also a bill to permit open-carry pending in the legislature, but if that doesn’t pass, how are you going to know? I seriously don’t think these folks consider they run into people carrying every day and never realize it. Back to the writer:

When you think of it like that: giving guns to young students largely interested in sex and booze, I’d wager it seems less of a genius idea.

Who’s talking about giving guns to young students? No one is giving away guns here. We’re talking about people who have licenses to carry everywhere else in public. It’s amazing to me how well our opponents frame their rhetoric. They speak of us as being fear mongers, but the truth is they are the greatest fear mongers of all, buy planting thoughts in the public mind that evoke images of Wayne LaPierre handing out Glocks as kids go into the lecture hall. This is ludicrous. It’s almost amazing this is even an issue given the very small number of people who are ever going to be toting guns to class.

2A Rally in Harrisburg

Capitol Ideas is reporting on the rally, along with some video. Looks like a much smaller crowd this year, which I expected. Having the rally in May one week after NRA Annual Meeting probably wasn’t the best timing.

Bob Mensch Guilty in Summary Charge

State Senator Mensch was found guilty in a Berks County court on a citation for disorderly conduct for allegedly flashing a gun at another motorist on I-78. Mensch denies that he ever displayed the firearm.

From what it sounds like, Mensch took his firearm out when the other motorist followed him off the exit and to a gas station. It seems reasonable to me that the other motorist could have seen it. But I do not believe, unless you point or threaten with a firearm (which can also be a more serious charge), that this amounts to disorderly conduct. Given what Mensch described in the trial, his actions do not seem to me to be unreasonable, presuming he is speaking the truth when he says he did not flash the gun in a threatening manner.

Mensch says he will appeal. I think he should. Having a gun where someone can see it obviously is not a crime. It should need to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Mensch displayed the gun in a threatening manner.

One lesson in all this is that it’s never a wise idea to stop in a road rage scenario. Your vehicle is the best defense you have. If you’re followed off an exit, keep going. If you’re certain the road raging person is following you, call the police. The gun is a last resort in these scenarios.

UPDATE: More here. Seems the other driver claimed Mensch had the gun in his lap. Mensch claims it was a cell phone. The other driver called 911 to report another motorist with a gun. I still say if a gun isn’t displayed in a threatening manner, you don’t have a case of disorderly conduct.