Guns – Page 517 – Shall Not Be Questioned

McCarthy and Friends

Babbling in the Congressional Record yesterday from McCarthy (D-NY) and Bill Pascrell (D-NJ):

Nearly 100,000 people are killed by guns every year. Over 260 people will be killed today by a gun.

– Bill Pascrell

That number keeps getting higher and higher doesn’t it? It’s a shame that’s nowhere near the real number killed by guns. In fact, it’s less than a third of that, and that’s including suicides. The number of homicides is about 1/10th that number.

This bill [HR 308] does not take away anyoneâ€™s right to own a gun. Let me make that very, very clear.

– Carolyn McCarthy

This is a bald faced lie.

To me, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in- clude being able to go grocery shopping on a Saturday or attend a public event on a Saturday afternoon without being gunned down.

– Carolyn McCarthy

Funny she should seek refuge in a document that stands as a justification for a violent revolution against the established order, yet I’m sure would condemn anyone who suggest other parts of the document as a source of morality for owning firearms. Her friend Pascrell suggests Congress takes an oath to these words “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” which makes on question whether he knows this is part of the Declaration of Independence, rather than the Constitution that they do take an oath to. Well, considering the Second Amendment is definitely part of that oath, it wouldn’t be surprising if he has no idea.

Lies and ignorance. That’s all they have to offer.

Castle Doctrine Passes Judiciary

From Senator Alloway:

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved legislation today sponsored by Senator Richard Alloway II (R-33) to expand the Castle Doctrine in Pennsylvania to protect gun owners who act in self-defense.

On to the Senate floor. The committee was a problem last session, but the makeup has improved a bit, and obviously it’s good news for the bill to have sailed though. It passed by a vote of 10-3. I’ll let you know who the three were when we get that information. There was an attempt to amend Florida Loophole, but the amendment was withdrawn.

UPDATE: Vote breakdown here.

Questioning “Gun Deaths” Internationally

Dave Kopel, Paul Gallant, and Joanne Eisen take a quite detailed look at the figures being toted by proponents of the International Arms Trade Treaty at the Untied Nations. It is rather long, but I’ll reproduce here part of the conclusion:

To the extent that we have been able to reverse engineer the Geneva Declaration Organizationâ€™s calculations, we have found repeated instances where the organization made choices which re- sulted in much higher estimates. Sometimes, those estimates have produced results that are out of line with other evidence.

Until the data and calculations are made available to the public, policymakers and concerned global citizens should give no weight to the unsubstantiated factoid of 740,000 deaths.

Not surprising that they are distorting the true numbers. They’ve never been able to win on facts.

California Court Upholds Ban by Violent Misdemeanants

The rationale sounds pretty weak to me:

While broad restrictions might be judged under a stricter standard, Margulies wrote,Â Heller makes clear that courts will continue to apply rational-basis review to laws barring possession by â€œdisqualifiedâ€ persons, including misdemeanants and those on pretrial release.

What if the misdemeanor was non-violent? Does rational-basis apply to prohibitions on people convicted of say, reckless driving? Speeding? Spitting on the sidewalk? This seems to be a very broad reading of Heller, which only mentioned felons.

Preemption in Iowa

Apparently there’s been a trend of cities bucking preemption:

Unfortunately, upon the passage ofÂ Iowaâ€™s new â€œShall-Issueâ€ Right-to-Carry law, some local governments began creating a patchwork of illegal gun bans acrossÂ Iowa.Â Â Most recently, claiming safety issues,Â Iowa Citypassed a resolution restricting all law-abiding Iowans from carrying in or on all city-owned property including city parks, buses, and even farmerâ€™s markets.

NRA is pushing a bill to fix this problem, HSB 19. Everyone is Pennsylvania should take a look at this bill, because it’s among the strongest preemption statutes I’ve seen. This might be something we need to look at here.

Horror Movie

I’m relatively amused by calling Colin Goddard’s “Living for 32” the “Virginia Tech Massacre Movie.” Joe Huffman has an observation about Goddard:

It occurs to me that the Brady Campaign is promoting Goddard as an expert and the media is accepting that. But does he have any training or expertise as a shooter? Iâ€™ll grant that he is an expert at getting shot. But I donâ€™t think that takes a whole lot of practice or that his experience is something that we can use a guide for how to handle the situation he experienced.

I agree. I also imagine it’s quite difficult to assess the tactical situation when you’re hiding under a desk playing dead.

Air Gun PSH

Apparently there’s some folks upset over a bill in Virginia to preempt air gun regulation. Check this out:

Most people above a certain age associate pneumatic guns with the Daisy BB guns of our youth, guns that had little power and a range of perhaps 50 feet. The current generation of pneumatic guns makes the Daisy BB gun look like a pop gun.

According to Chief Mark Sisson of the Christiansburg Police Department, the new pneumatic guns “are capable of carrying a projectile much farther and much faster and are now designed to look like real guns, putting the town’s police officers in harm’s way.”

They would also put town residents at risk. Many of the higher-powered pneumatic guns sound similar to regular gunshots, which means neighbors may not be able to distinguish one from the other.

High-powered assault air guns now, apparently. So the old Red Ryder didn’t look like a real gun unless you were up close? Could have fooled me. I should also note there’s a pretty good Second Amendment case to be made that air guns are protected just as much as powder guns.

Daley’s Presser Didn’t Go Too Well

Apparently he’s had to chide the media to actually talk about the subject at hand:

What a narcissistic jackass.

Don’t Take the Election Results for Granted

Inspired by an ongoing general email conversation with reader Adam Z., I was inspired to look at the challenges we could still face here in Pennsylvania to pass a clean Castle Doctrine bill this term. I’ve seen more than a few comments from gun owners that assume pro-gun legislation is in the bag & anti-gun bills are no threat at all simply because the Republicans have control of the House, Senate, & Governor’s office.

The fact is that we ran out of time on the bill because opponents were building up support among Republican leaders for anti-gun amendments while the bill was in a Senate committee. The committee chair voted for one of those amendments out on the Senate floor. Guess what gun owners? That guy is still in charge. A new member of the committee had this to say about Castle Doctrine last year:

Yeah, we still have hurdles, folks. If you live in Pennsylvania & your Senator’s name isn’t on this page, then get on the phone. If your Senator’s name is on that page, make sure he/she knows that you want a clean bill & no anti-gun or anti-hunting amendments added to it. It’s time to get Castle Doctrine passed.

UPDATE: Well, that didn’t take long. Here’s the news from NRA on this final evening before the hearing:

Anti-gun groups are working to attach a laundry-list of bad amendments to SB 273 tomorrow. We already know F-rated state Senator Daylin Leach (D-17) will be offering the so-called â€œFlorida Loopholeâ€ amendment which would prohibit the use of out of state Right-to-Carry permits by Pennsylvania residents while inside the Commonwealth. Once again this is an attempt by anti-gun zealots to torpedo this much-needed reform and we cannot allow that to happen.

Machine Gun Scam

ATF is charging some people for harvesting serial numbers from defunct pre-86 machine guns, and placing them on new ones. Uncle notes that it’s mismanagement of the NFRTR that made this possible.