Challenge to Pittsburgh’s Anti-Gun Zoning Law

This looks pretty clearly to be a violation of preemption:

On Thursday, October 2, at 10:00am, Peter Georgiades, a Second Amendment rights attorney, will be challenging the legality of a recently enacted provision in the Pittsburgh zoning code.  This provision restricts “gun-related businesses” from being established within city limits, even if the lot is zoned for commercial use.  This provision only applies to businesses that are in any way involved with the “sale” of firearms.  This is another blatant attack on the firearm industry and Pennsylvania’s law-abiding citizens.

If you live in the Pittsburgh area, this will probably be pretty interesting to attend.

Saving the Shooting Sports

Michael Bane makes some great observations and offers suggestiosn on saving the shooting sports.  I noticed a very good comment that made a very frightening observation:

The next generation is not oriented to shooting or hunting. They spend more time on their computers then outside. In my club of 250 members there are NO children. There is dam little shooting allowed in school programs. SCTP IMO is growing because it is held AWAY from school. If you tried to have indoor ranges for rifle or pistol (as did exist several decades ago) it would fall flat on its face.

My club is composed of 240 guys, 10 women, average age is 50. Not to mention there are almost no minorities. That is another area which is not confronted honestly. You do not see representative percentages of non-whites in the shooting sports. America in not to long, will have to deal with a majority non-white population. All the demographics point in the wrong direction.

What troubles me, is my observations of club demographics is similar.  This might surprise you, but the solution is to get more women into the shooting sports.  I think women are far more likely than men to get their kids into shooting, and keep them in shooting.  I’ve seen a lot of dads bring their kids to the range and do a good job of passing the tradition along.  I’ve also seen dads that are doing their best to make sure their kid absolutely grows up to hate shooting.  I’ve never seen a woman at a range with kids in tow not doing a good job with the kids.  They are far better teachers than men are.

UPDATE: Overall there’s excellent commentary on that post.  I can only read a little bit at a time because Michael’s color scheme is very harsh on the eyes.  I can still see the text lines burnt into my retina for a minute or so after taking a break.

New Terminology

I don’t wish to paint all Democrats as gun hating losers, because there are a lot of good ones out there.  Like Jason Altmire and Dan Boren, for example.  So I have decided on declaring an Axis of Evil to exist within the Democratic Party, composed of Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi.  Henceforth known as the Obama/Biden/Pelosi Democrats.  These are the people who make nightmares for gun owners.  We have to fight these Democrats, and in doing that, we’re really going to need our friends in the Democratic party.

US News Publishing AHSA Pressers

Look at this steaming pile of merda equi (I have to thank Xlrq for that one):

At the same time, the gun issue is losing its potency. Sure, the National Rifle Association is running television ads implying that Obama wants to take away hunting guns, but that attack is weakened by the recent success of the gun lobby at the Supreme Court. In June, the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment guarantees a private right to bear arms—a decision Obama promptly embraced. Such a backdrop makes the scare tactics less likely to stick.

That’s good news for conservation because the emphasis on the gun issue creates lousy politics for hunters and anglers. In 2004, Field and Stream columnist George Reiger pointed out that the gun lobby’s almost exclusive focus on the Second Amendment meant that hunters could “end up with a closet full of guns with no place but a shooting range to use them.”

Did Andrew Rotherham write this, or did Ray Schoenke?  If it’s losing its potency, why is the Obama campaign threatning to shut down broadcasters who run NRA ads opposing his candidacy, and exposing his horrible record on guns?  If this is true, it shouldn’t be any problem.  The gun issue has lost its potency right?

Obama can thank God for a lousy economy, because he was fast on his way to losing the election because of his stance on guns.  He may yet still lose.

This Isn’t a Left/Right Issue Right?

I understand that NRA is trying to attack Biden here, and I fully support that, but I would beware of highlighting articles that have language like this:

Just imagine what the sneering left intelligentsia, in the United States and elsewhere, would have said if a Republican vice-presidential candidate had told CBS News that “when the stockmarket crashed [in 1929], Franklin Roosevelt got on television” and informed Americans what had happened.
Gun rights isn’t a left/right, Democrat Republican issue right?  As it turns out, the article linked to had some bits that would have been far better to highlight from a gun standpoint:
The feminist Maureen Dowd has depicted Palin as “the glamorous Pioneer Woman, packing a gun, a baby and a Bible”. Professor Wendy Doniger, of the University of Chicago, has gone further, declaring that Palin’s “greatest hypocrisy is her pretence that she is a woman”. And the NBC News commentator Andrea Mitchell has been reported as maintaining that “only the uneducated would vote for Mrs Palin”.
NRA needs to be careful not to turn this into a left/right divide.  It often is, but that’s not ideally how we want to frame it.  It’s one thing to highlight gaffes from candidates who are against us, even if they are gaffes on other issues, but we must take pains not to come off as blatantly partisan when doing so, or diluting the pro-Second Amendment message by mixing them with other issues.

Going High-Tech for Gun Show Outreach

One thing I want to do for the Allentown show this weekend is make our table look attractive, to entice people to come over and talk with us.  The typical literature isn’t very interesting or eye catching, especially when you’re in a room with wall-to-wall guns.

In the mail is a digital picture frame, which I will use on the table to play video.  I’m planning on running the NRA Katrina video on that, with some literature placed near it.  In the other corner of the table, I’m going to borrow a Shuttle PC from my friend Jason, along with an LCD touch screen.  My idea was to put up NRA’s O-Match application up full screen and let people use it.  I figured kids especially may be drawn in, giving us an opportunity to talk to the parents.  Can you say “Barack Obama is a free speech stifling, gun banning weasel?  I knew you could.”  This should be something different, and we’ll see how this experiment goes.  I might lose my faith in humanity if I discover that cats and humans have more in common than I once thought, but if I get some more people at my table, and on my e-mail list, I’ll be happy.

Resistance Against Local Gun Ordinance

The Lehigh County District Attorney is resisting attempts by Allentown to pass local gun ordinances similar to Phialdelphia’s.  If people want to know why we defend preemption tooth and nail, this is why.  Before long you have a patchwork of laws that no one can reasonably comply with:

Any officer who makes an arrest under the ordinance could face obstruction of justice charges, Martin said in an interview Monday.

”The issue is clear,” Martin said. ”When it comes to gun-control legislation, any city ordinance is preempted by state law and that makes any Allentown law unenforceable.”

James Martin deserves the support of gun owners for being willing to stand by the law and our state’s constitution.

New Jersey News

Jersey City lost its appeal in its efforts to uphold its one-gun-per-month gun rationing scheme.  Good news, but it’s probably going to prompt the legislature to act on a state-wide bill to do the same thing.  After all, all those cousin humping rednecks in the Northwest and Southern parts of New Jersey keep killing themselves, and someone has to take all those dangerous things away from them.