The rally went swell. I will have coverage as I manage to get caught up, and organized. Things look very good for gun rights in Pennsylvania, and we met with many representatives. I would like to personally thank Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs, Pennsylvania Firearms Owners Assocation, Firearms Owners Against Crime, and Allegheny County Sportsmen’s League for putting this event together and getting people excited about lobbying to protect the second amendment.
Category: Guns
HB 1845 Passes House
The bill HB1845, which contains a provision to eliminate the administrative ban on carrying firearms in state parks, as well as passes “Katrina” legislation, preventing authorities from confiscating firearms in a State of Emergency, has passed the house. In fact, it passed the house while myself, and several other Pennsylvania Firearms Owners Association members watched from The House Gallery at the Capitol in Harrisburg.
Predictably, Philadelphia media is spinning this as a victory for gun control because of the provisions it has stiffening penalties for possessing a firearm with an altered or obliterated serial number. No doubt the anti-gun forces in that city are following the Brady Campaign model, where if you can’t win, you can claim to win, and it’s just as good.
The vote was unnanimous, 200 to nil. The only representative who got up to say anything negative about it was Kathy Manderino, who wanted to point out the problems she saw with the provision to issue emergency concealed carry licenses, and to remind everyone that the Coalition Against Domestic Violence is opposed to this bill. Why they are, I can’t imagine, since how is it not empowering to women to be able to successfully defend themselves against a man who means to rape, gravely injure, or murder them. One has to ponder what these groups think of the women they claim to represent, that they don’t believe them capable of making wise decisions in regards to their own personal security.  Nontheless, I guess Rep. Manderino’s objections weren’t that strong, because she didn’t vote against final passage.
Bowling Pin Shooting
Mr. Completely has some advice for bowling pin shooters. I’ve never tried bowling pin shooting myself, but it sure sounds like a lot of fun.
Channeling Dr. King
As it is always with great men, there are many who want to imagine that they would have supported this or that, or surmise what they may have thought of our modern situation. The Brady Campaign are no exception on the anniversary of his assassination:
If Dr. King is looking down on us today, I can imagine him seeing 12,352 gun murders a year in the United States – nearly 34 every day – and telling us that “the old eye-for-an-eye philosophy leaves everyone blind.â€
Somebody’s got to “have some sense†in America.
Maybe he would, and maybe he wouldn’t. One thing we do know is that the 14th Amendment of the US constitution was passed partly to prevent southern states from passing and enforcing laws to disarm blacks, so that the Klan wouldn’t risk armed resistance when they terrorized them.
Let’s not also forget the Deacons for Defense:
In some cases, the Deacons had a relationship with other civil rights groups that advocated and practiced non-violence: the willingness of the Deacons to provide low-key armed guards facilitated the ability of groups such as the NAACP and CORE to stay, at least formally, within their own parameters of non-violence.[2] Nonetheless, their willingness to respond to violence with violence, led to tension between the Deacons and the nonviolent civil rights workers whom they sought to protect.
Roy Innis has said of the Deacons that they “forced the Klan to re-evaluate their actions and often change their undergarments”, according to Ken Blackwell.[3]
Let’s not forget Condi Rice’s support of the second amendment. She has been quoted:
During the bombings of the summer of 1963, her father and other neighborhood men guarded the streets at night to keep white vigilantes at bay. Rice said her staunch defense of gun rights comes from those days. She has argued that if the guns her father and neighbors carried had been registered, they could have been confiscated by the authorities, leaving the black community defenseless.
Finally, it’s known that Dr. King also owned firearms, and even applied (and was denied) a gun permit in the days before his movement determined that a non-violence posture was the best tactic for the civil rights movement.
The untold story of the civil rights movement is that it involved a lot of blacks and civil rights workers protecting themselves with firearms. The untold story of the gun control movement was that it originally started in order to disarm blacks.
The Brady Campaign does the civil rights movement injustice by wanting to imagine acceptance of their agenda in a speech where Dr. King was calling on followers not to seek violent retribution for wrongs done to them, not speaking against people defending themselves. Dr. King understood, correctly, that America could be persuaded to change by letting the segregationists be the provocateurs, the arsonists, the terrorists, and the assassins. It was the smart tactic. It was the correct tactic.
What Dr. King would think of gun control today, I don’t know, and neither does the Brady Campaign, but ignoring the racist and xenophobic history of gun control does society no service. I do not believe the Brady Campaign pushes gun control because of any racist agenda; that motivation to pass gun laws is something that fortunately is now only in our past, but it ought not be ignored in the ongoing debate over our nation’s relationship with firearms.
Philly Delaying Vote on Gun Bills
Reader ErnieD e-mails this article talking about the vote:
A package of gun control bills submitted by City Councilman Darrell Clarke will apparently not come up for a vote tomorrow during Council’s weekly session. Clarke last week said that the city Law Department was reviewing the proposed legislation, which was approved by Council’s Committee on Public Safety. The legislation, which could have come up for a final vote by Council tomorrow, is being amended today and then held.
The legislation would limit handgun purchases to one a month, require owners to report lost or stolen guns to police, allow police to confiscate guns from people considered a risk to themselves or others, require a license from police to bring a gun into the city, ban semiautomatic weapons with clips that hold more than 10 rounds and establish a registry for ammunition sales.
It should take them about 3 minutes to review this legislation. It’s illegal under state law and the state constitution. It’s not that complicated. I’m wondering if the city is worried about the lawsuits that are sure to come about if they cross this Rubicon.
Terminated for Carrying
Eugene Volokh talks about a challenge to the Employment at Will doctrine that revolves around an employee being fired for carrying a licensed concealed firearm at work. Interesting debate in the commentary. I particularly like his brother Sasha’s comment here:
The right to self-defense is a sacred right.
Therefore, like all sacred rights, it should be waivable. Because a right that’s non-waivable barely deserves to be called a right at all — it’s more like a duty. You are required to retain your right to self-defense, whether you want to or not! The right to life should imply the right to suicide; the right to liberty should imply the right to contract away your liberty; the right to property should imply the right to alienate your property.
So the right to carry a gun should imply the right to agree not to carry a gun. You could agree to that by making a contract with a specific anti-gun clause; you could agree to that by making a contract incorporating a policy handbook with a prohibition on guns; or you could agree to that by making a contract of the form “you can fire me whenever you want for whatever reason you like,” which is the basic rule of at-will employment.
This is particularly notable given the NRA’s strategy of altering the Employment at Will doctrine in several states to make it illegal to fire employees who keep a firearm in their car while at work, which I have long disagreed with. I may believe that an employer is being silly for believing that banning firearms on company property will do anything to stop a determined workplace shooter, but employers and employees should have a right to agree or disagree with such things.
Obama on Concealed Carry
No one ever accused Obama of being a smart politican. A talented orator yes, but he makes amaturish mistakes. This is one of them:
“I am not in favor of concealed weapons,” Obama said. “I think that creates a potential atmosphere where more innocent people could (get shot during) altercations.”
It should be noted this is a state that issues more than 600,000 concealed carry permits, with Allegheny County, which contains Pittsburgh, issuing more licenses than any other issuing authority anywhere in the country. This area is also pretty heavily Democratic, but this is the part of the state that elects pro-gun Democrats. Hillary didn’t fare much better:
“I … think we should reinstate the assault weapons ban (that expired in 2004) in order to give our police officers a fighting chance against the criminals on the street with these military-style assault weapons,” Clinton said Tuesday.
The assault weapons issue hasn’t come up in our state since the early 90s, and we defeated it. Even the anti-gun people here in Pennsylvania consider it politically unachievable. The candidates saving grace will be that they both suck pretty equally on gun rights, which I can only hope will make many of the pro-gun Democrats that reside in Pennsylvania cross the aisle and vote for John McCain.
UPDATE: Gun Law News has more.
Problems in Tennessee
Put a hypocritical anti-gun politician in a prominent position in the legislature, and they can cause all kinds of problems. We’re fortunate in Pennsylvania that our house speaker is pro-gun, voted against the “Lost and Stolen” bill, which is something to be appreciated when his district is Philadelphia. But our speaker is a brokered deal between Republicans and Democrats. If the Dems make more significant inroads in the PA General Assembly, we could soon be in the same position as Tennessee.
New England Journal of Medicine Attacks Gun Ownership
Both Ahab and Jeff Soyer have coverage of this. Rather interesting that this comes out in such a prestigious medical journal just in time for Heller eh? You’d almost think the NEJM had made a conscious decision to shill for the anti-gun forces. You’ll notice some familiar names, such as Garen Wintemute, who conducted a bogus study of gun shows a few months back.
The real difficulty in our issue is the people who oppose us are almost universally well connected political elites, and opinion leaders for the people within our country who influence the political process. We are very much a movement of ordinary-type people who work for a living, and many of whom wouldn’t bother with these types of matters if our betters weren’t so intent on dictating to us a better way to live. We’ve been very effective, but it’s tough to fight against. One disavantage to using the federal courts as a means to secure second amendment rights is we’ll be fighting on ground that’s very much dominated by the exact type of elite who is typically against us. This is going to be hard, we’ll have to fight hard, but fight we must, because we’ll see more and more of this as the anti-gun groups attempt to limit the damage that is likely to be done by Heller.
UPDATE: More from Thirdpower and SayUncle.
Undeterred
The anti-gun forces in Pennsylvania vow to plod on, despite their resounding defeat in the legislature this Monday:
It was the latest loss in the last six months for Pennsylvania’s gun-control movement, but nevertheless its advocates insisted yesterday they had only just begun their fight.
“We have started to draw the gun-safety issue out of the shadows – which is where the special-interests lobby of the NRA wanted it to stay – and we are not going to stop now,” Joe Grace, executive director of CeaseFire PA, said yesterday. “We have a coalition that is growing, that is very energized.”
It’s been out of the shadows, Joe. You got a vote on the floor of the Pennsylvania House. All the media in Philadelphia, and in many other parts of the state covered this issue to death, and that coverage almost universally was in your favor. You lost. You don’t have the political power in this state to defeat the millions of hunters and shooters who live here. And we’ll do everything we can to keep it that way. John Hohenwarter has it right:
But John Hohenwarter, the NRA’s chief lobbyist in Pennsylvania, countered yesterday that “their problem isn’t organization. It’s their message. They don’t have a message that anyone is willing to buy here in Pennsylvania.”
Grace, of CeaseFire PA, disputed that, citing polls showing that the majority of residents support some form of gun control.
And, he said, his organization is rapidly expanding.
“Our goal is to build a coalition that is even broader and deeper,” he said, “so that it becomes a force to be reckoned with.”
Rapidly expanding? I’ll be interested to verify that with CeaseFire PA’s form 990s when they come out. How much you want to make a bet this rapid expansion is in Joe Grace’s imagination?