The Mayor of Darby, PA, the town I have the unfortunate requirement to name as my place of birth on every 4473, is a member of MAIG. One of the Darby borough council members is under investigation for straw purchasing. If Mayor Helen Thomas is really interested in cracking down on illegal guns, maybe she needed to start with her own Borough Council.
Category: Politics
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I Often Wonder How the Left Justifies This
Certainly they are fans of government regulations, but that has consequences. Consequences like this. It’s very difficult, actually, for ordinary people to avoid committing federal crimes. How do progressives justify a regulatory state with the power to destroy lives over something so trivial? How do they justify strict liability for crimes that can put people away for such a long time?
Is This Election Time Posturing?
Both DA candidates in Philadelphia say they will have no tolerance for illegal guns.
“My number one priority as a father of three daughters and a lifelong resident of Philadelphia is to make Philadelphians feel safer. And we are going to do that by prioritizing illegal guns. We are going to be going after the people that are using guns illegally. We are going to be going after the people that are selling guns illegally.”
I have no real beef with this position. But will they follow through if elected? If Bloomberg’s group were lobbying to put illegal gun traffickers and people illegally using guns in jail, I would have no problem with the group. But that’s not what they are doing.
Keep Up the Pressure
The Pocono Record has run another glowing op-ed on Mayor Baughman of Stroudsburg, praising his membership in Mayors Against Illegal Guns.
Tunnel vision gun owners, spurred by the powerful National Rifle Association, have been sending hostile messages to Baughman urging him to resign from MAIG. The NRA and groups like it hold tremendous sway over gun owners and elected officials.
Hear that? You have tunnel vision. You’re too stupid to think for yourself, according to The Record. They, of course, can see the big picture. But they wouldn’t be running this op-ed, once again today, if Baughman wasn’t continuing to be pressured by his constituents. Hopefully we can keep it up and get him to leave MAIG.
A Good Day at the Gun Show
There was a gun show in Lebanon, PA today, not too far from where my dad lives, so we decided to go. I was looking for .22LR, small rifle primers, and if the hunting was good, an AR-15 lower receiver. I like a show where I can find everything I’m looking for. Picked up two bricks of 22, which should keep us shooting for a few months. Same vendor had small rifle primers. I also picked up this:
It will eventually become the lower to fit the 6.8 SPC upper I have which has never had its own lower. I had to fill out the Pennsylvania State Police form that is normally reserved for pistols. A few months ago the PSP made a determination that because a lower can be made into a pistol, it’s a pistol, and is subject to the record of sale requirements, meaning it’s in the State Police registry. Even if I make it into a rifle, does this mean that I can’t transfer it without going through an FFL? Does it mean I need an LTC to carry it? Personally, I don’t think the State Police have any statutory authority to make this requirement at all, if you look at the UFA definition of a “firearm”:
“Firearm.” Any pistol or revolver with a barrel length less than 15 inches, any shotgun with a barrel length less than 18 inches or any rifle with a barrel length less than 16 inches, or any pistol, revolver, rifle or shotgun with an overall length of less than 26 inches. The barrel length of a firearm shall be determined by measuring from the muzzle of the barrel to the face of the closed action, bolt or cylinder, whichever is applicable.
Except in its form, it’s not a pistol, rifle, revolver or shotgun, because it has no barrel. My assertion is that it is a “firearm” under the actual definition, which subjects it to the PICS check, but is not a “firearm” under the UFA definition, which subjects it to the reporting requirement, and requires an LTC to carry. For some reason, the PSP changed their mind. Probably because we have an anti-gun PSP commissioner, appointed by our anti-gun governor.
State Budget Passes House
Capitol Ideas is reporting that the Pennsylvania State Budget has passed the house. One thing of note for our issue:
But Democratic leaders balked after getting an earful from rank-and-file Democrats earlier in the week. And they moved to drop unpopular proposals to impose the state sales tax on arts and theater tickets, as well as a proposal for a 20 percent levy on small games of chance operated by private clubs and fraternal organizations.
Most shooting clubs that I know of run small games of chance, and would typically qualify as private clubs or fraternal organizations. These are critical fundraising tools for many of those types of organizations, so this might be something we need to get involved with. I will try to report on this further.
BTW, Capitol Ideas has been doing a bang up job of covering the Pennsylvania budget fiasco in Harrisburg. Both on the blog and on Twitter. For those of you not in Pennsylvania, we are the only state without a budget currently. This has been dragging out for weeks, with both sides unable to come up with a deal. Rendell was late delivering the budget to begin with, and has been a constant wrench in the works. At this point I think the Dems just want to pass a budget and move on. The question is whether the Republican controlled Senate will feel so obliged.
Protesting Joe Biden
The Vice President was in town tonight, to attend a fundraiser for Arlen Specter. Word on Twitter spread there was going to be some protesting across the street at our local supermarket, so we hopped in the car and drove on down.
Bitter was carrying a sign, and I was documenting the whole thing on Twitter. I am not much of a protester, and don’t particularly enjoy attracting attention to myself, so I mostly lurked in the background taking pictures, and tweeted the event. Midway through, I wished I had a giant inflatable pig, because really, what protest is complete without a giant inflatable pig? Just think of the possibilities!
This was an easy affair for the Vice President. Pop in, stick your foot in your mouth, and pop out. 
What was amusing for us was that the venue for this Dem fundraising shindig is at the local caterers that Bitter and I constantly make fun of when we go to the supermarket. It is straight out of the 1970s, and I don’t think has seen much renovation since. Certainly not a place you’d expect a fancy Dem fundraiser. I think they had to clear out to make way for Spinal Tap, which was playing the venue after Joe.
I am pleased to mention that anti-administration protesters outnumbered pro-administration protesters by a ratio of about 10 to 1 at the height of the protest. 
That was our 10, to their one. I can’t even say their one had a sign that was all that pro-administration, since Obama seems to want both healthcare and warfare. He hasn’t exactly left Iraq and Afghanistan in a hurry, lady. Though perhaps he’s about to change that. She was very nice and cordial, and I was friendly, waved, and smiled. Her beef was that she had to pay 1000 dollars a month for health care for her and her daughter. I am sympathetic. I have to pay 1600 dollars a month for a mortgage for a house to put a roof over Bitter and I. Affordable housing is a right, isn’t it? So naturally the solution is for taxpayers to make my mortgage payments for me, right? I mean, it’s the fair thing to do.
At the end of the day, Bitter was happy that Biden, on his way out, was looking at her, and her sign. Granted it was through several layers of ballistic glass, but it was definitely him. For the curious, I did not attend the protest armed. I know, I know. Some people will suggest I am the Brady Campaign’s bitch by leaving my guns at home, but did not know, being just across the street from the Vice President, what the Secret Service reaction would be if they made me. I figured between the Secret Service, the State Police, and three local police departments, there were plenty of guns around to protect everybody. If the S was going to HTF, I don’t think they would have appreciating me trying to play a starring role in that drama.
Bitter was happy to feel like she stuck it to the man, or at least the Joe, just a little. I was sad I did not have an inflatable pig. Maybe next time.
Olympic Sized Fail
By now most of you probably heard that the Big Guy’s trip to Copenhagen to try to get the Olympics in Chicago was epic fail. Chicago got thrown out in the first round, and the prize goes to Brazil. The Brazilian president was present as well. This is epic fail on the part of the White House. As Jim Geraghty points out, the President should only really appear when the deal is already done. That’s what I suspect the Brazilian president was doing there. Getting thrown out in the first round wasn’t just a “no thanks” that was a “f**k you”. I’m guessing they wanted to punish Obama for the arrogance of showing up believing he was going to upstage the Brazilian leader, and undo what was already done.
Like You and Me, Only Better
Or maybe not. Even city council members can become victims of the City’s bureaucracy. Seems back in 2005 City Council member Rick Mariano went up to the city hall tower and started acting oddly. It would seem he was upset about a pending federal indictment. Family decided it would be best if the Philadelphia Police took his guns, including the 9mm he apparently liked to wear on his ankle. Â Only problem is, they sort of accidentally melted his guns down:
“It’s obvious this wasn’t supposed to happen,” said Lt. Frank Vanore, a police spokesman. “It looks to be just an error.”
Vanore said he was not aware of anyone’s being disciplined because of the error.
Mariano’s recourse? Vanore said the department told the family it could file a claim with the city and would be reimbursed for the destroyed guns, which included a Romanian AK-47 rifle. Vanore had no estimate of their value.
But it is LYMOB, because if that had been anyone else, they would have told them “Sucks to be you.” and made you sue them. I’ve heard of more than a few cases of people unable to get guns back from the city when the city had no lawful authority to hold them, and having to file lawsuits. And these are people who are found to have broken no law. Mariano is a prohibited person now.