The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
Thirdpower points to some campaign flyers for candidates in Illinois that are basically trying to scare voters into thinking machine guns are legal in Illinois (they aren’t) and that clearly we need to ban them.
At best, Representative Kathy Ryg is completely ignorant about what she proposes to regulate, and at worst is lying and deliberately misleading her constituents.
Man, I’m really glad we’re getting dangerous bouncers off the street. Â It’s always easier to arrest people for technicalities than go after actual hardened criminals.
Lying on an application to buy a firearm, or an application to carry a gun, has always been illegal under Pennsylvania law. The problem, explained Deputy Police Commissioner William Blackburn, was that the application used by the Police Department made it difficult to determine if the applicant was lying to illegally obtain a gun or was just confused by terminology.
Yes, it’s illegal, and has traditionally been used when you find someone who has committed a crime, and you’re looking for other things to throw at them, or throw at associates in an attempt to get them to turn witness. Â How is the City of Philadelphia making the streets safer by going after people for paperwork violations? Â Was Emmit Bethea a threat to public safety?
Why is the city wasting resources on paperwork violations, when they aren’t prosecuting real criminals who assault people, rob people, or even hardened criminals who are caught with guns? Â I’m not arguing that Abraham isn’t in the legal right. Â The law is the law. Â But her priorities are horribly out of whack if she considers going after paperwork errors a priority over going after real criminals.
Very interesting news item [from the shakedown artists over at] Las Vegas Review-Journal, about the gun record of Tarkanian, a GOP candidate looking to run against Harry Reid [here used to be a link, but I have removed it because I do not wish to promote extortion]:
[An excerpt of blah used to appear here from the sewer of a newspaper Las Vegas Review-Journal and Extortion about the Tarkanian campaign noting an e-mail campaign pointing out his “?” on his NRAÂ questionnaire, and former “F” grade from the Association]
A question mark means he didn’t answer his questionnaire. Â The F means he answered it poorly.
[Here was a statement excerpted from the rag newspaper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, that likes to sue bloggers for copyright infringements rather than try to work things out nicely first. That statement was from Tarkanian’s campaign, saying that they never received the questionnaire, so surely NRA thought they were just ignoring them.]
NRA sends a questionnaire to every candidate for office. Â In fact, NRA sends multiple questionnaires if they don’t get an answer back. Â This is what we would call a lame excuse.
[Here that rag of a newspaper, the Las Vegas Review-Lawsuit was excerpted, and told of Tarkanian’s previous “C” and “F” grades, the latter of which came from a Brady endorsement Tarkanian claims he never asked for.]
Just a misunderstanding, you see. Â Harry Reid is far from perfect, and I will admit that his squirrely nature worries me in terms of what he’s going to do when he can coast for the next six years, but if gun owners in Nevada are pinning their hopes on this challenger, I think they are making a mistake.
UPDATE 7/22/2010: This article was changed from the original, because the Las Vegas Review-Journal will get no more free links from this blog. Here’s why.
Let me expand a bit on a previous post, for those who want to believe Harry Reid is the Devil Incarnate, and suggest they will tear up their NRA membership cards if NRA endorses him, let me compare, side to side, so we understand what we’re dealing with here:
| Date | Key Vote | Reid (GOA F, NRA B) |
Durbin (GOA F-, NRA F) |
Hutchinson (GOA A, NRA A+) |
| 1993 | NICS Amendment to Brady Act | N* | ||
| 1993 | Final Brady Act | Y | Y* | Y |
| 1994 | Assault Weapons Ban | N | Y* | N |
| 1996 | Repeal of Assault Weapons Ban | N* | ||
| 1998 | Gun Luck Requirement Amendment | Y | N | Y |
| 1999 | Gun Show Sale Regulation Amendment | Y | Y | N |
| 2004 | Assault Weaposn Ban Renewal | N | Y | N |
| 2005 | Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act | Y | N | Y |
| 2006 | Prohibition on Firearms Confiscation (Katrina Act) | Y | N | Y |
| 2008 | Prohibition on Funds to Discourage Gun Ownership | Y | N | Y |
| 2009 | National Park Carry | Y | N | Y |
| 2009 | National Reciprocity | Y | N | Y |
| * Durbin was a Member of the House for this vote. | ||||
I’ve included both their NRA and GOA grades here, and their votes on key issues up to and including now.  You will notice that Harry Reid’s voting record isn’t all that remarkably different from Kay Bailey Hutchinson, is rated high by both NRA and GOA. Absent is the vote on Sotomayor, where Reid voted yes, along with every single other Democrat, and Hutchinson voted no, along with most of the Republicans.  Also of note is that Hutchinson signed the Heller brief, whereas Reid did not.
But Reid has also been willing to allow NRA to bring pro-gun amendments to the Senate floor for a vote. While it’s true that the Senate Majority Leader does not have the power of the Speaker of the House, they still control enough of the Senate’s business for a hostile majority leader to create real trouble for us. Â You will notice that Dick Durbin has never met a gun control bill he wouldn’t vote for, nor a pro-gun bill he wouldn’t vote against. Â I suspect his only “pro-gun” vote, against the child lock provision, is because it did not go as far as he wanted.
While I count myself among those who hope that the Democrats see their lead in the Senate cut down in 2010, for the sake of the Second Amendment, I’m hoping that Harry Reid keeps his position as Majority Leader. I don’t think that turning over the Senate to the GOP is within the realm of possibility in 2010, and probably not 2012 either. That’s a long time to go without progress, and a long time for someone like Dick Durbin to find an opportunity to bring a gun control bill or amendment to the floor. That’s not a risk I’d like to take.
Looks like the District Attorney of Philadelphia is going to go after LTC holders who lie on their application. Â It would appear she has legal authority to do this, since the License to Carry Application for Pennsylvania makes it clear you’re making a statement to authorities, and can be prosecuted for falsehoods. Â I do have to wonder though, how many hardened criminals Abraham thinks are applying for LTCs, and whether this is just a distraction from going after actual hardened criminals, in an attempt to make it appear that gun licensees are a problem in Philadelphia.
UPDATE: I’m hearing Abraham is also looking to abolish reciprocity with Florida. Â I will try to find some verification of this, and an article.
UPDATE: On a Fox Local News story on last night’s 10:00 news, Abraham reportedly suggested she would go after a “loophole” in PA law that allowed people to get Florida permits online, and carry guns in Pennsylvania.
I’m sympathetic to this guy’s plight, but I’m not sure it will really fix much in the long run. Â The guy essentially argues that we ought to abolish the Pennsylvania Legislature, and replace it with a unicameral legislature, with fewer members who have fewer perks.
The problem of our legislature costing so much is a real one, but I’d prefer solving it by going to a part-time legislature, like Virginia has, and cutting some of the perks. Â I doubt folks in Nebraska would agree a unicameral legislature is going to fix anything, and I would worry that a smaller legislature, where each state representative represents more people, will pay even less attention to constituents than the current one does. Â By making them part time, it should cost less money, and reduce the amount of time they have to screw things up.
This guy should be put in a museum, because if you looked up “Northeastern Republican” in the dictionary, I think you’d find a picture of this fossil. Â In this he claims that Republican Party is becoming a regional party of the South. Â While to some degree that’s true, I think guys like this are a big part of the reason the GOP has virtually lost all of the Northeast, including the Philadelphia Suburbs. Â The nature of their environment changed, and they were unable to adapt. Â We know how that worked out for the dinosaurs, and so it seems to have worked out for Northeastern Republicans.
People carrying guns are acting like jerks. So are the liberals who have created a giant scary amalgam of a right-wing protester, who has done every bad thing that every protester has ever done. More than one person has now asked me how I can defend someone who shows up at a rally holding a gun in one hand and a picture of Obama-as-Hitler in the other, and starts screaming about death panels?
Moreover, having created this horrifying bogeyman, the next rhetorical move is to claim that this constitutes the whole of the opposition to your program.
Does any of this sound oddly familiar? Wait a second . . . it’ll come to you . . . yes, that’s right, it’s 2003 all over again!
RTWT
UPDATE: More from Megan on this topic here, and here. I think Megan brings a useful, non-gun-activist view to this whole thing. She calls out the left for not being willing to put their money where their mouths are when predicting all manner of horrors that are sure to happen if people keep bringing guns to protests.
UPDATE: Doug Pennington’s two cents on McArdle’s posts here.
Over on the site Bitter and I maintain for EVC purposes, we talk about why the 2010 elections are going to be vitally important, despite it being a midterm. Why? Because the people you elect at the state level are going to get to decide how your state gets redistricted after the 2010 census. In Pennsylvania, we have a paper thin Democratic Majority in the House, and a Republican majority in the Senate. After the 2000 census, Pennsylvania lost two seats, which lead to the elimination of two Democratic seats, and the creation of the sixth district, which is now occupied by Jim Gerlach. We are expected to lose at least another seat in the 2010 census. All else being equal, I’d prefer the Republicans to decide the new districts rather than the Democrats, which would easily cement Pennsylvania as a true-blue state.