Category: Politics

Canned Hunting

The Humane Society of the United States, unlke PETA, who are mostly a joke, is a very smart anti-hunting group.  Look at this bill proposed by Senator Lautenberg:

Today, U.S. Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) introduced legislation that would prevent importing and confining exotic animals for the purpose of hunting.  This type of hunting, commonly known as “canned hunting,” is a brutal practice of placing an animal in an enclosure that severely limits its ability to escape.

Sounds like they are putting the animal in a cage so you can shoot it, right?  Well, no.  They are putting the animal on a preserve, and the preserve has a fence that delineates the property.  Doesn’t matter if you have 10,000 acres.  It’s a canned hunt, and it’s evil and cruel.  HSUS will mislead the public on this the same way the Brady Campaign misleads the public on the gun issue.  Hunters need to wake up.  Particularly hunters in New Jersey, which is getting perilously close to banning hunting altogether.

I also have to say that if the people of New Jersey choose to keep that fossil Lautenberg around, they are nuts.  Rob Andrews is no friend of ours, but saying he’d be a step up is a bit of an understatement.

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Misleading Info on Firearms Transfers

The state has set up a web site to inform people about firearms transfer laws in Pennsylvania.  Dave Markowitz takes the state to task for providing misleading information about what the law actually is.  Handgun and NFA transfers have to be done through an FFL or the County Sheriff’s office.  Long gun transfers between private parties are allowed, provided neither individual is prohibited from possessing a firearm.  Seems the state is leading people to believe all transfers have to go through an FFL.  From Dave:

Guntransfer.org clearly reflects the Philly-centric antigun bias. By fooling people into thinking that private party transfers of any gun are illegal in PA, they are looking to create a paper trail. All gun transfers which go through a licensed dealer first require the transferee to pass a background check conducted in Harrisburg by the Pennsylvania State Police. As you may be aware, a few years ago they were sued for creating an illegal registry of gun owners. As it turned out, the State Police won their case when the court ruled that the records which they were compiling did not meet the statutory definition of an illegal database. Nevertheless, it is still a de facto database of gun owners in Pennsylvania.

Our supreme court ruled that because the database wasn’t all inclusive, that it wasn’t a “registery,” which is prohibited by the Uniform Firearms Act.  I doubt this is a nefarious conspiracy to create a paper trail, but it’s definitely not good that a state agency is spreading false information about state law.  This is something we ought to bring up with Attorney General Corbett.

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Here Comes Everybody: A Review

Sounds like an interesting book to me.  I an intrigued by this part:

One of Shirky’s central arguments centres on the concept of mass amateurisation. In the same way that the printing press brought the written word to the masses, the internet is equipping anyone with an interest with the tools necessary to take on almost any task. In public affairs parlance, we might call the same concept by a different name: democratisation.

Anyone who has observed the effectiveness of well-funded NGOs backed by hundreds of thousands of supporters has seen its impact. This, Shirky would argue, demonstrates the de-professionalisation of public affairs.

We’re seeing that here in the gun rights movement.  Our political power has risen with the rise of the Internet and New Media, while our opponents have fallen.  If the premise of this book is correct, it will bode well for gun rights.  For the gun control groups, there is no “Everybody” to come.  I can count on one hand the number of comments and e-mails I’ve gotten supporting gun control.  Marshall closes with this:

While specialists will always be necessary to help clients navigate the vagaries of government, when it comes to making an impact, public affairs practitioners have a choice: adapt activities in light of the societal changes that the internet is sweeping forward or be tethered to methods and approaches whose effectiveness will steadily decline in coming years.

The NRA has been getting on board with this idea, slowly, but I think they understand it.  Our blog bash event in Louisville will be the first NRA Annual Meeting that will have bloggers, new media and Internet activists interacting formally with The National Rifle Association.  For many of us, this will be the first annual meeting we’ve ever attended, so it should be a good time.

The Brady Campaign, VPC, and many other gun control groups have yet not been able to capitalize on bloggers and new media.  In future battles, the Brady Campaign organization will become irrelevant, because they bear the burdens of a group that’s funded by a handful of wealthy donors.  The future of the gun control movement, and the only place it will find any real grassroots, is overseas.

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Quote of the Day

From TigerHawk:

If your answer to losing is to declare yourself “done with politics,” then you don’t really have the stamina necessary to be a participating citizen. Which is just as well. Democracy requires the continuing participation of the losers, and if you do not have the stones to play the game again the next time then you are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Giving up just reinforces the loss.  When handed a bad hand, like we’ve been handed this year with McCain walking away with the nomination, a redoubling of efforts makes more sense than quitting.

H/T to Instapundit

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Taxing Fast Food

New Jersey may want to tax fast food:

The thought of taxing a Big Mac or a Wendy’s burger came up at a New Jersey Hospital Association meeting where Gov. Jon S. Corzine was asked if it could be an option to help fund struggling hospitals. At the meeting, he reportedly called it a “constructive suggestion.”

A spokesperson for the governor, however, told CBS 2 on Wednesday:

“The governor is open to reasonable solutions to help solve our financing problems, but there are no plans for any fast food tax.”

So, New Jersey, How’s that one party rule treating you?  As a side note, the medical community are starting to get awfully meddlesome.  Do we really want these guys suckling at the government teat more than they already do, so they have even worse incentives to demand government force us to be healthy, or else?

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Gotta Watch that Mike’s Hard

Based on this article, you would almost think a bottle of Mike’s Hard Lemonade is rat poison:

The Comerica cop estimated that Leo had drunk about 12 ounces of the hard lemonade, which is 5% alcohol. But an ER resident who drew Leo’s blood less than 90 minutes after he and his father were escorted from their seats detected no trace of alcohol.

“Completely normal appearing,” the resident wrote in his report, “… he is cleared to go home.”

But it would be two days before the state of Michigan allowed Ratte’s wife, U-M architecture professor Claire Zimmerman, to take their son home, and nearly a week before Ratte was permitted to move back into his own house.

The father, a Professor of Archeology at the University of Michigan, who doesn’t watch much television, apparently was unaware that it was alcoholic lemonade.  Easy mistake to make.

One 12 ounce bottle of hard lemonade isn’t going to hurt a 7 year old.  Hell, they used to tell parents to give whiskey to kids to fight teething pain (ask my dad about that one).  It was a simple mistake, and a bit of questioning should have revealed that, and that should have been the end of it.

Hat tip to Orin Kerr.

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Sounds About Right

People are often under the mistaken impression that the Philadelphia Zoo is located at 34th and Girard.  Those of us who have been to sporting events in the city know that it’s really on South Broad Street, as this visitor from Montreal found out:

My son and I drove from Montreal to catch Monday night’s Flyers-Canadiens playoff game at the Wachovia Center. Your fans have many reasons to be proud of their city and team, but how they treat their guests at a sporting event is not one of them.

As the game progressed, the level of threats and abuse heaped on us grew at an alarming rate. At one point, an unfortunate Habs fan had a glass of beer poured on her head, and her boyfriend thought it best for them to leave the arena. By the end of the game, we and other Habs supporters needed the protection of arena security and police to exit the building.

I can’t imagine what would have happened to us if the Flyers had lost.

Welcome to the jungle.  When I attended the Flyers-Capitals game a few weeks ago at the Verizon Center in D.C. (in the VIP booth, w/ free beer and food, sweet!), I was telling Bitter the reputation our fans had.  Despite a few beers, I resisted the urge to jump up and start cracking heads when people cheered on the Capitals.  I am a poor Philadelphian.

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Gun Fatigue

They just don’t get it.  Or they wont get it:

But “gun fatigue” has set in, and it’s unlikely any new gun bills will be brought up in Harrisburg this legislative session.

However, this represents a moment that Nutter could use to his advantage: exploit the political goodwill he has been forging in Harrisburg to help change the conversation about guns and find solutions. Face it: If anything substantial is going to change about the city’s ability to make gun laws, it will require a civil sit-down between Nutter and state leaders – something House Speaker Dennis O’Brien, who once kept gun legislation safely tucked away in the Judiciary Committee he once chaired – told this editorial board he’s willing to do.

Nutter was smart enough to build bridges with Harrisburg before he took office. We believe he’s smart enough to spark a more productive conversation with state lawmakers, and get them to see it’s in their interest to help the city grapple with our gun problem.

We are not passing gun control laws because the City of Philadelphia can’t control it’s crime problem.  That’s off the table.  Put it out of your minds now.  It is not that we don’t care about the city’s problems, it’s that we keep telling you that you can’t fix your problem this way, especially when the city is doing little to enforce the laws they already have.  Nutter and City Council are throwing this temper tantrum because they lack the political courage to tell their constituents something they don’t want to hear; that until they get off their asses and start taking responsibility for their communities and neighborhoods, and start working with the police to get rid of the criminals, drug dealers, and gangs, nothing is going to change.  And most importantly, Philadelphians need to  elect judges who are willing to put these individuals away for a very long time when they are convicted.

We have a lot of guns in this state outside Philadelphia, and we do not have a violence problem.  The reason we don’t is that we would not tolerate it in our communities, and we’d hold the politicians and judges feet to the fire until they started dealing with it.  Really dealing with it, not pretending to deal with it.

Residents of Philadelphia are being sold a bill of goods by their politicians and by the media, that their problems have an easy solution, and it has to start with gun control.  As long as Philadelphia residents are willing to buy that line, and keep electing politicians who peddle that instead of doing something, nothing is going to change in that city.

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