Massachusetts is considering a law to make it illegal, with a 5 year prison sentence, to have more than fifteen guns within the Commonwealth. This is where one-gun-a-month and restrictive licensing will lead if we allow it to happen here.
Happy 1000
Over at Call Me Ahab, Caleb, the blogger formerly known as Ahab, lamented that he wasted his 1000th post on talking about Sly Stallone endorsing John McCain.  Well, hopefully this post helps waste it a little less :)
I Dare You Mike!
Michael Nutter claims he will be enforcing Philadelphia illegal gun laws:
At the first regular meeting of the new City Council yesterday, Council members Darrell L. Clarke and Donna Reed Miller introduced the same package of gun-control measures that languished last year while the state legislature refused to authorize them.
But these bills have a new wrinkle – they don’t call for state-enabling legislation. The previous bills were conditional on companion state laws in recognition of a 1996 Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling that said cities could not enforce their own gun laws.
But Nutter, Clarke and Miller, frustrated by the repeated failure of gun-control measures in the legislature, now appear ready to do just that.
“If these bills pass and if I sign them, then I expect to enforce them,” Nutter said. “If you believe we can have a safer city by putting these measures in place, I think as good public servants we are compelled to take some type of action in the face of no relief coming from anywhere else.”
Go ahead Mayor Nutter. Enforce them against me. Please. I could use the money I’ll make from the giant lawsuit I promise I’ll slap the city with. Pennsylvania needs to reconsider its preemption statue if Mayor Nutter is serious about crossing this Rubicon. Not to weaken it, but to impose penalties on cities and local municipalities who violate it. We have the power to do this in the legislature, and I really hope that City Council does not really want to bring this issue to a head.
UPDATE: I love this quote:
Kairys said the city’s action could set up a test of a new Supreme Court, now under Chief Justice Ronald Castille, the former Philadelphia district attorney who promised to depoliticize the court.
If the court is truly depoliticized, then Castille will uphold state preemption. That is not a matter of politics. The city home rule charter does not give the city the power to contradict state laws, and preemption is a state law designed to protect an enumerated fundamental right protected by the Pennsylvania Constitution. If Castille votes in favor of the city he will be breaking his promise, and will be actively politicizing the court.
AR-15 Controversey in Duncannon
Man, I’m glad I’m not a cop in this town. Apparently the fact that the police department purchased two AR-15 rifles is quite the controversy. Officers should really have a decent carbine in their patrol cars in addition to shotguns, and the AR-15 is a fine platform for law enforcement use.
Dummies like this …
… aren’t going to do much to help the cause of getting shall-issue carry passed in Delaware.
Gay Marriage is Contagious
Sen. Mike Brubaker is trying to get a marriage amendment onto the Pennsylvania Constitution:
Tom Shaheen, vice president for policy at the Pennsylvania Family Institute, said it’s important to protect marriage in the state’s Constitution — especially considering its proximity to Massachusetts, the only state to allow homosexual “marriage.”
Apparently Tom Shaheen thinks gay marriage is a strange disease we might catch by hanging out near Massachusetts. Are these people for real?
Pushing Irrelevance
Why is it that anti-gun folks love pushing bills in response to tragedy that would in no way shape or form have even remotely prevented it? Latest from Nebraska:
The NRA is urging its members to fight a bill in the legislature that calls for, among other things, mandatory trigger locks. The NRA is convinced this latest gun control plan would have a “drastic effect” on law-abiding gun owners.
But Action Three News has learned that victims of the Von Maur massacre, some who lived, some who’s relatives died, are ready to fight for the bill.
The trigger locks would be required on any gun, rifle, or assault weapon. In addition once gun owners know a weapon is lost or stolen, they’d have 48 hours to report it. Finally no one found mentally ill in the last 10 years could buy a gun.
Do these people really think a trigger lock would have stopped this guy? And what kind of “assault weapons” is not also a gun or rifle? This is the usual panel of gun control being pushed by the anti-gun groups everywhere else. In this case, exploiting people who are mourning the loss of loved ones promoting a political agenda, that wouldn’t have prevented their tragedy. The shooter in the Von Maur shooting was already prohibited from owning a firearm by existing laws.
UPDATE Joe’s Crabby Shack, which is a local Nebraska gun blog, has a lot more detail about this.
The Pin is Mine!
Finally, I managed to wrangle myself a pin for shooting ten chickens in a row. I shot a 35 out of 40 overall for that set. I came very close to getting a pin for rams, but by the time I was on the tenth ram, my pulse rate was so high I could see my heart beat moving the rifle, and I missed. Damn! But hey, I’ll take my chicken pin. Turns out I don’t do well when I don’t eat before going to the match. I do better when I eat first. I’ll have to remember that.
Bloomberg Gets Some Competition
It looks like county executives are eager to find out exactly where Mike Bloomberg and his cohorts buy their Bill of Rights toilet paper. Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano has started his own anti-gun coalition so they don’t feel so left out.
Quote of the Day
The case of Fred illustrates for us, in living color, just exactly how far superior ideas go in the 21st century: They’re not worth much without an infrastructure to back them up.
In fact, as much as we want to believe otherwise, the man with the inferior ideas and superior infrastructure wins, and this pisses us off, it supremely offends our sensibilities.
This is one of the better observations of the situation out there that I’ve seen. Read the whole thing. There’s a lot of analogies that can be drawn between politics and the workplace, because the workplace is really a microcosm of how people react to each other in a society. Fred was the manager everyone likes, has great ideas, but who could never get any of them done. We all have seen executive types with the power suit and nice hair who lie, cheat and backstab their way to the top (Romney), and the quirky engineer who spends his days in his office wasting his time on crackpot designs that he always claims will save the company (Paul). Then there’s the folks that just bully their way to the top by sheer force of personality (McCain), and who drive everyone batty because they don’t think they can do any wrong.