A New Aquisition from Cabela’s

I joked with Bitter that every weekend she spends away from me, I will comfort myself by buying a gun. She’ll have to find out whether or not I’m actually joking. This weekend’s addition was a Ruger Mk.III Hunter 22/45. I got it at Cabela’s, which processes gun buyers with assembly line efficiency. I figured it was easier to get exactly what I was looking for there, rather than run around to 20 different gun stores to find it.

I was disappointed to see that Cabela’s is now requiring customers to check their firearms at the front desk. I’m happy that they at least provide a place to check, but do they have to state “For your safety, please be sure to check all firearms at the customer service desk”, or something very similar. It’s not for my safety. Maybe for the job safety of their lawyers or whoever insures Cabela’s, but certainly not for mine. Needless to say I paid the sign about as much attention as it deserved. Does anyone else’s local Cabela’s post signage? If you by a gun, they also escort you out with the purchase, and hand it to you after you exit the building. The whole experience certainly makes me more inclined to make my next purchases at the local gun stores, where not only do they allow customers to carry, but the people behind the counters are strapped as well.

Maybe Cabela’s should rethink their policy and ban their insurance company’s lawyers instead of guns. No insurance policy is worth pissing off your customers. Especially in a state like Pennsylvania where there are close to 700,000 people licensed to carry.

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Weekend Blogging

I might be blogging a bit more this weekend than normal.   Bitter is spending some quality time with Bitchy Mom, so we’re not together this weekend.   It marks the first weekend since Jan 21st that we haven’t spent together.

I think celebrating mother’s day a week late is probably a good idea.  You can actually go out to eat without having to deal with the masses.  Last weekend we just wanted some breakfast, and I ended up having to pay twenty dollars for a twelve dollar buffet.

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Gonzalez Sucks Round IV

The Brady Campaign are singing the praises of our Attorney General:

Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, wrote to Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez yesterday praising a Justice Department legislative proposal that would help prevent suspected terrorists from purchasing firearms and urging passage of the related legislation by Congress.

Paul Helmke knows a political gift when he sees it, and Gonzalez handed it to him on a silver platter. Come out against the bill, and the meme is “The NRA and the gun nuts want terrorists to have guns!”, and the media will happily lap it up and repeat it. Helmke can count on no one criticizing the administration for, once again, trampling on constitutional liberties in the name of the “War on Terror”.

This is the administration that was supposed to be so good for our second amendment rights? Given the three stooges the Republicans are currently putting out there for 2008, I’m seriously wondering if I need to switch my registration to Democrat from Independent so I can vote for Bill Richardson in the primaries.

This isn’t about terrorists getting guns, it’s about due process, and this proposal makes a mockery of our constitution.

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Because, Of Course it’s a Bad Thing

Removing “gun-free” zones on concealed weapons license holders, is, of course, such an obviously bad thing, that the media doesn’t even need to bother talking to supporters of the bill.  And of course, it won’t pass, because it’s such a bad idea after all.

Watch the video.   It’s been a while since I could stomach TV news.

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Reciprocity with Pennsylvania

There was a time when I thought that it might actually be nice if Pennsylvania passed a training requirement so that we could get expanded reciprocity with other states.  I heard from people that our lack of training requirement was a real impediment to signing with states that had “substitutively similar” language in their reciprocity statues.

I don’t think that anymore.   Pennsylvania has done pretty well in signing reciprocity agreements in the past few years with other states.  While we’re still lacking some key ones I’d like to see, like Colorado, West Virginia, and Delaware, it’s a much better state of affairs then it used to be.

Today we have reciprocity agreements with:

  1. New Hampshire
  2. Virginia
  3. North Carolina
  4. Georgia
  5. Florida
  6. Michigan
  7. Kentucky
  8. Tennessee
  9. Missouri
  10. Oklahoma
  11. Texas
  12. Wyoming
  13. South Dakota
  14. Alaska

In addition, our LTC is recognized by:

  1. Montana
  2. Idaho
  3. Utah
  4. Indiana

This is quite an improvement over several years ago, and I hope it will keep improving.   Tom Corbett’s office deserves kudos for working hard on getting so many new agreements.  Hopefully in a few years we’ll be pretty close to universal reciprocity among states, despite boneheaded actions like we saw from the politicians in Colorado earlier in the week.

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More Hydrogen Powered Fantasies

Instapundit is skeptical of another hydrogen powered technology with the potential to not help much with our energy problems.

This one looks pretty identical to the magnesium based process that was talked about last month, and it suffers from the same problem. Aluminum is expensive, and it takes a LOT of energy to produce aluminum from bauxite ore, particularly electrical energy, which in this country, is produced mainly by burning coal.

The main problem with hydrogen is that it’s not an energy source. It’s a way of storing energy. To make hydrogen, you still need a source of energy that’s coming from some other source. In addition, it would be difficult to pack enough hydrogen into a small enough space to be a practical motor fuel, and it would be completely impractical to power larger vehicles like airplanes.

I can see this company is also big on the hype as well:

For Woodall, the biggest speed bump lies elsewhere. “The egos of program managers at DOE are holding up the revolution,” he told msnbc.com.

No, I’m pretty sure the laws of physics and principles of economics are what’s holding up the hydrogen revolution.

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Legislating Against Non-Problems

My example of Colorado earlier really has me steamed, not so much because it presents an intractable barrier to reciprocity with Colorado.  Indeed, I plan to talk to Tom Corbett, our state Attorney General, about approaching Colorado with a reciprocity agreement with Pennsylvania.  What has me steamed is it’s an example, which happens in areas other than guns, but happens especially with guns, of legislating to solve a non-problem in a way that wouldn’t help even if the problem existed.

What can be the public safety rationale in banning non-resident licenses?  If the goal was to keep Colorado residents from seeking out of state licenses in lieu of having to obtain a license from Colorado, that could have been easily accomplished without cutting into the reciprocity law as much as lawmakers have chosen to do here.

The application process for a Florida license, is identical whether or not you’re a resident of that state.  You must go through training, you must submit fingerprints, and you must have a clean criminal record.  When carrying in Colorado, persons in possession of a license, whether in state or out of state, are bound to follow Colorado law.  So what problem is this an attempt to solve?  I can see the rationale in preventing Colorado residents from using foreign permits, even if I think the legislature is trying to solve a non-problem here.  But why cut that deep into reciprocity?

I don’t think they could come up with a good explanation for this.  I doubt they could provide any serious evidence that there is an actual problem.  What happened is, Democrats were elected, and wanted to pass something against concealed carry.   Knowing full well a repeal of right-to-carry would probably piss off too many people, they went with this option.  People outside of Colorado can’t vote after all, and they can all feel good that they “strengthened Colorado’s weak guns laws”.   The symbolism of guns has always been more important than the actual hunk of metal itself, especially to the political left.

When laws like this are passed without any compelling reason or rationale, other than to strike a blow against a frowned upon liberty, it’s polarizing.  It justifies saying no to everything, no matter how innocuous or trivial, and no matter how great the public interest.

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