Arms Dealers has been running an add on the sidebar for some time, so we’re happy to see that they are announcing a new gun related classifieds section. To go along with that they are giving away free stuff.
Pittsburgh Post Gazette Doesn’t Get HR822 Close to Correct
We can expect the amount of hysterics over HR822 to continue, and for it to get ridiculous, such as this editorial in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette:
H.R. 822, or the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act, would force every state to honor every other state’s permit to carry a concealed gun — no matter how lax the other state’s standards. That would mean a convicted felon who can’t pass muster in, say, Pennsylvania, could get a permit elsewhere, and local law enforcement would have no choice but to let him walk around with a loaded weapon.
You see, she must have heard of this “Florida Loophole” thing, but instead of doing actual research to understand the issue, she’ll just shoot her ignorant mouth off. First off, in the language of HR822:
Notwithstanding any provision of the law of any State or political subdivision thereof, related to the carrying or transportation of firearms, a person who is not prohibited by Federal law from possessing, transporting, shipping, or receiving a firearm, and who is carrying a government-issued photographic identification document and a valid license or permit which is issued pursuant to the law of a State and which permits the person to carry a concealed firearm, may carry a concealed handgun (other than a machinegun or destructive device) that has been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce, in any State, other than the State of residence of the person, that-
That automatically excludes felons, people who have been adjudicated mentally ill, and anyone with a misdemeanor domestic violence convictions. That makes sense, since these people may not legally own or possess firearms in all 50 states. She also brings up Florida Loophole poster child Marqus Hill. I have shown why Mr. Hill is a failure of the City of Philadelphia, and not the State of Florida. That irrelevant to begin with, because HR822 does now allow you to carry in your state of residence on a reciprocal license, so HR822 would have been no assistance to someone of Marqus Hill’s disposition.
So either MAIG is employing the ignorant to speak out against HR822, or they have resorting to being deliberately deceptive. Not that I can blame them. Half truths and hysterics is all they know.
A Fair Criticism of My Approach to PCUSA
Over at the Captain’s Journal. He believes that gun control is a spiritual battle, as the right to bear arms is granted by God, and that the battle to preserve it is a matter of religion, morality, and righteousness.
I can’t really answer his criticism, because I think it’s correct. Spending enough time in a single issue to tends to make you think more practically about things and less religiously. I agree the right is granted by God, but it has to be protected by men, and for most of our struggle that’s been done through the political process.
Though, in terms of arguing the case from within the context of within a Church, I think the Captain’s approach is probably smarter.
PETA Strikes Again
Apparently they consider it a travesty that Prince William is a bird hunter, and are begging Kate Middleton to put a stop to it. If I were Kate, that would mean I have a very public dinner of pheasant.
As one might expect, the PETA nut cases are once again mischaracterizing the nature of bird hunting, and operating under the delusion that humans were never meant to be predators.
Never Has a Law So Simple Caused So Much Hysterics
You’d think the Florida Legislature had passed a state law required a detailed proof of Fermat’s Last Theorem from every single local legislator in the country by some unreasonable deadline, judging from the amount of hysteria I’ve seen in the media over the preemption law with teeth. How hard is it to repeal a law at the next town meeting?
After watching all the hewing and hawing from local officials in Florida, I’d really like to get this passed in Pennsylvania. It’s been great watching as local officials, who for years have gotten away with passing and sometimes enforcing laws, thumbing their noses at the state legislature and getting away with it, now suddenly find themselves held accountable.
Getting to Court
IJ put together this lesson on the process of taking a case and getting it to the Supreme Court. Â I think it’s useful to give those who don’t really think about the legal process a good insight into just how much work it takes to get a case going.
Another lesson: If there’s anything our legal system does well, it’s kill trees.
Close Prisons and Pass More Gun Control
Fast and Furious Not Getting Play in GOP Field
The Daily Caller is upset that the GOP isn’t saying anything about the widening scandal involving Fast and Furious. Now we have tapes, just like in Watergate. Today comes news that Customs has seized 30 guns headed south into Mexico. Anyone bother to check to see if any of those 30 were Fast and Furious guns. Also note Reuters continuing the meme that this was just a botched operation, rather than a deliberate effort. It’s pretty clear Fast and Furious was working exactly how it was intended to work.
It’s sad enough that the media is, for the most part, completely ignoring Fast and Furious. There’s no reason for the entire GOP field to ignore it too.
Friday Morning Wakeup Call
It’s been John Philip Sousa Week over at Old Picture of the Day blog. He’s been featuring old photos of the March King, and some of his marches. Yesterdays march was one I was not previously familiar with, but it’s fabulous for one of Sousa’s lesser known marches:
If that doesn’t supplement your morning coffee, I don’t know what will. I have an interview late afternoon today, with a company that makes a network monitoring product. This job would involve more low level programming, basically writing, analyzing and debugging device drivers under FreeBSD. I’d also be doing a lot of performance analysis, and development work on high-performance storage arrays. If I understand what they are looking for correctly, which I’m not sure I do, this job would take me back more into the engineering realm, My last position was more high-performance computing, general IT, and some high-level programming, supporting pharmaceutical research.
I’m trying not to pigeon hole myself. I’m willing to look at jobs that are different, even if it means a substantial pay cut, if it gets me into an interesting career path. We shall see.
What is the Purpose of the Media Matters Tagline?
By now most of you have heard of the flurry of activity appearing in the seldom read lefty blogosphere, with posts promoting gun control bearing this tagline:
This post is written as part of the Media Matters Gun Facts fellowship. The purpose of the fellowship is to further Media Matters’ mission to comprehensively monitor, analyze, and correct conservative misinformation in the U.S. media. Some of the worst misinformation occurs around the issue of guns, gun violence, and extremism, the fellowship program is designed to fight this misinformation with facts.
I agree, certainly, that some of the worst misinformation occurs around the issue of guns, but it’s occurring from the other side, not our side. That stands to reason, since when it comes to guns, most of them are ignoramuses on anything other than how to become hysterical on the topic. But I keep wondering what the purpose of this tagline is.
It’s certainly not required. Joyce/Media Matters are perfectly free, as fellow citizens with First Amendment rights, to fund anonymous speech. So why the tagline? A few reasons that I can think of.
- They want to be able to measure how much exposure they are getting for their money. It’s relatively easy to search on the tagline and see how many sites are being reached. It’s also relatively easy to see that the blogger followed through on what he was being paid for.
- They want to be able to cover their asses if a blog receives funding for a post, but in the next post does something that could qualify as electioneering, and endanger the funders tax status. By labeling the one post that received funding, it protects both the funder from accusations that they may be funding bloggers to do activity which is outside the scope of a 501(c)(3) non-profit.
If I had to take a bet, I think the latter is most likely the reason, maybe with a little of the former. The big downside for our opponents is it’s like spray painting your astroturf bright orange. It’s really easy for us to spot, and point out that, rather than being a genuine grassroots movement, what we have here are people that are pretty obviously being paid to shill for the Joyce Campaign’s anti-gun agenda.
It’s worth noting that NRA doesn’t have to pay shills to do pro-gun posts. Our community is pretty organic, and definitely unpaid. This blog costs me approximately 50 bucks a month to run between paying for the Internet connection to feed it, paying for the electricity to run the server, and upkeep on the server itself. If NRA offered to pay me for a post, I’d absolutely refuse. Even in the depths of unemployment, I still managed to find a few hundred bucks to spend at our “Friends of the NRA” dinner.
If the other side really wants to understand why they continuously lose, they have to understand this: their side can’t get mojo without buying off sympathetic people on the left to shill for their cause. I would not let NRA, or any other gun rights group I believed in, buy words from me. Every penny they spent on that would be money that isn’t going to keep lobbyists on my elected representatives like a pitbull on a poodle. If the gun control extremists want to understand why they can’t get any traction, they need to look no further than the fact that they even need to throw money at people to have a voice at all.