November 2007 – Page 6 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Not a Shocker

It’s going around on various blogs, it’s a holiday, so why not:

What American accent do you have? Your Result: Philadelphia Your accent is as Philadelphian as a cheesesteak! If you’re not from Philadelphia, then you’re from someplace near there like south Jersey, Baltimore, or Wilmington. if you’ve ever journeyed to some far off place where people don’t know that Philly has an accent, someone may have thought you talked a little weird even though they didn’t have a clue what accent it was they heard.
The Northeast
The Midland
The Inland North
The South
Boston
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

If you’re going to sing …

… another country’s national anthem, it’s really important to get the pronunciation correct.Â Or maybe not if makes you the hero of soccer fans in that country.

DC Gun Ban Constitutional

At least that’s what Barack Obama says:

But the campaign of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said that he “…believes that we can recognize and respect the rights of law-abiding gun owners and the right of local communities to enact common sense laws to combat violence and save lives. Obama believes the D.C. handgun law is constitutional.”

Obama need to learn two things here: One, local governments don’t have rights, they have powers. People have rights. One would presume to ask whether we think it’s appropriate for the federal government to give up protecting the free speech rights of Americans in favor of local regulation.

Two, the rest of the country isn’t Chicago. Outside of the reality distortion field that emanates from the windy city, believing in a total prohibition on firearms is way outside mainstream viewpoints.

This is a big part of why I think you can stick a fork in Obama.Â Bill Richardson give a lot more to Hillary as a VP pick than Obama, andÂ I expect she’ll make that choice.Â Obama offers Hillary nothing at this point, because he’s a caricature of a lot of ideas that make people uncomfortable about Hillary.Â Richardson might help Hillary take a few more states than she otherwise would.

Running into (nearly) Family

Bitter and I went to my father’s for Thanksgiving in Delaware. My sister didn’t come.Â I typically see my sister maybe once a year, so she hasn’t yet met Bitter. We were talking about the fact that Karen never goes to any family functions, and wondering when she might actually get a chance to meet her.

I stopped off to get gas in my home town, which is on the way back from my Dad’s, just south of the Philadelphia Airport (mostly because I know where the gas stations are), and on the way back out to the highway noticed some fire department activity, and said to Bitter “Well, my sister could be in that”. As I was driving slowly past the scene, a firefighter motioned for me to stop so they could get across the street, and sure enough, it was my sister. She didn’t notice it was me, since it was dark out.

It’s a good thing I stopped. I mean, they’ll string you up if you hit a firefighter. But what they are a family? “Well, officer… this is really a family matter. See, she never comes to visit, so running her over was really the only way to introduce her to my girlfriend.”

Harrisburg Report from The Geek

Geekwitha.45 and EgregiousCharles actually went to Harrisburg to help stick it to Rendell personally. He relays to us why HB 29, the lost and stolen gun reporting requirement, is a bad idea, and also relays some of the substance of questioned that were asked about the bill.

Happy Turkey Day

SayUncle is in favor of presidential strangling of turkeys with bare hands and taking a bite from it’s head. I couldn’t agree more, and I would add “Mmm…. tastes like…. Ahmadinejad.” would be good for a follow up.

While we’re on the subject of turkey, and because this is a gun blog, here’s an interesting article about Turkey’s troubles with their G3 service rifle. They are pondering replacements, like the Kalashnikov. Most of our other NATO allies use 5.56x45MM NATO. I can see why the Turks may not want to adopt this varmint killing round, when the 7.63x51mm NATO round they use now can kill much larger prey. But I would suggest they adopt the 6.8 SPC, then sell me a lot of surplus ammo for cheap.

I suppose I should say what I’m thankful for like Ahab did, but I think he pretty much already covered the basics. The only addition I would make is that I’m thankful Pennsylvania gun owners got their game on and send Fast Eddie slinking back to the governor’s mansion without his prize. He will be back, and so will we.

A Human Right

Ahab has the digs on Darfuris being denied their right to bear arms.Â I think we can predict where this one is going.

Polling Data

I managed to find a copy of the polling data Governor Rendell was touting, bought and paid for by CeaseFire PA. Let’s look at some of these polling questions and you tell me how loaded you think the questions are:

In the last week in Philadelphia, three police officer were shot, including one fatally. Which statement do you agree with more:

1. These shootings represent a crisis that needs to be dealth with immediate, and a part of the solution is to pass common sense handgun safety laws to protect our police officers

2. The shootings are a tragedy, but we should not rush to trample on our right to bear arms to address the problem.

61% of 600 Pennsylvania voters went with 1, and 32% with 2. The questions for the lost or stolen bill, which garnered 96% approval, were:

Support for handgun safety measures: Require handgun owners to immediate report lost or stolen guns to the police?

What if you phrased it this way?

Support for gun control measure: A firearm owner convicted of failing to report a lost or stolen firearm to the police can face a felony charge involving several years in prison?

Of course, that might not get them the result they want. There was a time when politicians might have paid attention to these polls, but when they did, gun owners voted a lot of them out of office. How did that happen if we’re such a minority? Because polls don’t matter. What matters is what motivates people to vote, and when we get screwed, we show up at the polls and pull the lever for the other guy. Hard core gun rights activists may be a minority, but a lot of people care about our issue. People who care bout implementing gun control enough to vote it? Now there’s a minority.

Public Safety Announcement

Corn kills!

What Happens After Heller

Assuming we prevail in Heller, Joe Huffman has a good suggestion on how to proceed…. that is cautiously.Â One of my chief fears is that people will start pushing second amendment claims against things like machine gun possession.Â Â While I would like to see the second amendment include a right to possess automatic firearms, it’s not something to start out of the gate with.

As for what to try after the DC ban? Â There’s not much easy pickings at the federal level. Â The ban on National Parks is the only thing that comes to mind, but I think incorporation is probably a better thing to try to get before going after the “bearing” part, rather than the “keeping” part.Â We could go after the “sporting purposes” clause, but then someone has to get prosecuted for importing a firearm before it can be challenged.