Maybe I was a bit hard on the Delco times the other day. This editorial highlighting the plight of Officer Daniel Faulkner’s widow, Maureen Faulkner, is pretty spot on.
Month: December 2007
Letters to the Editor
One thing I’ve been trying to do lately is, when I see newspapers make wildly inaccurate statements, to try to get a letter to the editor in. I haven’t had much luck so far, but if my luck changes I might point them out here.
The hard part about Letters to the Editor is that they typically want you to keep them under 200 words, and if you’ve ever tried to address a lot of issues in that kind of word space, you know how hard it can be.
But I think there’s probably not much better you can do to have an impact on the debate within your community. Letters to legislators are good, but getting a Letter to the Editor placed can influence hundreds or thousands of other people, and also lets the paper’s editorial board know they got something wrong.
Write Your State Representative
Remember folks, to write your state representatives about the Castle Doctrine Bill coming up.  Here’s mine:
Representative [Find Yours Here],
I am disappointed that HB 641, the Castle Doctrine Bill, did not get a hearing in the House Judiciary Committee as was originally scheduled for today. I am told that the bill’s sponsor, Representative Cappelli, plans to introduce it as an amendment onto Senate Bill 436, which is currently before the House.
I would very much appreciate your support of Rep. Cappelli’s amendment, and the final bill, when it comes up for a vote.
Sincerely,
[Your Name]
Hopefully we can get this bill on Rendell’s desk.
NJSP Sexual Assault Probe
Six suspended as investigation proceeds into allegations of sexual assault. Weird, I just drove past that night club a few days ago.
These people …
… have absolutely no shame or sense of decency.
Church Gunman Killed Himself
That’s the headline the AP is running. Expect a lot of talk now that the armed resistance didn’t matter much.  I’m not really surprised by this. It was a murder suicide fantasy, and he wasn’t about to let this woman take that away from him. These types of mass shooters usually off themselves when the police are closing in too, lest it spoil their script.
History Lesson
Clayton has a bit on the history of guns in Church. Back when people didn’t much have the luxury of academic debate on self-protection, bringing a gun to church was required.
More Gun Bias
This time from Colin McEnroe of the Hartford Courant:
I agree that it was a lucky thing that Jeanne Assam was there in church in Colorado Springs with a gun she used to stop a homicidal maniac; but only in America’s completely crazy gun culture would this be cited as proof that the system works. A guy shows up at a church with two handguns, an assault rifle and 1,000 rounds of ammuition, kills two young women and wounds their father; and we’re supposed to think that’s a good day in the life of Gunfighter Nation because somebody else had a gun too?
I’m seeing this theme a lot “I agree what this woman did was good, but guns are bad!” So clearly the solution is to make sure women like this are defenseless? The guy in the Omaha shooting was prohibited by federal law from purchasing a gun, but he got one anyway. Here’s what he would like to see from us:
“Hey, I’m not really down with gun control, but I can see, lately, that assault weapons are getting into the hands of crazy people, and maybe we need to take a look at that.”
I don’t disagree, but first you have to tell me what an assault weapon is? Seems simple. Kind of like what Justice Potter Stewart said of Pornography “I know it when I see it.” But how to define it? Assault weapons function the same as other ordinary firearms. How do you make a legal distinction between a “dangerous assault weapon” and a self-loading target or hunting rifle?
How about “Why are there so many crazy people and people with long criminal histories roaming our streets in the first place?” Is that something to look at as well?
MS-NBC Turns up the Bias
Can you get any less objective than this?
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRtVDDqzM_0[/youtube]
It seemed to save a lot of people for something that’s inane.
Sullivan Confirmation
Like a lot of our pro-gun leaders, I definitely don’t have any special affection for Michael Sullivan as director of the ATF. It doesn’t look to me like he’s done much to reform the agency, and I’m not sure he’s the ideal person to have that position. I’d definitely like someone hell bent on reforming the culture there, at all costs, but I doubt you’re ever going to get that out of Bush, who I think has given up on fighting his federal bureaucracies.
In my tradition not hesitating to challenge conventional wisdom on our side, I’m going to stir the pot here a little and suggest that expending time, energy and money in an attempt to defeat Mike Sullivan isn’t really going to accomplish anything. One thing I’ve learned from reading and talking to Dave Hardy, who has a lot of experience working in a federal bureaucracy, is just how little control the political appointees really have over a large agency like ATF. The bureaucracy will do everything it can to conceal facts, and the truth from the people the President appoints to run the agencies, to the point where it’s difficult to even know what needs to be reformed and where there are problems that need addressing.
We could expend a lot of energy, time and money, which are all limited resources, in a mad effort to defeat Mike Sullivan, which will cause Bush to appoint another appointee, who will likely have similar qualities, and also will have little ability or incentive to reform the agency. And that’s if we win. I think our chances of winning on this are virtually zero, because the Republicans aren’t going ot want to deny the president his nominee, and the Democrats aren’t going to scuttle a nominee unless it benefits them politically, which it doesn’t in this case.
So I’m going to put the onus on those of you who are demanding action. Why is this worth pulling out all the stops for? I’m willing to be convinced. But right now I think our energy is best spent making sure pro-gun candidates get elected in the primaries, and in 2008. Getting more pro-gun candidates elected puts us in a better position to push measures through Congress to strip ATF of the powers its been abusing. As much as I think it would be nice to get a real reformer in ATF, I don’t think you’re getting that out of Bush.
UPDATE: Well, it’s not an outright defeat of Sullivan, but I think Senator Craig and Senator Crapo just convinced me that maybe I shouldn’t be too quick to question the value of something that motivates enough grass roots to get this kind of action. Pretty clearly my mistake was not seeing that it could prompt action less than outright defeat of Sullivan, but still something that moved the issue forward. Pretty clearly I was wrong.