Month: March 2008

Mark R. Herring  State Senator from Loudoun County, Virginia apparently doesn’t read the legislation he votes against:

Herring did not support the bill. “Drinking alcohol and carrying firearms is not a good mix,” he said. “It’s a public safety issue. There was no compelling case for loosening the restriction on carrying a concealed weapon into bars.”

Let’s review for a minute the requirements of the law:

Virginia Senate Bill 476 would have allowed permit holders to bring concealed handguns into bars and restaurants. Patrons would have been required to notify their server of the weapon and would not have been allowed to consume alcohol on the premises.

Emphasis mine.  Now, is he legitimately ignorant, or is he, along with his other gun control supporting pals in the Virginia Senate merely misreprenting the issue to continue to screw gun owners in the Commonwealth of Virginia?

Looks like this issue is rather inconvenient to the Senate Majority Leader.  It’s tough having to be the leader of a party divided on the issue of guns.  This is pretty amusing though:

Republican Rep. Jon Porter, who plays in a congressional band called the Second Amendments but represents a largely suburban Southern Nevada district that is trending Democratic, said as long as those carrying guns are following state law, the proposal “seems reasonable to me.”

We need to find out who the other members of that band are :)

I know everyone is distracted by the oral arguments in Heller that will be happening tomorrow, but if you recall a few days ago I released some important information about an upcoming fight in our state.

It’s important to call your representatives TODAY and tell them to vote YES on Representative Cappelli’s amendment (A05131) to amend “Castle Doctrine” to House Bill 1845 and alsdo to vote YES on Representative Stevenson’s amendment (A05706) which would allow a Pennsylvania License to Carry Firearms to be used as a substitute for a PICS check.  Most importantly, do not forget to ask them to vote NO on Representative Levdansky’s amendment (A06178) to impose severe criminal penalties on gun owners who fail to report a lost or stolen firearm to the authorities.

The NRA alert on the matter is here.  If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask in the comments.  There are no stupid questions, only stupid politicians.

Rustmeister had some fun last week with an Australian blogger who had some issues with America’s gun culture.  Gun bloggers descended on his comment section, and, as would be expected, Reasoned Discourse ensued.  It looks like Rustmeister is talking again about this latest post by our intrepid Aussie, where he ponders why we hate our country.

I’ve talked to more than a few people from other countries who really have a very difficult time wrapping their heads around the idea of America’s gun culture, and why we think it’s so important to preserve it.  I think ones position on the issue depends on who you believe should be responsible for security, the individual or the community.  Americans, in general, aren’t entirely thrilled with the idea of being completely reliant on government for their personal security, and are willing to tolerate a higher level of social disorder in order to preserve their right to defend themselves and their families if the community at large fails to protect them.

Other societies place a higher value on community protection than they do on indivudal protection, and are willing to tolerate failures in community protection in order to maintain the primacy of the community in the role of protecting individuals.  Even if they will concede that individuals have a right to self-defense, they won’t agree that it extends to being able to arm themselves in order to exercise that right.

Needless to say I’m not willing to risk my own personal security for the sake of someone else’s sense of community, but it’s the reason it’s difficult to have discussions on gun control with people who come from other more community oriented cultures; they don’t start with the same fundamental assumptions that most Americans do.  Certainly there are many Americans that share a more community orientation, and who also favor disarming individuals in order to make them reliant on the community for protection, but American culture has always been more distrustful of the idea of surrending more individual automony and responsibility to the community at large, and our gun culture is probably the most prominent example of that.  It’s why those of us who fight for the individual right to be armed are as passionate as we are; it’s not just about guns, or maybe not even mostly about guns, it’s about preventing the individual from being sacrified on the altar of community.

Of course, it’s also hard to have a conversation with wankers who resort to insults and personal attacks rather than actually trying to talk and understand each other.