Sorry for the light posting. Busy busy work day.
Year: 2008
Now That’s Drunk!
It’s amazing that this woman wasn’t dead. Apparently Oregon is the state for Extreme Drunk Driving:
Comer is pictured below in a 2006 mug shot snapped after a prior drunk driving arrest. In that case, her BAC was recorded in the relatively minor .3 range. In November, another Oregon woman, Meagan Harper, was nabbed for drunk driving with an extreme BAC. In her case, Harper’s BAC was measured at .55. Comer’s .72 edges out what TSG has previously identified as the highest BAC we’ve ever seen. That fallen record (.69) was held by Willard Ashley III, an Indiana man who was busted in October 2003. (3 pages)
Wow.
Glossary of Terms
Some might find this useful for the 2008 election year.
MP3 Taser?
The Elusive Definition of Machinegun
I could swear I remember reading a case very similar to this where the ATF was smacked down on this theory on what constitutes a machinegun under the NFA and GCA. Anyone remember what it was?
DC Lawsuit Dismissed
I guess the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act actually works when it’s not considered before Judge Weinstein’s court.
DC Incompetence Pays off Big Time
I’m guessing these guys Dave Hardy is talking about don’t have much experience filing briefs with the Supreme Court. So the Supreme Court actually pays someone to sit there and count the words to make sure it’s just within the right limit?
Speaking of Property Rights
Apparently the State of California doesn’t have much respect for them. There a guy in my neighborhood that has a giant boat in his driveway. I don’t mean a small outboard motor boat, I mean a rather large vessel, that’s been up on blocks for several years. Various thoughts go through my mind about this huge eyesore in my neighborhood:
- Is he expecting one day the Neshaminy Creek will actually flood that high?
- Christmas is coming, is he going to decorate the boat?
- I wonder if the paint chipping off it is lead based?
But one thing I woudln’t presume to do is ask the government to force him to remove it. It’s his driveway. I wouldn’t even presume to ask him to remove it privately. I certainly wouldn’t dream of asking the government to trespass on a man’s property to ticket it.
Of course, I doubt anyone asked. They just decided. No doubt parking ticket revenue dried up when they banned overnight parking, forcing them to seek out new sources of banditry revenue.
There Will Always Be a Loophole
Joe reminds us that there will always be a loophole for the gun control crowd. He’s right. The United Kingdom is the petri dish, and I’m frightened of what’s growing. We don’t want to run this experiment here too.  We can’t let it run here.
The Heart of the Matter
I noticed in the comments over at Kim’s:
At the same time as HB89 was introduced in the House, the NRA bill – SB43 – was introduced in the Senate. This bill would allow employees to keep a gun locked in their vehicle in company parking lots while they were at work. GCO not only did not oppose this bill, but offered support for it as well.
While HB89 made its way through the House and was passed by a fairly large margin, SB43 brought about very focused opposition from two very large and well funded lobbying groups – the Georgia Chamber of Commerce and the insurance industry. Business and insurance companies feared the lawsuits that might result from a shooting and specifically and massively focused on defeating this bill. They succeeded and SB43 was voted down in the Senate.
At this point, HB89 was in committee in the Senate and it looked very favorable for passage by the Senate as well. The NRA then focused their lobbying efforts on amending the GCO bill – HB89 – by adding the wording of SB43 to it GCO politely and strongly urged the NRA to leave the bill alone so it could pass and was completely ignored.
So HB89 was not really the NRA’s bill, they hijacked it (yes, I used that term deliberately). And once they added SB43’s wording to it, it was also doomed to fail. The amended bill never left the committee, which is why it was already on the docket at the beginning of this year’s session, picking up where it left off last year.
Read the whole thing. This is an unfortunate circumstance, for certain. Georgia activists aren’t the first state level group to get pooped on when NRA decides it has different priorities. Sometimes NRA is going to sacrifice a state or local issue for the sake of it’s national agenda. It sucks, but I don’t know how to change that. NRA can’t always put its priorities on hold to accommodate everything a state or local group wants to accomplish. That was a case where it was either going to be NRA who had egg on their face or GCO. I don’t blame GCO’s feathers for being ruffled over this, but it’s not irreparable damage.
I still stand by my analysis that the “private property” clause in HB 915 jeopardizes HB 89. I had made the assertion that this seemed deliberate. That would not appear to be the case, according to GCO and the legislation’s sponsor. NRA is going to be particularly sensitive to clauses that could be grounds for a court challenge to their parking lot bill, which is practically a guarantee if it passes.