Caleb’s dad is participating in a Food Network contest with a smoked meatloaf that looks quite excellent. He’s asking that you go vote for his dad’s recipe. I haven’t tried the meatloaf, but I still call it double awesome. Why? Because other than sounding pretty good, it’s got Columbia Crest Merlot in it, and Columbia Crest’s owners are great supporters of hunting, the outdoors, and the Second Amendment. So go vote for Caleb’s dad’s recipe and help out the cause.
Month: June 2009
GAO Study on 90% Canard
The Government Accountability Office is an office chartered by Congress, which makes their study on the Mexican gun canard rather interesting. Who directed GAO to study this? Nancy Pelosi? Are you home? Don’t think for a minute gun owners aren’t going to punish your party over things like this. There’s a lot of mistrust of Democratic politicians on guns, even though Pennsylvania has a rather pro-gun contingent of Democrats. I can think of no more valuable organizing tool than telling gun owners they are going to lose their rights because the Mexican Government doesn’t have its shit together, and the US government can’t control its border. You couldn’t really ask for a better issue. So keep pushing it Nancy! You only make my job easier come November of 2010!
The LA Times has already jumped on it:
In the meantime, illegally obtained U.S. weapons — including an increasing number of automatic rifles — are being used to kill thousands of Mexican police, soldiers, elected officials and civilians, the report said.
If they are finding increasing numbers of automatic weapons being traced back to the US, it’s through legal sales by the US Government to the Mexican Government. Those aren’t coming from civilian stock. There’s no way they could be.
But the GAO criticisms go beyond operational concerns. Some findings cited laws and policies in the U.S. and Mexico that could make it difficult to institute lasting reforms such as lax U.S. laws for collecting and reporting information on firearms purchases, and a lack of required background checks for private firearms sales.
I have to wonder if this was engineered by the anti-gun leadership in Congress to embarrass the White House into helping them corral the pro-gun Democrats into towing the leadership line. That must be why the anti-gun politicians and anti-gun groups were ready to pounce on it as soon as it came out.
Victory in Commonwealth Court
The NRA has prevailed in the appeal of Philadelphia’s firearms regulations in Commonwealth Court.  The decision can be found here. NRA tried to restore standing to challenge the other ordinances, including “Lost and Stolen,” but Commonwealth Court failed to reverse the lower court’s decision. There is language in this decision that suggest that the “Lost and Stolen” ordinance would also be found in violation of preemption once we have a case that doesn’t have standing or ripeness problems:
Councilpersons, Darrell L. Clarke and Donna Reed Miller, filed an action seeking to have the court declare that seven gun ordinances passed by City Council and signed by then-Mayor John Street could take immediate effect and that Section 6120 was unconstitutional and did not apply to those ordinances because the ordinances did not regulate the “carrying or transporting” of firearms. The City argued that the General Assembly’s inclusion of the qualifying phrase “when carried or transported,” in Section 6120 indicated their intention to limit preemption of local firearms regulation accordingly, and would allow local regulation of any uses of firearms which does not involve carrying or transporting them. The City further argued that because our Supreme Court in Ortiz v. Commonwealth, 545 Pa. 279, 681 A.2d 152 (1996), did not address the qualifying phrase “when carried or transported,” it was not controlling. However, in rejecting the City’s arguments, we concluded that:
Given Schneck and Ortiz, we cannot agree with this construction of the Firearms Act. The ordinances struck down in those cases were not qualitatively different in that respect from those at issue here. While Petitioners point out that the qualifying phrase ‘when carried or transported’ was not specifically discussed in Ortiz, in light of its broad and unqualified language, we cannot distinguish Ortiz on this basis.
Clarke, 957 A.2d at 364.
Similarly here, the fact that the Court in Ortiz did not discuss the statutory language relied upon by the City does not provide a legitimate basis for us to ignore its holding. Unfortunately, with respect to the matter before us, while we may agree with the City that preemption of 18 Pa. C.S. § 6120(a) appears to be limited to the lawful use of firearms by its very terms, we believe, however, that the crystal clear holding of our Supreme Court in Ortiz, that, “the General Assembly has [through enactment of § 6120(a)] denied all municipalities the power to regulate the ownership, possession, transfer or [transportation] of firearms,â€9 precludes our acceptance of the City’s argument and the trial court’s thoughtful analysis on this point. As the Supreme Court stated in Ortiz:
Because the ownership of firearms is constitutionally protected, its regulation is a matter of statewide concern. The constitution does not provide that the right to bear arms shall not be questioned in any part of the commonwealth except Philadelphia . . . where it may be abridged at will, but that it shall not be questioned in any part of the commonwealth. Thus, regulation of firearms is a matter of concern in all of Pennsylvania, not merely in Philadelphia . . . and the General Assembly, not city council[ ], is the proper forum for the imposition of such regulation.
545 Pa. at 287, 681 A.2d at 156.
Accordingly, we affirm the order of the trial court permanently enjoining the City from enforcing the provisions of the Assault Weapons Ordinance and the Straw Purchaser Ordinance.
I think this ruling sets us up very nicely for a future court battle on all these Lost and Stolen ordinances, provided the Supreme Court is unwilling to revisit Ortiz, which I suspect it won’t. The City of Philadelphia is losing on virtually all their arguments. These ordinances were never about Lost and Stolen guns, or Assault Weapons, but were merely a means for the City to regain the ability to violate the Pennsylvania Constitution at will, so it could ban guns. It’s looking increasingly unlikely that ploy wil work.
Words I Wish I Didn’t Have to Read
Unless you’ve been glued to US sNews, you’ve heard about the recent sham of an election in Iran and resulting protests and unrest. And since our president hasn’t gotten permission to get his balls out of the jar, we have to turn to France.
Sometimes the truth is painful.
In Defense of Drama
Seems there’s been a bit of drama around the blogosphere lately, at Kevin’s last week, and this week at Caleb’s, which migrated back to the source, and then over to Tam’s. From Caleb’s post:
I am not trying to start blog drama here, but recommending that people trust their life to a 10 dollar piece of nylon stitched together in a sweatshop in Vietnam is irresponsible. You spent good money on that gun, take a little time and spend money on a good holster.
But any time you take a strongly held position on a topic that’s very dear to people, you are going to create drama, as those that strongly disagree take great offense to your challenge to their deeply held belief. You might not be trying to summon the Drama Llama, but you know he’s thinking about stopping in for a visit soon. The only way to avoid it, is to not take a stand on anything. That’s a common response in corporate environments, and I’ve seen suppression of passion or disagreement in corporate cultures repeatedly drive the best ideas into the background, and bring the worst ideas forward. An environment where everyone is afraid to hurt everyone else’s feelings is a breeding ground for disaster. So why apologize for taking a stand on something because you know people will take offense?
I have certainly, in my blogging career, and meatspace career, picked fights that were stupid, on issues that didn’t really matter, with people who weren’t worth antagonizing. It’ll happen from time to time, and sometimes it’s only in hindsight that you’ll realize when you’ve picked the wrong fight. But the only way you will avoid drama is to stand for nothing. While I’ve met more than my fair share of people in real life corporate culture who fit that bill to a T, those of us here in the blogosphere, especially the gun blogosphere, aren’t here to stand for nothing. We’re here because we have something to say. I don’t think any of us should feel like we should have to apologize for it.
Howard Nemerov Looks at Brady Rankings and RTC
There some interesting correlations going on there. Go take a look.
Congratulations to More Pennsylvania Shooters
Olympian Jamie Beyerle was in the news a few weeks ago for taking fourth place in Milan, but earlier this week she took first in USA Shooting National Championship in Women’s 50 meter three position rifle. Looks like we also had another Pennsylvania shooter score third place in the match, Emily Holsopple, from Wilcox, PA.  Second place was Sandra Fong, of New York City.
Looks like women shooters in Pennsylvania do a good job of representing our state.
D.C. Changed Its Gun Laws Again
SAF sued to get rid of the stupid color thing, causing D.C. to make an emergency change to its law. I think the long term solution to all this is to get Congress to preempt D.C. Council from regulating guns at all. Congress should be the body to set D.C’s gun laws.
Bob Barr on Pocket Knife Ban
The Case Against Microstamping Visualized
Arizona Rifleman has a post outlining the problems with microstamping, and a handy video just to make it easy for anti-gunners to understand how useless this technology is in the real world.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18Cs_8RMTbg[/youtube]