This is a really odd story. Neighbor buys a new dog Keira, doesn’t like Coco, one of the other neighborhood dogs. Accusations fly around about which dogs are mean to the other and neighbors stop taking to each other. Keira apparently mauls Coco once, leaving Coco’s owner with 3000 in vet bills. Keira escapes and charges at Coco and his owner  shoots Keira dead through the head, and ends up facing animal cruelty charges and disorderly conduct:
“Why didn’t you pick up a shovel, a stick or pepper spray?” Assistant District Attorney Shannon Crake asked Menichini.
I find the ADA’s attitude here more than a bit disconcerting. It is not her place to evaluate the man’s chosen means of self-defense. What he had available is a pistol, not pepper spray. I think pepper spray is a wise choice, but it’s a choice. Does she really expect him to carry a shovel with him? To search frantically on the ground for a stick big enough for self-defense? Sorry Ms. Crake the statute itself says “A person commits a misdemeanor of the second degree if he willfully and maliciously kills, maims or disfigures any domestic animal of another person or any domestic fowl of another person.” The key words here is “maliciously” which means the actor would need to be acting with malice. If this is a case of self-defense, that’s not a malicious act and not animal cruelty. There very well may be facts not reported here that would indicate malice on the part of the actor, but from this article, it looks like the ADA is more interested in second guessing the means of self-defense the actor had available and used, rather than making an argument for willful malice on the part of the actor.
I promise not to bore my non-classical-music-loving readers with this part of my life often, but my post yesterday comparing skills and knowledge got me thinking about piano again, so I was thinking back to some old pieces that I had started on and never finished. I have CDs of many of them so I was going back for a listen. The real danger of iTunes is that you suddenly have a world of music at your fingertips, and can go find, download, and listen to anything immediately. This can be a problem for the credit card if you lack self-discipline. But you can tell the pieces I’ve always been in love with by how many different recordings I have of them. One thing I never got to do when I played was play a piano concerto. One of my great disappointments in life that I never had the discipline to complete one when I could play. One day, when I have a lot of free time, I might finally learn one and then go find a local amateur orchestral group to play it with. It’s an oversight I’d really like to fix someday.
I started, but never finished Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor. You could just as easily say the Grieg Piano Concerto, because he only ever wrote but one. It’s fairly well recognized even by non-classical music fans though, and most people are familiar with the first couple of measures of the piece. I have only one recording of it though, by Pianist Santiago Rodriguez. Rodriguez is an excellent Pianist, but his interpretation of these pieces is a bit too fast tempo for my liking. Excessive tempo is a common pet peeve of mine in classical recordings. I feel that often a slower, more deliberate pace allows more of the color in the piece to come out. One exception to this is the complete recording of Beethoven’s Symphonies by John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique, which are at faster tempi than normally recorded, and on period instruments. In this case I believe the pieces are enhanced by the faster tempo, and the period instrumentation and orchestra size produces a very clean sound. It’s so good I have a hard time listening to a slower recording with a modern orchestra without thinking how much better this recording sounds.
Daley and his Chicago machine are going to be eager to pass this to get back at gun owners. How dare we stand up for our rights! He’ll make the downstate rubes pay for this one! Todd Vandermyde is making the argument, and it’s a good argument, that the several firearms manufacturers that are located in Illinois will leave the state if this passes. It’ll also shut down high-power competition in the state. Hopefully this can be defeated, but it’s amazing to me the IL legislature is willing to ignore a seven thousand plus rally at the State Capitol. If we turned out those kinds of numbers at our Harrsiburg rally, our politicians would crap themselves in fear. I guess when you’ve been gaming the system as long as the Daley crew have, you get a certain amount of arrogant cockiness about you.
The FDA released new rules for cigarette advertising. These things go so far that I swear, the next thing they will target will be my Christmas tree.
These restrictions are draconian – all in the name of the children.
1) No Sector Sixes. No manufacturer can use the name of a non-tobacco product in a tobacco product name, unless both products existed and shared the name prior to 1995.
2) No freedom to buy less than 20 cigarettes. This is kind of the like Pennsylvania’s beer laws. Bureaucrats want us to drink less, so we have to buy beer by the case at a distributer unless we buy it at a bar. FDA doesn’t want people smoking as much, so it’s only possible to buy cigarettes 20 or more at a time.
3) You may still buy cigarettes through mail-order, but you can’t use coupons or get any samples. (Damn coupon clipping kids!) Vending machines are now outlawed unless the premises bans kids at all times.
4) Free samples of cigarettes – even in a room full of adults – is banned. For smokeless tobacco, it’s severely limited and only about half an ounce per person per day provided that means they do it in a temporary facility surrounded by opaque material at least 7 feet high (and no more than one foot off the ground) where children and alcohol are banned and does not mention anything about tobacco on the outside. I guess that means they will have to start logging names if they hand out samples. Oh, and no samples to sports teams or entertainment groups. And none of these highly restricted non-advertising temporary structures may be set up at a football, basketball, baseball, soccer, or hockey event or any other sporting or entertainment event.
5) Any attempts to advertise outside of pre-defined limits (“in newspapers; in magazines; in periodicals or other publications [whether periodic or limited distribution]; on billboards, posters, and placards; in nonpoint-of sale promotional material [including direct mail]; in point-of-sale promotional material; and in audio or video formats delivered at a point-of sale”) must be be filed with the FDA at least 30 days in advance. Creativity and social media – damn you & your crazy innovation!
6) Declaring a war on color: all labeling or advertising for cigarettes or smokeless tobacco shall use only black text on a white background. Exceptions including the limited places where vending machines are allowed and porn magazines.
7) Declaring a war on music and sound effects: No audio advertisement can have anything other than a voice reading words. No video can have anything other than black text on white background and any associated audio cannot include music or sounds other than words.
8) Declaring a third theater of war on names, logos, and recognizable colors on non-tobacco products: No more hats, shirts, or products without tobacco can be released with the name of a brand, logo, motto, or even “recognizable color” of a brand.
9) Customer rewards are off the table. I remember people who used to clip the Marlboro Miles for random gifts – kind of like you credit card rewards. No more rewarding customer loyalty!
10) No more sponsorships of anything. Technically, the rule only says no sponsorships of any athletic, musical, artistic, or other social or cultural event, or any entry or team in any event. I know that UST has sponsored more than a few things in the gun/hunting world. Does these events qualify as athletic, social, or cultural? Well, we just lost a sponsor. Damn. They were good to our community for a long time. Technically, these companies can still sponsor, but only if they don’t tell anyone who they are or what they produce – which kind of takes the impact out of sponsorship.
So as you can see, it’s not completely a joke that my ornaments probably send the bureaucrats at the FDA into a tizzy. I just have to hope that the next round of rules doesn’t force me to keep the curtains closed while our tree is on display.
We had no warning of this one before it passed in Conshohocken. MAIG is getting very good at sneaking these things in before we have a chance to react. They are depending on that, in fact, because when we show up and make a case against the ordinances, and point out that they are unlawful, we’ve generally been winning. This round goes to Max Nacheman, Bloomberg’s hired gun, but it’s worth noting that he can only win by subverting the democratic process and trying to sneak these ordinances in under the radar before we have a chance to organize and respond. This is how these people operate. If they can’t beat us by using above board tactics, they’ll beat us by being sneaky weasels. If you live in Conshohocken, I’d be sure to give your elected officials trouble over this. Show up at the next meeting and demand to know why they passed an illegal ordinance without any public notice. You can find contact information here.
UPDATE: I’ve corrected the record. All pro-gun channels were silent on this town, and I heard nothing in the media about it. These are the traditional channels through which we find out. As it turns out, this was put on the agenda in the February Borough Council meeting, and we missed it. MAIG has paid resources to identify and target towns to try to pass this ordinance. We rely on volunteers to keep us abreast of happenings, and sometimes these kinds of things slip by without notice. So I apologize for the accusation that there was no public notice, but Max Nacheman and Bloomberg are still weasels ;)
NRA moves its Annual Meeting every year so that every once in a while, if you’re an NRA member, one will be coming to your neighborhood and you’ll have an opportunity to attend. They try to have it in places where as many NRA members as possible are within the radius of a day’s drive. Because the NRA Annual Meeting draws approximately 60,000 to 70,000 people, prominent political figures, a fair amount of media, and has some very significant space requirements, the number of venues that are capable of handling it is very limited, and it’s getting more limited as the meeting gets larger. For instance, Phoenix’s convention center is brand new and was built large enough to handle a convention of our size, and that opened that city up as a possibility which NRA took advantage of last year. We set a record for the largest single meal ever served in the history of Arizona. The Annual Members Banquet drew, if I recall, something like 6000 people.
The fact is there just aren’t that many venues scattered around the country that can handle a convention that large, with NRA’s room and space requirements, that also don’t have issues with carry. NRA’s alternative would be to always have the convention in Pittsburgh, Louisville, Houston and Phoenix. That would be great for people who carry, but would kind of suck for people who would never get to go because there was never any venue that was good enough.
I would also consider that the amount of money NRA brings to an area is not an inconsiderable incentive to improve laws in an area. Governor Jan Brewer, at the Phoenix Convention, announced support for cleaning up the restaurant carry situation while we were in Phoenix, and it wasn’t that long after we left that we had a fix. If we go back to Phoenix, that’s going to be nice not to have to deal with having to run back to the hotel to dump off a gun because you go to a place for lunch that serves alcohol, even if you don’t plan on drinking. I’m not saying we’ll be able to repeat that performance with North Carolina, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility. If politicians are impressed enough with the amount of money we bring into the region, and the positive publicity we get for their convention center (a favorite pork project of state level pols everywhere), they just might come asking what they have to do to get us to come back.
Just some things to keep in mind before getting angry about the situation. Nobody really likes it, but choices are limited, and someone is going to end up getting stiffed one way or another, no matter which direction you go.
Many people who are unfamiliar with firearms, which includes many people who work or volunteer for gun control organizations, don’t really understand shooting as a skill. They tend to want to treat is as knowledge. Knowledge is beneficial, but it can’t make one a proficient and safe shooter. I’ve spent my whole life in pursuit of some form of skill based discipline at one time or another, and I find shooting to be most accurately compared to playing the piano, in terms of what it takes to achieve proficiency. Actually, piano is much much harder, but it’s learned the same way, just piano takes much more self-discipline to master.
I took concert piano from the time I was four years old until my junior year in college. I was far more proficient at that than I am, and probably ever will be at shooting. But ask me to play something now, and I’d be lucky to clunk out the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata (if you listen to the Wikipedia recordings of it, they are appalling, just to warn you). At one time, I could play all three movements. The last piece of music I ever played in public was this one, my junior year in college. I couldn’t even begin to play it now, despite a working knowledge of the piece, knowledge of how keys are laid out on the piano, what the pedals do, and knowledge on how to read sheet music. Why? Because when I quit piano, I really quit. I never went back to it, and that skill I spent all those years building up has been purged from whatever part of my brain controls muscle memory. Granted, if I picked the piano up again, I would pick up the skill much faster than someone who had never played piano, as my brain rebuilt all those connections from long term memory.
Shooting is the same. I can spend an afternoon and give someone enough knowledge to go out and become a safe shooter, and that’s really all training can do. Shooting, and shooting safely, is a skill. Skills must be practiced, over and over again, until they are muscle memory. Firearms training is a good thing, because it can impart knowledge, and help you on your way to skill, just like piano lessons can help you learn how to play piano. But proficiency, and safety in the case of shooting, are entirely up to the person to develop. If you aren’t committed, and don’t practice, you’ll never be any good at either piano playing or shooting.
Some might try to argue that this means no one except police should carry a firearm, but police aren’t immune to this problem either, and many of us who’ve been shooting long enough have a story about cops at the range who have appalling shooting skills and gun handling practices. And those are the ones who at least practice some! Imagine how bad the ones are who only ever shoot their qualifier? I can put someone in training for twenty or forty hours, and I won’t make a good shooter. I can promise you over that time they will improve, but that won’t last long once they head out the door if they aren’t committed to polishing and maintaining the skill on their own.
This is why I say training is a good idea, but shouldn’t necessarily be a requirement. I think we should teach the basic knowledge of gun and shooting safety in schools as part of PE requirements. But I am about as much in agreement that legally mandating a training requirement for firearms ownership or carry will result in safe and proficient shooters as I am that mandating taking a piano lesson as a condition to buying a piano will result in more concert pianists. People who believe that don’t get the difference between knowledge and skill.
I can almost hear the gun control crowd now, “But Sebastian, aren’t you concerned with all those people who might carry a gun and have no idea what they doing with it?” No more than I worry about cops. The people who will end up carrying regularly are going to be, far more often than not, the people who are committed and serious about their skills. The person who gets a permit for the macho/cool factor or some other bad reason is going to very quickly tire of it once the novelty wears off, and once they realize that carrying a gun around with you is a pain in the ass. Most people who get toters permits don’t stick with it, and even if they renew their permits, they aren’t carrying very often if at all. It makes sense even in a musical context. If you see a guy on the subway every morning with a violin case, I’m going to bet you serious money he can play. He might not be Itzhak Perlman, but I’m going to bet he can play well. He wouldn’t be carrying it if he wasn’t committed. I’d be willing to take the same bet with a guy who carries a gun every day on the subway too.
We are supporters of the Second Amendment and are not against people exercising that right. We also believe that every Right has a corresponding Duty. We believe training may very well be a key factor in retaining or losing the very right our Second Amendment provides. We applaud those who have willingly sought out training on their own to become educated on gun ownership.
That being said, as firearms instructors we see many students come into our courses for training who have no clue or idea what the laws (both State Statutes and case law) are in regards to owning or using a firearm in self defense or any other purpose, let alone how to safely and properly handle or store their firearms. We feel that it is the informed and knowledge gun owners who will play an important role in allowing us to protect our Second Amendment Rights, not those who choose to remain ignorant of the responsibilities that come with that right. It¹s sad to say, but there are many in our society who will not seek appropriate training on their own. It¹s those who choose not to get training, act negligently and make stupid careless mistakes, who are the greatest threat to protecting our Second Amendment Rights. Mandated training is not the enemy, yet, it could play a very important role in saving our rights in the long run. Therefore in order to protect our rights we will support mandated training whenever it is available.
This is like a love letter to the Brady Campaign. They support making exercising of your right conditional on training. How much training is enough? Do I have to take four hours? If four hours is great, twelve would surely be fantastic. If twelve is fantastic why not forty? Why not limit the right to anyone who hasn’t gone thorough police academy? Why not require it for every gun you buy, just to make sure you stay fresh, and all.
Insight wants to make sure no one bothers to become a gun owner. They do not want the option of gradual introduction into the culture. What they propose will destroy our numbers and our political power right along with it. Once you make gun ownership a priestly class, it will cease to exist as a right issue, and as a political issue. There will not be enough gun owners left to prevent tightening the ratchet. In effect, Insight are slitting their own throat, and ours along with it, by signing on to this. If you live in Arizona, and need training, I would take your business elsewhere.
I am not against training. I think it’s valuable. But if it had been a requirement prior, I would not be a gun owner today, and you would not be reading any of this. I was not unfamiliar with firearms when I bought a gun. I was introduced, or reintroduced into shooting in my mid-20s by a friend who took me out shooting, and I used his firearms before I bought my own. After some initial guidance to break a few bad habits I had, I decided to buy my own guns. I enjoyed my time on the range, but I was not committed to getting back into shooting at this point. If there had been hoops to jump through, I doubt I would have.
Once I got my own guns and started practicing, I started to really enjoy it, and got more committed to the sport. But I did not seek out formal training until I started carrying. Though it is not required in Pennsylvania, training is a good idea. But it’s not the end all be all, and the reason is because of the kind of skill shooting is. I’ll explain that later.
