Thirdpower shows Abby Spangler what a protest is supposed to look like.
Month: March 2010
Hope and Change for Fishermen
Looks like Fishermen are getting abused by the Administration just as we thought gun owners would. There’s even media apologists saying that the fishermen and their representative groups are nuts. Obama just wouldn’t do that, you see? Because he’s a smart politician. Sorry, not buying it. Barry is about the most incompetent politician I’ve seen in a while. The guy can give a rousing speech off a teleprompter, and that’s about the extent of his political talent. He definitely has people in his Administration who would like to end or severely restrict recreational fishing. Unfortunately for fishermen, most aren’t as involved with their issue politically as are gun owners and hunters. That’s a shame too, because they have pretty substantial numbers. If I were Obama, it’s not a sleeping giant I want to risk awakening, given that he’s been kicking more than a few others lately. If he’s really not intending to restrict or ban fishing, he needs to get control of his bureaucracy and put a stop to this. I wouldn’t hold my breath, however.
Mitt the Panderer
Jeff Soyer notes that Mitt is a panderer. Ask Bitter about Mitt. She had to live under him in Massachusetts, and being very involved with the pro-gun community there, is decidedly not a Mitt fan. The thing is, though, that all politicians are panderers. You really don’t have that many true believers out there among politicians. Everything is up for negotiation depending on where there’s money and votes. But you want your pandering politician to be a rational actor. The problem with a guy like Mitt is, you never know when he’s going to double cross you.
In the end, I don’t care if a politician only agrees with my policy preferences out of rational self-interest rather than true conviction. But I do care whether or not he can be relied on. That’s one reason I’m very wary of Michael Fitzpatrick getting his political career resurrected by the Bucks County GOP.  Fitzpatrick was one of those guys that never really got tested, and I have a lot of reason to believe he wouldn’t be reliable when push comes to shove. Mitt has a lot of work to do to convince gun owners. So does Fitz.
You Can Blame Lawyers
The Brady Campaign asks why Starbucks allows customers to carry guns, but doesn’t allow employees. That’s a good question. I think they should allow their employees to carry if they are legally entitled to do so! But I have no plan to make that part of this debate. A restaurant can rule its employees have to wear a uniform if they want to, even though it would be absurd to demand the same thing of customers. There’s a difference between customers and employees. But you can blame a lot of this on lawyers.
The primary reason that businesses have weapons policies is CYA. Businesses are far less liable for the actions of their customers than they are for the actions of employees when on the job acting as agents of the corporation. This doesn’t have much specifically to do with guns, it’s just a general fact. Your company has far more liability issues if you get into an accident driving a company car on company business than they would be if you hit someone on the way to work in your own vehicle. That doesn’t necessarily say anything about the danger of driving. It doesn’t have to make sense to get a jury award. Juries are sucker for a sympathetic client and a big, rich corporation. If that wasn’t the case, John Edwards never would have been rich enough to pay off a staffer to take the fall for a baby he sired with his mistress.
It comes down to this. If a pizza delivery guy pops an armed robber, we’d all completely agree that he was acting in self-defense, and that such an act would not be a misuse of firearms. But suppose the family of the armed robber decides to sue the pizza shop? What if the pizza shop allowed their employee to be armed? Doesn’t that make the shop more liable? For a mom and pop shop, they probably value the lives of their employee (often a relative) more than they worry about being sued. They have insurance for that anyway. But for a large chain pizza joint, they have entire HR departments that fret and worry about how the company may get sued. They get blamed for stuff like that, especially if an HR policy, or lack of one, becomes an issue in a lawsuit. Corporate HR departments are risk averse and very eager to avoid blame for anything. Blame in a lawsuit is far worse than dealing with a dead employee, who quite honestly, has more of a case against the armed robber than they do against the employer. Corporate HR would also like to inform your family of the wonderful death benefit they provide for employees.
The fact is that the life of an employee means far less to a big corporation than than the possibility of a giant lawsuit, especially one that results in finger pointing at corporate headquarters. They might make a public face about being concerned about violence in the workplace, but the real concern is liability. Everyone knows that someone intent on violence isn’t going to suddenly remember the corporate policy and change his mind. That’s the elephant in the room. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is having a workplace violence policy that forbids employees from having effective means of self-defense shields the corporation from liability for an employee acting in self-defense. Dead employees are an acceptable sacrifice on that altar. You can blame lawyers.
Machine Gun Fun
Met up with Traction Control tonight over at Ready, Aim Fire in Bristol. He rented an MP-5 submachine gun. Got to shoot a magazine through it. The house MP-5 was in some dire need of cleaning and some fresh magazine springs, but any time I get to shoot a submachine gun I think “Man, we really need to get rid of that Hughes thing.” Full auto is a lot of fun even when it’s not running as well as it could, and sometimes submachine guns can be finicky.
Two notables tonight are that I got to shoot my Webley Mark IV for the first time, and I enjoyed it. Much less recoil than I would have thought, but that’s probably because it’s a rather heavy pistol firing a relatively anemic round. That crossbar safety has to go though. It’s rough to switch, and a general pain in the ass. It gets in the way of the enjoyment of the pistol. Eventually I think I need to find a Webley that hasn’t been mutilated for the sake of being legally importable.
I also got to shoot my Glock for the first time in a length of time I’m embarrassed to admit. I compete with air guns and .22s these days, so not much trigger time on the Glock. The problem is, my club has a lot of stupid restrictions on how many rounds you can put in your magazine, and drawing from a holster, so I can’t really practice self-defense shooting there. I don’t end up practicing self-defense shooting as much as I really need to for carrying a pistol around in public. That’s not to say I shot badly. Getting trigger time, any trigger time, keeps your skills from totally going to s**t, but I was shooting better practical pistol two years ago than I am now.
Drawing from holster, using my iPhone shot timer, I was getting somewhere between 1.5 seconds and 2.5 seconds between buzzer and aimed shot on target. At least I think. It’s hard to tell on a busy range which shot registered was yours, so it comes down to “I know I’m not that fast, but I’m pretty sure I’m not that slow.” Overall, out of the holster I’m in an area of about the size of a DVD container at 25 feet. That’s decent, but I did pull one shot pretty far off, which I’m a bit appalled by. I’m also unhappy that on about a 1/4 of my draws I had a grip that caused the slide to scrape against the web of my hand. No bloodshed from a slide cut, but not comfortable either. Whatever mojo Todd Jarrett imparted with his instruction has definitely departed due to lack of practice. That seems like it was a long time ago. Hopefully I’ll get out to a few practice shoots this season and top my skills back up.
Who knows. Maybe one day my club will come into the gun culture of the 21st century and we’ll have some practical shooting, or steel plate shooting where I can get some more practice in under time pressure and from a ready stance or from the holster.
*Sheepish*
So the other day I highlighted a candidate for Congress who doesn’t have a chance. Then I pondered why Bob Brady wanted her off the ballot – I assumed it was because his ego was too fat to allow anyone else on it.
In all of that, I assumed her campaign didn’t have much money. Well, I still think that political reality shows this is an more than an uphill battle for Pia – more like climbing the Alps – but I was wrong about the resources in her attempt at a PR coup. She has full page ads in both Philadelphia papers today. They stop you in your tracks, and they get right to heart of matter – “Hate Philly Politics?”
Damn straight, people do hate it. And clearly enough people hate it to help her buy some these ads. And hopefully these ads will lead to more volunteers and votes.
There They Go Again with the “Terror Gap”
I think this deceased equine by now is pretty thorough flogged, so I wasn’t going to respond to the Brady’s latest here on this blog, but since Opposing Views is a new place I figured I’d respond there. I thought it’d be a good idea to get into the debate there, despite there already being a good pro-gun presence, because Opposing Views has the benefit of being rated by Google as a news source instead of a blog. The gun folks over at Examiner.com also share that advantage. Blogs are good and useful, but if you’re a traditional blog, you’ll never be anything more than that to Google, but if you can get your message out onto something Google News can pick up, that’s something different. It’s important for our message to appear there too.
Thinking Seriously About the Issue
The Chattanooga Times Free Press can’t understand the legal difference between a State Capitol and other public places [Link removed. The Chattanooga Times Free Press is owned by the unethical WEHCO Media, that is suing bloggers. They will get no link love from here].
[Quote removed about how this unethical newspaper company thinks it’s understandable for legislators to disallow guns in the Capitol, considering that gun violence can strike anywhere, thus making the case for restricting guns, well, anywhere.]
First off, someone deranged isn’t going to be stopped by a law or policy. I don’t know much about how Tennessee’s State Capitol works, but ours is similarly off limits because it’s also a courthouse, containing the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. But a courthouse or state capitol is a vastly different type of public place than restaurants, rest stops, parks, or other places where we’ve been demanding our right to carry be respected.
It’s not just different because politicians are there, but is really a distinct kind of public place. The Supreme Court ruling in Heller suggests that state capitols and courthouses are the kinds of government buildings where it’s constitutional to restrict possession of firearms, at least temporarily. Whether you think that was right or wrong isn’t really what I mean to discuss here. The ruling says what it does, and it’s now law, so let’s speak for a minute about which “sensitive places” and “government buildings” might be covered, and why.
A courthouse or state capitol would, under Heller, likely be the kind of government building where firearms could be temporarily restricted. But given that the Second Amendment protects one’s right to self-defense, under what circumstances can this be the case? I think three aspects can make the case, substitution, screening, and storage. Let’s call them the three S’s. Let me explain what they mean.
- Substitution. Is there an ample law enforcement presence in the building? In most state capitols and courthouses, the answer to this is clearly yes. In Pennsylvania, the Capitol is staffed by the Capitol Police, and courthouses in PA are staffed by the county Sheriff’s office. In both their presence is ubiquitous. There’s very few circumstances where they aren’t going to more ably to deal with a situation than an individual would be. If a gunfight breaks out in the capitol rotunda, I’m far more likely to leave it to the guys with the submachine guns than try my hand at dealing with the matter. There’s a reasonable substitution for your own side arm with the ubiquitous law enforcement presence.
- Is the building screened? In other words, does everyone go through a security checkpoint? This isn’t perfect, but it’s a pretty good protection against someone disregarding the rules with intent to shoot the place up. In most courthouses I’ve been in, and in state capitols, there’s a security checkpoint with metal detectors and x-rays.
- Storage is the third aspect. In Pennsylvania, the Capitol Police provide for checking your firearm as is required by state law. This means your Second Amendment rights aren’t infringed upon on your way to and from the building.
But how many public places even come close to passing the “Three S” test? Very few. If you believe in the right to self-defense, and believe in the Second Amendment, there might be reasons, as was mentioned in Heller, that you can’t carry a gun just anywhere, but there needs to be a higher level of concern than just “some random nut” as the Chattanooga Times implies. The random nut is always going to have a gun. If the government is going to disarm citizens, it should be for a damned good reason, and in an environment where the government can provide a reasonable substitute for personal protection. The old adage “I carry a gun because a cop is too heavy” applies. It’s not surprising that media outlets don’t want to go into this issue in that level of detail, but if it’s really a right, it needs to be treated like one. You can’t just declare, “It’s a right, but what about whack jobs?”  We don’t think of other rights that way, do we? “There’s a right to free press, but what about libel?”
Jerry Brown for Governor?
Don Kates says he’s a good choice for California, and tells us some details we wouldn’t have known otherwise:
In contrast, I do know Jerry Brown. We went to law school together though we were not big buddies. And when I contacted him about supporting the pro-2d Am position in the McDonald case, he filed an influential pro-2d Am brief w/ the S Ct. I know that he personally made the decision to do this, overruling his staff; and he wrote the brief himself. (He is an able lawyer.) When he was assailed by anti-gun forces, his response was that the 2d am is a “civil rights issue.”
This is not to say that Brown is “pro-gun.” He just thinks – as does everyone rational and informed on the issue – that gun control does not help reduce crime; indeed, that it has nothing to do w/ crime.
I’d sure like more than lukewarm support, but it’s not like Ahhnold has worked out too well for California Gun Owners, has he?
Pennsylvania Dems Go Far Left on Guns
It’s not just a little gun control the Democrats seeking the gubernatorial bid are going for – they are all in. It’s a sad thing to say – the most moderate only wants to ban your EBRs. And, to some degree, Jack Wagner really only said he supported it previously. I haven’t seen him release an action plan to take them. And, yes, that puts him far above the other options for Democratic gun owners have on their primary ballot.
Take Dan Onorato. Apparently, there was early speculation that he was pretty pro-gun. He squashed that rumor at his campaign launch saying that any speculation about his support of the Second Amendment was “a mischaracterization.” Turns out that may be the understatement of the year.
Yesterday, he released his “plan for safe communities.” In it, we find a plan to end preemption (say goodbye to carry in Philly!), a proposal for statewide lost-and-stolen, and a plan to challenge Heller/McDonald.
Say what?
Yup. Dan Onoranto wants to force all gun owners who have minors in the home to lock their guns. Apparently he missed that key part in Heller:
In sum, we hold that the District’s ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense.
You don’t lose your right to read scary news or watch violent movies just because there are kids in the home. You shouldn’t lose your right to self-defense over the same. There is a factor of common sense, but that hasn’t been a serious problem for the overwhelming majority of families. Just like most parents don’t let their 6-year-old watch a gory horror flick or read extremely graphic descriptions of war to them at bedtime, gun owners take care when children are around their guns. There’s a difference between discovering the right solution for your home and the state removing your right to immediately defend yourself and those same children you love.
I think we can all agree that any perception of Dan Onorato supporting civil liberties is, in fact, a mischaracterization. He was absolutely right about that – just about the only thing he’s been on right on in this campaign.