The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
In the comments yesterday, someone suggested I was comparing apples to oranges comparing the new iPhone to Bitter’s Droid. Engadget has a more fair comparison, but I think the new iPhone still looks pretty good, depending on what features are important to you.
I have one more tech post for today, but no fear, we will not turn into a tech blog. Just not much going on in the gunnie world right now. Expect that to change when McDonald is released not too long from now.
We would like to welcome Cemetery to the club, though we would seriously advise against trying to devise a black powder .223 load. I’d also note you can get 10 round Jersey legal magazines you can actually grab on to. Basically a blocked 20 rounder, which ought to be legal in the Garden State.
This isn’t much of a surprise, but the results are still rather stunning:
Who is better informed about the policy choices facing the country—liberals, conservatives or libertarians? According to a Zogby International survey that I write about in the May issue of Econ Journal Watch, the answer is unequivocal: The left flunks Econ 101.
I could have told you that. Read the whole thing. What’s amazing isn’t that they do worse than conservatives and libertarians, but how much worse they do.
I have my issues with Pat Meehan, and the Meehan family (who run the Philly GOP), but we have to make sure Brian Lentz goes down to stinging defeat. Statements like this are part of the reason:
“So they essentially get a ‘get-out-of-jail free’ card when they’re stopped carrying a loaded firearm. They produce a Florida permit and our local law enforcement must honor that which is unacceptable given the arrest record and the background of many of these individuals.â€
See, you get out of jail free, because you flash a legal license. Everyone knows, of course, the default for carrying a gun should be to go to jail.
He says the Sunshine State is less strict when it comes to handing out permits, looking only at convictions and not a person’s character.
The Sunshine State is not less strict. They require training, fingerprinting, and a 120 dollar application fee. So far they can point to one bozo out of thousands in the Commonwealth who have Florida licenses. Most Florida license holders, including myself, also have PA LTCs, and only retain Florida’s CWL for expanded recognition from other states.
Philadelphia sure does look at a person’s character though. Unpaid parking tickets? Well, no, you can’t have a permit. What kind of person owes the City of Philadelphia money? Had a gun stolen once? Well, we can’t have you exercising your right to bear arms. You’re not a suitable person.
The UFA, namely the Amendments of Act 17, were supposed to make Philadelphia shall-issue like the rest of the state. But they haven’t. Philadelphia routinely revokes permits for trivial and unlawful reasons. They represent only a smal fraction of statewide permit holders, yet represent a hugely disproportionate numer of revocations. Why do some people seek recourse in a Florida license? Because it’s cheaper than hiring a lawyer to fight a denial or revocation.
Lentz and all his gun hating buddies in the General Assembly need to understand this very simple fact: We’re going to flip the House back this fall, and if you shove this down our throats, we’re going to shove a whole lot of things down your throats you aren’t going to like, which include eliminating or severely limiting the discretion local jurisdictions may exercise in issuing Licenses to Carry Firearms. You want us to be responsible with guns, we’re going to demand officials be responsible with the law. If they can’t be, we’re going to change it. Think carefully before going down this path.
Senator Wayne Fontana is looking at legislation to expand mentored hunting to adults, instead of just children. As an adult who has never hunted, but would like to try, this is a program I’d take advantage of. The big problem for me is finding time to do hunters education. Hunting requires an awful lot of investment up front to get into it. Shooting not so much. I’m reluctant to put so much time into something I may not do more than once or twice, depending on how much I get out of it.
I was told when I was a kid we’d have flying cars by now. Well, no flying cars. There’s also been persistent rumors of a Verizon iPhone. Screwed again. That’s a shame too, because the specs for the new iPhone are impressive. The 3GS wasn’t enough to compel me to upgrade from my 3G, but the 4G iPhone is something I’d love to upgrade to now. The specs from today’s WWDC:
It’s a good release. Apple needed to leap over the competing smart phones rather than merely match them, and so far it looks like they’ve done it. You can bet the competition will be out with bigger and better versions of their products, but it’s a compelling reason to upgrade. The question is, am I willing to put up with another two years of AT&T? Their upgrade offers are attractive, but I’d hate to take the bait, and then find out there’s a Verizon iPhone in early 2011. But perhaps the Verizon iPhone is the modern day flying car after all, and I’ll just be stuck with outdated technology for no good reason. It’s a difficult call.
Supporting gun bans, wanting to reargue Heller, and completely dismantling the state gun laws to overturn the Pennsylvania Supreme Court puts you on the pro-gun side of the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania, at least according to this article on PA2010.com. Really? That would be news to the many pro-gun Democrats in this state who actually support the rights of gun owners.
During the primary battle, we learned that the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Dan Onorato, was one of the farthest left candidates you could find on the gun issue. The only guy to his left was Joe Hoeffel. The only Democratic gubernatorial candidate who gun owners could come reasonably close to voting for if they were voting single issue was Jack Wagner.
We captured video from most of the Democratic forums before the primary and studied his statements on “public safety,” and those hit on a range of policy issues on the matter of Second Amendment rights:
| Onorato | Hoeffel | Wagner | Williams | |
| Ending Preemption (overturning Ortiz) |
Support | Support | Oppose | Support |
| Semi-Auto Ban | Support | Support | Support | Support |
| Mandatory Locks on Guns (overturned in Heller) |
Support | Support | Oppose | Oppose |
| Castle Doctrine | Oppose | Oppose | Maybe | Oppose |
| Shut Down Gun Stores Near Homes, Schools, or Parks |
Maybe | Support | Maybe | Support |
| Limit on # of Guns | Maybe (through local laws) |
Support | Oppose | Support |
| Eroding Reciprocity | Support | Support | Maybe | Support |
| Ban Gun Ownership w/out criminal conviction |
Support | Support | Support | Support |
On this list of what I consider to be “big” issues right now, Onorato goes against gun owners 75% of the time. The other two issues are unknowns, or he would support other government officials in their quest for more gun control. That’s not what we usually consider “on our side” in the gun owning community. (Hoeffel strikes against us 100% of the time, Williams at 88%, and Wagner at 25% of the time with another 38% of the issues as possibly against us.)
If you want to look at the issue from the gun control handbook from CeaseFirePA, their big issues show a similar breakdown. Onorato is with them 85% of the time, and they classify the remaining 15% of the positions as unknown, not in opposition to their agenda. (Hoeffel is with them 100% of the time, Williams 85%, and Wagner 46%. In fact, Williams is actually against them with the other 15% of the proposals which actually makes him more solid on the issue with gun owners than Dan Onorato.)
For context on how Onorato’s positions compare to legislators who have recently voted on some of the policies Onorato is pushing or opposing, here’s another chart. I’ve broken these charts down by NRA grade. (It was too wide with all of them in one, so forgive the repetition, it’s to prove a point.)
| Onorato Not Rated |
Lentz F |
Manderino F |
Vitali F |
Wagner F |
|
| Ending Preemption HB 1044 |
Support | Support | Support | Support | Support |
| Semi-Auto Ban HB 1045 |
Support | Oppose | Support | Support | Support |
| Castle Doctrine HB 40 |
Oppose | Support | Oppose | Oppose | Support |
This table shows that Onorato is farther to the left on recent gun rights policy debates than two of the four F-rated lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee.
| Onorato Not Rated |
Waters D- |
Brennan D |
Caltagirone D |
Shapiro D |
Costa C |
|
| Ending Preemption HB 1044 |
Support | Support | Oppose | Support | Oppose | Oppose |
| Semi-Auto Ban HB 1045 |
Support | Support | Oppose | Support | Oppose | Oppose |
| Castle Doctrine HB 40 |
Oppose | Oppose | Support | Support | Support | Support |
Let’s look at some who probably fall on the left of the issue, and another who falls squarely in the middle of the issue based on previous grades. Onorato’s policies fall in line with the D- lawmaker, but he’s exactly the opposite of two D legislators and our single C-rated guy on the committee. That doesn’t seem to be very “right flank” to me.
| Onorato Not Rated |
Casorio A |
Kula A |
Pallone A |
White A |
Petrarca A+ |
|
| Ending Preemption HB 1044 |
Support | Oppose | Oppose | Oppose | Oppose | Oppose |
| Semi-Auto Ban HB 1045 |
Support | Oppose | Oppose | Oppose | Oppose | Oppose |
| Castle Doctrine HB 40 |
Oppose | Support | Support | Support | Support | Support |
All of these lawmakers are probably the “right flank” of the gun issue for the Democratic Party since they are all A-rated or higher. Most of them carry the NRA’s endorsement. And Dan Onorato doesn’t agree with them on anything – from banning guns to gutting gun laws to even a law dealing with self-defense in your own home.
So, based on statements and specific policy plans, both gun owners and gun controllers agree that Dan Onorato is not on the “right flank” of the Democratic Party on gun issues. So I’m challenging the fine folks at PA2010.com to back up his claim that Onorato is in any way considered to be pro-gun. It would enlightening, especially to all of the Democrats I talked to this weekend who are planning to vote against their party on this specific issue in this race come November.
Dave Hardy picks up on an old story about the UN Arms Treaty. There was some buzz about this more recently due to a Washington Times article, but I haven’t been able to find anything new the Administration has said about this treaty. This might not be a tiger the Obama Administration wants to try to ride, because there’s a lot of information, some true, some exaggerated, making its way around to people. In the two gun shows we’ve worked, people have mentioned the treaty, and they are angry about it.
A lot of these stories are floating around in the boomersphere. What’s the boomersphere? It has to do with how various generations communicate. Younger people, notably those under thirty, are adept at using social networking such as Twitter and Facebook. GenX and late Baby Boomers do the blog thing, and often the forum thing. The earlier Baby Boomers, the ones in their sixties now, use e-mail chains to spread information. These e-mail chains I have dubbed the “Boomersphere.” While Baby Boomers seem to have poor Internet filters (half the things you read on the Internet are BS, and not to knock ‘Boomers, but the default seems to be to continue the e-mail chain rather than question in information within) the e-mail chains are remarkably effective at spreading information far and wide and getting people fired up. Now if only we can figure out a way to get them fired up over things that are actually true. The UN Treaty is potentially hazardous enough to lawful gun ownership there’s no exaggeration or deception required. It’s bad enough on its own.
Yes, even Nudists have a lobby in Washington D.C. now. You’d think under our federal system that would be largely a state issue, but no. I noticed they mention the nudist lobbyists don’t show up nude, but show up in suits. How do they expect to get people to accept public nudity going about things like that? How will it ever be normal and accepted? Clearly they have not taken their lessons from the open carry movement.
Hat tip to Sister Toldjah
We have another gun control bill coming up in Pennsylvania’s House Judiciary tomorrow. See here for contact information from the Committee. This is the bill that aims to close what the media has dubbed the “Florida Loophole.” If this passes, Pennsylvania will no longer recognize reciprocal licenses if you’re a resident of Pennsylvania.
It’s not uncommon for residents of Philadelphia to seek out the Florida license, because Philadelphia has an odious habit of revoking even for minor issues, like unpaid parking tickets, and has also been known to revoke if you’re the victim of a theft. Needless to say, given the problems we’ve had in Pennsylvania with Sheriffs and the City of Philadelphia abusing their discretion under the UFA when it comes to revoking permits, we can’t allow this to pass.