2011 – Page 19 – Shall Not Be Questioned

More on the New Funding Riders

Dave Hardy has the details on some of the other provisions. Evan Nappen has more details on the shotgun regulation, including the language of the appropriations restriction in that regard:

SEC. 541. None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to pay the salaries or expenses of personnel to deny, or fail to act on, an application for the importation of any model of shotgun if–

(1) all other requirements of law with respect to the proposed importation are met; and

(2) no application for the importation of such model of shotgun, in the same configuration, had been denied by the Attorney General prior to January 1, 2011, on the basis that the shotgun was not particularly suitable for or readily adaptable

It doesn’t completely eliminate enforcement of “sporting purposes” for shotgun importation, it basically just kills ATF’s proposed rule. If a shotgun has already been determined to be not particularly suited to sporting purposes, ATF will still be able to keep it out of the country. They just won’t be able to do any reclassification on the basis of a sporting purposes test.

This has now been signed into law, by the way. I have to say that NRA has gotten very good at playing this game. While everyone was busy getting themselves all worked up about HR822, and Bloomberg and Menino were having their dog and pony show in the Senate, NRA was quietly pushing funding riders that would go unnoticed by our opponents until it was too late. I consider getting Congress to take a whack at the Gun Control Act’s “sporting purposes” language, even if it’s just a modest funding restriction, to be a significant achievement, and certainly a step on the road to possibly getting that provision removed at some point in the future.

The Irony

I’m glad I’m not the only one that’s noticed:

Interesting District Court Development

Looks like a Section 1983 civil rights suit, involving the Second Amendment, will be able to proceed in California. The case involves people open carrying in compliance with California law, while handing out leaflets. They were detained by police.

Message to the Gunnie Internet

From SayUncle. If you’ve been around enough, you’ve probably heard everything he’s lamenting.

Iraq Government to Disarm Population

Now that we’re no longer going to be there, I guess they want to be able to impose whatever government they can get away with on the Iraqi people. That’s a lot easier if you don’t have to worry about them shooting back. Under US occupation and provisional government, Iraqis were permitted to have one AK-47 and a reasonable amount of ammunition for personal defense.

I don’t think this will end well.

Misplaced Grief

Joan Peterson talks about rude gun guys. I’m sympathetic in regards to running into rude assholes on the Internet. I can believe it. We have a lot of bozos in the gun movement on the Internet, same as any movement that generates real passion. But I have to take serious issue with this:

There were a lot of claims about concealed carry permit holders and the inconvenience of not being able to carry their guns into every state in the nation. I’ll tell them about inconvenience. My family was inconvenienced when we had to plan a funeral for my sister, shot to death on an August day. The inconvenience of sneaking to the back of the church in a rented bus to avoid the press shouldn’t have to be, but it was. It was inconvenient to watch my mother deal with the death of her first born child. It was inconvenient to watch my own children deal with the awful death of their favorite aunt. It was inconvenient to watch my sister’s grown kids and step children deal with each other and with their grief. So really, I just don’t feel sorry for these guys who can’t carry their guns everywhere they go.

My mother died an untimely death at 43 when I was 20. I spent most of my adolescent childhood watching her slowly die. I am not unsympathetic to what a family goes through when they lose a loved one in an untimely manner. My aunt (her sister) still has a lot of difficulty with it, and my grandmother did as well until she died too eight years ago. We all had to go through that, and still have to go through that together. You never get over it, you just learn to live with it, as best you can.

But I am absolutely not able to understand the sentiment expressed in Joan’s quote above. None of the people reading this post had anything to do with what happened to Joan’s sister. In fact, none of the many millions of individual who have concealed carry permits from the 41 states that issue them do either. So I quite seriously question Joan on this issue.

Why take your grief out on all these individuals who, quite frankly, have nothing to do with your sister’s death? I’m really not trying to be cold or callous. I really want to understand this. You go on further:

Do they care about victims? Are their gun rights more important than the public’s right to be safe from shootings of family members or friends? Are their rights to carry their guns more important than jobs, health care, housing, and other pressing needs? I believe that most Americans know the answer to this.

This is a horrendous accusation to make against your fellow citizens. If we lived in world where drivers’ licenses weren’t universally recognized by all states, and your sister was killed by a drunk driver, would you suggest that folks who just want to be able to drive freely in other states didn’t care about drunk driving? This is not a rational argument.

People don’t take kindly to being made to own up to the sins of the insane and criminal, and accept collective punishment. We want to be able to freely travel in other states while exercising our Second Amendment rights. Making those of us who feel this way somehow responsible for the death of your sister is insulting. When you insult other people, is it so surprising some of them decide that lashing out is the best course of action?

Can We Dispense With This “States Rights” Nonsense

I really only ever hear about “states rights” from history books, and when the media drags out the specter in an attempt to convince the American public there’s hypocrisy afoot. The term I often hear used by actual conservatives and libertarians is federalism, which is distinct from “states rights.”

For the most part, the media hasn’t been engaging in a whole lot of hysterics about the passage of HR822 in the house. The exceptions are in the anti-gun states like California and New Jersey. It shouldn’t be a surprise that we have two articles from those very places yammering on about states rights. First from New Jersey:

There is nothing in the Second Amendment prohibiting states from regulating who can carry a concealed weapon. That isnâ€™t being debated. The issue is whether the gun regulations of one state must be recognized by another.

Funny, I thought the whole keep and bear part was pretty clear. It’s amazing such a simple phrase has been so twisted around by people who just don’t want to accept the plain language. Now the LA Times in California:

It’s no surprise that highly urban states susceptible to gang, drug and gun crimes tend to put more restrictions on firearms than more rural states. When the streets of cities such as Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland are flooded with guns and the blood of gun-violence victims, there is a strong public interest in regulating firearms, an interest that is far weaker in states such as Utah and Montana, where guns are used mainly for hunting and self-defense.

And guns aren’t used for self-defense in big cities? Just doesn’t happen, eh? States rights simply are not a concern here. The concern is the right of individuals to enjoy their fundamental right to have arms to protect themselves, both in and outside the home. States have no more a power to restrict that than they do to suggest out of state individuals obtain a publishing license before printing books, or have the power to demand whites and blacks drink from separate fountains, or use separate bathrooms.

An Armored Personnel Carrier, Really?

Not a fan of the #occupy movement. Yesterday at #OccupyPhilly, they decided to block the Market Street Bridge. While most of them dispersed when the cops started getting out the handcuffs, about 24 of them decided to lock arms and continue blocking traffic. This made me wonder whether you get a 24 for 1 taser deal when you taser one of a group of 24 hippies locking arms. I don’t know, but if the experiment was tried, I’d like to know the results.

Regardless, back to the title of this post, it would seem that the Tampa police decided they’d drag out the Armored Personnel Carrier to break up the Occupy folks. Really? We need to bring out military equipment to clear out a bunch of hippies camping in a park?

Survival Bags

Over at Shooting Illustrated. Some of them have provisions for off body carry. Pretty neat.

FAA Cutting off Free Access to Charts

I’m subscribed to a number of aviation newsletters. One today pointed this bit of Crony Capitalism in my direction that’s certainly going to have an impact on the Flight Sim community in a big way. Basically, they are cutting off public access to aeronautical charts:

Industry officials told Aviation Consumer that the market will likely reject significant increases in cost for apps and online products. Smaller providers and free websites may simply go out of business. Larger companies may try to keep their subscribers but with higher subscription prices. The pervasive fear in the industry is that this could lead to only one or two entities controlling the market for the distribution of government-produced information that is essential for flight safety. Aeronav spokeswoman Abigail Smith told Aviation Consumer the agency is determined not to let that happen but the new fees, whatever they are, will have to be enough to cover costs.

I understand trying to cover costs, so less taxpayer money is required to fund this part of FAA, but why not just charge for individual access, rather than routing access through a handful of vendors with contracts? By making some buyers more equal than others, the large players are guaranteed to be the primary beneficiaries.

With the lot that’s running the country now, you have to wonder if someone is getting paid off. It’s the Chicago Way.