Month: May 2013

Governor Corbett has been asking universities to review their policies on this matter, and many schools have, including Kutztown, Shippensburg, Edinboro, Slippery Rock, and Millersville. It’s not blanket campus carry at this point, but it’s at least getting a discussion started.

Students with concealed-carry permits had questioned the constitutionality of blanket weapons bans at state-owned universities, prompting a legal review that found such bans were vulnerable to court challenge.

About a year ago, the state system provided a model weapons policy for consideration by all 14 schools “that more narrowly tailored the firearms restriction, addressing both public safety and constitutional concerns,” said Nils Hagen-Frederiksen, a spokesman for the governor’s Office of General Counsel.

It’s always been an up-in-the-air question as to what power state universities had to control guns on campus. Pennsylvania law does not prohibit firearms on college and university campuses specifically, but it’s not clear how much power the state university system has to control students from carrying, or exclude non-student LTC holders from carrying on their campus or in buildings. State law preempts not only local municipalities from regulating firearms, it also prohibits any “political subdivision,” a term which is not defined in the statute. Are the Regents of state universities political subdivisions of the state, given they are state chartered institutions?

Corbett is at least willing to force the universities to start taking those questions seriously, rather than dismissing them and doing what they want. Combine this with the fact that Corbett’s post-Newtown pronouncements on gun control essentially indicated the Governor’s Office would have our back, and it leads me to be quite pleased with Corbett from a gun policy point-of-view. Pennsylvania has a long history of Republican governors being lukewarm to the interests of gun owners, but Corbett is someone I’ll happy volunteer for in the 2014 election. If he doesn’t win another four year term, I believe it will be a major setback for us, especially given the slate of likely opponents are all thoroughly anti-gun.

I agree that they have a First Amendment right to ask. And I have a First Amendment right to say “None of your goddamned business, Doc.” I know there are a lot of doctors out there who are pro-gun, but you need to speak up against the politicization of your profession, especially given that it’s starting to look more and more like a government protected cartel.

I think this Maryland activist’s heart is in the right place, but I don’t agree with using referendum to try to overturn gun control laws. While, generally speaking, gun bans have never fared well in ballot referendums, they are a hugely expensive undertaking if you want to have a prayer of winning. Why? Because you have to reach a lot of low-information voters who barely pay attention to your issue, and may not understand it. There’s also very very dire consequences to losing. I cannot stress enough how dire the consequences would be to losing a ballot measure on O’Malley’s gun control package. And losing is a possibility. Why?

Because it comes down to spending. That’s it. Grassroots mobilization is certainly important in a ballot fight, but it’s the money that’s going to get you to a majority for the win. In a battle of our grassroots energy against Bloomberg’s billions, I’ll put my money on our grassroots any day of the week. In a cash fight for low information votes? It’ll be NRA’s money against Bloomberg’s money, and if Bloomberg wants to, he can outspend NRA. So I’m a little amused and more than a little annoyed to see that GOA is getting behind and effort to spend NRA’s money in a ballot fight we could end up losing because we’re up against a billionaire who can outspend us if he wants to. Do you feel confident you can beat a ballot measure with Bloomberg filling the airwaves with images of schoolchildren getting mowed down with automatic weapons? Oh, I know it’s a lie, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is what works, and who has the money to lie the loudest.

NRA is correct in this matter. The courts is the far safer course of action. Those of you who are regular readers know how little faith I have in the courts, so that gives you an idea of how reckless I think our side volunteering for ballot fights is.

From Professor Nick Johnson:

The reason I retrieved Sherrill’s Saturday Night Special from the back of a high shelf was that he offers a lively argument that the 1968 Gun Control Act was mostly about controlling Negroes and not much about controlling guns. That account was the primary reason I bought the many book years ago, and I confess I only just now read it cover to cover. Some of it is quite extraordinary.

Once you cut through the vitriol, the striking thing is Sherrill’s clearheaded critique of several issues that are central to the current gun control debate.  Indeed, on several key points Sherrill is in basic agreement with claims that I have developed in detail in my scholarship and summarized in previous posts to this blog.

There have always been honest gun control people, like Robert Sherrill, who’s book Prof. Johnson speaks of, that have been willing to admit that many of their core tactics are a sham. Read the whole thing.

As a side note, I’m also glad to see someone else railing against the current status of the nondelegation doctrine. I think the empowerment of the bureaucratic elite is one of the most damaging things the courts have ever allowed to be done to our government. Far worse than the current broad reading of the commerce clause, in my opinion.

Looks like the magazine ban is back in Illinois. You have to wonder about the sanity of these people. Concealed carry has been a complete non-issue in every other state that adopted it, and you’d think a court order would give the politicians cover from their supporters. “Well, you know, the courts made us do it.” I also don’t think these politicians are considering the benefits of being able to blame the Second Amendment for their own shortcomings. They should really have a chat with Philly politicians on that count.

But these things aren’t entirely rational. There’s an emotional aversion to empowering “those types of people,” you know.

I sort of feel like I need to come with a better name for these things than news dumps. One that seems to allude to bowel movements would be nice. Though, in a sense, these do serve to clear the constipation in my browser tabs.

These news dumps will probably start happening less often as gun control moves its way out of the news cycle. Though, given that there’s Benghazi hearings going on, and we’re learning the IRS is being used to go after political enemies of this administration, the media may decided that staying focused on guns is a fine and good thing. So we’ll see. But now, the news:

SayUncle notes that the market speaks. While everyone else who’s selling guns is doing brisk business, Dick’s Sporting Goods isn’t.

Saying bad things about open carry in the gun blogosphere is always bound to attract the Drama Llama, but Tim decided to do his best llama call over at Gun Nuts with two articles on “Open Carry Myths & Misconceptions.” Here’s part two. He speaks about the issue from a self-defense point of view.

The North Carolina Democrats are trying to fundraise off gun control. Running on gun control in the South is never a winning idea, even in the “California of the South.”

The New York Daily News is laying off workers. Sucks for the workers, but I’ll celebrate the misfortunes of outfits that advocate against our rights.

Jacob also takes on some optimistic thinking by the antis.

A gun safety measure in Congress I’d be willing to support!

Gun control ads have Democrats worried. Bloomberg is doing his level best to ensure that pro-gun red state Democrats are replaced by pro-gun red state Republicans.

How Feinstein fiddled while America burned.

A high capacity magazine of high capacity magazines!

These idiots are very very lucky no one got shot.

Now it’s the NRA’s turn to understand us. We do understand you. That’s why we oppose you.

The WaPo thinks NRA may have won for now, but faces long term challenges. One of those challenges, apparently, is Cato Institute chair Robert Levy, who unfortunately appears in the article promoting gun control.

How Can We Defeat the N.R.A., the New Yorker asks. Well, you can start by actually having grassroots, rather astroturf paid for by asshole billionaires. It would also probably help for the media and political elites to stop manipulating people with unresolved grief, and parading them in front of cameras in an attempt to emotionally blackmail fellow Americans.

When it’s “public health,” lead by meddling doctors:

To pediatricians, gun control is a public health issue, not a political one. But they’re treading a fine line, and they know it.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has begun a renewed push to try to get Congress to pass gun control measures, sending more than 100 pediatricians to Capitol Hill earlier this month.

Gun control is always political. Doctors should focus on healing patience, not butting their noses in where they don’t belong.

Miller’s done research on gun deaths using what CDC data he could get — dating from before Congress cut its funding.

He divided the U.S. population in half, classifying half as living in high-gun-ownership states and half in low-gun-ownership states. In the “high gun states,” 21,148 people were murdered between 1988 and 1997, compared with 7,266 in the “low gun states”.  He found 369 kids up to 14 of age who were murdered using guns in states with high rates of gun ownership; 97 were killed deliberately with guns in low-ownership states.

That’s just simply bogus. There’s no earthly reason to make that kind of division unless you’re trying to get a result. It’s possible to analyze the 50 states individually, without arbitrarily dividing your data points. But there’s probably a reason he did that. With murder rates there’s no correlation to gun ownership. There’s also no real trend when it comes to Brady scores. There isn’t a correlation Internationally, and nor do suicide rates correlate.

These people have an agenda, they are willing to lend the credibility of their profession to bad research and lies, and their funding for this kind of garbage must remain cut off.