This week we have house guests, and our Friends of the NRA dinner is tomorrow, so we’re a bit pre-occupied. Blogging will continue, but not quite at normal place, and I have some catching up to do since I didn’t have any time this weekend to devote to the activity:
Joe has a random thought taxing things in order to discourage their use.
Being afraid the government will show up at your door because, well, they’ve already done that.
California’s ban on virtually all semi-automatic rifles is now on Governor Brown’s desk. I think this is one of those cases where “They have us surrounded! The poor bastards.” In that I feel a lot better going to court with a ban like this than something that’s useless and cosmetic.
Obama still does not understand that polls on the gun issue are relatively meaningless.
The Daily Show wins an Emmy promoting gun control. I stopped watching a long time ago, because I don’t like my satire to have a political agenda. If I wanted to watch propaganda disguised as comedy, there’s MSNBC. Or perhaps that’s comedy disguised as propaganda?
Not gun related, but though I fully support the sentiment, you don’t just get to break the law.
Chief Kessler announces his candidacy for Sheriff of Schuylkill County.
The closer a rfile ban is to the DC and Chicago handgun bans the more likely it will be that the courts will treat them as the DC adn Chicago bans.
There’s also that in Cali logic adding a stock and a foot of barrel to a gun makes it *more* evil somehow.
The Cali situation is also a textbook example of the gun grabber’s slippery slope and how when they say Asssault Weapon they really mean “all rifles”.
“you don’t just get to break the law…”
Actually that is interesting, because the principle could be gun related, quite easily.
If Hanes sincerely believes the Pennsylvania law is unconstitutional, then it can be argued that his oath to the constitution when he was sworn into office obligates him not to enforce it, since unconstitutional law is not law at all, and never was, nor can anything legal derive from it.
It can be seen how that easily could be applied to a gun issue, and how we would applaud the action if it was.
On the other side, Commonwealth Court ruled only that his job obligates him to enforce and obey state law, avoiding the issue of its constitutionality.
I think this is an interesting and rare case of the system working. Hanes had created a scenario where the question of the laws constitutionality virtually has to be kicked upstairs to higher court, perhaps, ultimately, to the SCOTUS. He has created possibly dozens of plaintiffs with standing for lawsuits.
I much prefer someone like Hanes to a past “pro-gun Republican” Bucks County Sheriff who, when we visited him regarding problems with his enforcement of the Brady Law back in the ’90s, said flatly that he didn’t care about the issue of constitutionality of the law, as a long as it enabled him to do what he felt like doing. At least Hanes necessarily raised the issue of constitutionality.
“Chief Kessler announces his candidacy for Sheriff of Schuylkill County.”
I haven’t followed the Chief’s announcement closely, so I necessarily have to speculate quite a bit, but it would seem he would have a very uphill battle at this point.
He cannot run in the 2013 election as a major party candidate on the ballot, as he missed the primary. He also missed the deadline to be on the ballot as an independent or minor party candidate, since he apparently missed the early-August deadline for ballot petitioning. He apparently will have to run as a write-in candidate, and those candidacies are rarely successful in Pennsylvania, except for occasionally for local offices.
Now, if he had made the deadlines to be on that ballot, in Schuykill County I’d give him odds to win.