Reason notes: “Every petty excuse for the police to bother you is a loose trigger for further injustice.” Truer words have never been uttered. That goes double if you don’t have the money to hire a decent lawyer. Justice is for those who can afford it. If Evan Nappen hadn’t jumped on this, the dude would be going to jail.
18 thoughts on “Truth”
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I understand, from comments on Evan Nappen’s page by Nappen Jr. (also Esq) that most of the work is now done by Junior.
Still, Evan keeps his hand in and bless him for doing so.
If only we had a system that would establish justice and would punish government for doing things like this…
Punishing the government means punishing the taxpayers. What you need to do is to punish abusive government employees. Criminal law, not civil suits.
By punishing the government, I meant punish abusive government employees. They should individually be held liable for mistakes, not the taxpayers.
Let’s start by punishing the cops when they make bullshit arrests like this.
Reading that article, the thought that leapt to my mind was, the old saying that if you want to know what the law is, the last people to ask are cops. They have no need to know the law, because 99.9 percent of the time, in their experience, they are the law.
Is the NRA “jumping on this quickly” in terms of financial support, or is the NRA-ILA article just their equivalent of “hopes and prayers?” After all, a court case like that could cost almost as much as one of Pepe LaPew’s suits.
Can they even fund a trial court suit?
(Would Nappen take their money? He’s not that big a fan of the national NRA, though, AFAICT he’s on good terms with the local affiliate)
“Can they even fund a trial court suit?”
I know yours is a sincere question, so I would only amend it to, can they afford a trial court suit in addition to those necessary to defend themselves as an organization?
I would suggest (not assert) that they became over-confident in their unassailable position as a political organization, over the years, and became increasingly sloppy and incautious in their operations. Now they are experiencing the results of that sloppiness.
I have opined before that a lot of the NRA’s image as the 800 pound gorilla was fed by their enemies, who were perfectly happy with their monopoly and that nothing else was emerging. Perhaps the NRA is suffering from, not only believing their own press releases, but their enemies’ press releases.
(I don’t know whether this is analogous or not, and I haven’t actually verified it, but yesterday I heard that the Heartland Institute is in trouble and had laid off more than half its staff.)
I meant “legally/structurally can they provide money for the defense” not “do they have money to send.”
At any rate, it’s SAF that normally provides legal funding.
(Also, while it doesn’t much matter, NJ outlawed “carry insurance” last year)
“At any rate, it’s SAF that normally provides legal funding.”
To be my usual cynical self, they also are not above using trivial legal cases as fundraising artifices.
FWIW the network and personalities that became NAGR hated Gottlieb and his enterprises with a purple passion (they went nuts on Angel Shamaya when Gottlieb got KeepAndBearArms.com, and they didn’t) but I am pretty sure that was “economic jealousy” and not “ideological.”
Humans gonna human
“Humans gonna human”
Indeed. The trick is, being honest with ourselves what “being human” means.
“I meant “legally/structurally can they provide money for the defense'”
I’m just revisiting this to say, it never occurred to me that there was any legitimate reason they couldn’t.
Twenty-five years ago when I filed suit against Bucks County’s antigun Republican sheriff, another national gun rights organization that shall remain nameless got $500 to me within a couple days; while the NRA was nowhere to be found.
That organization used their “foundation” arm to contribute, as required by law. That was not hard for them to accomplish, because they operated more than one national organization out of the same office, so their foundation arm probably sat at the same desk as every other arm. But I don’t see why the NRA couldn’t work something out, now that we have telephones and all, that presumably can be picked up to call across the street.
(The NRA got some of the 800-pound-gorilla credit out of that case, because in the media our Republican sheriff styled himself as “standing up to the NRA”, which never was involved in the slightest way, unless you count that I was a Life Member. At the time I made sure the organization that did donate, got as much credit as possible.)
NRA CRDF does that kind of stuff all the time. But CRDF I think is a board entity. It’s not controlled by ILA or Wayne.
Good to know
Since we have dead air for a couple days now, I thought I would digress to other current events that are PA-relevant.
There were three special elections for the PA House on March 17, and the Republicans swept them all. That looks good for Trump and his party for November.
One of the races was local to me, though I don’t live in the district (18th). But, the Ds’ campaign ads were on my local cable, so I can critique them. I’ll now put on my “self-styled student of tactics” hat.
The D’s campaign was among the worst I’ve ever seen. The TV ads, anyway. They were issue-free, and consisted of the candidate saying “I’m a plumber, so I’m used to cleaning up messes, and that’s what I’ll do in Harrisburg.” Meh.
I had to look up whether the guy was a D or an R. I guess he through that was sly, but it was just bad.
There was an attack ad against his opponent, sponsered by a “Friends of” organization, not the campaign. It was bad because without it, I never would have known who the R candidate was; and it was just snarky.
The D reportedly outspent the winning R by multiples, but in my opinion was campaigning for his opponent.
The R is the daughter of a popular longtime R state senator, and probably needed to do no campaigning at all, other than letting people know she was the candidate. Her father has handed out plenty of “walking around money” over the years.
The D was nominally supported by his (plumbers) union, but chances are they stabbed him in the back, because nominal political alignments notwithstanding, they probably have a comfortable working relationship the R’s father. Bucks County politics have never been about ideology. It’s all “just business.”
I happened to be in Canada during the runup to their 2008 national election and every single yard sign I saw had the party affiliation on it. Not sure whether that is custom, law or a product of their electoral system. As opposed to here where affiliation almost never appears.
I couldn’t tell you exactly what year it was, but it was at least 30 years ago that our Bucks County pols almost all started using a standard white-on-dark-blue format that had become a Republican trademark. The Republicans had such a lock on things that the Democrats appeared to hope that if they pretended to be them, one or two might slip in unnoticed. It didn’t seem to work very well for anybody.
I got the impression this D special election candidate also was trying to play down his affiliation, which I think tactically was a mistake, because as I’ve mentioned before, since 2017 Democrat candidates for equivalents to Dog Catcher have been getting elected, I have to assume just on the strength of being Democrats.
But the D County Chairman is an asshole, whose defeat I had the joy of contributing to, when he ran for the state senate. He answered our gun rights candidates’ questionnaire, exactly the opposite from how he answered the same questions on the LWV’s questionnaire. I caught it, called it to the attention of the media, and they tore him apart and wouldn’t let it go. I can’t say that alone swung the election, but it helped.
At the time he tried to tell me he had answered the LWV’s questionnaire before we “educated” him, and I told him fine — all he had to do was come out in the media and announce he was now unreservedly on the pro-gun side. Then we would support him. I said that knowing he would never do it, because he just wanted the issue to go away. But prior to that he had even our gun club president snowed.
(From my “Why I’m a Cynic” collection.) ;-)