The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
State Rep Sam Rohrer is asking Pennsylvania residents to sign his petition to oppose any new gun control laws in the Commonwealth. I would ask everyone to do so, if you are from Pennsylvania.
Plus, if my family is to be believed, this guy is a relative of mine. I don’t know him from Adam, but according to them, anyone with a name derived from “Rohr” is somehow related. Good to see I’m not the only gun nut in my “family”.
Turns out we have a fun keynote speaker for the NRA banquet next week. I’m lookin forward to it.
Well, OK, it wasn’t a boxing match.  If it had been, it would have been worth the drive to see it. But it was a debate, and the SMU Daily Campus has some balanced coverage of it.
Looks like the Brady Campaign is most worried about castle doctrine, which make sense given it’s one of the NRA’s priorities.
Bob Levy asks via Instapundit:
Nobody at the NRA has provided a credible answer to this simple question: Why is the NRA pushing the DC Personal Protection Act? If the NRA were to say, “You’re going to lose, so we want to kill the litigation,” I would understand that argument — although I would dispute the premise. Instead, we’re hearing that the NRA wants the Supremes to review Parker. There’s a disconnect somewhere.
I’m not speaking with any special insider knowledge. I really like to know more too, and I don’t discount the possibility the NRA is just being stupid. But I think the disconnect is politics.
The NRA can’t really afford politically to ignore pro-gun legislation that’s being introduced in Congress and leave it’s pro-gun allies in Congress high and dry on a bill they’ve been pushing for a while. I suspect originally, the NRA’s attitude was “you’re going to lose, so we want to kill the litigation”, as Levy mentioned. I can’t blame them, because originally I didn’t think Parker would win either, and there’s a lot of “the courts are too risky” sentiment in the pro-gun community, and for good reason.
But now Parker won, and the NRA is in a pickle. It won’t want to derail Parker, but at the same time it can’t just pull the plug on the D.C. Personal Protection Act either. Do one, and you piss off membership who would like the Supreme Court rule on the second amendment, do the other and you piss off the lobbyists, staffers and politicians who have been working hard on the legislative side. Plus, there’s a not insignificant chance that Parker will fail. Any direction they go, the NRA is screwed. So what to do? Talk out both sides of your mouth, and try not to piss anyone off too much. It’s politics, and politics is ugly.
According to Pro-Gun Progressive, the Brady Campaign is requiring registration for their blog comments. I suppose they got tired of the volume of pro-gun comments on it, and figured since we don’t like the r-word very much, this might keep us off :) It doesn’t appear to me that the comments are still restricted. It seems to have the same WordPress style comment section as it had before
But seriously, it does look like registration isn’t restricted, but to be honest, I’ve never felt good about signing up for their mailing list or other such things. Who knows whether they count registrations or mailing list members for purposes of counting how much grass roots support they have. If a politician were told there are 20,000 people on the Brady mailing list, do you think they’d realize half of them might be pro-gun people “keeping tabs”?
I was amused at the volume of pro-gun comments when they opened them up, but I didn’t ever comment there, because I didn’t see much point. I mean, it’s not like Sarah Brady is going to come out and say “OK, I was wrong, now who wants to show me how you field strip this AR-15?”, or Paul Helmke will start asking for advise on a good reloading press.
UPDATE: Crap.. it got rid of my first update. Anyway, I said I rethought this, and decided that it’s not a waste of time to post over there, just in case anyone on the fence happens by their blog. I don’t plan to make a regular habit of it though.
UPDATE: Yeah, the comments work. I just submitted one. It goes into a moderation queue and has to be approved. You can see your comment, but no one else can. That’s how it was working before.
Robert Levy wrote, Instapundit and SayUncle linked it.  Levy asserts that the NRA’s actions make it appear that they want to derail Parker by pushing the D.C. personal protection act.
I understand why the NRA is doing this: Parker vs. DC could backfire on us in a big way, and a legislative remedy is the safer short term option. Â But I’m more open to Alan Gura’s argument that the Supreme Court is going to hear a second amendment case soon in any regard, and we might as well make the first case a good one.
I’m as nervous about the case as the NRA is, however, and even if Parker gets a favorable ruling, I’m really nervous about the aftermath. But to use warfare as an analogy, a general doesn’t always get to pick his battlefield, and this is quite likely where circumstance is going to demand that we roll the dice with The Court. I’m nervous but optimistic.  I’d really like to understand why the NRA isn’t, and hear their point of view, their real point of view, not just the official line.
Berks County is close to Philadelphia, but does not border it. The County Seat is Reading.  But they have a Sheriff who, unlike John Street and Ed Rendell, can face reality:
Berks County Sheriff Barry J. Jozwiak asked a panel of state lawmakers in Reading on Thursday to shoot down any legislation that would limit handgun purchases, claiming it would not curb crime or gun violence.
That had to have given the Philadelphia pols, and Mayor McMahon a heart attack. But it gets better:
Jozwiak, a Republican, said he opposed a bill that would limit people to buying one handgun per month.
Instead of passing new gun laws, Jozwiak said, police and judges should enforce existing laws.
“Gun control does not reduce crime,†Jozwiak said. “In fact, criminals prefer their victims to be unarmed.â€
Jozwiak even criticized a proposal that would require gun owners to notify police if their handguns were lost or stolen.
Supporters believe that would reduce instances of people buying guns, turning them over to criminals and then claiming that the gun was lost or stolen.
Jozwiak said such a law would punish honest, law-abiding gun owners who didn’t realize that their guns were missing.
Sheriff Jozwiak isn’t alone:
State Rep. Jim Cox, a Spring Township Republican, said he would not support the one-handgun-per-month legislation because it chips away at gun owners’ rights and could lead to more drastic restrictions.
“I want people to have the sheer, unadulterated ability to defend themselves,†Cox said. “If they want to go out and buy 20 weapons to protect themselves because there has been a crime wave in their neighborhood, I don’t want to restrict them.â€
Why not? You know the criminals don’t have any problems doing the same.  I’m glad to see once you get out of The City, politicians start having more sense. The City of Philadelphia continues to make guns the scapegoats for their crime epidemic, rather than, you know, criminals.
This is a quite interesting case, coming to us courtesy of Crime and Federalism:
ARLINGTON, Texas — Darrell Roberson came home from a card game late one night to find his wife rolling around with another man in a pickup in the driveway.
Caught in the act with her lover, Tracy Denise Roberson — thinking quickly, if not clearly — cried rape, authorities say. Her husband pulled a gun and killed the other man with a shot to the head.
On Thursday, a grand jury handed up a manslaughter indictment — against the wife, not the husband.
In a case likely to reinforce the state’s reputation for don’t-mess-with-Texas justice, the grand jury declined to charge the husband with murder, the charge on which he was arrested by police.
Seems to me it’s proper the husband isn’t facing charges. I think any of us, given similar circumstances, would have done the same thing. Every state, that I’m aware of, allows for use of deadly force to prevent rape. The standard is whether a reasonable person would believe, given the circumstances, that a rape was taking place.  The actor need not be factually correct on that count.
But man, what a person this guy married. I have to wonder if she, realizing her husband probably carried a firearm, knew what the result was going to be, and thought she could get away with it.
Since this story is moving around, I thought I’d throw in my two cents. I just want to make it clear I’m not in any way advocating people not be careful with airline security, or not take it seriously. Anyone who goes through security with contraband and doesn’t get caught is extremely lucky, and you don’t want to depend on luck to stay out of trouble. It’s important to keep your wits about you as to your carry situation at all times, especially when crossing security checkpoints.
But let’s say, given that you’ve gotten past airport security with a gun you’d mistakenly forgotten you were carrying, why would you then turn yourself in? If it was me, and I somehow made it through TSA security with a pistol, I’d count my lucky stars, finish the flight, and get the hell out of dodge as fast as I could as soon as I landed.
It would be prudent at that point to contact an attorney to ask for advise on the situation, and also what to do now that you have to get the pistol back to where you came from, when its original journey was quite illegal.
I have sympathy for this woman, who made an honest mistake, and tried to do the right thing. I think the prosecutors would be wise to do the right thing on their part and not charge her. Otherwise, the next person who finds themselves in this situation would be wise to just keep their mouth shut. I mean, you wouldn’t be worried you were going to hijack the plane right? You can bet the terrorists won’t turn themselves in.
At least I might, according to the State of California:
Thomas Lee McKiernan, who was arrested earlier this month when his house caught fire and exposed his arsenal to authorities, remains in jail awaiting a sentence that could range from probation and psychological counseling to five years in prison.
The charge? Possession of an illegal assault weapon, which would be legal in just about every other state. So it looks like all the service rifle competitors who go to Camp Perry each year are in need of some serious psychological counseling.
Hat Tip: Dave Hardy