Pennsylvania – Page 27 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Real Preemption Getting a Hearing in Pennsylvania

NRA is alerting members on two bills proceeding in Pennsylvania. One is a bill to give some teeth to our preemption provision, HB1523, sponsored by Daryl Metcalfe. This bill does not go nearly as far as the Florida law, but at least puts the municipality on the hook for legal fees and damages.

The other bill, HB 1668, offers some reforms to transportation of firearms (which are basically handguns, SBRs, and SBSs under PA law). Our transport laws are technically as strict as New Jersey, in that you have to go directly to/from allowed locations for transporting. The only difference is that Pennsylvania licenses are much easier to get, which exempts you from all the silliness. This would allow anyone who isn’t prohibited from firearms possession, or transporting for an unlawful purpose, is permitted to transport a firearm. End of story.

I should note that CeaseFirePA is opposing even this common sense measure:

Tomorrow, the House Judiciary Committee plans to consider legislation that threatens financial penalties for towns that have taken local action in favor of lost or stolen handgun reporting – a reform which police say could help to crack down on illegal gun traffickers and straw purchasers.

If this were true, there would be prosecutions to point to. They would be able to point to instances where this law has been used to punish… well… anybody. For such a necessary law, it doesn’t seem to be very useful. I’m surprised they can still say this with a straight face. NRA is asking folks to contact their state reps:

Please call AND e-mail your state RepresentativeÂ TODAY and urge him or her to support both critical pieces of legislation.

To find contact information or help identifying your state Representative, please clickÂ here.

Arlen Specter Called Bitter by Philly Press

Arlen Specter has largely been quiet since he was sent packing back to Philadelphia by Democratic voters in 2010. While we can at least take some comfort that he’s not blaming it all on Bush as most of his new old party leaders tend to do, now that he is speaking out, he is blaming Obama for his loss. That’s right, it’s not the “party & ideological flip to save my job that I feel entitled to on the taxpayer’s dime” that rubbed Democrats the wrong way. It’s not the fact that his opponent, Joe Sestak, ran as a hardcore liberal in a state where those on the left felt threatened by a shift to the right on many other political fronts. It’s Obama’s fault.

Should President Obama dump Joe Biden as his running mate and replace him with Hillary Clinton?

Arlen Specter was asked that hot-potato question, circulating in some Democratic circles, in a meeting Tuesday with The Inquirer editorial board.

His answer showed that the former 30-year senator hasn’t lost his knack for blunt talk – nor, perhaps, his bitterness over what he feels were slights from Obama during his failed 2010 Senate campaign.

He suggested maybe Obama is the one who should be dumped.

“That’s the second best alternative,” he said of replacing Biden. “A better alternative is to make Hillary the [presidential] nominee. As long as we’re talking about dumping, let’s go to the core problem.”

He complains that Obama flew over Pennsylvania twice in 2010 without stopping to campaign with Specter. I’m just amazed at how Specter can’t see how many on the left would have only held that against Obama as playing politics as usual with a candidate who could not be trusted to carry the flag for the progressive agenda. In a state with closed primaries where only the party faithful can vote to select a candidate for the general election, Specter couldn’t find too many friends on either side of the aisle. It wasn’t because he was some kind of true moderate. Honestly, most people just didn’t think he could be trusted based on his own actions that would throw one party and ideology under the bus so quickly – twice in his career, I might add.

The New CeaseFirePA Motto: Rules Don’t Apply to Us!

I presume that the new mission of CeaseFirePA will emphasize that laws must be applied differently depending on your status as a favored class member. Why is it safe to assume that? Well, the background of the organization’s new board president gives us one clue:

He also worked with the group while serving as Chief Counsel to Pennsylvania state Senator LeAnna Washington (D., 4th).

Followers on Twitter might recall that Sebastian and I were passed by his boss on the Pennsylvania Turnpike this year as she drove her state car through lanes and around other vehicles going in excess of 85 mph. (During an open spot in traffic, I tried to keep up to her to verify her license plate, but gave up and slowed down to normal speeds when I hit 85 and wasn’t close to keeping up with her. It’s not an exaggeration, and we did verify it was her driving when she suddenly slowed to pull into the King of Prussia service plaza.) So, given that he works for a woman who considers laws to be for the little people, I’m so curious to see if this philosophy will become the new standard for the anti-gun organization.

As a bit of side humor to his elevation, he sees success on the horizon for the anti-gun agenda. His evidence is rather amusing.

He pointed specifically to the state Supreme Court’s decision that it would not hear the NRA’s challenge to a Pittsburgh ordinance that requires gun owners to report lost or stolen firearms to police within 24 hours of discovery. The court ruled that the organization does not have legal standing to dispute the ordinance.

Success, by his definition, is the fact that officials refuse to use the ordinance they are pushing in municipalities; the reason NRA has no standing is because the illegal local laws aren’t being used at all.

I’m happy to help him keep defining success down in order to claim victory. Perhaps their 2012 annual report could say that there was a 100% rate of refusal to issue licenses to carry to those Pennsylvanians who never bothered to apply. Maybe they will report NRA member activity has greatly decreased in the state over his predecessor’s tenure. (Without a near-record NRA convention in the state, that would be technically be true.)

Pennsylvania’s Butter Sculpture

Only in Pennsylvania do we consider it to be a wise use of 1,000 pounds of butter to be turned into a sculpture of a beauty queen and a cow.

I hope we’ve invested in a bit more security this year. I’d hate to see a headline that Norwegians came in and stole our prized butter statue to take back home.

PA Castle Doctrine Tested

Ironically, it didn’t involve a gun. Instead it involved in someone shooting an arrow at an attacker wielding a club from his porch. To the best of my knowledge, no Cherokee were harmed in this first test of the law.

Signs, Signs, Everywhere There’s Signs

The mayor of bankrupt Harrisburg, PA has unveiled a brand new gun crime fighting tool – signs. But not just any signs, signs with a phone number. It was announced with a press conference bragging about how these signs would convince people to turn in guns used in crimes.

The signs list a phone number people who want to turn guns in can call or anonymous tipsters can call to report illegal guns on the street and other related crimes to police, Mayor Linda Thompson said this afternoon during a weekly crime prevention press conference.

Of course, this program has the standard promise that police won’t ask questions when guns are turned in through her pet project.

I’m sure that will solve all of the crime in Harrisburg if we just put up more signs. Perhaps Philly can just put up lots of signs and solve their city problems.

Republicans Sell Out the Free Market – Again

Just because the GOP is calling it a liquor privatization bill doesn’t actually mean that they are doing away with a government monopoly, cutting costs, or leading the fight for a remotely smaller government.

No, in fact, the leader of the new “amended” bill here in Pennsylvania that would end the complete control of all wine & liquor sales by the government is bragging about how he made certain to cut the private markets out of the picture by pricing the licenses to compete out of the range they were willing to accept. That’s right, the GOP lawmakers are bragging about trying to shut out the free market.

The current proposal will allow places that currently sell beer to sell wine, but only after they pay $50,000, plus an additional $15,000 every year after that. Oh, and if it’s a grocery store, we have to keep the same inconvenient current model of going to buy groceries from one part of the store, checking out, buying alcohol (beer only, for now) from another part of the store, and checking out yet again. Explain to me how this is an improvement.

Effectively, the state will still control prices and selection. While there is a wholesaler license available, GOP Rep. John Taylor from Philly purposefully priced it out of what he believes the market will pay at $100 million:

Taylor said he arrived at that figure by asking several groups what they would pay for a license to sell wine to retailers and then adding a few million. (emphasis added)

So, what we get is the perfect example crony capitalism. The prices are set based on private conversations that a lawmaker won’t reveal to potentially favor or disfavor anyone he chooses.

I also see this as potential burden for taxpayers. Sebastian and I sketched out this possible scenario last night while talking about the unbelievably stupid bill:

Continue reading “Republicans Sell Out the Free Market – Again”

CeaseFirePA Writes Re-Election Ads for Pro-Gun Lawmakers

There is nothing about this headline that doesn’t scream “re-elect these people,” and we have our opponents to thank.

Anti-gun violence group targets legislators
CeaseFirePA campaigns against Barletta and Marino for backing border legislation.

The article immediately puts CeaseFirePA on the defensive, forcing them to answer the question over whether their targeting of Republican Reps. Lou Barletta & Tom Marino is really just about partisan politics. They cite an ad targeted at Rep. Mark Critz in the southwest corner of the state, but they fail to mention anything about Reps. Tim Holden or Jason Altmire in their interviews on the ad buy. I guess the former Democratic staffer running the organization doesn’t want to piss off the two Democrats most likely to keep their seats in redistricting.

Back to the title of this post, this is where you know CeaseFirePA made a great investment in making sure that pro-gun lawmakers stay in office in those districts that are extremely friendly to our rights:

For their part, Barletta and Marino say they have no qualms about having voted for the National Right-to-Carry Reciprocity Act, which gives gun owners who have a concealed carry license from one state the right to arm themselves in any other state that also has a concealed carry law.

The spokespeople for the representatives talk about how this would simply be like the same recognition as a driver’s license and how Pennsylvania already has reciprocity with 26 states. It’s simply no big deal.

I just have to laugh at the ad targeting one more time. Even the Democrats who held these seats in safer years went out of their way to be seen as pro-gun, and you’d frequently see “Sportsmen for…” signs out for candidates of both parties. So, thanks CeaseFirePA! The myopic NJ-centric attitude of the organization’s leader is helpful with silly moves like this.

Concealed Carry Numbers for Pennsylvania Counties

After an email exchange with Dannytheman this morning, I was reminded of a method we used to answer questions about how big the pro-gun electorate in Bucks County was during the 2010 elections. We were asked by campaign advisors who weren’t the types to turn their back on gun owners if our numbers were small, but they would have liked to have the number quantified just so they could understand priority in doing outreach during campaign season.

The first form this question takes is usually how many NRA members are in a given district. Well, we don’t know that. Not even NRA knows exactly how many they reach in a given area. (I explain the reasons for this in a post on the same topic for PAGunRights.)

Nor is there a way to calculate exactly how many gun owners there are in a standard political district. A person whose entire collection of firearms was inherited 20 years ago may make voting in defense of their rights just as much a priority as someone who recently sought out training for the first time and is buying everything new. In addition, while all firearms in a household may actually belong to one person, the family may vote along the same principles.

However, we can use concealed carry license numbers as a rough guide. These are people who take gun ownership serious enough that they undergo additional background checks and pay extra fees. They take the time out of their busy lives to stop by the sheriff’s office and wait in line for their license. Even if they aren’t putting a gun on as part of their daily routine, they care enough to make an extra effort in defense of themselves and their rights. This is a reasonable substitute to give a rough idea of the number of voters interested in hearing about a candidate’s record on the Second Amendment.

In Bucks County, that number based on the latest available data is right around 27,000. That includes the nearly 1,000 sportsmen’s firearms permits issued. Even though that is a fairly small percentage of the entire county population, it’s still a very large interest group in one region.

So, if you’re looking for a way to articulate the approximate impact of people who will be interested in a candidate’s Second Amendment record, consider using the number of licenses and permits issued as a reasonable proxy. My guess is that it still underestimates the number of people who care about the issue because of the influence of family and friends on voters, but it’s a reasonable measure to consider when having these sorts of discussions with lawmakers and candidates.

County Wasting Money on Gun Buybacks

It looks like the County (my the County) officials are busy allocating public funds to cover the costs of gun buybacks in Bristol Township:

BRISTOL TOWNSHIP: $50,000 for municipal building roofing project; $35,000 for a 80 kw portable generator; $17,000 for GIS mapping services for GIS system upgrade; $200,000 for road improvements; $58,000 to the township public works department for a diesel bypass pump; $48,000 for a township public works department roofing project; $60,000 for a storm water inlet replacement project; $30,000 for a municipal complex solar lighting project; $22,000 for a municipal complex sign project; $25,000 to the township police department for a gun buyback program

The authority that is responsible for distributing these funds is the Bucks County Redevelopment Authority. No doubt Bristol Township officials requested it, but the redevelopment authority still approved. In other news, it looks like the County SWAT team will be getting some money for new toys.

My concern here is that this a waste of money that could be better spent on measures more proven to actually do something to reduce crime. The amount being allocated here would cover a decent portion of the cost to hire a whole extra police officer. I thought I’d let me local readers know in case anyone wants to go stake out the buy backs and make sure no one turns in history for destruction; my other big issue with buy back programs.