The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
From Rep. Bryan Cutler. After the knock down drag out fight we’ve waged to get this, this is speeding through the GOP legislature faster than I would have imagined last year. I think we’ll have Castle Doctrine before summer at this rate.
And remember, the Brady’s tried to tell everyone we lost the 2010 elections.
UPDATE from Bitter: And here’s the outcome:
Castle Doctrine passes out of committee with only 1 negative vote
Woo hoo. Now on to the Senate for more action this week.
This guy honestly isn’t the kind of help we need, but I’m rather curious about the charges here, since he was picked up on Luzerene County Community College’s main campus:
Police charged Christian A. Zaccagni Sr., 47, of Dana Street, Wilkes-Barre, with firearms not to be carried without a license and possessing a weapon on school property. He was arraigned by District Judge Donald Whittaker and jailed at the county correctional facility for lack of $10,000 bail.
Emphasis mine. The problem is that Pennsylvania’s statute in regards to possession on school property is limited to:
… any elementary or secondary publicly-funded educational institution, any elementary or secondary private school licensed by the Department of Education or any elementary or secondary parochial school …
And with an exception if a weapon “is possessed for other lawful purpose.” Now given that he was carrying unlawfully, that exception might be difficult for him to claim. But a community college is not an elementary or secondary school. Violation is a first degree misdemeanor, which is a prohibiting offense for firearms federally if convicted. If this is indeed a charge, it’s a bogus one.
This guy has been in trouble with drugs and providing false ID to police in the past, from what it looks like. This would make him ineligible for an LTCF in Pennsylvania, so even though the application was apparently “sitting on my China cabinet (at home),” that grades the gun carrying offense to a felony of the third degree.
UPDATE: Just discovered those charges were dismissed, so the carry charge is only a felony of the third degree with the school charge. If the school charge gets tossed, he’s down to an M1 for the carrying without a license charge.
The Senate Judiciary Committee approved legislation today sponsored by Senator Richard Alloway II (R-33) to expand the Castle Doctrine in Pennsylvania to protect gun owners who act in self-defense.
On to the Senate floor. The committee was a problem last session, but the makeup has improved a bit, and obviously it’s good news for the bill to have sailed though. It passed by a vote of 10-3. I’ll let you know who the three were when we get that information. There was an attempt to amend Florida Loophole, but the amendment was withdrawn.
UPDATE: Vote breakdown here.
It’s never fun to admit you’re wrong. It’s really not fun when the outcome of admitting you’re wrong means another tough political battle to fight. My Election Day prediction:
We need to send [Patrick Murphy] home. (Actually, he probably won’t return to the district. He’s been a very good fundraiser for bringing in money outside of the district, so I assume he’ll relocate to DC if he loses & become part of the professional political class.)
At the beginning of the year, we learned that anti-gun former Rep. Patrick Murphy was, in fact, going to stick around the district.
My displaced Congress Critter, Patrick Murphy, has taken a job with an area law firm with ties to DC. Probably helps that the Murphy Campaign finance chairman is a partner at that firm. This hints to me that Murphy may be Fitzpatrick’s next challenger in 2012.
Now, he’s speaking to Democratic groups around the state:
Former U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy, a prominent Bucks County Democrat, will speak April 1 in Centre County at a county Democratic Committee gathering, the committee announced.
Venturing about 200 miles outside of your home turf after you just lost an election isn’t usually something done out of the goodness of your heart. It usually means you’re trying to find new donors and raise your profile around the state.
It’s redistricting season here in Pennsylvania. Might I suggest that we cut out a little circle around Patrick Murphy’s house & instead of assigning it to another Pennsylvania district, we just give the property to New Jersey? He’d fit in far better on that side of the river.
Inspired by an ongoing general email conversation with reader Adam Z., I was inspired to look at the challenges we could still face here in Pennsylvania to pass a clean Castle Doctrine bill this term. I’ve seen more than a few comments from gun owners that assume pro-gun legislation is in the bag & anti-gun bills are no threat at all simply because the Republicans have control of the House, Senate, & Governor’s office.
The fact is that we ran out of time on the bill because opponents were building up support among Republican leaders for anti-gun amendments while the bill was in a Senate committee. The committee chair voted for one of those amendments out on the Senate floor. Guess what gun owners? That guy is still in charge. A new member of the committee had this to say about Castle Doctrine last year:
Yeah, we still have hurdles, folks. If you live in Pennsylvania & your Senator’s name isn’t on this page, then get on the phone. If your Senator’s name is on that page, make sure he/she knows that you want a clean bill & no anti-gun or anti-hunting amendments added to it. It’s time to get Castle Doctrine passed.
UPDATE: Well, that didn’t take long. Here’s the news from NRA on this final evening before the hearing:
Anti-gun groups are working to attach a laundry-list of bad amendments to SB 273 tomorrow. We already know F-rated state Senator Daylin Leach (D-17) will be offering the so-called “Florida Loophole†amendment which would prohibit the use of out of state Right-to-Carry permits by Pennsylvania residents while inside the Commonwealth. Once again this is an attempt by anti-gun zealots to torpedo this much-needed reform and we cannot allow that to happen.
Bitter got the Pennsylvania Game Commission on the phone and asked them some questions about the new permit requirement for public shooting ranges in Pennsylvania. I think a lot of people will object to the fact that only $200,000 of $11,000,000 in Pittman-Robertson funds goes to range maintenance. This is especially true when you consider handguns make up more than half of PR funds, and very few handguns are used for hunting.
In effect, the whole of the shooting community is subsidizing hunting. This will no doubt be a controversial statement, but I think that shooters should accept this state of affairs. Until this past year, hunting numbers had been in decline, while hunting license fees have been relatively stable, and not kept up with inflation. This means in real terms, state wildlife management budgets have shrunk. Increasing budgets for shooting ranges would mean decreasing budgets to support hunting programs, or raising hunting license fees, which will only serve to drive more people out of the sport.
A lot of people are going to argue that the baby is sick, probably isn’t going to make it to shore, and we’d be far better off just throwing it off the life boat preemptively, so that we can use the supplies for the rest of us. The problem is, hunting is a critical part of this fight, and we’re going to be far weaker politically if we toss that baby over. We have hunting numbers on the upswing. Perhaps that will continue. Time will tell.
Looks like the Game Commission is looking to require either a valid PA hunting license, or a range permit to be able to use PGC ranges throughout the state. Considering that PGC is funded with hunting license fees, and these ranges are maintained solely by the PGC, I think this is a fair move. Anyone who’s frequented Pennsylvania ranges knows they are crowded and poorly maintained. This strikes me as a fair way to manage the resource, provided the fees for the range permits are funneled into maintaining the ranges. Looks like there will be provisions for taking guests and kids too, without them also needing a range permit.
We have another US Senate race in Pennsylvania. With the incumbent Bob Casey being a fairly mild fellow, it could go either way. However, he should probably rethink his political brand just a bit with these numbers coming out today:
Sen. Bob Casey Jr. has a 44 – 24 percent approval rating, but even after four years in office, 31 percent of the state’s voters are undecided about him.
I guess the fact that nearly 1/3 of the electorate has no opinion on him after 4 years is not a completely bad thing. At the 7 month mark, not even his own staff knew if he was alive.
A Senate Bill has been introduced. NRA is not calling for action yet, just noting it. What’s interesting to me is that one of the sponsors of SB176 is Republican Stu Greenleaf, who is the committee chair for the Senate Judiciary Committee. Greenleaf lost his NRA endorsement after helping to sabotage Castle Doctrine with anti-gun amendments in the last session. I’m guessing his leadership position on this anti-gun bill means we can pretty much put him in the anti-gun column from now on.
What this means for Pennsylvania gun owners is that the party leadership of the Senate Judiciary Committee is now solidly anti-gun, despite the Republicans being in control of the Senate.
The Pennsylvania State Police are warning that the streets will become more dangerous if a major reform law is passed. For once, it’s not just gun owners being picked on for basic reforms. Today, it’s bar owners. What’s got the panties of law enforcement in a twist? Surely if they are warning that our streets will be flooded with drunks, it’s got to be something dramatic, right? Like making it legal to hand out bottles of tequila instead of mints with the bar tab?
One part of the new bill would mean changes to “happy hour.”
Under current state law, bars and taverns are allowed to reduce their alcohol prices for no more than two hours per day. In the proposed bill, establishments would still be limited to 14 hours of lower prices per week, but would be allowed to divide up the hours in any way.
Bars would be allowed to hold a four-hour “happy hour” for Monday Night Football or for a Sunday afternoon NASCAR race, said state Rep. John Payne (R-Dauphin), the bill’s sponsor.
Oh the humanity! Our children will all be run over by drunks because a bar can offer happy hour specials for 3 hours instead of 2! Yes, the PSP is actually warning lawmakers off of this dangerous new proposal.
These would be the same PSP folks who raided Philadelphia bars & stole gallons of beer from lawful business owners because they didn’t know how to read beer labels.
The bars – which specialized in foreign beers and craft brews – were raided in March and more than 300 bottles of beer and two kegs were confiscated. A subsequent investigation revealed police conducting the raids mistakenly confiscated legal beers because they misunderstood the some of the labels and the state’s list of legal beers contained misspellings and other errors.
I’m not anti-law enforcement, I’m just anti-stupid. When the department staff can’t even read a beer label to figure out if it’s legal or not, I have less than full faith that they have done serious research or have fully documented facts and figures to back up their warnings to lawmakers about a minor alcohol sales reform bill.