Pennsylvania – Page 40 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Happy Castle Doctrine Day!

Well, at least that’s what we hope to be saying by the end of the evening. The House comes into session at 1pm, and, according to John Micek, that means we might start to see some action on various legislation late this afternoon.

He also talks about the House Democratic leadership votes slated for tomorrow. It appears an NRA A-rated incumbent is likely to be Minority Leader, and that’s a nice perk even though the GOP won the House for the next term. For Democratic Whip, there’s another friend to gun rights running against 3 strong anti-gunners. That ain’t so good news.

I hope that all Pennsylvania gun owners learned why party leadership positions can make a difference in a vote. One man held up Castle Doctrine for months. The good news is that he’s being challenged from within his party by a pro-gun Democrat for the leadership position on his committee. While the Republicans will hold a bigger lead in the House next term than the Democrats currently have, we will still need the votes of pro-gun Democrats to defeat anti-gun amendments and to make up for any slacking anti-rights Republicans who might have slipped through. Even under one party rule, we can’t let this become a partisan issue.

Hohenwarter Q&A

Because we’ve had a voting session scheduled for Monday, where Castle Doctrine could possibly come up, I’ve informed NRA that we can wait until after Monday for the Q&A. John is going to have to be in Harrisburg, and I do not wish to distract him from the task at hand. Plus, it’ll add more to the story about the Castle Doctrine efforts. After Monday’s voting session is over, I will get questions in and get then answered as best I can.

In the mean time, probably better to contact your House rep, along with Rep. Eachus and Speaker McCall, and tell them you want them to vote on Castle Doctrine.

Hope for Castle Doctrine

The House Speaker has announced there will, in fact, be a voting session before the end of this legislative term. This offers us an opportunity to get Castle Doctrine passed. Please, please, contact your state rep, contact the leadership in the House, and tell them you want this done. See here for contact info.

We are down, but perhaps not out.

Ed Rendell’s Domestic Spy Agency

I was floored listening to NRA News the other night to learn some more details of the PA Department of Homeland Security, which was called out a few months ago for issuing an alert about the annual Second Amendment rally in Harrisburg. Now more details are coming out as to exactly what these people are up to. Have a listen:

Here’s a link to the story which talks about PA Homeland security spying on old quaker ladies. I’m not going to go so far as to say monitoring Twitter, a public forum, is “big brother” tactics, but is sure as hell seems like a total waste of my tax dollars. Now this, on the other hand, is big brother tactics. Remember that these are the same people who have been telling us that gun owners are a dangerous lot.

Ask Our NRA Lobbyist

On Friday we had some interesting comments in my thread about Castle Doctrine being dead. I spent a few hours at the end of the day on Friday and on Sunday talking to some folks at NRA about how they could communicate better with opinion leaders in this issue. Not wanting to just hurl criticism, I offered to do a Q&A session with John Hohenwarter, NRA’s Pennsylvania Liaison, and they agreed.

The way is will work is I’ll open the comments for readers to ask questions, and I’ll compile the best ones, add a few of my own if need be, and send them to John. My only request is to keep the questions limited towards issues we’re facing in Pennsylvania, rather than federal or general issues. Other than that, the field of questions is wide open. I’ll let this thread go for a few days before compiling the questions.

All the Mayor’s Men

Bitter does a rundown of how gun control advocates fared this election in Pennsylvania.

UPDATE: Bloomberg’s group AUSS is similar to the Bradys, in that they areÂ declaring victory.

The Stupid Party

I don’t understand how a man who may have the record for knocking on the most doors in a Pennsylvania election* can choose to ignore an NRA questionnaire when he’s a Republican running in a district with lots of working class or union middle class Democrats that borders two districts with huge gun clubs and in an area that supports lots of gun shops and even some commercial ranges.

Things we know:

Kevin Glasson did not respond to any of NRA’s mailings. Â This landed him with a big ? next to his name and resulted in no assistance from NRA in the way of a postcard mailer.
He lives right next to a district where the now incumbent state rep – who ran a similar uphill campaign in 2008 – actually ran into a man who brought his NRA magazine out of the voting booth and declared that no one with a ? gets his vote.
*He personally knocked on 13,000+ doors, so he’s definitely got the man of the people thing going for him.
He’s a firefighter in the community. Â That’s always a good thing in a race like this.
We already know that Democrats in the area were angry and more than happy to vote against their party. Â It was such a dramatic turnaround that even the NYT covered the shift.
He only lost by 301 votes.
Challengers benefit the most from NRA backing.

Of all the types of Democratic demographics in this area (NJ transplants, rich liberals, working class guys, union diehards, etc), his district probably has the most of the type who would be willing to cross over on something like the gun issue. Â By refusing to respond to NRA’s questionnaire, he didn’t even give them a choice between the two candidates. Â Yes, this election is all about the economy and jobs, but there are still folks looking for information on other issues. Â I had at least half a dozen union guys out of Philly and our district call me to tell me they would vote against their union this year and go all GOP. Â They just wanted to make sure their Republican choices were all pro-gun. Â I have to believe there were many more waiting on their NRA magazines to drop to find out about their local races in that district. Â Just imagine what the reaction might have been if it turns out he was actually pro-gun and received an endorsement and orange postcard. Â I wouldn’t be shocked if he could have found the 302 votes he needed that way.

If Glasson had won, it would have been nearly impossible to hold the seat through the next few election cycles. Â However, he would have been in for redistricting votes and hopefully to help us move Castle Doctrine along. Â I don’t want to pretend that the NRA endorsement is the magic bullet that will solve all of your election woes. Â But, in a county where about 20,000 people have licenses to carry, it’s not unreasonable that 300 votes could have been swayed by an NRA grade. Â But, that’s what you get with our local GOP folks. Â This isn’t the first year that Republicans have refused to even communicate with NRA, and it won’t be the last. Â If they are smart, they’ll learn. Â But I’m not sure I give them that much credit.

Castle Doctrine Officially Dead

We’ll have to try again next year. For this year, the Democrats have in charge of the House have announced there will be no more voting sessions this year. Next year the Republicans will control both houses. Let’s hope we can move a clean bill through both chambers, where Governor Corbett is sure to sign it.

Hope and Change Visualized

First, we had hope, and it looked like this:

Last night the voters of the Philadelphia Suburbs voted for change:

This looks more like the map I grew up with. I would note that each of those blue going red districts was an anti-gun Democrat being replaced by a pro-gun Republican. In addition, the Republican seats we held in the suburbs are solid. Allyson Schwartz, who’s district includes Philadelphia and heads out into Montgomery County, is the only gun hater left in the Philly suburbs. And this is where Bloomberg made his stand, dumped big money, and lost just as big. They tried to make gun control an issue and roundly lost.

UPDATE: That finger of blue coming down out of Berks County in the Northwest corner of this map? That’s Tim Holden’s district. Holden voted against Pelosi every step of the way, ran as a conservative rather than a Democrat, and carried an NRA endorsement. He’s a DINO.

PA Gun Owners to Bloomberg: Sit on This and Spin!

Bloomberg’s races have been swept across the board in our favor, and I couldn’t be more pleased. In the district I grew up in, PA-07, Pat Meehan cruised to a very comfortable victory over Bryan Lentz, who actively pushed the gun control agenda. Obviously Tom Corbett creamed Onorato, DanÂ Onorato, who joined Lentz in pushing a gun control agenda. In the 8th District, we’re finally rid of Patrick “I want to ban your M1” Murphy. He’s replaced with Mike Fitzpatrick, who had a pro-gun voting record in Congress in his single term (2004-2006), and carried an NRA endorsement in 2006 and this election. Pat Toomey managed to squeak by Mr. Gun Control himself, Joe Sestak, despite his foo-foo dog. In the race of a Â MAIG Mayor against incumbent Republican Congressman Charlie Dent, Dent beat Callahan roundly. NRA went out in a big way to help Dent, and I’m glad to see it paid off.

Mike Bloomberg floated 500,000 to CeaseFire PA to run anti-gun ads against pro-gun Republicans this election cycle, in the very media market that pro-gun Republicans won big. It did not help the Democrats. Pennsylvania gun owners want you to go home, Mayor Mike. That’s the message. In my local races, we won them all. The only exception being a local state rep race, Rob Ciervo, who’s is so close right now it’s going to lawyers and will end up in a fight over absentee ballots, an issue that’s current very much in contention in Bucks County. I sincerely hope Rob can pull it out still. Rob’s district is a potential pickup for us, and believing our other seats were largely safe, I put as much as I could into that race. Ciervo is a lesson that every vote counts. This could literally come down to a few votes when all is said and done.

If the lesson isn’t that gun control can hurt you, it is at the very least that it can’t save you. I believe Mayor Mike won’t give up, but perhaps he can find more fruitful places to spend his money than Pennsylvania. We’re coming for New York’s gun laws, Mayor Mike. For gun control advocates, this isn’t an offensive action anymor. You better start thinking about a strict defensive policy after this shellacking you’ve been handed in the Keystone State. Gun rights is advancing on all fronts. Whatever victories you might claim now will be little comfort. You’re the struggling redoubt of a dying movement. Best to start acting accordingly.