Philadelphia – Page 2 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Now With “More Me”

In the mailbox this morning:

Discover the IMPROVED INQUIRER!Â If you haven’t seen The Inquirer in a while, it’s time to look again. Because there’s a better Inquirer, and improved Inquirer, now with MORE YOU.

There’s already enough of me, I think. In fact, there could stand to be about 50 pounds less of me. I don’t want more me in my newspaper, but I’d really like one that presents local news in a balanced fashion, and isn’t just a mouthpiece for the establishment left. So until they apologize for that, instead of saying “MORE YOU,” I’ll continue monitoring other sources.

Seriously, that has to be the dumbest marketing campaign I’ve ever seen. I hope they didn’t pay too much for someone to come up with the MORE YOU campaign. If so, I’d want my money back.

“Assaulted: Civil Rights Under Fire” Comes to Philly

It’s going to be screened at the Ritz at the Bourse, 4th and Ranstead Street, Philadelphia, PA. That’s here, for those interested.

Assaulted: Civil Rights Under Fire
With Guest Speaker Gun Rights Attorney Joshua Prince

Thursday, August 8th 7:30pm $13.00
Ritz at the Bourse, 4th and Ranstead Street, Philadelphia

Tickets are available ONLINE ONLY. Please reserve yours ASAP.
https://www.tugg.com/go/akjcvx
You will not be charged unless/until screening attendance threshold is met.

Here’s the trailer:

The LTC Process in Philly

Despite the state making an effort to standardize the LTC application process, Philly is still wants to do things their own way.

The application itself is 4 (four) pages if you print some of them front/back. Doesnt that go against what is outline in:

18 Pa.C.S. Â§ 6109: Licenses (c) Form of application and content.–The application for a license to carry a firearm shall be uniform throughout this Commonwealth and shall be on a form prescribed by the Pennsylvania State Police. The form may contain provisions, not exceeding one page, to assure compliance with this section. Issuing authorities shall use only the application form prescribed by the Pennsylvania State Police.

Or am I just dense?

You’re not dense, no. But the law doesn’t honestly mean anything to these people, and it’s always just been cheaper to go get yourself a Florida license that to try to challenge the system. Kathy Kane might have just changed that equation, however. In every jurisdiction except for “cities of the first class,” which Philadelphia (and only Philadelphia) is under PA law, the issuing authority is the sheriff. For Philadelphia it is the Chief of Police. One bill I’ve seen would allow applications to be made to neighboring jurisdictions. This would be a useful first step, on the way to fixing this issue by not requiring permits, and may be useful for people who live in sprawling counties where the neighboring sheriff may actually be closer.

Things I Don’t Understand About Voting in Philly

I’m baffled by the stories that come out of Philadelphia after every single election. Last November, one polling location staffed by many Democrats thought it was perfectly appropriate to line up the voting machines in a room with a giant mural of a candidate on the ballot. A judge had to step in and let them know to cover it up. I wouldn’t even care if it was my candidate, my first thought would be to send someone out for a tarp, bed sheet, or giant roll of paper to cover it since it could clearly be seen as electioneering. But, no. This is something that Philadelphia poll workers needed a court to order.

After yesterday’s primary, the news was complaining about the lack of “shenanigans” that required court intervention in Philadelphia. I mean, how dare these people think that holding reasonable elections without rampant violations of election laws is acceptable?

That said, the main story this highlight still leaves me baffled. Apparently a candidate on the ballot tried to convince a poll worker running the elections to wear a temporary tattoo that promoted his campaign. The story says that the candidate was joking (but he apparently doesn’t dispute that he made the suggestion), but the opposition still went to court in order to get a judge to make it official that candidates should not be pushing poll workers to campaign illegally inside polling places. I would think this is common sense, but apparently not in Philadelphia.

And for these many reasons, I’ll never understand that city. I’m even more confused by the voters who consider all of this reasonable behavior.

Only The Police Are Responsible Enough to Have Guns

An M16 is missing from a Philadelphia Police locker:

“Obviously, this is very, very serious,” Ramsey said. “And believe me, we will get to the bottom of it, one way or another, I guarantee that.”

You’d think a critical mass of plutonium had gone missing or something. I mean, not that it’s not a problem, but I won’t lose any sleep over a missing M16, at least not anymore than who might be buying pressure cookers.

I’d also note that I hope that the weapon pictured in the story is not typical of the condition of the firearms in the PPD arsenal. If so, ugh.

Philadelphia Crapping on Preemption Yet Again

They are banning guns in parks and city owned public property. Obviously, this is illegal under Pennsylvania’s preemption law, but since there’s no cost to violating preemption, they routinely do it. Unfortunately, this also shows how little regard Philadelphia has for its police officers, who would be open to civil rights suits for enforcing this ordinance, given that preemption is well-established in the Courts. Any officer enforcing this law is open to being personally sued, and that suit can reach up the chain of command all the way to Nutter. Pennsylvania has a bill pending that would give teeth to the preemption statute, but so far it hasn’t moved.

So Many Lies…

The district he represents will never be competitive, but I would still like to think that the constituents of Rep. Chakah Fattah’s district deserve better than being lied to about what the laws are surrounding gun sales in Pennsylvania.

It’s just such flagrant disrespect, especially to a crowd of seemingly older folks who he probably views as too passive to actually challenge his fact-challenged anti-gun rant.

The Usefulness of Gun Control

Anti-gun lawmakers from Philadelphia are speaking out on Pennsylvania’s new concealed carry reciprocity restrictions. What are they saying?

“I donâ€™t think itâ€™s going to drastically affect violence in Philadelphia.” – Rep. Kevin Boyle (D-rated by NRA)
â€œItâ€™s not the people with legitimate guns, itâ€™s the people with the street guns who are destroying the neighborhood.â€ – Rep. James Clay (refused to answer NRA member questions during his election)
â€œWe have to be realistic. This isnâ€™t a panacea thatâ€™s going to solve all of our problems.â€ – Rep. Brendan Boyle (D+ rating from NRA)

In other words, this served absolutely no purpose even though many of the Philadelphia lawmakers previously claimed that “closing the Florida Loophole” would absolutely make a huge difference to solving Philadelphia’s crime rates. Now that they have it, these lawmakers are calling for more laws and restrictions.

Taking Away the Supply of Guns

Several top anti-gun leaders have seemingly conceded that they cannot get away with pushing bills to go door-to-door to round up all the guns. It doesn’t mean they don’t want to, it just means that they acknowledge there’s too much public acceptance of allowing people to own the firearms they legally purchased. So, their next goal is to end our ability to purchase the guns in the first place. Sen. Dianne Feinstein said, “The purpose [of her bill] is to dry up the supply of these weapons over time.”

We already know that Cerberus has essentially been forced to put Freedom Group up for sale due to threats from those in charge of investing California’s pension funds. Philadelphia is pulling its investments out of gun companies and investment funds that invest in gun companies unless they meet key conditions. What kinds of conditions? Gun companies must:

Promote gun control, including new hurdles for lawful gun and ammunition purchasers;
Give support (assuming financial since there’s no other that would make sense here) to cities to fund new record keeping options that would supposedly be used to share criminal records with NICS;
Conduct a background check on every single firearm and ammunition transfer – all the way down the line;
Stop producing their most popular products;
Dedicate any research budget for new product development to so-called “smart” guns;
Use any remaining product development budget to create an ammunition registry;
Harass every customer at every sale about the history of firearms training;
Redesign all existing products to include, at minimum, 4 serial numbers;
Fund gun buyback programs; and
Stop support of gun shows.

That’s just the highlights. Essentially, the demand from Philadelphia’s pension board is that gun companies should just shut themselves down before they can qualify for investments. Some of this stuff isn’t even possible given the distribution methods of the industry, but that isn’t stopping the big cities from making these demands.

Today’s headline is that Rahm Emmanuel is going after banks that allow gun manufacturers to do business with them, this is in addition to getting the city of Chicago to pull money out of gun companies and related funds.

They don’t just want a little gun control. They want to destroy the entire gun culture by making it so that even the law-abiding cannot easily find or buy firearms, and even if we pass them down, our children or grandchildren won’t have anywhere to turn to get them fixed or be able to buy new versions. Feinstein’s plan isn’t about drying up the supply of firearms. It’s about drying up the entire gun culture.

The Real Problems of School Security

Remember when the media said that NRA was nuts for suggesting that schools consider a wide-ranging security plan, not only for school shooters, but for other security threats that weren’t as obvious? Yeah, most of us do.

Well, shortly after dinner, my phone started going nuts with alert to look up the local Amber Alert. I Googled it as a good little citizen, and it just goes to show that the schools don’t take security seriously at all. A 5-year-old was kidnapped from her own classroom and the school didn’t even bother to report her missing.

According to what has been released in the last few hours, a woman described as wearing “Muslim-style clothing” walked into a school before 9am–minutes after the girl was dropped off–told the staff she was a mother, didn’t show ID, scribbled a line that was not a name onto a log sheet, walked into a classroom to tell the teacher that she signed a kid out and the teacher handed the student over, which, needless to say, is not “protocol.” The teacher just allowed her to walk out with the little girl without being questioned or stopped. Neither the teacher nor school officials bothered to follow their own procedures to find out if this was a person who even had permission to pick up the girl. They didn’t report the odd circumstance. They just let the kidnapper get away for hours without any report of what kind of vehicle she might be in, what direction she headed, or whether there were accomplices.

It was only when the girl’s daycare program that picks her up from school noticed that she wasn’t present and called her mom to verify that she was legitimately absent that anyone took notice. By that time, it was almost 3pm. The kidnapper had a 6 hour head start, and all because the school staff member was too lazy to question why a stranger who never had to show any ID just walked into a classroom and demanded to take a little girl.

These people aren’t serious about the safety of other people’s children. The child was dropped off just minutes before, and not a single staff member thought it would be odd that someone would turn around and pick them up within 5 minutes. The staff just believed a nice little title from the stranger that she was “mom” even though they couldn’t see her face or recognize her if they had known her since she purposefully covered everything except her eyes. The teacher just believed the stranger that she signed a kid out and handed the child right over. They simply didn’t care enough to give a second thought to that child and the very clearly odd circumstances in front of them.

If you have the means, you might want to take more seriously the Buffy the Vampire Slayer quote channeled by Glenn Reynolds and consider that home schooling is “not just for scary religious people any more.” At least then you’ll know that the person supervising your children actually cares enough to consider real security.