Snowflakes in Hell

A guide to which states consume the most beer.  Seems that Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota and Nevada drink more than most.  You’d think for people that drink so much beer, Montana would have better microbreweries.  Maybe this is my excuse to move out there.

Dustin looks at all the successes this year.  Many of these are great victories, but among those are the Parking Lot bill.  From the “not sure why NRA makes this a priority” department, the Goldwater Institute, normally a friend of gun rights, is planning on challenging the legitimacy of the law.

“The Goldwater Institute strongly supports the right to keep and bear arms,” Bolick stated, adding that the Institute filed a brief in Heller v. District of Columbia, the U.S. Supreme Court case that strengthened Second Amendment rights. “But it is a right against government, not against private individuals. This bill does violence to private property rights.”

As I’ve said, I don’t think the issue is really about property rights, but is really about employment law.  Whatever is in your car is your property, and your employer has no legal power to search your vehicle.  But your employer doesn’t have to continue a relationship with you if you do something that’s a violation of the employee agreement.  That employers bar guns in their workplaces and on their property is no more a violation of my right to bear arms than if a friend has the same rule for his house.  My response to a friend who wanted to search my vehicle would be the same as it would be to an employer, namely a to very nicely and politely tell them to go to hell.

As a society, we do accept government intrusion into the employer/employee relationship for a number of things, chief among those to prevent discrimination.  But that is a special case.  As a rule, I’m not comfortable with the government interfering in private relationships.  It is a restriction on freedom of association that should not occur in a free society.  There are better ways to make companies reconsider anti-gun policies than by government meddling in private relationships.

Let’s say that a future government has decided to incarcerate wrong thinking people into “reeducation camps,” to try to get people thinking right, and to quietly “take care” of all those who can’t be rehabilitated.  Free speech is suppressed, the media made an arm of the state, and the government refuses to stand for free and fair elections.  In that situation, most people would recognize the government has forfeited any claim to legitimacy.  We fought a World War, and a risky, expensive, and protracted cold war against such governments.  Most people, I would wager, would agree such a government ought to be resisted, and violently if necessary.  But I have to question how some view the form that would take on.

Do folks really believe that if the proverbial shit were to hit the fan, that the people will prevail by the people bringing out their privately owned tanks, RPGs, anti-tank missiles, artillery, mortars, F-16s, helicopter gunships, surface-to-air missiles, to fight and defeat a modern army, or even part of one, on its own terms in conventional military operations?  I would posit that warfare has changed a great deal since 1776, and even if the courts agreed the Second Amendment protected all of these things, it would be entirely symbolic and meaningless.  Very few people could afford them, or even if they could afford them, they wouldn’t own such things in large enough numbers to make any real difference.

This is not to say that I think the Second Amendment’s purpose of enabling people to resist a criminal government is completely obsolete, just that it’s not going to happen the same way it did in 1776, only with modern weapons.  Any resistance to a criminal government in the modern age will take conventional small arms, explosives, information, intelligence, and will.  Small arms we have to ensure are protected under the Second Amendment.  Explosives are impossible to control in such a situation, and will be available no matter what laws regulate them under a legitimate government.  Intelligence and will are organizational qualities that are unrelated to arms.  Hell, I would argue that the ability to tinker with model airplanes is more important to the modern concept of “militia” than knowing the principles of artillery, and knowing RF communication principles far more important than knowing logistics.

In the history of 20th century warfare, this has played out more than a few times.  The Vietcong engaged in an extensive and largely successful guerrilla campaign, with only what their fighters could carry on their backs.  In fact, the fatal mistake of the Vietcong was to come out of the jungle, and fight an offensive against the U.S. military on conventional terms.  Militarily, Tet was a defeat for the VC, and it destroyed them as a fighting force.  But Tet broke the American will, and in that sense was not a failure.  It is, however, a harsh lesson what happens when a guerrilla force tries to fight a conventional army on its own terms.

What I advocate here is not an extinction of the original purpose of the Second Amendment, but to emphasise that the priority has to be on protecting conventional small arms.  I don’t think whether destructive devices are protected or not really makes all that much difference in the overall scheme of things.  The nature of modern warfare has not made the Second Amendment’s “defense against tyrannical government” obsolete, but it has changed the equation enough that appeals to how things were in 1776 aren’t much use in figuring out how it would be applied in a modern context.

Arizona Rifleman wonders why commie bloc ammo smells so bad.  I’ve always figured it was the priming compound they use.  I’ve noticed that even with .22 ammo, there’s a difference in smell between, say, federal, and anything that is Eley primed.  Could be the powder, but even the cheap Eley primed Mexican ammo smells this way.

Now they are forced to sell their access to the White House, Congress, and their reporters instead of ads.  How much for a pro-gun op-ed prominently placed in the Post?  Can we buy some positive coverage of the shooting sports in the sports section?  A great puff piece on Women on Target?  Can NRA get a non-profit discount?  Inquiring minds want to know!

Cemetery has a link to a letter he receieved from Fred “One-Gun-a-Month” Madden, assuring him that he was against the the one-gun-a-month bill.  Looks like New Jersey Coalition for Self-Defense picked up on this one too.  I wonder what Fred’s spiel is now?

Looks like some folks are planning on suing over the restaurant carry thing.  Walls of the City points out how ridiculous the suit is.  You also have cities claiming that public streets are no such thing.  Louisville had a similar setup, though without the metal detectors.  You had to present ID and be over 21 to walk down the street.  I figured carry was fine as long as you weren’t drinking or at the bar.  Kentucky’s law allows carry in restaurants, just not the bar area.  I’m pretty sure carry is fine down that street in TN too.  Someone needs to challenge that.

New Jersey Senator Fred Madden and Governor Corzine apparently thinks it ought to be harder for law enforcement officers to get the firearms they need to protect themselves while on duty.  While the New Jersey one-gun-a-month law provides exceptions for law enforcement, it doesn’t offer exemptions for the dealers many smaller law enforcement agencies purchase firearms from.  Agencies that are too small for distributors to deal with directly.

It is important, I think, to come up with legal distinctions between certain types arms, protected by the Second Amendment, and other types of arms, which are unprotected.  Even most people who believe in a very broad reading of the Second Amendment would generally agree the Second Amendment protects no right for someone to have a nuclear, chemical or biological weapon of mass destruction.  Even if there is not agreement among Second Amendment activists about where the boundary ought to be, we can at least agree that there is a boundary, and distinctions must be made between arms that are protected, and those that are not.

The Second Amendment constructed by Heller protects the right of self-preservation, or more precisely, the tools necessary to exercise the right of self-preservation.  Under that kind of interpretation, the courts would examine the device’s utility for that purpose, when seeking to discover whether it is an “arm” in the scope of the Second Amendment.  It would seem unlikely that destructive devices of an explosive nature would be possessed for such a purpose.  But as I’ve said before, I don’t think the courts can just consider self-preservation under normal circumstances, but must also consider extraordinary circumstances, to determine whether a particular arm is useful for self-defense, and should fall under Second Amendment protection.  In the case of a .50 BMG vs. a pipe bomb or grenade, I think a distinction can be made.

The first distinction is that a .50BMG most definitely is useful for personal self-defense, in that it is a discriminate weapon, that can be aimed at a threat, and can disable that threat.  A grenade is not so discriminate.  It has to be lobbed a certain distance in order not to injure the thrower, and is only very generally discriminative, in that the shrapnel it sends in all directions does not distinguish between friend and foe, and can cause considerable collateral damage to property.

But I think there’s another distinction between the two.  One can imagine a .50BMG being useful in a period of temporary civil disorder, such as a hurricane or an earthquake, where an ability to disable a vehicle, or shoot through cover, could mean the difference between self-preservation and being dead. One can also imagine a grenade, for instance, being useful for fending off multiple attackers.  In either temporary, or a more lasting civil disorder, both could be useful.  But obtaining a precision rifle, such as a .50BMG rifle, is probably going to be very difficult during civil unrest.  Obtaining explosives is easy, as the ingredients to create them would be readily available even in the event of civil breakdown.  In that instance, I think it’s not unreasonable to suggest that banning the manufacture or possession of pipe bombs does not run afoul of the Second Amendment, because under ordinary circumstances, they aren’t useful for self-defense, and under extraordinary circumstances, in the absence of law and order, they would be available.  I think that likely strengthens the government’s case that the burden on self-defense is minimal.

Of course, this very fact makes the effectiveness of the law suspect, at best, since it wouldn’t be hard for those with criminal intent to make them under normal circumstances, but this isn’t an argument about what makes for good public policy, but about what is constitutional.  When it comes to that, I’m willing to accept a Second Amendment that doesn’t cover destructive devices, if their exclusion makes the federal courts more likely to offer stronger protections to other small arms.  The burden created on my ability to defend myself is minimal, and even for those who argue that the Second Amendment is meant to guard against tyrannical government, let’s face it, under those kinds of circumstances, pipe bombs aren’t going to be hard to come by.

I should note, based on some of the conversation going on in the previous post, that there’s a difference between a destructive device and an explosive.  True, that explosives are often a component of destructive devices, but merely being an explosive doesn’t qualify.  Also, not all things that make loud noises, or somewhat resemble the action of an explosive, are actually explosives.

Generally speaking, the possession of explosives by civilians is regulated at both the federal and state level, but is not terribly restrictive under most circumstances.  You can get a license, without too much difficulty, to manufacture and handle explosives.  Federal regulations contain distinctions between explosives, pyrotechnics, and blasting agents, but generally, aren’t regulated as destructive devices.

What makes something a destructive device, according to federal regulations is that it is “designed or redesigned for use as a weapon.”  Generally speaking, a pipe bomb is a destructive device that contains explosives.  What makes it a destructive device is that the “pipe” which surrounds the explosive is meant to fragment and send shrapnel in all directions, traveling along with the blast wave created by the explosive.  The government would argue that the only reason to possess such a device is as a weapon.  The court, in the case mentioned, found it unlikely such a device would be possessed for the purposes of self-defense, given the indiscriminate nature of a shrapnel driven by explosives.

Word came this morning that Arizona’s Senate passed restaurant carry. Assuming Governor Brewer (who spoke at the NRA Convention) signs it, it will make Phoenix a fantastic city for future NRA meetings. Those of us from out of town won’t have to make the call between leaving guns unattended in hotel rooms or just going to dinner at a joint that happens to serve beer.

UPDATE: Here’s the NRA press release.

It appears to be official, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney is going to challenge Kirsten Gillibrand for her Senate seat.

Geraghty is right that Maloney is no friend of gun owners. But then again, neither is Kirsten Gillibrand since going to the Senate. Don’t get me wrong, Maloney would be a disaster for gun owners, but I won’t shed a tear if Gillibrand loses the seat in a primary.

UPDATE: And if the first poll stands, there will be quite a knock down fight.

Looks like the FDA panel considering regulatory changes to acetominophen has decided that Percoset and Vicodin have to go.  This is going to essentially mean that people who have procedures that cause mild to severe pain, like having wisdom teeth removed, or having a minor surgery, are going to find it very difficult to find pain relief.

Percoset and Vicodin are both combination therapies, combing acetaminophen with oxycodone, in the case of Percoset, and hydrocodone, in the case of Vicodin.  Because of this, they are Schedule III drug under the Controlled Substances Act.  Regulators feel the acetaminophen content makes the drug less likely to be abused, so it is so classified.  That doesn’t stop people from trying, however, and a number of people each year fry their livers either by taking too much, or because they did some failed home chemistry trying to separate the narcotic drug from its codrug.

Oxycodone and hydrocodone, on their own, are both Schedule II drugs, meaning they have a theraputic use, but are likely to cause addiction and be abused.  Doctors are very reluctant to prescribe Schedule II drug, because they attract more heat from regulators.  There are also additional restrictions on Schedule II drugs, such as a doctor’s office not being able to call in a new prescription (it takes a physical, written prescription to make changes to dose, or get a refill).  If this is the only option available, many doctors, oral surgeons, periodontists, and various other medical professionals who often have a need to treat pain, are less likely to prescribe narcotic pain killers.   While this would probably be just fine by regulators, if you’re in pain and can’t find relief, a narcotic is often the only thing that will do the job.

Fortunately, there are a few alternatives, although they are expensive.  One is Vicoprofen, which is a combination of ibuprofen and vicodin.  For many people, it’s a viable alternative to narcotics in combination with acetaminaphen, but for many people, it is not.  Particularly people with gastrointestinal disorders, people taking blood thinners, or people with inflammatory bowel disease.  Another is good old fashioned Tylenol with Codeine, but unfortunately, for 10% or so of the population, their livers lack the enzyme necessary to convert codeine to morphine, which makes the drug’s narcotic component useless to them.

Don’t think, either, that just because many OTC pain releivers and many narcotics are both GRAS, or Generally Reocnigzed as Safe, that you can just combine them at will, and sell them on the market.  Combination therapies have to go through the FDA approval process as if they were new drugs, which means major costs to do the clinical trials.  No pharmaceutical company is going to do that without patent protection.  In short, if Vicoprofen doesn’t work for you, you’re screwed.  You can suffer in pain.  Hope and Change has come, folks!

Eugene Volokh has a summary of the ruling from the 11th circuit.  Eugene Volokh speaks of the entertainment value also, but a pipe bomb is a destructive device.  You can have plenty of fun with things that go boom without making a destructive device.  Just ask Joe.  Of course, this is ignoring the “defense from tyrannical government” argument, which I think is important, but I think the government should have power to regulate explosive ordnance, or other items that have little use for self-defense, and pose an inherent risk to the community, no matter how responsible a person is.

… when there’s more passionate debate going on in the gun blogosphere about shooting.  Hey, I’m happy just being able to watch this one from a detached distance.

It’s pretty clear by now that the federal government is completely out of control.  I’m in agreement with Yoseminite Sam about the new Con & Trade scheme recently passed by the House:

To say that I am angry is an understatement. One of the more outrageous parts of this outrageous bill is a requirement for a home energy audit upon selling a home. If your home fails this audit then the seller would have to pay to fix the problems outlined in the audit. So if you have an older home(like me) that has older appliances(like me), you will have to pay thousands of dollars to get new appliances, air conditioners or water heaters even if those appliances are in perfect working order. So much for the reduce, reuse, recycle encomium that the environmentalists keep prating on about. The landfills will be full of these still functioning appliances.

I’m probably a little less angry at the Amerian people though, because polls show that Obama’s policies are unpopular.  I don’t think it’ll be very long until that causes his approval ratings to take a hit.  I think that most people really had no idea what they were getting with Obama, as much as many of us tried to warn them.

But it’s not just Obama.  It’s pretty clear the federal bureaucracy is completely out of control as well.  Just yesterday, for instance, comes this story about the need to further regulate Tylenol.  And this is just the latest in a long line of insults.  It’s like, with the cat out of the White House, the mice now feel like they have free reign over the place.

What’s even more depressing is I don’t see the Republicans in a position to be able to capitalize on the unpopularity of Obama’s policies.  I don’t think we’re going to see a resurgent 1994 “Contract with America.”   Besides, we’ve been through the Republican Revolution once already, and I don’t know if liberty could afford another.

The only way I think we’re going to fix things is to build a movement to amend the Constitution.  If Republicans are smart, I would capitolize on this by calling for a Constitutional amendment.  First things first, we need a balanced budget amendment.  Second I think Republicans really ought to consider pushing Randy Barnett’s Federalism Amendment.  I think it needs some work to make it feasible, but if we can get a handful of states to pass laws opting out of the federal gun control regime, we ought to be able to get them to pass an amendment that limits the power of the national government.

The best part is, we don’t even need the Federal Government to do it.  We’ve been frightened of the idea of a Constitutional Convention, because it would likely be hijacked by the left, but why do we fear that?  Red states, even in the era of Obama, still greatly outnumber blue states.  I don’t think there’s much danger the country is going to adopt a new socialist constitution.

Given the nature of political life in this country, I don’t think there’s going to be any way to get the federal government under control unless we tie it down through constitutional amendment.  The progressives managed to greatly expeand the power of government through this method in the early part of the 20th century.  Why couldn’t we?

It’s always interesting to see how foreign media covers the gun debate in this country.  I can’t say it looks any different than what you’d find from, say, the New York Times:

Now America’s powerful gun lobby is pushing for the introduction of “commonsense” laws in Arizona that would allow people to walk into bars with guns — just as they did in the old days. Tennessee and Georgia have approved the measure in the past year and a similar law is now being considered by Arizona’s state legislature.

Pennsylvania is already the “wild west” then, and unlike Arizona, we have no restrictions against drinking while carrying.  Though, I think being caught intoxicated in public while carrying would probably be grounds for the sheriff to revoke your LTC.  Either way, I don’t see why this is always such a big deal.  It’s not like gunfights breaking out in bars is a common occurrence here, and we have a lot more LTC holders than any other state in the nation.

Evan Nappen is the foremost authority on New Jersey gun laws, which is no small feat, given how complicated they are.  He takes a look at the new one-gun-a-month bill passed by the House and Senate and concludes it has a number of drafting problems, including restricting dealers to getting one gun a month from distributors, allowing gun owners who want to dispose of a firearm collection only transfer one-gun-a-month to a dealer, and even fails to make certain exception for armed forces.  Evan says the law is so bad, it will virtually end retail handgun sales in New Jersey.  Maybe that was the point.

Story from Singapore.

I’ve seen this mistake made many times. Since most of you guys don’t follow me on Twitter, I thought I would hijack Sebastian’s blog while he’s driving to work to “re-Tweet” this reminder to a wider audience.

RT @APStylebook: Capitalize references to the U.S. Constitution with or without the U.S. modifier: The president said he supports the Constitution.

From NRA:

Kansas Attorney General Steve Six today concluded that the State of Kansas will now recognize ‘non-resident’ right-to-carry permits issued by any of the 22 states already recognized.

“NRA has maintained for years that language in the Kansas statute indicates that ‘non-resident’ right-to-carry permits should be recognized,” said Chris W. Cox, NRA chief lobbyist. “This decision is a victory for gun owners as it expands right-to-carry laws and provides permit holders additional freedoms in Kansas to protect themselves and their families.”

I guess this helps make up for losing Nevada.

Remember that bill Wayne Pacelle was complaining NRA was opposing?  Well, it stalled in the house and is headed back to committee.  I think that’s a good outcome, because there are things in the bill that I don’t think we ought to have any trouble with, but some things really need to change.  I’m rather mystified that the following groups are joining forces with HSUS on this:

The Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs was joined in support of the bill by the Quality Deer Management Association, the National Wild Turkey Federation, Pheasants Forever, United Bowhunters of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Ruffed Grouse, Pennsylvania Forest Coalition, Pennsylvania Crossbow Association and the Pennsylvania Deer Association.

Support also came from P.E.T.A. and the Humane Society, both anti-hunting groups.

Considerable fuss was made when the National Rifle Association questioned the bill, even though the NRA supported the concept. It became almost a frenzy as people and groups joined in condemning the N.R.A. over their mere concern.

There’s just no way that poaching should be in the same league as robbing a bank.  Sorry, no.  It’s a misdemeanor at most.  The District Attorney’s association and the gun rights groups in this state were right to raise concerns.  If Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen’s Clubs, which I am a member of, is going to keep joining forces with Wayne Pacelle and PETA, I will not renew my membership with them and will cease supporting the organization.  I fear they are already suffering for Melody Zullinger’s absence.

Red State has a list of Democrats who are vulnerable because of their vote on Cap & Trade.  My Congressman is one of them.  Let’s hope the Republicans run a serious candidate against him in 2010.  This isn’t an opportunity to squander.

The Arizona Rifleman is offering to tumble brass for the cost of shipping.  I could keep his tumbler busy for a while with what I’ve collected.  I will make a similar offer, except I get to keep the brass when I’m done :)

Looks like a number of Pennsylvania teams and shooters did quite well.