Snowflakes in Hell

Jeff Soyer bring us this bit on Colorado, where some Democratic legislators want to make it more difficult to obtain licenses for concealed carry. I don’t have much to add to what Jeff said except to make a point about something he mentioned in his post:

Colorado is NOT a “shall issue” state. As the FAQ says:

Regardless of whether the applicant meets the criteria specified, if the sheriff has reasonable belief that documented previous behavior by the applicant makes it likely the applicant will present a danger to self or others, the sheriff may deny the permit…

Meaning that if the Sheriff doesn’t like you, you’re fucked. Unspoken is the fact that if you voted the wrong way or are black or gay, you might not get your permit. I’m not saying they actually discriminate, simply that your permit approval is at the mercy of someone else’s subjective opinion.

Pennsylvania is also a shall issue state that isn’t really shall issue, since we have the same clause in our law that gives local sheriffs some discrescion over license issue. This was intended for people who might have a string of offenses, that would indicate they may not be entirely responsible individuals, but was not any of the enumerated offenses that would cause you to be denied by the statute. Most Sheriff’s within the Commonwealth do not abuse this discrescion, but the City of Philadelphia routinely does, and the appeals process in the City is stacked against the appelant, and my understanding is they routinely uphold denials by the Philadelphia Police for LTCs.

Fortunatly, for many Philadelphians who have a difficult time getting licenses, Florida is a true shall-issue state, and their license is recognized by Pennsylvania. There were more than a few people in my training class for the Florida CWL who had been denied by the city for minor infarctions. I suspsect what this politician wants to do is close that “loophole”, so that Denver’s abuse of the same clause will hold, and those denied won’t have recourse to seek licenses in true shall-issue states.

Today The View from North Central Idaho points us to a story in the media that’s decidedly not flattering to gun owners, but I put this in the category of “they gave us enough rope, and we didn’t disappoint”:

Wives were threats. Girlfriends were threats. They are the new scourges of secular life, hunting down unsuspecting men to get bucks and tear out their hearts. Women who talked too much were threats. And women who held public office and wouldn’t shut up were the scourge of the land. I also have picked up bumper stickers at gun shows that said: “I just got a gun for my wife. It’s the best trade I ever made.” Or handouts detailing the “Top 10 Reasons Handguns Are Better than Women,” ending with the No. 1 reason, “You can buy a silencer for a handgun.” I also had seen some pretty vicious materials on Hillary Clinton and Janet Reno. A new fear floated above some of the gun exhibits: judges, lawyers and voters were giving women too much power, and the women were using that power to take guns away from their husbands, their boyfriends and their constituents. A gun-grabber lurked in the heart of the liberated woman.

Women are the fastest growing segment of the shooting community.  Saying and doing things that alienate them, and make them feel unwelcome, is a great way to put our right to bear arms in jeaopardy over the long run. This is bad press, I agree with Joe on that, but it’s bad press that we deserved. Maybe the reporter came to that gun show with a pre-existing bias, but maybe she didn’t and we created an enemy where none had previously existed.

I don’t agree with many of the things this reporter says, and the article is definitely overtly hostile, but it should serve as a lesson to gun folks out there that you have to treat noobs with kid gloves, and not to just assume that anyone you talk to is a fellow gun enthusiast, and has already drank the kool-aid. Getting into the our community can be an intimidating experience for nephytes, and that might mean setting aside a lot of the politics and rhetoric we use with each other, and just try to get the person excited about the sport. We can work on all the other prejudices, stereotypes, and preconceived notions later.

From my friend and shooting buddy Jason, who isn’t cool enough to blog yet, I get this news item that the Principality of Sealand, an old World War II offshore artillery platform off the coast of Britain, is up for sale by the owner. A few years back the geek community was abuzz over a tech venture that set up a computer data center on the platform for use as a “data haven”. I’ve met some of the people involved with this venture, and Jason has the distinction of once beating Prince Michael at Hydro Thunder. The world would indeed be a poorer place without wealthy British eccentrics.

If you’ve ever wanted to own your own country, now is the chance.

Bitter has an interesting post up about some people who want to change divorce laws in Virginia that I think is worth a read:

So since a mandatory separation giving them a year to think about it already required, what is Clayton suggesting they change? It would appear from the article that the group really is trying to keep people from leaving a marriage if the other refuses to approve it. It’s not an ideal situation at all, but I think it’s a bad path to go down if we refuse to let them out of it. If they really are just trying to add punishment like making custody rules tighter or something for the person who files, I really don’t see how that does anything to improve a family.

I think Bitter is right here. If there’s a problem with people walking away from marriages too easily, the solution isn’t to pass more laws, and get the government to intrude more into people’s private lives. I don’t have too many issues with the government recognizing marriages, and dealing with the legal mess when they dissolve as a byproduct of that recognition, but I do have a problem, a big problem, with using it as a hook to meddle in people’s personal affairs. If the government ran my life as well as it runs itself, my life would be a mess. I agree that divorce is a problem, and people resort to it too quickly, but that’s not an issue for government to be concerned about.

It’s hard for me to understand how converatives like Clayton understand that the government is bad at running the economy, but somehow think it can be good at managing people’s lives. I don’t want people’s personal affairs becoming a political issue, no matter how messed up they are. People suck, and conservatives need to get over it, and stop looking for the government solutions to that basic fact.

I’m going to start a category of gun related posts entitled “How Not to Win”.  My intention is to point out issues within the pro-gun movement that I don’t think do us any favors politically, that don’t help win others over to our cause, and create barriers toward introducing new people to the shooting sports.  These three things are critical, because most statistics are showing the traditional hunting culture is contracting, and if all of us want to keep our boomsticks, we need to work at replacing them with different kinds of shooters.  As a community we certainly do a lot of squabbling among ourselves, , which is fine, even healthy, but at the end of the day, to quote Ben Franklin, we must hang together, or surely we will all hang seperately.

Up until now I’ve been pretty much an Evil Black Rifle guy, but lately I’ve been wanting to collect older stuff, since surplus is cheap, and I’m currently dumping a lot of money into remodeling a house. To that end, a few months ago, I obtained a C&R Federal Firearms License (FFL) from the ATF. I don’t notice too many gun bloggers blogging about C&R issues, so I figure I’d post some things about the subject from time to time.

The C&R license basically allows you to recieve and send firearms on the ATF C&R list, or any firearm over 50 years old in interstate commerce, from other licensed dealers, importers and wholesalers. Last night I completed my first purchase under the license; a Mosin-Nagant M91/30 from Century International Arms. I have to admit that it’s pretty cool to order a rifle off the Internet as if you were ordering a DVD on Amazon. It’ll be well worth the 30 dollars the license costs, since I intend to collect a few pieces. Needless to say, prices are lower when you can bypass your local dealer FFL and just order directly.

I never really completely liked Curt Weldon (which is probably true of any politician), when I lived in PA’s 7th congressional District, but I’m not really happy to see him replaced by an asshole like Joe Sestak. Gil Spencer has an editorial in the Delaware County Times that I think is worth a read if you follow Southeastern Pennsylvania politics:

When Weldon said during the campaign that he entered Congress poor 20 years ago and would leave congress poor, he wasn’t kidding. Exaggerating maybe, but only slightly. Compared to his peers, Weldon is poor. And not only poor, but under federal investigation for public corruption because he is suspected of helping friends and family make money off his political position.

The last spotting of Weldon I heard about was around Christmas time. He was at the Granite Run Mall, in jeans and a ball cap, pushing a stroller with one of his grandkids in it. His lawyer, Bill Canfield, says he’ll probably go back to teaching. No doubt he is hoping it will not be at some federal prison camp.
What’s true is that compared to many of his peers, Weldon is a piker when it comes to turning his office into a moneymaking machine.

Pennsylvania Democrat Jack Murtha ranks 335th among his fellow congressmen for personal net worth, but he’s helped his brother, Kit, and others make tens of millions. William Jefferson (D-La.) is said to be worth between $842,000 and $1.7 million depending, I guess, on whether all his appliances have been searched.

I don’t have a soft spot for corrupt politicians, and if Weldon is really guilty of what he’s been accused of, then I’m glad to have him out, but I’m not happy to have him replaced by Sestak, who I think will be a disaster for Delaware County. Weldon’s seat was targeted by the Democrats at the national level, and Weldon had a tough time keeping up with Sestak’s money machine. It was a bloodbath for Republicans in the Philadelphia suburbs. The surprising thing in all this is that the man no one expected to keep his seat, Jim Gerlach, managed to eek out a victory over Lois Murphy. The defeat of my Congress Critter, Mike Fitzpatrick, by Pat Murphy, hadn’t garnered as much media attention since Fitzpatrick had only served a single term in Congress, and was an easy target.

At some point the Republicans are going to have to deal with a basic fact if they want these seats back in 2008; that George W. Bush’s version of conservatism is wildly unpopular in the traditionally heavily Republican Philadelphia suburbs. Under Bush’s reign, the suburbs are becoming more blue, and to reverse that trend, the Republicans will need a candidate who can appeal to the middle. Philadelphia Republicans are economic conservatives, and while they might go for some of the milder social conservatism of the party, Bush’s record of freewheeling spending, combined with embracing some of the more radical social conservative elements of the party have alienated him from voters in this area. The culture of corruption the Republicans fostered in Congress didn’t help either, but that can probably be said of voters anywhere.