Snowflakes in Hell

Turns out we have a fun keynote speaker for the NRA banquet next week.  I’m lookin forward to it.

Kim du Toit, or one of his readers, rather, points to a bill that would bring gun registration to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  This bill doesn’t stand a chance, but there’s something everyone in Pennsylvania should be aware of.

The Pennsylvania state police already operate handgun registration in conflict with the Uniform Firearms Act.   Last year Pennsylvania Supreme Court heard a lawsuit bought against the state police over this section in the Uniform Firearms Act:

Notwithstanding any section of this chapter to the contrary, nothing in this chapter shall be construed to allow any government or law enforcement agency or any agent thereof to create, maintain or operate any registry of firearm ownership within this Commonwealth. For the purposes of this section only, the term “firearm” shall include any weapon that is designed to or may readily be converted to expel any projectile by the action of an explosive or the frame or receiver of any such weapon.

The Supreme Court ruled that the State Police database wasn’t, in fact, a firearms registry, even though they can easily find out what hanguns I own, but merely a record of sale.  Because it was created from the sales data the state police collects, and wasn’t a comprehensive registry, it was no registry.

This surprised everyone, including legislators, who were pretty sure they had passed a prohibition on exactly this.   I was told by my state representative that there would be a  legislative solution, but it didn’t make it through last year.   My guess is there’s no way it’s going to get past Ed Rendell.

So I hope Kim’s reader will not only write his state represenative and state senator about this registration bill, but ask that the legislature act to end the de-facto gun registry currently being operated by the state police.

Well, OK, it wasn’t a boxing match.   If it had been, it would have been worth the drive to see it.  But it was a debate, and the SMU Daily Campus has some balanced coverage of it.

Looks like the Brady Campaign is most worried about castle doctrine, which make sense given it’s one of the NRA’s priorities.

Bob Levy asks via Instapundit:

Nobody at the NRA has provided a credible answer to this simple question: Why is the NRA pushing the DC Personal Protection Act? If the NRA were to say, “You’re going to lose, so we want to kill the litigation,” I would understand that argument — although I would dispute the premise. Instead, we’re hearing that the NRA wants the Supremes to review Parker. There’s a disconnect somewhere.

I’m not speaking with any special insider knowledge. I really like to know more too, and I don’t discount the possibility the NRA is just being stupid. But I think the disconnect is politics.

The NRA can’t really afford politically to ignore pro-gun legislation that’s being introduced in Congress and leave it’s pro-gun allies in Congress high and dry on a bill they’ve been pushing for a while. I suspect originally, the NRA’s attitude was “you’re going to lose, so we want to kill the litigation”, as Levy mentioned. I can’t blame them, because originally I didn’t think Parker would win either, and there’s a lot of “the courts are too risky” sentiment in the pro-gun community, and for good reason.

But now Parker won, and the NRA is in a pickle. It won’t want to derail Parker, but at the same time it can’t just pull the plug on the D.C. Personal Protection Act either. Do one, and you piss off membership who would like the Supreme Court rule on the second amendment, do the other and you piss off the lobbyists, staffers and politicians who have been working hard on the legislative side. Plus, there’s a not insignificant chance that Parker will fail. Any direction they go, the NRA is screwed. So what to do? Talk out both sides of your mouth, and try not to piss anyone off too much. It’s politics, and politics is ugly.

… when you can just look like you’re fighting crime.  That’s my take on Philadelphia Police Commissioner Johnson’s latest stunt of putting more police brass out on patrol for four hours a week.  I’m not sure how this helps, but at least it’ll be four hours a week he won’t be begging for new guns laws, which won’t help either.

No doubt Commissioner Johnson will be carrying his service pistol with him on this public relations stunt, because the city is dangerous, after all.  But that’s something he wants to deny us ordinary peons.