Snowflakes in Hell

I was surprised to come across this article highlighting our Governor’s views on gun control in the wake of the Virginia Tech tragedy, and I found it refreshing that Rendell doesn’t seem to be taking a hard line approach, even making some honest admissions for someone who has strongly supported gun control efforts:

The Rendell administration is examining laws that control who may buy guns in Pennsylvania in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings, but the governor is unlikely to follow his Virginia counterpart’s lead and call for barring firearms sales to anyone ordered to get mental-health treatment, a top administration aide said.

“Should everybody who’s depressed not be able to buy a gun?” asked Donna Cooper, Gov. Ed Rendell’s policy secretary, whose staff is pulling together information about how other states balance patient privacy rights and public safety.

Wow! To be fair to Tom Kaine, his executive order limited itself to outpatient treatment combined with a danger finding. It doesn’t just apply to anyone ordered to outpatient treatment.

“Laws alone cannot protect society from crazed killers”, Cooper said, recalling the October 2006 shootings at an Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster County.

Double wow! Read the whole thing. Apparently Pennsylvania is one of the states that deosn’t report mental health records to NICS, though they are contained in the PICS system. Mentally incompetent people wouldn’t be able to buy a gun in Pennsylvania, but would be able to buy a long gun in another state.

Of course, I doubt this changes his support for gun rationing, which I will continue to oppose.

UPDATE: The article now actually includes a link to the story.

Writing in the Elmira Star Gazette, it seems high school student Danielle Schenone has more sense than the entire editorial board of the New York Times, but still misunderstands something:

The key to lowering the numbers of those who fall victim to inappropriate gun use is education and registration. All states should continue background checks and policies of fingerprinting those who buy firearms, and they also should require safety and ownership courses, much like those required to obtain a driver’s license.

Danielle is quite correct to recognize a firearm’s utility and use in self-defense, but misunderstands the difference between owning a firearm and driving a car.  One is a right, and one is a privilege.  You can put prior restraints on a privilege.  You can’t on rights.  Putting restrains on the point of sale will only affect those who are not inclined to commit crimes.  Criminals don’t obtain their firearms through legal channels.

Eric at Classical Values is on his 9th post about California’s AB1634, requiring cats and dogs to be spayed or neutered.  I’m neither a cat or dog owner, but this law strikes me as going way way too far, and probably won’t even solve the problems its attempting to address.

People in California, in all honestly, need to get their state government under control, and remind them who they work for, and what appropriate limits on their power is.   That might mean that folks in California may need to hold their noses, and vote for another party, just to get some of these people out of office.

The “Dangerous Terrorists Act” is out in PDF over at Of Arms and the Law.  I’m really curious why the DOJ wants this so badly, and I’m also really curious why Bush has yet to fire Alberto Gonzalez.  This is not the kind of crap I expect to be coming out of a “pro-gun” administration.

Of course, I could just chalk this up to the Aministration’s penchant for ignoring due process concerns when it comes to people they have declared “terrorists”.   I’ve been willing to grant them a lot of leeway in dealing with foreigners captured in a theater of war, but not with the rights of US citizens.   This is an outrage.

It appears ABC’s Lost will run for three more seasons, each 16 uninterrupted episodes.  This seems to suggest that they didn’t have the show all that well planned out from the beginning to end.  They do mention this:

“Due to the unique nature of ‘Lost,’ we knew it would require an end date to keep the integrity and strength of the show consistent throughout and to give the audience the payoff they deserve,” ABC Entertainment president Stephen McPherson said.

You better!  If this ends up being another Quantum Leap or X-Files, I’m going to be pissed.

From KYW1060, we learn City Council’s efforts on gun control aren’t likely to succeed:

Philadelphia city council has sent Mayor Street gun control bills and, lacking state authorization, plans to go to court, seeking the ability to enforce them. But council’s strategy faces long-shot odds of success.

Franklin and Marshall College professor and political analyst Terry Madonna says even if a Philadelphia Common Pleas judge were to side with council over the state legislature, based on history, council is not likely to prevail on appeal.

State Senator Erik Arneson said, “The city could probably find many other priorities that the money they’re spending on lawyers would be better used for.” I couldn’t agree more!

Dave Hardy tells us of a pretty outrageous incident:

In the latest blow-back from the Virginia Tech shooting, State University of New York at Cobleskill suspended a student and sent him to a mental hospital for five days after he posted a photograph of himself posing with a shotgun on his Facebook page. According to reports, somebody found that image along with an away message that read, “I’m tired of people talking sh*t about my school.” As a result, last Friday Tharindu Meepegama (Thar), “a junior majoring in computer information systems, was escorted by the sheriff’s department to a psychiatric center in Oneonta, N.Y., where he was held until Wednesday.”

So is this guy now a prohibited person?   It seems he was involuntarily committed, but I’m wondering where the due process is?  To me, this is clearly an abuse of the mental health system.  If jurisdictions like New York and California want to consider an interest in shooting as a reason for psychiatric commitment, I may just reconsider whether I think there’s enough due process protections in the system to consider whether it’s sufficient to strip someone of their rights.

Took a trip to the Chester County public PGC range this Saturday. Chester County has the one remaining Philadelphia suburban area public shooting range that hasn’t been closed by the PGC. If you want to get an idea of why it’s going to be hard for Philadelphia to get a state wide assault weapons ban out of Harrisburg, all you have to do is look down at your feet:

Of course, brass collectors will snatch up any actual brass pretty quickly, so this can’t be taken as a representative sample, but the Chester County range bench area is always covered in a thick layer of mostly 7.62×39 spent steel casing in various stages of rust.