Snowflakes in Hell

I am now a proud member of the Falls Township Rifle and Pistol Association. Facilities include trap range, with manual and automatic throwers. Indoor 25 yard pistol range. Outdoor 25/50/100/200 yard rifle range. 25 yard plinking range. It’s NRA and CMP affiliated, which is nice.  I’m hoping to get some CMP stuff through the club.

Now the real question is whether to maintain my membership at Classic Pistol, in Southampton. Classic Pistol is, without a doubt, the best indoor range in the area that’s not members only. Full auto is allowed, as well as rifles of any caliber. Pistol lanes are up to 15 yards, rifle up to 25. I think I’ll probably maintain it, and only drop it if I’m not using it enough. Since I can shoot there without being a member, if I don’t go enough, it’s not worth it to maintain the membership.

I’ll extend an open invitation to any of my readers to go shoot as a guest if you’re ever in the area.

Looks like the Fort Dix Six trained at a Pennsylvania Game Commission range in Gouldsboro, PA, the PGC Shooting Range at State Game Lands 127. See this article in the Pocono Record, with map locations of where they lived. Also see this article, where a local shooter describes them as lousy shots, who were breaking range rules and never bothered to clean up their mess.

From one of the suspected terrorists:

“You are in the mountains in the Poconos … In Pennsylvania. It is about two hours away from here. We went there for a week walking in the mountains and shooting in the open shooting range.”

The video showed 10 young men in their early 20s “shooting assault weapons at a firing range … while calling for jihad and shouting in Arabic ’Allah Akbar’ (God is great),” the complaint said. The 10 included six of those arrested, authorities said.

Scary stuff. I repeat the call for shooters in Pennsylvania to be vigilant, on the look out for people that look out of place, and are breaking the range rules. Report suspicious activity¹. Carry at all times, if you have a license to do so.

Pennsylvania Game Wardens have just been put on the front lines of War on Terror. Hopefully they will step up patrols of public shooting ranges. Welcome to asymmetric warfare in the 21st century.

Hat tip to Nathaniel for the links

¹Use your judgement here. I think everyone would agree that someone on the range taking video of themselves shouting “Allah Akbar!” would fall into the realm of suspicious activity. Anyone flagrantly breaking range rules, or being unsafe would fall under this as well. We must take care not to be unfriendly to new shooters.

I’m thinking that anyone who kills someone on the island dies.  Think about it.  Desmond has consistently foreseen Charlie’s demise, but Charlie seems to be destined to die.  Anna Lucia killed someone, and she’s dead.  The reason the others wanted John Locke to kill his father is to see if he’d die.  If he doesn’t, he must be special.   Sawyer killed Locke’s father instead, so now we’ll have to see if Soyer dies.  Who else has killed someone on the island?   Mr. Eko has.  He’s dead.  Juliet has, not dead yet.   So has Sun.  Sun’s going to die because she’s pregnant, and pregnant women die on the island.

Maybe there’s someone who doesn’t fit here that I’m not thinking about.   Another thing I wonder is what happened to Michael and his kid.

Check out page 9 and 10 on the affidavit:

DUKA told CW-2 that the DUKAs go target shooting with firearms, but cannot go to regular gun ranges becausenone of them are legal residents of the United States. DRITAN DUKA showed CW-2 a video on DRITAN DUKA’s cell phone which depicted individuals shooting firearms. DRITAN DUKA stated that this activity took place in Pennsylvania.

I’m wondering where? We certainly have enough private land in the state that people could use to shoot. There are also PGC public ranges, which are quite often, especially in rural parts of the state, unused for the better part of a day. This would seem risky though, as they are regularly patrolled by game wardens, and I can promise you, anybody shouting “Allah Akbar!” at any PA gun range in earshot of another shooter is going to get the police called on them.

SHNEWER specifically named the United State Army base at Fort Fix, New Jersey and a nearby United States Navy base. SHNEWER explained that they could utilize siz or seven juhadists to attack and kill at least one hundred soliders by using rocket-propelled grenades (”RPGs”) or other weapons. SHNEWER further explained that they could train for the attack in Pennsylvania.

Shnewer was quoted as saying, “There is a nice area where we can train … in Pennsylvania … It is two hours away from here.” Shooters in Pennsylvania need to be vigilant about this stuff. Use your local public ranges. Watch for suspicious activity. I think these guys probably would have set off alarm bells to anyone who came across them “training”. If you’re unsure about someone on the range, call a Game Warden.  Also we must monitor the media response. Once the anti-gun crowd learns of this, they are going to be quick to blame Pennsylvania’s “weak” gun laws.

Hat tip to Clayton Cramer

I’m hopping angry at Attorney General Gonzalez and the Bush Administration over this terrorist watch list anti-gun bill.  He might as well have handed the anti-gun groups and the media the rhetorical vise with which to put the screws to us.

Here’s the meme we’re fighting, it’s all over the media:

NRA wants to allow suspected terrorists to purchase guns

Take a look, and you’ll find this everywhere, and it’s incredibly damaging to us.  The reason is because these battles are waged in the public mind through use of memes, and that is a powerful one.  The answer to that is not a meme.  It’s complicated, and difficult to dispense with in a sound bite.

Much of the left, which normally strikes out against the administration for various perceived or real infringements on civil liberties, has embraced this one, since it’s damaging to a core conservative constituency.

How do we fight this meme battle?  How do we make the position that no citizen should be deprived of constitutional rights without due process? How do we make people understand that we don’t want terrorists getting a hold of firearms any more than anyone else in this country does?

I don’t have an answer to this.   And I’m quite getting tired of the media, who are quick to defend liberties they find dear to them, so carefully maligning liberties other people find important, and not even having the courtesy, and actually having the gall, to suggest that our concerns are driven by a desire to arm terrorists rather than legitimate due process and civil liberties concerns.

Conservative Scalawag, amused by a local news report on pet eating coyote troubles in suburban Atlanta that recommends swinging a broom at the varmints, tells us how to deal with the problem in a proper manner:

I will be over on my side of fence with a Ruger 10/22 with a suppressor practicing the 3 S’s. Shoot, shovel, and shut-up. This is the proper way to handle coyotes folks.

Sounds like a good way to piss off PETA, which is a good reason to be for it.

UPDATE: Link fixed

In relation to the Tennessean controversy over the publication of CCW holders in that state, SayUncle asks:

That seems to be the question of the day: Why publish this information in a story that is only marginally related to such data?

I think because these journalists actually do believe that CCW license holders are like sex offenders, and deserve to be tracked and outed. They think the public has a right to know who these dangerous and clearly paranoid individuals are. Who would want to carry a gun anyway? What is the reason for it? If these people have nothing to hide, they won’t mind the light of our pure and good journalistic truth shining into the dark corners of where these people lurk, waiting to shoot our children and eat them¹.

And the sad part is, our reaction will just reinforce the preconceptions these people have in their minds about license holders. To me, it’s a game. They have preconceived notions about us being sneaky and paranoid, and our reaction to this provocation just proves it in their minds.

¹ OK, OK, maybe they don’t think we’re actually out to eat their children, but I would venture to say that most people that move in these types of circles don’t think that much more highly of us than this.

Mayor of Washington D.C., Adrian M. Fenty, is apparently looking at a career in comedy:

 ”We want to say emphatically that the District’s gun-control laws, as have been outlined by many law-enforcement experts, are a critical part of the District’s public safety strategy and have been so for more than 30 years,”

Seriously, that’s really funny.  Can he say that with a straight face?  How many times has D.C. been the murder capital of the United States in that thirty years?   And who are these “many law-enforcement experts”?

John Lott tells us that the debate is beginning to be taken seriously.   Good!

Gretchen Gailey should have talked to someone familiar with PICS before writing this article:

For anyone who wants to purchase a gun they must go through paperwork on the federal and state level. The federal check clearly asks if the buyer has ever been committed to a mental institution, but the state form from Pennsylvania, never delves into the issue.

The application/record of sale (which only applies to handguns, long gun sales still go through PICS, but rely on the federal 4473 form) does indeed delve into the issue.  One of the questions on the SP4-113 form “Application/Record of Sale” asks:

31. Have you ever been convicted of a crime enumerated in section 6105(b) or do any of the conditions under 6105(c)  apply to you? 

In 6105(c), which is printed on the back of the form, you will find:

4.  has been adjudicated as an incompetent or who has been involuntarily committed to a mental institution for inpatient care and treatment under Section 302, 303, or 304 of the provisions of the at of July 9, 1976 (P.L.817, No. 143), known as the Mental Health Procedures Act. 

Answer yes on the form, the sale stops right there.  Answer no, and you will still get run through the PA Instant Check System.  Someone answering no falsely on the form would be committing a felony.  The article notes:

“If it has been a court order that they are ordered to see mental help, that should go on the books and that should be a part of the background check,” says Heckman.

It is part of the background check in Pennsylvania.  PICS includes the mental health records for the entire commonwealth.  It also includes whatever is in the federal NICS system.   The reporter is correct when she points out:

Pennsylvania is one of 28 states that does not share its mental health records with the federal gun database, because it would violate the Mental Health Procedures Act.

True, but Pennsylvania does use mental health records in the state system.  Reporting mental health records to the feds is something Rendell can’t change.   That would require a legislative remedy.

Reporters like Ms. Gailey would be wise to remember that gun shop owners aren’t always experts on all aspects of firearms law.  By not doing thorough research, people are mislead to believe that Pennsylvania’s firearms laws and purchase regulations aren’t addressing mental health issues.  This is not true.