Snowflakes in Hell

Dave Hardy tells us about a new program in Philadelphia.   Waive your fourth amendment rights to let police search for guns, and don’t get charged.

What’s wrong with this program?  Well, it’s not a crime to possess a firearm in Pennsylvania unless you’ve been convicted of a list of enumerated state and federal offenses, or you’re a juvenile.   If gun crime, which everyone admits is generally committed by multiple offenders, is a real problem in the City of Philadelphia, wouldn’t it make more sense to forget about the gun, and get the person who shouldn’t have one off the streets instead?   In the city’s flawed thinking, it is the gun that must be hauled off, and the criminal, well, they can stay on the streets so they can buy another gun, and keep committing crimes.

But we need one-gun-a-month because our gun laws aren’t working.  The city politicians are aptly demonstrating exactly why they aren’t working: they aren’t being enforced.

Got back from the NRA range.  It is quite impressive.   I like being able to shoot at 50 yards indoor.  I love the electronic controls that let you put the target out with accuracy down to the foot as well.  They allow you to shoot from holster, and the tables move out the way to accommodate sitting or prone positions.

I wasn’t shooting too well, but I found out at least that my SKS works.  That is, after I figured out why the action wouldn’t cycle to load the next round.  The knob on the front of the gas block has to go sideways.  I’m guessing for grenade launching, you don’t want the gases escaping, so the knob can turn off the gas system.   The SKS shoots great though once I got into it.

I did a little practice for the e-postal match.  Only did a paltry 28 out of 91 with the Glock, and 46 out of 91 with the Mk.III.  Still need work.  The good news is I don’t suck as much as one handed shooting as I remember, at least with the Glock.

The only downside to the NRA range is that it’s crowded.  I don’t shoot as well when I’m surrounded by distractions.  The guy next to me had his M1 Garand malfunction and started doing double and triple shots.  I’m getting too spoiled shooting on my private club range, where I usually have it to myself.  But the NRA has much much better facilities than anywhere else I’ve been.  I will definitely have to come back.

One thing I hate about carrying in Virginia is the stupid restaurant ban.  You can’t carry into any place that’s licensed to serve alcohol while concealing your weapon, even if you don’t intend to order a drink.  If you want, you can go all VCDL and unconceal it, but I’m pretty sure that would get me kicked out of a lot of the restaurants in Alexandria.

Contrast to Pennsylvania where you can carry into restaurants and bars.  You can even belly up to the bar and order a beer while carrying.  Not that I recommend carrying while intoxicated, but the law makes the presumption that people are going to be reasonable; I like that.

So how about it Virginia?   Can we get rid of this crap?   Probably not, because the meme will be “The NRA and VCDL want drunks to carry.” which is crap, but that’ll be the meme.   There’s also the fools at the other NRA, the National Restaurant Association, who will come out against it.  So perhaps we can at least restructure the law here.   How about off limits violations are a summary offense rather than the current penalty, which I believe is carrying without a license?   Or go the Missouri route, and make violation no penalty at all, but getting caught more than once puts your license at risk.   To me, these all seem to be reasonable alternatives if you can’t outright eliminate the restaurant ban.

Virginia’s carry laws are pretty good except for the restaurant thing.   Certainly better than a lot of other southern states, who have overly restrictive off-limits places.  Tennessee, for instance, bans carry in all parks and National and State Forests, which seems highly silly.  Or Georgia, which has a general public gathering exception.  Or the various southern states which prohibit carry into polling places.  Come on guys, you can’t let a bunch of damned Yankees beat you on this one ;)

I feel bad for this woman from Tennnesse who was arrested in Chicago for carrrying a gun with a TN license, being apparently unaware that Chicago’s laws were any different. I think the Chicago DA did the right thing in charging her with three misdemeanor counts rather than a felony count; this isn’t someone to throw the book at.

Still, I have to wonder, even if you were under the delusion that your Tennessee permit were valid in Chicago, why would you put your gun toting purse on an x-ray belt? I wouldn’t even do that back home in Pennsylvania, even if it was a place I had a legal right to be armed. Oh yeah, and if I, um, carried my gun in a purse.

It’s bad enough Virginia it trying to bilk its residents out of 3 grand per speeding ticket by making anything over 15 MPH over the limit as an automatic “Reckless Driving” rap, but now Pennsylvania State Troopers are being told to help the state make up some of the shortfall in the budget.

I, for one, welcome our new Democrat overlords!

Because I’m generally just pissed off at Pennsylvania state government right now, I’m angry at this too, even though I understand the rationale:

Sen. Lisa Boscola, D-Nothhampton, said current law is a good first step but it doesn’t go far enough. She is calling for the passage of a bill that would allow police to ticket drivers for failure to clear snow or ice before they take to the roads. Violators would face fines ranging from $25 to $75.

The bill also would increase the maximum fine for commercial and non-commercial drivers in violation of existing law to $1,500.

A similar rule is being pursued in New Jersey.

Just the fact that New Jersey is considering this too means we should look double close.  We have one documented instance!  I’ve had tractor trailer ice hit me before, and it’s only resulted in a little foul language.  I’m tired of the government regulating every damned aspect of our lives, and lately, I just want to tell them to go to hell, even if what they are asking for might have a hint of reason.   Previously, I’ve only had a few things elevate to the level of writing my state reps, but lately, I just want to tell them “Stop!  I mean everything.  Just stop trying to do anything.  We’ll all be better off.”

… who notice that CheyTec seems to have some pretty impressive hardware they think civilians are too irresponsible to own.  One more reason if I come into a lot of money, I’m getting a Barrett over any of the others.

I’m glad this guy got off, but that he was ever arrested or prosecuted is an example of just how out of control things really are.  You have people murdering each other in the city on a daily basis, but we throw the book at someone exercising their first amendment rights.

Unbelievable.

This article in The Guardian isn’t all that bad, but I feel the need to correct some errors they made.  The foreign press is generally much much worse than our own press at getting things right in terms of gun crime in the US:

Baltimore, Philadelphia and other cities in a bloodstained corridor along the East Coast are seeing a surge in killings, and one of the most provocative explanations offered by criminal-justice experts is this: not enough new immigrants. The theory holds that waves of hardworking, ambitious immigrants reinvigorate desperately poor black and Hispanic neighborhoods and help keep crime down.

They’ll string you up from both sides of the political spectrum for suggesting something like that in the US papers.  From the right, for suggesting that immigration can be good.   From the left, for suggesting that without “moderating” effects from new immigrants, black neighborhoods turn into war zones.   But let’s continue:

It is only a partial explanation for the bloodshed over the past few years in a corridor that also includes Newark, N.J., and Boston, but not New York City.

I should point out that Boston, New York City, and Newark, New Jersey, are cities with very strict gun laws.  New York Cities gun laws would be familiar to someone from Britain: that is a roughly de-facto ban on them.  But that doesn’t stop the Guardian from saying:

Some cities “never bothered to institute the reforms, policies and programs that impacted violent crime because they felt immune from what they saw as big-city issues,” said Jack Levin, director of the Brudnick Center on Violence at Northeastern University in Boston. “Now they’re paying the price.”

These efforts include limiting gun purchases, suing rogue dealers and deploying officers more strategically, based on crime data analysis.

Gun purchases in Boston are quite limited.  It’s very difficult for someone to obtain a firearm in that city.  And what exactly is a “rouge” dealer?  We have laws to deal with dealers who sell guns to criminals already.

The vast majority of U.S. homicides - nearly 90 percent in Newark last year - involve guns. And they are more powerful than ever. The weapons of choice are semiautomatics that can spray dozens of bullets within seconds.

Good to see New Jersey’s strict gun laws, which require police licensing before purchasing or possessing anything, are working effectively to quell crime in Newark.   Oh, and Guardian reporters might want to learn the difference between automatic and semi-automatic before spouting off.  Semi-automatic firearms don’t “spray bullets” you twits.

“If there were more immigrants in the city of Philadelphia, there would be less violence? I’m not making the connection here. I’m not getting it,” she said.

In New York, city leaders have pushed through strict gun-control laws while attacking social ills such as littering and loitering. New York’s homicide toll has plummeted to one-fourth its 1990 high of 2,245. The count could slip below 500 this year.

New York City leaders didn’t change the cities gun laws at all.   New York City has had a defacto ban on guns for most of this century, and it’s seen it’s crime rates go up and down over that time.   It changed its crime rates almost exclusively through better police methods, and getting criminals off the streets.

I say this isn’t a bad article, because it does touch on some of the causes of crime in American cities, but of all the cities talked about here, only Philadelphia has relatively liberal gun laws, and it’s lumped in with cities along the east coast, who also have a similar problem with increasing crime.  Guns are not the variable here.

Associated Press writers Ben Nuckols in Baltimore, David Porter in Trenton, Erin Conroy in Boston and Michael Rubinkam in Philadelphia contributed to this report.

I’m sure they did.   Remember foreign press, our media culture knows about as much about guns and gun laws as my cat does.  They are not experts.  Not even close.  You’d be wise to ignore anything they tell you, and talk to some real experts on American gun laws.

I agree with the Pocono Record that Pennsylvania’s fireworks laws are flawed.  I agree that it makes no sense that we can sell fireworks to residents of New Jersey but not to our own residents.  But where The Record and I strongly disagree is that the solution ought to be to ban fireworks sales to resident and non-resident alike.   I think the solution is to allow Pennslvania residents to buy fireworks as well.   It is not the proper role of the state to look out after my own well being.   I am an adult, and (I’d like to think) a free man, and I am capable of doing that for myself.

As I said, I think there are justifiable circumstances (such as a very dry climate or season) for banning fireworks, but we’re not currently experiencing any of that.   And even in such circumstances, the law should only address launching, and not possession or sale.

Given how popular John Street is in the city, Hillary should be reluctant to tout this particular endorsement.

I’m not Catholic, but isn’t crap like this what caused Martin Luther to tack up his 95 Theses to the door Catholic Church in Wittenburg in 1517?  You’d think after sparking the reformation, the Church might have rethought this policy, but apparently not.

Philadelphia City Council can apparently scrape together some serious money when it comes to protecting themselves:

Visitors to the upper floors of Philadelphia City Hall will soon be required to sign in and wear an identification tag, and possibly be photographed.The new security system goes into use Wednesday. It ends a century of generally unimpeded public access to the building.

The six-point-five (m) million dollar system has been in the planning stages since the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001.

Visitors won’t have to show identification. A city official says photos will be taken only “when we feel we need that level of security.”

The first floor of the building can still be accessed without going through security.

Sign in, get a photograph taken, and show identification.   This cost a cool 6.5 million?  That’s one damned expensive camera! Hell, I’ll take the six point five, and do that service for city hall.   How many police officers would that have hired to patrol the streets, so we could have maybe stopped some real criminals, who I’m sure don’t make a regular habit of showing up to City Hall.

Well, it depends on what kind of choice we’re talking about:

In September of 2006, the city of Philadelphia passed a ban on smoking in all work places, galleries, sports facilities, restaurants and most bars and 20 feet from any building entrance. Establishments that receive over ninety percent of their revenue from drinks are exempt as are private clubs and outdoor cafes, although they must acquire a waver.

Last February, Philadelphia joined New York City in banning trans fat. Restaurants will not be allowed to fry food in trans fat or serve trans fat based spreads. The ban should take place in September and next year will be extended to ban all food with any trans fat prepared in a Philadelphia restaurant.

The city of Philadelphia claims to believe a woman should have “ultimate control…over her own body,” but clearly not so much control that it might extend to a woman smoking a cigarette or eating a basket of fries cooked in trans fat in a privately owned establishment with which she engaged in a voluntary contract for the exchange of goods and services.

Clearly Philadelphia is pro-choice as long as your choices conform to the expectations of Philadelphia’s left-wing political establishment.  I should note that I probably would have many disagreements with any organization that has the term “Family” in it, including this one, but I’m glad to see them calling the city politicians out for their hypocrisies when it comes to choices they don’t approve of.  If we’re going to be a pro-choice city, that those choices ought to extend to proprietors allowing patrons to light up in their bar, or cook with trans fats.