Snowflakes in Hell

Kenn Blanchard has a must read about the RealCo protests.

Keyboard and a .45 has a post about one of the protesters in Dallas yesterday:

Lamont Levels may have changed his ways. Lamont Levels may be actually helping kids stay out of the gangs and stay in school. For that he should be applauded. But for the Brady Bunch to parade him out in front of the cameras, with an unnecessary and poorly applied eye patch, wailing about evil guns, is a bunch of crap. Lamont knows that gang bangers do not obey the law. Lamont knows that the guns in the hands of the gangs were not legally purchased through an ffl, but either stolen or purchased on the black market. Lamont knows that no amount of gun control laws will control the criminals who use guns. And you know what? The Brady’s do to.

I agree.  It’s a good message to get kids to turn away from violence.  That Lamont has reformed himself and taken it upon himself to try to keep kids out of gangs is commendable, but I don’t get being big on toughening the laws that he wasn’t concerned about obeying at the time he was shot.

Tom King of the NYSRPA has a new blog over at Albany Times-Union, where Robyn Ringler also blogs.   This follows up on Scott Bach of ANJRPC getting a blog along aside Bryan Miller.  It’s good to see the leadership in two states that aren’t friendly to gun owners taking up the banner and keeping the gun control folks on their toes.

Great find on the part of Thirdpower, who comments that Tom will probably allow free comments, unlike Robyn.

Yvette Alexander, who’s had some discussion with Pro-Gun Progressive, apparently has a forum.  Countertop has been having some fun with it.

John Lott has an editorial over at Fox News, talking about how some universities not only want their students disarms, but their police as well:

But citizens and police who pack heat do help, because they can stop a shooting while it is happening. Amazingly, opposition to guns on campuses is so extreme that some even oppose police being able to carry guns.

When, in the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting, campus police at Brandeis University asked that they be armed to prevent similar tragedies, the president of the Brandeis Student Union even argued that, “the sense of community and the sense of safety would be disturbed very much by having guns on campus.”

The administration is now considering arming its officers but has not taken action. By Sept. 10, the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa will also decide whether to end an almost 30-year ban and allow campus police to again carry handguns.

They really do live in another world.  I happens that I went to a school that did not have an armed police force.  I was once a witness to an incident on campus that required immediate attention, where a group of men were threatening another man who was waving the group off with a tire iron (it was a union dispute).  I watched several campus security people sit there, watching, talking in their radios, not getting involved.  It wasn’t until the Philadelphia Police showed up and injected themselves quite forcefully into the situation, that the incident was quelled.  Campus security was about as effective as anybody with a cell phone when the shit hit the fan.

You can’t ask people to enforce the law without being able to protect themselves, and I’d rather have campus police that can do something about a situation rather than sit there and watch.  College administrators can pretend that deranged killers are going to check the student handbook, and reconsider going on a spree, but forcing everyone else, campus police and CCL holders alike, to protect your fragile and false reality with their lives is unconscionable.

I’ve said before that corporate HR departments are more concerned about deflecting blame and not allowing the company to be sued than they are about doing the right thing.

Here’s a case of a Home Depot employee losing his job for doing exactly that:

Last week, the 24-year-old department manager confronted a man who was standing by a soda machine in front of the Murfreesboro store off Old Fort Parkway holding a crowbar and a wad of cash. When the suspect started running, Chester said his instincts took over.

He was fired Monday for violations of company policy in the incident.”When he ran, I ran after him,” he said. Chester caught the thief and restrained him in the parking lot until police arrived.

Chester was shocked to find out that for managers and most employees, catching and detaining thieves is against company policy.

Yep.  It’s against company policy, because the thief might get hurt and sue home depot.  The employee might get hurt, and sue home depot.  It could be a massive orgy of everyone suing everyone else!

Such things are nightmares to HR executives in large companies, and a few lost dollars is better than a lawsuit or bad publicity.

But even if he had known how the company wanted him to act, it wouldn’t have made a difference.

“He had a crowbar, and what if he had come inside and gone after customers or the employees working at the registers?” Chester asked. “I’d rather have him coming at me than going after any of the customers.”

Sounds like a good guy to me.  A pity he has to become another victim of corporate cowardice.  Making a “citizens arrest” is a minefield that people should be very wary of, and unlike a police officer, we don’t have qualified immunity.   But I hate to see someone who does it right, and helps get a loser off the streets, punished for his good deed.  As a society, we need to encourage bold behavior like this, not punish it.

In my opinion, one of the best things you can do for our cause.  Kudos to Robb for a great August 28th contribution.

Looks like only a few people showed up, according to The Daily News.  Hell, you could have gotten that turnout just with anti-gun journalists at all the city papers.  The people they mention are the standard players in the Philadelphia gun control movement.

Looks like the gun control movement didn’t have any better luck in other cities.

Well, I did go to the range and dispose of about 150 rounds of ammunition, but I also won an auction on a used Browning Citori over at Red’s Trading Post.  Those of you who have been following know that I was in the market for an O/U.  My friend’s dad has a Citori, which I got to shoot when I was down in Texas, and I liked it.  It was from the same era as the one I’m aquiring from Ryan.

I wasn’t quite ready to spend the money on a new Citori (Ryan has one of those too if you’re interested), but I figured I would get a used one in decent shape, and if I got more into clay shooting, or hunting, that I could always sell it in and get an new one later.  The nice thing about guns is, if you take care of them, they hold their value.  The new ones have removable chokes, whereas the older models have fixed mod/full chokes.

I saw Ryan had a used Browning Citori that was close to what I was looking for, and about the price I was willing to pay, so I figured why not.  I get the gun I want, and I can send some business to Red’s, and also some to my local FFL.  You can see all Red’s gun broker auctions here.  If you’re in the market for a gun, take a look, and help out a business that’s being harassed by the ATF.

Now I just need to talk to my local FFL, get the money to Ryan, and wait for it to arrive; hopefully not while PICS is down.  I was happy to see that Ryan did a brisk business in ammo and hats yesterday.  Good show everyone!

Rumors of a gun sale moratorium within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania are greatly overstated.  Sales out of the back of shady looking vans on the streets of Philadelphia will be in no way interrupted by the PICS outage.  For a little extra money, the intrepid gentlemen who ply this trade will sell you one “without any bodies on it.”  Isn’t that nice of them?   Buy two guns, and maybe they’ll throw in the serial number obliteration for free!  Rumors are abound that many of these gentlemen will accept crack in lieu of cash.  Sales are expected to be brisk.

Two pieces of news: PICS is going down as scheduled, and Ed Rendell is a worm.  Well, OK, one piece of news.  Everyone already knew Rendell was a worm.

When these instant check systems were passed in legislation, we were ensured that they would never be used as a back door registration scheme, and we were assured they would stay up and running.  As we all know, they have been used as a backdoor registration scheme, and now, we have this.

As I’ve said, there’s no earthly reason I can think of why this multi-day outage is necessary.  I’ve seen a lot of large database and systems upgrades, but I’ve never seen anyone that’s required this kind of outage.  Everyone needs to make sure to punish Rendell’s party in the next election.