Snowflakes in Hell

Walls of the City writes Laura Washington, informing her about our embracing the term People of the Gun, and gets a response.  From the point of view of an outsider looking in, you have to wonder what she has to be thinking.  Within a few days of her putting “People of the Gun” to paper, we have our own web site and merchandising.

Hell, even I can hardly believe it.   These Internets are surely a wondrous thing.   Thanks Al Gore!

The geek reports The Supreme Court may have taken Heller based on this article from MS-NBC.  I’m not sure MS-NBC knows what they are talking about here.  I can’t find any other source for this, including the one run by the attorneys in the case.

I’m pretty sure this is a case of sloppy reporting.

UPDATE: Looks like it is:

The headline “SCOTUS takes HELLER!” is hereby demoted. I got suckered by sucky reporting @ MSNBC…aparently, deciding whether to take the case counts as “consider”.

This from the docket site.

We’ll just have to wait and see.

I was almost ready to have a beer in honor.  I guess I’ll just have to have a beer because… I want to have a beer instead.

Bitter is on her way home now. This weekend wasn’t terribly exiting. There’s a lot of stuff I need to get done between now and the Gun Blogger Rendezvous. This weekend was spent replacing the hot-water baseboard heating units in my guest bedroom. Now that’s it’s over, I’m pleased with the results, but as with anything regarding this house, it was a fight.

For one, the new baseboards were a little higher, which meant I had to use a street elbow and sleeve to get the fitting to reach down a little farther. That was fine for the one site, but the other side needed a vent, so that required a little more fitting trickery. On the one side, the pipe was a little far from the wall than it needed to be, which necessitated bending the fins (which I hated doing) to put the cover on. The original installation had removed the fins in that area, which I didn’t understand. Now I do; they were covering a mistake. Par for the course in this house. I figured bent fins were better than no fins, so I just bent them and muscled the cover on.

We also had a little complication with the soldering. I tried to do one set of pipes, but the solder didn’t suck in like I would expect a well cleaned and fluxed joint to do. I had to break it up and redo it, at the cost of a copper coupling. My mistake may have been not getting the copper hot enough. It’s a struggle working in a tight area like that, and my dad’s torch is hot. Keep it one place too long and you’ll have a fire, or will bubble the paint on the new baseboard unit, and make it look like crap. Neither option was attractive. But we got it done.

Next weekend I have to replace the master bedroom baseboard units. Fun! All this needs to be done before it gets cold, and I need to turn on the heat. I have a few more weeks, at most, and one of those weekends is GBR, which I also have to get some stuff for, like, right now, after I submit this post.

Definitely not going to be able to get Ahab’s e-postal in, which I feel bad about, because I like that one. With shortened days, it’s getting harder to get range time. I’m way out of practice right now.

Dave Hardy links to an ATF internal related document outlining the problems at the agency:

Field agents have attempted to challenge the un-ethical, and illegal actions of field managers through various means in recent years only to meet with retaliation so destructive it almost inevitably results in the challenges or allegations being withdrawn.Fear of ATF leadership has replaced transparency. Lack of trust and the absence of good faith in trying to resolve these issues have caused a growing number of Agents to rely upon legal means to invoke the protections and seek redress. Record numbers of EEOC, OIG, OSC, whistleblower and internal grievances face the new management team. Requests for congressional intervention by Agents across the country…

Read the whole thing. Dave’s experiences with the federal buearaucracy seem to mirror a lot of this. That’s why I’ve said that ATF reform or even abolishment aren’t going to fix the problem, because they will be temporary at best, or will shift into another agency. The only thing that will work is altering or abolishing federal gun laws, to give whatever agency is enforcing them less leeway, and fewer laws to enforce.

This is from the comments, but I thought it warranted highlighting in a separate post.

Thankfully, Philly Chefs for Choice are striking back against the crazed bunch of zealots who would love nothing more than to take away more and more of our choices. In an event called “Philly Foie For Five,” about 20 Philly restaurants will offer foie gras dishes for just $5. The event goes from October 1st to October 7th. (More info at www.artisanfarmers.org )

The event is designed to expose more people to foie gras. If no one speaks against the minority activists, we will lose the right to eat foie gras. And the slope is slippery. Veal may go next. Then chicken. These activists aren’t going to stop until they have us all eating legumes and liking it. The final strike, if it were up to these activists, truly would be an end to meat-eating.

There are only three foie gras farms in the United States. We aren’t talking about “agri-business” here. We’re talking about small farms producing a small amount of product. But this is why foie gras has become an easy target for the minority zealots in Philadelphia, Chicago, Austin, and many states. In many situations, property owners have been targeted with vandalism and threats have been made against the lives of their families. Protesting is one thing, terrorism is quite another.

Ultimately, business owners are punished by these people for running their businesses legally, in the way they see fit. They lose customers to the screaming hordes (who wants to walk through a screaming band of zealots for lunch?) and lose more when they are forced to give in and take foie gras off the menu. Business owners lose thousands of dollars just fighting these people off. Commerce suffers in cities where these activists attack.

Those who talk about the cruelty of the foie gras process are sadly misinformed. They are putting humans in the place of the animals. By this logic, we should be horrified that the poor things stand around in the winter without shoes and socks.

That is the basic misconception exploited by animal rights organizations, that ducks are like people. Yes, a tube in the throat is not comfortable for humans. Neither is swallowing whole, spiny wriggling fish, which many species of ducks delight in.

In the same way, an enlarged liver in water fowl is a normal process, not a disease process. In fact, most birds have the same mechanism. Have you ever seen fat hummingbirds? Yet they sure take on a lot of sugar water before they migrate. The extra energy is stored in an enlarged liver.

For the activists and others not well-informed on the issue, foie gras production has been carefully examined by animal welfare advocates who have determined it to be humane. Unfortunately, these activists (or terrorists, if you will) are uneducated and ignorant of the truth. They may even know the facts but chose to ignore them out of zealotry for their cause.

Those who wish to know more about foie gras production, there are two articles at the bottom of the first page of www.artisanfarmers.org that discuss the animal welfare aspects of it. For some additional perspective, see: http://www.avma.org/onlnews/javma/sep05/050901q.asp

Actually, even for people it’s not all that uncomfortable to have a tube down your throat.  Endoscopes are typically done while the patient is awake, sometimes with drugs to suppress the gag reflex.  Birds don’t have gag reflexes, and many young are fed through regurgitation by the parent its young’s mouth.

Clayton Cramer has a great post up illustrating some of the things we’ve been arguing about this week in regards to HR2640, and mental health firearms prohibitions in general.  There’s more due process involved in a mental health prohibition than many people realize.

Dave Hardy discusses this too.

Ahab asks a good question about whether a black powder shotgun would be subject to the National Firearms Act if you were to saw off the barrel to under 18 inches.  I don’t know the answer to that.

I’d suggest calling the ATF, but even if the answer they give you is yes, doesn’t mean they won’t decide to arrest you later.

Jeff Soyer got some pictures up that people have sent him over at “People of the Gun“.  Mine is there as well.  The site looks really nice.

I have to agree with Bitter here that it’s a really bad idea for the gun rights movement to tie their fortunes to the Republican Party.  If recent history is any indication, that ship, if not actively sinking, definitely has more than a few holes in the hull.   The Republicans might be out in the political wilderness for a while.   I liked the Republicans more as a minority party than a majority party, and I hope that they will find their mojo again and start standing for things people actually want to vote for.

Until then, we have to find a way to work with Democrats, or our gun rights are doomed.  This isn’t the time to be snubbing pro-gun Democrats like Bill Richardson.

Sometimes self-defense stories illustrate important points.  We’ve all seen a lot of stories that contradict a lot of the myths out there, on both sides, about using firearms to defend your life.   This is an important one from New Jersey.  Why is it important?  This is why:

The woman ran to her bedroom, locked the door and grabbed her husband’s handgun and ammunition, Traina said.

The gun is legally registered to the woman’s husband, he said.

She then ran into the bathroom, locked that door and loaded the weapon while sitting on the floor.

Emphasis mine.  The Garden State has decreed that, once the technology is available, all firearms sold in New Jersey will only be operable by the authorized user, except to law enforcement, who apparently didn’t want anything to do with the technology.

I suppose this woman could have thrown the smart gun at the man trying to attack her.  It might be kind of heavy with all those electronic and mechanical extras in it, after all.

Squeaky talks about some funny business in the Texas legislature, in regards to votes legislators cast, or rather, cast for other members who are absent.  I think the rules of the legislative body in Texas needs to be changed to stop this from happening, but this probably doesn’t mean the legislator is voting twice.  Remember, these votes are on record, and it one of their colleagues comes up on record as having voted for something he needed to be against for political reasons, you can imagine the trouble that would cause.

What is likely happening here, is legislators are casting votes on their colleague’s behalf.  I agree this should change, but not because it’s double voting, but because it’s lazy and unprofessional.   If you want to cast a vote, at the very least, you should show up.  Otherwise, how are the folks back home to know how uninvolved you are?

Hopefully you get my little ASCII illustration there. SayUncle gets removed from the AdSense program because of firearms content. I don’t keep ads on Snowflakes in Hell, and have no intention to take ads. I especially won’t take ads from Google, even if I decide to start for some reason. Next time I take a call from a Google recruiter, I’m going to remind them why I’ll never work for them.

UPDATE: The ASCII art is a middle finger, for those of you who didn’t get it.

What a shocker this article is:

According to McNally, their tactics have ranged from chants and name-calling (addressing individuals as “duck rapists”) to firing bullhorns directly in her face. Other restaurant owners have taken foie gras items off their menus, but so far, McNally hasn’t backed down. “We don’t believe that, overall, we should be told what to eat,” she says.

As we talked on the drive, it became clear that there is more at issue than animal welfare — the way McNally sees it, her business is at stake as well. London has 70 outdoor seats that she needs to turn over at least twice a night to make payroll. “With the bullhorns and the screaming, you can’t sit there and dine,” she says. “That’s taking money away from the waiter and from us.”

Everyone has a right to free speech, but that doesn’t cross into disrupting your neighborhood such that your neighbors “quiet enjoyment” is disrupted.  The Philadelphia Police should be allowed to arrest these people for disturbing the peace.

Turns out that maybe Foie Gras isn’t as cruel as the animal rights psychos are making it out to be:

McNally and I arrived at the farm around noon and met Izzay Yanay, co-owner of Hudson Valley. A former member of the Israeli Defense Force, Yanay projects an intense, almost defiant pride when showing off his farm. “Make them come — all of them,” he says. He’s entertained roughly two tours a week for the past 20 years, hosting chefs and journalists alike. He promises unrestricted access and encourages me to take pictures.

Dr. Lawrence Bartholf, a practicing livestock veterinarian who operates independent of the farm, accompanies us. Bartholf often chaperones Hudson Valley tours to answer questions related to the birds’ physiology “It’s one thing to use facts to argue a point,” he says. “But when [protesters] use outright lies and distortions and half-truths, that’s where I draw the line.”

Leftist activists using outright lies, distortions and half-truths?  Nah…. you don’t say?  What a pity Philadelphia City Council is buying this crap, instead of arresting these people.

I noticed Jeff blogging about the Swiss Militia not storing ammunition at home, but letting them keep their rifles.  I used to work with a Swiss guy, and had this explained to me once.

Basically, ammunition that’s issued by the government in the home is tightly regulated.  You are not allowed to open that ammunition except under orders, or in a national emergency.  The government keeps track of ammunition issued as part of your militia duty.  Ammunition  for practice and shooting is commonly available in Switzerland, so this change in law won’t affect the ability of the Swiss to store ammunition in their homes, or to buy ammunition for sport shooting, hunting, or self-defense.  They just will no longer be issued ammunition by the Swiss government, to be kept and not used except in a national emergency.

This is entirely a symbolic victory for the gun control forces in Switzerland.  That’s not to say this isn’t something to worry about, we know how the gun control movement operates, and they will take their symbolic victories, and use it to build a movement for greater restrictions.  The Swiss ought to be worried, very worried, as this is just a first step.   But as a first step, it’s a really small one.

Armed Canadian offers the media some lessons in the definition of the word “loophole”

What Rudy’s wife really said

Via Bob McCarty, Via Dave Hardy

All this PSH about black powder guns is reminding me of a local Congressworm by the name of Joe Hoeffel.  Joe is the guy that unsuccessfully challenged Arlen Specter in the 2004 election.  I don’t like Specter much at all, but I’ve still voted for him, and this is why:

After a disgruntled former employee of Norristown State Hospital took two hostages, killing one and seriously injuring the other with a replica of an antique firearm, Joe introduced legislation that would bring antique and replica firearms under the same federal regulations as modern firearms.

But then gun control advocates tell us “You want the right to bear arms?  Fine!  You can have muskets and flintlock pistols, just like they had during our founding father’s times.  Our founding fathers never would have imagined an AK-47.”  Bogus argument, made even more bogus by the PSH over black powder arms when incidents like this sprout up.

SayUncle posts about the NRA being powerful in the Republican coalition, and we are. But he seems surprised Bush scored so highly, along with James Dobson and Pat Robertson.

Libertarians are political exiles. We are not a small group of people, if you believe polling data, but politically we have very little power. Want to understand why I focus on the gun issue? It’s a libertarian issue where I can win. I can’t win on anything else, because no one listens to libertarians. Why? Quite simple. Libertarians don’t vote in sigificant enough numbers to make anyone care about them. The Libertarian Party is a joke, and in the Republican coalition, we don’t turn out voters.

Gun owners turn out voters because people are passionate about the issue, and because it’s a good unifying philosophy that can get a lot of different types of people to vote together on an issue. In other words, it helps keep the Republican coalition together.

But being on a mission to save the second amendment doesn’t get people fired up nearly as much as being on a mission from God, and that’s why religious people turn out in large numbers to vote Republican. God might not have told them to do it himself, but they will use their churches, civic organizations, and social networks to get people out to the polls on election day, and get them to vote their values.

It sucks being out in the political wilderness, where I wish that I could focus on other libertarian issues I care about, if anyone in power would just care about them, but they don’t.

I’m not impressed that Michael Nutter is playing up the race issue within the Philadelphia Police Department. I have been holding out hope that Nutter will be a better leader for the city than the city’s current iPhone loving Corrupter-in-Chief. I’m getting less optimistic. It seems to me Nutty Nutter should heed the advice offered by one of Wyatt’s instructors:

“You’re not white. You’re not black. From here on out, you’re blue.”

The city’s problems aren’t going to get solved by making race an issue, which is part of the city’s problems to begin with.

Why the hell does everything have to be a loophole? The Media in New York is all over this St. John’s University .50 caliber muzzle loader story:

It’s a replica of an antique firearm and federal and state gun laws do not apply to antique-type guns. It can be purchased without any background check.

The gunman’s attorney says it was perfectly legal.

“You can go to any gun store in New York, Upstate New York, wherever you want and purchase it,” Rosemarie Rotondo, Hiraman’s attorney, said.

As it should be!

A former agent for the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms says for state and federal law not to consider this rifle a firearm is crazy.

“It is totally outrageous to have this type of firearm considered to be an illegal type of firearm, especially under federal and state law,” said former ATF agent Domincik Polifrone.

What? Is it just me or did that statement make absolutely no sense, and the reporter just interpreted to say what he wanted it to say?

Hat tip: Dave Hardy

Some of you may know that American Airlines banned firearms on overseas flights to Europe and Asia.  Needless to say that makes it a little difficult for competitors and hunters to attend competitions and hunt in other countries.   I originally found out about this from the AA web site, that I had to look up because I’m using AA to fly to the GBR.  Fortunately, it looks like we’ve made some progress here with the company:

“After a series of meetings, involving NRA and Safari Club International (SCI), we are pleased to report that there has been some progress. American Airlines has decided that it would amend its policy to allow legally declared firearms to be transported on nonstop flights to other destinations in Europe outside of the UK, and to Asian destinations. We have been informed that due to continuing onerous policies by the government of the United Kingdom, American Airlines is still not allowing civilian transport of firearms into the UK at present.

That’s good news.  It would seem the UK government was the responsible party for this whole policy.   This is another significant illustration of the danger of the international gun control movement, which I’ve detailed here before.

Dave just won a First Amendment case invalidating part of the Arizona Constitution.   Good deal!  You want my opinion, the whole primary system stinks.  I don’t think political parties should be able to hijack the voting apparatus of the state for selecting candidates, or  the other way around.  That’s just bad public policy.

But I think open primaries tread on the First Amendment’s freedoms of association.  If you’re going to let the state hijack the selection of candidates for parties, you should have to choose a party association.

Personally, I think all the states should do it the Iowa way, with caucuses.  All that stuff should happen outside the structure of the state.  There are ways you can structure ballot rules to be fair to the major parties, and to third parties, without letting every yahoo group onto the ballot.

There’s been a new development for the Gun Blogger Rendezvous. We will be having an NRA happy hour event on Friday starting at 2, with two our friends from the association:

Glen Caroline, Director of NRA Grassroots Division
Ashley Varner, NRA-ILA Public Affairs

We’re very pleased to have them come by and talk to us bloggers. It’s not too late to get yourself out to the GBR. Mr. Completely is looking for a few more good men or women to register and come out, and SayUncle is looking for a few more folks to take money from at the poker tables.

So get your rear in gear and out to Reno on October 11th, 12th, 13th.  We’d love to see you.  You don’t have to be a blogger to go!

I notice Larry Pratt keeps bringing up a Pennsylvania case where a man was committed involuntarily for observation under Section 302 of Pennsylvania’s Mental Health Procedures Act. This provision is described as follows:

Section 302 is the part of the Act relating to treatment without consent for observed behavior constituting a clear and present danger to the individual and/or others. The behavior must have occurred in the past 30 days. Under Section 302(a) any responsible party can petition for an involuntary evaluation by stating that an individual may be severely mentally disabled.

Now, it should be noted that for purposes of a federal firearms disability, this section is insufficient. The regulations specifically exempt persons held for observation.

Committed to a mental institution. A formal commitment of a person to a mental institution by a court, board, commission, or other lawful authority. The term includes a commitment to a mental institution involuntarily. The term includes commitment for mental defectiveness or mental illness. It also includes commitments for other reasons, such as for drug use. The term does not include a person in a mental institution for observation or a voluntary admission to a mental institution.

But that’s federal. The PA Uniform Firearms Act is also a controlling law:

A person who 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 act of July 9, 1976 (P.L.817, No.143), known as the Mental Health Procedures Act. This paragraph shall not apply to any proceeding under section 302 of the Mental Health Procedures Act unless the examining physician has issued a certification that inpatient care was necessary or that the person was committable.

So unless the person actually ends up being involuntarily committed to a mental health institution, there’s no prohibition under federal or state law that prevents him from owning a firearm in the future, unless he’s committed.  It should be noted that Pennsylvania already has a mechanism in place for restoration of rights for commitments and adjudications.  In the editorial I mentioned last, a PA district attorney was quoted as saying:

“I contacted the sheriff and had his license to carry a firearm revoked. And I asked police to commit him under Section 302 of the mental health procedures act and that was done. He is now ineligible to possess firearms [for life] because he was committed involuntarily,” the district attorney reported.

I think that particular DA needs to read the law, because he’s wrong.

Folks, it pains me to criticize other people who are on my side, and who I consider allies in the cause, but I feel the need to speak up when I think there’s misinformation getting out there to gun owners.  WND has an editorial here:

The legislation would allow a person’s right to own a gun in the U.S. to be permanently removed under a wide range of circumstances.

“You’d think that when rabid, anti-gun legislators like Sen. Charles Schumer and Rep. Carolyn McCarthy join together to pass anti-gun legislation, it would raise a few red flags,” the alert says. “But these two New York Democrats are currently planning to roll over gun owners with H.R. 2640 – legislation which would bar you from owning guns if: You are a battle-scarred veteran suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; or as a kid, you were diagnosed with ADHD.”

Gun Owners Executive Director Larry Pratt told WND that those are just two of the circumstances that legitimately could be used under the pending proposal to permanently remove an individual’s right to own a weapon in the U.S.

This is just not true.  Read the legislation.  It goes even further off the deep end:

Someone in counseling during a bitter divorce, a child who at one point gets into a scrape on a school yard and is put on Ritalin, or even someone given “counseling” for issues such as depression during recovery from an accident or work-related injury are some other situations that could trigger such “disarmament by diagnosis,” he said.

There’s no provision in this bill at all that would create that circumstance.  By now I’ve looked at it pretty extensively, and what Larry is claiming here just isn’t in this bill at all.

The plan, described in Congress as an expansion of the Brady Gun Bill that requires background checks for potential firearms purchasers, would require people who have such a diagnosis in their health record to be permanently banned from owning a gun.

This bill does not do that.  Gun Control Act of 68 is what gave us life time prohibition for mental health commitments and adjudications.  HR 2640 actually enables those with mental health problems in their past to clear their names, something they can’t do currently.

I feel like a broken record here, but Larry Pratt’s claims on this issue just keep getting more and more absurd to anyone’s who’s actually read the legislation.