Snowflakes in Hell

A special report by Chris Cox that mentions Red’s Trading Post.  The big question is whether it’ll be a priority for Nancy Pelosi?  I won’t try to candy coat it, this is going to be an uphill battle.  But I think we have to try.  They as asking people to call the U.S. House (202-224-3121), and asking their representative to cosponsor HR4900 the bill.

There’s a bill coming up for vote in Pennsylvania, known as House Bill 1845, which increases the penalty for possessing a firearm with an altered or obliterated serial number from a first degree misdemeanor to a second degree felony (underlined portions of a bill are parts being changed.  Non underlined parts are part of the existing law).

Now, the important part for gun owners is what’s planning to be amended to this bill.   I’m hearing there are plans to ammend the “Castle Doctrine” provision, as well as a provision that will make possession of a Pennsylvania License to Carry Firearms a substitute for the PICS check.  These amendments are sponsored by State Representatives Steven Cappelli (R- 83) and Richard Stevenson (R-8).

But there is a danger lurking.   State Representative David Levdansky (D-39) has filed an amendment for the “victimized twice” provision that enacts criminal penalties for failure to report a lost or stolen firearm.  It’s important to call your state representatives and ask them to support the Stevenson and Cappelli amendments, while opposing the Levdansky amendment.  Getting HB 1845 to come out clean depends on us, so let’s get to work.

Len Savage appearing on CNN?  Who would have thought?  David has the story.  I’m not going to suggest the main stream media is going to be anywhere close to on our side any time soon, but we’ve seen some movement toward some semblance of fairness as of late it seems.

Joe over at Joe’s Crabby Shack is pondering whether it’s worth accepting the commission in order to get rid of the permit to purchase requirement.

I don’t know all the ins and outs of politics in Nebraska, but it’s a deal I’d be willing to accept in Pennsylvania.  It’s ideal to be able to outright crush everything, but that’s now always how things will go.  Politics is not a rational or neat process.  This is pure speculation on my part that this is how it went down in Nebraska, but a general outline of how it goes:

1. Gun control legislator sponsors and introduces gun control bill
2. Various interest groups position on the bill, and mobilize their respective constituencies.
3. Politicians respond to that pressure, as said sponsor runs around trying to get support for their bill.  Sponsor realizes he can’t get support thanks to pressure from a certain gun rights group.
4. Sponsor begins amending bill in hopes of finding support.   (Sponsor won’t give up because he has to please his constituents, and avoid losing prestige.)
5. More support will invariably come on board as bill is altered to placate certain interests.  When support levels of said gun control bill begin to get close to having a chance at passage, the end of gun rights groups political power is nearing.
6. At this point lobbyists of gun rights groups have a choice.  Remain opposed and run the risk that a bad, albeit watered down bill will pass over their objections.  Or offer sponsor to add something constituents of gun rights groups want in exchange for dropping opposition to the bill.

Obviously NRA took the latter option here. Was it the best option to take?  That depends on what’s important to you.  Obviously NRA can’t conduct a membership poll in the middle of a big political battle, so they have to do their best based on what they know from interacting with members.  But if you boil down what happened here, a very very bad gun banning bill got turned into something that was largely neutral, and got rid of at least one prior restraint on the right to bear arms.

When they tired a semi-automatic ban in Pennsylvania, a similar thing happened.  It’s very rare in the political process to have to make absolutely no concessions, which is why the founding fathers chose to place the right to bear arms outside of it (only in theory thanks to the courts).  The trick is giving up symbolism and gaining substance.  If Cornhusker State gun owners keep turning out performances like they did with this bill, I don’t think they have much to fear from this commission.

Media article on what happened is here:

“No bill to ban any weapons will pass this Legislature,” Ashford said, explaining his about-face.

Instead, Legislative Bill 958 proposes that the Nebraska Crime Commission study gun violence and illegal firearms trafficking in Nebraska.

The bill also calls for repeal of a 1991 law requiring people to obtain a permit before they can purchase a handgun.

Lawmakers gave the amended measure first-round approval in a 25-13 vote.

Well, I’m glad Ashford his a brick wall in this case.  I think getting rid of a permit to purchase system is a good move.  It’s hard to get rid of bad legiselation even when everyone agrees its bad.  Even harder to turn a gun control bill into something that gets rid of a gun control law.

“I’ve received hundreds of phone calls from NRA members, and I have committed and promised to hundreds of constituents that I would not support this,” said Sen. Arnie Stuthman of Platte Center. “I have no assurances that the NRA has informed its members that it has agreed to the bill.”

Stuthman was one of 13 lawmakers who voted against the bill.

Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha said it was almost funny that lawmakers hesitated to support the bill after the considerable concessions Ashford made to the NRA.

NRA’s alert is out here.

After considerable opposition from Nebraska’s law-abiding gun owners, Senator Ashford significantly revised his original bill by removing the sections of the bill dealing with the reporting of lost or stolen firearms, mandatory gun locks and posting requirements. The new version of his bill would, however, have required the creation of an “Assault Weapons Commission” that would have been charged with making a list of firearms that it believed should be illegal in Nebraska. Despite being gutted from its original form, LB958 was still unacceptable to Nebraska’s gun owners and sportsmen. However, thanks to the hard work of NRA and gun owners in Nebraska, Senator Ashford again agreed to narrow the scope of his bill resulting in Amendment 2235.

Read the whole thing to find out what Amendment 2235 is.

The Joyce Funded pet of the anti-gun lobby, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, has signed onto Senator Lautenberg’s bill to deprive Americans of their civil rights, without due process, in the name of fighting terrorism.

If Bush were doing this, and not doing it to gun owners, the left would be outraged.

In terms of sales at least.  Not too surprising, really.  Guns are more expensive than golf clubs, and ammunition costs more than golf balls.  You can only accessorize your golf bag so many different ways.  I’ve said before, it’s not a sport for people who don’t have money or time, because it takes a lot of each.

The other difference is there isn’t a small well financed, vocal, and dedicated group of  activists who are looking to ban golf clubs in the hopes of one day living in a fairway free society.

How we feel about guns outside of Philadelphia.

Now they will have to take it before the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania:

The state’s Supreme Court will have to reverse itself on a 12-year-old gun-control decision if Philadelphia is going to adopt and enforce its own gun laws, the chief judge of Commonwealth Court told the city yesterday.

President Judge Bonnie Brigance Leadbetter made her statement during a preliminary hearing on a lawsuit filed by City Council members Darrell L. Clarke and Donna Reed Miller. They want the court to recognize Philadelphia’s authority to enact stricter gun laws regarding gun purchases and ownership.

Leadbetter, however, suggested that Commonwealth Court was just a stop on the way to the Supreme Court, which in 1996 upheld a state law forbidding municipalities from regulating firearms.

Until then, Leadbetter asked, “Aren’t we just a way station?”

If the Supreme Court doesn’t go our way, it’ll be the end of preemption in Pennsylvania.  Every city and town will want exemptions, and many of them will pass restrictive laws.  It’ll be impossible to travel the commonwealth to hunt, shoot, and carry for self-defense without significant legal risk.  I hope the Supreme Court reaffirms the 1996 Ortiz decision, and upholds preemption.

If Miller and Clarke fail in court, Mayor Nutter volunteered to take things into his own hands. At the rally, Nutter said he would sign into law gun-control measures being considered by City Council, then enforce them - even though the state Legislature says it can’t be done.

I anxiously await Attorney General Corbett, who is on the short list for governor, and no doubt needs the help of gun owners, to explain to Mayor Nutter than this will be illegal, and officials enforcing these laws can expect to be prosecuted under our Official Oppression statute.

Now Pittsburgh is jumping into the action to screw gun owners in Pennsylvania:

Pittsburgh City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved a resolution encouraging state legislators to pass a law making it mandatory to report lost or stolen handguns.

Council President Doug Shields, along with law enforcement and members of CeaseFire PA, will forward the resolution to Harrisburg, where they hope legislators will address the issue.

A similar bill proposed in the state House last year was tabled in November.

“If any reasonable person loses an item of value in a burglary or theft, they would report it,” Shields said. “These guns are finding their way to crime scenes and killing our sons and daughters.”

Yes, they would report it.  But we don’t throw them in jail if they don’t do it.  This is not an obvious law to someone who doesn’t follow this issue closely, and I’m not about to stand by and watch these people turn Pennsylvania into New Jersey where “when it comes to guns, the citizens acts at his peril” is uttered by courts before good people are issued devastating fines or sent off to the pokey.  This is a bad law, and it must be stopped.

I still maintain my opposition to this course of action, and I say that as someone who is prohibited from having firearms on company property myself, but my opposition is mostly due to property rights concerns. Looks like they are trying to same tact that worked in Georgia, where the bill will be limited to concealed weapons licensees.

Employers are nonetheless hysterical on the issue of guns, and I think there’s things we can do to encourage the change.  There was an approach, I think it was in Arizona, to create a civil action against employers who forbade firearms, essentially making them liable for the safety of their employees.  To me this is a far better way to deal with the problem, but I suspect, politics being politics, it’s a more difficult political course for many legislatures.

From Randy Barnett:

UNLESS, Dorf really means that courts should avoid results that HE and those who agree with him believe are morally odiousness, though many Americans may disagree. In other words, judges should follow their own moral views (if they agree with Dorf’s) regardless of how widely accepted those views may be. But this methodology simply places the moral views of judges above whatever independent meaning the text of the Constitution may have. And you will remember from my last post that this is indeed Dorf’s position: “[C]ontrary to conventional wisdom,” he wrote, “constitutional doctrine typically trumps constitutional text – at least absent arguments of sufficient strength to overcome the principle of stare decisis.”

This is a prescription for what Larry Solum has called the “downward spiral” of judicial nominations. If the Constitution has no meaning independently of a judge’s own views of moral odiousness, then everything depends on getting judges who share your views of moral odiousness. But when there is substantial disagreement about what is or is not morally odious at any given time (as there always is about some matters but not others) then this becomes an ugly fight to the death where anything goes, which is exactly what has happened.

Read the whole thing.  There’s more posts on this topic here and here.  I would love to get the left on board with an originalist constitutional consensus, but I doubt they’ll ever be able to accept it.  And why should they?  Progressive thought has largely dominated for the last century, and I don’t see any signs that it’s going to be change anytime soon.  I think George W. Bush’s presidency might have been enough to get them to flirt with the idea, but they are seeing salvation in the possibility of Obama, and I think there’s a good chance they’ll get it.  Constitutionally limited government is a bummer when you’re in power.

Over at Volokh.  I figured car accidents would be number one, but drowning is pretty high up there at 2.0 per 100,000.  Firearms are dead last at 0.1 per 100,000.  Ahead of firearms are falls, bikes, poisons, suffocation, and house fires.  We really need to ban gravity.  It’s for the Children.

Bruce has an example on display.  I’m going to guess that the cops that seize this stuff realize what it is, the brass senses a great press opportunity, and the press is only happy not to question anything.  And why would they?  What do they know?