Snowflakes in Hell

A good article that details the problems with excessive government and corruption in The Garden State.  Something we Pennsylvanians have to watch out for, as our state government continues to grow as well.

Hat tip to the geek.

This article by Monica Yant Kenny in the Philadelphia Inqurer attacks Pennsylvania House Speaker Dennis O’Brien for voting against the “Lost & Stolen” bill.  I will take this one piece by piece:

It was hardly a surprise that the Pennsylvania House shot down last week’s proposal to curb illegal gun trafficking, but when the votes were tallied, I was a bit baffled.

It would curb illegal gun trafficking?  Can you show evidence?  Or is that just what Joe Grace told you?

Scads of suburban Republicans stood up to their party and the National Rifle Association by supporting the plan to require gun owners to report lost or stolen weapons. This even though straw buying and the bloodshed that illegal guns cause is often derided as an “urban” problem.

Of course, the number of Democrats that voted against this measure exceeds the number of Republican reps that voted for it, but we won’t let facts get in the way here.

But House Speaker Dennis O’Brien, a city guy with constituents in the line of fire, voted against a small step for gun sanity.

Gun sanity?  Maybe they need some thorazine.

In saying no, O’Brien stood strangely alone. Every other Philadelphia lawmaker - Democrat and Republican - voted yes.

Even pols who doubted the proposal’s power to curb gun violence opted to give it a chance.

“We have a big enough problem in Philly,” said Republican John Taylor, “that I’ll try anything.”

So we’ve basically shown that the existing laws against straw purchasers are not being enforced.  We’ve shown that these laws can’t actually be used against a criminal with a gun, because that would be self-incrimination, a violation of the criminal’s fifth amendment rights.  Yet Ms. Kenny wants us to do something, even if it’ll end up getting innocent people in trouble with the law.

Sorry, Denny, but the really glaring thing is how anyone could be against requiring owners of a product that can take a life to report its loss or theft just as they would any other item of value.

You’d call the cops if your car was stolen, wouldn’t you? You’d file a report if the wife misplaced her wedding ring. Why not expect the same if a Glock goes missing?

A car is a bit easier to notice missing than a gun, and I would note that I would report a stolen gun, but we’re not talking about encouraging people to do the right thing, we’re talking about putting them in jail if they don’t do the right thing.  We don’t do that with any other product.  And no, if my wife misplaced her wedding ring, I wouldn’t call the police.  If it wasn’t stolen, I’m pretty sure they’d be pissed.

O’Brien and I haven’t talked since we had words at a crime forum last year, but to his credit he e-mailed a detailed 763-word response explaining his decision.

“While it may have been politically expedient to ‘go with the crowd’ on this one,” O’Brien wrote, “that has never been my style.”

To him, making it a crime not to report a crime would “cast an overbroad net” ensnaring the innocent.

That, he couldn’t stomach.

I’m going to ask that everyone who lives in Pennsylvania to please send Dennis O’Brein a letter of thanks.  He went out on a limb for us in a big way, and the City’s media machine is ripping him apart, and I have no doubt that he’s going to be targeted by CeaseFire PA in the next election.  He could have easily voted for this, knowing it still wouldn’t have the votes to pass, but he stuck with us, he stuck to principle, and that’s something you don’t see in politicians very often these days.

Also making the speaker a little sick? That gun-control groups like CeaseFirePA for the first time exercised as much muscle as the NRA.

“The group’s real goal was not to get a solution, but merely to get a vote,” O’Brien wrote. “After the amendment was rejected, they declared a victory in the simple fact of getting a recorded vote.”

Well, why shouldn’t the advocates crow? In Pennsylvania, when it comes to gun control, forcing officials to take a stand is success.

Defeating even a modest anti-gun measure 75 to 128 is exercising as much muscle as the NRA?  Is she on crack?  You don’t get to claim victory just because you had a vote, unless you win, or come close enough to winning to encourage you to try again next year.  The fact is they lost on this vote, and couldn’t prevent several pro-gun measures from being attached.

Meaning if the lost-and-stolen effort is really about scaring people out of becoming straw buyers, then target them, not the little old lady who forgets to tell the cops she gave Grandpa’s gun to her son.

Except there’s no legal way to distinguish between the criminal and the little old lady.  You’re asking us to rely on prosecutorial discretion, and that’s never been something I’ve been willing to hang my hat on.  There is no way this law won’t sweep up the innocent with the guilty, even in North Philly.  They way to discourage straw purchasers is to punish people for it using the existing law.  That’s not happening right now.  There was not a single prosecution for straw purchasing until the PA Attorney General came in and started busting these losers.  It makes no sense to beg for more laws when you’re plea bargaining away the laws that are already there.

After many revisions - and polls showing 100 percent of Harper’s constituents support the idea - she signed on, comforted by the fact that gun owners would have to be cited repeatedly to face serious punishment.

“If you forget to report your gun lost or stolen three times, you are a felon,” she said. “That doesn’t happen to Grandma.”

But O’Brien remained unmoved.

Sorry, but it’s a misdemeanor of the first degree on second violation, which can get you more than a year in jail.  That’s what I would classify as “serious”.  Someone who has more than one firearm stolen, would be looking at two counts under this law.  Since many gun owners have more than one, this law could get people in serious trouble if they are unaware of the duty it imposes.  One wonders how so many people, who would be appalled at lowering the state’s burden for prosecution of other crimes, suddenly are all for it when gun owners are involved.

I haven’t seen Pant Shitting Hysterics like this from the media for at least several days:

If the current law forbids guns in public spaces such as government buildings, then that ban should equally apply to other public spaces such as parks. Yes, bad guys can carry guns into parks, but that doesn’t mean we’ll all be safer if everyone carries a gun in a park. The more guns per square foot anywhere, the chances are someone innocent will be hurt or killed.

Also, it is hard to imagine anyone needing a 90-shot machine gun for self-protection — or even its semi-automatic cousin which is nearly as deadly. On a neighborhood scale, that’s a weapon of mass destruction, and common sense dictates that a city has a right to protect its citizens from such guns, even if state legislators lack the sense to do so.

A civilized society does not need or want handguns in its parks or assault rifles on its streets.

Nearly as deadly?  Says who?  I don’t really need my city to protect me from “such guns”, because last I checked, they don’t sneak out and night and cause mass mayhem on the streets.  Whoever wrote this needs to confront their irrational fear of firearms before they pontificate as experts on the subject of firearm deadliness and crime reduction.

Those of us in the gun rights movement are well aware of Reverend Michael Pfleger, nicknamed “Snuffy” after he threatened to snuff out the owner of a Cook County gun shop.  Well, it turns out that he’s one of Obama’s spiritual mentors.  Some quick facts from Dave’s article:

As a state legislator, Obama obtained $225,000 in grants for St. Sabina. (Chicago Tribune, May 2, 2007.)

Rev. Pfleger was a prominent early endorser of Obama’s successful 2004 Senate campaign, as well as his unsuccessful 2000 challenge to U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush.

Loyalty pays I guess.  Especially in Chicago.

UPDATE: In the comments at Volokh, I notice someone calls Dave an “American Zionist”.  This is fairly amusing to me, as Dave Kopel (one p, it’s in the title of the post doofus) is Catholic.  Pretty clearly this guy doesn’t know that Dave is a Secular Progressive, not an American Zionist.  Geez.

The many faces of the AR platform.

Or maybe not.

Pennsylvania is being touted by the Brady Campaign as a model of the gun lobby’s ineffectiveness:

As for the next primary state, Pennsylvania, the state with supposedly the highest per capita NRA membership, gun control supporters regularly win there statewide: Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996, Al Gore (against strong NRA opposition) in 2000, and John Kerry in 2004.

Even more telling, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell – someone who just two years ago said, “I believe with all my heart that we need more gun control” – has won two gubernatorial elections against NRA-endorsed opponents, beating Mike Fisher in 2002 by nine points and Lynn Swann in 2006 by 20 points.

I would point out that Rendell was completely mum on the gun issue in his election and reelection campaigns.  It wasn’t until he had lame duck status that he started pushing the issue harder.  Fisher and Swann ran awful campaigns, against a well financed and smooth talking Ed Rendell.  Rendell is a talented politician, Fischer wasn’t, and Swann wasn’t even a politician.

But the point is valid.  Pennsylvanians are often Democrats before they are gun owners, and will pull the lever for an anti-gun politician if he has the right letter after his name in a national race.

But the Brady’s make the mistake of assuming that running on gun control is a vote winning issue.  It is a vote losing issue, because there is no passion for gun control in Pennsylvania, or anywhere else.  Not enough to make people pull the voting lever based on the issue.  Take a good look at the picture here.  Every single one of these folks showed up on their own, many taking a day off work to attend.  And this is with very little involvement of the NRA in the planning or promotion of this rally.  It was all state level groups who organized and promoted this.  There are many of us who will vote on the gun issue alone, when it comes election time.  The real reason groups like the Brady Campaign lack any real political power is because they have no grass roots.  Where are the anti-gun people linking to me to challenge my assumptions?  Where are the anti-gun commenters?  Why does the City of Philadelphia have to provide bus service and give days off work to get people to turn out to rallies favoring gun control?   The passion is on our side, not theirs, which is why we win and they lose.   They can try to spin it all they want, but that’s the reality.

It’s nice that we actually get factual reporting out of the Pittsburgh media.  The Philadelphia Inqurer coverage was not as good:

Yesterday morning, gun owners crammed the Capitol Rotunda for their annual “Right to Bear Arms” rally and lobby day, vowing to launch voter-registration drives ahead of the November elections and to defeat pro-gun-control lawmakers.

Dressed in NRA caps, camouflage jackets and even Revolutionary War uniforms, about 200 sportsmen and firearms owners cheered speakers, among them Rep. Daryl D. Metcalfe (R., Butler), who assailed Gov. Rendell and his “gun-confiscating conspirators,” urging participants to “fire” lawmakers who supported gun-control measures.

There was one guy dressed in a costume, and he was part of the rally, not some random nut playing dress up.  I recall seeing no one in camouflage.  There were a few NRA hats, but big deal.

Looks like a normal bunch of people to me, many of whom are in suits.  The Inquirer can barely hide their contempt for us through their lame attempts at factual reporting.  The Inky closes with a statement from CeaseFire PA:

Joe Grace, executive director of CeaseFirePA, said raffling off a handgun in the state Capitol was insensitive to victims of gun violence.

“It’s unfortunate considering the hundreds of victims of handgun violence in this state,” said Grace. “It makes light of such a serious issue.”

Joe Grace is entitled to his opinion, but the capitol is everyone’s, and whether he likes it or not, he has to share this state, and its capitol, with people who value the right to bear arms, and don’t see guns as symbols of violence.

I have to agree with Jeff Soyer on and Bitter this one.  It’s pretty tasteless to want to hold a gun control rally on campus on the anniversary of Virginia Tech, and kudos to the administration for throwing a flag on that play.

Of course, if it had been NRA wanting to hold a campus concealed carry rally, don’t you think the media would be all over it?

In Japan.

As many as 320,000 guns for hunting and sporting competitions are legally owned in Japan. Within the five years leading up to 2007, there were 19 cases of murder or attempted murder involving legally owned firearms.

Also fresh in our memory is an incident in which a rifle accidentally went off at a doctor’s house in Tokyo, killing a 2-year-old child.

I’m actually surprised there’s that many in legal possession.  But still, 20 incidents out of 320,000?  The interesting thing is they are tightening their requirements for rifles and shotguns to look more like ours.

The law revisions are aimed at broadening the scope of these disqualification clauses. Past offenders of stalking crimes and domestic violence as well as those who committed heinous offenses without guns will be barred from owning firearms. It goes without saying that such people should never be allowed to own guns.

I would have figured they already had their own “Lautenberg”.  But before you go thinking this measure will be enough.

We think the system should be changed so that guns and ammunition are not controlled by individuals, but stored in specified locations except for those occasions when they are to be used. If a firearm is not in constant proximity, it would be difficult to use it rashly in a fit of rage.

The NPA did consider this idea, but shelved it on grounds it is too difficult to implement at this stage. This is because existing gun depositories can store only 30,000 guns.

Because the people who own these things are obviously steaming kettles just waiting to boil over.  Centralized storage is something I’ve heard from gun phobic people here as well.  Fortunately, it’s very impractical, but you do hear it.

After the Sasebo shooting, more than 5,000 people throughout the country returned their gun ownership permits voluntarily. In some cases, the police persuaded registered owners to return their permits, citing reasons such as “problems with neighbor” or “advanced age.” A systematic structure is necessary to catch the warning signs of someone likely to commit a crime, and revoking gun permits even after they have been issued.

It’s a very different culture, for sure.  One where the needs of society are put before the rights of the individual, and where individuals can be shamed out of gun ownership.  It is not America’s culture.  It should never be America’s culture.