Snowflakes in Hell

… this is really funny.  As I’ve said, I plan to vote for the old bastard.  But that’s fun for the whole family right there.

VCDL responds to my earlier criticism about their open carry dinner.  As I said in the comments, if you can go out in public openly armed, and people just don’t pay attention, shouldn’t that be considered mission accomplished?  If the goal is to get concealed carry in restaurants, that will happen eventually, it just means waiting out Kaine.  It seems to me that potentially rubbing restaurant goers the wrong way by making a public announcement in a place where public announcements generally aren’t socially acceptable does more to undermine that cause than to promote it.

UPDATE: Countertop in the comments:

First, I understand that the owner pressured him to stand up and say something.  I wasn’t there, so I don’t know for sure - thats just what I heard.

Also, this was the culminating dinner - with full press attention (though really, I was hoping for the Washington Times or Post or something substantial) - with a whole crowd gathered.

Knowing these two fact, it strikes me that there might be more to this story and that, while certainly within the attention whore column, perhaps not as bad as if it was just another one of the VCDL dinners.

This would certainly be a mitigating circumstance.

Keyboard and a .45 talks about the growing momentum of HR1022.  What we’re seeing here is that the gun hating faction of the Democratic party growing bolder, as polls show that the 2008 election is likely to be a bloodbath for Republicans.  While the national candidates are stilll pretending to be gun shy, a lot of anti-gun Democrats are feeling brave enough to “come out,” so to speak.

If we don’t halt the Democratic momentum this fall, we’re looking at dark days for our gun rights ahead.

Ninth Stage commenting on my earlier post about interrupting dinner:

“I’m armed and so are dozens more here.”  Sounds like the opening line in a takeover robbery.   I’d be checking for a clear backstop in preparation for shooting the assclown before I heard another word.

Heh

Bruce talks about Satan’s Snowballs.  It’s good to hear that Massachusetts of all places is considering repealing their income tax.  Bitter has more on this.

Canadian authorities insist on pursuing charges against a man for defending his son from a grizzly bear attack.

“He was 16 yards away, actually, when I shot him. It’s not fun being attacked by a grizzly bear, that’s for sure.”

Lucas said he has fully co-operated with the investigation. He even rode by horseback three hours to his truck to charge his cellphone and call authorities about the death.

“They’re wanting me to become accountable for killing that bear,” he said. “I wonder who would be accountable if my son was dead or I was dead?”

You think the life of your kid means anything to government bureaucrats?  You’re dirt to them.  There’s a dead bear on their hands, and someone is going to pay.

I support open carry, and support using it as a form of activism, as long as people follow the “don’t be an assclown” rule, which I think most activist tend to follow.   But I do have to say, that if a bunch of people got up an announced to the whole restaurant that they, and everyone at the whole table were all gay, I’d be pretty pissy to have my dinner interrupted over someone’s desire to attract my attention with a big steaming plate of “Don’t give a shit”.   Same goes for gun people:

The patrons at Champps, an upscale restaurant and bar chain, were eating ribs and drinking beer on a recent Saturday when customer Bruce Jackson stood up and made an announcement: He was armed, and so were dozens of other patrons.

The armed customers stood up in unison, showing off holstered pistols and revolvers. Jackson said a word or two about the rights of gun owners to carry firearms in Virginia, then thanked everyone for their attention and sat down.

To me, this violates the “Don’t be an assclown” rule, and we shouldn’t do it.  Just sayin’.  This just makes people think gun carriers are kooks.

I’m really getting tired of these fascists:

Perhaps, then, the recent signs of violent times occasion an opportunity for broadening our collective sense of what ”rights” should be in terms of our social consciousness. Our political and judicial discourse would benefit from moving beyond a purely libertarian view of rights, which emphasizes freedom from governmental coercion or constraint, to incorporate also a dignitarian view of rights, which promotes freedom for the good of each other and for society as a whole. The challenge now before us is how to preserve personal independence and autonomy while also recognizing, as Prof. Mary Ann Glendon once wrote, ”that we are constituted in important ways by and through our relations with others, and that each of us develops our potential within a social network of obligations and dependencies.”

Sorry Reverend Dailey, you sir, can go to hell.  Inidividual liberty and freedom is social well-being.  Any government empored to create social well-being, empowered to do ulimited good, is by nature empowered to do unlimited evil.  If you’d like to live in a society like that, perhaps I can suggest Venzuela, or perhaps China.  But this country is founded on principles of limiting government for the sake of personal liberty, and if you don’t like that, get the hell out.

Calling for assault weapons to be banned.  Of course, the fact that the SKS was never an assault weapon and was never covered by the ban will never enter into the debate.   Neither will the criminal records of the scumbags who were responsible.  The Reading Eagle doesn’t seem ot want to talk about that.

The clarion call has been sounded, both by the politicians in Philadelphia, and by the Philadelphia media, that the only way we’re going to prevent cop killings on our streets is to pass more gun laws.  The Philadelphia media has spent precious few resources concentrating on the three pieces of human debris that were responsible for the shooting death of Sergeant Liczbinski.  I have managed to obtain complete criminal records for all three of the murderers.

Howard Cain was the trigger man in the Liczbinski murder.  You can see his fifteen page criminal record here.  Let’s look at all the violations of the Pennsylvania Uniform Firearms Act that Cain has been arrested for.  Keep in mind we’re only looking at gun charges, since that is what this blog concentrates on.  Over Cain’s criminal career he had thirteen arrests for unlawfully carrying a firearm, that were listed “Nolle Prossed,” meaning the prosecutor chose not to bring charges.  In a further eleven arrests for violations of Pennsylvania’s firearms laws, the charges were either withdrawn or dismissed. In only three cases was he prosecuted and either plead guilty or was found guilty.  On weapons charges alone, he could have done 12 years in prison, in which case he would not have been on the streets to kill a police officer.

You can find Levon Warner’s criminal record here. His is only six pages.  We are happy to see Warner facing three charges for being a felon in possession of a firearm, and for unlawfully carrying firearms, in his latest arrest for conspiring to murder a police officer, and we do hope Ms. Abraham’s office will make them stick this time. Previously, the Philadelphia DA’s office thrice declined to prosecute Warner for gun law violations. The Philadelphia judicial system chose not to try him for six other violations of Pennsylvania’s gun laws.

And last, but certainly not least, Eric Floyd.  Again, hopefully this time, he’ll actually face weapons charges, in addition to the murder charges.  But again, in 1994, he was arrested for robbery, and the prosecutors declined to prosecute him for carrying firearms illegally in two counts.  Also in 1994, the courts declined to try him for two counts of carrying firearms illegally.

Now keep in mind, I’m only looking at weapons charges.  The rap sheets of these scumbags total twenty six pages, and contains all manner of things that should have kept them off the streets for good.  I think it’s time we had a serious discussion here in Pennsylvania about how absolutely and utterly broken the City of Philadelphia’s criminal justice system is, and talk frankly about things we can do to fix it.  Gun control obviously is not a solution, since the system is currently not using the laws already in the books in prosecutions. The Philadelphia media must not continue to give the politicians a free pass on deflecting blame onto others, and shame on them that it takes bloggers to bring the criminals records of these scumbags into the public light.  The citizens of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania deserve better, and they aren’t getting it from either their political leaders, or from the media.