Snowflakes in Hell

What about the complete and utter failures?

This is an interesting shotgun accessory.  I hope it doesn’t turn into another fiasco like this did.

Bitter did an analysis of VPC’s finances a few years ago.  Now Howard Nemerov has updated us on the current state of VPC’s finances:

In 2007, VPC saw a small improvement, mostly by cutting functional expenses by 48.7% since 2003, plus the fact that salaried employees received no raises since 2005, along with  $144,227 increase in “direct public support.” (Where this “public support” comes from will be examined in Part 2, because this tells the story of who VPC really represents.)

This ought to be good.

Taxpayers in Harrisburg will be happy to hear that their City Council voted unanimously to waste money by passing an illegal gun control law. They passed the same kind of law that has prompted a lawsuit from NRA in Pittsburgh. I wonder how the residents feel about a gun law that won’t make a lick of difference, but will cost the city tens of thousands of dollars to defend – tens of thousands of dollars that could be going to schools or other local program.

SayUncle has a pretty good roundup.  Turns out it’s not really all that scary, Joe Biden’s hysterics to the contrary.

UPDATE: Speaking up hysterics.

UPDATE: A poem for Joe Biden.

Thirdpower notes that Josh Sugarmann of the Violence Policy Center is less than thrilled with Obama’s first 100 days.

Pro-Gun Progressive reports hearing a Mexican official opine that the swine flu came from an American gun show.   Really?   Maybe he got his talking points mixed up.

Jacob Sullum talks about the great expansion of federal hate crime that Congress is considering.  This bill makes federal crimes out of most crimes, enabling double jeopardy.   The problem is that, under our federal system, the federal and state governments are considered separate sovereigns, and so while double jeopardy is generally prohibited, because each sovereign is considered to have its own, separate interest in prosecuting crime.

It’s a nice idea in theory, and it might even work out if Congress were truly limited to its enumerated powers.  But Congress’ power over interstate commerce are now without limit.  With this new hate crime law, a person could easily be acquitted by a jury in state court, and then brought to trial in federal court for the same act, under this “hate crime” law.  The nexus to interstate commerce?  Well, he used a gun see.  And that gun once traveled over state lines.  Lopez was supposed to deal with this problem, but who knows if that’s even still valid precedent, even if it might technically still be.

I asked Bitter if Alaska even has anyone who would dare introduce gun control bills after reading this story this morning.

Hundreds Turn Out to Protect Gun Rights

It was standing room only at the Soldotna Sports Center last night as many from the Kenai Peninsula attended the rally of the Second Amendment Task Force of the Kenai Peninsula. Even the presenters discussed the turnout, including Bob Bird of Nikiski. He was gratified with the turnout. He explained to the audience that the rally was not called as part of the National Rifle Association, or as part of the Gun Owners of America. Those speaking at the rally wanted to relay the message that there is a reason Americans should be concerned that the freedom to keep and bear arms is being threatened.

It’s great to hear about pro-active gun owners.

VSSA has a great post on yesterday’s debate between Democratic gubernatorial candidates. You’ll note that two of the candidates are trying to twist their way into different positions in an attempt to appease presumably anti-gun party primary voters primarily in the DC suburbs and also a more pro-gun general populace across the entire state. Sometimes it’s best to just grab a bowl of popcorn and watch the entertainment.

The Beaver County Times published a short editorial about the gun rights rally in Harrisburg last week.

Hundreds of pro-gun advocates, led by the president of the National Rifle Association, showed up to remind state lawmakers who is pulling the strings and whose strings are being pulled.

It was an impressive combination of clout and cowering. (It’s not hard to figure out which adjective applied to gun backers and which applied to lawmakers.)

I hope they are correct in their prediction that gun control at the state level isn’t likely to move.

Our Vice President reminds us on this 101st day of the Obama Administration that we could have, in fact, made a worse electoral decision. Instead of keeping on his talking points about Obama’s “enchanting moments,” he used his time on the Today show this morning to unleash his inner survivalist.

Joe Biden tells Americans that they should no longer take public transportation, fly on commercial airlines, or sit in “enclosed” classrooms. I’m sure that will really help the struggling economy. Politico tells us that the Administration has promised a forthcoming “clarifying statement.” According to one account on Twitter, even the show’s hosts were wondering why Biden just asked America to stop using public transportation.

It looks like Gun Owners of America is throwing its weight behind Pat Toomey, even though we’re still an entire year out from the Republican Primary, and as far as I can tell, the primary ballot isn’t even really known yet:

First, Senator Arlen Specter provided the instrumental Republican
support to get anti-gun Attorney General Eric Holder confirmed by the
Senate.

So did GOA A- rated Shelby.  So did GOA A rated Chambliss, and GOA A rated Isakson.  I could go on.  Point being, 75 Senators voted, including a lot of Senators highly rated by GOA voted to confirm Eric Holder.  I anxiously await GOA’s endorsement of their primary opponents this early on.

Then, he singlehandedly pushed through the massive economic bailout, the so-called stimulus bill, which contained several provisions of concern to gun owners.

This has nothing to do with guns.  Most of GOA’s arguments centered around the health care provisions of the bill, combined with their opposition HR2640, which has been documented extensively on here as total bunk.

Every time Attorney General Eric Holder opens his mouth and talks about reinstating the Clinton gun ban, gun owners know they have Arlen Specter to thank.

Along with several other highly rated GOA Senators.

Without Specter, there would be no $1 TRILLION bailout.

Really, by the time debt services and other frills of the “socialism
bill” are accounted for, the cost will be over $3 TRILLION!

I thought you were Gun Owners of America, not the National Taxpayers Union, or Americans for Prosperity.  What about the highly rated GOA representative Jason Altmire, who has an A-.  What about highly rated Congressman Dan Boren, also with an A-.  They voted for the Porkulus too.  Shall I go to the Senate?  You have to decide what your issue is.  If it’s conservatism, you should change your name and rate many of these representatives lower than they are rated.

Please help Gun Owners of America make this Specter’s last term in office by supporting Pat Toomey for Senate at: http://www.toomeyforsenate.com/contribute

What if A- rated Gerlach decides to run in the primary, because he’s apparently thinking about it.  Do you want to endorse an A vs. A- candidate?  What if Gerlach wins?

Rep. Toomey was “A” rated by Gun Owners of America during his time in Congress.

So were many others who voted the same way as Arlen Specter has.  Why single him out?  I have an answer.  GOA knows NRA is likely to stand by Specter as long as Specter keeps voting the right way on guns.  They know that will upset a lot of the faithful who hate Specter on issues that are not related to guns.  They are hoping to capitalize on that.  I can’t think of what else it could be.

Many GOA supporters were quick to lambast Bob Barr on his vote for the Lautenberg Amendment, probably won’t give Arlen Specter much credit for voting against it.  But who I am I to get in the way of a joke of a pro-gun organization trying to promote themselves.

Brillianter has another in his series on self-defense.

Finally got the server tested out under a full blown Instalanche, which beats any load testing you can do.   I’ve received a few links from Instapundit since I got the new server, but never at a peak traffic moment.  This morning I noticed my server was running a bit slow, and sure enough, there was a lot of traffic coming in from Glenn.   My current settings were a bit too generous, and caused a lot of swapping, which is lethal to LAMP server under high load.   Scaling my max clients back a bit solved that problem, and we seem to be holding up to the worst that Prof. Reynolds can throw at me.   Not bad for a 300 dollar server!

The Atlanta-Journal Constitution says that gun violence is more serious than the swine flu.  Let’s see here, gun violence kills about 14,000 people a year.  During a typical flu season, it’s estimated that 30,000 – 50,000 people die from flu.  Models of a pandemic flu strain show deaths in the range of anywhere from 209,000 to 1.9 million.

That’s a considerably larger potential problem space than gun violence.  If the Atlanta-Journal and Constitution wants to shill for the Brady Campaign, they can at least do a little research.

For your amusement, Jim Geraghty has posted a list of at least 16 promises from Obama that have expired within his first 100 days. (For you non-mathy readers, that’s an average of one broken promise every 6 days.)

Jim notes that once his readers find the post, he will no doubt receive many more submissions. I’ll be curious to see if he can get 100 broken promises for each of the 100 days in office.

I have the winter Kalashnikov/SKS match results up over at our little informal gun blog rifle league.  I shot the smallbore match, but I’ll be damned if I can find my target.  What a shame too, because I got a perfect 100, and beat you all.  If you believe that, I have a Senate seat in Illinois to sell you.

I’ll try to get the spring match up before the weekend starts.  It’ll be a 500 point open sight match.  I’ll make the closing date the end of June, just so it doesn’t end on an oddball date.  That gives everyone two months to shoot it.   Thanks to everyone who took the time, and braved the weather, to shoot the winter match.

Via Grassroots PA, it looks like they are clearing the way for Specter on the Democratic side.  State Representative Josh Shapiro is ruling out running now, and so is Allyson Schwartz.  Grassroots PA also reports Sestak isn’t rulling out a primary challenge, and Sestak is a big enough asshole to do it.  Apparently Torsella is also staying in.

If Specter is too progressive for Pennsylvania Republicans, he’s probably too conservative for a lot of Democratic primary voters.  I would be surprised if Specter doesn’t face anyone in the primary, but we’ll see.  The Democratic Party seems to be getting behind Specter, so anyone who does run won’t likely have the backing of the party leadership.

There’s a lot of speculation that Specter can’t really be trusted on the gun issue, because of his betrayal of the Republican Party and of conservatism.  It’s certainly a possibility he’ll abandon his positions on guns, but I don’t think it’s likely.  One mistake folks should not make when it comes to politicians, is believing they have any loyalty to anything beyond keeping their seats.

From that point of view, Specter’s move is perfectly rational.  Polling is making it abundantly clear he can’t survive politically in Pennsylvania as a Republican.  He could have waited to see whether that changed, but switching parties late in the game wouldn’t give him any time to build support among Democrats, and to raise money through those circles.  When viewed through the lens of “What do I need to do to stay in office,” switching parties was really the only choice, and now is probably the right time.

The question for Specter is whether he views his record on guns as an asset, or a liability.  If Specter faces a serious primary challenger from the left, he might view it as a liability.  If I were Specter, I would look at it this way: his NRA endorsement is the one asset that he can take with him across the aisle.

But wait?  Republicans will never vote for him whether he carries an NRA endorsement or not!  True, but Pennsylvania is not generally a red state.  It’s a blue state, generally pro-gun, and it’s worthwhile noting that Specter has never been a conservative and has always had a lot of support among Democrats, and many of those Democrats appreciate his stance on the Second Amendment.  Pennsylvania has a lot of A rated pro-gun Democrats.  The last thing Arlen Specter will want is to tempt those Democratic voters to cross the aisle and vote for his opponent.

If I had to put money on it, I’d bet Specter stays good on guns.  It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been wrong if he doesn’t, but this also isn’t New York.  Specter’s party switch is a cold political calculation aimed at keeping his seat, and in that case, the same calculation should also make him want to keep his endorsement.

We have the video from the interview with Cam last night.  I am still speechless.  A high school teacher who doesn’t realize that federal law applies to the whole country, including New York.  A high school teacher who took what New Yorkers Against Gun Violence said about the law at face value, and who pretty clearly hasn’t researched the topic at all.  This is what’s teaching the next generation?  God help us.

Click below to see the video, it is in three parts:

Read more »

Bitter asks in the previous post about whether Specter will want to keep his A-rating from the NRA.  Specter is politically weak, and NRA is a good ally to have in your corner in Pennsylvania, even if your a Democrat.  I don’t think he can afford to piss off the NRA right now.  But it’s actually a bit of an issue for Bitter and I if he keeps his endorsement.

The issue is, we’ve yet to have an endorsed Democrat running for any office.  This makes it a lot easier for us to work through the GOP, instead of the individual campaigns, in order to provide support for our endorsed candidates.  When we had ourselves and our volunteers manning phone banks this past election, it was through the Republican Federal Committee of Pennsylvania.  The calls were going out to benefit all the federal candidates in our district, all of whom happened to be endorsed, and all of whom were Republicans.  We didn’t have to choose between who we lent our time to.  We could shill for all them at the same time working through the GOP.

If in 2010, Specter wins the NRA endorsement as a Democrat, we’ll have to go back to working through the individual campaigns at the federal level.  As much as I hate Arlen Specter on several other issues, and will loathe having to volunteer for him, it’s my commitment in my role as a volunteer to help NRA deliver the votes to their endorsed candidates.  I take that seriously, because when endorsed candidates lose, it feeds the perception, currently being molded by our illustrious Governor, that NRA endorsements don’t help you in Pennsylvania.  So as much as I hate Arlen Specter as a citizen, as an NRA election volunteer, I’ll help him out if he wins the endorsement.

It’s times like this I wish I had some pro-gun Dems who wanted to help out candidates.  That way I wouldn’t have to get my hands dirty with Arlen.  If he wins the Democratic primary, I do hope I can recruit some pro-gun Dems who want to help him out.  I want Specter to stay true to his current A-rating, because it would better to have two candidates fighting over the gun vote than not.  But if Specter goes down in the Dem primary, I can’t say I’ll be all that disappointed.  I’d like to be able to throw my support fully behind Pat Toomey.

As much as the thought of having to help out Specter in 2010 bothers me, you don’t win friends in politics by throwing them off the boat at the first sign of rough seas.  In politics, you don’t always get good choices.  It’s not a game for people who prefer things to be black and white, and the choices to be easy.

I think it’s time for a poll.

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Mayor Mike Bloomberg tells people that if we just take away the guns, we will get rid of the violence.  Unfortunately, New York criminals are embracing their entrepreneurial spirit.

In 2008, even as gun killings fell, the number of killings committed with knives or other “cutting instruments” rose 50 percent in New York City, the Police Department said: to 125 from 83.

The news gets worse for the law abiding because fatal stabbings rose faster than gun deaths fell. Once again, we prove that criminals will find ways to attack the innocent regardless of the gun laws.

As you read deeper into the article, the NYPD spokesperson appears to lament the easy availability of knives and lack of restrictions in getting them. Fortunately for taxpayers, the community activists who arrange gun “buy backs” acknowledge that there isn’t enough money in the coffers for them to conduct knife “buy backs.” It might be time to join Knife Rights if you live in New York.

I found a great example of a well-written letter to the editor.  It’s sharp, witty, plays off a kernel of truth with just a little exaggeration (but not too much!), and gets people thinking about the issue.

Unfortunately, it was submitted by an anti-gun activist.

That doesn’t mean we can’t learn from it.  If there are any readers in south Florida, a well-written response would likely get published.

Arlen Specter has been spending quite a bit of time in Harrisburg lately.  He was at the state capitol yesterday and was asked about the chances of a federal AWB.

UPDATE: Link fixed.