Snowflakes in Hell

Let me expand a bit on a previous post, for those who want to believe Harry Reid is the Devil Incarnate, and suggest they will tear up their NRA membership cards if NRA endorses him, let me compare, side to side, so we understand what we’re dealing with here:

I’ve included both their NRA and GOA grades here, and their votes on key issues up to and including now.  You will notice that Harry Reid’s voting record isn’t all that remarkably different from Kay Bailey Hutchinson, is rated high by both NRA and GOA. Absent is the vote on Sotomayor, where Reid voted yes, along with every single other Democrat, and Hutchinson voted no, along with most of the Republicans.  Also of note is that Hutchinson signed the Heller brief, whereas Reid did not.

But Reid has also been willing to allow NRA to bring pro-gun amendments to the Senate floor for a vote. While it’s true that the Senate Majority Leader does not have the power of the Speaker of the House, they still control enough of the Senate’s business for a hostile majority leader to create real trouble for us.  You will notice that Dick Durbin has never met a gun control bill he wouldn’t vote for, nor a pro-gun bill he wouldn’t vote against.  I suspect his only “pro-gun” vote, against the child lock provision, is because it did not go as far as he wanted.

While I count myself among those who hope that the Democrats see their lead in the Senate cut down in 2010, for the sake of the Second Amendment, I’m hoping that Harry Reid keeps his position as Majority Leader. I don’t think that turning over the Senate to the GOP is within the realm of possibility in 2010, and probably not 2012 either. That’s a long time to go without progress, and a long time for someone like Dick Durbin to find an opportunity to bring a gun control bill or amendment to the floor. That’s not a risk I’d like to take.

Looks like the District Attorney of Philadelphia is going to go after LTC holders who lie on their application.  It would appear she has legal authority to do this, since the License to Carry Application for Pennsylvania makes it clear you’re making a statement to authorities, and can be prosecuted for falsehoods.  I do have to wonder though, how many hardened criminals Abraham thinks are applying for LTCs, and whether this is just a distraction from going after actual hardened criminals, in an attempt to make it appear that gun licensees are a problem in Philadelphia.

UPDATE: I’m hearing Abraham is also looking to abolish reciprocity with Florida.  I will try to find some verification of this, and an article.

UPDATE: On a Fox Local News story on last night’s 10:00 news, Abraham reportedly suggested she would go after a “loophole” in PA law that allowed people to get Florida permits online, and carry guns in Pennsylvania.

On the advice of Brillianter, I thought I’d give another flashlight a try.  I had been known to carry around a Surefire 6P.  The 6P was certainly bright enough, but too bulky to be carried anywhere other than on the belt.  Not too long ago the bulb on my 6P blew out, and I wasn’t all that motivated to get another one (especially considering the bulb costs almost as much as a new flashlight).  Here are some problems I had with the 6P:

• Too big to be carried in a pocket.
• Takes lithium batteries that are expensive, and tougher to find.
• Prone to switching on, which if it happens in a case will melt plastic or nylon, and possibly burn you.  For mine, by the time I thought to myself “What’s the burning smell?,” there was already a large hole burnt in the top of the nylon.
• Battery life is measured in minutes, but the unit can’t be operated for more than ten minutes anyway before the bulb gets too hot.

So when I saw Brillianter’s post on flashlights, I thought I’d order one and give the Fenix LD10 a try.  It’s a very nice light.  It puts out a lot of light for a single AA battery, as much as the 6P really, and has a much higher run time off that battery than a 6P gets off its battery.  Let’s go over the pros:

• Small enough to fit in a pocket.  In fact, it can be carried comfortably in a pocket riding along side a pocket holster, without interfering with the draw of a pistol or the light.
• Light output is very good.
• The LED light allows for a strobing “dazzle” feature.
• Takes a single AA battery
• Run time is considerably longer than Xenon lamp bulbs

The Cons:

• Still prone to switching itself on, but the LED puts out little heat, and doesn’t drain the battery as quickly.  You can prevent the unit from switching on by loosening the cap, but then you need two hands to make it operate.
• The output adjustment by twisting the bezel is a little awkward.
• Nylon belt holster it comes with is so tight, and makes drawing so hard, as to be useless.  But pocket carry is a better option with this light anyway.
• Could really use a pocket clip to help facilitate pocket carry.

I’m happy to have tried this, since I find having a flashlight on me to be quite handy, and while I never really missed keeping a 6P on my belt, I did miss the convenience of having a flashlight that I could easily carry around.  Like my Leatherman, it comes in handy quite often.

Harry Reid is is likely going to face a pretty tough race in Nevada this coming 2010 election, so I expect NRA will sing his praises from now until then.  Why?  Because if you look at the seats up in 2010, it’s exceedingly unlikely the Republicans are going to take back the Senate, which means the Demos will still control it.  If Reid is ousted, we’ll be stuck with Dick Durbin as the Senate Majority Leader.  Reid has been willing to bring pro-gun measures up before the Senate, and has been instrumental at keeping the lid on any gun control ambitions from the White House.  I don’t think anyone needs any convincing that Dick Durbin will not be so favorable to our plight, and will likely use his office to be an obstacle.

NRA is going to want to keep Reid in the Senate, so he can continue to serve as Majority Leader.  As much as I would like to see Reid cut down, just as a rebuke of the Democratic leadership, I have to admit it would be bad news for gun rights moving forward.

The case is Adames, et al v. Beretta USA Corp, and they are asking that the Supreme Court review the constitutionality of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which immunizes manufactures, distributors, and dealers from certain types of lawsuits in federal and state court.  As SCOTUSBlog points out:

The narrower issue in the Illinois case is whether the specific lawsuit by the dead boy’s parents fits within an exception in the 2005 law that permits some cases to go ahead.  The broader issue is whether Congress has intruded too deeply into the way states craft their own laws, barring those that test issues arising under state common law, allowing at least some that test a state statute.  The petition quotes at length from congressional floor debates, with lawmakers blasting juries and judges for fashioning “novel” ways to attack the gun industry while showing respect for laws that emerge from state legislatures.

The tragedy that led to the Adames lawsuit in Illinois occurred eight years ago, when 13-year-old Billy Swan aimed and fired a Beretta pistol at a friend who had come over to play, Joshua Adames, who also was 13. The gun belonged to Billy’s dad, a Cook County sheriff’s deputy. Billy had taken out the gun’s clip before aiming it, believing that would make it harmless. A bullet that had remained in the gun’s chamber killed Joshua.

Under standard product liability law, manufacturers are liable for defects in design.  Typically this requires a manufacture to make a product more safe if they can possibly do so, without impacting its function.  The problem is, the function of a gun is to send a chunk of metal flying at very high speed out the barrel if you pull the trigger.  In this case, a gun was pointed at someone, and the trigger was pulled.  That the user did not know how to unload a firearm properly is not the fault of the manufacturer.

No doubt the plaintiff will claim a simple change in the design to include a magazine disconnect safety would have made the firearm safer without impacting the function.  But this is not really the case, especially for a police officer, as there are situations where you want the round in the pipe to go off even if the magazine is out.  Magazine disconnects are also dangerous in and of themselves, for reasons we’ve covered on here.

But the question of whether PLCAA preempts such lawsuits is an interesting one.  If you look at the language of the act, it gives this exception to the lawsuit immunity:

(v) an action for death, physical injuries or property damage resulting directly from a defect in design or manufacture of the product, when used as intended or in a reasonably foreseeable manner, except that where the discharge of the product was caused by a volitional act that constituted a criminal offense, then such act shall be considered the sole proximate cause of any resulting death, personal injuries or property damage

I would say if this was just a standard argument of defect in design, this exception would apply.  But it’s the last part on “caused by a volitional act that constituted a criminal offense.” that probably makes the Adames unable to claim this exemption, because pointing a gun at someone and pulling the trigger is a criminal act, even if unintentional.  In fact, the Illinois Supreme Court recognized this, and restored the summary judgement of a lower court in favor of the defendant (Beretta).

The petition for cert is essentially asking to the Court to find the PLCAA unconstitutional under the 10th Amendment, which I think is a bit of a hail mary argument, considering preempting state tort actions that affect the interstate market in a product is pretty clearly within Congress’ commerce cause powers.  But they go further to argue along these grounds:

Congress’ clearly expressed preference for legislative determinations of grounds for liability over judicial applications of the common law in the PLCAA dictate to the States how its law must be made, at least when liability is to be assessed against the firearms industry. 15 U.S.C. § 7903(5)(A)(iii) (creating an exception to the immediate-dismissal dictate so long as the lawsuit is authorized by certain legislative actions); see also 15 U.S.C. § 7903(2)(a)(7) (finding stating that liability actions against gun manufacturers and dealers could only be imposed “by a maverick judicial officer or petit jury [and] would expand civil liability in a manner never contemplated by the framers of the Constitution, by Congress, or by the legislatures of the several States”) (emphasis added); Id. at § 7901(a)(8) (finding stating that plaintiffs in the actions intended to be preempted were “us[ing] the judicial branch to circumvent the Legislative branch”).

They are basically arguing that Congress only intended to usurp state judicial authority rather than legislative authority citing this exception as evidence:

(iii) an action in which a manufacturer or seller of a qualified product knowingly violated a State or Federal statute applicable to the sale or marketing of the product

But this section also includes two examples that give some idea of what Congress meant, and I don’t think it’s favorable to the plaintiff in this case.  I think Congress did intend to preempt state laws that would hold gun manufacturers accountable for third party criminal acts.  What Congress did not intend to do is preempt state law regarding the sale and marketing of firearms.  I think the Illinois Supreme Court got it right.  I expect the Supreme Court will decline to hear this case.

Apparently tourism officials in Phoenix are worried about a drop in tourism and convention business because of the image of Arizona being a bunch of gun nuts.  I think your average American is a lot less hysterical about the topic than Art Frommer, and other New Yorkers, so I would suggest any concern is overblown.

The Roanoke Times is crapping themselves over the fact that it’s easy to get a license to carry in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

And I have my permit. Even though I have never laid a finger on a pistol in my life.

To me, that’s final proof that Virginia’s concealed carry law is insanely weak, utterly ridiculous and absolutely reckless.

It makes about as much sense as the General Assembly giving blind people permits to drive.

In Pennsylvania, it’s even easier than in Virginia.  But hey, even though we have about three times the number of licensees as Virginia, it’s not causing mass hysteria and blood running in the streets.  I suppose it probably comes as a shock to the Roanoke Times that people who aren’t into shooting typically don’t tend to get concealed carry licenses.   And lets not forget about Vermont and Alaska, which require no license to carry at all.  Real dangerous states, those two.  People shooting each other by mistake all over the place right?

That’s apparently what they are calling Moonshining these days, and apparently Tennessee is about to make it legal.  Of course, that’s not going to get the feds off your back.  Under federal law, you can make small amounts (up to 200 gallons) per year of wine or beer for your own use, or to give away to others (you can’t sell it).  But there’s no amount of distilling that’s lawful for home use.  To do that, you need a license from the ATF and you need to pay the excise taxes on what you make.

My understanding is that if you want to commercially brew, make wine, or distill, ATF is actually very helpful at getting people set up and in compliance with the federal law.  Reading through a lot of forums on the subject several years ago I found myself thinking “This is not the ATF I knew.”

Speaking of brewing, it’s been quite some time since I’ve contributed toward my 200 gallon limit.  Pretty soon I will need to bring that down to 195 left for the year.  I’m thinking a scottish ale.

I’m sympathetic to this guy’s plight, but I’m not sure it will really fix much in the long run.  The guy essentially argues that we ought to abolish the Pennsylvania Legislature, and replace it with a unicameral legislature, with fewer members who have fewer perks.

The problem of our legislature costing so much is a real one, but I’d prefer solving it by going to a part-time legislature, like Virginia has, and cutting some of the perks.  I doubt folks in Nebraska would agree a unicameral legislature is going to fix anything, and I would worry that a smaller legislature, where each state representative represents more people, will pay even less attention to constituents than the current one does.  By making them part time, it should cost less money, and reduce the amount of time they have to screw things up.

We’ve followed the saga of the Blue Trail Shooting Range up in Connecticut for a while now.  It seems there’s a new twist in this sorry story that’s very strange.  It would seem our villain this story, Pat DiNatale, who argued that the reservoir adjacent to the Blue Trail range was contaminated with lead, is taking about $450,000 of said “contaminated” soil from a dredging project on the reservoir to use as topsoil for a grazing field for his cows.  See stories here and here.  I guess if he’s willing to use it for grazing purposes, he can’t think it’s very contaminated then can he?  The soil apparently tests out fine.

There’s always been something very shady with this whole thing.

This guy should be put in a museum, because if you looked up “Northeastern Republican” in the dictionary, I think you’d find a picture of this fossil.  In this he claims that Republican Party is becoming a regional party of the South.  While to some degree that’s true, I think guys like this are a big part of the reason the GOP has virtually lost all of the Northeast, including the Philadelphia Suburbs.  The nature of their environment changed, and they were unable to adapt.  We know how that worked out for the dinosaurs, and so it seems to have worked out for Northeastern Republicans.

Ran out to the Apple Store in King of Prussia yesterday to pick up a copy of Snow Leopard.  Installation went off without a hitch, and the main reason I decided to upgrade quickly, which were the time machine speedups, seem to work OK.  The integration of Apple Mail with Exchange 2007 seems to work well.  My iCal synchronizes with my Exchange calendar just fine, and the e-mail part works fine too.   I’m happy about this because it gives me an opportunity to stop using Entourage, which works fine, but is a bit more slow and bloated compared to Mail.  I also switched to using Safari instead of Firefox, because it’s much faster, so I thought I’d give it another chance.  We’ll see how it goes.

The NRA Annual Meeting, which draws upwards of 70,000+ people every year, is scheduled to be in Pittsburgh in 2011.  Looks like NRA is threatning to pull the convention out of Pittsburgh if they continue with their threat to ban assault weapons.  As much as it would pain me, since I can easily drive to Pittsburgh, pulling the meeting is the right thing to do if Pittsburgh wants to continue demonstrating they have no respect for gun owners, or for state law.

The more I find out about the ordinance, the less I understand the need for it.  If a police officer orders you to disperse, and the order is lawful, it doesn’t matter what you’re in possession of.

Jeff points to this article on men who don’t want to admit they love cats.  I don’t know, maybe it’s because I have enough guns to compensate for my inadequacies, as the anti-gun folks would surely believe, but I have no problem admitting to loving cats.  In fact, it’s a problem in our house, because Bitter is a dog person, and is allergic to cats.  I will have to wait until I live somewhere with enough land that I can have an indoor/outdoor cat.

Glenn Reynolds has a picture of a sign outside a Bonefish Grill in Tennessee.  That’s interesting, because we have several around here, and I’ve not seen any signs outside of them.  I should note that Bonefish is operated by OSI Restaurant Partners, which also owns Carrabba’s Italian Grill, Cheeseburger in Paradise, and Outback Steakhouses.

I’ve never seen any one of those restaurants posted here, or anywhere else.

Joe Huffman has the most thorough coverage of it, close enough to what I would have written to save me the time. I generally think it’s constitutional to deprive people convicted of certain crimes of their right t0 bear arms, but I think retroactively applying what is essentially a sentencing enhancement is ex post facto.  As Clayton Cramer is fond of saying, in the time of the founding, we deprived felons of their right to breathe oxygen, so it wasn’t a problem ever considered in the time.  Plus, I don’t think the founders ever considered felonies for putting lobesters in the wrong bag.

But despite the fact that I think some violent criminals can be constitutionally deprived, that’s not to say I agree with the current federal and many state regimes on this matter.  If the courts are willing to agree that blanket bans on gun possession by felons, violent or no, is unconstitutional, I have no issue.

Thanks to Greg for pointing out that Google has newspaper archives, and you can search through and look at old newspaper archives.  For instance, this article from the Eugene Register, dated October 29th, 1981, certainly would make the folks down at the Brady Campaign pine for the good old days:

What is the fastest growing outfit in the country?  A likely candidate for that honor is Handgun Control, Inc., which recently announced a current membership of 451,000.

Just six months ago it was only one-quarter that size, and thus has quadrupled its membership in the half-year that saw the killing of singer John Lennon and the wounding of President Reagan, both with handguns.

They had a goal of reaching a million members by March 30th 1982.  Looking at articles from around that time, it would seem they never reached their goal.  In this March 29th article, they speak of having a bit north of 565,000 members, only 165,000 of which had contributed any money.

Interestingly enough, you can do a search and see when the media was speaking most about the issue.  The one thing you can definitely see is how assassination of prominent figures does drive the issue.  But it seems to be that we, as a nation, most talk about the gun control debate, when gun control is a major political issue.  Look at the spikes in the 90s, to see what I mean.

I also found this article from 1967, when the NRA refused to let Teddy Kennedy speak at their annual meeting.  Or how about this article from July of 1968 speaking of the NRA trying to derail a bill to register and license guns and gun owners, and this article here which speaks of the Gun Control Act of 1968 being passed by the Senate, and then this one which shows the Senate bill in trouble . They even call us the “gun lobby.”  Notice also that most of the articles speak to NRA’s opposition stymies progress every step of the way, despite the fact that many of our modern revisionists like to argue that NRA just rolled over on GCA ‘68.

Shame shit, different decade.  But man, do I hope the Secret Service is on the ball with Obama.  There’s a common thread that runs through all these articles, if you read them.  And Ted Kennedy was at forefront of all these bills.  No wonder the Brady folks really miss him.

Cemetery points to a rather ridiculous practice, but it’s nothing new.  Gun control didn’t poll among the public as well as gun control groups thought it needed to for them to gain any real traffic, so it morphed into “gun safety.”  Andrew McKelvey, who founded Monster.com, even created an entire group in order to get this meme to sail, but the ship sank.  It was after AGS failed, that we suddenly got AHSA, also founded by leaders in the gun control movement.  AGS failed so spectacularly that they are largely gone from the Internet.  There’s not even a defunct web site.  Let’s hope that’s a metaphor for Corzine’s campaign.

I mentioned in my final post about breaking down the ranks of Bloomberg’s anti-gun mayors that if your mayor is on the list, go after them on the anti-concealed carry advertisements Bloomberg funded. I said there was a possibility that they had no idea what their names were being signed on to in conjunction with Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Turns out, I was right.

Two mayors resigned from the group specifically over those ads and the position Bloomberg took against concealed carry. I already mentioned the resignation of the Houston mayor in the post, but I just found a reference to the specifics of his departure:

Former comptroller John Sharp, a Democratic candidate to succeed Hutchison in the U.S. Senate, said Monday that Houston Mayor Bill White, another Democrat seeking the Hutchison seat, should resign from a group called Mayors Against Illegal Guns. White’s campaign said he resigned last week, adding that the group’s focus had grown from its original effort to prevent the sale of stolen guns.

Sharp’s campaign pointed to the group’s fight against a proposal to allow those with concealed gun permits to carry them into other states. White’s campaign said he resigned the day that the group took out a newspaper ad denouncing that proposal.

Either he didn’t know about it, or he did and realized that it was a political liability. Either way, Bloomberg’s extremism cost him the mayor of Houston.

It turns out that those ads also caught the attention of Sen. Thune himself.

The ads included lists of mayors. That definitely got the attention of Thune’s office. Someone noticed that one ad suggested Sioux Falls Mayor Dave Munson opposed the amendment. That one stung — Thune lives in Sioux Falls.

Thune’s office placed a call to Munson, who told them he didn’t oppose the amendment, a Thune staffer said. Several days later Munson resigned from the mayors group, Feinblatt says.

So there’s confirmation that Bloomberg is signing mayors onto policy statements they do not endorse. He’s using their names to advance his personal agenda without even consulting them. Those types of actions make pretty much every politician skittish.

From Megan McArdle:

People carrying guns are acting like jerks.  So are the liberals who have created a giant scary amalgam of a right-wing protester, who has done every bad thing that every protester has ever done.  More than one person has now asked me how I can defend someone who shows up at a rally holding a gun in one hand and a picture of Obama-as-Hitler in the other, and starts screaming about death panels?

Moreover, having created this horrifying bogeyman, the next rhetorical move is to claim that this constitutes the whole of the opposition to your program.

Does any of this sound oddly familiar?  Wait a second . . . it’ll come to you . . . yes, that’s right, it’s 2003 all over again!

RTWT

UPDATE: More from Megan on this topic here, and here.  I think Megan brings a useful, non-gun-activist view to this whole thing.  She calls out the left for not being willing to put their money where their mouths are when predicting all manner of horrors that are sure to happen if people keep bringing guns to protests.

UPDATE: Doug Pennington’s two cents on McArdle’s posts here.

I went back to air pistol silhouette with Sebastian last night, the first time I touched the gun in a couple of weeks. But I wasn’t in the greatest mood for a number of reasons. About an hour before I left, I became insanely tired – like worried I’d fall asleep and not get Sebastian’s gun to him tired. When I got out there, the humidity was a bit of an issue. While it wasn’t icky sticky humidity, it was just enough that my clothes were sticking to me and making me itch a little.

In theory, you always want to do well. In reality, sometimes your give a damn is just busted. That was me last night. I started out the day wanting to go shoot, but in that last hour before we hit the range, things just kind of fell apart, and I wasn’t really there. Because of this attitude, I didn’t bother telling Sebastian about my trouble with the sight on the gun until I was on the last two banks of chickens – more than 3/4 of the way through the 60-shot match. It appeared as though there was crap in my sight, but I assumed it was something to do with my eye. My allergies have been driving me nuts the last few days, most notably with my eyes. So I assumed it was just one more physical reason I shouldn’t be out there. (They were joking with me that I was yawning too much since I was doing so every couple of minutes.)

Turns out that others agreed, my sights were in need of adjustment. So Sebastian came over and took care of it for me. (It’s still his gun, so I don’t change anything on it other than the CO2 and pellets.) Lesson learned. Even if I’m grumpy, if something seems off, I shouldn’t assume it’s just me. It might be my allergies, it might be my crappy eyesight, but there’s also a small chance that it might be the gun.

I’m not seeing the sense in endorsing a candidate in either the Dem or GOP Senatorial primary at this point in the game.  But it seems FOAC is endorsing Bill Kortz, who’s a dark horse candidate running on the Dem ticket in the race that’s better known as the battle between Snarlen Arlen and Joe Sestak.  What’s also surprising is the language in the article would seem to indicate this is an overall endorsement, and not just a primary nod:

In its endorsement of Bill Kortz over all other declared candidates for U.S. Senate, Firearm Owners Against Crime, a non-partisan group of Pennsylvania citizens went on to declare, “We believe that a strong, independent and Constitutionally sound Government is essential for our society to flourish, especially in these trying times. It is our goal to assist in this process by helping to elect responsible leaders to elected office. F.O.A.C will be distributing our Voters Guide throughout Pennsylvania and your name is listed on this Guide as our endorsed candidate for the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate race”.

I suspect what FOAC is thinking here is that any interest group is going to have more relative power to affect the vote in the primary rather than in the general election.  I don’t think it’s necessarily a mistake for a state level group to make an endorsement in a primary when the other candidates in the race are anti-gun.  But it’s still very early in the race — too early, I think, for an endorsement.  Let me explain my reasoning.

Any PAC or interest group that makes endorsements has to take care to protect and enhance the value, or at least the perceived value, of the endorsement.  The way you develop that value is to have a reputation for helping candidates win.  There’s a lot more too it than just “This guy is pro-gun, so I’m going to endorse him.”  If I were attempting to build a reputation for, say, a Snowflakes in Hell endorsement, I would stick to endorsing in close, better developed races, where I might be able to have some positive effects.  That both gives me a better chance of betting on the right horse, and a better idea of how much electoral power I have.  If you bet right more than wrong, even if you’re not the reason the candidate won, the perception will be there, and perceptions matter quite a bit in politics, arguably more than reality.

This is one reason NRA stays out of a lot or races, even when you have a pro-gun candidate running against an anti-gun incumbent.  Typical odds are 90% the incumbent is going to win.   Getting involved in a race which is going to beyond your organization’s power to influence — if you can’t drive enough votes and money to help the candidate win — you’re not doing your organization or the candidate any favor with the endorsement.  He’s still going to lose, and by association so will your organization.

Let me take a look at the numbers for a minute, just using this example here.  The last midterm primary, we had a total of 744,000 votes in a three way Democratic Senate race.  I believe this primary will probably pull roughly the same amount of votes.  I don’t know what FOAC’s break down between members who are registered Democrats and voters who are registered Republican, but I’ll be generous and assume it’s matches Pennsylvania’s overall voter breakdown, which means about 50% would be Democrats.  That’s about 30,000 of FOACs 60,000 members.  If you take the total number of likely Dem votes, and split it three ways, you come up with 248,000 votes needed to win.  If you assume you can drive an organizational discipline of 66%, and get 20,000 to actually follow your endorsement, you come out to about 8% of the total votes needed to win.  That is nothing to sneeze at, and a good reason for FOAC to be involved in primary politics if they have a lot of Dems in the organization.  But this is assuming the race is within the margin of FOAC’s influence.

The race currently isn’t close.  Latest polls show Snarlen at 47%, Sestak at 34%, and other at 3%.  Undecideds are at 16%.  Move all FOAC’s Dem members to Kortz, that brings him up to 7%.  A nice boost, but no cigar.  You can see what I’m saying when I argue the race hasn’t developed to the point where an endorsement is going to help a dark horse candidate all that much.  FOAC pretty clearly has some electoral muscle to exercise, but I’m not sure this primary is going to be a good demonstration.  If Kortz suddenly surged late in the game, and the numbers looked favorable for a FOAC endorsement to be able to push him over the top, go for it.  But until the odds look good, it’s not helping either the endorsor, or the endorsee to become involved.

Pittsburgh is claiming that it will revive its assault weapons ban, which was never taken off the books officially, for the G20 summit next month.  Whether this law is still on the books or not (Philadelphia’s still is too) is irrelevant.  The law was thrown out in court, and is therefore no law.  If the City of Pittsburgh tries to enforce it, they are acting under color of law.

The only way that we’re going to get cities to stop shit like this is to hurt them.  This would be a great opportunity for a group of activists, in consultation with an attorney, to get themselves arrested.  You can then proceed to file a civil rights lawsuit under Section 1983 against the people who demanded this non-law be enforced.  Civil rights lawsuits let you sue public officials, in their personal or official capacity, who act under color of law.

This would be how to do useful open carry activism.  Think someone will step up?

As a sometimes home brewer who primary has made ales from the British Isles, I have several authentic British pint glasses.  Authentic because they are emblazoned with a royal engraving on the glass, which certifies it one imperial pint (~20oz).  Truth be told, all these glasses are now made in Calais, France, but they are the royal standard.

Now it seems they may be in danger of becoming a thing of the past, due to the Home Office’s obsession of ridding the United Kingdom of anything that could possibly be used as a weapon.  That would be tragic, in my opinion.

I don’t see how Larry Pratt can sell himself as an expert on dealing with the Apocalypse if he doesn’t plan to talk about how to confront the eventual zombie menace.  I mean, the elephant in the living room isn’t it?  At least how to deal with zombies would be tangentially related to gun rights.  What good is saving your 401k or IRA from planned confiscation if something has eaten your brain?