Snowflakes in Hell

Philadelphia is 26 on a list of top 35 freest cities.  Las Vegas is the freest city in the ranking.  But hey, at least Philadelphia beat New York in something that doesn’t involve negative social indicators.

Hat tip to Dr. Helen

In Philadelphia, wasting valuable police resources fighting the scissor menace in our public schools.

The City of Philadelphia has begun to enforce one of the gun laws that were not thrown out.  It should be noted that the laws that remain were not upheld, it was ruled that the National Rifle Association did not have standing to challenge the remaining three laws.  The city will begin enforcement of the Lost & Stolen Reporting Requirement only, at this point.  Anyone arrested under this ordinance will have standing to challenge the law under Pennsylvania’s preemption statute.  Any police officer or prosecutor enforcing this law is opening him or herself up to the possibility of lawsuits.

I’m hoping this means we can finally start having a serious discussion about violence in Philadelphia.  It’s long overdue.

Hat Tip to Dave Hardy

He says that law evolves, but he also says:

“What we’re seeing on the streets of Philadelphia is not self-defense. It is sensless violence and slaughter.”

Nutter says it’s not lawful ownership but illegal activity that is the source of the gun violence in the city.

Really?  Because my friend might have a different view on this one.  Sorry Mayor, just because your lapdogs in the media aren’t reporting cases of self-defense against the criminals whom you have allowed to run amok, doesn’t mean they aren’t happening.

Pennsylvania’s gun laws are useless, because Philadelphia isn’t enforcing them, again.  So why are they not only barking loudly for more, but if they aren’t going to enforce the laws we have now, why are they even on the books?

Philly has long been held hostage by trade unions.  If Nutter manages to break them, he’ll be doing the City a tremedous service on the way to turning it around.  Just to give you an idea how this city works:

A few days earlier, a couple of blocks away, the same electricians union had been outbid for a job repairing a bit of wiring at the Five Guys burger joint. The electricians are headed by John Dougherty, one of the city’s most vocal and visible union leaders, who has a reputation for rough tactics when it comes to union business. The union — Local 98 — sent picketers who insinuated that the restaurant was unclean due to a vermin infestation.

The unions in Philadelphia are no better than a criminal shakedown racket, and they are in desperate need of having their power smashed.  If Nutter can accomplish that, it’ll make up for some of his bungling stupidity in other areas.  This, no doubt, also has to do with Philadelphia voters kicking John Dougherty to the curb.

Having grown up in an area with a lot of union households, I can say based on my antecdotal evidence, this is more than just political correctness:

The “problematic” piece of legislation stemmed from a push by City Council for more racial balance in the trade unions, following a series of stunning revelations in previous weeks.

I had one of my friends who was in a trade union explain to me that “there’s no way we’d accept more n*****s into the apprenticeship when it’s getting harder for white people to find work.”  Another said “if you hire scab labor, it’s just a bunch of lazy mexicans who will do faulty work.”  When I used to work in a union shop part time in high school, it was our company’s unstated policy that no blacks would be hired, and I was looked at as if I had some kind of disease when I suggested this practice might be, I don’t know, morally and lawfully wrong.  The common belief was “They’ll steal our product, and sell it to all to their ‘home boys.’”

Now, I’m not saying that all union members are racist, but in my experience growing up and working for a bit in that kind of environment, the attitude is pretty prevalent, and it’s difficult for me to believe that doesn’t make its way into decisions about who and who doesn’t get let into the apprenticeships.

It’s been almost two decades since I worked in a union shop, so maybe things have changed since then, but I think they’ve largely kept African Americans and other minorities out of the skilled trades, and the skilled trades are a way out of the poverty trap.  As libertarians, we can’t go around demanding and end to government handouts and affermative action, and let remain in place the system, such as the one that exists in Philadelphia, that allow unions to hold the city hostage, and deny a fair shot to people outside that system to get ahead.  It’s high time that was ended, and it’ll be an important component of any turnaround the city might have.

UPDATE: This is what used to happen when you stand up to union thugs in Philadelphia:

Altemose installed a mile-long chain-link fence around his work site, and proceeded without the unions. He started carrying a pistol, which he practiced shooting while wearing his coat and tie.

He and his workers received threats — such as acid in their kids’ faces — if the work continued. Altemose installed a device on his car so he could start it by remote control each morning in his driveway.

In June, a thousand union men showed up in Valley Forge, wearing hard hats. They trampled over the chain-link fence and began what the state Supreme Court later called “a virtual military assault,” using color-coded smoke bombs to designate targeted areas, along with firebombs and — incredibly — hand grenades.

The second amendment protects us against a lot more than just government thugs.  Would Altmouse have had the minerals to stand up to the unions if he was forcibly disarmed by a government that would have most decidedly looked the other way when it came to union thugs carrying guns?

Looking over this very interesting post on ATF enforcement patterns at SayUncle, it would seem the City of Philadelphia refers a great number of cases over to federal prosecutors for violations of federal gun laws.  The feds took only 238 of the 1578 cases that were referred to them.  The top reason for our district was “Minimal federal interest, or no deterrent value.”

So if the feds aren’t using the laws to go after actual violent criminals, but are using the law to go after people like Wayne Fincher, David Olafson, and various other folks who are no threat to polite society, what use are they really in terms of public safety?  What is the “federal interest” in sending hobbyists to federal prison, but not violent felons?

I would note that until the Attorney General Corbett came in, Philadelphia almost never went after cases like this.  I guess they got tired of us telling them they weren’t using the existing laws.  Of course, if they are serious about continuing it, how much you want to bet it lowers the murder rate in Philadelphia?

In the Trentonian yesterday: “Jersey gun problem PA’s fault”:

New Jersey’s biggest obstacle to controlling gun-related crimes could be the state of Pennsylvania, according to federal data analyzed by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

The vast majority of gun crimes committed in Jersey involve guns that were sold from another state, and most of those recovered firearms came from the Keystone State in 2007.

This data, compiled by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, show that only 27.9 percent of crime guns recovered last year in New Jersey came from Garden State dealers. Of the 1,467 out-of-state crime guns seized by law-enforcement agencies in Jersey last year, most of them (285) originated from Pennsy gun dealers.

Of course, what they don’t mention is that most gun shops in New Jersey have closed down due to the opporessive gun regulations in that state.  The shooting and hunting culture in that state has all but been completely extinguished by regulations that can land you seven years in prison by stopping at a Dunkin Donuts drivethrough on the way back from the range for a cup of coffee.

They don’t have to make guns illegal if they just make owning them so legally risky that no one bothers, except the criminals.   Now they want to do the same thing to Pennsylvania; to destroy its hunting and shooting culture, and close down thousands of gun shops in the state.   No thanks.   The end result will still be criminals getting guns, they will just smuggle them from somewhere else.

People like Bryan Miller won’t stop until they destroy the second amendment.  They might not destroy it outright, but they can destroy it through attrition.  It happened in New Jersey, and we can’t let it happen here.

First they pass gun laws which are illegal, now the Sheriff of Philadelphia has apparently refused to do one of his key functions, which is to foreclose on houses:

With the economy soft and thousands of Philadelphians delinquent on their mortgages, Sheriff Green this spring refused to hold a court-ordered foreclosure auction. His move raised eyebrows on the bench and dropped jaws among lenders and their attorneys, who accuse him of shirking his duty to enforce legal contracts.

When I was shopping for a house, at the height of the sub-prime business, I avoided it because it looked like a stupendously bad idea.  Why not lock in a low interest rate for 30 years?  If you didn’t think carefully, or read the fine print, why should you be able to evade responsibility for your mistake?

And before you say I don’t have a heart, and don’t care about poor people, how do you think those poor people are going to fare when no one will lend them money for mortgages, or other loans, because banks decide that making loans in Philadelphia is too risky because the law doesn’t apply there?

The city gets two gun laws outright thrown out before anyone has even tried to enforce them, and the other three are dismissed on standing, which is not the same as the laws being upheld, the city has gone and declared victory.  Now the AP seems to have gotten it right, but the city media?  Hook, line and sinker baby.  Joe Grace, I have to hand it to you.  You’re a brash and brazen scheister, but you’re good.  Anyone who can do media relations for a guy as corrupt and crooked as John Street has to be.

The Philadelphia Metro should be ahsamed of itself, though.  When you’re just a propaganda arm of City Government, what good are you as journalists?  Are you doing any service to the citizens of Philadelphia?

I have a copy of the audio segment where the mayor answers my question.  The question wasn’t submitted under my alias, so don’t listen for Sebastian :)  It starts right off with the gun issue.

KYW actually read my question on the air this morning at about 8:36AM.  I was in my car on my way to work.  His response basically was that I was incorrect.  That his laws were not, in fact, violating the constitution, and that he respects the second amendment.  His laws, you see, are only meant to go after criminals.  They aren’t meant to target law abiding gun owners.  And what reason do law abiding gun owners have to own an assault weapon anyway?   Well, Mr. Mayor, under your law, all the following are assault weapons:

Now, Mr. Mayor, do you care to try, once again, to tell me I’m wrong?  The city ordinances do affect sport shooters Mr. Mayor.  Either you’re a fool, because you believe what Joe Grace of CeaseFire PA, and your advisors are telling you, without asking real experts, or you are dishonest for deliberately misleading the citizens of Philadelphia and of this Commonwealth.  Either way, it doesn’t look good.

I was happy that the reporter asked a follow up question, from a questioner asking how he expected gun control to be effective in Philadelphia when it hasn’t been effective in Washington DC at reducing crime.  The Mayor doged that question by suggesting that things in DC were “complicated” and that it wasn’t a simple problem.  He then went to provide the example of New York City, which has what he called “more reasonable” gun laws (New York law amounts to near total prohibition, BTW, except for the rich and famous) and has managed to lower its crime rate.   The reporter fired back at him, again using part of this reader’s question which stated that New York City’s gun laws were decades old, and crime only recently began to drop there.   Mayor Nutter dodged again, suggesting the questioner come live in Philadelphia for a bit, and then see if he feels the same way about gun control.   Well, I can be pretty sure if I had to live there, I would cling to my guns like the most bitter and religious person Barack Obama could possibly imagine!

UPDATE: I’ve obtained a copy of the segment for you.

UPDATE: I originally had an .17HMR rifle and a shotgun in there, but upon further review of the law, neither of those firearms qualified.  I have replaced them with better examples.

Apparently Judge Greenspan ruled that two of the laws were illegal:

A Philadelphia judge yesterday sided with the National Rifle Association and struck down city ordinances banning assault weapons and limiting handgun purchases to one a month.

In a blow to the city’s attempt to write its own gun laws, Common Pleas Court Judge Jane Cutler Greenspan ruled that Philadelphia should be permanently prevented from enforcing the laws that City Council passed unanimously in April.

But Greenspan gave city officials a consolation prize by declining to strike down three other laws on procedural grounds, indicating that the NRA and other plaintiffs did not have legal standing to challenge those laws.

The laws that remain standing, for now:

The three laws Greenspan allowed to stand permit judges to remove guns from people declared to be a risk to themselves or others, prevent people subject to protection-from-abuse orders from owning guns, and require gun owners to report the loss or theft of a gun to police within 24 hours.

Oliver said the city would immediately begin to enforce the law requiring gun owners to report lost guns. He said the other two laws would require enforcement regulations.

Shields said it was only a matter of time, as the city attempted to enforce the laws, until the NRA would locate aggrieved parties who could act as plaintiffs.

This fight will continue.  Note that the judge didn’t allow the three laws to stand on merit, she allowed them to stand because the plantiffs in the case didn’t have standing to challenge them.  Standing is often used by courts when they want to dodge issues.  I’m not familiar with Pennsylvania’s standing doctrines, but I would suggest that the ruling makes sense by legal reasoning, even if we don’t particularly like the outcome.

Our local news radio station, KYW 1060AM is hosting a Q&A session tomorrow with Mayor Nutter, and they were nice enough to put a form online so we can submit questions.   Here’s mine:

Mr. Mayor, when you took office, you swore an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and of this Commonwealth.  By restricting the rights of Philadelphians to own firearms for sport and protection, aren’t you violating that oath?

Go ask a question.  Can’t hurt.  Keep it short and polite, but tough.  I don’t expect they’ll ask the Mayor any pro-gun oriented questions, but let the media know that gun owners are out there.  Another one to think about asking him would be what an assault weapon is.  If you’re from the Philadelphia area, definitely make sure to get a question in.

Good editorial in The Daily News talking about the lawsuit the Boy Scouts have filed against the City of Philadelphia, who are trying to evict them because they exclude gays.  The Inqurer has run other editorials denouncing the Boy Scouts position, and arguing the city is justified in what it’s doing.

I take a bit of a conflicted position on it, in that I believe the Boy Scouts of America is wrong for excluding homosexuals and atheists from scouting, but I also think the city is wrong for punishing this particular troop because of the backwards policies promulgated by the national organization.  The next thing you know, they’ll be punishing local shooting clubs because they don’t like what the NRA does… oh wait.

The kids in the Philadelphia Boy Scouts shouldn’t be made to suffer for the position of the national organization over which they have no control.  This is political grandstanding, pure and simple, and it’s shameful.  Scouting offers a lot of positive things to young boys, and in a city that’s in desperate need of giving young boys positive leadership, and keeping them out of trouble, it seems to me that this move is supremely short sighted on the part of the city politicians.

I understand their beef with the Boy Scouts of America.  I even share it.  But they are a private organization, and are free to exclude whoever they want.  The Boy Scouts are not a hate group.  They don’t preach discrimination, or notions that some people are better than others; they view homosexuality and atheism as immoral behavior and belief.  I disagree with them strongly on this matter, but that’s what the national organization has decided.  The city politicians should be free to denounce this all they want, but they shouldn’t go so far as punishing the boys of this local troop by canceling their lease.

Eric posts about a historic firehouse that’s being demolished in Philadelphia to make way for Ed & Mike’s Convention Mega Emporium.  It goes on to talk about the declining convention business.  Having just attended one of the larger conventions out there, I can’t imagine there are that many large events that make this kind of project a good investment.  Even after Philadelphia completes the expansion, I’d be doubtful that NRA would ever return of Philadelphia, given Mayor Nutter’s glowing love for the second amendment.  It’s hard to see how a city like Philadelphia can compete for convention business with a city like Las Vegas, or even a smaller city like Orlando.

He says there’s no proof that gun control solves any problems.  This is something Philadelphians desperately need to hear.  The politicians already know this, but they are hoping their constituents don’t, and as long as they can keep blaming Harrisburg, they don’t have to answer for their own failures.  Kudos for Dr. Lott for getting the message out there in our toxic media environment.

Well, it’s often been said there has never been a better gun salesman than Bill Clinton.  Seems that Mike Nutter is doing his part too.  You see, Mayor Squidward, the more you bellow, the more we buy; the more bold and defiant we get.  You sure you want to keep doing this?

It would seem that she doesn’t much like it.

Harsh words from C. Scott Shields for Mayor Nutter:

NRA attorney C. Scott Shields later accused Nutter of being a “tyrant” willing to cast gun-shops owners in a false light. “To suggest that they’re engaging in unlawful trafficking of handguns is outrageous,” Shields said.

The city ultimately hopes to take this fight to a higher court to provoke reconsideration of a 1996 state Supreme Court ruling that killed the city’s last attempt at gun-control laws.

City Solicitor Shelley Smith yesterday said that she’d be ready with an appeal in a week to 10 days if Greenspan rules against the city.

Earlier in the article

Nutter said that “you don’t have to be a rocket scientist” to know some legally purchased guns are later resold to people who are prohibited from owning them.

So Nutter thinks having lost in the state legislature, he can just decree Colosimo’s and The Firing Line to be criminals?  Well, that pretty much fits the definition of tyrant if you ask me, which in ancient Greek meant a ruler who seized power without legal right.

Nutter is dragging Philadelphia gun shops into this now.

“These gun traffickers are not going to stop us from keeping the citizens of Philadelphia safe,” Nutter said in a news conference before an afternoon court hearing on the five laws he signed into law last month. One of them limits gun purchases to one a month in an effort to curb “straw purchases,” in which individuals buy multiple firearms for resale to felons and others forbidden to own guns.

I would be talking to a lawyer right now about a libel suit against the Mayor.  Good thing is, the lead attorney appears to hint at the possibility:

C. Scott Shields, who spent the afternoon arguing the case against the laws in a City Hall courtroom, called Nutter’s words “shocking.”

“He may be inviting separate legal action for casting Colosimo’s and the Firing Line in a false light,” Shields said. “To suggest that they’re engaged in illegal trafficking of handguns is outrageous.”

The three ring circus in that city continues.  But why isn’t Mayor Nutter talking about this?  Why isn’t the media forcing him to address it?

Things are looking good to get a permanent injunction against the city’s five illegal gun control laws:

Greenspan ordered the city and the NRA to condense their positions into writing by this morning, in advance of an afternoon hearing.

The city wanted to offer testimony from 10 witnesses, including Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey and a retired ATF agent, along with 75 exhibits that included two semiautomatic assault rifles. The city planned to use that testimony to argue that there is “no common lawful purpose” for assault weapons.

But NRA attorney C. Scott Shields objected to such a lengthy proceeding.

“What we’re trying to circumvent now is putting on a dog and pony show of having to listen to all the different reasons why the city needs gun control,” Shields said. “They should really be concerned about criminal control.”

The judge seems to have rebuked the city’s request for a dog and pony show of witnesses.  I’m guessing the judge didn’t take too kindly to having her courtroom used as a three ring circus for the city politicians.  This is really a matter of law, and the City of Philadelphia is on the wrong side of it.  I do hope that Judge Greenspan rules the right way on this one.

UPDATE: Just noticed this one, “The hearing drew a small crowd of demonstrators from X-Offenders for Community Empowerment, a group of men who previously served prison terms, some for crimes with guns.”

Felons for gun control!  Are you kidding me?

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.