This just in--Governor Rendell is still anti-gun rights

I notice that Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell is supporting more restrictive gun legislation (that's news?). The murder of Philadelphia Police Officer Chuck Cassidy apparently inspired Rendell to
advocate . . . the same kinds of things he has advocated all along.

Visibly moved by the funeral Wednesday for slain Philadelphia Police Officer Chuck Cassidy, Gov. Rendell yesterday called for tougher penalties for shooting at a police officers and pledged to renew his fight for three gun-control laws stalled in the Legislature.

Alright, I have a big problem with this, even before we get to the "fight for three 'gun-control' laws" part. Whenever I see calls for "tougher penalties for shooting at a police officers [sic]," I get the impression that we are expected to believe that the lives of police officers are implicitly more valuable than the lives of us "Average Joes." That's a concept I utterly reject.

I am not at all "anti-cop," and I would be 100% behind a drive for stiffer penalties for assault with lethal force (on anyone, cops included), but to say that such assaults are less offensive when perpetrated against school teachers, carpenters, or blues harmonica players, than they are when perpetrated against police officers is to epitomize the "Only Ones" mentality.

Rendell proposed raising the sentence to 20 years for anyone who shoots at a police officer, and said he'd raise money for an intensive public information campaign so criminals know the rules have changed.

"We want to get out onto the street a clear message," Rendell said. "Even if you shoot at [a police officer] and miss, you are going to jail for 20 years, no ifs, ands or buts. No guilty pleas can save you, no judge can save you. . . . You do not shoot at police officers."

O'Brien backed the idea, saying, "We ask our men and women in blue to take these risks. When they walk into a Dunkin' Donuts and someone shoots them, it's because they're wearing that uniform. We can't tolerate that in this society."

The fantasy of a "no ifs, ands or buts" approach to criminal justice, in the (in)famously porous Philadelphia "justice" system would be laughable, were the reality not so disgusting.

Pennsylvania House Speaker O'Brien, in saying that cops are being shot because they are cops, might be trying to argue that the enhanced penalties for shooting at cops is not because he thinks that their lives are inherently more valuable than everyone else's, but because they are at greater risk. If that is his argument, it's a weak one. The fact that more people might see a benefit in shooting an officer than in shooting a truck driver does not make shooting the truck driver any less evil.

The three "gun control" laws mentioned earlier are the usual suspects:

The proposed laws would require gun owners to report lost or stolen weapons, limit handgun sales to one per person per month, and enable municipalities to enact their own gun laws.

So, we have the "criminalize the crime victim" law, the gun rationing law, and the "allow us to be as brilliantly successful in combating violent crime as Chicago and Washington DC have" law.

Oh--look who else supports these laws:

One NRA member, influential Philadelphia Democratic state Sen. Vince Fumo, said through a spokesman yesterday that he'd support Rendell's bills if they reached the Senate.

I'd call Fumo a traitor, but if LaPierre himself advocates maintaining schools as victim disarmament zones, and actively helps write a massive expansion of the NICS program, I suppose the NRA has little room to fault Fumo.

About that proposed law to require a gun owner to report the loss or theft of a gun--I'm no attorney, and am in no position to give legal advice, but if such a law ever passes here in Illinois (it has been proposed, by the way), I know what I'm going to do. The very day it goes into effect, I am going to tell the police that I went canoeing on the Mississippi river, with all my guns in the boat, and that the canoe capsized, and all my guns were lost.

None of the "report lost or stolen gun" laws I've seen required the gun owner to report finding the guns again, so as long as I don't file an insurance claim, I don't see how I can be charged with anything, even if it is eventually discovered that I have the guns. Never mind that I'm paraplegic, and can't really imagine how I'd get in and out of a canoe, and never mind that in the event of a capsizing, I would most likely drown--I'm still clinging to the naive idea that one is innocent until proven guilty. If, by then, I have one hundred guns (a man can dream, can't he?), I'll say I took twenty trips, and capsized every time.

If they insist on passing freedom-destroying laws for no purpose other than to . . . destroy freedom, they'll have to deal with said laws being treated with the contempt they deserve.

The police and military need guns that 'jam easily'

According to PA Governor Ed Rendell, anyway. About 37 seconds into the following video (not counting the annoying, ten second advertising segment first):

"It’s nuts for ordinary citizens to go out and buy assault weapons," Gov. Ed Rendell, D-Pa., told CNBC. "Assault weapons are difficult to operate, they jam easily. If you want a gun to protect your home it’s the last thing you should have.

"Assault weapons only have one purpose, Becky, and we should be clear about that. They fire at short range; they put out a ton of fire at one time; and they are very powerful.

Short range? How does the good Guv reconcile that with what he says a few seconds later?

The three Pittsburgh officers who were killed--one was killed by an AK-47. The AK-47 was so powerful that from a house a long distance away, it blew through a, uh, a police car--it just absolutely blew through the police car.

So which is it--"short range," or "from a house a long distance away"?

Now, to the money quote:

"These weapons have one purpose," added Rendell. " . . . They’re to kill and to maim, and they shouldn’t be in the hands of anyone else but the police and the military."

Because, apparently, the mission of the police is to kill and maim (and to do so with weapons that jam easily).

About 3:19 into it, he gets back to arguing that these firearms (the use of which by the police and military he endorses) jam, are "not very effective," and have no purpose but to kill or maim.

They use it ["it," in this case, being any firearm] to protect their house. If you have an assault weapon to protect your house, you're crazy. They jam, and they're not very effective. You should have a revolver, or something like that. There's no purpose for these guns but to kill or maim.

Says the firearms expert, Ed Rendell.

More on the Pennsylvania House

I know this has already been discussed here recently, but enough has happened since then to justify another look. Most obvious is the tragedy in Lancaster County, PA, in which five young girls were killed, and five more wounded, three critically. It would have been reasonable to assume that no one would be so lost to honor as to try to exploit this tragedy to advance an agenda--reasonable, but wrong. Not twenty-four hours after the deranged monster committed his vile, abominable act, several Philadelphia area politicians, seemingly immune to shame, tried to use this horror to justify the passage of yet more gun laws.

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, to his credit, although he reaffirmed his commitment to such laws, at least had the honesty and moral courage to acknowledge that no gun laws would have done anything to prevent Roberts' hideous deeds:

"I think we should all understand, no proposed law, none that I would think of or none that I've seen, could have ruled out this situation," Rendell said.

Others, such as Representative Thomas W. Blackwell IV, of Philadelphia (where else?), lacked such restraint (and honesty). In questioning the idea of defending the Constitutionally guaranteed fundamental right of the individual to keep and bear arms, he had this to say:

"Yesterday, all those children were killed," Blackwell said. "You're talking about a piece of paper while children are dying? What kind of god do you serve?"

By the way, this gem was part of a discussion about a ban on so-called "assault weapons"--weapons that had nothing to do with the shootings of the school girls.

Fortunately, even in the face of this tragedy, and the cynical, callous exploitation of it by the gun rights deprivation lobby, Pennsylvanians outside of Philadelphia were well enough represented that the last day of the "committee of the whole" ended without approval of any freedom destroying gun bills.

This, of course has the gun haters in an uproar. My favorite wingnuts, the Gun Guys, are apparently so upset that they think Philadelphia should become its own state:

The NRA is entrenched at the state level, especially in a state like Philadelphia [emphasis added].

The state of Philadelphia? Sound more than a little confused, don't they? Actually, though, for the sake of the rest of Pennsylvania, kicking Philadelphia loose doesn't sound like such a bad idea--it would certainly improve their legislature. As an Illinois resident, I certainly wouldn't be opposed to Chicago becoming its own state, and leaving the rest of us alone.

In the anguished wake of this unspeakable horror, the residents of most of Pennsylvania can take comfort in the fact that they are well represented by people who don't believe that the solution to the fact that there is horrible evil in the world is to render people disarmed and helpless to face it.

More Philadelphia 'assault weapon' hysteria

Annette John-Hall, of the Philadelphia Inquirer, asks "Why do we buy the NRA's line?"

Mayor Nutter and Gov. Rendell are taking aim and don't plan to let up.

In the aftermath of the cold-blooded killing of Philadelphia Police Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski with a semiautomatic weapon, they made a written appeal to lawmakers in Harrisburg last week.

Man up - now.

Stand up for the state's law enforcement officers and ban the possession, manufacture, use and importation of assault weapons.

One of the problems with that idea is that most of those Pennsylvania legislators would like to be reelected some day, and voting to ban so-called "assault weapons" is a good way to make sure that doesn't happen in much of the country, most of Pennsylvania included.

This latest action comes on the heels of the mayor, no doubt sick and tired of being sick and tired of Harrisburg's failure to get any traction on gun control, signing five new gun laws that were to take effect immediately.

He had to realize that his defiant stroke of the pen would amount to nothing more than shooting blanks.

Especially since District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham had already advised him that the laws were unconstitutional.

And most especially since one of the perps oh so willing to fire back was the all-powerful National Rifle Association.

Talk about hostage-takers who refuse to negotiate.

So now NRA members are "perps" and hostage takers. As for "refus[ing] to negotiate"--puh-lease--their willingness to negotiate away gun owners' rights (you do remember the NICS "Improvement" Act, don't you, Annette?) is my biggest problem with them.

Sure enough, the NRA wasted no time suing and winning a restraining order against the mayor's regulations, which included a ban on assault weapons.

An effort that was successful precisely because the mayor's "laws" were so clearly in violation of the Pennsylvania constitution (as well as the Second Amendment of the United States Constitution, but, hey--everyone else violates that--why not Philadelphia?).

As expected, the NRA continues to cling to the age-old argument that guns are the least of the problem.

"It's the same song-and-dance out of Ramsey, focusing on the firearm and not at the root of the problem," NRA spokesman John Hohenwarter said. "The problem is the revolving door of the courtroom and the lack of intervention for these kids who grow up to be criminals."

But none of those things killed Liczbinski. A criminal armed with a body-armor-penetrating weapon did.

Never mind for the moment that any hunting rifle will penetrate soft body armor--what the hell does body armor penetration have to do with the killing of an officer who wasn't wearing body armor?

Annette then goes on to talk about people whom I refer to as "Gun Owners Against the Second Amendment"--including "Judas Bob" Ricker.

But the good news is that there are citizens who love their guns and respect the Second Amendment [Ha!], and who also strongly support reasonable gun-control laws.

Roy Vernick, a small businessman who lives in Warrington, bought his first gun in 1976 for safety. Today he owns three handguns. They're all registered and kept under lock and key in his home.

But when he and his wife go into Center City, chances are he's packing.

"Guns to me are like fire extinguishers," Vernick, 57, says. "You don't expect to use them, but you'd better have them if you need them."

So far so good, but . . .

He believes he represents the typical law-abiding gun owner who supports gun regulation.

And he wouldn't join the NRA if you paid him.

"I'll probably get shot for saying this, but I think they're a bunch of terrorists," Vernick says. "We don't have the right to own an AK-47 and we don't necessarily have the right to own a Glock with a 15-round magazine."

Yeah--the NRA has a long history of shooting people with whom they disagree. As to the right to own an AK-47 (has the NRA started standing up for private ownership of select-fire weapons, and I've not been giving them credit, or does he mean semi-automatic copies of AK-47s?), or Glocks with magazines that can hold more than fourteen rounds, perhaps you could explain your take on shall not be infringed.

Vernick's opinion is shared by the 25,000 members of the American Hunters and Shooters Association, a new organization created to bring reason back to the gun issue.

"We believe in the right to bear arms, and hunting and shooting. But we also believe there needs to be reasonable restrictions," says AHSA executive director Bob Ricker, a former NRA attorney. "There's a place for military rifles, in competitions and other things. But they pose a danger to our city streets."

"Competitions and other things," Bob? "Other things" like self-defense, perhaps? And how do certain firearms, being inanimate objects, "pose a danger to our city streets"? Would you say that "danger" is greater or less than the danger posed by violent felons with long criminal histories being set loose on society?

Annette ends her little whine-fest with this:

Why do we continue to listen to the NRA?

I don't know, Annette--would you prefer to listen to the Violence Policy Center?

If the existing assault weapons ban expires, I personally do not believe it will make one whit of difference one way or another in terms of our objective, which is reducing death and injury and getting a particularly lethal class of firearms off the streets. So if it doesn't pass, it doesn't pass.--Tom Diaz, Violence Policy Center senior policy analyst

GRE Round Up, Nov. 29

Here's the latest from my fellow GREs:

John Longenecker/Los Angeles:

• Safer Streets 2011: Is incoming Congress serious about smaller government?

David Codrea/National:

• ATF attempting to reclassify small arms ammunition without public input


• ‘The Social Contract’ exposes Southern Poverty Law Center


• Felon laments he can’t vote for gun control

Dave Workman/Seattle:

• Rendell veto closes link between anti-gun and anti-self-defense philosophies

Also check out these other Liberty-oriented Examiners:

• Albuquerque Libertarian
• Cochise County Libertarian
• Conservative
• LA Anti-Establishment
• Michigan Firearms

Today is the day in PA

This probably won't come as news to any regular readers of gun blogs, but today, the Pennsylvania House Judiciary Committee meets, with several restrictive gun laws on the agenda. Virulently anti-gun Governor Ed Rendell will speak to the committee in support of the bills.

Here are the bills of which I speak:

The package includes legislation, House Bill 22, for a one-gun-a-month policy. Rep. John Myers (D-Philadelphia) is sponsoring the bill, which would disallow a law-abiding Pennsylvanian to purchase more than one handgun in 30 days.

"To some extent, we need to create a public policy saying we want to cut down on the availability of guns," Rep. Myers told The Bulletin. "I really can't even imagine where I would store 12 guns in my house in a year."

"Cut down the availability of" a legal product? So basically, you mean make it an illegal product, right (not that such an approach works for reducing availability--see "War on Drugs"). By the way, notice that the article says that such a law "would disallow a law-abiding Pennsylvanian to purchase more than one handgun in 30 days." Whether intentional or not, I applaud the article's author, Bradley Vasoli, for his perception--such legislation prevents the law-abiding citizens (exactly the ones we don't need to worry about) from buying multiple handguns in a month, but will have no effect on the felons who buy their guns on the street.

House Bill 18, sponsored by Rep. Dwight Evans (D-Philadelphia), would strengthen the ability of municipalities to enact gun-control measures that could supersede state law. Gun-rights supporters, who tend to regard Pennsylvania law as tolerant of firearms ownership, believe this would weaken residents' ability to protect themselves and confuse gun owners who travel from one jurisdiction to another.

Yeah--some folks just can't seem to see the wisdom in allowing communities to pass laws that make mockery of fundamental human liberties.

A third measure, House Bill 29, would criminalize the failure to report a handgun missing or stolen within 24 hours of its disappearance. The National Rifle Association and other gun-rights advocates believe this measure will only harm Pennsylvania residents who have not acted maliciously.

"My bill would tell people that they must be responsible to report their guns lost or stolen," the bill's sponsor Rep. Jewell Williams (D-Philadelphia) said. Gun owners "should be thankful" for it, he said, because it will extricate them from liability for paying a victim's medical bills or punitive damages if their gun was used by another individual.

Yep--that's my favorite part--"Gun owners 'should be thankful' for" being held responsible for what criminals do with the guns they steal from peaceable gun owners.

The Philly Daily News editorial board seems to take a view somewhat different from mine.

WHAT WILL it take to bring our Harrisburg lawmakers to their senses, to break them out of the National Rifle Association's hypnotic trance and pass the handgun laws we so desperately need?

A splash of cold water to their faces? A sustained high-decibel scream? A sharp snap of the fingers?

You could try those things, I guess--seems a bit puerile to me, but I suppose it's about par for course.