Category: Gun Laws

I Don’t Think that I Often Say This, But ………

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Props to NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg:

Joe Baca never saw it coming, and neither did Gloria Negrete McLeod.

But as state Sen. Negrete McLeod replaces Baca in Congress, the dueling San Bernardino County Democrats witnessed first hand the beginnings of a change in gun politics, courtesy of billionaire New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

No doubt the strongest gun control advocate on Forbes’ list of the fabulously rich, Bloomberg seized an opportunity to unseat Baca, a pro-gun Democrat, by spending $3.3 million on television and mail attacks. Given his estimated $25 billion fortune, $3.3 million is couch cushion change. But it was three times the sum Baca and Negrete McLeod raised between them. By homing in on a loyal National Rifle Association politician, Bloomberg altered a long-standing element of American politics.

There’s more to this than just guns, McLeod is fairly pro-gun as well, and there is an important bit a few ‘graphs down, that the NRA is basically a partisan organization, where it’s “my cold dead fingers” philosophy now takes a back seat to party:

It skipped Baca’s race, a telling omission. If any candidate warranted NRA support, Baca was that man. In his 20 years in Sacramento and in Washington, Baca rarely if ever wavered from National Rifle Association orthodoxy. There were times when he was the only Democrat who sided with the NRA.

“Joe was a very good friend of the NRA’s,” recalled Steve Helsley, the NRA’s California lobbyist when Baca was in the Legislature.

Baca sought the NRA’s endorsement this year, but said the NRA turned him down because he failed to join Republicans who voted to sanction Attorney General Eric Holder for the ATF’s bollixed Fast and Furious gun investigation, and because he supported Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor as U.S. Supreme Court justice.

I’m not unhappy about the results.  Baca was a Blue Dog, and he had a long history of directing his campaign funds and those of the House Hispanic Caucus for the benefit of his relatives, and then there is the whole thing of his calling Rep. Loretta Sanchez a “whore” (though not to her face) when she confronted him on this and other irregularities.

Here’s what Blue Dogs and New Dems should take away from this whole story:  If you support lax gun ownership rules, good for you, but do not expect the NRA to do anything, even something as minor as an endorsement when you are running against another Democrat.

They are not your political ally.

F%$# the NRA, Without Lube

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We had another shooting, this one local:

Charged as an adult in the Perry Hall High School shooting, 15-year-old Robert Wayne Gladden Jr., was held without bond Tuesday as a portrait of a withdrawn and occasionally bullied student with a troubled home life emerged through interviews with classmates and court documents.

The suspect, who underwent a mental health evaluation Tuesday, remains at the Baltimore County Detention Center. He was charged with attempted murder and assault in the cafeteria shooting on Monday, the first day of classes. Gladden’s lawyer, George Psoras Jr., cautioned against a rush to judgment, saying the bullying his client endured pushed him to a breaking point.

(Emphasis mine)

One of Natalie’s BFFs, Abbey, goes to Perry Hall high, and was in the cafeteria when the shooting went down.  (She was uninjured)

Yes, This Both Cowardice and Hypocrisy

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Roger Simon (not the Pajamas Media Guy) notes that both Presidential candidates are full of it in their expressions of sympathy for the victims of the Batman shootings.

The issue here is that both candidates, while expressing sympathy, are refusing to do anything, even the most basic stuff, like keeping records of gun purchases, as they do with explosives (and many types of fertilizer), so when someone purchases 6000 rounds and multiple weapons, someone might flag this as being a matter of concern.
Here is the money quote from the OP/EE:

What was baloney is that he intends to do nothing about preventing it in the future.

His White House press secretary had announced as much to reporters on Air Force One on the flight to Colorado. Jay Carney said Obama “believes we need to take steps that protect Second Amendment rights of the American people but that ensure that we are not allowing weapons into the hands of individuals who should not, by existing law, obtain those weapons.”

That “existing law” was painfully inadequate to protect the 70 people who had been shot in a movie theater was obvious to all. All except for politicians running for reelection, that is.

Mitt Romney is no better. Having opposed “deadly assault weapons” as governor of Massachusetts in 2004, he now does “not support any new legislation of an assault weapon-ban nature.”

But he, too, said he was “deeply saddened” by the Aurora shootings. Just not deeply saddened enough to promise to do anything about future shootings.

I think that every player in American politics is Wayne LaPierre’s bitch.

Heard About the Shooting at the Salon In California?

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Click for full size


See the License Plate Frame?

Normally, I don’t say anything about such things, but then a friend pointed out the license plate frame on the shooter’s truck. (See the join the tea party dot us URL?)

From reports, this is not a politically motivated shooting, and I have no reason to believe that it is.

That being said, what is clear is that there are a lot of teabaggers with easy access to firearms and a few screws loose, and there are a lot of people out there who are giving encouragement for them to go postal (Limbaugh, Beck, O’Reilly), and the fact that a few of them are going do decide to do very bad things as a result is more probable than just possible.

H/t Hedgehog at SP.

When a ‘Phant Calls Another ‘Phant a Stupid Classless Idiot…

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You know that a big fat line has been crossed.

In this case, it’s  Brian Miller, former head of the Pima County (Tucson) Arizona Republican Party, calling his successors classless dolts for raffling off a Glock handgun as a fund raiser.

The reason that he’s saying this is because this is Gabrielle Gifford’s district, and she was shot, wait for it, with a Glock:

Eyebrows shot up all over the country Thursday following news that that the Republican Party in Pima County, AZ — home to Tucson and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ (D) district — is raffling off a Glock similar to the one used to shoot Giffords in the head in January.

In Tucson, the condemnation of the plan was universal and bi-partisan.

“There’s a woman who has a bullet in the brain and who everybody is wishing a full recovery,” Brian Miller, the immediate past chair of the Pima County GOP told TPM. “I don’t think that raffling off a firearm right now is probably the right way to go.”

Miller says the people who took over the party — and booted him from his position after he criticized local law enforcement for shooting a Marine in a controversial raid on his home in May — are from the “my way or the highway” wing of the GOP who don’t pay much thought to the political fallout from their actions.

While he said that raffling off a firearm to raise money is something he did himself when he ran (and lost) in the 2010 Republican primary in Gifford’s district, it’s not something he’d do now.

But it’s the kind of thing the folks in charge of things at the Pima County GOP may become known for, and to the party’s detriment, he said.

“The people who are running the Pima County GOP right now aren’t exactly known for their ability to feel the political pulse,” he said. “Politically, it’s kind of a silly thing to do.”

Anyone who thinks that you can reason with rat f%$#s like this is delusional.

How Politics Are Supposed to Work

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Here’s something that I didn’t know, that Palm Springs, California, is the gayest city per capita in the United States.

So, when the homophobic police chief and DA decided to run entrap run a sting operation to harass gays, they both get forced out:

The June 2009 gay sex sting netted 19 public indecent exposure arrests, and disbelief and outrage have festered in this desert haven ever since.
This is Palm Springs, “the gayest city in America,” a gay tourist destination governed by an openly gay mayor and home to the sexually charged White Party, a dance and music festival that attracts tens of thousands of gay men every year.
………
The controversy reached a boil last June with the revelation that an officer involved in the sting was taped uttering a gay slur. It grew venomous in December when Police Chief David Dominguez, who had disciplined the officer, acknowledged that he too had made an “inappropriate comment” — also caught on tape.
………
It wasn’t enough. Dominguez abruptly announced his retirement last week.
………
Former Riverside County Dist. Atty. Rod Pacheco’s hard-line prosecution of the Warm Sands cases, which have yet to go to trial, rallied many in the Palm Springs gay community to pour money into his challenger’s campaign in the June election. Pacheco lost to Superior Court Judge Paul Zellerbach by 8,400 votes.

“I was told that on election night he was cursing my name,” [counsel of many of defendants, Robert] Tansey said.

It should noted that the police and DA claimed that there were extensive complaints, but they have been unable or unwilling to turn over that information to defense attorneys.

Palm Springs has been in decline for decades, with its recent status as a gay vacation destination being the only thing that is not turning it into Inland Empire, but the police, and the Republican (I Wikied it) DA decided that it was time for some gay bashing, and they discovered that the LGBT community has learned to vote.

Republicans Are So F%$#ing Classy

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Wouldn’t you know it, “Jesse Kelly, the ex-Marine Tea Partyer who challenged Gabrielle Giffords,” is looking into the possibility of gearing up for a special election:

Kelly, if you don’t already know, has been taking heat since Giffords’ shooting for sponsoring a campaign event last year in which supporters joined him in shooting a “fully automatic M-16.” “Get on target for November. Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office,” the event’s announcement read.

It’s true that the M-16 event had no direct connection with Giffords’ shooting, and claims that it indirectly helped create a “climate” conducive to the shooting are dubious at best. Still, to many people, Kelly is now best known as the guy who encouraged supporters to shoot M-16s in the name of defeating a member of Congress who was, several months later, nearly shot to death. Politically, the association is toxic, and Kelly faces a formidable — maybe impossible — task in repairing the damage.

Thus, stories about him quietly looking into whether there might soon be a special election for Giffords’ seat are particularly damaging for him. Sure, the inquiry his campaign apparently made wasn’t actually that unreasonable. There were, after all, reports earlier this week that Arizona state law requires that Giffords’ seat be declared vacant if she’s incapacitated for more than 90 days. All Kelly may have done is make a discreet inquiry about whether this is true. (It isn’t; only the House itself can declare a seat vacant.) But, especially in the wake of the M-16 controversy, it looks terrible for Kelly to be seen making political calculations right now.

Actually, it doesn’t look terrible.

It’s par for the course for the ‘Phants.  It took them about 12 hours to politicize 911, after all.

Can We Please Give Texas Back to Mexico?

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Texas has a concealed carry law, something that it did not have when I lived there, but one of the consequences there is make things more convenient for lobbyists in Austin:

……Well, I hear from a friend that lobbyists visiting the Texas state capitol building have started applying for concealed carry licenses. Why? Because as you pass through the metal detector to get into the capitol building, there’s a separate – basically empty – line for people who have a license to carry a concealed weapon. So the lobbyists are applying for the license in order to take the short line.

The body politic of the great state of Texas is a maggot ridden zombie……With a case of the clap.

They Who Must Not Be Named

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Let us add Washington Wizards star Gilbert Arenas, as well as any other moron who decides that celebrity justifies their carrying a firearm in violation of the local laws:

Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas, who was suspended from professional basketball, pleaded guilty to a felony count of carrying a handgun without a license.

Arenas, 28, entered the plea today before District of Columbia Superior Court Judge Robert Morin in Washington. Under a plea agreement, Arenas admitted violating a District of Columbia law on carrying an unlicensed handgun.

Under the agreement, he likely will receive a sentence much lighter than the five years he might otherwise face. The agreement calls for prosecutors to recommend a sentence of six months when Arenas is sentenced on March 26.

When the prosecution asks for 6 months, can they please also ask for the sentence to be served at the same time as the NBA season?

I don’t want to start any blasphemous rumours

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Pictured in Happier Times

But I think that God’s got a sick sense of humor
And when I die I expect to find Him laughing.*

Meleanie Hain, who made headlines when she showed up to a kids soccer game with a pistol strapped to her hip, and then filed a 7 figure lawsuit against the sheriff when her carry permit was revoked, has been shot to death in an apparent murder-suicide, along with her husband.

Thankfully, the children, who were in the house, have not been physically injured.

God Bless the 2nd amendment.

*Song Blasphemous Rumors, artist, Depeche Mode.

Legal Humor

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So the good professor Dorf is discussing the issues caused by the 2nd amendment intersection of DC v. Heller and the sad matter of New York Giants receiver, and sad sack, Plaxico* Burress, who shot himself with his own unregistered gun in a New York night club:

Which brings us to Plaxico Burress. Suppose he had applied for a NYC handgun license. As I read the application materials, he could not have gotten a carry license because he had no reason related to his business to need to carry a handgun. His story that he needed a gun because he wears a lot of expensive bling and carries a lot of cash, while touching, doesn’t establish a business need. Burress’s business is catching footballs, and with the possible exception of playing the Eagles on the road, would not generally expose him to the risk of armed attack.

(emphasis mine)

After cleaning my screen, my thought was, “Ahhh yes….Philly sports fans….The only people capable of making me feel empathy for former Dallas tight end Michael Irvin.”

*Ask your physician if Plaxico® is right for you. Nursing and pregnant women and persons with sensitivity to lead should not take Plaxico.†
†As much as I’d like to, I cannot claim credit for this line. Manny at Stellar Parthenon came up with this.