Chronicling the depravities of the State.
The results on the amendment vote were just posted…
Both Franken and Klobuchar voted against the amendment. Looks like a couple letters are in order here. It also shows us where our new senator stands on gun rights, and he’s standing on the wrong side.
The national reciprocity amendment missed being included by 2 votes. I was hopeful but expected this outcome, it was too good to be true.
You know what they say you win some and you lose some. This is a minor set back considering all the victories we’ve been winning as of late. We’ll get this through eventually it’s just going to take time.
Good news from Mr. Ayoob’s blog…
http://backwoodshome.com/blogs/MassadAyoob/2009/07/21/fish-ordeal-–-over/
The prosecution will not re-try Harold Fish who spent years of his life in prison for defending himself. Although this is good news he and his family are out half a million dollars for defense costs.
Gun rights examiner takes a look at the Violence Policy Center’s new “study” which shows 7 police officers and 44 civilians have been murdered by carry permit holders. As expected the study has more holes than a sieve…
Needless to say this line from the study sums it up…
Because of the secretive nature of concealed handgun permit laws, the VPC relied primarily on news accounts.
So they don’t even know if the perpetrators were actually permit holders. Great study there guys. Of course that’s not all that’s wrong with the study. Follow the link to find more.
I’ve been watching Snowflakes in Hell’s post about the imminent national reciprocity amendment vote. Looks like it’s going to be happening in a few minutes. He’s giving debate updates on his post so head over there to see what’s going on as it goes on…
http://www.snowflakesinhell.com/2009/07/22/vote-coming-at-1130/
I’m not a very difficult man to make happy. It’s really quite simple in most cases, especially if you’re one of my representatives. All you have to do is either pick up the phone when I call or reply to any e-mail or letter I send with something along the line of content.
So here’s the fiasco. I wanted to let my representatives know that I would like them to vote yes on the Thune amendment that would allow national reciprocity for carry permits. Of course being time was very constrained I was unable to use the old snail mail system. In it’s place I sent an e-mail first. To send her an e-mail you need to use a form on her website as she doesn’t publish her e-mail anywhere (although I did get it eventually from the reply that was sent). Of course I didn’t get a response e-mail that night, I figured this was expected since I believed they would need staff there to send the reply.
I then called her office in D.C. At that late of an hour nobody was there to pick up so I left a message with my name, city, phone number, and what position I wanted her to take on the Thune amendment.
Yesterday around noon I also called her office, this time the local one. Again I was greeted with a machine saying nobody was there to pick up. This I found really odd being it was the middle of the day and their office is open until 17:00. Once again I left a message expecting some kind of return call.
Well I never received a return call and nobody is picking up the bloody phone. I did however receive an e-mail which read as the following…
Dear Christopher:
Thank you for taking the time again to contact me about guns. I realize the importance of this issue, and I appreciate hearing from you.
To keep track of what I am doing both in Washington and in Minnesota, please visit my website at http://www.klobuchar.senate.gov. You may also like to track legislation through the Library of Congress legislative information website at http://thomas.loc.gov.
Again, thank you for taking the time to contact me. One of the most important parts of my job is listening to what the people of Minnesota have to say to me. I am here in our nation’s capital to do the public’s business and to serve the people of our state. I hope you will contact me again about matters of concern to you.
Sincerely,
Amy Klobuchar
United States Senator
Wow. Just wow. This is the ultimate form letter of form letters. It had to be generated automatically as there is no content in it that would imply it was a response to what I sent. No where does it state her position for or against, well, anything. I don’t ask for much but a response to the message I sent would be nice. A simple yes or no answer to by request with some reasoning is all I’m looking for. I just want to know some human looked at what I sent and at least let my senator know where I stand.
I’m very disappointed with her office and her. She should be stomping on her staff for not responding to her constituents. Every other one of my representatives has no issue at all responding to my communications. Usually these responses aren’t even form letters or e-mails but actual thought out responses.
Since I was only able to find contact information for our new senator, Franken, I’m giving his office a couple days to give me the courtesy of a reply.
Since Britain has all but banned guns they are now targeting the next evil weapon criminals use, knifes…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8161880.stm
They have run into a problem though. Knife crime is actually going up in areas they are targeting with their anti-knife campaign. This implies that telling criminals not to do something doesn’t prevent them from doing it. Who would have guessed that?
I wonder what will happen next. I’m betting some kind of ban on all knifes that can’t be used for sporting or cooking purposes. Eventually there will be a requirement to register all kitchen knives with the government and licenses will be required to own them. After that a total ban on all knives will occur. Afterwards they will go after blunt instruments. This will lead to law abiding citizens having no objects as most things can be used as a weapon while the criminals will still have guns, knives, and blunt instruments.
I must say my opinion of RIM just went from “I don’t really care” to “Wow talk about rock solid.” A United Arab Emirate telecom company call Etisalat posted an over the air update for its Blackberry users. Emirate said, “upgrades were required for service enhancements”. It turned out the update installed surveillance software produced by SS8 in California…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8161190.stm
From the article…
The update has now been identified as an application developed by American firm SS8. The California-based company describes itself as a provider of “lawful electronic intercept and surveillance solutions”.
Yup I’m sure the freedom loving rulers of the UAE wanted this only for lawful reasons. Wait a minute the UAE isn’t comprised of freedom loving rulers? They probably wanted this software to spy on its citizens? But if you’re not doing anything illegal you have nothing to hide hence why would you be uncomfortable with your government spying on you? Oh that’s right people like privacy.
Research in Motion, the makers of the Blackberry, stated they did not authorize or develop any such update. To alleviate this issue they have released a removal too which can be found here…
http://na.blackberry.com/eng/ataglance/security/regappremover.jsp?CPID=OTC-REGAPPREMOVER
I say good on Research in Motion.
There is an amazing post over on The Smallest Minority. In it the writings of Marc Rubin are totally decimated. For those of you unaware Mr. Rubin wrong the following article…
In it he said he made an argument that was irrefutable that the second amendment was never meant for the right of individuals to own guns. We’ll it was refuted quite well…
http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2009/07/refuting-irrefutable.html
Unlike Mr. Rubin’s “irrefutable” article this one cites sources and uses previous court outcomes to establish that the right to bear arms is for individuals and not the states.
It looks like the New York Times will need to get a change of pants (note some people say this article requires registration to read it but I’ve not had that issue yet)…
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/opinion/21tue2.html
Like most anti-gun articles this one is filled with hysteria…
Passage of the amendment would make it much harder for law enforcement to distinguish between legal and illegal possession of a firearm. It would be a boon for illegal gun traffickers, making it easier to transport weapons across state lines without being caught.
If a state has concealed carry laws how is this going to make it any harder to determine if a person they see is carrying a gun legally or not? This doesn’t make any sense.
Let us use an example here. A cop in Minnesota is walking down the street and sees a person openly carrying a gun. Here in Minnesota this is perfectly legal with a permit to carry since we have no concealment requirement. How can he tell if that person has a license or not without asking? He can’t. Now take this a step further and say the person is from Utah and has a Utah issued carry permit. How can the cop known the person is out of state without asking? He can’t. So there is no change here whatsoever.
And how will this make it easier to cross state lines with guns? No permit or license is required to transport a gun from one state to another. If a police officer pulls somebody over who is transporting a firearm across state lines they can’t arrest the person for that since no law is being broken regardless if the person transporting the guns has a permit to carry a gun.
Furthermore…
Proponents of Senator Thune’s attempt to create the equivalent of a national concealed carry system claim it would reduce crime. But the evidence shows otherwise. Between May 2007 and April 2009, people holding concealed handgun permits killed at least seven police officers and 44 private citizens, according to a new study by the Violence Policy Center, a gun control advocacy organization. Other examples of crimes committed by concealed-carry licensees are plentiful.
So in two years people holding carry permits have killed at most (not at least because you know if there was the chance of it being more they’d use the higher number) seven police officers and 44 citizens. Of the hundreds of thousands of permit holders out there only 51 people have been killed in two years. That’s a much lower number than the number of people police wrongfully shoot per year, heck probably per month. Furthermore there is no citation of the study and no mention why these 51 people were killed (i.e. was there a belief of the carry permit holders that their life was in danger).
But being from the Violence Policy Center who is a paid shill for the Brady Campaign I can see why these numbers are meaningless. They’ve been known to sensationalize things a wee bit more than there are stars in the sky.
Let us continue…
For Alaska to permit residents who have committed repeated violent misdemeanors or who have committed misdemeanor sex offenses against minors to carry a concealed weapon is terrible public policy. For the Senate to extend that permit to 47 other states would be the height of irresponsibility, as well as a breathtaking violation of legitimate states’ rights.
Actually the state of Alaska allows their citizens to carry guns without a permit hence anybody there can carry a gun so long as they can legally own one. What is being said here is that a person who has committed violent misdemeanors or misdemeanor sex offenses against minors (note how both are misdemeanors) can purchase a gun.
And then they bring in the states’ rights argument which I feel is irrelevant. See the right to bear arms is spelled out in the Bill of Rights which is a list of rights considered natural and inalienable. Every state of the union must follow the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Hence the right to carry a gun is constitutional not state given. As stated in our Constitution any laws not spelled out in it are reserved for the states and citizens. Well the right to bear arms is spelled out hence it’s not reserved for the states but given to every citizen.
LOGIC?! Oh noes!!!!!!!!