Interactive

As we await the SCOTUS decision on the Heller case, I thought I would posit a question for all of you.

As you know, marriage licenses are honored as sacrosanct from state to state. A marriage license issued in Illinois is honored in every state of the Union - no questions asked. However, a firearms license issued in Utah is not honored in every state in the Union. Only 32 states will honor a legally issued firearms license issued by the state of Utah. This in spite of the 2nd Amendment that guarantees the right so the citizens in this country to keep and bear arms.

So I ask you, dear readers, why do you suppose this is? Why is a license for an activty that is not even mentioned in the Constitution given higher value than a Constitutionally guaranteed right?

Another School Shooting

Another school, another "gun free zone" and another free fire zone. This time in the backyard of my childhood home....DeKalb Illinois. I will not claim to be an expert on the weapons that the shooter carried. Rather, I would like to take a look at some of the background things that you need to know about Illinois as you take this tragedy into account. First (as I said earlier) NIU is a "gun free zone" (HT Leo)

Students may not have or keep any firearm on their persons, in their quarters, or in their motor vehicles at any time while on university property except with the permission of the chief security officer of the university.

Second the shooter, Stephen Kazmierczak (kaz-mer-chak) was apparently off of his unspecified medications that caused him to act "erratically" in the last few weeks.

Third, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (bla-goy-a-vich - trust me....you have to be a homey to pronounce this!) signed a bill last year that supposed to keep people LIKE Kazmierczak from getting a Firearms Owners ID (FOID) card as a result of last year's Virginia Tech shootings. Given what is leaking out about Kazmierczak and his being off of his meds, it sounds like this young man would have been a candidate for the ISP database and yet he was issued a FOID card and allowed to legally purchase those guns last week (HT Gateway Pundit).

The point that I am getting to here is that no amount of "gun control" legislation is going to stop someone bent on doing a crime. No amount of "gun free zone" signs is going to keep a determined gunman from shooting up a school. The ONLY thing that will stop someone like that is the possibility that someone else in the room (a teacher or appropriately trained student) might be equally armed and ready to defend themselves. It is that simple.

Oh and one last note of irony, also via Gateway Pundit, from Kazmierczak's NIU ACA biography/candidacy for ACA Treasurer.

VICE-PRESIDENT: Steve Mazmierczak (sic). Steve served as an undergrad teaching aid for Sociology 388 (corrections) and 488 (juvenile delinquency) inspring, 2004. He has strong interests in justice reform and, as an oldersociology/criminal justice major, he brings experience and ideas to the group.My name is Steve Kazmierczak, and I'm a 3rd year student here at NIU. During my sophomore year I served as an aid for the SOCI170 web-board and last semester, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to be a team leader for SOCI488-Juvenile Delinquency. Since attending NIU, I've worked very hard as a student, and I know that I would be able to forth the same effort as an officer of the ACA. I feel that I'm committed to social justice, and if elected as treasurer I promise to serve the NIU chapter of the ACA to the best
of my ability.

Blood In The Streets

Remember when the Minnesota Legislature was first debating our Minnesota Personal Protection Act? Predictions of mass shootings and blood in the streets came from many of those who were against the Act, including our friends at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Again from the inbox....

Dear Minnesota Brady Campaign Member,
Soon, the State House of Representatives will consider HF 498, a bill that would allow a gun owner to shoot and kill another person in public areas, even if their life were not in danger. This bill eliminates a citizen's duty to avoid a threat and instead allow the gun user to "shoot first" and ask questions later... or never.
CALL YOUR MINNESOTA STATE REPRESENTATIVE TODAY!
Tell him/her: "I urge you to oppose HF 498.Deadly force should not be a first resort in public!"
Click here to look up your State Representative's phone number.
This legislation permits the average citizen to bypass our entire justice system by permitting him or her to assume the role of police officer, prosecutor, judge, and executioner -- but it doesn’t stop there -- this bill also protects the shooter from criminal liability even if they kill or injure an innocent bystander!
Allowing people to use deadly force as a first resort in public can have deadly consequences for innocent bystanders who can be killed or injured in the crossfire.

OH MY...blood in the streets.....except for one small problem. HF 498 doesn't exactly say what the Brady campaign says it says....HF 498 is Minnesota's Castle Doctrine bill. What that means is that if you, as a permitted gun owner are in your home (that is not in public for those of you in Washington DC) and someone that you do not want in your home breaks into your home (again for clarification that would be NOT in public) you are allowed to defend your life, your family and your property by firing on said intruder. Also covered in this legistion is your personal vehicle so that if you are a legal permit holder and some armed thug tries to car jack you, you are able to defend yourself in whatever manner necessary. The law does go into great painstaking detail as to what presumptions must be met in order to meet the criteria of this bill and what the consequences are if those presumptions are NOT met. There is no "by-passing" the justice system (as the Brady Campaign states). Individuals who do use deadly force will still answer to the authorities in order to make sure that the presumptions of harm laid out in the bill were met.

This is another one of these situations where a lobbying organization twists the facts of legislation in order to support their narrow view point on the legislation which is why I strongly urge all of you to make an effort to go to the State Legislatures website to look up these bills (as I did today). It will tell you exactly what the "real deal" is.

Drop Out?

Here is an interesting off-shoot (pun intended) of the Virginia Tech tragedy. (HT Best of the Web Today)

College students across the country have been strapping empty holsters around their waists this week to protest laws that prohibit concealed weapons on campus, citing concerns over campus shootings.
"People who would otherwise be able to defend themselves are left defenseless when on campus," said Ethan Bratt, a graduate student wearing an empty holster this week on the campus of Seattle Pacific University.
Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, a group of college students, parents and citizens who organized after the deadly shootings at Virginia Tech University in April, launched the protest.

These students are taking on a mindset that simply refuses to compromise.

"You don't like the fact that you can't have a gun on your college campus? Drop out of school," said Peter Hamm, a spokesman for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

Oh so if Mr. Hamm doesn't mind violating Aled Baker's Consitutional rights?

Aled Baker, a junior, said he loses his constitutional right to protect himself and others when he steps on campus.
"It's null and void when you go on campus," the mechanical engineering student said.

I wonder if Mr. Hamm would have such a cavelier attitude about it if his free speech rights were what was being curtailed?

The Daily Collegian (a Penn State University student publication) had a very well balanced story on the protest.

Nathaniel Sheetz doesn't care if you notice the empty gun holster strapped to his right hip this week.
That's the point, he said.
"People who carry concealed weapons go about their daily lives just like anyone else would," Sheetz (graduate-industrial engineering) said. "We are trying to show people that just because we might be carrying weapons, that wouldn't impact how we go about our business."

I can't help but think that Hamline University student Troy Scheffler needs to hook up with these folks. If anyone needs their help it would be him as Mitch, Ed and King have shown.

It is nice to see these kids standing up for their rights. Heaven knows there are times when a trained, licensed conceal carry wholder ould have kept a bad situation from getting worse.

On the morning of Aug. 1, 1966, few people had ever considered the possibility that they might die in an indiscriminate shooting spree. But shortly before noon on that fateful day, a 25-year-old former Marine climbed to the top of the University of Texas bell tower and created a worldwide reference point for such fears.
As police rushed to the scene, officers already on the UT campus struggled to formulate a plan. At that time, the Austin Police Department had no SWAT team. Officers were armed only with service revolvers and shotguns, both useless against a sniper firing from a fortified position high above the ground.
Seeing that something had to be done, students quickly retrieved hunting rifles from dorm rooms and fraternity houses, took up defensive positions throughout the campus and returned fire. In the August 2006 edition of Texas Monthly magazine, Bill Helmer, a graduate student at UT during the shooting, recalled the experience to journalist Pamela Colloff: He said he remembered thinking, "All we need is a bunch of idiots running around with rifles." But what they did turned out to be brilliant. Once the shooter could no longer lean over the edge and fire, he was much more limited in what he could do. That's why he did most of his damage in the first 20 minutes.

It is certainly something to think about.

What we need is pool control

Earlier this summer a tragic accident occured in the Minneapolis metropolitan area. A young girl, in a privately run swimming pool, sat on a drain and had part of her intestines sucked out. It was a preventable accident - starting with the parents who were supposed to be watching the child. That did not stop our Junior Senator and our Senior RINO from springing into action - demanding that legislation be drawn up to regulate swimming pools. Thus nanny government would "save us" from harm. The same "logic" is used in the gun control debate. Guns must be controlled by the government in order to protect the children!

A simple fact of life is that a child is more likely to be injured or killed in a swimming pool or bathtub than the are by a handgun. However, in our topsy turvey world, most parents have more problems sending their child to the home of a conceal carry permit holder (174 deaths per year) than they do one that has a swimming pool (1236 deaths per year) or a trampoline (approximately 100,000 injuries a year).

The number one cause of death in children in the US is automobile accidents, drowning is number 2. Accidental shootings....no where close!

Using the old saw about saving the kids from accidental shootings in the home is one of the ultimate red herrings in the gun control debate. When you look at the cold hard facts (of the leading causes of childhood death and injury) you realize that our kids face far greater dangers every day....dangers that are not (and should not be) as tightly regulated as guns are in this state.

Inconvenient truths

Here is a REAL inconvenient truth for those who are trying to use the VTech tragedy in order to grab the guns away from law abiding citizens.

"As the nation debates whether more guns or fewer can prevent tragedies like the Virginia Tech Massacre, a notable anniversary passed last month in a Georgia town that witnessed a dramatic plunge in crime and violence after mandating residents to own firearms.
In March 1982, 25 years ago, the small town of Kennesaw – responding to a handgun ban in Morton Grove, Ill. – unanimously passed an ordinance requiring each head of household to own and maintain a gun. Since then, despite dire predictions of "Wild West" showdowns and increased violence and accidents, not a single resident has been involved in a fatal shooting – as a victim, attacker or defender.
The crime rate initially plummeted for several years after the passage of the ordinance, with the 2005 per capita crime rate actually significantly lower than it was in 1981, the year before passage of the law.
Prior to enactment of the law, Kennesaw had a population of just 5,242 but a crime rate significantly higher (4,332 per 100,000) than the national average (3,899 per 100,000). The latest statistics available – for the year 2005 – show the rate at 2,027 per 100,000. Meanwhile, the population has skyrocketed to 28,189. "

I don't think that there is much more that needs to be said on this subject.

A time to mourn, a time to blame

One of the many wonderful things about living in Minnesota is the Minneapolis Star Tribune (aka Prairie Pravda). Today's Op-Ed page gives us yet another reason to be thankful for the paper of record in Minnesota. Today they give us an editorial entitled "A time to mourn, not to point fingers" and then turn around and point fingers!

"Mourning today is fitting and proper. Frustrations and recriminations will rise soon enough. That's because Americans are tired to the bone of gunmen, rampages, swat teams -- and of needing grief counselors. We are weary to death of the "healing process," and want simply an end to the violence, or, more realistically, a receding to some explainable level.
But unstable people can do unpredictable things, and we've made a decision in this country that guns can be easily obtained. And so we must live with greater risks than those tolerated by other "civilized" societies." (emphasis mine)

Easily obtained huh? As the days go by and we learn about the methodical planning that went in to Monday's rampage, the more we find out that this was not "easy" by any stretch of the imagination.

"Given the risks we have chosen it is unfair to heap blame on the university administration and police for not anticipating this extraordinary two-step mass murder. Hindsight comes too glibly from the sidelines. Cho Seung-Hui could easily have concealed his handguns and ammo clips and slipped in among his fellow students in the two hours between the dormitory slayings and the carnage that followed.
Turning campuses into stockades cannot be the answer. Unless we decide to clamp down on guns and the culture of violence, or to more aggressively intercept dangerous, unstable people, America must expect that Blacksburg won't be its last killing field. " (emphasis again mine)

So the Pretentious Philosophers of Portland Avenue want to crack down on violence? Do they call to clamp down on violent rap music - the kind of music that encourages and glamorizes just this kind of violent behavior? Do they call for a clamp down on "first person shooters" - the games where the player walks through all kinds of "normal" scenarios with the goal of shooting as many people as possible as quickly as possible? OF COURSE NOT!!!! The ONLY thing that the Pretentious Philosophers of Portland Avenue want us to crack down on is GUN USE!

Monday afternoon, I told a discussion group that I belong to that the DFL lead legislature in St Paul was already writing the legislation to repeal our conceal carry legislation based on the VTech shooting. At the time, I was being quite facetious. Based on this editorial, I fear that I was more than a bit prescient.