No seriously. The city of Dacono is contemplating a pit bull ban. Again, there is no way to scientifically determine what breed of dog a dog is. It’s based on appearances, which are often misleading. This is why I refer to politically incorrect dog as a Chihuahua.
Update: While I am on the subject of BSL, it seems that California is not a wholly evil place.
Mark Koscielski emails The Last Gunshop in Minneapolis:
The gun grabbers have announced their intentions to disarm America, and Now they’re at it again: The City of Minneapolis is trying to force Koscielski’s Guns and Ammo– the only gun shop in the Minneapolis—out of business. For the second time.
In 1995 federal firearms dealer Mark Koscielski opened his store several days before the city council passed a moratorium on gun shops. The city attempted to close down his operation, but a Federal Court judge ordered Minneapolis to allow Koscielski to conduct his business. Mark’s shop was grandfathered in according to that year’s zoning code, which specified no minimum distance requirements.
In 2002, his landlord decided not to renew Mark’s lease, and the zoning board informed him that there were only two zoning areas in which it would be possible to run a firearms dealership. In actuality, the “revised” codes added a further condition: a gun shop must be 500 feet from a church, a school, a park, or a library and 250 feet from a residence. There was no place in the City of Minneapolis where a firearms dealer could exist. However, when a day-care center opened just 8 feet from the gun shop, the zoning and planning board said nothing about the suitability of the site.
Ironically, Minnesota originally had a preemption law excluding firearms dealers from restrictive municipal zoning laws; however, a later state law permitted municipalities to regulate the location of firearms dealers, provided that their zoning ordinances are “reasonable, nondiscriminatory, and nonarbitrary.”
In the summer of 2003, Mark’s lease was finally terminated, and he searched for another location. The restrictive zoning laws forced him to rent a site not in compliance with the zoning code. Mark set up shop and prepared for the inevitable legal battle. Within 24 hours of his hanging up his sign bearing his “Koscielski’s Guns & Ammo” logo, the zoning department appeared on site, demanding that the sign be taken down. To eradicate Second Amendment rights, even the First Amendment can be sacrificed.
Minneapolis backed away from barring the sign, at least until Mark—a disabled veteran—has his day in court to fight for his livelihood. However, the city did shut down Mark’s business for three-and-a-half months, thus cutting off his income and severely restricting his ability to retain
effective legal counsel. A consulting attorney operating pro bono prepared a tentative litigation plan for Koscielski vs. City of Minneapolis, and his arguments are strong and carry potential nationwide application.1. Minneapolis’s action may violate the Second Amendment rights of Koscielski’s customers, particularly since the adoption of the Minnesota Personal Protection Act of 2003 that sanctions the carrying of concealed handguns with a permit.
2. Minneapolis’s adoption of an impossible-to-legitimate or satisfy ordinance may violate Koscielski’s right to substantive due process under the 14th Amendment.
3. Koscielski has a claim for violation of his right to equal protection.
4. Koscielski, on behalf of his customers, may have a claim under the Minnesota Constitution, which establishes the preservation of hunting and fishing rights.
5. Koscielski should have a claim for the “taking” of his business.
6. Koscielski may have a claim that Minneapolis, by confining such businesses to a zone in which there are no qualifying properties, has gone beyond regulating the location of firearms dealers and has effectively banned firearms sales in the City.If you believe that the Second Amendment means nothing without access to firearms and ammunition, and if you believe that liberal anti-gunners should not be allowed to fulfill their social agenda by driving federal-government-regulated businesses out of existence, please help us today. Send a donation in any amount to
Koscielski’s Guns & Ammo Legal Defense Fund
c/o TCF Bank
5550 Nicollet Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55419The clock ticks away on our freedom.
For further information, call, write, or email Mark or Barb at
Koscielski’s Guns & Ammo
2926 Chicago Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55407
(612) 827-3832
Kevin quotes the text of the Federal Marriage Amendment:
Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution or the Constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.
On what I covered here, Kevin has more. Including the VPC admitting to the misinformation I’ve chided them for:
Assault weapons—just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and plastic firearms—are a new topic. The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons—anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun—can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.
Gun control isn’t about guns. It’s about control.
I’m flattered. Bubba asks his readers to guess which Roveblogger said something. One of the commentors guessed me.
If I’m annoying some factions of the left wing, I’m doing something right.
The RTB is heavily armed. A few of us (me, Stoney and wife, Les, Rich, and Justin) met at Guncraft last night for some rootin’, tootin’, doggone shootin’ range time. A good time was had by all and, we’re happy to report, no radiation seeped into our brains causing us to kill one another nor innocent passers-by.
Guns fired: Walther P22, Sigarms 220, Sigarms 229 in 9MM, Sigarms 229 in 40S&W, Glock 30, Browning Buckmark, and a few more.
I’d never met Justin before. He was, given the tone of his blog sometimes, a surprisingly calm guy.
Two federal appeals court judges on Tuesday repeatedly expressed skepticism about the government’s effort to ban the sale of a book that purports to show people how they can legally stop paying income taxes, a theory that one judge called nonsense.
State Rep gets pulled over for DUI and gets a ride home from the police.
George Bush wants line-item veto power. What on Earth for? It’s not like he vetoes anything.
Bitter is not alone in her position on gun rights and voting. The Republicans don’t get it any more.
Update: Clayton Cramer starts being a Bush apologist with respect to guns.
I still hold that Bush will get the NRA endorsement, even though Bush is no friend to gun owners.
Md. lawmakers hear gun-ban testimony:
For state lawmakers, gun-control advocates, police commissioners and even candidates stumping for president, when it comes to the issue of banning assault weapons, 1-in-5 is the magic number.
Democratic presidential primary front-runner Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts uses the statistic. So does the Episcopal Church of America. And in Annapolis, where a Senate committee heard testimony yesterday from all sides on a proposed assault weapons ban, supporters quoted the statistic verbatim: “One in five law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty is killed with an assault weapon.”
There’s just one problem with the ratio, according to gun rights advocates: It isn’t true.
Dozens of them testified before the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee yesterday, and a hundred more crammed an antechamber while committee members considered a bill that would give Maryland one of the nation’s strictest bans on semiautomatic firearms by banning 45 named weapons and any subsequent copycats. Though 70 state senators and delegates back the bill, gun shop owners, hunting groups, and assorted police organizations rejected the ban and the statistic.
Lt. Col. Steven. T. Moyer of the Maryland State Police — which opposes prohibiting the sale, transfer and ownership of semi-automatic weapons — told committee members that of the 50 rifle-related deaths in the state over the past decade, none of them were officers.
“The statistics are not here and [don’t] support this legislation,” he said.
Roots of the 20-percent figure lie in the Washington-based Violence Policy Center, a nonprofit group that works to curtail gun violence through research, advocacy, education and litigation. The group analyzed unpublished FBI data on fatal police shootings from Jan. 1, 1998, through Dec. 31, 2001. During the period, 211 officers nationwide were killed in the line of duty, 41 of them with weapons the group determined to be assault weapons, such as M1 Carbines, AK-47s, Tec 9s and AR-15s.
“They classified all rifles as assault weapons,” Republican state Sen. Nancy Jacobs, wearing a button with the words “MARYLAND GUNOWNERS VOTE,” complained during the marathon hearing.
The VPC has a long history of lying through its collective teeth. Glad to see it get some media coverage. All rifles are assault weapons. So, my dad’s Remington nylon body 22 is the same as an AR15? The anti-gun folks defend their stat, which has been severely debunked in other ways.
Of course even Kevin is wrong. An insignificant number of the cops (likely zero) were killed with rifles capable of automatic fire that fire medium power cartridges, which is the real definition of assault weapon.
Join together issues a press release:
CeaseFire Maryland, the state’s leading gun violence prevention group, welcomed the results of a survey by Gonzales Research that showed seventy-seven percent of Marylanders favor state legislation banning military-style semiautomatic assault weapons and their copycats. Only 19% oppose a ban on such weapons. Leah Barrett, Executive Director of CeaseFire Maryland, said: “Marylanders have spoken clearly in favor of banning these weapons of war from our streets. I hope the Governor is listening.”
The support for a strong Maryland assault weapons ban including copycat assault weapons encompasses the majority of voters in every demographic sub-group – 68% of Republicans, 75% of men, 75% of voters in the Eastern Shore and Southern Maryland, 74% of voters in the Baltimore suburbs and 71% of western Marylanders. Percentages were higher among women, African American and Baltimore City and Washington suburb voters.
If lies like the one above and others were known to your average citizen, I doubt they’d support it. After all, most people are under the assumption (based on lies and misinformation by groups like Join Together, the Brady Bunch, and the million err Four Mom March) that these are machine guns that are getting banned. That, however, is not the case.
The measure, which advanced out of the Senate Judiciary Committee by a 6-4 vote, would allow residents in communities that prohibit handgun ownership to use handguns in their home for self-defense, even though local law may bar them from owning the weapons in the first place.
So, it’s legal to own a gun when you really, really need it. Otherwise, it’s illegal.
A sign our legislators apparently don’t have enough real work to do:
A proposal that would prohibit your dog from roaming free while riding in the back of the family pickup truck drew fire in the legislature yesterday.
The dog bill was offered by Rep. Bill Dunn, R-Knoxville, who said that if dogs ride in a truck bed, they should be harnessed or caged.
Are dogs getting thrown from trucks a real problem?
Some in congress are trying to push legislation that would require disclosure of webmasters’ names, addresses, and phone numbers. If you don’t, you could get fined $150K and get jailed for seven years.
If this law gets passed, I’d be amazed. The fact it’s up for consideration is rather 1984ish.
Why would WATE run these articles on election day as opposed to, you know, before election day when the info would be really helpful?
One person in Blount County voted for Lyndon Larouche. Here are Blount County’s results.
Kerry continues his lead. Clark is out.
Kerry won Virginia. I can see that. And he won Tennessee. That I find shocking and disappointing. Good thing I spent the night at the range.
Justin alerts us that if you’re hobby is indoor gardening, you’re likely to be on a TBI watch list. But they’re begonias, officer.
Pundits speculated a while back about a third party run by Howard Dean. Now, it could be in the works:
Former Vermont Gov. Howie Dean and his advisers are looking into options that would allow him to run for president on the Green Party ticket should he fail in his bid to wrench the Democratic nomination away from Sen. John Kerry.
Dean had been looking at the Green Party long before his campaign caught fire. As early as late last summer, Dean was considering the Greens as an option, particularly because at the time Ralph Nader, the Green nominee in 2000, appeared less interested in a run.
Republicans are saying please.
This Is London reporter James Langton writes:
First sentence:
Arnold Schwarzenegger is today locked in a legal battle after ordering his first execution as governor of California.
Second Sentence:
The actor turned politician refused to grant clemency to a man convicted of four murders.
The first sentence says Ahnold ordered an execution. The second says he just refused clemency. Lame.
And I do mean Damn! Her story is here.
Update: To remove doubt about the issue of whether or not she’s damn worthy, I present this.
Barry addresses some political problems liberals are facing. You really should read this. Choice quote:
But things have changed in this past year. I’ve seen Democrats and Liberals alike shift to the left and abandon a number of the principles that the party stood for, in order to pursue a partisan agenda against George Bush and his War on Terror/Iraq War plans. For some, it has to do with Bush’s National Guard record, to some it’s his background as an opportunistic frat rat; for a large, large number of people it’s the continuing belief that he, his brother Jeb, the Florida government and the US Supreme Court stole the 2000 election from Al Gore. But underlying all of that is the pure desire for revenge for the eight years of partisan hell the Republicans put this country through opposing Bill Clinton.
Read the whole thing.
Update: quote updated.
Prominent unions abandon Dean. Doesn’t say much for their credibility when they abandon their candidate just because he’s losing.
Owen responds to this quote by Wes Clark:
“Before 9/11, the president did not do everything he needed to make us safe. And after 9/11, he took us to a war we didn’t need to fight,” Clark said, referring to the war in Iraq.
Owen says:
Let me get this straight, Wes, Bush should have acted preemptively to thwart attacks before 9/11, but should have done nothing after 9/11? Boy, I sure would feel safer if Wes were running things.
Ouch!
Here’s a chart that shows increases in federal outlays.
Updated to correct my glaring error! Thanks Manish!
Some one wants to ban goose parts as food. That’s rather lame. Any activity that leads to less geese in the world is OK by me and my dog.
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
Uncle Pays the Bills
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