Left Rudder

Robert Mueller, Director of the FBI:

Mueller said communities will have to determine their own license programs. As a former Marine who served in Vietnam, he said “I tend to believe weapons harm people and more often than not they harm the people carrying them.”

But what does a former Marine officer, criminal law lawyer and prosecutor, and FBI director know? Better to leave issue related to guns to book keepers at Casey Tool & Machine and halfwits.

Hey, that last sentence was redundant.

are soon parted.

I’m certain the NRA will be using the Heller decision as a fundraising ploy; after all, there’s not much that organization won’t use to raise money for Wayne LaPierre and his cronies.

NRA dupes like to believe they are all historians. Yet, this bit of history has escaped them:

Despite that risk, the NRA seems determined to derail our case. Nearly two months after we filed our lawsuit, the NRA filed a copycat suit on behalf of five D.C. residents and moved to consolidate its case with ours. Both suits challenged the same regulations, asked the same relief, and raised the same Second Amendment arguments. But the NRA included several unrelated constitutional and statutory counts, each of which would prolong and complicate our case and give the court a path around the Second Amendment.

Worse still, the NRA sued not only the District of Columbia but also Ashcroft, presumably because the Justice Department prosecutes felonies in D.C. Yet no NRA plaintiff is at risk of a felony prosecution. Joining Ashcroft simply adds months to the litigation so the court can decide whether he is a proper defendant. Regrettably, we now have two suits, one of which is unnecessary and counterproductive.

Thankfully, on July 8, federal judge Emmet Sullivan, wishing “to avoid any protracted delay in the resolution of the merits in either case,” denied the NRA’s motion to consolidate. That means the NRA failed in its attempt to control the legal strategy. Just one week later, Sen. Hatch introduced his bill. The timing is suspicious, to say the least. If enacted, Hatch’s D.C. Personal Protection Act could result in the dismissal of our lawsuit. After all, plaintiffs cannot challenge a law that no longer exists.

This week’s Jon C. Sullivan Award for Outstanding Achievement in Defense of Darwinism goes to:

The man and friend were playing with guns inside an apartment in the 6400 block of 88th Street Court Southwest about 8 p.m. Sunday, Lakewood police reported.

The friend put a gun to the back of the victim’s head while they were in a living room area and, thinking it was empty, pulled the trigger.

The victim was shot and rushed to Madigan Army Medical Center, officers reported.

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Dream on, Tony Scalia

Oh, one more thing: Scalia’s ludicrous vision of a little old lady clutching a handgun in one hand while dialing 911 with the other (try it sometime) doesn’t fit the facts. According to the Justice Department, far more guns are lost each year to burglary or theft than are used to defend people or property. In Atlanta, a city where approximately a third of households contain guns, a study of 197 home-invasion crimes revealed only three instances (1.5 percent) in which the inhabitants resisted with a gun. Intruders got to the homeowner’s gun twice as often as the homeowner did.

No matter which way the Court rules, there will be no impact on the self-destructive gun culture of the United States. Millions of (mostly) white men, obsessed with the declining value of their masculinity in an age that exalts brains over brawn, will continue to treat the gun as a sacrament in their religion of death.

Exactly right.

In the matter of DC v Heller.

It could have been worse but , all in all, I’m pretty happy. Obviously, the gunloons get a debating point–they can now say the Constitution protects an individual right to firearms. DC is a big loser; in addition to having to pay taxes and sending its citizens to the armed services and not having representation in Congress–they also have a court of political hacks telling them that what an overwhelming majority of their citizens want doesn’t matter.

OTOH, Fat Tony Scalia and his cronies have said licensing, registration, and other forms of regulation pass Constitutional muster. Assault weapons and other “dangerous” firearms can be banned. Bans against concealed weapons, carrying weapons in schools and government buildings (Et Tu, Nino?) and other locations are kosher.

The gunloons also lost a debating point: that the 2A serves as a protection against tyranny. Uh, uh sez Fat Tony; the 2A is about self-defense–at home.

Resident Muay Thai expert, gunloon, and pretend progressive Sebastian Sassi is running for Congress (MD-3). He running on the Libertarian Guns ‘n’ Dope ticket, hoping to be elected a Representative in the state of Maryland.

He’s also hoping his hairdo will become fashionable.

Both hopes are quite sadly doomed to failure.

Snark aside, although I disagree with the Libertarian Guns ‘n’ Dope Party (they’re basically a bunch of rightwingers who don’t want to apologize for their hookers), I do believe the US needs to see the inclusion of other parties in the political process. It’s healthy and helps keep the two big parties semi-honest.

Unfortunately, folks like Sassi use candidacy in these minor parties as a form of self-aggrandizement and promotion, rather than running a campaign. Sassi’s not the first; Alan Keyes and Pat Buchanan have made careers of using campaigns to promote themselves rather than trying to get elected. So long as the Libertarian Guns ‘n’ Dope Party continues to field candidates like Sassi–they’ll have to be content to finishing last in most races.

Update: Oh, no. The Sassi-do is sweeping Munchkinland!

Chris Carpenter, gunloon, gives us his best Blutarsky imitation in comments at the American Thinker:

The Swiss realized the value of the militia system earlier than we did and for centuries has relied on the militia system. In fact Ben Franklin often referred to Switzerland in regards to this.

Swiss men, at the age of 18 are issued a SIG 550 assault rifle and are required to keep it in their homes in a ready state along with their kit and a full battle load of ammo. They are required to show for musters and to remain proficient in the use of their arms. This has been a tradition for centuries.

With a whole country armed, it served as a deterent to Nazi aggression during WWII. In fact, after Hitler began invading Europe, a German border guard was talking with a Swiss militia man at a border crossing. The German asked, “What would you do if we invaded your country?” The Swiss militia man said, “We would all take one shot, and then go home.”

I’ve often heard gunloons cite Switzerland as an example of gunloon utopia. Nevermind the fact, privately-owned guns and ammo are registered. The state-issued militia weapons are required to be locked up and securely stored and all ammo sealed and strictly accounted for. But I’ve never heard the story that Nazi Germany was afraid to invade Switzerland.

That’s because it’s not true:

However, from that time onwards the country was completely encircled by the Axis powers. Eugen Bircher, a Swiss colonel, probably made a correct assessment of the situation at the time when he said that the Germans would have been able to advance towards Bern with a single tank regiment.

The reason Switzerland wasn’t invaded by Hitler was because Switzerland served a key German interest: maintaining a financial and trade conduit to the international market.

Chris Carpenter also makes a bizarre comment regarding Franklin–alleging Franklin spoke often of Switzerland’s militia system. Ben Franklin was an amazing man. But not so amazing that he could have been remarking on a system that was created nearly a quarter century after his death.

Tragic:

Klaseus pleaded guilty to felony second-degree manslaughter. Other charges, including reckless discharge of a firearm and misdemeanor charges of trespassing and hunting turkeys without a license, were dismissed.

The criminal complaint showed Klaseus, 40, had alcohol and marijuana in his system when he shot his son.