very savvy — and it’s working. Turn the sound down before you watch this clip. Allahpundit calls it roaring. That’s pretty accurate.

The media estimate a 10,000 turnout for the rally in Sterling Heights, Michigan.

Meanwhile, when Obama’s not whining or begging Hillary to take on that mean ol’ lady from Alaska, he’s making an ass of himself trying to get those bigger, clingy Pennsylvania votes.

A woman in the crowd told Obama she had “heard a rumor” that he might be planning some sort of gun ban upon being elected president. Obama trotted out his standard policy stance, that he had a deep respect for the “traditions of gun ownership” but favored measures in big cities to keep guns out of the hands of “gang bangers and drug dealers’’ in big cities “who already have them and are shooting people.”

“If you’ve got a gun in your house, I’m not taking it,’’ Obama said. But the Illinois senator could still see skeptics in the crowd, particularly on the faces of several men at the back of the room.

So he tried again. “Even if I want to take them away, I don’t have the votes in Congress,’’ he said. “This can’t be the reason not to vote for me. Can everyone hear me in the back? I see a couple of sportsmen back there. I’m not going to take away your guns.’’

So let’s do an English translation. First, he claims not to be a gun-grabber. Then, when he sees that he’s not fooling people, he says even if he’s lying through his teeth and really is a gun-grabber, he can’t do it.

Tell me again, please, who decided this man was intelligent, and based on what evidence.

Very cool. Second Amendment granny.

Uncle: Gun control: what you do instead of something

Seriously.

When he was arrested on July 1 Webster reportedly told police that he had a constitutional right to own those guns. If that sounds scary, here’s something scarier. There are a lot of people out there who agree with him.

Second Amendment literalists have long held that the phrase “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed” means just that.

Really, I’m not making this up. This asshat actually wrote that. And it’s not a parody. He really has dumped in his diapaers because the Constitution is written in, you know, English.

Armed and Free has a lot of well-deserved snark, but I’m pretty near speechless.

Seen this, Daley?

Municipalities concerned about violent crime rates in their communities and dismayed at the Supreme Court finding in Heller that cements a public right to legal gun ownership would be wise to point themselves towards Richmond, Virginia for a dose of common sense. The capital legislature of the Old Dominion teamed with local, state and federal law enforcement to 1) enact, and 2) vigorously prosecute strict laws concerning the criminal possession and use of firearms. Violent crime in what was once the country’s third most dangerous city has dropped over 50%. By 2007, Richmond had dropped off the list of the top 25 most dangerous cities. This in a state with some of the most liberal gun ownership laws in the country.

What is it about cities that turns the inhabitants into drooling idiots, anyway?

at least for you gun nuts, is Kevin’s Freedom, Hope, Outrage, Bright Lines, Revolution and End Times. Long, and thought provoking.

I hate to say this, because I’m going to come off like a traitor, but I strongly suspect that crime rates have more to do — directly, that is — with the metropolitan/non-metropolitan population ratio than they do gun laws.

Look at the crime rates for states broken down into metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas. The difference is striking. That should come as no surprise.

Guns surely come into play somewhere, but I don’t know that gun laws per se are much of a variable. Look at Philadelphia, then look at Pennsylvania’s gun laws — better, look at Philadelphia, then look at Centre County. Same state, completely different galaxy. My point is that no matter what the gun laws may be, people in the suburbs and country are far more likely to be armed than people in the city (criminals excluded, of course), and they are far more likely to take responsibility for their own lives and neighborhoods.

How people react to crime primarily has to do with dependence. In the suburbs, small towns, and the country, people are not dependent, and when faced with crime, take a proactive role. Dependent people take a wholly reactive role, and do nothing much but hold candlelight vigils and memorials and wave giant puppet heads and have Al Sharpton down so they can riot. Dependent people are also far less likely to own firearms for protection, because protecting oneself is an independent action, not a dependent one.

There is an article in the Atlantic about how crime follows Section 8 housing. There is the usual amount of idiotic, guilty liberal hand-wringing in the article, but what’s controversial about this? It isn’t race. It’s culture. These are people who are content to live with crime, who hate the police more than they hate the criminals, who whine constantly about how awful it is that the criminals who murder their children and parents are in prison, and who blame crime on everything but the criminal. Why wouldn’t it follow them?

Crime rates are more a cultural than a legislative phenomenon. The legislation — here, gun laws — reflects the degree of dependence of the state as a whole (or whoever holds the power in the state legislature).

I’m not saying that the likelihood of being armed doesn’t affect crime rates. It’s basic common sense that it does. But even in a gun-friendly state like Pennsylvania, the areas with the highest degree of dependence are the areas of the highest crime, and vice versa. And even in a gun-friendly state like Pennsylvania with relatively few gun control laws, those high dependence areas spawn extremely high crime rates. After all, even if a lack of gun control were capable of reducing crime, people would have to take advantage of the laws for them to have an effect.

Crime has nothing to do with poverty. There are people just as poor in the country, and they don’t mug other people; likewise, no thug running around with $5,000 in his pocket is, in any way, poor.

Why, then, does the poor person in Mifflin County not resort to stealing from others, but the not at all poor person in Philadelphia is a career criminal?

Culture.

Our poor person in Mifflin County — we’ll call him John — doesn’t mug people or break into houses and steal or sell drugs because doing any of those things would be socially unacepptable. The Philadelphia career criminal with $5000 in his pocket — we’ll call him Hector — is a career criminal because it’s socially acceptable. And because it is socially acceptable, he knows nobody in his community is going to do anything to keep him from mugging, stealing, raping, selling drugs, or murdering.

And in fact, they don’t. They spend all their time blaming everybody but Hector for the crimes he commits. It’s slavery, or the police, or white people, or racism, or Republicans, or not enough welfare checks, or guns, but it’s never Hector — and if Hector is ever convicted and thrown in prison where he belongs, Hector’s being in prison is suddenly a tragedy, and not the fact that he murdered 25 people. That diversion of responsibility away from Hector is what makes his crime socially acceptable, no matter how much people may whine about the crime, and no matter how many of their own children are murdered.

Those who divert crime away from the criminal enable the crime.

They also encourage Hector to commit crimes because they are dependent. They don’t see policing their own community as their job; they want somebody else to do it. So they wave those giant puppet heads and have million man marches and hold candlelight vigils against guns and sometimes riot, none of which has any power to affect the crime. They want more gun control precisely because they don’t want anybody doing anything about the crime. Defending oneself against a criminal or policing the community would violate the culture of dependence.

It would also cast the spotlight on Hector. So diversion of responsibility and the culture of dependence are the ingredients of the poison cocktail.

This is why even though I applaud the Heller decision, I predict that it will have absolutely no effect on crime in DC. Only a tiny handful of people will arm themselves against crime and take responsibility for their own lives and neighborhoods (provided that they can, given DC’s attempts to re-legislate the ban), by no means enough to affect crime. They’re too busy complaining about the evil police or how they’re not getting enough welfare or how “The Man” is keeping them down to grow up and be adults.

If they were adults and criminals were murdering their children and assaulting them on the streets, they wouldn’t be whining about the police; they’d be doing everything they could to help the police. They’d be too busy cleaning up their own neighborhoods and demanding that criminals be locked up in prison to whine about Bush or guns or most offensive of all, how awful it is that so many of “their boys” are in prison. But they aren’t adults. They’re children. And as long as they remain children, I can’t be bothered to lose any sleep over the crime they encourage in their own neighborhoods.

Crime is for society, a cultural problem. For the individual, crime is a moral problem. Poverty, racism, not enough welfare, Republicans, race, none of these causes crime. Only a lack of morals causes crime.

The Heller decision was good for the nation. It won’t do a damned thing for DC. And that’s my cynical 2 cents for the day.

Joe Huffman: How Gun Control Lost.

Carrot cake in the oven.

Home Depot opened yesterday (didn’t realize it was open till we drove past it today). I looked closely, and saw no NO FIREARMS signs. I did see a guy in a T-shirt who was obviously printing.

Haven’t I seen discussions about Home Depot prohibiting concealed carry?

(An intentionally ironic title, given that I got the link from Glenn Reynolds.) On Volokh:

The Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, upholding the Second Amendment right of individuals to own firearms, should finally lay to rest the widespread myth that the defining difference between liberal and conservative justices is that the former support “individual rights” and “civil liberties,” while the latter routinely defer to government assertions of authority. The Heller dissent presents the remarkable spectacle of four liberal Supreme Court justices tying themselves into an intellectual knot to narrow the protections the Bill of Rights provides. Or perhaps it’s not as remarkable as we’ve been led to think.

And on that note, I think I’ll retire to the TV until tomorrow.

Obama on the DC gun ban, now and in February:

Since the Illinois State Rifle Association filed suit against Chicago’s gun ban the minute Heller was handed down, I thought I’d check out Second City Cop, and see what he had to say about it:

Anyone want to guess how much tax money Daley is going to spend attempting to fight what is already a lost battle? Someone really needs to explain what a US Supreme Court decision means to this alleged law school graduate.

You can’t call that ambiguous — although he really guts Daley like a fish in this other article:

Frightening? In what way? That people might be able to defend themselves in their own homes with perfectly legal firearms when the police are far away? And as to the fighting vigorously, on behalf of voters everywhere, stay the fuck away from deciding what’s good for us. You work for us and we’re telling you loud and clear to stay the hell away from our guns.

That’s just for starters. Read the whole thing.

From the Blog Father:

It takes politicians, law professors (and, it turns out, four Supreme Court justices) to believe that a “right of the people” somehow actually doesn’t belong to the people at all.

From his article in the NY Sun. And he forgot to mention academics.

If you’re interested, there’s a detailed, lengthy discussion of the Heller decision at SCOTUS Blog, with links to ruling and dissents.

Uncle:

Oh yeah, and lawsuits filed in NYC and Chicago tomorrow.

From the blog:

Tom Goldstein - Heller affirmed.

Ben Winograd - The Court has released the opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller (07-290), on whether the District’s firearms regulations – which bar the possession of handguns and require shotguns and rifles to be kept disassembled or under trigger lock – violate the Second Amendment. The ruling below, which struck down the provisions in question, is affirmed.

Justice Scalia wrote the opinion. Justice Breyer dissented, joined by Justices Stevens, Souter and Ginsburg. We will provide a link to the decision as soon as it is available.

Tom Goldstein - Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm.

Tom Goldstein - We’ll post the opinion as soon as it is available.

Whew! Now, I need to shower all the sweat off before Best Buy gets here.

for Best Buy, I’m watching the liveblogging of the SCOTUS, on the SCOTUS Blog. I’m waiting, of course, to see how they ruled on Heller.

Kaveman2008 sez:

When I need to buy 9mm or .40 cal, I usually buy the boxes labled 9mm and .40 cal.

Apparently I’ve been doing it wrong.

Warning: May cause a heart attack funny

but I didn’t. Bruce is on a roll.

Uncle again:

Under an executive order expected to be announced today, [District of Columbia] police Chief Cathy L. Lanier will have the authority to designate “Neighborhood Safety Zones.” At least six officers will man cordons around those zones and demand identification from people coming in and out of them. Anyone who doesn’t live there, work there or have “legitimate reason” to be there will be sent away or face arrest, documents obtained by The Examiner show.

Wait. I’m confused. I thought they had all that great, effective gun control in DC . . . Oh, that’s right:

At that point, a reporter interjected: “the Mayor (DC Mayor Adrian M. Fenty) says the handgun ban and his initiatives have significantly lowered violent crime in the District. How do you answer that, Mr. Heller?”

The initial answer certainly wasn’t expected – Dick Heller laughed. Ruefully.

Pointing at the Mayor who was making his way across the plaza, surrounded by at least six DC police officers, Heller said, “the Mayor doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“He doesn’t walk on the street like an average citizen. Look at him; he travels with an army of police officers as bodyguards – to keep him safe. But he says that I don’t have the right to be a force of one to protect myself. Does he look like he thinks the streets are safe?”

There was no follow-up question.

And maybe my favorite Uncle quotation of all time:

I uphold the fine American tradition of not really giving a fuck what other countries think of the US.

Sebastian chimes in on the new, progressive, DC police state here.

Google is forever:

Because there was no better source for pro-gun information than the Brady Blog itself, the Brady Blog shut down comments which were pro-gun by about 10:1.

On an entirely unrelated topic, I just figured out that I’m really grumpy. I was warned about this. Prednisone is a steroid.

Pro-Gun Progressive guts the Baltimore media. Good article, there. While you’re there, you might want to peruse the site.

John Lydon of the Sex Pistols:

England’s a violent place. Too violent for me. That’s why I prefer it here. For a gun-toting nation, Americans are surprisingly passive.

I’m getting pretty cynical in my old age, so there aren’t many politicians I really, really, really like. But here’s one:

Continuing his ongoing efforts to secure immediate legislative action on the School Property Tax Elimination Act (House Bill 1275), Representative Sam Rohrer (R-Berks) will host the Save Our Homes Rally at 11:00 a.m. on Monday, June 2 in the state Capitol rotunda.

Organized in conjunction with the Pennsylvania Taxpayer’s Cyber Coalition (PTCC) and 27 other grass roots taxpayer groups from across the Keystone State, the Save Our Homes Rally will feature personal testimony from several individuals who have been forced out of their homes or otherwise negatively impacted by school property taxes.

I got on his mailing list because he’s about the strongest Second Amendment advocate in the state legislature (and to be fair, that’s saying a great deal). This guy is a rock star. It’s just not fair that he’s not my representative.

But you know what? I sent him an email message and told him I lived in the 5th, and he replied anyway — and it was a real reply, not a form letter. Give this man another gold star.

Sam Rohrer, 128th District, PA.

The Second Amendment Blog Bash channel (hat tip: Bitter).

Buy a car, get $250 of gas or a pistol. So which of the two are most customers choosing?

The pistol, by a 4:1 margin.

Doncha love America?

McCain at the NRA convention.

More about it later — it’s Saturday, remember? Errands day. Scott’s roasted pork sandwiches day. Prince Caspian day. And I’m sorry to say, neighborhood yard sale day.

Link: sevenload.com

Hat tip to Don Surber for the latest idiocy from the Huckleberry. While speaking at the NRA Convention, he heard a noise, and made a “joke,” except it wasn’t funny (even the attempt at humor escapes me, and to judge from the dead silence in the audience, the NRA members), and actually, fairly offensive.

During a speech before the National Rifle Association convention Friday afternoon in Louisville, Kentucky, former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee — who has endorsed presumptive GOP nominee John McCain — joked that an unexpected offstage noise was Democrat Barack Obama looking to avoid a gunman.

“That was Barack Obama, he just tripped off a chair, he’s getting ready to speak,” said the former Arkansas governor, to audience laughter. “Somebody aimed a gun at him and he dove for the floor.”

What a moron — then, everything that has ever come out of his mouth since he crawled out from under his rock in Arkansas has been stupid. Can we stop this idiotic talk of putting him on the ticket now? And how did this blithering idiot ever get elected in the first place? Oh wait. This is Arkansas, the same state that elected Clinton. That’s how he got elected.

Sisters of Fallujah.

It’s not the best form to quote an entire post, but it’s short, and it’s Uncle, so it’s, uh, pointed:

Did you know Bob Barr is running for president on the Libertarian party ticket? Yes, Bob Barr of war on drugs, ban gay marriage, etc. fame. Those aren’t very libertarian positions. And the guy was in office for a while, he coulda gotten his libertarian on then, ya know. Instead of now, when he’s a political nobody. Just saying.

NRA members only. Go here to sign up (your NRA membership number is on the mailing label of your monthly magazine; it’s the long number after the pound sign immediately above your name). And if you sign up, kindly plug in my referral number on the form: FB593

I grossly underestimated what a shameful excuse for a justice system Philadelphia has. Sebastian has dug up the criminal records on the three cop killers:

Michael Cain was the trigger man in the Liczbinski murder. You can see his fifteen page criminal record here. Let’s look at all the violations of the Pennsylvania Uniform Firearms Act that Cain has been arrested for. Keep in mind we’re only looking at gun charges, since that is what this blog concentrates on. Over Cain’s criminal career he had thirteen arrests for unlawfully carrying a firearm, that were listed “Nolle Prossed,” meaning the prosecutor chose not to bring charges. In a further eleven arrests for violations of Pennsylvania’s firearms laws, the charges were either withdrawn or dismissed. In only three cases was he prosecuted and either plead guilty or was found guilty.

[ . . . ]

You can find Levon Warner’s criminal record here. His is only six pages . . . Previously, the Philadelphia DA’s office thrice declined to prosecute Warner for gun law violations. The Philadelphia judicial system chose not to try him for six other violations of Pennsylvania’s gun laws.

[ . . . ]

And last, but certainly not least, Eric Floyd . . . in 1994, he was arrested for robbery, and the prosecutors declined to prosecute him for carrying firearms illegally in two counts. Also in 1994, the courts declined to try him for two counts of carrying firearms illegally.

And those are just the gun charges (Sebastian has links to their records). Gun grabbers sneer at “enforce the laws on the books,” but note that had the criminal justice system done just that, Sergeant Liczbinski would be alive today, and those three scumbags would be in prison where they belong. Why is it that idiots who are always screaming for gun control don’t think it’s important to enforce gun laws? Could it be that crime doesn’t worry them at all?

And why do they even bother pretending to have courts in Philadelphia? Couldn’t they save millions of dollars by closing the courts altogether?

about this video of Philly police:

Excessive force?

For cop killers? Not enough force.

Of course, the Philly liberals are having fits and demanding an investigation. Tomorrow, they’ll be wringing their hands about crime and demanding more gun control. Me, I figure they deserve all the crime they accomodate down there. It’s just too bad more of them don’t get killed.

Grumpy, me? Naw!

Via Jonah Goldberg, this uplifting saga:

COMMERCE CITY, Colo. — A couple fighting about which gang their 4-year-old toddler should join caused a public disturbance that resulted in the father’s arrest, Commerce City police said Thursday.

On Saturday, Joseph Manzanares stormed into the Hollywood Video store where his girlfriend worked, threatened to kill her and knocked over several video displays and even a computer, Commerce City police Sgt. Joe Sandoval said.

After he ran out of the store, police were called and the 19-year-old was arrested at his home.

His girlfriend told police that they had been arguing about the upbringing of their son and which gang he should belong to. The teen mother, who is black, is a member of the Crips. Manzanares is Hispanic and belongs to the Westside Ballers gang, the woman said.

“They have different ideas on how the baby should be raised. Basically, she said they cannot agree on which gang the baby would ‘claim,’” Sandoval said.

How sad that instead of arresting him, the police did not give each one a pistol and encourage them to shoot each other. Everybody would have won: Society, the community, and most of all, the toddler.

Dave Kopel, on Hillary and Obama trying to get gun owners’ votes:

Imagine an election race of Pat Robertson versus James Dobson, each of them appearing at organic grocery stores and Starbucks throughout Massachusetts, with each candidate insisting that he alone deserves the vote of gay-marriage advocates. . . . A presidential candidate could of course swear devotion to the First Amendment, while declaring that the amendment’s purpose is to protect sports reporting and book collecting. And that candidate could still support government lawsuits against publishers, local bans on newspapers, and draconian restrictions on political commentary.

The only reason I know about this is because I saw a sign on the road, but just so’s ya know (if you live around here), there’s a gun show this weekend.

Apr 19-20 Centre Hall, Grange Fairgrounds, Outdoor Sportsmans Club, Patrick Cronin, 814-404-6933

McCain’s response to Obama’s smug comment.

Via Uncle. Jeff sez:

Gun control is the only kind of policy that we have where the proponents of it will point to its utter failure as evidence that we need even more of it.

Actually, it applies equally well to any pet liberal policy. Welfare. Entitlement programs. Education funding. They’re failures, you see, because we’re not doing it enough!

Wait, Jeff was quoting a . . . Canadian, as in a French Canadian?

Wow.

Sebastian has a post up about the rally in Harrisburg, including an anedcote about a hysterical liberal politician, a Representative Josephs. Don’t get the idea all of our state reps are diaper-wearing wussies. For a contrast, see “Rallying in Support of Your Right to Keep and Bear Arms,” by Rep. Sam Rohrer.

But it’s not just an essay. It starts off:

I recently joined Representative Daryl Metcalfe (R-Butler) along with a united coalition consisting of more than 40 pro-gun lawmakers, leading state and national Second Amendment advocates and hundreds of gun owners and outdoorsmen in the state Capitol Rotunda for the Third Annual Right to Keep and Bear Arms Rally.

You got the “I recently joined” part, right? So instead of just scoring political points, or schmoozing with the reps in the state house, Rep. Rohrer was part of the rally. With the citizens, not the politicians. Oh, and there’s a video at his link.