QOTD - Do Your Homework Edition

From an editorial in the Dallas Morning News comes this quote:

Better yet, do even more homework, and make sure you check on crime stats. That way, you won’t have to depend on the news media — me included — for your information. That’s always a dicey thing when it comes to gun news.

In fact, relying on mass media is a dicey proposition when it comes to any news. You should always check their sources, and be on the lookout for bias, both from them and confirmation bias from yourself.

It's a good thing to have your assumptions challenged every now and then. You just might find out they were wrong.

(h/t to FarmDad over at gunblogger_conspiracy for the link)

No, this won't be abused at all

The WSJ has an article about a new "stolen phones" database, that the major telecom vendors will use to keep from activating stolen phones. It's being created in cooperation with the Federal Government, apparently after the Major Cities Chiefs Association pressured the FCC to do something about stolen phones.

According to the article:

Thieves can sell pilfered devices to local merchants or street-corner middlemen—or hawk them on sites such as eBay.com, Amazon.com or Craigslist.org, where a used iPhone, for instance, can fetch several hundred dollars.

I don't see any way at all this could be abused or misused.

There's no way someone might sell a legitimate used phone, but have it reported as stolen just to be a jerk. Or there's no way that a spited significant other might report a phone as stolen to get back at their ex.

Registries don't work. They don't accomplish their initial purpose, and they merely serve as a vehicle to get further governmental intrusion into our lives. How big of a step is it from a stolen phone registry to a phone registry. Telecoms couldn't activate a phone, or provide service to it, unless it validated against the database.

After all, criminals and drug dealers use pay-as-you-go phones to conduct their business, so the tool must be intrinsically evil, right? And it has to be controlled by the government, right?

Any similarities to my thoughts on gun control and gun registries are not incidental AT ALL.

Thoughts on Binding Signage

One big area of discussion and even sometimes dissension within the gunnie community is around so-called "binding signage". For those that don't know, in some states and localities where the carriage of weapons is allowed (whether open or concealed), businesses are legally authorized to post signage banning weapons on their premises. Frequently, the formatting and textual content of the signs are regulated by statute.

Ohio Binding Signage

There are some gunnies that maintain that binding signage should be illegal, contending that it's an infringement on their right to keep and bear arms. I have heard others say something along the lines of "I don't care if they post or not. My gun's concealed, and they won't know if I'm carrying or not."

As much as I support the 2A and gun rights, I can't support this particular stance. What we're running into here is a collision or conflict of rights. I personally feel that a business owner should be able to set reasonable restrictions on his patrons, whether they are on attire, behavior or almost anything else. Freedom of Association and Freedom of Contract come into play here.

As gunnies, we absolutely have the right to protest, to send letters, to refuse to do business, and to encourage businesses to change their policies. What we don't have the right to do is ignore lawfully posted signage. We cannot, in good faith, argue that our rights should be respected while at the same time ignoring the rights of others.

Now, I think governmental entities should NOT be allowed to post binding signage. The Second Amendment, and similar state statutory and constitutional guarantees, are supposed to be checks on governmental overreach. Based on that, I don't think the government should be able to restrict the lawful carry of weapons on its properties.

The stickier proposition for me has to do with non-binding signage. They do not have legal force, but they are obviously expressing the proprietor's intentions. For example, in Kentucky the binding signage laws apply to concealed carry only. Theoretically, even if signage is posted, open carry is still permissible (the Commonwealth has constitutionally-protected open carry with full state preemption). That being said, if you open carry in there, you should be fully prepared to leave when asked. If you refuse to leave, you are now subject to criminal trespass statutes.

Here is my personal position on non-binding signage. I think gunnies should respect those signs. A business should be free to do business with whomever they desire, and should not have to do business with those they'd rather not. Obviously, if "no guns allowed" signs are actively proscribed by law, then that's a whole different scenario. But where the law is silent, we should be respectful of one another's positions.

Advocate for a business to change? Absolutely.

Completely ignore their wishes? Not so much.

We have other battles we should be fighting instead.

Because keeping guns off campuses makes them safer

Or something.

Man robs (school) bookstore with knife

Remember, Gun Violence Prevention organizations would rather we cower like scared mice, and call the police¹, instead of taking responsibility for our own safety.

¹Unless, of course, the police are actually doing their job and busting up protests using methods not approved of by our betters. Then the police are evil nasty people that should be ridiculed, lambasted and jailed.<sup>2

2</sup>Yeah, my brain hurts too.

Have car, will travel

Frank Bruni pens an article about the evils of state reciprocity:

Between deciding whether I should wear my sports coat or pack it, if I should go to the local airport or the one an hour away with cheaper fares, and trying to remember if I'd armed the alarm system, I thought I had this business travel thing down pat.

Well, not quite!!! Things could be much worse, especially if I had a vehicle operator's permit in my state, but wanted to drive around in some other state as well.

You see, my state merely requires that I pay a licensing fee and subject myself to the ignomity of proving I'm a resident. They might also require that I've never been convicted of felonious vehicular man slaughter.

Some states are tougher. They have different requirements regarding visual acuity, age, response times and recurring training required for the proper operation of a motor vehicle. Yeah, the rules are different in different states.

Thank the Good Lord Above for the Conveyance Association of Roamers, keeping a keen eye out for any Machiavellian institutions that might try to curtail the free travel rights of Americans.

The C.A.R is pushing a statute, the Diverse Roamers In Vehicles Extolling Reciprocity Act of this year, that would amelioriate the itinerant wanderer's concerns. Should Congress see fit to pass this bill, any state that allows a citizen to move from one place to another, regardless of the certification requirements, would be obligated to allow the citizen of another state to do the EXACT SAME THING, no matter the other state's rules.

Spike T. Wheel, C.A.R.'s chief spokesperson, recently said that the current legal environment "presents a nightmare for interstate travel, as many Americans are subjected to state laws that ignore the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the U.S. Constitution."

Nightmare? That could plausibly apply better to C.A.R, though it's not the first adjective I think of when considering their current agenda.

Contradiction, hypocrisy: those words rush in ahead. The bill thus far has more than 872 Republican co-sponsors in the House, many of them conservatives who otherwise complain about attempts by an overbearing federal government to trample on states’ rights in the realms of health care, tort reform, education — you name it. But to promote interstate travel, they’re encouraging big, bad Washington to trample to its heart’s content.

Imagine how apoplectic they’d be if, on certain other matters, Washington forced their states to yield to others’ values the way this bill, the D.R.I.V.E.R. act, would compel Oklahoma, North Dakota and Florida to honor more vehicle operator regulations from the South and West. As it happens these three states all allow 6-wheeled vehicles, which more conservative states do not have to recognize.

It’s not fair to talk only about Republicans. D.R.I.V.E.R has dozens of Democratic co-sponsors as well, and when Democrats controlled Congress for the first two years of Barack Obama’s presidency, they made no major progress on vehicle control. Reluctant to cross C.A.R., they let it slide.

In 2009, when Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader in the Senate, was about to enter a tough re-election battle in Nevada, he actually voted in favor of legislation highly similar to D.R.I.V.E.R. It was defeated. That same year President Obama signed a law permitting vehicles in national parks.

The story on the state level has been just as sad over the last few years. Wisconsin recently approved expanded vehicle operator legislation, leaving Illinois the only state in which certain people can’t drive a car. Several states have enacted laws spelling out that cars can in many circumstances be driven to bars.

One was Tennessee, where a state lawmaker who sponsored the legislation, Curry Todd, sometimes drives a vehicle. I know this because he was drving it when Nashville cops pulled him over two weeks ago for drunken driving. They also charged him with operating a vehicle in public while intoxicated. At least that’s still illegal.

New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey and several other states don’t have reciprocity arrangements that allow someone like Todd to drive a vehicle in their state. That’s because New York officials can deny vehicle operator licenses on a case-by-case basis, whereas many other states — South Dakota, for example — don’t put much stock in such scrutiny.

The D.R.I.V.E.R Act, now in the House Judiciary Committee, makes a mockery of our diverse values and strategies for public safety. If it were enacted, off to New York the South Dakotan tourist could go, Mazda RX-7 churning along..

That’s not liberty. More like lunacy.

Oh, wait. He got confused on his deodands.