Falling Down The Interweb Hole

So earlier when I put up my post about HR 822 (thanks Sean) I saw a link to recent news articles about a quarter of the way down the page.  In those links was an article about law enforcement opposing the resolution.

I tend to judge some things by who is opposed to it, so this to me seemed like a positive endorsement of HR822 (like I needed another one). However when I clicked on the link I found that there seems to be only one entity that opposes the bill - the Philadelphia PD.

The Philly PD does not have a good track record where guns are concerned, so this seems to be pretty par for the course. (Sorry Wyatt, you are known by the company you keep.)

The story they quoted was of one Marqus Hill (not Marquis, Marquis Hill is a trumpet player) who, after being acquitted of murder in 2005, was denied permission to get his concealed permit back. Philly, it seems, is a one-time-good-deal jurisdiction where gun permits are concerned. More symptoms of the disease, dontchaknow.

Marqus did what many other Philly residents do - he applied for a Florida non-resident permit. Since Florida is a must-issue state, and since Marqus did not have any felony convictions, the permit was issued.  And, since PA reciprocates with FL, that means he was once more legal to carry in Philadelphia.  This, by the way, is the issue that sticks in the craw of the Philly PD - they said no and the citizen, rather than meekly go away, went around them.

Fast forward to 2010; Mr Hill sees some teenagers out minding their own business selling lemonade and cookies - oops, change that to burglarizing cars, his being among them - and he shot one of them. Thirteen times.

This incident is being used as a good reason not to allow national reciprocity, because if you do that then...what exactly?  Since Mr Hill was already holding a valid permit recognized by the State of PA, what would the proposed law do that is not already being done in this particular case?

I'm not condoning the actions of Marqus Hill, I was not there and I don't know the particulars of the case. Perhaps he is a bad, bad man and needs to be buried under the jail, perhaps he lives in a bad neighborhood and felt threatened enough to shoot thirteen times, I don't know and until the facts come out in the trial neither do you. That's how we still do things here for the most part, first we have the trial and then we have the execution (except in the press).

I'm also not going to go into depth on the obviously flawed reasoning of the Philly PD or Philly, City Of regarding gun laws, and I'm certainly not going to go off on a well-justified rant as to the appropriateness of having to obtain permission to exercise a Constitutionally protected natural right.  I think you know where I stand on such issues.

Instead I am going to quote the infamous Tam: "Where the hell do you get off thinking you can tell me I can't own a gun? I don't care if every other gun owner on the planet went out and murdered somebody last night. I didn't. So piss off."

And now back to the actual subject of this post.

Whilst searching for the above quote I found where she had linked a post at Popehat, which had linked a post to here.

This brought me full circle back to Tam's for this post.

And that is how you get to the point where you are nursing your second beer thinking about the good old days of the Clinton presidency.

And while you are at Popehat you must read this. Priceless.