Category Archives: Right to keep and bear arms

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Lies catch up to you

We have twice previously noted the story of a dog being killed in the City of Brotherly Love, far, far, far more coverage than The Philadelphia Inquirer gives to actual murder victims. I suppose that this story couldn’t have been ignored, considering the information, but this is the third story on the shooting of the dog.

The pit bull fatally shot by Philly’s top FBI agent severely injured another dog earlier this year, neighbors say

“Many of us in the building know that this dog was not completely innocent,” said one neighbor, describing the violent incident three weeks before the dog’s death Monday.

by Jeremy Roebuck | Friday, February 24, 2023

Less than a month before Jacqueline Maguire, the FBI’s top agent in Philadelphia, shot and killed a pit bull as it reportedly attacked her smaller dog on a Center City street this week, that pit bull seriously injured another dog, requiring three surgeries and $9,000 in vet bills, according to residents of the building where the earlier incident took place.

The Jan. 27 fracas — between the 7-year-old pit bull named Mia and a Siberian husky mix puppy that lived in the same apartment complex — prompted management to ban the pit bull from a community dog park and require it to be muzzled in all common areas, three neighbors at the Lincoln Square apartments at Broad Street and Washington Avenue said.

Those residents — most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid conflict with neighbors — said they were prompted to share the story with The Inquirer after seeing news of the pit bull’s fatal shooting Monday and in response to a TV interview in which the dog’s owner, Maria Esser, said she’d never had an incident with the dog before.

“It’s been a little frustrating,” said one resident who witnessed the earlier dog fight. “Many of us in the building know that this dog [Mia] was not completely innocent.”

There’s more at the original, and yes, in view of the Inquirer’s earlier coverage, the information in this article was necessary. But Miss Esser telling people that there’d never been trouble with her dog previously, when other residents had seen differently, $9,000 in veterinarian bills, and a photo in the article showing the bandages on the injured Siberian husky mix, would appear to cast doubt on Miss Esser’s claims.

I wonder what the animal rights activists are saying now?

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It’s just so easy for the white liberals in safe neighborhoods to support ‘progressive’ politicians After all, most of the crime happens in other places

My good friend Harrison Finberg — OK, OK, I’ve never actually met him, but we can be good friends on Twitter these days — noted this tweet from Philly First Ward, the Democratic Executive Committee in Philadelphia’s First Ward. We have previously noted the mayoral candidacy of Helen Gym Flaherty,[1]Even though Mrs Flaherty does not respect her husband, attorney Bret Flaherty, enough to have taken his name, The First Street Journal will not show him a similar disrespect. one of the furthest left of the ever-growing list of hopefuls, whom The Philadelphia Inquirer described as a “longtime activist who is typically aligned with the Democratic Party’s left wing”. Mrs Flaherty’s campaign website is full of the usual ‘progressive’ bromides, but, at least as of this writing, there’s no actual issues page, telling the city’s voters — of which I am not one — what she would actually do, other than those bromides, in office if elected.

While she says that she will fight “gun violence,” what she doesn’t want to do is fight the criminals who use guns. I guess that’s not much of a surprise, since ‘progressives’ seem to think that guns simply levitate and shoot people all by themselves.

Helen Gym makes it official and launches a run for Philadelphia mayor on a pledge to address gun violence

The now-former Council member and leader of the city’s progressive movement launched her run at the William Way LGBT Community Center in Center City.

by Anna Orso | Wednesday, November 30, 2022

Former City Councilmember Helen Gym announced Wednesday that she will run for Philadelphia mayor on a pledge to address the city’s alarmingly high rate of gun violence, saying, “Everything is at stake right now.”

In remarks to a room of about 350 supporters gathered at the William Way LGBT Community Center, Gym centered her message on public safety, vowing to declare a state of emergency on her first day in office and prioritize improving homicide clearance rates.

I am amused that Mrs Flaherty chose a homosexual ‘Community Center’ as the place in which she announced her long-anticipated candidacy, but that’s probably something of which The Democratic Executive Committee in Philadelphia’s First Ward approves.

But while the longtime activist who is typically aligned with the Democratic Party’s left wing said violence is “destroying our city and our people,” she was far from taking a tough-on-crime tone.

“I will not use this crisis to roll back the clock on civil rights,” she said. “While many people in this race will talk about public safety, let me be clear: Decades of systemic racism and disinvestment brought us to this place.”

Further down:

Gym has opposed tax cuts for businesses and corporations, and has been critical of the Police Department, championing legislation to ban the use of tear gas on protesters and rejecting calls to bring back stop-and-frisk. In 2020, she voted against a planned increase to the Police Department’s budget — along with a majority of Council.

And here’s what Mrs Flaherty tweeted in 2019.

I support reducing the prison population by 50% from 2019 levels, We must center transformative and restorative justice practices in Philadelphia.

Can any policy have failed as badly as District Attorney Larry Krasner’s ‘decarceration’ program has failed the city since then? Murders get the most attention, and yes, they’re down a bit, but shootings, and every non-self-defense shooting is an attempted murder, are up.

So, who are The Democratic Executive Committee in Philadelphia’s First Ward? The First Ward is a gentrifying area, between Wharton and Mifflin Streets north and south, bounded on the west by South Broad Street and running east to the Delaware River. To the left is their group photo from their website, and with only four exceptions, they’re all as white as ceiling paint.

The area? Even a dump fixer-upper like this one is listed for sale for $475,000, though the fixed up row house at 1007 Mifflin Street is listed for $465,000.

It’s pretty typical in today’s urban areas, where the well-to-do whites who aren’t worried about street crime, who aren’t seeing the dead bodies or hearing the gunfire in their neighborhoods can blithely support ‘restorative justice‘ and ‘decarceration‘, because the bad guys who aren’t locked up aren’t in their neighborhoods.

Then again . . . .

Armed Delf-Defense in Dallas

by Robert Stacy McCain | Saturday, February 18, 2023

This happened in December, but the police took a while to complete their investigation and make arrests, so we’re just now getting a detailed account of what happened:

There are a lot of new details about how a recent attempted carjacking of a luxury car went down in an upscale area of Dallas.

Police arrested the three suspects they were looking for, and court documents detail a good lead police had.

One suspect showed up at a hospital with a gunshot wound minutes after the attempted carjacking and shootout last December.

Police say he was shot by a friend of the Maserati owner they were trying to carjack.

Skipping the details of the crime, down to Mr McCain’s conclusion:

This attempted carjacking happened, as they say, “in an upscale area” on the north side of Dallas, which shows that there is no such thing as a “safe” neighborhood in 21st-century America. Who knows what might have happened had it not been for the fact that the Maserati owner’s friend was armed? Permit me to recommend two books by my friend Robert Waters, The Best Defense: True Stories of Intended Victims Who Defended Themselves with a Firearm and Guns Save Lives: True Stories of Americans Defending Their Lives With Firearms.

It is unfortunate that civilization has collapsed to the point that no one is safe unless they’re carrying a pistol, but we must live in the world as it is, rather than that fantasy world where “safe” neighborhoods still exist.

The good, noble, progressive Democrats of Philadelphia’s First Ward might, just might, find the effects of the politicians and policies for which they have voted visiting their own gentrifying streets.

The feelgood story about the three ‘unsuccessful’ carjackers came from Dallas, and there’s always a better chance that Texans will be armed. The good progressive Democrats of the First Ward? The city’s Democratic politicians — and Democrats outregister Republicans in Philly about 7 to 1 — don’t want the public to carry firearms, so it might be less likely that an attempted carjacking on Wharton Street would be met with a prospective victim who was armed. Might as well give up their wheels, and hope the ‘jackers don’t go ahead and shoot you anyway.

References

References
↑1 Even though Mrs Flaherty does not respect her husband, attorney Bret Flaherty, enough to have taken his name, The First Street Journal will not show him a similar disrespect.
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To the left, liberal politics are far more important than Freedom of Religion Jennifer Palmeiri said the quiet part out loud: to the left, religious faith is determined by politics, rather than the other way around.

As we noted on Friday, an FBI “Analyst” submitted a proposal to monitor traditional Catholics who prefer the Tridentine, or Traditional Latin, Mass, “Radical-Traditionalist Catholics,” or RTEs, he called them, because “Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists,” or RMVEs might be interested in using Latin Mass Catholics to spread their goals.

Someone leaked a hand-redacted, redacted by magic marker, copy of the “FBI internal use only” document, and the Bureau decided, rather quickly, that they ought to withdraw the document entirely.

FBI retracts leaked document orchestrating investigation of Catholics

By Tyler Arnold and Joe Bukuras | Thursday, February 9, 2023 | 3:15 PM EST

The FBI says it is retracting a leaked document published on the internet Feb. 8 that appears to reveal that the bureau’s Richmond division launched an investigation into “radical traditionalist” Catholics and their possible ties to “the far-right white nationalist movement.”

In response to an inquiry from CNA, the FBI said it will remove the document because “it does not meet our exacting standards.”

Really? The document is ‘sourced’ citing far-left political sources, including Salon, The Atlantic, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. If there are less biased sources, they were redacted from the document. It’s so bad that it makes me wonder: if it was a great departure from the Bureau’s “exacting standards,” why wouldn’t the document author have realized it, and the Bureau have flagged it before it was leaked? Or is the document not really that great a departure from those “exacting standards,” which calls into question just how “exacting” those standards really are. Continue reading →

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We wicked Catholics and our Assault Rosaries!

My good friend — OK, OK, I’ve never actually met her, but people can become good friends over Twitter these days — Christine Flowers says, in her Twitter biography, that she has an “open carry permit for (her) assault rosary.” That was a mocking reference to an article by Daniel Panneton in The Atlantic, originally entitled “How the Rosary Became an Extremist Symbol“, about which I have previously written.

The Atlantic got plenty of pushback about it, and twice changed the article headline and subheading — the title “How Extremist Gun Culture Co-Opted the Rosary: The AR-15 is a sacred object among Christian nationalists. Now “radical-traditional” Catholics are bringing a sacrament of their own to the movement” isn’t shown in the screen captures tweeted by Taylor Marshall — imaged to the left, but the internet is forever.

And now we find out that some in the federal government, specifically the FBI, see Catholics, at least some Catholics, as evil subversives. From National Review:

FBI Internal Memo Warns against ‘Radical Traditionalist Catholic Ideology’

by Brittany Bernstein | Wednesday, February 8, 2023 | 5:14 PM EST

The FBI’s Richmond field office released an internal memo last month warning against “radical traditionalist Catholic ideology,” and claiming it “almost certainly presents new mitigation opportunities,” according to a document shared by an FBI whistleblower on Wednesday.

Kyle Seraphin, who was a special agent at the bureau for six years before he was indefinitely suspended without pay in June 2022, published the document, “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities,” on UncoverDC.com. Continue reading →

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Why, it’s almost as though gun control laws don’t work!

It was just one sentence, buried far down in the story:

“I believe the weapon that was recovered at the Alhambra location is not legal to have here in the State of California,” LA County Sheriff Robert Luna said Sunday.

The New York Post reported that the alleged Monterey Park gunman, Huu Can Tran, 72, was essentially nuts:

The gunman who slaughtered 10 people at a California dance club before killing himself had been a regular patron at venue — and believed that the instructors said “evil things about him.”

Huu Can Tran, 72, opened fire at Star Ballroom Dance Studio in Monterey Park late Saturday with a semiautomatic pistol, killing 10 people and wounding at least 10 others before storming the rival Lai Lai Ballroom & Studio, where two bystanders disarmed him.

He later killed himself inside a cargo van during a stand-off with police in Torrance, about 30 miles from Monterey Park, officials said.

The motive for his rampage after a Lunar New Year celebration remains unclear but several disturbing details have emerged about the gunman, who had once been a regular patron at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio, where he gave informal lessons, CNN reported.

There’s more at the original, and the Post is not behind a paywall.

It has been reported that Mr Tran was looking for his ex-wife at the two dance halls; she had been invited, but he had not. It was, as it is so often, a domestic dispute.

Mr Tran used a Cobray M11 9mm semi-automatic pistol, a weapon not highly regarded by firearms experts, but one for which a thirty-round magazine has been available. The Los Angeles County Sheriff said that the weapon was not legal to be possessed or owned in California, but Mr Tran apparently had one anyway. Why, it’s almost as though nuts and criminals don’t obey gun control laws.

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The Philadelphia Inquirer just trashed its own gun control arguments

We have previously noted the change from the 502 homicides originally reported for 2020, down to 499. Now, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Helen Ubiñas noted someone that many expected to be on the list of 499, but who wasn’t there. This one seems legitimate:

A 22-year-old was killed just over the city line in Upper Darby. That might have helped his family’s quest for answers.

A mere 100 yards might have made all the difference in an attempt to find a measure of justice.

by Helen Ubiñas | Wednesday, December 7, 2022

Amir Parks was a 22-year-old new father who was shot and killed near Cobbs Creek Park in August 2020. He was loved, friends and family told me. He was missed. He mattered.

But when it came to Parks’ death, answers were mostly hard to come by for those who knew him best. And there was this mystery: Why wasn’t Parks mentioned on the official list of Philadelphia’s 499 homicide victims in 2020?

Maybe the police had misidentified him or even misspelled his name, I thought, hardly an uncommon error in a city that averages more than a homicide a day.

After double and triple checking the list with the police, an answer. His loved ones were right; he had died around the woods along Cobbs Creek, in the 6500 block of North Church Lane not far from Marshall Road.

But that was about the length of a football field beyond the Philadelphia city line in Upper Darby Township, a section many misidentify as being part of Cobbs Creek.

What no one realized then was how crucial those 100 yards would be in his family’s quest for justice.

In 2020, when Philadelphia was just shy of 500 homicides, Upper Darby had 10.

As we have previously reported, the homicide rate, even adjusted for population, is several times higher in Philadelphia as in the rest of Pennsylvania. Those 499 homicides in 2020? They constituted 49.48% of all murders in the Keystone State, while the city has just 12.33% of the Commonwealth’s population.

It got worse last year, as the city’s 562 homicides were 54.72% of Pennsylvania’s total.

Of all the homicides in Philly in 2020, only 210 were solved, or about 42%‚ typical in a city where a majority of murders are unsolved.

By comparison, nine of the 10 homicides in Upper Darby that year have been solved, including last month when police arrested a 20-year-old man for killing Parks.

Now, I doubt that Mr Parks was included in the 502 number; the call was handled by the Upper Darby Police.

There followed several human interest story paragraphs concerning how nice a guy young Mr Parks was, and noting that, for the majority of homicides in Philadelphia itself, no one is arrested.

According to police, Parks was killed while illegally trying to sell guns to a potential buyer — a trade that (his cousin Shamiese) Parks–Gunagan said she believes her cousin took up in a desperate attempt to support his family.

And there it is: young Mr Parks was not the great guy in Miss Ubiñas story. Actually, it’s a bit of a surprise that the story was published at all, in that the Inquirer doesn’t usually tell us about the bad guys who get killed in the process of being bad guys.

I will admit to some doubts that a 22-year-old, in just “a desperate attempt to support his family,” would turn to gun-running. Such is not usually an entry-level crime. To be a gun-runner, you have to have money in advance, to buy the weapons you plan to sell at a profit. He could, I suppose, have just been a mule for the real gun-runner, but that would mean he’d have had to have known a pretty bad guy, and was trusted by that bad guy enough to make the sale.

Parks left a note on his phone shortly before he was killed: “Just in case something happens this is the person in the car.”

So, yeah, young Mr Parks knew that he was doing something bad, and that bad things could happen in the process. Miss Ubiñas’ first internal link was to Mr Park’s obituary in the Philadelphia Obituary Project, which tells us what a great and loving guy he was. But, if the Upper Darby Police are correct, he was still killed while he was committing a crime.

And it was more than just a simple, one-off crime. If Mr Parks was running guns, even as just somebody else’s mule, he was doing something which he had to know — and his obituary tells us that he was supposedly a smart guy — would enable other people to commit other crimes.

This is more than just a story about the killing of Mr Parks. It also points out the silliness of the arguments by Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia) and District Attorney Larry Krasner (D-Philadelphia), that the problem is that the state legislature in Harrisburg will not allow Philadelphia to pass its own, stricter gun control laws. Marshall Road in Upper Darby turns into Spruce Street in Philadelphia after you have crossed the bridge over Cobbs Creek as you pass the boundary between the two, but the Philadelphia Police are not sitting there, checking every border-crosser for contraband. If Philly had stricter gun control laws, the next thing about which the city, and the editors of the Inquirer, would whine is that those laws needed to be applied to Upper Darby and Haverford and Plymouth Meeting and Bensalem, because, as Mr Parks’ killing shows, the bad guys know how to drive to the next town.

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What is he thinking right now? I’d bet he isn’t thinking, “Hey, I sure got around those gun control laws, didn’t I?”

Stephon Henderson. Photo by Fayette County Detention Center, and is a public record.

Meet Stephon Henderson. Mr Henderson, 59, allegedly shot and killed Talina Henderson, 47, his wife, at a residence in the 2800 block of Bay Colony Lane. Mrs Henderson was shot “multiple times,” which tells us that this was no accident. This was Lexington’s record-breaking 41st murder of the year; the previous record of 37 was set in 2021.

According to the Lexington Herald-Leader and Fayette County Detention Center records, Mr Henderson was charged with murder (domestic violence), violation of an emergency protection order/domestic violence order, and possession of a handgun by a previously convicted felon.

Now, you would think that any person with an IQ above room temperature who was the subject of a domestic violence protection order would be smart enough to not have a handgun. You would think that any such person who is a previously convicted felon would be smart enough to realize that possession of a handgun, a violation of KRS §527.020 (2)(a), is a Class C felony, punishable by a minimum of five and maximum of ten years in the state penitentiary under KRS §532.060, even if he never uses it, and the existence of a protection order could easily result in the police searching his home.

Bay Colony Lane, near Masterson Station Park in Lexington is hardly a bad area. It’s something of a cookie-cutter development, of decent single-family homes with actual front and back yards. While Zillow shows no homes currently for sale on Bay Colony Lane itself, 2657 Wigginton Point, a couple of streets away in the same development, is a three bedroom, three bath, 2,056 ft², built in 2020, very similar home listed for $327,900. There is a lot of new development in that area off of Leestown Road. The neighborhood is neat, clean, racially integrated, and not run-down at all.  Simply put, there was no particular self-defense need for Mr Henderson to be packing.

This tells me of just how ridiculous it is for the left to tell us we need more gun control laws. Mr Henderson — assuming that he is guilty of the charges — was obviously able to obtain a handgun, despite being legally barred from buying one. More, he knew that it was illegal for him to own one, yet he chose to do so anyway. Then, after doing something — the newspaper does not tell us what it was — to cause his wife to seek an emergency protection order, he still kept the gun, even knowing that the police could come at any time and search his residence for a weapon, and knowing that simple possession of the weapon was enough to send him back to the big house for five to ten years. All of those reasons not to have a firearm, and he chose to have one anyway.

He was subject to a restraining order, but he was near his wife anyway. I guess that piece of paper didn’t do very much to defend her.

Mr Henderson is 59 years old, and the possible sentences for murder in the Bluegrass State include death, life in prison without the possibility of parole, 25 years to life, or a 20-to-50-year sentence. If convicted of murder, there is no way Mr Henderson would be out of jail until he’s 79 years old, and possibly not until he’s stone-cold graveyard dead. He threw the rest of his miserable life away.

And for what? Sometimes I fantasize about what other people can be thinking. As he sits in his cell, is he thinking, “Damn, I sure showed her!“, or is it more probable that he’s thinking, “Boy, did I f(ornicate) up this time”? I’d bet one thing though; I’d bet he isn’t thinking, “Hey, I sure got around those gun control laws, didn’t I?”

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Some common sense from the county sheriffs

On November 8th, I will be voting for one Democrat, Estill County Sheriff Chris Flynn. He’s a Marine Corps veteran, and I personally know him to be honest. And, in his auto repair business — which he inherited from his father, and was once again being run by his father once Sheriff Flynn took office following the 2018 election — there are a couple of signs posted showing support for the Second Amendment.

Sheriff Flynn is serious, and has said, publicly, that if given an order to confiscate law abiding citizens’ guns, he would resign before obeying such an order. It seems that he is not alone; from The New York Times:

Another Challenge to New York’s Gun Law: Sheriffs Who Won’t Enforce It

Some say the measure, which was passed after a Supreme Court opinion, ignores common sense, the Second Amendment and the way people live outside big cities.

By Jesse McKinley and Cole Louison | Sunday, October 9, 2022

LYONS, N.Y. — Robert Milby, Wayne County’s new sheriff, has been in law enforcement most of his adult life, earning praise and promotions for conscientious service. But recently, Sheriff Milby has attracted attention for a different approach to the law: ignoring it.

Sheriff Milby is among at least a half-dozen sheriffs in upstate New York who have said they have no intention of aggressively enforcing gun regulations that state lawmakers passed last summer, forbidding concealed weapons in so-called sensitive areas — a long list of public spaces including, but not limited to, government buildings and religious centers, health facilities and homeless shelters, schools and subways, stadiums and state parks, and, of course, Times Square.

Also see: William Teach, Bummer: New York State Sheriffs Refuse To Enforce Highly Restrictive NY Gun Law

“It’s basically everywhere,” said Sheriff Milby, in a recent interview in his office in Wayne County, east of Rochester. “If anyone thinks we’re going to go out and take a proactive stance against this, that’s not going to happen.”

On Thursday, a U.S. District Court judge blocked large portions of the law, dealing a major blow to lawmakers in Albany who had sought to blaze a trail for other states after the Supreme Court in June struck down a century-old New York law that had strictly limited the carrying of weapons in public. Between the court challenge and the hostility of many law enforcement officers, New York’s ambitious effort could be teetering.

The article subtitle really gives the demarcation point, the difference between city and country life. When I lived in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, the county was under the same gun regulation laws as Philadelphia, yet somehow, some way, Carbon County went years between homicides, and the Commonwealth, outside of the City of Brotherly Love, doesn’t have the murder rate as Philly.

In 2020, there were 1,009 murders in the Keystone State, 499, or 49.45%, of which occurred in Philadelphia. According to the 2020 Census, Pennsylvania’s population was 13,002,700 while Philadelphia’s alone was 1,603,797, just 12.33% of Pennsylvania’s totals.

Here’s how the actual numbers work out: there were 510 homicides among 11,398,903 Pennsylvanians not living in Philadelphia, for a homicide rate of 4.474 per 100,000 population, while there were 499 murders among 1,603,797 Philadelphians, which works out to a homicide rate of 31.114 per 100,000. If the gun laws are the problem, why aren’t the homicide rates for Philly and the rest of the Commonwealth fairly similar?

It got worse last year: with 562 homicides in Philly, out of 1027 total for Pennsylvania, 54.72% of all homicides in the Keystone State occurred in Philadelphia. Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh is located, was second, with 123 killings, 11.98% of the state’s total, but only 9.52% of Pennsylvania’s population.

The other 65 counties, with 78.11% of the state’s total population, had 33.30% of total murders.

So, why are the county sheriffs in upstate New York not giving priority enforcement to the ridiculous gun control laws?  Other than in the five counties making up New York City, sheriffs in the Empire State are elected officials, and they are, therefore, concerned with the opinions of the voters, and most voters in less urbanized counties understand that gun control really doesn’t reduce crime; it simply makes it more difficult for law-abiding citizens from defending themselves.

“We will take the complaint, but it will go to the bottom of my stack,” said Mike Filicetti, the Niagara County sheriff, who appends a Ronald Reagan quote to his emails. “There will be no arrests made without my authorization and it’s a very, very low priority for me.”

The law took effect on Sept. 1, and, at least anecdotally, has been used only sparingly since. Jeff Smith, the sheriff in mostly rural Montgomery County, west of Albany, said his office has had no calls for enforcement of the new law, noting that “almost every household” in his jurisdiction had some sort of gun.

Sheriff Smith, a Republican, said he understands the motives of lawmakers to quell violence and mass shootings, but that the gun law inadvertently targeted lawful gun owners.

“The pendulum swung way too far,” he said.

The left are, of course, aghast. A Twitter user styling herself Silent Spring wasn’t silent at all in giving her opinion: she wants all of those sheriffs fired.

But all law enforcement officials have some discretion, and New York City has been especially aggressive in ordering its employees not to enforce federal immigration laws. The left seem remarkably unconcerned about law enforcement not enforcing the laws the left don’t like.

The dispute evinces a larger rift between Democratic lawmakers in Albany — heavily represented by downstate liberals — and more conservative law enforcement and elected officials upstate. The schism was intensified by the pandemic, with some sheriffs defying Covid occupancy rules for Thanksgiving dinners in 2020, while other Republican county officials refused to abide by mask mandates in schools.

Hey, we defied Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) COVID-19 restrictions for Thanksgiving in 2020, and while our gathering for Thanksgiving dinner did not exceed ten people, they were from more than two separate households. The authoritarian state governors, of course, couldn’t send the gendarmerie to every home to check for compliance, but were depending on officious little pricks and Karens to enforce their illegal orders.

It would not make a difference even if widespread gun control laws actually made a difference in the crime rate; they’d still be mostly unconstitutional. But gun control laws really don’t make a difference, because the actual criminals don’t obey those laws.

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Mayor Jim Kenney just can’t think things through

On Tuesday, September 27, 2022, Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia) signed an executive order banning the possession of firearms and other deadly weapons at city parks and recreation centers, something that even The Philadelphia Inquirer recognized as likely to draw a legal challenge.

It didn’t take long: on Monday, October 3rd, the executive order was tossed by a judge:

Judge bars Philadelphia from enforcing Mayor Jim Kenney’s ban on guns at rec centers and playgrounds

The lawsuit cited a Pennsylvania state law that prohibits the any city or county from passing gun-control measures stricter than state gun laws.

by Robert Moran | Monday, October 3, 2022

A Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judge on Monday blocked the city from enforcing an executive order Mayor Jim Kenney signed last week banning guns at recreation centers and playgrounds following the fatal shooting of a Parks and Recreation employee last month.

The Gun Owners of America, on behalf of several state residents, filed a lawsuit last Tuesday, the day Kenney signed his order. After hearing arguments Friday, Judge Joshua H. Roberts issued his ruling siding with the plaintiffs and ordering Philadelphia to be “permanently enjoined” from enforcing Kenney’s ban.

The lawsuit cited Pennsylvania state law that prohibits any city or county from passing gun-control measures. The preemption law, which the city has repeatedly sought to overturn, bans local government from passing gun-control measures that are stricter than state gun laws.

Andrew B. Austin, the attorney representing the plaintiffs, said in an emailed statement: “For my part, I am gratified that the Court of Common Pleas was able to so quickly resolve this suit, but that was in large part because the law is so explicit: The City is not allowed to regulate possession of firearms in any manner.”

There’s more at the original, and the pre-emption law is pretty clear and explicit.

The right to keep and bear arms is pretty explicit in our Constitution, and I support that without reservation. In this, I am going to ignore the constitutional and legal issues, but ask the obvious question: just what would Mr Kenney’s executive order have done were it allowed to go into effect?

A ban on the possession of firearms at city parks would probably be mostly obeyed by legal gun owners in the city. If someone has gone to the effort of obtaining a license to carry a firearm, he is pretty much a law-abiding citizen.

But the impetus for the Mayor’s order, the killing of Mill Creek Recreation Center worker Tiffany Fletcher by a stray bullet allegedly fired by 14-year-old Makie Jones, was not something that the executive order would have prevented had it been in place at the time. Young Mr Jones was using a “ghost gun,” a privately-manufactured weapon put together with spare parts and having no serial number, which had an extended magazine. Mr Jones supposedly saw some of his enemies, and a gun battle ensued:

The killing came after a shootout around 1 p.m. Friday between Jones and at least three other people near the rec center on the 4700 block of Brown Street, Chief Inspector Frank Vanore said Monday. Vanore said it was not clear what sparked the gunfire, but that investigators later recovered 12 fired cartridge casings at the scene — eight on one side of the street, and four on the other.

Does the Mayor seriously believe that a 14-year-old who was willing to obtain and carry a ghost gun with an extended magazine, and engage in a gun battle with his enemies would care about an executive order banning the carrying of firearms in a city park? Anyone with any sense at all — a definition which certainly excludes Mr Kenney — would know that someone like the alleged killer wouldn’t care at all about such a restriction, not that one would suspect young Mr Jones of having read the Inquirer to even know of its existence.

One question to which I have never received an answer is just how Mr Kenney thought his executive order could be enforced? Was he hoping that Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw would have Philadelphia Police officers stationed at the rec centers, stopping and frisking everyone there for a weapon? I saw nothing like that in the media, though, to be fair, I could have missed it.

Back to the main article cited:

Kevin Lessard, a spokesperson for Kenney, said in an emailed statement: “We are reviewing today’s decision and are disappointed by the outcome, which as it stands prevents city employees from making the reasonable request that anyone with a firearm or deadly weapon leave a recreation facility. Since 2019, nearly 300 reported incidents of gun violence have occurred at city recreation facilities, in addition to dozens of other incidents of violence with a deadly weapon.”

OK, then: the mayor was apparently counting not on the police, but on unarmed city employees, employees like the late Tiffany Fletcher, to ask people spotted carrying firearms to leave. Has the Mayor forgotten assaults by three ‘unruly’ teenaged girls on July 21st, which led to vandalism, led the city to drain the pool and close it for the rest of the season. City Parks and Recreation said that the pool was closed due to concerns for the safety of staff and visitors, and that this pool, in the crime-ridden Kensington section, has had many problems, including multiple break-ins after hours. The Parks Department did not say that the staff had all just up and quit, or refused to work at that pool again, but the city has had a serious shortage of lifeguards for the pools, and opened only 50 of the 65 pools in the city. If the city had to close the McVeigh Recreation Center because three uncivilized, but apparently unarmed, brats were disruptive, and vandalized the place, just how can he expect unarmed staff to confront and ask to leave someone they believe is carrying a firearm?

This is a huge problem when it comes to the left: they just can’t seem to think things through! Anyone with any common sense ought to have realized that an enforcement incident, the way Mr Lessard described it, is too fraught with danger in a city like Killadelphia; it’s a way to get an unarmed staffer killed.