Friday, April 25, 2008

More laws we can ignore a la Mayor Nutter

Defying the law by restricting guns in order to "do something" about crime makes as much sense as....

... defying US civil rights law by reintroducing Jim Crow laws, in order to "do something" about improving race relations

... taking the vote away from women and forcing them to stay at home, in order to "do something" about womens' rights

... putting children into the care of known pedophiles, in order to "do something" about child abuse

Apart from the fact that Nutter, in passing these putative laws, is defying the laws of the state of PA, as duly passed by its elected legislature, there are these things to consider:

Either Michael Nutter hasn't done his homework on the effects of "gun control", or he's so terrified of the Philadelphia criminal community that he feels compelled to introduce measures that empower them further (of course, there couldn't possibly be any other possible reasons).

It's inconceivable that Nutter hasn't done his homework on this topic. If he's so terrified of the local criminals that he's willing to subvert the laws of PA and the rights of its citizens, then perhaps it's time for the national government to send in the US Marshals or National Guard to help him clean house.

It worked with George Wallace when he defied the law of the land in favor of bigotry, and I'm sure it can help with the Philadelphia of poor, helpless Mayor Nutter.

Thursday, April 17, 2008

Philadelphia passes restrictive local gun laws in defiance of state law

Erm... why, exactly?

Murder rates in Philly have for over 10 years been lower than they were before the city was obliged to honor PA’s concealed carry law in 1996. Some years they have been up to 30% lower (something Mayor Nutter and his police chief never seem to want to discuss, for some reason).

Why, then, does Philly need new gun laws at all?

Maybe what Philly really needs is an administration that is less anti-gun.

Given John Street’s anti-gun tirades during his mayorship, and now Nutter’s attitude, I can easily imagine that crime bosses in the city might, following those tirades, have gotten the bright idea of ordering their guys to shoot people randomly whenever possible. Why not try to make the mayors' words into reality, and help bring forward the day when their victims might once again be generally unarmed?

The city’s stance on guns is irresponsible, dangerous, and goes against every real-world example, historical and recent, of the true effects of gun restrictions. They enable criminals, and they enable political intimidation of defenseless serfs, sorry, constituents.

The city’s stance is also cowardly and despicable, since it goes after the law-abiding (even those under a protection order!) and does NOTHING substantial to hinder criminals. God knows, criminals are dangerous people. I guess we shouldn’t expect the city to actually tangle with them. Better to go after the law-abiding wives, husbands, grandparents, mothers, fathers, gay, crippled, minority and small business owners who’ve done nothing wrong, except dare to protect themselves and their loved ones with an effective deterrent to criminals.




I posted the content above to citypaper.net, an online Philadelphia paper which does not generally agree with the viewpoints above. I wonder how long my post will stay online:

http://www.citypaper.net/blogs/clog/2008/04/16/philadelphia-gun-control-nutter-abraham-harrisburg/

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Returning the abused to the care of the abusers

Some years ago, I watched a fact-based miniseries that told the story of a Catholic school in Nova Scotia, which in the early 70s was involved in a paedophilia scandal.

Some of the children tried to resist the advances of the "brothers", and some of the older teens tried to openly defy them, at the cost of terrible physical abuse.

Eventually, word got out by way of an outside worker who saw one of the injured teens, and heard some of what was going on, and despite much effort on the part of the "brothers" and the local Catholic authorities to silence and intimidate the children, and to put pressure on local authorities to drop the case, many brave children (and at least one of the Brothers who was innocent) risked punishment and defied the intimidation, and gave depositions and testimony.

What finally happened was that pressure from the church resulted in the police working on the case being intimidated into emasculating their report, the guilty parties went free (though they left the area), and the school was placed back into the control of other "brothers" who were, seemingly, little different in their views and actions than the previous bunch.

In other words, the abused stood up for themselves and defied the abusers, at considerable risk to themselves, and sought help from other powerful groups and institutions in their world.

And the end result was that they were betrayed by by a lot of smug, craven apparatchiks and suck-ups, many of whom had connections to the abusing organization. The victims were patted on the head, told everything would be just fine, asked to smile bravely, and sent back to the very same group who'd been abusing them to begin with (and the results were not good).

I thought of that story again today, while reading this news story, about NATO's treatment of Georgia and Ukraine.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml...04/wnato104.xml

Nato bars ex-Soviet states in win for Russia


Nato, led by Germany and France, wilted in the face of a sustained campaign of pressure and intimidation by the Kremlin, which has argued that the two former Soviet states must stay within Moscow's sphere of influence.ties with Europe.

If tensions persist, Nato's capitulation will be seen as short-sighted and futile.

The alliance has already been accused of breaching its own constitution, which calls for membership to be conferred on any European democracy that wants it.
The "Great Powers" throwing smaller democracies to the wolves? I'm sure we've never seen anything like THAT before on the world stage.

When, in modern times, did we start openly deciding the fate of countries based not on those countries' aspirations, but on whose "sphere of influence" they are in, and what that "somebody" might think about it?

If that's the current model, then let's make Cuba a US territory again. Or is George W Bush not actually a big enough dictator after all, for other countries to want to grovel at his feet?

Shame, NATO. Shame.