PA Bill Number: HR541
Title: Recognizing the month of October 2024 as "Domestic Violence Awareness Month" in Pennsylvania.
Description: A Resolution recognizing the month of October 2024 as "Domestic Violence Awareness Month" in Pennsylvania.
Last Action:
Last Action Date: Sep 27, 2024
Oops: Report reveals anti-gun canard; lament over D.C. train stabbing :: 07/14/2015
Sunday’s Seattle Times may have just unintentionally blown a mammoth hole in one of the gun prohibition lobby’s most strident arguments for so-called “universal background checks” — that online gun sales are done without such checks.
In a new report about City Council President Tim Burgess’s proposal to slap a $25 tax on the sale of every firearm in the city, plus a nickel on the sale of each cartridge, the newspaper said this: “There were 22 licensed dealers listed in the city when the officials checked. Some are actual stores, including three Big 5 Sporting Goods locations. But more are either pawnshops or individuals mostly serving as middlemen for Internet firearms sales.
“When someone buys a gun online,” the Times reported, “the purchase is shipped to a dealer who conducts a background check and charges the buyer a fee before handing the gun over.”
At least one Times reader also seized on the admission, noting, “This is the ST explicitly stating online sales go thru an FFL!! All that (stuff) they've been spewing about gun shows & online sales being exempt from background checks HAS BEEN LIES.”
During last year’s $10 million-plus campaign to pass Initiative 594, which the Seattle Times endorsed, there was a concerted effort to portray online firearms sales as something of a rogue process not involving background checks, where criminals and crazies can get guns. Thanks to Sunday's story, that does not now appear to be true, and gun rights activists might say it never was.
This comes a day after the Seattle Times and other newspapers reported about the brutal fatal stabbing of a man on a Washington, D.C. Metro train on July 4 in front of several witnesses, none of whom intervened. The Times ran a story that noted, “The stabbing death of Kevin Sutherland on July 4 on a Metro train while passengers watched has sparked a furious debate: Should his fellow passengers have done anything to stop it? Could they have done anything even if they wanted?”
As it turns out, the Bellevue-based Second Amendment Foundation, which has threatened to sue if the Burgess gun tax is adopted, is currently pursuing a legal action against the District of Columbia that could provide one option that most D.C. residents do not now have: Legal concealed carry for personal protection.
SAF first filed, and won, the case of Palmer v. District of Columbia. The current case before the court is Wrenn v. District of Columbia. Palmer forced the city to begin issuing carry licenses and Wrenn seeks to make sure those licenses are not subject to arbitrary discretion and “good cause” restrictions.
Thursday’s Washington Post discussed the Metro slaying and asked this about the many witnesses: “What should they have done? What would you have done?”
Where citizens can be legally armed, there is always the possibility that at least one courageous person could draw a defensive sidearm and deter or shoot the attacker. In this case, police arrested and have charged an 18-year-old identified as Jasper Spires with first-degree murder.
Anti-gunners pooh-pooh such a notion, arguing that private citizens rarely use firearms in self-defense. But they base those arguments on body counts, which is a false standard. One needn’t kill bad guys in order to make them break off an attack. Then, again, this is the same kind of false narrative that would have the public believe on-line gun sales are unregulated and don’t involve background checks.
Even the National Rifle Association’s “Armed Citizen” news briefs is accompanied by this notation: “Studies indicate that firearms are used over 2 million times a year for personal protection, and that the presence of a firearm, without a shot being fired, prevents crime in many instances.” Thugs staring into the muzzles of guns in the hands of good people frequently become world-class track stars.
Perhaps it boils down to a philosophy of denial. Gun prohibitionists deny armed citizens can be an effective deterrent or defense against crime. They portray online gun sales as unregulated. Burgess argues in today’s Seattle Times story that his gun tax proposal “isn’t an anti-gun measure.”
The gun tax proposal will be heard before a city council committee Wednesday morning. The Seattle Times is portraying it as “more or less a done deal” because all members of the council, and anti-gun Mayor Ed Murray, support the idea. Times readers predict this will drive firearms businesses out of Seattle, which follows along the theory that far left Seattle liberals want the city to be a “gun-free zone.” Presumably then people would only be stabbed to death, eh?
http://www.examiner.com/article/oops-report-reveals-anti-gun-canard-lament-over-d-c-train-stabbing
