Lancaster Online:

A 25 year old man accidentally shot himself in the groin at his Lancaster Township home Sunday, police said.

He picked up his .40-caliber pistol to put it away when the weapon accidentally discharged the bullet into his groin area, Sgt. Timothy Ponessa said Monday.

The man was taken to Lancaster General Hospital with an injury that was not life-threatening, police said.

Gosh, I hate it when that happens.  I remember the last time I shot myself in the groin.  From the comments, the negligent discharges might just be beginning for him.

But just to correct the report, he picked up the weapon, put his finger on the trigger where it didn’t belong, and pointed the weapon in an unsafe direction.

There.  Fixed.

‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”  — Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

Scalia dissented from the recent SCOTUS Obamacare ruling.

“The Court holds that when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act says ‘Exchange established by the State’ it means ‘Exchange established by the State or the Federal Government.’ That is of course quite absurd, and the Court’s 21 pages of explanation make it no less so,” Scalia wrote.

Scalia added, “Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is ‘established by the State.’ It is hard to come up with a clearer way to limit tax credits to state Exchanges than to use the words ‘established by the State.’ And it is hard to come up with a reason to include the words ‘by the State’ other than the purpose of limiting credits to state Exchanges.”

Roberts also dissented, but of course words weren’t so important to him when he created rights out of whole cloth and the supreme court forced every state to accept same-sex marriage.  He wants to pick and choose when words mean something, and get his self-righteousness on when he opposes the policy.

As I had stated to someone else this weekend, you have the political right to advocate what you want, but God will judge us – individually and collectively – for our choices.  But constitutionally, the court has absolutely no business bossing the states around.

This ruling – and many more like it – marks the end of the state.  The grand experiment in states as the laboratories of democracy is finished.  It failed, and not because it couldn’t have worked.  Evil men vandalized the experiment.  If Roberts has his problems, Scalia does too.  In Heller, he stated:

Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited.  It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the Amendment or state analogues. The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of fire arms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.  Miller’s holding that the sorts of weapons protected are those “in common use at the time” finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons.

“Shall not be infringed” means as little to Scalia as ‘Exchange established by the State’ means to Roberts and the other progressive justices on the supreme court.  Scalia is clever, witty, smart, fun to read and biting in his dissents – and just as inconsistent as the rest of them.  Scalia gets a taste of his own medicine in the Obamacare and same-sex marriage ruling.

As I listened to the quiet conversation and whispers this weekend as I went about my business, I think Mike Vanderboegh’s words will turn out to be prescient.

But even as staunch an anti-communist as I am now — as hard-nosed a supporter of the Founders’ Republic and the Constitution as I have become — I can see that the regime has dealt itself a crippling blow to its own legitimacy. I further note with somber acknowledgement that as bad as this confluence of events is for the country as a whole that it makes our job easier for it confirms everything we have been saying about the regime of both corrupt political parties being destructive of liberty and the rule of law. This will swell our ranks with people who are finally convinced that for the purposes of protecting our liberties, the present system has broken down completely and that the only thing we can count on from this point on is ourselves, alone. And our rifles. I will not celebrate this as a Marxist would but I will give a most sincere, albeit grim, “thank you” to the Supreme Court and the two predatory gangs of a tyrannical regime.

I would add that we can always count on God to honor His promises.  God will not be mocked (Galatians 6:7).  His words never change, and will always mean what they have always meant.

Molly Marshall, Baptist News Global:

Three important articles, first from Mike Vanderboegh:

So when the reset button gets pushed in the aftermath of the tyrants’ attacks and their defeat, they lose it all. Everything. Every tool of our oppression. This is something they should think about before they rouse their own people to righteous anger. They will lose everything they hold most dear — their power over us, their position, their appetite for our liberty, our property and our lives. That is what “reset” means to them in the context of the civil war they are determined to have. Everything.

Good point.  This is related to another article Mike penned concerning legitimacy, which will get some attention from me momentarily.

David Codrea, whos has a new gig with TTAG:

The way things are, there’s not much more hotel management can do besides offer condolences over their dead and wounded guests, stay in touch with authorities and report any findings to the public.

Hey, as long as the government feels safe from accountability from its citizens, everything is cool.  After all, that’s the reason for gun control.

Kurt Hofmann:

His criticism of those who invest in weapons manufacture is especially puzzling. Anyone, after all, who purchases a weapon could fairly be said to have invested in the manufacture of them. And as it turns out, the Pontifical Swiss Guard, who defend the Vatican and its most famous resident, are lavishly equipped with some pretty hefty investments in Sig-Sauer, Heckler & Koch, Steyr Mannlicher, and Glock semi-automatic handguns, personal defense weapons, assault rifles, and submachine guns, not to mention whomever manufactures the swords, halberds, and other more traditional weapons carried by his guards.

So, will the Vatican be melting all those guns and blades down, to be remanufactured into farming implements, or something similarly non-martial? If not, who is the real hypocrite here, Your Holiness?

Kurt turns his usual logical incisiveness towards the Vatican.  I saw all of that too, including the Pope’s ridiculous dive into AGW (which is just a massive global wealth redistribution campaign).  The pope is a clown.  I would care if I was Roman Catholic, but I’m not.  Kurt made just one mistake in the article – he called the pope “Your Holiness.”  There’s nothing holy about him.  Anyone who claims to be the vicar of Christ deserves the same condemnation the reformers gave him.  Gun control is just one more thing the pope will be accountable for before God.

She’s addressed as “commander” in the video, which comes from Rio de Janeiro.

She’s holding the gun limp-wristed, apparently has two fingers on the trigger, and presumably has never shot a gun in her life.  Here is a picture of me shooting my XDm .45 in Pickens, S.C.  Notice the stiff arms, forward stance, and position of my two hands.

Or if you wish, Jerry Miculek or Rob Leatham can teach you better than can I.  Just seek someone out who knows more than you do before you ever attempt to discharge a firearm the way she did.

Andrew Heller:

They hadn’t yet caught the person who murdered nine people in their own church in Charleston, South Carolina, and gun defenders were already telling the TV cameras, “Now is not the time to debate gun control.”

So when is the time? After his trial? After the next full moon? After the next slaughter? Or the one after that? Or the one after that?

The truth is it’s never the right time in this country to talk about guns or racism or the mentally ill, or why a toxic stew of all three so often leads to mayhem.

And that’s why nothing changes. Ever. Not after two disenfranchised high school punks murder their classmates. Not after a nut shoots up a midnight movie, killing 12. Not even after 20 children and six staff are slaughtered in their classrooms.

Nothing, no matter how horrific, moves us off the dime, which makes us cowards, fools or both.

It’s infuriating. And I frankly don’t understand it. Why do we accept this? Because the NRA says we have to? That’s crazy.

Oh Andrew, you’ve fallen for the claptrap hook, line and sinker.  The NRA has nothing to do with it.  We talk about guns here virtually every day, including the day of the shooting or thereabouts.  We’re not afraid to engage in a little truth-telling in these parts.

So if we’re going to have a conversation about guns, you and I, let’s get a few boundary conditions set up front.  We will never comply with weapons confiscations schemes.  We will also never comply with universal background check schemes, or bans against certain kinds of weapons.  None of that will be voluntary on our part.

That means that any of the schemes I strongly suspect you advocate will be met with civil war and blood will run on the sidewalks and in the streets.  I’m guessing you didn’t know that, or if you did you’re okay with it.  So now that nicety is out of the way, I’ll let you fire the first volley – pardon the pun if you will.

Josh Sandburn:

Many pastors argue that arming congregants goes against religious teachings of non-violence and that guns have no place in a place of worship. Many states, including South Carolina, specifically prohibit guns in church. “The presence of a cross in our sanctuary reminds us that God’s response to violence is never greater violence,” Pastor Baron Mullis of Atlanta’s Morningside Presbyterian Church told WGCL-TV. “This is a place of peace. … This is not a place for guns.”

Ridiculous.  God demands violence as a response to threats on our person because of the fact that man is created in God’s image and life is to be preserved.  It is our solemn duty.  Mullis only says those things because he thinks of Jesus as a Bohemian hippie flower child rather than the creator and master of all things.

So although I tire of the constant duty of having to remind everyone of the error, to use Professor John Frame’s analysis, Pastor Mullis makes the error of assigning a single attribute to God’s character.  He uses an “exclusive reduction” to describe God rather than using His attributes as an “emphasizing reduction” (in this case it’s peace).

“God is love” is a truism, but that isn’t the only thing God is.  He is also justice, wrath, anger, righteousness, and so on.  Pastor Mullis is advised to re-study his systematic theology.  This time he should use a meaningful and worthwhile textbook rather than the crap he apparently used in seminary.

John Lott is making much over the recent church shooting in Charleston.

The horrible tragedy last night that left nine people dead at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., probably could have been avoided. Like so many other attacks, the massacre took place in a gun-free zone, a place where the general public was banned from having guns. The gun-free zone obviously didn’t stop the killer from bringing a gun into the church.

Well, yes, no and maybe.  There’s more to it than that.  I play second fiddle to no one in terms of carry of weapons, including open carry which John Lott doesn’t like.  John and I have been in the ring exchanging blows over this very issue (see both article and comments).  But it’s important to be accurate on this issue because what we learn is dependent on a correct understanding of the law and choices we make thereto.

(M) A permit issued pursuant to this section does not authorize a permit holder to carry a concealable weapon into a:

(1) police, sheriff, or highway patrol station or any other law enforcement office or facility;

(2) detention facility, prison, or jail or any other correctional facility or office;

(3) courthouse or courtroom;

(4) polling place on election days;

(5) office of or the business meeting of the governing body of a county, public school district, municipality, or special purpose district;

(6) school or college athletic event not related to firearms;

(7) daycare facility or pre-school facility;

(8) place where the carrying of firearms is prohibited by federal law;

(9) church or other established religious sanctuary unless express permission is given by the appropriate church official or governing body; or

(10) hospital, medical clinic, doctor’s office, or any other facility where medical services or procedures are performed unless expressly authorized by the employer.

The law is stupid and shouldn’t require “express permission” of the church officials.  But at least it does give the latitude to carry with permission of the church, and this isn’t defined in state law.  So for example, the church could have given permission for every man and woman over the age of 21 who has a concealed carry permit to carry in the church, up to and including posting at the door that carry of weapons is allowed with a permit (unfortunately, in a tip of the hat to racist Jim Crow laws, open carry is not currently allowed in South Carolina because Senator Larry Martin killed proposed legislation to make it legal, a sore spot with me that we will revisit as time goes on).

What does this mean?  Are worship centers in South Carolina gun free zones?  Well, sort of, if they so choose.  But they don’t have to be.  They can choose differently, and this pastor was a well-known advocate of gun control.  So you don’t miss it, let’s cover that again.  This pastor was a well-known advocate of gun control.

They chose to disarm.  The result is the same – sadly, men and women are dead.  But it’s important to get the facts straight so that the right things are learned from the horrible experience.

Via Mike Vanderboegh, Bob Owens:

As a direct result of Cooley’s stunt, Georgia Democrat Hank Johnson has now proposed a federal law to ban both open and concealed carry in airports … Thankfully, is is very unlikely that Johnson will amass enough support to make this bill viable.

Sadly, we’re now having to devote energies on defense to explain why Johnson’s proposed bill really isn’t “common sense.” It’s a prospect made all the more difficult because your average citizen isn’t going to be able to grasp why a mentally healthy person might want or need to walk into an airport with AR-15 with a drum magazine inserted to see someone off at the airport, unless that airport is in Afghanistan.

When gun rights activists and pro-gun lawmakers have to deal with distracting, grandstanding behavior like Cooley’s, it takes away time we could better spend attempting to pass other pro-gun laws, or dismantle gun control laws already on the books.

Jim Cooley’s fifteen-minute stunt did nothing to help the gun rights movement, and gave gun control supporters ammunition that they will reuse again and again for years to come to portray gun owners as extreme, paranoid, and out of touch with the American mainstream.

That’s not helping us, and never will.

I’m not even close … no, let me find a better way to say this … I am literally light years from understanding Bob’s argument.  If I were to lay it out syllogistically, it may look something like this.

• We currently have rights understood to be so by the authorities and people, one of which is open carry of both long guns and handguns.
• Exercising that right may invoke the disapprobation of the lawmakers.
• The lawmakers may remove their written approval.
• If they remove their written approval, we can’t exercise that right.

But of course the problem is that if we could never exercise the right without recognition of it being removed, recognition of it was a phantom to begin with.  It doesn’t work for me to say that perhaps he should have carried a handgun openly, because the same person could have gotten offended at the handgun, which the media surely would have called a “high caliber high magazine clip assault handgun.”  It would effect the same end for the collectivists.  If they are offended at long guns, they will be offended at handguns.

Now, if Bob’s real concern is that he believes we are ostracizing ourselves, then he is lobbying for the wrong thing.  He should be lobbying for a new law prohibiting open carry.

So completely aside from the issue of whether you concur with what this person did (i.e., carry of an AR-15 in an airport) or even agree with open carry, Bob’s argument makes absolutely no sense to me.  I don’t understand why he is in a fit and why he presented the argument the way he did.  Again, if he believes there is no reason to open carry and he wants folks behave differently, he can lobby for a law and we can evaluate his argument on its merits.

Kurt Hofmann:

… when a member of the audience at a speaking event asked Christie about the murder, and New Jersey gun laws’ role in it, he passed the buck just as quickly as he could

He’s always tried to shift blame to the Congress, when the entire executive branch reports to him.  The power of the governor’s office is huge to craft legislation, state up front what will be signed and what won’t, instruct the state attorney general to prosecute or not, and so on.  Furthermore, he thinks that we’ll forget his past concerning gun control.  Hell will freeze over before Chris Christie becomes president.  See also my own coverage of Chris Christie on gun control.

See this post by Mike Vanderboegh for the best extemporaneous speech I’ve ever read.

This is what governments do who are in financial trouble.  Plan accordingly.

Slain black pastor advocated gun control.  Bet he wishes someone in the church had a gun to stop the boy from killing him and his people.