Sort of a BULLETIN on Iowa Gun Rights; Shall Issue

If you're reading The Travis McGee Reader in Iowa,* I have suggestion for you, and you have very little time to act. The legislative action could come in the next few minutes, possibly some other time before projected adjournment Sunday or Monday.

As a matter of strict political calculation, Democrat leaders in the House and Senate +may+ permit a vote on a shall-issue CCW bill. My reports (I have spies on the floor.) indicate they haven't yet decided if it's politically advantageous to allow their rank and file to vote. Earlier, the top dogs had scuttled the bill.

Radio Iowa, a news service of some integrity, summarizes it:

"Legislators made some final decisions Thursday, with still more looming today — including a possible debate over gun rights. A bill backed by the National Rifle Association could be among the last to clear the legislature. It would set a statewide standard for issuing gun permits, replacing the current system which gives the sheriffs in each of Iowa’s 99 counties the authority to decide who gets a permit to carry a gun and who doesn’t."

The needed action is simple: Call your lawmaker and ask him or her to speak out in favor of permitting the vote. Ask them to put the pressure on the leaders -- Sen. Gronstal and Rep. McCarthy -- to permit the vote. Most Republicans favor the bill, as do enough gun-rights Democrats to provide a margin of victory. Frame your words accordingly, and it can't hurt to politely but firmly emphasize to Democratic lawmakers that your November vote will be heavily influenced by his action here.

(As political background for folks not fortunate enough to live here. Democrats control everything in Iowa right now, governor's office, house, senate. They're frightened to death of losing it all this year. Iowa is a pro-gun state, but rather laid-back about it, so there's never been any very serious pressure by 2A friends to enact shall-issue. The mere fact the liberal Democratic leaders are considering CCW reform indicates their belief that shall-issue has substantial election implications.)

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Edit: There isn't time for USPS to do any good. Email is better than nothing, but I suspect the legislators' email boxes are overflowing, so our best shot at this is the telephone. Let's keep trying to get through. And please don't be afraid to talk with your lawmaker's clerk if that's the best you can do. Most of them are faithful about relaying constituent comments.

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*McGee foiled some evil here, not far off the Lincoln Highway west of Ames. Free Fall in Crimson is the tag John D. gave the yarn in which Trav allowed as how this was a great place to visit but he wouldn't care to live here.

OK, THAT'S ENOUGH READING. GET ON THE PHONE. DO IT +NOW+!

A little more on the health care bill

Even some of the proponents agree the cost will be horrible, but they like to point to the "savings"* and tax hikes on the "rich." Personally I would be a little happier with these folks if they had they decency to admit they plan to continue creating money out of thin air forever, or until the Chinese withdraw their permission for America to do so, which ever comes first.

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* The "savings" are in fact a politician's guess about what certain costs would have been without this bill minus the same politician's guess about what the those costs will be under this bill. It is a number as meaningless at the term "Honorable" which congress critters apply to one another despite massive evidence to the contrary

A man should keep his cool about President Barack Obama. He should be mocked as a figure of fun, as a caricature of a President because this is what he is. President Obama is ultimate expression of Chicago ethnic-group and precinct politics.

But it is hard to stay detached and calm while watching him milk government by sob story for every crocodile tear he has in his demagogic soul. He gloats over the Democratic Party Payback Decree he is about to sign. His White House audience of American political masters is applauding wildly as he displays his glee at a bill which (a) will adversely affect millions, because, he claims, (b) it might help three of four of the saddest cases he could find after sending his messengers throughout all the provinces of his realm, looking for anecdotes to fill the void left by his abandonment of rational discourse.

An Unhealthy Interest in Firearms

Posting a picture of himself with an imitation Beretta bedroom pistol on Facebook has landed a citizen of the Place Great Britain Used To Be in prison for five years.

If we were to take the newspaper report at face value, I would add that he also had no healthy interest in preserving his own life.

Now, I don't know if Merry Old Fleet Street has the same multiple layers of fact checking as our colonial broadsheets, but if they do the perp posed with what looks like one of those pot metal nonguns you used to see in one-inch ads in the back of Mechanix Illustrated. According to the report:

"During a search in his bedroom (Bobbies) found an imitation pistol, illegally converted to fire 8mm bullets and capable of killing."

Killing whom, pray tell? The cops might have saved the Queen a pretty pence in incarceration expenses by making the accused demonstrate his gunsmithing ingenuity through discharging one of the "8 mm bullets." My bet would be forearm lacerations and a quick bleedout.

And, Ladies and gentlemen, may I present one of our worst nightmares of the later periods of the Obama Administration.

"Det Chief Insp Reed added: 'What does a normal member of society need with a firearm? 'When we looked at his computer, we discovered he had an unhealthy interest in firearms'."

Of course it can't happen here, and I am pleased to live in a nation where the authorities would never even think of snooping in a citizen's personal computer to discover, publish, and punish his or her unhealthy interests.

H/T to Jay