Category Archives: Social Commentary

Gun Control Blowback

New York’s idiotic new gun law will be challenged in court:

Any Supreme Court action is years away, but many scholars think it’s inevitable in wake of two previous cases.

In the 2008 case of District of Columbia v. Heller, the high court for the first time established that the Second Amendment protects the individual right to bear arms.

And in McDonald v. Chicago of 2010, the justices ruled that the Second Amendment also applies to state and local gun laws.

For its part, the Cuomo administration says the SAFE Act will withstand its coming review in the federal courts.

“We believe that our law is sound and is immune from constitutional challenge,” said Richard Azzopardi, a spokesman for the governor. “Heller is the broadest reading of the Second Amendment that has ever come down, and the SAFE Act is consistent with that decision.”

Note that these are the same morons who restricted the use of guns to magazine capacities that didn’t exist, and forgot to exempt law enforcement from them.

Federal court decisions in the case will be “grounded on principles established by the Supreme Court over the last several years that seem to produce a robust set of problems for lots of aspects of the New York law,” said Nicholas A. Johnson, a Fordham University law professor and co-author of the book, “Firearms Law and the Second Amendment.”

Those problems go beyond the Second Amendment, Johnson noted.

The lawsuit filed in Buffalo challenges several provisions of the SAFE Act as being unconstitutionally vague, contending they conflict with the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of due process under the law.

For example, the law’s definition of assault weapons includes some guns that include a pistol grip “that protrudes conspicuously beneath the action of the weapon.”

Which raises the question: how big is a conspicuously protruding pistol grip?

It may be up to the courts to decide, which is nothing unusual. Johnson said gun-rights activists have been routinely challenging gun-control laws for 20 years on the grounds that their wording is too vague.

Such issues arise because of the “technically inept descriptions” of weapons in many gun control laws, Johnson added.

My emphasis. He’s being kind. For “technically inept” read “imbecilic.” In addition to the nonsensical “common-sense” phrase used by these people to describe their rapacity on our constitutional rights, the other phrase that they currently use in preference to the stupid “assault weapons” is “military-style weapons,” which “no one needs.” Unwittingly, they don’t even understand how that gives away the game on their stupidity in trying to outlaw commonly-used weapons for purely cosmetic reasons. It’s about “style,” don’t you see? It actually has nothing to do with actual function. They just want to outlaw the guns because they’re scary looking.

Anyway, they may end up regretting this if it results in the SCOTUS sweeping away much of their existing laws. But at least the law-abiding people in Washington DC and Chicago — and New York — will be safer once their draconian disarmament is off the books.

Holy Chilole

I like me some chiles, but these people are nuts:

Mr. Bosland claims to have broken the two million Scoville mark in February 2012 with his Trinidad Moruga Scorpion. That is the same strength as police-grade pepper spray — a substance no sensible person would let travel through his digestive tract. Mr. Bosland hasn’t yet submitted paperwork to Guinness for the official record, and his claim really burns up Mr. de Wit, who insists his pepper is still the hottest. Only chemical chromatography that measures several samples for their average level of capsaicin, the chemical that gives peppers their bite, can establish a record claim. But Mr. Scott, one of the few people on Earth who has tasted both varieties, says the Moruga Scorpion is clearly hotter.

I used to grow habaneros on the patio (and I still have a container of dried ones, years old, to spice up a chili), but I hadn’t realized that they were now growing peppers in the mega-Scoville range.

California

If you’re unhappy about the way things are going in the no-longer-Golden State, you’re obviously a racist.

[Update a while later]

And if you support gun-control laws, you’re a racist.

Really.

I’m going to just start saying that, completely unironically, because it certainly is objectively so in its impact. When someone argues for gun control, say that that’s a racist position, and explain why. They do it to us, with a lot less basis.

Same thing applies to wage controls, and immigration amnesty, all things that are highest on the president’s agenda. They all have disparate impact on blacks.