For all the talk of the decline of the British Empire, even the most red-blooded American has to admit that somehow, they managed to relieve themselves (dare I say excrete?) the creature from their brave little island, and we seem to be stuck with it.
If I were the Obama administration, I would blame this (as on all else, now four years since the end of his disastrous dictatorial reign) on George W. Bush, but sanity and honest compels me to lay it at the foot of the cable news network formerly, and currently known as the Cable News Network. Which is one of the many reasons that I (and judging by the ratings, many others) find it less than indispensable.
It should. As he points out, it’s not like it’s anything new. It’s all part of the growth of Leviathan and a tyrannical state, and it needs to be trimmed way back.
Whether by clever design, simple ignorance, or haste-induced inattention, these provisions in effect have turned the most popular handguns bought for self-defense and recreational purposes — 9mm and .40 caliber semi-automatic pistols — into expensive paper weights, unusable for their intended and wholly lawful purposes. That’s because, with the exception of a small number of small 9mm “pocket pistols” and a slightly larger number of .40-caliber pistols — there are no seven-round magazines produced or available (magazines produced for semi-automatic pistols normally hold eight or more rounds). Thus, although the most popular handguns themselves remain legal under the New York law, the magazines that are necessary for them to work have been declared illegal.
As he notes, this is a de facto ban of all hand guns other than revolvers, and as the court ruled in Heller, far too sweeping to pass Second Amendment muster. Also, expect the “assault weapon” ban to be challenged as well. The federal version expired prior to Heller, so it hasn’t been tested.
OK, I decided that I had to take action to prevent this environmental holocaust. So head on over and sign my petition. I know they’re microfauna, not mega, and not all that charismatic, but they’re all God’s creatures. Let’s see if we can break a hundred thousand.
[Update a while later]
A comment over at Free Republic: “Just another case of Brazilian deforestation causing another extinction of a species.”
[Afternoon update]
An email from Jim Bennett: “If you declared Sandra Fluke’s nether parts to be a navigable waterway they would come under the jurisdiction of the Army Corps of Engineers, who would then have the power to forbid the clear-cutting of habitat.”
…is not being libertarian. And as he points out, no one who supports Barack Obama and the Democrats in the budget fight can credibly claim to be a “fiscally conservative.”