Here’s Codrea on (no doubt temporary) new rules from DC’s metropolitan police chief for policing in a world where mundanes are allowed to carry firearms.
“Effective immediately, pursuant to the decision in Palmer … and the directive of the Attorney General of the District of Columbia, members of the Metropolitan Police Department shall not enforce D.C. Official Code … until further notice,” that directive instructed.
It also provided three sample scenarios, the first noting a D.C. resident carrying an unregistered firearm should be so charged, the second noting a Vermont resident with no criminal record would be free to leave (with the potential for further investigation), and the third instructing a Virginia resident with felony convictions should be arrested for unlawful possession of a firearm.
I note with surprised respect that these scenarios actually do address the full 10% of states that don’t require no steenking license, so what’s a poor DC cop to do*?
I still think this state of happy confusion is temporary, though so far – as usual – my predictions of instant legal shenanigans have proven incorrect. After all, we can’t let mundanes carry guns in DC! This is where we keep all our most important people!
Someday I’m going to meet one of those state-level CCW activists I spent so many years nay-saying, and I’m gonna get down on my knees and I’m gonna kiss him or her right on the ass.
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*though of course even those people had better be able to produce government-issued photo ID without the slightest delay, so in a way even there you need a license of some sort. I’m still not making any vacation plans for DC.
What I’d like to see is 10% of the NRA membership (that’s 500,000) on Pennsylvania Ave.One long gun over a shoulder. Walk right up to the White House, flip the bird to Obonga, express that sentiment vocally, then walk away. Maybe burn a couple of RINO’s in effigy too.
If .1% of American citizens did it I’d say yeah, that would be fun to watch. If 10% of NRA members do it, they would only make some progressive dreams come true by getting the NRA listed as a terrorist organization.
“getting the NRA listed as a terrorist organization.”
Calling 5 million heavily armed motivated men terrorists—-yeah that would get the ball rolling. Good luck to Homeland Security kicking down doors. They might get motivational issues themselves when a few 180 grains of 30 cal. come zipping in. Nowhere to hide and they can’t run very fast in those jack boots.
I have a dream, Expat. It’s probably an unrealistic dream, I recognize, but those are the best kind. My dream is that we find ways to gradually turn things for the better for the citizens of this country without actually fighting a civil war. Which we would probably lose, even if we won it. We have seen conceptual examples of how this can be done, with patience and an obnoxious level of perseverance. See the last paragraph of the post. These methods can be turned to other matters besides concealed carry.
Chances are if shots ever get fired, things won’t be better after the smoke clears. The times in history when that’s been the case have been so few that I don’t want to risk it.
Ask anyone who lived through a war on their own turf. They’ll tell you that it sucks. It sucks more than living in a country where you can mostly carry a gun anywhere you want, with a few exceptions and caveats, like we have now. It sucks worse than an effective 40% tax rate. It sucks worse than social problems created by a culture of irresponsibility.
I have a friend – well, i guess I HAD a friend, he’s dead now of a cerebral hemmorage – who was Croatian, and lived there during their civil war. He was only teenager then, but he had terrible scarring on his head where he was beaten almost to death, by a soldier that entered his house, and he remembered, with haunted eyes, the hunger and deprivation.
God forbid my daughter ever has haunted eyes like that.
Yeah, that’s why I’m going with ‘we’d lose, even if we won.’
Joel,
I don’t disagree in the slightest with your opinion on civil war, or any war for that matter. No sane person would.
I do not however feel that willing compliance with the thugs running Homeland Security or indeed the local SWAT team will somehow change things around. Maybe that’s not an issue for you living on your little patch of forgotten desert. Limited internet and no travel will do that. I’m probably guilty of that myself although I’ve many liberal friends to keep me more centered.
Perhaps you believe the controls and surveillance now in effect keeps you and yours safe or that our society and the politicians they elect will see the light and we’ll return to the values that founded our country before we suck the big one.
Remember when you didn’t need an ID to open a bank account or buy a gun (or dynamite for that matter) or get on a plane but did need one to register to vote or enter the country?
Expat, if you searched every single post in this blog, going back to 2008, do you think you would find one single time when I ever intimated it would be best to show ‘willing compliance’ with a single damn thing?
Because I’m guessing you can’t back up a word of what you just said, based on things I’ve actually written. But thanks loads for the vote of confidence.
There’s a massive difference between “willing compliance” and doing that which you have to do in order to go on with your life.
I am in the process of getting my CCW in Cali. I had to gulp down many years of “fuck that shit, I won’t ask permission to exercise a right” and am now working it.
I don’t like it. I hate that I had to pay to take a mandatory course from a meatball federal security guard that Mickey Mouse WOULD have taught better.
I hate that I have to take YET ONE MORE Live scan. I may have to do it YET AGAIN again later.
I hate that some pipsqueak somewhere got to dictate that I had to choose three guns and only three to put on a permit to the exclusion of all others.
I hate that I have to repeatedly prove who I am.
I hate that someone in the Sheriffs department can look at me and make such important decisions over my private life.
I hate that I can still be told no. I also hate that being told no is a line in the sand that I will sue over(we have already had the test case discussion) and in that will once again be stuck dealing with yet more bureaucracy.
But I am doing it.
It isn’t willing compliance, either. It’s coerced compliance. And that’s all it is. And I hate it.