Philly Mayor Nutter: I'm James Madison, Bitches! [krakatoa]

To paraphrase a cliche: In order to create a [tyranny] you have to break a few [laws].

Mayor Nutter likened himself and City Council members yesterday to the band of rebels who formed this country as he signed five new gun-control laws that defy the state legislature and legal precedent.

"Almost 232 years ago, a group of concerned Americans took matters in their own hands and did what they needed to do by declaring that the time had come for a change," Nutter said as he signed the bills in front of a table of confiscated weapons outside the police evidence room in City Hall.

I bet you thought I was making up his name and his claim.

Details after the break.

The five laws - called everything from unconstitutional to criminal by critics - do the following:

Limit handgun purchases to one a month.

Require lost or stolen firearms to be reported to police within 24 hours.

Prohibit individuals under protection-from-abuse orders from possessing guns if ordered by the court.

Allow removal of firearms from "persons posing a risk of imminent personal injury" to themselves or others.

Outlaw the possession and sale of certain assault weapons.

You might ask, why did they decide to take so drastic an action?

Phil Goldsmith, president of the gun-control advocacy group CeaseFire PA, said "it's worth trying" to enact and test the laws.

"It's a shame the city has to do something like this because the legislature has failed to exercise its responsibilities," Goldsmith said.

Wow, it sounds as if the state legislature really dropped the ball here and hasn't had a vote on this issue.

The city has tried and failed for three decades to buck the 1974 state law that reserves gun regulation to the state legislature. The state's preeminence appeared to be cemented in a 1996 Supreme Court ruling that allowed the legislature to prevent Philadelphia and Pittsburgh from enacting local gun laws.

Hmm... it sounds strangely like the definition for "failed to exercise its responsibilities" is "failed to legislate and/or adjudicate in the manner I demanded."

Sorry to take up so much space, actually. This is hardly newsworthy, as it is straight out of the Liberals' playbook -- If you can't win legislatively, go to the courts. If you can't win in the courts, just break that inconvenient law.

The article ends with a Nutter comment that is entirely inapplicable contextually, but is at least entertaining on a number of levels:

"If we all sat around bemoaning what the law was on a regular basis," Nutter said. "I'd probably still be picking cotton somewhere as opposed to being mayor of the city of Philadelphia."

posted by xgenghisx at 03:14 AM

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