Oh, Oh, Oh, I Know The Answer Mr. Kotter

For those who were fans of the old TV show Welcome Back, Kotter, you will remember the character Arnold Horshack. Whenever he’d raise his hand to answer a question, he’d yell, “Oooh, oooh, ooh”.

So it is with a story from Legal Insurrection regarding the 2018 House races. It featured three races with Republican incumbents that are expected to be very close. The Republicans mentioned in the story are Rep. Peter Roskam (R-IL), Rep. Mia Love (R-UT), and Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL).

While I can’t speak to Mia Love’s race for re-election, I do have an answer – or at least a partial answer – as to why Roskam and Curbelo might be on the bubble. They both voted against concealed carry reciprocity. Moreover, Curbelo is the sponsor of HR 3999 which would make it illegal “to manufacture, possess, or transfer any part or combination of parts that is designed and functions to increase the rate of fire of a semiautomatic rifle but does not convert the semiautomatic rifle into a machinegun.” The way the bill reads this would mean not just bumpstocks and binary triggers but stuff like Geissele or Timney triggers.

Perhaps Roskam and Curbelo think playing to the gun control crowd will win them a few more Democrat or moderate Republican votes. I’d say it will also cause them to lose a lot more gun owners who might have provided them with the margin of victory.

I know my friend and Polite Society Podcast co-host Gary Daugherty who lives in Roskam’s district is quite angry over Roskam’s vote against HR 38. Given Gary helps organize town halls for ISRA in his area of Illinois, this does not bode well for Roskam.

Cornell University Says Kill The Townies

In the battle between town and gown, Cornell University is going after the townies and they want them killed.

You can relax a little. Cornell isn’t trying to kill local Ithaca conservatives though it may have crossed the mind of some campus radicals. The Ithaca townies in this case are not the two legged variety but rather the four-legged cloven-hoofed variety with flashy white tails.

It seems that Cornell University is overrun with whitetail deer. You need to remember that Cornell is a weird hybrid in that it is both a liberal arts Ivy League school and a land-grant university with many test farms. It is this latter part of the campus that is the great attraction to the deer combining as it does food, shelter, and lack of predators.

According to a report by Professor William Jacobson at the Legal Insurrection, the university came up with a two-part plan to control the great numbers of deer attracted to its campus. In a move that would warm the cockles of Sandra Fluke’s heart, on-campus deer are given free, permanent birth control. They got tubal ligations. Meanwhile, off-campus deer were subject to a controlled hunting program with emphasis on killing does.

The plan was an expensive failure as Professor Jacobson describes in this interview with Cam Edwards.

“David Gregory” Clause In NY Gun Law?

William Jacobson of the Legal Insurrection blog is a law professor at Cornell University Law School. As a class project in one of his courses, they are trying to unravel the new 39 page gun law that Gov. Andrew Cuomo rammed through the NY State legislature.

Jacobson was interviewed by Cam Edwards of NRA News about the new law on Friday. The key point made by Jacobson in discussing this new law is that it is so complicated and full of pitfalls for the law abiding that the intent seems to be to discourage gun ownership entirely. He notes that there are all sorts of ways to run afoul of the new law. For example, Jacobson said that a previously legal “assault weapon” under New York law must now for the first time be registered. He could see someone not realizing this and being stopped with a non-registered rifle on the way to the shooting range. That person would now be a felon if convicted and lose all gun rights.