About dang time...!

Via Individ we find an encouraging post by Grandpapinhead:

The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and National Rifle Association (NRA) joined with individual gun owners in Louisiana Thursday morning, filing a motion in United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana seeking a temporary restraining order to stop authorities in and around the City of New Orleans from seizing firearms from private citizens in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

In cases reported to SAF, police refused to give citizens receipts for their seized firearms. Earlier, SAF insisted that police account for all seized firearms, disclose their whereabouts, and explain how they will be returned to their rightful owners. Authorities have not responded.

There is absolutely no legal excuse, and even less moral excuse, for the police to disarm the citizens of NOLA, leaving them defenseless from looters who are doubtlessly better armed.

But Katrina just might have been an excellent public-education program for the Second Amendment, because even better news comes from the Montgomery Advertiser regarding comments made by the mayor of no less a city than the capital of Alabama:

Mayor Bobby Bright is unapologetic and stands firm behind comments he made this week about the need for residents to buy guns and learn how to use them to protect themselves from criminals.

It is a solid concept for people to protect themselves since the criminal justice system is not working, Bright said.

"In my opinion, people need to buy a weapon, buy a gun, educate themselves on how to use that gun and they need to use that weapon to protect themselves from the criminal element out there," he said Thursday.

"I will not back away from that concept. It is a sensitive issue. It is simply me as the mayor wanting and caring enough about our citizens here to tell them this may be the best way they can help us protect themselves."

..."We have got to put the career criminal on notice, we are not going to take it anymore," he said. "They are not going to walk in and walk out and rob our innocent citizens in Montgomery."

Pardon me whilst I pick up my jaw from the floor and dust it off.

For the record, while I am still momentarily ignorant of what political party or race or any other group he is from, I don't freaking care.  Makes me want to move to Montgomery just so I can vote for the man.  And it's a plus if he's Democratic--that way I could vote for him twice, or more, even.  Per election.

That is just almost too un-freaking-believably good to be true.  But there it is.  Not everyone in Montgomery agrees with him, unsurprisingly.  But all he really had to do was look hard at the images on his TV screen in Katrina's aftermath, realize that neither he nor his Police Dept. are omnipotent, and think logically.   Oh--and actually care about his constituents.

And if we're very, very lucky, and put pressure on our own local officials, they will learn a bit about public service and Bobby Bright's attitude will spread.

UPDATE:  Grandpapinhead reminds me that, were Bobby Bright a Democrat, not only could I exercise my own franchise--early and often--but I could also enlist all my dead relatives to vote for him as well.   He actually could end up with more votes than there are voters in Mongomery County.  (That's never actually happened, of course...has it...?)