I'm messing around with the look of Alphecca. Expect some weirdness today...
My goal is to make Alphecca more readable and clean, and also to freshen it up a bit. Many readers have complained (especially those using LCD screens) that the light-gray text on a black background is hard to read. I also think it's gotten a bit "gloomy" and to that end, what you are seeing now is how I learn my way around CSS. Some colors will change because I have to go into the main template besides just the style sheet.
Your comments are most welcome. By the end of Sunday I should have it the way I want it. If worse comes to worse, I can always plug my old style sheet back in...
Update 6:30 pm:
Okay, I've got the main "blog body" looking the way I want but I still have to work on the linkage sidebar on the right. Anyway, I see by early comments that I'm meeting some "resistance". Since I want to please as many readers as possible, I'll let you all use the comments as a sort of informal "poll".
We have several choices here on my color scheme but mostly I think we're arguing over the top-photo. Let's call it the "topper". I will present the choices here now and you can all indicate in the comments as to which you prefer. In a perfect world where I'm a real geek and can program cool stuff, I'd let you choose your own look much like my friends at On The Third Hand. OR, I could do something nifty like my new friends at ARGGHHH! do, where the topper changes every time you go there.
Let me present you with your choices. I will not try to influence you in any way. I will be completely objective.
Your first choice is the fresh, bright new look which speaks optimism, confidence, hopefulness, and happy, clean, wonderful cheerfulness that I'm trying to establish around here:
Update Monday: If you visit regularly and you're NOT seeing a difference since last Saturday, you might need to empty your cache, especially if using IE. Then reload the page...
Finally, some sensible tort reform passes the Senate. From the AP:
- The Senate voted Friday to shield firearms manufacturers, dealers and importers from lawsuits brought by victims of gun crimes, a measure opponents said had been ordered up by the gun lobby.The 65-31 vote passed a bill that supporters said protects the industry from financial disaster and bankruptcy caused by damage lawsuits.
"This bill says go after the criminal, don't go after the law-abiding gun manufacturer or the law-abiding gun seller," said bill sponsor Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho.
This is really just a start, folks. Maybe Congress will start examining some of the other areas of manufacture that are being driven to bankruptcy by trial lawyers and try to reign in all the other frivolous lawsuits and outrageous "damage" awards that consumers windup paying for in the end. One reason healthcare is so expensive these days is because doctors have had to practice "defensive medicine" to stem the tide of lawsuits that beset the healthcare industry.
It's interesting to note that the vote on S397 was rather lopsided, with several Democrats voting for the measure. Every opinion poll of ordinary Americans showed support for the legislation, indicating that even people who don't like guns still believe in fairness, even to businesses.
However, a word of caution: Once this bill becomes law -- that doesn't end all lawsuits against gun makers and dealers. The trial lawyers will comb through the exemptions that are still actionable and simply change their tactics. The chief benefit of this legislation is that it will end the class action suits that claim that gun makers' products are creating a public nuisance or that try to recover gun-crime costs.
Update: Countertop Chronicles has the score on who voted how.
...When I'd posted this then you would be enjoying the fruits of this:
Shares of Smith & Wesson Holding Corp., the parent company of gun maker Smith & Wesson Corp., and Sturm Ruger & Co. shot through the roof on Friday with the expected passage of an industry-friendly gun-liability bill in the Senate.Both gun makers hit new 52-week highs on the pending legislation, which was stripped of an amendment in a 62-37 vote Thursday that would have allowed lawsuits against gun makers for gross negligence.
Well, it was in the wind... From the AP:
Gov. Rod Blagojevich signed into law Friday a measure that requires background checks on potential firearms buyers at gun shows, closing a loophole that police and others contend has been exploited by gangs and other illegal buyers.Background checks are already required for people buying guns at licensed stores to ensure they don't have a criminal record that would bar them from possessing firearms.
The new law, which applies to unlicensed dealers, has long been sought by gun control advocates, police and even many gun owners.
[...]
The law, which takes effect immediately, requires gun sellers to ask state police for backgrounds on potential purchasers. If the buyer is approved, the sale must take place within 30 days.
Gun Law News has been following the action on the gun maker shield bill.
I really like the new look at Countertop Chronicles. I'm thinking of changing things here, too. I'm tired of the dark and stormy motif. Any thoughts?
While the "make believe news network", CBS, continues to sob in hysterics over the bill that would protect gun makers and dealers from frivolous lawsuits, let's remind ourselves of why the industry needs our protection and why the right to bear arms is so important. From the Daily Herald (UT):
ST. GEORGE -- A resident told police he used his concealed gun to chase away a knife-wielding robber downtown.The resident suffered a minor cut on his neck, police Lt. Mark Brklacich said.
He said the man had cashed a check at about 1:45 p.m. Tuesday at the EZ Cash drive-up window.
As he pulled into traffic, he saw a man near a dark SUV waving him over.Thinking the man was having car problems, he pulled over. The resident said the assailant approached him, put a knife against his neck and demanded money. But the resident "reached down and pulled out his concealed weapon and pointed it toward the suspect," Brklacich said.
Democrats (and an occasional Republican) are flouncing around attempting to attach all sorts of amendments to Senate bill S397, the legislation that would protect gun makers and dealers from frivolous lawsuits resulting from the criminal misuse of their products. One requiring an external safety lock be sold with each new gun was passed. That's okay and hardly objectionable. Actually, most gun makers include such a lock now with their firearms.
Some of the other proposed amendments are simply ludicrous. From the AP:
Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., agreed late Thursday to allow debate on amendments to the measure Friday. One, sponsored by Sen. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., would make police officers exceptions to the bill's restrictions, allowing them to sue. Another, sponsored by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., would do the same for children.Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., introduced an amendment that would ban hollow-tipped, "cop killer" bullets. Another, sponsored by Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., would allow individuals, but not municipalities, to file such lawsuits.
And then there's Ted "the lifeguard" Kennedy, who wants to ban hollow-points. He likes to call them "cop killer" bullets but of course they're not. Again, it's not the bullet but how it's used and even a casual browsing of hunting forums shows that cast-hollow-points are very popular because they often (aside from shot placement, of course) help insure a one-shot kill in animals such as deer. Handgun hunting almost requires hollow-points. And yes, for personal defense, a hollow-point is preferable.
Reed's amendment is just silly. So instead of gun manufacturers having to defend against 30 class action lawsuits, they would now have to defend against 3000 individual lawsuits?
I don't expect any of these measures to pass, nor bans or extreme regulations on .50 caliber rifles, either.
It must suck being a Democrat these days, heh.
While hardly scientific, this USA Today Poll asks:
Should gun makers be protected against lawsuit damages resulting from the illegal use of a firearm?
This could have significant impact in other areas and could stop lawsuits against beer and distilled-spirits makers before they even start. Tort reform might be closer than anyone thinks.
Needless to say, some of the barking moonbats on the left are not amused over the proposed legislation to protect gun makers and dealers.
[And no, I haven't been sitting here all day voting "yes" over and over...]
The Christian Science Monitor is wrong. They pretty much always are. I have to presume that their un-named editorial writer doesn't read or doesn't bother to even research a bill he is criticizing:
What the gun bill would do is prevent citizens or local governments from suing the tiny number of unscrupulous gun dealers, only about 1 percent of the industry. These operators have nothing to do with supplying arms to US forces, the reason the administration gives for supporting the bill.Last year, families of the six victims of snipers who terrorized the Washington D.C. area in 2002 won a modest settlement of just over $2 million from Bull's Eye Shooter Supply in Washington State. The gun dealer could not account for how more than 200 weapons mysteriously left his shop, including the assault rifle used by convicted snipers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo. These families can only be grateful that this ill-advised measure had not yet passed.
(5) QUALIFIED CIVIL LIABILITY ACTION-(A) IN GENERAL- The term `qualified civil liability action' means a civil action or proceeding or an administrative proceeding brought by any person against a manufacturer or seller of a qualified product, or a trade association, for damages, punitive damages, injunctive or declaratory relief, abatement, restitution, fines, or penalties, or other relief' resulting from the criminal or unlawful misuse of a qualified product by the person or a third party,
but shall not include--(i) an action brought against a transferor convicted under section 924(h) of title 18, United States Code, or a comparable or identical State felony law, by a party directly harmed by the conduct of which the transferee is so convicted;
(ii) an action brought against a seller for negligent entrustment or negligence per se;
(iii) an action in which a manufacturer or seller of a qualified product knowingly violated a State or Federal statute applicable to the sale or marketing of the product, and the violation was a proximate cause of the harm for which relief is sought, including--
(I) any case in which the manufacturer or seller knowingly made any false entry in, or failed to make appropriate entry in, any record required to be kept under Federal or State law with respect to the qualified product, or aided, abetted, or conspired with any person in making any false or fictitious oral or written statement with respect to any fact material to the lawfulness of the sale or other disposition of a qualified product; or
(II) any case in which the manufacturer or seller aided, abetted, or conspired with any other person to sell or otherwise dispose of a qualified product, knowing, or having reasonable cause to believe, that the actual buyer of the qualified product was prohibited from possessing or receiving a firearm or ammunition under subsection (g) or (n) of section 922 of title 18, United States Code;
(iv) an action for breach of contract or warranty in connection with the purchase of the product; or
(v) an action for death, physical injuries or property damage resulting directly from a defect in design or manufacture of the product, when used as intended or in a reasonably foreseeable manner, except that where the discharge of the product was caused by a volitional act that constituted a criminal offense then such act shall be considered the sole proximate cause of any resulting death, personal injuries or property damage.
(B) NEGLIGENT ENTRUSTMENT- As used in subparagraph (A)(ii), the term `negligent entrustment' means the supplying of a qualified product by a seller for use by another person when the seller knows, or reasonably should know, the person to whom the product is supplied is likely to, and does, use the product in a manner involving unreasonable risk of physical injury to the person or others.
(C) RULE OF CONSTRUCTION- The exceptions enumerated under clauses (i) through (v) of subparagraph (A) shall be construed so as not to be in conflict, and no provision of this Act shall be construed to create a public or private cause of action or remedy.
Curious story -- actually two for one -- yesterday from the AP. It starts out with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist playing hardball with the bill to shield gun makers and dealers from most frivolous lawsuits:
Until lawmakers vote on a top-priority gun rights bill, nothing else happens in the Senate. And that includes Congress' prized monthlong vacation.That's the way Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has toughened up his style in the final days before the August break was to begin, learning from last year to leave no room for gun control advocates to derail legislation limiting lawsuits against the gun industry.
Frist, R-Tenn., used Senate parliamentary procedures Wednesday to keep Democrats from dooming the measure with an amendment that would offend the National Rifle Association.
But critics said that the bill goes much further and would prevent action even against distributors who supply guns to criminals. They said it would halt lawsuits by policemen shot on the job or families who lost loved ones to the 2002 Washington-area snipers."The real effect of this bill would be to prevent victims of gun violence from pursuing even obviously valid claims in state or federal courts," said Sen. Edward Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat.
But then, let's go back to the AP story for a moment because there was a "second part" to it dealing with sex offenders:
States would have to have uniform Web sites for registering sex offenders and establish new mandatory minimum prison sentences for crimes against children under a bill approved Wednesday by the House Judiciary Committee.But majority Republicans barely beat back an effort by Democrats on the panel to delete a provision that would establish a minimum five-year prison sentence for convicted sex offenders who fail to register their whereabouts with authorities.
Democrats called the measure too harsh, saying it could apply to a person who had been convicted of a misdemeanor sex offense. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said a person could end up serving more time in prison for failing to report than for the actual crime committed. "That doesn't make any sense at all," he said.
However, Rep. Mark Green, R-Wis., said failing to register undermines a key weapon against sex offenders — knowledge of where they're residing. "It is, in my view, a very serious offense," he said.
And proving that that is their logic, we see that they don't want to impose mandatory jail sentences for sex offenders who fail to register their whereabouts. Perhaps they would rather blame or file suit against the mattress company that was used in the original crime...
I'll tell you this much: Start looking for a rash of suits against beer and liquar companies. It isn't the drunk, it's the booze.
I normally give blogging a rest on Wednesdays so that my "Weekly Check" doesn't get lost in the shuffle but it seems to have anyway, so...
Confederate Yankee has a really good post about all the nonsense surrounding SCOTUS nominee John Roberts.
More crushing of dissent! Read the gory details and also about how you can help Joe Huffman in his battle against PNNL.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, Backroad Blog shows what a live visit is worth... Heh.
Cowboy Blob reports on what you should bring to the range.
Lastly, but not leastly, I must be getting noticed because I've had my first offer of a loaner gun from a manufacturer. While I hope it becomes a "permanent" loaner, this is totally cool! More details shortly plus a feature range report, but I can tell you that it [the rifle] is like having control of lightning... That's all I'm going to say right now... I'm surprised that more companies don't take advantage of my goodly-sized audience of gun-nuts. (That's a HINT, Taurus International...)
Okay, enough ellipsis for now...
Update 7/28: I guess I should end speculations. I'm quite happy that Mark Serbu, President of Serbu Firearms has kindly offered to let me play around with one of these! Yup, a BFG .50 rifle. (He's even sending some ammo, how cool is that?) Naturally I'll have extensive range reports plus, I suspect, a lot of fun. A bunch of guys from work are all waiting -- they want to try it out, too.
Welcome, my friends, to the July 26th edition of my Weekly Check on the Bias, wherein I report on just some of the coverage by the mainstream media pertaining to gun ownership and the Second Amendment.
Before getting to "the gory stuff" I am continuing the series I started last week of reproducing some of the beautiful, fine-art photography taken by Robert Langham for the 2006 Texas State Rifle Association Calendar. When the calendar is ready, I will post details on how to order it so you can not only see the true beauty of the final pictures, but also have the chance to support the TSRA itself and get a swell calendar to-boot. Robert has kindly given me permission to post these preliminary shots. Robert Langham is an NRA member, a Texas State Rifle Team National Match Shooter, a Junior Rifle coach, and a holder of the Distinguished Rifleman's Badge. He has donated his time to help train US Army troops. I present his comments on each shot first, and then the photo.
From the CMP North store. Did the stocks with Murphys Oil Soap, now peening gas rails and switching parts to tighten up the group.
Cowboy shooting is a big deal. They have their own magazine. They have "handles" (fake names) and badges with numbers. Basically the deal is, they dress up like cowboys and go out and shoot period or replica pistols, shotguns, and rifles at a course of fire based around a holdup, barfight, bank robbery or jail break out.Just imagine a 68 year old baldheaded happily married insurance adjuster strapping on this gear and entering a competition where you kill your fellow card players using four firearms at a match you enter without revealing your name.
He-Haw Jackson meet Purple Toes Smith. You and Grizzly Zabrieski will be teaming up against Cut Hand Leftwitch and Lefty Stump One-Eyed Johnson. Starting team will be determined by cutting the cards. Double-Horse Washington will be the umpire.
An aquaintance who is a hell of a nice guy loaned me about 7K worth of vintage rifles, pistols, leatherwear, bear-gutting knives, (this one modeled after Geronimo's shiv), hats, chaps, et. et. I think his handle is Latigo Snake-Eyes or something. He's an INSURANCE ADJUSTOR!
This is NOT an Olympic Sport. Yet. I admit to being slightly aghast but...in the photos from the shoots, everyone seems to be having a hell of a time.
Oh, they sell rolling gun carts that look like.....(wait for it)....coffins.
Under my corner windows with a white card reflector and one small hand-held silver card I shot with the coolpix. Custom light balance. 1/8 second. Took less than 30 minutes and I took the stuff back before they could print a wanted poster. I include two possible shots.
When we were kids Dad had a 1891 Argentine Mauser he sporterized for us to hunt with. It's long gone but several years back these 91 Carbines came into the country. I rattled up a nice buck and shot him with this Cavalry model and I have an Engineers model that is cleaner. I handload 7.65 Argentine.The second rifle is a K31 Swiss that I bought off Gunbroker. I bought two and passed one on to my junior shooter, Evan Hess. I got the walnut stocks. Most of them have the name and address of the guy it was issued to under the buttplate. This one belonged to Alois Rathmann. I wrote him and sent him a photo of his rifle in Texas, but got it back in the mail.
I shot this rifle with the GP11 ammo prone at 600 yards last week. I set the rear sight on 600 meters and shot twice hitting two nines at nine O'clock about six inches apart. Not bad for Rathmann's old rifle. I bet he would have paid the 139.00 on gunbroker to have had it back.
The bottom rifle is a 1937 K98 W.W.II war trophy. No papers and someone put a Lyman Peep on it. 1937 was about the time the Nazis got rolling. I'm glad to have it in Texas in civilian use. I keep thinking I will shoot a doe with it. 8mm is a lot of bullet.
I built the set in the corner of two windows. I used a big white card on the left with the light off my reloading bench coming around it and lighting up the Texas Flag in the background. There's a smaller silver card off the right. The flag is draped over CMP rifle shipping boxes. I added ammo and a Swedish canteen. Lots of clamps and risers to get the rifles arranged. Coolpix 8800 handheld, custom light balance off a piece of computer paper, and the Vibration Reduction turned on.
An Alton woman embroiled in a divorce case spent more than four hours in jail for contempt of court after she refused a Madison County's judge's order to return a handgun to her ex-husband, a convicted felon.Elizabeth "Beth" Ritchie, 30, said that complying with Associate Judge Ellar Duff's order, delivered at a hearing on Thursday, would have required Ritchie to commit a crime herself.
It is a felony in Illinois for a felon to possess a firearm, and for anyone to transfer a gun to a felon.
Duff said in an interview Friday that she did not learn until after the hearing that Ritchie's ex-husband was a felon, and that she then ordered Beth Ritchie released from the Madison County Jail.
Ritchie said she tried to explain the situation to Duff in court but was ignored.
"I was being ordered by the law to break the law," Ritchie said. "And when I wouldn't, I got thrown in jail."
Ritchie's ex-husband, Timothy D. Ritchie, 34, a used-car salesman from Wood River, was convicted in Madison County Circuit Court of felony drug possession in 1999 and felony theft in 2000. He got probation in both cases.
Beth Ritchie said she had mailed certified letters a month before Thursday's hearing to three court officials - Associate Judge Nelson Metz, State's Attorney Bill Mudge and Circuit Clerk Matt Melucci - informing them of the legal dilemma over the pistol. She said she followed the letters up with calls but never heard back from the officials.Beth Ritchie attended Thursday's hearing with her father.
Beth Ritchie said that she explained the situation to Duff but that the judge refused to listen.
"She said she didn't care about other circumstances, that I had better return the gun to Tim immediately," Ritchie said.
At that point, Beth Ritchie's father approached the bench, after getting permission from the judge.
"I could see the letter Beth had written, outlining the whole matter, right there on the bench in front of her (Duff)," said Swift, 59.
Swift said he asked whether the pistol could be given to Duff to transfer, "so that we wouldn't be the ones breaking the law."
"At that point, Judge Duff just snapped and ordered my daughter and me arrested for contempt of court," Swift said.
For that reason, I support efforts in states such as Colorado and Virginia and -- hopefully -- soon in Ohio where legislation is pending to prohibit municipalities from enacting gun ordinances that exceed state law.
California is no stranger to some very tough gun control laws, not that it's done anything to reduce crime because criminals tend to ignore laws anyway. I reported here some time ago that bills were pending to require "ammo registration". It's moving forward but at least some newspapers there are reporting that it might not be a good, or effective idea. From the Madera Tribune:
According to the legislation, each bullet will be required to have a serial number to be laser engraved. Then, after a crime is committed with a handgun, the belief is that the bullet can be retrieved and the serial number traced back to who purchased the bullets. Bullets would have to be sold in boxes of 50 and all 50 bullets would have the same serial number that matches the serial number on the box.“That’s where a problem exists,” said Gar Svendsen, director of production and quality service for Federal Ammunition. “We have been told that the machine needed to do the laser imprinting only costs $300,000 to $400,000. What they don’t realize is how our manufacturing process works. We manufacture hundreds of thousands of bullets every day. They are all placed in large bins and everything is automated. To accomplish the goal of SB357, we would have to set up several production lines, purchase dozens of the machines, and hire added labor because out automated systems can’t do the job. The cost of manufacturing would go through the roof. We really wouldn’t have too many choices. Either the cost of ammunition would increase dramatically, and I mean dramatically, for a few cents per round to up to $2 or $3 per round or we would have to forget California as a market.”
[...]
Thomas Millner, president of Remington Arms Company, has written Gov. Schwarzenegger about SB357.
“The domestic ammunition industry, of which Remington is a market leader, produces about eight billion rounds of ammunition each year, and our facilities manufacture, assemble and package millions of rounds daily,” Millner wrote. “Serialization of individual cartridges would turn modern assembly lines into early-19th century piece work shops, with individual workers engraving casings and bullets, then matching and boxing them in increments no larger than one or two dozen. This proposal would be prohibitively expensive to implement, without credible evidence that the benefit would come close to the cost incurred to our high volume, low margin industry.”
The Sporting Goods and Ammunitions Manufacturers’ Institute, Inc. said on its website, “Manufacturers would be forced to abandon the California market or go bankrupt.”
I must applaud the writer of this news story, Cal Tatum, for presenting an unbiased look at the consequences of such legislation. It is clear that two of the major ammunition makers would probably just pull out of the California market. That will disadvantage everyone from Olympic hopefulls to target shooters and hunters and even just those folks who own guns for defensive purposes and wish to get some practice time in at the local range.
The article concludes:
Assemblyman Ron Haynes wrote, “The two bills that seem designed to stop the sale of firearms and ammunition in California are AB352 and SB357. Apparently, they were written by someone who has watched too many episodes of CSI.”
After the tragic school shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado, NBC's Today Show host Katie Couric declared that today's youth were "more likely to pull a gun than make a fist." U.S. News & World Report then weighed in with a report about "Teenage Time Bombs" and "Children Without Souls." The stolid New York Times opined that the shootings "were a disturbing trend."After school shootings by teen boys in four separate states over two years, it appeared to TV news viewers that the average American youngster had become a Nazi storm trooper who liked to shoot up schools just for kicks. But nothing could be further from the truth. If those in the media had bothered to check, they would have found youth homicide rates have declined by 30% in the last decade. Youth homicide rates were actually higher in 1965 than they are today!
"We live in a culture of fear," says Barry Glassner, Ph.D., University of Southern California professor of sociology and author of The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things. "The harm? We are continually distracted from serious problems by focusing on things that are extremely unlikely to happen."
According to Glassner's statistics, the more real dangers to teenagers include car accidents, binge drinking, and unprotected sex. He adds, "It's very unlikely the average teen will be shot at school. But that's what captures headlines." When all the news channels repeat scenes of one tragic shooting over and over, it looks like schools everywhere are under attack.
In reviewing police reports, scientific studies and skeptical media accounts over five years, Glassner found part of the blame for widespread false fear rests with the news media's penchant for crime stories. When a crime happens in any city, it is very likely to be the lead story on all the newscasts. But the truth is, between 1990 and 1998, the nation's murder rate declined 20%. Meanwhile, the number of murder stories on network news increased 600%, according to Glassner's calculations.
"You may not get the proper perspective from a T.V. station whose motto for selecting news is 'If it bleeds, it leads,'" Glassner says. "Consequently, Americans waste tens of billions of dollars yearly fighting minor or non-existent dangers." All the while, we neglect real problems—problems we could solve if we put our minds to them.
How else to explain the repellent editorial from the NY Daily News that I discussed yesterday? I won't repeat myself here (since it's just the previous post) but I'd like to point out one more thing about the opening paragraph:
The gun-huggers at the National Rifle Association will not be holding their 2007 convention, as had been planned, in Columbus, Ohio. Lucky Columbus. Of course, the NRA would never even consider N.Y.C. This city does not believe in blowing the heads off small animals. Or people. Which is why it wants to get tougher on illegal weapons. Guess what group is opposed?
Thanks to blogger David Hardy I came across an American Chronicle article by John J. Cahill that (here's a shock) catches the Brady Bunch in a lie:
The Brady Campaign testified on March 15, 2006, at the House Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law, against H.R. 800. This testimony included opposition to companion Senate legislation S. 397. Part of that testimony was a letter purported to be from several national Law Enforcement organizations opposing Gun Liability reform. The letter was published on the web along with Brady’s record of testimony. The letter carried a list of 66 individually named Sheriffs and Police Chiefs of major cities. Six of the names listed were Nevada Chiefs or Sheriffs. My Sheriff was included.I made contact with my Sheriff through a ranking officer in the Department. He remembered getting a briefing from the Brady organization at a State meeting but didn’t remember that our Sheriff had signed any letter. Later my Sheriff responded directly and personally to an email saying he was checking facts on the whole matter.
[...]
Following the NRA Alert, all of the feedback I was able to track indicated that not one of the Nevada Law Enforcement Officers listed had signed the letter or authorized the use of his name. My info now is that every one of the six has demanded his name be removed and two penned letters of support for S.397.
How about a positive story to end with? From South Coast Today (MA):
NEW BEDFORD -- One by one, the women learned how to load and shoot guns -- a .22 caliber revolver, pistol and rifle.In a windowless, wood-paneled room, they wore bright orange ear plugs and fed bullets into the guns' magazines. Then they slid the barrels into place, undid the safety and cradled their non-trigger fingers around the hand grip.
"Pull the trigger slowly," one shy instructor named Chad said.
Then a loud boom rang out -- louder than any gun sounds on television.
A Fairhaven woman, Robin Bodeau, said she felt a jolt and closed her eyes after firing the .45.
Bullet holes, appeared on the paper targets hanging 25 yards away, if the shooters were lucky.
"I had my instructor sign my target," Julie Marchetti, a cheerful blonde, said afterward. "I'm going to frame it and show it to my husband."
Ms. Marchetti and about 25 other women learned how to care for and fire guns yesterday at the New Bedford Revolver and Rifle Club, a nonprofit organization on Bolton Street. The event, called Women on Target, was sponsored by the National Rifle Association and was meant to inspire women to practice target shooting -- still a male-dominated sport, club members said.
Although the New Bedford Revolver and Rifle Club welcomes female shooters and competitors, only 20 of their 200 members are women. "Maybe it's just a time factor," Judy Thornhill, a member of the club's pistol team, said to explain the dearth of women. "I got into it originally because of my husband. Now my husband plays golf and I shoot."
Here's what's happening at some other fine blogs:
Learn first hand from Irons in the Fire about what goes into forging a knife. Interesting stuff and I'm looking forward to future installments.
There are some blogger shoots coming up. Publicola has the scoop on the August 7th meet in Colorado and Jay G at Toys In the Attic has the details on the August 6th New England bloggershoot in Massachusetts. Time is running out so I urge all who can attend (you don't have to be a blogger, just a blog reader!) to get in touch with them.
Lots of bloggers are participating in the "What's on your nightstand" meme that I also posted on last week including WadCutter and Les Jones.
Yipes! It's almost 11 o'clock. Time to get this up! I'll be on Cam's later today and thanks so much for stopping by.
How's THIS for a bunch of crap:
The gun-huggers at the National Rifle Association will not be holding their 2007 convention, as had been planned, in Columbus, Ohio. Lucky Columbus. Of course, the NRA would never even consider N.Y.C. This city does not believe in blowing the heads off small animals. Or people. Which is why it wants to get tougher on illegal weapons. Guess what group is opposed?City officials are trying to cut off the plague of weapons at its source by suing gun makers and distributors that carelessly deliver their wares to unscrupulous dealers who, in turn, sell to criminals. It's a strategy any levelheaded politician would love - but the NRA and its pals in Congress are doing their darnedest to keep the supply lines open.
Bills headed for votes in the House and the Senate would grant gunmakers immunity from lawsuits like New York's. In other words, the manufacturers could turn a blind eye to the 1% of dealers who are responsible for 60% of the illegal guns on the streets.
He's correct that the NRA probably wouldn't consider NYC as the site for their convention because NYC doesn't grant it's subjects all of the Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment.
The lawsuit by New York City claims that gun makers and dealers are "creating a public nuisance". NYC was able to find a sympathetic judge who is allowing the lawsuit to proceed. More here. Personally, I think the "public nuisance" is being created by the criminals who are misusing firearms but I suppose that a leftist liberal city never blames the criminals, it must be the fault of the legally built firearms. This is the same twisted logic of the left where the terrorists who bomb or crash planes into the World Trace Center aren't to blame, it's the democratic policies of the US government.
The "Lawful Commerce" act before congress would stop such "nuisance" lawsuits. As I've pointed out a dozen times here, the bill would NOT prevent legitimate suits filed because of illegal actions by gun makers and dealers.
Remember, this is the same city whose council voted to "regulate" all gun stores around the country.
I'm sure that the Daily News was overjoyed finding (second item in editorial) that proposed SCOTUS candidate John Roberts had voted (in the minority) to uphold a firearm conviction due to an illegal search.
Another tiresome article from the Peoria Journal-Star:
Scott Vogel had never before owned a gun when he purchased a bolt-action .50-caliber rifle over the Internet a few months ago with little more than his Illinois driver's license and Firearm Ownership ID card.Vogel, a Chicago resident and coordinator with the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence, said he did so on the group's behalf to show how easy it is to obtain a weapon powerful enough to strike targets more than a mile away, one that is able to pierce armor plating and potentially ground a jet aircraft during takeoff or landing.
"It's fairly easy to do," Vogel said of the purchase, noting the seller "threw in 150 rounds" of ammunition for free for buying the rifle.
Members of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence toured the state this week "educating citizens" about the rifle's ability as what they claimed is a potential terrorist threat as well as a touting a bill in the Illinois legislature aimed at restricting possession and selling of a .50-caliber rifle.
Oh, oh! And the seller threw in some ammo. My dealer in East Burke always gives me a free box of ammo when I buy a gun from him. It's like the free "pen" the bank gives you for opening an account.
Later in the article we read:
But Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association, said that if the group wasn't targeting the .50-caliber rifle, it would be a different gun."The point is, it's the rifle of the week they want to ban. Next week, it'll be the .49-caliber, then the .48-caliber," Pearson said.
The gun advocate said the .50-caliber rifle - which is about 5 feet long, weighs more than 30 pounds and shoots a nearly 6-inch long bullet more than one mile - is primarily used for long range target practice, but is also used for hunting bear or elk.
"It is perfectly legal under U.S. code," Pearson said.
And countering claims that purchasing the .50-caliber rifle over the Internet could more easily get it into the wrong hands, Pearson said every state requires a potential buyer undergo a state and federal background check.
And if this anti-gun group is calling itself the "Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence" then why are they even worrying about a rifle? Because (I'll answer that!) they give themselves a name that conjures up images of people brandishing handguns but their real agenda is to ban all guns including long ones.
Again, a perfectly legal sale; what's the story?
The New York Times sports section has a Q & A on rifle scopes today... Nah, I'm just jazzing you. Actually, it's the Macon Telegraph:
QUESTION: I have recently acquired two rifles. One is a Kimber bolt action in .22-caliber long rifle. The other is a Ruger bolt action in HMR-17. I (like you) am an accuracy nut. What are the best scopes I can put on these rifles without spending a fortune? I would like to spend no more than $300 on the two.ANSWER: The Kimber is one of the most accurate rifles one can have in .22 long rifle. Still, even with its inherent accuracy it has its practical limitations, which to me is a 75 yard maximum effective range. Parallax (optical error) is a consideration with a .22 long rifle. Big game scopes have parallax set from 100 to 150 yards. This would create error potential in the shorter range of the Kimber. I would suggest a 3x9 variable scope on which the parallax has been set at the factory for 50 yards. These are available at sporting goods stores as well as in catalogs such as Cabelas and Redhead, at a price under $70.
Don't trust the store clerk on the 50 yard parallax setting; make him show it to you on the box.
The HMR-17 is even more accurate than the Kimber and is practical out to 150 yards, thus a scope with a 50 yard parallax setting is inadequate. For this rifle I would recommend a scope with an adjustable objective (AO) lens so that you can dial in your shooting range, thereby eliminating parallax error.
There are several economical scopes with this feature, but I have always been partial to Bushnell because of quality and warranty. The Bushnell Banner is available in a 4x12 variable with adjustable objective. It has a 40 millimeter forward lens and will fit most (not all) standard rings. There is also a 6x18 and a 6x24 available but these have a 50 millimeter lens and require high rings.
For target shooting, I would recommend the 6x24. For practical field shooting, I would opt for the 4x12. These two scopes will keep you well within your budget.
Independent Sources examines the bias, or lack thereof, in coverage of the London Subway Shooting from the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. Needless to say, the NY Times loses.
There! That got your attention! What the hell, it's Saturday and nobody reads on weekends... Seriously, I want to ask a question of you like-minded gun nuts. When I used to collect guitars, I would sometimes lay them all out and polish them, remove any fingerprint, tune them over and over, feel and smell the wood and laquer. I would just revel in them, that I owned them and loved them.
I'm like that with my guns. Now, I don't have a lot of guns by anyone's standards. When I'm flush, I buy. When I'm down, I sell. At the moment I own three long guns and 5 handguns. Hardly "a collection".
Sometimes, I treat them better than my cats. I spread them all out before me, clean them all even if they don't need it. I touch and feel and examine them and think about how cool they are and how I could take my .22 and [In your dreams --ed.] win every target shooting competition in the world. I smell the remnants of Hopp's, the odor of oil. I run my fingers over the craftsmanship and check the magazines and fuss over the "blueing" on some of them. I fuss over the sights, the trigger actions, the grips. I try the balance and aspect over and over. I'm in LOVE...
I hold them, feel them and caress them.
I realize that these are the same actions that any collector does with his (even in my limited case) grouping, ownership.
I hold my P-45 and think, "you will protect me from EVERYTHING". I hug my Marlin .22 bolt and think, "I had you when I was 14-years-old".
So. I fondle and molest my guns. Go ahead, tell me that I'm full of it. I don't think I'm the only one, though. I refuse to believe that. The design and operation of each gun is fascinating. The look is unique. Owning them is like taking in your art collection; gazing lovingly at each piece of work.
I have my small collection spread out before me now and I think I will give each one some lovin'.
Firearms and the Second Amendment are all we have standing between us and a totalitarianism, fascist government dreamed-up by the leftist, liberal members of our once frontier, bold nation.
Have you fondled your guns today?
FORT WORTH, Texas More than 70 guns stolen before the opening of a Cabela's sporting goods store in Fort Worth -- have been recovered.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives today confirmed the guns have been located.So far no arrests.
Further details weren't immediately available.
The 100-thousand dollars worth of rifles, shotguns and handguns turned up missing from a storage site in May, in the weeks before the Cabela's store opened.
And is it now called the BATFE?
Over at But That's Just My Opinion, the latest Carnival of Cordite. Ambitious effort this week.
Pervasive Light doesn't think much of the idea of NYC cops searching backpacks.
Tonecluster has more thoughts on British cops' head shots and read this too.
Perry de Havilland at Samizdata shows why the above is necessary. And continuing the thoughts, so does Dean Esmay.
There's so much good stuff out there...
Hey, for something completely different and refreshing, Jean at Gumbo Pie had met and knew James "Scotty" Doohan as a jazz fan. Must read!
Lastly, I want all my "gay" readers to read THIS.
Or just say you will. This image has been kicking around my hard drive for I don't know how long; I don't even know where it came from but I just stumbled upon it again and it seems to tie-in neatly with the previous post (Nightstand Meme) so...
James at Hell in a Handbasket answers the new meme going round that asks, "What's on Your nightstand?" And passes it on to me.
Well, I've had a variety over the years. Given where I live, I don't really worry about it a lot and usually I'll just lay my carry gun down on the night table. Sometimes just my TomCat, sometimes my S&W .38 Airweight. Lately though, I've really come to like the compact EAA Witness .45 I picked up a while back. It's very reliable and with the polymer grip it seems to absorb recoil very well. Anyway, here it is from just a few minutes ago, on the nightstand:
I have a plethora of Remington 230 GR hollowpoints right now because they're, er, economical, and I've been practicing with them at the range. I've got a lot of Winchester 230 jacketed roundnose too. Wal-Mart sells it cheap. Normally in a carry or night table .45 I'd probably have it loaded with 185 GR Hydra-Shok.
Again, with my location, and the only access through one door and window, both wired, I don't wake up at every sound. Still, I like having a gun next to me that "throws big rocks" as one friend puts it.
Okay, time to pass this meme on to... I'll throw it to:
Geoffrey at Dog Snot Diaries
Zendo Deb at TFS Magnum (okay, I'll bet I know her answer...)
and
Actually, even though WE ALL KNOW that he doesn't actually own any firearms..., but if he DID, what would be on this guy's nightstand?
Update 4 hours later: Acidman has already picked-up the gauntlet.
Update: Countertop has his response up.
Geoffrey at Dog Snot Diaries has answered, too.
Confederate Yankee reports that cops are being trained to deal with terrorists in the only way possible, with headshots.
Update: or maybe not.
Tornadoes are a rarity in this area because of the hilly, mountainous terrain. But they do show up once in awhile. They're never very big and rarely last more than a minute but... About 6-7 years ago one touched down on my cousin's property the next town north. It was during a violent cold front/storm. I was there the next day and you could see along the heavily wooded ridge where a 50 foot wide swath about 200 feet long was simply blown down with the trunks of trees looking as if they'd been twisted apart from the stumps.
Last night we had another such storm here in town. It's tough to know if it was a twister or -- more usually -- wind sheer. Wind sheer is common during these fronts when cold air comes over a ridge and dives down under the warm air. I remember one such time (my home is just east of a large, 300 foot high ridge) the sheer was so extreme that the trees in the yard were bent almost sideways. The wind sounded like a train going past and it was and remains the only time I was ever frightened of the weather.
Last night the violent front struck the lake on the other side of the ridge behind me. About 8 trees came down across the road and more at both childrens' camps on the lake. One tree crashed into the rec-room building but (as far as I know) no kids were hurt. Another cousin of mine has been the camp nurse there for something like two decades. Weird coincidence. Maybe my cousins and I just attract dramatic weather.
After work last night I went to the big resort on the lake because I like the place a lot (I worked there for several year, years ago) and it's a nice spot to have a few drinks. Half the building had power, half didn't (there are about 150 guest rooms) because, being built in sections at a time and added onto over the past 100 years, the resort receives it's power from two seperate lines coming in opposite directions around the lake.
So I sat out on the porch with a drink and cigarette, by candle light, surveying the peace and calm after the storm. The lake was once again placid. The only sounds came from the chainsaws working to clear the downed trees here and there and crews working to restore power.
Extreme weather is rare in Northern New England, unless you count big snow storms -- which I don't since around here the road crews know how to dispatch with that in a hurry.
I've always loved thunder storms, though. As a kid I used to run out into them, or hang on the porch and watch the fireworks; the more lightning, the better. Feeling the horizontal rain whip your face and feeling the thunder rumbling through your body. I dig that stuff.
The best thing of all (or the only good thing of all, some would say) is that a violent cold front like that brings wonderous relief from the 90 degree weather we've been suffering through for the past two weeks. Sweet.
Gun Law News has the initial details. Thomas.gov doesn't have the text yet. I'll be checking this everyday.
See what they're trying to do, folks? They can't get the AWB back so they'll try to enact it piece by piece with a hi-cap ban and a .50 caliber ban and so on. A pox on all their houses. Or better yet, a gang on all their houses. Then we'll see if they change their mind on hi-caps and so-called "assault rifles".
I'm not the world's greatest speller, so when I saw the headline come up in a Google search: Cretans called to keep guns on rack I was, like, "Hey, who're you calling a 'cretan'?"
Fortunately, I read the story and realized they were talking about residents of the Isle of Crete. Of course, the first sentence didn't help, either:
Gun-wielding Cretans may soon be relics of the past if the government manages to succeed in its push against the illegal use of firearms on the country’s largest island.In a public event aimed at fighting Crete’s long-entrenched gun culture held yesterday, Public Order Minister Giorgos Voulgarakis said that the government is supporting initiatives that will help reduce the pain caused by gun-related accidents.
Firearms are widely owned on Crete, where firing guns in the air is a common local custom in celebrating events such as weddings.
Well, not exactly, but thanks to Eric I now know that Tom Cruise's beliefs are absolutely nuts.
John at Argghhh! points out the differences of living in an Army town. Nice photos, too. I think I would rather like those differences. I also think [no brainer] it's going to be very hard on those towns whose bases are scheduled to be closed.
Most gun companies are privately owned but two that aren't, Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger, are being recommended by Jon D. Markman at TheStreet.com:
With Harley-Davidson (HDI:NYSE) backfiring and Coca-Cola (KO:NYSE) in the can, the past year hasn't been the greatest for famous American consumer brands associated with the great outdoors and sunny summer months.But two U.S. icons have started the season off with a bang. Both are small-caps: Smith & Wesson (SWB:NYSE) , maker of the nation's most popular line of revolvers, and Sturm, Ruger & Co. (RGR:NYSE) , maker of the nation's most popular line of pistols.
There are a number of structural, legal and specific reasons why shares of the country's only two public firearms manufacturers are blazin'.
Let's start with Smith & Wesson, probably most famous as the original manufacturer of the powerful .357 Magnum pistol. This is a company that has had more owners over the past 150 years than your basic Saturday night special, but its latest group of executives appears to finally have it on track. Founded in 1852 by Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson, it passed through any number of hands, including earlier incarnations of the auto-parts makers Lear (LEA:NYSE) and Tomkins (TKS:NYSE) , before merging with a small public outfit called Saf-T-Hammer in 2001.
Shares kicked around the $1 level for a while, then spent three years at around $2 to $2.50 before shooting up to the $4.50 zone in the past three months. The stock went up 13% right after the terror attacks in London. Smith & Wesson's new leaders have expanded its focus from its niche in consumer handguns under the Smith & Wesson and Walther brands -- 80%-plus of current sales -- to take aim at more commercial opportunities in the $2 billion market for U.S. firearms. It has also indicated it will launch a long-gun division -- the industry term for rifles and shotguns. These would be the first with the Smith & Wesson label.
[...]
Trading at a market cap of nearly $240 million, Sturm, Ruger -- run by the 65-year-old son of co-founder William Ruger -- earned $4.1 million over the past 12 months on revenue of $149 million. Shares have fallen 21% in the past year. But amid recent signs of stronger sales of its pistols, rifles, shotguns and precision titanium castings, they're up 35% in the past three months from their May low. The company's balance sheet is a thing of beauty, with $35 million in cash and no debt -- and, remarkably, it pays a 40-cent dividend that provides a 4.6% yield.
Like Smith & Wesson, Sturm, Ruger has positive brand recognition and loyalty among hunters and military buffs. The company is seeking to capitalize on it this year by releasing a dozen new products.
[...]
One reason that prospects are brightening for this pair is that their legal exposure is fading. Barrett noted that lawsuits against gun makers by local governments have repeatedly been dismissed by courts, and laws in 34 states prohibit any action at all. On the federal level, a bill called the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act -- which would bar future civil action by municipalities -- has been passed by the House but is blocked in the Senate.
Either way, it looks like investors in these two gun makers could shoot the lights out over the next couple of years as long as they exercise a little patience with volatility along the way.
Incidentally, there were some shotguns marketed by S&W a few years ago but I believe they were made by Marlin. I had the chance to buy a used pump-action one in 1999 but passed on it.
In what is becoming a weekly feature around here... Gun deaths still up over in gun-free England. From Sky News:
Latest figures released by the Government show violent offences are continuing to "spiral out of control".There were 1,035,046 incidents of violence against the person - which does not include sexual offences or robbery - in England and Wales in 2004-05, up 8% on last year's 955,800.In 1997 the figure stood at 251,000.Overall there were 1,184,702 violent crimes recorded by police in the year, up 7%.
However, the Government also published the British Crime Survey, based on interviews with members of the public, which suggested violent crime was down 11%.
The number of gun crimes recorded by police rose 6% in the year to just under 11,000, and 73 people were killed by guns in the 12 months, five more than the previous year.
There's more at the BBC.
...shadow home secretary David Davis said the police figures were "further evidence that the government continues to fail on violent crime"."With violent crime continuing to spiral out of control, it beggars belief that the government's only response is to unleash 24-hour drinking on our town and city centres," he added in a reference to proposed drink law changes.
The president of the Association of Chief Police Officers, Chris Fox, meanwhile has defended police detection rates of 26%.He said policing was not just about catching criminals - it was about preventing crime in the first place.
"There are millions of people who have not been a victim of crime that would have been if we hadn't focused on reducing crime," he said.
Just as we see when the UN and Amnesty International actually think it's better not to interfere with genocides around the world by arming the victims, so we see the same sick mentality at work in Great Britain.
Columbus's loss is...Little Rock's gain? From Ohio News Now:
LITTLE ROCK -- Rep. Mike Ross on Wednesday sent a letter to the National Rifle Association asking the group to hold its 2007 convention in Arkansas following the NRA's rebuke of Columbus, Ohio, because of a new assault weapons ban.Ross, D-Ark., said he hoped he could lure the convention to Hot Springs or Pine Bluff, the largest cities in his district. In a letter to NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, Ross said Arkansans, as a general rule, love guns.
"The State of Arkansas and its residents have long been known for their support of the NRA and the Second Amendment," Ross wrote. "This is evident by the fact that close to 100,000 residents of Arkansas applied for a hunting or fishing license just last year."
[...]
There are no local assault weapons bans in Arkansas.
Ross said he'd like Hot Springs or Pine Bluff to host, but they might not be able to handle a convention if it draws its expected 60,000 visitors. In that case, Ross said, the NRA may have to choose Little Rock, the state's largest city.
Richard Davies, director of the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism, said a deal would have to be made between the NRA and an individual convention center. Ross said he hasn't spoken to community leaders about hosting the meeting, but said Arkansas should pursue it because an NRA meeting would bring $15 million to the local economy.
Still, I say bring it to the one state that has always respected gun rights: Vermont. The more I think about it, there would certainly be enough hotel rooms if you look at the combined areas around Burlington, VT and Plattsburgh, NY.
"Come to the light my children..."
From the Berkeley Daily Planet:
There’s a new counter-trend among some leftists which says that gun control is not a winning issue these days, so it should be downplayed. Winning back red-staters, some say, means not challenging their right, indeed their need, to strap those rifles onto their pickups (forgetting the children in rural areas who have turned these guns on each other).Women who fear being victims imagine that possession of firearms will make them safe. And urbanites whose lives are controlled by their fears believe that guns in their homes will protect them, oblivious of the statistics that say that guns in homes are most often used against family and friends, not strangers.
There are tactical discussions about tradeoffs in the political area—let’s ban Saturday night specials, not shotguns, gun shows, not gun dealers. But the central inescapable fact about guns, all guns, is that they make it possible, indeed easy, for humans to kill other humans on a whim, without reflection, with no chance to say no to anger. Death can be dealt from a distance, so that the person pulling the trigger does not even have to touch the victim. Guns provide an all-to-easy way for humans to dodge the checks and balances inserted by evolution and culture between our murderous tendencies and our actions.
The writer, Becky O'Malley, "has the need" to "believe" and "imagine" that if we just ban all guns, the criminals will gladly turn theirs in too and resume the peaceful lives they used to have.
[Cue up Barney the Dinosaur]
"I love you,
You love me,
We're as happy
As can be..."
No, not me -- Acidman. Liberalism at its finest... Hard to believe we're having trouble competing in the world!
Welcome to the July 19th edition of my Weekly Check on the Bias by media concerning guns and the 2nd Amendment. News is traditionally slow during the Summer months but we'll always have Columbus, Ohio. You might call this the "Beauties and the Beasts" edition. Let me start with the Beauties, which has nothing to do with media bias and everything to do with fine photography.
Robert Langham is an NRA member, a Texas State Rifle Team National Match Shooter, a Junior Rifle coach, and a holder of the Distinguished Rifleman's Badge. He has donated his time to help train US Army troops. He's also a superb photographer who puts together the photos used in the Texas State Rifle Association Calendars. Fortunately for us, he's also a reader here and has offered to let me put up this year's photos. I'll be including several, along with his commentary, in each week's report. I'll put his comments first, then the photos.
My neighbor is AC Gentry the semi-famous watercolorist. I must admit, Gentry is a real man's kind of outdoor man. He paints, he hunts, he drinks coffee with the other retired guys. Then he paints some more. This shotgun belonged to HIS grandfather.In WWII AC was a pathfinder for the Army Island landings in the Pacific. He and some others swam ashore the night before several pacific Island landings and helped guide units in.
I got permission to photograph his Parker Brothers 20 Guage. Gentry says he has probably killed 10,000 quail with this gun. I don't doubt it.
While he snored through his afternoon nap a couple of rooms over, I photographed this in the office. I used windowlight and one silver card. Custom white balance cleaned up the color. I turned on the Vibration Reduction Tool since I was handholding at 1/4. You can see the silver card in the side plate. Two of Gentry's watercolors are behind the chair. That's his coat and gloves.
One of the old widowers at our family church was a B17 ball turret gunner in the Eighth Air Force. I've known him all his life but only in the past few years since his wife died and he retired did he begin to discuss his service. His plane was shot down after D-Day and he parachuted into France armed with this pistol issued in England. The French hid him in a town attic until the Germans had been pushed out of the area. While he was hidden by the French, a woman asked if she could use his parachute to make a wedding dress. He and some other crew members were reunited at the wedding after the Nazis were gone. The French had taken his pistol but returned it when US troops overran the area.I asked Bill if I could shoot his W.W.II Ithaca 1911 A1 for the Texas CCL range qualification. He agreed, but when he got it out I noticed that the ammunition was marked "EC 43." It was the same ammunition that he had in it when his B17 was hit over France.
Bill gave me his pistol before he died last year. I photographed it when he was still alive, in his front yard in sunlight on top of a box of range gear out of my truck. He sat next to me and held a reflector. The background is the remains of his France parachute. That's his England flight line ID, a slug from an ME 109, some 88 shrapnel, his original holster, and ammo. I used a handheld Nikon Coolpix 8800, sunlight, and two silvercard reflectors.
The pistol shot a perfect CCL score with hardball Winchester .45.
My Ruger #1 has been in the last two calendars so I gave it a break and borrowed this pre-64 Model 70 Winchester 300 Win Mag. I have at least one friend with good taste in rifles. I stood the rifle up with clamps and draped in a deer hide and a USGS map for the background. I put my binoculars and my hat in the foreground. That's a Distinguished Rifleman's patch on the hat, # 1659, for you heathens.The deer skull is the largest deer I ever took. I shot it nearly in the city limits after I rattled it up in a big thicket during the rut. I boiled the whole head in a big pot of water for a couple of days. (full disclosure again: I'm not married) Makes a nice mount. Next to it is a Caddoan bowl with a Texas Hunter Safety Education patch and a fake folded $20 bill that you open and find information about turning Osama Bin Laden in. They were going to drop these all over Afghanistan, but someone decided it wasn't PC.
The photo is lit from bluish window light and a tungsten bulb bounced off a white card on the right side. The left side has a BIG white foam core board bouncing window light back. Coolpix again, handheld. I balanced for the window light and then let the tungsten go warm.
That red strap on the binocs was on every pair of binoculars I ever remember my father ever using.
Well, now we turn to the ugliness of the media...
Folks, let's just hypothetically say that an automobile enthusiasts' convention was planned for Podunk, OH. And the city council of Podunk decided to ban all sports cars. Wouldn't you say it was not only perfectly reasonable but actually to be expected that the convention would be moved to some other city? Apparently, Mainstream Media feels otherwise.
The big news last week (other than the sham UN conference on world-wide gun control) was that the City of Columbus, Ohio decided to enact -- once again -- an "assault weapons" ban. You know, banning guns that operate just like any other guns but have scary looking features such as pistol grips and folding stocks. Pathetically, they use the specter of "terrorism" as the chief concern in the bill's language by stating that "assault weapons" and particularly the AK-47 are favored by Al Quada as reported in their training manuals.
Well, I haven't read of any Al Quada terrorists shooting up Columbus, or any other American city (they seem to prefer bombs and airplanes) and since -- again, we have a simple ban on cosmetic features in these banned guns -- this ordinance is simply "feel good" law. All semi-automatic guns operate exactly the same in that only one bullet is fired when the trigger is pulled.
The NRA rightfully changed their plans to hold their 2007 annual convention there since many vendors would be prevented from displaying their wares.
Most newspaper and TV outlets merely repeated the AP Story:
The National Rifle Association has abandoned plans to hold its 2007 convention in Columbus following the passage of a ban on assault weapons by city officials.The ban, passed earlier this month, outlaws the sale or possession of semiautomatic rifles with pistol grips and detachable magazines. Mayor Michael Coleman said that the NRA and other groups will not dictate city policy and that the ban will make Columbus safer, which will attract other convention business.
The NRA, however, was clear about its decision Monday.
"When freedom comes back to Columbus, we will come back to Columbus," NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said in a statement posted on the group's Web site.
The New York Times said this:
Supporters of the Columbus law, including the police officers union, said they pushed for a local ban in response to the expiration of the federal law. They said that the Columbus police had confiscated larger numbers of military-style weapons in recent years from criminals, including a murder suspect who wounded a police officer in a fierce gun battle last year."We need anything that puts another tool in our belt to keep weapons out of criminals' hands," said Detective Daniel R. Jones, the officer who was wounded in that firefight and has lost hearing in one ear.
Mayor Coleman is planning to run for Ohio Governor next year. The NY Times continues:
Aides to Mr. Coleman said they would try to counter the rifle association's attacks on him by portraying the mayor as a crime fighter whose main goal has been to take weapons away from criminals. They also suggested that Mr. Coleman's support for an assault weapon ban might help him among more liberal Democratic primary voters.
The real problem with city ordinances such as this is the same as we saw in Denver, Colorado and in several cities in Virginia; citizens from other parts of the state who are behaving in a perfectly law-abiding fashion and owning a perfectly legal product suddenly become criminals if they drive or walk through Columbus. From the Morning Journal (OH):
The sponsor of Ohio's law allowing concealed weapons said yesterday he wants the state to override local bans on types of guns, a move that would cancel Columbus' decision to outlaw assault weapons.[...]
State Rep. Jim Aslanides, sponsor of the law permitting people to carry hidden guns, said local weapons bans should not be allowed because Ohioans should feel confident they are not breaking the law by carrying weapons through the state's cities and villages.
Such a law would supersede the Columbus ban, said Aslanides, a Coshocton Republican.
''It would solidify specifically that a statewide weapons law cannot be pre-empted. The purpose of that is not to stop what's occurred in Columbus, but to stop the arrests of people carrying legally,'' Aslanides said.
I do have to let you see one completely over the top press release by Toby Hoover of the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence that is titled:
NRA Retaliates Against Columbus, Ohio for Regulating Cop-Killer Assault Weapons by Moving 2007 Annual Meeting
Turning to neighboring Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that a compromise has been reached between a gun show promoter and the venue that tried to end their association after an accident left one man with an injured leg during a recent show. From the article:
The gun shows will go on, but all sides have agreed on more safety precautions after the accidental shooting of a man at a Pennsylvania Gun Collectors Association show in May at the Pittsburgh ExpoMart in Monroeville.Walter Gladkoski, 65, of Monroeville, was hospitalized May 14 with a wound of his lower leg.
State police said Gladkoski accidentally was shot by John Bogesdorfer, 64, of Monroeville, who was handling a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun at the booth of Hannah's Gun Shop of Tipton, Blair County. The weapon had been exhibited under glass and, as Bogesdorfer handled it, the pistol discharged, Samuel Kamin, an attorney representing the gun association, said yesterday.
No charges were filed.
After the shooting, Oxford Development Corp. and Mart/Hotel Limited Partnership, which operate ExpoMart, sought to void its lease with the gun association, which holds several shows a year at that venue.
Two years remain on the lease.
Kamin said average crowds of about 5,000, including dozens of law enforcement representatives, attend the shows.
From California's Daily Press comes this pro-gun rights editorial:
The fight to maintain our rights is a never-ending struggle. We were reminded of this recently when we received a postcard from an organization called the Freedom States Alliance. This is an outfit that uses scare tactics about terrorism to push its anti-gun agenda.Pictured on the front of the card was a civilian airliner with an illustration of a rifle scope's crosshairs centered to the nose of the plane and the Web site www.50CaliberTerror.com listed across the top. On the back was a listing of why .50 caliber rifles should be banned. The reasons might seem reasonable, but a bit of research shows them to be exaggerated and open to interpretation.
The first claim is that the rifles are "the most lethal weapons available on the civilian market, but are easier to purchase than a handgun." For openers, it might be relatively easy to purchase one of these rifles, but it's not cheap. The most basic, bare-bones, single-shot models will set you back about $1,600. Terrorists can get AK-47s and similar rifles for about $200 each, so it's unlikely they'd opt for the more costly rifle.
[...]
What the ban proponents propose is to get rid of .50 caliber rifles before they can do harm. Although that might seem reasonable, it's not how things should work in a free society. We don't put people in jail because they might commit a crime, we must wait until they actually break the law and are convicted.
From the department of "Here's How It's Done" comes this Houston Chronicle story:
A northwest Loop-area homeowner shot and killed an intruder early today, Houston police said.The dead suspect, who has not yet been identified, was shot by Peter Heckler, 51, when he threatened Heckler with a weapon while trying to break into Heckler's home about 3:45 a.m., police said.
A man in Davie took the law into his own hands early this morning when he shot and killed a young man, according to police and news reports.It was unclear what the young man, 18-year-old Richard Rojas, was doing at the home, which is where his ex-girlfriend lives.
The shooter, whose name police did not release, fired at Rojas about 1:40 a.m. Wednesday after he approached the home at 15025 SW 51st St. in Davie. No one has been arrested in connection with the fatal shooting.
Turning to one more example of how the gun control crowd just doesn't get it, we have the sad story of three young people killed in Racine, Wisconsin:
Investigators haven't yet determined what prompted the shootings in a municipal parking lot near several bars.A patrolling officer heard several gunshots early yesterday and traced them to the lot, where he found a big group of people. Officials say gang members were among the crowd.
Two 23-year-old men and a 22-year-old were killed.
The mother of one of the dead says he "was just there with the crowd."
But not to the Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort (WAKE):
Gun-control advocates in the city said Monday that this weekend's triple homicide was a tragic example of the need to restrict guns in Wisconsin."It's terrible for the people involved; for the friends and family who have to go through this. It's really sad when we lose three of our citizens to gun violence," said Racine Alderman Pete Karas, member of the Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort. "We have to curb the availability of guns. We need to get out of this cycle of violence - this attitude that more guns on the streets makes us safe. We don't want to create a situation like the shootout at the OK Corral."
While it can't be known if the shooting would have happened with stricter gun-control laws, Karas said more guns at the scene would have led to more deaths and injuries.
The state Legislature came within one vote last year of allowing state residents to carry concealed handguns if they applied for a permit. The Republican-led Assembly and Senate failed in their bid to override Gov. Jim Doyle's veto of the measure.
Karas said he recognizes crime reduction and violence prevention is a bigger issue involving other factors, such as Racine's high unemployment rate, gangs, drugs, socio-economic standing, living conditions and education.
[...]
"Apparently the individuals involved in the shooting who died had concealed weapons. We have to make sure a conceal to carry law does not become law in Wisconsin," Karas said. "It just compounds the issue."
So, according to WAKE, the thugs had concealed weapons -- by golly, that's against the law, isn't it? -- and the dead didn't. And that's how WAKE wants to keep things. Don't allow victims to protect themselves, they should just stand there and die like sheep while the mutants continue to ignore laws and get away with -- literally -- murder.
This flies in the face of statistics that show that when the law-abiding are able to conceal-carry, crime goes down because criminals become wary. WAKE's demented logic is the same as that of the UN regarding "small arms control" where the victims should STAY victims and the mutants should be given free-range to commit their atrocities. *Sigh*
Here's what's happening at a few other sites:
Blogonomicon has an email up stating that Republicans are just as disingenuous as gun-grabbers.
Confederate Yankee reports on a different kind of media bias.
FreedomSight points out that most liberal organizations that champion various causes always manage to ignore or work against the one that would help them the most.
Say Uncle let's us peek into his AK workshop.
GrampaPinhead is joining the e-postal matches.
The War on Guns has more on the NRA convention move from Columbus but does take Wayne LaPierre to task.
Man, I am SO late with this that I'd better get it posted NOW.
Thanks for stopping by and -- of course -- I'll be on Cam's later this afternoon.
From a press release on the NRA site:
As a direct result of the Columbus City Council decision to ban semi-automatic firearm ownership for law-abiding citizens, the National Rifle Association (NRA) announced it will move its 2007 Annual Meeting and Convention from Columbus, OH. Speaking at a press conference at the Greater Columbus Convention Center, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre stated that the NRA would return to Columbus when the Legislature enacts a preemption law that would override the Columbus ban.“Two months ago, I was pleased to announce that the National Rifle Association chose the great city of Columbus to host our 136th Annual Meetings and Exhibits in May of 2007,” said LaPierre. “The NRA is not coming to Columbus in 2007. The party is canceled because last week your City Council unanimously voted to revoke the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens in Columbus by banning perfectly legal firearms.”
The City Council’s decision will have a negative economic impact on businesses in the greater Columbus area. Earlier this year, the Columbus Chamber of Commerce said it estimated $20 million in revenue from hotels, restaurants, entertainment and other NRA convention related spending. In addition, Columbus would have received free publicity from major national and regional new organizations covering the NRA Annual Meetings.
Past conventions brought significant economic boon to NRA Annual Meeting host cities:
Ř NRA’s 2005 convention brought $20 million in revenue for Houston, TX, and an overall $50 million impact for the local economy. The 450 exhibitors and 60,000 attendees sold out a total of eight hotels.
Ř In 2004, NRA’s convention in nearby Pittsburgh, PA, brought 61,000 attendees and 360 exhibitors to the city, resulting in $12-15 million for local merchants.
LaPierre announced the NRA will push for preemption legislation in Ohio to protect the lawful gun owners by making gun laws uniform across Ohio. Ohio is one of only seven states that does not have this law to protect gun owners from a confusing and dangerous patchwork of firearms laws.
“The NRA is going to work with the people of Columbus and the Ohio Legislature to pass state preemption legislation and restore freedom to the people of Columbus," continued LaPierre. “When the Ohio Legislature enacts preemption, freedom will be restored to the people of Columbus. And when freedom comes back to Columbus, we will come back to Columbus.”
No word yet on where they'll move the convention but might I offer the suggestion of Vermont? The one state in this country that has always fully supported gun rights without limits, permits, and licenses? Burlington could handle a convention of this size and the scenery can't be beat.
It is truly amazing, the lengths CBS will go to, to try to ban guns. From CBS TV:
The gunrunner's name is Florin Krasniqi, and he is seen providing a new shipment of weapons to Albanian rebels, who are about to smuggle them over the mountains into Kosovo. After a few days' journey on horseback, the guns will end up in the hands of a guerrilla force known as the Kosovo Liberation Army, which has been fighting for independence from Serbia for nearly a decade.Krasniqi took these guns to his family's home in Kosovo. Most of them were easy to get in Albania, but not the .50-caliber rifles. "This is, we get from the home of the brave and the land of the free, as we would like to say," says Krasniqi, who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Krasniqi came to America in 1989. He was smuggled across the Mexican border in the trunk of a car with just $50 in his pocket. Today, he’s an American citizen, and the owner of a highly successful roofing business.
"This is what I do for a living," says Krasniqi. "This is how we earn the money in New York. There’s a large Albanian-American community in the New York City area."
[...]
If the power of the .50-caliber rifle amazed Krasniqi, what amazed him even more was how easy it was to buy. Krasniqi allowed a Dutch documentary film crew to accompany him to a gun store in Pennsylvania.
"You just have to have a credit card and clear record, and you can go buy as many as you want. No questions asked," says Krasniqi.
Was he surprised at how easy it was to get it? "Not just me. Most of non-Americans were surprised at how easy it is to get a gun in heartland America," says Krasniqi. "Most of the dealers in Montana and Wyoming don’t even ask you a question. It’s just like a grocery store."
And, he says there are a variety of choices for ammunition, which is easy to get as well. "Armor-piercing bullets, tracing bullets," says Krasniqi. "[Ammunition] is easier than the rifles themselves. For the ammunition, you don't have to show a driver’s license or anything."
"You can just go into a gun show or a gun store in this country and buy a shell that will pierce armor? A civilian," asks Bradley.
"You never did that? You’re an American. You can go to the shows and see for yourself," says Krasniqi. "Ask the experts. They’ll be happy to help you."
60 Minutes asked Krasniqi how he shipped .50-caliber rifles out of the United States."You just put in the airplane, declare them and go anywhere you want," says Krasniqi. "It's completely legal. It's a hunting rifle."
Krasniqi says he shipped the rifles to Albania, and then the soldiers carried them onto the battlefields. He wouldn’t say how many .50-caliber rifles he sent to Kosovo, so 60 Minutes asked Stacy Sullivan, a former Newsweek correspondent, who wrote a book about Krasniqi called, “Be Not Afraid, For You Have Sons in America.”
How many guns did Krasniqi ship over there? "Probably a couple of hundred," says Sullivan. "It's easy. You're allowed to take two or three at a time. He had a group of guys that were dispersed in the U.S., some in Alaska, some in Nevada, some in California, some in Michigan, some in Illinois. And they would each buy a few at a time, and they would take them over in twos and threes on commercial airlines."
Krasniqi’s team of gunrunners never had a problem getting the guns out of the United States. But they often had to switch flights in Switzerland, and authorities there wanted to know what they were doing with such powerful weapons.
"We told them ‘We’re going to hunt elephants.’ And they said, ‘There’s no elephants in Albania,’" says Krasniqi. "And we told them we were going to Tanzania, so we had set up a hunting club here and a hunting club in Albania."
"You had to set up a phony hunting club in Albania, tell the Swiss authorities that men from this hunting club were going to go to Tanzania to shoot elephants," asks Bradley.
"Yes," says Krasniqi. "I never saw an elephant in my life, never mind shot one."
Even so, Krasniqi’s team needed evidence to support the African hunting story, so he says, "We had bought an elephant in Tanzania and set up the whole documentation, so it proved to them we are just elephant hunters."
He says he paid approximately $10,000 for the elephant. But he never got the elephant. "We were not interested in elephants," says Krasniqi. "We were interested to fight a desperate war."
Krasniqi’s shipments of .50-caliber rifles gave the guerrillas a confidence and firepower they’d never had before. But they weren’t getting enough of them. So Krasniqi broke the law by shipping the rifles out in larger quantities than customs allowed.
What was Krasniqi's largest shipment of .50-caliber rifles to Kosovo? "One was on an airplane that he filled up with weapons," says Sullivan. "And I think there were about a hundred guns in there,… 100 .50-caliber rifles."
According to Sullivan, the gunrunners transported the guns on a truck to New York’s Kennedy airport and hid them inside shipments of food and clothing destined for refugees.
"They put the palettes into a plane. Nothing gets X-rayed," says Sullivan. "It's wrapped up as humanitarian aid."
Tracking weapons as they leave the country is like finding a needle in a haystack, unless federal agents are already tracking the smugglers and their activities. Vince, a former ATF official, says Congress should pass a law that would enable law enforcement officials to maintain computerized records of gun sales, something the gun lobby strenuously opposes.Right now, Vince says there isn't a central database for gun purchases. "There is no national registration whatsoever," says Vince. "If we had computerized all the sales of firearms, we could be looking at patterns of activity."
And Vince says this includes all those .50-calibers purchased by Krasniqi and his team of gunrunners: "People normally buy firearms for hunting, for sporting purposes and self-defense. But you don’t buy 50 of the same type of weapon – or more in this case. It would obviously, through any type of analysis, ring buzzers with customs or anybody else investigating this."
Secondly, how much of this is real and how much is it just a typical thug bragging? Fish always grow in size in the days after they were pulled from the river.
Third, if it's that easy for international terrorists to purchase these weapons, how come they're not using them (at all) to shoot-up the US?
Lastly, Krasniqi broke numerous laws and regulations: Gun laws, FAA laws, customs laws, international laws. Why does Ed Bradley think passing yet more laws and regulations will stop these crimes? If this creep was able to smuggle out as many firearms as he says he did, isn't that a call for better enforcement of customs and airport security? If existing laws aren't enforced, more laws won't be, either. After all, Kasniqi isn't in jail, right?
It is obvious that CBS "News" has an agenda against the lawful gun owning community. Again, they sought out no opposing views and seemed to relish all the crimes that were committed. I suppose we shouldn't expect any better from the Rathergate Network.
No, I didn't stand on line at midnight like some fool but I did head to Borders after work tonight and I did buy Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince because I own all the others and I LIKE THEM. Regular readers know I read a lot of SF and Fantasy and Horror and Mystery. I don't care if J.K. Rowling's series is considered "juvenile", I like it, too. I have next weekend off and will dig-in then. It's a world I wouldn't mind living in... Go on, how many of you big-burly gun nuts will admit that you enjoy the books too?
I usually take weekends off from here although for the past month I haven't. But I do try to post about "lighter stuff" when I do, although this morning I didn't. Ghod, why can't I just adopt a schedule and stick to it?
By the way, Technorati seems pretty useless these days and that is what I used to rely on to find out who had been chatting about me or had added me to their blogroll. Since my blogroll is reciprocal, I really want to include you if you are kind enough to have me on yours. Please don't be shy, email me and let me know!
Lastly, I am working with Robert (Blackfork6) to bring you the great calendar photos he's producing and you should start seeing them on Monday, or maybe even within my Weekly Report on Tuesday (There's an idea!).
Unless something earth-shaking happens tomorrow, I will give this place a rest. Even MOI needs a day away from the monitor.
Have a terrific weekend and for all my friends here in the Northeast, this heatwave sucks and I hate hot weather and I hope glaciers cover all of North America. But that's just me... Sorry, anything over 70 degrees and I get cranky.
And while I'll probably put up a post or two more tonight, let me use the sign-off that I have for the past 2 3/4 years: Thanks for stopping by!
Republicans, he said, "want to kill us."I was driving past the Pentagon when that plane hit" on Sept. 11, 2001. "I had friends on that plane; this is deadly serious to me," Begala said.
"They want to kill me and my children if they can. But if they just kill me and not my children, they want my children to be comforted -- that while they didn't protect me because they cut my taxes, my children won't have to pay any money on the money they inherit," Begala said. "That is bulls*** national defense, and we should say that."
--Democrat political strategist Paul Begala, yesterday.
I added a line to the individual archive template so that links continue to open in a new window and I think it screwed comments up, like when you go to add (post) a comment it pops up in a new window. If you hit post again, it posts the comment twice. Since I don't really know how MT works, I'll have to figure this out... Feel free to offer advice if you know what is happening.
Update: Following the advice given by Gregory in the comments, I deleted the target tag on the individual archive template (rats, I want people to find their way back to me...) so things are as they were before I "tampered".
Because, you know, there really aren't any pressing issues here in America right now other than trying to find "hidden sex" in a video game. From Reuters:
Two high-profile U.S. senators, Joseph Lieberman and Hillary Rodham Clinton, are incensed over pornographic content "hidden" in the popular video game "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas," and are demanding action from either the government or the game's maker.The content can be unlocked by using the "Hot Coffee" code modification widely available on the Internet. By installing the modification, gamers can have their drivers find different girlfriends in the game who will have a "cup of hot coffee" -- a euphemism for sex -- with them.
A spokesman for the game's maker, Rockstar Games Inc., said the "Hot Coffee" modification was the unauthorized work of people in the "modder community" -- the group of intense gamers who often add content to games.
Lieberman (D-Conn.) asked Rockstar president Sam Houser to submit the game to independent analysts to determine how the content was put in.
"I am asking you to bring this matter to light and resolve this serious controversy by voluntarily submitting your game to independent concerned and responsible parties for such technical analysis," Lieberman wrote in a letter to Houser.
So someone wrote a "hack" for the game. And rather than deal with anything important such as, oh, perhaps the war in Iraq, eminent domain, education, Medicare, the environment, global warming, illeagal immigration, rising oil prices, ... Well, you get the idea. I wish Joe and Hillary would wakeup and smell the hot cup of coffee.
Having failed to demonstrate that gun ownership by the law-abiding leads to more crime, the Violence Policy Center is now focusing on teen suicide as a reason to disarm American citizens. From the Laramie Boomerang (WY):
Wyoming has one of the highest youth gun suicide rates in the nation, but questions persist about what that means and how to fix the problem.The Violence Policy Center in Washington, D.C., released a study that looked at data from the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control’s database from the years 2000 through 2002 to determine gun suicide numbers for children and teens 16 and younger. The raw numbers were then broken out into rates per 100,000 youths in the age range for each state.
Wyoming had five youth gun suicides during that span, but because of the state’s small population base, that meant a rate per 100,000 youths of 1.43. While the aggregate number is not overwhelming, the worst 10 states listed in the center’s study were all western states that they characterized as having “extremely weak” gun laws.
“Wyoming’s gun laws do not really add much to the federal laws,” said Kristen Rand, the legislative director for the center. “Wyoming does not add a background check for hand guns or long guns, and they have no licensing or additional restrictions, including child access prevention.”
In Rand’s view, it is not a coincidence that the 10 states with the highest rates (Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, North Dakota, Nebraska, South Dakota, Utah, New Mexico and Colorado) all have lax gun laws, while the jurisdictions with the best rates (Washington, D.C., Massachusetts, and Connecticut) all have stringent gun rules.
“This is a very strong indicator that gun laws keep guns, particularly handguns, out of the home and prevent suicide,” said Rand. “These laws are important because youth suicide virtually always involves handguns in the home.”
[...]
Permits, controls over what types of guns may be purchased, and guns locked away in a safe place in the home are changes to the laws in Western states Rand would like to see enacted.
I'm not a psychiatrist (but I play one on TV) but I think most would agree that part of the high rates are attributable to long winters and more "darkness", sometimes called light-deficiency-disorder or some such thing. These areas also tend to be more sparsely populated resulting in less socializing by teens with others of their own age. Alcoholism and drug use tend to be higher in these areas as well.
A quick search of the internet will also bring up studies (legit or not) that there are also high rates of suicide among gay teenagers, and -- really -- listening to country music. Perhaps parents should be required to lock-up their Garth Brooks CDs.
If someone wants to kill themselves, they will find a way. It's for that reason that, unlike the VPC, most mental health workers focus on the "why?" of teen suicide instead of the "how?" Ask almost any experienced coroner or cop, they will tell you that many head-on crashes into highway overpass abutments aren't accidents.
The VPC's Rand also says that these states don't have enough regulation of the types of guns people can own. If a child is going to kill themselves, does it really matter WHAT type of firearm they use? Again, that's a nonsense argument. It goes without saying that requiring a parent to have a "permit" for a gun makes no difference to the situation, either.
In fact, the sole kernal of truth in their screed is that parents should be keeping their firearms in a safe manner. I've always said that myself; that unsupervised guns left lying around a house with children is an invitation. Considering the low levels of actual gun suicide within the teen age group, education is far better than having a law mandating it.
The example that the VPC uses, Wyoming, is also ridiculous because anytime you are using such micro-statistics, any tiny blip in them seems huge. I remember that one year Vermont's gun murders rose from 4 to 6 people. It is impossible to draw any sort of conclusion from that sample but the Brady Bunch did, in their own "yearly report" by breathlessly exclaiming that Vermont had a skyrocketing gun problem. Statistically I suppose they were right but the reality is that in a state with few people, one incident can seem dramatic. In the town I live in, there hasn't been a car stolen in about 15 years. If a kid suddenly decided to steal one this year, that would be a 100% increase! Or something like that. Mostly, it would be meaningless.
The Violence Policy Center will stop at nothing until all guns are banned. Now, they're trying to use the emotionally unstable teenage years as the reason to accomplish this. In my opinion, they are using false and misleading data and arguments. That's generally been their modus operandi all along.
Update: Several folks have questioned me (in comments, emails, and posts) as to why I didn't bring up the high suicide rate in Japan, where private gun ownership is prohibited. I did consider it but the answer is... Simple: Suicide in Japan is a cultural anomaly. That is, especially among the older generations, it is considered an honerable thing to do. So, I don't really consider it a valid example of what the VPC, or I, am referring to and I do believe in "fair play" in the debate over gun control. That's what sets me apart from the VPC!
Ya' know... All over the blogosphere we have "Friday cat blogging" and "dog blogging" and even sex doll blogging. How about something a little more meaningful?
No matter where anyone comes down on our efforts in Iraq, I think most bloggers (left and right) can agree that our brave soldiers are worth our respect. How about a little of our bandwidth, too?
So every Friday I'll seek out a photo of one of our soldiers and put it up along with the caption of who he/she is. Maybe this could spread to more blogs, each seeking a photo of their own, a hero for the day!
Today:
U.S. Army Capt. Jonathan Powers
U.S. Army Capt. Jonathan Powers with an unidentified orphan at a playground at the Adhamiya Public Orphanage in Baghdad, Iraq. Powers, 27, is director of the upstart Orphans and Street Kids Project, whose goal is to coordinate the country's ill-equipped orphanages and offer vocational training for children living on the streets and out of the facilities' reach.
A yellow ribbon is nice but we bloggers (and of course, many already do!) can show the faces behind those ribbons... Many bloggers ARE covering what is happening there and doing a great job. I think it would be nice if those of us who normally blog about other subjects tipped our hats to the men and women in uniform at least once-a-week, too.
My blogBuddy Acidman is about 1900 hits away from two million visitors! So, uh, go click there. Actually, the real reason you should go is because he's never boring.
Me? I should get my 2-millionth about the same time the Sun burns out. I'll probably be sitting in a nursing home bed somewhere blogging about what a wonderful job they do cleaning my bed-pan out and how I hope President Chelsea Clinton doesn't outlaw plastic knives, too...
Meanwhile, in Michigan:
Authorities are searching for a state-owned vehicle loaded with ammunition that was apparently stolen Thursday morning from outside an Oak Park home, Local 4 reported.[...]
The vehicle had inside of it 10 boxes of .40-caliber ammunition, some Oleoresin Capsicum (OC) gas, which is similar to pepper spray, a set of handcuffs, a blue police light and a police radio, according to Oak Park police.
There were no weapons inside of the vehicle, which belongs to the state of Michigan and an investigative division of the Environmental Protection Agency.
See update at end...
From the "Why did I do that?" department comes this Daily Sentinel story:
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — He bought it for two packs of Chesterfield cigarettes. He sold it for a $75 Target gift card.But World War II Navy veteran Bruno Filippelli never knew the Japanese rifle that collected dust in his closet for 60 years was a bona fide wartime treasure.
He turned it over to West Palm Beach police Saturday during the city's gun buy-back program, and the rare and valuable firearm — better suited in a polished museum or with a wealthy weapons collector — now lies alongside 450 other submitted shotguns, handguns and assault rifles in the department's evidence storage room.
"I feel like an idiot," said Filippelli, 79, four days after selling the rifle and just a few hours after discovering its worth.
And police say they're not giving it back. In fact, the gun could soon be melted down and destroyed with the others.
The controversy over the rare gun erupted when a picture of Filippelli turning over the rifle appeared in the Sunday edition of The Palm Beach Post. A Palm Beach police officer recognized the rare rifle, researched the gun and then delivered the bad news to Filippelli Wednesday.
"He told me, 'If I was you, I never would have turned it in,' " Filippelli said.
The gun, an Arisaka Type 99 pressure test rifle, is one of less than 100 ever produced. There are as few as 50 left, including about 20 in the United States, according to gun experts and dealers. The type of rifle was never used in the field. It was designed to test the chamber pressure and bullet velocity for the Type 99 rifle, which Imperial Japanese forces widely used throughout World War II.
Although the gun is not listed in most price guides, a piece in good shape could be valued by as much as $5,000, said Bob Adams, a rare-gun collector and firearms dealer in Albuquerque, N.M.
Update 7/16: The police decided to return the gun to Filippelli. From AP/Yahoo:
A gun collector saw a photo of the Arisaka Type 99 pressure test rifle in The Palm Beach Post and told Filippelli the gun is a rarity worth thousands. He asked for it back, but the police originally said no. They planned to melt it down with the other 450 firearms collected or give it to a museum.But after the Post ran a story Friday about the Delray Beach resident's mistake, the police returned the gun.
"I think the publicity got too much for them," said Filippelli, 79. "Or maybe because I'm a vet or maybe they felt sorry for me."
He even got to keep the gift card, which he'll use to buy a present for his daughter.
Speaking of mutants, one of Vermont's own has been sentenced to death. From the Burlington Free Press:
Murderer Donald Fell should be executed for kidnapping and killing North Clarendon grandmother Terry King in November 2000, a federal jury decided Thursday.The unanimous verdict came after nine hours of deliberations that began Wednesday and ended the first death-penalty trial in Vermont in half a century. The jury's sentence drew gasps and then hugs from King's family; left Fell silently, expressionlessly stroking his face; and saddened protesters who said the death penalty does not belong in Vermont.
[...]
Vermont has no death penalty, but Fell was convicted under federal law for abducting King, 53, as she arrived at work, forcing her at gunpoint into her car and driving her to New York state, where he and a friend beat and kicked her in a clearing until she died. Hours earlier, the pair had killed Fell's mother and her friend Charles Conway in Rutland.
That's the impression given by this Reuters story:
The gun industry is likely to win sweeping protection against civil liability lawsuits in the U.S. Senate this month, reflecting a more firearm-friendly Senate after the 2004 elections, lawmakers said on Thursday.[...]
California Democrat Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a co-author of the 1994 assault weapons ban that Congress allowed to expire last year, said she would still try to amend the liability bill, but in more modest ways than last year.
For instance, instead of trying to reinstate the assault weapons ban, she said she would try to limit sales of powerful 50 caliber weapons so that they could only be sold through federally licensed dealers, not at gun shows.
Feinstein said she was realistic about what she could hope to achieve in the current Senate. The Senate Republican majority gained four seats, and some of the new Democrats are also opposed to tightening gun controls.
I suspect the .50 caliber amendment might not pass muster either, no matter how hard CBS TV, NPR, and other MSM try to lobby for it. And make no mistake, part of the glaring bias of these "news" organizations is designed to lobby for measures their liberal reporters favor.
It's all well and good that Yahoo has a Gun Control Debate Page which you would rightly assume links to stories about various gun control measures. So why did they link to this AP story?
Earl Lazenby had delivered mail for years to the aging brown home with overgrown plants in the yard and a National Rifle Association sticker on the front door. The home's owner was always friendly, sometimes chatting with Lazenby at the grocery store in this Atlanta suburb.But what Lazenby didn't know was that William Crutchfield was deep in debt and looking for a way out. Authorities say Crutchfield apparently watched with envy as Olympic bomber Eric Rudolph was headed to prison for life and aspired to the same fate — allowing him to live off the government while behind bars.
So he allegedly hatched a twisted plan: Kill a federal employee.
Two weeks ago, Crutchfield walked down his driveway carrying a .380-caliber pistol and greeted his mail carrier at the curb. He then opened fire on Lazenby, drove to the police station in his Chevrolet Cavalier and told the secretary, "I just shot the letter carrier."
Or is it Yahoo's story editor's idea that by putting up stories about gun-crime, that the anti-gunners will "win" the debate?
Nice touch by the reporter to mention that the mutant had an NRA sticker on his front door, as if all four million members are, by association, murderers. Uh-huh. It will probably turn out that Crutchfield was (given his age) a member of AARP, too. We'd better start rounding up all the elderly. Come to think of it, did he have a library card? Can anyone at Yahoo and the AP spell B-I-A-S?
Well, gun neighborhood, anyway.
James at Hell in a Handbasket extolls the joys of pre-WWI rifles. My friend has a Krag chambered in 7mm, which I've fired. Definite shoulder-pounder.
Bruce at mASS Backwards reports on more idiocy at the Brookline (MA) Police Dept. Pathetic.
Zendo Deb at TFS Magnum asks the right question. If we have to sacrifice liberties to remain safe, then the terrorists have won.
Denise at The Ten Ring shows there are more than just two legged predators running wild in Massachusetts. The problem with both, though, is that MA makes it tough to deal with either.
Say Uncle points out that the (seemingly out-of-nowhere) decision by the ATF to ban imports of certain rifle barrels presents a capitalist opportunity.
Look, I'm not making light of a "murder-suicide" but what the hell does it have to do with the KIND of gun used? From the Indy-Star (IN):
A man with an assault rifle apparently killed his wife inside their Westside apartment Tuesday and then fired at a sheriff's deputy before taking his own life, authorities said.
I'm trying to picture how this would play out in (*ahem*) gun-free England:
A disturbed man used a chef's carving knife to kill his wife and then himself. If only we could ban chef's knives, this wouldn't have happened because everyone knows that a simple Bowie Pocketknife isn't sharp enough unless the mutant was schooled in knife sharpening and...
It must be the gun, not the criminal. That's how our modern-day press operates. "The fire was started by a BIC lighter", not some idiot. What fucking bullshit. Find someone, or rather something, to blame. Just as long as it isn't the creep who actually committed murder, then the lawyers stand to make some money by blaming the manufacturer. And trust me folks, the alcohol-death suits are starting up against auto-makers. Blame Ford: It was their fault, not the drunken driver's...
What a stupid world we live in!
Of course I'll probably get some flak for that last post because (besides being gay myself) the 10-12 gay readers here will (rightly) argue that military spending costs money and granting rights doesn't.
My point was that in Canada, the legislature should be addressing pressing issues. I think that should be happening in Washington, too. Instead, we have a president and congress diddling with Social Security (which might go broke in 40 years -- who the hell knows what kind of space-faring society and economy we'll have by then) and irrelevant "flag-burning" measures, and yes, anti-marriage amendments for gays and lesbians.
It would be nice if the President and our overpaid legislators (overpaid by tax-payers, I don't know how much the lobbyists and pacs are paying them) would focus on important issues such as out-of-control illegal immigration, an endless war in Iraq, and ignoring basic Constitutional rights. On that last one, has any senator or congressman YET introduced a bill to address the disgusting ruling by the Supreme Court in Kelo vs. New London?
And if Bush and company are bad, think how much worse it would have been had the useless, anti-constitutional Kerry been elected along with more of his Democratic fascists?
Heck, by now we'd all be required to attend Islamic Cultural Respect classes. Oh, wait! That's already mandatory at most of our liberal colleges! Don't dare mention God or Christianity but do hold seminars on how Muslem murderers are just a cultural phenomena and all cultures are equally valid and we deserved what we got and bla-bla-bla...
If they have a problem with that, heck, just look me up and pay a visit: I'm waiting to greet you:
I always like to post about stories like this from the Cortez Journal:
Unlike some teenagers, when she sets down a book, she picks up her rifle.Roni Borgen, 15, recently returned from Columbia, Mo., after competing in the National 4-H Invitational as a representative for the Colorado State 4-H shooting team. The showing proved strong for both Borgen and her team. The firearms used in the competition were .22 rifles.
"In the free position (I placed) ninth out 37, (and) the Colorado team (placed) third in that competition," she said. "For silhouette shooting, I placed sixth out of 37, and the state team placed third."
[...]
Roger Borgen, who is also one of Roni's coaches, is a certified National Rifle Association rifle instructor and a 4-H instructor.
He said success among females in riflery, such as his daughter's case, is not uncommon. Some experts attribute early displays of dexterity to physiology.
"Part of it is the way their nerves run down their arms - girls on the outside, males on the inside," Roger Borgen said. "So they (females) can hold a position longer."
Roni Borgen has her own take on the matter.
"We have a better attention span," she said. "We listen to what people say instead of just shooting."
Roni Borgen hopes that attention span can maintain her success in the sport. She would like to continue shooting into college.
"I want to be on a college team when I go to college," she said. "The University of Washington in Seattle has a rifle team. I like their shooting programs and their English programs, too."
An Iowa Libertarian reports that someone has discovered the secret! It doesn't involve Barney, either.
Nashville Files has the good news that the legislature in Connecticut is stepping in and examining their eminent domain laws.
After Danny Guzman was shot to death outside a Worcester, Mass., nightclub six years ago, his family did what few grieving families do: They sued the gun maker.The Guzmans' attorney, Hector Pineiro, contends that internal security measures at gun maker Kahr Arms were so lax that one of its employees was able to systematically steal the 9 mm guns' component parts and assemble them outside the factory before their serial numbers were affixed. One of those guns, police have determined, was used to kill Guzman.
The Guzman lawsuit, as well as larger, pending lawsuits against the industry by several municipalities, including the District of Columbia and New York City, would come to an abrupt halt if legislation Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., wants to bring to the Senate floor as early as this week passes.
The bill would effectively ban lawsuits against gun manufacturers when the guns they make are not used for legitimate self-defense, recreational or sporting purposes.
(5) QUALIFIED CIVIL LIABILITY ACTION-(A) IN GENERAL- The term `qualified civil liability action' means a civil action or proceeding or an administrative proceeding brought by any person against a manufacturer or seller of a qualified product, or a trade association, for damages, punitive damages, injunctive or declaratory relief, abatement, restitution, fines, or penalties, or other relief' resulting from the criminal or unlawful misuse of a qualified product by the person or a third party, but shall not include--
(i) an action brought against a transferor convicted under section 924(h) of title 18, United States Code, or a comparable or identical State felony law, by a party directly harmed by the conduct of which the transferee is so convicted;
(ii) an action brought against a seller for negligent entrustment or negligence per se;
(iii) an action in which a manufacturer or seller of a qualified product knowingly violated a State or Federal statute applicable to the sale or marketing of the product, and the violation was a proximate cause of the harm for which relief is sought, including--
(I) any case in which the manufacturer or seller knowingly made any false entry in, or failed to make appropriate entry in, any record required to be kept under Federal or State law with respect to the qualified product, or aided, abetted, or conspired with any person in making any false or fictitious oral or written statement with respect to any fact material to the lawfulness of the sale or other disposition of a qualified product; or
(II) any case in which the manufacturer or seller aided, abetted, or conspired with any other person to sell or otherwise dispose of a qualified product, knowing, or having reasonable cause to believe, that the actual buyer of the qualified product was prohibited from possessing or receiving a firearm or ammunition under subsection (g) or (n) of section 922 of title 18, United States Code;
(iv) an action for breach of contract or warranty in connection with the purchase of the product; or
(v) an action for death, physical injuries or property damage resulting directly from a defect in design or manufacture of the product, when used as intended or in a reasonably foreseeable manner, except that where the discharge of the product was caused by a volitional act that constituted a criminal offense then such act shall be considered the sole proximate cause of any resulting death, personal injuries or property damage.
(B) NEGLIGENT ENTRUSTMENT- As used in subparagraph (A)(ii), the term `negligent entrustment' means the supplying of a qualified product by a seller for use by another person when the seller knows, or reasonably should know, the person to whom the product is supplied is likely to, and does, use the product in a manner involving unreasonable risk of physical injury to the person or others.
If Kahr Arms was actually negligent, the suit could proceed. That's a big "if" since the employee stole the parts of a gun.
If the Bull's Eye gun store in Washington was negligent (and it seems they definitely were) then lawsuits by victims of the DC Snipers could proceed. (Unfortunately, Bushmaster, which was NOT guilty of anything, on advice of their attorneys and insurance co.) had to settle to stay out of bankruptcy.)
What this bill DOES do is prohibit civil actions brought about simply because the gun was manufactured or (in the case of a dealer) sold.
Incidentally, I did not know that one of the amendments attached to the bill would require that .50 long range (what ever that means) rifles such as the Barrett be registered under the same law as machine guns:
The new GOP seats make Cunningham optimistic that an amendment that would require the registration of long-range .50-caliber military sniper rifles, which critics say are so powerful they could ignite an airplane's fuel tank, would fail. It's a legal gun, Cunningham adds, and should be treated as such."The .50-caliber is more of a novelty -- it's a several-thousand-dollar gun," he says. "Why do you take your kids to school in a Porsche that can go 150 miles per hour? Because you're a law-abiding citizen and you can."
Every time I go to the local supermarket I wind up buying a gun magazine. I have stacks of them all over the place. I was re-reading some of them and came across a quiz from the April '99 issue of Guns and Ammo. Here are a few of the questions. I'll put the answers in dark gray at the bottom.
1) The Lahti pistol was standard-issue with which country's military during World War II?
a) Italy
b) Sweden
c) Finland
d) Both B & C
2) What United States president also served as the president of the National Rifle Association?
a) Theodore Roosevelt
b) Calvin Coolidge
c) Ulysses S. Grant
d) Ronald Reagan
3) When was the first production stainless-steel handgun introduced?
a) 1955
b) 1958
c) 1960
d) 1965
4) Three of the following designations are different names for the same cartridge, while only one is a different round entirely. Which is the odd one?
a) 9mm Luger
b) 9mm Steyr
c) 9mm Parabellum
d) 9X19mm
5) Which of the following companies did NOT manufacture Model 1911A1 pistols for the US Government during World War II?
a) Colt
b) Ithaca
c) National Postal Meter
d) Singer Sewing Machine Co.
6) Which of the following designations was once the official name of the .280 Remington rifle cartridge?
a) 7mm Firecat
b) 7mm Express
c) .280 Huntsman
d) 7mm-06
Have fun...
I think I'll put some line breaks in here...
and here
and here
and here
and here...
The answers:
1) D. Both Sweden and Finland. 2) C. Ulysses S. Grant. 3) D. 1965 by S&W with their Model 60. 4) B. The Steyr is a different animal. 5) C. National Postal Meter. 6) B. The 7mm Express -- but Ken says it should be D. Hmmm...
Cam & Company at NRA News have a PDF of IANSA's (George Soros's global gun control group) internal talking points memo warning THEIR "sycophants" on what to say to the press...
I'd call it required reading to see what we're up against by one of the most dishonest anti-gun lobbying groups.
"We at Amnesty International are not going to condone the escalation of the flow of arms to the region," said Trish Katyoka, director of Africa Advocacy. "You are empowering (the victims) to create an element of retaliation."Whenever you create a sword-fight by letting the poor people fight back and give them the arms, it creates an added element of complexity. You do not know what the results could be."
The slaughter, rape and torment of the citizens of Darfur would end if humanitarian aid included guns.Darfur is a Texas-size region of Sudan. The Sudanese government and its militia proxies have killed roughly 70,000 civilians, raped and mutilated untold numbers of others and caused about 3 million refugees to live in camps.
Sudan could teach Serbia a thing or two about ethnic cleansing.
This carnage has been going on since 2003. The Sudan People's Liberation Army, a small band of revolutionaries from Darfur, were the only excuse the government needed to wage war on unarmed citizens in the region, who also happen to be fellow Muslims.
Read that Amnesty International statement again. Because the victims might fight back or defend themselves, they should not be allowed to own firearms. And yes, folks, firearms means ANY firearm as we see from this UN statement:
Small arms are weapons designed for personal use, while light weapons are designed for use by several persons serving as a crew. Examples of small arms include revolvers and self-loading pistols, rifles, sub-machine guns, assault rifles and light machine-guns.
"I think we really need to look at the right to gun ownership as a human right. And the UN was formed, in no small part, in order to ensure that we never again have a genocide, like what we saw in the Holocaust [note: Hitler disarmed all the Jews before rounding them up --js] and in fact we decided to protect against it with international law. We got a convention on genocide which was signed by such nations as Cambodia, the Congo, and Rwanda, all of which have been sites of some of the greatest genocides in the 2nd half of the 20th century. The UN, in each case, did nothing and in the case of Rwanda was in fact complicit. And as a result, the notion of relying on international law to protect us from genocide seems pretty dubious. In every case the international community just stood aside and did nothing except offer tea-and-sympathy when it was all done.What we need to do, instead, is think about things that actually prevent genocide. And there is a lot of evidence that armed populaces are not generally subject to genocide because -- and this is so obvious that it shouldn't require explanation -- it's harder to kill people [armed] with guns. And if we don't think of mass-murder and genocide as good things then we ought to make it harder to kill people.
Yes, [empowering people is] exactly right! But they're not really about justice and they're not really about preventing genocide and I think they unfortunately made that quite plain. Some in the international community are far more interested in feathering their own nest than then they are in protecting people. That's disappointing, it's a big disappointment to me, but the evidence speaks for itself.
I think it's important that they point out that it's the "gun murder rate" and not the overall murder rate. I have no idea what those statistics are. I prefer to be murdered with a blunt object. That's always been my first choice. Whenever I am murdered, that's what I choose.
UN Secretary General issued a statement yesterday that included:
In my report “In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All”, I urge the international community to expedite negotiations on a legally-binding instrument to combat illicit brokering in small arms and light weapons. I hope the World Summit will provide high-level impetus toward this goal. My recent broad-based consultations on this issue were constructive and highlighted areas of major concern to be addressed further by the General Assembly -- mandated Group of Governmental Experts.Next year, Member States will convene for the first Conference to review the implementation of the Programme of Action. I am hopeful that they, and representatives of civil society, will seize the opportunity of this Biennial Meeting to compare experiences and lessons learnt, with a view to identifying actions needed to enhance further the implementation of the Programme of Action at the national, regional and global levels.
Naturally, press around the world picked up on the conference such as this one:
Most victims of war die these days from small arms like machine guns, pistols and rifles, making them the true weapons of mass destruction in the world today, according to a new report released yesterday.The report, the latest annual small arms survey conducted by researchers at the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies, concludes that conflict deaths due to small arms have been vastly underreported in the past.
The simple fact is that all the UN worshipers who claim to want to have peace in the world ignore the fact that many are under siege from their own governments. But peace activists would rather have quiet -- even the murderous quiet of a Saddam Hussein -- than a conflict where people try to protect themselves and restore their rights. I can't personally think of any right greater than the right to remain alive.
Back in OUR country, the hurrumphing over the "assault" to restore constitutional rights to our nation's capital continues with this NY Times editorial today:
There is no end to Congressional intrusion in the lives of the residents of Washington, and lives is the operative word this time around.The House has cavalierly overruled the city and voted to repeal a local law that requires licit gun owners to keep their weapons unloaded and locked or disassembled when stored at home. What could be more sensible in an American gun culture that is regularly punctuated by the tragic deaths of children who happen upon family weapons? Yet this worthy precaution proved too much for the gun lobby and its lock-and-load sycophants on both sides of the aisle, who voted 259 to 161 for repeal.
Deprived of fair representation at the Capitol, the city has been historically abused by Congress's plantation whimsy. The one practical idea in the gun debate came from Representative David Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat, who said a $70,000 pay cut was logically in order for his colleagues. "If the people in this House want to act like your D.C. city councilman, then they can be paid like a D.C. councilman," he said. The House, of course, clung to its salary the way the gun lobby clings to its symbolic musket.
Notice that where -- in the past -- the New York Times would only decry the gun-lobby "sycopnants" among Republicans, now, given the lop-sided vote for the measure, there are "sycophants" on both sides of the aisle.
Meanwhile in England we get the story of a criminal-turned-informant killed by his ex-colleagues with the headline: "BODYBUILDER DIED IN HAIL OF AK47 BULLETS". From the Daily Record (UK):
A BODYBUILDER was executed with 26 rounds fired from an AK47 assault rifle in just two seconds, a court heard yesterday.Glasgow-born Dave King was murdered after criminal associates allegedly took a contract out on him because they thought he was a grass The 32-year-old, known to pals as 'Muscles', was shot repeatedly outside a gym in October 2003.
He was wounded in the arm, hip, stomach and thigh and died as a result of a chest wound.
Yesterday, four men went on trial charged in connection with his death Andrew Bright QC, prosecuting, said the weapon used was 'a highly effective killing machine'.
Back in the states... I've been covering this story for awhile. Last night the Columbus, Ohio City Council decided -- again -- to ban "assault weapons":
The Columbus City Council has for the third time passed an assault weapons ban that it hopes this time will pass a likely federal court challenge.A pro-gun group that successfully challenged the legislation twice before said it is contemplating another lawsuit.
The ordinance outlaws the sale or possession of semiautomatic rifles with pistol grips and detachable magazines.
In an attempt to pass federal court muster, it tries to distinguish between legitimate sporting weapons and military-style assault weapons.
After Aug. 11, the sale of guns fitting the city's description of an assault weapon will be outlawed.
Residents who own an assault weapon will have 90 days from Monday night to register their firearm with Columbus' Department of Public Safety or face a first-degree misdemeanor charge.
How about a positive story? I gave a list on Sunday, but here's one more from the NJ Herald:
Repeatedly pulling the trigger on a loaded gun seems like an unusual way for a teacher to spend a weekend, but that is what many area educators did Sunday during the Franklin Rifle and Revolver Association's first ever firearm training geared toward those in the field of education."We want people to know what we do," George Ambrose, the association's special events director said. "We want to show the positive side of the sport and thought the best way was through education."
After a brief but thorough safety lesson, 17 teachers, social workers and others in the educational field took to the range to fire shots of their own; some for the first time.
"I loved it," Maryanne Gherlone, a librarian at Mount Olive's Sandshore School said. "I grew up with hunting and love the outdoors, but this was my first time shooting a pistol."
Gherlone heard about the class through a friend who is a member of the association. After a few practice sessions, Gherlone ended the day by hitting the target with every shot from her last round.
"I was aiming down at first, but then I calmed down and it really helped," Gherlone said.
The association usually holds two training sessions a year, which are targeted toward women. Sunday's course was for a new group to get the word out to more people, John Heller, president of the association, said.
"Part of our constitution is to provide firearm safety training for the community so we're looking to reach more people," Ambrose said.
Since teachers have such an influence on others, it's the association's hope that Sunday's lesson will be passed on, Ambrose said.
TV Channel covers Cowboy Action Shooting. Really!
Badgerman's right hand blurs into motion like a hummingbird's wings, and when the hand comes back into focus it's holding a stainless steel revolver that sprays lead hail in .44-caliber chunks.His targets down, Badgerman jams the revolver back into its leather holster and lets go of the pistol's shiny black buffalo horn handle.
Then he moseys 10 feet to his left, grabs a double-barreled shotgun and slips a 12-gauge shell into each cylinder. He snugs the gun's butt against his shoulder and empties both chambers - a pair of ear-numbing thuds blending into a single concussion.
This gunfight is over. And although Badgerman's aim was true, not one drop of blood has been spilled in the sagebrush near Virtue Flat, about seven miles east of Baker City.
Badgerman is one of Baker County's Vigilantes of Virtue, who compete in one of the country's fastest-growing sports involving firearms: cowboy action shooting.
The basic idea is to recreate a world where Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday would feel at home.
Cowboy action shooters wear cowboy boots and cowboy hats and wrap brightly hued cowboy bandannas around their necks.
They adopt colorful monikers like Little Bullett, German Jack, Old Rawhide and Grubslinger.
By scrolling down at Alphecca (or returning to the main page here) you can read about much more media coverage and bias of firearms ownership.
Naturally, I'll be on Cam's doing my regular Tuesday gig (this report LIVE) at about 3:20 eastern time. But of course you should be listening to the whole show (3-6pm).
Time to get this up. Thanks for stopping by!
The Washington Times has an article that is critical of two gun bills in California:
Police officials and gun rights advocates are worried that two pieces of legislation pending in the California Assembly could do considerable harm to the firearms industry and to national security.A bill introduced by Assemblyman Paul Koretz, a Democrat from West Hollywood, would require that all guns manufactured in the state be equipped with microstamping technology, which would allow law-enforcement personnel to track guns used in crimes as well as who purchased the weapon.
A companion bill introduced by state Sen. Joseph Dunn, a Democrat, would require manufacturers to laser imprint serial numbers on each bullet casing and register the numbers with the Justice Department.
Gun rights advocates said the passage of either bill would result in the destruction of California's ammunition industry.
"Any manufacturer that attempted to comply with the legislation would be bankrupted, because the costs to build a laser imprinting device would be the same as, well, they would have to build a new factory," said Lawrence Keane, general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation. "The bill would become a de facto ban on ammunition in California."
In letters to California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, two lawmakers said the legislation would harm national security.
The Miami Herald has a regular column by Martin E. Segal called "Ask Dr. Law". Today it examines gun law and punishment. Interesting reading. Crime is way down and the "Castle Doctrine" hasn't filled the streets with blood.
Some mutants just don't get it. From KOIN TV (OR):
It was deja vu for an accused burglar in Klamath Falls.Twelve years ago, a Klamath Falls police officer shot Timothy Allen Lamere after catching him carrying a microwave out of a dental office.
This week, Lamere was shot while allegedly trying to enter a neighbor's house.
Police say James Bauman came out of his bedroom with a handgun after hearing the screams of his 16-year-old sister, who had been sleeping on a couch.
Bauman shot at the front door and the bullet went into Lamere's upper right leg.
Lamere was treated at Merle West Medical Center and then taken to the Klamath County Jail.
He was arraigned on charges of attempted burglary and criminal mischief.
Apparently there is a Libertarian Party in New Zealand, which still has a few gun rights remaining. From the New Zealand Herald:
Libertarianz party candidates Julian Pistorius and Helen Hughes are organising a 'Guns and Fun Day', to be held next Saturday.The event will include paintball, clay target shooting, rifle shooting and barbecues. It will be held at Extreme Paintball, north of Whangarei.
Former Libertarianz leader Peter Cresswell, an architect and property rights campaigner, will talk about issues affecting Northlanders, including "the horror that is the RMA".
Peter Linton, an outdoorsman and shooter, will talk about self-defence and the rights of gun owners.
The Lakeland, FL Ledger has coverage of the ESPN Great Outdoors Games shooting events here and also here. Nice to see coverage of the shooting sports in a positive fashion. Needless to say, the New York Times didn't send a reporter.
The Department of Natural Resources in Wisconsin conducted a poll of people who get hunting licenses. The Wausau Daily Herald has the results. While the demographic is probably not a surprise, it's interesting to note that the bolt-action rifle is still the most popular among hunters. More hunters are also carrying GPS devices and cellphones. Most hunt from tree stands. There's lots more so read the whole thing.
Interesting article by the AP on the rapidly approaching future of directed energy weapons. And you laughed at the phasers on Star Trek!
Nice article at KATU TV in Portland, Oregon about Cowboy Action Shooting.
There you go. Alphecca gives you cool stuff to surf on a Sunday afternoon.
I haven't seen the Spielberg remake of War of the Worlds yet but at the San Francisco Chronicle, Debra Saunders has:
Consider the rare civilians who have guns in the movie: Tom Cruise's character, Ray Ferrier, has a gun.There is also a rifle-toting ex-paramedic played by Tim Robbins. Even though he, unlike the countless other civilians who are butchered while trying to evade the alien killing machines, chooses to do battle, he is revealed as "a bug-eyed maniac," says Chronicle reviewer Mick LaSalle, or "a fruitcake who fancies himself a member of the 'resistance,' " says the Washington Post's Michael O'Sullivan. You know he's a nut because he has a gun, a big gun. Mentally unstable, he, of course, invites his own demise.
"War of the Worlds" also has to be one of the few alien-invasion movies in which civilian guns only are fired at humans, not the space invaders. Compare "War of the Worlds" to the 1996 sci-fi flick, "Independence Day." Yes, most civilians run from attacking forces in that movie. But their flight doesn't convey the every-man-for-himself feel of the Spielberg exodus. People rescued each other. They supported military efforts as they fled and were mindful of the need to seek a place for a final stand.
For his sorry part, Ferrier doesn't try to help anyone else on the road in "War." He actually impedes the departure of a ferry so he can scramble on.
From the department of "Here's How It's Done" comes a story today from the Ledger-Enquirer (OH):
A Columbus woman used a jolt from a stun gun Thursday to stop her estranged husband after he threatened her at her 54th Street home, police said.Arbrey Vernon, 36, was charged with simple battery, cruelty to children and criminal trespass. He was freed on bond.
Police said Jamie Vernon, 28, shot her estranged husband with the stun gun shortly after he entered the house and started pushing and threatening the woman. Several items had been broken at the home.
Jamie Vernon used the stun gun to protect herself, police said. Columbus police arrived at 12:34 p.m. to arrest the man.
The Vernons live at different addresses and have filed for divorce, police said.
One of the nice things about getting older is that I can (because I'm losing my mind...) re-read books I enjoyed many years ago and enjoy them just as much. So I went hunting through the stacks of books in my closets and came up with a quartet worth another go-through:
I'm set for a couple weeks, thank you very much.
Incidentally, I just finished reading Allen M. Steele's Coyote and Coyote Rising. I had enjoyed the stories that made up this series in the pages of Asimov's SF Magazine but the books bring it all together and I think most libertarians will enjoy them.
Update 5:45pm: Incidentally, Jay Solo IS Heinlein! (Via Jay) Which SF writer are you?
Hot Damn! So am I:
 | I am:Robert A. HeinleinBeginning with technological action stories and progressing to epics with religious overtones, this take-no-prisoners writer racked up some huge sales numbers. |
Say Uncle asks, "Where'd all the fisking go?" and as if right-on-cue, Dusty at Castle Argghhh! proceeds to take Tom Oliphant apart.
I switched to Movable Type about 16 months ago because it allowed me to blog from anywhere, did all of the archiving automatically, and most importantly it allowed for comments, something I desperately wanted to offer my readers. I'm happy to report that the 3000th comment was posted during the overnight and it happend to be by good friend Robert (Blackfork6) who has been a supporter since the beginning. Fittingly, it was to the post Home Alone on the Range. Thanks to Robert and to all of you for taking the time to say something about my inane ramblings here.
It's simply the best show ever put on TV. Yes, folks, I'm ending the week with a non-gun post. When I first bought my $49 dollar DVD player last year, one of the first disks I bought was the first year of The Simpsons. Last week I bought the second. I plan to chill out now and watch it, every hour of it. I wish all TV was this clever and funny.
Have a great weekend, folks. I'll be back soon with more gun stuff and of course, on Tuesday I'll have my latest Weekly Check on the Bias report.
I know I say it a lot but I really mean it: Thanks so much for stopping by!
In a sudden blast from the past, a story I reported on last January has come back to life. Here's the quote from the LA Times (which isn't accepting my log-on right now) story from my post:
Internationally known artists Chris Burden and Nancy Rubins have retired abruptly from their longtime professorships at UCLA in part because the university refused to suspend a graduate student who used a gun during a classroom performance art piece, a spokeswoman for the artists said Friday."They feel this was sort of domestic terrorism. There should have been more outrage and a firmer response," said Sarah Watson, a director at Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills, which represents Burden and Rubins. "People feared for their lives."
Neither Burden nor Rubins would comment when contacted by The Times. They submitted their retirement paperwork Dec. 20, over the school's winter break.
The handgun incident occurred Nov. 29 at UCLA's graduate art studio annex in Culver City.
The brief performance involved a simulation of Russian roulette, in which the student appeared before the class holding a handgun, put in what appeared to be a bullet, spun the cylinder, then pointed the gun at his head and pulled the trigger, according to one student's account that was confirmed by law enforcement sources. The weapon didn't fire. The student quickly left the room, then the audience heard a shot from outside. What ensued is not clear, but police said no one was hurt.
The gun a graduate student put to his head during a performance art piece simulating Russian roulette was actually a wooden replica, according to a campus investigation and the student's lawyer.Last November, University of California, Los Angeles student Joseph Deutch put what appeared to be a bullet into the chamber and pulled the trigger in front of his class.
After the sound of a click, he ran out of the room and a loud noise rang out, causing panic among students who briefly thought he had committed suicide. In fact, Deutch had set off a firecracker in a can offstage, his lawyer Howard R. Price told the Los Angeles Times.
When the 26-year-old returned to the room about a minute later for a critique, "it was pandemonium," Deutch told the newspaper. "The idea of a class structure or any critical thinking was blown out of the water." Worried that Deutch was suicidal, class instructor Ron Athey took the student for an hour-long drive after class to monitor him.
[...]
Deutch is still enrolled at UCLA after a panel of three faculty members found in a May report that he didn't use a real weapon, and that his actions didn't pose a threat or disrupt the education of others.
The initial investigation into the incident was hampered by Deutch's desire to keep secret whether he had used a real gun. He purchased a .357 Magnum as a model for the replica before returning it to the gun dealer, Price said.
I'm tired of being creative today. Fortunately, there are a veritable plethora of great bloggers out there whose juices are still flowing on a Saturday night:
There's always cool stuff up (with wit) at It Comes In Pints.
You know, I used to (egotistically) think I was one of the few Vermont bloggers around. Fortunately (especially for liberals) there are many others and you can keep tabs on them at my [vacationing] friend Cathy's blog, 802 Online.
I'm surfing as I watch one of the few TV shows I actually like, Star Gate. I like anything sci-fi.
I'm sure that you've noticed that I often mention that I listen to Coast to Coast AM with George Noory (who is a much better interviewer than Art Bell ever was) and that is the same reason I like a recent addition to my blogroll, Weird Events. I think that you will, too.
I don't mention him nearly enough but Nels Lindahl has the cool idea that eventually, we here in the US need our own chunnel from the east-to-west coasts. That is a super-cool idea! I don't fly; period. I love trains and have taken them to a lot of places such as Florida and Illinois. A high-speed train between coasts (and especially if I could have a private spot like the old pullman-coaches) would get me out more.
He's taking a few days off because he's (Matt Rustler) celebrating his 10th anniversary. Congratulations. Matt is a credit to the pro-2A crowd I hang out with.
I hope Kevin comes back to full-time blogging about guns, soon.
Head's Bunker reports on a jerk who doesn't want his morning sleep disturbed by our proud defenders. Life's a bitch, huh?
Irons In the Fire asks, Can Britian Step Up? Interesting question but damn, I think they can and have, as the strongest and most strident ally of ours.
Want to know what's wrong in Washington State? Just click over to Heartless Libertarian to find out! Always good reading.
Ahhh, pity the poor French.
I have to work tomorrow and so I'm signing off now. Have a great weekend, everybody. Thanks for stopping by!
Granted, I own several domain names (though not nearly as many as my only declared blogson) and I do nothing with them. I've even let my pets blog lie in a near stupor state although I promise I will revive it in a couple weeks when my work load lightens-up a bit. And of course my namesake site is totally static although I plan to turn it into a site that inflicts my gawd-awful attempts at fiction onto the web world.
Still, since many refer to me (correctly!) as the "gay gun nut" I splurged and bought the domain GayGunNut.Com because, well, I'm like some dog that likes to mark his mark with piss or something... Don't bother going there now because it's simply redirected to here, at Alphecca. But who knows, one day I might use it for something.
So why am I even bothering to tell you this? Why not? It's my dime and I'm tired of blabbing about media gun bias and it's the weekend and I'm three-sheets to the wind after two brutal days at work. I'll yak about whatever I want... But if you have a cool suggestion for what I should do with that domain, I'm listening...
...Reports that while some countries are working hard to eliminate the ability of victims to defend themselves, things are improving in Italy.
Cops and prosecutors and law makers love broadly worded legislation because it allows them the leeway to prosecute anyone they want. One federal judge in New York State is questioning such wording. From the Democrat & Chronicle (NY):
A federal judge on Thursday questioned whether a state law governing gun show transactions may be so broadly worded that it could affect pancake breakfasts or other similar events sponsored by gun clubs.A lawsuit filed last year by local sporting clubs attacks various pieces of New York's gun control statutes, including one section designed to govern firearms sales at gun shows.
Under the law, any gun show must be prepared to provide background checks on possible gun buyers. The show operator can otherwise face civil penalties up to $10,000.
Scott Garretson, the attorney representing the sporting clubs, said the statute simply defines a "gun show" as an event where gun owners gather. That definition could apply to pancake breakfasts, pig roasts, political rallies or 4-H events sponsored by a gathering of "gun owners," Garretson said.
Assistant Attorney General Charles Steinman said the state Legislature's intent clearly was not to place onerous restrictions on gun club events that have nothing to do with gun sales.
He maintained that the Attorney General's Office would not pursue action against other events.
[...]
U.S. District Judge Charles Siragusa answered that he must consider what the statute says, not how the current attorney general may interpret it.
"It sounds silly, but (the statute) could encompass a pancake breakfast, regardless of the attorney general saying, 'We're not going to prosecute,'" Siragusa said.
I'm reminded of when I lived in an apartment complex in a town in NJ. There was never enough parking in the lot so each night (being a young party-hardy soul) I would come home late and have to park in the street -- and overnight parking was prohibited. So also, every night, I would have to call the town cops and tell them I was leaving my car on the street, and why, etc. And often the desk cop would stop me and say, "that's alright, we're not ticketing tonight!" Needless to say, I DID receive the occasional parking ticket on some of those nights.
A bad law is worse than no law.
I've talked about it before but for those who have any doubt that target shooting and competition shooting are some of the most popular sports in the US -- from the News Messenger (OH):
PORT CLINTON -- More than 4,000 people are expected to flood Camp Perry during the busiest days of this summer's National Rifle & Pistol Matches.Col. James H. Chisman, Camp Perry commander, said 2005 marks the 98th consecutive year Camp Perry has hosted the event. Opening ceremonies are scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. Monday, although muzzle-loading matches start today.
Contestants from around the world will compete in more than a dozen shooting categories until the event closes Aug. 17. Olympic champions and medalists have participated in some of the previous National Rifle & Pistol Matches at Camp Perry.
"We have the best firing ranges up to 1,000 yards in the country," Chisman said. "The crown jewel of Camp Perry is our firing ranges."
[...]
Port Clinton Mayor Tom Brown said studies show the national matches bring $10 million into the local economy every year.
And remember that the NSSF estimates there are 17 million enthusiasts just here in the United States.
Given that Microsoft has discontinued all support for the Mac version of IE, and I don't like Safari, I've been trying out the Firefox Browser for several weeks now. I rather like it.
Just thought you'd want to know that riveting information...
Yesterday evening after work, I sped over to the local range and once again had the place to my self. I didn't have a camera with me but here's a couple snaps I took a few months ago:
When alone, I can study my plinking form with one of my .22s, without getting razzed for being slightly "trembly" -- a problem I've had since my teen years. Also, I can practice my weakest position -- standing. I can set up 5 or more targets in a row and fire away at each one without waiting for others. Selfish, I know and I actually prefer having friends around but nights like this let me get a LOT of practice in. I've spent several weeks now working the 100 yard boards, which is about the limit of my eyesight with a low-power scope. The limits of my steadiness, too.
I kept my best target of the evening, 100 yards kneeling with the Ruger 10/22 with a 4X scope, Remington .22 Golden hollow points:
1) Luck!
2) Being totally relaxed with no one watching.
3) Absolutely no wind or distractions.
4) About 500 rounds spent adjusting the scope in the preceeding weeks.
5) And, did I mention luck?
Incidentally, I find the Remington cartridges rather "dirty", a lot of residue that I don't see with my favored CCI round nose Blazers. You can see it all over the shells.
One day, if I win the PowerBall Lottery, I will own a small home on a big piece of land and have my own private range. Days like yesterday when I'm alone, it almost feels the same way. No, I'm not a great shot and I'm sure most of you are better, but I was glowing on the way back to my other home...
In a rather rambling and strangely written article in today's Texas Monitor, we learn the following about Rocker and NRA advocate Ted Nugent and his love of Texas:
"My rehearsals are not like those of other musicians," Nugent said."We spend most of our days shooting, fishing, barbecuing and filleting bass. (We have) three, one-hour slams and the rest of the time is living a wonderful outdoor lifestyle," Nugent said.
Nugent’s touring schedule is always scheduled around the hunting season. Nugent credits hunting for staying sharp and productive throughout his lengthy career.
"Ozzy (Osbourne) got high and he’s brain dead. I went hunting and I’m still Ted," Nugent said.
Rock ‘n roll is a firestorm, Nugent said.
For the entrepreneurs out there, the Florida Sun-Sentinal offers a game plan:
West Palm Beach police are anticipating that some clever gun owners will take advantage of this weekend's city-funded gun buyback program."There's nothing you can do about it," Officer Kelly Carsillo, an organizer, said of some people's plans to buy cheap guns at pawnshops, turn them over to the police at Saturday's initiative and make a profit in the form of a Target gift card.
Message boards on fatwallet.com, an Internet site that touts freebies and discounts, has some people crowing that they're going to do just that.
Police are offering gift cards worth $75 to $200 for every operable rifle, handgun and assault rifle, no questions asked. The department doesn't cap how many guns someone can turn in, Carsillo said. Other than a cursory visual examination, officers won't be testing the guns to make sure they work, she said.
Still, some gun sellers and pawnshop managers doubt many people will go to all the trouble to cheat a program meant to reduce violence. A cut-rate gun goes for as low as about $50. But there's a statewide three-day waiting period for gun purchases.
The real problem with gun buybacks is that mutants (criminals) will never turn in their firearms.
On a related subject... My own "gun buy" program -- the Taurus Fund -- is on the right...
Matthew at TriggerFinger gives a warning to talk radio hosts.
I wonder how Cam Edwards feels about this?
My friend Victor at Publius emailed me an interesting question from a friend of his:
"So, now we've won the Olympics, I wonder what we're going to do about the
Olympic Pistol Shooting events, seeing as handguns (even for sports purposes)
are outlawed in the UK - currently I believe our UK team has to travel to
other countries, such as France, to practice..."She raises an interesting point, and one I thought you might like to comment
on. It seems Britain didn't think some things through somewhere along the
way...
Australia's ban was already in effect although they do allow sporting pistols to be kept locked-up at a gun club or range. Does England have a similar rule?
Perhaps, given the events of yesterday, they'll allow target shooting as long as there's a turbin on the target...
Anyway, I throw the question out to you folks if you have some knowledge about this.
Jim at Smoke on the Water has a required reading post.
So I'm reading Les Jones' description of his trip to Stinging Fork Pocket Wilderness and I see someone named Jay mentioned and then there's a picture of a guy and I could swear it looked like Jay Solo. I really need to start wearing my reading glasses when working at the computer.
And you know what? He's almost right! I'll explain in a moment but first, here's a couple quotes from today's Boston Globe:
WASHINGTON -- Bitter about efforts to loosen gun restrictions in the US capital, Washington's mayor yesterday told Congress to stay out of the District of Columbia's business and contrasted the fight for democracy abroad with the lack of rights for the city's residents.Meanwhile, activists touted a symbolic recommendation by the parliamentary assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe calling for full congressional representation for the district. The US Constitution created special status for the district as the seat of federal power. Washington has more than 550,000 residents. While they pay federal taxes, they have no representation in the Senate and the city's delegate to the House cannot vote on the House floor.
[...]
''It's really no one's business other than the citizens of the district," Williams told reporters. ''It really is so galling when you're fighting for rights overseas, to build democracy overseas, and then you have the capital of this country just totally disregard any kind of home-rule consideration."
And isn't it ironic that as American and Iraqi soldiers and Iraqi citizens fight off insurgents wracking death and destruction in Iraq in order to form a democracy, Williams compares his city's fight for home rule with them. Only, in DC, the insurgents haven't infiltrated into the city from outside but are instead home-grown mutants causing the District to have a violent crime rate second only to Chicago.
Just as many Iraqi citizens have grabbed their guns and joined the police and army, so too the subjects of Washington DC decided to take their city back from... Oh wait, no they haven't; they can't. They're not allowed to defend their homes, neighborhoods, and loved ones because they are denied one of the fundamental rights accorded to most other people in America, the right to keep and bear arms.
Yes, Mayor Williams, there are people gladly fighting for their lives to form a constitution and democracy in some countries in the middle-east. In your city, the people are fighting just to maintain their already eroded constitution. You're the one preventing that. If there is a "lack of rights" of your residents, hop a bus and visit the Rotunda of the National Archives Building to refresh your memory of what is contained in the Constitution.
Bring back freedom and democracy to Washington DC. Restore the fundamental right of the Second Amendment!
Since every other special interest group is issuing a litmus test on any proposed nominee by President Bush for the Supreme Court, I thought I would, too. You know, because I have so much say in the matter and everyone (*cough*) gives a rat's-patootie what I think.
My one-issue life revolves around protecting the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and specifically the Second Amendment. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales would not be good for our side of the issue. Anecdotally, the Washington Post reports:
Behind the scenes, Gonzales clashed frequently with Ashcroft's Justice Department. He felt blindsided when Ashcroft, early in the administration, announced that the department would embrace, for the first time ever, a view of the Second Amendment that regards gun possession as an individual right on a par with freedom of speech or religion.
Testifying before the U.S. Senate last week, Alberto Gonzales announced he supports President Bush's position on the semi-auto ban."The president has made it clear that he stands ready to sign a reauthorization of the federal assault weapons ban if it is sent to him by Congress," Gonzales said. "I, of course, support the president on this issue."
While some might be tempted to give Gonzales a "pass" since he was parroting his boss' position, Gonzales went even further, indicating that gun control was a heart-felt position of his own.
He spoke of his brother, who is a Houston SWAT officer, and said, "I worry about his safety and the types of weapons he will confront on the street." Hence, he supports a prohibition on semi-automatics that, in truth, only amounts to a ban on ugly guns.
I'm nervous, too, because if he is willing to curb our rights in one area, he's probably willing to curb them in others. Witness his support for the reauthorization of the Patriot Act.
I fear though that Bush and other Republicans might view Gonzales as a tool to make further inroads into the Hispanic vote which is the fastest growing demographic of voters in the country.
Update: Great minds (such as Bill Quick's) think alike.
Welcome to the July 5th edition of my Weekly Check on the Bias by media concerning firearms and the Second Amendment. Hopefully you all had a terrific and long holiday weekend.
Last week I had a well read post (thanks to InstaPundit, Kim du Toit, and others) that addressed the vote by the House of Representatives to repeal a few small parts of Washington DC's draconian gun laws. No, residents are still prohibited from buying and owning handguns (unless purchased before 1976) and concealed-carry is not yet an option in the city with one of the highest crime rates in the nation.
What they did vote to repeal was the part that says that if you do have a rifle or handgun (again, pre-1976 ownership) you no longer have to keep the gun in an unloaded, unlocked, disassembled (i.e. useless) state.
I'm not going to rehash all my arguments again (or maybe I will...) about why restoring the District's constitutional rights trumps "home rule" but instead will focus on one point concerning media bias. Sometimes all you have to do is read the lead (title) of the story to guess where the reporter comes down on the issue. The AP titled their story:
House Votes to Weaken D.C. Gun Control Law
House measure renews assault on D.C.'s gun ban law
Instead, they're "weakening" or "assaulting" gun control laws. The first paragraph of the Reuters "news service" story (and this wasn't an editorial, folks) read:
The U.S. House of Representatives dealt a blow to Washington, D.C.'s strict gun control law on Thursday when it passed an amendment that would effectively allow fully assembled rifles and pre-1976 handguns to be kept in city homes.
I'm sure you'll be astounded to learn that the measure didn't sit well with the Washington Post:
PARLIAMENTARIANS [who] gathered in Washington this holiday weekend from Europe and North America arrived just in time to witness the U.S. House of Representatives -- on the eve of the anniversary commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence -- trample upon the right of self-determination. Morphing themselves into city council members, a House majority overturned a city law and voted to allow D.C. residents to keep in their homes loaded shotguns and rifles, as well as handguns bought before 1976, unbounded by trigger locks or disassembled. The deed itself makes a mockery of Congress as a federal body. If the action is allowed to stand, however, the consequences could be even worse: The nation's capital will become a deadlier place in which to live.
Of course not! What we actually have is a set of gun control laws in The District that make a "mockery" of residents' 2nd Amendment rights and Congress is slowly working to correct that.
Note -- by the way -- the tired old chestnut that DC will be a "deadlier place...to live". The editorial writer didn't say "blood running in the streets" because, well, it already is. DC may have seen a slight drop in crime recently (and since it's only recently, obviously the 1976 ban had nothing to do with it) but the rate there is still FAR HIGHER than almost anywhere else.
The editorial continues:
The gun safety law that the House voted to repeal makes all the sense in the world. It enjoys the full backing of the city's mayor, council, police chief and, most important of all, the city's residents. Perhaps residents and their leaders want the law on the books because they know, even if the House does not, that properly locked or secured guns help prevent gun violence and accidental shootings...
The Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA) jumped into the fray:
Two prominent Virginia lawmakers are in the middle of a recurring and emotional congressional fight over repealing the District of Columbia's ban on handgun ownership.Sen. George Allen, R-Va., a potential presidential candidate in 2008, and Rep. Thomas M. Davis III, R-11th, chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, are on opposite sides.
Allen recently joined with Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, to introduce a bill that would repeal the District's handgun ban, which dates back to 1976.
When the bill was introduced in May, Allen said it was time to "give the law-abiding citizens of the capital their constitutional right to protect themselves again."
Davis, on the other hand, staked out at a hearing of his committee last week his vigorous opposition to a similar House bill.
"I personally believe that federal legislation seeking to overturn D.C.'s gun laws is an unnecessary and potentially dangerous assault on home rule," Davis warned. The Northern Virginia lawmaker took sides with District officials who view the proposed repeal as an intrusion on self-government.
"For our system of federalism and democracy to work, states and localities need to be able to make their own decisions -- even if some of us think they're bad ones," Davis said.
Rep. Thomas M. Davis III, a key player in House efforts to block the removal of Terry Schiavo's feeding tube yesterday, said he issued subpoenas to preserve evidence for a congressional investigation.[...]
He issued subpoenas to Schiavo, her husband, hospice administrators and attending physicians to "preserve the nutrition and hydration for Terri Schiavo during the period of our inquiry." The panel planned to hold a "legislative inquiry" in Florida next Friday, he said.
"This will allow us to fully understand the procedures and practices that are currently keeping her alive," he said yesterday.
Later, her feeding tube was removed, and Davis' committee filed an emergency request at the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to have it reinserted while the committee files appeals.
Waxman contended the subpoenas "were issued unilaterally by Tom Davis, acting at the request of the Republican leadership. There was no vote and no opportunity to debate the issue in committee. The process was a perversion of democracy."
If you think guns don't have any place on or near school property, don't move to Utah.A change in Virginia's law allows people with a concealed-weapons permit to carry loaded firearms when picking up students from school - as long as the guns are concealed and are kept inside vehicles.
But Utah's latest gun law goes further. It allows teachers, principals and anyone else with a concealed-weapons permit to carry weapons on school grounds. The guns can be loaded and are not restricted to vehicles.
Needless to say, there are plenty of quotes:
Shonda Harris-Muhammed, a teacher at Richmond's Armstrong High School, said there is no way parents or anyone else should bring guns near a school.Harris-Muhammed said she was livid upon hearing that Virginia's new law meant gun owners were no longer required to unload their guns before entering school property.
Mark Dozier, a teacher at Henrico County's Douglas Freeman High School, also opposes guns on school property.
"We should do as much as we can to keep loaded guns away from our schools," Dozier said. "Someone who lost their temper can put students and teachers in harm's way."
To the writer's credit, there was one quote from a teacher who did not feel threatened.
Regarding Utah's law, the gun must still be concealed and considering the rare but highly publicized school shootings over the past few years, I know I would feel safer if some of the teachers or administraters were armed and could quickly bring "an event" to a close. It might not prevent an incident but it could save at least some of the lives.
Here's another quote:
Lear, who deals with law and legislation for the Utah Board of Education, said it is understood that school employees must keep their firearms concealed. She emphasized "must," and said employees are told that consequences for failure to conceal a weapon could be severe."If you ever show that gun," she said, "you may be putting your employment at risk."
Say, how's it going in gun-free Britain? From the Guardian:
One in ten teenage schoolboys in London has carried a gun in the last 12 months, often for reasons of self-defence, according to a leaked police report.According to the Times, a study commissioned by the Metropolitan police revealed that fear is driving many youngsters in urban Britain to arm themselves with weapons from knives to real or replica guns.
Six percent of the 11 to 15-year-olds questioned said they had actually fired a real gun, 8% said they could easily get access to a handgun, and one in seven said they knew someone who had "brought a real or real-looking gun" into school.
Apart from showing the children's desire to protect themselves on city streets, the study also suggested that a new generation of armed criminals could be taking shape as children imitate adults in their communities by drifting into a gun-related lifestyle.
Perhaps the kids are correct. The streets are obviously unsafe. Criminals haven't obeyed the law (there's a concept!) and are still carrying guns. Because the thugs KNOW that their intended victims are unarmed, they go about their mutant muggings and murder without fear of resistance. Children fear for their lives because the law-abiding adults in their lives are not allowed the means to protect them. So the kids have sought-out illegal weapons and have begun protecting themselves. How'm I doing?
Washington DC, Chicago, (and soon) San Francisco take note!
To end on a much lighter note, a New Jersey police department is selling a Tommy-Gun! From the Press of Atlantic City:
It turns out that unloading a classic Thompson machine gun takes a little more than stashing it in a violin case and putting it up for sale on eBay.Nearly a year after the borough decided to sell the classic weapon - given to the borough police department in 1930 - plans are still under way to conduct an auction.
"We had to deal with some regulations from the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms," said Commissioner John Stroebele, who is handling the sale. "Basically we have to sell it to a licensed gun dealer with the proper certification to handle collectible weapons. So that means we have to do a little marketing to those dealers in New Jersey and also some surrounding states."
The machine gun is a 1921 model, one of the first mass-produced versions of the famed Tommy gun. Still, only about 15,000 were made.
"I have heard people say that it could be worth as much as $60,000 to $70,000." Stroebele said.
[...]
The gun came to the borough's police department in 1930 as a gift from one of the owners of the Thompson company to then-police Chief Richard DePamphilis. Though it has been in the borough's armory ever since, it has never been used in action.
The Thompson is one of the most famous American guns ever made. U.S. Army General John T. Thompson designed the two-handled metal gun with a 50-round drum during World War I. He teamed up with retired U.S. Naval Commander John N. Blish to develop an ultra-light automatic rifle. The 1921 version was a popular gun on fixed-wing attack planes.
Though many U.S. police departments used the gun, the Tommy is usually thought of as the weapon of choice for prohibition-era gangsters. To showcase the weapon, the borough is creating a brochure with pictures of the weapon taken from different angles to be sent to gun dealers.
James, that is, at Hell in a Handbasket. I think I'll follow the Bill Hobbs model.
I've noticed a trend lately in the media. Whenever a rifle is used in a crime, it is now referred to as an "assault rifle" even when the police or reporter have no clue as to what kind, caliber, or make the rifle was. A perfect example is the opening to this story:
FLINT—One Lapeer County man is dead, and two are injured from an assault rifle attack on their vehicle early morning Saturday.The hail of gunfire at Arthur and Kleinpell Streets in Flint left Kenneth Mark Frohm, Jr., 28 of North Branch, dead. Terry Roll, 35, of North Branch, and Robert Dwayne Griffin, 23, of Imlay City were seriously injured.
Have the cops even had time to run ballistics on the bullets? All two bullets, judging by the report of the story?
I'm not trying to minimize the crime committed against these three guys. I just wish reporters would be a little more careful about the phrases they bandy-about when writing their stories, especially with scant actual information at hand.
Specifically, harassing them for owning rifles. Aptenobytes has the story.
Not long ago on the east coast of Florida, a 30-something thug broke into the home of an elderly lady. His biggest and final surprise came when he found himself staring down the barrel of the dear lady's pistol, with which she promptly shot him dead.In my hometown, a Korean grocer has shot dead two would-be robbers on two separate occasions. Since the last one died on his floor, no one has tried to rob that particular store again.
I relay these two anecdotes to remind you that as much as we might doubt it, we live in relatively the same situation as our ancestors. We live in a country in which there are brigands, bandits, killers and rapists. If they choose us as victims, then we, like our ancestors on the frontier, will have to deal with them.[...]
I know several very tough South Korean tae kwon do masters, but any of them will tell you that if you anticipate a need to defend your life, buy a gun. A gun solves the combat problem of distance. Nobody can hit or kick you until you are within range of his fist and foot. With a gun, you can stay 10 or 15 yards away and deliver a lethal blow
[...]
The handgun is small and can be concealed. More than 30 states now allow honest citizens to get permits to carry concealed weapons. I believe this is a factor in the lower crime rate.
I'm sure that the official Alphecca Blog Scientist, Jay Manifold will be covering the collision of the comet probe with the, er, comet.
Long before she arrived in 1981 as the first woman to serve in the august chambers of the Supreme Court, she had learned to ride horses, had plinked bottles with a .22-caliber rifle and had tended to sick cows on her father's ranch in the rough-and-tumble Arizona desert. She had been an Army lawyer in Germany, launched her own law firm in an Arizona strip mall and served in that state's legislature.
[Music fades in here] I wanna' be a cowboy, and you can be my cowgirl...
I don't know what is going on but I'm suddenly not able to alter some parts of the blog. I'm waiting for Hosting Matters to get back to me. They recently updated the security on my server and now there are all sorts of error 500s.
I first wrote about this two weeks ago. Now, as expressed by some of the commenters of that post, there's plenty of misery spread around as reported in today's Ithaca Journal:
— Todd Johns sent his gun, which was given to him by his father, to Ithaca Gun Company for repairs in January.He still doesn't have his gun barrel, and last week he discovered he might never get it back because Ithaca Gun Company has closed its doors.
Johns said Ithaca Gun Company promised him a quick turnaround. He said he called the company four or five times as he waited through the spring months.
“I felt like I was getting the runaround,” Johns said. In June he called and he said the person he talked to said to call again in two weeks. Two weeks later Johns discovered Ithaca Gun Company's phone number was disconnected and the business had closed its doors due to building debt.
[...]
Juan Esteves of Puerto Rico is among the far-flung customers who are seeking answers. He sent his Ithaca Gun 20 gauge pump featherweight to the firm for work about a month ago.
Now, he's at a loss for where it is or when he'll see it again.
“I've had that gun since I was like 15 or 16,” Esteves said. “I'm presently 72.”
Andrew Sciarabba, a major investor of Ithaca Gun Company, said the company is trying to repair what it can and ship back what is in their factory.
“We are trying to, but our service is very limited,” Sciarabba said. He said they want to make sure people get their product back but at the same time they are trying to find a buyer so they don't have to foreclose their company.
I hope it all works out for the customers and the company.
My buddy Publicola has a couple of posts up here and here suggesting that just as we have Buy A Gun day and Buy Ammo Day, the pro-gun folks should also have an American Range Trip day. Read both his posts in the order I listed them. I think it's a good idea (although like many of you, a trip to the range is an at least weekly event for me) and since he asked for input, I thought I'd tweak it just a bit by making it a Bring a Friend to the Range day. As in take someone who isn't into target shooting (or guns, or doesn't like guns, etc) and show them what the sport is all about.
Regulars know that I've been posting about several programs supported by many states that encourage people to learn about and participate in the shooting sports. Perhaps a special day set aside (it would probably have to be a weekend day each year) to try to make one convert to our side of the argument that guns can be a lot of fun, or at least that with proper training and safe handling, there's nothing to be afraid of regarding them.
Head on over to his posts and offer your comments.
