This is rather lame:

Sakinah Aaron was walking into the bus area at the Wheaton Metro station several weeks ago, talking loudly on her Motorola cell phone. A little too loudly for Officer George Saoutis of the Metro Transit Police.

The police officer told Aaron, who is five months pregnant, to lower her voice. She told the officer he had no right to tell her how to speak into her cell phone.

Their verbal dispute quickly escalated, and Saoutis grabbed Aaron by the arm and pushed her to the ground. He handcuffed the 23-year-old woman, called for backup and took her to a cell where she was held for three hours before being released to her aunt. She was charged with two misdemeanors: “disorderly manner that disturbed the public peace” and resisting arrest.

Those are the facts on which both sides agree.

Even though loud cell-phone talkers annoy the crap out of me, they shouldn’t be arrested for it. Hit about the head and neck area by passers-by, sure. Arrested, no. More:

Transit Police and some Metro officials say Saoutis was protecting the peace by removing a woman who had overstepped the boundaries of civil behavior because she was loudly cursing into her phone.

They say that cell phones have become just another instrument of loutish behavior in the public space and that they are fighting a dramatic deterioration of manners in the transit system.

I’m afraid it’s not up to the police to determine what oversteps the boundaries of civil behavior. That would be a matter of law, not law enforcement. It may be offensive, but it doesn’t warrant being taken to the ground, handcuffed and jailed.

The Lawrence Journal-World, which coincidentally is almost as dumb a name for a newspaper as Post Intelligencer, writes:

Justice for killer pit bull delayed by lax enforcement

In Lawrence, owners of dogs found to be “dangerous” must do what a judge orders them to do, such as building a secure pen and registering the dog with the city. If owners don’t comply after 15 days, the law says, the dog will be impounded or put to sleep.

But that’s not exactly what happened in the case of a pit bull that attacked and killed a Chihuahua named Peanut this spring. For more than three months, the pit bull’s owner was allowed to keep the dog without meeting the conditions ordered by Municipal Court Judge Randy McGrath.

The case finally came to a close Thursday, when the pit bull’s owner admitted he hadn’t met all the conditions, city officials said. He was fined $250, and the dog was impounded and probably will be put to sleep this week.

But Tom Fellers, Peanut’s owner, said the fact the pit bull was allowed to remain in the community for so long shows that the city’s system doesn’t have enough teeth.

“It’s a weak law, and it was very weakly enforced by the court once the dog was determined to be dangerous,” Fellers said. “That’s not acceptable.”

While I generally support such a law because it requires that the owner of the pet be held responsible, I don’t like the fact that the reporter used the word justice. Animals don’t comprehend justice and it isn’t applicable to them. The dog probably doesn’t remember the incident and killing the dog isn’t going to dissuade other dogs from doing the same. Justice, like irony, is lost on dogs.

Of course, I like to wait until politically incorrect dog falls asleep on the couch, then I jump on the couch to wake him up. I do this because when I fall asleep, he hops on the couch and wakes me up. While I get a bit of satisfaction out of it, my dog doesn’t get it.

Via Tom: No this isn’t me.

Me and a buddy went to this weekend’s gun show. I had the itch and, dammit, I was going to buy something. I did, more on that later. The show was disappointing. There wasn’t any post-post ban stuff there. What little bit was there was ridiculously high in price. I guess the streets aren’t flooded yet. Regular capacity magazines were still running high in price (except one guy who had regular capacity Glock magazines stamped Law Enforcement Only – which now means nothing – for $29. He planned ahead and bought in advance, apparently). People were still trying to sell AR mags for $20 (sorry, no ban and I expect to pay less than $10) and people still had pre-ban prices on pre-ban guns. Mind you, you can get a brand new one that is identical for much, much less, if you can find one.

I decided a while back that I wanted a shorty AR and that I wanted an AK clone. I decided to combine the two and got an AR15 kit that is chambered in 7.62X39. I’ve heard some of these have feeding problems due to magazine issues. We’ll see how it works. I bought the kit from the fine folks at J&T Distributing and began looking for a lower receiver. Problem is, they don’t exist. People are snatching them up. One guy at the show had one and he wanted $275 for it (they sell new for $120). I asked him why it was so high and he said because it was pre-ban. I almost told him there wasn’t a ban anymore but felt I’d be wasting my breath. Obviously, I passed on his lower.

I started calling all the gun shops I know of and none of them had receivers. Finally, I stopped by Predator Custom Shop and ordered one (for $120) that should be here in a week or two. The guy told me that since the ban, he can’t keep any ARs or lowers. He said he sold 28 ARs and 16 lowers since 9/13. He also told me there is only one supplier who can keep up with his demand and that’s the lower I ordered.

So, to conclude:

Gun dealers are either bastards or don’t know the ban is gone and that people will no longer pay $1,500 for a $700 rifle. Nor will they pay $100 for a $20 magazine.

Only one dealer had the foresight to try to meet the demand caused by the ban’s expiration.

Nobody stocked post-post ban guns. No one. Just kits.

Good luck getting a lower receiver for an AR15.

I think I saw my first this weekend. Went to Lowe’s and bought some stuff but the grill I bought wouldn’t fit in the truck. The plan was to take the Mrs., Junior and all our stuff home then go back and get the grill. On the way home, we saw some people carrying signs at the AAA building. Then, going back to Lowe’s, there were hundreds of pro-lifers on Lamar Alexander Parkway holding up signs from the court house all the way to the 129 bypass. I got the grill, headed back (total time of thirty minutes) and when I got back to the parkway, they were all gone. Like they were never there. You don’t see that every day.

A federal judge ruled Tennessee’s choose-life license plates unconstitutional.

Alphie reports that Kerry’s camp is claiming that Kerry’s Chinese assault weapon is really an old bolt action:

[A campaign spokesman] said the gun had no make or model markings on it and that Mr. Kerry “got it from a friend years ago,” adding that such rifles were first manufactured in Russia more than 100 years ago and were used by the North Koreans and the Vietcong….

Though the comment was presented by Outdoor Life as part of an “exclusive interview with the two presidential candidates,” four pages that included many long, conversational answers using first-person pronouns, Mr. Meehan said Mr. Kerry’s portions were written by his staff. A public relations representative for Outdoor Life did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Show us the rifle, Senator. And as Alphie says:

Did the enemy really use 70-year-old guns or did they use the ones flooding across the border from China? Whatever, one thing is sure: Kerry sure does hire some blundering idiots for his staff. I wonder who he plans to put in his cabinet?

So, again, Kerry proves that he, marketing himself as a pro-gun candidate, doesn’t know much about guns. I have to wonder, if he really thinks an old bolt action is an assault weapon, does he want those banned as well?

Jeff has the latest.

Michael Bowen on Kerry’s unnatural looking handling of guns:

Ronald Reagan’s daughter Patti once told a story from her childhood about watching, with her father, a movie starring Doris Day and Rock Hudson. When they kissed in the final scene, it just didn’t seem right to her. Awkward, somehow unnatural. She asked her dad about it, and he answered matter-of-factly, “You see, honey, Mr. Hudson doesn’t have much experience with kissing women. He’d really rather be kissing a man.”

Kerry’s shotgun waving, skeet shooting, and bird hunting are just a pose. His heart is really in the gun control camp, and when he appears at the range or in the field, his tin ear shows through every time. His gun-handling habits are awkward, and at times actually unsafe. If you’re all familiar with shooting, it’s like watching Rock Hudson kissing Doris Day.

The New York Times notes that:

Senator John Kerry, a hunter who supported the recently expired assault weapons ban, frequently tells audiences he has never met anyone who wanted to use an AK-47 to shoot a deer. But it is not clear what Mr. Kerry does with the Chinese assault rifle he told Outdoor Life magazine he kept in his personal collection.

In interviews appearing in the October issue of Outdoor Life, Mr. Kerry and President Bush were asked whether they were gun owners, and, if so, to identify their favorite gun.

Mr. Bush named the Weatherby 20 gauge (although he gave a slightly different answer in a separate chat with Field and Stream magazine.) Mr. Kerry’s answer was more complicated.

“My favorite gun is the M-16 that saved my life and that of my crew in Vietnam,” Mr. Kerry told the magazine. “I don’t own one of those now, but one of my reminders of my service is a Communist Chinese assault rifle.”

Mr. Kerry’s campaign would not say what model rifle Mr. Kerry was referring to, where he got it and when, or how many guns he owned. A spokesman for the senator, Michael Meehan, said Mr. Kerry was a registered gun owner in Massachusetts. On Thursday morning, Mr. Meehan said he had not been able to ask Mr. Kerry about the rifle because of Mr. Kerry’s hoarse voice; he did not respond to further inquiries.

Kevin has the round up on this issue. All I would add is:

Show us the gun, senator. Is this a typical case of it’s Ok for you but not the little people?

The Courier Post has said, surprising to most, that criminals don’t obey gun laws. Actually, what they say is that Federal gun ban’s demise will weaken N.J. protections:

The good news is that New Jersey’s ban on assault weapons still stands despite the refusal by the Republican-dominated Congress to renew a federal ban.

The bad news is that, without the federal ban in place, it’s only a matter of time before military-style weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines start showing up in New Jersey after first being purchased legally in other states.

Because criminals don’t obey laws. More:

It’s a travesty that this successful ban on dangerous devices designed to kill people was allowed to disappear.

Police officials said that, before President Clinton signed the bill into law in 1994, weapons such as those banned by the law were the instruments of choice for organized gangs. Since the ban, violent crime has declined every year, reaching its lowest level ever in 2003, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Actually, no the didn’t. In fact, the Trenton, NJ chief Joseph Constance said in 1993:

Since police started keeping statistics, we now know that assault weapons are/were used in an underwhelming 0.026 of 1% of crimes in New Jersey. This means that my officers are more likely to encounter an escaped tiger from the zoo than to confront an assault weapon in the hands of of a drug-crazed killer on the streets

Keeble McFarlane:

Once again, the gun fetishists who with their overflowing coffers and braying voices tend to drown out anyone who tries to talk reason in the United States have won out over common sense. On Monday of last week, two days after what’s become a new annual tradition of wallowing in grief over the attacks on the World Trade Centre in 2001, the US Congress let a 10-year-old law banning the sale of certain types of guns lapse without so much as lifting a finger to renew it. The law banned the sale of certain types of military assault weapons, such as Uzis, AK-47s and AR-15s, which are capable of firing multiple rounds when the trigger is squeezed.

The ban doesn’t affect machine guns. Only machine guns are capable of firing multiple rounds when the trigger is squeezed.

So…where in the Constitution does it say that the federal government has been granted permission to pay for “health care” and education?

And if you say “general welfare,” please turn in your voter registration card; you obviously don’t understand the Constitution and are a danger to our Republic.

That’s what this article says. Of course, by police chiefs they mean one police chief in Dyersberg. What is particularly funny is this image (go ahead and look, I’ll wait). Neither weapon shown was covered by the ban. Both are post ban models.

Dyersburg Police Chief Bobby Williamson is an idiot.

What is wrong with this picture?

Today’s idiot is Thomas Withers, who apparently wants us to know he’s a former member of the NRA. This idiot thinks the expiration of the ban will mark the end of the NRA as a political force:

Eventually, someone with an assault weapon — as before the ban — will assassinate all the customers in a fast food store or kill a dozen or more workers in a manufacturing plant, all with a gun that doesn’t need reloading. When this happens, as it did in Australia, Britain and California, there will be an uprising unlike any we have ever seen demanding common-sense gun control laws we would have except for paranoia in the National Rifle Association.

The laws enacted will require the registration of all gun owners, the registration of all guns owned, and limit the number of guns a person may buy in a year. Mention these three laws, and any NRA member worth his shooter’s cap will have a panic attack.

The expiration of the assault weapons ban should be a wake-up call to expose the warped thinking and mendacious actions of the NRA. We don’t have to wait for a mass murder. A good place to begin is by showing that the NRA’s “patriotic” defense of the Second Amendment is nothing more than hogwash. It uses the Second Amendment as a smokescreen to defend its irrational and illogical proposals under the pretext that legality equals sanity.

Eventually, the murder will happen. But I’ll bet the assault weapons ban would not have prevented it, just like it didn’t prevent Columbine.

Apparently, someone is going to gas stations in Ohio and telling them they need to put up No CCW signs because they sell beer:

There is someone going around (again) to Summit county convenient stores and gas stations telling them that they must post ‘No CCW’ signs because they sell alcohol. The gentleman in question is even nice enough to give the stores the ‘No CCW’ signs free of charge. I have compiled info and supplied it to a couple stores. Upon seeing the truth, they have removed the signs.

North Little Rock is looking at passing breed specific legislation:

Some North Little Rock residents are seeking a ban on pit bulls and the city council will be holding public hearings on the proposal.

North Little Rock updated its vicious dog ordinance last year to prohibit wolf hybrids, but didn’t ban a specific breed.

Pit bulls actually are not a breed, but rather a group of dogs with similar traits and characteristics, according to the Pit Bull Rescue Central Web site.

The proposal would allow pit bull owners who currently have a city dog license or who get one before the ordinance goes into effect, to keep their dogs. But the owners must register the dog by allowing city Animal Services to tattoo it for identification
purposes.

Unlicensed pit bulls or those brought into the city after the law takes effect would be illegal and violators could be criminally prosecuted.

Kudos to KATV for actually researching what a pit bull really is. Shame on them for not presenting the other side of the argument, which is basically that breed specific legislation has many problems and doesn’t work.

CBS again tries to equate the assault weapons ban as a health issue:

But it’s difficult to imagine that gun-control laws didn’t have at least something to do with the drop. And that’s what has health-care professionals worried now that a federal ban on assault-weapons and gear like large-capacity ammunition clips has been allowed to lapse after 10 years.

While there is a tremendous political debate over gun laws, in America’s emergency rooms and trauma centers the questions are not about politics but about carnage: How many more victims will have to be treated and at what cost to society?

Health-care reporter Kristen Gerencher’s Vital Signs looks at the public-health issues surrounding the demise of the assault-weapons ban. Read her column, plus see what the IMF thinks about the possibility of a global bubble in housing prices and get retirement columnist Robert Powell’s advice on figuring just how big your nest egg needs to be, on Thursday’s Personal Finance pages.

Yes, the assault-weapons ban was flawed. But if we’re not willing to at least try to take some military-like shooting instruments off the streets we better be prepared to pony up with more sutures, gauze, IVs and plasma.

These weapons were used in such a minuscule number of crimes that the impact would be utterly insignificant. The blood in the streets, AK47s, and weapon of choice for terrorists angle didn’t work so we’re up to something else.

Since he asked, molon labe.

SFGate:

Pelosi developed the New Partnership based on a consensus of ideas put forward by Democratic members. As a result, the platform — which will be distributed to all Democratic House candidates on a palm-sized card they can use on the stump — doesn’t mention such divisive issues as abortion, the expired assault weapons ban or same-sex marriage.

A friend of mine has a cool job. Her and her little team try to sneak bombs, guns, knives, and other such devices of mayhem (all fake, of course) on airplanes. She tells me her team has never been caught. So, this doesn’t surprise me:

Undercover investigators were able to sneak explosives and weapons past security screeners at 15 airports nationwide, according to a government report on aviation security.

The government watchdog for the Department of Homeland Security, Clark Kent Ervin, delivered the results of the tests in a classified report to members of Congress. “The performance was poor,” said Ervin, the department’s inspector general, in releasing a less detailed version Wednesday.

The tests were done during the second half of 2003. But they highlight ongoing vulnerabilities in the nation’s aviation security system, particularly in detecting explosives such as those that Russian authorities say were used to bring down two airliners last month.

But don’t ever show the screeners your tweezers.

A truth commonly taught in self defense classes, particularly the rape/abduction prevention classes for women, is you don’t allow yourself to go to the second location. If someone abducts you and gets you in the trunk of a car or to a basement, it’s over for you. Not only is it over, it is usually particularly brutal and the abductor can take their time, have the advantage of no witnesses, and do whatever psychotic things they’re going to do. Make your stand at the abduction point.

The recent spate of executions of hostages in Iraq should be a testament to that. I am uncertain of the details of their abduction but I am fairly certain that their last few days were horrible. They were likely beaten, humiliated, tortured, belittled, and had their spirits broken. How else could you explain their demeanor in the tapes in which they beg leaders to give in to demands so their lives would be spared? I can say all that I want that I would never do such a thing but I have not experienced torture nor have I endured what those poor souls went through. And I never will.

At the abduction point, you have a choice to cooperate vs. flee or fight. Your odds at successfully fleeing or fighting are better at the abduction point and almost non-existent at the second location. You can scream, hit, shoot, or whatever at the first location. At the second, you will be restrained or otherwise incapacitated. You should fight and attempt to flee no matter what the cost before this point. You may die. And you may still be abducted but it is your best option. The alternative (certain death following brutality) is much more hideous. And by fight, fight for your life. Fight with all you have. Never stop. Never give in. Fight dirty. Fight mean. And make a lot of noise. Die on your feet if you have to. You cannot reason with them at the second location, they have too much invested in you.

These poor folks who were abducted and subsequently brutally murdered (likely after being tortured) would have stood a better chance at the first location. We wouldn’t be seeing videos of them begging for their lives or having their heads sawed off by a bunch rabid zealots.

When you go down, you go down fighting.

Heh. Well, not really Heh as in funny. More like Heh as in what the hell.

Bob Barr:

The debate over “assault weapons” was largely unheard of prior to the late 1980s. It was in 1988 that gun ban advocate Josh Sugarman told gun control advocates they needed a new issue around which to rally public support for their efforts to restrict handgun possession. The new issue became “assault weapons.”

Actual “assault weapons” were long defined to be military-style weapons capable of fully automatic firing — guns already heavily regulated and illegal in the hands of all but a miniscule portion of the civilian population since the 1930s. Despite that, Sugarman and his followers began throwing the term around to describe all sorts of firearms that were not capable of automatic firing.

The ploy worked. Members of both houses of Congress jumped on board, led by Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California and then-House member (now Sen.) Charles Schumer of New York. They used the term so often — and so disingenuously — that the public largely bought into the argument that so-called “assault weapons” were flooding our streets, and that AK-47s and Uzi submachine guns were killing innocent Americans day in and day out in communities all across America. (Of course, this wasn’t happening, but that didn’t slow the propaganda.)

The ban has always represented a symbol for gun control and nothing more. With it gone, they are losing. The push for it will continue.

Amy Fisher is either an idiot or a liar:

In 1994, President Clinton signed into law the ban of 19 types of dangerous assault weapons. There was a stipulation, or “sunset clause,” which stated the ban would be lifted in 10 years if Congress didn’t renew it. President Bush claims he would sign the bill renewing the ban if it made its way across his desk. Unbelievably, these assault weapons that will now flood the streets of the United States are the same type our military is trying so hard to get off the streets of Iraq.

Lie number one. The weapons in Iraq are machine guns. The assault weapons ban did not affect machine guns.

In 1994 the Internet wasn’t commonplace in every home, providing people with unlimited access to just about any type of information they desire. The Internet has also become a tool for the unethical and even the criminal to market products such as legalized guns and medications, without really knowing to whom they are selling these products. . . It only stands to reason that there will be opportunists offering assault weapons like Uzis, AK-47s and TEC-9s online without giving a second thought as to who the purchaser is on the other side of the screen. Online gun distributors have already offered assault weapons and related products for presale so that anyone who wanted these items could have them in their hands on Sept. 13th, when the ban expired.

And any legal firearms purchase done online is required to go through a Federally Firearms License, aka a gun store owner. You don’t just hop on Ebay and buy a gun. If you do, you’re breaking the law.

A global tax on gun purchases:

This is not the first time Chirac and other world leaders have called for a global tax.

Last year, some at the G8 summit meeting floated the idea of a global tax on arms sales, including – at Chirac’s suggestion – a tax on gun purchases by individuals.

In a speech at the annual meeting of the “Group of Eight,” or G8, da Silva pushed the arms-sales tax as a scheme whereby the world’s wealthiest nations could fund efforts to eliminate world hunger.

Wreaking of desperation:

Gun-law demise worries health experts
End of assault-weapon ban may add to trauma costs

[snip]

Specifics aside, what the assault-weapons ban really did was make injury prevention a national priority, medical experts said.

“For a decade, we had a national consensus that included the policymakers that we had to be careful, at least a bit careful, about what kind of weapons we put out there,” said Dr. Katherine Kaufer Christoffel, a professor of pediatrics and preventive medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.

“What the elimination of the assault-weapons ban says to me is we’re going back to viewing this as a purely criminal-justice issue and not a public-health issue, and I think that’s a mistake, a turn in the wrong direction.”

Freedom is not a public-health issue, you loon. Additionally, since these weapons were involved in an underwhelming less than one percent of crimes, it’s quite a stretch to speculate on it’s impact on health care costs. Those costs will be insignificant if not non-existent.

Go read this. So full of misinformation and lies, it’s not funny. I left a comment (and you should too!) there and we’ll see if the editor decides to print it.

Apparently, Australian politicos think Americans have some sort of disease:

we will find any means we can to further restrict them [Guns – ed.] because I hate guns. I don’t think people should have guns unless they’re police or in the military or in the security industry. There is no earthly reason for people to have … ordinary citizens should not have weapons. We do not want the American disease imported into Australia.”

So, how’s that gun ban thing working for you guys anyway? And, for what it’s worth, I think that is the most pro-gun I have seen Tim Lambert because he disagrees with that statement.