Land Surveying Weblog notes that Missourians may face increased taxation to regulate well water. Looks like owners of wells would be forced to pay for and install meters and other regulatory stuff.

The Nashville Independent reports that the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services wants a law granting more leeway for entering homes.

And to regulate baseball:

As Major League Baseball’s steroid scandal widened to include the sport’s most prolific active home run hitter, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) said yesterday that he will introduce legislation imposing drug testing standards on professional athletes if baseball players and owners do not adopt a stringent crackdown on steroids by January.

No comment.

Gunner has the latest roundup of gun contests. Check it out, you might win a gun.

There may be a ban on real assault weapons in Iraq, not like that fake ban we had here. It seems that the US Military’s offer of $200 for each AK47 that Iraqis turned in wasn’t resulting in many of them being turned in. If those Iraqis could get those AKs to the US, they’d probably go for thousands of dollars. The author points out that $200 is a good deal. I think the Iraqis have it right. If such a ban were implemented, all those AK47s just went up considerably in value. The smart man invests. Additionally, not many folks are too keen on giving up the means to defend themselves for a measly $200.

Also, the Military doesn’t understand economics:

This was true despite the fact that for the insurgents it was a good deal. Partly because the coalition disbanded the Iraqi army shortly after the “Mission Accomplished” sign was hoisted in May 2003, the country is awash with weapons. AK-47s can be had on the black market for about $50. An insurgent could therefore sell his assault weapon to the coalition for about $200, replace it for $50 and have plenty of money left over for a dozen rocket grenades and a family visit to Burger King.

Offer four times the value when there are plenty available? Not a good plan. And no article on AK47s would be complete without a tie in to the NRA:

. . . such a law would probably be regarded as falling afoul of the highly influential NRA (National Rifle Association), who would point out that it violates the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The Second Amendment, they explain, permits anybody to carry his (and possibly even her) own machine gun.

Now Democrats and other losers might try to argue that the protections offered by the U.S. Constitution do not cover the Iraqi insurgents. However, since our president has just won a smashing national vote of confidence, partly by proving that he has brought liberty to the Iraqis, it would not behoove us to continue the weapons ban that was brutally enforced by the overthrown dictator Saddam Hussein.

Moreover, the NRA fears, with some justice, that the Democrats may not remain forever dead, and that in the future they might use an assault-weapons ban in Iraq as the thin edge of a wedge to extend the same lack of liberty to the people of this country.

As it is, the administration’s purchase of AK-47s is, overall, a good thing. Though the $200 price does not disarm the insurgents but instead supports them financially, the occupying forces can send the purchased weapons to the United States, where prices are much higher. By selling them here, the armed forces can not only confer liberty to the purchasers, but also increase the defense budget while still cutting taxes.

First, such a ban is in no way similar to the recently expired US assault weapons ban. In Iraq, they have machine guns. Such weapons have been regulated in the US since 1934 and, provided certain criteria are met, are legal to own subject to excessive regulation and taxes. The notion that such a ban in Iraq is remotely similar to the recently lapsed US AWB is absolutely asinine.

The Mrs. decided that this holiday season the Uncle family would do the family picture thing for Christmas cards. Her plan was to have a picture taken of me, her, Junior, Politically Correct Dog, and Politically Incorrect Dog. Since we can’t very well all head to Sears for such a wondrous occasion (large dogs at the mall during the holidays is apparently frowned upon), the plan was to have the in-laws come over and man the digital camera while the Uncle family stood around in uncomfortable clothes and tried to look happy (and comfortable) in front of the Christmas tree. So, here are the players

SayUncle: Despite the fact that I don’t do drugs, I suffer from the same ailment that afflicts comedian Jim Brewer. I look stoned in pictures. If you take 100 pictures of me, I will look stoned in 80 of them. I don’t know if I squint or if the flash makes my eyes lose focus but, as the Mrs. will attest, I look stoned in almost all of our pictures. I also am generally averse to wearing sweaters. I find them uncomfortable, scratchy, they fit too tightly, and restrict my movement. Being the holidays, I was required to wear a holiday sweater. I also can’t do the fake-smile-on-command thing. In order to smile, I have to think of something funny, be told a joke, or actually see something funny to make me smile.

Junior: She’s perfect. However, getting a five month old to smile on command is quite difficult, though less difficult than getting SayUncle to smile.

The Mrs.: She’s perfect too. She can smile on command (a quite beautiful one too). She can do this even while yelling at me.

The in-laws: One of the in-laws has the technical ability to operate our digital camera. One of the in-laws has the ability to make Junior smile on command. Unfortunately, it’s the same person with both of these abilities.

Politically Incorrect Dog: when treats are involved, he does all of his tricks at once. You pull out a treat and he will immediately sit, speak, shake and eventually become so flustered trying to do everything he knows that he’ll become a shaky, excited mass of fur and tongue.

Politically Correct Dog: when in a high-stress situation, he turns into submissive dog. He’ll generally just lie down on the ground on his back and avert his eyes from, well, everything. He’s kind of a pussy.

My initial thought on this whole adventure was that the Army Corps of Engineers couldn’t pull off getting a smiling baby, two dogs posing, and a non-stoned looking SayUncle together in one picture. The in-laws arrive and it’s on.

The first major task was getting junior to smile. At first, this was attempted by one of the in-laws jumping up and down, making odd sounds, and clapping. The problem was that, though it got Junior to smile, it made me and the Mrs. laugh as well. Not good for pictures.

The second major task was getting the dogs to sit and stay. Ordinarily, this is not a problem. However, the picture taking session lasted over an hour. You can’t expect a dog to sit and stay that long. It is also a problem for the dogs when the in-laws are caterwauling, clapping, and jumping up and down. This tends to excite the dogs. As mentioned before, Politically Correct Dog just laid down and rolled over. Also not good for pictures.

None of this worked. Eventually, Junior grew weary of the sound effects. The dogs got a little excited, then bored, then appeared to give up on life and sat there looking around. Time for other plans. We decide that the in-laws holding treats in the air for the dogs to get the dogs to sit would be a good idea. Also, instead of constant sound effects for Junior, it turns out that she smiles uncontrollably when you bounce her around. The new plan is that, with the in laws holding treats, I will bounce Junior in the air and, after the camera operator tells me she’s smiling, pull her close and pose. After about 20 minutes of bouncing and 52 snapshots, my arm hurts. Time for a break. We transfer the pictures to the computer and all the pics where the baby is smiling and dogs are behaving feature me looking quite stoned.

We try again. So, to be clear, here’s the situation:

The Mrs. is smiling patiently and dealing with my inability to look not stoned and my inability to smile. I am bouncing Junior in the air with a sore arm while trying to fake smile. I am also trying to time stopping her bounce and moving her into position for the camera click before she stops smiling. I’m doing this while thinking of that scene in PCU where the guy, who is stoned, asks Can you blow me where the Pampers is? I still laugh at that. One of the in-laws is holding a treat aloft to keep the dogs’ attention. Politically Correct Dog is trying to roll over on his back and act submissive for his treat. Politically Incorrect Dog is sitting, shaking, speaking, and doing every trick he knows to get the treat. The other in-law is trying to time the picture-taking so that we’re all doing what we’re supposed to be doing at the time the picture is taken.

Twenty later minutes and we score success. Total time: 1.5 hours. Total pictures taken: Well over 100. And it didn’t require the Army Corps of Engineers. People better appreciate these Christmas cards.

A reporter goes to the gun show:

Whether I told people I was doing an article or not, people could tell (that notebook’s a dead giveaway) that I was a commie, pinko, faggot, city slicker out to get them. And although people were generally polite, the majority refused to speak with me or give me their names. They did not want to be cited in a piece they feared would be a hatchet job.

I wonder why that is? It’s not like reporters misrepresent gun shows or anything? But I do have to give the article credit for its honesty at accurately portraying the assault weapons ban. Key quote:

It’s all actually fairly complicated and most people who would pronounce themselves pro-assault-weapons ban would have a hard time telling you what exactly is now available that wasn’t. Certainly, going to a gun show before and after the ban, your casual observer would be hard pressed to identify the newly available guns.

Indeed they would. From a distance, I sometimes can’t identify previously banned weapons. Kudos.

I have to confess to some disappointment. I am currently in the top 250 blogs in terms of traffic. I can spike a Sitemeter or two (thanks to a Googlelanche, the ‘lanche that keeps on giving). And I can’t get a nomination?

By the way, the weblog awards need a Best Gun Blogger Category. I nominate these folks:

Alphecca
Argghhh!
Backroad Blog
Because I Say So
From the Heartland
HeadsBunker
Hell In A Handbasket
Kim du Toit
Musings of The GeekWithA.45
Publicola
The Smallest Minority
TFS Magnum
TriggerFinger
WeckUpToThees!

In the first, a city tells a property owner to do something with his land or they’ll take it:

Downtown property owner Ron Lau vows he will fight the city’s attempt to seize his land for redevelopment.

“That’s unfortunate and misguided and just a flaw in how we as human beings operate,” Lau said of the city Redevelopment Agency’s plans to condemn his Pacific Avenue property that has been sitting empty since the Loma Prieta earthquake leveled much of the area in 1989.

A Hawaiian native who lives in Watsonville, Lau is a self-described free spirit who doesn’t like to be told what to do or when to do it. He owns the gaping concrete pit between Lulu Carpenter’s and the World Savings Bank branch — a spot many see as nothing but an eyesore and place for weeds to sprout in the heart of downtown.

The 20,000-square-foot lot has been appraised at $1.4 million.

Lau has 90 days to accept an offer by local developer Bolton Hill to buy the parcel. If a deal is not reached, the agency will attempt to negotiate with Lau. If that proves unsuccessful, the city says it will consider eminent domain.

The push to take the land came from a private developer. Another case of forced private party transfers.

In another case, the land has already been taken and given to a private developer. While the judgment is being appealed, another judge gave the developer the go ahead and tear down the building on it. The justification:

The financially strapped city has insisted it needs the property for the proposed Rookwood Exchange development — 200 condominiums, apartments, retail space and 550,000 square feet of office space — to bring an additional $1.8 million annually in earnings tax into the city’s coffers. The development also will generate an additional $300,000 per year for Norwood schools.

That’s pretty abysmal.

exists that police are not obligated to protect you. However, a man is suing his local sheriff’s department for his wife’s death because the police didn’t show up for more than an hour after called.

Good heavens, it’s been a while since I posted. Well, it’s been pretty hectic what with Thanksgiving travel and so forth. I’ve also been reading a lot. One of the guys at work gave away a bunch of books, and I snagged a whole box full. Of that box, I’ve managed to read Elmore Leonard’s Get Shorty which I would characterize as decent airplane reading. I haven’t seen the movie.

Then, on “Black Friday” we went to the Green Valley Book Fair where I picked up another dozen or so books. The first thing I read was Jared Diamond’s The Third Chimpanzee. I had really enjoyed his Guns, Germs, and Steel (catchy title, no?), so I thought I’d give this one a try. It was ok, but I didn’t enjoy it as much.

I’m now working on Max Boot’s The Savage Wars of Peace. I like this one quite a bit so far, and I’m eager to finish it. Up next is Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences. I’ve already read a little bit of this one; I’m afraid it may be a little tedious, but I expect I will learn quite a bit while reading it.

As if that weren’t enough, I’ve also requested Born Fighting from my local library. There was a queue of about 12 people ahead of me, so hopefully I’ll be caught up by then.

Another victim.

The Bush Administration credited Project Safe Neighborhoods for the recent reduction in gun crime. The program was designed to go after black market guns by allowing local, state and federal agencies to coordinate and prosecute crimes committed with guns. This is a worthy goal in my opinion. But, thanks to an email from Lobbygow, we learn that with $15B in pork to pay for, the program lost funding:

Key Antigun Program Loses Direct Financing

Actually, it’s not an antigun program. It’s an anti-gun-crime program. Continuing:

Congress has eliminated direct financing for a Justice Department program that has been the centerpiece of the Bush administration’s efforts to prosecute black-market gun crimes.

The move, which Congressional officials attributed to competing budget priorities, cuts federal grants to local and state law enforcement agencies in investigating and prosecuting crimes committed with guns. It also raises questions about the administration’s ability to persuade the Republican-controlled Congress to support its legislative priorities, after Republicans last month blocked an intelligence overhaul backed by the White House.

The administration had sought $45 million for local grants under the gun prosecution program, Project Safe Neighborhoods. That would have represented a sharp increase in grants for a program that President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft have hailed as a critical way to crack down on gun trafficking and gun-related crimes.

This program was not a magic pill, as overall gun crime prosecutions are low relatively speaking but, maybe because of this program, such prosecutions had been increasing.

Whatever happened to that Republican ideal of smaller government? I’m just asking because, you know, $15B is a ton of money:

The shortfall between the government’s spending and its income swelled to a record $412 billion, or 3.6 percent of national output, in the 2004 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. And yet, in the budget for that year, lawmakers were able to come up with $15 billion for more than 10,000 special projects, or what critics label “pork.”

The Geek:

Constitutional limits on federal power. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Yes, it would be. Those limits are there, just ignored.

The Shooters’ Carnival’s newest contributor, Gunscribe, has an article up about bang for the budget.

St. Louis residents getting kicked out for a new shopping center. Worse, is the shopping center will be taxpayer funded:

Smith’s south-city neighborhood near Carondelet Park is about to become the latest of many that the city is looking to grant a TIF, a thirteen-year-old tax-increment financing arrangement that allows developers tax breaks to raise new buildings in so-called blighted areas.

The Desco Development Group, a Clayton-based developer and the Schnuck family’s development company, plans to put a $40 million shopping center called Loughborough Commons on the 30-acre parcel of land at Loughborough and South Grand avenues, adjacent to I-55. Desco spokesman Steve Houston says the firm is looking to build a bigger Schnucks and a Lowe’s Home Improvement Warehouse, and to bring in some smaller retailers. The project has been in the works for eighteen months.

Another case of government taking private land to give to other private parties. That is not public use.

The GOP is discussing the idea of a national sales tax:

President Bush and House Speaker Dennis Hastert have both said the idea of a national sales tax deserves a serious look. For many, the idea of a world without the Internal Revenue Service is very seductive.

“We spend about $400 billion a year complying with the tax code. We spend $200 billion a year just filling out IRS paperwork,” said Rep. John Linder, R-Ga., who has proposed a bill that would create a national sales tax.

Proponents have spent millions on research and have concluded that a national sales tax can replace the income tax, payroll tax, estate tax and corporate tax. Advocates say the new tax would lower the cost of manufacturing and job creation and attract foreign investments, among other things.

“If we were to get rid of the sales or the income tax and the payroll tax and all compliance costs, we would be so ferociously competitive in a world economy that corporate America would not be competed with unless foreign corporations started building their plants in America,” Linder said.

Other Constitutional issues aside (i.e., is sales tax justifiable), I oppose such a proposal unless it calls for the repeal of the 16th amendment. If the sales tax passed and the sixteenth was not repealed, it would only be a matter of time before we were hit with both. After all, it’s happened in many states exactly like that.

It would eliminate compliance costs and put some accountants out of business. It would also create new forms of tax evasion. Conversely, people (not just the rich ones) could control their tax burden by controlling spending and the immediate effect would be to put money back into the economy as folks wouldn’t be paying employment taxes or having their payroll checks hit.

SKooBie emails a link to the local not-so-alternative weekly wherein our local reporter, Molly Kincaid, tries her hand at shooting some semi-automatic firearms. Aside from the misleading title of Automatics for the People (again implying the ban affected automatic weapons, which are machine guns), A taste:

When it’s my turn to shoot, the buzz that comes with firing a semi-automatic rifle for the first time is almost an afterthought. While the smokiness of spent powder and the smooth surface of the rifle’s body should arouse a tingling feeling of power or a savage prick of excitement, the concentration required to handle the hefty weapon overpowers any initial sensory stimulation.

Yes, those spray-firing, bullet hoses do require a lot of concentration. More:

Danny Guy, a safety instructor at the range, took care to familiarize me with the intricacies of the M1A rifle, which is the civilian equivalent of the M14, the military’s primary weapon for a few years prior to the escalation of the Vietnam War in 1966. Before each shuddering shot, he reminds me to “align my sights” then “look through the black halo” (a tiny black circular sight that aids in aim) and “undo the safety” then “squeeze through the soft spot and finally, the trigger.” All these steps commingle in my mind as I crouch close to the gun, tunnel my vision through the halo, eyes blurring. Before I know it, I’ve shot the beast of a weapon, and its stock is slamming back into my shoulder, knocking loose my senses from their transfixed numbness. Only then does an ambiguous excitement tempered with relief begin to set in.

Excellent. Good choice of weapon and it sounds like the instructor gave a pretty good lesson. Molly then addresses the Assault Weapons Ban. She then goes down the list of restrictive features and notes that guns with those features could not be sold or manufactured. Actually, a gun that accepts a detachable magazine can have one of those features. Her instructor gets one point wrong:

Flash suppressers (sic), attached to the tip of the barrel to diminish the visible flash, were also forbidden under the ban. “They would be useful at night, for the military, for example. It would keep the enemy from knowing where the fire came from,” says Guy.

Actually, the purpose of the flash suppressor is to hide the flash from the shooter. In a weapon without a flash suppressor, the flash exits the barrel in all directions. This makes it difficult to see. For a military shooter or a competition shooter who needs a little speed, this flash prevents him from maintaining sight picture for follow up shots. The suppressor disburses the flash to the sides of the barrel and out of the sight picture.

On magazines, she states:

The most significant difference in the gun market since the ban expired is the increased capacity space of the magazine (the cartridge which holds the bullets). Before the ban, no magazine could be sold or manufactured (for long guns or handguns) that held more than 10 rounds.

Actually, they could be sold but no new ones could be manufactured. There was no shortage of regular capacity magazines. The only effects of the magazine limit were that the cost went up; manufacturers made new guns that accepted older magazines; and the US military had a difficult time getting its hands on quality magazines (since there was no civilian market, companies stopped making them).

On what people are shooting since the ban expired:

“We haven’t seen much of a change in the weapons people use here [since the ban expired] because so many people had licenses to shoot these guns during the ban,” says Guy of the significant loophole in the legislation.

I was unaware shooting and owning a gun required a license. There was no loophole in the ban. It was just bad law all the way around. The assault weapons issue was invented in the late 1980s when gun ban groups realized that they were losing (and badly) at their goal of banning handguns. They invented the term. The weapons covered by the ban merely looked like military assault rifles but were functionally identical to your daddy’s semi-automatic Browning deer rifle. In fact, congressional staffers came up with the list of 19 banned weapons by looking through gun magazines and highlighting the ones that looked mean. If you were pro-gun, it was bad law because it restricted the aesthetic features your gun could have. If you were anti-gun, it was bad law because it didn’t ban semi-automatic weapons. The ban was watered down because there was no way it would have passed through Congress otherwise. Also, the 10 year sunset was added to get it to pass. The assault weapons ban was a purely symbolic gesture to rally the gun control crowd.

I found this particularly interesting:

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, which provides background checks for all guns purchased in Tennessee, gives statistics that would tend to further the notion that the ban’s expiration was a mere blip on the radar of the gun world. Records from October 2004 show that TBI processed 20,484 total firearms—only a handful more guns than the 19,499 they processed in October of 2003, when the ban was still in effect. Not exactly a sales boom.

Not a significant jump, which I find odd. I had to wait three weeks to get a lower receiver for an AR15 and I had to wait nearly a month for a 30 round Ruger 10/22 magazine. The number from the TBI doesn’t represent people like me who went out and bought some items related to the restricted features (like folding stocks) or who bought regular capacity magazines.

She then discusses something we agree on, some weirdos at the gun show. I was there, too bad she didn’t chat me up. And she addresses the private party transfer section of the Brady Bill, which reporters refer to as the gun show loophole. Or as I call it lawful commerce.

I think she tried to be fair but, given her limited knowledge of guns, may have mixed up a few terms. Overall, I respect any read about the issue that doesn’t repeat anti-gun talking points and isn’t hysterical in nature. Good for Molly.

Well, you have a blog. Then someone creates a blog that is one big death threat to you.

I still hate the damn things. As a property owner, I find them vile. A good sized flock can turn acres of grass into a pile of turds in a few days. They’re loud, obnoxious, stupid, and generally unpleasant. They are also protected by some arbitrary migratory bird laws. The only good they provide is exercise for Politically Incorrect Dog. He tends to run full force toward any flocks of them he happens to come across. An environmental lawyer friend of mine told me that was OK as long as I wasn’t turning him loose on them. He hasn’t managed to catch one yet because they can get airborne quickly when they have to. And 75 pounds of bull dog qualifies as having to.

I hate geese. Now I have another reason to hate them. They are, again, sucking at the government teat. They could just gas them, like New Jersey does.

Rich is also back.

Heh! The media seems to be having some trouble with math.

Chris Muir is back to publishing Day by Day. Welcome back!

VPC Press Release:

“Armed hunters were no match for one person firing an SKS assault rifle,” said Kristen Rand, VPC legislative director. “This sad incident illustrates why the SKS is also a leading cop-killing rifle in America today.”

Actually, there was one armed hunter who was probably shot first. And it likely wasn’t an SKS but another rifle also not covered by the assault weapons ban.

Rand pointed out that the SKS assault rifle was not covered by the recently expired 1994 federal assault weapons ban. The VPC criticized the 1994 law as inadequate and favors enactment of a tougher version of the law that would ban the SKS and many other assault weapons that easily slipped through the old law’s loopholes.

The old law’s loopholes being, of course, that not everything was an assault weapon. As David Workman says:

Wisconsin case about murder, not political football

Though I’ve never commented on the VPC’s trailer before, here it is:

The Violence Policy Center is a national non-profit educational foundation that conducts research on violence in America and works to develop violence-reduction policies and proposals. The Center examines the role of firearms in America, conducts research on firearms violence, and explores new ways to decrease firearm-related death and injury.

Actually, the VPC conducts no real research. They tend to make it up.

In a record for me, the comments to this post are out of control and that’s considering that I’ve deleted about 15 of them for some generally offensive comments. I may have to shut them down. A comment there provides more information on the Chai Vang incident than the press is giving us. It is from a resident of Rice Lake:

One is that the reason they only had one gun between a group of 20 hunters is…There was only one set of hunters in the woods actually hunting when they noticed Mr. Vang (definately more respect than I should give him) sitting in a fellow hunters’ stand. So..there was only ONE gun needed in the woods at that time. When the altercation happened with Vang and a couple of other hunters came out of the cabin, they had no reason to bring out weapons. And again…after Vang began his massacre and the others came out after recieving a call for help, they weren’t thinking anything that bad was happening out there, so they did not bring weapons. They left 2 younger hunters inside the cabin and went to find out what was going on. One of the boys was a nephew and a son of some who were getting killed in the woods. I know that one of the hunters that survived said that one of the land owner (who died) did say something to Vang after he refused to leave that wasn’t nice. But when someone isn’t listening to you and you needed the stand for your family for the days hunt and you started out trying to be nice, you tend to raise your voice a bit. And he said some profane things as well. Which isn’t shocking. But he wasn’t going to shoot at Mr. Vang. I know this because he was an upstanding member and business owner in our community. He was prideful in our tradition of hunting and excited to be hunting with his sons and nephews and friends. The son who was screaming “Help Me!! Help Me!!” as Vang chased him down and shot him 4 times in the back. The friends who were shot of the 4 wheeler 3 times each in the back as they were trying to get away, not be confrontational. One of the people on that ATV that was shot off of it and hit 3 times in the back was a woman. (sic)

It is, of course, all here-say but provides some detail (though questionable) about the cold-bloodedness involved.

Melissa Meagher, in a piece called Gun Control Gone Wrong:

…the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has connected a number of guns used in crimes to flea markets and gun shows.

Yes, and that number is 1% and 0.7%, respectively. Not exactly astronomical. So, like good little reporters, they set off to engage in legal and illegal activities:

Armed with an undercover camera, the WAFF 48News Investigators sent one of our producers to the Collinsville Flea Market in Dekalb County. In minutes, he was able to buy a 22-caliber handgun.

Our producer asked the dealer, “I don’t have to sign anything, do I?”

The dealer replied, “No.”

Then he asked our producer how old he was. When our producer told him he was 29, the dealer said, “Well, I thought you was old enough. You’re fine. Come back and see me.”

For $200, he walked away with the gun without ever showing an ID or even giving his name.

This was a private transfer and no law was broken. Lawful commerce, nothing more to see here. But then:

Next, with his parent’s permission, we sent in one of our 16-year old employees to a different dealer at the flea market.

The dealer told him he could give a firearm to him for $90, but the teenager told him he had to go back to his car to get the money.

Even though the dealer negotiated a price for a firearm and never asked for ID, we chose not to complete the sale.

While it is illegal under federal law to knowingly sell a firearm to a minor, there is no requirement that private individuals verify age. Unless the seller was willfully selling to a minor, there is no crime. Well, no crime other than the fact that a news agency sent a kid in to break the law. Good thing he did not complete the purchase.

I dunno that I’ve ever been linked in Chinese before.