Bubba has an update to RTB membership. Welcome aboard, all.
In other news, Mike has apparently quit the RTB due to some joke Bubba made at the expense of Bill Hobbs. Mike may be taking it a bit too far. Sure, Bubba and Bill have had their little tussles but a joke is a joke. Hate to see Mike go.
In Maine, there is a bill in the works to ban weapons that look like assault weapons. A few notes about the bill:
Strimling wants to give Maine law enforcement leeway to develop a system to identify new assault weapons and add them to the list.
An open ended list sounds like a very bad idea. It is also subject to abuse by the powers that be.
Strimling says military-grade weapons are unnecessary and dangerous and he calls his bill a commonsense approach to gun control. Maine Citizens Against Handgun Violence supports his bill.
Ethan Strimling is a liar. This bill does not ban military-grade weapons. It bans weapons that look like military weapons.
A while back, I mentioned a child who found a security guard’s gun in the bathroom and how proper gun safety likely saved him. The Knox County Sheriff’s office gave him a special safety certificate:
Billy says he knew not to touch the gun because he had participated in a gun safety program at his school.
“I saw the gun and I didn’t want to touch it so I told my dad,” he said.
Katy Davis says this is just the outcome her office hopes for when students receive safety training at school.
“It’s very rewarding to know that teaching safety lessons can save a kid’s life.”
The “Eddie Eagle” gun safety program, sponsored by the National Rifle Association, is designed to teach children the risks of touching an unattended gun.
The NRA saving children.
Speaking of the LA Times, an editorial entitled Remember Gun Control:
Over the last four years, the president and his congressional allies have repudiated or quietly eviscerated key gun laws and regulations.
Really, name one?
Now they are poised to shield firearms makers and sellers from nearly all damage claims when their products kill or maim. Not only is this a gift no other industry enjoys, it’s a truly bad idea that even gun owners have reason to oppose.
I support it merely to annoy hysterical bed-wetters like the editorial board of the LA Times. However, the bill just shields dealers who lawfully sell products from lawsuits that result from the misuse of those products. The analogy, of course, is suing Ford because that’s what kind of car a drunk moron happened to be driving when he plowed into a family of six.
Last year, Republican congressional leaders simply ran out the clock on the 10-year-old federal assault gun ban, refusing to even call a vote on renewing it despite steady popular support for the law.
Another lie. I watched, live on CSPAN, as Congress brought the bill up, voted on it and then killed the overall bill.
And now, the real hysteria:
With it died the ban on domestically made ammunition clips with more than 10 rounds, a boon for any disgruntled employee, terrorist or high school student who wants to mow down a crowd.
Actually, there was only a ban on making or importing new ones. There will still plenty around from before the ban. I’d venture to guess that over 95% of all AK magazines on Earth were made prior to 1994.
Meanwhile, a Government Accountability Office study examining FBI and state background-check records found that 35 people whose names appeared on terrorism watch lists were able to buy a gun. Incredibly, a would-be buyer’s presence on a watch list does not disqualify him or her from buying a firearm.
Yeah, that pesky due process of law.
It would even block injury suits from gun owners. That means gun owners can’t sue if poorly made handguns explode in their hands or fire unintentionally.
Another blatant lie. The bill will not protect manufacturers who make faulty or defective products.
Aaron has gone all Buy A Gun Day all the time. He wants to get 214 bloggers on board since the Second Amendment is 214 years old.
Laura Washington wrote a piece a while back that just reeked of hysteria an misinformation. Some snippets:
Political leaders nourish culture of deadly gun violence
No, they don’t.
We have become inured to “a culture of death.” That’s what the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence calls it.
Using the Brady Bunch as a reference?
Last September, Congress and Bush allowed the 1994 federal ban on assault weapons to expire. The law kept AK-47s and other semiautomatic assault weapons off the streets and out of the hands of the gang-bangers and drug dealers who trade in them.
I promise you that the AWB kept nothing off the streets. People predisposed to break laws will keep doing so.
Unless we get serious about gun control, the killing will continue. There is a gun around every corner. One of them could have your name, or the name of your child, on it. Live — and die — with that.
Serious like Australia, England or Canada? All three of which, after sweeping gun control, saw their violent crime rise?
Anyhoo, Laura wrote a column this week wherein she reprinted a bunch of letters from people about her hysterical column. She got over 100 pro-gun letters and exactly four gun control letters. She concludes with:
The gun control lobby needs to get on the stick. Now.
I don’t think she understands what the issue really is.
Update: Yeah, you damn spelling gurus.
Head has consolidated links to his series on building your own AK47 and answered questions from readers. A good resource for those of you who like doing it yourself.
It includes a bunch of legal info too. This gun law stuff is quite complex.
Homemade Sausage Just Tastes Better
Kinda interesting to see how much free federal money is used and misused locally.
Patterico reports that GM pulled its advertising from the LA Times for factual errors and misrepresentations. Of course, those factual errors and misrepresentations were specific to GM.
Good news: Maryland’s assault weapons ban is done for.
Bad news: So is concealed carry.
So says kirk.
A reader emails a link to the International Network on Small Arms propaganda arm. Ghana’s government supports disarmament. More propaganda here.
This stuff is almost comical. After all, if you disarm a bunch of Africans, what could possibly go wrong?
A reader emails this article, which specifies that CCW holders can’t carry their weapons into certain places. Unless, of course, you are retired and current police officers, private detectives, corrections officers, auxiliary officers and security personnel.
Lawmakers in Georgia are again looking to ban Pit Bulls. The news piece even has a hysterical piece labeled Animal Outlaw, though I don’t think the dog listed is a pit bull. The entire article:
[16 paragraphs describing one incident where four unrestrained pit bulls killed a horse]
A proposed bill would make it illegal to “import, sell, transport, carry, or own any live pit bull dog.”
In other news, it’s not breed specific legislation but breed specific discrimination:
“We’re urging every officer on the force to exercise zero tolerance on pit bulls,” Smith said.
The city has a dangerous dog ordinance already but is targeting pit bulls. Another negative for BSL.
An article that notes gun control is losing ground (good!) is filled with quite a bit of misinformation:
This February and March, there was another round of high-profile, gun-related killings in Atlanta, Chicago, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Texas. Two dozen men, women and children as well as three of the gunmen were killed. Yet this time, there has been no widespread clamor for tighter gun control.
[snip]
The circumstances of the recent killings differ from those at Columbine in that many of the guns involved were legally obtained — or, in the case of Atlanta’s courthouse killings, taken from a law enforcement officer. But gun-control advocates, lawmakers and the families of shooting victims said this week they believe the reasons for the apparent shift in public sentiment about gun control run much deeper.
Let’s see, in Atlanta the guy took the gun from an older security guard. The Minnesota kid stole the gun from someone after he murdered them. And I recall reading the guy in the Texas shooting was prohibited from owning guns because he was a felon.
I never heard about the one in Chicago but, since most guns are heavily regulated there, I’d venture to guess it was obtained or possessed illegally.
A few pro-gun bills were making some headway in Illinois. Now, a couple of anti-gun bills are:
Rep. Robert Molaro (D-Chicago), the bill’s sponsor, welcomed Blagojevich’s help on what is a critical piece of the mayor’s anti-gun package, saying the governor’s support may help to pick up votes when the measure is called a second time. The governor also said he sees progress to ban assault weapons, prohibit the sale of .50-caliber sniper rifles and close a gun-show loophole. He called the three initiatives “very competitive.”
The bill also allows people to sue gun manufacturers.
Last week, I noted a pretty stupid bill that would make the death penalty a sentencing option to any murder committed with an assault weapon. The bill was stupid for a couple of reasons. One is that murder is murder. The second is that there is now no such thing as an assault weapon in the eyes of the law. Now, the ATF agrees:
He rewrote it to allow the death penalty for murders committed with weapons that are federally banned. Smitherman said he believed this change would cover murders with fully automatic weapons.
But the ATF says he’s mistaken.
“There are no federally banned guns, either,” said Carl Bengtson, supervisory special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives. “They need to do some more tweaking.”
A federal law that had banned assault weapons was allowed to expire last year. Owners of automatic weapons, sometimes called machine guns, face specific tax and registration laws. But as long as a buyer pays $200, fills out a registration application and passes a background check, he or she can legally own an automatic, Bengtson said.
Few such guns are used in homicides, though.
So few in fact, it approaches one. Actually, it was only one and it was a weapon used by a cop. Then, the paper states:
A Florida State University study of guns used in crimes found that less than 1 percent of murders, even in high-crime areas such as Miami and Chicago, were committed with fully automatic weapons.
Actually, that is wrong. Less than 1 percent of murders are committed with assault weapons as defined under the now expired assault weapons ban. The ban did not ban assault weapons but weapons that looked like assault weapons.
Aaron’s back to promoting buy a gun day, even though others of us took up the charge in his absence. He notes that last year’s BAG day netted 141 bloggers. Well, let’s top that. Say, is it number of guns that’s important or number of bloggers? I mean, I’m not above buying two, though the Mrs. might be.
Bills are moving through Congress to ban the sales of firearms to people who are on terror watchlists. On the issue:
The National Shooting and Sports Foundation (NSSF) says the recent revelations that the secret government lists include senators and congressman, as well as the foundation’s own senior vice president and general council, are proof the lists are not reliable.
It’s a secret government list and we don’t know who gets on or why, said Gary Mehalik, communications director for the NSSF, a trade association for the firearms industry. It’s an excuse for gun control.
If someone is suspected of terrorism, which is a crime, they should be arrested and not be roaming around free, Mr. Mehalik said.
Also, this is amusing:
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat; Rep. John Lewis, Georgia Democrat; and Rep. Don Young, Alaska Republican and chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, say they have been stopped at airports because their names are on the no-fly list.
Don’t they have armed guards? And AG Gonzales is backing the bill.
Not many of my friends know I have a blog. My wife and three friends know about it. None of my family does and I don’t talk about it. Never told a co-worker about it or anything. People that I’ve met through blogging (and there have been a dozen or so) obviously know about it.
One night, me and my friends had a little poker game. They started asking about the blog (and had apparently been reading it). It was weird talking about it because it occurred to me I had never really used the terms blog, blogosphere, fact check their ass, and a whole host of other words and phrases in, you know, conversation for any length of time. Made me feel a bit geeky to actually use those words. They don’t roll off the tongue. It’s also odd to hear someone mention the blogosphere on TV.
And, for what it’s worth, I’ve never said heh, like you and me only better, when city planners attack, lame, and other blog memes that I use here when talking to people.
Boy, I tell you. You don’t comment on the local officer who shot himself while cleaning his assault rifle and you get emails and comments and everything else. I didn’t think it worth commenting on initially, even though the initial reports were that the officer had been shot, which implies some sort of nefariousness was involved. But it wasn’t:
The victim is Capt. Tony Arden. He was apparently cleaning his .223 caliber rifle in his office around 3:45 p.m. when other officers in the justice center heard a gunshot and found Arden laying on the floor.
I assume it was an AR15 type rifle based on that sentence and the fact our state troopers recently bought some too. As to how it happened:
Officers at the scene of the shooting said the magazine was out of the rifle while Arden was cleaning it. They say a bullet may have gotten lodged in the chamber and been overlooked.
This is why you assume all guns are loaded and you keep your finger off of the trigger. To say a bullet may have gotten lodged in the chamber is not accurate. The bolt was pulled back and a bullet was put in the chamber, as evidenced by the fact it went bang! A bullet was in the chamber.
Additionally, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say, assuming it was an AR15, the guy probably wasn’t cleaning it. At least, he wasn’t cleaning it correctly. When you clean an AR, the first step (after unloading it) is removing the upper portion of the rifle from the lower portion. When these portions are separated, the gun is incapable of firing. It’s possible that he was trying to run a patch down the barrel while the gun was not taken apart (which is not the proper way to clean an AR15). At least, that’s my guess.
The TBI is investigating this incident. I wonder why.
Update: Reader Chris writes:
Am I the only person to observe that, in the last 3 weeks in our local area, that:
1. a security guard at a local credit union left a pistol on the toilet;
2. a school security guard lost a pistol on the school premises; and
3. a police captain accidentally shot himself while cleaning his rifle?People who carry a gun for a living need to engage in firearms training or practice regularly.
They don’t necessarily need to be gun enthusiasts, but they need to be competent with firearms.
Ayup.
And Les has, err, more.
Heh:
I’m registered for Blog Nashville. Here’s the list of registrants. There are lots of people I’m looking forward to meeting. And also Oliver Willis.
I’m thinking about going to Blog Nashville myself. Could be fun but I primarily just want to meet people and not attend the seminar stuff.
David Hardy reports that the Fifth Circuit continues to take the second amendment seriously:
The Second Amendment right is subject to “limited narrowly tailored specific exceptions or restrictions for particular cases that are reasonable and not inconsistent with the right of Americans generally to individually keep and bear their private arms as historically understood in this country.” Id . at 261. It is not inconsistent with the Second Amendment to limit the ability of convicted felons to keep and possess firearms
Well, the fifth circuit acknowledges the individual right. So does the Congress and the President. So do the official platforms of major political parties. Why then do the other circuit courts not get it? More importantly, why hasn’t the Supreme Court ruled on it?
When Blount County schools (sic) officials asked for help Wednesday, the Sheriff’s Office provided a show of force at William Blount High School with more than 50 uniformed and plain clothes officers on the scene after threats of “bodily harm” were made against some students.
Sheriff James Berrong said he and Blount County Schools Director Alvin Hord are taking “a proactive instead of reactive approach” to the situation.
Investigators are pursuing “all leads and information regarding racially motivated threats and graffiti made by students against other students at the high school,” according to a press release.
Honestly, involving the police over threats of violence? Back when I was in school, they never called police. See, our teachers in the 1980s had something teachers today don’t have. They’re called balls. I recall one incident in high school where the assistant principal intervened in a student dispute. A student then punched the assistant principle right in the face. The assistant principle looked the student in the eye, without flinching, and said If that’s all you got, son, you better sit down now. And he sat down.
Heck, I worked in a juvenile prison for a while right out of college. We had no guns, no tear gas, nothing at all like that. All we had were padded rooms and some mechanical restraints, both of which required three days of paperwork to authorize the use of so they were no use at all. Still, we never called the police even when we had full on riots. We did it ourselves. And these were violent criminals.
Teachers are too quick to call the police these days. Kid has a knife, call the cops. Kid has a BB gun, dial 911. Call the five-0 because some kid has over the counter drugs. I guess they’re so damn scared of another Columbine that they don’t want to take chances.
Here’s a newsflash for the teachers, you are expected to maintain discipline at the school. It’s your job. Do your job or go home. Sitting down isn’t an option.
Update: Bubba notes in comments:
But according to the details starting to emerge, the problem has been brewing for several weeks. They don’t say what specific event(s) triggered the law enforcement response, but there was apparently a list with specific names, more than one case of racist grafitti, in one case mentioning a specific date.
So when you have named targets and specific threats and a date, seems like something you have to take seriously. Even if you didn’t care about the kids on the list, think of the school’s liability if it turned out to be a real threat.
I suppose, in the event that targets are that specific, the school is probably justified for involving the law.
In Alabama, there is a law proposed that would:
State senators are working on expanding Alabama’s death penalty law to cover murderers who use illegal assault weapons, and they are trying to narrow it to exclude minors and the mentally retarded.
Huh? First, murder is murder. Why bother with assault weapons? Second, the assault weapons ban no longer exists, which the article reports as:
Smitherman’s bill would not affect as many weapons as it would have a year ago. The federal ban on 19 military-style assault weapons expired in September, but some foreign-made assault weapons, such as the Israeli-manufactured Uzi, are still banned under a 1989 federal law.
The bill would be pointless as there is no assault weapons ban. Additionally, the foreign-made assault weapons are not banned under a 1989 federal law. They are prohibited from importation via executive order and subject to limits on the amount of foreign made parts they can have. Additionally, there’s this:
Smitherman, who is chairman of the committee, also got the committee to vote unanimously for a companion bill that would make it a crime, punishable by up to life in prison, to knowingly furnish a banned assault weapon to a convicted felon who then used it to commit a crime.
Too bad there are no banned assault weapons.
First, this blog is fake. It’s not real. SayUncle is actually a hot blond who does porn but wanted to be taken seriously for her thoughts. As such, she chose a male pseudonym so that people would respect her opinions.
Second, I clearly cannot agree with everyone on my blogrolls. I must, therefore, remove all of you.
And since I don’t toe a party line, you all must remove me from your blogrolls.
Yeah, that’s three things. Now four.
The Lone Star Times blog, with the headline Second Amendment lie makes news, notes:
A KTRK story informs us that a Houston man accidentally discharged his “assault rifle” while removing it from his vehicle, and the shot struck his wife in the hip, putting her in the hospital.
Unfortunately, the Harris County Sheriff’s Department doesn’t seem to be aware of gun laws, given this absurd statement from one of its deputies:
“With the ban being lifted on assault weapons, we are having more people carrying these weapons than we did when the ban was in place,” said Deputy Dennis Brown with the Harris County Sheriff’s Department.
While not surprising, it is none the less aggravating to hear a law enforcement officer make such a ludicrous statement, than have it amplified by news agencies as truth.The fact is that the so-called “assault weapons ban” did not ban such weapons. It did ban importation and manufacture of certain specific makes of weapons, and restricted magazine capacity to an arbitrary 10 rounds, but most semi-automatic rifles, including the kind involved in this accidental shooting, were perfectly legal to own and transport.
That’s actually not lying about the second amendment. That’s lying about the assault weapons ban. Regardless, people lie about guns (and the media parrots the lies) every day. And those of us that rebut those lies should do so truthfully.
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
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