Snarky little editorial:

When we first read the headline in last Thursday’s Sun – “Feds taking aim at gun violence” – we thought that there must have been some mistake.

Gun violence? What gun violence? We have a very expensive national gun registry that was put into place to ensure that every firearm in Canada can be tracked. We have cumbersome regulations in place that make it more difficult for Canadians to buy guns. We have armies of bureaucrats shuffling paper to and fro to make sure that everything related to guns in this country is all very above-board and law-abiding.

So there can’t possibly be any gun violence in Canada!

OK, we made our point. There is still lots of gun violence in Canada, and the gun registry hasn’t done a single thing to stop it.

Regarding the account of ATF and local authorities breaking the law and harassing gun show attendees, Eric notes the silence in the press. And points out it is eerily reminiscent of their complacence in other less than stellar moments of the ATF.

Apparently, the King of Swaziland is preparing to pick his 13th bride, but according to CNN, a few folks think King Mswati III has perverted the process:

Thousands of bare-breasted virgins will dance for Africa’s last absolute monarch in Monday’s Reed Dance ceremony, which King Mswati III has used to choose new brides.

Critics say the ancient ceremony, meant to celebrate womanhood and virginity, has become little more than a shop window for the 37-year-old king to choose young brides.

Has become? What the blazes do these “critics” think these ancient ceremonies were for in the first place? An Oberlin College work-study program?

Not just a kick ass metal band but can disprove Evolution, according to Der Commissar:

Evolution is falsifiable. My friend Michael the Thumper has wearied of my ritual invocation of Precambrian rabbits, as a test that would falsify evolution. Here are six more:

true chimera (centaurs, mermaids), combinations from different lineages. An Intelligent Designer could put a human torso on a horse. Why not? Sure would have been awesome cavalry in the old days. But the process of evolution doesn’t permit a “mix-and-match” approach. Maybe a centaur seems silly, but there are billions of non-silly combinations that MIGHT have occurred. None have. Find one and you have falsified evolution. (Any commenter stupid enough to suggest that convergent evolution is the same thing, “bats are mammals with wings,” wins today’s booby prize.)

He lists more. I think he should remove this one from his list. Enter the platypus: One of only four mammals that lays eggs. It has a bill and webbed feet that are similar to those on ducks. Poisonous ankle spurs (in males). Adults are toothless (mammals have teeth). Its ears are in its jaws. Extra bones in the shoulder. And the males testicles are internal.

Seems to be a bit of mixing and matching to me. However, it seems possible that mixing and matching could be brought on by evolving. But I’m no scientist.

I’ve seen this countless times, and it never gets old. Here are the rules for a gun fight. My favorites:

4. If your shooting stance is good, you’re probably not moving fast enough nor using cover correctly.

10. Someday someone may kill you with your own gun, but they should have to beat you to death with it because it is empty.

Apparently, they will track you down and somehow find your personal cell phone number.

The Carnival of Cordite is up.

Fred Phelps’ followers are going to protest at the funerals of two fallen US soldiers in Tennessee tomorrow. Michael Silence has been on the story. I ask the press, with all sincerity, not to show up. Do not go to the funeral. Do not give these whackjobs a platform to spread their delusional message of hate.

If you do go (and some of you will), ignore these hate-mongering psychopaths. Cover the funeral only. Please. Do not give them air time. Do not talk to them. Look away. Leave the family to its grief and ignore these zealots.

It’s the decent thing to do.

Pete says:

It appears that this story is one that is not going to go away quietly (and I’m going to do what I can to make sure we continue to talk about it).

Indeed. As will I. This article gives a run down:

Andrew Diotaiuto has returned repeatedly to his grave at North Haven’s All Saints Cemetery.

He sometimes makes two or three trips a day from his home in East Haven.

Burying a child is always painful, but the last moments of his son’s life are especially troubling.

On Aug. 5, Anthony Diotaiuto was shot to death by a SWAT team from the Sunrise, Fla., Police Department during a dawn narcotics raid in the home he shared and helped buy with his mother, Marlene Whittier.

According to police, he was found with about 2 ounces of marijuana, plastic bags and a weight scale.

The police are sticking to their story:

Sunrise police Lt. Robert Voss said the homicide department was still investigating the case, which will be presented to a grand jury for review, as is standard in all fatal police shootings in Florida.

“We’re asking for people to keep an open mind and wait for the facts to come in … before coming to a conclusion about what happened in the house.” Voss said.

Voss said police had a court-authorized search warrant based on surveillance and a controlled narcotics purchase from the house.

Officers entered the residence and confronted Diotaiuto in the living room. He was shot after fleeing to a bedroom and arming himself with a loaded semiautomatic handgun, Voss said.

Diotaiuto had a concealed weapons permit.

“It was his choice not to follow orders and to retrieve a weapon,” Voss said.

Neighbors dispute whether or not the police announced themselves.

It also mentions the effect of blogs:

Television and print media in Florida have closely followed the story. It also has taken on a life in Internet blogs, where some see it as another call to change the nation’s drug laws.

Good. Keep the story alive.

No, really. It seems his office sent a letter asking the parole board to take into consideration the positive steps Mr. Britt has taken. Britt is a convicted murderer. The letter was sent in error. A few blogs picked up on it and the Ford campaign responds with:

The following quote is Harold Ford Jr.’s response to the right wing blog community attack:

Ford is hostile toward the blogs for giving the story legs. Not the paper that ran the story or the incompetence of his own staff.

Lame.

Drug War Rant tells us that the New Jersey police and the DEA swat teams raided the wrong house. For the second time. In four months:

A State Police SWAT team and a swarm of federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents stormed a four-family home in Newark on Tuesday, kicking down doors, waving guns and ransacking two upstairs apartments.

The officers tore through an armoire looking for guns and shouted curses at frightened adults as they clutched their young children.

Then the officers apologized for being in the wrong house.

Oops. Sorry about the house, would you like a stick of gum?

In the county of my birth, there was a school shooting yesterday. A kid took a round to the leg. Here’s the KNS write up. Three kids were involved and two guns. One kid supposedly brought both guns and one was unloaded. At first the kids say they dropped the gun and it went off, which is virtually impossible unless it is an older style gun or one of the cheaper guns on the market. The police say the kids were playing with them. Local officials are looking at charging the kids and the parents who allowed access to the weapons.

Gun Law News, who need to get some blog software so I can link directly to items – scroll down, has a plan:

Over the past several decades, a gun control victory was defined by our side lessening the impact of new gun control proposals. Over time our rights were whittled away, however slowly. FOPA 86 was a step in the right direction but was burdened by the heavy load of the Hughes Amendment.

It is now a new world. The 1994 Assault Weapon Ban has expired. S.397, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, has passed the Senate and is expected to make it through the House.

From now on, let the gun grabbers learn how we have been living. Instead of compromising our position, we should start pushing for the repeal of laws that only serve to undermine our Second Amendment rights.

They advocate repeal of the Hughes Amendment and the various sporting purpose clauses. Uncle concurs.

In one of my undergrad classes (The Physiology of Behavior or some such), we discussed this theory that the brain essentially functioned like a hard drive and stored information in certain sections. This got me to thinking about whether or not your brain could get, well, full. If it got full and you learn/remember something new, does it overwrite old information? I’m not well-versed in the operation of the brain so this may all be made up.

Anyhoo, the concept that a brain could get full made me wonder how much brain space I’ve wasted on movie lines or song lyrics or the intricacies of the law with regard to the now non-existent assault weapons ban. I’d hate to think I could no longer recall something that could be beneficial (such as what to do in the event I’m on fire – stop, drop and roll or duck and cover, not quite sure) but can gladly recite:

We went to a shopping mall
And laughed at all the shoppers
And security guards trailed us
To a record shop
We asked for Mojo Nixon
They said “He don’t work here”
We said “If you don’t got Mojo Nixon
Then your store could use some fixin'”

Any way, err . . . what was I talking about? Oh yeah, the brain.

I have this distinct memory from childhood that tractor trailer trucks were being driven by robots. It’s true. On a cross country trip when I was about six years old, I saw several 18 wheelers being driven by robots. I saw it, or at least think I did. Now, as an adult, I know that never happened. Was it my imagination? Did I dream it?

The wife works with head trauma/stroke patients. She’s told me tales (that are apparently common) wherein someone gets a head injury and can’t answer the questions What is your name? or Where do you live?. However, they can tell you all about what they were doing one warm sunny day, 20 years ago in vivid detail.

That brain, memory, and cognition. Tricky stuff.

Heh:

Did you know that today, over 7 million Americans are writing their own blogs — and nearly 1.2 million Americans are actually reading them?

A rough week or so for the New York Times. Unsurprising to anyone, Maureen Dowd does what she does and quotes someone out of context. At least there’s no ellipsis. If you’re a columnist and your name has been turned into a verb, it’s not good.

The Times also takes good news about body armor in Iraq and turns it into bad news. Someone else decided to contact the Times’ source and their source was a bit miffed.

Krugman tells a whopper about the 2000 election. Commissar is right, Krugman must believe. Patterico has more.

And the Times totally blows it by mischaracterizing why a scientist on a panel preparing a report for the Bush administration resigned.

Update: Krugman continues to fib. Surely, Media Matters will be all over this.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote:

My daddy always said you could knock a helicopter out of the sky with a well-placed rock.

Via reader Nate, he was right.

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood. JAMES MADISON

Jamie Satterfield of the KNS:

For three months now, Neal has been sitting behind bars in a West Tennessee prison even though a Knox County judge has deemed him innocent of double murder charges.

That’s because the state Board of Probation and Parole had accused Neal of violating his parole by possessing for a matter of minutes a gun he wrested from two intruders who broke into his East Knoxville home.

That is the dumbest thing I’ve heard. More details:

Terry Dodson, 32, and Benjamin Pollard, 24, were linked to a Memphis gang and had a history of violence. On May 17, the pair stormed into Neal’s apartment, threatened to shoot him and began looting his home, testimony has shown.

Neal didn’t know either man. He tried to run but wound up in a struggle with the men. He disarmed one of the intruders, shot him and tried to flee again when the second intruder began to attack him. Neal shot him, dropped the gun and ran.

The first person he called was his parole officer, phoning her within hours to explain what happened. He then contacted Whalen to arrange his surrender to police.

His parole officer filed a warrant against him. Whalen said Neal had expected as much. After all, he was by then charged with two counts of murder.

But when Knox County General Sessions Court Judge Bob R. McGee ruled at a hearing in July that Neal had acted in self-defense and dropped both charges, Whalen said he expected Neal to go free.

He didn’t.

His parole officer refused to dismiss the parole violation charge, which was based entirely on the double shooting of which Neal had been acquitted, Whalen said.

The article doesn’t tell us who the parole officer is but it should. That person’s phone line should be ringing off the hook.

If you wish to contact the Tennessee Board of Probation and Parole, you can reach them at:

Tennessee Board of Probation and Parole
404 James Robertson Parkway, Suite 1300
Nashville, Tennessee 37243

Phone: (615) 741-4543
Fax: (615) 532-8098
Email: bopp.webmail@state.tn.us

The good news is he’s at least scheduled to be released because this idiot parole officer’s supervisors intervened:

The officer responded that supervisors in Nashville had decided to free Neal, who was on parole for a cocaine possession charge, Whalen said. Neal still isn’t free, though. First, he must be returned to the West Tennessee prison where he has been housed and then processed for release.

“They’ve promised to expedite his release,” Whalen said with a cynical chuckle.

The entire affair has Whalen wondering just how wisely his tax dollars are being spent.

“It would be of real interest to find out how much money was spent on this whole case,” Whalen said. “It’s ridiculous.”

Mr. Neal, I recommend you lawyer up.

Joe has covered the drug bust in Utah, where cops used dogs, helicopters, assault rifles, and ninja outfits to arrest a bunch of kids who were at a rave for drugs. Malkin says that people are overreacting.

Phelps has video and notes:

Listen to the last bit of audio on the video that was being taken. “Put the camera down. You’re under arrest.” What was his crime? As near as I can tell, it was the audacity of videotaping the police.

Sorry Michelle, but criticizing that is far from hysterical.

Pete rounds up the local media accounts of the incident:

To be sure, there were a number of drug- and alcohol-related arrests and citations arising from the rave. These are fair game by any measure. Once a crime is committed, a permit may be considered null and void. But of the 43 citations reported by the Utah County Sheriff’s Office, about half appear directly related to the raid itself — disorderly conduct, failure to disperse and related acts. Most of the others could have been dealt with on a case-by-case basis, without shutting down a concert at which the majority were not breaking the law.

A massive police assault on virtually any public gathering (a BYU football game, for example) would uncover similar illegalities, from drugs to weapons to expired driver’s licenses. But if a crime is committed during a BYU football game, the game is not stopped. Offenders are trundled off individually. A general suspicion that something illegal might happen at a public gathering, even a rave, may not be the best basis from which to launch a major law enforcement action.

B4B reports that Governor Phil admits his blog sucks:

When Bredesen was asked last week about his mostly idle blog, he conceded that he had not posted enough times but would “give it a little more serious try.”

“Maybe I’ll do an all nighter and put in a lot of blog entries,” Bredesen said. “That’ll keep all of the staff busy for weeks probably sorting all of that out.”

“If I get to the end of this year and it’s still four, five or six entries, I’ll just shut it all down but I hate to not be successful at something so we’ll try to make this successful,” Bredesen said.

Admitting you have a problem is the first step.

Forbes is counting down The 20 Most Important Tools. Coming in at number seven is the rifle.

In Columbus, a city council candidate is challenging the city’s recently passed assault weapons ban:

A City Council candidate sued to challenge the city’s recently approved ban on assault weapons that led the National Rifle Association to move its 2007 convention out of Columbus.

Republican Phil Harmon, a lawyer who represented bar owners in their failed quest to overturn the city’s smoking ban, wants a court to prevent the assault-weapons ban from taking effect. He filed the lawsuit Wednesday in Franklin County Probate Court.

The ban that Democrat-controlled City Council adopted July 11 prohibits the sale or possession of semiautomatic rifles with pistol grips and detachable magazines. It is scheduled to go into effect Aug. 11.

Harmon said Thursday the assault-weapons ban is flawed because it has no provision allowing people to sell or transfer weapons to relatives if they die or need a guardian.

“So an executor of an estate who comes into possession of an assault weapon could be exposed to criminal prosecution,” Harmon said. He filed the lawsuit in probate court because it has jurisdiction over the settlements of estates.

Federal lawsuits successfully overturned two previous attempts by Columbus to ban assault weapons, which tried to outlaw specific models. Cleveland, Dayton and Toledo are among the Ohio cities with some kind of weapons ban.

Third time’s the charm, I guess.

Update: Just realized that was the 2,000th post on guns for this blog. Maybe I need a new hobby?

Signature file seen at AR15.com:

1f y0u c4n r34d th1s you r3411y n33d t0 g3t l41d

Heh.

Heartless Libertarian points to more police abuses at a gun show:

Shortly, the state Supreme Court will decide whether police in the state of Washington can make up their own gun control laws — laws not approved by any federal, state, or local legislative body.

The case at hand (Pacific Northwest Shooting Park Association v. City of Sequim) specifically involves a police chief who sauntered through a local gun show on the day of the show. Whereupon he announced his arbitrary and unpublished decision that, notwithstanding state law, only federal license holders would be allowed to sell firearms on the premises.

His actions virtually shut down the entire show.

Certainly, at stake in this case may well be the viability of gun shows in the state of Washington for years to come. But that’s not all.

If the police can make up their own firearms laws at local gun shows, then they can do the same at gun shops, at firing ranges, or even in your own home!

What The Rocky Top Brigade is talking about:

Took the newly acquired Walther P22 to the range. If I had my way, I’d make the following changes to the gun:

It’s like this thing was made for California or something.

I got to the range, loaded up a couple of mags and took aim. The trigger pull is fairly stiff, even in single action. First shot was in the center of the target. The gun was very accurate. The third shot made a hideous sound and sent powder into my face. It also failed to eject. I ejected the magazine, cleared the chamber, and checked the barrel. I was afraid it was a squib. It was not. I couldn’t find the casing as it ejected in front of the firing line. Content it was a fluke, I resumed. A few more rounds and it did it again.

I grabbed one of the guys at the range to look at it. This time, I managed not to eject the shell casing beyond the firing line. The casing was split, which is very dangerous and in some guns (particularly higher calibers) it could destroy the barrel or, worse, injure the shooter. He called the gunsmith. He checked it out and said the gun looked fine. I switched to Federal ammunition. Turns out, it was old ammo that was doing that. Not sure the brand but it was old and I think I got it from a relative who was tossing it out. I immediately tossed that stuff. No more incidents after that. I should be clear that this was not the gun’s fault but the ammo’s. In hindsight, I have to say I was impressed with the Walther as a lesser gun may have Kaboomed or at least suffered barrel damage. Powder spraying in your face will get your attention. I went through about 100 rounds of Federal and 120 rounds of CCI Mini-Mags with no more feeding or exploding problems.

After the first magazine, another issue came up. After every fourth or so round, the magazine would eject into my hand, seemingly on its own. This was quite annoying since the magazine safety also prevented me from shooting the next round. I talked to the gunsmith about it and he said to send it back to Smith and Wesson (who, by the way, are the importers of the Walther line) and they would fix it. Still, I came to shoot and commenced doing so. It kept ejecting the magazine fairly regularly.

Finally, I decided that maybe it was me with the issue. I had someone else shoot it and they had no problems. Turns out that my long fingers were tripping the magazine release on recoil. They instructed me that maybe I should use a thumbs up shooting grip, in which both thumbs are high on the left side. Takes a few seconds to get used to but seems to offer more stability. I adjusted and sure enough had no problems from that point on. I’m accustomed to shooting handguns with magazine releases on the pistol’s grip so this has never been a problem before. The Walther’s mag release is in an inconvenient place.

My impressions of the gun are that it is reliable, can stand up to abuse (particularly some rather nasty ammo), and is quite accurate for a gun with a 3.4 inch barrel. All this for under $300, not bad at all. I was impressed with the accuracy. The occasional straggler aside, it was easily getting 1.5 inch groups at 10 yards with Federal and 2.5 inch groups with the CCI.

The Walther comes with a lot of extras, such as interchangeable back straps for people with long fingers (like me), additional front sight posts, and a threaded barrel (along with a barrel wrench to change out barrels if you need to). There are also a ton of aftermarket accessories for it.

Next accessory will be a suppressor for it. It was like it was made for one. Not sure which one but I am mulling the AAC Pilot, The Gemtech Outback and the TAC 65. Thoughts?

Joe reports California has shelved their novel, if by novel they mean won’t work, idea of stamping serial numbers on ammunition. I guess some ideas are even too stupid for California.

Tennessee ranks fifth among the states in the percentage of residents who are obese. The top 10 contains seven south eastern states. This isn’t surprising since we deep fry and batter everything. Seriously, we deep fry chicken, fish, steak, tomatoes, bananas, and even pickles. Heck, when we’re out of stuff to deep fry, we just deep fry batter to make hush puppies or deep fry milk to make gravy.

What shocked me about the article is the handy little chart at the bottom detailing the top ten obese states. They decided they would label states as not Southeastern state, for those of us that suck at Geography.

Chris Wage needs your help. If that doesn’t work out, Chris, and you want to come to the Knoxville area, range time, guns and ammo are on me. I do owe for the upgrade.