You’ve got to be kidding me:

The ACLU of Georgia released copies of government files on Wednesday that illustrate the extent to which the FBI, the DeKalb County Division of Homeland Security and other government agencies have gone to compile information on Georgians suspected of being threats simply for expressing controversial opinions.

Two documents relating to anti-war and anti-government protests, and a vegan rally, prove the agencies have been “spying” on Georgia residents unconstitutionally, the ACLU said.

For example, more than two dozen government surveillance photographs show 22-year-old Caitlin Childs of Atlanta, a strict vegetarian, and other vegans picketing against meat eating, in December 2003. They staged their protest outside a HoneyBaked Ham store on Buford Highway in DeKalb County.

An undercover DeKalb County Homeland Security detective was assigned to conduct surveillance of the protest and the protestors, and take the photographs. The detective arrested Childs and another protester after he saw Childs approach him and write down, on a piece of paper, the license plate number of his unmarked government car.

“They told me if I didn’t give over the piece of paper I would go to jail and I refused and I went to jail, and the piece of paper was taken away from me at the jail and the officer who transferred me said that was why I was arrested,” Childs said on Wednesday.

The government file lists anti-war protesters in Atlanta as threats, the ACLU said. The ACLU of Georgia accuses the Bush administration of labeling those who disagree with its policy as disloyal Americans.

Sure, this Childs person is a bit, er, off but she has a right to be. And arrested for writing down a plate number? Give me a break.

Noting that the police really have no need to track other guns, sold by the same dealer when a crime gun is found, Nemerov opines:

Senators Schumer and Clinton wish to manufacture a crisis, using the death of two police officers to promote their own agenda of creating a registration database: the next step necessary to institute a national policy of civilian disarmament.

Some other smart cracker said something similar a while back.

Les Jones on Wal-Mart:

Wal-Mart provides the libertarian ideal where Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms is a store rather than a government agency.

Glenn Reynolds on Wal-Mart:

You know, to me Wal-Mart is a lot like George W. Bush. It’s not that I’m that big a fan in the abstract, really, it’s just that the viciousness and stupidity revealed in its enemies tends to make me view it more favorably than I otherwise would.

I shop there on occasion and it’s because they have cheap ammo and I don’t have to carry a dumb little card to get the best price. Actually, the card isn’t to get the best price, it’s just to get a competitive price. And where else can you go grab some ammo, pick up a Ruger 10/22 for less than $120, a Leupold scope for less than $200, a six pack of Guinness, get your oil changed, grab a pack of underwear, sample snacks, get a fishing license, have your pictures developed in less than an hour, review popular brands of HDTV flatscreens, get tax software, and grab a pack of Chiclets?

There was a thread on arfcom where folks were discussing Wal-Marts ammo prices. One of the anti-Wal-Mart contingent said something about supporting China. Well, guess what, if you buy the same product at another store, it’s still made in China.

A while back, I did my AR v AK comparison. Now, Head has done is own comparison. My favorites:

AK – You are able to hit the broad side of a barn from inside

AR – You are able to hit the broad side of a barn from 600m

Mosin – You can hit the farm from two counties over

And:

AK – Your rifle can be used by any two bit nation’s most illiterate conscripts to fight elite forces worldwide

AR – Your rifle is used by elite forces worldwide to fight two bit nations most illiterate conscripts

Mosin – Your rifle has fought against itself and won every time

Heh.

The SCOTUS denied cert. He has a round up and David Hardy has more. Seems you have to actually risk going to jail to challenge the law. I didn’t realize petitioning the government for a redress of grievances had to mean risking time in the slammer.

Bitter tells us the senate there voted to override the veto. I doubt the chamber has the votes but good to see the effort.

Xavier has some rules for scoring stuff at gun shows. One I always forget is:

Carry cash. Carry cash in $20 increments, in several different pockets.

As a willing player in the cashless society, I rarely carry cash. Much less in large quantities. But at a gun show, it’s a good idea.

Kathy McIntyre, of some paper I’ve never heard of, published the names and addresses of 24 pit bull owners in a newspaper for Commerce City, Colorado. Her lame ass reason was for the greater good of the community. Never mind that, like the time the Cleveland Plain Dealer published names of carry permit holders, it’s an unnecessary privacy violation. She assumed that people who owned such dogs were a threat and should be embarrassed or acknowledged so as to be ridiculed, apparently. It also could give some folks the view that the paper is encouraging vigilantism. Blogger Andrea Weckerle recommends that you contact her via the address at the Metro North Chamber.

Well, here’s the address of a real threat to the community:

At work:
Kathy McIntyre
Commerce City Gateway
PO Box 88
Commerce City, CO 80037
(720) 221-7352
(720) 221-7352
kathy@coloradobusinessalliance.com

I also have her home address, phone number, a map to her house, a picture of her house, and know her husband’s first name. I could publish all that but that would make me a dick. Man, Al Gore’s Internets are a scary place.

Maybe there is hope in the KELO mess. I hope this spreads to other businesses.

djuggler emails a link to this:

Cinema-goers around the country will be shocked this week by a new advertisement offering AK47 machine-guns for sale among the ads for cars and soft drinks. They will see presenters talking up the firepower and reliability of the AK47, as a young boy demonstrates how the gun is so easy to use that even a child can fire it. They are even offered free ammunition when they call to place their order with advertisers Teleshop.

You can see the ad here. I don’t use quicktime so I haven’t watched it but I read the scroll bar, which also offers free ammo for a year. Here’s an article on it, which says:

But viewers will be relieved to find that the ad is by Amnesty International, spoofing a TV shopping channel to highlight the ease with which weapons can be bought and sold due to lax controls on the international arms trade.

A final caption reads “The arms trade is out of control” and asks people to text the word “ARMS” and their full name to 84118 to join a petition for tough action to control the sales of deadly weapons.

The ad, of course, is absolutely misleading. More:

“Some people might find our Teleshop advert disturbing. But what’s truly shocking is that one person dies every minute from armed violence. And there is a scandalous lack of controls to stop weapons getting into the wrong hands.

Really? You are aware that it’s illegal in the UK to buy an AK-47, right? And in the US, buying AK-47s has been regulated since 1934 and banned since 1986. Amnesty International is pulling propaganda and scare tactics directly from The Brady Campaign.

Via Keep and Bear Arms, the Brady Bunch is up in arms at no duty to retreat laws that their repeating themselves:

Brady Campaign: A New Approach to Law and Order for Wyoming — Encourage Everyone to Be First to Shoot

Brady Campaign: New Approach to Law & Order in Alabama — Encourage Everyone to be First to Shoot

Brady Campaign: A New Approach to Law and Order for Alaska — Encourage Everyone to Be First to Shoot

I guess their writer took the day off?

Last night the family was watching Jack’s Big Music Show when this video came on. The wife looks at me and says Man, he is hot.

The guys at The Gun Zone blame Olympic Arms for the import restriction on milsurp steel core ammo which caused the prices to sore in the mid-90s. But what’s up with it lately? Last time I bought a case, it was $99. Now, it’s going for $150.

On a piece entitled:

Campaign Finance Law May Have A Loophole
Some Issue Ads Could Be Exempt, Justices Say

This quote grabbed my attention:

“This is a delaying tactic by the Supreme Court,” said Richard L. Hasen, a professor of election law at Loyola University in Los Angeles. “However, with the Supreme Court changing and the realistic potential that the new justices will be more sympathetic” to critics of campaign finance regulation, yesterday’s decision “could be the opening salvo in a battle to scale back the regulation of campaign finance.”

I’m for getting rid of the 2002 Incumbent Protection Act. Seems more people are figuring out that it’s bad law.

This reality show is proof:

Contestants agreed to live in a “love hotel” with the least attractive being voted out each week.

The remaining two couples then had a race to conceive a child and win the cash.

And it turned out to be a hoax. People would be willing to have a child merely for some minor fame and some cash. Abysmal.

Heh and more heh!

I sang their praises regarding their policy of not loaning to developers who get their property via eminent domain. It’s a good thing. Sadly, they post signs saying you can’t carry weapons in their Virginia branches. I won’t be switching banks after all.

I’m fully aware it’s their right to post such a sign but it’s my right not to patronize their place of business.

The 9th Circuit ruled that Possession of an “Assault Weapon” Isn’t a “Crime of Violence”. But a few notes:

On the other hand, if we know that an object has no lawful uses, we can presume that someone who possesses it intentionally does so for the purpose of using it illicitly. And, if the universe of uses for such an object is largely confined to illegitimate violence, we can infer that the object will be used to intimidate or inflict physical injury during the course of an unlawful transaction. We have thus held that illegal possession of such a weapon — like a silencer or a sawed-off shotgun — is a crime of violence. What distinguishes silencers or sawed-off shotguns from other dangerous firearms isn’t the amount of injury they’re capable of inflicting — there are many weapons that can cause a lot more injury than a silencer. What makes silencers and sawed-off shotguns different from ordinary weapons is that they have few, if any, legitimate uses. Unlike an ordinary firearm, neither is likely to serve any sporting or self-defense purpose. Thus, we have held that they “are inherently dangerous, lack usefulness except for violent and criminal purposes and their possession involves the substantia risk of improper physical force.” We must determine, therefore, whether an assault weapon is more like an ordinary firearm, or more like a silencer or sawed-off shotgun.

Congress requires registration of any silencer, sawed-off shotgun or similar firearm. Failure to register a listed firearm is a crime punishable by up to ten years is prison. The registration requirement reflects Congress’s determination that certain weapons are almost certain to be used for unlawful purposes: “[T]he primary reason that unregistered possession of these particular weapons is a crime is the virtual inevitability that such possession will result in violence.” As the Seventh Circuit put it, “most firearms do not have to be registered — only those that Congress found to be inherently dangerous. If the weapon is not so labeled, mere possession by a felon is not a crime of violence.” Congress has never imposed a blanket registration requirement on semiautomatic weapons, suggesting that they have lawful uses and are less likely to lead to unlawful violence than sawed-off shotguns and silencers.

Suppressors and sawn-off shotguns serve many legitimate uses. Both are still legal to possess, at least at the federal level. Suppressors, for example, are used quite extensively in other countries as effective hearing protection and for varmint control in places where the crack of a gun shot may cause alarm. Additionally, sawn-off shotguns are quite effective home defense weapons. I find their argument unconvincing with respect to those two items.

More interesting, the ninth on the so-called assault weapons ban:

When Serna was convicted of possession of an assault weapon in 2002, possession of some semiautomatic weapons was a federal crime — but no longer. Thus, non-felons can now freely possess assault weapons under federal law. Even before the federal ban was allowed to lapse, it was riddled with exceptions: Congress exempted any firearm lawfully possessed under federal law before the passage of the act, and over 650 specific firearms. Thus, a large number of semiautomatic weapons remained legally in circulation, even during the so-called ban.

In the end, the temporary federal ban on assault weapons is largely a wash. The most plausible inference to be drawn from the evolution of federal law as to assault weapons is that Congress allowed the ban to lapse, having found it unnecessary. Because current federal policy places assault weapons on the same footing as other non-registrable weapons, we see this, on balance, as supporting Serna’s position. We find more significant the fact that, when the federal assault-weapon ban ended, Congress didn’t require previously-banned semiautomatic weapons to be registered. The fact that semiautomatic weapons are not now, nor have ever been, subject to a blanket registration requirement suggests that mere possession of them does not pose the same risk of physical injury as possession of weapons subject to a blanket federal registration requirement — like silencers and sawed-off shotguns.

Supposedly, the most liberal court in the land referred to the expired ban as a so-called ban. And implied it was thought to be unnecessary. Ouchie.

First, I really appreciate and like what TAFKASKB* is doing. But Knoxviews already has a troll infestation. If you do not toe the line, we will annoy you with nonsense, non-sequitur and ad hominem to get you to go away (Not the host, the commenters).

Unfortunate. More unfortunate is that I felt the need to address them, a mistake I don’t mean to duplicate. Some folks over there (like Rikki) are serious about engaging the issues but a few bad apples and all that.

And that doesn’t mean I’ll quit reading or crossposting there because I think it’s an awesome concept for a blog. Just that I’ll stop feeding the trolls. Seriously, there’s a time and place for incivility, when it’s reasoned and shows some thought. I don’t think the various posts I’ve seen there by me and other right leaning folks warrant such annoyance.

* The Artist Formerly Known As South Knox Bubba.

Update: TAFKASKB responds. Thanks! And the word infestation was a bit much. For that, I apologize.

Over at KnoxBlab some people are poking fun at the Take Back Our Government Rally.

One poster wrote, “I heard that the anti wheel tax people are having a rally tomorrow night at the Expo Center on Clinton Highway to take back the government. Anyone know who they are taking it from and what do they want to do with it assuming they get it.”

Another poster wrote, “I don’t know who they want to take it from, but they want to give it to Steve Hall, Gary Sellers, Lumpy Lambert and #9. Apparently their platform espouses bringing the Dark Ages back to Knox County.”

Sounds Medieval doesn’t it?

This is interesting. There appear to be nervous people since the “cats sleeping with dogs” phenomenon that occurred during the Candy Factory fight when conservatives and progressives joined together for a common cause. Now there is a war among the various progressives. Is it a political sin to mix with other groups? Consider how the Haslam administration and various people on KnoxBlab and k2k have maligned the Green Party.

There will be featured speakers at the rally. One of these speakers will be Michael Kaplan of the Green Party. He will be speaking about the Candy Factory and eminent domain.

If the City and County had acted after the Kelo decision would this strange convergence of different political groups have occurred? One thing is certain; the people of Knox County are serious about property rights.

The rally will be held Thursday the 26th from 5:30 PM to 8:00 PM at the Knoxville Expo Center . Michael Silence has said he will try to attend. My guess is many curious people will attend also.

Malkin thinks that some how the qualifiers in a Ben Franklin quote are relevant. I’m going to guess it’s probably because the protesters only had so much poster board and the whole quote wouldn’t fit. It’s not some nefarious plot to hijack Ben Franklin.

If essential is such a key modifier, exactly what liberties are essential? After all, free speech is not essential. Nor is my freedom from unreasonable searches, to not have troops quartered in my home, etc., etc. In short, with the exception of the right to live, not a single liberty I have is actually essential to my life. The qualifier that liberties must be essential in order to be protected basically makes all liberties meaningless. It’s not a bill of essential liberties nor is it a bill of needs.

Seems like a stretch to pick such a nit. And I say that as someone who picks a helluva lot of nits.

Update: And I got a kick out of this:

Take a close look at the protest banner held up by a petulant bunch of Georgetown University kids who disrupted a speech by Attorney General Al Gonzales defending the NSA’s terrorist surveillance program yesterday

Yes. How dare they exercise their non-essential liberty of protesting!

BB&T, a bank that operates locally, says:

BB&T Corporation today said it will not lend to commercial developers that plan to build condominiums, shopping malls and other private projects on land taken from private citizens by government entities using eminent domain.

The commercial lending policy change comes in the wake of Kelo v. City of New London, a controversial Supreme Court decision in June that said governments can seize personal property to make room for private development projects.

The court’s ruling cleared the way for an expansion of eminent domain authority historically used primarily for utilities, rights of way and other public facilities.

“The idea that a citizen’s property can be taken by the government solely for private use is extremely misguided, in fact it’s just plain wrong,” said BB&T Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Allison.

“One of the most basic rights of every citizen is to keep what they own. As an institution dedicated to helping our clients achieve economic success and financial security, we won’t help any entity or company that would undermine that mission and threaten the hard-earned American dream of property ownership.”

Reward good behavior. Seriously. I may just have to switch my banking needs to BB&T. That is awesome. Hats off to them.

And, in Rhode Island:

In a move supported by Gov. Don Carcieri, the state Economic Development Corporation will discontinue using eminent domain to take people’s property and give them to private developers for economic development.

The policy change came in a vote by the EDC’s board on Monday.

“We’re trying to send a clear message that when it’s owner-occupied we’re respecting those rights,” said Carcieri, who’s chairman of the EDC. He asked the agency last year to revise its eminent domain policy that would protect Rhode Islanders’ homes from eminent domain condemnations for office buildings, hotels and other private uses. Carcieri said earlier this month that he plans to introduce legislation to prevent the use of eminent domain for economic development statewide.

Arthur:

you can’t fight evil with a macaroni duck!

* And by random, I mean in the sense that I just watched the episode. So, not really random at all.

Not sure how they work, but these look neat. I wonder if you can fire shot through them? Seems like they’d strike the baffle. Good for gun clubs that have sound restrictions. And at £98.50 (about $176), I realized that we Americans get screwed when it comes to suppressors.

I’ve been pondering registering an AR-15 lower as a short barreled rifle because they look neat. See:

I discovered here that not only do I have to go through the NFA process, get law enforcement sign off, and pay a $200 tax, I also have to engrave my name, town and state on the receiver. If I build my own lower (which I’m doing), I also have to give it a serial number. If I buy an AR receiver made by another company, when I fill out the paperwork to register it as an SBR, I become the manufacturer. So, even though I may have a Rock River Arms lower receiver, I have to conspicuously engrave my name, city and state somewhere on it because I want the barrel to be shorter than 16 inches.

Man, that seems arbitrary.

Looking at my traffic stats, my traffic dropped from 1,500 visits to about 1,000 (and page views went from 2,700 to about 2,500) in about three days. I find that odd. Wonder what that’s all about?

Update: In comments, readers suggest I’ve been added to restricted site lists in various company servers. You can get around that by using proxy servers. Personally, I blame Google now that all those Chinese folks won’t be able to land here.

Last night, I discovered quite by accident that bourbon mixed with iced green tea is quite a refreshing beverage. As you were.

S. Carpenter on the right’s obsession with stopping dudes from kissing:

CHARACTER COUNTS SO WE MADE IT A LAW

Update: In comments, Les takes issue with my use of the phrase stopping dudes from kissing. Yes, it’s intentionally an oversimplification used to convey that what consenting adults do (whether it’s kiss, diddle each other, or enter into an enforceable legal arrangement that guarantees rights to survivorship and the ability to make decisions for each other out of love or respect or compassion) is really nobody else’s business except the consenting adults involved.

As you were.

Jeff has the latest on anti-gun bias in the media, the international addition.

They are up over at Phin’s place.