A federal jury in Memphis has just handed down a verdict finding former State Sen. Roscoe Dixon guilty of accepting illegal cash payments in exchange for influence in the Tennessee General Assembly. He was found guilty on all five federal charges against him
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On a new bill aimed (and misfiring) at gun trafficking:
“This legislation will actually create a new federal crime of gun trafficking, make it a federal crime and give federal authorities the power, which they need, to go after gun traffickers,” King explained. “It would also make it a new crime for criminals to use stolen firearms [or those] which have [obliterated] serial numbers.”
Err, it’s already illegal to use stolen firearms and illegal to obliterate serial numbers. More stupidity:
Chief Mary Ann Viverette of the Gaithersburg, Md., Police Department also spoke at the event, representing the International Association of Chiefs of Police, of which she is also president. Viverette briefly praised the anti-trafficking bill, but then attacked another piece of legislation — the Firearms Corrections and Improvements Act (H.R. 5005).
“H.R. 5005 would make our job more difficult by severely limiting the ability of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to share tracing information with state and local law enforcement agencies,” Viverette claimed. “This legislation clearly has the potential to severely impede the investigation of criminal activities.”
The problem, of course, is that HR 5005 does no such thing:
But, as Cybercast News Service previously reported, H.R. 5005 contains no prohibition against the ATF sharing gun trace data with state and local law enforcement agencies for use in criminal investigations or prosecutions. The bill does prohibit the agency from sharing the data with state or local governments’ civil attorneys for use in lawsuits or other administrative procedures against gun dealers
They have to lie to win.
Alphie on Jersey’s smart gun law:
A prototype of a “smart gun”, a gun that can only be fired by its owner, has been developed by a group in New Jersey. Although a commercial version is at least five years away, as soon as one is available New Jersey citizens will be unable to purchase a gun that doesn’t contain personalization technology.
Note that I saw citizens, because cops will be exempt from the law because, after all, they are better than the rest of us.
If this comes to pass, it will set the stage for the biggest gun confiscation (in the form of “retrofit”) in recorded history.
Xrlq has a new twist on everyon’e favorite game. But a couple of quibbles. Xrlq says one is subject to total prohibition in California, not to mention the entire country from 1994 to 2004. Not quite.
The federal ban only affected semi-automatics with 2 or more evil features. So, for it to have been prohibited, he would have to add a pistol grip (since ARs don’t function without them) and one other evil feature, such as a telescopic stock.
Regarding the California ban, whether that one is banned or not depends on (and I am not making this up) who the manufacturer of that lower receiver is. Here’s a list. If, for example, that is a Rock River lower, it is banned. If it is Stag lower, it probably isn’t but that’s only because the California AG hasn’t put Stag on its list of evil weapons. Mind you, the same machining company makes both Stag and RRA lowers, they just put a different logo on them.
And, by the way, California is one generation away from making all such weapons illegal:
Pursuant to California Penal Code section 12285(b), any person who obtains title to a registered assault weapon by bequest or intestate succession shall, within 90 days, render the weapon permanently inoperable, sell the weapon to a licensed gun dealer who has a permit from the Department of Justice to purchase assault weapons, obtain a permit from the Department of Justice to possess assault weapons, or remove the weapon from this state.
When someone with such a weapon dies, their heirs must destroy the weapon or sell it.
A reader notes some progress at Kos, of all places:
It’s no secret that I look to the Mountain West for the future of the Democratic Party, people like Brian Schweitzer and Jon Tester. But I also look to candidates like Jim Webb in Virginia and Paul Hackett in Ohio.
And what is the common thread amongst these candidates?
They are all Libertarian Democrats.
…
So in practical terms, what does a Libertarian Dem look like? A Libertarian Dem rejects government efforts to intrude in our bedrooms and churches. A Libertarian Dem rejects government “Big Brother” efforts, such as the NSA spying of tens of millions of Americans. A Libertarian Dem rejects efforts to strip away rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights — from the First Amendment to the 10th. And yes, that includes the 2nd Amendment and the right to bear arms.
If you read the comments, quite a few of the Kossacks are pro-gun. I found this surprising and interesting. But, and let me be clear, if Kos is getting it, its impact must be growing to the point that it can’t be ignored. Regardless, I salute these types.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. In light of recent posts here at SayUncle that are sympathetic to the lefties, you’re probably wondering where the real SayUncle is and who is it taking over his blog being all sympathetic with the lefites. But I assure you, it’s still me and, no, I’m not off my meds.
But bear with me while I divulge another dark secret. See, I’ve been looking to the 2008 Presidential Elections and the possible candidates. And guess who I like? Well, Russ Feingold of all people. I figure any candidate that opposes the assault weapons ban, opposes the PATRIOT Act and said:
The Second Amendment raises interesting questions about a constitutional interpretation. I read the Second Amendment as providing an individual right to keep and bear arms as opposed to only a collective right. Individual Americans have a constitutional right to own and use guns. And there are a number of actions that legislatures should not take in my view to restrict gun ownership.
The modern Supreme Court has only heard one case interpreting the Second Amendment. That case is U.S. v. Miller. It was heard back in 1939. And the court indicated that it saw the right to bear arms as a collective right.
In a second case, in U.S. v. Emerson, the court denied cert and let stand the lower court opinion that upheld the statute banning gun possession by individuals subject to a restraining order against a second amendment challenge.
The appeals court viewed the right to bear arms as an individual right. The Supreme Court declined to review the Appeals Court decision.
is at least worth consideration. He (1) accepts that the second amendment enumerates an individual right and (2) is familiar with the case law. I think that’s a good thing. Also, his website says:
-Senator Feingold believes that the United States Constitution guarantees American citizens the right to keep and bear arms. As a Wisconsin State Senator, Senator Feingold co-sponsored and helped to write a constitutional amendment to ensure this right.
-Senator Feingold has consistently opposed proposals to ban handguns.
-In 1993, Senator Feingold voted to stop a licensing fee increase for people who sell guns.
-In 1998, Senator Feingold voted to prevent back door gun licensing and to prevent the creation of a government master list of gun owners.
-In Summer of 2002, Senator Feingold voted to allow airline pilots to carry firearms in the cockpits of airplanes.
-In Fall of 2002, Senator Feingold voted to let off-duty and retired police officers carry a gun outside their jurisdiction.
-In the April 2003 election, Senator Feingold was pleased to vote for a statewide referendum, which guaranteed Wisconsinites the right to hunt, fish and trap.
No mention of his opposition to the Assault Weapons Ban.
It’s a pity he has that abysmal incumbent protection act err Campaign Finance Reform as part of his checkered past. And he did support the assault weapons ban the first time around. So, it could be risky.
What will be more interesting is if he gets the nomination, watching the NRA squirm. Based on the current trends, I’d say Feingold is more pro-gun than anyone the Republicans would field. And who do you think the NRA would endorse?
Update: Meanwhile, real libertarians are not impressed.
According to this piece at ABC News by LESLIE YERANSIAN, Bloomberg is targeting colored gun kits as made by Lauer Weaponry. Bloomberg is targeting one of the more popular brands of quality products and these paint jobs are expensive. The paint is cheap, if you do it yourself but it requires knowing what you’re doing. Some stuff:
Mayor Bloomberg held up a toy gun and a real gun that had been colored using a paint kit to demonstrate how indistinguishable the guns would be to a police officer who might be confronting a person with one of the disguised weapons.
But Hugh Lauer said Bloomberg’s demonstration was a foolish one because, said Lauer, the real gun was obvious: “Maybe the real gun is the one with a hole and a barrel?”
Heh. More:
Lauer is the owner of Lauer Custom Weaponry in Chippewa Falls, Wis., and the inventor of Duracoat, a popular gun coloration chemical that has taken heat from Bloomberg. Lauer invented Duracoat more than a decade ago. He said he can’t keep up with the abundance of phone and Internet orders for the product.
“Our customers are all avid hunters, law enforcement, not gang bangers,” said Lauer. “We’re not getting orders from New York City. Our sales records only show two orders placed from there, and same thing with Los Angeles. We’re only getting order from movie makers.”
Two orders? Bloomberg is rather fanatical, it seems. And here’s a brilliant piece of journalistic integrity:
Regardless of how many gun-coloration kits Lauer is selling in New York, 80 percent of the guns used in committing crimes there have come from out of state.
And that is related how precisely?
A second Big Apple gun store swept up in the city’s crackdown on rogue gun dealers had hundreds of firearms returned by police, the store’s lawyer said yesterday.
Cops handed back 234 firearms to the Woodhaven Rifle and Pistol Range in Woodhaven, Queens, after seizing the guns in an undercover sting on May 25. The turnaround came a day after cops returned 247 weapons taken from DF Brothers Sports Center in Brooklyn in the same sting.
…
Store owner Michael Spallone, 43, was busted for selling guns to an undercover investigator accompanied by a retired female cop who showed a Suffolk County pistol permit. The same investigators were used in the sting against the Brooklyn gun shop.
But Chambers argued the sting operation amounted to nothing more than entrapment.
He said his client followed procedures – initially refusing to sell the gun and insisting the investigators procure required paperwork from Suffolk County police.
The lawyer said that when they returned the next day, the serial number had been transposed on the paperwork, so his client refused to let them leave with the gun.
But Chambers said city lawyers ultimately realized no crime had been committed and decided to return the weapons.
Now, the elipse is interesting and I saved it for the end. Check it:
“This is a law-abiding gun shop. This is not some squirrelly Southern gun dealer trying to make money and is NRA-happy. They only deal with licensees,” said John Chambers, the lawyer for the Woodhaven range.
Err, they’re not trying to make money? And, so far, it seems that not a single one of the Southern gun dealers entrapped by this scheme has broken the law. And there are no licensees in most other states, you twit.
Xrlq in comments made me horse laugh:
With that, I hereby induct you into the Non Sequitur Society, where “we may not make sense, but we do like pizza.”
R. Neal, addressing my corruption post at No Silence Here, says:
And who knew politicians could be bought so cheaply? Some amounts mentioned in the Tennessee Waltz sting are laughably small – $1000 here and $6000 there. Why would someone risk their career and reputation for amounts that small?
Well, like any other low-margin business model, they make their cash on volume. It’s not a single $1K transaction, I would guess. It’s many, many $1K transactions.
Radley has more instances of police putting on their ninja gear, grabbing their guns and breaking down doors at the wrong house. The overzealousness of the police in drug raids is getting a bit ridiculous. These make the case to allow civil action to be brought against individual officers personally, if you ask me. That approach would be problematic, of course, because everyone who ever got arrested would sue the officers involved. But surely there’s some way to hold these guys accountable and cause the police to be absolutely certain prior to ninjaing up and busting doors down.
All the references to assault weapons involving the Indiana slayings seem to have stopped. No mention in this story, for example. I wonder why? Oh yeah. But I’ve seen no corrections.
Here’s another account of the details of the Indiana murders that doesn’t mention assault weapons. Still seen no correction.
Well, Karl, that there gay cooties banning didn’t work out. So, plan B:
Bush says immigrants must learn English
Man, these guys can pull non-issues from their hindquarters faster than Puff Daddy can ruin a bitchin’ song riff.
In a rare accomplishment, the US Senate managed to avoid embarrassing itself over the issue of marriage discrimination.
Of course, the 49 Senators who voted to support a Constitutional ban on equal marriage have their fingers in a crumbling dike. Future generations will look at their bigotry in much the same way we look at pre-Loving v. Virginia America. If their children aren’t already ashamed, their grandkids will be.
The haters are losing a battle against demographic destiny. Every poll shows that opposition to marriage equality correlates strongly with age. The future is clear, and nobody rationally doubts that America will eventually have marriage equality. The question is can we get there now or do we have to wait a couple decades for the bigots to die of old age. I’m guessing the latter, but as the slim majority becomes an overwhelming minority in state after state after state, momentum on this issue is going to shift pretty fast.
I wonder how those 49 Senators feel about being on the wrong side of history.
Via the Comedian, comes this awesome graphic of the relative size of planets in our solar system and the sun.
According to my sources, the ATF is sending dealers a computer CD titled Federal Firearms Licensee User Manual. According to those same sources, this CD crashes Windows. You’ve been warned.
Update from Bruce in comments:
Well, seeing as the ATF crashes doors of unsuspecting citizens, it’s only fitting that the ATF’s CD do the same to their Windows.
Heh.
The police chief of New orleans has retreated from his statement that firearms would be siezed if another situation like Katrina happens.
Within two hours of an announcement that the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) was calling for a Justice Department investigation of New Orleans Police Superintendent Warren Riley’s plan to confiscate guns again if a major storm hits the city this year, SAF learned that Riley has backed off.
The article does not give any quotes or other evidence of this retreat so I am waiting to declare this a smll win. The main problem is the police chief could easily change his mind the day of the storm.
In the poll I mentioned yesterday, I am surprised that National CCW is in the lead. In fact, it would be last on my list as that is successfully being handled on the state level except in places where it’s a lost cause. So, go vote.
Update: Now, it’s the Supreme Court.
I don’t approve of people writing on other people’s dirty cars. But, more importantly, I don’t approve of people writing the tired, old Wash Me on them. If you’re going to vandalize someone’s property, at least make it amusing. After all, scores of people will see it by the time they wash it off and, face it, they need a laugh. So, instead of wash me, try something like I wish my wife were this dirty. Last night, I was heading home and was behind a car with hatchback. It was dirty and someone decided to write something on it. They wrote the phrase Midget Porn. I guess because that’s dirty, too. I should carry a camera.
Bloomberg’s push to ban gun coloration kits is, well, stupid. But I didn’t really know what he meant. Dave the hyphenated American has some examples. He notes:
So now not only are black rifles like the AR-15 “evil” in the gun-grabbers’ eyes, but now guns of color are too. So far, no-one seems to have noticed that most SKS and AK-47 types come in wooden stocks. I guess it is only a matter of time that wood is “evil” too
The ATF is apparently working hard to define manufacturing as touching a tool to a gun. Gun Law News has the skinny on the continuing war on gunsmiths:
The BATFE is going after gunsmiths for work analagous to this via the Tax and Trade Bureau to fine, and in some cases, close down small, custom gun shops.
…
Nowhere does “Make a bad gun good” or “Make a good gun better” fall anywhere within the definition “manufacturing firearms”. That does not stop the BATFE from throwing common sense out the window.
Ultimately, the question for gunsmiths becomes, “Where does maintenance end and manufacturing begin?” The question is significant as the answer affects whether or not you pay Federal Excise Tax on your work. Get the answer wrong and you rate a visit from the BATFE and the Tax and Trade Bureau. Unfortunately for some smiths, the answer changes depending on which BATFE agent you talk to.
If you thought that was bad enough, be patient. Let’s say that you are a gun writer. As a part of your job, you have had gunsmiths tune guns to your liking so you could write about them, thereby making money on the improvements. According to some in the BATFE you have just made yourself a ‘manufacturer’ and the smith working for you is a subcontractor. You, as the writer, are responsible for having a manufacturing FFL and paying excise taxes.
Yeah, the ATF needs it’s collective pee-pee whacked.
I don’t think this is about keeping guns out of the hands of criminals at all. I think this is about ridiculing and shaming legal gun owners.
I think we do this for two reasons. 1. By and large, we don’t own guns. We want to believe that our way of looking at the world is correct and therefore, we want gun owners to give up their guns in order to validate our ways of life. This is stupid, but not malicious.
I disagree that it is not malicious. Waiting periods have killed women who went to buy a gun only to be told to wait. Even a day is a lot of time to wait and bad things happen:
In April of 1991, Bonnie’s relatives were grieving her untimely death. She had just inquired about getting a gun to protect herself from a husband who had repeatedly threatened to kill her. She was told there was a 48-hour waiting period to buy a handgun.
Unfortunately, Bonnie was never able to pick up the gun she needed for self-defense. She and her two sons were killed the very next day by an abusive husband of whom the police were well aware.
In the aftermath of the Kelo ruling, it looks like the city council has voted to evict:
City officials voted Monday night to evict residents who refused to leave their riverfront homes, signaling that the end is near in an eminent domain dispute that reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
The City Council approved the action 5-2. The city attorney will now go to court to seek removal of the remaining two families and obtain the properties in the Fort Trumbull neighborhood, a process that could take three months.
Another sad day for America and for property rights.
After Katrina, a few states passed laws making it a crime for the powers that be to confiscate firearms during emergencies. Now, there is a federal bill in the works that does the same:
The start of hurricane season has become a selling point for gun-rights legislation spurred by Hurricane Katrina.
During the during storm’s chaotic aftermath, government officials hoping to ensure public safety seized hundreds of legally owned guns from Louisiana residents, some seeking to protect themselves from pillagers and assailants. The seizures have triggered outrage among gun-rights activists, spawning a lawsuit and bills nationwide to ban future confiscations.
“These people were left to defend themselves from criminals,” said Chris Cox, chief lobbyist for the National Rifle Association (NRA). “It really became the proving ground for what American gun owners have always feared, and that’s the day that bureaucrats threw the Bill of Rights in the trash can.”
Cox and other lobbyists are pushing for a bill that would ban government officials from seizing firearms during emergencies, saying it would ensure protection for law-abiding citizens when they need it most. Opponents say it could hamper law enforcement’s ability to stabilize turbulent situations.
That’s funny, I thought we already had a 2nd Amendment
In response to my post on National Ask Day, where parents ask Is there a gun where my child plays?, reader Rich gives a possible answer:
Why, does your kid look for valuables in neighborhood houses?
Heh.
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
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