This site is dedicated to the law-breaking, jack-booted thugs who work for parking enforcement in Arlington, VA. It is dedicated to the taxpayer-funded hypocrites who regularly break the traffic laws they are supposed to enforce.
Well, JBT reference aside, I like the concept.
BB Guns are illegal in Chicago:
Making good on warnings that BB-guns are illegal in Chicago, police have busted a Northwest Side store owner for selling one of the plastic weapons to a 13-year-old boy, authorities said Monday.
Plastic? Are they AirSoft? Banning BB guns is stupid and banning AirSoft is likely more so.
Japan is re-thinking it’s passivity:
Shinzo Abe, the front-runner to become Japan’s next prime minister, has called for revisions to the pacifist constitution imposed after World War II, saying the country must adapt to a new era.
It’s a new world but I’m fairly certain Japan has agreed to stay that way in exchange for us not nuking them.
Via Xrlq and, err, me. While the press is busy giving us wall-to-wall coverage of the Jon Benet Ramsey case, important shit is happening that we should be paying attention to:
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that police may keep the $124,700 they seized from Emiliano Gonzolez, an immigrant who by all appearances was attempting to use the money to start a legitimate business.
This is an outrageous ruling. Consider:
Gonzolez was never charged with any crime in relation to the money, much less convicted. Gonzalez had an explanation for the money that a lower court found both “plausible” and “consistent.” He brought several witnesses forward to corroborate his story (in the preposterous land of asset forfeiture, property can be guilty of a crime, and the burden is often person the police seized the property from to prove he obtained it legally). The government offered no evidence to counter Gonzolez’s explanation. Instead, the court ruled that the mere fact that Gonzolez was carrying a large sum of money, that he had difficulty understanding the officer’s questions, that he incorrectly answered some of those questions (due, Gonzolez says, to fears that if police knew he was carrying that much money, they might confiscate it — imagine that!), and that a drug dog alerted to the car Gonzolez was driving (which, as dissenting judge Donald Lay noted, was a rental, likely driven by dozens of people before Gonzolez), was enough to “convict” the money of having drug ties, even if there wasn’t enough evidence to charge Gonzolez.
Not convicted of a crime. No due process. Just a case of the you might be up to somethings. Walter Olson calls it Driving While Loaded:
A Nebraska state trooper stopped Emiliano Gomez Gonzolez for speeding on Interstate 80 in 2003 in his rental car, then proceeded to seize $124,000 from a cooler in the back seat. According to the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals (opinion, PDF), Nebraska was within its rights to seize the $124,000 as presumed drug money (it then became the subject of a federal forfeiture action) even though 1) Gonzolez had no substantial or drug-related criminal record; 2) witnesses backed up his claim that the money had been pooled by several immigrants for purposes of buying a refrigerated truck for his produce business.
Note to the press: this is the kind of gestapo shit that should be on the front page.
I love the EOTech holographic weapon sight, particularly the reticle. Tam has dubbed the reticle the donut of death. Here’s a picture of the reticle:
It is a 1 MOA dot inside a 65 MOA circle (for those not in the know, MOA is roughly one inch at a hundred yards). The dot is good for longer shots when accuracy is needed. The circle is good for rapid acquisition when MOA accuracy isn’t necessary. Also, it’s roughly the size of a man (a shorter man) at 100 yards and can be used to SWAG* a range estimate. The reticle also has posts at 12, 3, 6 and 9 which can be useful for a variety of things.
This brings us to fun with my 9mm AR-15. Since I only shoot it at the indoor range and have decided it would make a good house gun, it’s set up for short range work. I have it zeroed in at seven yards (gunnies will know what that number means). On the EOTech, at 7 yards, I put the dot on the target and that’s where the bullet goes. At 7 yards, firing as fast as I want to, it gets groups like this:
Sighting it in at such a short range has disadvantages as most sights are designed for at least 25 yards but mostly 50 to 100. This means that at further ranges, the dot isn’t that useful. So, here’s where the EOTech’s coolness comes in. At 15 yards, I simply place the target I am shooting at between the 12 0’clock hash-mark and the dot like so (X is my target):
And it works. I didn’t take pictures when at the range last but it gets groups of comparable size but slightly larger. A little bounce has more effect the further away the target is. At 25 yards, I place the target at the bottom of the top hash-mark, like so:
It works too. Your mileage may vary.
* Scientific Wild Ass Guess
Remember Jenny Price? The chick who made some ridiculous argument on banning handguns and was then surprised people were mean to her after that? Well, Joe wonders why the Department of Justice wants to know what bloggers are saying about her.
A woman wounded in last month’s deadly shooting rampage at Seattle’s Jewish Federation offices says she hopes the attack helps the public and lawmakers see a need for tighter gun control laws.
“How and why the murderer who invaded my workplace a couple of weeks ago was able to legally acquire two semiautomatic weapons in our state is still a very disturbing mystery to me,” Dayna Klein, 37, said Thursday, seated next to her husband at a news conference in a downtown hotel.
Klein said she met with former President Bill Clinton last week while in New York, discussed both gun control and workplace safety with him and was encouraged by the conversation.
“His foundation is committed to doing similar things domestically, so this will be a project that we potentially will have an opportunity to collaborate on in the future,” Klein said.
Seems to me, one CCW holder would have made a huge difference.
I’ve mentioned that in the last couple of weeks that there is a two-pronged front going on for the gun control movement. One is the assault weapons ban canard and the other is the assault on castle doctrine. Kevin spotted another case of the latter:
Intruder fatally shot
Fatality third in Escambia since ‘Stand Your Ground’ law passed
Law enforcement and attorneys say the local nurse who fatally shot an intruder at her Navy Point home Saturday would have been protected by state law before the “Stand Your Ground” law passed.
Then Kevin asks: Then why mention the “Stand Your Ground” law at all?
The answer, like the assault weapons ban canard, is association. Say “Stand your ground” in stories where people get shot enough times and people will correlate the two. The assault weapons ban canard keeps picking up some force too:
Dade cops seeing more assault rifles
More homicides in Miami-Dade have been committed this year using assault-style rifles, but whether that means more of the weapons are on the streets is unclear.
Which is it? Are they assault rifles (medium power, select fire weapons) or assault style weapons (made up)? More:
Although most killers still use handguns, police report the use of assault-style rifles — the AK-47 and its cheaper cousin, the SKS — is on the rise.
AK-47s have been banned since 1986 and heavily regulated since 1934. The SKS is neither an assault rifle, nor an assault weapon. And it’s no so much the cousin of the AK as it is the AK’s jilted ex-lover. More:
• During the first six months of the year, at least nine homicides handled by Miami-Dade detectives were believed to have been committed with assault-style rifles. That’s up from only one last year during the same time period, the department said.
• This year, the Miami Police Department’s homicide unit has handled 10 deaths attributed to assault-style rifles — including the June triple murder. That’s up from six during the same time period last year.
Uhm, is nine or 10? And is it six or one? I don’t understand what they’re saying here. Either way, those numbers hardly seem staggering.
The Broward Sheriff’s Office hasn’t detected a sharp increase, but it has noticed a ”bit of an upswing” in crimes involving shotguns and long guns over the past few months, according to BSO spokesman Elliot Cohen. He said it’s too early to draw any conclusions.
”The last couple months there has been a higher than normal level of incidence with shotguns and long guns,” Cohen said. “Anecdotally, it’s something our detectives have noticed.”
That’s what I figured.
The spate of murders comes nearly two years after legislators allowed a federal ban on certain assault-style weapons to expire — but whether that means more are on the streets is difficult to gauge, law enforcement officials say.
And there’s the blame.
I’ve noticed this trend quite a bit in the last two weeks, enough so to make me think that it is not entirely accidental.
Via Nimrod.
Here at the office, we prepare this thing every week. For sake of argument, we’ll call this thing the WENIS. People send me info and I compile the info then send the WENIS to a very important person, who we’ll call The Big Cheese. One particular person (who we’ll call Regularly Incompetent Person) always gets their WENIS wrong. Actual conversation about the WENIS:
Regularly Incompetent Person: I need you to reject the info I sent for the WENIS.
Me: I already did.
Regularly Incompetent Person: [baffled] You did?
Me: Yes.
Regularly Incompetent Person: Why?
Me: Because it’s always wrong and you always call to tell me you need to resubmit it. Rejecting it the first time saves me the time I would ordinarily spend 1) deleting your mistake and 2) re-submitting the correction.
Regularly Incompetent Person: Oh, uhm, well … err… it’s wrong and I need to resubmit it.
Me: I told you.
Regularly Incompetent Person: Smart ass.
So, I plan my day around others’ incompetence. It’s a good skill, saves you time.
In an update to this post on about neo-Nazi stuff at the Knob Creek shoot, the machinegunners respond over at subguns.com:
Alot of the black and camo BDU and certainly Nazi paraphernalia would be better left at home, or better yet in the trash.
Indeed. I do hate going to the gun show and seeing the obligatory Nazi section. I steer clear and shake my head as I walk by. I’d advise other gunnies to do the same.
The guys at subguns also get their factchecking on:
Two things I really disputed in the article:
“Sonny Landham, the 1980s action movie star ….white supremacist?” Somebody better check their facts, he`s a American Indian. He`s the American Indian in Predator.
The “so called neo-nazi crap” was U-Boat memorabilia dealer. By the same logic any dealer selling Russian/USSR relics must be a “communist”
Heh:
Aren’t you afraid an underprivileged urban-outdoorsman might break in and steal the rifle?
No, we have the rifle and camera setup in a secured office building with an alarm system. Besides, if criminals actually stole the weapons they later used in crimes, gun control laws wouldn’t make much sense.
Check it out here.
WBIR:
Dennis Smith and his wife, Kristie Dawn Smith, had just put their five-year-old son to bed in July 2002 when three men burst into their mobile home near Tazewell, demanding to know where the drugs were.
The demand was specific — 116 pounds of marijuana, methamphetamine and the Smith’s meth cookers.
They didn’t have any of it, as a search of their trailer showed.
The lawmen were at the wrong home, having taken the word of an informant and not verifying even who owned the cars in the driveway, according to court documents.
The proposed settlement will cost Claiborne County taxpayers $10,000.
You should have had a few more zeros added to the settlement.
My wife frequently calls me lazy. It’s not because I won’t do stuff but because of how I do stuff. For example, when charged with sweeping, I’ll use the large pushbroom instead of the small one. It covers more surface area and is more efficient. Or, if it’s outside, I use the leaf blower. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing with power tools. Not sure why she says it’s lazy as it takes more effort to get the blower out and all that. And the blower does a better job.
Seems some conservatives no longer think the war was good idea. Der Commissar:
Presuming that overthrowing Saddam was “a good thing” even absent WMDs, we did not commit enough troops to secure and rebuild the country, although plenty of Rumsfeld’s generals said they would be needed. As one of the above authors noted, we didn’t occupy Iraq, we staged a coup. Then having overthrown Saddam, we presided over chaos, disbanded the Iraqi Army, and outlawed the Baathists. To a very large extent, the insurgency is of our own making.
Rick Moran says QUIT OR COMMIT:
Simply put, the reason I have come to this conclusion now is that the enemies of Iraqi democracy have established a clear upper hand in the country and it is uncertain at best whether the situation can be retrieved at this point.
I’ve personally been disappointed with the handling of this whole thing, though I did support it and still do. I am, however, unwilling to throw everything under the bus now for a variety of reasons.
In PA, the one gun a month law misfires:
They’re at it again. Gun-control advocates and their friends in state government are once again trying to nibble away at your right to own firearms. But you’ve got to hand it to them, as they’re quite crafty.
This latest proposal, which is merely a retread of Gov. Ed Rendell’s 2002 campaign proposal to restrict firearm ownership, would limit handgun purchases to one per month.
It all sounds relatively mild. After all, who would want to purchase more than one handgun per month?
Certainly, the anti-gun crowd would lead us to believe, only criminals would.
Well, if they can limit purchases to one a month, why not one a year or once in a lifetime?
I recall when the whole drugs fund terror commercials came out and everyone said, basically, it was bullshit. At the time, I knew those saying it was bullshit were wrong. Drugs make money quickly and easily, if you don’t get killed or arrested. It was only natural to assume terrorists figured that out too.
Any way, now it seems that anti-drug war crowd has realized it wasn’t bullshit too. And they’ve started using the idea to gain support for a serious look at the war on civil liberties err drugs:
On Saturday, Aug. 19, 2006, The Washington Post reported that there is dispute within the drug policy reform community over the veracity of a Drug Enforcement Administration traveling road show that connects the $ 322 annual world wide retail black market for illicit drugs and terrorism. The proliferation of stateless terrorist armies around the world, that are able to thrive and grow independent of national sponsorship in the past twenty years, should alone serve to confirm the connection. There is no other supply of untraceable capital in the world economy able to do this as efficiently as does the U.S. and U.N. imposed prohibition black market economy of the drug war. Drug-Terror Connection Disputed Washington Post.
Not only does the prohibition economy of the drug war fund terrorist armies including, I believe, alQaeda, but it provides underground logistical and tactical resources as well. International smuggling routes. Money laundering. Weapons. Heroin itself is reported to be an asymmetric weapon of bin Laden’s. Heroin that bin Laden has been flooding the west with since the mid 1990’s in order to destabilize what he perceives are decadent western societies.
There’s more. Read it.
And who is armed. Nifty graphic of salaries, who is armed, and relative number of employees. About 1% of us are employed by the federal government.
First, (as mentioned before), the assault weapons ban canard is popping up. While pointing out that in 2005 murder is up, casually mention the assault weapons ban expired. It doesn’t seem to matter that murder is up in places that have a ban or that there is no evidence that murders committed with formerly banned are on the rise or that the preferred and most common weapon used in murder is a handgun. Gunbloggers need to stay on this one.
Second, in South Africa, comes something you’ll never see in the American press:
While the gun control lobby called for the act to be strengthened, the pro-gun groupings argued that the laws were in conflict with the constitutional protection of property and the right to compensation if firearms were forfeited as a result of the act.
Did you catch it? Here in the states, the press never calls an anti-gun group a lobby. They are activists or advocates. Meanwhile, the NRA is always a lobby and never an activist or advocacy group.
Next up, David Hardy smacks down the Daytona Beach News for
As Don Kates has pointed out with regard to another article, “Among the highly misleading things in this article is that the ordinary reader will probably never realize that the retreat rule has always been the minority rule in the U.S. So instead of a horrible earthshaking change taking place, all that is happening is that the legislatures of at most 15 states have adopted what was already the rule in most states.”
The assault on castle doctrine is heating up as well.
Update: regarding the assault weapons canard, pro-gun progressive says:
The article also presents the other staple of the media anti-gun bias playbook: the unrebutted quote from a Bradyite mouthpiece which distorts a key fact
Well, the assault weapons ban, Lautenberg amendment and Brady Bill had his name on it so it’s no surprise Clinton had it in for gun makers too:
The “promising idea” identified by Blumenthal involved filing massive product liability and negligence lawsuits against major handgun makers, “the opening salvo in a campaign against the gun industry by an alliance of anti-tobacco attorneys and local governments,” wrote The Los Angeles Times. According to one of the lawyers involved in the lawsuits: “We are going to do to [the gun industry] what we did to tobacco. It’s going to be a very large war.”
Judicial watch has more on Clinton’s war on guns, including some of the documents. Hell, I may have to vote Republican this time around since Bill still has pull and I hear is wife may be running for prez.
The police watchdog group that revealed how difficult it is to obtain a police complaint form in various South Florida jurisdictions conducted the same investigation in Independence, Missouri.
This time, their investigator was arrested. Rather violently.
Abysmal.
As far as I can tell, the only purpose an indicator light on any electronic device serves is to let you know that the indicator light is broken.
A New Orleans Police Department employee and a felon have been indicted for illegally obtaining an AK-47 assault rifle, federal prosecutors said Friday.
U.S. Attorney Jim Letten said Nisheka M. Webb, 21, went to a local gun show July 29 with Wayne C. Jones, 28, to buy a gun for him. Jones, a convicted felon, is prohibited from ever owning or possessing a firearm, Letten said.
The indictment charged both with conspiracy to acquire a firearm by providing a false statement to a federally-licensed firearm dealer.
Yet no one has arrested Bloomberg’s investigators. Via David, who says:
what’s this “federally-licensed firearm dealer” business? Everyone knows gun shows provide loopholes for supplying felons and terrorists with firearms–no questions asked.
Right, GOP presidential hopeful John McCain?
No secret, I’m a fan of Sigs. Check out the torture test of the Sig 226.
Via AD.
The lefty loons at AlterNet went to the Knob Creek machine gun shoot:
The Knob Creek machine gun shoot in Kentucky attracts thousands of neo-Nazis and other extremists. But the orgy of firepower helps everyone get along just fine.
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
Uncle Pays the Bills
 |
|
Find Local
|
