Excellent news. TVA will be guest blogging at No Silence Here.

I’m as pro-dog as they get but dogs should not run loose. That’s why I don’t particularly get upset when stuff like this happens. It’s sad the dog died and it’s not the dog’s fault. It’s the owners fault.

I noticed Front Sight is showing up in Google ads sometimes.

First, I never cared for Lieberman. As I said before, he’s a statist and only seems to appeal to the conservatives lately entirely due to the war. The significance of Lieberman’s loss is that the people, for good or bad, can be motivated to buck the status quo. That’s a good thing, overall. Also, it’s that rare occasion where the ideals take precedence over the party line and the status quo.

Also, for good or bad, Lieberman has (in the words of Andy) invoked the spirit of “party unity” at 11:05, Joe Lieberman concedes, but vows to run as an Independent. I do not think that means what Joe think that means. I wonder if the Democrat machine will back party or the status quo this time? It damn sure doesn’t have a history of backing ideals.

This could be the beginning of a one party system if the Dems grassroots primary campaigns can’t get electable candidates to the general election. They seem to be doing that lately. Granted, I know very little about Lamont and he may be electable. He has no stance on gun control, according to On The Issues.

Update: Jay says:

Joe Lieberman lost his primary race because he wasn’t moonbatty enough, and Cynthia McKinney lost her primary race because she was too moonbatty.

Heh. Not sure if Lamont is moonbatty but I’m sure that’s how this will talked about for the forseeable future.

Update 2: Well said:

But he embodies so much of what’s wrong with Washington. He’s the prototypical David Broder candidate, a big government liberal who’s willing to engage in magnanimous gestures of bipartisanship . . . on issues where Republicans also support big government. So he’s cool with bombing and nation building, and state-sponsored health care. He’s okay with government censorship of video games and cable TV, and heavy-handed regulation of business.

Golly. What a moderate!

In other words, he’s wrong on every issue. He’s a culture warrior, a values cop, a Nanny Statist, and a big government foreign policy hawk. He favors high taxes, and a massive welfare state. He’s pro-pork, pro-status quo, and pro-business as usual.

No Silence Here is two years old.

Yesterday, I made this pledge:

Any organization* that wants to run a political ad criticizing any politician in that window can do so here. Not only will I run the ad free, I’ll do a post on the ad on the front page.

Kim du Toit made a similar pledge.

I’m happy to report that a few others have joined the fold:

Xrlq, who apparently takes issue with my use of i.e., makes a similar pledge with some caveats. He supports clean free elections.

Jolie Rouge also takes the pledge with Wield the awesome power of 8 hits a day in your campaign. Hey, don’t feel too bad. More people will see campaign-related free speech in action on your site than will see it on NBC.

If you wish to take the pledge, you can do so even if you do not run ads. Commit to posting said items on your blog. Free speech needs your help.

Who else is up for it? Let me know.

Repeal the Lautenberg Amendment, aka, section 658 of Public Law 104-208. The Lautenberg Amendment is a silly piece of legislation. It can keep you out of the military, from being a policeman, and ends your gun rights without due process of law.

Local adult novelty store Sunshyne Video (not safe for work, for those who need to be told that) made the local news:

A woman who has been ordered out of her home after living there for months without water or electricity received help from an unlikely source Sunday.

Margie Hamby was told by Maryville officials to move out two years ago because her house had been declared unlivable for safety reasons and because of her overabundance of belongings.

Determined to stay put, Hamby refused city and court orders, claiming she wasn’t able to do it alone.

Sunday she got help from an unlikely source.

It’s not everyday employees of an adult bookstore and members of local churches come together for the greater good. But Sunday everyone worked together to help get 20 years worth of clothing and clutter out of Hamby’s home.

“We help where we get a chance to let people know that there’s really not much to the stereotype of adult bookstore or adult stores,” says David Anderson, the owner of Sunshyne Video.

He says he and his employees heard the call for volunteers and decided to lend a hand.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re a member of an adult video store or a church if someone needs help the American thing to do is be there,” says Anderson.

Marc has more info to this post of mine called the world’s least powerful handgun.

Les Jones:

I Just Realized We’re in a Proxy War with Iran and Syria

I’d say we’re probably in a proxy war with more nations than we realize.

Seen at Radley’s:

My friend approached his city councilman and asked, alluding to the Georgetown murder, how the victim or the woman with him (she was nearly raped) could possibly have defended themselves, given D.C.’s strict gun control laws. My friend correctly noted that a stun gun or a handgun may well have thwarted the attack.

The councilman’s answer?

“Wear a whistle around your neck.”

In DC, guns and stun guns are banned. And you need special permission to have pepper spray. It’s a city where those who are not criminals and those who are not politically connected are forbidden from defending themselves.

First of all, those guys at Microsoft are supposed to be pretty smart. But they do all kinds of dumb shit. My biggest peeves with their software are as follows:

1 – The fact that when you open an Excel document from an Outlook attachment, it opens that stupid review toolbar. This monkeys with my settings and costs me valuable time, 0.25 seconds at a time.

2 – That MS Word documents opened from Outlook open in document map mode

3 – That the Links folder in Internet Explorer will perpetually come back no matter how often you delete it.

Fortunately, I found solutions for these items:

1 – Can be solved by adding some code to your personal.xls file. See here.

2 – Can be solved by clicking Tools\Options. On the general tab, unclick the box the box that says something to the effect of Allow starting in reading lay out.

3 – There’s a way to fix using a registry editor but I just use Firefox.

Microsoft products do other stupid shit but those are the ones that annoyed me this week.

Penn & Teller do a somewhat flacid bit on polling. They interview Frank Luntz and effectively make the point that crooked people make crooked polls. They extend this to the fallacy that all polls are crooked. And then take it way too far with a repeated chorus of “Fuck you, Frank!”

Polls are like any other science. The people that pay for them can shape their outcome to meet their desired conclusions. But they can be done well and some places (i.e. Marist and Quinnipiac) do an acceptable job of modelling public opinion.

Bottom line: who pays for those polls and who conducts them?

From the NYTimes. It’s short, so I’ll quote it in full:

The first seven months of 2006 were the warmest such stretch in the continental United States for any year since climate record-keeping began in 1895, federal scientists said. Scorching temperatures in July, particularly strings of hot nights, were almost certainly related in part to the continuing buildup of heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe gases linked to global warming, said Jay Lawrimore of the National Climatic Data Center. “The long-term trend we’re seeing cannot be explained without the influence of greenhouse gases,” Mr. Lawrimore said.

Seen at Kim’s:

When Congress comes back into session, roughly 60 days before the November midterms, it will essentially be immune from criticism. That’s because Congress—acting, of course, only in the interest of “clean” politics—passed a ban on ads that mention federal candidates’ names in the window 60 days before the general election, as part of McCain-Feingold in 2002.

So, say the Senate takes up an immigration bill granting full amnesty to all illegal immigrants this fall—it will be almost impossible for grassroots groups to advertise against it, because they won’t be able to run ads during this period naming the people who are sponsoring or voting on the bills. Criticizing them by name during this window is against the law. You can’t ask voters to “call Congressman [So-and-So].”

First of all, that’s retarded. Secondly, I’ll continue to say whatever I choose to say on this here blog. Kim pledged:

If a conservative organization wants to run a political ad criticizing any Congressman up for re-election during that 60-day window, I’ll let them run one on this website, for free, right up until Election Day.

I’ll go a step further:

Any organization* that wants to run a political ad criticizing any politician in that window can do so here. Not only will I run the ad free, I’ll do a post on the ad on the front page.

I advise other bloggers to offer the same.

* The organization must pass the Uncle Sanity Test, i.e., no NAMBLA, Peta, or other weirdo extremists.

In defense of Kelo, the argument used to justify it or to quell the masses usually goes something like this:

The Supreme Court in Kelo simply recognized that the State of Connecticut had made a series of legislative choices, spurred by aggressive lobbying from developers, that allowed local officials to take with just compensation private property and then turn the land over to private economic developers.

While that is true (and shame on them), there is also the issue that the bill of rights applies to state government’s as well. The fifth amendment states:

nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Private development is not public use. The significance of Kelo is that the supreme court had the chance to assert that the fifth amendment means something and it did not.

A surprising development in the Mike Ragsdale saga. On July 31, 2006 Jon Gustin of the Mayor’s office registered the Internet Domain www.ragsdaleforgovernor.com.

There is a poll at KnoxViews.com

Jeff has a request for gunbloggers and commenters:

In the previous post, I showed how the NY Times is clearly biased against the “Stand Your Ground” — also known as Castle Doctrine — laws being passed around the country.

This morning on NBC’s Today Show they joined the fray, discussing the “iffy” case of a Florida Prostitute who didn’t run from an abusive “John” but shot him instead (one of the same stories used by the Times).

Missing from both the Times and the NBC News stories was the reason that Stand Your Ground laws were coming into being — the people who, in the past, were unfairly charged with crimes because they defended themselves and their loved ones.

It’s obvious that most of Main Stream Media is incapable of anything resembling unbiased reporting. So…

I need your help!

Many of you know of (or have blogged of) stories about people who used firearms to defend themselves from mutants and were then charged with serious crimes because of that. Or they were sued in civil court by family members (and greedy lawyers) of the shot perpetrators.

Can you locate your blog posts or newspaper stories about these cases and post links to them in the comments here? If you prefer, you can email them to me although with all the spam email I get, sometimes stuff gets lost.

Go help him out. I’ll search my archives later.

I hate when someone uses weasel words like failed to mention or never mention. Not mentioning something proves little, generally, unless it’s a blatant omission of some kind. But my real peeve about it is that it 1) generally implies intent to deceive; and 2) is usually a bullshit claim.

Take for example this:

As gun lobbyists often point out, states with stringent gun-safety laws such as New York often have some of the highest firearm murder rates in the country. The implication is that stringent gun laws don’t work.

However, what the lobbyists never mention is that the firearms used to kill and maim people in states with stringent gun laws often flow from states with weaker laws.

Well, what Maureen Downey fails to mention is that most crime guns are also stolen. Stealing is illegal. She also fails to mention that moving guns into NY is also generally illegal. Something about criminals not obeying the law comes to mind. She continues:

Using federal gun-tracing data, New York identified out-of-state dealers — including five in Georgia — who had sold weapons linked to more than 500 crimes in the city from 1994 to 2001.

The city dispatched teams of private detectives with hidden cameras to the dealerships to see how easy it would be for an illegal buyer to walk in and get a gun in a “straw” purchase. That’s when a buyer who legally can’t own a gun — mainly because he has a criminal record — brings a pal to fill out the mandated federal background check.

New York confirmed that certain dealers were more than willing to engage in the straw sales that feed the gun trafficking pipeline. After the city caught 15 dealers selling guns to straw buyers, it filed a lawsuit in May that the gun lobby dismissed as a joke.

She fails to mention that said sting is illegal. That said sting is being investigated by the ATF because it’s illegal. And that the dealers (along with Bob Barr) are suing the city of NY. Still, more:

Well, two of the five Georgia gun dealers named in the lawsuit agreed to settle last week, suggesting that the lawsuit wasn’t so silly after all. The shop owners agreed to strict monitoring of their sales practices and financial penalties on any future violations.

She fails to mention that those dealers are pawn shops, who sell guns the way Wal-Mart does meaning that they do so to make money and not because they’re into guns. Still more idiocy:

New York’s sting operation refutes the National Rifle Association’s fairy tale that guns fall from the skies into the hands of criminals, and the NRA’s response has been telling. It is now pushing Congress to pass a law that would prohibit the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from releasing gun trace information to anyone but a police department investigating a particular crime.

Actually, we pro-gun types never say that. We say guns are stolen. And the only reason gun trace data should be available is to search for a crime. If it’s merely used as a data-mining exercise, that is flatly illegal as federal law prohibits any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions and dispositions.

She also asserts:

The proposed changes come at a time when the FBI is reporting a rise in violent crime, especially in mid-size cities. Police are beginning to tie newly legalized assault weapons with increased gang violence. (When Congress refused to renew the ban on assault rifles two years ago, who did it think would be the market for AK-47s, Uzis and Tec-9 pistols — the Rotary Club?)

She fails to mention a source of that info and it doesn’t jibe with any statistics I’ve seen anywhere. I’d say it’s made up. She also fails to mention that Ak-47s and Uzis have been banned (and remain so) since 1986. And the company that made the Tec-9 has gone out of business.

She fails to mention quite a few materially significant things. But, then, she has to in order to believe the horse shit she writes. You can let her know that by emailing her at mdowney@ajc.com.

One of the jokes about anti-gun statistics is they often include something like X number of children are killed per year with a gun. But when you look into the stats, those children include 24 year-olds. I guess this explains why:

Firearms are kept unlocked in nearly half of U.S. gun-owning households where children are adolescents, and some are loaded and unlocked, a study said on Monday

Children are adolescents? I thought adolescents were adolescents else they would be called something else.

A piece on the one year anniversary of the day Anthony Diotaiuto was killed by 10 rounds of 9mm to the chest for having less than an ounce of marijuana and a handgun permit in a pre-dawn raid. This bit of info is new to me:

A year later, only two new details have come to light: Sunrise police cleared the two officers who shot Diotaiuto, and the Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office acknowledged police waited three hours after the shooting to contact a coroner.

Why would they do that? That’s a lot of time. More:

Sunrise police declined to answer a dozen questions submitted to them this week, including whether SWAT teams are still being used to serve search warrants. Lt. Roger Torres, speaking for the department, said city attorneys suggested the department not comment. Diotaiuto had a concealed weapon’s permit, a “major factor” in justifying use of the SWAT team, police have said.

And some details:

A judge approved the search warrant on Aug. 3, 2005.

Details of what happened next are in dispute.

Diotaiuto got home from work about 4 a.m. Two hours later, the SWAT team assembled on his property.

Police have said the team knocked on his front door and announced themselves that morning. But at least two of Diotaiuto’s neighbors, who stated they watched the raid, said police did neither. The SWAT team smashed open Diotaiuto’s oak door, and kicked in his bedroom door.

By 6:15 a.m., Diotaiuto was dead in his closet with 10 gunshot wounds.

Police gave three different accounts of the confrontation the week it happened. First, police said Diotaiuto pointed a gun at officers. Then, police only said Diotaiuto was armed with a gun. Finally, police said he was found dead next to a gun. Police also said they seized 2 ounces of marijuana from the home, despite an inventory afterwards that showed 1ounce was found.

On the officers, an attorney says:

“Each is the type of officer you would want protecting your neighborhood, protecting your wife and your family,”

Let’s see, over aggressive; evidence of cover up; three inconsistent stories regarding the shooting. The Hell they are.

Here, I said:

Think I’d rather have one [an AR-15 – ed.] in 45 ACP.

Well, via reader bob, CNC gunsmithing to the rescue with the AR45:

It’s time for something a little bit different. The same guy who shared with me his idea of the A1 detachable carry handle, William Putnam, also dreamed up another idea. He wanted to use M3A1 “grease gun” magazines (which are .45 caliber) in an AR15 with a .45 cal. upper receiver. Olympic Arms sells .45 cal. upper receivers but they come with a modified Uzi mag with a built-in mag well block. The mag is single stack, so it’s not real high capacity mag. William was wanting to use the grease gun mag so you could have more trigger time between reloads. The problem with using grease gun mags is that the body of the mag is about the same width as the outside of a normal AR15 mag well. So you can’t simply modify the AR15 receiver and expect it to work. In order to get this to work, a brand new receiver would have to be machined from a billet of material to allow for a wider mag well. One company has attempted this idea, but they used plastic receivers which aren’t very versatile, as you can’t change out the stock and pistol grip to fit your needs. They also used a mag catch similar to that of the AK-47. With that method, you have to hold the rifle with one hand, and then with the other hand grab and release the mag, then reach for another mag and insert it in the receiver. I wanted to stick with a normal AR15 look and feel. I wanted to be able to drop the mag by pushing the mag release button with same hand I am holding the rifle with while at the same time reaching for another mag. This method would be alot faster than the AK47 style of mag release. I also didn’t want to move the location of the mag release button, since AR15 users are already familiar with it’s current location. So I started to work on the solidmodel design of the receiver and I came up with something I thought would work. I’m going to call this new design the AR45. It will be using an Olympic Arms .45 cal upper receiver. In the pic above you can see how the mag well is wider than that of an AR15 receiver. I’m not going to give a whole lot of details about how it’s going to work just yet, but I’m 99% sure it will work. I have already made a test piece and it worked perfectly. As I get closer to finishing the receiver, you’ll see exactly how this design is going to work.

Nice.

Nemerov:

Previously, we examined how gun-rights voting records correlate with campaign contributions from lawyers and law firms during the 2004 election cycle. This bias appears to remain in force for the 2006 cycle.

According to the most recent Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) data, lawyers have retaken first place as the largest industry donor at $68,529,030, having dropped to second in the 2004 election after holding first place since the CRP began collecting campaign contribution data. Recent lawyer/law firm contributions heavily favor Democrats ($47,577,820 to Republicans’ $20,786,462), though the percentage of total contributions dropped from 74.5% in 2004 to 69.4% at present. Historically, this industry group has averaged 72.0% Democrat in its campaign contributions, varying between 68.9% and 74.5% from 1990–2006, thus the 2004/2006 variation does not indicate some new trend.

Make your own here. Via fug.

In Kansas:

“Usually summers in the gun business are deader than a doornail, but we’re having a record year,” said Jeff Howlett, owner of Kansas Firearms Specialties in Tonganoxie.

Much of the increased interest in guns is because people are arming themselves to take advantage of the new Kansas concealed carry gun law, Howlett said.

“We’re selling a lot of pistols,” he said.

Excellent.

Gun warnings are getting a bit, err, silly:

There is a new gun in town: a Swiss minigun the size of a key fob that can shoot an eye out, according to an Intelligence Bulletin from the Baltimore, Md. police obtained by ABC News.

You have to click the link to believe it. Via reader Chris.

Via Chuck, comes this:

A German scientist has been testing an “anti-stupidity” pill with encouraging results on mice and fruit flies, Bild newspaper reported on Saturday.

It said Hans-Hilger Ropers, director at Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, has tested a pill thwarting hyperactivity in certain brain nerve cells, helping stabilise short-term memory and improve attentiveness.

“With mice and fruit flies we were able to eliminate the loss of short-term memory,” Ropers, 62, is quoted saying in the German newspaper, which has dubbed it the “world’s first anti-stupidity pill.”

Or maybe the water cooler at The Brady Center?

The NYTimes does a piece on the disappearing duty to retreat. It’s a fairly factual story that illustrates what has changed and then quotes a bunch of people saying the change is bad. For example, they quote Sarah Brady saying “In a way, it’s a license to kill.”

They give a few examples of real life killings that would have been illegal but are now probably not prosecutable. A woman took a man’s gun (he had been threatening her) and, although she could have safely left, shot him instead. A cabbie used a stun gun to get a drunk passenger to leave his cab, then shot the guy instead of just driving off. In each case, the Times downplays the threat and casts the story as a killing of questionable justification.

The 15 states that have relaxed the duty to retreat are Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and South Dakota.

Brittney G. drops the linky and breaks out the thinky:

Corker spent all his time, effort, money and energy cementing in the minds of Tennesseans that he is a far-right Republican. Ford, the known Democratic contender for some time, has been running as a moderate Democrat, with ads that place emphasis on immigration, national security and oil prices.

Actually, I think Ford is running as a cross between a conservative or a populist, both of which are ironic..

I guess everyone wants to invent a round these days. Bushmaster has introduced an AR-15 that shoots the .45 Bushmaster cartridge and it looks like they’re going for the big bore market:

The .45 Bushmaster – big bore power in an “AR” platform – one gun industry writer exclaimed… “I’ve found my new hog-hunting gun!” This powerful cartridge – developed in affiliation with Hornady – is tamed by the AR type gas operating system so that recoil is reduced to a heavy thump, and second shot control is retained. Standard AR type 30 round magazines are fitted with a blue single stack follower to yield a full magazine capacity of nine rounds.

Think I’d rather have one in 45 ACP.