Over at Arfcom it’s post pictures of your most expensive gun day.

Speaking of Poppa and Honey, my dad on my mom’s pending 60th birthday:

I can’t believe I’ll be sleeping with a sixty year-old woman . . . again.

Picking what to call grandparents can be trying but, ultimately, the kids decide. My dad wanted to be called Poppa. And that worked because it was easy for a young child to pronounce. My mom, on the other hand, wanted to be called Grandmother. Not sure why, because that’s hard for kids to pronounce. I think it’s because my mom’s side of the family is a bit, err, country. And everyone called my grandparents on her side mamaw and papaw (it’s a Southern thing).

Needless to say, Junior never could not pronounce Grandmother. But she’d say Poppa all the time. Poppa this, poppa that:

The Wife: Say poppa!

Junior: Poppa!

The Wife: Say grandmother!

Junior: *blink*

And on it went. One day, we’re over at Poppa and Grandmother’s. And Poppa, wanting grandmother for something, yells Hey Honey. Ever since then, Junior calls Grandmother Honey. So, that’s why my little girl calls her grandparents Poppa and Honey. Honey doesn’t seem to mind.

Chris asks Which is it:

Weird ellipses in a quote of Ford from this Tennessean article:

“I was there,” the Memphis Democrat said. “I like football, and I like girls. I don’t have … no apologies for that.”

WMCTV quotes him as:

“I was there,” he said. “I like football, and I like girls. I have no apologies for that.”

So which is it? Bad grammar or good grammar?

At the Gun Blogger Rendezvous, I poked fun at Kevin for his longish posts. Let’s face it, most blog readers do so from the office and can’t devote several minutes reading long posts. Anyhoo, his latest is here. And I’ll have to read it later.

Meanwhile, here at SayUncle, we cater to your short attention span. Look! A monkey.

In PA, it’s win-win:

No matter who wins Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race, the National Rifle Association probably won’t be complaining.

On gun issues, Republican Sen. Rick Santorum and Democrat Bob Casey Jr. could be twins.

Santorum earned an A-plus and an endorsement from the NRA – whose leaders campaigned with him yesterday. Casey got an A, the highest mark for a nonincumbent.

Good.

In Harris Co. Texas, they can’t ban gun carry in parks.

Lately (and entirely due to this blog), I’ve been getting a few requests from reporters to talk to them (I’ve had them in the past but they seem more frequent now). For example, one lady from the Wall Street Journal wanted to talk to me about the poker bill. I told her I blogged about it but was probably not the best and referred her to some poker players I know. Now, I have one from a New York paper that wants to talk about the Mayors Alliance Against Guns. My inclination generally is to decline for the following reasons:

So, it is with reservation that I even consider talking to the press. Am I paranoid? A bit. The downside, of course, is that I am missing the opportunity to speak truth to power. So, what are your thoughts?

The NRA has a site about the violent gun confiscations that occured in New Orleans. The site is called Give Them Back. They have video.

And I think it sums up the 2006 election year:

I want the Republicans to lose but I don’t want the Democrats to win.

Looks like Bruce has decided to live free and not in Massachusetts. Congrats.

Ammo prices up and will keep rising:

In case you haven’t noticed, the price of ammunition has been rising slowly, and it is not about to stop. Not by a durn sight. The reason is that the prices of the metals that go into almost all ammo—lead, copper, and zinc—have risen exponentially.

I’m confused. What would Washington DC need gun detecting sensors for? I mean, guns are banned there. So, there shouldn’t be any gun shots.

More:

The crack of gunshots can be heard nearly every night in some of the District’s deadliest neighborhoods — and no longer just by the people within shooting range.

The sounds are being picked up by the police department’s newest tool: ShotSpotter, a network of noise sensors that identifies and pinpoints gunfire. Over the past few weeks, the technology has guided police to three homicides in Southeast Washington, and in one case officers got there rapidly enough to make an arrest.

[snip]

Scott D’Angelo, who lives half a block away, said he heard the gunshots that morning but did not call police. He said that the sound is frequent in his Anacostia community and that he does not call 911 every time he hears the familiar pop.

You must be hearing things. Maybe it was a car backfiring?

It strikes:

Sen. Sam Brownback has put a hold on one of Presient (sic) Bush’s federal judicial nominees because she once attended a commitment ceremony for a gay couple.

Not officiating, mind you. She was merely in attendance.

I don’t think it’s contagious.

The WaPo:

GAO Calls Radiation Monitors Unreliable

The Department of Homeland Security’s plan to spend $1.2 billion deploying next-generation nuclear-detection equipment at U.S. ports and border crossings cannot be justified, given test results that showed the devices are unreliable, congressional investigators warned yesterday.

I did some work for DOE many years ago. They had these little green plastic squares that supposedly measured exposure to radiation. You wore it when you were there and, quarterly, it was sent off to tell you how much you’d been exposed to. At one facility, they (being some sort of inspector) opened some of the detection devices up to check them out. They were empty inside. They were nothing, just little plastic squares.

A Gallup Poll:

Since 2000, the percentage of people who view having a gun as making a house more dangerous has fallen from 51 to 43 percent, while at the same time the percentage that view a gun as making a home safer has gone up from 35 to 47 percent.

Progress.

Chris has some with pics. He also, in reference to said SKS mods, notes How not to have your life ruined by the ATF. Good advice but it begs the question:

Has anyone ever been charged under USC 922(r)? I personally know of no one. It seems to me that proving parts were made in America or were not would be difficult.

Over at the Media Blog they note that Reuters asserts:

More than 30,000 people die from gunshot wounds every year, through murder, suicide and accidents.

They note that Reuter’s number hasn’t changed for 6 years (from an article in 2000). Quips Nathan Goulding:

This means that one of two things is true. Either, the rate of people killed by guns has not increased over six years — very good news. Or, Reuters is relying on six year-old data. Whichever is the case, Reuters is simply opining on gun control, and is using the recent school shootings as an opportunity to do so.

Well, this got me to thinking it was time for a trip to the CDC website. Some numbers (they only had data for 2000 to 2002 on the site).

Deaths weren’t more than 30,000 people are shot to death in murders, suicides, and accidents in 2000 or 2001 per the CDC. And Reuters doesn’t mention that well over half of gun deaths each year are suicides. And they don’t mention the 700K to 2M times per year that guns prevent violence.

And Reuters used the number provided to them by anti-gun “researcher” David Hemenway. You remember him? He said guns cause road rage.

Over at ProgressiveU (a liberal blog), Redneck Hunter is talking pro-gun:

FABLE I: A gun in the home makes the home less safe

FABLE II: The Second Amendment to the Constitution does not protect an individual right to keep and bear arms.

FABLE IV: “Gun control” laws prevent crime.

You know what, there’s a lot. Go here and scroll.

All guns are always loaded:

Two men were injured Saturday morning at the Wanenmacher’s Tulsa Arms Show at Expo Square when a vendor accidentally discharged a shotgun.

…

Joe Wanenmacher, the gun show’s manager, said the vendor was examining a double-barreled .410-gauge shotgun that he thought was loaded with a snap cap. A snap cap is a nonlive round that allows the handler to dry-fire the weapon without damaging the firing pin or the firing pin holes.

From the LA Times, we can see one more cost of the drug war: a creeping culture of corruption among the agents charged with policing the line between US and Mexico. Illegal drugs provide the funds to bribe border control agents, but it’s not just drugs that get in– it’s also illegal immigrants and anything else the bad guys want to sneak into America.

Their … tactics were so well developed that smugglers could have moved “nuclear weapons” over the border, said Asst. U.S. Atty. Marina Marmolejo.

A while back, I bought the Mrs. some, err, underthingies online from Victoria’s Secret. It was win-win, she gets new stuff and I get stuff like this emailed to me.

Bob Corker’s campaign has been awful. He’s not engaging, not charismatic, not showing up, and generally not been around much. I guess his plan was to sit back, keep his mouth shut, and wait for Harold Ford, Jr. to do something stupid. It took a while, I bet Corkie’s folks were sweating.

From news you can’t make up, comes Shaq may have been involved in one of those police raids where they raid the wrong house. If true, maybe a bit of celebrity will draw some attention to this nonsense. Seems it’s not been mentioned in the press but it will be interesting to see if it’s true.

Komo News:

Kwan legally owns more than 100 pristine and historical machine guns. But during a search of Kwan’s home in January 2005, agents found one – an M-14 – that they said was illegal.

Kwan’s attorneys argue that the M-14 in question required substantial modification by federal agents – including use of a rotary tool with a cutting wheel and the installation of new parts – before it could be fired automatically. Therefore it didn’t meet the legal definition of a machine gun, they argued.

A: Whenever they say it is.

Rebecca Ferrar And Matt Lakin of the News Sentinel have a column Saturday in the KNS that corroborates charges made by Tyler Harber in the three part Betty Bean column in the Halls Shopper News.

While there is a deep well of both comedy and drama in the 33 pages of emails that explores the soap opera like atmosphere of the KNOX GOP these emails ask the larger question, how can there not be an investigation of Tyler Harber?

Monday at 2:00 PM Knox County Commission will vote on whether the Commission should investigate Tyler Harber’s employment with Knox County. 13 votes are required and Friday Knox County Commissioner Lumpy Lambert said on AM 1180 that 9 votes are available and the remaining 4 votes may come in over the weekend.

People years from now will ask how this whole thing blew up so badly. It appears that the desire for the KNOX GOP mailing list was a powerful lure and when this prize collided with Mayor Mike Ragsdale’s temper there was an explosion. If Mayor Ragsdale had not called Chad Tindell and lost his temper, as Tyler Harber alleges, perhaps this whole affair would have not ignited.

Many people will be upset no matter has this is resolved. Now Knox County awaits the decision of County Commission. What will they decide?

Updates:

In today’s News Sentinel an article by Matt Lakin quotes Knox County Sheriff Tim Hutchison as saying that a law was broken in the theft of emails from former Knox GOP Chairman Chad Tindell.

Terry Frank informs readers of her blog that two local radio hosts who were subjected to Team Ragsdale dirty tricks have written a letter to Knox County Commission. Lloyd Daugherty and Kelvin Moxley tell of how Tyler Harber went to the Knox County Health Department and attempted to obtain their medical records.

Betty Bean spoke this morning on the Lloyd Daugherty radio program on AM 1180 that, “former GOP head Chad Tindell was “threatened” by Mike Arms, Chief of Staff to County Mayor Mike Ragsdale, regarding the possible investigation of the County Mayor’s office stemming from allegations made by former Ragsdale employee, Tyler Harber.”

This story did not run this morning in the News Sentinel but may run on Tuesday.

Bacon.

The Geek says of Saul Cornell’s book on the second amendment:

Despite my reservations concerning Prof. Cornell’s work, given his Joyce Foundation funding, I’d always extended Prof. Cornell a certain grudging benefit of the doubt concerning the presumption of good will and academic integrity, but after reading Holbrook, I can no longer do that.

When it comes to history and the foundation of law, it seems that the Forces of Organized Gun Bigotry simply cannot find a leg to stand on without resorting to flagrant distortion.

Indeed. The one thing that the antis simply cannot get around is that there is absolutely nothing from the time of the founding indicating the collective rights model. Collective rights meaning no rights at all, really. In fact, you likely won’t find anything supporting the collective rights model until about the 1940s, would be my guess. They keep tilting at that windmill though. Guess they just make it up.

Kevin has run down reminds us that they never stop.

Tam discusses Harold Ford’s trip to the range:

After a perfunctory session on the range with a stainless Smith revolver, they came out and settled up.

A stainless Smith revolver? Well, had Mr. Ford snagged the full-auto, short-barreled 9mm AR-15 off the wall and sent several hundred rounds down range with a grin on his face, he’d have gotten my vote.

Each time you move from one domicile to another, your volume of stuff will double.

As evidence:

In 2000ish, the Mrs. moved with me into my condo. To get her stuff, we rented a U-haul (smallish) and got all her stuff there.

In 2002, the Mrs. and I decided bought a house and moved from our condo. We decided that moving yourself sucks so we hired movers. This move required two men and one truck and they made one trip.

In 2003, we bought a bigger house (babies will do that). We hired two men and one truck. It took two trips. We doubled our stuff.

This weekend, we moved to a bigger house (last time I’m moving for at least a decade). We hired four men and two trucks since we figured we’d want to avoid two trips. Well, it took four men and two trucks two trips. We doubled our stuff again.

Other stuff:

I was organizing the basement and realized how many boxes of Christmas decorations we had (Seriously, the boxes take up an entire wall of my basement and that’s just Christmas – not the other holidays). New rule: The Mrs. is free to buy any Christmas decorations she wants. But for everyone one she buys, she must throw two away.

Also, the new pad has a rec/bonus/playroom for the kids. It was the first time we had all of the kids’ toys in one spot. It was ridiculous. Same rule: For every new toy bought, throw two toys away.

Ammo is heavy.

Gun safes are heavier.

Watching these guys move my stuff, I was thankful to have a Master’s Degree. Remember kids, guys with Masters Degrees don’t move big screen TeeVees.