Joe goes into great detail about why the second amendment means what it says.

In Philly:

Police also plan to ask home owners at times for consent to search their homes without a probable-cause warrant, District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham said Monday.

“If we go to a house, we’re going to ask the owner of the house if they will consent to a search for illegal weapons,” Abraham said at a news conference. “Any gun that we can find that way is one more gun we can get off the street.”

I expect a rise in the number of consensual searches that get to court and the home-owner swears up and down they did not consent. And exactly how does a police officer determine if a weapon is illegal by looking at it?

Wow, there is Wolf Ammo out there.

Now in 45ACP.

Update: Sorry Farkers, my host doesn’t like you. Beyond my control. And for you folks criticizing the statistical methods, no one is saying Brady Causes Violence. Just that their gun control pipe dreams aren’t showing an decrease in violence. And, for shit’s sake, it’s not a study.

Now back to your original post:

==================

It’s that time of year where The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership issues its grades. I like to call it a Freedom Index, only its grading system is backwards. Nemerov spanks their grading system pretty hard:

Brady comes out each year with their report card, which analyzes a set of gun-law criteria and arrives at a grade from “A” through “F.” As noted in a previous paper, there is a strong correlation between lower grades and right-to-carry (RTC) status, with shall-issue states regularly assigned “D” and “F” grades.2 Brady graded South Carolina “D+” in 2005, because guns are too freely available, as per Helmke’s statement above.

Since 2001, RTC states, where more people carry guns in public, consistently average a “D”. Brady continues to be unhappy with the country’s direction regarding gun control: between 2001 and 2005, RTC states increased from 32 to 38 and Brady downgrade the U.S. average from “C-” to a “D+.” Their response is curious, since the national violent crime rate fell 7.0% during this time frame.

Even worse for Brady, violent crime trends are not spread equally across all states. RTC states (average Brady grade “D”) saw an aggregate 7.8% drop in violent crime, while non-RTC states (average Brady grade “B”) saw a 5.2% decrease. Even when Brady grades synchronize with violent crime trends, it fails to give an accurate picture: Brady dropped the national average grade from “C-” to “D+” in 2005, the same year that the violent crime rate increased 1.3%. This would seem to make sense, as a lower grade is supposed to reflect less safety for citizens. Unfortunately for Brady, most of that increase occurred in non-RTC states, which saw an aggregate increase of 2.8%, while RTC states increased 0.6%. Using Brady’s criteria of grading each state as an equivalent entity, non-RTC states averaged a 5.6% increase in violent crime, while RTC states averaged a 0.6% increase. Since 2001, the violent crime differential between RTC and non-RTC states increased from 26.0% to 27.5%, meaning that RTC states are becoming relatively more law-abiding compared to non-RTC states.3

There’s also the fact that two of Brady’s A students (Mass. and Illinois) recently experienced mass shootings. Since Brady cannot offer solutions, they offer condolences. You guys gave them an A.

I like Texas:

A Texas real estate agent looking to add more bang to her business is offering clients in law enforcement a free Glock pistol if they buy a home from her.

Why just law enforcement? Via Tom.

No one is an extremist, just ask them. I’ve said it before and it bears repeating:

A common misconception we all have (other than that we’re good drivers) is that we’re moderate. We all think we are. After all, we usually associate ourselves with similar minded folks and since those folks are all around us, we must be middle of the road.

Well, I don’t but I’m reminded of this by Rich, who quotes Orson Scott Card’s book that I haven’t read:

A good working definition of fanaticism is that you are so convinced of your own views and policies that you are sure anyone who opposes them must either be stupid and deceived or have some ulterior motive. We are today a nation where almost everyone in the public eye displays fanaticism with every utterance.

It’s kinda relevant because some extremist, fanatic recently said:

Anyone who believes in the collective rights (or as it should be called the ‘no rights’) model of the second amendment is either clueless or a disingenuous hack.

But it’s OK. I’m comfortable with my own extremism. I fully realize that my views on guns and gun control; the role of government; the drug war; and a variety of other things are in not even close to a moderate view. It’s how I am. I’m a freedom extremist. And I am right. Just like everyone else is. They are right, just ask them.

Rivrdog in comments at Aunt B.’s:

You either have to admit that the government’s persecution of any militia which tries to get organized (and “well-regulated”) seems to suggest (very strongly) that the Government itself supports the individual rights model of the Second.

Couple days ago, I met a third generation Mexican immigrant (legal). He didn’t speak Spanish. Ok, he said he didn’t.

How do you know when a blogger is out of shit to write? He does a meme. Bolded is shit I’ve done (via GLN):

Read the rest of this entry »

Should have bought one then.

So says their site:

IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT
ATF DECIDES THE AKINS ACCELERATOR™ TO BE A MACHINEGUN

Akins Group Inc. regrets to announce that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has reversed its position and has decided the Akins Accelerator™ to be a machinegun conversion kit, thereby subjecting it to strict regulation under the Gun Control Act (GCA) and National Firearms Act (NFA).

ATF rescinded its previous determination that the Akins Accelerator™ was not subject to the GCA or NFA (see http://www.firefaster.com/documentation.html). Attorneys for the Akins Group Inc. are seeking reconsideration by ATF of its new position. In the interim, any sale, transfer, or return of the Akins Accelerator™ must be suspended. Akins Group Inc. will advise further after meeting with ATF.

Akins Group Inc. has received no instruction as to the disposition of units in customer hands. Please refrain from public speculation and emotional responses and allow our Attorneys to advocate for everyone’s best interests.

Let the lawsuits begin.

Update: More here.

Update 2: The ATF approved the device a bit back and has now changed it’s mind (assuming it has one). Also, there is speculation that the new 10 round Saiga-12 mags are next. The ATF has a history of arbitrarily changing the rules. Some speculation that the NFA community was behind it as the Akins Device resulted in a drop in Pre-86 prices.

Update 3: Oops, guess you can’t remember everything I write. The Akins Accelerator:

It is a stock/spring system for a Ruger 10/22 that offers a rate of fire of 650 RPM. It’s completely legal (except in Cali and Minnesota) as it is not a machine gun. Video here. A bit pricey at about $1,000 but much cheaper than than a pre-86 registered Ruger 10/22 that comes in at about $10K.

Ok, actually it is.

Foreign Policy has good high-level capsule summaries of the various different Iraq options: Go Big, Go Long, Go Sunni, Go Shiite, Go Home, Go Regional, and Divide Iraq. Personally, I’m down with the long division.

And just in case you think the choice between these options is going to be made by dedicated, informed people, take a look at what happens when you ask politicians about some basic Middle East facts.

When Google purchased YouTube many people said it was one of the dumber business acquisitions in recent history. Mark Cuban laughingly wrote they would be sued out of business. Google prepared a 500 million dollar fund for legal battles.

And there lawsuits. But not as many as expected. Then CBS did an about turn and uploaded 300 clips of their programming. The results have been impressive. The shows CBS pushed on YouTube became bigger hits on Television. It is kind of like windows shopping for new Television shows to watch. David Lettermen and Craig Ferguson of the Late Late Show have received big benefits. Letterman has gained an extra 200,000 viewers and Ferguson’s show is up seven percent. Ferguson’s stand up bits have become classics on YouTube.

The biggest benefit of YouTube for Television Networks may be focus groups. No longer will the studio have to do focus groups the old fashion way. Now they can instantly reach millions of people all across the country and see if the latest sitcom idea will fly.

YouTube may also be the next discovery vehicle for new stars. No more trolling through malls to find the next new face. The next Lana Turner may be discovered not in a soda shop but on YouTube. Lisa Nova hopes it will be her.

Technology pundits have long talked about the convergence of Television and the Internet. All that was needed was an application. YouTube is the killer app for convergence.

I’ve been complaining about my children being sick lately. They’ve had a variety of ear infections, coughs, sniffles and every other assorted contagious thing that kids bring home from daycare. Last night, a friend told me that in the next few months he’d have to get his four-year-old little girl a wheelchair. And that she was not expected to make it past the age of nine. I can’t imagine how horrible that would be to know. Made my complaints seem utterly insignificant.

It’s stats day, I suppose. Here’s a comparision of ways to die.

Tam addresses the recent trouble the police are having:

We need to seriously re-evaluate what it is we want police to do, because the current setup is not working. If you want cops to sniff out every meth lab, bust every drunk driver, arrest every teenage marijuana seller, round up every prostitute, and ticket everyone not wearing a seatbelt, you’re going to wind up with, not a police force, but an army of occupation.

StateMaster has stats comparing the states. Here’s some gun stats pages:

Permits by state
Prohibited firearms by state
Prohibited persons by state

Via Ben.

TriggerFinger has more analysis on the Parker case.

Barack Hussein Obama says so:

Are there some voters who would not vote for an African America candidate because of race? I’m sure there are. Those are the same voters who probably wouldn’t vote for me because of my politics.

That’s as lame as me pointing out that his middle name is Hussein when it’s unnecessary. See, I don’t vote for big government, nanny-statists regardless of skin color. Rich says: I think I’ve learned all I need to know about Mr. Obama.

Either all the drivers on I140 read my post yesterday or today is some sort of retard holiday because I140 was not backed up this morning for the first time in weeks.

How do all these shootings keep happening in gun control utopias? In a couple days, two Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership A rated states have experienced mass shootings. Another:

Three people were killed, and several others, including two police officers, were wounded at an early morning shooting at a New Bedford, Mass., strip club, police said.

A gunman wearing body armor entered the Foxy Lady at about 2:30 a.m. and opened fire — killing two patrons — before shooting himself, police told WSAR radio. One officer was shot in the face and the other in the arm when the gunman briefly emerged, FOX affiliate WFXT-TV reports.

The shooting may have been part of a domestic dispute, WFXT-TV reported.

The gunman was described as being armed with an M-16 rifle and full body armor, and was wearing a mask over his face, FOXNews.com has learned. The wounded were taken to St. Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford.

I expect a crackdown on body armor soon. Seems to be a lot of nut jobs armoring up before, well, doing what nut jobs do. And I really doubt the guy had an M16. Perhaps he had an AR-15, which is odd too because they’re banned in Mass.

Newswatch50 on a home invasion:

Meanwhile, Mrs. Papin, age 74, retrieved a shotgun from the bedroom area and confronted the two intruders, demanding that they leave, which they did.

On my blog I posted about some ammo my brother was given. This is the followup post on the subject.

——

I went to {edited to protect the dumb} in {edited to protect the dumb} Tn, and using calipers and such, they identified it as .308

Now a small gun rant.

When the smith told me it was a .308 he also said it was steel cased and that could be damaging to a firearm. I had read that before, but never have come across the situation, so had not gave it much thought. We talked about the brass wash/gilding then he said it.

I said “I thought at first it was a 7.62 × 51 mm. I got pretty close.”

Then he said “Well they’re the same thing”.

The problem is that they are not.

One of the better writeups on the issue can be found at Say Uncle’s Shooting Carnival, and even The Gun Zone has a good post on the subject.

While the 7.62mm NATO cartridge has a maximum chamber pressure of approximately 50,000 pounds per square inch (psi), in the SAAMI book the .308 Winchester has a MAP (maximum average product) pressure of approximately 62,000 psi* (each by conformal transducer measurements, and therefore comparable). This is not to say that all .308 Winchester loads will develop such pressures, merely that they would be within manufacturing tolerances if they did so. Firing .308 Winchester ammunition in a firearm specifically chambered for the 7.62mm NATO risks damage to the firearm and injury to the shooter.

When even gun smiths are giving out bad information how can newbies to the shooting field figure it all out? I’ve never shot a .308 or a 7.62X51mm, yet I know the basics of the issue on size and preasure.

Take a moment and verify all information you get over the counter. You get second opinions with doctors, why not gunsmiths?

Anyone who believes in the collective rights (or as it should be called the ‘no rights’) model of the second amendment is either clueless or a disingenuous hack. I think it was insty who referred to the ‘no rights’ model once as creation science, wherein the goal is developed first and worked back from there to obtain that result. He’s right. For those of you wishing to have that argument again, go to Aunt B.’s place.

To Nintendo: Seriously, guys, make more Wiis. I want one but I’m not standing in a line or calling Wal-Mart every day to get one. I got money. Get me a Wii.

To Illness: Go away. I swear, ’tis the season for sick kids with winter and daycare. Can we get at least a week’s break? I’d like to sleep for more than two hours at a stretch.

Sweaters: They’re scratchy and fit too snuggly for me. I hate them. But, every year, the wife buys me one. Stop.

The dude up the street: get on the Scott’s lawn-care program or something. Your lawn looks like a cross between a desert and the jungle. Some parts of it are solid dirt and other parts are bushier that Madonna’s pits from her 1980s Playboy spread.

To hypersensitive, politically-correct twits: Don’t you have better shit to do?

To Sanford: Do you just not make erasers for my 0.9MM mechanical pencil anymore?

To Windows Rescue & Recovery: You’re useless. Backing up my hard drive on, err, my hard drive is real fucking smart.

To proprietors of link farms and sites that just re-post feeds: I don’t care that you copy entire posts from me but please stop sending trackbacks and pingbacks. You’re just noise on Al Gore’s Internets and I have no use for you. Buy an ad if you want a link back.

Glenn Reynolds: Dude, every time I post over at No Silence Here, you link to it. It’s clear you like reading what I say so just go ahead and add SayUncle to your reading list and send a few more links my way. I could use the increase in ad revenue.

To random bloggers: Somehow, your feeds update every hour or so. And all it shows me is the same post over and over. Either your blogging software automatically re-sends your feed every hour, or you’re updating spelling/grammar throughout the day. Well, stop. I only want to read a post once unless it’s updated.

To Sean Braisted: Dunno what you’re doing, but every time you post a new entry, your feed updates the last 20 posts. So, I think you’ve written a few essays. But, instead, there’s one new post and 19 old ones.

Coming up with shit to write every day is hard. Hence, more linky than thinky lately.

In addition to Terms of Use and an Email Policy, I need to come up with both a linking policy (long and short: I link to who I read) and a privacy policy (I won’t give out any info unless it’s on request of a lawful court order).

I still don’t care about your cat.

It’s frightening that using the phrase small dicks in a blog post will lead to a significant increase in traffic.

To Verizon: don’t advertise that your phone/mp3 player holds 2 gig of music. You should advertise that it takes MicroSD chips that can hold 2 gig of music.

To anyone who has ever developed a program that requires passwords: I realize it’s not good security for me to use the same password over and over. Or even for me to use the same two or three passwords over and over. But for fuck’s sake, I can only come up with so many nonsense words that I can remember. I think I’m up to about 12 now and I still can’t fucking keep up.

To MS Outlook: Why do you even have a default font setting for email when you’re just going to create everything in 10 Arial any fucking way?

To MS Excel: Seriously, make that review toolbar go away. I don’t like it. I don’t use it. Every time I get rid of it, it comes back. I even installed a fucking macro to get rid of it and it still comes back.

To Paypal: I told you to leave me alone. Our relationship is through. Stop sending me email; stop contacting me; and cancel my account. You’re like a clingy old girlfriend who can’t take the hint. I know, your monkeys with keyboards tell me they can’t cancel the account and must keep it open for 7 years but I don’t care. You’ve wasted enough of my time and I will not devote any more time to resolving the issue. In fact, I’m tempted to ask my readers to paypal me $0.01 with the phrase Semi-Automatic Assault Weapon in the subject line. Though it’d be funny, you’d make money from it.

Whoever designed and timed the red-light structure from about Northshore Drive west needs to be taken out and shot.

To all the drivers on I140, you’re dumb asses. Every morning, at about the Westland Avenue exit, traffic comes to a complete stop. Once I travel the additional couple of miles to my exit, I see there’s no problem. There’s no wreck, no stall, no anything. You just stop at random. It’s like there’s a collective cloud of dumbass that covers the area and you breath it deeply. And it looks like all you retards in the left lane need to be in the right lane. Here’s a clue: Get in the right lane sooner.

To the .gov: Despite the fact that studies concluded that red light cameras either increased accidents or had no effect on accidents, you voted to install them any way. I guess the pocketbook is more important than the lives of your constituents, who hopefully vote your sorry asses out soon. I think I’ll open a store that just sells Photoblocker.

To all executives or producer or whoever the Hell decides formatting:

I appreciate the fact that you guys want to get your logo and stuff out there but here’s the deal: I own a plasma TeeVee. So, whenever you leave your gay little logo on the bottom right of the screen, I risk it permanently burning into my TeeVee screen. I had to run the screen restore stuff this weekend because a ghost image of the Noggin logo kept showing up.

You guys should fire everyone who writes for you now and go hire some random chump off the street. TeeVee people are completely devoid of original thought these days. There’s always my idea, if you’re desperate. And you are.