Cohen sayeth:

The Marshal Dillon Rule is based on common sense, not to mention the law of averages: The more guns you have, the greater the chance they will be used.

Really? You got any actual, you know, statistics and figures and cites to back that up? Because, err, no one else does. And you don’t even seem to buy your own argument:

Mind you, while I subscribe to the Marshal Dillon Rule, I am on record as being sympathetic to those who like to keep a gun in the house. This is because I was burglarized one very dark night by a klutz of a thief who burst though my back door and ran around the first floor making so much noise that I was certain he was coming for me. (This was before the deranged had recourse to e-mail.) I very much wanted a gun — not to whack the intruder but merely to protect my life.

So, about that law of averages? Anyhoo, he chimes in with the non-starter that you don’t give college kids guns. A position I concur with since your average college kid cannot legally buy them anyway. But he doesn’t realize that some college kids aren’t college kids but are adults who are lawfully allowed to carry concealed weapons. Yet that permit is invalid on a campus. And you think maybe they want to protect their lives?

Or put another way: Liberal Washington Post Columnist Attacks Fred Thompson For Being Too Pro-Gun Rights. Shocking!!!

Here’s some more CZs, only without chicks.

The other day, I went outside to fix Junior’s seat on the bike. As I was tightening a bolt, I looked at my leg and there were five mosquitoes bellied up to the buffet. Ugh. I looked at Junior and she had some on her too. Took her inside, I hit myself with some Off and continued working. Anyway, via MCB, we learn that some plants repel the little buggers. Good to know. We have a Rosemary bush (for eating) on the side yard. Now, I’m gonna put a couple by the front and back porches.

So, Macca was found to be a Brady Board Member. You can read about it here. Well, I should be clear. A lot of circumstantial evidence indicated who Macca likely was. And I’m torn between revealing that evidence or not. (ETA: reveal evidence not identity) Sure, I could (with Sebastian’s permission) state how but then others following in Macca’s steps would know how we (ETA: and by we, I mean Sebastian) did it.

Macca has now denied it. Macca claims we’re avoiding the issue by drawing attention Macca’s ties with the Brady Camp. I issued Macca a challenge:

you can post at my blog whenever you want. I’ll set you up as an author. You can make your case. I and my readers will make ours. Comments there will be welcomed.

I doubt Macca will take me up on it. And, boy, would that annoy readers.

Anyway, here’s some thoughts:

Macca may be denying it because Macca’s antics were not sanctioned by (or even known about by) the BC.

We’ve not publicly outed Macca for a few reasons and they are:

The whole reasoned discourse series over at the Brady Blog was the justification for their shutting down comments.

We’ll probably see some press about how those poor, poor souls at the BC had to shut down comments because of the vile rhetoric and threats from the pro-gun side, what with all their facts and sources and stuff. They’ll cite the reasoned discourse series, even though those comments did not appear on the blog.

The BC has figured out how to turn off trackbacks now. Teehee. So much for that reasoned discourse, eh?

Switch roles for a moment and assume it was the NRA shutting down reasoned discourse. It’d get a write up in the NYT and the WaPo.

Update: BTW, in comments, Jared states that:

Kelli [the other anti-gun commenter at the Brady blog – ed] is exactly who she says she is. I’ve verified it through documentation available to me. I will not stand for her arguments but I will personally attest to her honesty in identifying herself to the extent that she has.

Good to know.

I asked about this belt-fed revolver. Looks like I got an answer from SDC in comments:

It’s a Josselyn chain pistol, in 22 rimfire. It was patented January 23, 1866, by Harry Josselyn, in Roxbury, Mass. See “Firearms Curiosa”, by Lewis Winant.

Ferfrans M1A. Sweet looking.

By R. Neal.

Goes to AC.

There will be an article about it:

About a week and a half after Hurricane Katrina ripped through New Orleans, Eddie Compass, the city’s police superintendent, went on national television and promised there would be no guns allowed in the Crescent City. Police, he said, would confiscate all guns.

When the policy was implemented, it set off a hot controversy. Gun owners said the police were violating the Constitution’s second amendment guarantee of the right to bear arms. Some of the gun owners were members of the National Rifle Association and complained to the organization.

The NRA sued, Baton Rouge attorney Dan Holliday representing the organization in the action in U.S. District Court. Federal Judge Jay Zainey agreed with the NRA and ordered the city to stop seizing guns and to start giving the guns they had already taken back to the rightful owners. The city ignored his order.

The city kept taking guns, even though officials denied it. The NRA wasn’t going to let go of the issue. It wasn’t just that it was guns. This was also a property rights issue. Many of the guns were cheap guns, but even those were worth hundreds of dollars each. Other, more expensive guns were also taken. The NRA dogged New Orleans on the issue, filing a contempt of court suit in February 2006 and eventually forced the city to allow them to examine the cache of confiscated weapons. That happened in April 2007.

In the upcoming August cover story for the NRA’s million-circulation magazine, America’s First Freedom, local author and NRA member Gordon Hutchinson and co-author Barb Baird reveal what the NRA observers found: barrels of illegally seized guns, mostly handguns, many damaged or rusted to uselessness.

John B. made some bling selling guns at some gun buy backs in Chicago. Go read. I found this interesting:

Given that Chicago Police reportedly now receive one vacation day and a $300 bonus on their paychecks for each gun they confiscate, I was very cautious.

And:

I had just sold $10 worth of scrap plus maybe a $50 5-shot .22 “affordable” wheel gun for $1000! It seemed too good to be true!

Heh.

So, Rudy Giuliani has accused the Democrats of wanting a nanny government. This came from Rudy Giuliani. Yes, that Rudy Giuliani. You know, broken windows, war on porn, gun control, and supporting questionable domestic surveillance Giuliani? That guy.

Update: Via insty, comes this:

What mayor was it again who installed those hectoring recordings in New York cabs that kept telling you to buckle your seat belt? I forget his name. I think it’s the same guy who cracked down on jaywalkers and street peddlers.

Looks like Ted Stevens home got raided. He might be corrupt? Who knew? Les Jones thinks it was about tubes.

It’s kinda telling that I categorized this post as humor. I guess if I took our political system seriously, it’d be too depressing to deal with.

CZ posters. W00t.

Or you could just buy an air rifle.

Look, no comments. Told ya. We win.

Update: Oops, forgot to turn off trackbacks though.

About Brady Blog commentator macca. Probably. Sebastian says he’s figured out who Macca is. But he ain’t telling. The hints are there so Macca will know. Any way, it once again proves there’s not much grassroots on the other side. Mmm, interesting.

Gunner asks me if I know what this is:

No clue. Bueller?

Here’s more info on the Kwan case:

The ATF did two things here during this case:

1.) ATF examined every gun in his inventory [by flying out a firearms technology branch expert]. Many were forwarded to FTB for further “testing”. The ATF took a semi version of the M-14 and the ATF, not Mr. Kwan and made a machine gun out of it. The ATF claimed it was a machinegun because it was made from a MG, “once a machine gun always a machine gun”, and that it was also “readily restorable” as well, and it only took a small arms expert, in a government research facility about 30 minutes to make it fire full auto.

2.)The ATF later added a superseded charge of an un-registered Short Barrel Rifle because Mr Kwan had a Heckler and Koch VP-70 model M [machine gun], with factory “Holster/Stock” [plastic version of Luger or high power wooden holster/stock], a spare “Holster/Stock”, and a VP-70 model Z [semi only]. All perfectly legal.

I discussed the case before here.

Under Fire ain’t looking too hot anymore either. Via Jacob.

Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale has had a very rough 24 hours. On the Sunday talk shows the County Mayor was the subject of much speculation concerning whether he could finish the remaining three years of his term. On “Inside Tennessee” panelist and prominent local attorney Don Bosch said Ragsdale’s term would be remembered as “The Lobster that ate Knoxville.” If you have not heard the lobster story more about it here and here.

The biggest surprise was when the head of the Tennessee Conservative Union, Lloyd Daugherty, called for Mayor Ragsdale to resign on Gene Patterson’s show “Tennessee This Week.” Frank Cagle, columnist for the Metro Pulse said the Mayor would not step down voluntarily but might not have a choice if the on going audits turned up more fraudulent charges on county credit cards. Those words would be prophetic in less than 12 hours.

In today’s Halls Shopper News Sandra Clark rates the Ragsdale administration and gives a grade of F in the department of “Making Government better every day.” Sandra Clark writes, “Starting with Tyler Harber flashing his badge at the Copper Cellar and ending with disclosures of P-Card spending yet to come … Ragsdale’s management is a casebook study of what not to do. He made bad hires and supervised them poorly. He handed out purchase cards with little oversight. He divided the world into two groups – friends and enemies. Now the town is laughing about lobster lunches, Princess cruises and the liquor fund. In our land of Oz, Ragsdale is not a wizard, just a little fellow behind a curtain with an expensive suit and two press agents.”

Just when it seemed it could not be a worse 24 hour period Sandra Clark breaks a new story that the County Mayor himself used a county credit card for a medical procedure co-pay. For a colonoscopy of all things. This caused the Mayor’s Communications Director Dwight Van de Vate to have to send an emergency memo on a Sunday night to County Commission members explaining the “mistake”. How does anyone use a Knox County credit card for a medical co-pay? What other mistakes are there?

People want to know when we will get to the bottom of this. As the audits turn up new information on almost a daily basis the office of the County Mayor has become a rudderless ship. Who will be the next to call for the County Mayor to stand down?

AR-15. Joe Biden does not approve.

Here’s the site. Seems it may be down for the count. So, here’s some thoughts on that.

What I do know:

What I suspect (i.e., no proof just a guess – could be wrong but probably not):

My prediction (and I’ll bet a beer on it): The blog will continue without comments or be shut down. After all, their views quickly fall apart when there is actually reasoned discourse and there are challenges to their lies. The long and short of it: We win, they lose. But that seems to be the trend for the last 15 years, don’t it? I mean sure, they keep getting victories in places like MA, CA, and NJ but that’s not so much a big deal since those are pretty much lost causes. But that’s it. They can’t even get their AWB pipe dream in Illinois or MD, which I would have bet were sure things.

SM predicted it but got the timing wrong:

What they (The Brady Campaign) haven’t figured out yet is that their particular brand of propaganda requires endless repeats of the same damn lies until people take their claims as the truth. Letting in dissent from just anyone with a browser would ruin the effect. It can’t last. I’ll give it 48 hours, tops, until they put some kind of moderation in place.

More at SM:

With that message, they have closed comments on every active post. It seems pretty clear to everyone what change #1 is going to be. I would imagine that the comments onslaught would continue over on Huffington Post, but I note that Paul’s last two entries have not been crossposted.

PGP says:

As you may have heard, apparently they’re tired of getting shellacked on their own blogsite, so…the solution is turn off the comments! Funny!

Sebastian:

We wish the Brady’s the best of luck with their new and improved blog, that no one will read now.

Bitter’s looking at the Violence Policy Center’s finances and notes their revenue and net assets are dropping. Well, their revenue is likely down because people who donate to a cause expect some results and the VPC has had none. Also, I don’t think the decrease in net assets is indicative of much. After all, people don’t like their causes sitting on cash. They like it spent. Seems they’re having trouble getting contributions. I wonder if Joyce dropped their grant dollars.

Most of their expenses are related to salaries and benefits. And they have quite a few employees that make enough to qualify to be disclosed on their 990. At first, I thought this was odd for a non-profit but, once I thought about it, it is not for activists who don’t really provide any service (of course, the VPC provides nothing but the occasional pants-shitting media quote about how we’re all gonna die at the hands of evil Saturday night special 50 caliber assault sniper weapon rifle handgun automatic semi-automatic bullet hose designed for spray firing from the hip at targets four miles away^tm.

And Mark Karlin is on their board? Where have I heard that name before? Oh, yeah.

At least she’s narrowed it down but go offer some input.

The Olympics are in London. One of the sports is shooting. In Britain, they’re afraid of guns and pointy things. But they decide to let people practice anyway, though they have to do so with armed police standing around them. This is, apparently, still too lax for some:

But anti-gun campaigners reacted furiously to the proposed changes, warning that they represented the “thin end of the wedge”, and that the sport would use it to prise out permanent exemptions from the handgun ban.

Oh, England. What happened to you?

Marlin 336.

Heh.

Update: more here.

John Edwards, also known as Mr. Two Americas and the $1200 haircut man, has declared “they want to shut me up.” Mr. Edwards is referring to his message about ending the war and universalizing health care.

That’s nice. He advocates retreat on the War on Terror and socializing heath care.

No word as to who “they” are, but I am guessing the vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

Read the rest of this entry »

Some suggestions. My fave:

Paul’s “Reasoned Discourse” series will be replaced with “Would you mother-f%^ing gun nuts stop correcting me already?“

They’re gonna have some changes. One of those is, apparently, to shut off comments. I’m guessing that’s because there is no better source for pro-gun information than the Brady Blog itself. And, of course, the pro-gun comments outnumber the anti-gun comments by a ginormous margin. And the trackbacks usually make them look like idiots.

Update: In comments, DMeadows notes he predicted it a bit back:

I guess we’ll see what the BC actually does with the blog, but I speculated back on July 1st, in “Reasoned Discourse? – Part II” on the BC blog:

“I wonder if this “Reasoned Discourse” series is actually a strategy to build a pretext for closing the blog to comments or shutting the blog down itself.

“Think about it. This blog could be perceived by the BC as a failed and embarrassing experiment. Gun rights folks far outnumber gun control proponents. The presenting of facts and attempts at rational argument of POV is done far more by pro-rights people. Most of Paul’s blog posts are either about political/legal setbacks or some other negativity for gun control, and few are about successes or big wins for gun control.”

We’ll see.