KDT wrote:

A long time ago, I responded to the question ”Why do you spend so much time looking at news from Britain?” with ”Because if we’re not careful, all that could happen here.”

Here’s hoping not. Notably, this bit about banning thinking about drinking (which Greg thinks is cause for shooting the bastards) is particularly scary:

People who even think about going for a drink face being banned from their town centre for up to two days under wideranging new police powers.

And here’s some scary bits:

The banning orders – called ‘directions to leave’ – can last for 48 hours and any breach can be punished with a fine of up to £2,500.

Fingerprints and DNA samples will be taken.

[…]

Police can act against someone for doing nothing more illegal than looking like they might cause alcoholrelated disorder, whether they have started drinking or not.

I can’t imagine living under such a police state.

CHL holder in Ohio apprehends a murderer.

Politico seems surprised there are pro-gun folks in DC.

Heh. More appropriately, your .gov won’t let you. I once saw a video of some Japanese guys competing in what looked like IPSC with airsofts.

Tennessee’s illegal drug tax was overturned once already. Now, it’s been suspended once more:

Two Knoxville lawyers who convinced a chancellor to strike down the state’s so-called “crack tax” as unconstitutional now have won a rare restraining order against the agency that collects it.

Attorneys James A.H. Bell and Richard Holcomb, representing a Livingston pharmacist accused of peddling painkillers, have won an order barring the state Department of Revenue from disposing of the more than $1 million in property they say the agency seized.

Unlike last time, this ruling seems to affect the whole agency. More:

Bell and Holcomb contended that the tax was no tax at all but punishment for people who were accused but not convicted.

Ayup.

Via Groves.

Amen:

Bill Richardson didn’t create ANY jobs. The hard working people of New Mexico created the jobs and the only contribution of Bill Richardson was to keep government out of the way.

Politicos only create jobs to the extent they hire people or create more bureaucracy, which hires people.

It was a very helpful resource but it kinda disappeared. Ninth Stage has some info. I do recommend handgunlaw.us.

Mouseguns.

Remember those anti-gun protests I wanted to crash? Well, there aren’t any close by. See link for protests that might be near you.

A global pricing index for guns?

The US might skew your numbers quite a bit. Rumor from folks in the know is that an AK-47 in Iraq costs about $100. In the US, they go for about $15,000.

Update: bitter has more.

As someone who just got back from vacation, I’d buy a power assisted stroller. Even better, one with a remote.

Over at Bryan Miller’s blog, reader dwlawson translates Reasoned Discourse^tm into English:

What they say ==> What they mean

Dialogue = => you listen to us
Spew ==> facts and statistics
Dangerously Extreme ==> passionate and committed
No time or inclination ==> unable to respond
Sensible Gun Laws ==> gun bans
Good Gun Laws ==> gun bans

Ya know, I don’t mind making fun of gun owners if it’s actually funny. But this isn’t:

Heh:

With the outbreak of Reasoned Discourse^tm over at Paul Helmke’s Brady Blog to Prevent Gun Ownership you might think that there’s no way to inject facts into the debate anymore, well at least not with Paul Helmke.

However that is not the case. I am not the first to notice that the Brady Bunch is crossposting over at The Huffington Post. Comments are allowed with registration.

I chose other. And by other, I meant AC Kleinheider prior to June 28, 2007. You know, back when WKRN had a sack. I didn’t always agree with AC but he made me think.

Update: And honorable mention to B-ho, Abramson (who I’d link to if he actually wrote at one site) and Braisted. And that other guy, you know, the one you’re thinking about.

Heh:

I’m selling a bunch of Pokemon cards. Why? Because my kids sneaked them into my shopping cart while at the grocery store and I ended up buying them because I didn’t notice they were there until we got home. How could I have possibly not noticed they were in my cart, you ask? Let me explain.

The NRA steps up to help Red’s Trading Post. The doc is at David’s.

So, where are all the assault weapons that are supposed to be used in all those crimes?

I pre-emptively call myself a racist so you don’t have to. Neener neener.

One of the things rarely discussed (because it’s just not PC) is violent crime and race. It’s OK this time, because a black guy’s doing it:

Last year, among the nation’s 10 largest cities, Philadelphia had the highest murder rate with 406 victims. This year could easily top last year’s with 240 murders so far.

Other cities such as Baltimore, Detroit and Washington, D.C., with large black populations, experience the nation’s highest rates of murder and violent crime. This high murder rate is, and has been, predominantly a black problem.

According to Bureau of Justice statistics, between 1976 and 2005, blacks, while 13 percent of the population, committed over 52 percent of the nation’s homicides and were 46 percent of the homicide victims. Ninety-four percent of black homicide victims had a black person as their murderer.

Blacks are not only the major victims of homicide; blacks suffer high rates of all categories of serious violent crime, and another black is most often the perpetrator.

Liberals and their political allies say the problem is the easy accessibility of guns and greater gun control is the solution. That has to be nonsense. Guns do not commit crimes; people do.

Deb also notes: If Guns Cause Crime, Why Aren’t All Communities Affected?

Now, I’ve touched on this cultural phenomenon before. And, notably, Useful Fools did some comparisons across countries and via race, noting that the US had a substantially lower violent crime rate than European countries but a higher murder rate. And that the homicide rate for blacks was 20.5 whereas the rate for whites was 3.3. And, while overall violent crime and homicide among non-blacks declined, among blacks it continued to rise.

And, according to the Justice Department, Firearms Violence 200% Higher for Blacks Than For Whites. Other race based stats:

* Firearm violence rates for blacks age 12 or older (8.4 per 1,000 blacks) were 40% higher than rates for Hispanics (6.0)

* 200% higher than rates for whites (2.8 per 1,000).

* Blacks were about 9 times more likely than whites to be murdered with a firearm.

* On average black victims of firearm violence were 3 years younger than white victims — 29 versus 32.

* From 1993 through 2001 blacks accounted for 46% of homicide victims and 54% of victims of firearm homicide but 12% of the U.S. population.

Is it also rather handily dispels the myth that there’s this pipeline of guns flowing into states with strict gun laws. I also would think that the time to crime figures dispel the myth that gun shows are supermarkets for criminals since it takes several years for a gun to traced relative to the date of its retail purchase.

Heh. But I think it needs another monkey behind it flinging poo.

Oh, the canininity.

Somebody tell my wife:

Please stop making these lame, feeble and comically arbitrary attempts to water your lawns.

Also, funny story. Behind the house, we have a creek. The Mrs. and I both thought it would be a good idea to install a pump in the creek and use it to power a sprinkler system (dude, free water!). So, we looked into it. Turns out, we’d have to pay fees, hire a lawyer, file forms with the EPA, take 8X10 glossy photos, have a study conducted, file forms with the local .gov, and juggle three chipmunks on one leg while facing north singing Blame it on the rain. For a portion of a creek that I own. You know, usual bureaucratic crap. And that’s not counting the cost of the pump, piping, power and system. Long and short, we’d have to use the pump system for several, several years to recover the cost involved and for several decades to make up for the lost time. So, we scrapped the idea.

So, I was amused to learn that while I was on vacation the city (my the city) asked us to conserve water. Well, I would have been conserving more if I didn’t have to jump through hoops to keep my grass looking decent. I think I’ll turn on all three bathtubs when I get home. I kid.

It is outrageous but this quote is hysterical:

When I saw the Headline “Student Suspended for Drawing Gun,” (link) I first thought “he should keep it holstered during the schoolday”.

Sadly, a kid was suspended for doodling a pic of a gun.

Driving while hungover.

Explained.

Ya know, I’m probably pretty far from Blount County Commissioner Windy Pitts Reeves politically but I do like the fact she pokes the powers that be with a pointy stick and addresses conflicts of interest. More at Blountviews.

Seems the .gov loses money making money. Of course, the .gov loses money selling sex, which is really hard to do.

And we’re not reading this from a card, why do you ask? For the Dem debate:

You can head here and answer their questions.

Could be. Regarding Robyn Ringler’s anti-gun rights blog and allegations she’s deleting comments, a reader (who I will identify, if the want) emails:

I think there’s some confusion about the moderation/deletion on her blog.

When you post a comment on her blog, you see it immediately posted, but it’s not really through moderation, you can only see it because you’ve posted it, nobody else can see it.

I’ll post a comment at work and see the comment appear on the entry, but when I check the same entry on my computer when I get home, it’s not visible—at least not until she allows it through moderation, at which point it’s viewable from anywhere. On the other hand, if she doesn’t allow it through moderation, it will no longer be visible on either computer.

It’s the same way on LiveJournal—when you screen comments by default, the person who posted a comment will see their comment posted when they view the thread, but it’s not publicly viewable until I unscreen it. If they log out of LJ or view it from another computer, their comment will appear to have been deleted.

So I don’t think your comments are being deleted, they are simply never allowed through moderation in the first place (it just appears that way). Not that there’s much of a difference between deleting a comment and never allowing it to be seen by everyone—it’s still censoring content and of course the end result is the same.

On a side note, have you noticed that her entries seem to contain much less PSH than they did a month or two ago? Either we’re making an impact on her mindset, or she’s realizing that she can’t continue to make ridiculous arguments without having her ass handed to her. I’d like to think it’s a little bit of both, but either way, we win 🙂

Could be.