David Hardy has a review of the book. On it being anti-gun:

It isn’t. He plainly thought the world of Harlon Carter (as do I), feels that gun laws do harm rather than good, and that NRA’s objectives are correct. He plainly dislikes Wayne and former ILA head Jim Baker, and their financial decisions, and dislikes Neal Knox. There’s some bias there, since Jim Baker got him essentially fired. But the dislikes take up maybe ten pages of the book — it’s just that the reviewers, who hate the progun cause, focus on quotes from those pages.

I think the book will actually help the firearms rights cause. Given the reviews, there will probably be a lot of people buying it who are antigun. But to find the ten pages of criticism, they will have to read about 280 pages on why gun laws (including assault weapons bans) are nonsense

Heh.

Speaking of Rivrdog, he says I shouldn’t use proper terminology when addressing gun issues because, frankly, your average non-gun person is too ignorant to grasp what I’m getting at. I dunno about your average person but your average reporter definitely is.

Local boys make good.

Ben won Sam Adams Alliance Sammy.

The News Sentinel is up for three Edgies.

Glenn is a top 25 web celeb.

And, in the not quite awards but good going department, both Rivrdog and Sean Braisted have returned to blogging.

Fred Thompson ad:

No, not that crappy TeeVee show. That’s how many rounds were fired by the SWAT team that raided the wrong house. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful that no one got hurt. But, in terms of training, doesn’t that indicate the SWAT guys need to spend more time at the range and less time raiding the wrong house?

And this:

when the MPD SWAT cops kicked in the door of the house, owned by Vang Khang, lived in by Vang Khang, his equally Hmong wife, and their six little kids, they thought that they were raiding a black street gang.

Which means that a quick property records search combined with, say, three minutes of observation and a few not terribly difficult questions

(“Say, Jesse, in your keen professional law enforcement opinion, don’t those little Hmong kids in the house look rather unlike black gangbangers? And ditto for that Hmong guy and Hmong woman?”)

Joel Rosenberg has a lot more. Via Insty.

Heh.

Seems the US would rather pay an undisclosed amount than allow people to waste their own money.

Sen. David Vitter has placed another hold on the confirmation of Michael Sullivan as ATF Director. This in addition to two Idaho senators doing the same. Hmm, maybe I’ll lose my bet.

This a symbolic victory and a good thing.

Zero tolerance is working its magic again.

A ten year-old girl was suspended for using a knife to cut her food.

And, in Tennessee, you can’t defend yourself at school:

In a video, a 17-year-old student is seen grabbing Rachel Davis from behind. The video shows Davis turn and walk away.

The video shows the other student follow and confront her a second time.

Again, Rachel Davis turned and walked away.

The girl then followed her out of camera range. That is when the incident reportedly escalates.

Davis said, “My daughter was struck in the face with either a back pack or a purse. She got a laceration on her jaw required a trip to the ER and stitches.”

So, the girl walked away. Twice. And fought back after being hit. For that, she was suspended.

This time, the homeowner was not killed but a police officer was shot.

A Minneapolis police SWAT team kicked in the wrong door yesterday during an early morning raid, prompting the man of the house to grab his gun and open fire on the officers who entered the house.

“He took out his shotgun and he said if they are bad guys I’ll shoot, I’ll scare them away,” Dao Khang, the brother of the homeowner, Vang Khang, tells the Star Tribune. “He fired first, he told me it was two shots.”

Dao Khang says his brother was trying to protect his wife and six children. No one from the family was hit during the exchange of gunfire. Vang hit two officers, but the Pioneer Press says they were protected by ballistic vests and helmets.

“I must’ve heard over 20 or 30 shots, I swear, it was scary,” Ruth Hayes, the family’s next-door neighbor, tells WCCO-TV. “It was like 30 SWAT guys out here … it was crazy it was just like havoc.”

Well, police are not known to be the best of shots. I’m glad that no one in the family was killed. The police are, of course, covering their butts:

Minneapolis police say they are not to blame for a mistake that sent a SWAT team into the wrong house over the weekend.

And this: Police haven’t decided whether they’ll try to charge Khang with a crime. KMSP-TV says the Khang family is consulting with a civil attorney.

Try him for what? Defending himself against invaders who failed to identify themselves? And I hope the Khang family sues the crap out of them.

Really? I guess it must have been someone else who got the wrong address, kicked in the door, and got all Ninja on an innocent family!

“It was bad information that came on the informants end, not on the police end,” said Jesse Garcia, a Minneapolis Police spokesman.

Garcia said after the informant gave police three addresses they did their homework.

Well, I guess they had a one in three shot of not being wrong. Any way, the informant works for you. You guys failed to adequately investigate and you terrorized an innocent family.

Shame on you all.

Update: Radley has more.

Paul Helmke is issuing bogus challenges to candidates:

I challenge them to stand up and support meaningful action to reduce gun violence in America.

So do I! Put violent criminals in jail and keep them there. Gun control only impacts the law-abiding.

I challenge them to work for a strong and permanent ban on military-style assault weapons.

That was done in 1986. Of course, you constantly and disingenuously conflate semi-automatic rifles with military weapons, even by insinuating that the weapons soldiers carry in Iraq are freely available here in the US. And that is a lie.

I challenge the candidates to support the NICS Improvement Act of 2007.

Well, yeah, but the NRA supports that bill too.

I challenge the candidates to support the Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2007.

Paul thinks it’s common sense to deny someone their civil liberties without due process of law.

I challenge the candidates to support legislation to require background checks for all gun sales in America.

He then yammers about how the Columbine killers and drug dealers get their weapons at gun shows. Crime guns that came from gun shows are less than 1% of total crime guns. And the Columbine killers did not get their weapons from gun shows. They used two straw purchasers, who happened to go to gun shows. Those two were not prohibited persons and could have bought them anywhere.

I challenge the candidates to support legislation to limit bulk purchases of guns.

Another measure that only affects the law-abiding. The Omaha shooter had only one gun. The VA Tech shooter had two and VA has a gun a month law.

Fortunately, politicians are not listening to Paul. No one is vying for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership endorsement. Gun control: what we do instead of something.

Thirdpower has his own challenges for Paul:

I challenge the Brady Campaign to stop misrepresenting what different firearms are capable of.

Never happen. Without hysterical misrepresentations, they have nothing.

Sebastian can smell the desperation.

Ravenwood has a question about shootings. I think it’s got more to do with the recent mass shootings.

See-through AR-15 lower. With a matching upper, that’d be awesome.

Meanwhile, here’s Oleg’s AR-15 gallery.

Video of AK-47 v. M-16.

Michael Bane notes misinformation about the NRA from an anti-gunner. Meanwhile, Thirdpower notes that pro-gun conspiracy sorts are spreading misinformation about the NRA too.

Alphecca notes that anti-gun shill Kristen Rand says the second amendment says something other than what it says. And there’s a counterpoint op-ed written by a student from Virginia Tech.

Over at DefRev, they note the Army’s comparison of XM8,
Mk16 SCAR-L, HK416, and M4 Carbine.

Update: Here’s The Army Times on the tests:

The M4 carbine, the weapon soldiers depend on in combat, finished last in a recent “extreme dust test” to demonstrate the M4’s reliability compared to three newer carbines.

Weapons officials at the Army Test and Evaluation Command at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md., exposed Colt Defense LLC’s M4, along with the Heckler & Koch XM8, FNH USA’s Special Operations Forces Combat Assault Rifle and the H&K 416 to sandstorm conditions from late September to late November, firing 6,000 rounds through each test weapon.

When the test was completed, ATEC officials found that the M4 performed “significantly worse” than the other three weapons, sources told Army Times.

Officials tested 10 each of the four carbine models, firing a total of 60,000 rounds per model. Here’s how they ranked, according to the total number of times each model stopped firing:

• XM8: 127 stoppages.

• MK16 SCAR Light: 226 stoppages.

• 416: 233 stoppages.

• M4: 882 stoppages.

In Japan, they experienced a mass shooting. Japan has some of the most stringent gun laws (and sword laws) in the world. And, in fact, possessing arms other than shotguns is mostly illegal. So, the press there wants to make guns more illegal.

Jackie Mason on gun control:

The NRA reports that 47 senators have asked Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne to remove prohibitions preventing law-abiding citizens from transporting and carrying firearms on certain public lands.

This piece, complete with PSH, comes to us from the paper of record:

Barely touched on in the coverage of the two latest gun rampages is how the disturbed shooters could so easily obtain assault rifles — weapons designed for waging war.

Barely touched on because it’s untrue. An assault rifle is a select fire weapon that fires more than one shot per pull of the trigger. The shooters in these cases used semi-automatic rifles that fire one round per pull of the trigger.

The Omaha killer took his stepfather’s rapid-fire rifle from a closet to pick off Christmas shoppers.

Doing the Brady Campaign’s work for them, the NYT continues to conflate semi-automatic rifles with machine guns.

Guns are ubiquitous in this country, and the gun lobby is so powerful that this year’s toll of 30,000 gun deaths makes barely a political ripple.

Yes, it’s the NRA’s fault!

Until recently, the nation did have a law designed to protect the public from assault rifles and other high-tech infantry weapons.

No, it didn’t. The ban on weapons that look like assault rifles banned aesthetic features that new semi-automatic rifles could have. The ban did not impact high-tech infantry weapons, whatever those are.

In 1994, enough politicians felt the public’s fear to respond with a 10-year ban on assault-weapons that was not perfect but dented the free-marketeering of Rambo mayhem. Most Americans rejected the gun lobby’s absurd claim that assault rifles are “sporting” weapons.

PSH alert for Rambo reference. But the whole premise of this editorial is based on misinformation so why not throw in some hysterical emotional appeals? And, if the public was for it, why, then, did all those politicians get voted out of office after the ban passed? And why did the House vote to repeal the law?

Instead of asking how could this happen, the country needs to know who is going to stop it.

Well, gun control won’t stop it. After all, we had the assault weapons ban in 1999 when the Columbine attack occured.

Looks like Katie Allison Granju has set up a new blog for locals.

Joe has some quotes. I like Huckabee’s quote.

While you’re at Joe’s, maybe you can explain this one to him. Or to me. Because if I understand it, they’re saying gun control is a failure so we have to do it harder.

Bloglines seems to be broken. So, all the cool stuff I saved to blog about today has disappeared. So, no cool stuff for now because I forgot.

You come and go.

Glenn looks at the role of commas in the second amendment. People often do this, on both sides of the debate. As insty notes, the commas really don’t amount to much and states ratified different versions with different comma structures.

Volokh asks you to find the non sequitur.

Meanwhile, for all your second amendment grammar questions, don’t forget The Unabridged Second Amendment.

This morning, the local talk radio was running a poll on presidential candidates. /20~ p@\/1 was leading the pack by a huge margin. Then, the host said something like these /20~ p@\/1 people must be out texting and emailing and getting the word out about this poll. Then /20~ p@\/1 supporters called to tell the host that, no, that’s not what happened.

My thoughts are that supporters of /20~ p@\/1 are very likely politically active and aware. As such, they’re probably just more likely to listen to those types of radio shows.

And if Fred Thompson doesn’t get his shit together soon, I may be forced to vote for /20~ p@\/1.

Heh.

Romney:

Just as the President said, he would have, he would have signed [the assault weapons ban] if it came to his desk, and so would have I.

He’s also telling whoppers about NRA endorsements he received. He did not receive them, of course.

And Bruce has a question for the gun grabbing governor on weapons of unusual lethality.

Over at survivalist blot. I’ve thought about putting spare parts for my various AR-15s in the pistol grip. Probably not a bad idea.

Over at polling report, most people can actually read and comprehend the second amendment. And people don’t support banning handguns. People tend to think gun laws should be more strict but I’m guessing most people don’t know what the gun laws currently are.

Update: I didn’t notice but Horse in comments notes they incorrectly quote the second amendment.