In Baltimore.

A TeeVee station is crapping it’s pants over tannerite. They used some of Joe Huffman’s boomershoot footage without permission. Ry wrote them a letter.

Any of you lawyer types who want to send Joe some info about this please do.

Update: Joe sent them a letter.

10 Self Defense Myths.

Mostly, they start in Hollywood.

Seriously, I think the Die Hard and Lethal Weapon franchises probably account for 80% of gun myths. And gun nuts for the other 20%.

Olofson responds to Sebastian’s piece on his case.

AR-15 in 308 from DPMS for under $1,000.

Gun bloggers were at NRA Con, and Greg went to a special operations industry trade show.

It’s interesting but I met so many people there. And I can’t remember them all. But here’s a few more.

I met Jacob of Gun Legislation & Politics in New York. He has some write-ups on the convention here, here and here.

I also got to hang out with Tom King of Gun Talk. Tom is a nice guy and he’s about twelve feet tall. I asked him what it was like tilting at windmills err talking about guns for a New Jersey paper and he said his blog was the second most visited page on their site. Cool.

I also got to spend some time with Mike W. who thinks we need to remind convention attendees about the rules of gun safety. Tam concurs.

And I met JR. He’s got some gun porn from the show here, here, and here. Also, a write up on the American Values speeches here.

Update: I see Squeaky is having the same issue.

More from Crime, Guns and Videotape who think the short barreled rifle charge is bogus.

$100K for a shotgun.

Video of McCain on weapons that look like assault weapons. He sees no scenario in which he would support a ban on them.

Between this and his earlier comment on the issue being cosmetic, he does understand the issue. Good for him.

At the NRA convention, I learned that ParaUSA was getting into the AR game. Check them out:

Click to embiggen.

They have no info on their page and have done no pressers. So, you can consider this an almost exclusive. Or rather, as exclusive as it can be when 70K other people may have seen it at the convention too.

Anyway, some interesting bits (and these are from memory so I may be wrong). You’ll notice that the stock folds, which is odd for an AR. They use a short bolt carrier assembly with a spring already in it. This, in addition to allowing it to be fitted with a folding stock, also means that the firing cycle is shorter. As such, a full auto version can likely fire much faster. And if I recall correctly, it has a gas piston system instead of a gas tube. This keeps its insides cleaner and enhances reliability. And they look cool.

Update: Probably not a piston system. See comments. I said I could be wrong.

So, The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership Blog did a bit linking to Sebastian and David and it was crossposted at HuffPo. And, well, I’ll let David tell it:

“Neat,” I thought. I’d wondered why “Handgun Control” was lurking here yesterday morning. But having this appear on both the Brady Blog and especially The Huffington Post ought to really drive some traffic my way, and that never hurts.

And then a funny thing happened. Nothing.

Sebastian says he got exactly one hit from Brady and five from HuffPo.

Tam sums it up best:

Astroturf, indeed. Is there anyone who thinks about (or even cares about) gun control who isn’t on the clock?

That was one of the things discussed at NRA Con. And a theme discussed here before: the anti-gunners simply cannot penetrate on the internet. There just aren’t that many people passionate about gun control. The internet is the grassiest of grass roots and the gun controllers have none on the internet. They have to pay bloggers. People are passionate about rights. People have to be bought and paid for to be passionate about being anti-gun.

We’re winning on the internet too. Where everyone has a say. And that is huge!

I was meeting someone for lunch and they told me a certain local political player had inquired about me. Said political player did not like me very much and did not have any desire to meet me because of my salty language. I had written some things about said political player. I thought at the time that maybe if I gave up the salty language, I could have met said political player and changed their mind on a particular issue. Then we’d both have a Coke and a smile and everyone would be happy.

Then, it occurred to me that maybe (just maybe) I should cut down on the potty mouth because maybe someday I could try to legitimize myself as a real writer. I even asked you guys. And you basically said fuck that.

I still entertain that notion of cleaning up my language. And I had a conversation at the NRA Convention about exactly that. That is, about whether or not I should stop using foul language. Everyone told me to keep doing what I’m doing because I apparently use an amount of foul language that is edgy but not over the top. One of the people who said that was David Kopel, who recently wrote this:

Did your grade-school English teachers ever tell you that people who overuse foul language do so because they don’t have much to say? Your teacher was right.

Boy, talk about mixed signals.

Update: In comments, Drake reminds me of one of my favorite quotes:

Profanity is the inevitable linguistic crutch of the inarticulate motherfucker.

And, obviously, I didn’t stop cussing today.

David Hardy reports that the White House and OMB have started cracking down on ATF’s arbitrary abuse of power err letter rulings. You know, where one day they give you the OK. Then after you build a bunch of product, they change their mind and bankrupt you. You know, little things.

It is ATF though. And, hell, they ignore court rulings so the impact may not be much. But it is a start.

Microsoft to pay you for searching?

Ooh, Kimbers:

The US Army Marksmanship Unit was there and they displayed some of their handguns:

Maddened Fowl with the Glock girls.

Tam pokes fun of HK. We were actually going to get Squeaky to walk up to the HK booth and ask them why they hate us while we videotaped the encounter. That would have been instant youtube gold. But I could never get Squeaky and a camera together at the same time. Bummer.

Rusty has more pics.

I was also unaware that PDB was there.

Joe:

I spent probably 15 minutes talking with Jarrett and he got really interested in Boomershoot and told me he wanted to blow up a car. He wants to be able to shoot bullets into it and have it lift about four feet off the ground. I gave him my card and told him I thought I could do that. He seemed interested in exploring that further. Cool!

A car dealer is offering people who buy cars either $250 in gas or a gun. 80% take the gun.

Another police officer with an illegal weapon in Illinois. If history is any indication, he will walk. Well, at least on the gun charge.

TheHill.com:

Lawmakers who favor gun control are not optimistic about next year even though Democrats may be running Congress and the White House.

Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), the sponsor of legislation that would reinstate the expired federal assault weapons ban, dismissed the idea that her bill might pass in the 111th Congress.

“It’s a pro-gun House, a pro-gun Senate and [Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) or Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.)] won’t want to deal with it,” McCarthy said.

McCarthy stressed that she is not giving up on reauthorizing the weapons ban that sunsetted in 2004, but also made clear she is not holding her breath.

To get in line with the Uncle way of doing things, Barack Quincy Obama has been endorsed by Robert Byrd. For some reason, the one on the left made me immediately think of TGW.

Ya know, there was a bit of a dust up over there being no guns in McCain’s room at the NRA Con. Now, there will be no functioning guns when Bush goes to Fort Bragg. The secret service doesn’t trust soldiers but the PR folks I guess still want guns in the photo ops.

Update: Fixed. I have McCain on the brain.

Lots of stuff from Bitter, including Facts from the NRA Convention and Facts on NRA Voting.

A write up at the Outdoor Wire. (scroll down to NRA Reflections):

And it’s true, the “blogosphere” was a phrase tossed out like it was nothing – and the NRA took what I think may be one of the most daring steps by the firearms industry to reach out to the new media.

There were plenty of main line media folks in attendance. But there were also credentials bearing accredited titles that were getting more than a few double-takes from attendees and fellow writers as well. After all, Snowflakes in Hell, Say Uncle and Bitter (won’t write the whole title), were there this year as well. These were the bloggers who for the first time were welcomed as accepted media members.

The google streetview post is taking off like mad.

BTW, maybe we should all email this link of google street view to Richard Daley?

Why won’t these dumb, cousin-humping rednecks vote for Obama?

Booth babes.

I alluded to it earlier but here it is:

Bloggers who registered for & attended the Second Amendment Blog Bash are eligible to win a weekend in August training at the Blackwater USA facility with practical shooting champion Todd Jarrett.

Thanks to Para USA and Michael Bane for doing this!

Also, I met Kerby from ParaUSA while there. Heckuva guy.

That pretty much nails. A few of us have been having that conversation off line for a while now. Partially due to uncertainty and because, frankly, that view would piss off a lot of pro-gun people. But Olofson fucked up and could have fucked us in the process. That doesn’t make ATF any less culpable for basically cheating to win.