So, Heller today maybe? They better hurry up because I’m running out puns.

Via several sources, it seems that Blackwater has questionably purchased NFA firearms. Seems that the local sheriff was listed as the buyer, Blackwater paid for them, and Blackwater keeps them at their facility. The weapons consist of 17 AKs and 17A ARs.

Ry notes that this transaction is likely illegal. Joe likens it to a straw purchase of title ii firearms.

I wonder why Blackwater would go through the trouble. I seem to recall recently a bill passed that exempted federal contractors from the NFA ban. Nope. Never mind. The bill is part of the ATF Reform act, which has not passed yet.

Next, assuming it is illegal, this is another negative from the NFA ban. After all, we can’t equip our contractors with appropriate weaponry until they’re out of country. They’d have to train with them first and could not, in country, under the NFA. So, most of their weapons stuff is OK out of country.

This in addition to the fact manufacturers won’t develop military rifles in country because there’s no market.

This is not the first time there have been issues with Blackwater and NFA laws. A while back, there was some press because they exported suppressors without dotting i’s and crossing t’s.

Update: BTW, why wouldn’t Blackwater just get an FFL and an SOT?

Chicago Alderman loophole passes. Good thing somebody important ran afoul of the law.

Gets ice cream. Nothing happens.

Here’s hoping it puts an end to this mythology.

So, why not just send guns?

Yeah, its an old story but, for reason, this one is popping up on the anti-gun blogs.

Heh.

Btw ‘Til Tuesday rocks.

I was harsh on open carry folks the other day. Guy With Guns has a detailed read on it and why people do it.

Personally I think that guns, like Kos Kids in the general election, shouldn’t be seen.

I agree. This is the first time I’ve heard of someone actually being arrested for lying on their form 4473. Not saying it never happens. Just I don’t recall seeing it in the news.

In a city that enacted tough gun laws, violence increases?

Phoning it in. I wanted to see if could actually blog by talking into my telephone using the handy new Jott software program, Jott.com. listen

Powered by Jott

Update: This part is typed. But how cool is that? I called a toll free number on my cell phone and spoke a post. Neat. Might have to try harder words.

Update 2: Now, I can blog from anywhere.

I just need to figure out how to do the linky.

Sebastian notes another line item that says we can use non-lethal firearms to introduce folks to shooting. So, after they tell us not to show human shaped targets they suggest non-lethals like airsoft and paintball which are sports where instead of shooting human shaped targets you shoot actual humans?

Bitter is liveblogging the NSSF webcast. She notes regrettably that there is no clarification that NSSF is not embracing these action items as is. One of those action items was this:

Public acceptance of rifles and shotguns is greater than acceptance of handguns, the latter having some negative connotations for some individuals in American society.

Action Item 163. Efforts to promote acceptance of shooting sports should focus on rifles and shotguns

My Google-fu is mightier than your Google-fu.

That took, what, 23 minutes?

In all fairness, it does help that I have ‘an audience’.

Can we stop gnu violence.

Armed citizen stops bank robbery

Home-owner wounds would be burglar

Per a presser:

HR 6310 will allow the firearms and ammunition industry to pay the FAET on a quarterly basis, the same payment schedule as every other industry that supports conservation. Currently firearms and ammunition manufacturers must pay the FAET bi-weekly. This payment schedule forces many manufacturers to borrow money to ensure on-time payment, and industry members spend thousands of man-hours administering the necessary paperwork to successfully complete the bi-weekly payments — monies that are due long before manufacturers are paid by their customers. This legislation will not lower the amount of conservation dollars collected by the tax.

Personally, I don’t care for the tax. IIRC, it’s 11% (and 10% on handguns). And, in TN, add 9.25% for sales tax and quite a bit of your purchase price is taxes. And the other $0.10 per box of ammo. Anyway, gun owners pay a lot of taxes.

But I’d think the hunter sorts would like the fact that the ammo and weapons I buy to not hunt with are funding their hobby.

Also, one reason why building your own EBR is cheaper: no tax on parts.

Empathy deficit disorder. Wow. I’ve always called it being a douchebag.

More bloggers chatting with NSSF.

Bitter crunches some numbers:

Now, what stands out to me is the jump from 2005 to 2006. With people supporting self-defense as one of the top reasons to own a gun, my guess is Katrina. Thank you, New Orleans.

Sebastian has more.

This is one of the dumbest things I’ve seen:

Thousands of parents could face a choice: volunteer at your child’s school or pay a $100 fine.

A bill introduced in the Ohio legislature would require parents to donate at least 13 hours of time to their school district each year or pay the price. And, if parents failed to pay up, the fine could be deducted from their state income tax refunds.

How many tax dollars go to schools? And it’s never enough. Ever.

Seen at the Volokh conspiracy:

The Poker Players Association has an urgent action item:

Tuesday, the House Financial Services Committee will review a bill, H.R. 5767, that would block the implementation of UIGEA regulations. In order to get this bill out of Committee on onto the House Floor, we need your help. We need you to contact the committee and express your support for H.R. 5767, as well as the King amendment which will refine the bill language. PPA strongly supports H.R. 5767 and the King amendment, but this important bill and amendment won’t pass without your help!

Call or Fax the House Financial Services Committee* Democrats’ Committee Office:* Ph: (202) 225-4247 – FAX: (202) 225-6952 Republicans’ Committee Office:* Ph: (202) 225-7502 – FAX: (202) 226-4301

George Bush hates white people.

How to make your own!

So, there was a bit in the paper yesterday athat said: Applications for concealed handgun permits triple in a year. And now the article doesn’t even mention that. It is here and mentions they are slightly down.

The original article that other reports are based on (still not corrected) said: Applications for Tennessee carry permits statewide have skyrocketed over the last five years, increasing from 237 in 2003 to 195,251 in 2007. Applications more than tripled between 2006 and 2007, records show.

Wow, that would be quite an increase. And our local Merchant of Death tried to clue them in:

That’s right, a near thousandfold increase in applications. Hm. I doubt it. The Channel 8 guy did too, and didn’t run the story at all, in fear it might be wrong.

I clued Channel 6 onto this information, before they did the interview. Newschick didn’t particularly care, figured she’d still do the interview. Same questions, same deal. Only, when they got back to the studio, all of the “find out why carry permit holder numbers in Tennessee are SKYROCKETING!” audio they did was fairly useless, since the real numbers actually show a decrease in permit applications, regardless of whether or not we’re seeing an increase in them here in our store. Exactly the opposite of what they originally wanted to talk about. Suspect that trucated their useable video a bit, too.

Try manners.

That may be the ugliest gun I’ve ever seen.

Alright, pay attention. This one is important.

One of the epic battles we gun rights people face that is far more damaging than anything The Brady Campaign To Prevent Gun Ownership can ever do is the fighting amongst ourselves. You’ve heard it before. We call hit hunters v. shooters; fudds v. gun nuts; or, as Bob Ricker says, self-defense whackos v. sportsmen. We all seemed to unite after the Jim Zumbo incident. After all, the industry got it pretty quickly. And hats off to them for that.

But this divide can quickly come back to haunt us. And this weekend, that could have happened. Michael Bane:

These items Jim references are here, buried deep in the back of the omnibus “The Future of Hunting and the Shooting Sports,” prepared by NSSF and Response Management, produced under a grant from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service:

PAGE 235
Public acceptance of rifles and shotguns is greater than acceptance of handguns, the latter having some negative connotations for some individuals in American society.

Action Item 163. Efforts to promote acceptance of shooting sports should focus on rifles and shotguns.

Now, if you wanna know what keeps a gun blogger up late at night, this is it. This report marginalizes the shooter/handgunner demographic by that rather poorly thought out action item. As I’ve noted before, hunting is on the decline but gun sales are up. People are buying defensive weapons (handguns and evil black rifles, specifically).

And, frankly, the math supports my contention. Check out bitter’s lengthy piece on fear and the shooting sports.

And this fear of handguns thing is grossly overstated. In fact, there is quite often positive coverage of the shooting sports in the press (see here, here and here for very recent and real examples). When educated, folks in the press can highlight these sports and do so positively. Industry should embrace GSSF, SASS, IDPA and USPSA and promote them.

Being the shooter type, that really concerned me that an industry study would conclude that marginalizing the fastest growing demographic was a possible action item. This mentality could quickly get the Zumbo juices flowing again pit us against our allies. Jim Shepherd agrees:

Shooters – especially those who primarily shoot handguns feel they’ve been consistently ignored. So too, I’m hearing, are some of the manufacturers who see their dollars going into a pot where they don’t feel they’re getting equitable shares.

So, there’s an undercurrent of tension that most of those in attendance will do everything possible to either downplay or minimize.

But the stage is set- and the Survey itself has contributed to the tension with its long litany of suggested action items.

Bottom line, if the survey of “recruitment and retention strategies” is endorsed or adopted as written, the damage will be certain. It will also be obvious very quickly, due to the fact that the “blogosphere” is already chattering about the report.

In short, the natives are restless. They’re not revolting -yet, but they’re getting tired of the status quo.

Indeed. And Bane notes:

The L’affaire du Zumbo sent a message to the industry that the tail — the huge part of the culture involved in sports shooting and self-defense issues — was now officially wagging the dog — the hunting side of the industry. That’s something we in the tail have known for a long time…we buy the lion’s share of the guns and ammo, pay the lion’s share of the federal excise tax and face the lion’s share of the heat from our enemies.

Bitter notes: So did someone throw a pot shot? I have to say, I think they did. At best, it was careless and a result of internal biases.

So, after I got all this info this weekend, I was a bit concerned. I decided to go straight to the source. I emailed someone at NSSF and the replied pretty quickly that they wanted me to call them. So, I did. NSSF’s Rep stated that the they do not endorse these action items. That the firm that did the study (Responsive Management) generated 196 action items. Obviously, some of them are unacceptable. The concern among some folks is that NSSF put their name on it. And NSSF was clear to me that they did not endorse these action items and that one of the goals of this week’s summit was to go through these list of action items and formulate a plan.

And I’m with Bitter on this one and hope that tomorrow’s session includes a very thorough condemnation of this line item.

Not today.

It’s like they’re teasing us or something.

Odds are opinion is written by Scalia. That’s a positive.

Could be today. In the next few minutes. ScotusBlog is swamped and connection is spotty. Alternate route here.