Someone in the press points out the obvious: Criminals tend to ignore wishful ‘Gun Free Zones’

Really? Who knew?

I don’t usually do posts to plug ads but look who’s advertising on the left. Clicky.

Names changed to protect the, well, fine people

In the early 1990s, I knew this girl who we’ll call Allison. Two things about Allison were that she was 1) smoking hot and 2) queer as a football bat. Seriously, we’d go to the mall and ogle chicks together. She was very nice, smart, fun to hang out with, and just generally good people.

She had another lesbian friend who we’ll call Tammy. Now, Tammy and Allison were not a couple. That always surprised me because, honestly, how many lesbians can there be on a Baptist college campus in Jefferson City, Tennessee? I’m guessing that market was pretty small. But I digress.

This ain’t a post about that. It’s a post about this. When your average person met Allison, they’d never know she was queer as a plaid rabbit. She was just a regular college chick who happened to be hot.

Now, her friend Tammy was different. Within a few minutes of meeting her, you’d know she was queer as fish feet. Because she’d tell you. Over and over. She’d even remind people who already knew. And she’d up in your face asking you if you had a problem with it and why it made you uncomfortable. It was quite annoying. To the point folks stopped asking her to come around.

I get that same vibe from a lot of open carry activists some time. Seriously, don’t interrupt someone’s dinner to make your point. All you’re doing is pissing those folks off. And you’re scaring the white people.

Whether your issue is gay, gun owner, your race, your religion, or hobby; people don’t like you in their face.

Update: In comments, Chris says:

these people had cooperation of the restaurant including that they had microphones and a sound system… that is no different than the golden corral hosting the lions club… now if one guy stands up at the olive garden and spouts that he has a gun, that is a problem… but the incident where the people raised their hands was pre-planned and even featured local politicians as speakers…

Did not know that.

South Sudan to disarm civilians.

Behold the 0″ barrel.

Suing again. I think this is like the third lawsuit.

Ya know, I’m not surprised when some nitwit thinks banning handguns is a good idea. I am surprised, however, when such a nitwit is in my state:

Current laws on possession of handguns by juveniles are fine and appear to be enforced, from my vantage point in Juvenile Court. But as we all know, handguns continue to be available to Nashville kids. Something more needs to be done.

The current laws are not curing the problem. They are a Band-Aid. Kids are still carrying handguns, still being charged with robberies using handguns, and kids are still being injured by handguns.

The most practical and effective method for handgun control is also the easiest to describe: Ban handguns.

Couple things: I don’t think you know what practical or effective means. I’d also lay 5:1 you couldn’t tell me what current gun laws are.

Whenever a place has lots of gun crime, their local politicos are quick to posture and subsequently pass laws that only affect the people not committing the gun crime in the first place. In New Jersey, there’s a push for a one gun a month bill. Scott Bach tells us why that bill is a bad idea:

A New Jersey Court recently pronounced: “There is no rational relationship between restricting the number of guns that a licensed gun dealer and a licensed gun owner can transact per month and the frequency of illegal gun possession and crime.”

In so holding, the Court voided a local ordinance that rationed firearms specifically to law abiding citizens pre-certified by the State as having no criminal or mental health record after passing a 13-point background investigation.

Trying to reduce gun crime by rationing firearms to law abiding citizens is a little like trying to reduce stabbings by rationing steak knives to restaurant goers, which is why the Court found the ordinance to be irrational. The criminal misuse of any lawful product is not a function of the number of units sold to honest citizens; it’s a function of how effectively society deals with those who misuse them

Despite judicial recognition of the fallacy of gun rationing, gun ban extremist group CeaseFire NJ, embarrassed by its loss at the local level, is now pushing for passage of statewide gun rationing in the form of Assembly Bill A339, misleadingly citing statistics to buoy their latest whopper — that handguns bought by law abiding citizens from New Jersey licensed dealers are significantly involved in crime and illegal trafficking.

I do not think it means what you think it means.

This one left me speechless. However, it did not leave Bruce speechless:

A Lakeville man says he feels violated after two police officers woke him up at 3 a.m. to tell him his door was unlocked.

Their surprise visit was part of a public service campaign to remind residents to secure their homes to prevent thefts. Usually, officers just leave notices on doors.

But they went further in Troy Molde’s case on Thursday. Police entered the house where four children under 7 were having a sleepover, and then went upstairs to Molde’s bedroom.

Gunless?

The source of Toronto’s illegal guns is Chicago? That’s odd because guns are banned in Chicago too.

Guns + Reactive Targets = Woohoo.

When Metallica is not busy sucking, they’re busy pissing off their fans. Ya know, the two they have left after being such douchebags. Via Aunt B.

George Carlin has died. That guy was seriously funny.

Good: Montesano Mayor Ron Schillinger says he vetoed a gun ban in city parks after receiving numerous protest messages, many of them from National Rifle Association members across the nation.

Miss Tennessee has a handgun carry permit!

So, folks predict tomorrow is the big day. And we’re all pretty much predicting a major civil rights victory for the good guys. I mean, I’d say tonight, you could stick a piece of coal up Paul Helmke’s rear and by the end of tomorrow it would be diamond. But . . .

Roberta is asking what plan B is if it doesn’t go our way? I’d predict a shit storm of epic proportions if that happened. But we’d have all drink a nice big glass of ‘cool our shit’ juice and come up with a plan.

Update: All the marbles!

The Mrs. is out of town. Just me and the kids. Can you tell?

In addition to the giant mess of toys everywhere, it’s one o’clock and we’re still in our jammies.

Ya know, if hard core metal bands (since we’re talking about metal) decided our foreign policy, the world might be a better place.

Even a nothing threat, deserves a response you won’t soon forget

Kids today. It’s like they’re neocons or something!

Here’s the vid.

Update: probably explains why dude don’t host Empty Vee’s Headbanger’s Ball no more?

Update 2: speaking of metal

CMP Auctioning some rifles!

Did not know they did that.

Dual wielding AK-47s open zipper cool!

John McCain reads blogs?

Three years after Kelo and what happened: Nothing.

South Carolina passes sweeping reciprocity law.

Even the idiots at Gun Guys have gotten the memo that they’re going to lose. Man, the anti-gunners get their marching orders out across all their astroturf outlets pretty quickly. It’s like they’re all working together. Or, you know, there’s just not many of them.

Going after ammo in Cali. Only 50 rounds a month? I shot six times that on Tuesday.

Judge rules no guns sign violates state law and is pretty fucking stupid. Ok, he didn’t actually rule the sign was pretty fucking stupid but, seriously, he should have.

In what may be a first for Barack Peep And The Big Wide World Obama, he has embraced the free market:

Barack Obama chose winning over his word.

The Democrat once made a conditional agreement to accept taxpayer money from the public financing system, and accompanying spending limits, if his Republican opponent did, too.

No more.

The chance to financially swamp John McCain — and maneuver for an enormous general election advantage — proved too great an allure.

Obama, a record-shattering fundraiser, reversed course Thursday and decided to forgo some $85 million so he could raise unlimited amounts of money and spend as much as he wants.

I take it as good news. I mean, here I thought Barack Who Farted? Obama was kind of a socialist because he’d never seen a place where government funding or meddling or control was bad. Now, he’s opted for the free market route. Well, regulated market. But, you know, it’s better. Maybe there is hope(change).

In Baltimore:

Investigators with the Maryland state prosecutor’s office, who have been probing Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon’s financial dealings during her tenure as City Council president, searched her home yesterday for more than seven hours.

She’s a member of Mayors Against Guns and hosted one of their events.

Seen at David’s:

Sullivan added that most licensed gun dealers are law-abiding and that, to be fair, ATF needs to apply the rules more uniformly across the country.

Well, you guys do in fact uniformly ignore the courts. And you uniformly prefer to go after clerical errors instead of real gun crime. Consistently bad is still consistent.

Heh:

In the film [V for Vendetta], the anarchist revolutionary V incites the population of Britain to don his mask and rise up against the government, because nothing captures the spirit of anarchy better than a mob of people in identical uniforms unquestioningly obeying one man.

Aunt B. is with me. She offers a guideline:

Say a Preacher is throwing a record burning or CD smashing. If, when he holds up an album by that group, you and your friends would have laughed and laughed and laughed that anyone could have thought that music was Satanic, it’s probably hard rock.

I dunno. Perhaps she should check out Demon Hunter, a Christian metalcore band. Here’s a tune. Kinda the opposite of Satanic but probably would cause convulsions in your average preacher.

Update: The outrage seems to be universal.

Looks like they may be easing their onerous restrictions since gun rights proponents are forming their own party. Sebastian has more.

or Here’s how easy it is to inadvertently break federal gun laws and not even know it

For Christmas this year, my wife got me a subscription to Guns Magazine. It’s a good mag and there’s even a column in each issue by David Codrea. In short, I enjoy the magazine so I’m not trying to be unnecessarily harsh on these guys.

In the current issue, they review the KEL-TEC PLR-16. The following picture is on page 57.

On page 58, is a similar pic with a note that says something like equipped with a surefire flashlight and forward grip, it makes a fine home defense weapon. Trouble is that ATF holds that attaching a vertical forward grip to a pistol makes the pistol an Any Other Weapon (AOW). The manufacture of an AOW (which you would do simply by putting a foreward grip on a pistol) requires payment for a $200 tax stamp and an extensive background check. It’s basically the same process as buying a machine gun or suppressor. This, per sentencing guidelines, is a pretty serious violation that could result in 10 years in jail and a $250K fine. Now, this ruling has been successfully challenged in court in South Carolina. The court ruled that: Even after being modified with grips, the pistols are still “pistols” as defined above and not “any other weapon” as defined by 26 U.S.C. section 5845(e). But that doesn’t matter because ATF as an institution has acted as though that ruling never happened and still holds that such a grip makes a pistol an AOW.

This incident shows how easy it is to run afoul of gun laws, particularly when related to AOWs, short barreled rifles and pistols. Chris has a fine write up on the classifications here.

I’m sure the author of the piece thought absolutely nothing of it. After all, the flashlight fits on the picatinny rail. Just takes tightening a bolt. It’s easy to do and no one would think that putting a light on their handgun was a big deal. But it is. I hope Guns Magazine lets its readers know that when it comes to gun laws, the enthusiast acts at his peril.

I can see it now where the ATF rules that pistols can no longer come with rails as that makes them readily convertible to AOWs.

Careful out there.

Update: In comments, Mr. Taffin notes that the weapon was fired stock. The grip was only put on during photo ops.

Update 2: People keep pointing out that registering an AOW is only $5. That is true. But making one yourself (i.e., putting a grip on it) requires a $200 tax stamp.

It’s good that the abuse of asset forfeiture is starting to make the mainstream press. Drug War Rant notes a four part series on NPR that deals with the issue.