Ebay, which has always been a good place to buy gun accessories, has announced:

Effective June 8th, 2004, we will be making some guideline changes to the Hunting category (found under Sporting Goods). The following restrictions will limit what gun-related items can be sold on eBay:

The sale of any assault weapon-related parts or accessories will not be permitted. This will apply to all parts and accessories related to any firearm defined as an “assault weapon” by federal or California law.

The sale of any firearm receiver or firearm frame will not be permitted. This includes complete receivers and frames; components and parts of receivers and frames; or “cut”, “80%”, or “partially complete” receivers

Isn’t everything an assault weapon under California law?

Michael Badnarik, who I’ve mentioned before, has won the Libertarian presidential nod. He won’t win but is likely who I will vote for. Or I’m turning in a blank ballot. I don’t know.

Regardless, check out Badnarik on the issues.

Apparently, President Bush has Saddam’s personal handgun as a trophy. That’s all well and good, except that, you know, it’s illegal to have a handgun in DC.

I was typing in the URL for a Blogger-hosted blog, and I transposed a couple of letters. I got this site:

Aaron’s Bible

A mega-site of Bible, Christian and religious information & studies; including,
audio and written KJV Bible, Bible helps & tools, churches, Doctrine, links, news,
prayer, prophecy, sermons, spiritual warfare, statistics, and tracts. Features the
Chronological 4 Gospels, Prayer Book, Prophecy Bible, and a photo tour of Israel.

Well, that’s ONE way to get traffic.

CAGW Blog has a pretty funny story:

S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford brought live pigs into the House chamber to make a point about pork barrel spending. Sanford showed up at the state house doors with a piglet under each arm. The pigs are named “Pork” and “Barrel.”

The stunt sparked a bipartisan firestorm. “Insulting” and “childish,” said House Speaker David Wilkins (R). “This is beneath the dignity of the Governor’s Office, and I am embarrassed for him.”

Gov. Sanford had the courage to veto huge amounts of pork in the state’s budget, but the House breezed through 106 budget vetoes with little or no debate.

Adding insult to injury, one of the pigs promptly defecated on the marble floor of House.

Sweet.

Picking a pup can be one of the most exciting things you ever do. When you head to the breeder’s place (you do go to breeders don’t you? Never support pet stores), there will be a lot of activity. You’ll likely get to meet mom and maybe dad. And there will be cute little puppies running amok.

The basis of a dog’s temperament is set pretty early and you can see this in the pups based on a few things (most notably their interaction with litter mates). You should first decide what type dog you want because the type of dog you want may not be the type I want. For example, you may want an overly submissive dog. I don’t. It try to look for certain characteristics in a pup and, based on their behavior, can usually determine if the have those traits. Back when I trained police dogs, we picked up pups regularly. However, I’ve only picked out one now in the last decade.

Following are traits I look for and what I do to ascertain if the dog has those traits:

Inquisitive (and not fearful): does he run up to me or run from me? I’ll drop my car keys. The pups that run are ruled out. The ones that stop and look without retreating are curious. The ones that run up to the keys to check them out are the inquisitive ones. Stamp your feet on the ground and see who runs and who does a play bow.

Confidence: When you reach for the pup, does he turn away? How about his interaction with littermates? Does he rule the roost or is he quiet? Is he picked on by others without responding? When it’s time to nurse, does your pup get moved out of the way by littermates or is he the one diving right in there?

Intelligence: This one, you just have to watch for cues. There’s not really a test. However, avoid the one that keeps running head first into hard objects.

Play drive: Take a small ball or a wash rag. Try to initiate a game of fetch/catch with the pups with the ball. Does he take to it or run? Is he interested but cautious? Try to get him to play tug with the wash rag. Does the pup play hard or does he give up as soon as you tug back. Jiggle your keys and see who comes running or runs away.

Prey drive: Drag the wash rag along the ground. Does he chase it? Does he mouth things (yeah, all pups do)?

And remember, if you do all these tests and decide that Pup 1 is the dog for you, you may end up getting Pup 2 because your wife thinks the patch over his eye is cute.

It must be Sunday, because every where I look on the web, I am told The Day After Tomorrow is here. That’s just weird.

I generated an Rocky Top Brigade roll up (i.e., it’s a page that just shows the most recent posts from the RTB). Then, I made a feed roll for the RSS version, which is here.

And, where it gets nifty, is I used Feedroll to generate a roll of the most current posts. It looks like this:

If you want the code to put it on your site, hit the MORE button.
Read the rest of this entry »

I have addressed the messages (though, they are likely not intentional) in television cop dramas before. See the following:

Big Brother in a Box

Note to David Caruso

Judging Amy

Cop Dramas Revisited

Now, Matthew Hisrich addresses the subversive message in the TV show 24. A snippet:

In foreign policy, the problem is arguably worse than in domestic policy, because the government deals with political systems its supposed experts cannot understand, cultures that are unfamiliar, and unleashes forces and responses that it never expected. The result is always some “crisis,” which means nothing more than a dangerous development that had not been part of the plan.

“24’s” preoccupation with this theme seems indicative of an underlying message for viewers. Season after season, we are confronted with the reality that meddling in the affairs of other countries brings deadly consequences home to American soil.

This perspective has raised the claim that “24” is subtly blaming the victim with the claim that somehow America is responsible for the terrorism unleashed against Americans. Writing in the Jewish World Review, Steven Zak puts it this way: 24 is merely “a dramatic expression of the idea that America is responsible for the attacks this country experienced or may yet suffer.”

This story has a new twist:

A Kerr County Sheriff’s deputy suffered a bullet wound to his hip and upper thigh area Tuesday after his gun discharged during a timed weapons proficiency exam.

[snip]

The bullet grazed the side of the holster, entering O’Keefe’s right hip area and then exiting his right thigh.

As is always the case, note the gun went off as if it were sentient. More:

O’Keefe’s holster has a safety feature — a hold and release mechanism — that requires him to hold down the safety button in order to remove the gun from the holster.

Sheriff’s department investigators reconstructed the incident, using O’Keefe’s holster in the re-enactment. What they found was a problem with the design of the holster itself that caused the discharge of the weapon. Holding the safety release button while pulling the weapon out of its holster forces the officer’s finger to be on the trigger while he is removing the gun.

Investigators determined that in the urgency of the timed exam, O’Keefe pulled the weapon out of the holster without realizing his finger was on the trigger and the gun discharged.

Sorry, that is not a design problem with the holster, that is not following basic gun safety.

Knox County tax payers got to foot the bill for $77K in legal fees to fight Sheriff Tim Hutchinson’s contempt charges. Shurff Tim was fined $300.

Steven Den Beste has a post about heroes that is completely unrelated to what I’m going to say here. However, in the very first paragraph he mentions that he bought some DVDs at his grocery store recently. This reminded of something I’ve been meaning to blog about for a while.

Last week or so the local Kroger had a bunch of DVDs for $5 each. They weren’t exactly huge titles, but I pawed through and found a some of the Frank Capra Why We Fight films. I’d heard they were pretty good, so I figured, hey, it’s only five bucks. I bought The Battle of Russia; Divide and Conquer plus The Battle of Britain on one disc, and The Battle of China plus War Comes to America on another disc.

Sadly, I’m way behind on everything, so I haven’t got a chance to watch them yet. Maybe I’ll win the lottery or something and I’ll be able to stay home and watch TV all day.

Per this Yahoo news item:

Unwanted bulk messages now account for roughly 83 percent of e-mail traffic, according to filtering company Postini Inc.

That’s a lot of spam.

The Governor of South Carolina signed a law that ends the one gun a month rule.

Weekly gun link goodness. I like the silenced browning. Wiping drool from keyboard now.

Yeah, I’ve blogged from the toilet too. Here’s an article in The NYT about blogging. Has some neat stats. I like the bit about how bloggers give up when they realize no one is reading them.

A three year old girl died from heart failure caused by obesity.

From Jacksonville, FL:

[Sheriff’s Office] To Be Armed With Automatic Weapons, Tasers

That’s the headline. Interesting. I wonder what kind of automatic weapons.

[E]very officer will now have access to an automatic AR-15 and will be armed with a taser.

An automatic AR-15, huh?

Police said the new semi-automatic rifle was chosen for several reasons…

Wait. Automatic or semi-automatic?

Oh, what’s the difference? After all, this is an assault weapon we’re talking about. It’s designed to kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible. Nobody needs one of these.

Such weapons are generally found in the military, and not on the streets. But police site [sic] several recent crimes that have made them reconsider their own protection.

So, an assault weapon can be used for your “own protection?” Maybe, if you’re a policeman, I guess. So what crimes were these, anyway?

Police cite [sic…no wait, this time it’s right] the chilling image of a gunman pointing an automatic weapon [automatic or semi-automatic?] at a woman during a recent bank robbery, and Clay County deputies say a mass murder suspect used a semi-automatic weapon [you sure? maybe it was a crew-served machine gun] to kill four people over the weekend.

But what good is an “automatic” “assault weapon” against these heavily armed thugs?

[I]t holds more rounds, is more accurate in long-distance shooting, and is less penetrating, so someone standing behind a suspect would be less likely to be injured

Compared to what? The “automatic weapons” the criminals have? I wonder if it’s “more accurate” when spray-fired from the hip. The police are going to spray-fire from the hip, aren’t they? I mean, that’s what the pistol grip is for, right?

Oh, the video clip is even better. It starts out with the newscaster lady in body-armor saying that the police told her “the bullets from the rifle we just showed you of the bank robbery suspect could actually go right through this bullet-proof vest I’m wearing…it is so powerful, it could actually go through the BODY OF A CAR!”

The video contains a brief picture the bank robber with his “automatic weapon,” but I couldn’t quite make out what it was. The police also demonstrate their taser on a journalist, which is definitely something I can support.

Remember, kids, the moral of the story is: in the hands of trained law enforcement, an “automatic” “assault weapon” is a tool for public safety. In the hands of Joe Citizen, it’s a dangerous bullet hose.

Stoney’s site has the latest edition of what TN bloggers are yakking about.

I am amazed that an article about the Assault Weapons Ban appeared in the Chicago Tribune that isn’t promoting the ban. It’s a good read, here’s a taste:

The 1994 law was a monument to President Bill Clinton’s distinctive political genius–which generally involved tiny symbolic changes that pleased particular constituencies without actually having much effect. It prohibited the manufacture, sale or import of 19 different firearms, along with magazines holding more than 10 rounds.

All the rhetoric behind the bill gave the impression we were outlawing military machine guns, an impression fed by references to the need to get AK-47s off the streets. But machine guns were effectively banned long ago, and the 1994 law didn’t affect them.

The guns used by the Red Army and assorted guerrillas around the world are indeed automatic weapons, firing up to 100 rounds a minute with a single squeeze of the trigger. But the so-called AK-47s allowed before the ban were semiautomatics, which fire only once each time the trigger is pulled. They are to authentic military weapons what a beer-league softball player is to Barry Bonds.

My favorite quote, which addresses the anti-gunners’ claims that those evil manufacturers are using loopholes to skirt the law, is:

Because “gunmakers have easily evaded the law by making slight, cosmetic changes to banned guns and continued their sale unimpeded.” But if you ban red cars and automakers increase their output of maroon ones, that’s not evading the law–that’s complying with the law.

Update: Oops. Added the link.

I understand that before a baby is due, it is common for the mother-to-be to begin nesting. The Mrs. hasn’t taken this up yet. However, I have begun building things. I guess the pending addition has brought out the builder in me. I’ve taken up carpentry of all things.

I’ve never had any training and the only power tools I have are a power drill, circular saw and a Dremel. The only other thing I’d ever built before was basically a board with some cross supports that had clothespins attached. It was so I could hang the spices that I grow on it to dry. In the last couple of weeks, I built a growth chart for the baby and a workbench with an 8 feet by 3 feet table surface that could survive a nuclear blast.

Now, I am planning on building a dog house. I’m not building it because I think my dogs will really use it, after all they hang out in the air conditioned house on their my leather couch. I’m building it as practice to some day build a play house for our daughter.

Any way, here’s a website with some dog houses people made. Pay special attention to the one that has a patio and an air conditioner. I’m not going that far with it but the lengths some folks go to for their pets is amazing.

I guess it is the male form of nesting.

Willie Nelson just won the Gene Weed Special Achievement Award. When they announced it, I said to my wife, “Hah! Willie Nelson just won the Weed Award!”

Of course, when he accepted it, he thought it was funny, too.

This story about the Idaho primaries has this quote at the bottom:

Bush claimed 93 percent of the vote but 7 percent of the Republican primary voters opted for “None of those listed” in what some saw as a protest vote.

Somehow, Spoons is responsible for this.

I didn’t think so. No traffic spike for me. I tend to not comment on these blog controversies (if you can call them that), but this one is a train wreck. I can’t look away. Kim’s site is where I read about the exploits of Wonkette and Washingtonienne. The latter apparently took it up the bum from some unnamed politicos for money and blogged about it. The former blogged about it and drew attention to it. Take that, add some fake lesbian mystique, a couple Instapundit plugs, and that’s a recipe for instant traffic success.

The controversy sounds made up to me. But the two of them should get a job with a marketing firm. Wonkette’s pulling Instapundit level traffic and selling ad space at $1,500 per month. And it’s not for the content, which is insightful in the same way that Cathy isn’t.

The Commissar (linked above) tells us why this is big for blogging. Yes, it’s big in terms of volume. However, it’s bad in terms of credibility, which was just (giggle) blown out the ass.

And yes, I’m jealous of the traffic.

Some time ago I posted about a bill before the Louisiana legislature to ban low-riding pants. It appears that the bill has been defeated. I must say I’m relieved; you just can’t never tell what that bunch is going to do down there in Baton Rouge. Fortunately, while some come off as clowns in the article, there appear to have been at least a few clear heads:

Lawmakers questioned how police would determine what was deemed the proper dress and what breaks the law. Rep. Jack Smith, D-Stephensville, said police would have to get new training “to now determine what fashion is legal and what fashion is illegal.”

Rep. Danny Martiny, R-Kenner, said the measure was well-intentioned but unenforceable. He said the bill would only hurt the Legislature if it was passed, making Louisiana “the laughingstock of the country.”

“At the end of the day, there’s only so much that we as a Legislature can do to deal with people’s conduct. This is an issue that ought to be addressed by parents primarily, by the preachers, by the coaches,” Martiny said.

Shepherd said the Legislature has the right to determine what was decent. He compared his proposal to curfew laws, truancy laws and a ban on gay marriage and called his bill “tough love” for young people.

“I’ve heard arguments before that it’s unenforceable, that it’s unconstitutional. Those same arguments were used when we enacted seat belt laws,” he said.

There’s those dang seat belt laws again!

My sister used to work for a state agency, and she often had to attend sessions of the legislature. As she put it, sometimes Louisiana seems like a Banana Republic.

Via Rodger, we have this:

The District of Columbia — a city famous for its hard-ball policing of parking violations — has apparently come across a new way to increase its ticket revenues: aggressive enforcement of pocket trash.

After 28-year-old Andy Chasin found a used FedEx address label in his pocket, he threw it into a corner trash can. But that was too much for the city waste inspector, who has fined Chasin $35 for — “Improper Use of Public Litter Receptacles,” insisting Chasin violated statute 24 DCMR, 1009.1, which states — “Public wastepaper boxes shall not be used for the disposal of refuse incidental to the conduct of a household.”

It’s probably for the best that people in DC aren’t armed.

Shurf Tim was found guilty of contempt of court:

A state appellate court ruled Tuesday that Knox County Sheriff Tim Hutchison was guilty of lying in response to a request for public records.

Knox County taxpayers should not foot the bill for Hutchison’s convictions for criminal contempt, the court ruled. Instead, the sheriff should pay the $300 fine for six criminal contempt convictions out of his own pocket, the court ruled.

Good news, four were arrested in connection with the murder of a local woman who was killed when someone tossed a large rock from an overpass.

The Knoxville Police Department has some new rides, Impalas.

School solution: cut programs. After all, that wheel tax has to cover important things, like an expensive new library that nobody will use.

Ravenwood reports that the Democrats are calling Lieberman a turncoat for telling other Democrats that they should support our troops.

Lieberman is one of those politicos I actually almost like. I disagree with him on most issues but he, rather like McCain, is at least honest on the surface. I disagree with McCain a lot too.

So, the AP says there is credible evidence of a terror attack this summer. But we’re not raising the lame terror alert level (AKA the Holy Shit-o-meter).

In reference to my post below about the regular capacity magazine ban being detrimental to our troops, the Comedian comments about sending our guys overseas some new springs:

Last September I sent a ten pack to a friend of mine who was in Iraq with the 101st.

Here’s a link to the Wolff page on M9 springs. (Civilian equivalent model is the Beretta 92.)

http://www.gunsprings.com/SemiAuto/BerettaNF.html#Beretta92Magazine

Be sure to get the +10% (10% higher spring force) springs.

I had to call Wolff directly to have the order shipped to an APO AE address since their web ordering process couldn’t handle the full military address.

(FWIW — My buddy came back in Feb/March and he reported that the springs worked well and solved the problem that he and several of his fellow officers were facing.)