I have been remiss in plugging Hot Chicks from Yahoo News (best used through an RSS feed). The content may not be for everyone but the concept is cool. It counts words and determines which news stories are likely to have a picture of a babe. Most of the time, it’s right on. Other times, not so much.

Well, there go my plans for making a T-shirt that says I’m carrying a gun.

A retailer of scope mounts and other gun accessories called Mounting Solutions has linked to SayUncle. To my knowledge, that’s the first time a manufacturer of firearm related products has linked to me.

And, heck, they get some free advertising out of the deal with this post.

And I’ll be needing one of these soon, since once the ban expires I’ll be building an M4 with a flattop upper, as seen here.

My ass:

[John Kerry] was in Wisconsin the other day, pretending to be a regular guy, and was asked what kind of hunting he preferred. “I’d have to say deer,” said the senator. “I go out with my trusty 12-gauge double-barrel, crawl around on my stomach… That’s hunting.”

So, what’s wrong with that quote?

Update: Kynn sets us straight in comments. Kerry was apparently Dowdified as the full quote is:

After his successful round of trapshooting Saturday (Kerry hit 17 of 25 targets), Kerry told a reporter he would rather have been hunting.

He was asked in the interview Sunday what kind of hunting he preferred.

“Probably I’d have to say deer. It’s tough, depending on where you are,” said Kerry.

“I go out with my trusty 12-gauge double-barrel, crawl around on my stomach. I track and move and decoy and play games and try to outsmart them. You know, you kind of play the wind. That’s hunting,” said Kerry, whose manner was relaxed as he spoke on the final day of an excursion along the scenic upper Mississippi that he seemed to take some relish in.

As Kynn says:

There’s nothing in the original version to indicate that Kerry’s quotes were said in direct succession (nothing to say they weren’t either), but he clearly didn’t make the statements as portrayed in the edited version, which appears to flow cleanly between “hunting deer” and “crawling on the ground.”

In particular, the phrase It’s tough, depending on where you are can be seen as Kerry saying, “It’s difficult to find a place where you can hunt deer, because they’re not always around” – so likely he means that he hunts other things.

His reference to “that’s hunting” has to be read in light of the fact that he’d just been trapshooting. He wasn’t saying “hunting deer with a shotgun on my belly, that’s hunting” – he was saying “going out and stalking prey instead of blasting clay pigeons, THAT’S hunting.”

I concur.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (which is almost as dumb a name as Post Intelligencer) writes:

More than 7,000 people who should have been barred from buying guns were able to buy them anyway in 2002 and 2003, according to a Justice Department review released Monday.

The government rarely prosecutes such cases, the report said.

Federal law stipulates that gun buyers might have to wait up to three business days before receiving their weapons; under a system of instant FBI background checks instituted in 1998, most sales are approved much quicker. Of the 17 million gun purchases in the past two years, 122,000 were denied because of the checks.

If the background check isn’t completed within the period, however, the law says the purchase must go through. In 2002 and 2003, there were a combined 7,030 “delayed denial” cases in which the FBI found that a prohibited person was able to get a gun after the period expired, according to the review by Glenn Fine, the Justice Department’s inspector general.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives retrieved the weapon in 97 percent of those cases. But that sometimes took a year or longer.

The study did not say how many times a crime was committed with the gun before it was retrieved but provided some examples, including an instance in which a prohibited buyer was charged with aggravated assault after firing the illegally purchased weapon at another person’s car.

Several reasons were cited by the bureau for its failure to retrieve the guns more quickly, including staff shortages, technology problems and lack of adequate timeliness standards. The review also found that agents did not consider it a priority to track down the illegal gun purchasers because they are not viewed as dangerous. “We were also told that ‘bad guys’ generally do not purchase their firearms through legitimate dealers,” the review said.

The study also found that federal prosecutors brought charges in only 154 of the 122,000 illegal purchase cases.

I suppose the three-day rule is to rule out denial of a legal purchase by simply not doing the check. Seems the better solution is to mandate the check be done in three days.

Only 154 charges in 122,000 cases? Maybe if the ATF was more willing to enforce existing gun laws, the calls for more gun laws might not be necessary.

The Geek shows us the free speech zones at DemCon.

Ravenwood has more.

I’m sure all those lefty bloggers who were bashing Bush’s free speech zones will come out and decry these horrendous acts? Bueller?

Update: Good for SKB on calling it outrageous.

The Comedian, a site you should be reading, landed an interview with comedian Jim Norton. Read it here.

I’d have one guy whose job it as to make sure I didn’t do anything that, you know, made me look really stupid.

The Knoxville News Sentinel’s Tom Humphrey is blogging the Democratic National Convention. Good for the KNS.

There’s a lot of good AWB stuff today. Bill O’Reilly gets the assault weapons ban wrong, according to Vox Day:

Mr. O’Reilly once attacked the president of the Gun Owners of America as a nutcase on the fringe due to the GOA’s opposition to the assault weapons ban. This demonstrated three things:

1 “The Factor” does not understand the purpose of the Second Amendment, which is to ensure that the people are able to militarily resist their government. Of all people, a New England man should know that Lexington and Concord were fought by those resisting the attempt of the then-legitimate government to confiscate private weapon stores.

2 “The Factor” does not understand the Assault Weapons Ban, which does not concern itself with bazookas and machine guns, but pistol grips and magazine clips.

3 “The Factor” has no intention of allowing open debate on his program. It’s his program, so that’s his right, but it puts the lie to his “No-Spin” claim. Mr. O’Reilly is every bit the agitprop artist that Michael Moore is, the primary difference being that Moore lies and seeks the destruction of his targets in order to destroy them, while O’Reilly lies and seeks the destruction of his targets in order to sell himself.

And party foul to Mr. Day for using the phrase magazine clip.

It turns out that the police do not overwhelmingly support the ban, at least among the rank and file. The Law Enforcement Alliance of America writes:

Long guns of any type are used in only a tiny fraction of gun crimes (the preferred firearm for criminals is, naturally, more concealable pistols). And despite the impression you may get from movies and TV, the criminal use of rifles classified as so-called “assault weapons” is even rarer. Indeed, those firearms classified by the legislation as “assault rifles” are the least likely firearms to be used in crime.

In effect, the 1994 law bans 19 types of semi-automatic rifles and pistols because they have two or more “scary looking” features –like a bayonet lug, pistol grip or flash suppressor. Note that none of these features actually contribute to criminal use of the firearm. And, there is a prohibition on newly manufactured ammunition magazines capable of containing more than 10 rounds, for rifles or handguns.

Surely there must have been some reduction in crime as a result of this sweeping ban? Actually, no.

The U.S. Department of Justice conducted two studies of the consequences of the 1994 ban. Nearly five years after passage, in 1999, the U.S. Department of Justice, still under Clinton’s control, looked exhaustively at the ban’s effects. It concluded that “the public safety benefits of the 1994 ban have not yet been demonstrated.” In 2001, a second Justice Department review similarly found no evidence that the ban had a statistically significant effect on violent crime. Finally, a congressionally mandated study by the liberal Urban Institute reached comparable conclusions.

This article states that police are largely underwhelmed and will view the sunset of the ban as just another day:

Big shots in the national gun-control debate may party or hang out black crepe paper Sept. 13, when a 10-year ban on assault weapons is expected to end.

Area law enforcement officials expect it to be just another day on the streets.

“I think it makes most police officers uncomfortable knowing the amount of fire power that is out there and available to the percentage of the population that would use it for evil purposes,” said David Lain, chief deputy of the Porter County’s Sherrif’s Department.(sic)

“But I don’t see that, ban or no ban, that it’s going to affect what weapons the bad guys are able to get ahold of.” (sic)

Indeed.

On the political front, Clinton, in his book, apparently blamed the 1994 ban to the Republican congressional sweep that happened two months later:

One issue that Democrats are not highlighting on a national level is gun control. In his new book, Clinton writes that the passage of the assault-weapons ban helped Republicans take control of Congress 10 years ago.

Sen. John Kerry, who supports extending the ban that expires Sept. 13, has stressed that he is an avid hunter. He interrupted his campaign schedule earlier this year to vote for the extension of the assault-weapons ban.

However, he does not list gun control as a major issue on his campaign website and has attempted to make a clear distinction between his views on guns and those of 2000 Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore.

If you haven’t heard, Carolyn McCarthy will be giving a speech about the ban at the Democrat National Convention. The ban is definitely the party line at this point. If the ban sunsets, I’ll have to reconsider my support for Bush because if Bush loses, the Democrats will push for it.

However, this article states that Democrats are divided on the issue:

The issue is complicated for Democrats because some party leaders, including Louisiana Senate candidate Chris John, now a U.S. House member from Crowley, strongly support the National Rifle Association position against gun control, which is that aggressively prosecuting lawbreakers is more effective than any gun legislation.

Those who helped write the Democratic platform apparently didn’t want to place a major emphasis on the gun-control issue, devoting just a single paragraph to the topic.

“We will protect Americans’ Second Amendment right to own firearms, and we will keep guns out of the hands of criminals by fighting gun crime, reauthorizing the assault weapons ban and closing the gun show loophole, as President Bush proposed and failed to do,” the platform reads.

Protecting my rights by infringing on them? I think you misunderstand the concept. The article also details the struggle in the party about, though most Democrats support the ban, they don’t want to push it because it will cost them votes. So, if it’s not an election year, expect a push for it if the Dems gain power.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation has a fact sheet on semi-automatic firearms.

What did one America say to the other?

Shove it!