Memphis police chief is supporting a gun law. He uses as a prop a Sig 551 to show the scariness of such evil weapons (like the one that was stolen in Memphis). These weapons have never been used in a crime that I know of. Because they are new machine guns (which are banned for civilian ownership) and Sig doesn’t sell them to the public. Alphie has more.
The downside of the tubes: Building landing strips for gay Martians.
Co-blogger #9 has written extensively about YouTube and its potential effects on politics and society. Well, there’s one thing on there that I can’t stand and Brittney reminded me about it. See, I hop on YouTube on occasion to watch old music videos and the like. And I search for songs for which I have never seen the video. And I was shocked and happy to learn that one of my favorite songs of all time had a video. Cool! Then I realized that it did not. Seems people like to just film themselves lip-synching to someone else’s tune. No, I’m not upset about copyrights and whatnot. I just don’t care to watch some guy lip-synching and doing it poorly. As to one of my favorite songs of all time, here’s the video of some guy no one knows mouthing the words:
People say to me: Hey Uncle, no one wants to take your guns. I’ve never, ever heard any politician say they want to take away my hunting rifle. This is a false argument created by gun lobbyists like the NRA. And I can say: Really? Then why do they have a plan?
I’ve used UPS to ship guns for repairs and to ship gun parts quite a bit. Seems the feds busted one of their drivers for stealing and then reselling guns.
Over at a new (to me) blog called Grappling with Guns:
I am a democrat.
I am also a gun owner and possessor of a concealed handgun permit in my state of residence.
I am also a college professor.
I am not (yet) a member of the NRA, but based on much of the current debate about gun control, I may join.
Over at West, by God comes another response to my little thought experiment on gun laws (see my post here for background). A taste: Take away BATFE’s ability to capriciously write policy. Or, heck, just put their policy decisions under review.
This again. So, we have this terrorist watch list. I don’t know how you would know you were on it unless you were detained at an airport. Now, there’s a push to ban people on this list from purchasing guns. Now, no one (except terrorists) wants armed terrorists. But, from what I have read, most people who are on the list are usually guilty of having a similar name to some other person. And, of course, being put on this list doesn’t require a conviction or due process of law.
In other news, anyone else find it frightening that we keep such lists?
I know that people get a bit antsy when there are mass shootings. Then they starting pointing out how England banned this or that after a mass shooting and they haven’t had one since. But no one ever points out that crime with firearms in England has doubled since then.
Told to express emotion for a creative-writing class, high school senior Allen Lee penned an essay so disturbing to his teacher, school administrators and police that he was charged with disorderly conduct, officials said Wednesday.
Lee, 18, a straight-A student at Cary-Grove High School, was arrested Tuesday near his home and charged with the misdemeanor for an essay police described as violently disturbing but not directed toward any specific person or location.
I am without words, which is good since they’d arrest me for them.
And since the Gun Blogger Rendezvous is in Reno.
I gamble. Not a lot but often enough. I enjoy it and I only play with an amount of money I am willing to lose. If I engage in a game, all the money I take to the table I consider already spent. Never gamble more than you’re willing to lose. I’m not encouraging you to gamble and assume no responsibility if you lose money. Now, with those lame disclaimers out of the way, here’s Uncle’s brief intro to gambling.
The way you win is to stake money when the odds are in your favor. And that doesn’t happen often or, with many games, at all. And staking money when the odds are in your favor consistently over time. The classic example is in poker and you have a flush draw with two cards to come. If you hit your draw you will win. In the pot, there is $100. Assume your opponent will do one of two things: (longish post, you’ve been warned.)
Average white folks are not extreme. They are not as informed. They do not share your anger. They have not become radicalized and chances are you don’t want them to be.
Ayup. AC also touches on one other point which is that we don’t want a bunch of radical white people. When a bunch of white people get scared, people die.
CNN:
A police officer and a former officer pleaded guilty Thursday to manslaughter in the shooting death of a 92-year-old woman during a botched drug raid last fall. Another officer still faces charges in the woman’s death.
It wasn’t a botched drug raid. It was a criminal assault carried out by those entrusted to uphold the law. A few new (to me) details:
The charges followed a November 21 “no-knock” drug raid on the home of Kathryn Johnston, 92. An informant had described buying drugs from a dealer there, police said. When the officers burst in without warning, Johnston fired at them, and they fired back, killing her.
Fulton County prosecutor Peter Johnson disclosed Thursday that the officers involved in Johnston’s death fired 39 shots, striking her five or six times, including a fatal blow to the chest.
He said Johnston only fired once through her door and didn’t hit any of the officers. That means the officers who were wounded likely were hit by their own colleagues, he said.
This case is a symptom of a disease. Hopefully, it will lead to a serious look at drug war tactics in this country. But I’m not holding my breath.
You always hear about the GAO finding fraud. But you never hear of anybody getting fired for it.
In response to my question here on what gun controls pro-gunners could live with, Armed Canuck has a lengthy (as in grab a drink) response: Reconstitute the Militia.
Clayton Cramer looks at the bill to close it (HR 297):
As I said on a radio broadcast this morning, I support the concept of improving state reporting of disqualifying mental illness problems, but the devil is in the details. So I have been reading over HR 297, and I am having trouble finding where “this bill would allow the FBI to obtain massive amounts of information” about individuals. The bill doesn’t even require states to provide information–it only sets standards for how much money the state can receive for improving its reporting to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System based on its level of data that it reports.
Jeff has a transcript. The only one who called for more gun control was Biden. (note: by more, I don’t include the mental health records as more. That law is already in existence but there’s no reporting requirements). And five of eight admit to having guns at some point.
Another idiot threatens violence against a lawmaker. At least this lawmaker packs heat.
After the 1997 shooting of 16 kids in Dunblane, England, the United Kingdom passed one of the strictest gun-control laws in the world, banning its citizens from owning almost all types of handguns. Britain seemed to get safer by the minute, as 162,000 newly-illegal firearms were forked over to British officials by law-abiding citizens.
But this didn’t decrease the amount of gun-related crime in the U.K. In fact, gun-related crime has nearly doubled in the U.K. since the ban was enacted.
Some bloggers and others are describing what it was really like to find themselves being robbed at gunpoint. It’s probably a good idea to read those accounts before forming an opinion about how a person can be expected to react.
Les has a round-up. Fact is, you don’t know what you’ll do. Too much to consider and lose. If I was robbed, I’d just hand over my wallet. If I were in fear for my life, that’s a different story.
ATLANTA (AP) — Three current and former police officers have been indicted in the shooting death of an elderly Atlanta woman during a botched police drug raid.
Here:
Stop Exploiting Tragedy
It’s been more than a week now since a mass murderer struck on the campus of Virginia Tech, and as the NRA joins the debate on policies and laws, there are a few things I want to point out.
It wasn’t 24 hours after the horrific shootings that the politicians started flapping their lips. Congressman Jim Moran suggested that somehow the tragedy was the fault of Republicans and President Bush. Barack Obama compared the evil events in Blacksburg to outsourcing jobs overseas. Senator Dianne Feinstein called for a new dialogue on gun control. Mayor Bloomberg spoke of the events in Blacksburg as he pushed to stop the Tiahrt Amendment from being renewed. And that’s just the politicians.
Gun control advocates had a field day. Within hours, the Brady Campaign had a “Donate Now!” button on their website. The Violence Policy Center was blaming “lax gun laws” in Virginia for the murders, instead of placing the blame on the madman. John Rosenthal, head of Stop Handgun Violence in Massachusetts, even suggested that the gun laws in that state make it less likely for mass murder to occur there.
I’m a gun nut. And a pretty hardcore one at that. However, I’m about to lose some of my gun nut street cred. I’d like to touch on one of my rules for convincing others why I’m right. I’ve alluded to it before (here and here) but I don’t think I’ve ever written about it specifically. Are you ready? It’s real simple:
Don’t scare white people.
Uncle, you say, What the Hell are you talking about? Well, let me explain. Most people in this country fit a certain demographic. That demographic is the prototypical family with two cars, 2.4 kids, stability, owns a home, is in debt, have no issues with gay people other than they don’t want them to get married, etc., etc. Most decisions in this country in terms of legislation center around what these people think. So, when I say white people, that’s who I mean. Don’t scare them. If you scare them off by appearing excessively gun nutty, then you’re turning the people who politicians almost exclusively pander to against you. So, don’t go get a sign that says:
Rep. Cruz should be hung from the tree of liberty for treasonous acts against the Constitution
And show up at a protest. First of all, it’s hanged. Secondly, it’s not smart. Sure, your heart may be in the right place and all that other hippie tree hugging crap to make you feel better about yourself. But white people think you’re fucking nuts. And you’re not doing gun rights any favors. Don’t get me wrong, I think Rep. Cruz is a moron. His bill would require gun registration and a $10-a-gun annual fee. And, well, that’s probably unconstitutional. But that’s no excuse to out-moron him. See, I’ve come close to saying things like that before and then actually did a blog post about me thinking about saying it and then deciding it’s not something that should be said. And then saying it in a weasel way because I’d done fessed up to thinking it.
And, if it’s any consolation, his supporters don’t quite get the first amendment either when they say:
No one has the right to call for the lynching of another human being — no one
Sure they do. It’s not a smart thing and if they actually incite someone to do it, they should be held accountable. But we can say crazy shit like that. The issue, for me, is that it’s stupid to say stuff like that.
And here’s the other thing: The press loves to show off some right wing nut jobs and gun nuts. If some right winger or gun nut does something stupid, it’s all over the news. However, idiots at left wing protests rarely get press coverage. You’ll never see these photos or significant coverage of them in an AP story.
Others:
The Geek: Fight Hard, Fight Smart
Bitter: Dig Faster
David (who likely doesn’t agree with me – he does): it’s certainly not “just a figure of speech.”
Sebastian: Putting the “C” in Crazy and This is one for the “How Not to Win Column”
Well, the only surprise is that they’re admitting it now. They’ve been taking dictation from anti-gun groups for years. Says Newsbusters:
CBS Blogger: We Need More Gun Control Stories
In an April 25 post, CBS’s “Public Eye” editor Brian Montopoli worries that the media are not doing enough reporting on gun control, lamenting that the media are waiting for political players to gin up the issue.
There were reasons not to take up larger issues and assign blame in the immediate wake of the shootings – those first few days needed to be about how people were dealing with the horror of what had taken place. But some time has now passed, and I’m hard pressed to think of a better time for the media to focus on a huge issue that isn’t going away anytime soon.
I’m sorry, but where has this dude been?
Jeff says:
So what Montopoli appears to say is that since media thinks there’s a problem of gun availability in this country, it’s up to media to fan the flames of the people to demand more gun control laws.
I’m not that concerned. Sounds like business as usual to me.
The fact that presidential candidate Ron Paul is a regular guest on a radio show that talks about US government mind control conspiracies; or that, of the current field, he’s the one I’m more likely to vote for?
Looks like the house is trying to close it:
Since 1968, federal law has prohibited the sale of guns to anyone adjudged mentally ill. But more than half the states cannot — or will not — supply the necessary mental health records to the FBI database that is used to conduct background checks on would-be gun buyers.
That could change following last week’s massacre at Virginia Tech. The U.S. House is considering a bill that would encourage states to share mental health records with the federal government by giving them more than $1 billion in grants to help cover the costs.
Privacy laws and lack of technical ability now prevent 28 states from sharing such information with the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System based in Clarksburg, W.Va., according to a Justice Department report.
Privacy: It’s about more than abortions!
Mr. Completely has some room rates and codes. I tentatively plan on going. Who else is going?
Looks like the supreme court will take up the incumbent protection act err campaign finance reform. Again. Maybe they’ll get it right this time? Hell, even the bill’s supporters don’t much care for it these days, including Fred Thompson.
Looks like Barney Frank will introduce a bill to repeal the ban on transfers of money to online gaming sites. More at The Politico. In other news, SayUncle agrees with a Democrat from Massachusetts.
Seriously? One’s always there. I have several. But I also always have a cell phone to keep me abreast of the time. My office has a clock and a computer to let me know the time. I’m always in view of a clock at my house. My car has one. Any place I go has one.
So, why do I wear one?
My post over on KTB tells the Laura Cole story. It is yet another story of a hapless homeowner facing destruction of their property by the developer government complex of Knox County.
It is a story about greed, corruption, ineptness, incompetence, and the complete contempt of personal property rights. It is a story about wink, wink, don’t worry about the rules what can these people possibly do?
One man got a video camera and what he has done is very compelling. James McMillan took his video camera and has created a library of videos that have now appeared on YouTube. The narrative tells a story of some of the usual suspects of stormwater abuse.
Isn’t it ironic that both developers Victor Jernigan and Scott Davis are two of the worst offenders of stormwater runoff? Both are friends of Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale. Victor Jernigan funded R. Larry Smith in his successful Knox County Commission race against James McMillan.
Victor Jernigan is the “go to guy” on Knox County Commission for stormwater issues. Why would you pick the guy with one of the worst records of stormwater violations to be the “go to guy”? Scott Davis is famous for the impassioned speech he gave about ethics and getting along with people after it was very clear that Lee Tramel would be appointed to the District 4 seat he coveted in the January 31st appointment debacle in Knox County Commission.
Mr. McMillan is often referred to as “Farmer McMillan” because he is actually a farmer who became concerned about the stormwater issue after Mr. Jernigan built several subdivisions that caused stormwater runoff which hurt Mr. McMillan’s cattle.
These are the videos that tell the real story of personal property rights in Knox County:
The Laura Cole story via “Farmer” James McMillan and YouTube:
The Knox County Commission meeting Public Forum featuring Laura Cole via Publius9 and Channel9 of YouTube:
What could be causing the decline in newspaper circulation? It just keeps going down.
Do you think that maybe since newspapers stopped reporting local news and became echo chambers of liberal blather that might have something to do with the decline?
Oh, and there is that Internet thing.
Do you find that blogs like Say Uncle reflect your thinking more than your local newspaper? Maybe there is a new publisher in town. And no trees must die for the story to be printed.
In an update to Chris Redford misrepresenting what assault weapons are, comes the latest:
KTBS can’t stand the attention. The article has disappeared but thanks to Google cache you can read it here in the extended entry:
Seems Chris Redford’s shoddy reporting isn’t even worth a correction. At least I couldn’t find one.
Police guns getting stolen. In Memphis:
Memphis police were looking Monday night for the thieves who stole seven weapons from a North Carolina SWAT team van parked in South Memphis.
Members of the SWAT team based in Raleigh, N.C., were eating at Interstate Bar-B-Que, 2265 S. Third, about 3:30 p.m. Monday when they realized their van had been broken into, said Lt. Jerry Gwyn of Memphis felony response.
Taken were three machine guns, two semi-automatic handguns, and two 12-gauge shot guns, Gwyn said.
My sooper seekrit sources say the machine guns are actually Sig 551s. And in Utah:
Thieves broke into a Utah County Sheriff’s vehicle early Tuesday morning in Lehi and stole two very dangerous assault weapons that authorities fear could be used in other crimes.
The FBI arrested two veteran Halawa Correctional Facility prison guards over the weekend for allegedly arranging to obtain a device that can convert semiautomatic rifles into fully automatic machine guns.
Ronald Philip Lee Jr. was arrested Saturday when he accepted a mailed package containing the device, while Patrick H. Sonsona was arrested when he tried to get the device from Lee, the FBI said.
What sort of device? A shoestring? A rubberband?
No, I’m guessing they fell for the Pre 81 DIAS scam.
Update: I should be clear on the shoestring/rubberband thing. In light of the Akins Accelerator issue, why is it that a rubberband that facilitates bump-firing has not been ruled illegal? Same concepts. The shoestring is actually illegal and subject to regulation, which is a bit silly.
And it is also worth pointing out that if these guys did get a Pre 81 DIAS, then they have not broken the law unless they actually are also in possession of an AR-15, per current rulings.
Confusing, ain’t it? Try to keep up.
Uncle gets his copy and paste on.
Two new polls conducted since the Virginia Tech shooting deaths report measures of Americans’ attitudes towards gun control. There is little evidence in either of a surge in support for gun control in the aftermath of the tragedy.
An ABC News poll conducted over one day, Sunday April 22, gives us the most specific information. ABC found 61% of Americans favor “stricter gun control laws in this country”, the same as last October. The longer-term trend in support for gun control is down since Sept. 11, at which time – as I noted here — support for gun control dropped in most polls. (This most probably reflected less interest on the part of Americans in restricting access to arms with the specter of terrorist attacks in their minds.)
A Pew Research Center poll released on Monday is a little more difficult to interpret. It included a question on banning the sale of handguns, but the last time this question had been asked before their current April 18-22 survey was in March 2000. The current Pew survey finds 37% support for a law banning the sale of handguns. This is lower than in March 2000. But that was to be expected given the 9/11 effect I’ve discussed above. We don’t know what may have happened to attitudes as measured by this Pew question in the intervening seven years.
Hume:
If you are wondering why the apparent popular support for gun control does not translate into legislative action — there is ample illustration in the latest ABC News poll taken after the Virginia Tech shootings. 61 percent of the respondents said they favor stronger gun control laws — but as to whether they would do any good – 49 percent said yes and 50 percent said no. By a 52-to-29 margin, respondents said they prefer enforcing existing gun laws to passing new ones.
ABC devoted nearly two minutes to the poll during last night’s evening newscast — but never mentioned one of the most interesting results. When asked the primary source of gun violence – 40 percent said popular culture, and 35 percent said the way parents raise their children. Only 18 percent blamed the availability of guns.
A FOX News poll last week found that only 19 percent of Americans believe tougher gun laws can help stop shootings like the one at Virginia Tech. A 71 percent majority disagrees.
A Zogby poll indicated that 59 percent do not think stricter gun control policies would help prevent tragedies like the one at Virginia Tech, and only 36 percent believe they would help.
An AP-Ipsos poll showed that 49 percent think gun laws should remain as they are or be made less strict than they are now, and 47 percent that they should be more strict.
Virginia’s governor said Tuesday he may be able to single-handedly close the loophole that allowed a mentally ill Seung-Hui Cho to buy the guns he used to kill 32 people at Virginia Tech.
Federal law bars the sale of guns to people who have been judged mentally defective. But it is up to states to report their legal proceedings to the federal government for inclusion in the database used to do background checks on prospective gun buyers.
In Cho’s case, a special justice ordered outpatient psychiatric counseling for him in 2005 after determining he was a danger to himself. But because Cho was never committed to a mental hospital, that order was never entered in the database.
Democratic Gov. Timothy M. Kaine said in a radio interview that he may be able to tighten that reporting requirement by issuing an executive order.
“This is the magnet we’re all really focusing on. This grabbed our attention,” Kaine said later in the day in an interview with The Associated Press.
Similarly, the chairman of a panel appointed by Kaine to review the massacre said the reporting requirement must be tightened.
“It’s pretty clear: He should not have been able to obtain a weapon,” said retired Virginia State Police Superintendent W. Gerald Massengill.
I don’t think there’s a loophole. There’s just not a provision in VA to get this info in the NICS since Cho was not committed. And that was how it was. Recognizing the effects of that now and doing something about it doesn’t make it a loophole. It represents, instead, a shortcoming of the state in its reporting. Loophole is apparently a synonym for Oops, didn’t think of that.
Good. It was a stupid idea. In other news, if the ads offend you, you can still turn off the TeeVee. See background here and here.
Publicola addresses the NRA’s support for expanding the NICS. The NRA has always supported the NICS. In the 1990s, they supported it so much that they did not stop the assault weapons ban because they wanted the NICS more.
I can’t fault the NRA too much, really. We’re going to have background checks so they may as well be done right. In the event said checks become an arbitrary system for removing gun rights, then all bets are off. But I don’t see that happening.
I’ve seen some pretty stupid media bits that misrepresent guns through ignorance (either willful or otherwise) but this one is completely retarded.
TN Representative Chris Crider:
Tennesseans, my constituents, have overpaid taxes by almost $1 billion. I don’t know about everyone else, but I know when I overpay a bill, I expect a refund.
There’s a push now to use the excess collections to offset taxes on food. Giving us our money back? Novel concept.
Mourning Cho’s death. I share Jay’s sentiment. Also, this bit is disturbing. Seems people are concerned for the perpetrator’s of violence to an extent that I cannot comprehend. Sure, each incident is tragic but, of all that, the initiators of violence are not the people I mourn for or sympathize with.
My post on KTB of a local story that has made it to the Drudge Report.
As first reported on WATE news:
KNOXVILLE (WATE) — A father took extreme measures Wednesday to discipline his 14-year-old son, who he claims was abusing drugs.
Because the boy is a minor, 6 News won’t reveal his or his father’s identity.
The boy was forced to wear a large sandwich board sign that said “I abused & sold drugs,” while standing in front of Cedar Bluff Middle School.
“I would like to say that I’m not out here doing this to humiliate my son,’ the dad said. “I’m doing this because I love him. We do have an extreme drug problem in America, and maybe it’s time for extreme measures that parents need to take to monitor this problem that we have.”
The man says he recently learned after reading the boy’s MySpace page his son was involved with marijuana and OxyContin. That’s when he decided to take immediate action.
Some of America’s mayors, led by Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City and Thomas M. Menino of Boston, would like you to believe that their Mayors Against Illegal Guns Coalition is about fighting illegal firearms in their cities and across the country.
It’s not.
The principal goal of this coalition is the repeal of language that has repeatedly been passed into law for the past several years that prevents information on gun traces collected by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) from being given to mayors pursuing civil litigation suits against firearms dealers and manufacturers. The mayors would have you believe that law enforcement supports giving them the information on gun traces because many of their employees — namely police chiefs, who often serve at the pleasure of the mayor — have publicly backed their coalition.
But the officers in the field who are actually working illegal gun cases know that releasing sensitive information about pending cases can jeopardize the integrity of an investigation or even place the lives of undercover officers in danger. That is why the Fraternal Order of Police has always supported language protecting firearms trace data, now known as the “Tiahrt amendment.” For the men and women in uniform who are fighting illegal guns, it is a matter of officer safety and good police work.
ATF itself has repeatedly gone to court to fight the release of its data, because the release can have a negative effect on its efforts to investigate illegal gun trafficking and threaten the safety of officers and witnesses.
It’s a shame the FOP brass supported the assault weapons ban. This almost makes me want to donate to them again. Almost.
Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam is a member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns.
The CBS affiliate station in Wichita, Kan., is refusing to air a television advertisement that is part of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s gun control campaign, saying the spot is misleading.
[...]
KWCH said the ad is misleading because the amendment allows law enforcement to have specific gun data for criminal investigations or prosecution.
The radical extremist gun lobby says we should improve the NICS:
With the Virginia Tech shootings resurrecting calls for tighter gun controls, the National Rifle Association has begun negotiations with senior Democrats over legislation to bolster the national background-check system and potentially block gun purchases by the mentally ill.
Rep. John D. Dingell (Mich.), a gun-rights Democrat who once served on the NRA’s board of directors, is leading talks with the powerful gun lobby in hopes of producing a deal by early next week, Democratic aides and lawmakers said.
Under the bill, states would be given money to help them supply the federal government with information on mental-illness adjudications and other run-ins with the law that are supposed to disqualify individuals from firearms purchases. For the first time, states would face penalties for not keeping the National Instant Criminal Background Check System current.
The bill is authored by Carolyn “Barrel Shroud” McCarthy. More:
Since 1968, individuals deemed mentally ill by the legal system are not supposed to be able to buy guns. A court’s ordering Cho into treatment in late 2005 should have been reported to the federal background check system, congressional aides said. Instead, his background check came up clean, and he legally bought the two handguns used to kill 32 students and teachers before he committed suicide.
“The states are not putting records into the system,” McCarthy said yesterday.
My thoughts on the bill are here.
Via David, who’s none too happy.
So, you run a library. In that library, you find a WW1 German machine gun that was captured by Alvin York. You want to sell it to fund your library. Tough shit, it’s illegal:
According to the research, Lewis had plucked the weapon from a pile given up by surrendering Germans and shipped it home. Briefly prized as a souvenir of the war, it was paraded through the town on Armistice Day in 1919 by Boy Scouts who towed it in a red wagon. But over the years it faded from public view.
Its rediscovery stoked dreams of a big windfall for the library, where officials had been pondering ways to finance an expansion of the cramped facility and an upgrade of an antiquated cataloging system. Library officials said they contacted several auctioneers in New England who estimated the weapon’s value at $100,000 and perhaps several times more than that.
But the dreams didn’t last long. Library officials soon learned that the gun is illegal and that they can do very little with it.
Federal gun laws prohibit possession or sale of automatic guns unless they are registered with the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. In the library attic for years, the German machine gun was never registered. The library isn’t allowed to register the gun now because federal law prohibits new registrations on automatic weapons, except in rare circumstances.
Since it is illegal for the library even to have the gun, Nahant police took it and stored it under lock and key in an evidence locker, forestalling seizure by the ATF.
“We cannot hold onto this weapon,” deStefano said. “If we kept it on the premises, they were going to come and get it, and they were going to destroy it. This is a piece of history. We’re kind of caught between a rock and a hard place.”
The town has appealed to the ATF for permission to sell the gun, but so far, bureau officials have rejected the pleas.
Possession of an unregistered NFA weapon can land you 15 years in club fed and a big fine. But:
A spokesman for the ATF said yesterday that it would be possible for the Nahant police to register the gun and take responsibility for it, which would prevent it from being destroyed. They could also possibly transfer it to another public agency, but it’s unlikely that it can be sold on the market , according to Jim McNally, a spokesman in Boston for the ATF.
He said the agency — at the request of US Representative John F. Tierney, a Salem Democrat — is researching options that Nahant might be allowed under the law, such as transferring the gun to a private museum.
Sorry. The weapon cannot be transferred. It is already contraband now. Such a transfer (and possession) is illegal. Time to destroy a piece of history due to our gun laws.
Sebastian is giving a class on gun laws. Good idea. I often see these polls wherein some percentage (usually about 30 – 40) say they favor stricter gun laws in the US. I wonder if you asked those 30-40% what gun laws there were if they could answer. I tend to doubt it. But they may know what a barrel shroud is.
While you’re over there, check out: Demonstration of why you should wear safety glasses while shooting. Ouch.
No need to know that the expert, identified as a retired ATF agent, is also on the board of the anti-gun disguised as pro-gun group American Hunters And Shooters Association. In other news, Oliver Willis is still blogging and still stupid. I thought he’d quit or something since I haven’t noticed any right wing blogs making fun of him in a while. Anyway, most states ban the use of full metal jackets and non-expanding bullets for hunting. That pretty much dictates that to hunt, you use hollowpoints.
I may have spoke too soon. Here’s comes the first wave:
US Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and US Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) said Sunday they will push legislation in the US Congress that would mandate that states improve their system for reporting mental health records of gun purchasers to the federal databases for background checks in the wake of last Monday’s shootings at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute that left 33 people dead. US Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) , chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, also said Sunday he will hold hearings to consider the issue of guns following the tragedy at Virginia Tech.
My understanding is that as of now, most states have minimal requirements for getting said info into the NICS and 20 or so states have no requirement at all. Depending on how said legislation is drafted, I may not be a fan. After all, medical records should be private. So we can have abortions. Or something. And, of course, if said reporting includes those not convicted/committed with due process, it’s quite a slippery slope. The LAPD, for example, has been known to assume that because a person is suspected of a crime and is in possession of a gun (though said gun had nothing to do with said crime and was at the suspect’s home) that person must require a psychiatric evaluation. So, said person loses their right to arms without due process. Or, taken to an extreme, a judge can just decide you’re mentally defective, etc.
There’s also the issue that, like a lot of other gun control pipe dreams, that the feds hand down an unfunded mandate and the states tell them to give them money or get bent.
And, honestly, I don’t think anyone wants Carolyn “I don’t know what it is but I want to ban it” McCarthy making laws about something she knows nothing about. The article concludes with:
Overall, members of Congress do not seem particularly keen to amend existing gun control legislation, though there has been some support for streamlining state and federal laws regarding whether and how someone with a history of mental illness can purchase firearms.
Yeah, pretty much.
Poll: Tragedy Hasn’t Changed Views On Guns
Despite Va. Tech Shootings [what media bias? - ed], Nation Remains Split On Gun Laws, No Rise In Demand For Tighter ControlsThe nation is profoundly split along gender, racial and other lines over gun violence and what the government should do to control it, despite near-universal sorrow over the Virginia Tech shootings, an AP-Ipsos poll has found.
Women and minorities are far likelier than men and whites to view gun violence as a major problem, to worry about being shot, and to want stricter firearms laws, said the survey, which was taken after the killings.
Fault lines also exist by political party and where people live, with Democrats and city dwellers taking a far dimmer view of guns than Republicans and suburban and rural residents. Though similar divisions have long existed, the findings spotlight how each group’s views remain entrenched despite this week’s shootings, the worst gun slaying in modern American history.
“It’s just too easy for anybody to go in and buy a gun,” said Daphne Renolds, 59, an office manager from McDonough, Ga., a respondent in the AP survey.
Though Monday’s horrific killings of 32 students and teachers — plus the gunman — were fresh in people’s minds, there was scant movement in their attitude toward gun laws. Forty-seven percent said firearm controls should be tightened, 38 percent said they should remain unchanged and 11 percent said they should be loosened — about the same as in a January survey.
Six in 10 women think gun laws should be toughened, nearly double the proportion for men. Fifty-five percent of minorities favor stricter legal requirements, compared with 44 percent of whites.
[...]
Nearly 60 percent of Democrats favor stricter gun laws, almost double the number of Republicans, with more women in both parties supporting tougher standards.
WBIR:
The shootings at Virginia Tech have sparked a renewed debate about gun control. It may have also sparked an increase in gun sales at shops across the country.
“There’s all kinds of crazy things almost every night when you turn on the television and I think that just raises people’s worries more about protecting themselves and protecting their homes,” says Chaz Sunser of Chuck’s Guns and Ammo.
Chuck’s, a Jupiter, Florida firearms store noticed a sharp increase in business last week.
Sales had been slow after Easter, but following the Virginia Tech tragedy their concealed weapons class filled up.
Handgun and ammo sales skyrocketed, both at Chuck’s and around the country. Chuck Sunser, the gun store’s owner, says it’s a nationwide trend.
“I spoke to three of my bigger distributors up north, and most of them are in the Pennsylvania area and Connecticut and they told me that their sales, the phones are going off the hooks. And most of the gun shops that they were dealing with were out west and mostly up north.”
I don’t know that I’m willing to believe that overall gun sales are up based on one shop’s reported uptick and he-said-she-said with a distributor. But it seems lately that we always hear of gun sales increasing after some tragedy.
I’ve noticed something odd. I fully expected that, in light of the horrific incident at Virginia Tech, that we’d see calls for gun control. And we have. But I figured we’d also see more people agreeing with those calls. But that’s not the case (see here, here, and here – note: they’re not scientific polls).
In the 1990s, I would have bet money on that. Now, not so much. What changed? I don’t really know. But a few guesses:
1) Blogs – more importantly, faster dissemination of info and faster ability of critics of gun control to respond. On guns, the press just takes dictation from the anti-gunners. Now, folks can respond to that and dispel untruths.
2) Katrina – I think people realized during that incident how useful and practical guns are. People would not have thought so before. A spike in gun ownership happened after Katrina.
3) More concealed carry – There are now only two states that have no provision for concealed carry. And there are nine states that have may issue provisions. Your average citizen is more likely now to pack or know someone who does.
4) And, yeah, maybe (as much as I am loathe to get on the ‘it changed everything’ wagon) 9-11. But gun ownership also increased after 9-11.
I’m just speculating but there’s something in the water.
Update: And no politicians are really screaming for gun controls either. Well, except the usual suspects. And Barack Obama, who seems trapped in the 1990s. Seriously, have you heard the rest of his message? He’s like Bill Clinton only without the cool.
Meanwhile, the AFP:
The powerful US gun lobby, far from being weakened by last week’s tragic college campus shooting, actually has emerged stronger, gun advocates said, stepping up calls Sunday for a better-armed US citizenry to prevent future attacks.
A college professor was fired for re-enacting the VT shooting and how it would have been different if someone there was armed:
Winset said he gave students a disclaimer before he started his Virginia Tech re-enactment, which involved him pointing a Magic Marker at students and saying, “Pow.” He then had another student shoot him with an imaginary gun to make the point that Cho could have been stopped by another student with a firearm.
Here’s video of him talking about it.
Here’s some discussion as to how Cho did it. I’d asked before how he was able to since he was adjudicated mentally defective. Says Kopel:
Well, let’s take a look at the statute. I think, actually, the federal law was clear enough in this case, but the problem was that, as in lots of cases, the law didn’t get properly enforced.
The Federal Gun Control Act, ever since 1968, has prohibited the possession by a person or the sale to a person who is what they call mentally defective. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms wrote a regulation, and that regulation says that that category includes a person who has been found by some kind of official body to be a danger to himself or others.
Cho was found to be a danger to himself or others when he was brought before a magistrate. The magistrate had the option to commit him but found that less restrictive treatment, the outpatient treatment, would be sufficient. Yet even though he wasn’t committed, that’s sufficient under federal law to bar him for the rest of his life from ever possessing a firearm.
And, in fact, there’s a case from the federal district court of Michigan, U.S. v. Vertz, that finds exactly that, that, in a very similar situation, the Federal Gun Control Act did apply and prohibited the person from having a gun.
Now, clearly it would be very helpful if these regulations were better known and disseminated more broadly to the mental health community and to the judges and magistrates who may make these commitments or determinations about a person’s danger so that this information does get reported.
Not really commenting but just gonna go ahead and say this misinfo in these bits is pretty severe.
Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said this week’s shooting at Virginia Tech highlights serious shortcomings with gun control.
“We’re still selling handguns to crazy people,” Obama said during a campaign stop at a Nashua senior center on Friday. “We’re supposed to have a system that these people are screened out. What’s clear is the background check system in this case failed entirely.”
And:
“(Cho) had a semiautomatic weapon with a clip that allowed him to take 19 shots in a row,” Obama said. “I don’t know any self-respecting hunter that needs 19 rounds of anything. The only reason you have 19 rounds is potentially to do physical harm to people. You don’t shoot 19 rounds at a deer. And if you do, you shouldn’t be hunting.”
Gun rights aren’t about hunting and need. They never have been.
Miss America 1944 has a talent that likely has never appeared on a beauty pageant stage: She fired a handgun to shoot out a vehicle’s tires and stop an intruder.
Venus Ramey, 82, confronted a man on her farm in south-central Kentucky last week after she saw her dog run into a storage building where thieves had previously made off with old farm equipment.
Ramey said the man told her he would leave. “I said, ‘Oh, no you won’t,’ and I shot their tires so they couldn’t leave,” Ramey said.
She had to balance on her walker as she pulled out a snub-nosed .38-caliber handgun.
Here, the uncle family is doing that:
See, when we get on our road, we let junior move to the front seat while I drive 10MPH for about 100 yards. I think that’s child abuse. She thinks it’s fun. The Second is oblivious.
Despite such attitudes, average Americans have always made up the front line against crime. Through programs like Neighborhood Watch and Amber Alert, we are stopping and catching criminals daily. Normal people tackled “shoe bomber” Richard Reid as he was trying to blow up an airliner. It was a truck driver who found the D.C. snipers. Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that civilians use firearms to prevent at least a half million crimes annually.
When people capable of performing acts of heroism are discouraged or denied the opportunity, our society is all the poorer. And from the selfless examples of the passengers on Flight 93 on 9/11 to Virginia Tech professor Liviu Librescu, a Holocaust survivor who sacrificed himself to save his students earlier this week, we know what extraordinary acts of heroism ordinary citizens are capable of.
Dr. Helen notes some issues actually getting the info about such adjudication into the NICS. States, it seems, often don’t report mental health records and professionals in the field don’t like to divulge info due to privacy considerations.
And the mentally defective tend to lie on form 4473.
So, should mental health records be reported? What say you, gun nuts and privacy sorts?
Sebastian thinks so.
Hard to tell. Radley has an email from a guy who was at a raid on a Dallas poker room. Seems the cops ninjaed up and took an A&E film crew to bust these miscreants who are a danger to society.
And, of course, the tapes that would confirm one guy’s story disappeared.
In this post, there is a lot of info about my questions in comments.
These past couple of weeks have been big for The Second. I mentioned he’s taken a few steps and had his first haircut. He is also, as of now, off of formula and drinking whole milk. Now, The Second is a big boy. And he eats a lot. He’d go through about 1.5 cans of Similac Isomil Advance in a week. And, with tax, they run about $25 each. In a month, it’s about the same amount I make off of Google Ads.
Up next: purging my house of bottles.
Seen over at Les Jones:
“The page view has been the traditional measure for advertisers to compare which websites provide the most opportunities to display their ads to consumers. The large portals and social networking sites tend to dominate this way of looking at engagement.”
“However, as the technology that publishers use to deliver content to the user moves away from static, reloaded pages to be more streamlined content-e.g. online videos- the page view is becoming a less relevant gauge of where might be the best place to advertise online.”
“Consequently advertisers will have to look at other metrics, such as time spent or visits, to see where their online ad pound might be best spent.”
Well, the average visitor here sticks around for two minutes and twenty-one seconds. Don’t know if that’s good or bad.
HR 1859: Anti-Large Capacity Ammunition Feeding Device Act of 2007. Well, I prefer to to call them regular capacity.
Professor Glenn Reynolds explains, “Gun-free zones” are premised on a fantasy: That murderers will follow rules, and that people like my student, or Bradford Wiles, are a greater danger to those around them than crazed killers like Cho Seung-hui. That’s an insult. Sometimes, it’s a deadly one.”
Like many other local bloggers I will be blogging on KTB, the Knoxville Tennessee Blog. Today’s post is on stormwater and I break it down as simply as it can be broken down.
How long will taxpayers in Knox County allow developers to put in metal corrugated pipe and plastic pipe for stormwater? The good stuff is concrete pipe, it can last many, many decades. The cheap stuff can need replacement in 15 years.
Why should taxpayers and property owners have to pick up the tab to replace stormwater pipes in 15 years because of the poor stormwater ordinance from Knox County Commission?
Rikki Hall and Betty Bean have some fine columns this week you should read on the stormwater debate.
A new (to me) site Knoxpoker.com. A message board for strategy, tips, and local meet-ups.
First, I saw on the snooze last night that the shooter had been adjudicated mentally defective by a judge and ordered to go to padded land. Now, I’m not sure how the National Instant Check System works but shouldn’t something like that show up on a background check? Heck, a number of years ago when I was a federal contractor and had a Q Level Security Clearance (it expired when I left), I’d always set off the NICS or TICS when I bought a gun. Same thing each time: They’d call, there’d be a hold up on the other end. Gun store clerk would say: they said they’ll call back. They’d call back in ten to thirty minutes. If that gets a blip, why wouldn’t such adjudication?
Second, the next day, the Feds knew where the shooter got the gun. How did that happen since the anti-gunners tell us that law enforcement has no access to gun trace data?
Update: See? And Terry asks:
Will Mayor Haslam continue to maintain his membership in Bloomberg’s group when the timing of this campaign is clearly geared towards weakening the 2nd amendment?
Update 2: Brisbane Times:
However, Harvey Baker, the director of ACCESS, an independent community mental health service that evaluated Cho in December 2005 at the request of the university, said staff advised at the time that a temporary restraining order be issued against him.
That wording is a bit odd. I have not found yet whether a restraining order was issued. Only that one was requested. If there was, that would also disqualify him from purchasing a gun.
Update 3: Ask, and you shall receive. In comments, Rustmeister answers:
I was wondering the same, heard this morning that they go into NICS only if they are committed against their will. In Cho’s case, he decided not to go into the Nervous Hospital, and the judge ruled in favor of outpatient treatment.
As for the restraining order, that wouldn’t show unless he was charged with a domestic. He never was.
Armed Canadian looks at media distortions regarding guns.
LawDog on licensing and registration:
Any person who possesses a drivers license can drive on any public road on any state in the Union. They can drive on school grounds, they can drive on college campuses, and they can drive to any courthouse in the Union.
Tell me, Gun Grabber, that you want to license guns just like cars. You’ll let anyone with a gun license carry a gun anywhere they want to, in every State in the Union — just like a drivers license.
You’re a liar.
When someone asks you about licensing and registration, pick up a pen and a sheet of paper. Tear the paper in half and hand half to your questioner. Say “Okay, this pen is a gun. The paper I’m holding is my license and the paper you’re holding is the registration. Using only these two pieces of paper, explain to me just how you are going to keep me from shooting someone?”
In a surprise move, a House panel voted today to repeal a state law that forbids the carrying of handguns on property and buildings owned by state, county and city governments — including parks and playgrounds.
“I think the recent Virginia disaster — or catastrophe or nightmare or whatever you want to call it — has woken up a lot of people to the need for having guns available to law-abiding citizens,” said Rep. Frank Niceley, R-Strawberry Plains. “I hope that is what this vote reflects.”
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
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