Digital Brownshirts
Or cybernauts?
There’s a pretty ugly local election for judge in my county. Apparently, the local papers have been pretty incompetent on the issue. Incompetent is one word. Partisan hacks would be another. But I digress.
Also, we have the battle of the douchebags. See, we got us a state senate race going on. The incumbent is Ramond Finney. Despite his tendency to be a bit embarrassing, he’s mostly harmless. And Finney does have the NRA endorsement.
His opponent is Doug Overbey, whose cheesy mug you see all over the city, my the city. Overbey is running on a conservative leadership platform and pointing out that he’s a lifelong Republican, 100% pro-life, and all second amendment rights.
Unfortunately, Doug Overbey lost all credibility on two of those claims when he crossed party lines to vote for Jimmy Naifeh as speaker of the house. Jimmy Naifeh, you’ll recall, is our lying speaker of the house who keeps abusing his power to kill pro-gun bills.
I’ll be voting Finney.
Looks like the NRA is pushing the Second Amendment Enforcement Act. Good. The Hill notes that NRA is pressuring conservative Democrats to put up or shut up:
The National Rifle Association is putting the election-year squeeze on conservative Democrats, demanding that they buck their leadership to support a bill to erase more of the District of Columbia’s gun laws.
Democratic gun rights supporters will risk losing their A-plus rating if they don’t sign a discharge petition to be filed Wednesday bringing the gun-rights bill directly to the floor.
It will be the first time in more than 20 years that the NRA has “scored” a discharge petition in determining the grades it gives lawmakers before the November election, said spokesman Andrew Arulanandam.
Hats off to NRA for that one. Put the pressure on. Typically, gun bills are avoided like the plague in election years.
The buy-back program was challenged last week by Dr. Carl Bell, a psychiatrist and president and CEO of Chicago’s Community Mental Health Council, who said at a City Council hearing that the guns being turned in “don’t work in the first damn place.”
Drugs, my anti-WOW:
Or, rather, sad panda. Josh Sugarmann is taking it pretty hard. After all, he founded his group to ban handguns and was told No, bad kitty!
The only two saving graces for your campaign as far as I’m concerned is that of supreme court judges and that you’re not Barack So a pirate walks into bar Obama. But there was this third thing I was holding out for. It was that your Vice Presidential choice would not suck. Let’s face it, you’re kinda old.
The rumors are that you’re looking at Mitt Romney as your Veep pick. Now, I don’t like Romney. At all. The guy is even more of a Democrat than you are. So, why do you insist on making the already daunting task of getting hammered, holding my nose and voting for you even more miserable?
If you do pick Romney and are elected, I hope we make some major strides in life extending technology.
Not sure why but I was exposed to all this feminism at once. So, you get to suffer for it.
First up, KAG on Why We Still Need Feminism:
Democratic candidate for Property Assessor Andrew Graybeal referred to me as “darlin’” in discussing his planned appearance with me.
Yes, he called me “darlin’”
OMG! Darlin! When will the oppressive patriarchy end! Actually, I think this shows why most view feminism as a joke.
Speaking of feminism as a joke (via AC):
Just like every year except 1984, the list of serious contenders for the Democratic VP spot appears to be another boring list of people with penises.
Yes, the most important aspect of the selection of a Veep is their genitalia. Which is why Obama would be better off picking Paris Hilton over a statesman like, say, Russ Feingold. I bet Egalia would just be absolutely giddy if McCain picked Condi Rice, right?
And lastly, a decision to take responsibility for your own safety is a decision to leave the feminist sisterhood (via SM). Now, listen up, sweetie. I understand. I mean, guns are tools for self-defense. And, well, women aren’t so good with tools. No, kidding aside, seems those who want to empower women are OK up until the point you actually want to, you know, empower women.
Did they find a shoulder thing that goes up?
An outspoken Long Island gun owner’s home was raided by Nassau County detectives, who seized two dozen weapons he lawfully owns just one day after Rep. Carolyn McCarthy’s office made a 911 call about him.
Freeport resident Gabriel Razzano claims he was targeted in the spring raid for his “unpopular” political beliefs.
Nice.
I’d love to see that business plan.
So, it looks like the Moms Against Guns group held itself out as a non-profit in order to get free billboards in Philly. Turns out, they’re not a non-profit and mislead Clear Channel Outdoor. The group is self-funded.
Ah, the ethics of anti-gunners. Once again, lying to win.
“[NRA is against] anything that restricts the opportunity for a guy who gets cut off in traffic from pulling out a hand gun and almost assassinating an entire family, as was the case a few days ago in San Francisco, where three people were gunned down. That somehow that is appropriate and wonderful and that person celebrated his freedom to carry a loaded pistol.”
Via Dr. Helen, Reason Mag ranks the top 35 most populous cities by their relative nannyism.
Strangely, the supposedly least nanny city is experiencing population growth.
First, big government nanny stater John McCain could not say whether or not Barack Yanni Obama was a socialist. And now, big government nanny stater Joe Lieberman:
I must say, that’s a good question . . . I will tell you that during this campaign, I’ve learned some things about him, about the kind of environment from which he came ideologically. And I wouldn’t . . . I’d hesitate to say he’s a Marxist, but he’s got some positions that are far to the left of me and I think mainstream America.
Well, one in six guns on earth is an AK-47. But you’re going to have to convince the average white person to have any sway in this country. And that will take decades.
A look at some of the stupid things the city of DC has done. I’m thankful that DC politicos are retarded. Makes challenging them in court easier.
Via my dad.
Apparently, is a pink unicorn that farts moonbeams.
Update: Actually, it farts rainbows.
A while back, I noted the case of Mark Edward Marchiafava:
Mark Edward Marchiafava did not break the law in Gonzales, La. on January 28, 2006. But nonetheless, he was handcuffed, arrested, and his firearm, which he was legally carrying in the open on his side that day, was confiscated and not returned.
His property was returned shortly after. Mr. Marchiafava emails me that the attorneys for the police involved opted to settle out of court. He notes that the grand jury absolutely refused to allow any testimony or evidence that indicated criminal wrongdoing on the part of the police.
The Christian Science Monitor has a long tradition of being anti-gun and un-christian and un-science. After all, making stuff up isn’t very christian or very sciency. But I digress.
The latest is this tripe (careful with that link, it may hijack your browser) from their blog: Obama’s views on gun control align with battleground areas’
The trick, of course, is that you have to completely ignore everything Barack You’re Soaking In It Obama has ever said about or voted on with respect to guns and focus your sights on one little statement he made that one time after a landmark court decision basically said banning handguns (a position Obama has supported by writing it out in his own handwriting) was unconstitutional. And you have to forget that Obama did not sign the senate brief to the supreme court in the Heller case that supported an individual right to arms. In other words, that one time at band camp, he said that one thing.
Obama shill Dante Chinni then proceeds to use 2004 data to show Americans largely support gun control even though the gun controls Americans support in the study are not the kinds of gun controls Obama has supported. So, why does Chinni use 2004 data? Oh, I think I know why that is.
No, the other kind.
A couple of women gun bloggers have learned that, despite my general opposition, wearing more clothing to the range is a good idea. Ouch and ouch.
Profile of first person to register a firearm in DC at the Examiner. Of course, readers here knew about it last week.
Good: A third-grade teacher arrested for taking a gun onto school property was set for trial today, but prosecutors dropped all charges.
According to Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria, Obama is the “conservative” when it comes to foreign policy, and McCain is the “liberal”:
Over the course of the campaign against Hillary Clinton and now McCain, Obama has elaborated more and more the ideas that would undergird his foreign policy as president. What emerges is a world view that is far from that of a typical liberal, much closer to that of a traditional realist. It is interesting to note that, at least in terms of the historical schools of foreign policy, Obama seems to be the cool conservative and McCain the exuberant idealist.
…snip…
Obama rarely speaks in the moralistic tones of the current Bush administration. He doesn’t divide the world into good and evil even when speaking about terrorism. He sees countries and even extremist groups as complex, motivated by power, greed and fear as much as by pure ideology. His interest in diplomacy seems motivated by the sense that one can probe, learn and possibly divide and influence countries and movements precisely because they are not monoliths. When speaking to me about Islamic extremism, for example, he repeatedly emphasized the diversity within the Islamic world, speaking of Arabs, Persians, Africans, Southeast Asians, Shiites and Sunnis, all of whom have their own interests and agendas.
Obama never uses the soaring language of Bush’s freedom agenda, preferring instead to talk about enhancing people’s economic prospects, civil society and—his key word—”dignity.” He rejects Bush’s obsession with elections and political rights, and argues that people’s aspirations are broader and more basic—including food, shelter, jobs. “Once these aspirations are met,” he told The New York Times’s James Traub, “it opens up space for the kind of democratic regimes we want.” This is a view of democratic development that is slow, organic and incremental, usually held by conservatives.
Obama talks admiringly of men like Dean Acheson, George Kennan and Reinhold Niebuhr, all of whom were imbued with a sense of the limits of idealism and American power to transform the world. “In his view of history, in his respect for tradition, in his skepticism that the world can be changed any way but very, very slowly, Obama is deeply conservative,” wrote Larissa MacFarquhar in her profile of him for The New Yorker. “There are moments when he sounds almost Burkean. He distrusts abstractions, generalizations, extrapolations, projections. It’s not just that he thinks revolutions are unlikely: he values continuity and stability for their own sake, sometimes even more than he values change for the good.”
…snip…
Ironically, the Republicans now seem to be the foreign-policy idealists, labeling countries as either good or evil, refusing to deal with nasty regimes, fixating on spreading democracy throughout the world and refusing to think in more historical and complex ways. “I don’t do nuance,” George W. Bush told many visitors to the White House in the years after 9/11. John McCain has had his differences with Bush, but not on this broad thrust of policy. Indeed it is McCain, the Republican, who has put forward some fanciful plans, arguing that America should establish a “League of Democracies,” expel Russia from the Group of Eight industrialized countries and exclude China from both groups as well.
The whole thing is worth the read. Cross-posted at Lean Left and TennesseeFree.
Is there a wireless TeeVee system?
Lemme ’splain. Got a new treadmill. Due to a failure to plan on my part, it doesn’t fit through the basement door into the den. If it did, then I could watch TeeVee while running. But now that it’s assembled, I’m not taking it back. I’d like to get a small flat screen TeeVee that would receive the signal from my various DVR boxes so I can catch up on my shows while doing some cardio. Also, it would be handy to have for those nights I want to sit on the back porch with an adult beverage while the kids are playing. A quick search reveals mostly spam.
Anyone?
Thanks.
I did find a wireless video send thingy. But not sure about it.
A guy running for NRA Board says gun owners should not store ammo; supports microstamping and gun owner databases; and if you have a gun for disaster preparedness, you’re out of the mainstream. Meet Pat Wray.
Update: and in the past, he called owners of evil black rifles Vicious, vengeful, vitriolic jackals.
Breda: I do have a small purpose in my life, such as it is. I go to work, love my family and then, in my spare time, send some words out into the universe hoping that they will help a woman realize that yes, she is free – free enough to fight and be feminine at the same time. Free enough to choose to live.
7:33 PM Sebastian: Bitter is complaining about the 9mm not being pretty ![]()
7:34 PM me: so was ahab
’cause he’s a girl
You’ll recall a reader submitted entry here about how someone’s gun was stolen. A few things:
Buy a damn safe – Ya know, I never had a safe until the Mrs. got pregnant.
Meanwhile, an idea for storing serial numbers. I keep a couple of electronic files with that info on them, though I haven’t updated in a while.
And the author emails:
- I’m know I’m not liable in a legal sense. I just feel partly responsible, which is a different thing. Even if it was a computer or stereo that got stolen, I’d still deserve an extra large dumbass award if it got stolen because I left the house unlocked.
- It’s not so much that someone stole my property, it’s that I made it a lot easier than it needed to be. I recognize that if somebody wants something badly enough, they’re going to get it. That doesn’t excuse leaving it unlocked, and in relatively plain sight.
- I have been in contact with the contractor, and he’s aware that I’ve notified the police that his helpers are suspects. He’s been very helpful on the issue, an absolute dream to work with, under the circumstances. One of the two helpers he brought was a trusted assistant that he’s willing to vouch for, but the other was new, and he’s pressuring that guy hard. I suspect that he’ll never use that assistant again. This actually gives me a bit of pause, because there is one other possible suspect — a satellite TV installer — although the latter suspect was pretty closely supervised the whole time. Still, I’m not 100% certain which one it was, so I’d hate for someone to lose his livelihood because of my mistake. The latter guy seemed much more like the type who would do it, he just didn’t have nearly as much opportunity.
Even in Alabama, a solid majority don’t support your right to own a machine gun. It’s a political reality. Deal with it.
Conversely, can Heller be used to challenge sporting purposes provisions?
John McCain says he doesn’t know if Obama is a socialist. That one should have been easy.
I think you’re reading too much in to this white people business.
One of my more often referenced bits is Don’t Scare White People. 45Superman takes issue with the phrase and advocates scaring white people. First of all, in my original bit I described exactly who I meant by white people and that pretty much meant your average voter with 2.4 kids, etc. Additionally, advocating that anyone not on your side deserves to live in fear is a guaranteed way to lose.
However, he is correct that we can’t just sit back and do nothing. We should push boundaries when it’s helpful. But you can’t be all in your face all the time or you will lose. Getting more people on our side is, frankly, more important. I’m not saying you should be dishonest. I’m just saying you’re gonna convert more soccer moms by taking them to the range than by screaming SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED at them.
Sebastian has more on balance.
Lots to do. Kinda tired. So, no blog. Not that I blog much on weekends anyway. But I do usually blog some.
Some gun porn: GSG 5P.
A potentially terminal case of teh st00pid:
If your child came across a gun, what do you think they would do with it? Tell an adult? Pick it up? Pull the trigger?
We wanted to try something. With a Northside ISD police officer’s help, we put a group of children in a room with a real, unloaded gun to see what they would do when they thought no one was watching.
We want to emphasize: News 4 and a police officer took every precaution to make sure these children were never in danger.
Except that part about leaving kids alone with a fucking gun.
The only application received yesterday was from a woman who brought a revolver to the registration office under the amnesty program, officials said.
After the gun was test-fired and the woman completed registration paperwork and a written test, she went home with the gun to await a decision on her application.
By law, she must keep the gun in her home, unloaded and either disassembled or fitted with a trigger lock, and she is not allowed to use it, even for self-defense, unless her application is approved. The process involves a background check for disqualifying factors such as a felony record or history of mental illness.
There is but one dealer willing to do transfers in DC and his license is up for renewal.
And Dick Heller is running for office as a Libertarian against Eleanor Holmes Norton, who is stupid.
So, I made fun of some girls for picking a girl caliber to train with. Anyway, some good points have been made about both weapons. To wit:
The TAC-S in 45: Well, it’s 45. Slim and snag free design. And some folks love the LDA trigger. And some folks can’t stand the trigger. And I actually carry a 45.
The LTC in 9mm: It’s a 9mm but if we’re gonna fire 1,500 rounds, that may be easier to deal with. Also, I prefer a single action trigger. Just preference. So, which would you choose:
However, the judgment in this case relates only to the provisions that were struck down, and the city appears to be complying with the literal command of the judgment.
Looks like challenges of DC’s new law have already been promised.
Good.
And my sooper seekrit sources tell me that the first person to register a firearm in DC is a woman by the name of *redacted*. There are supposed to be two interviews with her, one from NRA News and one from the Washington Times. I haven’t found them yet.
Update: Due to reasons pointed out in comments, name is gone.
My state senator Finney done got his NRA endorsement. We got invited to some recent shindig for Finney. My wife asks if I want to go. I explained I was not a fan. He is good on guns though.
To TN House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh who recently got his handgun carry permit only three months after lying and saying he already had one.
Bradies try their google-fu
Thanks to a tip from WizardPC, as of this writing, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership has the number one spot on Google for Carry Permit Holders. So, we’ll fix that: Carry Permit Holders
Last time it took 20 minutes. It’s now 9:15a.m.
Robb reminds me that the Para TAC-S is also what I’ll be shooting at the Para/Todd Jarrett training. Some folks are shooting the 9mm. Because they are girls. Not that I’m naming names. But one of those names may involve 200 pounds of sausage.
Curt looks at the number of CCW holders charged. Of course, handgun carry permit holders are more law-abiding than most, even more law-abiding than police.
In Chattanooga, a bear was a threat to a man’s family. So, he killed it. Good for him. But now TWRA is looking to charge him. As Deb said:
Because that’s what they do – they charge people. They don’t search for Justice. They charge people. They are probably reviewed on whether or not they charge (and convict) enough people in a given time.
Quite amusing how now the Brady Campaign is stating concealed carry doesn’t have an appreciable impact on crime. But a few years ago they were telling us there would be blood in the streets and we’d all die at the hands of road-ragers. Oh, did I say years? I meant hours.
No comment: Three journalists were hurt when a gun went off at a press conference called by Chinese police to highlight the success of a gun-control campaign.
If you’re one of the 12 people who have emailed me the Dewalt AR-15, that is so six months ago.
In South Carolina: On those two days, South Carolina will waive collection of its 6 percent sales tax on the purchase of handguns, rifles and shotguns.
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership refers to a man charged in a double homicide as a Law-Abiding Gun Owner
My google fu is weak.
What specific firearm did Dick Heller try to register in the beginning?
People make reference to 5-4 on a .38 revolver but that was his duty weapon. And, IIRC, the order was to allow registration of his weapon. So, what did he try to register? Some say his 45 and others say a Beretta 92. But I cannot find a cite in any court docs that state what he tried to register.
Update: SM’s google-fu is mighty:
he applied for a permit for his high standard buntline .22 revolver
Link.
Countertop emails that the article below says Dick Heller has a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol. So, even if he brings it back to register, it will be denied. Because semi-automatics are still illegal in DC.
Then he has standing to sue since the handgun is the quintessential self-defense weapon. And the semi-automatic is the quintessential handgun.
Every day, I am thankful that Fenty is a moron. And our side is smart.
Update: Heller 2: The city has rejected me again,
From a reader: According to NBC4, Heller was denied registration.
Can anyone confirm?
Update: Confirmed – sorta:
In the first hours of the first day that it was legally possible to register handguns in the nation’s capital, only one person showed up to do so–and he was turned away because he didn’t bring his weapon with him.
Capitol Hill resident Dick A. Heller, whose lawsuit prompted the landmark Supreme Court ruling that scuttled the city’s strict firearms control laws, arrived at D.C. police headquarters at 6:30 a.m., a full 30 minutes before the new gun registration office was scheduled to open.
Heller, accompanied by his attorney, was met on the steps of the building by a cluster of camera crews and Lieutenant Jon Shelton, head of the firearms registration unit. In an animated discussion, police explained to Heller that he needed to show officials the guns he wanted to register — and allow them to be test-fired — as part of the registration process.
Heller’s attorney, Dane von Breichenruchardt, said Heller owns at least two handguns — a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol and a 9-shot, .22-caliber revolver — and has stored them for years with a friend in Maryland. Although officials said that gun owners in Heller’s situation can bring legally owned firearms from other jurisdictions into the District in order to register them, the attorney said he had told Heller not to do so without written assurance that it was permissible.
Received via email from a reader and presented without comment.
=================================
I’m part of the problem
Ask just about any gun rights advocate where criminals get their guns, and most will immediately tell you that they steal them from law-abiding gun owners. Unfortunately, a few months ago, I unwittingly contributed to that problem. The worst part is, I didn’t even notice until yesterday.
I had stored a couple of handguns up there, ironically so that they wouldn’t get stolen (I had gone on vacation, and the thinking was that if anyone breaks into the house while I’m gone, they won’t go up there, so whatever they get, they won’t get the guns). I don’t yet have a safe — I’ve been procrastinating on that for a couple of years now, I’m afraid — so this seemed like a logical choice. Since nobody ever goes in our attic but me, and we don’t have children in the house, the two gun cases were more or less in plain sight, once you got into the attic. One was locked, the other was unlocked. The locked case contained a .22 varmint pistol, and the unlocked case contained a .40 S&W.
A couple of months ago, I had some contractors working in my attic. They were up there unattended for several hours. I had forgotten that I stashed the guns up there, so I didn’t think anything of it. Yesterday, I went up to go get the .40 to take it to the range (life’s been busy, and the range is a ways away, so it’s been months since I’ve been able to go). The locked case with the .22 was still there, more or less where I remembered putting it. The unlocked case, the one with the .40, was missing.
Panic set in, and I just felt sick inside. I tore apart the house, hoping against hope that I had moved the .40 and simply forgotten I’d done so. I checked all the places where I’ve ever stored it, and several where I never did, to no avail. No trace. Finally, I decided to do a more thorough search of the attic. And it was up there, inside a blue plastic storage container, that I found the conclusive proof: the empty gun case had been hastily dumped in there, wide open, along with the holster. The .40 and all three magazines were gone. That sick feeling just got worse.
I called the police and filed a report, but months after the fact, there’s only so much they can do. Worse, that particular gun was a gift, and I hadn’t bothered to write down the serial number anywhere, meaning that the odds of ever recovering the piece drop from “pretty remote” to “zero.” (I called the guy who gave me the gun; he didn’t have a record of the S/N, either.) The loss of the gun isn’t that big a deal to me; it’s the thought that my gun, a gun I’m responsible for, could wind up in the hands of some thug, and someone could be hurt or even killed with it. If that happened, I don’t know if I could live with myself.
Now, I’ve always been of the (somewhat outspoken) opinion that we as gun owners bear additional responsibility because of the very nature of the tool we choose to own. And in that regard, not only did I fail to live by my principles, I let all gun owners down. I’ve unwittingly contributed to the gun-grabbers’ argument that we can’t be trusted, that guns are too dangerous to just have “out there,” blah blah blah. And for that, too, I am deeply sorry.
The thing that has me kicking myself the most about all of this is how easily it could have been prevented. Not only did I not do everything I should have done to prevent the gun from being stolen; I didn’t even take basic, reasonable precautions that would have taken almost no time and cost almost no money. The locked gun case, the one with the .22 in it, wasn’t tampered with. How fucking hard would it have been to put a padlock on the case? Yet I procrastinated, and I didn’t do it. I didn’t buy a safe — there were always “more important” priorities. Some friends have tried to calm me down, saying that it’s not my fault that some scumbag stole the gun. Maybe not, but it’s certainly my fault that it was so easy for them.
My only hope in writing this is that you learn from my mistake, and don’t repeat it. Don’t be a shithead when it comes to your guns. When they’re not on you or with you, lock them up. Preferably in a safe. Don’t make it easy for the wrong people to get their hands on them. I’ve learned my lesson, but unfortunately, it’s too late.
Since assault weapons are weapons of war, designed to be sprayfired from the hip as a bullet hose to kill as many people as quickly as possible, why are police in Chicago getting them?
You mentioned the gun position. I’ve been talking about the Second Amendment being an individual right for the last year and a half. So there wasn’t a shift there.
It is apparently ludicrous to question denying someone their civil rights without due process of law.
We’re trying to figure out how close we can get to where we were before.
In case you were wondering: Whatever happened to that moron in that YouTube video?
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
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