Via The Packing Rat, comes this:

The NRA Respondents-Supporting-Petitioners, in McDonald v. Chicago, have filed a Motion for Divided Argument to request time at oral arguments. Petitioner opposed this motion.

In short, the NRA, represented by Paul Clement at King & Spalding, is asking to divide Gura’s time, and to get 10 minutes to argue. The NRA argues that Gura’s brief spent primarily focused on arguing in favor of extending the right to keep and bear arms through the Privileges or Immunities Clause, rather than the Due Process Clause. The NRA argues that the Court needs to hear an argument in favor of the Due Process Clause.

Rich has some questions:

Who are the good vendors?

I’ve owned ARs and parts from JT Distributing, Rock River Arms, DPMS, Delton, Stag, and many others. I find them comparable. I will note that Rock River parts seem to fit tighter. I tend to stick with JT Distributing because they make a quality product, use FN parts (like Colt), have good customer service, and I know Jesse.

.223 or 5.56? One works in both but one doesn’t. Are there advantages to either?

In 99% of the cases, either is fine. But a general rule of thumb is that it’s safe to fire a .223 in a 5.56 chamber. But a 5.56 in .223 may cause problems. Get 5.56

What tips and tricks do I need to know before I start?

There’s quite a few. Get all your parts and come to my house. We’ll hang out in the basement of mad science and I’ll walk you through the whole thing.

I’ve seen prices on stripped lowers from $89 to $200 and up. What’s up with that?

Used to be that there were only four machine shops that made most of the lowers in the country. So, it didn’t matter if you bought $200 lower or a $100 lower. I’ve used RRA, Bushmaster, Doublestar, and Essential Arms with no problem. I recently ordered two from SI Defense for $50 each. Note that I linked them up and apparently ar15.com did too so they ran out of stock and are backordered. I just got notification that my two will arrive at my FFL on 1/11.

I know that I have to go through an FFL to get the lower. Do I buy it first and then set up delivery or the other way around?

Buy it first, get confirmation, call up your local FFL and have them fax a copy of their FFL to the seller. I used Gunny’s, who charge a flat fee of $25 per transfer.

Get over there and help Rich answer his other questions.

We had a discussion on the topic a bit back. The gist seems that Fox OC is the way to go. James looks at the Kimber double-action two-shot chemical derringer.

Another James has more options.

Snake Gun.

AK Pistol

Fear and loading. Heh.

Looks like Steyr is looking to get back into the US market for evil black rifles.

Activists get their lawful open carry on and, while being interviewed for the TeeVee, the police show up:

Walter Stanley was in the middle of telling an ABC7 News crew about his public effort to exercise his legal right to openly carry an unloaded gun, when Livermore police came calling.

“Put your hands on your head for me please,” Officer Fuller shouted to Stanley.

Note to officer friendly: Keep your boogerhook off the bangswitch. After all, it may have been loaded.

The liquor lobby says getting rid of their monopoly will cause people to lose their businesses, lower prices.

I mentioned in my car bleg that I would not buy from government motors or a firm that got bail out money. Seems that others like that idea too:

Ford Motor Company’s December 2009 sales were up 33 percent from December 2008.

Chrysler and GM sales are down.

The Joyce Foundation on their grant to Johns Hopkins:

For support of research on policies that can more effectively restrict firearm ownership to law-abiding persons.

Via Sebastian, who thinks it’s an error and got a screen grab.

I said yesterday that the movie was Dances with Wolves in Outer Space. On facebook, I called it Dances With Giant Smurfs.

Turns out, it’s actually Pocahontas. In space.

Others agree that it’s Dances with Wolves. It could almost be A Man Called Horse in Outer Space except the giant smurfs aren’t that mean.

A discussion at The Shooter’s Log.

Two stories that caught my eye.

Richmond Times Dispatch criticizes the Violence Policy Center’s bogus statistics.

And the Washington Times:

In Oklahoma City the previous week, an armed citizen singlehandedly stopped an attack that surely would have resulted in a multiple-victim public shooting. The media gave the event scant attention. The scene went down when a Marine, who was on leave and came home for the holidays, started firing in an apartment parking lot. Before anyone was harmed, another man aimed his permitted concealed handgun at the attacker and ordered him to put down his weapon.

Positive treatment.

In your Google Store, making your Droid old.

A few things:

iPod shuffle is pretty slick. The wife got one for Christmas. Small, light, click button controls that are intuitive, good sound. Can hang on your shirt when hitting the treadmill. It’s a great little device. Once you get it setup. Which . . .

. . . brings us to iTunes, which sucks. Like all Apple products, it’s loaded with proprietary garbage that makes it incompatible with things it should be compatible with. It doesn’t just keep songs and manage media. No, it renames everything, garbles a bunch of crap, and poops out bloat. It even renames all your songs in secret code on your iPod device for some lame reason. If you need to copy songs too and from, it sucks. After all, I may be on one PC when I download a tune and need to transfer it. And what better way than by a gizmo that reportedly stores all my music? And puts multiple copies of your media in its library. Can’t even export a playlist or import one. Lame. I’m surprised it’s still the dominate player in the market, given Apple’s track record with this exact business model. Unless something new from Apple comes out, I’d even expect the iPhone to lose big marketshare soon too.

The movie Avatar summed up: Dances with Wolves in Outer Space. Aside from the cool 3D visuals, it was terribly mediocre.

Yahoo’s new webpage blows. I had a Yahoo email address for years but am going to abandon it so I don’t have to witness that monstrosity. No matter where your mouse falls, some menu expands and covers all the stuff you need to see. Lame.

I think I have finally got all my blog-fu, twitter-fu, and facebook-fu bundled up all nice and neat. So, this post may confirm that. Or it may drive me batty.

One would think that integrating RSS, Twitter, and Facebook would be easy peasy. After all, social media is supposed to be easy peasy. One would, however, be wronger than Joe Biden on the economy.

The facebook fan page is here. Over 300 fans in a bit less than a week. Feel free to add it on FB. And if you want to follow me on twitter, I am here. Or you can just visit me at the blog.

A clarifying comment from Daniel regarding their position on Cali ammo sales:

Let me clarify our position a bit.

Right now, we are selling ammunition to California.

When the law takes effect in January 2011, we will cease ALL sales to California to any individual, agency, law enforcement or government body.

It’s not that we wouldn’t love to continue selling ammunition, but the restrictions placed on us by the new law would make it impossible. For example: one of the mandates of the new legislation requires us to obtain fingerprints from the purchaser for each and every purchase. This is, of course, impossible to accomplish for our phone sales or internet sales. Based on our reading of the legislation, all internet and phone sales of ammunition will be illegal.

Because of this, and various other restrictions this new law places on ammunition sales, Cheaper Than Dirt! has made the decision to cease all ammunition sales to any individual as well as all law enforcement agencies.

A reminder from NSSF that since the technology is patented, it’s not quite a go.

Indy Star Threatens State Rep? Yeah, they don’t like his bill to limit their access to handgun carry permit data.

Looks like a nifty concept:

Kruger created the new scope for complex combat situations. The U.S.-made sight is actually two scopes in one compact package.

For close combat situations, the sight is a high-resolution 1 MOA dot with a 60 MOA circle reflex sight. A flip of a lever transforms it into a 2-8×40 sniper scope with mil reticle.

All adjustments can be quickly made while looking through the sight, so there is no need to lose sight of a target. A patent-pending “zoom-slider” makes magnification adjustments quick and easy.

I’ve made fun of tactical stuff a lot. Like tactical socks, tactical safe, tactical underwear, and even tactical bacon. Now, a tactical pen.

PIA: The Philippine National Police stressed that all gun-wielding individuals in civilian attire will be arrested on the spot.

The website looks pretty good.

Here’s an article on tactical 22s. And here’s a few videos.

More flashlight blogging. It’s a topic I do on occasion.

Some goodies I found:

Pretty cool: A couple of reasonably priced 900 lumen flashlights here and here.

If you need more oomph or want to summon the mother ship, here’s a 2,600 lumen rechargeable.

And if those aren’t good enough and you want to keep a little piece of the Sun in your pocket, try this 4,100 lumen monstrosity.

Joe has a lengthly discussion about a debate playing out on the gun blogs a bit back. And more from Sebastian.

Dr. Helen has a look:

The authors–two experienced martial artists–point out that there is almost always a build-up to violence, one that many people are not aware of. They teach you to have situational awareness without being paranoid or mentally exhausting yourself.

One of the things I’ve realized is that people who are afraid to make eye contact or look at someone else are the ones that are caught off guard by violence. Seems folks are too bashful to assess a situation. I guess they don’t want to appear socially awkward or something. Don’t be afraid to look. It’d be silly to die because you didn’t want to be embarrassed checking out the pan-handler in the Target parking lot.

Remington ACR video

Remington Modular Sniper Rifle Video.

And the M24

Odd how much stuff is “leaked” just before SHOT.

Supposedly, she’s talking about magazines. I didn’t notice the magazines.

A nice OC experience.

Well, she looks like she’s having a good time to me.