Update: more from the city paper.

In other words, the DC government is so prejudiced against gun owners that the government would sacrifice voting rights for DC citizens rather than permit those citizens to exercise Second Amendment rights.

Three senior investigative officials, who insisted they not be identified by name because of the sensitive nature of the ongoing federal investigation, told reporters in Washington that Hasan was never nominated to be on a watch list. He was able to purchase weapons legally and had done nothing to justify even a preliminary investigation, they said.

He also had a security clearance:

In addition, Hasan had a security clearance at the “secret” level and received good performance reviews, they said. Nonetheless, they continued to examine his communications with the cleric in Yemen for several months as a precaution.

Some of those weapons allegedly ended up on the streets of Chicago.

No, those come from gun shows, remember? That’s what they tell us.

Will Gun-Control Case Prompt a Constitutional Reawakening?

And archaeology is from the Greek Archae meaning to dig; and ology meaning stuff up.

Remington 511

OTS 38 revolver. A new one to me.

Holder wants a national, permanent gun registration system administered by law enforcement. A registration of honest citizens that have cleared the federal background check for gun purchases with those records permanently retained by and shared among law enforcement.

Holder wants new federal authority to prohibit any person on the federal watch list (reported to be 400,000 names) from buying guns and supports confiscating guns from those on the list who possess them.

So, he doesn’t want due process protections for people who want to own guns. Even though we give those protections to people who, say, fly planes into buildings.

Update: In comments, David he’s trying to corroborate the story with no luck. Could be bogus since the official transcript contains none of the quotes attributed to Holder.

And thanks to Hosting Matters for their efficient response.

From Misc

Note that it is actually one of the few TCA compliant signs that I have seen. But when you walk inside, you see:

From Misc

Ok, then. A place I won’t eat.

Apparently the geniuses at the American Journal of Forensic Medical Pathology figured out that there are weapons all over planes. Like Marko said: Your weapon is that squishy grey mass between your ears—everything else is just a tool.

Update: As The Duck points out in comments, that doesn’t count the various office supplies that are in the bag.

Even better than blaming guns. Blame chicken. Maybe it’s a chicken plague?

In comments, Guav:

Lots of unpossibles here in just the last two months:

Bronx Girl, 15, Shot In Head By Stray Bullet
Teen Pulls BB Gun On Cops, Gets Shot In The Face
Drive-By Shooting On Lorimer Street In Brooklyn
Bronx Student Shot Outside High School
Brooklyn Teen Fatally Shot Outside Brownsville High School
Stray Bullet Kills 92-Year-Old Bronx Woman In Her Home, Teen Arrested
Teen Shot Dead In Flatbush Coffee Shop
13-Year-Old Queens Boy Fatally Shot in After-School Fight
Bronx Mom Killed In Afternoon Gang Shootout
Brooklyn Drive-By Shooting Leaves 2 Dead, 1 Wounded

Maybe instead of banning guns, Bloomberg should just ban Brooklyn and the Bronx. Or teenagers.

I think I’d prefer zombie night.

Classic 22s

Chiappa Rhino

BAR bullpup

Breda on the Zen of the rifle.

ETA: And I mean the drivers, not Biden.

the interior of the earth is extremely hot, several million degrees

And this is the leader of a religion that wants me to have faith in their prophecies.

* misspelling intentional.

Insight Technology’s Ken Solinsky named Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2009 Winner in the Distribution and Manufacturing category

Insight Technology makes some quality lights, illumination and aiming devices.

Video here.

I find it interesting that a company related to the gun industry is getting an award from a Big Four (there’s four now, right?) accounting firm. Mainstreaming, indeed.

Via The Duck.

But I think this is the best visual on the topic.

Somali pirates attacked the Maersk Alabama on Wednesday for the second time in seven months, though private guards on board the U.S.-flagged ship repelled the attack with gunfire and a high-decibel noise device.

Yup. Folks with carry permits are involved in an underwhelming amount of gun deaths.

Sebastian has more and notes the lying.

Update: More math from Joe:

So, the average CCW holder is (5.4/100,000)/(1/142,000) or 7.668 times less likely to murder someone than your average private citizen. And that’s not correcting for the exaggerations pointed out by Sebastian and the conservative numbers used by Waldron (it’s actually 34/5,000,000+ or 1/147,059+). So the real number is probably on the order of 10 times less likely.

Update: More from SIH:

A man drunk at home is charged with having a firearms while intoxicated. It seems to me that the public has an interest in a person not carrying a firearm in public while intoxicated, but the state’s power to reach into the home ought to be considerably diminished. Should someone be charged because they are intoxicated at home, but have a loaded pistol in the bed stand upstairs, or have a rifle in the closet?

More at M1A rifles.

Surveys indicate that gun ownership is not spread evenly across U.S. households. In fact, chances are that a substantial proportion of U.S. gun owners have more than one weapon, so it’s quite possible that fewer than 200 million Americans own those 260 million guns. That means there may be more than 100 million citizens left unprotected against their gun-owning fellow citizens.

Surely everyone can agree that this is an outrage. Moreover, it is an outrage that Congress can easily fix, without months of committee meetings, town halls or tea parties. All that is required is a bipartisan, pro-constitutional bill to extend the Second Amendment’s protection of gun ownership to all Americans, whether they like it or not.

Under such legislation — let’s call it the Gun Insurance Act of 2009 — every American would be required to buy some kind of gun. Those who cannot afford even the simplest weapon — say, those whose 2009 annual income is less than twice the federal poverty level — could be issued $500 vouchers that would be valid only at gun shops or gun shows, and would have to be used before the 2010 Census.

You non-gun-owning people aren’t doing your part so the Feds should make you.

Says Lyle:

Immitation is a sincere form of flattery I suppose. Thanks, Izhmash. That forward rail of yours was my first UltiMAK prototype, so you’re starting to catch up to this Yankee after 60+ years, when I came up with it about a week after touching my first AK. ‘Course we improved mine since the first version, by incoprporating the rail into the gas tube itself, hard-mounting it, and divorcing it from the rear sight block and gas block. Now it seems everyone is an UltiMAK wannabe. Wonder what my lawyers will say…

update: I am reminded of KDT’s report on the ultimak. And here’s my own experience with it as well. It’s a damn fine product.

Tacticool AKs

Auto Revolver

And the FN SCAR will also come in black next year.

Via Tom. In other news, The Onion seems funny again.

The FN Black Box:

detects/discriminates/counts shots
measures burst rates and burst lengths
records firing sequences
detects stoppages due to failures to cycle

The armorer can therefore anticipate necessary maintenance actions and consult all previous maintenance operations when and as required.

Interesting. The same concept is often applied to industrial machines.

Beretta 93R

AR pistol

870 before and after

Also, via insty, comes the iPhone v. Droid smackdown.

I’ve never had an iPhone though I have played with a few. So, I can’t really say one is better than the other in terms of the interface. But Droid has a few key tangible things that I like better:

It can run multiple apps.
I can change the battery.
Comes w 16gb SD card.
And Verizon, unlike AT&T, doesn’t suck.

Past Droid posts here.

I don’t have a lot of information on the study but the basic result was that people see openly carried guns as “deadly force” and threatening/fear-causing which makes it different than gays holding hands, interracial couples, or woman’s bare ankles being visible. Sure, some people are fearful of gay cooties, Jews controlling the world, and their daughter dating a black guy. But it’s pretty easy to point out the silliness of those types of fears. Openly carried guns are different. If they didn’t have at least some real fear inducing properties they wouldn’t be useful for self-defense and as a deterrent against attack. Apparently that fear inducing quality persists to some degree in most people even after repeated exposure with non-threatening people carrying the gun. It may not be rational but people are not rational. Expecting or insisting people be rational is irrational.

There’s a lot more.

It also reminds me of a story. A friend of mine is in real estate. She was showing property to someone when a guy comes by walking his dog. He has a holstered gun on his hip. The family looking at the property immediately became uninterested in the property. Oddly, their interest in the property was renewed a few days later when they found out that the neighbor was a police officer who’d just gotten home. So, perception matters with respect to open carrying.

Attorney General Eric Holder is retreating on his commitment to pursue a controversial gun-control measure.

Holder’s statements, recently delivered to senators in writing, clearly indicate the Obama administration is in no rush to reinstate the assault weapons ban, which expired in 2004.

[…]

Regarding the administration’s next step, Holder stated, “The department is currently reviewing existing gun laws to determine how best to combat gun violence and keep guns out of the hands of criminals and others prohibited from possessing them.”

I doubt you’ll see any push for gun control by the democrats in power because they want to stay in power.

NYT Columnists Who Blamed Conservatives for ‘Right-Wing’ Killings Ignoring Fort Hood Massacre

More women are arming themselves

Senator Charles Schumer held a press conference on Sunday to call on the Department of Justice to require immediate notification of the Joint Terrorism Task Force when a suspect of a terrorist inquiry attempts to purchase a gun.

Currently, the FBI Counterterrorism Division is notified of background checks when a gun purchaser is listed on the Terrorist Screening Database, but the watch list is not inclusive enough. Senator Schumer says there are many more people who should be on that list who presently are not.