I should be more concerned about the shots fired at the Bush Cheney HQ here in town, but, let’s face it, the female cop in this picture is damn cute.

Update: Someone complained that registration is required, so here’s the pic.

House and Senate negotiators have reached a tentative agreement on a bill that will allow Tennesseans (and other states) to deduct sales taxes they paid for federal income tax purposes:

Lawmakers in the states without an income tax have sought the sales tax benefit, which was taken away nearly 20 years ago in another federal tax overhaul.

The change would benefit Tennesseans who itemize deductions on their federal returns. The Congressional Research Service says that’s about one in four state taxpayers.

The agency estimates the tax benefit would average $470 for those who itemize.

That just seems like a paperwork nightmare.

A rebuttal letter to Swanee Hunt’s ridiculous column is here:

Thursday’s columnist Swanee Hunt (“The safety of America’s streets hinges on politics”) makes a number of erroneous and/or misleading statements concerning firearms, which deserve an answer.

She posits that the 1994 assault weapons ban is keeping AK-47s and Uzis off the streets. Not so. These are machine guns and have been, since 1934, covered under the National Firearms Act. Nothing about this law is scheduled to change.

That sounds like something one of my readers emailed me. Who was it? Confess!

This one seems to be enjoying himself.

This Boston Herald article addresses a study that concludes Massachusetts ranks 47th in prosecuting felons who possess firearms:

Hundreds of people who lied on their applications for gun permits in Massachusetts and dozens of corrupt gun dealers have gone unpunished by federal officials, according to a blistering new study.

The study, commissioned by a Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group, ranks the Bay State a dismal 47th in the nation in prosecuting felons who possess firearms or who committed a violent felony with a firearm from 2000 to 2003.

Some 245 such felons were prosecuted in the state during that time – a low figure compared to other states per capita.

The report found that U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan’s office prosecuted just 12 of 505 Bay Staters caught lying on federal gun applications on criminal records, addresses or other information between 2000 and 2003.

The source comes later:

“Dirty dealers are a major source of crime guns,” said John Lacey, spokesman for the Americans for Gun Safety Foundation, which commissioned the study. “These are crimes that fall on the back of the federal government and they’re not prosecuting them.”

AGS is an anti-gun group. They hide behind the term safety but mean gun control. Regardless, Massachusetts gets an A- rating from the Brady Campaign. As such, you’d think that Massachusetts, using Brady logic, wouldn’t rank 47th. I suppose it’s a matter of the extent of the law. When you have more gun control laws than most other states, it’s probably hard to prosecute all (including the serious) cases.

A pretty good read:

This lack of correlation between gun control and violent crime rates would indicate that gun control on the whole does not do what HCI, Million Mom March, and the Brady Campaign, an influential gun-control advocacy group, says. It doesn’t reduce violent crime rates.

A report by the Brady Campaign states there has been a decrease in the amount of gun traces of “assault weapons” since the passing of the Federal Crime Bill. It also claims this decline is “extremely significant to law enforcement and has clearly enhanced public safety, especially since these military-style weapons are among the deadliest ever sold on the civilian market.”

It shouldn’t be a surprise that after it became illegal to manufacture or sell particular kinds of firearms, they became less common. “Assault weapons,” however, are not inherently more dangerous than hunting rifles, hunting shotguns, and handguns.

The term “assault weapon” was invented to describe guns that looked scary to average people and has little meaning to those familiar with firearms. Examples include the AR-15 and AK-47, which are loosely based on weapons used by The American and Russian militaries.

Read the whole thing.

Fort Worth police are upgrading their arsenal to include AR15s, which is a good thing. They’re doing so to avoid being outgunned. However, I think the police chief has no idea what the assault weapons ban did, he’s a liar, or that he doesn’t know shit about guns:

Mendoza said that acquiring the weapons is even more of a priority since the expiration of the assault-weapons ban last month.

“We were going to do it anyway, but from my perspective, that adds more weight and more credence to do it as well,” he said.

Mendoza was among several police chiefs nationwide who had supported a continuation of the ban.

“I think it’s a disappointment to this organization, to the chiefs in the larger cities of the United States, that the legislators didn’t listen to some of the top law enforcement officers in the country,” Mendoza said.

The same weapons were available when the ban was in place. I don’t think it matters to the man on the street if that weapon has a bayonet lug or not.

Council Bluffs city council will vote on breed specific legislation soon. They want to ban pit bulls:

The council may re-introduce an ordinance to ban the pit bull breeds American Staffordshire Terriers and Staffordshire Bull Terriers at its meeting next Monday night. The ordinance was defeated at the Aug. 12 council meeting on a 2-2 tie vote.

Yup.

Cheney to Edwards (paraphrased):

Your facts are just wrong . . . but you probably weren’t there to vote for it, Senator.

Heh. This debate is like a repeat of the presidential debate. They’re both saying the same thing. I wonder if a side by side comparison of the transcripts would be that different?

I was reading an article on National Review about Colorado changing the way its electoral votes are allocated. There was one sentence in it that particularly annoyed me:

If the proposal would have been in effect in 2000, Al Gore would have won the presidency…. [emphasis added]

Now, I’m just a dumb redneck with an engineering degree, but just between you and I, I don’t think that’s the right way to use the subjunctive mood. However, I think it’s fairly common. What’s the deal?

Additional discussion topic: is it time to just give up on the subjunctive mood?

Forged AR lower receivers for $80.

This is not an ad (nothing at this site is), I’m just pointing my readers to a good deal. Heck, I spent $140 for one a week ago.

Update: And a kit for $415. That puts you in one for just over five bills. I got my upper (granted, it was in 7.62X39) for just over five bills (when you factor in FFL fees and shipping).

Update: Marc says the uppers don’t include bolt and charging handle. However, the kits ($415) do.

WBIR:

An unknown suspect fired several shots into the Bearden office of the Bush/Cheney re-election campaign Tuesday morning.

The headquarters are located at 4618 Kingston Pike, next to Noveau Classics and in the same shopping plaza as Long’s Drugstore.

According to Knoxville Police Department (KPD) officers on the scene Tuesday, it is believed that the two separate shots were fired from a car sometime between 6:30 am and 7:15 am.

One shot shattered the glass in the front door and the other cracked the glass in another of the front doors.

There were no witnesses to the shooting. A customer at a nearby dry cleaning store noticed shattered glass on the sidewalk in front of the headquarters and called police.

The KNS writes about a local man arrested for possessing an unregistered machine gun (kudos to Jamie Satterfield for specifying it was unregistered):

A federal magistrate judge on Monday ordered a Sevier County man held without bond pending trial on charges he possessed an unregistered machine gun.

David Zimmerman, 44, is accused in a complaint filed in U.S. District Court with having a cache of weapons, including a rifle that authorities allege had been converted from a semi-automatic to a fully automatic weapon.

Zimmerman is a convicted felon. He bought the gun from Sevierville Police Department Officer Ted Newman, according to testimony from U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives Special Agent Forest Webb.

Webb said Newman insisted the rifle still operated as a semi-automatic when he sold it to Zimmerman. The ATF agent did not say whether Newman was aware Zimmerman has two prior felony convictions in New Jersey or whether the officer checked Zimmerman’s record before selling him the gun.

It is a crime to knowingly sell a convicted felon a gun. Newman, as a casual seller of a gun, was not required to conduct a background check on Zimmerman.

He bought it from a policeman, is a felon, and converted the gun illegally. When will this crime be blamed on the assault weapons ban? Further in the article:

In November 2003, Webb said he executed a search warrant at Zimmerman’s Kandy Way home in Sevier County and found the fully automatic rifle as well as 15 other weapons.

So, they waited almost a year to hold him? A reader speculated to me that maybe the case was held off for a year in order to politicize the Assault Weapons Ban.

Update: The same reader above inquired as to whether the article mentioning the case was held for a year was a misprint. The reporter stated it was not and that they did wait for a year.

Apparently, employees that work for the Department of Energy in Oak Ridge were getting tuition reimbursement for course work completed at bogus colleges. Your tax dollars at work.

A good right hook, however, may do it:

Following the news that a sex offender had moved into the town, parents are looking to adopt a new child education program called radKIDS, that attempts to teach children what to do if they are assaulted by adults.

The “rad” in radKIDS stands for resisting aggression defensively. According to radKIDS founder and former police officer Stephen Daley, his program gives children what other programs such as DARE don’t — empowerment.

“We teach children that no one has the right to hurt them because they are special, and that is the beginning of empowerment,” said Daley to the crowd of 35 teachers, parents and police officers during the Sunday afternoon presentation.

According to Daley, through radKIDS training children become empowered, learning to replace the fear, confusion and panic of dangerous situations with confidence, personal safety skills, and self-esteem.

The program, which combines tips on everything from fire safety and warding off bullies with a healthy dose of child self-defense moves, may soon see its way into York schools if Suzanne Heyland, a local parent, has her way.

First, it’s my job to protect my child. I realize that and I will do everything I can to do so. However, I won’t need the touchy-feely, tree-hugging, self-esteem, empowerment crap. The self defense stuff, safety skills and knowledge of how to react in dangerous situations is a must and trumps that hippie crap any day. All the self-esteem in the world won’t stop a criminal. Knowledge of how to escape and fight, however, will.

Check out Barrett’s new 25MM (yes, MM as in almost a 100 caliber) rifle:

The XM-109 is essentially a reconfigured M-107 .50 Caliber semi-automatic rifle — if you can imagine a .50 caliber rifle being mated with a 25 mm receiver. Thanks to the increased power, the XM-109 rifle is designated as a “payload” rifle, designed to destroy light armor, and light enough to be carried by a single sniper. Essentially, the 25mm upper receiver attaches directly to the lower receiver of the M-107 (in effect, swapping out the .50 caliber components for 25mm ones). In the process, the rifle’s weight actually remains unchanged at 33 pounds, but its length has been shortened considerably, with the XM-109 (at 46 inches) being 11 inches shorter than the M-107.

No doubt, a deer rifle.

The Supreme Court let stand a lower court ruling that prohibited gun shows on government property.

The Nashville Independent is up with two posts. Go check them out.

Update: They’re not up and running yet and those were test posts. Should be up soon though.

The Brady Campaign blames their first crime on the expiration of the assault weapons ban after just three weeks:

One of the nation’s first assault weapons crimes since the sunset of the ban on these weapons apparently occurred here late last week, at a Mobil gas station on South Sycamore Street, just sixteen days after Senator Arlen Specter and Congressional leaders helped the gun lobby kill the ban. An employee at the gas station told police the gun the robber brandished was an Uzi with a large capacity ammunition magazine. “The employee said he knew the weapon from seeing it in magazines and elsewhere before,” a police detective told the Bucks County Courier Times newspaper.

First, Uzis are still regulated under the 1934 National Firearms Act as machine guns. Second, semi-automatic (i.e., not machine guns) versions of the Uzi are banned under a 1989 executive order. If the ban were still in place, it would not have prevented this robbery. Once again, the Brady’s have to lie to make a point for their cause.

Update: Apparently, the Brady Campaign made most of it up. Matt contacted the original reporter and finds the Brady Bunch doing what they do best, misrepresenting the facts.

Last month, I got instalanched three or four times. The result, my sit bogged down. The fine folks at Hostmatters then moved me to a new server without me (or you, dear reader) ever realizing it. Good job. And thanks.

It’s important to me because I’m going through an Instalanche right now and you can read this.

Jeff has the latest!

I have noted several times in the past that the election was Bush’s unless he did something really stupid. I wonder if his poor showing at the first debate could be the start of it. Polls the race is now close, and intimate the debate affected that. I have no reason to disagree.

Additionally, for some fun facts on the debate, this piece (HT: Michael) tells us some things we’d rather not have known about the debate. My favorite is:

(2.) Important issues are locked out by the CPD debate rules and party control.

“Really important but sticky or tough issues get axed, because the parties control the questions and topics,” Rice says. “For example, in 2000, Gore and Bush mentioned the following issues zero times: Child poverty, the drug war, homelessness, working-class families, NAFTA, prisons, corporate crime and corporate welfare.”

Our candidates will not (or can not) address complex issues. Why? No doubt, fear of losing some of the base or because they don’t know enough about the issue. There will, for example, never be a serious public discussion on the benefits and costs of the drug war because the issue is too complex.

The question I really have is: Complex for whom?

Is it complex for me, a simple Joe-voter? Or too complex for our candidates? Do they think I’m not sophisticated enough to understand these complex issues or is it because they can’t form good, concise sound bytes since these issues are so complex?

You should read the whole post entitled When is a law not a law? However, this quote will give you an idea of the ambiguity of the whole thing:

This is the ultimate in government bull. They make a “rule” then declare it a secret, then tell you that you can not object to it because the rule, that you do not know anything about, and will not be told about even if you want to know, is not a law. That logic could drive a man to drink.

A nation of laws, eh?

CNSNews is reporting that newly found documents indicate Saddam had WMDs and extensive ties to terrorists:

Iraqi intelligence documents, confiscated by U.S. forces and obtained by CNSNews.com , show numerous efforts by Saddam Hussein’s regime to work with some of the world’s most notorious terror organizations, including al Qaeda, to target Americans. They demonstrate that Saddam’s government possessed mustard gas and anthrax, both considered weapons of mass destruction, in the summer of 2000, during the period in which United Nations weapons inspectors were not present in Iraq. And the papers show that Iraq trained dozens of terrorists inside its borders.

The article goes into detail about the source of the documents. I’ll reserve judgment until CBS authenticates them. However, some of the detail:

A senior government official who is not a political appointee provided CNSNews.com with copies of the 42 pages of Iraqi Intelligence Service documents. The originals, some of which were hand-written and others typed are in Arabic. CNSNews.com had the papers translated into English by two individuals separately and independent of each other.

There are no hand-writing samples to which the documents can be compared for forensic analysis and authentication. However, three other experts – a former weapons inspector with the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), a retired CIA counter-terrorism official with vast experience dealing with Iraq, and a former advisor to then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton on Iraq – were asked to analyze the documents. All said they comport with the format, style and content of other Iraqi documents from that era known to be genuine.

An unsigned editorial in today’s Tennessean is all aflutter with emotion and no substance. Regarding the passage by the house of the repeal of the DC gun ban (a symbolic gesture which can’t clear the Senate, at least this term), they write:

The U.S. House of Representatives showed it’s more concerned about political capital than Washington, D.C.’s reputation as a murder capital in the United States with its vote last week lifting the ban on handguns.

Hmm. Murder capital and a near total gun ban at the same time. Now, I don’t really think that correlation equals causation but I think it’s a pretty safe bet that gun laws do not significantly impact crime.

No one can seriously believe this is good policy, but for both parties it seems to be good politics for members of Congress who can campaign back in the safety of their districts as gun advocates while poor Washington residents suffer for their mistake. All of Tennessee’s congressional delegation shamefully voted to lift the ban.

Actually, I seriously can. By dismissing completely that it may be good policy, there is no effort to present the case for it. It’s just dismissed outright.

But the lifting of the ban does much more than put handguns into the hands of Washington residents. The bill puts semiautomatic rifles and other weapons in their hands. The legislation also ends all requirements to register firearms as well as regulations that require owners to unload and lock up their rifles and shotguns.

So, it makes DC like just about every other place in the country where, you know, crime is lower?

It’s not the absence of guns in Washington that has given the city the name of murder capital; it’s the proliferation. Lifting the ban is some kind of cruel joke. But Americans should consider the ultimate irony: Congress is spending billions of dollars to protect itself and the nation’s most important work in Washington from terrorists. The House apparently wants to hand terrorists another weapon.

Actually, it’s got more to do with the socio-economic aspects of DC than gun availability. Obviously, the guns are getting in somehow and criminals are getting them. These laws disarm honest citizens or result in them breaking the law to feel safe.

Dana Wilkie:

Watchdog groups say misstatements, distortions by both candidates plague presidential race, making it difficult to separate fact from fiction.

Sounds about right to me. Continuing:

Sen. John Kerry’s supporters leave voters with the impression that President Bush wants to put machine guns in the hands of civilians.

He doesn’t.

Bush backers want voters to think Kerry advocates more abortions in this country.

He doesn’t.

[snip]

One TV ad aired last month by MoveOn.org, a liberal group that supports Kerry, showed a picture of an AK-47 assault rifle and said such guns can fire up to 300 rounds a minute – a challenging feat with the semiautomatic version of the weapon, which requires one pull of the trigger for each bullet fired – then simulates the sound of machine-gun fire. An announcer said Kerry, “a sportsman and a hunter, would keep” the weapon illegal.

“But on Sept. 13th,” the ad announcer continued, “George Bush will let the assault weapons ban expire.”

The message is that Bush wants civilians to own machine guns. Yet the assault weapons ban has nothing to do with machine guns or other fully automatic weapons, which civilians have not been able to own legally without U.S. Justice Department approval since 1934.

I have some good friends who vote straight Republican. Even they thought the ban affected machine guns and they make an effort to follow politics. I explained it didn’t and they were a bit confused. I then explained that the ban is portrayed as such (quite intentionally) for shock factor. I’m not sure I convinced them as I haven’t heard about since but at least they thought about it. I should have printed off this handy information packet, I suppose.

Is Dorothy Samuels, courtesy of the New York Times. She begins with the typical misinformed rants about the assault weapons ban and refers to attempts to repealed DC’s gun ban (i.e., make DC like most of the rest of the country) as loony. Then she discusses an anti-suicide bill. The bill, which apparently allots $82M for counseling, she says doesn’t address what she feels causes suicide, which is guns in the home:

But the bill’s positive aspects notwithstanding, it fails to address perhaps the most salient risk factor for troubled young people – the presence of a gun in the home. This avoidance is particularly frustrating given the scant chance that Congress will revisit the teenage suicide issue anytime soon, and the fact that it doesn’t take a brain surgeon – just a lowly editorial writer – to see a couple of common sense steps that Congress could have taken to protect kids, and didn’t take.

She states that the bill doesn’t have a provision for Child Access Prevention (warning: CAP will be a new anti-gun term soon!) and blames that on the gun lobby, which implies the NRA. Mind you, she provides almost no evidence that the NRA tried to kill the addition, but she implies it.

We pro-gun types have often point out that supposed assault weapons were (and still are) rarely used in crime. It turns out, that number may have even been inflated when the assault weapons issue was invented in the 1980s:

“Should it be renewed, the (assault weapons ban) ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.” That bombshell admission appears in a report prepared for the Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s Jerry Lee Center of Criminology.

The report also revealed that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives apparently overstated the use of these firearms in crimes during the 1980s and 1990s. The report also noted that even before the ban took effect, so-called assault weapons were used “in only a small fraction of gun crime — about 2 percent according to most studies.”

Of course, I have yet to see the NIJ study mentioned prominently in a major media piece addressing the ban.

Just watched Jeopardy. One of the categories in Double Jeopardy was “Blogs.”

I felt like Cliff Clavin.