Thalif Deen:

The National Rifle Association (NRA), the most powerful pro-gun lobby in the United States, is leading a campaign to literally flood the Sri Lanka Mission to the United Nations with letters and postcards protesting an upcoming conference on small arms.

Ambassador Prasad Kariyawasam of Sri Lanka, president-designate of the two-week long conference beginning Monday, told IPS that the NRA campaign is totally misguided because the meeting is “not aimed at banning small arms or controlling weapons that are legally manufactured, purchased or traded in conformity with national laws”.

At last count, his Mission had received over 100,000 letters, post cards and email messages — most of them arriving at the staggering rate of about 4,000 per day — all of them with an identical anti-U.N. message in what appears to be a rigidly coordinated letter-writing and hate-mail campaign for which the NRA is notorious in this country.

Hate mail? Really? Or, you know, concerned folks voicing their opinions.

Other people’s children, that is.

Me and the Mrs. took Junior to Splash Country yesterday. For you non-local folks, it’s a water park operated by Dollywood. We had a good time. Now, not all kids can be perfect like mine so let’s talk about your kids and how I hate them. Well, OK, not you specifically but you in the general sense. And not your kids that I hate, really, but your parenting or lack thereof. And not hate so much as generally annoyed by them.

First thing I noticed about your kids is they can’t read. We were at the water park and they have this special section for small kids (think toddlers) that is about 1.5 feet deep max. There are also a various water guns set up to squirt other folks and little fountains that shoot out of the water. This is not the place you should take a kid who is starting to grow whiskers. He should be wearing his big-boy pants and riding the big boy rides. There are signs with the height requirements and some of the features say anyone above a certain height must be accompanied by a kid. But pimply faced, hairy kids with cracking voices were every where. As my dad would say You’re big enough to whip a bear with a flyswatter. You don’t need to be in the kiddie pool.

Second thing I noticed about your kids is that, well, they’re fat. Not sure why it is but there were a lot of morbidly obese kids at the water park. I don’t mean obese as in baby fat and kinda cute. I mean I saw an eight year old with stretchmarks. I saw two sisters who were maybe nine years old and both were rather rotund. Seriously, I think if about four specific kids had simultaneously gotten out of pool area, the shift in water volume would have created a small scale tidal wave.

The third thing I noticed about your kids is that they’re inconsiderate shits. There’s a water slide at the kiddie pool and Junior and I would ascend the ladder, wait our turn, and go down the slide together (remember, I had to be accompanied by her). Now, quite a few of the other kids (who were all unsupervised) would just run to the front, cut in, and hop on the slide. The lifeguard lady tried to stop this at the start but eventually just gave up. Learned helplessness I suppose. On our last trip up, there was another father there with his little girl. He mentioned to me that one particular inconsiderate shit had gone down the slide three times while he waited. He pointed her out. Then, she came for the fourth cut in. This particular father had a jarhead haircut and a USMC tattoo and he’d had enough. He gently grabbed the kid’s arm and told her she needed to wait her turn like everyone else. She did and other parents applauded. Now, Junior was starting to catch on to the line-cutting thing and kept trying to run up to the slide. I’d pull her back and say Let’s wait our turn, honey. I’m trying to teach her a lesson and it is don’t be an asshole.

The fourth thing is your kids are kinda dumb. There were rocks and things on the edges that were slick and they kept climbing up there. The lifeguard would shoo them away. And they’d do it again. One kid fell. Also, there are various water cannons stationed at various spots. You can grab one and shoot away at other folks. This is fine if you want to shoot me, after all I came to get a bit wet. However, shooting at a mother carrying a baby that is just a few months old or shooting at a toddler who can barely walk is just fucking stupid.

So, generally speaking, I don’t like your kids much.

There’s some Father’s Day gifts at the Gun Blogs.

CBC:

Some gun and hunting groups are boycotting Air Canada after the airline imposed a $50 surcharge on passengers who check their firearms as baggage.

The one-way handling fee went into effect on June 5 for tickets purchased on or after April 14, adding $100 to the cost of a return trip.

Air Canada says the surcharge will cover the cost of making sure firearms are declared, unloaded and secured in a case that cannot be easily broken into during transport.

BTW, I’ve not flown with a weapon since pre 9-11. Looks like I may start traveling some again. Anything new I need to be aware of in this post 9-11, freedom isn’t free era?

Today’s must read is How to make your wife hate guns.

Triggerfinger has a ton of updates on the Parker case, a gun rights case in DC.

Xrlq has an AR-15 (and trouble at the range). No pics?

This time, at Ravenwood’s in the SBR flavor.

Not here, but here and here. I’m taking Junior to Splash Country.

HEO has a list.

Nylarthotep has the skinny.

Greeley Tribune:

In a bizarre twist of events, what should have been a routine film shoot turned into a real-life thriller.

Members of a film crew got the shock of their lives Saturday when a Larimer County SWAT team surrounded the crew and ordered everyone on their knees, hands behind their heads.

The crew from Twelve Monkeys Dancing Films, a Denver-based independent film company, was shooting a scene from their current low-budget feature, “Different Kinds,” in the North Pines campground just west of Loveland.

In the scene, Chris Borden, the lead actor, plays the role of Jared, who is holding a girl hostage and pistol whips a good samaritan who tries to intervene.

Borden surmises that someone passing through the park thought there was a real hostage situation, and in a panic, called the police.

The crew had a park permit and had been shooting the movie for several hours when the SWAT team moved in.

“One of the actor’s faces goes completely white and we all turn around and we’re all surrounded by SWAT,” Borden said.

The entire crew was ordered to drop to their knees with M-16 rifles pointed at their backs and then were forced to lay on the ground for 15 to 20 minutes. Several crew members tried to explain that they were just filming a movie, but were ordered by the SWAT team to shut up.

They were issued a citation for disorderly conduct. On the one hand, it’s another incident of a SWAT team acting a bit overzealous. On the other hand, the film crew should have probably notified the authorities.

Update: Apparently, everyone says films require permits and those serve as notification. SWAT team’s fault.

Rape down, Authorities stumped

The LAT:

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca has revoked the concealed weapons license of a retired sheriff’s captain who waged a fiery but unsuccessful campaign to unseat him in last week’s election, a move the candidate’s lawyer called “blatant retaliation.”

And this is why I don’t like may-issue CCW. It’s subject to abuse. In this case, it was abused by giving it to a privileged person and again abused when it was revoked for political purposes.

Slate has an interactive feature on torture. Don’t worry, it’s not that interactive. It’s really just a gussied-up web page, but there’s lots of good information there. They break down all the controversial interrogation techniques, tell you where they’re used, what the official comment is and what the international lawyers say. Better yet, they try to tell a story about how these policies arose and hilight some of the problems torture has caused.

The real legacy of American interrogation practices, post-9/11, is that practices and justifications that should have been reserved for the worst of the worst (assuming we could know who they are) began to be used indiscriminately. In the eyes of the government, they began to seem almost normal. The effect has been to turn America from the world’s leader on many issues of international human-rights law into the world’s tyrant.

Reader Chris:

While our spouses may hope for the passage of the 1 gun per month law, it is meaningless because it can be defeated by the use of straw persons.

Dr. appointments for the kids and errands. Light blogging. Let me know if anything happens.

According to the Knoxville News Sentinel Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale asked the Knox County law director’s office to file a motion in Weaver’s court asking for 180 days to amend the charter to address Weaver’s concerns.

Three months from now is September 19th. Almost six weeks after the August 3rd General Election in Knox County. Is this most hypocritical act of mendacity yet to be foiled upon the people of Knox County?

Is this enough to show the utter lack of leadership? The great issue at hand is not that we don’t have a Charter to govern Knox County but we do not have leaders to govern Knox County.

Yet ironically there is one lone voice on County Commission. Is he perhaps a prodigal son? One has to wonder about the atonement of John Schmid. One of the first to sue in court over term limits Schmid is now trying to fast track an appeal of Chancellor John Weaver’s ruling that invalidated the Knox County Charter. He is among the few that has standing to make such an appeal and he goes against the wishes of 18 other Knox County Commissioners. Schmid told the Knoxville News Sentinel, “The appeal’s been filed. We’re trying to get a quicker decision than the Charter Review Committee.”

According to the News Sentinel Schmid decided to move forward with the appeal after talking with Chief Deputy Law Director of Knox County John Owings. Schmid asked Owings if the committee would acknowledge that term limits apply to commissioners. Owings stated, “Everything is on the table, as far as term limits.”

The greatest mystery is why County Mayor Mike Ragsdale would take the chance of playing a game of who can take the moral high ground while holding back term limits for another four years. Ragsdale said term limits must stay in a revised charter yet it is clear there will be no term limits in this Knox County General Election. Is this a way of saying, “Let them eat cake”?

If ever Knox County needed a Jefferson Smith to come forward this is the time. Friday at 5:00 PM is the final time for write-in candidates to apply at the Knox County Election Commission for the August 3rd General Election. Of course Jefferson Smith was just a character in a movie. In real life heroes are much harder to find.

Pete Guthier, aka Drug War Rant, has put up a wiki voting guide so we can keep track of where candidates stand on the drug war. There’s no content on it yet, but with Pete’s involvement, you know it will soon be a valuable resource.

Seems the NYT is up in arms over limiting access to gun data. And they tell an outright lie:

These two bills would give crooked dealers more — not less — leeway in interstate trafficking. The Justice Department has warned that the worst provisions would have a “chilling effect” on gun control and law enforcement. If they had been in effect during the deadly spree of the Washington, D.C., snipers, the dealer who peddled the murder rifle and scores of other crime guns could never have been shut down under federal law.

No. Bullseye (the dealer) failed to keep records up to date and failed to report the gun missing. It was stolen. This law only affects gun data not related to criminal investigations.

The gun lobby will do almost anything to deny basic information about the gun mayhem that Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York and 60 other mayors are properly pursuing through the courts.

And Bloomberg broke the law while conducting his investigation to pursue the lawsuit. And the lawsuit likely won’t advance due to the protection of lawful commerce in arms act.

The carnival of cordite is up for your gunblogging pleasure.

Gene Patterson, a local news anchor at WATE who blogs, wants to know. Well, I’ll tell you. By the time it’s on TV, it’s old news. I’ve known for a while already. That and scary commercials like Something in your house can kill you!!! We’ll tell you about it in three hours at 11:00.

I also don’t like hard hitting investigative pieces on subjects like bootie juice.

Or investigations that conclude that (gasp!) nothing out of the ordinary happened.

Or selling sexual innuendo.

Or using lame inaccurate buzzwords on a subject the reporter clearly knows nothing about.

Or when you guys are flatly inaccurate (or intentionally misleading) in a report. Then you’re called on it and you say your mistake was addressing my complaint and stick by your bogus story even though I’ve quoted the law chapter and verse to you to show you how you’re wrong/misleading. Despite my attempts to show you the law, you stick to the talking points that you Googled up from an anti-gun propaganda outfit.

All those items are, of course, my criticism of WATE’s news coverage. Is that a good start?

I’ve mentioned this push before but the NRA is now circling the wagons for the coming UN driven arms control hooey:

An American delegation will participate in a controversial United Nations small-arms conference criticized by Second Amendment advocates as a threat to U.S. gun ownership.

The U.N. Small Arms Review Conference will meet in New York City June 26 to July 7 to discuss illegal trafficking in arms, “ineffective national controls” and related issues.

The U.N.’s disarmament effort features a program in which it buys back weapons in nations torn by civil strife. But National Rifle Association Vice President Wayne LaPierre insists the U.N. is concerned about more than illicit arms in African hot spots. He says the global body wants the firearms of American citizens – and much more.

It’s coming.

Via top, comes this:

My fellow liberals, arguing for gun control, say that the amendment only relates to citizens in an organized militia. The wording is unclear, but I can’t get past this: the bill of rights generally is about the rights that belong to individual citizens. I don’t know exactly what the founders where thinking, but it seems odd to think that they meant this particular amendment to only apply to organized groups. So I have to conclude, even if it challenges some of my poltical opinions, that it means that yes, American citizens have a constitution right to their guns.

But on the other side, I see anti-gun-control folks insisting that this means that any law that controls the ownership of guns is unconstitutional, and I think that’s patently ridiculous. The right to free speech is probably the most fundamental of all of our Constitutional rights, but that doesn’t mean speech can never be controlled in some ways. Your freedom of speech doesn’t include freedom to incite violence or panic with falsehoods, or freedom to libel someone. Your right of assembly doesn’t mean that the city can’t require a permit for some public gatherings. (It does mean that the way such permits are given out had better be fair, though.)

Given that, I don’t buy the argument that regulation of gun sales or registration of weapons is unconstitutional.

There’s more. Read it all.

Seems a lot of liberal types are abandoning the gun control bandwagon. Good.

Odd:

A man who had drugs and weapons inside his home is going to jail. Alvin Maxwell has been sentenced to 17 months in prison. He pleaded guilty to importing and manufacturing weapons at his home . In exchange, the drug charges were dropped.

Police would rather get a gun conviction?

Tam has a nice desktop background for the hoplophobe near you.

Ah, Congress and it’s Republican foolishness. Georgia Rep Lynn Westmoreland co-sponsored a bill requiring the display of the 10 Commandments in the House and Senate. Steven Colbert challenged him to name all 10 and the guy barely managed to paraphrase three. Aren’t you glad these are the people running the country?

Via Milk and Cookies.

It is interesting to read the different viewpoints between optimists and skeptics concerning the Weavergate conundrum. Local optimists believe Knox County government is made up of good people doing their best and they can disagree and still be friends. Local skeptics believe Knox County government is controlled by a very few un-elected people and everything that happens, happens for a reason.

Before the Tennessee Supreme Court issued the Bailey ruling that term limits apply in Shelby County, term limits were ignored in Knox County because of a 1994 opinion from the State Attorney General that State Constitutional offices could not be term limited even though Knox County voters clearly voted in a 1994 referendum on term limits that clearly stated that all office holders in Knox County government would be held to a maximum of two terms.

One of the problems is that the English language can be imprecise. Another problem is that no matter how well a law, Charter, or referendum is worded there is always a lawyer somewhere that can challenge it using some literal absolute interpretation. Optimists may say that Chancellor John F. Weaver was doing his job and had no choice but to enforce the laws of the State of Tennessee. Skeptics may say that the fix was in from the day the Supreme Court ruled in the Bailey decision to enforce term limits.

The outcry from the public is matched by the outrage in the press. Editorials from the Knoxville News Sentinel and The Metropulse have chastised the Weaver ruling as unfortunate, outrageous, and egregious. The most telling opinion is from the Number One optimist Mayor Mike Ragsdale who said, “This would be the same as a federal judge ruling that the U.S. Constitution is invalid simply because Jefferson or Adams signed on the wrong line or that Benjamin Franklin didn’t deliver the right copy to President Washington.”

One of the most significant sources on this matter has been Richard Beeler the former Knox County Law Director who took office in 1990 and was Secretary on the Charter Commission of 1988. His appearance on the Lloyd Daughtery Show and on WBIR’s Inside Tennessee have provided more information than almost any other source. Mr. Beeler defends John F. Weaver as a good judge and astute legal scholar but disagrees with his ruling. Beeler does not seem to fit in either the optimist or skeptic camps. His point is that the Charter had no problem in the fact that the Constitutional offices were not defined. They were not defined in the Shelby Charter either. There are defined in the State Constitution.

Beeler’s other main point is that the Charter became effective upon being ratified by the people and that the return receipt from the Secretary of State is an overblown issue.

But here is where it gets interesting. Beeler notes that the term limits referendum was brought forth by a regular citizen and was not correctly written according to State law. Stop right here, this is the important part. The Charter was never the problem, the term limits referendum was the problem. The State Attorney agreed that the term limits referendum was incorrectly worded when he gave his opinion in 1994 that the Constitutional offices were not affected by referendum. Since 1994 Knox County Commissioners have used that opinion to disregard the will of the people on term limits.

The question people will ask is why did Weaver muse out loud in court that the Charter might not be valid? Betty Bean was far ahead of the curve on this when she wrote about the problem of obiter dicta.

Optimist may say that Weaver is just a very analytical judge who made this ruling in only a legal interpretation of the law. Skeptics may say there is an end game. If the skeptics are right, what is the end game?

The Geek notes that the city attorney that defended the handgun ban in San Fran position was:

We’re disappointed that the court has denied the right of voters to enact a reasonable, narrowly tailored restriction on handgun possession,

I don’t think an outright ban (Mr. and Mr. San Francisco, turn them in) is a reasonable, narrowly tailored restriction on handgun possession.

Update: What, no comment on the Mr. and Mr. San Francisco thing? Must be slipping with the gay jokes. I bet if I’d said Mrs. and Mrs., you’d have liked that. Everyone seems to like the lesbian stuff. Well, except Bob Corker.