That’s what the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership tells us about assault weapons. So, why do the police want them?

Free Republic has the text. Some notes:

This bill is particularly ugly, folks.

Update: Seems the ban on transfer provision is there to prevent people like my from going out and stocking up on evil black rifles. This happened quite extensively prior to passage of the 1994 ban. Manufacturers cranked out weapons that look like assault weapons and regular capacity magazines in droves. People bought them up and some turned a profit. I personally sold an Oly Arms AR for $1,300 after spending $700 on it two months before.

Update 2: Make sure you write or call your Congressmonkies and tell them oppose this bill.

Well, someone has to do it.

heh

Nobody pays attention to audible car alarms. At best they garner a lazy “Shut that shit off!” At worst, they’ll get you a rock through the windshield. Now, though, there is a car protection device that really emphasizes deterrence. It’s called the Eye of Sauron Antitheft Device and it has captured the attention of my inner ricer.

What the Hell are you starin’ at?

Update: I guess in the upgrade process, WordPress has forgotten how to count comments.

Update 2: Comment count fixed thanks to Standard Mischief.

Might try to upgrade. Could get scary in here.

Update: All done. Now, let’s see how many problems we have.

Err, not digging the new look of new wordpress. I’ll live.

Knoxville News Sentinel Editor Jack McElroy has instructed his attorney Rick Hollow to offer a settlement to Knox County Commissioners to drop its Sunshine Law lawsuit if the County Commissioners have a do-over of the January 31 appointment meeting which brought eight replacement Commissioners into office.

At what point should the citizens of Knox County question Mr. McElroy’s judgment and conduct? E.W. Scripps Company has a very specific Ethics Code. In this code are very specific guidelines regulating participation in political and governmental affairs. Today’s settlement offer is troubling and disturbing.

There is no provision in either the Knox County Charter or the Tennessee State Constitution for a do-over for the January 31st appointment process. Time and time again Mr. McElroy has shown a preference to defend the County Mayor and attack his opposition. There is not much that can be done in areas of Editorial judgment. However, this is a different matter. I hope County Commission chooses to fight Mr. McElroy in court and that they draw a line in the sand. This kind of heavy handed interference in the administration of local government cannot be condoned. It is outrageous and Mr. McElroy should be sanctioned by the E.W. Scripps Company corporation.

Is this a matter of principle, or is it a matter of intimidation? The section of the E.W. Scripps Company Ethics Code is listed below.

Read the rest of this entry »

Some numbers on mass murders. Interesting.

Apparently, mass murdering psychopaths hate Mondays too.

Update: I misread the chart. See comments for explanation by Heartless Libertarian.

NIT has new digs. Terry Frank will have new radio digs.

Nashville is Talking is sporting some new wordpress digs.

Romney, trying to get his pro-gun credibility, recently joined the NRA. Big fucking deal. So did Michael Moore.

He’s still for a ban on weapons that look like assault weapons. Sorry, I have no use for a Massachusetts liberal, even if they have an R after their name.

There was a rather unflattering entry at Wikipedia about Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam being a member of Bloomberg’s anti-gun Mayors Against Guns group. Seems someone from Knoxville (i.e., perhaps some of the mayor’s people) keeps trying to scrub it. But, never fear, Countertop restored it.

Spam, gizmos, cookies and various doodads annoy the average web-surfer. SM tells you how to deal with web annoyances, notably Snap.

I linked to this yesterday, but in a different context. To illustrate what we’re up against, here’s a reminder of what The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership is about:

I certainly agree with your sentiments. There is no pressing need for optics that allow shooters to make sniper shots from over one hundred meters.

Not only are they anti-gun, they’re anti-scope.

Wendy’s is using a Violent Femmes song about getting high and masturbating to pimp their food. I saw that commercial last night and also thought: man, even the alternative songs from when I was a kid aren’t safe from commercialization these days.

WBIR:

A woman home alone with her two children in Morgan County’s Coalfield community fired a gun three times Friday morning to protect herself and her family.

Shortly after Suzanne Carson’s husband left for work, Carson said she went back to bed with her 3-year old daughter.

When she heard a noise, she got up to check on her 4-year old son, who was sleeping down the hallway.

…

Carson said she saw the face of a young man trying to open her back door.

She fired three times. The thug ran off, apparently uninjured. Now, I’m glad she ended the attempted break in but let’s imagine how the news would look if her round connected:

Stu Pidasshole, career criminal and thug, died today when his head was aerated by a 9mm. Diligent homeowner shot Mr. Pidasshole as he attempted to unlawfully enter her home, no doubt with nefarious intent. He was pronounced dead at the local hospital. Cause of death: brains seeing light of day.

See, isn’t that a much happier ending?

It’s now an internet verb right up there with Fisk and Dowdify. Discuss.

In a strange irony the end of the world now has better odds than you winning the PowerBall Lottery this Wednesday. An asteroid may come uncomfortably close to Earth in 2036.

Astronomers are monitoring an asteroid named Apophis, which has a 1 in 45,000 chance of striking Earth on April 13, 2036.

It will only be the end of the world for a City or small region but it is interesting that this is a fraction of the odds of winning this weeks PowerBall which has odds of 1 in 146,107,962.

Rest easy, the United Nations is on the case.

Insty calls them fur children. I’ve always used Practice Kids.

Remington has issued a presser.

I’m with Tam. I’ll be buying some Remington stuff. They get preferred status. And they can have some free ads if they want.

Update: Outdoor Life drops Zumbo’s blog. It’s gone. Look, we were rightfully hard on Zumbo. But I think his apology was a sincere effort. Like Adam said:

…in the comments he’s still being shit on. People are saying he’s just doing it to keep his job, he’s just doing it for financial reasons, et cetera. What, so only people with nothing to lose are allowed to apologize? That’s ludicrous. He said he was wrong. He didn’t blame us for misinterpreting what he said, he didn’t do what the Dixie Chicks did and make it worse. He flat up too responsibility for his mistake, said he was wrong.

That takes guts.

So stop being so goddamn cynical. He said he was wrong.

I concur. While I applaud Remington for their unequivocal response, I think Zumbo was sincere in his retraction. Sure, he used his free phone call to the Nuge and all that. But it’s quite likely he was, in fact, ignorant and now realizes that.

Countertop points out that Outdoor Life has been giving some coverage to the American Hunters and Shooters Association, which is an anti-gun group disguised as a pro-gun group.

He advocates that you call Outdoor Life:

Anyway, I would suggest ALL Outdoor Life subscribers call customer service today.

1 800 365 1580

Press 0 and speak with an operator.

Lets flood them with telephone calls too.

While you have them on the line:

* Complain about this gun banning bigot and demand that OL addresses the issue in their (much more widely read) print edition.
* Complain that the magazine over the last few months has also been too willing to run press releaseses (sic) from ASHA (American Hunters and Shooters Association – Ed).
* Demand that along with publiclly(sic) distancing itself from Zumbo in print, that they need to come out and definitivly (sic) state
1. OLs position on the 2nd Amendment and
2. Publicly expose ASHA as the frauds they are with a focus on the legacy of bigotry and lies its leaders have espoused (in a major cover story would be ideal).

In an update to the Zumbo mess, Remington has a statement at their website:

NOTICE: Remington is in the process of severing our sponsorships with Mr. Zumbo. Remington in no way shares or advocates any of the comments made by Mr. Zumbo on his blog site. A formal announcement will be released by noon today.

Via NK, comes this poem on the M16. It is entitled Blaming of Parts.

Update: link fixed.

Via MKS, the local dead-tree newspaper is running a What bloggers are saying feature. Cool.

To those of you using that annoying Snap thing that pops up when I mouseover a link, can you get rid of that? It’s really fucking annoying.

So, this weekend we had a bit of a controversy over hunter and outdoorsman Jim Zumbo equivocating us folks who own black rifles with terrorists. He later said he was wrong. There was quite a bit of pressure and his two posts received thousands of comments. Some thoughts:

I think Zumbo was just ignorant. As a hunter, he likely doesn’t know shit about guns other than to the extent they help him hunt.

I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

We gunnies are too quick to eat our own. Boycotts of the products that sponsored Zumbo were immediately called for without giving the companies who sells those products time to respond. People, for example, immediately wanted to boycott Remington. Well, they were wrong. Reminton’s president left a comment at the thread stating that Zumbo does not speak for them. David Codrea has confirmed that comment was from him and that Remington has severed their relationship with Zumbo over this. That said, I hope all of you who were calling for a boycott are on your way to the gun shop right now to buy a Remington. Remington, who to my knowledge doesn’t even make black rifles, went to bat for us. If you’re willing to crucify them before they respond, you ought to be willing to pony up some cash for their products when they come through.

ETA: And to you guys at Remington, if you’re reading, you can get all the free ads here you want.

Statements like Zumbo’s give anti-gunners ammunition. It’s true. They see one ‘defector’ and pounce. See? In other news, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership has a myspace page.

Seen at bitter’s:

I believe this is also a time that we handgunners and EBR nuts need to look inside and wonder what we’ve done to drop the ball that someone as high up as Jim Zumbo didn’t get the message on the importance of these issues and how they are connected to hunting

So, to all you evil black rifle and handgunner nuts out there: Take a Fudd shooting.

More on this at The Ninth Stage, SIH, KDT, and Kevin.

Via SM, looks like the NRA is getting their You Tube on.

Via Kopel and Hardy comes an FBI study of of shootings of police officers. In what is a shock to no one who pays attention:

Predominately handguns were used in the assaults on officers and all but one were obtained illegally, usually in street transactions or in thefts. In contrast to media myth, none of the firearms in the study was obtained from gun shows. What was available ‘was the overriding factor in weapon choice,’ the report says. Only 1 offender hand-picked a particular gun ‘because he felt it would do the most damage to a human being.’

Researcher Davis, in a presentation and discussion for the International Assn. of Chiefs of Police, noted that none of the attackers interviewed was ‘hindered by any law–federal, state or local–that has ever been established to prevent gun ownership. They just laughed at gun laws.

Really? No gun shows used and no preference for assault weapons? Why that goes against everything the anti-gun crowd and the media have been telling us.

What is surprising, to me anyway, is that the killers were proficient with their weapons, reported practicing a lot, and had been in gun fights before. I say surprising because when I think of cop killers, I assume gang-banger (thank you, Ice-T). And gang-bangers typically just can’t shoot.

It means they’ve already got my evil black rifle.

I was gonna write something extensive about this moron but Tam and Kevin already did. Some dumbass who I’ve never hard of but who writes for Outdoor Life says:

I must be living in a vacuum. The guides on our hunt tell me that the use of AR and AK rifles have a rapidly growing following among hunters, especially prairie dog hunters. I had no clue. Only once in my life have I ever seen anyone using one of these firearms.

I call them “assault” rifles, which may upset some people. Excuse me, maybe I’m a traditionalist, but I see no place for these weapons among our hunting fraternity. I’ll go so far as to call them “terrorist” rifles. They tell me that some companies are producing assault rifles that are “tackdrivers.”

You’re not a traditionalist. You’re a scaremongering turd who is more a threat to gun rights than Carolyn McCarthy because you masquerade as one of us. An assault rifle is a select-fire, medium powered rifle capable of automatic fire. These rifles are being used by our troops, who are not terrorists. Assault weapon was an arbitrary legal construct.

Not only are you a threat to gun rights, you don’t know shit about guns.

If you have or get Outdoor Life in any form, call and complain. Many have canceled their subscriptions.

His commenters are letting him have it too. Good.

Update: He says he was wrong. Good.