Not today.

Sebastian says it could be.

June 19 would be rather appropriate.

I guess all the anti-gun groups got the same memo. We now have Washington Cease Telling The Truth President Ralph Fascitelli stating that, well, the Heller ruling is irrelevant since anti-gunners are probably going to lose but here’s some gun controls we can still pass. Same old crap consisting of you don’t need a gun, gun show loophole, blah blah. But I found his headline odd:

Gun violence is everyone’s problem

Sorta. It is everyone’s problem. But there is predominately one socioeconomic group that comprises an overwhelming majority of both victims and perpetrators of gun violence. And, basically, until we can all put on our big boy pants and talk openly about that, there will be little impact on gun violence.

Those dastardly Republicans. How can they ban Muslims from being in their photo op. Oh, wait, that was Obama’s folks.

So, there are these stupid allegations that Barack Hawaii Five-O Obama may not have been born in America and, therefore, is not a citizen and cannot run for president. So, they asked for a birth certificate. One showed up. Allegations were it was fake since it looked like it came from Dan Rather’s HP printer. Smart people realize that, gasp!, maybe the state of Hawaii, like most places, has document retrieval technology. So, basically, no big deal. And, honestly, pretty fucking stupid if you ask me.

And a while back there was speculation that McCain being born in Panama was also excluded from running for president. This claim was equally fucking stupid.

The difference in the two is that there was actually considerable press time devoted to the fucking stupid story about John McCain. And the only mention of the fucking stupid story about Obama is on some right wing blogs.

Update: In comments, it was said that there are actually two federal cases to disqualify McCain. Interesting. I have not read about those.

George Bush hates white people even more than he hates black people.

Veritas Mark IV.

Turns out, these will be deployed at the hippie quadrennial in Denver.

Crime in South Africa!

Knoxville starts enforcing leash law.

Plans are underway and the site has been redesigned and updated.

First Maxine Waters acts all socialist. Now, Maurice Hinchey of New York:

We (the government) should own the refineries. Then we can control how much gets out into the market.

Update: I think I found your answer.

How Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership likes to find some statistic about gun dealers and stolen guns then mentions Abrams and NRA in the same paragraph. To imply something, it seems.

You know, when he’s not dancing in the blood of someone’s dead child, of course.

This is uncalled for.

The place where Great Britain used to be is the world’s largest arms exporter:

Britain was the world’s biggest arms seller last year, accounting for a third of global arms exports, the Government’s trade promotion organisation said.

UK Trade and Investment (UKTI) said that arms exporters had added £9.7 billion in new business last year, giving them a larger share of global arms exports than the United States.

“As demonstrated by this outstanding export performance, the UK has a first-class defence industry, with some of the world’s most technologically sophisticated companies,” Digby Jones, the Minister for Trade and Investment, said.

Unpossible! Since they tell it’s the US who’s responsible for all those guns in other parts of the world. And, ya know, 1 in 6 guns on earth is an AK and neither the US nor UK is big on exporting those.

And it’s kinda funny that the world’s largest exporter of arms is looking at banning pointy sticks, knives and clubs. ’cause those might hurt people.

We must ban Google. For the children.

Little background. Former sheriff is corrupt. Resigns because of it. County selects new sheriff. Instead of cracking down on corruption in her department, she cracks down on those few who happen to be luck enough to get concealed carry permits in Cali. The former sheriff advocated shall issue and the new sheriff seems to think his manner of giving out permits showed corruption.

You have voted for your favorite gun blogger in ParaUSA’s weekend at Blackwater event, haven’t you?

You could win a seat by voting!

Mentioned before I was creating a gun nut. He’s in process. Well, last night we went to the range at Gunny’s and put about 240 rounds of 5.56 down range. He’s going to build an AR soon, would be my guess.

From the past:

When someone asks you about licensing and registration, pick up a pen and a sheet of paper. Tear the paper in half and hand half to your questioner. Say “Okay, this pen is a gun. The paper I’m holding is my license and the paper you’re holding is the registration. Using only these two pieces of paper, explain to me just how you are going to keep me from shooting someone?”

Anyone? Buller?

Oh, and by the way: Unpossible!

This was emailed to me by reader JKB:

========================================
I’ve been taking a look at this Syracuse University Clearinghouse on federal law enforcement data (http://trac.syr.edu/). I got to the clearinghouse via this post at instapundit. The ATF data is interesting. Seems the ATF enforcement is more active in rural areas than in the big cities. I looked up Philadelphia out of curiosity since it doesn’t appear on the list of low activity. I found some interesting details which I lay out below; #1 in referrals but low prosecutions, top reason for non-prosecution: No federal interest.

I hope you find this useful if you weren’t already aware of the clearinghouse. I enjoy both your blogs. Keep up the good work.

BTW, the Tennessee East (Knoxville) ATF district is an active area for ATF referrals (18th out of 90) and has a good prosecution and conviction rate with longer than average sentences.

JKB

From the summary of Regional Patterns in ATF Enforcement:

Big cities have a reputation for having more armed felons than rural areas. And the ATF, moving out of the drug and alcohol enforcement business, is now concentrating its energies on prosecuting previously convicted felons who have been discovered with weapons.

Why then, when considered in terms of the number of referrals in relation to population, are six of the nation’s “big city” districts among the least active? In FY 2002, for example, California South (San Diego), California Central (Los Angeles), Illinois North (Chicago), California North (San Francisco), Massachusetts (Boston), and the District of Columbia all fell in the bottom third of the 90 federal judicial districts in the United States in terms of this particular measure.

link

As for Philadelphia:

Seems Philadelphia was #1 for referrals for prosecutions (2004) (latest data available free online)

link

But is #2 is declinations of prosecution (2004) or 89th out of 90 in referrals actually prosecuted

link

Interestingly, in the Pennsylvania East (Philadelphia) district, the top reason for declining to prosecute for 2003 (81.5%) and 2004 (86.4%) is “Minimal federal interest or no deterrent value”. (Note-There is a separate categories for prosecuted by other authorities, insufficient evidence, etc.)

link

The US Attorney for Eastern PA lists Safe Neighborhoods on top of his initiatives

Project Safe Neighborhoods is a firearms initiative that aggressively targets violent and dangerous firearms offenders in the local court systems (Philadelphia County and the surrounding suburban counties) for prosecution in the federal system. By prosecuting these cases in the federal system, the local and federal authorities hope to take advantage of a more certain and severe sentencing scheme, the pre-trial detention of federal defendants pending trial, and the swifter disposition of these cases in federal court

link

However, he seems to not find a federal interest to prosecute 85% of the cases the ATF referred for prosecution with 86.4% being declined due to lack of federal interest or no deterrent value. I wonder if the US Attorney had prosecuted Sergeant Liczbinski’s killers for the multitude of gun charges they had prior that fateful day if there would have been a deterrent value?
========================================

Interesting. A few notes:

So, what about enforcing the laws on the books. Why not try that first instead of clamoring with calls to do more, harder! Even though we’re not doing much with what we have, apparently.

As far as not prosecuting in the big cities, I wonder if that’s because ATF figure big cities with big PDs ought to do that on their own. It is, after all, not entirely uncommon for local PDs in small towns to generally look the other way when it comes to federal gun laws. If you don’t believe me, visit south Texas one day.

Here in Knoxville, our police are involved in Project Safe Neighborhoods. The signs are literally everywhere. I guess the prosecution rates relate to participation in that program.

I also found this bit interesting:

Are there not a fair number of armed felons in these six cities? Is it possible that these particular police departments are so proficient in the gun control business that ATF managers decided to deploy their troops in other parts of the country? Perhaps.

But the ten districts that come out on top in the listing of per capita ATF referrals raise other kinds of questions. This curious list includes Tennessee West (Memphis), Nevada (Las Vegas), Kentucky East (Lexington), Rhode Island (Providence), Louisiana Middle (Baton Rouge), Missouri West (Kansas City), Utah (Salt Lake City), Delaware (Wilmington), Oklahoma North (Tulsa) and North Dakota (Fargo).

So, no sign they’re out in South Texas either. Of course, that explains why drugs come in and guns go out.

More info here.

Interesting stuff, nonetheless.

Update: Ouch:

So if the feds aren’t using the laws to go after actual violent criminals, but are using the law to go after people like Wayne Fincher, David Olafson, and various other folks who are no threat to polite society, what use are they really in terms of public safety? What is the “federal interest” in sending hobbyists to federal prison, but not violent felons?

More ATF stuff here.

Seems the number one source of crime guns for New York is, err, New York. Unpossible! We’ve been told it’s all those dumb, cousin-humping rednecks from the south sending the guns there.

At the other biased Washington paper.

It has a new name but the content looks the same.

Where Great Britain used to be. More here.

In Dallas:

Dallas County commissioners are asking the county criminal court judges to generate more revenue from their courts or possibly lose funding for some key programs such as drug court and jail education, as well as and services for the homeless and mentally ill.

Silly me. I thought courts were supposed to mete out justice. Not bring in bling.

First, Red’s Trading Post was being investigated for errors in firearms transactions. Said investigation was, well, dubious at best and what we’ve come to expect from ATF. Now, they’ve gone and had the audacity to own land where a future city hall needs to be.

This is amusing:

City officials say the deal is legal, though they acknowledge that they had to work around state law that bars urban renewal board members from benefiting from the projects they oversee.

Because laws are for little people.

Now, I’ve not really followed nor particularly given a crap about this AP blogger con job. But it looks like they’re considering charging bloggers for content:

In the name of “defin[ing] clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt” the Associated Press is now selling “quotation licenses” that allow bloggers, journallers, and people who forward quotations from articles to co-workers to quote their articles. The licenses start at $12.50 for quotations of 5-25 words.

Like Rusty says, they’ve gone from dismissive of blogs to concerned. But that’s not the funny part, this is:

Now, in a slightly ironic twist, the AP is taking content from a blog site. Namely, mine.

In a news item about the e-mail from Judge Kozinski’s wife that I posted on this site, an AP article lifted numerous passages.

I counted 154 words quoted from my post. That’s almost twice the number of words contained in the most extensive quotation in the Drudge Retort.

So am I going to be an ass and threaten to charge them, or sue them, or demand that they remove the quotes? Of course not. They benefited from my content and I benefited from their link.

Oops. I think $10,000 per word ought to cover it.

Ah, zombies!

Squeaky tells us gunnies to listen up:

Jesse tells us that there’s a bill trying to get pushed through by a couple of Memphis Senators that would make serialization of ammunition required by January of 2009.

No worries. This is the second (maybe third) time this has come up. And it will again get killed in committee.

Barack Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom Obama has proposed, I shit you not, a Credit Card Bill of Rights. You see, children, you’re just too fucking stupid to be trusted with managing your debt. And you’re too fucking stupid to read a contract before you sign it. So big brother will be there. And it will force credit card companies to play nice and fair. Because, you know, spelling out the terms in advance isn’t fair. And, though it’s just a rumor, they may even be required to give you a puppy.