I concur:

ATF has no business attending gun control news conferences

Should a federal agency advocate a position on gun control? I think not. In fact, I think I’ll call my congress monkey and tell him that.

Update: Press coverage here.

In SC, handgun carry permit data to be kept secret. I’d like to thank the Tennessean and Christian Trejbal at the Roanoke Times for helping get this legislation passed.

No, really:

Colt’s grip on military rifle criticized

M4 does poorly in Army’s own test

A look at combat rifles

Update: BTW, an issue I’ve addressed before is that there is no motivation for American gun makers to get it in the military rifle game since there’s no civilian market for such weapons due to our gun laws making their possession illegal.

Tam:

The reason I loathe the Dem’s candidates is because of their politics, not their genetics.

Judging from my referral logs this weekend, it seems like the rest of the world was figuring out that Barack More Cowbell Obama used to be on the board of the anti-gun Joyce Foundation. The Politico notes what we gun bloggers have known for years now:

Barack Obama’s presidential campaign has worked to assure uneasy gun owners that he believes the Constitution protects their rights and that he doesn’t want to take away their guns.

But before he became a national political figure, he sat on the board of a Chicago-based foundation that doled out at least nine grants totaling nearly $2.7 million to groups that advocated the opposite positions.

The foundation funded legal scholarship advancing the theory that the Second Amendment does not protect individual gun owners’ rights, as well as two groups that advocated handgun bans. And it paid to support a book called “Every Handgun Is Aimed at You: The Case for Banning Handguns.”

Obama’s eight years on the board of the Joyce Foundation, which paid him more than $70,000 in directors fees, do not in any way conflict with his campaign-trail support for the rights of gun owners, Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for Obama’s presidential campaign, asserted in a statement issued to Politico this week.

LaBolt stressed that the foundation, which has assets of about $935 million, doesn’t take “detailed policy positions,” but rather uses its grants to “fuel a dialogue about how to address public policy issues like reducing gun violence.”

Really? You mean paying millions of dollars to fake grassroots groupsis designed to fuel dialogue? How about we look at one of their flagship groups that got $650,000: Gun Guys. And this group is an utter failure at even generating dialogue.

At UT.

Their new graphic:

Heh.

In Chicago this weekend, 32 people were shot. Which is odd because of all that gun control they have, including a ban on the guns that were likely used in all the shootings.

Ok, he’s not really a chick but he looks like one.

One crime = four charges.

WSJ’s Arthur Brooks:

According to the 2006 General Social Survey, which has tracked gun ownership since 1973, 34% of American homes have guns in them. This statistic is sure to surprise many people in cities like San Francisco – as it did me when I first encountered it. (Growing up in Seattle, I knew nobody who owned a gun.)

Who are all these gun owners? Are they the uneducated poor, left behind? It turns out they have the same level of formal education as nongun owners, on average. Furthermore, they earn 32% more per year than nonowners. Americans with guns are neither a small nor downtrodden group.

Nor are they “bitter.” In 2006, 36% of gun owners said they were “very happy,” while 9% were “not too happy.” Meanwhile, only 30% of people without guns were very happy, and 16% were not too happy.

In 1996, gun owners spent about 15% less of their time than nonowners feeling “outraged at something somebody had done.” It’s easy enough in certain precincts to caricature armed Americans as an angry and miserable fringe group. But it just isn’t true. The data say that the people in the approximately 40 million American households with guns are generally happier than those people in households that don’t have guns.

The gun-owning happiness gap exists on both sides of the political aisle. Gun-owning Republicans are more likely than nonowning Republicans to be very happy (46% to 37%). Democrats with guns are slightly likelier than Democrats without guns to be very happy as well (32% to 29%). Similarly, holding income constant, one still finds that gun owners are happiest.

Why are gun owners so happy? One plausible reason is a sense of self-reliance, in terms of self-defense or even in terms of the ability to hunt their own dinner.

Many studies over the years have shown that a belief in one’s control over the environment dramatically adds to happiness. Example: a famous study of elderly nursing home patients in the 1970s. It showed dramatic improvements in life satisfaction from elements of control as seemingly insignificant as being able to care for one’s plants.

A bit of evidence that self-reliance is at work among gun owners comes from the General Social Survey. It asked whether one agrees with the statement, “Those in need have to take care of themselves.” In 2004, gun owners were 10 percentage points more likely than nonowners to agree (60% to 50%).

I knew gun owners spent a lot of money (guns aren’t cheap) but I was unaware that we were so darn happy.

Via Ben.

The pipsqueak’s blog turned 1.

Ouch!

More from the past.

AC is back!

The pilot whose weapon discharged on an airplane is about to be fired.

He’s going to be fired because TSA’s asinine policy that requires a pilot to unnecessarily handle a gun and insert an object near the trigger. See here, here and here.

If I understand all the yammering on the blogs, it seems those who vote Democrat are upset over the recent Hillsy v. Barack 867-5309 Obama debate. It seems (and, once again, I did not watch) that the moderators focused on issues such as whether or not Hillary Clinton is a liar because she misspoke about taking sniper fire; and whether or not Barack A-Wop-bop-a-loo-op a-lop-bam-boo Obama really looks down on gun-toting, religious crackers (one blog, and I forgot where, called it Crackerquiddick – heh). You know, unimportant things.

See, they did this instead of focusing on the issues. Which is apparently code for repeat prepared statements about diversity and hope and change and compassion and Free Health Care that we’ve all heard at least 17 times already this week. You know, real debate! At this point, the two differ on their views about as much as two guys on death row have differing opinions about the death penalty.

Apparently, there’s a more sophisticated way to say vote for me, you cousin-humping rednecks.

In the country of California, Mark Vargas installed some solar panels. Trouble is that, in a colossal case of failure to plan, his solar panels were installed in the shade of his neighbors’ redwood trees. But get this:

Richard Treanor and Carolynn Bissett of Sunnyvale, Calif., were criminally prosecuted because redwood trees in their backyard cast shadows over their neighbor’s solar panels.

A judge ordered in December that two of the trees be trimmed back. The couple have had one trimmed, hoping that will satisfy the judge.

Criminally prosecuted and threatened with fines of $1,000/day because their neighbors put solar panels in the shade of their trees. Wow. And, seriously, there’s a law that covers that. Governor Moonbeam signed it back in 1978. Mark Vargas was rewarded by the state despite being stupid enough to install solar panels in the shade. More:

“I still think it is sad that we couldn’t have figured it out between neighbors,” Vargas said. “I offered to pay to remove the trees.”

There’s no figure it out you want X and your neighbors wanted exactly the opposite of X. There’s no figuring that out. Unfortunately for your neighbors, there’s also no shortage of stupid in California law.

Update: I think I’d go find one of those spotted owls and let it live in the trees.

I’ve said before that, on a handgun, I don’t want one that has a magazine disconnect safety. I think California and Massachusetts require them on guns (police excepted, of course). Well, here’s one reason why:

The officer was struck with the bat as he walked out of his office and fell backward in a daze, Dyer said.

As the officer tried to draw his firearm, the weapon’s magazine clattered to the floor, Dyer said.

The student with the bat approached the officer again, the chief said, prompting the officer to reach for a second firearm attached to his ankle.

I want it to go bang when I pull the trigger, whether there’s a magazine in it or not.

Here’s a livejournal from a guy who everyone thought was the Virginia Tech shooter (I’ve linked him before). They thought it was him because he’s 1) Asian (they all look the same, you know) and 2) he was a gun owner (we’re all crazy and shoot things all the time, you know). Anyway, a year later, he goes back through some things from that time, including his place getting raided and various press interviews. Interesting stuff:

Interview

Now, congress is calling for an investigation into Big Football!

You can feel safe or, you know, be safe.

GunPundit interviews Kyle Cassidy on his book Armed America: Portraits of Gun Owners in Their Homes.

Barack Lollapalooza Obama’s appeal summarized.

Judge to Mayor: Knock that shit off.

If they enforce the illegal laws anyway, remember TITLE 18, U.S.C., SECTION 242

Over at the NYT, David from war on guns continues to do battle though he’s surrounded by anti-gunners.

My move to a new server is now complete. If you’re seeing this, then you’re here. If you’re not, well there’s no point in me talking to you.

No, I kid. But it wouldn’t surprise me.

BTW, the new Wal-Marts don’t sell guns, I don’t think. And the new one in Maryville definitely does not.

Too much to list!

I mentioned before how the site seems to go down in the afternoons and it’s due to referrer spam. Well, my host provider (the wonderful people at HostMatters) are moving me to a new server. So, access to the site may occur or may not. You’ve been warned so if you type a long comment telling me I’m wrong, you may want to save it somewhere before hitting submit.