Paul Helmke of The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership:

If this is something that can take a 30-round clip and fire them off quickly, it should be banned. This is a weapon of mass murder

That would include your Glocks, Ruger 10/22 plinkers, Mini-14s, and, basically, any magazine fed weapons, which is most of them.

Reasonable restrictions, indeed.

Only, this one was started by the good guys:

Delaware County attorney C. Scott Shields says Mayor-elect Michael Nutter’s “stop-and-frisk” proposal for getting illegal guns off Philadelphia’s streets is a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Shields, the mayor of Rutledge Borough, plans to sue the city himself if Nutter implements the policy – just as soon as he gets done suing Upper Darby Township for what you might call its “take-and-keep” approach to gun control.

Shields is representing township resident Mary Welsch, who claims in a federal lawsuit before U.S. District Judge Juan R. Sanchez that police illegally took her deceased father’s guns from her house, then refused to return them without a court order.

Via David.

It’s that time of year again where we, collectively, are supposed to sit back and reflect upon things that are important and goodwill toward man and all that other hippie, tree-hugging crap that makes us feel better about ourselves. Continuing the tradition, I opt to do the opposite and tell you why you suck. And by you, I don’t mean you specifically but you in the general sense. I’m talking about the Festivus tradition of The Airing of Grievances. So, the first grievance I have is The Airing of Grievances. I feel obligated to air said grievances and, of course, must suffer through other people’s airing of grievances.

My other grievance is this: order from the damn menu. When you go to a restaurant, they’re set up to serve stuff that is actually on the menu. That’s why they have menus. Your choices generally only consist of how you want that cooked and your option of sides. That’s what they do. All else, you takes your chances. When you order something that is different, you’ve messed up the system. So, stop. Other parties at your table now have to wait an extra three or four hours while a cook, who doesn’t speak English, and a waitress, who probably didn’t write your custom order down, try to decipher what exactly it is you’re getting at. If, say, a joint serves a salad and that salad comes with the little shavings of red cabbage and you specify that you don’t want the shavings of red cabbage, odds are you’re getting some because that’s how they mix the salad that they made in bulk five hours ago. Don’t act surprised when you find some red cabbage in your salad and get hostile and demand they take it back. Because now, they’re probably spitting in your food. And, while minor adjustments like that usually work out OK for you, don’t use subjective terms such as light ice and expect their definition of light ice to jibe with yours. Use concrete terms such as the number of cubes or how far up the glass you want the ice to go. And if you make more than two adjustments, forget about it. The Army Corps of Engineers probably can’t figure it out and neither can your cook or waitress.

Past Airing if Grievances here.

I’ll stop being pseudonymous/anonymous if you stop being sensationalist, biased twits beholden to the establishment.

Deal?

Pocket Rifles: here and here.

Get them some armor.

Deb says we hate our government:

Congress’ Approval Rating at 20%; Bush’s Approval at 32% Both the legislative and executive branches of government are very unpopular. They didn’t ask about the courts.

More stuff. Seems the press is reporting the weapon as SKS, AK-47, and an SKK. I don’t know what an SKK is. And that it takes 7.66 ammo. I don’t know what that is either. I’m guessing that ammo doesn’t exist. However, there is an SKK which looks to be an SKS with a small detachable magazine, similar to the SKS-D. I heard some of the 911 tapes this morning and the shooter fired more than 10 rounds in the course of the tape, indicating he either reloaded pretty quickly or had a modified magazine.

AC is angry at the press for lying. More here. I don’t know that they’re lying so much as ignorant and, of course, unwilling to remedy that ignorance.

Sebastian is angry at the press for other reasons.

Tam notes the same old song and dance.

Bill of rights.

Coffee mug for gunners.

Bush is a long time ally of NRA? That’s odd because, last I checked, Dubya wasn’t even a member.

Tune into WATE “The News Station” tonight at 6:00.

You will laugh your ass off.

Resident WATE firearms expert Tearsa Smith shows the weapon from the Omaha Mall shooting. She correctly describes the SKS semiautomatic Russian military rifle and it is correctly captioned.

But what picture is under the caption?

Guess. No, you are mistaken.

The picture is of a Winchester lever action rifle. I swear. I am not making this up.

Be very quite, so I can get this on YouTube.

We have a lot of fun with Tearsa and her mastery of firearms. Honestly, it could have been a soldering iron and she would not know the difference.

the not getting it edition:

It is frightening to see such educated men so thoroughly defend the right to bear arms.

Or maybe it was a man-eating cow?

Some asshat named David Nason:

NEBRASKA, the farming state with the highest per capita gun ownership in the US, began the year with LB-454, a new state law allowing people 21 years and over to carry a concealed handgun pretty much wherever they go.

Applicants must pass a routine police check, complete a basic handgun training course (most are run by ex-cops) and pay $US100 ($115) for a five-year permit. It’s as simple as that.

Nebraska marked the end of the year yesterday with a bloodbath at the Westroads shopping mall in Omaha, the state’s largest city. Eight people were shot dead and several others are fighting for their lives.

And you’ll notice that the killer had no such permit, was under the age of 21, and didn’t use a handgun. He was also prohibited by law to even be in possession of a gun. So, the two are not related at all. Yet, the implication is that CCW laws caused this crime. David Nason is an idiot or thinks his readers are.

Ahab has more.

For a friend. But where in Knoxville can one get Lowenbrau?

This morning’s talk radio featured two Mormon guys educating East Tennesseans about Mormonism. It was, obviously, an attempt to stir up some, err, something about Mitt Romney’s pending speech to The God Squad. Most of the callers would call in and ask questions to these two guys that were designed to be gotchas. You know how many angels fit on the head of a pin and do you guys really think God lives on another planet kinda nonsense that would have caused holy wars 800 years ago.

Anyway, to all you folks out there arguing about how silly one religion is compared to another, step back a moment. Let’s take a 30,000 foot view of things. You can’t really criticize one religion as silly for believing that billions of people were brought to earth in DC-10s or that God lives on another planet. And then tell me with a straight face that whatever particular magic your God did was real. Just saying.

The AP:

She told the Omaha World-Herald that the night before the shooting, Hawkins and her sons showed her an SKS semiautomatic Russian military rifle — the same type used in the shooting. She said she thought the gun belonged to a member of Hawkins’ family. She said she didn’t think much of it — the gun looked too old to work.

Not an AK, as reported over and over and over after the story first broke. And it’s not a weapon that was covered by the assault weapons ban. Up next:

Records in Sarpy and Washington counties showed Hawkins had a felony drug conviction and several misdemeanor cases filed against him, including an arrest 11 days before the shooting for having alcohol as a minor. He was due in court in two weeks.

So, the shooter was a prohibited person also?

Paul Helmke of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership wants to know why there’s mention of Dred Scott in Parker/Heller. Mind you, he calls it reliance on the case. He notes that Dred Scott is one of the more infamous cases. Let’s spell out Paul’s goals here, because he won’t. First, he’s deflecting the fact that some in the pro-gun community have lately been bringing up the racist roots of gun control. And, pretty much, in Dred Scott, the court said they didn’t want no armed blacks:

It would give to persons of the negro race, who were recognised as citizens in any one State of the Union, the right to . . . keep and carry arms wherever they went.

The second, of course, is the subtle implication of racism. I find it funny since, you know, Paul’s goals are more in line the racist roots of gun control.

Gene McIntyre:

Are there guns at the home of your child’s pal? Ask

Parents that allow their children to go to other homes to play with friends may be gambling with a tragic outcome. It turns out that at least 40 percent of American homes with a child in them have guns. I say “at least” because these are the homes that have reported the presence of a firearm; meanwhile, my educated guess is that the percent is a lot higher, even shockingly and nerve-shatteringly so.

It’s nerve-shattering that a substantial portion of the population has guns? I was disappointed that it was only 40%.

If you as a parent haven’t done so before, it is among your most basic of responsibilities to ask whether the homes, where your children go to play, have firearms and, if they do, whether those guns are locked away so safely that the firearms themselves are no more accessible than the ammunition that arms them.

It is indeed. Because I do not want my children to be at a home that has an inability to protect them.

Somehow, I don’t think that’s what Gene meant. But, then, I have smart neighbors.

Update: Seems to be a trend.

CNN notes that Fred Thompson doesn’t have a hunting license. The implication being, of course, that his pro-gun street cred isn’t valid. Well, I don’t have a hunting license either. And I’m pretty sure my pro-gun street cred is still good.

Bruce notes: Not only that, but how the hell can Thompson even call himself a supporter of the 1st Amendment? Last I heard, he doesn’t even own a printing press.

AC takes a newbie shooting.

Sometimes, they have stupid rules. I let my membership expire at the Volunteer Rifle and Pistol Club after Junior was born and haven’t been back since they said you could only shoot from the bench. That included handguns. Well, that and the fact that the members and range masters were jackasses who made me feel unwelcome.

Jay has pics of various methods of concealing firearms.

Wow. Perp was a four time felon. How did he get a gun? That’s illegal. It’s unpossible.

Another AG comes out in support of Heller. Good.

heh.

Nutjob, gun-free mall, rifle. Same as last one, only it’s a crazy white guy instead of a crazy olive-skinned guy. Soon, the press will again be in All AK-47 All The Time mode. I was going to write about it but everyone else already did:

PGP: Is violent death from lax gun laws around every corner? Or am I probably really safe and shouldn’t ever have to worry about violent death from a crazed attacker who is either a complete stranger or a person I know in the community?

Sebastian is angry.

PGP is taking bets.

Joe has a round up.

John Lott on the media coverage notes what’s missing.

Me? I say the usual. Expect calls for banning weapons that look like assault weapons. And calls for the other gun control pipe dreams, none of which would have stopped this.

A tale of how a woman came to get a weapon and concealed carry permit:

She was beaten, kicked in the face, gagged, tied to a chair and locked in a closet.

After escaping that nightmare, Beth Ferguson needed nearly two weeks to garner the courage to step out of her home. Her first trip was to church, her safe haven.

[…]

Her second trip out of the house: a gun shop on Cross County Road in North Charleston.

I love The Tick. Jay has a good Tick quote. That somehow led me to this list of Tick quotes:

And, isn’t sanity really just a one-trick pony anyway? I mean all you get is one trick, rational thinking, but when you’re good and crazy, oooh, oooh, oooh, the sky is the limit.

Everybody was a baby once, Arthur. Oh, sure, maybe not today, or even yesterday. But once. Babies, chum: tiny, dimpled, fleshy mirrors of our us-ness, that we parents hurl into the future, like leathery footballs of hope. And you’ve got to get a good spiral on that baby, or evil will make an interception.

Good stuff. And the comic rocked too:

And then he threw a chimney at us.

Update: And how could I leave off:

Tick: It’s your turn now, Thorace-bog.
Thrakkorzog: It’s Thrakkorzog. Thrakkorzog. With a K.
Tick: We’re only serving humble pie, Whatchamazog.
Thrakkorzog: For the last time, it’s…
Tick: Thorax-and-a-bog. Four-yacks-and-a-dog.
Thrakkorzog: No.
Tick: Ah, laxative-log.
Thrakkorzog: No, no, no.
Tick: Sapsucker-frog.
Thrakkorzog: Thrakkorzog.
Tick: Susan?
Thrakkorzog: Now you’re doing it on purpose. How juvenile.