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.

Insert your own surrender joke.

Kinda nipply.

Hillary Clinton so far is dominating the early polls for the Democratic Presidential nomination. Looking across the political landscape it seems this race resembles the Bill Clinton Bob Dole match up of 1996. If the theory that the South still has crucial sway over the Presidential election, pundit Dick Morris may be right that no one can stop Senator Clinton in her quest for the White House in 2008.

Unless of course she stops herself. Howard Dean’s quest for the Presidency was cut short by a noise canceling microphone. Unknown to Dean at the time the microphone filtered out the crowd noise so his speech sounded manic to Television viewers. Some question whether he was setup by CNN or others.

One of the great movies of the late 1950’s was “A Face in the Crowd”, the story of the fictional Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes, played by Andy Griffith. Rhodes by luck and talent is propelled from radio to Television and becomes a star. Along the way he betrays the people who believe in him and helped him to the top.

In a Howard Dean moment Rhodes is betrayed by Marcia Jeffries, played by Knoxville’s own Patricia Neal. At the end of a “Lonesome” Rhodes Television broadcast while the announcer does a voice over, Rhodes is bragging to the control room how he controls the viewers and mocks them as “idiots,” “morons,” “guinea pigs.” Rhodes does not know that Marcia Jeffries has turned on his microphone and the viewing audience can hear his mockery of them. His career is finished.

Is it possible that the only person in America that can keep Hillary Clinton from the White House is either herself or her most trusted friends?

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership embarasses itself:

Which is what happened last month when the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence released a report, “Shady Dealings: Illegal Gun Trafficking from Licensed Gun Dealers.” Tanner’s store was featured as one of the scurrilous.

What the Brady Center didn’t know is that the sale had been a sting, arranged in cooperation with the local office of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Oops.

Tam on the 10/22 rifle:

It has ascended to that plateau of firearms ubiquity (shared only by the M1911, AR-15, and Remington 700) where you can build a complete example of the gun, from the ground up, without using a single part from the original manufacturer.

A few years ago, at the dawn of the Tivo era, Jamie Kellner, CEO of Turner Broadcasting said:

[Skipping commercials is] theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you’re going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn’t get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial . . . you’re actually stealing the programming.

He was afraid that 10 years from now, when everybody who has a TV also has a tivo-like device, nobody would ever watch a commercial again. And he wasn’t alone. Lots of broadcasters were bemoaning the death of their business model, as they do whenever a new technology emerges. As it turns out, though, they were all wrong.

[A] lot of people with digital video recorders are not fast-forwarding and time-shifting as much as advertisers feared. According to new data released yesterday by the Nielsen Company, people who own digital video recorders, or DVRs, still watch, on average, two-thirds of the ads.

Is there a need for more than a few? I mean really.

or not.

Via NIT, comes this interesting bit on a DARE video that teaches kids what to do in the event of a school shooting. Well, interesting once you get past the anti-gun hysteria. Says Mack:

Yesterday I picked up the kids, and usually we recap their day. My 11 yr old announced that they had DARE again at the school, and I assumed it was the usual “war on drugs” propaganda. (Which, I should say, I’m thankful for, except when they encourage children to report their parents for marijuana possession, though I haven’t heard about that happening locally.) To my surprise and shock, yesterday’s lesson was “what to do in the event of a school shooting.” Apparently, they covered a wide variety of possible scenarios, and the lesson included a video that made my 11 yr old quite uneasy. They were told what to do if caught in the hallway, a classroom, or even a restroom. (bathroom self defense tactics included the advice to spread liquid soap on the floor by the entrance, so the shooter would slip, giving you time to escape. ) They were taught the difference between “cover” and “concealment.” I mean it was pretty thorough. Later in the day, I overheard her explaining to her 9 yr old brother that a car is good cover, but you should hide behind the front tire. He asked “why the front?”, and she replied that the engine added additional protection from stray or intended bullets.

I would be curious to see the video. If anyone has any info on it, let me know. Many times, school programs are stupid when it comes to some issues. And I hope that this one teaches the right things. I am glad that they’re teaching concealment v. cover. Concealment is only useful to the extent it buys you time to get out. Of course, my thoughts on what to do are simple and straightforward and based on the following assumptions:

That said, here’s what I’ll teach my kids:

If you have any advice, post it in comments.

Remember that horrible blogger bill in Tennessee? No, well, it said if a blogger was accused of libel, they had to remove the post. Anyhoo, there was some controversy as to how the bill got started but all roads lead to Jamie Woodson. Mrs. Woodson is full of pathetic excuses as to why it was filed. Here’s the latest.

In Jersey, of course.