The Second Amendment Carnival. via Mr. C.

David Hardy:

The bill to microstamp guns has apparently had an amendment added that would require serial numbers on bullets.

Today, this blog is four years old. I’ve enjoyed it. Hope you have. It’s also that time of year where I look at the numbers (I’m an accountant, it’s what I do). Here’s some:

Pro Gun Progressive crashes a Brady press conference:

What struck me most–there was nobody there. Nobody. The NRA person, the Washington Post reporter covering it, and myself were the only non-Brady staffers there. No ABC. No CBS. No NBC. No local affiliates…nobody. Was a time ten years ago when every time Sarah Brady spoke, the cameras lined the room and somebody like me wouldn’t have been able to get a word in edgewise. There weren’t scads of local reporters, Rosapepe volunteers and campaign workers, etc. Just me, the NRA, the Post, Sarah Brady and her assistants, Casey Anderson, and Jim Rosapepe. An unlikely lot, no?

Heh. And, by the way, the enemy is correct:

Peter Hamm [the Brady Campaign’s Communications Director – Ed.] agreed with me that the worst thing the gun rights movement can do is allow the stereotype that gun owners and gun rights activists are exclusively rural redneck types with beards and beer bellies chasing deer around the woods with AK47s. You know and I know that’s a silly stereotype, but unfortunately it exists, and he made no bones about the fact that the perpetuation of that stereotype only helps their cause. Newsflash for those High Road, FiringLine, etc. type gun rights communities—if you doubt me when I say the worst thing the gun rights community can do is continue to divide ourselves, bicker, infight, and discriminate against the non-Republican members of the movement, you heard it here straight from the Brady Campaign horse’s mouth. The fact of the matter is simple—they agree that nothing works against the gun rights movement more, and helps them do their job better, than the continuation of the idea that gun rights is exclusively a right wing philosophical domain. The more you disagree with me on this front, the more you’re helping the Brady Campaign. It’s that simple.

Indeed. I hate when I see the pro-gun boards bashing the Pink Pistols or other pro-gun groups because they disagree with them on other things. You should accept that any pr0-gun demographic is good for you to hold on to. Do not run them off.

Update: Here’s the presser, that leaves off some details

Seen at arfcom, a chart that shows how 9mm AR-15 velocity in feet per second changes by barrel length (thanks to Randall Rausch at www.ar15barrels.com):

Seen at No Silence Here:

Federal election regulators refused to ease limits on political advertising Tuesday, blocking an effort to let interest groups run radio and television ads mentioning elected officials within weeks of an election.

The Federal Election Commission voted 3-3 on a proposal that would have allowed such ads as long as they addressed public policy issues and did not promote, support, oppose or attack a sitting member of Congress. Supporters of the change said they wanted to strike a balance between campaign ad restrictions and constitutional free speech guarantees.

The measure failed on a tie vote with the commission’s three Democrats voting against the proposal and the three Republicans backing it.

With 70 days left before this year’s general election, the change could have let loose a wave of unrestricted ad spending in the weeks leading up to Election Day. The vote lets stand a provision in the 2002 campaign finance law that requires independent groups to limit the contributions and to disclose the donors of money used to pay for ads that run within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election.

I hate articles like this:

I like guns. I come from a gun family. I am a 2nd Amendment, pro-gun liberal—which makes me a very lonely creature when the subject comes up in casual conversation around the office. And part of the pleasure of any Michael Mann movie is identifying what the fashionable young man is killing people with this season. Sometimes it’s easy. In “Collateral,” Tom Cruise’s primary weapon is a .45-caliber Heckler & Koch USP fed with 12-round clips. This is a terrific lightweight automatic, and Cruise—as a testament to what must have been weeks of trigger time—handles it like a pro. The HK USP is versatile. Winter, summer, whenever. You can dress it down with a pair of loafers, or dress it up with a jacket and tie for a rampage out on the town.

…

The drug cartel guys deploy a variety of very fun assault rifles. Their big gun—and the most overtly political weapon in the film—appears to be a Barrett .50-caliber M107 semiautomatic rifle, a 32-pound, 5-foot-long military sniper rifle that was banned in California starting last year, for the altogether sensible reason that it can bring down airliners

All this in a movie review? First, it’s not a clip. And it is as likely for a .50Cal to take a plane out of the sky as it is a 300 WinMag, 338 Lapua or, even, a 30-06. Which is to say that it hasn’t happened yet and likely won’t.

Denise talks about how to collect guns.

Heh.

USA Today:

A $1.4 billion anti-drug advertising campaign conducted by the U.S. government since 1998 does not appear to have helped reduce drug use and instead might have convinced some youths that taking illegal drugs is normal, the Government Accountability Office says.

The GAO report, released Friday, urges Congress to stop the White House’s National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign unless drug czar John Walters can come up with a better strategy. President Bush’s budget for 2007 asks Congress for $120 million for the campaign, a $20 million increase from this year.

What was the response:

Walters’ office disputed the study and noted that drug-use rates among youths have declined since 1998. A 2005 survey by the University of Michigan indicated that 30% of 10th-graders reported having used an illicit drug the previous year, down from 35% in 1998.

The GAO report is “irrelevant to us,” says Tom Riley, spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). “It’s based on ads from 2½ years ago, and they were effective, too. Drug use has been going down dramatically. Cutting the program now would imperil (its) progress.”

Got that, folks? A government mandated measure of efficiency is irrelevant to them. Criticism and concern about how your dollars are wasted are irrelevant.

Via commentator D.

Publicola gets a witness.

I do not encourage its use, but this the remote sniper is damn cool:

The Remote Sniper. Hah, forget about those pathetic TV-B-Gone things, mad person, and build yourself a Godzilla version which can control a TV or VCR from a quarter of a mile away. Tshaw…take that, sad Idol fans. $30.00 for the plans.

The SAF:

The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) is calling on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to prosecute New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg for obstruction of justice, for failing to turn over evidence of allegedly illegal firearms transactions to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

In his letter to Gonzales, SAF founder Alan Gottlieb noted reports in a New York newspaper that Mayor Bloomberg has been stonewalling the information his maverick investigation allegedly uncovered during a sting operation earlier this year. That so- called “investigation” was highly criticized by law enforcement when it was first announced more than three months ago.

“Bloomberg’s vigilante operation may have compromised genuine on-going BATFE investigations,” Gottlieb said. “The city’s refusal to turn over so-called ‘evidence’ in this rogue investigation is very suspicious.

“Allegations of criminal wrong-doing,” Gottlieb noted in his letter, “do not necessarily mean the retailers victimized by the mayor’s self-generated publicity have actually committed any crime, yet Bloomberg’s grandstanding has literally convicted them on television and in news columns.”

The NSSF:

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the trade association for the firearms industry, said today that the failure of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to turn over evidence of alleged illegal firearm sales to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) is telling.

“If these firearms dealers violated federal law there needs to be a full investigation,” said Lawrence G. Keane, senior vice president and general counsel of NSSF. “The fact that Mr. Bloomberg is so afraid to turn over ‘evidence’ to the ATF speaks volumes as to the veracity of his claims.”

Or, you know, he has something to hide. More:

ATF is the appropriate and legally authorized regulatory agency in charge of overseeing enforcement of firearms laws and regulations.

NSSF called upon the mayor to come clean with the “proof” he and his private investigators accumulated in their attempts to circumvent federal law protecting law- abiding firearms dealers from baseless civil suits.

David notes this case:

Judge Haywood Turner is charged with pointing a pistol. Police say it appears to be a case of road rage . . . Investigators say he turned himself in on Friday, and was charged with two misdemeanor counts of pointing a pistol.

Wow. Aggravated assault is a misdemeanor? Err, no:

Aggravated assault, which is a felony:

“occurs when you assault someone…2) With a deadly weapon…”

Special classes get special treatment.

Update: In comments, Alex says:

FYI, The Great State of Georgia actually has a criminal statute titled “Pointing or aiming gun or pistol at another” and it states that “a person is guilty of a misdemeanor when he intentionally and without legal justification points or aims a gun or pistol at another, whether the gun or pistol is loaded or unloaded.” O.C.G.A. 16-11-102.

Looks to me like there’s some leeway in which law you charge someone with.

My personal opinion is that the Republicans have basically abandoned every thing they stood for now that they’re in power, except lowering taxes. So AC’s prediction wouldn’t surprise me:

I can say quite confidentially [err, is it a secret – Ed.] now that the Democrats will take both the US House and the US Senate. I believe it will happen. If Harold Ford doesn’t win, then it will be Webb in Virginia or some other upset.

I doubt they will this time around. Maybe in 2008. There’s simply not enough time for the Ds to have distanced themselves from some of their recent less-than-stellar moments.

Ben:

“The quality of life is going down about as fast as taxes are going up,” said Kuendel, 50, of Atlantic Highlands (New Jersey). He and his wife are looking at houses in Delaware, where there is no sales tax, no income tax and property taxes are relatively low.

Wonder what the correlation between tax rate and U-Haul rentals is?

The latest version of Gun Facts, which comprehensively takes on all the anti-gun arguments.

Cam Edwards says Bloomberg has a double standard:

More than three months after Mayor Bloomberg’s announcement that he had sent private investigators into five states to catch gun dealers making illegal sales, he is refusing to turn over the evidence they’ve gathered to the federal agency that investigates illegal guns.

Analysts said the impasse may have slowed the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in its investigation of and possible action against gun dealers that broke the law.

The city won’t turn over the evidence, which includes videotapes of gun dealers allowing so-called straw purchases of guns, until the ATF signs an evidence-sharing agreement that would prohibit the agency from “publicly disclosing evidence without notice and consent from the city,” the mayor’s criminal justice coordinator, John Feinblatt, said.

First, the only evidence I’ve seen indicating anyone broke the law was that Bloomberg’s investigators lied on ATF Form 4473, which is a felony. As such, I don’t think it’s a double standard. I think it’s damage control. As mentioned before:

ATF has said they will be investigating every aspect of these “sting” sales (and there were ATF people present who repeated that). This may be bad news for the city, since IF the sales were illegal straw sales, their investigators committed felonies.

One gun was traced TWICE in NYC. The first time was for a crime, so it would have to have been confiscated. Only explanation for how it would later be on the street is that someone in NYC PD is selling seized guns on the street.

My guess is the opposition comes from some potentially embarrassing disclosures, such as the disappearing gun and the fact his agents may have committed a crime.

Of course, I’m willing to bet that if the ATF does conduct an investigation into this, it will be a total sham and nothing will happen.

So, that was it? (spoilers ‘n shit; click more if you want)
Read the rest of this entry »

Brother can you spare 9 million?

Have developers figured out what patsies our leaders in local Knox County government are? Much has been written about TIF’s here at Say Uncle. Even those like myself that cast a wary eye towards TIF’s admit that in theory they can be progressive and provide a reasonable return on investment.

But when every project has to have a TIF to be viable one has to question what is going on.

In Friday’s Knoxville News Sentinel Roger Harris writes that the James Doran Corporation that is building the Northshore Center has come back to City and County government and said that if they do not get a 9 million dollar TIF for roads that the entire 250 MILLION DOLLAR PROJECT MAY NOT BE VIALBE.

Who can really blame them? Isn’t this just smart business? It is easy to see that Mayors Haslam and Ragsdale have sent a message to the development community that if you want some TIF money you just have to ask for it.

Let’s review. The reason development is supposedly good is because it expands the tax base. Unless of course the first 15 years are used to pay off the roads and infrastructure. All across this nation cities and counties are imposing impact fees for roads, schools, and utilities so that infrastructure is NOT paid for by all the taxpayers. The ones that create the need pay for the associated infrastructure.

But not in Knoxville. Here all of the taxpayers pay for the infrastructure through TIF’s. Think of it as opportunity costs. If the tax base does not increase for the first 15 years it must be made up for elsewhere. So what good is development if you receive no tax base for 15 years?

Does it seem like just yesterday there was a City project that had to have multiple injections of taxpayer money to be viable? What happened to the Five Points Village Plaza? After over 4 million dollars of taxpayer money was “invested” it went belly up in five months. Yes, Virgina, five months.

Local government must stop sending the message that projects are only viable if taxpayer money funds them. Do we really have to bribe people to come and live here? Or is this just a transfer payment to powerful developers who control our government?

David Hardy on why gun control proponents are different from other proponents:

Firearm regulations are entirely different. No matter how much is enacted, its political proponents insist that they must have more. As I noted in the previous post, even New York and Massachusetts politicians want more, more. If the laws are failing, it just proves they must be made nationwide, not that something is wrong with the approach.

Nylarthotep takes on the Boston Globe:

Here’s an article by that bastion of truth, the Boston Globe. This article distorts the facts of the Bloomberg sting operation and omits much other relevant data regarding his gun control methods.

…

If you care to read the article you won’t find any mention of the fact that the investigators and Bloomberg are being investigated,(at a glacial rate) by the BATFE for this “sting.” No mention that the investigators were the ones committing a felony by making the straw purchases. They were not law enforcement officials in any sense. There could very well be some question of the dealers not refusing to deal with obvious straw purchases, which would make this a legal issue for the BATFE.

Things are going so well in Boston.

Uhm, don’t think they’re clear on this one:

The families of the South Florida children killed by stray bullets in recent months remain in mourning, but have taken on a new fight: a petition drive to have state lawmakers change the ”Stand Your Ground” law.

They fear the law could complicate how stray-bullet cases are prosecuted and make it easier for those accused in the shooting deaths of their loved ones to walk away without being punished.

Wait, you had some Wolf ammo? How about a Kel-Tec mag?

Some pawn shops have settled and there’s a counter suit in the works after Bloomberg’s investigators broke the law. One guy isn’t settling:

Dennis Alverson said he has received offers from New York City to settle a lawsuit the city brought against his Old Dominion Gun & Tackle shop in Danville.

No deal.

“I’m not in agreement with either of them,” he said during a recent phone interview.

On the case:

Private investigators employed by New York would enter the stores in pairs. One would make inquiries about purchasing the gun and the other – who was uninvolved in the process – filled out the required federal forms to pass the background test.

The city contends that federal law prohibits licensed dealers from selling firearms to someone when the dealer has a reasonable belief that the weapon is being sold to someone other than the buyer.

Federal law also prohibits people from putting incorrect info on the forms to buy a firearm, which the investigators did. More:

In Danville, Alverson bristles at the suggestion that he is a rogue dealer and notes he is in compliance with all state and federal regulations.

“If we were doing anything wrong, we would not be in business because [the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] would shut us down,” he said.

Alverson said his clients know he has done nothing wrong and the suit has not affected his business.

In an update to this where the ATF classified something and then changed its mind based on loosely defined criteria, Eric Larson gets serious:

This is essentially a test case.

Retroactively reclassifying an item or firearm as a machinegun because it “has features and characteristics of a machinegun” is an admitted new practice by the ATF.

Len makes a perfect test case. A small SOT with new and bold ideas. He is controversial in the sense he has been a pain in the ass for the ATF. No major fanfare if the ATF loses this fight. Work from the bottom up if it wins to avoid major political fallout. The NFA world is effectively that bottom.

Read both classification letters carefully. The item does NOT have to be able to fire a single round to be classified as a firearm and subject to the GCA. The item does NOT have to be able to fire multiple rounds to be a machinegun and subject to the NFA. It only needs to have “features and characteristics of a machinegun”. Now there is no written description on what a characteristic of a machinegun is. It is up to interpretation by whom? On what items/guns? Replacement uppers? At what limit will this new standard be applied? [Remember a barrel is a design characteristic of a machinegun, (and a BB gun as well)].

If we as a community just role over to ATF abuse and intimidation we shall surely find out.”

Indeed.

Norm Stamper, former chief of the Seattle Police Department and an advisory board member of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and Law Enforcement Against Prohibition – some LEOs who oppose the drug war, writes:

Drug criminals have an unlimited supply of high-powered weapons at their disposal. Kingpins pay mules, usually impoverished, always expendable, to travel to the States and pick up a firearm or two at a gun show. Using the Brady Bill “loophole” (and congressional and presidential failure to extend the ban on assault rifles), all it takes is a phony stateside driver’s license and a handful of cash to walk out with semiautomatic Uzis, AR-15s and AK-47s.

You really think that these guys buy at gun shows? Gimme a damn break. And you also think that the assault weapons ban would have stopped any thing since the ban only impacted the aesthetic features rifles could have?

I’m against the drug war. I’ve supported LEAP in the past. It will not happen again.

Update: In comments, Allison from LEAP writes:

While we support Norm Stamper’s efforts to end prohibition you should understand that LEAP’s only goal is to end prohibition and the accompanying crime and violence. Any statements that a LEAP speaker makes regarding any other issue does not represent the opinions or perspective of LEAP as an organization. Thank you for your support and the support of the entire blogging community.

Norm is on the advisory board and held himself out as such. I don’t think it’s a far stretch to conclude that was LEAP’s position. Regardless, individuals who spread misinformation about the ban on weapons that look like assault weapons, the supposed gun show loophole, and gun control do not endear themselves to me.

A reasonable (by that, I mean not otherwise hysterical) article on gun laws.

To Xrlq on the new addition.

Cool little photo essay on making ammo.