The Tyler hits the fan on the Gene Patterson show “Tennessee This Week” which will air Sunday at noon. If you cannot wait to see this program it is available here. On the panel are Terry Frank, Mike Cohen, and Frank Cagle.

It is particularly interesting when Mike Cohen, a Vice President with Ackermann PR, channels Perry Mason when he puts the witness on trial. The witness of course being Tyler Harber. Cohen was once Mayor Ragsdale’s staff advisor. Cohen was replaced by Mike Arms who was on Knox County Commission. Arms is the Chief of Staff for Mayor Ragsdale with a handsome salary which was recently raised to over $ 125,000 per year. Some say Arms effectively runs County Government allowing Mayor Ragsdale to do more important things like fund raising so he can run for Governor. Arms was replaced on Knox County Commission by Mike Hammond who is seeking to be the Chairman of the Commission after only two years on Commission.

The program develops quickly when Mike Cohen flatly states, “Tyler Harber is a liar”.

Terry Frank and Frank Cagle ask some pointed questions but all answers lead to Cohen’s end game that ” Tyler Harber is a liar. Tyler Harber has a long history of lying”. Yet in the discussion that is not clear at all. The only clear thing that this interview brings to the table is that the Ragsdale administration maintains that ” Tyler Harber is a liar and a troubled young man. We wish him well in his recovery”. Your mileage may vary. The truth may vary. One thing is certain, it is irrelevant if Tyler Harber is a liar. What is important is whether he was following orders from the Mayor or the Mayor’s Chief of Staff.

At least twice Terry Franks says, “There needs to be an investigation”. Each time Cohen flinches.

Gene Patterson is back to his old form here as he draws Cohen close with some soft balls but then closes with the “Mike Wallace” type question, “Is it possible that Tyler Harber was simply a maverick on his own doing things, without knowledge by Mayor Ragsdale, or was he being directed tacitly by Mayor Ragsdale? Cohen’s expression after this question reveals a great deal. Ask poker players what it means when people look down at the table.

This is either a tragedy or a comedy. I have trouble deciding. But it is compelling and entertaining. Based on Cohen’s performance it is clear this play will have four acts.

Correction: Mike Cohen was not replaced by Mike Arms. Cohen was the “communications and government relations guy” and was replaced by Dwight Van de Vate. Arms served two years as both Ragsdale’s Chief of Staff and a District 5 Knox County Commissioner. It was perceived as a conflict of interest by the taxpayers and this was what necessitated the resignation of Arms as County Commissioner and the appointment of WNOX radio executive Mike Hammond to fills Arm’s vacant seat. Dwight Van de Vate was formerly the Director of Communications for the Knox County Sheriff’s Department.

Don’t take nail clippers or Gatorade. But you’ll have no trouble getting dynamite on a plane:

A college student’s checked luggage on a Continental Airlines flight to Houston from Argentina on Friday contained dynamite, and federal authorities are investigating why he had it and what he intended to do with it, an FBI spokeswoman said.

Joe says:

This has to be one the easiest to detect cases. One of the problems with explosives sniffers is that someone can custom make an explosive that isn’t detected by existing detection devices. The problem is similar to the computer anti-virus vendors. They have databases of “virus signatures” they compare suspect attachments and files to. If it matches something they have in their database they flag it as a virus and handle it appropriately. If a new virus shows up they have to update their database with the new signature. Commercially available explosives, such as dynamite, should be within the capabilities of the explosives sniffer.

Ben Cunningham of Tennessee Tax Revolt is blogging here. Good.

Via Terry.

The carnival of cordite is up, for your gun blogging fix.

An NFA weapon (a machine gun that I presume was not registered) was taken in a drug raid. After the raid, police turned it over to a museum. I wonder how that is? An NFA weapon that is unregistered is contraband and cannot lawfully be transferred. David says:

I think there is a museum exception (not dead sure). The only police exception is, as I remember, that they don’t have to pay the $200 tax — but guns on which no tax is paid become “law enforcement only,” I think even if a person offers to buy and pay the tax on that transaction.

Anyone know? If so, I may open a museum.

So, why is this dude stealing my shit?

Should I give the disgusting picture treatment? Or other?

Update: That’ll teach him.

Update 2: Didn’t take the hint, had to get real nasty with it. Removed link because it’s, err, absolutely disgusting. Someone will get their myspace account suspended.

Update 3: Ok, that was too much for even me. Image deleted.

CNS News:

The California Senate on Thursday passed a bill that would require the “microstamping” of semi-automatic handguns — giving cartridges fired from those guns a unique imprint, which according to gun control advocates, would help police solve crimes.

Supporters say microstamping would turn spent cartridges into potential evidence in civil and criminal cases. According the California Million Mom March, “when the police retrieve the bullet casing at a crime scene, they can quickly track down the legal owner of the handgun that fired it.”

Well, any feature that can quickly be disabled with the use of a file isn’t going to be effective. And criminals will just use older guns. Meanwhile, what it seems to be about is:

Nonsense, say Second Amendment supporters, who view the bill as yet another attempt to burden gun manufacturers and further restrict gun sales in the state. They say that gun makers, faced with the added expense of microstamping semiautomatic weapons, would either stop selling their wares in California or drastically raise prices.

Via David.

Nothing beats them, cute little buggers. Stuff I never would think about:

Or Abbie, for a short two syllable name ending with a vowel, making it easy to reach those high notes when calling.

The box of truth looks at how rounds do against kevlar helmets. Via marc, who says:

All I can say is even with a kevlar helmet on I still don’t want to be shot in the head with a .357.

Don’t seem to do much for rifles, either.

AC: How did he get that Gatorade on the plane?

But I know one when I see them. Rich says:

First, I’m opening up the comments section to all of you to post your definitions of liberal and conservative. Tell me and howie how you would define the terms. In your oomments, please identify how you describe yourself.

Second, I’m going to invite two bloggers, one conservative and one liberal, to define their ideologies, and I’ll post their definitions here in a future post. I’m going to let a true conservative and a true liberal to speak for themselves, rather than attempt to speak for them.

James Na of the blog Guns and Butter has a piece in the Seattle Times:

First, as a matter of principle, a free, open society like ours does not, and ought not, preemptively restrict freedom of the general population out of fear that a small criminal minority would misuse that freedom.

crebralfix shows you how it’s done, without blowing your dudes off.

Mlive:

Grand Rapids neighborhoods that were virtual shooting galleries earlier this summer have quieted down substantially thanks in part to stepped up police patrols, curfew sweeps and increased community contact. The effort to stanch the violence — dubbed Operation All-Out by Grand Rapids Police Chief Harry Dolan — is likely to continue through September, as it should.

For sure, there has been a cost, $96,000 in police overtime. But the payoff for citizens and the city as a whole is more than worth it.

What’s missing? Amazing how policing is more effective than gun control.

I thought it was funny:

As long as I have been reading SayUncle, I always assumed that all the posts where written by Unc. I have noticed some things that seemed a little off-topic or were written with a slightly different political viewpoint than normal, but I just figured that the maybe Unc had been up late or eating paint chips or something.

Heh.

Yes, the confusion over who posts seems to come up. Reason attributes a post to me when it’s actually co-blogger Brutal Hugger. And in the comments to the same post Reason cites, another blogger says he ain’t reading me no more. That’s happened before. But Dave came back.

My $0.02 is my website slogan: Remember, I do this to entertain me . . . not you. Or as my Terms of Use say:

This site exists entirely for my amusement. If it amuses you too, that’s cool but not necessary.

You don’t want to read, I don’t care. But here at SayUncle, we like to get our debate on. That’s why I brought Brutal Hugger on board. I generally stay out of the arguments made by other posters here because I don’t want to appear to be picking favorites in a debate. But I find Fug saying he’s out of here amusing since he emailed me once to ask why I de-linked him. I didn’t de-link him, I just had some technical issues. He even said in those emails that he took issue with BH but respected my site. It’s speaks of a person that they cannot bear reading those who disagree with them, particularly on issues they hold dear.

I always get this flak over co-bloggers and guest-bloggers. I do sometimes wonder if it’s worth it. You know, encouraging debate and all. I guess I could just type and only link/read those who I agree with. But that’s not stimulating. As I said before:

Now, I’d like all the readers to agree with everything everyone says and for us to all hold hands, have a coke and a smile, and smoke some dope while singing Kumbaya. But that would be boring. No challenge. No entertainment. Posts would go like this: I’d post something witty and insightful. You’d all comment indeed. And we’d get bored.

It’d be cool if everyone liked me and all the other folks that post here, but it isn’t necessary.

Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Update: Fug and I spoke offline. Long and short, I think we both overreacted but we kissed and made up. Well, OK, we didn’t really kiss.

Len Savage, of Historic Arms LLC, made a belt-fed upper receiver in 7.62X39 for use on an M-11 called the BM 3000. Initially, the ATF ruled that said item was not a firearm and not a machine gun. The ATF changed its mind and decided that the upper receiver was actually a machine gun because, well, I’m not sure why as it seems highly technical. Now, the ATF has said he needs to register the BM 3000s he made and they cannot be sold to the public. Operating under the assumption that the BM 3000 was neither a firearm nor a machine gun, he could have sold them to anyone. He did not. But he could have. Then, with the ATF’s changed ruling, some folks could be in trouble. The letters are here. Interesting case and good luck to Mr. Savage, who you may recall is the expert in the video that exposes ATF agents trying to assert that a malfunctioning and otherwise legal semi-automatic weapon was a machine gun.

Regardless, ATF’s reconsideration of some issues has the potential to make people criminals through no wrong-doing of their own. Good thing Len hasn’t sold any.

Similar to the Wrenn case, where Wrenn made and sold semi-automatic versions of the Maxim machine gun. Wrenn plead guilty.

Update: post on message board was deleted.

Heh:

convince him a)that Glocks are useless pieces of tupperware and make the baby JMB cry. b) that Glocks are simply what St. Gaston says, “perfection.” c) of any other strongly held belief.

Well, c) would be they’re damn fine guns.

In New Hampshire comes something hella lame:

The state Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that the government can keep and destroy more than 500 CDs taken from Michael Cohen, owner of Pitchfork Records in Concord, in 2003 even though the state failed to prove that a single disk was illegal.

Cohen was arrested for attempting to sell bootleg recordings. But the police case collapsed when it turned out that most of the recordings were made legally. Police dropped six of the seven charges, and Cohen went to trial on one charge. He beat it after the judge concluded that the recording was legal.

However, the police refused to return Cohen’s CDs. In the state Supreme Court’s Tuesday ruling, Chief Justice John Broderick, writing for the majority, reasoned so poorly that it appeared as if he’d made up his mind ahead of time.

Update: In comments, Tom notes there’s more to the story:

After beating the criminal charges, Cohen asked for all of his music back, saying he wanted it for his personal collection, not for his store’s sale bins. In doing so, he acknowledged that there were bootlegs among them and that selling those would be illegal, according to court records.

Well, there wasn’t enough to prove that in a court of law so I’d say give him his stuff back. Your thoughts?

I wrote about. Gun Law News sets me straight:

The starting point for these debates is an assumption that proposed legislation is all about a federally issued permit. It is not.

There’s more.

Seen in comments here (and written by this guy), I present without comment:

SYNOPSIS:

I am a U.S. merchant seaman with a Second Amendment cause of action that has been languishing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia since 2002. Because I am an unrepresented civil plaintiff with a Second Amendment case I have been jerked around the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, Appellate Procedure, and the U.S. Supreme Court these past 4 years until I discovered the biggest act of corruption to date. Because I am a resident of Arkansas, using my Arkansas address on every complaint and pleading these past 4 years, no judge or court clerk ever though to look at the law on jurisdiction (28 U.S.C. 1402(a)(1)) to tell me that the U.S. District Court for DC DOES NOT HAVE JURISDICTION OVER ME! That means that my case for these last 4 years is VOID FOR LACK OF JURISDICTION. I am now fighting to get my case in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas (Little Rock), Northern Division (Batesville).

REBUTTAL:

Instead of the federal licensing scheme how about using the Federal Premption Doctrine from the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause preempting local and State gun control laws that restrict, prohibit, or otherwise infringe upon the Second Amendment right (along with the Ninth, Tenth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Amendments) to openly keep and bear arms in intrastate and interestate as a form and function of the Common Defence clause (“Defence” is the original spelling as used) in the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution?

The power of the States and of the Federal Government to legislate and regulate the Second Amendment has almost always been done in a prohibitive manner through the Commerce Clause since Roosevelt’s threatened Court Packing Plan of the 1930’s. Nothing is every said or written about legislating and regulating the Second Amendment in a positive manner through the Common Defence clause of the Preamble.

If the FCC can employ the Federal Premption Doctrine for the Amateur Radio Service with PRB-1 (http://www.arrl.org/FandES/field/regulations/local/prb-1_program.html) as a matter of protecting the First Amendment for amateur radio operators then the BATF/E can employ the Federal Premption Doctrine to protect Second Amendment rights of American gun owners restoring the right to openly keep and bear arms in intrastate and interstate travel by preempting local/State (and federal?) gun control laws that prohibit or otherwise interfere with that right.

Such a case is in the process of moving from the corrupt U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (Case Nos. 02-1434, 02-1434, and 03-2160) to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas (Little Rock), Northern Division (Batesville). As you may know the original 1939 U.S. Supreme Court case, United States v. Miller began in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Arkansas (Fort Smith).

The present case that is on the move to Little Rock/Batesville, Arkansas is HAMRICK v. PRESIDENT BUSH, et al. It is a Second Amendment case for National Open Carry Handgun from a U.S. merchant seaman’s point of view taking the Second Amendment through the Common Defence clause of the Preamble and through the Ninth, Tenth, Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Amendment. The case employs the RICO Act to allege the United States is racketeering an unlawful and an unconstitutional protection scheme over the Second Amendment in addition to the central cause of action of government wrongdoing, retaliation, and harassment of me for being a protaganist for Second Amendment rights of American civilian seafarers when the U.S. Government requires small arms training as a prerequisite for seafarers seeking employment aboard U.S. Government vessels when the U.S. Coast Guard refuses to provide occupational documentations of such compulsory training in the form of an endorsement on the “Merchant Mariner’s Document” (ID card). I want the endorsement to right “National Open Carry Handgun” as a matter of right not as a matter of licensing.

If “National Open Carry Handgun” was the social and legal norm for the first 100 years of our nation’s history then it ought to be part of today’s social and legal norms for the simple reason that it is THE “constitutional norm.”

All gun control laws are nothing more than GOVERNMENT placating to the phobic of society on the false premise that government can protect society from the criminal element. This is tantamount to government supporting a delusion for the sake of government.

Good news. We can now get stem cells from embryos without destroying the embryos. While I see the “embryos = human life” argument as a bunch of semantic nonsense, this gets that issue off the table. We can get all the benefits of stem cell research without all the messy political fighting.

We’ll soon know whether the scientific community exagerrated the benefits of stem cells to win the political battle over federal funding.

That’s the question of the day. Michael posts a comment he recieved:

Just one opinion, so take it for what it’s worth, but I hate a bunch of people having access to posting on your blog. I read it for you…not for them. They can have their own blogs. Or set up a guest blogger blog on KnoxNews.com. But I don’t like them on yours and find myself reading it less because I have to sort through posts.

I feel his pain. I’ve taken some flak for a couple of the co-bloggers I have here. Thibodeaux annoysed (not sure where that guy went) the lefty readers and Brutal Hugger annoys the righty readers. Les Jones says:

Even though I’m on one of those folks with posting privileges at No Silence Here, in all honesty I generally don’t much care for group blogs. I prefer a blog with a single voice. For instance, I think Volokh.com would be a better blog if Eugene Volokh was the only person posting there. As it is, there are too many voices and too many topics represented.

I do, however, like community blogs such as KnoxViews.com where anyone can set up an account and start posting. That’s more of a hybrid of blogs and message boards, and at KnoxViews it’s working.

I do think guestblogging is a good practice when the blog’s author is out of town or unavailable.

I like some aspects of group blogs. I like The Gun Blogs, you see good stuff there (I’m biased since it is my site) but the readership isn’t huge. So, let’s do a poll:

So, today I got a Google news alert for assault weapons ban and it pointed me here. I was all like Whoa, that sounds familiar. Yeah, because I wrote that. I guest blog over at No Silence Here on occasion, which is a blog hosted at the local newspaper’s site. Google picks it up as a news source.

Cool, I’m now the media. I’m part of the problem.

Note to Michael: I’d post there more often. But, let’s face it, I have a bit of a potty-mouth.

Aunt B.:

Lord knows I’m not ready to sit around drinking moonshine and laughing at the less fortunate (which I believe to be the main pastimes of libertarians, though I have no real evidence to back that up)

Heh. It’s also good to see self-professed liberals voicing concern about simultaneous trends to disarm regular folks and make battle-ready the police.

I was thinking about this case and a quote really stuck out:

But, prosecutors say he also has six weapons, bought within seven months, and all unaccounted for, except for the one they say Cletus Rivera used to kill Officer Scott Wertz on August 6th.

We know that Federal law prohibits the federal government from establishing any system of registration of firearms, firearms owners, or firearms transactions and dispositions. So, how then do prosecutors know that this man bought these firearms? Recall that:

… ATF relies upon federal firearms licensee (FFL) records to trace firearms recovered in crimes through its National Tracing Center. Inaccurate or incomplete record keeping makes the tracing of firearms involved in violent crimes virtually impossible.

So, they likely traced the gun to this man. Then, without the use of a registry, somehow figured out he’d bought other guns? Rather curious if you ask me. And, by curious, I mean total bullshit. Is there a state database in PA?

Alphie doesn’t like the idea and says the NRA is compromising rights again:

Yet in order to bear arms I must take a class, stand in line for hours in order to talk to deal with frustrated civil servants, pay an outrageous fee, undergo an invasive background check and (the final indignity) get fingerprinted like a criminal so my prints can be stored in files in both Nashville and Washington.

He also notes Andy Barniskis says:

I expect that what will be dictated by congress in the future–if not immediately–will include fingerprinting, mug shots, mandatory training, and high administrative costs. And, once the principle of federally dictated standards is established, increasingly restrictive standards could become a backdoor way for carry permits to be de facto prohibited by federal regulation, without congressional action. …

We will be better off continuing to fight reciprocity issues at home, on a state-by-state basis, never forgetting that licensing a right converts that right to a privilege. Ultimately, we should not lose sight of our ideal, that armed self defense is a genuine constitutional right, and genuine rights should not be subject to the prior constraint of licensing.

I am as gun nut as they get. But here’s where I often disagree with other gunnies. The notion that one can merely carry arms (those that disagree with me say the Second Amendment does say bear) willy-nilly is not generally supported by, well, anything other than the word bear in the second amendment, which has other connotations. I think the states can regulate the wearing of arms. The Tennessee constitution, for example, says:

That the citizens of this State have a right to keep and to bear arms for their common defense; but the Legislature shall have power, by law, to regulate the wearing of arms with a view to prevent crime.

At the founding, concealed weapons were commonly viewed as the tools of assassins and cowards. And they were scorned. Nowadays, it’s just good fasion sense to go concealed. So, folks were understandably not keen on concealed weapons.

But I do agree that federal carry permit regulation is bad joo-joo.

I don’t need one but some of them come with free guns:

A creative marketing campaign conjured up by Prestige Nissan General Sales Manager Dan Crumpler offers buyers of used or new Nissan SUVs or trucks in August a choice of a Remington 1187 shotgun or a Remington 700 rifle.

Meanwhile, a board member of a fake pro-gun group is saying gun makers shouldn’t advertise. More here.

Note to the gentleman in the blue Ford pickup:

Sir,

I respect and appreciate your love for our lord and saviour and the fact you’ve chosen to let me and others know of said love with the use of a bumper sticker that says: I Love Jesus.However, I would also ask that you consider loving your gas pedal too.

People ponder often What would Jesus do? I contend that he would get out of the way and allow others to pass instead of holding up traffic on Alcoa Highway.

Sincerely,

SayUncle

Kopel:

During the recent war against Israel, Hezbollah used night vision equipment which had been supplied by Iran, as detailed in a new article by the Jewish Institute of National Security Affairs. Iran had obtained the equipment from the United Kingdom to “bolster Iranian efforts to combat heroin smuggling across the Afghan border as part of the UN Drug Control Program.” The U.K. was extremely foolish to expect the Iranian tyrants to keep their promises not to divert the equipment to military use.