Big Stupid Tommy wrote himself in as Senator.

R. Neal has some:

One can only conclude that, despite the media coverage, the 25% of Knox County voters who bothered to vote were simply not informed and either a) voted a straight party ticket, or b) voted for name recognition. One might also speculate whether this was the reason term-limits were not a factor, and could also explain the 75% who stayed home.

Tennessee Values Authority has some too (good to see him blogging again):

The term limit issue was but a poor player on the electoral stage in 2006. A lot of sound and fury, but mostly signifying nothing.

Lots of stuff at Nashville Is Talking and Volunteer Voters too.

With the primary decided, lets’ look at an issue important to me. I’ll do a post on Corker as soon as the man actually, you know, has a record.

This morning on the local talk radio, Ford was asked about the second amendment. He stated he had a B rating from the NRA. I reported here that he had an F rating. My first thought was he just flat out lied to east Tennessee. But Ford isn’t that stupid. I figured something had to be up. Turns out, Project Vote Smart has a timeline of sorts on gun ratings. I put it in chronological order and condensed it to the following:

1999-2000 Gun Owners of America assigned Representative Ford a grade of F-

1999-2000 Representative Ford supported the interests of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence 100 percent in 1999-2000.

2000 the National Rifle Association assigned Representative Ford a grade of F

2001-2002 Gun Owners of America assigned Representative Ford a grade of F-

the National Rifle Association assigned Representative Ford a grade of F

2002 On the votes that the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence considered to be the most important as of 2002, Representative Ford voted their preferred position 87 percent of the time.

2003 Representative Ford supported the interests of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence 77 percent from 1988-2003 (Senate) or 1991-2003 (House).

I’m guessing about here is when he realized he needed to be pro-gun to win

2003 Representative Ford supported the interests of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence 0 percent in 2003.

2003 Representative Ford supported the interests of the Gun Owners of America 0 percent in 2003.

2003-2004 Representative Ford supported the interests of the Gun Owners of America 0 percent in 2003-2004.

2004 the National Rifle Association assigned Representative Ford a grade of C

2005 Representative Ford supported the interests of the Gun Owners of America 50 percent in 2005

Now, I don’t have Ford’s 2005 NRA rating so it could be a B, as he said in his interview. But I’d guess his lifetime is somewhere in the C area. Seems Ford realized at some point that if he wants national office, that alignment with anti-gun groups wasn’t the way to go. That tells me he’ll change is mind with the way the wind blows, but which politician won’t.

Update: He’s probably a liar. I have confirmed that his rating is in fact a C and not a B. Via Bitter.

So, Campfield won. He beat the establishment challenger, which is good. It will also guarantee two more years of bloggy entertainment.

Mostly incumbents won. This should shock no one because that’s what our system is set up to do.

I told you so! Bob Corker will be the next senator from Tennessee. I’ll still bet a beer on it. Corker had to change his image from moderate Republican to conservative Republican to do so. I voted for Bryant. I wonder what these guys are gonna do now.

In my home county, voters overwhelmingly rejected the wheel tax. Good.

The guy I voted for for mayor did not win.

Blogger Bob Krumm won his primary as well.

Update: MKS notes:

So much for term limits

Eight of nine incumbent Knox County commissioners win, including four of the five who filed a legal challenge over the county charter and its term-limits provision.

The voters talk a good game but they don’t mean it. That or the system makes it real easy for incumbents.

Not only can you trick them out to look like ARs, but you can trick them out to look like AKs:

Sweet.

I’ve written a lot about how ignorant the American press is when it comes to guns. But other countries’ coverage of the American gun issue are just fucking retarded:

Statistics show us that more people are killed by the gun in the United States every year than in all of the countries combined!

Absolutely false. And this gem:

The National Rifle Association (NRA), which makes millions of dollars through the manufacture and sales of weapons,

Oy. And that’s how the world views America on guns.

Officer.com:

The District’s crime rate has slowed after the declaration of a crime emergency during each of the past three years, and the current emergency appears to be following suit.

Two slayings, including one in Northwest yesterday, have been recorded in the District since police Chief Charles H. Ramsey declared an emergency Wednesday. There had been 13 killings in the first 11 days of this month.

So, kudos to DC for declaring an emergency to get them to act on something they should have been doing all along. Or something.

Have you ever wondered what exactly is happening in your brain when you do drugs? Well, the University of Utah hired a bunch of cartoon mice to explain it to you (no coincidence, one of the drugs they study is acid). My favorite is the fidgety little guy on coke.

It’s great that people are doing more research into the brain chemistry of recreational drugs. This is the kind of stuff that could lead to safer (and legal) designer drugs, as well as better treatment for addicts.

I hope many, many mice were harmed in the making of this flash demo.

Surgery last week went well and the vet noted nothing appeared to have spread. Today, we got the lab results back and his tumor was benign. He’s A-OK!

Thanks all for the support.

GQ has a roundup of the 100 funniest jokes of all time. They spread the schtick thick over there. My favorite:

A Jewish guy goes into a confession box. “Father O’Malley,” he says, “my name is Emil Cohen. I’m seventy eight years old. Believe it or not, I’m currently involved with a 28 year old girl, and also, on the side, her 19 year old sister. We engage in all manner of pleasure, and in my entire life I’ve never felt better.” “My good man,” says the priest, “I think you’ve come to the wrong place. Why are you telling me?” And the guy goes: “I’m telling everybody!”

None of the jokes deals with firearms, which made me wonder. What are the 100 gunniest jokes of all time?

Seen at Les Jones’ joint. Summing up the AR v. AK Debate:

1. The AR is a tempermental, finnicky tool that will only cycle through a full magazine when blessed personally by the pope, plus it shoots a round that won’t even stop a well-fed hamster. The AK can be filled with concrete and it will still fire 10,000 rounds without a stoppage. Plus, it shoots a man’s round.

2. The AK is so inaccurate that you couldn’t hit a barn from the inside with a full magazine. It was made by communist slaves who used rocks to assemble the receivers, in the dark. The round has such a curved trajectory that you have to aim at a target’s hat to hit his feet at 150 yards. On the other hand, the AR is a precision weapon that can hit a matchhead at 600 yards consistently, and should have night vision, IR, a red-dot scope, a tactical sling, and a tactical flashlight, making you a single-man ninja army.

Heh.

It’s election day. If you’ve not voted, get out there now. Go on, I’ll be here when you get back.

I just did it myself and it was mostly painless. But those voting machines in Blount County are the most ridiculous things I’ve ever seen.

I haven’t written about Mel Gibson’s little bout of anti-Semitism because, frankly, I don’t give a shit. I realized long ago there were weirdos and hateful sorts who just hated other people for random reasons. If we were all the same race/religion, someone would hate you because of your size. If we were all the same size, they’d hate you because of your eye-color. And on and on. There’s just stupid, hateful fuckers out there. Deal with it.

My issue with Mel is that he’s blaming one of my favorite things: booze. I like to drink. I like to drink a lot. And I drink it all, except vodka, wine and frou-frou drinks. I drink beer, whiskey, beer, rum, beer, bourbon, beer, and scotch. And, for a skinny white boy, I can drink a lot at a time. But none of that has ever made me hate Joos. Or black folks. Or homos. Or anyone. In fact, it has often made me love lots of folks, both in that you’re an OK dude and that You’ll regret this tomorrow kind of way. Yeah, before my wife went and domesticated me, I was a bit of a, err, partier, we’ll say.

Drinking has made me do lots of things, like walk down my friend’s street naked singing Stand By Your Man at 2 a.m. accompanied by three other equally drunk, heterosexual men. It’s caused me to wake up next to people who I had to promptly introduce myself to then ask if they wanted breakfast. It’s made me utter the phrase and at this point, we need to throw exactly 17 bananas. It’s made me think that it was a good idea to jump off the blue bridge in Dandridge, Tennessee. It made me and a friend think that it’d be cool to stuff some gun powder in a cinder block and light it (well, OK, that actually was cool . . but not smart). It’s made me think that on karaoke night I could actually pull off No Rain by Blind Melon (hint: if you have testicles, you can’t pull that song off). It made me decide that dressing in a corset, fishnets and Sebagos was a good idea. It made me and some friends realize on the fourth of July, you could light bottle rockets 144 at a time if you used a blowtorch. It made me think it was cool to drive with the top down . . . in January (I did have the heat on). It made me and some friends think it was perfectly reasonable to wrap PVC in foam and beat the shit out of each other with it. It made me decide it was a good idea to tell a 6 foot 8 inch, 300 pound angry-looking dude he can’t park there. It made me respond at my 10-year high school reunion when asked what I did for a living that I was a ninja (kick ass dental!) or a fire truck (here’s a picture of me at work) or a fluffer (Peter North is such a gentle man but he’s not into chicks) or a member of the super-villain group The Legion of Doom (And then, he threw a chimney at us). [ed note: for plausible deniability, one of these is made up. I’ll never tell]

Well, the point is that it made me do a lot, but hating people and spouting off conspiracy theories isn’t one of those things. So, Mel, stop blaming the spirits. It just makes you an anti-Semite who also happens to be a dick. A dick with a publicist trying to save your career but still a dick. Leave my beer alone.

He writes an anti-second amendment screed for the Coloradoan that says:

The text of the amendment is “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Actually, it reads:

A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed

It has only one comma. Some folks think that is important (for why they do, see here) but I don’t really think it is to the overall meaning.

The amendment consists of one sentence of 27 words. It cannot be interpreted in pieces, but only as a whole, the NRA to the contrary.

Indeed. But even the whole supports an individual rights view. As noted by Roy Copperud (whose credentials on the English language are quite astounding) notes:

The sentence does not restrict the right to keep and bear arms, nor does it state or imply possession of the right elsewhere or by others than the people; it simply makes a positive statement with respect to a right of the people.

…

The right is not granted by the amendment; its existence is assumed. The thrust of the sentence is that the right shall be preserved inviolate for the sake of ensuring a militia.

…

To the best of my knowledge, there has been no change in the meaning of words or in usage that would affect the meaning of the amendment. If it were written today, it might be put: “Since a well-regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be abridged.”

Roemer continues:

The principle debate concerns whether the right to bear arms applies to individuals or only to a militia.

Yes, that is the debate. And you just lost it. He continues:

The Supreme Court has never decided the issue; however, there is currently a conflict between two Circuit Courts of Appeals that make the issue ripe for review by the Supreme Court, but unfortunately the individuals involved in the two cases have not seen fit to appeal either case to the Supreme Court. See U.S. v Emerson 270 F. 3d 203 (5th Cir. 2001) is in favor of individual ownership and Silveira v Lockyer 312 F. 3d 1052 (9th Cir. 2002) is against individual ownership.

He’s sort of correct. While the Supreme court has never ruledon the amendment, it has acknowledged gun cases a number of times. David Kopel, who analyzed 35 Supreme Court cases involving guns, concludes:

Twenty-eight opinions remain, including nineteen majority opinions. Each of these opinions treats the Second Amendment a right of individual American citizens. Of these twenty-eight opinions, five come from the present Rehnquist Court, and on the Rehnquist Court there has been no disagreement that the Second Amendment is an individual right.

And the book entitled Supreme Court Gun Cases noted that:

the researchers conclude from the evidence that the Supreme Court has recognized an individual right to arms for most of the past two centuries.

Additionally, the fifth circuit acknowledges the individual right. So does the Congress and the President. So do the official platforms of both major political parties. So does the Justice Department.

He also concludes:

So the Second Amendment only applies to the federal government, leaving the states to regulate the ownership of weapons as it sees fit provided that the state legislation does not conflict with any federal law on the same subject.

Simply, the courts are wrong. Period. Congress, it seems, is looking to remedy that situation.

Update: The folks at KABA note:

Emerson had two writs of certiorari denied. The first on June 10, 2002 and another on July 2, 2004. In Silveira certiorari was denied December 1, 2003.

So, he’s wrong on many levels.

Alphie has one for Shelby County.

Rhineland Arms makes an AR-15 style stock for the Ruger 10/22. Check it:

You can buy them at Numrich.

Or at least annoying visits from the police that may lead to confiscation:

FIREARM owners in Wodonga, and in fact the whole of Victoria, have been put on notice.

Victoria police will be calling on them in the coming months to check they are complying with the law when it comes to the stage storage of their weapons.

And those who are not doing the right thing had better watch out as the penalties for breaking the law are pretty severe.

I liked Australia before they went crazy.

GLN sets the media straight on straw purchases:

There is a fundamental flaw in this description. A ‘straw purchase’ is a violation of federal law and can not be done legally. The 4473 form requires to certify that they buyer is the actual buyer of the firearm(s), which in the case of a straw purchase is false. Lying on the 4473 is a violation of federal law. Therefore, the idea that “a person buys the gun legally” is a false starting point.

You could write that on a baseball bat and hit most reporters with it and they still wouldn’t get it.

I wonder if knives are arms. No matter, I think people should be allowed to own them. In comments, KCSteve points us to United States Knife & Tool Association:

The United States Knife & Tool Association (USKTA) is proposed to serve knife and tool owners as their advocate against restrictions on knife and tool ownership and carry. Many industry insiders believe that knife owners are too apathetic, that until they see local or state laws proposed to restrict their freedoms, they won’t do anything; that this effort is doomed to failure. They may be right. What I know is that if we don’t try, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

SayUncle supports the right to own and carry slashy and pointy things.

At 5:00 PM many people from West Knoxville will meet in the large assembly room of the City County building for a special meeting of the Knox County School Board.

The issue is whether to send the new Hardin Valley High School back to Knox County Commission so it can be fully funded. Parents are furious that the school is under-funded at a time when the Knox County Commission voted to spend 5 million dollars on a Business Park in Blount County to create jobs in Blount County when this school has sat in limbo for two years. Only Knox County Commissioner Scott Moore voted against the Blount County give away.

Today on WNOX radio Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale debated a local citizen Todd Townsend for 45 minutes on the Hallerin Hill radio program. In a “David versus Goliath” struggle the Mayor tried to make sense of his stubborn defense of the under-funded high school. The Mayor was adamant that the school must be built for 40 million dollars even if it can only be built for 1,300 students. While Goliath did walk away from the battle without a fatal wound he did take one in the shorts. The Governor’s mansion in Nashville looks very distant at this point for the County Mayor.
Read the rest of this entry »

Heh.

The other biased Washington paper:

Consider these eye-opening FBI and Metropolitan Police Department statistics: Since 1976, when the District of Columbia imposed its ban on guns, the city’s murder rate, which had been declining, started to increase; between 1976 and 1991 it rose 200 percent, while the U.S. murder rate rose just 9 percent.

Did not know that. Also, I found this bit interesting:

“The legislation is long overdue,” said the National Rifle Association, referring this week to the “District of Columbia Personal Protection Act,” introduced in each house by Rep. Mark Souder, Indiana Republican, and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Texas Republican.

If passed, the legislation in each House would restore the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of “equal protection of the laws” by ending the city’s unique prohibition on allowing guns for self-defense in one’s home, while retaining stiff penalties for illegal gun possession and gun crimes.

Err, I thought that was what the judiciary did and not congress. Of course, the judiciary has basically been full of shit when it comes to anything regarding the second amendment.

KETV:

It appears that concealed weapons will be permitted in Omaha.

The Omaha City Council on Tuesday afternoon successfully overrode the veto of Mayor Mike Fahey in a 5-2 vote.

That’s the same vote when the measure was passed two weeks ago.

The council’s move reverses the city’s longtime ban on concealed weapons.

Good.

I haven’t dog-training-blogged in a while. So, here’s some stuff.

We socialize and train our dogs for certain behaviors. But bear in mind a few notes on dogs that you ought not forget, no matter how much training you’ve done:

Dogs are not people. They are animals. Don’t forget that.

All dogs are killers. More specifically, all dogs have the ability (and even desire) to kill. Even that little yappy dog that some rich lady keeps in her purse is a killer at heart. It’s just a killer in a small package. Killing for dogs is the natural order of things. People often seem shocked or surprised when you remind them that fluffy-pookins has gnarly teeth for a reason.

Dogs are also scavengers. They’ll eat things that the thought of will make a billy goat puke. They’ll eat roadkill, feces, your child’s vomit, their own vomit, and all sorts of other nasty things.

For dogs, there is the dominant dog and all other dogs are subservient. In the dog’s eyes, you as master should be the dominant dog. Dogs are quite content with this as they favor a strong leader. If you are not the dominant dog in your dog’s eyes, you’re in for trouble. For a dominance test, look at these behaviors:

More things about dogs:

Dogs have no sense of fairness. Dogs don’t understand that it’s not fair for a big dog to attack a little dog. It’s the order of things to determine who is dominant. If you have two dogs and one very clearly is dominant over the other, your intervention in that should be minimal (by that, I mean if they fight you break it up). Do not treat them as though things should be fair or equal. They are not. For example, if one dog hops on the couch to lay at your feet and does not allow the other dog up, you’re doing no one any favors by inviting the other dog up. You have challenged the more dominant dog to re-assert himself over the other. You can control this only when you’re present, when you go to work, they’re going to iron out exactly who the boss is.

Dogs should be supervised when around children. More to the point, you’re supervising the child. I trust my dogs with my kids. I don’t trust my kids with my dogs. Junior will tug ears, pull tails, swat, and chase the dogs. The dogs will take it and like it. But, I still correct Junior and put the dog outside or in a bedroom. If a child physically hurts a dog, the dog may bite in defense. If I’m cooking dinner or otherwise can’t devote my attention to supervision, the kids and dogs are separated. Always.

Dogs do not understand sharing. They either have it or they want it. They don’t care if the other dog has it or not.

Dogs do not understand evil. Whether it’s chasing a field mouse, killing a neighborhood cat, or biting someone, dogs do not see these actions as evil. It’s just how things are. For them, it’s the natural order.

If your dog attacks someone who is a family member or invited guest, you shoot it. Non-invited folks are excepted because that’s what the dog does.

If your dog is out in public, it should be restrained. Dogs should be on leashes in public.

Do not let your dog run wild in the neighborhood. Have a fence. If you don’t, they will go scavenging and killing.

Dogs are wonderful animals, if properly socialized, trained, and supervised.

Someone is stealing Fug’s pics of his dog in bunny ears. Well, just get your own dogs some bunny ears:

Chuck notes some irony in a couple of anti-gun articles:

Although white South Africans seem to fret the most loudly about violent crime, poor black neighborhoods like the one Armaroesi lives in have the highest murder and attempted murder rates.

And:

South Africans, especially white South Africans, are among the best armed private citizens on Earth.

Maybe those two should get together.

So says Phelps:

Winning Lebanese opinion is not an objective. It would be nice if Lebanon liked Israel, but it isn’t something that Israel needs to survive. In fact, it would probably be so expensive that it would not be worth having. Israel has written Lebanon off as an ally. They have had 15 years as a “democracy” and six years of cease-fire to do something. In that time they have done nothing. There can be no more waiting.

Update: Ayup.

Even with the air conditioner on:

The dog’s handler left his dog in a police cruiser outside the station with the engine running and air conditioner on. But the car stalled. When the handler returned, the dog was dead.

The NYT erroneously reports:

These are just two of several hundred such deaths that will almost certainly occur this year. Guns account for 10 percent of all injury-related deaths among children ages 5 to 14.

I guess they were called on it as they non-correct thusly:

The Personal Health column in Science Times yesterday, about gun safety, included an incorrect statistic from a medical journal on firearm deaths. They make up about 10 percent of deaths caused by injury among children aged 5 to 14, not 10 percent of all deaths in that age group.

KABA notes:

According to the CDC’s WISQARS website, between 1999 and 2003 there were 14,242 “accidental injury” deaths among children between 5 and 14, and 297 (or 2.09%) were caused by firearms. And if you expand that artificial age range to include all children 14 and under, the percentage drops to 1.31%.

Still not right.

Commenter Gatt Suru I noticed now has a blog called Citizen’s Arrest. He’s doing gun stuff, like the New York reload (if you don’t know what that is, go read) and some knife blogging.