Friday, March 21, 2008

If I'd ever had any thoughts about moving to California,

this crap is just one more nail in the already-buried coffin of that idea.
Introduced by State Assembly Member Kevin De Leon (D-45), Assembly Bill 2062 puts ammunition sales in the crosshairs. AB2062 would require that law-abiding gun owners obtain a permit to buy handgun ammunition and would impose severe restrictions on the private transfers of handgun ammunition. Applicants for a “permit-to-purchase” would be required to submit to a background check, pay a $35 fee, and wait as long as 30 days to receive the permit.

Granola country, times four.

Ok, one more thing referring to Heller


Let us not forget just where a good many gun ownership restrictions got started

Ballistic fingerprinting bad idea

according to both CA and now a national study.

Whoda thunk it?

Oh Gawd, wouldn't you love to unload

one of these at the range?

Everybody else has been talking about Heller,

so I'm just going to note two things. The first is in Kevin's slapdown of the GFWs and their whining and lies. He notes a truly idiotic statement by the DC Chief of Police:
I think the reasonable standard of the handgun laws in the District, which are not completely a ban, because there is licensed handguns in the District of Columbia for law enforcement, retired law enforcement, federal law enforcement, security agencies, so it's not a complete ban on handguns,...

No, indeed. It's just a ban for anyone who is not an "only one." It's a ban for anyone who doesn't draw a government paycheck. And Anthony Heller, who is a security guard, and who carries a firearm to protect judges is not allowed to have that same firearm at home to protect himself. He's not "only one" enough. But he was the "only one" enough to have standing in the suit against the City.

And the second, found at Uncle's:

At that point, a reporter interjected: “the Mayor (DC Mayor Adrian M. Fenty) says the handgun ban and his initiatives have significantly lowered violent crime in the District. How do you answer that, Mr. Heller?”

The initial answer certainly wasn’t expected – Dick Heller laughed. Ruefully.

Pointing at the Mayor who was making his way across the plaza, surrounded by at least six DC police officers, Heller said, “the Mayor doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“He doesn’t walk on the street like an average citizen. Look at him; he travels with an army of police officers as bodyguards – to keep him safe. But he says that I don’t have the right to be a force of one to protect myself. Does he look like he thinks the streets are safe?”

There was no follow-up question.

Jed Clampett did a bit more shooting

Found through Rodger:
In the next 30 days the USGS (U.S. Geological Survey) will release a new report giving an accurate resource assessment of the Bakken Oil Formation that covers North Dakota and portions of South Dakota and Montana. With new horizontal drilling technology it is believed that from 175 to 500 billion barrels of recoverable oil are held in this 200,000 square mile reserve that was initially discovered in 1951. The USGS did an initial study back in 1999 that estimated 400 billion recoverable barrels were present but with prices bottoming out at $10 a barrel back then the report was dismissed because of the higher cost of horizontal drilling techniques that would be needed, estimated at $20-$40 a barrel.

Now, the first Sierra Club weenie or left-wing politician who gets in the way should be tarred & feathered. Rail optional.

State Senator Andrew Rice:

The GFW candidate!

This is the guy who wants to take the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Jim Inhofe. I wrote about him once before, noting his fundraising friends. A couple of days ago I decided to find out his stand on the Heller case and the 2nd Amendment in general, so I looked up his website and sent an e-mail asking. That was about five days ago, no response. Which to me indicates either
A: since I'm not in the district in question they won't bother with a reply or
B: they figure anyone asking such a question probably won't support him, so they won't reply.

So I went to the McCarville Report and searched for his name, and found this:
The ORA* cites responses Rice gave to a questionnaire he completed when a candidate for the State Senate: "In the survey he stated he (1) supported the assaults weapon ban, (2) believed the sale of military semi-autos to civilians should be curtailed, (3) civilian semi-automatic firearms should be restricted, (4) supported the registration of all firearms, (5) supported registration of all handguns, and (6) all firearms owners should be licensed."

So, on top of his associates, he's a GFW of the first water. How truly joyous.

Additional: damn, I scanned through all the posts McCarville has on this and ran across this:
The allegation comes from "Rusty," the administrator of the blog http://www.okdemocrat.com/, who writes, "Calvin (Rees, co-administrator of a second blog for Democrats, http://www.demookie.com/) and I often do not get along well. But Calvin and I generally agree on veteran’s issues. It was Calvin who told me about how Andrew Rice and Keith Smith took money raised for veteran’s families and deposited it in a gay endorsed PAC. Calvin has told his story to other veterans in front of me. Members of the newly formed Democrat Veteran group have been told the truth by Calvin about this issue. I have not released everything I know about this. It is even worse than a good Democrat could expect. It is far better than a good Republican could hope for."

A second poster, "Sally," says she confronted Rice about the allegation: "I asked Andrew about this terrible story and he walked away from me. His silence is deafing. I feel his political career is ruined by his own actions."
If THIS crap is indeed true, then the bastard ought to be stomped on by his own party, let alone anyone else.

And he's a Mikey Moore fan, too. Big surprise.


*Oklahoma Rifle Association

Thursday, March 20, 2008

RIP - A quiet activist

Whenever any of the liberal Jews in the community asked him how he could take such a position, he merely said, "One day you will need people like him, and you will forget that you once thought he was worse than a criminal."

Go take a look.

Thanks to the Geek for directions to this.

Another needless use of a SWAT team,

and another needless death, and another life needlessly ruined.

I said it before, I'll say it again: I am so damn sick of reading of cases like this.

Kim puts the position of a lot of people very well:
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: if anyone tries to break down my door and invade my home, he’d better be prepared for a shit-storm of Biblical proportions, because I will unload it on him. And that goes for cops, robbers, ex-husbands, ATF, FBI, whoever. I have nothing illegal in my house: no drugs, drug paraphernalia, unregistered NFA guns, espionage materials, nada.

End of sentence, end of statement.


I've seen a lot of downright vicious comments on some sites noting incidents like this, ranging from "You idiots have no idea what cops face" to "I hope you die because a cop wouldn't save you" bullcrap. My answer: There is NO EXCUSE for using a tactical team for serving arrest/search warrants on non-violent possible offenders. Period. If you have no evidence- 'evidence' does NOT include words from an informant alone- that the person/people are armed or otherwise dangerous, you do not need a SWAT team kicking in doors. And running around in masks, etc.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Well, they didn't stay long

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Maybe I don't write well enough?

The Englishman has a quote

from a really scary piece of work:
"...the authors conclude that an authoritarian form of government is necessary, but this will be governance by experts and not by those who seek power. There are in existence highly successful authoritarian structures--for example, in medicine and in corporate empires--that are capable of implementing urgent decisions impossible under liberal democracy. Society is verging on a philosophical choice between "liberty" or "life." But there is a third way between democracy and authoritarianism that the authors leave for the final chapter. Having brought the reader to the realization that in order to halt or even slow the disastrous process of climate change we must choose between liberal democracy and a form of authoritarian government by experts, the authors offer up a radical reform of democracy that would entail the painful choice of curtailing our worldwide reliance on growth economies, along with various legal and fiscal reforms. Unpalatable as this choice may be, they argue for the adoption of this fundamental reform of democracy over the journey to authoritarianism.

I do believe a fed has ticked off JPFO

just like he did Dave Codrea:
We at Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO) have recently become aware -- through what amounts to a rather circuitous and highly sinister threat from you, Mr. Meyer -- of a relatively new federal law that calls itself "The Court Security Improvement Act of 2007".

This perfect example of typical police state legislation -- which you pressured Ryan Horsley, a defendant in a recent BATFE case, into sending us -- says that whoever knowingly makes restricted personal information available about a "covered official", or a member of his or her immediate family, supposedly "with the intent to threaten, intimidate, or incite the commission of a crime of violence" against him, her, or it will be fined, imprisoned for no more than 5 years, or both.

And they're not happy about it.

And yet its agents strive to retain their anonymity and avoid responsibility for their acts. This reminds us of yet another morally questionable practice of many federal, state, and local police agencies: since when did American cops start wearing masks? Isn't it the badguys who wear masks, Mr. Meyer? Aren't they properly anxious to conceal their identities to avoid responsibility for their criminal acts?

Could government's masks be revealing something about government?

There is no room, Mr. Meyer, for secret police in an open society. No gun-toting government employee should ever be allowed to appear in public in civilian clothing, but should be required instead to wear a distinctive uniform on the job, complete with his or her name and badge number in six-inch reflective letters on the back and in three-inch letters on the chest. It should be a felony for any "law enforcement officer" to conceal his or her face, even with protective headgear.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Magazines, tweaking of

The good things about a detachable magazine are that you can carry spares already loaded to speed things up, and- depending on firearm- have them in different sizes. Bad thing is you can drop them or otherwise ding the feed lips which means either a bit of careful work with suitable pliers to repair them or, in bad cases, you toss it and buy a replacement.

Except when you're talking about an old or uncommon firearm. In which case there may be no replacement to find(at least at reasonable cost), or the replacement doesn't work. Which is the case here.

A while back I wrote about a High Standard Sport King .22 pistol. Marvelous thing, which came with the original magazine. The owner discovered two things:
Magazines are expensive, and
ALL the replacements he found and tried, did not work. Oh, they fit in perfectly, but the lips were different from the original. The cartridges were not releasing from the mag properly, which caused the bullet to enter the chamber while the case was still at a downward angle, which caused the slide to whack into it and bend the bullet a touch. Not good at all. So since he couldn't find an original, he took a replacement he'd bought and set to work.

The original mag has a 'tab' formed into each side that both guides the cartridge and causes it to 'snap' up as the cartridge is pushed forward, lining it up with the chamber. The replacement had straight lips, no tab. So he used a dremel and cutoff wheel to cut two tabs and shape them as close to the originals as he could. So far, so good.
Original on the left. Now came the tricky part: shaping the tabs. Which, he found, also included some careful shaving on the outside, as the replacement mag had an overlap along that section which made them way too thick & stiff. He finally, after a LOT of work and a number of ruined cartridges, got it right.

He's now put about a hundred rounds through it, and the only hitch is that sometimes the first round will try to jam when you chamber it; all the rest in that load cycle flawlessly.

Says it was worth every bit of it to have a working spare mag.

You may well have heard of the upset over Rep. Sally Kern

griping about the homosexual agenda, etc. Today there was a protest by various groups/people at the state capitol basically demanding she meet with them and apologize or resign. Only reason I'm saying anything about this is the leader of one of the groups said, near as I can recall, "I believe in the First Amendment, but not in hateful(or hurtful) speech"*. Which really, truly pisses me off. You, you effing liar, do NOT believe in free speech: you believe in freedom for speech which meets your standards. Screw you.

It will not surprise you to hear that he also then demanded that the Legislature immediately pass a 'comprehensive hate-crimes law to protect all Oklahomans'. Which is also bullshit. I think somewhere in the early history of this blog I once stated my opinion on this, but I'll cover it here to be sure:
I think hate crime laws are a very bad idea for two reasons. First, you presume to give someone extra punishment based on what you think, or believe, was in his mind at the time. Second, you're basically setting up some groups as 'protected species', which is a PROFOUNDLY bad idea("You struck Subject A, and that's bad, but you then struck Subject B, and that is worse!" "Why?" "Because Subject B is a ' ', and it's worse for you to assault him than it is the other guy.")

I also note that the head of one group said they were going to request a meeting with Rep. Kern, but didn't go to her office to do it: the did it in a group in front of the Capitol where they could have lots of cameras and reporters around.

Screw it. I've got guns to clean.

Forgot to mention, found Plumb Bob Blog yesterday on a link from Day by Day, he has some thoughts on the matter here.

*This is 'as best I recall' because I heard this stuff on radio news today, but after looking around a bit I couldn't find an article with the quotes, and I ran out of time. Did I mention guns to clean? Lots more fun that digging for this.

Monday, March 17, 2008

And in the corner of the Nanny State,

we have, first, Gary Pugh, director of forensic sciences at Scotland Yard and the new DNA spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers who says Primary school children should be eligible for the DNA database if they exhibit behaviour indicating they may become criminals in later life, according to Britain's most senior police forensics expert.
...
A recent report from the think-tank Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) called for children to be targeted between the ages of five and 12 with cognitive behavioural therapy, parenting programmes and intensive support. Prevention should start young, it said, because prolific offenders typically began offending between the ages of 10 and 13. Julia Margo, author of the report, entitled 'Make me a Criminal', said: 'You can carry out a risk factor analysis where you look at the characteristics of an individual child aged five to seven and identify risk factors that make it more likely that they would become an offender.' However, she said that placing young children on a database risked stigmatising them by identifying them in a 'negative' way.
Anybody want to bet that the same kind of thing that 'experts' say calls for kids to be drugged with Ritalin will also do as 'causing suspicion the child will become a criminal'? Or however they'll word it. Also note this:
'The number of unsolved crimes says we are not sampling enough of the right people,' Pugh told The Observer. However, he said the notion of universal sampling - everyone being forced to give their genetic samples to the database - is currently prohibited by cost and logistics.
So 'cost and logistics' is the only reason seen by those in favor of not forcing everyone in the damned country to give a DNA sample. Just bloody wonderful.

Second, Los Angeles PD actually has a 'Wrong Doors Unit' to repair damage done when they break into the wrong house. Like the guy at Reason said, I don't know whether it's good they're dealing with at least this aspect of it, or bad that it happens so damn often that they need a 'unit' for it. Also, I'm curious: he says that last year he did eight doors, but later on it says "Quite often, Jenkins said, wrong doors can get busted down in the early morning hours as armed officers clad in riot gear conduct raids." I don't know about you, but eight times doesn't quite match up with 'quite often', to me.

What the welfare state has done to Sweden. It's bad.

More later

Sunday, March 16, 2008

From the desk of Francis Marion



No idea where daughter found this

I do believe they have a slight training problem

over there.
The number of armed police officers accidentally shooting themselves – and other colleagues – has soared in the past five years.

Now, nearly half of all injuries caused by police shootings are the result of officers blasting themselves or a colleague, often during bungled training and demonstrations. (bold mine)

Which, of course, the GFWs are using to say "SEE! NOBODY is safe with guns around!"

Three of the NDs noted are:
• A diplomatic protection officer in Central London shot himself in the leg getting into a car in September 2007.
• A firearms officer from West Mercia Police shot himself in the leg and foot in January 2006 after his gun became caught in his clothing.
• An airport security officer from the Met shot the top of his thumb off when he put it in front of his MP5 sub-machine gun during training in 2005.


As to the third, I realize there's not a specific rule about "Keep your fingers out of the way of the muzzle(that's the hole in the loud end)", but damn...

Thanks to Sondra for pointing to this

The Freedom Microchip! (fixed)

Designed to be implanted in the foreheads of America's enemies by any Soldier, Sailor, Marine, Airman or General Citizen of the U.S.!

When implanted, allows the subject to immediately speak to/commune with Allah!

Comes in an exciting variety of dosages!



Possible side effects include:
Implantee may or may not get to choose size.
May contain precious metals
May or may not be painless.
Bleeding and swelling will occur at injection site.

It is suggested implantee be operating heavy equipment in close proximity to co-workers at time of implant.


Yeah, yeah, that'll teach me to blog when sick.