On the gun bigot and BS 'statistics' front we once again wind up at Momlogic

for this claim, and Kevin taking it apart:
Gun Accidents Kill 500 Kids Each Year

Advice every parent needs to hear about firearm safety.

This week, an 8-year-old boy accidentally shot and killed his 2-year-old sister in California.

"It's a tragic case of a sibling who picked up a firearm, thinking it was a toy, pointed it at his sister and discharged one round from the firearm, striking her in the head," said Vacaville Police Sgt. Charlie Spruill.

But these aren't freak accidents. More than 500 children die annually from accidental gunshots. Some shoot themselves, while others kill friends or siblings after discovering a gun.

Here are more scary stats: Americans own 200 million firearms, and 35 percent of homes contain at least one gun. Last year, a study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that more than 1.7 million children live in homes with loaded and unlocked guns.

There's more, but this is enough.

The part I've emphasized in bold? It's a lie.

It's a blatant, bold-faced lie.

It's also not an isolated incident. It's not even uncommon.
Someone you know points to Momlogic and the other hysteria-mongers, point them to Kevin's place. If nothing else, it'll annoy the crap out of them.

Chester Kulis seems to be a former Only One, a sockpuppet

and a liar.
He is also either ignorant or a liar. He makes the claim:

Under Chicago's gun ordinance, about 15,000 guns are seized and then melted down each year from individuals who were illegally carrying them in their cars or on the street.

Yet according to the IL UCR, less than 7,000 are traced each year, about 7,400 confiscated and about 6,000 collected in 'gun buy backs'.

Another fabrication:

"homicides -- are mostly committed by family members or friends in the course of an argument

Not according to the FBI. Most are committed by 'acquaintances' ie someone you happen to know. In the case of Chicago, 90% of the offenders have a criminal past and 70% of the victims do. 60% are directly affiliated w/ gangs or gang activity.
Never mind that he ignores the fact that, even according to him, the numbers of privately owned firearms has increased yet didn't equal an increase in crime w/ them.
Etc.

Now, of course, it would be IMPOSSIBLE for a tyrannical despot to rise to power in Germany…

After all, it is a civilized country…

Kevin has his take on the latest 'Guns Are Evil!' bit

from the CSM up. He's got the full breakdown, including how the cops in Baltimore are doing a very smart thing:
"No, what the cops in Baltimore are doing now is what the NRA has been advocating for decades - enforcing the laws on the books, and in spite of the title of the CSM article they're not "targeting guns," they're targeting criminals:

"If you start boiling down the violence in Baltimore – the homicides and the nonfatal shootings – you find that 50 percent of all the people we charge with those offenses have one thing in common: They have gun offenses in their backgrounds," Mr. Bealefeld says. "And we know that when bad guys get out, they get guns again. They don't work for IBM. They don't hand out Bibles. They stand outside with guns waiting to perpetrate another crime."

And so, Bealefeld says, he has made it clear whom his officers should be targeting.

"I don't aim to make [it] all that complicated," he says. "Find out all we can about gun offenders and focus on those guys."

(My emphasis.) Those guys, not "those guns."
Exactly.

I'm just going to say something about this summation of the "We must DO SOMETHING" crap:
Thus, our public policy goal should be to restrict the sale and possession of all handguns to those who can demonstrate a legitimate law enforcement purpose or can guarantee that the use of such guns will be limited to participation in a regulated sporting activity. Handgun ownership that advances reasonable law enforcement purposes must be permitted. Individuals with a professional need to have a licensed gun - law enforcement officers, gun collectors, some business owners and certain other professional groups - will continue to keep handguns on business premises or for use on the job. The rest of us, however, must give them up.
Let's see, where have we heard this before... Oh yeah, every time Obama and Holder and Pelosi and the hypocrites Feinstein and Boxer and a bunch of other politicians and GFWs open their mouths: "You peasants cannot be trusted with arms, only minions of the State and a few approved persons can be allowed to have them. And then only in places and times and manners that we approve of.

Until we decide to disapprove of ALL of them."
Oh yeah, we've heard all this before. Over and over and over. This one is slightly further along than most, of police only those 'licensed' to have one will be allowed; apparently these clowns think the situation in (fG)Britain is just peachy.

And don't you just love that line Handgun ownership that advances reasonable law enforcement purposes must be permitted.
What the HELL does that mean, anyway? Do they even know? Or did it just sound good to them so they threw it in? Or is this their "Only police who we decide can be trusted enough will be allowed to be licensed to carry a firearm" idea and this is how they express it?

Yeah, we've heard all this before.

And I can't pass this up, either:
As this tragedy has unfolded, how has the gun industry responded? It has refused to make guns safer. It has failed to market and distribute its products in a way calculated to keep guns out of the hands of children and criminals. It has reacted to a saturated market by creating new products with greater killing power and by attempting to expand its market to women and children.
Let's see...
'Refused to make guns safer' how? With demands like those of NJ for guns to have features that don't freakin' exist?
They can only sell complete firearms and receivers to federally licensed dealers- NOT individuals- who can only sell to people who pass the NICS check and- in a bunch of places- whatever the local laws call for; which means THEY CAN'T LEGALLY BE SOLD TO CRIMINALS OR CHILDREN, YOU MORON.
'New products with greater killing power'? Facts, please. Maybe they mean the .460S&W Mag, although compared to a lot of rifles- let alone a 12 gauge- it's not of 'greater killing power'.
Yes, a lot more women are shooting now, quite legally, for sport and self-defense. For the idiot comment about 'children', see above about how DEALERS CAN'T SELL TO CHILDREN.
And, for that matter, if the market was 'saturated' there wouldn't be any need for new and improved, would there?

Geez, there's not a damn thing new in this, just- as Kevin says- More leftist language manipulation

Hey, did you know that if you disagree with what a blogger says,

you're a troll? I have to admit I'd never heard that before. And it's coming from somone who makes snotty comments about 'teabaggers', so he must be an expert, right?

If you're wondering what this is about,
Blogger is upset(rightly) by some idiot illegally and idiotically carrying and having horrible accident,
Blogger gets very nasty toward anyone who carries without her fully- approved background,
Commenters question and argue,
Blogger and husband edit comments, insult, and- in hubby's case- threaten,
Various bloggers call attention to this,
And hey! they're ALL 'radical pro-gun "trolls" '!

If you're interested, part 1, part 2, general roundabout on this, and check the comments on Tam's post.

Oh, and it seems the hubby making threats to 'conservative assholes' bragging about 'splitting skulls and breaking noses' is a politician. In TN.

Some wonderful people on the left, huh?

More "I'm a gun owner BUT-" bullcrap

over here. And, surpise!, it turns out
Now, coinciding with the above highlighted phrase, I did a little research on our alleged gun owner. Turns out he is a strong Obama supporter with donations totaling over $2,000 for the last election.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

Dumbass/Dishonest(take your pick) Ruben Navarrette

makes big stink with "We're causing it!" myth, Kevin takes him apart. Among other parts:

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives estimates that 90% of the firearms confiscated in drug crimes in Mexico come from the United States, and some of the shipments can be enormous.
Which again illustrates graphically that the BATFE is a whirling vortex of suck at DOING THEIR JOB, doesn't it? Instead of investigating "straw purchases" etc., they seem to spend an extraordinary amount of time screwing with manufacturers after changing the rules on them without warning, or pursuing typographical errors instead of, you know, known criminals because, I suspect, legitimate businessmen (unlike drug dealers) don't shoot at you when you screw with them.
and

That was all it took. Those who love their guns more than their neighbor to the south were eager to believe CNN's Lou Dobbs when he declared: "Attorney General Eric Holder is willing to sacrifice our gun ownership rights under the Constitution for the benefit of a foreign government, in this case Mexico."

And here's the second fundamental flaw of The Other Side - the belief that if you don't agree with them you must be EEEEEVIL! Note the comparison: If we don't believe in "gun control" then we "love our guns" more than we "love our neighbor to the south."
Etc. Go read it, it'll do you good.

Well, it MIGHT explain some things...

Crotalus: If guns are an extension of a man's penis, does that mean that men who support gun control secretly want to have vaginas?
January 23, 4:24 PM

Of course, there's another problem:
Ned: According to Henry, my wife's gun is a penis extension. I guess that must make me a homosexual.

Do I get some sort of federal protection now that I am in a minority class?

Some interesting stuff out there, starting with GFW/Lib squealing

in New York. The governor did indeed appoint Gillibrand to the Senate seat. Which is causing lots of whining and screaming, apparently the big reason being she's got a good rating from the NRA. Which, of course, is reason enough for people like McCarthy and the Kennedys and so forth to want her to take a long walk on a short pier. Not counting keeping a Kennedy from taking her 'rightful place', which seems to mean 'getting what she wants' to the worshippers.
But as hard as she works, she will always have to wonder if she was actually Gov. Paterson's second choice. After all, until Wednesday almost everyone in the state expected the job to go to Kennedy.
Well, duh. I think she knows that Paterson would have gained points with the Kennedys & Worshippers & Sycophants, Inc., for appointing her. It would also have painted him as someone willing to give a Senate seat for personal gain, and I don't know if he was too wild about that. I have no idea of all the infighting in that state on this, but I'm sure he decided the long-term gain of Gillibrand was worth it.

...There were some high points -- President Barack Obama called in the middle of Gillibrand's speech.

Gillibrand finished her remarks before she went to the side of the stage to take the call.

"He said, 'I look forward to working with you,'" Gillibrand said.
Snork. I bet he does. From what I've read he WANTED Kennedy in that chair, and he not only got someone else, it's someone who, on at least one issue, just might stand against him. I do like her priorities on this: whether she wanted to make the point that she's not at his beck & call or not, she finished what she was doing before taking the call. Which is as it should be.

Gillibrand's pro-gun stance hung over the event, but she said she was willing to work with people against gun violence.
'Hung over the event'. Translation: the nanny-state weenies are aghast that someone with such a view should be out in public, let alone in public office, and are already planning to intimidate her into changing, or getting her out of the office as soon as possible, with the Kossites already making plans. I wonder if it's occurred to them that she might be kind of popular in her district, and crapping on her might be kind of counterproductive?

Probably not. It would mean the peasants don't think like they should, and that's not acceptable.

We'll see how it goes with her. Should be interesting, if nothing else.

'A world without guns' would be a very scary place,

but the fact some people think you could do it is even scarier.
Perhaps a global prohibition law isn't good enough. Maybe imposing the harshest penalty possible for violation of such a law will give it real teeth: mandatory life in prison for possession of a gun, or even for possession of a single bullet. (We won't imagine the death penalty, since the Yoko crowd doesn't like the death penalty.)

On second thought, Jamaica's Gun Court Act of 1974 contained just such a penalty, and even that wasn't sufficient. On August 18, 2001, Jamaican Melville Cooke observed that today, "the only people who do not have an illegal firearm [in this country], are those who do not want one." Violent crime in Jamaica is worse than ever, as gangsters and trigger-happy police commit homicides with impunity, and only the law-abiding are disarmed.

And that doesn't even count workshops:
Just take the case of Bougainville, the largest island in the South Pacific's Solomon Islands chain. Bougainville was the site of a bloody, decade-long secessionist uprising against domination by the government of Papua New Guinea, aided and abetted by the Australian government. The conflict there was the longest-running confrontation in the Pacific since the end of World War II, and caused the deaths of 15,000 to 20,000 islanders.

During the hostilities, which included a military blockade of the island, one of the goals was to deprive the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) of its supply of arms. The tactic failed: the BRA simply learned how to make its own guns using materiel and ammunition left over from the War.

In fact, at the United Nations Asia Pacific Regional Disarmament Conference held in Spring 2001, it was quietly admitted that the BRA, within ten years of its formation, had managed to manufacture a production copy of the M16 automatic rifle and other machine guns. (That makes one question the real intent behind the U.N. Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All its Aspects, which followed several months later: the U.N. leadership can't be so daft as to fail to recognize the implications for world disarmament after learning of the success of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army.)

If they can, what could someone like Og, or any good machinist, turn out? Uh-oh, have to license milling machines and drill presses and lathes and tubing suitable for barrels and constant surveillance of what goes in and what goes out to make sure all steel's accounted for... which ain't gonna work, either.

Good article, which I hadn't seen before. Read it all.

On the GFW/Do what they tell you front,

we have this guy who wrote to Insty when he had the nerve to suggest some armed citizens might have been handy:
So you think that ordinary citizens armed with handguns would slow down a surprise attack by trained paramilitary forces armed with automatic weapons, grenades and who knows what else? I’m curious how you see that scenario playing out. Etc.

Well, I'll tell you what: I couldn't stop the whole bunch myself, but I could cause them problems, maybe take one or two out of the equation. And, being from OK, I'd have the knowledge that there's a fair chance someone else with a gun would be handy to help out. Kind of makes the job of the bad guys more difficult.

As other people point out.

You know, the Brady Coalition to Ban Guns is so full of crap

they should be stood in the garden to fertilize things.
Just hours after a Brady Center report highlighted the NRA’s repeated and false denials that its bill to gut DC’s gun laws would allow assault rifles on the streets of Washington, the gun lobby has revised the bill to prevent the carrying of assault weapons on DC’s streets.
Damn. WE can revise bills? Can't be true, because if we could the Brady Center would have stroked out in terror and hyperbole a long time ago.

When a lawyer and politician words things in certain ways,

you know he's either flat-out lying, or talking around the answer.
A woman in the crowd told Obama she had “heard a rumor” that he might be planning some sort of gun ban upon being elected president. Obama trotted out his standard policy stance, that he had a deep respect for the “traditions of gun ownership” but favored measures in big cities to keep guns out of the hands of “gang bangers and drug dealers’’ in big cities “who already have them and are shooting people.”
Translation: "I'll ban them where and when I can, and big cities are the easiest place to start. I'll just say it's for the public good, of course." And, of course, he's ignoring the fact of all the laws already in effect on that.

“If you’ve got a gun in your house, I’m not taking it,’’ Obama said. But the Illinois senator could still see skeptics in the crowd, particularly on the faces of several men at the back of the room.

So he tried again. “Even if I want to take them away, I don’t have the votes in Congress,’’ he said. “This can’t be the reason not to vote for me. Can everyone hear me in the back? I see a couple of sportsmen back there. I’m not going to take away your guns.’’
Here's where you have to think about what he's saying. "If you have a gun in your house," does not cover 'if you carry for self-defense or take it to the range', and so on. And "Even if I want to take them away, I don't have the votes" is a dead giveaway; "Don't worry about it as long as I don't think I have the votes."

And that last bit: "I see a couple of sportsmen back there." Again, very specifically a group is pointed out and reassured; screw everyone else. This is a standard part of the liberal Dem line: "You can have guns for 'sporting purposes'." Coming from a guy who's tried to ban whole classes of firearms, who wanted a federal ban on concealed carry, that's not exactly reassuring, now is it?

As Q&O puts it, Good grief. "Even if I want to take them away"? Translation: "I'm not a gun grabber, but assuming that I'm lying about that, I've put some thought into it and I've calculated that I can't currently succeed. So you're not going to hold this little matter against me, are you?"
Answer: "Yes, We Are!"

Ok, this is a good morning for a roundup

mostly on Heller this time.

We've got an 'about damn time' to read.
A general breakdown of some points from O'Shea.
McArdle notes that a firearm equalizes a woman against an attacker: some really strange GFW crap ensues in comments.
It seems that the dissents from Justices Stevens and Breyer aren't exactly going to be held up as examples in law school. In a good way, that is.
Alphecca notes various liberals having wet-undergarment problems. Uncle finds some more.

Ok, the 10% chance of rain this morning became 30% which just became 'thunder and lightning and rain pouring down' outside; so much for running those branches through the chipper.

Where was I? Oh yes, if you had any doubts about the ACLU, this ought to take care of that:
In Heller, the Court reinterpreted the Second Amendment as a source of individual rights. Washington D.C.’s gun control law, which bans the private possession of handguns and was widely considered the most restrictive such law in the country, became a victim of that reinterpretation.

The Court was careful to note that the right to bear arms is not absolute and can be subject to reasonable regulation. Yet, by concluding that D.C.’s gun control law was unreasonable and thus invalid, the Court placed a constitutional limit on gun control legislation that had not existed prior to its decision in Heller. It is too early to know how much of a constitutional straitjacket the new rule will create. Yeah, the bold is mine.
These people just flat suck, don't they? Look the thing over, and as Uncle says "Let’s play spot the hysteria and spot the outright lies."

If you like the proper legal wording, etc., just go to Volokh and start scrolling down; LOTS of stuff to read.

It has nothing to do with Heller, but DAMN! look at that cheesecake!

Crap. Now they're saying it's going to turn 'partly cloudy and highs in the mid-90's'. Which'll make it like a steam room outside. I think I'd better take care of some things now.

And speaking of (fG) Britain,

that 'Ban guns = Peace and Light' idea ain't working out too well.

Some general stuff, starting with The Holy One

The Obamessiah and His Worshippers:
A crack team of cybernauts will form a rapid response internet “war room” to track and respond aggressively to online rumours that Barack Obama is unpatriotic and a Muslim.” ... If Obama were in any sense mediocre, he would be forgotten by now. He is, in fact, a remarkable human being, not perfect but humanly stunning, like King was and like Mandela is. He is the change America has been trying desperately and for centuries to hide, ignore, kill. The change it must have if we are to convince the rest of the world that we care about people other than our (white) selves.
Etc. As Uncle says,

Next, if you shoot somebody with a paintball gun, while you're trespassing, don't be surprised if they think it's real and shoot back. You effing moron, the guy may lose his eye because of you, and you didn't get scratched: I do hope you wind up in jail for a long time.

As the man says, when you're a gun-ban group and ATF criticizes your report, you've really messed up.

The Brady Gun Ban Group is feeling the heat, California is getting even more retardedrepressive, and the Barack I-AM-the-law Obama 'ban the gun shops without actually banning them' plan.

Ok, post? Check. Hot, humid day? Check. Bike oil & filter changed? Check. Barack Michelle-is-a-saint Obama noted? Check.

'Night, all.

Kevin noted the study showing 'ballistic fingerprinting' is BS

here; now Ahab notes the study showing that the claims for microstamping of ammo are also the product of the backside of a hyena.
Two different methods were designed to evaluate the ease with which lasermachined micro-characters could be intentionally defaced or obliterated. In the first method, the firing pin for an AMT “Backup” 380 Auto semi-automatic pistol was held perpendicular to a household sharpening stone and rubbed back and forth for 30 seconds. The second method involved placing the firing pin for a Sig Sauer P229 semi-automatic pistol on its side on an anvil and rolling it back and forth while lightly peening it with a ball peen hammer for 15 seconds. The firing pin was then stood on its base and the tip was peened for an additional 15 seconds.

…

Finally, both defacement/obliteration methods demonstrated that the microcharacters could easily be intentionally destroyed with the firing pin removed from the firearm.

Go over and read up when you can.

Once again, Ronnie Barrett shows where he stands

with no mincing of words:
Be aware there are more companies that will respect this position. If Hawaii or any state bans the sale of the .50-caliber rifle, we will immediately stop the sale and service of all Barrett products to that state’s government agencies. We will also welcome all small arms manufacturers to take the same action.

Damn, if I had the money, I'd buy one just to support the company.

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?