Comcast continuing...
I told the person yesterday, when the tech people are coming out, call my office number, here it is. Do not call the home number, the one on the account.
They were supposed to be here between 10 and 12: nobody showed up.
So I call back in... and am told the tech called me. I ask, did he call the office number? Yes, that's the number we gave him. I responded -- I have caller ID, that shows two calls today, and I answered both. Uh... no explanation, we'll tell him to put you on the list when he's available.
Checked home phone. Yep, he called there. Called back and was told someone will be here "today."
Someone was angered enough to create Comcast Must Die.
Mayor Bloomberg has problems with 1st as well as the 2nd amendment
According to the New York Sun, Mayor Bloomberg has moved, in the suit against a GA gun dealer, to forbid the defense from mentioning the Second Amendment. As the paper notes, "While trials are often tightly choreographed, with lawyers routinely instructed to not tell certain facts to a jury, a gag order on a section of the Constitution would be an oddity."
I suppose we'll see if Hon. Jack Weinstein has problems with both amendments as well.
UPDATE: it's called "long arm jurisdiction." A very technical end of the law (took a case to the state Supreme Court on it once). Basically, you can sue a person or company where they reside, and also sue a company where it "does business," so to speak. If you go beyond that, it's a denial of due process. The question of how much contact the company has to have with a State is confused and confusing, even at the US Supreme Court level. But local courts of course want to assert jurisdiction (having locals sue out of Staters sounds like a great idea). In my case, it was product liability, a single action being dropped and firing. The mfr was in Italy. At the time the gun was sold, the mfr had no advertising in the US, no local company. Its sole contact had been to make one lot of arms, which an American importer based in Connecticut picked up in Italy and sold in the US. Twenty years later, one of them was dropped in AZ and fired, killing a local. How it got from CN to AZ was not determined; someone could have bought it back east and moved here.
AS Supremes held that the AZ courts had jurisdiction over the Italian manufacturer, and the US Supremes denied cert..
Purposeful availment--I forget how they dealt with that. Claimed to go with the Asahi plurality, using that standard, but then construed it to mean ... memory is faint, but it was something like: this was shipped to the US, a single-action is a Western looking gun and would be likely appeal to a person in a Western state such as AZ, aha, that's purposeful availment of AZ markets! The state Supremes were very pro-plaintiff then, which I didn't mind since I mostly do plaintiffs' work. The case was A. Uberti v. Leonardo, 181 Ariz. 565, 892 P.2d 1354 (1995).
Permalink · Gun manufacturer liability · Comments (6)
NYC police gunfights
A summary of studies.
Two figures -- only 13$ of shots fired him, and only 34% of the time was the person being fired on hit at all -- aren't too astonishing. One of the revolutions in training came years back, when they realized that people trained on shooting from a good position at a well-lit target in a fixed location, when in fact gunfights usually occurred under conditions too dark to see the sights, while you were trying to take cover, the other guy was doing anything but standing still facing you, and your blood was full of adrenalin, often with bullets whizzing past.
Hat tip to Joe Olson...
Atty interested in talking to private investigators in Chicago
Just got a relayed email from an attorney who has represented several private investigators and security folks in that city. Even though state law says they're exempt from many gun regulations, the city police have been busting them or confiscating their guns.
If any of you know anyone in that situation, they should contact attorney Joel Ostrander, voice 1-708-383-2112, fax 1-708-383-2237. I don't have an email for him.
Video of Len Savage on CNN re:BATF
Right here. At least I think so. On dialup I can't do very much to watch video.
Permalink · BATFE · Comments (6)
Comcast ... grrrr...
Some Comcast workers are out front, installing a new distribution box or whatever it's called. High speed internet goes down (it did so temporarily yesterday while they worked). OK, it's called working on the system.
I look out and notice everyone's gone. And the high-speed still doesn't function.
Call their number. Reach a human, who asks that I test everything here. I do. Then he puts me on hold for another department ... and the call is cut off.
Call back, run thru the entire matter. Am told, around 2:30 PM, that the earliest they can have a repair guy out here is between 10 AM and noon tommorrow. He'll call first, and it's mandatory that someone answer. If no one picks up, he will not try again, just cancel the appointment.
Fortunately, I have dialup backups on this computer, but the rest of the family has none on theirs.
Brady Campaign campaigning
Against the Ill. Firearm Owner ID card. They want background checks in addition to the firearm permit, because the permit spans ten years. (I think there is a requirement, for a gun permit system to exempt the holder from background checks, that the permits not go beyond a certain time, or have a way to revoke if the holder is convicted of something disabling).
UPDATE: see comments. Carl in Chicago, who oughta know, says the ID cards are updated if convictions occur, and background checks are run for each sale atop them. If that's so, then Brady is campaigning only because they don't understand the law.
Permalink · antigun groups · Comments (6)
CCW and NRA meeting
Snowflakes in Hell is reporting that CCW permit holders can carry in the convention center, anyway. Maybe I'm old and overly cautious, but I'm not going shod. I wouldn't count much on a newspaper article (Sebastian already notes one correction to the story; this may or may not be true as to the celebration of Amer. values), wouldn't know the local laws (is the center only open to concealed carry?) and any misunderstanding will be on the evening news (esp. if there is more than one misunderstanding).
S&W integral trigger lock failures
They're being discussed at the Smith & Wesson Forum. Quite a few reported -- trigger lock engaging under recoil, if dropped, etc..
Link via Xavier's Thoughts, reporting his own gun lockup.
Hat tip to reader John M. Maraldo, who adds: "puts me in mind of the differing attitudes gunnies and gunphobes have as to safety. Ask a gunny what safety is and they'll relate the rules of safe handling and safe shooting. Ask them what safe design is and they'll tell you it is a design that makes the gun shoot when the trigger is pulled, but not when the trigger is not pulled. Ask gunphobes what safe design is and they'll tell you it is a design which makes the gun unlikely or difficult."
Permalink · shooting · Comments (0)
Burglar fights with police, shoots self by accident
Story here.
Pro-gun media pieces
1. Just got tipped that Lou Dobbs, CCN at 7 PM, will be doing a pro-gun piece. Could be tonight or tommorrow night, or perhaps later.
2. Howard Nemerov will be on NRANews.com tonight, at 11:40 PM EDT. Apparently the topic will be Brady and VPC's system of ranking states.
Steve Halbrook's new book out!
"The Founders' Second Amendment." You can order it here, from Independent Institute. 20% discount, so $23.16. Which for a 448 page hardcover, is very, very modest.
Antigun fundraising
Snowflakes in Hell has an interesting post regarding the pro and antigun PACs this election cycle. Brady Campaign's PAC has under $50,000, and has so far raised... $73. NRA's PAC has over six million, and has raised eight million, of which about 3/4 came from donors of under $200.
His guess that perhaps Brady has been forced to cross off PAC fundraising in an effort to keep its regular operations bankrolled does seem a likely explanation. But $73?
Hat tip to Instapundit, whose referrals are keeping Snowflakes in Hell swamped for the moment...
Permalink · antigun groups · Comments (5)
McCain announces Justice Advisory Committee
Story here. I have no knowledge of what such a critter does, but the story says it would advise him on judicial appointments. What stands out to me is that it includes:
Sandy Froman, the Tucson attorney who is former NRA President.
Prof. Eugene Volokh, a quite pro-2nd Amendment academic and operator of the Volokh Conspiracy;
Prof. Orin Kerr, a member of the Volokh Conspiracy.
Charles Cooper, whom I recall filing some pro-2A amici, tho the memory is faint.
Former Sen. Phil Graham, with whom I've gone shooting.
Sen. John Kyl, quite pro gun.
Former Sen. Fred Thompson.
UPDATE to comments: Nope, a different Frank Keating! Former Gov. of Oklahoma, not former convictee in AZ. I actually have a bit info regarding the other. McCain was junior Senator, and the senior one, Dennis DeConcini, talked him to going along for a meeting with the agency that was investigating Keating's savings and loan. Supposedly, it was just a meeting to encourage the regulator to act quickly and not delay a ruling any farther. At the meeting, however, DeConcini bluntly pressured the regulator to act favorably to Keating. Who, it turned out, had been ripping off the S&L blind, or equivalent conduct (I forget now).
I was told by officials at the U of Arizona that the outcome made the football games a bit difficult. Both Senators had seating in the, I forget the term, the fancy box seats up on top. McCain was so angry at DeConcini that, to avoid a conflict, they had to work things out so neither Senator entered or left at the same time, and neither passed the other during the game.
Hat tip to Joe Olson....
Permalink · Politics · Comments (11)
Gunfight and police siege ... in London
Story here.
Permalink · non-US · Comments (3)
NRA celebration to be loaded with former candidates
The Kentucky political blog PolWatchers reports that the NRA's Celebration of American Values in Louisville will be attended by John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Karl Rove, several senatorial candidates, Those backing Ron Paul won't be left out, as he's having his own rally on the 17th.
Permalink · Politics · Comments (6)
Form 4473 under Paperwork Reduction Act review
Here's the Federal Register notice, in pdf.
Basically, under the Paperwork Reduction Act, every agency is required to file, with the Office of Management and Budget, any form it has that requests info from the public, together with its estimate of how many hours are spent filling in the form (for 4473, ATFE estimates 4.3 million hours annually; they estimate 10 million are filled out at 25 minutes each.
Then every so many years it comes up for OMB review, and the public can send comments suggesting how the time burden can be reduced. (One that comes to my mind: how about eliminating the requirement for detailed info, in the vast majority of cases where the buyer is presenting state-issued ID that already has all that recorded?)
Permalink · BATFE · Comments (4)
Ooops...
Police chief shoots self in foot while clearing a jam.
Ev Nappen on VPC state rankings
Ev Nappen has a column in the Union Leader on the subject.
"The VPC dares not look at the bottom seven states instead of the arbitrary five. That is because, lo and behold, New Hampshire ranks seventh from the bottom in per capita gun deaths. New Hampshire is undeniably a strong pro-gun state that greatly respects the individual right to keep and bear arms.
New Hampshire is beaten only by sixth-place Connecticut, the home of "Gun Valley," a major area of gun making in the United States. For that matter, all of New England is in the bottom 12....
he VPC also has to purposely limit its selectively picked data to states rather than cities. This is because the one jurisdiction with the strictest gun control in the entire nation is the District of Columbia. In D.C., all handguns are banned, long arms must be stored disassembled, locked and unloaded, and law-abiding citizens have no right to carry guns. According to the same 2005 CDC data relied upon by the VPC, D.C. has the highest rate of shooting deaths of any place in the United States! The district has well over double the national average."
UPDATE: Reader Denton Bramwell has this pdf examining the similar Brady Campaign rankings. Essentially, if you chart States' Brady rankings and their homicide rates, you find no relationship at all. States with As and States with Fs are equally as likely to have a high or low homicide rate, suggesting that Brady's agenda doesn't do anything to reduce violence.
Hat tip to reader Jack Anderson...
Claim for attorney's fees
The Goldwater Institute in Phoenix challenged a city gift, essentially, to a developer and shopping center. The trial court ruled against them, and now the developer is seeking $600K in attorneys' fees for their having had the temerity to suggest the gift violated the state constitutional ban on subsidizing individuals.
Another 911 case
In Madison, WI. Brittany Sue Zimmermann calls 911 from cell phone (nobody's talking about what she said). At one point she stops talking, and the 911 operator just hangs up. No word as to whether the operator bothered notifying officers.
The next day her fiance finds her murdered in her apartment.
Note all this is coming out a month after the event.
Here's another story, reporting that 911 did not dispatch police.
Josh Horwitz on Heller
At the Huffington Post. Horwitz is leader of one of the antigun groups (they change names so frequently I can't recall what it's named now) created by some mega-billionaire.
His theme is rejection of an "insurrectionist" purpose behind the 2A (i.e., that it was meant to provide a safeguard against tyranny). He doesn't deny the history, just doesn't like the idea because it precludes the government having a "monopoly on force." (Madison's insight was deeper than Weber's: he saw the US as composed of people, states, and the federal government. By this standard, none of the three has a true "monopoly."
What I find interesting about all repudiations of "insurrectionist purposes" is that they are left empty when it comes down to: so what WAS the Second Amendment about? It had to have purposes, right? If not enabling resistance to tyranny, aren't you left with self-defense as a purpose? But for some strange reason they don't like that idea, either.
Permalink · Parker v. DC · Comments (10)
Civil War collector killed by140 year old shell
Story here.
When I lived back there, I'd see lots of civil war cannon projectiles for sale. Collectors would roam the old battlefields (only tiny portions of which were parks) with metal detectors. I read about one who had invented a remote controlled drill press, with water cooling of the bit and a closed circuit TV, so that he could drill into and deactivate them while staying a safe distance away. And gad, this was a 75-pounder.
UPDATE More on the issue, this time from the experts, including a picture and CAD images of the naval fuses. Some news stories suggest that he was grinding rust off the outside of the shell, but I can't see anyone trying that without deactivating it first; he must have known how spark-sensitive black powder is. Just from the size of it he would have known it was a naval shell (for land use, 6-12 pounders were standard, and a 32 pounder was heavy siege artillery), and I'd assume knew about naval fuses.
Hat tip to reader Bill Bailey....
Permalink · shooting · Comments (6)
Man arrested for pointing finger
Story here.
"The former mayor is under indictment, the Village Board is hamstrung by infighting and a defiant landowner has vowed to put a pig farm on his property to stop the town from building a water tower.
But the news on everyone's lips in far north suburban Island Lake is about Greg Kachka and his T-shirt."
He was arrested for disorderly conduct, on the claim that while wearing a "Don't run, you'll only die tired" T-shirt during a heated village council meeting, he pointed a finger at one member while she was rolling her eyes at her constituents, and the claim he also extended his thumb, making it a gun-like symbol.
It's interesting that the council members say it was only brought to their attention after the meeting. Whatever disorderly conduct may be (usually including disturbing the peace), it doesn't include things that have to be "brought to your attention" after the fact.
Hat tip to Dan Gifford...