Website on gun and concealed carry self-defense
Just discovered it here.
Bloomberg's gun control positions
No surprises here. Just list every form of gun control proposed in the last twenty years, and you'll have it.
Oooops....
Gun turned in and supposedly destroyed in a Chicago "gun buy back" mysteriously appears next to a gang member shot by police.
Hat tip to Instapundit....
Sums it up nicely
Re: the school shooting in California (yes, the state Brady Campaign rates highest for gun restrictions):
"However, it's a fact that you can have universal background checks, a ten day waiting period on firearms purchases, background checks on ammunition purchases, an "assault weapons" ban, microstamping, a "high capacity" magazine ban, red flag laws, "safe storage" laws, age restrictions on purchasing firearms, and dozens of other gun control laws and still have an attack like this happen."
Next time, use a gun, or swing harder....
Victim uses battle axe to stop home intruder. I'd have expected much better results against an unarmored intruder.
Babylon Bee strikes again
Police Arrest AR-15, let mass shooter go free.
"It's 3 pm. Do you know where your assault rifle is?" [a CDC official] cautioned.
The assault rifle has been charged with several counts of murder, assault, and domestic terrorism, and will be tried as an adult, sources confirmed.
At publishing time, the shooter had decided not to use a gun for his next mass attack so that he will get full credit for it."
and again--
Established a web page for my writings
https://www.hardybooks.net
The tab at the top links to my academic works, the books available on Amazon are at the bottom....
Supreme Court denies review in Remington v. Soto
SCOTUS today denied cert in this Connecticut case, which held that the plaintiffs could sue a gun maker (Remington, owner of Bushmaster), for criminal misuse of its product, under a state law that prohibited
The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Firearms Act generally prohibits such suit. But it contains an exception for cases where the manufacturer or dealer "violated a State or Federal statute applicable to the sale or marketing of the product, and the violation was a proximate cause of the harm...." It then lists examples, involving failures in record-keeping or sale to a prohibited person. The Second and Ninth Circuit had interpreted the exception in light of the examples listed, as limited to knowing violation of laws specifically directed at gun commerce.
Plaintiffs argued, and the CT Supremes agreed, that they could thus sue under the state's Unfair Trade Practices Act, which bans unfair competition and "unfair or deceptive acts" in advertising. The advertising in question was Bushmaster's military theme to its advertising, "when you need to perform under pressure, Bushmaster delivers," "Opposition, bow down," etc. The CT Supremes held that "unfair" includes "unethical" advertising, and "unethical" includes essentially advertising for anti-social purposes, and that the ads could be interpreted as that.
Big point: the trial court dismissed the suit for "failure to state a claim." This is the first stage at which a suit can be reviewed. Dismissal is only proper if it is based on the pleading, bare written allegations. The CT Supremes said only that it couldn't be, at this stage. Plaintiff still have to prove their allegations (after discovery, they can be challenged by a motion for summary judgement, and if that's denied, fought at trial). The CT Supremes even allowed that plaintiff may have to surmount "herculean" barriers to win.
A few of those: the suit arises from the Newtown shooting. Adam Lanza stole the AR-15 from his mother after murdering her. Plaintiffs thus have to show that Lanza saw the advertising, and that it made him choose the AR-15 over the other guns available for theft. Then they face the "proximate cause" issue -- did it cause harm in a sufficient direct fashion? As a general rule, criminal conduct breaks the chain of proximate cause. You're not liable for a crash caused by someone who stole your car. Or, in this case (1) murdered the gun owner, (2) stole her firearm and then (3) committed crimes with it. But those are all things to be worked out as the case proceeds.
Why'd SCOTUS deny cert? It (as usual) gave no reasons. It may figure it'll take the case if and when plaintiffs win (or defendants win and plaintiffs appeal), and not want to get involved at the pleading stage. Here's a link to the Supreme Court docket. The CT Supreme Court opinion is under the first entry "lower court rulings/opinions."
Veterans' Day
Stories from my own family (all now deceased):
Dad (Albert D. "Bud" Hardy) enlisted in the US Army Air Corps in 1940. He was fresh out of St. David, AZ, a tiny town in southern AZ, and had lived in a one-room adobe shack with his grandparents -- no running water, no utilities, lit by lamp or candle, cooking on a wood fire outdoors. For him the Army was wonderful, hot food, nice barracks, etc. Even if he never got his wish -- the recruiting sergeant had sworn that he could get Dad sent wherever Dad wanted. None of which was true, of course. But Dad stopped complaining after December 7, since his pick had been Hickham Field, and he was an aircraft mechanic.
It did leave him with a lifelong terror of flying, tho. When I got married in DC, he drove the family from Tucson to DC rather than fly. He told me of being flown in transports by pilots who washed out of fighter school. The transports had their center wheel in the tail, most fighters had it in front, so the pilots would tip the plane forward to try to land on the nose wheel -- suddenly realize there was no nose wheel -- and tip the plane back hard.
Another time they were taking off, facing into a tree-covered mountain, heavily loaded. All he could see thru the windshield was trees, as he heard the pilot muttering "come on baby, you can make it baby, come on baby..." He said they seemed to clear the trees by inches.
Another time they arrived over a field at night, and it had low cloud cover. Neither they nor the field had radar, and if you tried to land in the cloud cover and it went down to the ground you'd crash. The pilot circled until he saw a gap in the clouds, then stood the plane on one wing and dived for it. They survived.
While in the Army, he had the first sit-in on a segregated bus (sorry, Rosa Parks, you had to hear someday). He sat down in the back, refused to move, said he enjoyed it there. The bus driver threatened him with arrest, Dad stayed where he was, and the bus driver gave in.
My uncle, George Ferguson, a/k/a Fergie or Bubbles, enlisted in the Coast Guard around the same time, figuring war was likely and the Coast Guard a safe assignment. Wrong, he wound up on a small boat with a depth charge launcher escorting convoys across the terrible North Atlantic. He talked of seeing clusters of sailors in the water in their life preservers, frozen to death in minutes after sinking. The ships were forbidden to pick them up; that'd make the ship a sitting duck, with a U boat within range.
After the war he was demobilized on the east coast, and had to get home via bus. Before WWII, he said, servicemen were poorly treated: they were presumed to be folks who couldn't hold down a regular job. In segregated Norfolk, VA, signs often read "Negros and Sailors Not Admitted." (I've read of other signs, reading "Sailors and Dogs Keep Off the Grass." When he was demobilized, tho, he travelled cross country and never paid for a single meal. Restaurant owners would refused to give him a tab, saying "it's on the house, sailor," or "you're money's not good here, sailor" with a grin. On the few times he got a tab, a civilian took it away from him and paid it. Dad reported similar events. In 1940 you were scum, in 1945 you were a heroic figure who'd helped save Western Civilization.
My late father-in-law (late father of my late wife), William Turner "Bill" Avery, served in the Army, mostly as a translator in Egypt, England and India. In the Army his buddy was Willie Jordan, who after the war introduced him to his sister, Frances, who'd lost her husband shortly after D-Day. Frances and he eventually married.
He had tales of India and Egypt. In India, at one point the toilets were metal pipes running into the ground with a concrete square around it. You squatted over it and when done flushed by pulling a chain to a shower head overhead. The monkeys, loved to swing down and pull the chain while the user was still squatting, drenching him as they and the other monkeys chattered in laughter.
One day an officer suggested that Bill, with doctorate and all, was a wonderful candidate for Officer Candidate School. Bill pointed out that at some point soon, we were going to be invading Europe, and we both know that the lifespan of a new junior officer during that invasion is going to be a lot less than the lifespan of a noncom translator in India!
Before the war, he had done postdoctoral work at the American Academy, in Rome. One day he walked past the last public rally that featured Hitler and Mussolini. He translated between a German who had driven all the way from Munich on his motorcycle just hear his fuhrer speak and an Italian gate guard who was saying he didn't care, you can't get in without a ticket. At another, he looked at a high Nazi official thru binoculars and was confronted by the Gestapo, telling him it wasn't allowed, binocs might conceal a gun barrel in one and a scope sight in the other.
After the war, he taught languages and founded the Univ. of Maryland Department of Classical Languages (which has since been merged, I believe). He told me of one diplomatic assembly to honor a Central American poet. When they brought out the cupcakes, he said a aloud a Spanish saying -- "For the dead there is the grave, but for the living there is cake." (Cake and grave rhyme in Spanish, and sweets are often presented at a Spanish funeral). The women blushed and the men laughed, and he asked a friend what did I say, and the friend replied, in this country "cake" is slang for a part of a woman that men like to eat."
He died in 1985, just before his grandson was born, and I told the minister about the incident, and he worked the saying into the end of the eulogy, with the note that it hadn't worked well the last time Bill used it. My wife, Frances, Jr., was weeping but looked at me with a smile and said "Daddy would have been so proud."
Mother calls for arrest of defender who shot him during his armed robbery
Story here. I'd raise a further question. Since the robber had recently worked there, he'd be recognized by the employees, and all his personal data is in the files. They had a robbery here (may have been a Pizza Hut, too) where the robbers tried to solve the problem by murdering all the employees.
Uncle Joe is losing it
In New Hampshire. It's at about the 30 second mark of that video.
""I believe in the second amendment but nobody says you can have a rounds -- a magazine with a hundred clips in it -- a hundred [fumbling for words] bullets in it. We protect geese more that we protect, no joke, you can only have three shotgun shells when you go shoot for geese."
Amusing that he begins by asking "We don't have the courage to take on the NRA?" and ends with "We stand for unity, not division."
Earlier, in Iowa: ""The idea that we don't have elimination of assault-type weapons, magazines that can hold multiple bullets in them. It's absolute mindless."
Interesting to compare him speaking six years ago: he's quite coherent. Wrong, but coherently wrong.
Interesting....
This letter from ATF.
"I say hold onto your guns, people."
A relative of the folks massacred in Mexico speaks out:
"These things are happening here in Mexico because people can't protect themselves because by law they're not allowed to own these guns.
So since the government isn't doing their job of protection in the way that they should, these cartels can just wreak havoc and the people are left defenseless."
Something they'll never write about National Match shooters
NFL star's "Aaron Hernandez's Killing Fields: Exposing Untold Murders, Violence, Cover-Ups, and the NFL's Shocking Code of Silence". Except maybe Carlos Hathcock, who spent his time whacking bad guys for the good guys.
Prospective voters
Well, of course, first you'd have to know did he need shootin'?"