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Back from SAF gun rights conference

Got off the plane late yesterday, no time to give details, but the conference was great. A few high points:

John Lott gave a presentation on the practical end of gun control and promoted several of his books. I read his book "Straight Shooting" on the flight back, and it is GREAT! It's a compendium of his articles arguing that gun control doesn't work. Brief and to the point, and every chapter hits hard. Example: he points out that the homicide rate in Baghdad, where we let everyone except insurgents have a full auto AK-47 in their home or business, is lower than that of DC, where guns are tightly controlled. (And he has a followup article rebutting claims that Baghdad has more homicides, pointing out that the MSM who carried that story used stats that included in the Iragi homicides insurgents killed by the US, people killed in car crashes, etc., basically all deaths other than disease). I know I probably got the city's spelling wrong, no time now to correct it.

Don Kates said he thought Parker would go our way, and very likely by more than 5-4, but probably in a fragmented decision, a plurality maybe with concurrences giving it the necessary majority, and with concurrences going all over the place in suggesting what is the right legal test and how far the right goes.