« September 2009 | Main | November 2009 »
October 2009
Assisted-opening knives protected by new statute
Details here. Customs had moved to redefine "switchblades" to include assisted-opening knives that are banned from import; the bigger problem was that many State laws against switchblades incorporate the Customs regulations as their definition.
New article
Nicholas Johnson has a new article out on Heller.
Thoughts on accidental shootings
Howard Nemerov has some interesting notes. Between 1984 and the present, about 112,000,000 new firearms entered the civilian market, yet the accidental firearm death rate fell by 70%, even while other rates for other fatal accidents were increasing.
Article on John Marshall
Right here. It's an argument that future Chief Justice John Marshall authored a document supporting the Sedition Act, which criminalized criticism of the president or Congress (but not of the vice president, his rival, Thomas Jefferson)). I think it interesting since I think the revered Marshall was a political hack. THen again, there are those who consider me a bit of a contrarian.
Permalink · General con law · Comments (5)
Movie I must see
The Men Who Stare at Goats. [update, title corrected, thanks]
Great video
Here. It's incredibly slow motion video of bullets and shotgun pellets striking paper, metal, and gelatin.
Permalink · shooting · Comments (0)
Sacramento residents shaking in their boots
Story here. The Sheriff has approved 37 carry permits this year, and a Brady Campaign spokesman worries that this "would not make us safer and could actually increase gun violence in Sacramento County..."
Permalink · CCW licensing · Comments (6)
Britain deploying subgun armed police
Story here. And here's a report from the London Telegraph. Which doesn't notice that the story is about arming police with H&K subguns, while the illustration is of an M4/M16.
"Gill Marshall-Andrews, chairwoman of the Gun Control Network campaign group, described the routine arming of officers as a "very retrograde step" and warned that it could lead to higher levels of gun crime.
"This is likely to raise the stakes and encourage more criminals, especially young criminals, to arm themselves," she said."
So criminals will be nice so long as the police are helpless, but will get nasty if the police can do something. That also says a lot for the arms laws that group, I assume, defends, -- criminals can arm themselves at will, should police choose to arm themselves.
Hat tip to reader Nick Lidakis....
Permalink · non-US · Comments (2)
70 year old lady shoots robber
Story here. Some of the pro-robber comments are gems.
Hat tip to reader Mark Noble....
Permalink · Crime and statistics · Comments (6)
ATF HQ'S Toilet terrorist task force
You can't make this up. ATF HQ is on a manhunt for the employee who is vandalizing their johns.
Permalink · BATFE · Comments (10)
NIH back to funding gun control studies
Story here.
"NIH records show that one study being questioned by lawmakers aimed to "investigate whether adolescents who consume alcohol and/or carry firearms, and/or whose daily activities occur in surroundings rich in alcohol and/or firearms, face a differential risk of being shot with a firearm or injured in a non-gun assault.""
That's something a lot of us have long wondered about. Once we have the study's results, we'll know at last whether it is wise to give guns to drunken teenagers.
Media bias on self-defense
Howard Nemerov takes down the Orlando Sentinel.
Permalink · media · Comments (0)
ACR Rifle
An interesting rifle. Modular design, so it can quickly be switched between calibers and chamberings.
Hat tip to reader David McCleary...
Online CPR training videos
Right here.
The Missouri "militia memo"
A while back, the Missouri Info Analysis Center (a State agency) and the MO highway patrol circulated a report claiming a resurgence in the militia movement and telling police to keep an eye on dangerous radicals concerned about unemployment, taxes, gangs, border security, inflation, abortion, and federal agencies.
Americans for Limited Government made a public records request for data relating to the preparation of the report, and information behind it, and got some interesting results. As in ... there are none. There isn't even a record of who wrote it.
More on the NFA database
Interesting results, here.
Permalink · National Firearms Act · Comments (2)
Another case of no tolerance no brains
A two-inch pocketknife is found in a student's locked car, so the school suspends him for five days, then increases that to twenty.
Via Instapundit.
Permalink · arms law victims · Comments (10)
Schwartzenegger signing statement
Pdf here. It's his approval of AB 962, which among other things requires that all ammunition sales be face-to-face and that the seller record data on the buyer including, as I recall, a thumbprint.
The California legislation is meant to ensure that criminals, who are legally unable to get firearms, now won't be able legally to get ammunition for the firearm that they legally don't have. Or something like that.
Hat tip to reader Jim Dewey...
Permalink · State legislation · Comments (14)
Drawing for Damascus knife
At Shiloh TV. Some nice video segments there, too.
Judge Laurence Silberman on the Second Amendment
Video here. He wrote the DC Circuit opinion in Parker/Heller, which the Supreme Court affirmed.
He says that he started in thinking it was a collective right, but when he looked at the briefs in Parker/Heller, he changed his mind.
Hat tip to reader Scott Stradley....
Permalink · Parker v. DC · Comments (0)
Supreme Court denies review in Olofson case
The denial was handed down this morning.
How many commas does the Second Amendment have?
An interesting question. They didn't have photocopiers back in 1789, and when clerks copied the Bill of Rights they punctuated and capitalized as they please.
Permalink · Second Amendment wording · Comments (8)
Zero tolerance, zero brains
A 6 year old takes a cub scout camping tool to school and suspended because it includes a knife. Note also the third grader who was expelled after she brought a birthday cake and a knife to cut it (the teacher thoughtfully used it to cut the cake before reporting her to the principal).
UPDATE: I know an attorney here, a good friend, who had a mother come in and tell a tale of woe. Seems her kid had been fencing a stolen pistol at school. A potential buyer asked if it worked, and he showed it did by touching off a round in the air. On the school property. He got suspended or expelled, and the mother wanted to sue the school. On a theory, I guess, that is it utterly unreasonable to discipline a thief selling stolen guns, and shooting them, on school property.
The attorney yelled, get the hell out of my office! It's people like you and your little monster who make life hard for me and mine!
Nifty device for shooting ranges
Right here. Just roll it along the ground and it picks up spent brass. Apparently the inventor originally came up with one to pick nuts up off the ground, and then thought that it might work with spent brass, too.
Permalink · shooting · Comments (10)
Gallup poll shows MAJOR shifts
Story here.
1990 vs 2009:
Gun laws should be stricter: in 1990, 78%, fell to 44% today.
Gun laws should stay the same: 17%, now 43%.
Gun laws should be relaxed: 2%, rising to 12% today.
Now, some of the shift could theoretically come from enactment of background checks, etc., during the 1990s, which made the 1990 population segment satisfied. But it doesn't look like that. When asked about handgun bans, 60% approved in 1990, but only 28% in 2009, a drop of 32 points. That matches the 34 point drop in gun laws should be more strict, and suggests that a lot of Americans who supported gun restriction as a concept in 1990 stopped supporting it by 2009.
Ill. ruling on guns in cars
The Illinois Supreme Court has ruled that a car console can be considered a case.
Apparently ILL has an offense called aggravated misconduct with a weapon, that involves carrying concealed, uncased, either loaded or with ammunition readily available. There's an exemption if the gun is cased, unloaded, and carrier has a Firearm Owner ID card. Must be treated pretty seriously -- this defendant got 2.5 years for it.
Good to live in AZ. Here, officers stopping a car with guns in the console would regard it as normal. And legally it wouldn't be CCW. And if it was, the penalty would be a modest fine and forfeiture of the firearm.
Hat tip to reader Bill Zeller....
Permalink · State legislation · Comments (4)
Lady in India cleans terrorist clock
A great headline: "Indian farmer's daughter is most bad-ass woman in the world". More detail at The Telegraph.
Border terrorists entered her house and began beating her father with clubs. She whacks one with an axe, takes his AK-47 and finishes the job, then wings one of his buddies as they run for the hills.
Permalink · Self defense · Comments (2)
Local self defense
Story here. A robber has to be careful: his victim may be faster on the draw.
Permalink · Self defense · Comments (0)
LA Times endorses Chicago gun case
Hat tip to reader Alice Beard...
Permalink · Chicago gun case · Comments (10)
Officer backshoots defender as defender talks to 911
Story here. Prof. Bob Cottrol once pointed out that most training is done with targets that are clearly good guy or clearly bad guy, and bad guy status is often denoted by his having a gun. He thought it'd be more appropriate to have some targets that were homeowners, armed, but not aggressive.
Via SondraK.
Brady Campaign on the Chicago cases
Their latest, at the Huffington Post. Someone quipped that after Heller, they were going thru the seven stages of grief, starting with denial, then anger, etc.. Well, they seem to have reached the last stage, resignation. Before and right after Heller, they were indignant that anyone would even seriously consider an individual rights claim. Now it's more like when they lose, it really won't hurt so bad as it might have:
"Although the Chicago case involves interesting constitutional issues, even if Chicago loses, such a ruling is unlikely to prove a serious threat to state and local gun regulation across-the-board. "
Permalink · Chicago gun case · Comments (4)
Mayors' group
The Pocono Record rises to defend Mayor Charlie Baughman's membership in the Bloomberg group, arguing it is only about stopping illegal gun use:
"he nationwide coalition of mayors works with police departments and advocacy groups to fight criminals who use or traffic in guns. That is a commendable mission. But it's not commendable enough to hold legitimacy in the eyes of people who feel that even efforts that distinguish between legal and illegal guns threaten the constitutional rights of legal, law-abiding gun owners."
That's strange, since the group has issued a private 51 page report referring to "criminal activity endemic to some gun shows." calling for a special BATF unit aimed at gun shows, etc. (The report does reveal that, where persons fail the background check, "In 2005, the FBI referred 67,713 cases to the ATF, but federal prosecutors pursued only 135 of those cases.").
Hat tios to Snowflakes in Hell...
Permalink · antigun groups · Comments (2)
40th high school reunion
It was this weekend. Very good to see folks I hadn't seen in years, and in some cases, in decades. At mass this morning they read off the names of classmates who'd passed on. 22 names, plus one they forgot (Larry Brown, the Red Bandana Bandit, killed after release from prison). 23 out of a class of about 300.
Brown -- ah, he showed the benefits of a good Salpointe education! The judge who sentenced him told me he was the most polite armed robber, ever. One time he took his place in line behind two ladies, and only stuck up the clerk after they'd been helped. No cutting in line! Another time it looked like the clerk might make a move, and so roughly the following took place:
Brown: Wait a minute, let's talk.
Clerk (mystified): OK.
Brown: They pay you minimum wage, right?
Clerk: Yes.
Brown: And they don't give you health or life insurance, right?
Clerk: Yes.
Brown: Then why should you risk YOUR life for THEIR money?
The clerk testified the argument was utterly convincing, and so he cleaned out the cash register. After Brown got out of prison he was killed. Never was solved, but there was guessing that he might have gotten on the wrong side of some prison gang.
Permalink · Personal · Comments (3)
Interesting thought
SCOTUSBlog has some thoughts on the Chicago gun cases.
To begin with, eight of the nine Justices have never ruled whether a Federal bill of rights liberty is applied to the States by the 14th amendment. The sole exception is Justice Stevens, who was on the Court in 1979 when it last considered a rather small subset of the issue. (back in the 60s the Court had held that the right to a criminal jury trial bound the States. In the 1979 case, it held that allowing conviction on a less than unanimous verdict by a less than 12 member jury would violate this right).
Permalink · Chicago gun case · Comments (3)
Back up!
In case you're wondering where this blog went ... my host, Hosting Matters, had a major hard drive crash. Fortunately (1) they had noticed the drives starting to get iffy, and were already replacing them when they headed for the last roundup and (2) had run a backup a few hours before. So all is back to normal.