Winning, Duh.

H.R. 2055, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, has passed the Senate and is on its way to the President's desk. The NRA managed the inclusion of three pro-2nd Amendment provisions in the final draft.

The first is quite self-explanatory, and very encouraging.

None of the funds available to the Department of Defense may be used to demilitarize or dispose of M-1 Carbines, M-1 Garand rifles, M-14 rifles, .22 caliber rifles, .30 caliber rifles, or M-1911 pistols, or to demilitarize or destroy small arms ammunition or ammunition components that are not otherwise prohibited from commercial sale under Federal law, unless the small arms ammunition or ammunition components are certified by the Secretary of the Army or designee as unserviceable or unsafe for further use. [p. 23]

The second provision is in Section 503 of Title V, and it puts the kabosh on the use of any funds from the National Institute of Health to promote gun control:

The prohibitions in subsections (a) and (b) shall include any activity to advocate or promote any proposed, pending or future Federal, State or local tax increase, or any proposed, pending, or future requirement or restriction on any legal consumer product, including its sale or marketing, including but not limited to the advocacy or promotion of gun control.  [p. 325]

The same language appears in Section 218 of Division F [p. 300], which seems to have the President a bit miffed.  According to a statement he released today,

Additional provisions in this bill, including section 8013 of Division A and section 218 of Division F, purport to restrict the use of funds to advance certain legislative positions. I have advised the Congress that I will not construe these provisions as preventing me from fulfilling my constitutional responsibility to recommend to the Congress's consideration such measures as I shall judge necessary and expedient.

Of course he can still make his recommendations, but he can't use government money to do the legwork for him.

Stubborn Facts and Pliable Statistics

Two years after the election, gun sales are still going through the roof.

Two years after the boom in sales, violent crime is still dropping.

As I've pointed out before, correlation does not equal causation. We can't attribute the drop in crime to an increase in gun sales. What we can show, however, is that a vast increase in civilian gun ownership does not lead to more crime.

In other news, Eric Holder's trotting out the race card:

This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him, both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American.

"Nature of the relationship?" Like being the Attorney General of the United States? Or maybe it's due to the fact that he's so incompetent he can't keep rogue elements in line, can't orchestrate a decent coverup, and doesn't have the political acumen to throw anyone under the bus, even if it means saving his own lying skin.

Or maybe it's just that wretched walrus mustache.

They Said It Couldn't Happen

But it did. Blaine Tyler was openly carrying his handgun in a Richmond gas station when a teenage sociopath grabbed it. Unarmed, Tyler gave chase and was fatally shot with his own gun. To make things worse, his assailant went on to kill a second person hours later.

Tyler was deliberately targeted for his weapon, something people keep telling me never happens. Well, here we have it. Perhaps better situational awareness, equipment, or training might have helped, but at the end of the day, he would not have been targeted if his weapon wasn't plainly visible.

Having the weapon exposed adds a significant element of risk back into an equation meant to mitigate risk in the first place.

Sharp Edges and Frayed Nerves

The Supreme Court has refused [pdf] to hear United States v. Masciandaro. That leaves Woollard v. Sheridan, which still has decent odds of making it to the calendar.

There's been some scuttlebutt that the Court would rather hear a "pure" case in which the petitioner isn't someone appealing a criminal conviction. Both the Heller and McDonald cases fit this bill, as they were brought by law-abiding citizens appealing unjust laws. In such cases, the Court can address a constitutional issue directly, without having other logistical issues getting in the way. Woollard is a compelling case that gives them that opportunity.

In happier news, that's the CZ P-01 with a Ka-Bar pistol bayonet at the top. Sure, CZ made one a few years back, but this one is lighter, and it has a really good blade. I don't know why the world needs more of these, but hey: it looks cool.

I still haven't figured out a holster solution for it.

Perishable Skills

I finally got to shoot the P210 on Saturday, and Earl here volunteered to take a few rounds for the sake of experimentation. The group is a mix of 147gr Hydra-Shok, 9BPLE, and 127gr +P+ Ranger. It was shot at a measly 20' since I haven't had a chance to shoot for nearly six months, and my skills have atrophied a bit.

The gun doesn't seem to care much about bullet shape or weight, and it's very consistent. Given its heritage, I expected it to prefer hotter European ball for target purposes. I was pleasantly surprised that this wasn't the case. It fed the mild Atlanta Arms 115gr loading quite well, the only issue being that the slide failed to lock back after the final round.

Skyrim

As much as I'm enjoying this game, there's one thing that keeps poking in to that whole "suspension of disbelief" thing for me.

The entire cast talks like Motörhead roadies.

No, really. Half the characters speak in an accent just like this, and the native people are called the Nords. One of the towns is named Hrothgar, after the Danish king of the Scylding line. Whiterun is ruled by a Jarl, and one of the mead halls is called Jorrvaskur, which basically means "spunky pony."

It quickly becomes obvious that Skyrim is little more than a thinly-veiled piece of anti-Scandinavian propaganda and defamation.

Brütal Legend was offensive enough, but this just crosses the line. Thanks for the hate crime, Bethesda. Our attorneys will be in contact shortly.

Sig Sauer P210 Legend

Swiss production of the SIG P210 ended quite awhile ago, but J.P. Sauer & Sohn of Eckernförde have since picked up the rights to produce the pistol. In the transition, there have been some changes, not the least of which is the fact that Sig Sauer will be importing them into the United States.

While the new model isn't cheap, it's certainly more affordable than Swiss specimens on the secondary market. As far as I can tell, it's just as well made, if not better in some respects.

Circling the Wagons

Eric Holder testified before Congress today for the second time regarding the Fast & Furious disaster. Here's the condensed version:

• He's not apologizing to the family of Bryan Terry


• The best way to keep illegal guns from flowing southward into Mexico is to further restrict the guns the government bought to ship southward to Mexico.


• It's all the fault of the Bush administration.


• He didn't know anything about it. His staff kept him in the dark.

The allegations of impropriety began to circulate in April of 2010.  Terry died in December, and despite the widely distributed and reported allegations, Holder claimed in May of 2011 that he'd only heard them a few weeks prior.  He revised that estimate to "probably (...) a couple of months" today.

If that's the way he's running his office, Holder is, at the very least, wildly incompetent.

He's calling an operation that provided weapons used in over 200 Mexican homicides a "failed response," and he swears he's taking measures to stop future lapses in judgement, but he's taking no responsibility. Best guess? Lanny Breuer and Dennis Burke get thrown to the wolves, then pardoned January 19th, 2013.

But Is It Art?

Scott Rickard is a mathematics professor at Dublin College. He also has a keen interest in music, which makes sense, as the two fields have some common points of interaction.

Repetition is a common trait to all music. I'm not just talking about Philip Glass and his tedious 2-hour arpeggio exercises; recurring patterns, no matter how tenuous, can be found in even the most complex music. It's hardwired into our brains somewhere. 

As an experiment, Rickard endeavored to write a piece of music "devoid of any pattern," one in which there's no repetition whatsoever. He's not the first to try this. Schoenberg and others have resorted to questionable mathematical and arbitrary systems to avoid conscious choice in the past, but nowadays, we've got technology on our side. Oh, what a bleak and horrible future we live in!

Does it work? Yes. Is it music? Technically, yes.



So...art? As Zappa once said, that's for the critics to decide. Frankly, I can't tell much difference between his random work and the supposedly organized drivel (epic lyric win at 04:04) of "modern" music I was force-fed in my academic days.

What's odd is that I'm somewhat fascinated by it. In a way, Rickard's piece is a challenge. The more I listen to it, the more I think I can catch a pattern somewhere, but I can never find it a second time. If I do, does that mean he failed, or that my subconscious mind is simply projecting meaning where there is none?

Jeez, dude, thanks for screwing with my head. As conceptual art, it wins.

Yep, It's Halloween

Talk about serendipity. I blame Manservant Hecubus.

I Hope They Do Parties

Meet the seasoned operators of Tactial Bodygaurd & Security SVC.  According to their website, TB&S is based out of Montgromery, Alabama. I can't seem to find Montgromery on a map, which leads me to believe that these folks are some serious covert operators. There does appear to be a ninja in some of their pictures.

What exactly do these guys do?

 We specialize in security for clubs, bars, convenient store, private parties. weather it be a small job or big nothing we cant handle.

These folks certainly look professional, which leads me to believe that the rampant typographical errors are some kind of code. Try as I might, I can't seem to crack it.  Good work, guys.

This We Don't Need

Just when the media starts to accept that the gun culture is the mainstream, a knuckle-dragging troglodyte like Crockett Keller decides to crash the party. Keller runs a gun shop in Mason, Texas and teaches the state CHL course. In a recent radio advertisement, he set some fairly prejudicial ground rules in his student selection process.

If you are a socialist liberal and/or voted for the current campaigner in chief, please do not take this class. You have already proven that you cannot make a knowledgeable and prudent decision as required under the law.  Also, if you are a non-Christian Arab or Muslim, I will not teach you the class. Once again, with no shame, I am Crockett Keller.

Guess which story is getting more attention?  Give yourself a cupcake if you guessed it was Keller.

Friday Quickies

You too can be Irony King (or other monarch) of the week by going here and giving your address.  They send you one of these bumper stickers free.  The site says it'll take 4-6 weeks to ship, but that's still plenty of time before the primaries.

In other news, there's a promising verdict from the North Carolina Superior Court (opinion linked at Volokh) upholding a felon's right to keep and bear arms.

Before you flinch at that, bear in mind that one can be punished as a felon for crimes that do little or no real harm to anyone.  Rehabilitation or decades of clean living don't matter:  a felony conviction of any sort is a lifetime ban from owning firearms.  However, if the right to keep and bear arms is a fundamental liberty (as the Supreme Court ruled in McDonald), can felons be denied its exercise forever?  After all, they still have rights to freedom of speech and legal counsel, right?

When All Else Fails, Lie

H.R. 822 now has 245 cosponsors.  I have my reasons for thinking it's the wrong approach, and even if it does get through the Senate, it won't be signed.  That's alright.  I like this one for one very salient reason: it's got folks in certain corners going all kinds of asplodey.

Today's exhibit is from the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (CSGV).  They were originally formed in 1975 as the National Coalition to Ban Handguns.  One of the founders was Edward Welles, who also started the Violence Policy Center.  At some point, they decided that the phrase "ban handguns" might be a little extreme, and they changed it.  If that story sounds familiar, the Violence Policy Center used to be Handgun Control International.  Evidently, "control" is also a scary word to the moderates these guys hope to attract.

Under the even less threatening name of the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, the CSGV collects $125,000 from the Joyce Foundation every year, which is about $120,000 more than the Brady Campaign makes.

Anyhow, this bill is bringing out the worst in the gun control crowd.  First we had Pulitzer Prize winner John Crewdson committing perjury on a Florida carry license application to prove some elusive point, and now we have this piece of claptrap, which is a cheap, manipulative lie.

Under 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9), also known as the Lautenberg Amendment, it is illegal for anyone convicted of any crime of domestic violence to own a gun.  Period.  No state will issue a carry permit to anyone thus convicted.  Why?  Because the applicant can't legally own a gun in the first place.  H.R. 822 won't do anything to make domestic violence worse.

The folks at CSGV know that, but this is how low they have to sink to get attention.

Zombies Are Passé

The whole "zombie" meme in the gun culture is just tired.  The only thing more likely to induce a contemptuous yawn of disinterest might be Punisher grips.  Zombies are totally 2009.  So are those posters of Obama looking like the Joker, or yelling "this is Sparta!" when you're not in Sparta (or gay).  Times change, and none of that foolishness is novel or witty any more.  It's just embarrassing.

Nonetheless, there still appears to be a profit in it.

We need a new bogeyman, and lately that seems to be flash mobs.  I'm telling you, suburban white folks are terrified of them, and I can see why.  I could use some additional cash flow, and since nobody's offered to load my new cartridge, I figure I'll kill two birds with one stone.

Newsflash: California Possibly Not Sinking

Things might not be what they seem. I have very little to substantiate this at the moment, but some folks with their ears closer to the ground than mine are wondering what Governor Brown might be playing at with the gun-control bills he signed into law this week.

We've got an interesting snippet from a statement he made today:

The governor tried to explain to an audience in Belmont why a bill that bans the open carrying of unloaded handguns and another that makes it easier to carry a concealed weapon were both signed.

“There is a phrase called the coincidence of opposites. I can even say it in Latin—coincidentia oppositorum. It means that apparently antagonistic measures can be melded together in a higher unity.”

This got me thinking.

Mulford Act: Full Circle

Today, California Governor Jerry Brown signed AB 144 into law, making open carry of any sort a misdemeanor.

Since 1967, there's been a loophole in § 12031 that allows an unlicensed citizen to carry a handgun, as long as it's visible and unloaded. It's a questionable mode of carry, but at least it's an option when others are not available. Now, Californians don't even have that. Who's to blame? Portantino? Brown? Nope. We are.

For over 40 years, the whole technicality was something of an open secret, but it was never front-page news. That is, until a bunch of pro-gun folks decided it was their mission to make it an issue. They wanted controversy, and they succeeded. Now, California citizens are worse off, and the Brady Campaign can chalk up a win.

Losing is still losing, no matter how righteous some thought they might have been. This didn't have to happen.

(Adam Winkler has a new book out called Gunfight, which traces the history of gun control in America.  The Mulford Act wasn't passed in a vacuum, and the book has a good history on the circumstances and events surrounding it.)

Now They Do Make a .46

Plenty of obnoxious clichés get thrown around in the gun culture, but the most annoying is, "I carry a .45 because they don't make a .46!" I'm mildly surprised when the simpletons chanting that one manage not to drool on themselves in public.

In fact, I am so weary of it that I'm going to rectify the situation. I'm going to make a .46 caliber handgun cartridge.

Now, you might say that's a bad idea. Let me tell you something. When George Washington wanted to cross the Potomac and drive the British out of New Jersey, I'm pretty sure some folks told him that was a bad idea. But he proved them wrong, didn't he? He sent them packing all the way back to California. Smelly hippies. Without him, we'd be spelling words like "color" and "flavor" with a "u." I'm telling you, that man was a great American.

What was I saying? Oh, yeah. I plan on calling the cartridge the .46 Ginormous Action Tactical. A serious load demands a serious name, and that means using the word "tactical" to the point that it loses all meaning. It also prevents confusion, since ".46 GAT" couldn't possibly be confused with any current commercial loading.

Dave's Not Here, Man

The ATF recently distributed a letter to firearms dealers to remind them that they cannot sell guns to users of marijuana. People are suddenly up in arms about the situation, which I find odd, since this isn't anything new.

Good old Kentucky Blue has been Schedule I since 1970, and the accompanying prohibitions date back to 1968. Having or consuming the stuff is illegal, and those who do so are prohibited under U.S.C. § 922(g) from receiving or possessing a firearm. Thanks to an unpleasant trend in jurisprudence, federal law overrides any state laws that might make it legal, even by prescription.

The current situation presents real a hardship to those who need the Maui Ouchie for legitimate medicinal purposes, and the punishments for those who use it recreationally are excessive and unjust. It might be nice to see things change, but the majority of pot smokers aren't the most...shall we say, motivated bunch. Peeling oneself off the beabag chair long enough to go shuffle around at a NORML rally doesn't get much done.

A legislative push would be nice, but the problem lies in the fact that I've never met an advocate for its legalization who wasn't an active user, and therefore engaged in criminal activity.  That hurts credibility a bit.  Mainstreaming the idea means getting folks who don't break the law to work on changing it.

A Right Deferred

The Supreme Court has chosen not to hear Williams v. Maryland this term.  Are we screwed, then?

The implications aren't encouraging. The first is that we couldn't get four Justices to take an interest.  The second is that there might have been four, but they didn't think they could convince a fifth to their side.  A loss at the Supreme Court level would essentially end the reach of the 2nd Amendment at the doorstep of one's home.

While Williams was our best overall case, we've still got Masciandaro and Woollard awaiting review.  However, their chances aren't looking too bright at the moment, either.

That leaves constitutional protection of the right to carry in a precarious position, with three 4th Circuit decisions implying that there isn't such a right.  I worry that those might be taken as precedents in future litigation.

Vacancy

Music for empty rooms, spooling loops, and palindromes that don't quite work.

Vacancy  (00:39)

Black Hattery

While going through my server logs a week back, I noticed some odd traffic. The site was getting hits from keywords like "Viagra" and "Cialis." This is strange, considering that I've never really had much interest in, ahem, male enhancement products. When I checked my site in Google, I found this bit of oddness:



I did some research, and the diagnosis seemed to be that the site had been hacked.

Except it hadn't. I went through and checked for all of the usual symptoms, but found none. File permissions and timestamps were unchanged. There was no unusual FTP traffic. My database was clean. I followed Chris Pearson's advice and checked for rogue files. There were none. I ran Cotton Rohrscheib's scripts against everything, but I found no base64_decode functions other than where they should be. My theme files are hand-coded, so it was a trivial matter to rule out tampering.

Wordpress wasn't the problem. My server wasn't the problem. Foreigners and hippies weren't the problem.

That leaves Google.

Sooner or Later

We know now that the ATF sat by and let straw purchases of weapons happen in Phoenix.  We know they reassured dealers that the weapons would be tracked.  We know that didn't happen, and that those weapons have been used in dozens of homicides.

As of today, we also know that the ATF themselves purchased weapons and sold them to criminals.  Apparently, John Dodson was given authorization and ordered by Supervisor Voth to pick up a few Draco pistols and deliver them to suspects.

I'm not sure why Dodson didn't bring this up during his testimony to Congress back in June.  Any risk of self-incrimination can easily be countered by the Nuremberg Defense, especially considering that his vehement resistance to the idea is well documented.

This whole thing is far worse than Watergate, and yet only two mainstream news organizations are actively following it.  I don't know what it's going to take to bring this to the front page, but Congressional hearings are largely toothless when the department charged with prosecuting the issue is complicit in the problem at hand.

A Lubricious Incline

News comes that politicians in Boston are looking to curb violent crime by restricting the sale of knives.

There's some precedent for this across the Atlantic. In the United Kingdom, they responded to a high homicide rate by banning guns. Something had to be done.

Then they saw an epidemic of knife crime, so they banned many types of knives. Something had to be done.

Then folks started assaulting each other with pint beer glasses, and something had to be done. They considered mandating plastic glasses.  I am not kidding.

When folks start beating each other with tire irons, rolling pins, and lawn gnomes, something will have to be done.

If Dihydrogen Monoxide continues to claim as many lives as it currently does, something will have to be done.

Of course, they could try looking at the root causes of violence, such as unemployment and alcoholism, and...oh, who am I kidding?  It's easier to just ban stuff.

For the wee drunken children and all.

On Desperation

By now, you've likely heard of Attack Watch, a site on which loyal citizens can report their friends, neighbors, politicians, boss, or gardener for spreading "misinformation" about the President and his agenda.  The site is registered to Obama for America, an underdog organization with only about $140,629,243 in capital.  It's not quite the Ministry of Love, but it'll have to do.

I got to thinking, and I've been pretty hard on the guy myself.  In fact, I'm positively wracked with guilt.  As such, I've turned myself in to the site.  I advise anyone else who's disagreed with the administration to do so as well.  Consider it a gesture of purgation and reconciliation.  Really, isn't it time we started healing as a country?

I've also taken the proactive step of reporting anyone I suspect of not having the moral character to do so themselves.  A short list follows.

On Hypocrisy

John Crewdson has an article on Bloomberg in which he laments the progress of H.R. 822.  One implication of the bill is that a New York resident could bypass his own state's requirements by simply getting a non-resident concealed weapon license from Florida, which New York would have to honor.

Apparently, this represents such an existential crisis for Mr. Crewdson that he applied for a Florida license. He details the process in the article, along with the fact that he lied on the application:

I’ve never touched a handgun and I haven’t been to Florida in decades, yet this month Florida officials mailed me a permit to carry a concealed gun.  (...)  Florida, which granted my permit after I viewed a half- hour, online safety video, now says it made a mistake.

Florida Statute 790.06 clearly stipulates that the applicant must have taken one of the training courses listed within, but Mr. Crewdson did not complete any of them.  False statements on the application constitute a second-degree misdemeanor under Section 837.06.  Oops.

Will he be prosecuted?  Unlikely.  Still, there's a certain bit of schadenfreude in the fact that a Pulitzer Prize winner would have to sink this low to make a point.  It makes me question the validity of the Pulitzer when they'll give one to this shill, but not to Duke Ellington.

(Thanks to Rob Allen for the heads-up.)

On Civility

Oh, this is just lovely. A company called StarvingEyes Advergaming is hosting a Flash game called Tea Party Zombies Must Die. It's a first-person shooter that allows the player to kill zombiefied versions of Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and other Tea Party celebrities.

What's that again about conservatives being hate mongers?

Felix Gilman: The Half-Made World

This is one of the most unique works of fiction I've read in awhile.  A summary doesn't do it justice, but I'd recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in science fiction or fantasy.

Spoilers ahead.  If you don't want the good bits given away, go read the book, then come back.

On second thought, that would make reading this article pointless.  Oh well.   Do what you want.  Free country and all.

1937 All Over Again

For someone claiming unalloyed fealty to the Constitution, Rick Perry sure does want to tinker with it. He's called for repeal of the 16th and 17th Amendments, and he wants new ones to outlaw abortion and gay marriage.

This guy wants to take our founding document and tailor it to fit his personal whims. That should scare the living daylights out of any American.

Equally strange are his plans for the Supreme Court. He wants rolling term limits for Justices, and he wants to give Congress the power to overrule verdicts by a 2/3 vote. Both ideas are wretched, and both have been tried before.

Lando Calrissian: A Man for Our Time

We were pretty slow at work this weekend. Apparently, Atlanta is not only hosting a football game, but Dragon*Con and Black Gay Pride as well. It's hard to compete with a lineup that covers that many bases.

Given this unprecedented confluence of diversity, one must inevitably wonder: is Lando Calrissian getting the respect he deserves? He could be a major influence for cultural integration and acceptance.

Seriously, look at the guy. He's all kinds of fabulous.



Now, I'm not implying anything here.  Lando does seem to prefer the company of women, but then there's this:



Of course, that doesn't prove much, either. I'm not gay, but I'd let Harrison Ford hug me. I might draw the line at second base, but I could definitely find it in my heart to forgive him for that awful film he made with Ellen Degeneres' ex-wife.

In any case, I'd like to declare September 4th National Lando Calrissian Appreciation Day.  The man has the potential to bring us all closer together.  I mean, what else is there to commemorate?  Anton Bruckner's birthday?  The deposition of Romulus Augustulus?  The founding of the Third Republic?  Bah, says I.  Lando's the man, and he deserves this day.

Fundamentals

Sarge made this adorable mockery of the innumerable shooter diagnostic charts circulating on the internet.  He takes what we're all thinking and sums it up in one picture.

YouTube videos and gun forums are dubious sources of knowledge at best, and they provide no real-time feedback for the shooter.  A simplistic chart (which is designed to correct defects in long-distance, one-handed shooting, by the way) might help as part of a whole suite of training tools, but taken by itself, it is of little value.

Most people don't need a more expensive gun, a laser, or larger magazines.  They need to find a shooting coach and drill on fundamentals.  Once they do, they find that shooting is an enjoyable hobby rather than a disappointing ordeal.

Today in Music History

On this day in 1957, Jimmy Smith began recording a series of sessions that would be compiled as The Sermon!

The first song recorded was "J.O.S." (for "Jimmy Oscar Smith").  It's a fast-moving 32-bar blues buoyed by Smith's deft pedalwork and Donald "Duck" Bailey's drumming.  Though Bailey would be replaced by the unstoppable juggernaut Art Blakey in subsequent sessions, he's a great fit for this setting.  Kenny Burrell is magnificent on the guitar, but the real shock is the trumpet work of Lee Morgan, who was 19 years old at the time of the recording.

Morgan is brash and cocky, and what's more, he's got the talent to get away with it.  At 6:24, you can hear his solo running well past the chorus.  Smith stabs a dissonant chord to signal him, and Morgan's either blowing too hard to notice or he feels like mischief.  In either case, it's a dose of humor that fits right in with the informal feeling of the record.

Shaking Through

A few minutes ago, things in my house wobbled and swayed for 30 seconds or so.

Wind?  No.

Strange.

As it turns out, a 5.8 magnitude earthquake struck Virginia, north of Richmond.  While the news reports it as being felt as far as North Carolina and Ohio, I can attest that we felt it down here on the Piedmont Plateau as well.

I'm telling you, allowing this to happen is yet another failure of this Congress and White House.

At Least He Hacks Off the Bradys

I was incorrect in a previous article, and I'd like to post a correction.  Steve Perry, the beloved singer from arena rock band Journey, is not running for the Republican Presidential nomination.  I regret the misunderstanding and assure the readership that swift punishment will be meted out.  There will be demerits.

As it turns out, the actual candidate is Rick Perry, shown here displaying some truly wretched muzzle and trigger discipline:



Way to set an example, Rick.

The Brady Campaign wasted no time putting the shot to good use, issuing a press release on the matter.

The Republican primary campaign has hardly begun and already it is being dominated by extremists. None as scary as Rick Perry who brazenly carries weapons — concealed and revealed. Even on the campaign trail!

Only an egotistical extremist would carry a loaded weapon into a crowd — encouraging others to do so.  Is this where America is headed? Is this the America you want for our nation’s children?

Heck, why not?  Let us not forget that Teddy Roosevelt was known to carry a pistol, and he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905. He also kept a gorgeous engraved FN 1900 on the nightstand in the White House.  Of course, handguns weren't banned in Washington DC in the early 20th Century.  A modern President might find himself running afoul of the law by keeping and carrying a gun there.

Perhaps Warming Up to Ron Paul

Tonight's Republican Presidential debate in Ames was, of course, little more than glossy dinner theater wrapped in the flannel shawl of politics. Heck, it was run by Fox News. Nevertheless, it gave us some clue as to the intentions and character of our possible nominees.  Some of it came as a surprise.

In short, Ron Paul rocked the house. We're talking Hendrix at Woodstock, folks. All the man needed was a bottle of Zippo fluid and a Fender Strat.

The most interesting dynamic was the running academic debate between him and Rick Santorum on constitutional limits. I disagree with Paul vehemently on his blanket hostility to the 14th Amendment, but I sure wouldn't have to debate it with the guy in person. Though he comes across as a little nervy, Paul is capable of delivering complex concepts in layman's terms, and doing so with real fire. The crowd responded to him, in approval and not, more vocally than they did for any of the other candidates.

Kimber

You can't pick up a gun magazine without seeing advertisements for Kimber's pistols on every third page or so.  They certainly look debonair in print.  In the hand, they feel wonderful, what with  all the judiciously sloped edges and modern touches.  It's obvious that they place a great priority on the idea of the gun as art.

That's fine.  There's certainly a place for that.  Unfortunately, Kimber's production practices fall woefully short when it comes to the idea of the gun as a functional weapon.

How and How Not to Win

In the Heller and McDonald cases, the Supreme Court found that the 2nd Amendment protects the right of individual citizens to keep and bear arms, but under current jurisprudence, that right ends at the front door of the home. Though both decisions contain dicta implying that the right to carry arms outside the home is protected, the lower courts disagree, citing a lack of specific direction from the Big Nine.

There are several cases currently awaiting the Court's review on the matter.  Woollard v. Sheridan challenges the unrealistic and corrupt permitting system used by the state of Maryland to deny the right of self-protection to ordinary folks, even those who have proven that they are in imminent danger. The plaintiff in Williams v. Maryland never even tried to get a permit, knowing that denial was a foregone conclusion. He was convicted of illegally carrying, and his conviction was upheld in a very arrogant 4th Circuit ruling.

United States v. Masciandaro is a third case, this one brought by a man who was convicted for having a firearm in his vehicle on National Park land. Of the three, this might be the best one to bring before the Court.

"A Perfect Storm of Idiocy"

Representative Issa and Senator Grassley released a joint report [pdf] on their investigation into the ATF's Fast and Furious operation. It covers their recent interviews with ATF officials in Mexico.

Acting ATF Attaché Carlos Canino gave his thoughts on the situation:

You don't lose guns. You don't walk guns. You don't let guns get out of your sight. You have all these undercover techniques, all these safety measures in place so guns do not get out of your custody or control. I mean, I mean, you could follow, you could do a surveillance for 1,000 miles . . . either use planes, trackers, you use everything under the sun, but at the end of the day, those guns do not leave your control. At some point those guns do not get into the streets.

Law enforcement is known to let drugs and other contraband "walk" from time to time if a minor infraction might lead them upstream to the bigger fish.  However, there is one hard and fast exception:  you never let guns go.  The agents who authorized and conducted Fast and Furious knew this, and chose to take the risk.

Walking away from one, walking away from one gun when you know that that gun is going to be used in a crime when you, I mean, there is no, there was no gray area here guys. There was no gray area here. We knew that these guys were trafficking guns into Mexico. There is no gray area.

He also implicates Mark Chait, Assistant Director of Field Operations.  Mario Gonzalez Rodriguez was murdered by Sinaloa cartel members, who were later found to be in possession of guns traced back to Fast and Furious.  By his account, Canino sought to address the matter with Chait, but was prohibited from telling officials in Mexico of this connection.

Another 15 Minutes

I had the day off, so I decided to pore over Anders Breivik's self-serving manifesto.  It's obvious that he took some inspiration from Timothy McVeigh in the execution of his plans.  As others have noted, he cribs some of his personal mythology from the Unabomber manifesto in justification of his actions.

Madmen like Breivik and Kaczynski write this stuff to preserve their place in history, and we read it in a vain attempt to find some reason, some explanation, for their atrocities.  Of course, there isn't any:  some people are simply evil.  To give attention to their ramblings is to play into their hands.  Yet here I am laboring through all 1480 interminable pages.

After all the conspiracy theories, historical revisionism (which he claims to abhor), and claims to be a knight in a shadow order of renewed Templars, we come to Breivik's planning notes.  This is where it becomes clear that he's not only deluded, but quite incompetent as well.

It seems that his research on weapons procurement consisted of watching a BBC documentary on Prague.  Given the Czech Republic's lenient gun laws, Breivik decided to try getting guns "off the radar" there.

Norway's Oklahoma City

Before shooting 84 people in Utøya, Anders Breivik used ammoninum nitrate to blow up government buildings.  Sound familiar?

Breivik was a member of the right-wing Fremskrittpartiet ("Progress Party"), a group taking a hard-line stance against the lenient immigration policies traditionally held by Scandanavian governments.  This is one of their promotional posters:



The caption translates as, "the perpetrator was of foreign origins!"  Breivik himself appears to have been less than fond of Muslim immigrants.

So, what happens now?  Likely the same thing that happened here in 1995.  The Norwegians will see increasing calls for stricter gun control laws and regulation on vehement discource.  Those holding conservative or libertarian views will be painted with Breivik's broad brush.

Extremism isn't exclusive to nation or a culture.  This isn't just an American phenomenon.  We all need to be aware of the darkness that lies at the outer margins of any political ideology.

Crossed Wires on Gun Control

I came home to two different emails tonight. The news is good, and unintentionally amusing. Both messages regard Monday's Department of Justice announcement that gun dealers in the southwest would be required to report multiple sales of rifles to the ATF. The first is from the NRA-ILA:

House Committee Passes Amendment to Defund Illegal Obama Firearm Sales Reporting Requirement

Today, during consideration of the FY 2012 Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bill, pro-gun U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-Mont.) offered an amendment to prohibit the use of funds for a new and unauthorized multiple sales reporting plan proposed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The Amendment was passed by a vote of 25-16.

The Rehberg Amendment, which was strongly supported by NRA, will defund the Justice Department’s controversial and illegal move requiring federally licensed firearms retailers in states bordering Mexico to report multiple sales of semi-automatic rifles.

That's good news, and my hat's off to Denny Rehberg. The second email is from the Brady Campaign:

Victory! President Obama listened to us and not the NRA!

Dear Cordwainer,

Late Monday evening, the Obama Administration announced that it would require gun dealers in states bordering Mexico to report to law enforcement multiple sales of certain semi-automatic rifles. We applaud this move by the President which gives federal law enforcement an important new tool to fight gun trafficking into Mexico.

Thank you to everyone who helped the Brady Campaign push this issue with the Obama Administration.

Evidently, their victory dance was premature, and it's ironic that their message was posted over an hour after the NRA's announcement.  Cake will not be served for the Bradys.

In case you're wondering where this whole mess began, here's a hint:



Thanks to Bob Owens for the source.

Rule #2

Arizona Senator Lori Klein justified pointing a loaded gun at a reporter by claiming, "I just didn't have my hand on the trigger."  I wasn't aware that made it acceptable.  I'll have to run it past the folks I shoot with and see how they react.

Evidently, Ms. Klein bought the Ruger LCP to supplement her ".40 caliber revolver."  Though she mentions the usual politician backstory of childhood hunting trips with dad, she does not mention any contemporary training, nor does she seem to understand the gravity of carrying a pistol.

She is fond of the Ruger because it's "so cute."  I'm sure cleaning up blood and settling lawsuits diminishes the "cute" factor by quite a bit.  She needs to leave her guns at home until such a time as she can get some sort of training.  Until then, she's a dangerous liability to everyone around her.

Look to Windward

~ "God that thing is ugly," Huyler said when they first saw it, riding across from the wreck of the Winter Storm in the tiny shuttle with the ship’s black-skinned, gray-suited avatar.   "And these people are supposed to be decadent aesthetes?"

~ "There is a theory that they are ashamed of their weaponry. As long as it looks inelegant, rough and disproportionate they can pretend that it is not really theirs, or not really a part of their civilization, or only temporarily so, because everything else they make is so subtly refined."

Look to Windward is (chronologically) the second novel of Iain M. Banks' Culture series.  In his mythology, the Culture is a post-scarcity society, facilitated by artificial intelligences and near-perfect manufacturing technologies.  The human lifespan averages four centuries, and the people want for nothing.  The political structure is a benign anarchy, with policy decisions made largely through direct (and instantaneous) democracy.

In short, the Culture is a liberal utopia.

Closing the Barn Door

The Justice Department announced today that gun shops in Arizona, Texas, California, and New Mexico will have to report all sales in which multiple "high powered" rifles are involved.

There are two problems with this.  The first is that the horses have already run free.  Lone Wolf Trading Company and the other dealers implicated in the Fast & Furious controversy were cooperating with the BATFE.  The sales were done under the orders and direct supervision of the Bureau, the dealers were reporting them in real time, and those guns still got across the border into Mexico.

So, Justice wants to generate (by their estimates) an extra 18,000 reports per year, most of which will do nothing more than tie up payroll and manpower the ATF doesn't have, and which will end up sitting in boxes and gathering dust in the Martinsburg office.   How is an insignificant stopgap like this supposed to staunch the bleeding?

Furthermore, exactly how does the multiple reporting requirement work, when 18 U.S.C. 923(g)(3)(B) explicitly mentions "pistols or revolvers," but not rifles?  Who has the authority to change that regulation on the fly?

A bill specifically barring the use of Federal funds for this purpose is languishing in committee.  If your Senator is not co-sponsoring it, contact him.

At this point, token half-measures aren't going to cut it.  Acting Director Melson managed to sidestep the blowback by testifying to Congress on his own, and the fact that some of the "walked" guns are showing up in domestic crime scenes doesn't bode well for the administration.  The only option I see for them now is to come clean, and that's not going to be pretty.

Equivalence

OK, folks.  9mm Parabellum isn't any more accurate than 9mm Luger.  It's not more reliable.  It does not have more "stopping power."  They are the exact same thing.

The 9mm Parabellum was designed and named by Georg Luger.  Despite the fact that he never called the loading 9mm Luger, some American manufacturers referred to it as such because the pistol bearing his name became quite popular after the first World War. It made marketing easier.

Luger was not a Nazi.  He died well before there was such a thing.  Nor did General Patton "change the name" from Luger to Parabellum to make it sound "more American."

I mean, where do people get this stuff?

Ezell v. Chicago: Full of Win

Does the right to keep and bear arms include the right to fire them?  According to today's 7th Circuit opinion [pdf], it does.

In order to keep a functional firearm in the home, Chicago residents must acquire a permit.  Part of getting the permit involves proving proficiency through a live-fire course at a range.  However, the city has an ordinance that prohibits anyone from opening a range in which the average person can do so.  Read that again.  Yep.

The 2nd Amendment Foundation sought an injunction against enforcement of the ordinance last year, but Judge Kendall upheld its constitutionality in District Court.  The case moved to the 7th Circuit in April, and they were not pleased with the city.

Stung by the result of McDonald v. City of Chicago, the City quickly enacted an ordinance that was too clever by half. Recognizing that a complete gun ban would no longer survive Supreme Court review, the City required all gun owners to obtain training that included one hour of live‐range instruction, and then banned all live ranges within City limits. This was not so much a nod to the importance of live range training as it was a thumbing of the municipal nose at the Supreme Court. [Judge Rovner's concurrence, p. 51]

Nor did they appreciate Kendall's somewhat apathetic treatment of the constitutional issues.

To be fair, the standards for evaluating Second Amendment claims are just emerging, and this type of litigation is quite new. (...) [but] The harm to [plaintiffs'] Second Amendment rights cannot be remedied by damages, their challenge has a strong likelihood of success on the merits, and the City’s claimed harm to the public interest is based entirely on speculation. [p. 3]

Arguments were heard by Judges Rovner, Kanne, and Sykes.  You may recall that the latter judge was the author of the Skoien opinion, which figures strongly in this case. All three agreed that the Chicago ordinance fails to pass any sane standard of constitutional scrutiny.

At the end of the day, the issue of building shooting ranges is peripheral: the real question is whether infringements on the 2nd Amendment must pass the same level of scrutiny as infringements on other enumerated rights.

RMMLite

Last night, I decided to upgrade Ubuntu to 11.4.  Long story short, that was a mistake.  An hour of back-tracking later, I had re-installed 10.4.  I plan on sticking with it for the foreseeable future.

11.4 is buggy, to put it mildly.  There's some conflict with the drivers for my Nvidia card, and the system locked hard several times.  I once enjoyed hand-configuring Slackware installations by hand, but my zeal for that faded years ago.

The Unity interface is laggy, cluttered, and counter-intuitive.  While I can understand why some might find the Gnome interface to be bland and utilitarian, the OSX-looking dock on the left side just eats valuable screen real estate.  Frankly, I can't tell what its exact purpose is.  In some ways, it acts like WindowMaker's dock, but it also serves as a redundant menu.

Speaking of menus, the original Gnome panel is also there, but most of its functionality has been removed.  It appears that it's meant to host the application bars for open windows, an approach that gets very confusing when multiple programs are running.  There appears to be no way to drag-and-drop programs to to either panel to be used as quick launchers.

Simple routines (like a "run application" dialogue) are replaced with an awkward search engine, and the whole thing feels pasted together.  I can't imagine this being easy for new users.

To make things worse, I lost my copy of RMMLite at some point during the backup process.  As it turns out, it's no longer supported.  That isn't such a surprise, considering that the Karma hasn't been manufactured for about six years.  Still, I thought it'd be easier to find a replacement copy.

I tracked a backup down on an old hard drive, and if you need it, here it is.  It's self-executing (./rmmlite.jar) under newer Java implementations.  On older ones, the syntax would be: java -jar rmmlite.jar.

Teabagging=Protected Speech

The Supreme Court has ruled [pdf] against the state of California in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, striking down AB 1179 as an unconstitutionally vague restriction on free speech.

The law at hand provides for a fine of $1000 to be levied against retailers who sell or rent violent video games to minors. Using a modified version of the Miller test, the state would determine which games contained the necessary quotient of violence to qualify.  The majority opinion of the Court states that California's law does not address a "compelling" interest, and thus does not meet strict scrutiny.

Rejecting the notion that depictions of violence in video games are more vivid or dangerous than those in literature, Justice Scalia writes:

Reading Dante is unquestionably more cultured and intellectually edifying than playing Mortal Kombat. But these cultural and intellectual differences are not constitutional ones. Crudely violent video games, tawdry TV shows, and cheap novels and magazines are no less forms of speech than The Divine Comedy, and restrictions upon them must survive strict scrutiny-a question to which we devote our attention in Part III, infra. Even if we can see in them "nothing of any possible value to society . . . , they are as much entitled to the protection of free speech as the best of literature [footnote, p. 9]

He goes on to point out that many great works of literature, such as Grimm's Fairy Tales, the Odyssey, and Dante's Inferno feature harrowing acts of violence.

Paul Helmke Retiring

There aren't many details yet, but Paul Helmke, current President of the Brady Campaign, has announced his retirement.  He served since 2006.

Bringing him on was a shrewd move for the Brady Campaign. Helmke was ostensibly a Republican. He presented himself as a moderate, and he was a master of spin who helped tailor their image accordingly.   Under Helmke, we started hearing phrases like "sensible gun laws" and "reasonable regulation" more often.

He vehemently opposed the Heller case, but immediately after the decision, he pronounced it a victory for their agenda.  He deftly turned a direct idealogical loss in the McDonald case into a set of talking points about what current and potential restrictions would or wouldn't pass constitutional muster.

Ten years ago, this guy could have been truly frightening, but his tenure came a bit too late.   The culture and the debate have changed, and even he couldn't render the Bradys' message palatable to the general public.  He was quite unique for his role, however, and it remains to be seen if they can find someone equivalent to replace him.

Bon Iver

Justin Vernon's first album under the Bon Iver moniker was the unlikely product of a ruined relationship, a battle with mononucleosis, and a self-imposed hermitage in the northern woods of Wisconsin.  It was a sparse, ramshackle record that was by turns confessional and willfully obscure.

Coming as something as a surprise, For Emma, Forever Ago was also quite successful.

The self-titled sophomore record replaces some of the intimacy with a grander cinematic sweep, but Vernon's artistic voice is still much the same.  In "Holocene," he insists that "I was not magnificent," just before the song kicks in and proves him quite wrong.  Magnificence on a humble scale is how Bon Iver operates, and the addition of a judiciously placed, and sometimes unorthodox, ensemble helps convey that.

Traver's Back in Town

Rumor has it that Kenneth Melson, acting director of the ATF, will be removed from office amid the political fallout from Project Gunrunner.  Apparently, Andrew Traver is flying to Washington for a meeting with Eric Holder and Deputy Attorney General James Cole next week.

The administration tried to get Traver nominated to fill the position of Director late last year, but failed.  The office has been vacant since Truscott's resignation in 2006, and the Senate has been unwilling to confirm anyone as a replacement.

Installing Traver is a way of getting him close to the top without the pesky confirmation process, but it's also a tacit admission of guilt.  They wouldn't be throwing Melson out (and failing to promote from within) unless they felt that the information showing up in the Congressional hearings was something truly worth worrying about.

If that's the case, let's hope it doesn't end with one scapegoat.

Nationmaking in the 21st Century

The people of Iceland will be updating their constitution in the coming months.  What's interesting is how they're doing it:  by polling Facebook users.

Do let's make jokes now.

When they gained independence in 1944, Iceland pretty much copied and pasted the Danish constitution.  The name for the legislature was changed from Folketing to Althingi, and the office of the king was replaced with an elected president.  Almost everything else remained intact.

Their current constitution takes a few concepts from ours, but can be vague on certain matters of civil rights.  Section VI establishes a state church, and allowances are made for restrictions on liberty in the name of "public order," which is a bit vague.  Then there's this:

The law shall guarantee for everyone the necessary assistance in case of sickness, invalidity, infirmity by reason of old age, unemployment and similar circumstances.

Sound familiar?

Plaxico Burress and the Brady Campaign

Plaxico Burress caught the pass that won the Giants the 2007 Super Bowl.  Nine months later, he caught a bullet in the leg.  He'd been carrying a firearm in a New York nightclub, tucked into his pants with no holster.  The weapon dropped down his pants leg, and when he tried to catch it, he depressed the trigger.

He was later arrested and served two years in prison for illegally carrying a firearm.  Now he's out, and he's working for the Brady Campaign.  According to their press release,

[H]is direct, and painful, experience with a gun in a nightclub in 2008 had taught him a lot of lessons. It had taught him, ultimately, that guns make everything worse.

Of course, professional football players are experts on gun safety, just like they're experts on the humane treatment of animals.

Hoping to slow their decline into utter irrelevancy, the Brady Campaign will grab at whatever straw they can.  Adding a celebrity like Burress to the roster doesn't really help, though.  It would be one thing if he was the victim of an act of violence, but Burress is an idiot who shot himself in the leg.  He's not a tragic example; he's a buffoon and a laughingstock.

Hey, whatever works, guys.

Salt in the Wound

The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled [pdf] that the NRA is eligible for reimbursement of attorneys' fees from Chicago and Oak Park.  That makes my day.

You may recall that the NRA had a case running in parallel to McDonald v. Chicago, and though they lost, they were later vindicated by Alan Gura's victory in the Supreme Court.  The ever-quotable Frank Easterbrook writes:

This litigation was over except for the entry of an injunction by the district court. Chicago and Oak Park capitulated, which made the exercise unnecessary. By the time defendants bowed to the inevitable, plaintiffs had in hand a judgment of the Supreme Court that gave them everything they needed. If a favorable decision of the Supreme Court does not count as “the necessary judicial imprimatur” on the plaintiffs’ position (Buckhannon, 532 U.S. at 605), what would?

Now, if Alan Gura could start getting his fees back, we'd be somewhat square.

Appetite for Self-Destruction

For nearly 70 years the music business and the record business were one and the same.  If an act wanted to be successful, they'd need to sign with a major label at some point.  That meant a record contract.

Never mind that the contract meant signing away massive amounts of control (and potential revenue) to a corporation driven by fickle trends in exchange for promotion:  that was the only way to go.  The labels knew it.  Everyone knew it.  It was accepted wisdom.

Artists lived under a modern-day feudal relationship with the labels.  If one was commercially viable and could turn out a few decent songs, they had a chance at making it.  Of course, it was the record company who ultimately profited the most.  Artists could expect to get a decent percentage of the revenue from live performances (as long as the label promoted them well enough to fill seats), but the label received most of the profits from the actual records sold.

And selling records was the business of the labels.  There was a good markup on records, and later cassettes.  The physical artifact was of immense value to listeners, and as long as the label had a lock on the distribution of that, they had a guaranteed revenue stream.

Then, in the 1990's, the whole thing broke.

Stephen Camp, Rest in Peace

Word comes that Stephen Camp passed away last night.  He was a former Sargeant with the Denton, TX police.  In his later years, he was a tireless 2nd Amendment advocate with both the NRA and the Texas State Rifle Association.  He maintained a valuable and enjoyable site of his own, and he was known on many of the established firearms forums for his eloquence, knowledge, and patience.

He is survived by his wife Sandra, who has requested that any donations be directed to the Denton Police Officers' Association.

The Trouble with Timetables

Howard Camping is predicting that the world will end on Saturday, May 21st.  Apparently, the End of Days will be preceded by an earthquake in the Pacific Rim at 6:00 PM.

So, true believers, feel free to get in touch with me.  I'll set up a dedicated PayPal account, and you can deposit all the money you won't be needing as of Sunday there.  I guarantee I can put it to better use than charlatans like Camping would.

Before we get all gunched up over silly numerological ramblings, let's remember Matthew 24:36:

But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

It's not curtains until the Big Man Upstairs says so, and it doesn't seem like he's going to be making reservations.

Camping's made this prediction before.  In 1994 alone, he predicted that the end was coming on September 27th, September 29th, and October 2nd.  When the world stubbornly stuck around after each of those, he predicted its demise on March 31st, 1995.  That also failed to transpire.

Somebody keep this guy away from the horsie track, folks.

He's not the first, of course.  Edgar Whisenant predicted the end three times during a three-week period in 1988, and again in Rosh Hashana, 1989.  Between 1975 and 1994 (big year for this stuff), Charles Taylor predicted the end no less than thirteen times.

And yet here we still are.

(I don't know if there's any connection, but May 21st also marks the founding of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church in 1863.)

Spaaaace!

Cave Johnson would be proud of the Space Personality Core.  No employee of Aperture Science has ever shown such utter devotion to a singular objective as this little guy.

His joy at the consummation of his duties is obvious, well-deserved, and enunciated with no small amount of enthusiasm.  Here's a short edit of his utterance, suitable for a ringtone.  Good luck out there, little buddy.  We're all proud of you.

Williams v. Maryland

The Supreme Court's decision in D.C. v. Heller affirmed that the 2nd Amendment guarantees an individual right to own guns.  McDonald v. Chicago incorporated that right against the states.  Both of those cases were about ownership of guns in the home.  The issue of carry outside the home (the "bearing" part of "keep and bear") was touched upon only lightly and vaguely.

This case may change that.

Charles Williams legally purchased a gun in Maryland.  He jumped through all the hoops.  He did everything right.  After picking it up from the shop, he dropped it off at his girlfriend's house.  Later, he retrieved the gun and headed home.  He was arrested and sentenced to a year in jail for unlawful transportation of a firearm without a permit.

Williams admits that he didn't even apply for a permit.  Why?  Because the state of Maryland has made it clear that they don't issue them.  Sure, there's a bureaucratic framework for doing so, but the process is so arbitrary that denial is a foregone conclusion.

At the moment, Mr. Williams is a criminal.  He hurt nobody.  He didn't deprive anyone of anything.  He simply committed a malum prohibitum offense that would not have been a crime if his rights were respected.

Odd Crossings

Apologies to Bruce Cockburn for stealing his chord progression.

Odd Crossings  (00:58)

We Got Him

Just in time for the 11:00 news (but a bit early for the 2012 election), the President announced that Osama bin Laden has been killed.  Navy SEALs stormed a mansion in Abbottabad, Pakistan early Sunday morning and bin Laden fell in the ensuing firefight.

It only took 10 years and two wars costing over $2 trillion.  While I'm glad he's out of the picture, I have few illusions that this is much more than a symbolic victory.

Abbottabad isn't some remote cave in the mountains.  It's a wealthy, metropolitan city with football stadiums situated near the Silk Road.  Bin Laden was living well there, and he had people protecting him.  Those people have money, power, and access to government resources.  Even more were willing to turn a blind eye and keep their mouths shut.  They will carry on without him.  Expect violence in the coming weeks as his lieutenants fight with one another to fill the vacuum.

This isn't over.  I don't know that it ever will be.

You Pay Your Money...

With any sort of specialty hobby, you've got enthusiasts.  Some of those folks will spend massive amounts of money for the best equipment they can get.  There are more than a few companies who are eager and willing to take advantage of that.

Case in point:  AudioQuest makes a "high end" HDMI cable that runs $1650.99.  I've no clue what advantage you get for that kind of scratch.  Neither does anyone else, and the reviews have subsequently taken on a David Hasselhoff vibe.

What's great about it: Color matched my shag carpet and futon, allowed me to see further past the visible light spectrum.

What's not so great: Went blind, girlfriend captured by winged livestock, may have unleashed Armageddon.


No, I would not recommend this to a friend.

The truth of the matter is, there's no reason to buy this instead of an off-the-shelf $30 cable.

The Trouble With Normal

It always gets worse.

By now, you've likely heard "Friday" by Rebecca Black.  It's easy to criticize on any number of levels.  It's vapid.  It's an idol farm's vanity project to to milk rich parents of their money.  It's overproduced to the point of sterility.  The singer's voice is so saturated by pitch correction that it sounds like fingernails being raked across a blackboard.

In short, it's everything that's wrong with pop music.  But it's also the new normal.  For all the mocking and vitriol, everyone's heard it.

Ruger SR1911

Well, it's official.  Ruger has entered the rather crowded 1911 pistol game. Ordinarily, I'd respond to this with a yawn, but a few factors make me suspect they'll do great things with it.

Jeff Quinn wrote a nice writeup on it, and he sounds optimistic.  It'll have a cast frame, which is little cause for worry since the folks at Pine Tree Castings have been proving the investment casting process to be capable of great durability for decades.  A point of interest is the fact that the plunger tube is cast as part of the frame, which corrects one of my greatest complaints about the design.

When I first heard they'd be making a 1911, I worried a bit.  Ruger being Ruger, I expected them to slap a giant lawyer warning on the side of the slide (like they do on their revolvers).  They avoided that, and surprisingly, the gun is quite traditional in form.  The only real "modern" safety augmentation is the addition of an unobtrusive witness hole serving as a loaded-chamber indicator.  Smith & Wesson uses a similar design on their exemplary 1911's.

In fact, the gun lacks a firing-pin safety of any sort.  Though Michael Bane (warning:  bad low-rent Jan Hammer music) is slightly mistaken in referring to it as a "Series 70 safety," it's interesting that Ruger chose to go this route.  The gun also lacks forward slide serrations, an ambidextrous safety, or a full-length guide rod--things I despise on a 1911.

Aside from the stainless steel slide and frame and Novak sights, this is a fairly conventional build in a field dominated by whiz-bang ISPC Frankenstein monstrosities.  Ruger is quoting an MSRP of $799, which will likely translate into a street price in the middle $600 range.

This could be a big splash in a widening pond, and it could obviate a few troublesome guns in the same price range.

Assault Clips

Nobody knows for sure what made Clippy snap.  Perhaps it was the cocaine.  Maybe it was the way Steve Ballmer would sneak up and grope him when they were alone in the break room.  For all we know, he hit the breaking point when he turned on the television and saw himself being voiced by Gilbert Gottfried.

All we know is that the 21st century wasn't being kind to Clippy, and he wasn't taking it anymore.



One January morning in 2000, he showed up at the Microsoft offices in Redmond with a Glock 19 and a 33-round magazine.  There would be blood.  Oh yes, there would be blood.

However, Clippy's rampage was cut mercifully short by the fact that he lacked fingers and was unable to operate the gun.  King County deputies arrested him on weapons charges.  He took an insanity defense, and he's currently getting the help he needs.

I wish the same could be said of the Brady Campaign.

Ezell v. Chicago Orals

In a way, this case is a rematch.  In one corner, we have Alan Gura, who represented us admirably in McDonald v. Chicago.  In the other corner, we have Chicago counsel James Feldman, who utterly crashed and burned in his attempts to argue the city's claims in that case.  Apparently, Feldman isn't willing to settle for one failure in front of the nation's highest court, so he's repeating it here.

The case at hand is Ezell v. Chicago, a challenge to Chicago's ban on the construction of indoor shooting ranges within the city limits.  The ban presents something of a Catch-22, due to the Responsible Gun Ownership Ordinance (also known as the "We're Cooperating As Little As Humanly Possible With The Damn Court" ordinance).  The Ordinance requires that registration of a handgun include

an affidavit signed by a firearm instructor certified by the State of Illinois to provide firearm training courses attesting that the applicant has completed a firearm safety and training course, which, at a minimum, provides one hour of range training

That's a hard thing to do when there are no firing ranges around.  Judge Diane Sykes summed it up best:

We're not talking about regulation.  This is a ban.  The city has simultaneously mandated live-fire training as a condition of licensure and prohibited it.  How can that be permissible, and not a burden of a very significant sort on the 2nd Amendment right?  [19:19]

Audio of the arguments is available here [mp3].

Llumetes

Llumetes  (02:32)

Saturday Info Dump

First off, mixed news from Colt.  They're bringing back the New Frontier, but it appears they've "modernized" it a bit.



Maybe it's just a typo.  Still, I imagine a few folks out there are punching their monitors and spewing down the gun forums with the Fanboy Firehose of Indignation.

For April Fool's Day, I propose an advertisement promising a reintroduction of the All American.

A second source of vitriol comes in the form of yet another Chuck Schumer gun bill.  This one is called the "Fix Gun Checks Act of 2011."  So far, he's only managed to con Kirsten Gillebrand and John Kerry into cosponsoring it.  It's going to the Senate Judiciary committee, where I've little doubt Grassley and Coburn will eviscerate it like two-week starved hyenas.

Really, why would he even bother in this climate?  The only explanation (beyond utter barking madness) I can surmise is that the President wants him to be the errand-boy for a dry run on gun control proposals.  In this legislature, that's like sending someone to storm the Somme with a Tec-9.



Both scenarios are mildly amusing and utterly futile.

France Shot First

It might have been a shrewd political gamble, but history is going to remember that France took the initiative in Libya while we stood by.  It will remember that our President was visiting Brazil while civilian militias in Benghazi stood alone against the forces of a demented and vicious dictator.

We failed the Egyptians.  Now we're attempting to atone by taking half-measures on behalf of the Libyans.  We're sitting in the back seat of a coalition supported even by other Islamic states, and we're talking about "limited" action as if this were a minor policing operation.

We have an obligation to support the growth of liberty around the world.  We can't fulfill that by sitting on the sidelines.

Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste

Feathers are being ruffled over an opinion piece penned by President Obama in the Arizona Daily Star.  In the article, he calls for a "conversation" on gun control.  As I'd expect from him, it's light on substance and heavy on condescension.

Some will say that anything short of the most sweeping anti-gun legislation is a capitulation to the gun lobby. Others will predictably cast any discussion as the opening salvo in a wild-eyed scheme to take away everybody's guns. And such hyperbole will become the fodder for overheated fundraising letters.

At first, it seems a bit odd.  The rhetoric suggests he's trying to make an appeal from the center, but he's still playing to the crowd who elected him.  Taken as a whole, his statements are mildly insulting to everyone involved.

He doesn't offer much in the way of an actual proposal.  In a nutshell, he wants the NICS system to run a little more efficiently.  That's it.  It's vague and non-threatening, which is exactly what he strives to be.  He's not taking any risks, but he can tell the folks back home that he tried.

This the man's greatest failing: he won't commit to anything that might draw controversy.

Blowing It

The reputation of the ATF has taken a beating over the years.  Longtime members of the gun culture are well aware of the Bureau's disastrous actions in the early 1990's.  During the last decade, the ATF seemed to have reformed their strategy somewhat, and their credibility was slowly being rebuilt.

That all changed with the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry late last year.

On December 14th, Terry was gunned down in a firefight near Rio Rico in southern Arizona.  The following day, Arizona law enforcement recovered two of the rifles used.  They were WASR-10 semiautomatic AK-47 clones, purchased by Jaime Avila at a shop in Glendale the previous January.

Avila had been identified by the ATF the previous January as a participant in a vast conspiracy to transport weapons and narcotics across the border into Mexico.  Both Avila and the rifles were in their database as "suspect." Yet Avila was not arrested or questioned until the death of agent Terry.

Plainsong

The Law of Fives is never wrong.



Plainsong  (01:50)

Constitutional Carry Passed in Wyoming

Governor Mead signed the Jennings-Jaggi bill into law today.  As with Alaska, Vermont, and recently, Arizona, Wyoming residents no longer need to apply for a permit to carry a concealed weapon.  Congratulations and gratitude are due for the efforts of Wyoming Gun Owners.

Some will predict that blood will run in the streets.  We've heard it before, and it never happens.  Since passage of Alaska's law in 2003, crime rates have remained largely static.  Arizona's law just passed last April, so crime statistics are not yet available.  However, I don't expect to see any fallout.

Wyoming isn't alone.  Support is rapidly gathering in both houses of South Carolina.

For a long time, Vermont was considered an anomaly.  Alaska could also have been written off as a bit eccentric, but adding two (possibly three or four) states to the rolls may very well constitute a trend.

H.R. 822

John Richardson has the scoop on this one.  Introduced by Cliff Stearns of Florida and co-sponsored by Heath Shuler of North Carolina, the bill seeks to enforce national reciprocity for carry permits.

Two years ago, Senators Thune and Coburn attempted to pass a similar bill by amending it to the Defense Department budget.  It failed by only two votes then, and the landscape is much more amenable to it now.

That is, if the Tea Party still believes all that stuff they did last November.

Ailera

After everything runs down, the wind still blows through.

Ailera (01:57)

Luna, 1993-2011

Luna was a good friend for 17 years.  She'd been through a lot with me, but her health began to fail as of late.

Towards the end, she could scarcely walk, and I wasn't sure if she could recognize me.  It was time.

Leather for the XO

I love the unique contour of the slide on the Sig Sauer 1911, but it makes holster selection tricky.  Blade-Tech makes their Stingray model for the gun, but most other makers aren't supporting it yet.

That means custom work, so I contacted Tom Dyer, and as usual, he came up with an elegant setup.

The Morning After

While CNN frets, Cairo rejoices.

When Hosni Mubarak announced his resignation, Egypt exploded.  Not in strife or anger, but in triumph and elation.  My sister and her husband were present at the celebrations in Tahrir Square, and they sent a few pictures.

I've rarely seen the spirit of hope and optimism so eloquently conveyed.

Seefeel

Last fall, Seefeel showed up out of the blue to perform new material at Warp's 20th Anniversary concert. An EP titled Faults was released shortly thereafter.

This came as something of a surprise, as I hadn't heard anything from them since 1996. It's hard to grasp that it's been 17 years since I first heard them on the astounding Pure, Impure EP.

Lots of things from that period sound pretty dated. Surprisingly, Seefeel's output doesn't.

Cairo

I have a bit of personal perspective on this.  My sister and her husband teach at the American University in Cairo.  They were with me for the holidays, and they returned last Tuesday.

The day they left, we had been hearing about a few student protests.  That was the extent of it.  We were heartened by the departure of the Ali government in Tunisia, and while we suspected this to be the spark of the rallies in Cairo, nobody expected the situation to erupt with such swiftness or power.

By Thursday, the internet was shut down, as were the cellular phone networks.  We had communicated by VoIP, and that link was now severed.  I was left to wonder and worry as activism turned to unrest, then to violence.  Historical patterns like this never bode well.

The Usual Suspects

None of this is anything new, novel, or unexpected.

Carolyn McCarthy will be presenting a bill [pdf] on Tuesday, as yet un-numbered, to "prohibit the transfer or possession of large capacity ammunition feeding devices, and for other purposes."  Yes, she's capitalizing on Saturday's tragedy in Tuscon.  Yes, it's revolting.  No, I really don't expect any better out of her.

Before anyone panics, let's remember that Ms. McCarthy has attempted to reintroduce the Assault Weapons Ban every single session since 2003.  It has never made it out of committee.  Tuesday's bill will be met with the same crushing apathy.  It will not pass.

Next, consider Peter King's proposed bill to ban the carry of firearms within 1000 feet of a federal official.  Such a thing is utterly unfeasible to implement.  Would police have to pat down every WalMart customer when a local politician goes shopping?  What happens when your Senator wants to go to the range?  Must everyone else clear out?  That seems pretty lonely for the guy.

It's silly, it's unworkable, and our new Speaker of the House is hearing none of it, so take a deep breath and go do something interesting with the rest of your day.