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.