Category: Uncategorized

This is What the Gun Control Groups Consider “Reasonable Regulation”

“England can do it, Australia can do it, We Can TOO!” is what they were chanting at the (somewhat less than a) Million Moms March a couple of years ago. Courtesy of Keepandbeararms.com comes this heartwarming story of what can happen to you in a totally gun-phobic society when you take possession of a gun that belongs to a relative – just to FIX it!

Family allowed to keep heirloom gun

Allowed! How nice that the State allowed this family to keep their own property! But wait! It gets better!

A Mooroopna man was convicted and fined with possession of an unregistered firearm in Shepparton Magistrates’ Court yesterday after taking possession of the family heirloom to remove a jammed bullet.

Jay Hunter, 23 a slaughterman of PicolaKatunga Rd, Picola, was given the Remington .22 pump-action rifle by his grandmother on June 6.

The court heard how the day after the gun was given to Mr Hunter to remove a jammed bullet, police attended his home to investigate reports of a domestic dispute between he and his partner that day.

Police prosecutor Senior Constable Les Oroszvary said Mr Hunter offered police the use of his phone to ring the victim’s parents and confirm the victim’s welfare.

Objection! Mr. Hunter has not been convicted of anything (except in the media), so his “partner” was not a “victim.” His “partner” was the other person in reported domestic dispute. This could have been anything from a shouting match to a knock-down-drag-out fight, but you’ll note that Mr. Hunter was not charged with domestic abuse, if you read further. Hell, HE could have been the “victim.”

But Mr. Hunter had an unregistered firearm! He’s obviously an eeeeevil wife- partner-beater.

“While there the police saw the Remington .22 pump-action rifle and subsequently arrested the defendant,” Sen Const Oroszvary said.

He should have never let them in the house. But do police in Australia require a search warrant?

Apparently they don’t in the U.S. anymore.

Magistrate Steve Raleigh ordered the gun be destroyed; however, Mr Hunter’s grandmother, who was in court during the hearing, pleaded that the heirloom be preserved.

The court heard how the firearm belonged to the defendant’s deceased grandfather and had sentimental and monetary value.

Magistrate Raleigh allowed for the gun to be kept by the family under conditions that it be registered and in the possession of a licensed gunman.

Mr Hunter was convicted and fined $500 on the firearms charges.

And another dangerous, violent felon was prevented from committing a heinous crime, right?

Who cares, the State is $500 richer, another dangerous firearm is registered, and another citizen has a criminal record! A trifecta!

I swear upon everything I hold dear I will NEVER obey a law requiring me to register my firearms or get a license to own them.

POWER is Up!

Bill Whittle has published his 13th essay, POWER.

Go read.

The Washington Times reports on Maryland’s current attempt to expand its own “Assault Weapons Ban.” Let’s see how many mischaracterizations and logical disconnects we can find, eh?

Two Maryland lawmakers want rifles like the one used in the sniper attacks last year added to a statewide ban on assault weapons, as the federal restriction on such weapons expires next year.
Sen. Rob Garagiola of Montgomery County and Delegate Neil F. Quinter of Howard County, both Democrats, are sponsoring the “assault weapons-ban bill” in their respective legislative chambers for the second year in preparation for the lifting of the federal ban on assault weapons in September next year.
Mr. Quinter said he is pessimistic that Congress will extend the ban. “I hope that they do, but I think realistically speaking, it is not very likely the Republican-controlled House and Senate will,” he said.

(Aside: Halleluja! End aside.)

Mr. Garagiola said he believes the Bushmaster rifle should be included in the ban. Police said the two suspects in the sniper attacks last fall used a Bushmaster rifle in the random shootings that left 10 persons dead and three injured in the Washington metropolitan area.

Yes, once again the eeeeevil Bushmaster rifle is at fault for the shootings, not Muhammed and Malvo.

“I am not looking to take away legitimate hunting rifles and handguns,” he said. “I am looking to maintain and strengthen a federal ban at the state level.”

That’s what we always hear. It’s what the English were told, too. First they lost their semi-automatic rifles and shotguns, then all handguns. And the current red tape and bullshit required to have and keep the few firearms still allowed them has reduced the number of legitimate gun owners to an all time low. And gun crime is at an all-time high in England. (New York smokers should be used to this rhetoric. They were told “We don’t want to ban smoking!” Riiiight.)

Second, if Muhammed and Malvo – who fired one shot at each victim – had actually used a “legitimate hunting rifle,” say, a Remington 700 chambered in 7mm Remington Magnum, would he be fighting to have that rifle banned? (Oh, right, that’s a “long range sniper rifle.”) And what about “legitimate handguns?” Maryland Attorney General Joseph Curran has made it perfectly clear that he is in favor of doing anything and everything to get handguns banned (and if you read between the lines, any other firearm not in the hands of government) in his manifesto “A Farewell to Arms.”

Chris W. Cox, chief lobbyist for the National Rifle Association (NRA), disagreed with the bill. Mr. Cox said the federal ban’s intention was to study whether the restriction decreased crime, which it didn’t.
“I guess the question is why do the politicians want to keep ineffective laws on the book?” Mr. Cox said. “They’re playing on the emotions of voters and abusing the general public on a very complex and technical debate, and it’s all to chip away at the rights of law-abiding gun owners by incrementally banning more guns.”

Which is why, as Mr. Cox is well aware, they want to keep an ineffective law on the books. It’s far easier to modify an existing law than to pass a new one.

Maryland banned a number of military-style assault pistols about 10 years ago but allows the sale of 45 models of semiautomatic assault weapons if a buyer passes a criminal background check and agrees to a seven-day waiting period.
The federal law prohibits the sale of those guns that have two or more characteristics of an assault weapon, like a forward pistol grip and a grenade launcher. There are 19 weapons banned under the law.
The proposed bill would list all the banned weapons and outlaw the sale of 45 models of assault rifles and shotguns. Mr. Garagiola said the bill also would stop manufacturers from simply changing the name and altering a few characteristics of a gun to bypass the law.
Mr. Quinter and Mr. Garagiola — who last year failed to get the weapons-ban bill to the floor — now have the support of Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley and Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan, Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.’s chief rivals in state politics.

You remember Governor Erlich, right? He’s the guy who beat gun-control enthusiast Kathleen Kennedy Townsend after the “DC Snipers” were caught.

During his campaign for governor last fall, Mr. Ehrlich questioned the effectiveness of many gun-control laws in Maryland and said he would review the laws if elected.
Mr. Garagiola said he doesn’t see this as a Democrat vs. Republican issue.
“I can’t see how or why anyone can make an argument to have these weapons back on the street,” he said.
Mr. Garagiola said five other states have imposed such firearm restrictions. He said Connecticut and Kentucky are considering similar bans.
“They were originally banned [by the federal government] because police were being outgunned,” he said. “It does not make sense to allow these guns back on the street.”

Now, which is it, Mr. Garagiola? Was the law effective at keeping the guns off the street, or wasn’t it? If it wasn’t, then letting the ban die won’t put them “back on the street” will it? You’re arguing that the manufactures “bypassed the law” by “changing the name and altering a few characteristics of a gun.” Therefore the law didn’t “keep them off the streets,” did it? And what did crime do over the period from 1994 until 2003? It WENT DOWN didn’t it? All those evil, renamed, slightly modified “assault weapons” that the law didn’t stop from hitting “the streets,” and crime went down anyway.

It’s not about guns. It’s about CONTROL.

THIS is EXCELLENT

Farewell to the nation that lives the ideal

Go read.

Hat tip to Kathy Kinsley of On the Third Hand for the pointer.

If Not Now, When? If Not Silveira, Who?

Publicola does an excellent job in his dissertation on Dave Kopel’s recent National Review Online articles Secret Weapon: Some 2nd Amendment lawyers help the gun-ban side, and The Silveira Threat: How long will the Second Amendment live?. He makes the points I was thinking when I read the pieces.

Kopel makes a compelling argument for manipulating the system to achieve the (eventually, someday, maybe) goal of legally restoring the intent of the Second Amendment, and of the risk being taken by pursuing Silveira v. Lockyer before a hostile or at least intellectually dishonest Supreme Court. Yes, the risk that SCOTUS might finally come out and rule that the right to bear arms isn’t an individual right is real. In fact, I wouldn’t be all that surprised, given the level of Statism our government has reached. In fact, I believe that, should the Court declare that the Second Amendment is meaningless, it might (finally!) wake up the majority of gun owners and make them politically active.

But I’m not holding my breath.

Anyway, read Publicola’s peice. It’s worth your time.

Via Clayton Cramer’s blog comes this New York Times story about intermarriage in Iraq. (Registration required.)

Iraqi Family Ties Complicate American Efforts for Change

Iqbal Muhammad does not recall her first glimpse of her future husband, because they were both newborns at the time, but she remembers precisely when she knew he was the one. It was the afternoon her uncle walked over from his house next door and proposed that she marry his son Muhammad.

“I was a little surprised, but I knew right away it was a wise choice,” she said, recalling that afternoon nine years ago, when she and Muhammad were 22. “It is safer to marry a cousin than a stranger.”

Her reaction was typical in a country where nearly half of marriages are between first or second cousins, a statistic that is one of the more important and least understood differences between Iraq and America. The extraordinarily strong family bonds complicate virtually everything Americans are trying to do here, from finding Saddam Hussein to changing women’s status to creating a liberal democracy.”

Clayton comments:

We’ve heard a lot for several years from the leftist Hussein apologists about horrifying birth defects in Iraq, supposedly caused by use of depleted uranium shells during Gulf War I. I wonder: is the birth defect rate in Iraq unusually high because of too much in-breeding?

Good question. But if you’re interested in seeing some of the Depleted Uranium hysteria, try these sites:

Extreme Birth Deformities

Common Dreams

Stop NATO

Hell, just do a Google search on (Iraq “birth defects” “Depleted Uranium”)

Then go read the FACTS on Depleted Uranium, which is no more dangerous than lead, just denser.

Federation of American Scientists

World Health Organization

Or, if you want it explained to you clearly, Steven Den Beste does a good job in this piece.

I noted several articles that claimed a significant increase in birth defects after the 1991 Gulf War. Two questions:

1) How do we know for sure that there really was an increase (totalitarian regimes tend to use whatever propaganda they can,) and

2) Aren’t some chemical weapons teratogenic?

But I think Clayton’s on to something.

What Clayton didn’t comment on was the last couple of paragraphs in the NYT story which illustrates the level of trust in Iraq.

Sheik Yousif and his sons said they put no faith in American promises of democracy — or any other promises, for that matter.

“Do you know why Saddam Hussein has not been captured?” asked Saleh, the oldest son of Sheik Yousif. “Because his own family will never turn him in, and no one else trusts the Americans to pay the reward.” Saleh dismissed the reports that Americans had given $30 million and safe passage out of Iraq to the informant who turned in Mr. Hussein’s sons.

“I assure you that never happened,” Saleh said. “The American soldiers brought out a camera and gave him the money in front of a witness, and then they took him toward the Turkish border. Near the border they killed him and buried him in a valley. They wanted the money for their own families.”

Culture clash. “We behave this way, so everybody behaves this way.”

We’ve got a long way to go over there.

National Ammo Day 2

Kim and Connie du Toit are cranking up National Ammo Day, but this year it’s actually National Ammo WEEK. Read about the idea here.

There are fifty days left until it begins. Save your pennies, and buy some ammo. Send a message.

My wife and I went to see this film last Wednesday, but I wanted to wait until I had a chance to peruse the “critical” reviews before I opined myself. The critics were, as I suspected, critical. Most were pretty mild, objecting to Haley Joel Osmet’s performance (which I considered excellent) or script weakness (“…those who can’t teach, criticise.”) but some, unsurprisingly, were just WAY off the mark.

Warning: This contains spoilers, so if you haven’t seen the film, STOP READING NOW

Consider, for example, Wesley Morris’s Boston Globe review:

The film reenacts these episodes as cartoonish cliffhangers, with a young Hub and Garth foiling anonymous but craven Moroccans. Written and directed by Tim McCanlies, “Secondhand Lions” is made from a child’s perspective, but its point of view has a glass eye. While handsome Americans come to the rescue of a beautiful Moroccan damsel, the Moroccan men are presented as swarthy caricatures of Arab danger.

That’s uncomfortably retrograde. Fine, the flashbacks are set in the silent era, but must the movie’s mind-set follow suit? Kids might not ask if all Arabs clean their teeth with machetes, but it’s a parent’s duty to inform them that given the option most would probably choose a toothbrush. The movie tries to clear things up with a conversation in the final minutes that involves Josh Lucas playing a grown-up Walter, but it’s the images that linger.

In your mind maybe. Uh, Wesley? The story is being told to a fifteen year-old boy. Those images are IN HIS HEAD. You expect anything other than cartoonish stereotypes? Wesley’s problem is that this piece isn’t PC enough for him.

Steven D. Greydanus of Decentfilms.com said this:

There’s a key scene in Lions in which Walter tells Uncle Hub that he doesn’t know what to believe any more and wants the truth. Here is Uncle Hub’s regrettably quotable response: “If you want to believe in something, then believe in it! Just because something isn’t true, that’s no reason you can’t believe in it!” Uncle Hub then goes on to list some ideals he thinks are worth believing in whether they’re true or not: that honor and virtue, not money and power, are what really matter; that good always triumphs over evil; that true love never dies.

Now, the fact is that there is truth to all these propositions, depending on how they are understood. I can even appreciate, in a sense, someone like Uncle Hub having the will to recognize the value of these ideals despite not being in an epistemological position to affirm their truth.

Nevertheless, expressed this way, this is bogus sentimentality, not belief or faith — and this notion casts a long shadow over the rest of the film. Even a revelation that goes some way toward mitigating potentially problematic implications in this regard feels less than entirely earned, like more sentimentality on the part of the filmmaker. Like Hub, McCanlies’s heart is in the right place, but his head could use a little straightening out.

Earth to Greydanus: That was Hub explaining the “Hub Philosophy of Life,” not the Greydanus philosophy of life. I didn’t expect the man to be Plato, and the movie wasn’t about the “rightness” of the way Hub and Garth lead their lives.

The one thing I was surprised to see was no mass condemnation of the massive use of firearms in the film – especially the scene where Haley Joel Osmet’s character is in the cornfield with the lion, and Hub, Garth, four teenaged boys, and the despised relatives – including the children – all come out of the house armed to the teeth to “save” him.

Anyway, I greatly enjoyed the film but will admit that it was not as good as it might have been. Highly recommended, though. Especially if you’ve never gone fishing with a 12-gauge.

(Disclosure: I worked in a movie theater in high school, and ever since I’ve really enjoyed the movies and the big-screen theater experience. Consequently, I see probably thirty or so first-run movies a year, and go to enjoy them not criticise them.)