I’ll put this in the category of “stupid airsoft tricks” if I had such a category. I have to admit though, it’s kind of cool:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txeGZoBW7vY[/youtube]
Month: June 2008
Celebrating Heller
With high explosives. I love the “End of Miller” bit too.
Support Gun Rights? You’re a Gangbanger!
At least you are if you’re Oak Park, IL village manager, you think so. Here’s an unintended consequence of Heller that’s going to be good for us. You see, currently Chicago has no shooting culture. It’s been, pretty much, completely eliminated because of the Chicago and surrounds’ gun bans. Heller offers an opportunity for those cities to rebuild a healthy shooting culture. I can’t think of a better use for an old warehouse than a nice, indoor, 50 yard indoor shooting range. Can you?
Even Philadelphia hasn’t managed to eliminate its shooting culture, and we even have a few pro-gun state reps that represent constituents in the city. There are constituents for the right to keep and bear arms within the City of Brotherly Love, and definitely within its suburbs (I’m living proof). Suburban reps tend to either support guns rights, or are moderate on it. Only in a few near-city suburbs do you get radical anti-gun representatives. Even as bad as Nutter is on guns, his rhetoric is nothing like Mayor Daleys. Nutter has to decieve to do what he wants. Daley has no such restriction.
That may likely change. Given the calls the Oak City, IL manager has gotten from people wanting to own handguns, it seems that it might change rather quickly. If the anti-gun folks lose Chicago and New York as solid anti-gun enclaves, it’ll be over for them. Once people have friends who are shooters, or relative, or neighbors, it gets a lot harder to maintain the level of ignorance needed to get them to sign onto the gun control agenda with any enthusiasm.
Range Etiquette
I don’t generally think too poorly of people using old clothes as rags. I even do this myself. But if you’re going to use a nasty old pair of Hanes whitey tighties, please don’t leave it at the range on the bench for other people to have to avoid it like the nasty, skid stained, plague infested monstrosity it is. That is all.
What Were They Doing?
Apparently in a French military demonstration, sixteen adults and children were wounded when someone mixed up blanks with live ammunition. I wonder what kind of demo would involve shooting blanks at someone? A firing squad demo?
More On Morton Grove
This from an NPR article from today:
Village Manager Joe Wade says Morton Grove isn’t going to wait for a court battle. It’s going to act.
“The village of Morton Grove has every intention to comply with [the Supreme Court ruling],” Wade says. “We’re going to propose an ordinance that would eliminate the possession-of-handgun ban within the village.”
So that pretty much confirms it. I did send an e-mail to them earlier, but have yet to hear back. We shall see what happens here.
Irony of the Day
A truck, carrying a load of fire extinguishers, catches on fire in Lancaster Township, Pennsylvania.
Media Hysterics Post Heller
This has to win a creativity award for the most utterly ridiculous gun control proposal I’ve ever seen in my life:
We propose a new way to prod gun makers to reduce gun deaths, one that would be unlikely to put them out of business or to prevent law-abiding citizens from obtaining guns. By using a strategy known as “performance-based regulation,” we would deputize private actors — the gun makers — to deal with the negative effects of their products in ways that promote the public good.
It then goes on to speak of a performance based system where gun makers would be rewarded for drops in gun violence, and penalized for increases in gun violence. This presumes that there’s anything manufacturers can do about the fact that their products make their way onto black markets. But they have an idea for that too:
How would gun companies go about reducing gun deaths? The main thing to emphasize is that this approach relies on the nimbleness, innovation and experimentation that come from private competition — rather than on the heavy-handed power of governmental regulation. Gun makers might decide to add trigger locks to their guns, or to work only with dealers who meet certain standards of responsibility. They might withdraw their semiautomatic weapons from the consumer market, or even work hand in hand with local officials to fight gangs and increase youth employment opportunities. Surely they will think up new strategies once they have a legal obligation and financial incentive to take responsibility for the harm their products cause.
Ah yes, the old canards. Since they admit that Heller might mean they can’t just flat out ban these guns, now they need to offer incentives for no one to make them. Because a revolver is so measurably less deadly than a semi-auto pistol? Does it even matter if the “gun death” being spoken of is a suicide? How does supplying trigger locks work unless someone uses them? If this is what Heller has reduced our oppoents to, perhaps Heller is a bigger victory than I had imagined.
UPDATE: As a reader points out, this is pretty much the same type of business as the lawsuits the PLCAA was meant to put a stop to. I mean, would we hold Ford accountable for drunk driving rates, or Zippo accountable for reducing the incidence of arson? Drug makers for reducing drug suicides?
The Question of Machine Guns
Firearms and Freedom looks at the question of whether Heller closes the door to machine gun rights, and concludes it probably does. I think both sides of the machine gun issue can find support for their arguments in Heller, but I agree with Peter that the federal regulations on machine guns are probably largely safe. That’s not to say that I believe there’s not room for litigation on the issue, but I would consider us to be very lucky if we could even get the federal courts to rule unconstitutional the Hughes Amendment to the Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986, which banned any new machine guns from being registered for civilian use.
Justice Scalia …
… self-defense whacko. Bitter helps AHSA decorate their offices a bit.