2007 – Page 102 – Shall Not Be Questioned

If We Just Record Enough…

Centuries ago, Native Americans once practiced rain dances in the belief that their dances could bring the rain. So many gun control proposals today make about as much sense, only instead of rain dancing, if we just record enough things, we can fight crime. This is the latest out of California:

Some Sacramento gun dealers say a proposed ordinance requiring them to keep track of all the ammunition they sell will hurt business. But police say itâ€™ll help catch criminals. City Council members are set to vote on the ordinance Thursday.

There is no way to trace ammunition or ammunition components back to an individual. All you get is a manufacturer, and sometimes maybe a lot number, or year of manufacturer. That’s about it. Someone needs to explain to me how having the gun shop owner record ammunition sales is going to catch a criminal, given that ammunition recovered at a scene of a crime isn’t going to be matchable to those sales records.Â You can match a bullet to a gun, and sometimes a casing to a gun, but you can’t match a bullet to a piece of paper.

This seems like a case of politician rain dancing.Â If only we could force some more record keeping, it will magically translate into lower crime, no matter how absurd the idea is.Â Do a little dance, and hope for the best.

NRA Supporting Biofuels

No, not this NRA, I’m talking about the National Renderers Association. They have formed a committee relating to biofuels. Who is the NRA? Well, according to their website:

The NRA is an American Trade Association, whose business is to promote the interests of it’s members. Members of this association are all in the business of rendering, i.e. transforming waste from the meat industry into useable products for animal feeds and technical use. Renderers are even known as the original recyclers. On average slaughter houses, packing plants, supermarkets, butcher shops and restaurants collectively generate at least 40,000 metric tonnes of animal byproduct each week. Without the rendering industry, byproducts from meat and poultry processing would fill up landfills very quickly and the decomposing waste would contaminate our soil and water with disease-causing microorganisms and vermin. For more information on this and related subjects see the Environmental perspective page found on this site.

This is the kind of biofuel I can get behind; the kind made from waste product. I certainly like it a lot better than screwing up the economy to give ADM nice fat subsidies, along with artificially inflated corn and feed prices.

NRA Arming Kids Again!

We talked a month or so ago about the NRA arming kids, in that case, 16 year old Katie Bush, who is a trained sharpshooter.Â Well, the NRA is continuing its dastardly plot for teaching our nation’s children the safe and responsible use of firearms.Â Their treachery clearly knows no bounds.

Congratulations Garrett Cranney, the award is well deserved.

FBI Getting Involved in Gun Permit Corruption?

This article from the Sacremento Bee suggests the FBI might be investigating the Sheriff of that county for issuing carry licenses as patronage.Â Read the whole thing.Â This kind of circus is the system the Brady’s support as “reasonable”.

M82A1 Introduced, Minus the PSH

This is a pretty good Marine Corps video introducing the Barrett M82A1 .50 Caliber sniper rifle system:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9lMViBr6d8[/youtube]

You will notice the penetrating power of the .50 BMG through 22 millimeter plate armor with conventional ammunition is negligable. The military, when it employes that M82A1 in anti-materiel operations, uses the MK211 HEIAP “Raufoss” round, which is demonstrated in this video.

It’s rather important to note, for folks like Bryan Miller, and the Violence Policy Center, that the MK211 anti-materiel round is considered a destructive device, as it is explosive ordnance, and is therefore unavailable to civilians.

The 2010 Governor’s Election

Geez, Midge Rendell probably barely has her inauguration gown back from the dry cleaners, and they are already talking about the 2010 election. Pennsylvania has alternated between Democrat and Republican Governors for half a century. I’d like to keep things this way.

On the slate for the Republicans, we have folks like former Congressman Pat Toomey and Attorney General Tom Corbett. On the Democrat side, it seems that Robert Mellow, Auditor General Jack Wagner, Dan Onorato, and Don Cunningham.

Advantage so far goes to Republicans as far as names go. Most everyone who follows Pennsylvania politics knows who Tom Corbett and Pat Toomey are. For the Democrats, only Jack Wagner holds statewide office, and not a very well known one. The rest are local players. It’s still really early yet, but so far it’s looking like we might have some good candidates.

Welcome to the Club

Squeaky Wheel has settled on her weapon of choice.Â It happens to be the same as mine.Â It won’t let her down.

Guest Blogging Over at SayUncle

I’ll be helping fill in for SayUncle while he’s on vacation.Â I will try to keep up the volume of material on here, but it might be hard.Â I’m going to try to avoid cross posting, since I’m pretty sure our audiences overlap a good bit.Â Pennsylvania stuff will stay over here, unless it involves juicy gun stuff.Â Â But man, the news is dead lately.Â It’s like everyone is on vacation or something.

Addictions

78%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

I’m not as addicted as Chris Byrne, but I’m within 10 points. I usually blog when I first get up in the morning, maybe a few posts around lunch time. And then at night. Some posts are timed to go up, but if I notice something interesting come up during the day, I might link it. I still have time to do things despite blogging, but I have to admit, it’s a very time consuming hobby if you want to be good at it.

Fallout

I attended the monthly meeting for the gun club tonight, and now am working on the fallout from HR2640.Â Â The NRA is doing it’s usual bang up job of communicating exactly nothing to it’s clubs and members in regards to the nature of the deal, and as such, our Legislative chairman is getting all of his news from GOA and the Brady’s, which as I’ve detailed here, has been quite misleading.

Our club is a 100% NRA club, which means you need to be a member of the NRA to join, and continue your membership with the NRA to continue your membership with the club.Â Our club has about 1100 members, which amounts to quite a lot of money if NRA were to lose a club of that size. Â Granted, it would be their own fault, because they, one, cut a deal with the devil which was bound to be controversial no matter how many positive things we got in return, and two, haven’t been working hard to make sure the message gets out there.

I’m going to do what I can do to repair this damage, but the problem is, I don’t know anybody who can help. Â Bitter might, and I’m pursuing some of those channels, but this could be a hard thing to fix, and I very well might be on my own here.Â As a new member of the club, who doesn’t really know anyone, I’m not entirely comfortable at starting a huge political fight within the club over the 100% NRA program.

I think the Brady Campaign may have outsmarted us on this one.Â If the cost of this deal is a divided pro-gun community, and a weakened NRA, it will have amounted to a giant victory for the gun control movement. Â Whether people like them or not, the NRA is the 800lb gorilla on the gun issue in Washington, and the politicians don’t know much about the other pro-gun organizations, and don’t much care.Â Much of the gun control movement may be on the ropes, but we will be too if we end up divided, and have a weak NRA representing us in Washington.Â That’s the political reality.