Navigation Aids

United is planning on replacing all their flight manuals and charts with iPads. I’m not surprised by this, as there are quite a number of apps for aviation, and the numbers seem to keep growing. Many of the apps are expensive, but it’s a small price to pay for eliminating all that paper.

Setback in Court

A judge has denied a preliminary injunction on the border rifle reporting requirement, saying that the NRA failed to show it would suffer irreparable harm. There’s still hope for the NSSF case. I’d say being forced to comply with a provision which has no basis in law should qualify as irreparable harm under any standard.

California Carry Permits Jump in Two Counties

Two counties recently went shall-issue in California, thanks to pressure from the CalGuns folks. Both those counties have experienced an increase in the number of permits issued. To date I have not heard any reports of the streets of Sacramento running red with blood from permit holders going off half-cocked and shooting people in arguments over parking spaces. But still, UC Davis professor Garen Wintemute is making excuses:

“There are a lot of steps between loosening a policy and seeing something different in the ER,” said Wintemute, an emergency room physician.

Research doesn’t clearly support changes in crime rates, up or down. “We don’t know,” Wintemute said.

This story has been repeated over and over again, and they’ll never just admit they were wrong.

McCain Full of Crap

So he’s saying now:

“I am a staunch advocate of the second amendment — don’t get me wrong I have a perfect record from the NRA — but we need to do what we can to make sure that someone can’t come to a gun show or some place and exploit a loophole.”

Perfect record? Going into the 2004 elections, I seem to recall the guy had a C for supporting this kind of crap in the past. The reason he won the endorsement was because no matter what you might say about McCain otherwise, he wasn’t a former director of the anti-gun Joyce Foundation, and hadn’t called for handgun bans.

So let’s dispense with this perfect record crap. This guy has made a career out of not being as bad as the other guy, and that’s about the best you can say about him. If he had been running against, say, former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson in 2008, it would have been a completely different story.

The big problem with McCain, is you never know when he’s going to go all “Maverick” on you. Sometimes I really think he’s his daughter’s father.

A Question for Our Gun Control Advocating Friends

So if the evil “gun lobby” is all about securing the “profits of the gun industry,” who, of course, donate money back to groups like NRA (the whole Triangle of Death thing), then why wouldn’t the self-interested response to Fast and Furious be to look the other way? If the goal is to help make money for the evil gunmakers, an operation like Fast and Furious, with the full blessing of ATF to sell as many guns to straw buyers for the Mexican cartels as they can, should form a great symbiotic relationship. So why the outrage on our side? Why was it gun bloggers who first did the digging to discover this scandal? What interest would NRA have, who is part of the Triangle, have in pushing Congress and raising the profile of this issue?

If this was about gun industry profits, we should love Fast and Furious, but we don’t. If that isn’t enough to make our opponents question the veracity of their own rhetoric, they are absolutely blind to the truth.

Demonizing Glocks

A county Republican group in Arizona is raffling off a gun to raise money for Get Out The Vote efforts, and HuffPo is sounding the alarm!

For just $10, readers can purchase a raffle ticket (out of 125 offered) for a chance to win a brand new handgun. Not just any handgun, but a Glock 23

Arizona Republicans surely know just how effective this particular brand of gun can be. After all, it was only eight months ago that Jared Lee Loughner used a Glock 19 in Tucson – the seat of Pima County – to shoot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in the head.

That’s two different models that just happen be made by the same manufacturer. They aren’t even the same caliber. And, yes, the article even ends on a nice hysterical note about how the three 12-rounds magazines that come with the raffle prize will allow the winner to shoot even more people than Loughner.

For PA & NJ folks, you can win the Glock of your choice at the Friends of NRA dinner on Sept. 15. If readers buy a ticket, make sure to notify the person following up on meal choice that you’d like to sit with other blog folks, and we will make sure that there are enough reserved seats. Odds on many of the guns will be 1 in 50, maybe even better. If you want a Gold or Silver package, the odds on winning the Kimber Stainless Pro Carry II in that limited raffle are REALLY good right now – and your package is mostly tax-deductible.

Those in Arizona who want a raffle ticket to win the Glock 23 can get the details in the GOP newsletter.

Solving the Preemption Problem

Anyone who lives in Pennsylvania knows we’ve had a serious problem with local cities and towns bucking preemption. Florida passed a preemption law with real teeth, which provided for fines, recovery of attorneys fees, and even holding officials personally liable. Since then towns have been scrambling to get their illegal laws off the books. I’ve seen dozens of articles like this over the past few weeks, so I’m now inclined to suggest the Florida law is working quite well. Hopefully this will be a template for Pennsylvania in the future.