2013 – Page 54 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Bad Exception Proposed for SAFE Act

I oppose carving out an exemption for retired NY cops from the SAFE act. If the guns and >7 rd magazines are only useful for hunting humans, the police shouldn’t have them either, and there can be no rationale at all for them having them off duty. It also looks like,Â according to this source, the GOP may have caved to Cuomo on guns in exchange for Cuomo caving on redistricting. So under the bus gun rights go:

Republicans number just 30 in the 63-seat Senate, yet they reasserted the state’s last bastion of GOP and conservative influence.

This year, Republicans were no longer under Cuomo’s thumb after he accepted the GOP’s redistricting plan, which will protect Republican power in the Senate for the next 10 years.

Senate Republicans struck a deal to share the majority with four breakaway Democrats in the Independent Democratic Conference in an unheard-of bipartisan agreement. And it worked.

Republicans allowed the IDC to raise the minimum wage and let Cuomo’s gun control bill pass, giving the IDC under Democrat Jeff Klein another major win.

Emphasis mine. If there was a deal to trade gun control for the GOP redistricting plan that preserved the GOP majority, you could bowl me over with a feather. When it comes to principles versus staying in power, power will win every time.

Illinois Mayor Joins Ranks of More Law Abiding

The Mayor of Rockford, Illinois says he’s leaving MAIG, and says he plans to get a concealed carry permit whenever the state passes its new law. The Mayor said he joined because of the name, but once it became apparent they were about a lot more than just “illegal guns,” he decided the group wasn’t for him. I wonder how many other mayors out there are just as deluded? If your Mayor is a MAIG member, go have a talk with them. Let them know what kind of things Bloomberg is signing their names on to.

Welcome to the Party

A few readers have sent stories about how MAIG’s servers, etc, were being run by the City of New York. I thought this was pretty much common knowledge to anyone who has been following Bloomberg’s organization for a while, so I didn’t think it was really news, but it’s gotten picked up by the media, and they are all running with it. Welcome to the Party. Bloggers figured this out years ago.

Back in 2011, the New York Post ran a story on how Bloomy yanked 100 large out of the NYPD budget to run stings on gun shows, and then there was the revelation about a year ago that New York City wasn’t the only city who’s tax dollars were going to fund gun control. So it was largely known, at least among gun bloggers, that MAIG was partially funded by New York City taxpayers. Who knew it was big news?

A Short Change of Topic

I’ve been in the office all day, part in meetings, and part at our new warehouse double checking some floor plans I’ve come up with to make sure everything fits in real life like it does on the computer. So since I have no idea what’s going on in the gun world today, I’ll talk about another topic near and dear to my heart: beer.

I’ve been thinking about getting back into brewing beer. I’ve tried the wine thing a few times now, and the time between effort and reward is too long. On the bright side, if you don’t have time for the wine, the wine has time. Unlike beer, if you properly sulfite your wine, it’ll get nothing but better with age. Beer will get better too, but only to a point, and then you better do something with it (drinking it is usually my solution).

As I’m sitting here in the Wegman’sÂ Cafe waiting for rush hour to die down, I’m drinking a Samuel Smith’s India Pale Ale. The IPA, as a style, is one of my favorite ales to brew, and also is one of my favorite ales to drink. While I like a good American IPA, I really like English IPAs, so every time I have an English IPA, like Sammy Smith’s, I get the itch to brew my own.Â Most of the IPAs you drink in the US are going to be in the American style. What’s the difference? American IPAs are usually run pretty heavy on Cascade hops. The total bouquet may contain a lot more than Cascade, but it’s usually the prominent hop in most American made IPAs. English IPAs are also more heavily hopped than other styles — that’s part of surviving the trip to India, after all — but they generally use more subdued hop varieties. As a result, English IPAs don’t tend to punch you in the face with hops quite as much, and still retain quite a lot of malty body. I like that.

My tap water is medium-hard, so it tends to make really good IPAs and other medium-to-high gravity ales. I’ve had a tougher time with mash efficiency trying to do light bodied pale ales. When I’ve made my IPAs, I’ve always tried to hop them the English way so the maltiness of the ale comes through for a better balance. What’s your favorite beer?

Firearms & The Zimmerman Jury

CNN has a piece on the role that familiarity with firearms may play in regards to the jury in George Zimmerman’s trial. It features one of the “tests” that Zimmerman’s attorney used in selection proceedings and also features a few comments by a firearms attorney from Florida on the value of women on the jury in this case.

Sorry for nearly all video content today. I’m playing stuff in the background as I put together materials for a gun show table this weekend. Being a “real world” activist is sometimes distracting from blogging. :)

David Kopel on The Truth About Gun Control

Dave Kopel gives a speech talking about how the issue of standing up to a tyrannical government (through the eyes of the founding generation) is related to the issue of personal self-defense. In both cases, it’s both self-defense and defeating tyranny. The topic is an introduction to his longer form essay book The Truth About Gun Control.

Looking for a Ballistics App for Windows Phone?

Joe Huffman has developed one.

It Just Gets Worse for MAIG

The general right-of-center media has had a field day with Mike Bloomberg’s missteps with his MAIG bus tour. It seems like there are stories about it every single day since his people read off the Boston bomber as a gun violence victim whose life they want to protect.

Now the Washington Examiner is looking over MAIG’s list and found that just a quick review shows that about 1 in 12 names on their list of victims are actually criminals themselves who were killed in the progress of committing a crime by police or armed citizens in acts of self-defense. MAIG is having to walk back from the list and is now trying to say that the story isn’t in the circumstances surrounding the names, but the numbers. That’s interesting since the entire tour and the bus itself are branded as the “No More Names” tour, not the “No More Numbers” tour.

Mayors Against Illegal Guns doesn’t even defend their criminal mayors so publicly, yet they’ll stand by and say that the number of criminals killed in the midst of violent crimes matter. At least their criminal mayor members are typically non-violent criminals.

What a Shame

Sen. Dianne Feinstein got stuck in an elevator with Senate aides today. Unfortunately, they let her out.

Video of Tazing Incident in New Hampshire

A local TV station got video of the takedown in Concord, New Hampshire, of the protestor who confronted one of the MAIG speakers at the podium. From what it looks like to me is he was trying to physically turn the officer around so he would look at the camera. All I could think about watching this was “This guy is Peter Griffith from Family Guy.” Except I think Peter Griffith probably respects the personal space of others better than this guy does. I’m not sure an arrest and tasering is an appropriate response to what’s pretty clearly non-assaultive personal contact, but at this point I think most people know with today’s “officer safety” culture that even touching a cop is going to land you in the hoosegow.