Keyboard and a .45 has an interesting post about answering the door. I have a pretty simple solution to this problem, I just don’t answer my door if I’m not expecting someone. Chances are, if I didn’t invite them, I don’t want to talk to them. Maybe it’s rude, but I figure anyone I know who is outside my door and I’m not answering, is going to call the cell.
Author: Sebastian
PA Signs Agreement with Arkansas
Pennsylvania and Arkansas now have reciprocity. The agreement can be found here.
Congress Can Have My Lightbulbs …
… when they pry them from my cold dead hands. And you can thank president Bush for signing this piece of garbage.
“In this bill, we ban by 2012 the famously inefficient 100-watt incandescent bulb,” said Rep. Jane Harman, a California Democrat who co-sponsored that provision.
You can go fuck yourself Jane Harman. Seriously.
The bill requires a fivefold increase – to 36 billion gallons – in the amount of alternative home-grown fuels, such as ethanol, that must be added to the nation’s gasoline supply by 2022.
Good to see the corn farmers got their hands in this. Corn farmers can go fuck themselves too! [No offense intended to any corn farmers who read this, and aren’t actively participating in the conspiracy to force their product onto the American consumer]
Folks, our government is out of control, and pretty clearly George W. Bush and the Republicans aren’t going to do a thing about it. I have no problem with compact florescent bulbs, but if they didn’t have problems, they wouldn’t need government intervention to beat standard incandescents in the marketplace. The government has banned toilets that actually flush decently, and now light bulbs that are actually…. bright. Am I the only one who is tired of this bullshit?
UPDATE: Joe has more to say here.
UPDATE: Ride Fast & Shoot Straight too.
Primer Fun
Primers are important components of ammunition. But what are they made of? How do they work? Basically, a primer is some shock sensitive explosive mixed with other fuels, oxidizers, abrasives and binders.
The most common compound used to initiate the explosion is lead styphnate. Needless to say, it’s pretty toxic, which is why people say to wash your hands after shooting or handling ammunition. Primers made from this compound are considered to be non-corrosive.
The original compound used for priming was mercury fulminate. Its main disadvantage is that it produces elemental mercury, which readily forms an amalgam with brass, substantially weaken brass casings. In more modern corrosive ammunition, it was combined with potassium chlorate, which when ignited would coat parts of the firearm in potassium salts, which attract moisture and promote corrosion very rapidly if not removed.
Handguns Down Under
According to Ahab, they are going to restrict them.
MPD SWAT Raid
Other people are doing a really good job of covering this. I’m constantly listening to complains by folks that gun owners don’t care about other rights, that we’re lap dogs of George W and his goons. Well, how come it’s gun bloggers and other sympathetic people who are most outraged by these kinds of law enforcement tactics? Does anyone think this Hmong gentlemen, who was the victim in all this, make no mistake, was treated gently after having shot and wounded two officers after they unlawfully invaded his home?
There are cases where you have to do raids like this, but it shouldn’t be, in any case, so routine that we hear these stories pop up so often. Maybe I’ll have an easier time taking some folks on the left as being anything other than babbling baboons when they wake up and realize that there are very real civil rights abuses going on under their noises that have nothing to do with George W. Bush.
A Surprising Review
Dave Hardy reviews Richard Feldman’s book, and doesn’t find it to be as bad as it is made out to be.
It isn’t. He plainly thought the world of Harlon Carter (as do I), feels that gun laws do harm rather than good, and that NRA’s objectives are correct. He plainly dislikes Wayne and former ILA head Jim Baker, and their financial decisions, and dislikes Neal Knox. There’s some bias there, since Jim Baker got him essentially fired. But the dislikes take up maybe ten pages of the book — it’s just that the reviewers, who hate the progun cause, focus on quotes from those pages.
I think the book will actually help the firearms rights cause. Given the reviews, there will probably be a lot of people buying it who are antigun. But to find the ten pages of criticism, they will have to read about 280 pages on why gun laws (including assault weapons bans) are nonsense, Harlon’s brilliance in creating the modern NRA, how sleazy or foolish antigun politicians are sleazy or dumb (priceless case: NY governor Mario Cuomo tries to defuse tension during a meeting with Feldman and others, by intentionally sitting on a whoopee cushion and then showing it to them), how pro-gunners are honest and decent, etc., etc..
Read the whole thing. I’m not sure Feldman’s book is intended to be subversive, in the manner of enticing anti-gun people to buy it, and then hitting them with a pro-gun message, but if that’s the end result, I’m not going to complain.
UPDATE: Countertop Comments:
Frankly, complaining about people driving Mercedes in Northern Virginia/Washington, D.C. to people in Northern Virginia/Washington, D.C. is a bit ludicrous. Sure, folks in the heartland might be offended, but its no different than any place else. Thats what the average person here drives, so thats what your going to see.
Even the marketing arrangements and nepotism that Feldman complains of, it isn’t any different than what you would see anywhere else in D.C.
And the salary’s too. Last time I checked, Wayne LaPierre was making around $600k a year. Its nice, but not a lot. Not by D.C. standards, not when the heads of much less powerful (and smaller, and poorer) organizations are making millions a year in salary in addition to all the perks and bonuses they all get (and they all get them).
If the NRA wants to continue to be successful, and its phenomenally successful (GOA complains that every piece of gun control legislation has its finger prints on it, well yeah. Thats cause nothing gets by without the NRA’s sign off. But remove the NRA and everything gets by. You have to pick your battles, and considering where we’ve been, we’re doing pretty good right now) , its going to have to continue to hire the best.
I don’t disagree. I don’t honestly think we’re doing too badly as a movement right now. We have our opponents on the ropes. Get rid of the leaders? I’m not going to consider it until I’m convinced they are doing the wrong thing.
Rewards Good Driving
Ahab talks about a program in California to stop drivers and give them Starbucks gift cards to reward them for good driving. I think a very interesting legal question centers around whether this practice is actually even legal.
I won’t pretend to be an expert in this field, but I’m fairly certain that the police can’t seize a driver for any old reason. They have to have a reasonable suspicion that the occupants of the vehicle were engaged in some kind of criminal activity. Even if it’s not strictly illegal, it’s definitely an abuse of authority.
Hollywood Needs Fresh Ideas
Hollywood’s latest hit, “I am Legend,” is still a rehash of older movies that were supposed to be cinematic versions of a book. Anxious, I suppose to rehash more old movie ideas, it seems they are coming out with a new version of the movie Real Genius, once again starring Val Kilmer.
Don’t get me wrong, the original movie is an 80s classic, but please don’t tell me they are going to try to pass Val off as a college student?
Pulling it Out From Where the Sun Don’t Shine
Man, this editorial is filled with so much ignorance, I can’t even begin to pick it apart.
Such extraordinary firepower is not meant for hunting animals or target shooting. We see only one other purpose. And so did Murray.
If I had a dime for every time someone said that a rifle firing a medium power cartridge, is too “extraordinarily powerful” for civilian use, I’d be a rich man. The .223 is indeed unsuited to deer hunting, because it’s not powerful enough. Of course, there are AR-15s that are built in calibers suitable for deer, and people use them.
[…] state lawmakers, in Colorado and elsewhere, ought to follow the example of Maryland, which just enacted the Assault Weapons Ban of 2007. (It would mean amending a law now on the books.)
Maryland passed an assault weapons ban in 2007? That’s news to me. I’m pretty sure the correct fact is that one was propsed, and second amendment activists in Maryland defeated it. A little research never hurts, unless you’re an “authorized journalist”, in which case it must be obviously painful, since they never do it.
During the ban, the number of assault weapons linked to crimes dropped. The proportion of banned assault weapons traced to crime dropped by two-thirds from 1995 to 2004.
It did? I could swear the actual facts from a CDC study done on the issue showed it to be ineffective.
Frankly, we can’t figure out the benefits of having assault weapons easily available. Law enforcement officers universally agree that people wanting self protection don’t carry assault weapons. But criminals do.
If they are so ineffective for self protection, then did they ever think maybe they should ask the police why they carry them? Well, it’s not the only bit of logical analysis that’s missing fro this piece.