This article from the Sacremento Bee suggests the FBI might be investigating the Sheriff of that county for issuing carry licenses as patronage. Read the whole thing. This kind of circus is the system the Brady’s support as “reasonable”.
Author: Sebastian
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. It happens to be the same as mine. It won’t let her down.
Guest Blogging Over at SayUncle
I’ll be helping fill in for SayUncle while he’s on vacation. I will try to keep up the volume of material on here, but it might be hard. I’m going to try to avoid cross posting, since I’m pretty sure our audiences overlap a good bit. Pennsylvania stuff will stay over here, unless it involves juicy gun stuff.  But man, the news is dead lately. It’s like everyone is on vacation or something.
Addictions
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.  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. Our club has about 1100 members, which amounts to quite a lot of money if NRA were to lose a club of that size.  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.  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. 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. 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.  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. 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. That’s the political reality.
Winning Converts
The other Sebastian shows it is possible to win people over to your side, if you have good arguments, and don’t go off the deep end. I hope all this works out well. If we’re converting the true believers, we’re truly making progress!
Reporter Takes Concealed Carry Course
Remember the reporter a while ago who bought a cheap piece of junk pocket pistol intending to get a concealed carry license in Kansas? He took his class, and wrote about it.  Zendo Deb has the details.
Gun Control Australia Wants More
For those who think that perhaps those that advocate gun control will get their little victory, and then go away, I offer this:
Gun Control Australia says stronger laws have reduced the number of mass killings in Australia, but is worried the test to obtain a shooting licence is far too easy.
“In all jurisdictions, that is nowhere near as thorough and demanding as should be,” Gun Control Australia president John Crook said.
“Our only experience in analysing Victorian figures is virtually everyone, that is 99.5 per cent of people who take that test, pass it.
“In other words, it completely lacks integrity.
“It’s the simplest test you could imagine of just a few multiple choice answers.”
Mr Crook argued the test should be made into a course of between 20-40 hours over six months.
Put in tests and training, it’ll then be too easy, because people are passing them. They don’t want any legal ownership, but you can’t get there in one fell swoop.
“If I had a magic wand, if was premier for a day, I would have a total prohibition on guns. Total prohibition, including disarming the police force,” he told the Nine Network.
Yeah. Go ahead and try that and let me know how it works out for ya.