You’re a Blogger Right?

I have to admit, my muse has gone on vacation too.  But I haven’t so run out of things to say that I’m resorting to posting what the trolls say on the blog.  When you get people posting crazy stuff, just ignore it.  That’s what most of us do.  I mean, I’ll gladly approve someone who disagrees with me, even if it sounds a bit nuts, but if you’re completely off the reservation, to the point where I don’t know what you’re saying or why you’re babbling, the “Spam” button works pretty well for that.

In defense of the Brady Campaign, I think that was probably an actual comment, though I see some people are skeptical of this.  You’re probably seeing what they don’t approve.   But still, we all get crazy stuff as comments from time to time.  This is like having show and tell at an elementary school, and the Brady’s are the kid that brings a pencil.  We’ve seen it before, and we all have one.

Great Philadelphia Leadership

Wyatt Earp over at Support Your Local Gunfighter is a Philadelphia police officer, and marks an unfortunate milestone for the city: the 200th murder of the year.   Read the whole thing.   He doesn’t have good things to say about Commissioner Johnson’s last act of “leadership”:

Look, when you take someone who has been behind a desk for half their career and put them in patrol for the summer, who is that helping? No one. They don’t want to be there, so they’re not going to be stopping cars and rushing to priority jobs. But, when the media asks, the brass can say, “We’ve increased the amount of officers on the streets!” It’s a shell game.

Yup.  I talked about that a few months ago here.  Until the city politicians actually face the problem, instead of deflecting blame to Harrisburg or elsewhere, this is going to continue.  The city’s politicians lack the political courage to do anything.  The only thing that will work is taking the criminals off the streets and keeping them off the streets.  It’s my understanding that the courts, jails and prisons in the city have become a revolving door.

I think it’s a tough thing to for the politicians to face, because to go into a bad neighborhood and say “We’re getting the criminals off the streets, and we need your help” means telling folks that you’re going to lock up someone’s brother, child, nephew, husband or other loved one.  It means people will have to take responsibility.  It’s far easier for the politicians to deflect blame, whether it to be to Harrisburg, guns, drugs, what have you, so no one has to take responsibility.   There may be things Harrisburg can do to help, but the problem won’t abate until someone stands up and admits what the problem is.   I may have my disagreements with Michael Nutter, but he’ll be an improvement over the circus clowns that currently run city hall.  Hopefully he’ll impress me.

Finally Finished

Buying a new surplus SKS is not for those who don’t know how to completely strip down a rifle and reassemble it. I don’t mean field strip either, I mean strip down every part, clean, and reassemble. I picked it up from the UPS depot on Tuesday, and got to work immediately. I learned that Bitter frowns on the practice of using a tin foil tray in the toaster oven to melt off the excess cosmoline from the smaller parts. After a mishap, I ended up with a new toaster oven. It was a tough battle, but I think I’m happy with the result:

http://www.pagunblog.com/blogpics/mysks.jpg

It’s now ready to take to the range. I can’t wait to shoot it. It had quite a lot of cosmoline on it that had to be removed. Turns out Gunzilla doesn’t work as well as Hoppes No. 9 on cosmoline. It works decently, but just not quite as well. That’s probably because Hoppes is mostly kerosene, which is going to solvate a heavy grease better than most other things.

What has me stoked is that it’s in really good shape. No rust, very little wear on the finish. Shiny barrel without any evidence of pitting. Good stock, which looks like it’s seen some use, but in decent shape. The kit that came with it has someone’s name written inside, which I thought was a nice added touch.

Taking the Media to the Range

Joe takes some local reporters to the range. I’m curious to see what they write. It’s good that they sought out someone with first hand experience and knowledge, rather than talk to the first “expert” willing to offer a quote. I notice Omie is left handed, and rather cute. Of course, any chick behind an AR-15 automatically gets a +5 in the looks department!

That looks like the same fiberglass Israeli mag that was my favorite for a while.

More on Criminal Profiler Pat Brown

We screwed up. It seems that not only is Pat Brown not anti-gun, but she’s actually pretty pro-gun. In the interest of not eating our own, I’m hoping everyone gets the word out that we misunderstood what she was saying.

It’s difficult, when you don’t know someone from jack, and hear a statement on the air that can be taken a certain way, to decide how to take it. Given CNN’s reputation on our issue, it’s easy to misunderstand something, or take it the wrong way, as I did with this statement. The great thing about the blogosphere, is it offers a forum where people can defend themselves when they feel they are being unfairly maligned, as Ms. Brown has chosen to do in this case. Unlike a newspaper, we don’t put the correction on page E9.

So I admit that I was in error as to her orientation towards our issue. I’m hoping everyone that linked to the CNN video will update the post with a link to her comment.

Pat Brown Responds

From the comments:

Wasn’t it just a few months ago when I got wailed on by the left during the Virginia Tech massacre for suggesting kids should carry guns to school to protect themselves? Sometime during the many interviews I did that week I said something to the effect that if we allowed concealed carry on campuses maybe someone would have taken Cho out. I am a big fan of concealed carry because I know criminals carry concealed weapons all the time and I would like to even the field with some honest citizens carrying a few themselves so criminals don’t think no one will shoot back. I think of how many lives would be saved if only someone in the school or company could defend against mass murderers instead of allowing these killers from mowing down a bunch of sitting ducks who are desperately try to hide behind furniture to save their lives.

Now, after doing interviews on the Jesse Davis murder, those from the right are taking one statement out of context and going nuts about it. It seems they think that I believe any man who owns a gun is a danger to women. If I thought that, I guess I would be talking about my own father and my own son. They have guns for personal protection. For that matter, my daughter has guns for personal protection and I also own firearms for personal protection. I am all for gun ownership for personal protection. Clearly, I was not saying a man with a gun is a psychopath.

Nor was I saying a man who might have a collection of guns is a psychopath. I know many of these men as well. They are hunters or lovers of antiques or do a lot of target shooting. What I was talking about during the Paula Zahn Show was the combination of psychopathic behavior and an obsession with weaponry as psychopath love weapons as it gives them a feeling of power and control. Psychopaths do indeed have a fascination with guns and knives and just because the rest of us might happen to own weapons or even have a number of them as a hobby doesn’t eliminate the fact that psychopaths may also be shopping at the gun store with us.

Women must learn to differentiate between psychological healthy men and unpsychologically healthy men if they want to keep from getting into a dangerous life threatening situation. No one trait will be proof that an individual is a psychopath but add a bunch of traits together and this is a warning. A kind, honorable, honest man with a gun collection is not a psychopath or a danger to anyone but a lying, manipulative, arrogant creep who has a cache of twenty weapons is someone a woman wants to get the hell away from. A man who teaches history at the local junior high school and happens to have a collection of Asian swords is not someone a woman should be frightened of but a man who obsessively watches ninja flicks, brags about how he used to be in the CIA, can’t keep a job, calls women sluts and whores, and owns a huge collection of swords and daggers, now there is a guy a woman wants should avoid like the plague.

Anyone who watched the actual Paula Zahn Show and paid attention to the whole conversation and intent would clearly know I was not labeling gun owners psychopaths. Unfortunately, when words are taken out of context and printed on the Internet, often the meaning of those words get misunderstood. I apologize to any gun owners (who aren’t psychopaths) who thought they were the target of my statements. I respect your constitutional rights to own firearms and would never want to see those taken away. I, like you, want to be sure I can protect myself and my family. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Criminal Profiler Pat Brown

I’m glad she responded.   For the record, I don’t think I took her statement out of context.   The context was pretty much in tact in the video.  I think she misspoke.  In other words, said something that sounded different than what she really meant.   That’s fine.   I can’t imagine I wouldn’t say something the wrong way on camera if I was in the media spotlight a lot.   Now that she’s clarified, I don’t think her sentiment is unreasonable or that she meant to malign gun owners.

Yet More NICS Stuff

It’s getting tiring posting about this, but it’s important, so I’ll keep doing it.  Via SayUncle, I found a pretty good article opposing HR2640:

No one knows how many of the 21 million records Congress seeks will truly identify Americans who lack the legal right to have a firearm. The effect on guns already owned by people in the 21 million records seems clear — they would be subject to confiscation. At least, a transfer of ownership seems a likely requirement if the law is enacted and those people’s names are poured into the list. There are no plans to notify these people.

Well, you see, the problem is these 21 million or so people are likely already prohibited persons, and thus aren’t able to legally own firearms even currently.   I agree that there are likely to be mistakes, but we have that now with the system the way it is, and there’s little recourse for getting your name out.  There’s also a lot of veterans who get screwed in 2000 who will get unscrewed by HR2640.

It’s also important to note that the reason the bill is moving so fast is so that amendments can’t be tacked on during debate.  We want this to move fast.

It seems to me that this article, though well written and well argued, is really arguing against the Brady Act altogether.  I think that’s a reasonable argument to make, because background checks can be infringing if the records are not accurate.  I wish we could have gotten more out of Congress in this regard.   But we did get something, and something is pretty good for a law that doesn’t really add any new legal restrictions on who may or may not own guns.

Two Pennsylvania Things

Over at Jeff’s, the Black Caucus in the General Assembly is holding up the budget over gun control.

Philadelphia is now the sixth largest city.   Congratulations Phoenix!  I heard on the radio this morning it was because Phoenix cheated, by annexing land.  I also think it might have something to do with the city not being a sewer, but I could be wrong.