Good Riddance. And now, this tribute:
Author: Sebastian
Incandescent Bulb Ban Overturned
Tam reports that the Incandescent Bulb Ban that Congress passed a while back has been quietly repealed, joining an unfortunately short list of times when Congress has actually repealed a law that limited people’s freedoms. By this point, we’ve replaced most of our bulbs with CFLs, and for the same reason Tam has. I find the quality of light put out by modern CFLs acceptable for most purposes. My only real pet peeve left with them is warmup time. Nonetheless, the cost savings of running 15 watts versus 60 watts for the same amount of light, and not having to replace bulbs as often, makes the deal for me.
That said, I don’t want the government mandating that I use them, and nothing else. I have fixtures that won’t take acceptable CFLs, and they absolutely suck for outdoor lighting in the winter because of the warm-up time, unless you leave them on all the time. Much better to use halogens on a motion sensor.
We can also rest easy that the old EZ Bake oven you might want to pass onto your kids will still find an ample supply of light bulbs, even though the new ones apparently don’t require it. At least we can rest easy until the CPSC figures out that ovens are hot, and could burn children, and that it’s powered with electricity, and kids might try to take a bath with their favorite toy.
I Don’t Know How This Could Be
People never can successfully defend themselves with a gun, if you ask our opponents. Remember, for them it’s only a DGU if there’s a corpse. Kudos to the homeowner, but three shots and not a hit? Time to get to the range. Also interesting is that neighborhood is rich. This is not far from where I used to work for ten years, and I could never afford to live in the neighborhood I worked, and I didn’t make bad money.
This means there are two criminals out there now targeting rich looking houses, and will no doubt be moving to what they think is an easier target. I’ll go out on a limb here and suggest society would have been better off if this homeowner had made some well placed shots, even if that only enabled the police to apprehend them when they showed up in the emergency room with gunshot wounds, which, BTW, still wouldn’t have been a DGU if you use our opponents statistical methods.
Goals: We Need Them
Glock, for the 125th Anniversary of the Statue of Liberty, made a beautiful engraved model. As a community we need goals, so I would suggest we’re not finished until you can lawfully carry the Statue of Liberty Glock at the actual Statue of Liberty.
We’re a long ways from that, even if HR822 passes. Currently there is a security screen at the Statue of Liberty ferry, run by the National Park Service. There’s no law against the carrying of firearms in National Parks under New York Law, that I know of, but the building they do the screening in is a federal facility, which are gun free zones. So even if HR822 passes, you won’t be able to carry to the Statue of Liberty.
So I guess you could say HR822 is a Statute of Liberty won’t enable you carry at the Statue of Liberty.
King Busybody on Online Gun Sales
Bloomberg is publishing a misleading report about online gun sales, obviously targeting forums like GunBroker, GunsAmerica, and other far off corners of the Internets where people arrange deals. What he fails to mention is that it’s unlawful for private sales to proceed among people of different states without an FFL being involved, and that it’s unlawful for someone who is not a gun dealer to ship  firearm through US mail. I believe common carrier to someone in the same state as the seller is lawful in a private sale, but that’s a narrow category. Many of the sales Bloomberg claims to have attempted would be unlawful under existing law.
So qualifying this as a “vast and largely unregulated market for illegal guns,” is disingenuous, non-factual, and highly misleading, proving that even though MAIG may be picking up the mantle of gun control from previously failed groups, with an interesting twist and slick marketing, they are still not above sleight of hand and deception to try to make their case. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Readers Sending LTE’s
I always like it when readers get a Letter to the Editor published in one of the major papers in the state. Such is the case here, from the Allentown Morning Call, standing up for Charlie Dent’s vote on HR822, which was lambasted by the former head of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, which is solidly anti-gun. So Kudos to Peter for getting this in and published.
Belgian Mass Shooter
Extrano’s alley has a summary of the guy who went ape shit in Belgium and shot up the place. Not surprisingly, European elites are calling for more gun control laws, even though it seems apparent the weapons was procured and possessed illegally under Belgian law, and was not a type that would ordinarily be legal. He assembled it himself. But, you know, we’re all wacky for suggesting to our opponents that people will do this if you outlaw them.
You would tend to think that if gun control is going to stop anyone, it would be the mass shooter, who has limited access to black market sources, and is more likely to have to rely on the primary legal market to acquire firearms. But given that this happens in Europe, that doesn’t appear to be the case at all.
The Truth About Fair Use
The blogosphere loves itself a good controversy, and it looks like we have yet another one generated by the folks at Truth About Guns, courtesy of Weer’d Beard, who also links to a thread over at Reddit. Once again, this involves accusations of appropriations of intellectual property, refuted with a claim of fair use.
There have been accusations of a similar type made against Truth About Guns that I do indeed think fall quite probably into fair use. Their use if Weerd’s banner, for instance, is arguably fair. I use the word arguably, because there’s a lot of room for that when it comes to the legal implications of this topic. It’s not nearly as cut as dry as TTAG’s responses would have you believe. Fair use is kind of like Justice Potter’s infamous statement about pornography, in that he knows it when he sees it. While their are some pretty sound guidelines as to fair use, what is and isn’t fair use is not so cut and dry that one can just declare it, and that is the end of it.
You will get no argument from me that the Internet implicates necessary adjustments to how our society thinks about intellectual property, and copyright laws in particular. But the law is what it is. We’ve all used bits of material derived from other works, at one time or another, in the course of blogging. This is not what I think is imprudent behavior on the part of TTAG. What is imprudent, among other things, is blowing off a copyright holder when he claims your use is infringing, with claims that it’s clearly fair. It’s not clearly fair, because the law doesn’t work that way.
The prudent reaction is “What can I do to make this better?” All the author may want is clear attribution, or some other minor concession, and you both get to walk away happy. Even if the demand is to cease using the work, it’s a one post loss. What’s it to you? A blogger should be willing to work with a copyright holder who claims his use of their material isn’t fair. The copyright holder has the upper hand in this matter legally. So why make an issue of it?
The Nanny State Again
The NTSB recommends banning cell phone use in cars. Even hands free. This is at least keeping with research that shows hands free doesn’t matter for safety. I’m wondering whether banning passengers is next. Our state recently passed a ban that only covers texting, but interestingly enough it probably also has the unintended consequence of banning Apple’s Siri technology. This is really something politicians should just but their noses out of. There’s lots of potentially dangerous distractions in automobiles, and what problems technology can create, technology can fix.
The Space Pen Myth
Roberta takes a look at the old tome that “NASA spent millions to develop a space pen; the Russians just use pencils.” It never seemed to me that, in the pure oxygen environment used in early spacecraft, or really even in spacecraft today, it was a good idea to have little bits of broken off conductive, flammable graphite floating around among a lot of electrical equipment. The Russians may have used pencils, but they also didn’t care as much for the lives of their astronauts. Failures could be swept under the rug.