Syd has an excellent take on the video circulating of the girl smacking herself int he face with a recoiling Desert Eagle.
Category: Guns
Special Interests
This is a startling admission from the New York Times:
 There’s an attractive logic to this argument, except that, in practice, it runs into some nettlesome inconsistencies. For instance, the National Rifle Association is also a dues-paying group that aggregates the power of its members, as is the National Federation of Independent Businesses, and I doubt very much that Edwards or other Democrats would describe these as anything other than special interests. Just like the N.R.A., Big Labor tries to manipulate elections to gain access and favor for its members. That doesn’t make unions a corrupting influence; as Andrew Stern, the president of the Service Employees International Union, always says, unions have been the greatest antipoverty program in American history. But it does make labor a special interest, whether Democrats like it or not.
Is it just me, or is that the first time you’ve ever seem anyone at the New York Times state that the NRA represents its members interests, rather than being a toady of the firearms industry?
BBC Article
Both War on Guns and Armed and Safe have offered their takes on this BBC article.  I have one as well:
Police commander Michael Anzallo says the capital has seen an influx of handguns from neighbouring states where there are fewer controls.
“The police department recovers more than 1,000 guns a year,” he says.
“The problem is easy access to firearms. Most of the motives for homicides are arguments or robbery related and the quick pull of the trigger means somebody’s life.”
This seems to be a common tactic; blaming the neighboring states. The way this is always presented suggests the gun law of the controlling jurisdictions are strict, and effective at keeping guns out of the hands of criminals, but that criminals can just cross over into another state and buy a firearm because of the lax laws there.
Given that most people aren’t aware of what current gun control laws actually are, this is an effective tactic to deflect the criticism that gun control will never work. Most people don’t know that it’s illegal to buy a handgun out of state, or that someone with a criminal history will fail a background check, and aren’t aware of the current laws about straw purchasing.
It’s effective to evoke images of a criminal heading to a Maryland gun store and picking up a gun because of the “lax” gun laws there, rather than explain the existing laws, or the black market networks through which criminals obtain firearms.
D.C. Gun Buyback
Ravenwood talks about Washington DC’s gun buyback program, and suggests a gun buyback program of his own that I could really get behind.
The Yearly PSA
Repeated again and again in communities everywhere. Don’t fire guns into the air, says Lynn Abraham. Probably good advice. We’ll never compete with Kentucky anyway. It’s not as big a problem as public officials like to make it out to be. I agree that it shouldn’t be done, but I have to wonder if this type of PSA (or is that PSH) is designed more to scare people about gun ownership, than it is to combat a legitimate problem. The kind of people who do this type of stuff are about as likely to care what Lynn Abraham thinks as they are to obey the gun laws which already make this activity illegal.
Libel?
Looks like there’s a troll on David Codrea’s blog that’s threatening a libel suit. For those of you who want a bit of background on libel law in the United States, you can read here:
And just what is malice when it comes to proving libel? Retired Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., who wrote the Sullivan decision, defined it as “knowledge that the [published information] was false” or that it was published “with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.” In other words, public officials no longer could sue for libel simply by proving that something that had been broadcast or printed about them was false. Now they would have to prove that a journalist had knowingly printed false information while making little, if any, attempt to distinguish truth from lies.
The Supreme Court later extended its so-called Sullivan rule to cover “public figures,” meaning individuals who are not in public office but who are still newsworthy because of their prominence in the public eye. Over the years, American courts have ruled that this category includes celebrities in the entertainment field, well-known writers, athletes, and others who often attract attention in the media.
The burden on the plaintiff to prove libel is pretty high, even higher when dealing with a “public figure”, which arguably being a board member of Pennsylvania’s prominent state anti-gun group would make him, if this troll is who it seems to be. That’s not even mentioning we’ve all agreed this evidence is circumstantial, and not something you could take to court.
Also, being an IT professional, I’m well aware of how IP spoofing works, and if someone is spoofing in order to frame Dr. Reily, this is something that should be investigated. I’m a bit skeptical anyone would go through that much trouble. Spoofing an entire blog and numerous comments isn’t an easy feat.
Private Security Contrator NFA
Armed and Safe expresses some concerns about the contractor provisions on HR4900. One thing I’d urge folks to consider is that if security contractors don’t have to compete for very limited transferable Title II firearms, it should take some pressure off prices. I think it’s good to keep transferable Title II firearms in the hands of collectors, rather than having security firms gobbling them up.
Too Many Assault Weapons in… Knoxville?
We’ve seen stories like this from the land of John Timony in Florida. Maybe he has a relative working in the Knoxville PD, or perhaps the anti-gun people are hard at work there too.
“We have traffic stops and find rounds or magazines or weapons in cars where there is a group of people in the car.”
In the past, he says police would find someone with a handgun that might hold 8 to 10 rounds, now they are facing assault weapons capable of holding 100 rounds in a single magazine.
“The guys that shoot these high capacity weapons just spray them in all directions and that is obviously an extreme danger wherever this happens,” said Hoskins.
Hoskins says people who carry such weapons are a major threat to police and the public.
Geez, I hope Hoskins doesn’t intercept any of the gun bloggers headed to Coal Creek today. He’ll crap his pants.
Huckabee Channels Cheney
Looks like Mike Huckabee has some muzzle discipline problems of his own.
Late to the Party
Bitter and I were off driving around in the mountains of Virginia and North Carolina today, with much getting rained on, so I will have to do a roundup of what other people have posted on the topic of our friend, and troll, CeaseFire Pennsylvania Board Member, Alex Tristan Riley. What these bloggers have gathered is very circumstantial, and we can’t conclusively prove these allegations, because Alex has done an effective job of erasing his past by removing all the blog work he has done. It’s all gone down the memory hole.
War on Guns posts an example of this juvenile satire, posted under the pseudonym NRAfourever. Someone using that Pseudonym has also in the past run a blog, a screens shot of which is showing below:
Rob Allen does the best job of presenting the evidence he has that Alexander Tristan Riley, Culturologist, and NRAFourever are quite probably the same person. Thirdpower backs it up with some more.
You might not be able to take it to court, but judge for yourself whether or not you think they are the same person. All the former blog efforts have now been removed, since Alex accepted his position on CeaseFire Pennsylvania’s Board of Directors.
UPDATE: Armed and Safe has more.