Shall Not Be Questioned – Page 614 – The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …

Down For Maintenance Sometime This Weekend

When I set up this blog four and a half years ago, the performance of some of the journaled filesystems that did not originate from Linux, like JFS and XFS, were better than the native filesystems, notably ext3, which was really a journaled version of ext2. So the blog, for a number of years, has run off JFS, which had its origins in IBM’s flavor of Unix, AIX.

But from most benchmarks I’ve been able to find, and my own testing, ext4 is better than either JFS or XFS in terms of performance. The blog is running on a very old filesystem, and it’s time to make the switch. The defrag we’ll get from the switch alone should boost performance, even absent the filesystem switch.

I estimate the blog should not be down more than an hour sometime either after 1AM Saturday morning or 1AM Sunday morning. One of the great things about being linked by Instapundit is it gives me a great opportunity to examine the server under a heavy load, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the filesystem we’re using is both badly fragmented, and using a slower journaled filesystem than we could be using.

Unions Smearing NRA on Flimsy Evidence

A union shop is trying to paint NRA as being anti-union on some pretty flimsy evidence. Their argument essentially goes like this: John McCain votes against unions, and NRA supported John McCain. NRA endorses politicians. National Right to Work Committee endorses politicians. NRA often endorse the same candidates as NRTWC, therefore NRA must be anti-union:

McCain is the NRA-endorsed candidate for president. He supported a national right to work law, which the fiercely anti-union National Right to Work Committee has wanted for years.

The NRA is cozy with the NRTWC, which also pushes hard for state right to work laws.

The NRA claims it is pro-gun rights, not anti-union. Yet the NRA and NRTWC often back the same candidates. Almost always, those candidates are anti-union like McCain.

Union leaders have generally resented the influence of the NRA over union rank-and-file. As someone who lives in a pretty heavily unionized area, I can tell you that influence is real. I can also tell you there are plenty of union member gun owners who will vote against their Second Amendment rights, and work to keep pro-union, anti-gun Democrats in office. But I’ve never met one of those who felt like it was an easy choice for them.

The great irony is, I’ve never heard of NRA being all that cozy with NRTWC. In fact, because a lot of other right-of-center groups in DC don’t really appreciate how NRA throws its weight around (and usually gets its way), my impression has been that their disposition toward NRA is a bit more hate than love. Maybe instead of smearing the NRA with flimsy accusations, the unions ought to put pressure on the Democratic Party leaders, particularly urban areas, to drop the gun control shtick.

Hat tip to our friends at CSGV, who never met a smear about NRA they wouldn’t repeat, no matter how untrue or ridiculous.

UPDATE: Looks like it’s an old article. A reader pointed out the date on the comments. I figured it might be recent given McCain opening his mouth about his “perfect” record.

Progress on Suppressors

The Michigan Attorney General, Bill Schuette, has issued an opinion that suppressors are legal in Michigan, provided that the NFA requirements are complied with.Â The demonization of silencers, or more accurately, suppressors, never made a whole lot of sense, especially when you consider noise complaints are the biggest issue shooting ranges face, especially places like around here, which have numerous suburban and exurban shooting ranges, with plenty of neighbors in earshot.

“We thank Attorney General Schuette for this well-reasoned opinion, which will allow Michigan residents to possess suppressors in compliance with federal law,” said Chuck Cunningham, NRA-ILA Director of State and Local Affairs. Â “Noise suppressors are an effective means of reducing hearing loss among shooters, and we are pleased that shooters in Michigan, like those in 38 other states, will now have the freedom to choose these useful safety devices.”

When you put it that way, you’d almost think they were going mainstream, and you’d be right. I think suppressors may very well be the best shot we have at chipping away part of the National Firearms Act. A few years ago I didn’t think it would be possible, but now I think it might be.

USA Today Peddling Contrived Controversy

USA Today is jumping on the bandwagon, reporting about the manufactured controversy over the PIMA County GOP raffling off a Glock 23. Aside from not even being the same model Glock that the nut used to shoot up the Giffords rally, it also happens to be, quite likely, the most common brand of handgun sold today. There’s nothing odd or unusual about it.

Caroline Brewer, spokeswoman for theÂ Brady Campaignto Prevent Gun Violence, said it doesn’t matter that it is legal to raffle a gun. “Where is their moral compass? It boggles the mind,” she said. “This is insensitive to Rep. Giffords and all the families in Tucson involved in the shooting.”

This controversy is one that’s been entirely manufactured by Democratic operatives and Washington DC based groups who don’t have much to do these days except sit around waiting for their organizations to run out of money.

If our opponents want to go back to the days of railing for handgun prohibition, they are welcome. This is a losing issue for them. The implication is you’re a bad person for owning or wanting a Glock, and an awful lot of people own them. So please, Brady folks, keep on marching down that road to irrelevance.

UPDATE: Robb Allen in the comments: “Would these people have a problem with a car dealer on Chappaquiddick Island raffling off a car?”

Navigation Aids

United is planning on replacing all their flight manuals and charts with iPads. I’m not surprised by this, as there are quite a number of apps for aviation, and the numbers seem to keep growing. Many of the apps are expensive, but it’s a small price to pay for eliminating all that paper.

Setback in Court

A judge has denied a preliminary injunction on the border rifle reporting requirement, saying that the NRA failed to show it would suffer irreparable harm. There’s still hope for the NSSF case. I’d say being forced to comply with a provision which has no basis in law should qualify as irreparable harm under any standard.

California Carry Permits Jump in Two Counties

Two counties recently went shall-issue in California, thanks to pressure from the CalGuns folks. Both those counties have experienced an increase in the number of permits issued. To date I have not heard any reports of the streets of Sacramento running red with blood from permit holders going off half-cocked and shooting people in arguments over parking spaces. But still, UC Davis professor Garen Wintemute is making excuses:

“There are a lot of steps between loosening a policy and seeing something different in the ER,” said Wintemute, an emergency room physician.

Research doesn’t clearly support changes inÂ crime rates,Â up or down. “We don’t know,” Wintemute said.

This story has been repeated over and over again, and they’ll never just admit they were wrong.

McCain Full of Crap

So he’s saying now:

â€œI am a staunch advocate of the second amendment â€” don’t get me wrong I have a perfect record from the NRA â€” but we need to do what we can to make sure that someone can’t come to a gun show or some place and exploit a loophole.â€

Perfect record? Going into the 2004 elections, I seem to recall the guy had a C for supporting this kind of crap in the past. The reason he won the endorsement was because no matter what you might say about McCain otherwise, he wasn’t a former director of the anti-gun Joyce Foundation, and hadn’t called for handgun bans.

So let’s dispense with this perfect record crap. This guy has made a career out of not being as bad as the other guy, and that’s about the best you can say about him. If he had been running against, say, former New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson in 2008, it would have been a completely different story.

The big problem with McCain, is you never know when he’s going to go all “Maverick” on you. Sometimes I really think he’s his daughter’s father.

A Question for Our Gun Control Advocating Friends

So if the evil “gun lobby” is all about securing the “profits of the gun industry,” who, of course, donate money back to groups like NRA (the whole Triangle of Death thing), then why wouldn’t the self-interested response to Fast and Furious be to look the other way? If the goal is to help make money for the evil gunmakers, an operation like Fast and Furious, with the full blessing of ATF to sell as many guns to straw buyers for the Mexican cartels as they can, should form a great symbiotic relationship. So why the outrage on our side? Why was it gun bloggers who first did the digging to discover this scandal? What interest would NRA have, who is part of the Triangle, have in pushing Congress and raising the profile of this issue?

If this was about gun industry profits, we should love Fast and Furious, but we don’t. If that isn’t enough to make our opponents question the veracity of their own rhetoric, they are absolutely blind to the truth.

Demonizing Glocks

A county Republican group in Arizona is raffling off a gun to raise money for Get Out The Vote efforts, and HuffPo is sounding the alarm!

For just $10, readers can purchase a raffle ticket (out of 125 offered) for a chance to win a brand new handgun. Not just any handgun, but a Glock 23

Arizona Republicans surely know just how effective this particular brand of gun can be. After all, it was only eight months ago that Jared Lee Loughner used a Glock 19 in Tucson – the seat of Pima County – to shoot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in the head.

That’s two different models that just happen be made by the same manufacturer. They aren’t even the same caliber. And, yes, the article even ends on a nice hysterical note about how the three 12-rounds magazines that come with the raffle prize will allow the winner to shoot even more people than Loughner.

For PA & NJ folks, you can win the Glock of your choice at the Friends of NRA dinner on Sept. 15. If readers buy a ticket, make sure to notify the person following up on meal choice that you’d like to sit with other blog folks, and we will make sure that there are enough reserved seats. Odds on many of the guns will be 1 in 50, maybe even better. If you want a Gold or Silver package, the odds on winning the Kimber Stainless Pro Carry II in that limited raffle are REALLY good right now – and your package is mostly tax-deductible.

Those in Arizona who want a raffle ticket to win the Glock 23 can get the details in the GOP newsletter.