Month: February 2008

More on Ammunition Encoding

There is a bill that’s been introduced in Pennsylvania to implement Ammunition Accountability that we talked about last night.  It’s HB 2228.  I haven’t talked about this yet, because it’s still in committee, and not much of a threat at this moment, but that could change any minute.

The lobbying firm that runs the Ammunition Accountability web site is Gordon Thomas Honeywell, presumably their Governmental Affairs Group.  You will notice that they list ACS as a client.  Important to note that until recently Gordon Thomas Honeywell Governmental Affairs was known as Smith Alling Lane Government Affairs.

Tim Shellberg, who is President of GTH Government Affairs has several times donated to the campaign of  Washington State Representative Allister O’Brien, who is the lead sponsor of the Washington Ammunition encoding bill.  I also notice that Gun Owners Action League of Washington has donated quite a bit to his campaign as well.  Not enough it would seem.  O’Brien failed to win an endorsement from NRA last election.

And to think, Russell Ford said on Cam’s show he wants this whole thing to be as transparent as possible.  Transparent as in we hire a lobbying firm to anonymously set up a web site to push for model legislation, and to lobby key legislators that have been quietly bought off, in order to be able to skim off the top of every one of the eight billion rounds of ammunition produced each year.  You have to admit, that’s quite an ingenious scam, that would make even the most talented con artist jealous.  And it’s all legal.

Be sure to tune into Cam’s show at NRANews.com or on Sirius Patriot 144, Thursday at 10PM to hear the re-broadcast of the interview with this worm.

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Staying Home Today

Well, today I decided to spare my coworkers my plauge and stay home.  I woke up with a nasty cough this morning, so I can no longer count on copious use of hand santizer at work to prevent me from becoming typhoid Sebastian.

Last night I ran out of my drug of choice, Claritin-D, which you now can’t get at the 24 hour supermarket because the pharmacy is closed, meaning no one is there to wear the jackboot.  This morning I will have to go submit to the government anal probe to get my favorite Table I precursor.  How come no major candidate is running on telling the UN to go to hell and repealing this nonsense?  Does anyone agree with it other than power hungry politicians?

Either way, enough about The Man making my cold medicine a controlled substance.  Blogging activity should be close to normal.

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Ammunition Accountability

The web site Ammunition Accountability apparently is administered by the lobbying firm of Ammunition Coding Systems, who ultimately pays for the site, and who conveniently produces the system that does this type of encoding.  I just heard Russ Ford of ACS admitting to this on Cam Edwards’ show.

There’s a per round royalty their company plans to charge for this. Nothing like succeeding in the marketplace by having the .gov force your product on the consumer, whether they want it or not.  Seriously, these guys are hoping to get state legislatures to basically pass a tax on ammunition that gets passed on to them.

UPDATE: Cam comments that the interview with Russ Ford will be re-aired on Thursday.  You can tune in at NRANews.com.  I would highly recommend folks tune in.

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Hillary’s Gun Summit

Life long hunter Hillary Clinton wants a presidential “gun summit”:

“I believe we really should have a summit where everybody comes together on all sides of this issue,” Clinton said. “Let’s figure out how we can be consistent with the Second Amendment, which I wholeheartedly support, and do more to keep people safe.

“I think we can do that, but it’s going to require us all to maybe give a little and understand the point of view of the other people,” she said. “That’s something I would do as President to really bring people together.”

While surely this is campaign rhetoric, all one has to do is go read Bryan Miller’s comments on his blog to see what Hillary’s summit would look like.  It’s hard to come to terms with people who don’t even want to recognize the existence of a constitutional right to arms, or recognize that it means anything.

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Stay Home Sickos!

Ace of Spaces thinks people who are sick should stay the hell home.  I tend to agree, but I’m being a hypocrite today saying that.  I feel like dirt, yet I’m still at work.  Granted, no way in hell I’d come to work with the flu, but I shouldn’t really even come in with a cold, and risk making other people sick and miserable.

The problem is, I am a hoarder.   Company policy is that we get six days of sick time a year, but we get to deposit unused time into a “sick bank”.  Given that a cold will last up to a week, I can’t really afford to take the time off and still have anything left over should I get the flu, and the flu is particularly bad this year.  My instinct is to hoard sick days for a serious illness, rather than the sniffly coughy kinds of illness.

Wise companies will encourage or force sick employees to stay home, so as not to contaminate a company’s entire labor pool, but most HR people, who make these policies, tend to enjoy putting the cart before the horse.  If you create policies that discourage people from taking sick days, you can’t be surprised when people show up sick, and the plague spreads through the company like wildfire.  I think for most HR types, it’s more of a priority to prevent employees from treating sick time like vacation.  Good employees won’t do that (at least not much), but human resources departments will seldom want to blame bad hiring and bad performance management practices, which are hard to fix, when you can appear to fix the problem with a few simple policy changes.  Giving the appearance of action is a pretty fundamental drive for lazy people who want to look good for others who won’t bother to look all that closely.

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NIU Shooter Was Known Whack Job

Over at Crime, Guns and Videotape:

In order to buy the four firearms in Illinois, Steven Kazmierczak had to lie on four separate #4473 Firearm Transaction Forms, and his Illinois Firearms Owners Identification Application. That FOID process takes months to complete. Once the FIOD was received Kazmierczak could not take delivery until he had endured the mandated waiting periods for the guns he had already purchased.

It would appear he was prohibited from having a firearm under both federal and IL laws, yet he still managed to get past the many obstacles Illinois throws up against purchasing a firearm, including state licensing, waiting periods, and a host of other controls the Brady Campaign and others say will prevent this kind of stuff.

It doesn’t work, now can we start talking about solutions that will?

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