Mayor Miller of Toronto thinks it’s an idea who’s time has come. But you know, we’re just a bunch of paranoid gun nuts. What do we know about slippery slopes?
Month: May 2008
Quote of the Day
“On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes — and I see many of them in the audience here today — our sense of patriotism is particularly strong.”
To be fair to Barack Obama, it’s the kind of mistake any politician could make, but it’s an amusing screw-up nonetheless. After reading about this gaffe, and others, in more detail, I’ve come to the conclusion that he’s just a stupid politician.
More Controversey over The 5.56x45mm
AP article on the ineffectiveness of the M855 round.
Dr. Martin Fackler, a former combat surgeon and a leading authority on bullet injuries, said the problem is the gun, not the bullet. The M4 rifle has a 14.5 inch barrel — too short to create the velocity needed for an M855 bullet to do maximum damage to the body.
My understanding is that the 5.56×45 needs to be doing over 2800 fps to do serious tissue damage, which it achieves being fired out of an M16, but not an M4.
Rules of war limit the type of ammunition conventional military units can shoot. The Hague Convention of 1899 bars hollow point bullets that expand in the body and cause injuries that someone is less likely to survive. The United States was not a party to that agreement. Yet, as most countries do, it adheres to the treaty, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
I would argue if our adversaries can behead people, we can use effective ammunition. To me, this is the real problem. With the right kind of ammo, I think the M4 would be much more effective than it is with M855.
“One of the things I’ve discovered in guns is that damned near everyone is an expert,” he says. “And they all have opinions.”
No doubt.
Republicans Running Serious Against McCarthy?
According to Jacob, it looks like the New York GOP mean to front a serious challenger against anti-gun Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy, architect of HR1022, a sweeping semi-automatic ban, and expert on barrel shrouds. I wish they would have done this in a year where it the Republican brand wasn’t smelling like a truck full of used diapers.
Castro Warming Up to Obama
Another Gun Blog has the quote. Seems Castro is worried if he says too many good things about Obama, he’ll help McCain. That’s probably true.
Michael Bane’s NFA Rant
Michael Bane argues that the regulations applied to short barreled rifles, short barreled shotguns, and suppressors, are worse than stupid. I couldn’t agree more. Even most European countries don’t regulate suppressors, and regulating barrel lengths has never made much sense. Suppressors particularly, with more and more shooting ranges under threat from noise ordinances, would be particularly useful for ranges in keeping friendly relations with neighbors. But suppressors aren’t common in the US like they are in Europe, because of their excessive regulation in this country.
I think it’s politically feasible to create a movement against these aspects of the National Firearms Act, but if Obama ends up in the White House, we’ll be two decades just undoing that damage, if we ever manage at all. If gun owners don’t win elections, we don’t win. Michael also isn’t too happy about the candidacy of Bob Barr on the Libertarian ticket. I agree with him that it’s no time for a feel good vote. If Governor Richardson had gotten the nod, I might feel better about telling the GOP to go to hell, but the idea of an Obama presidency scares the ever living crap out of me.
Good
Word from Dave Hardy is that there’s a major shakeup at ATF. Hopefully they can clean this mess up before we’re looking at President Obama. Also, Dave points to an article that talks about the kinds of justices that Obama would likely nominate.
Memorial Day
You can read about the history of memorial day here. Wyatt has his thoughts, and highlights a World War I veteran, which Marshall Manson thinks our society doesn’t pay enough attention to. Brent Greer joined a local boy scout troop to plant flags on the graves of veterans. Tam’s reminder is simple, but powerful. Jeff has pictures from Arlington National Cemetary. Murdoc has a fantastic shot of a 21 gun salute.
In other news, Google pretty clearly doesn’t appreciate the sacrifices made by others so they could make their fortune, but Yahoo! does. I mean, you can do an earth day logo, but not one for memorial day?
Congrats to Kit and John
Kit and John have gotten married, and someone actually liveblogged the wedding.
IIcx’s, IIsi’s and NeXTs, Oh My
I’ve decided it’s high time to get rid of some of my old hardware I’ve been keeping around for sentimental reasons, and not much else. Here’s what I have:
- Two NeXT Monochrome Mexapixel Displays. They both work, the natural rubber pads on both have gooed off by this point.
- Three 68040 25MHz NeXT Cubes. One has a bad SCSI HD, the other is missing RAM. One boots up, but needs to be booted into single user mode and have all the Netinfo crap turned off. None of them have the Dimension color board.
- One 68040 Turbo slab, monochrome. Missing RAM.
- One Mac IIcx, no monitor. Seems to work.
- One Mac IIsi, w 12″ monior. Missing HD.
- I seem to have keyboards and cables to go with all this stuff. I think I have some NeXT software and optical disks too. No clue whether the optical drives are still functioning.
If anyone wants them, they are free to a good home if you want to come pick them up. If you want them, but don’t want to pick them up, let me know where you are and I can see if I plan to be by that way any time in the NeXT year (ha!), and I might be able to deliver.
UPDATE: Looks like Tam and TD are interested. Now I just need to figure out how to get the machines to them.