This is pretty funny, I don’t care who you are. For the uninitiated, it’s a parody of this post and comment thread over at TTAG, which has spawned much discussion both at Uncle’s and Caleb’s.
Year: 2011
Polishing the Turd
Looks like Media Matters is doing their best to try to make the latest polling results not seem so bad for them (or perhaps I should say their anti-gun paymasters) as they really are.
HR822 Truths
John Richardson has some links and a video that speak to exactly what HR822 does and does not do.
Latest Polling
Record low support, at 26%, for a handgun ban, since Gallup first started asking in 1959. Has to feel awful for our opponents to be on the wrong side of history and public opinion. Of course, ask them now they don’t support handgun bans, they never supported handgun bans, and who are you to suggest that was ever so?
Of course, that’s not even the worst news for our opponents. Here’ the worst news:
For the first time, Gallup finds greater opposition to than support for a ban on semiautomatic guns or assault rifles, 53% to 43%. In the initial asking of this question in 1996, the numbers were nearly reversed, with 57% for and 42% against an assault rifle ban.
We are getting our message out there folks. Now we just need federal judges to get the message.
The Next Step in Canada?
So a stake has been driven through the heart of the Canadian Long Gun Registry by Steven Harper’s Tory Government. This is a momentous achievement for Canadian Gun owners. But what comes next? This article offers a key insight:
But it will be shortly ending. The Conservatives have signalled they will introduce legislation to abolish the registry, fulfilling a campaign promise – a promise its predecessor party first made in 1997.
They are finding, however, that breaking up is hard to do because over the years the registry has been a stalwart friend, a gift that kept on giving. They have used the “Liberal†registry to raise funds and create division in opposition parties.
Canadian gun owners should understand that politicians do nothing out of the kindness of their hearts, or because it’s the right thing to do on general principle. There might be a few individual true friends here and there, but as a lot they are motivated by self-interest. That self-interest, for the most part, revolves around winning elections.
So Canadian gun owners need another issue that can be that “gift the keeps on giving” for the Tories. The key is to never be satisfied. Now that Canadian gun owners have their victory, now is definitely not the time to go back to sleep. Now is the time to wake up. The National Post might offer some guidance in this area, namely attacking licensing.
But gun owners in Canada need some organization. While the Canadian Shooting Sports Association has a decent online presence, The Canadian Institute for Legislative Action needs some serious help. This is an area some volunteers would be helpful, so if any Canadian citizens are reading, and have some free time, go offer to help out Tony Bernardo. Right now their online presence screams one man operation. That has to change if you want to move forward.
UPDATE: More ideas here. I wish our media would help us strategize!
Gun Shops in Big Boxes
Most of the time when one thinks of a gun shop, they imagine a fairly small and cramped space. At least, that’s been my experience with a majority of shops I’ve visited. Even the larger spaces I’ve seen (outside of the big box retailers themselves) aren’t actually terribly big. So, it’s rather amusing to read about a guy who wanted to open a gun range and gun shop who found an empty big box store to buy.
Perhaps the most unusual use of a former big-box store is William James’s Arms Room gun shop and shooting range, which opened last year in a former Circuit City store south of Houston. Mr. James spent nearly $5 million to buy the 20,000-square-foot space and convert it into a shooting range, a price he considered a bargain compared with building from scratch. The Arms Room offers handgun training courses in addition to traditional shooting practice, all in a popular shopping center anchored by Target Corp. and Home Depot Inc. stores.
“It was sort of providential,” Mr. James said in his Arms Room office, surrounded by antique swords and modern firearms. “I never dreamed of a place like this.”
The local PetSmart & Mattress Giant have both recognized the gun range for bringing in new customers. The Home Depot was willing to go on record before he opened that they had no problem with a gun range in the shopping center.
The only Pennsylvania example cited for a non-traditional use of retail space was a community theater in Harrisburg mall. It’s too bad. There’s an empty anchor store at one of our local malls that could use a gun range. :)
Lawlessness & Segregation?
Things you should know about Philly are best summed up in this tweet by Wyatt:
And it continues. The murder count in #Philly is now at 273. #armyourselves
That was from Monday. One more day on the books means four more murders on the tally, according to the PD’s website. The number is now 277.
Anytime Philadelphia needs to make budget cuts, they look to public safety first. I mean who cares if a few more people die in fires each year? And that murder count doesn’t really matter since the Police Department’s leadership is cooking the books in terms of how they compare crime statistics anyway. Slashing these departments has been the favored policy of Democrats ever since I moved to the area. But now an independent candidate for Mayor wants to take it to a new extreme, as well as divide up the city’s services based on race.
Philadelphia voters who go to the polls next month will find an independent candidate on the ballot for mayor – Wali “Diop” Rahman, a 34-year-old activist pushing for a major shift in city spending priorities, taking dollars away from law enforcement to spend more on education and community development.
“Right now the city’s fundamental policy is that of police containment,” said Rahman, an organizer for the Uhuru Solidarity Movement, which promotes efforts by the African American community to control its own institutions, including schools, police, health care, and housing.
His platform doesn’t explain how much he will cut from police and court budgets, but it does include a few other gems like mandatory hiring for convicts. It’s not clear what force he will use for businesses to make the hires, but it will be mandatory. In theory, he could make it a stipulation of the taxpayer-funded handouts he’ll give to businesses based on the race of their owners, but he doesn’t actually tie the two policies together. He will also free “political prisoners” which just happen to be those who have killed police officers.
It will be interesting to see how many votes this guy gets on Election Day. Given that the city is headed towards one of the highest murder counts in years, will some voters really support someone who wants to cut back on police and release more murderers from prison?
About to Get Some New Hardware Around Here
I have acquired a rather large UPS. Used of course, but wasn’t of much use to its previous owner. I also have come across a quad-Xeon workstation, with 16GB of RAM, which I think would make a splendid server for the blog. I’ve had the Xeon for a while, actually, but what’s kept me using the older box is that it’s pretty miserly with electricity, giving it a nice run time on UPS power. Well, now I have a big honkin’ UPS, so that’s less of a concern.
But the quad-Xeon is much faster, and has twice the RAM. The only issue is, I’m using dmraid (FakeRaid) in the current box to do mirroring, because I was short sighted, and didn’t think through the consequences. Ordinarily, I’d just move the mirrored pair over, and things should be fine. But I have to break the dmraid pair, and convert to to Linux software RAID. This is doable, but a bit of a PITA. So I need to do this after hours. I think I can make the transition without incurring any serious downtime.
My plan so far is to remove one drive from the current mirror, and let it run degraded. Set up a degraded software mirror on the new system with the drive I took out, and then copy data from the current box over, while live. Once the new box is running as a copy, albeit an outdated one, briefly shut down the current box and update the files that have changed. After that I should be able to come up on the new server, add the other drive, rebuild the mirrored pair, and we’re good to go.
House Judiciary Passes HR822
HR 822 has passed out of the house Judiciary Committee by a vote of 19-11. This looks like a party line vote.
The yes votes were Lamar Smith, James Sensenbrenner, Howard Coble, Robert Goodlatte, Steve Chabot, Darrell Issa, Randy Forbes, Steve King, Trent Franks, Jim Jordan, Ted Poe, Jason Chaffetz, Tim Griffin, Tom Marino, Trey Gowdy, Dennis Ross, Sandy Adams, Ben Quayle, and Mark Amodei.
No Votes were Dan Lungren, John Conyers, Howard Berman, Jerrold Nadler, Robert Scott, Maxine Waters, Steve Cohen, Hank Johnson, Pedro Pierluisi, Mike Quigley, and Judy Chu
Republicans that were not present were Elton Gallegly, Mike Pence, and Louie Gohmert.
We’re asking all readers who have an account on Twitter to please tweet some thank kudos to the yes voters on HR822. This is something Congress Critters notice, and it shows them we’re paying attention to what they are doing. We’re pleased to report the number of yes votes is too large to fit into one 140 character Tweet, so we had to break them up.
- Click here to thank @LamarSmithTX21, @RpSensenbrenner, @HowardCoble, @RepGoodlatte.
- Click here to thank @SteveChabot, @DarrellIssa, @Randy_Forbes, @SteveKingIA, @RepTrentFranks.
- Click here to thank @Jim_Jordan,  @JudgeTedPoe, @jasoninthehouse, @griffincongress.
- Click here to thank @RepTomMarino,  @TGowdySC, @RepDennisRoss, @SandyAdams4FL24.
- Click here to thank @benquayle, @RepMarkAmodei.
More Proliferation of Felonies
Apparently it’s already a misdemeanor to put corn syrup or cane sugar in a bottle and call it maple syrup. Apparently that’s not enough for the Congressional Delegation from Vermont. Because we need more federal felonies or something.