The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
I’ve made my reservations, and paid for my flight. I will be at The Gun Blogger Rendezvous in Reno, Nevada from October 11th, flying out Monday afternoon. Anyone staying over Monday?
Now I just need to send in my registration form to Mr. Completely, and it’ll be all ready to go.
Bitter is hanging it up for now. A busy work schedule is just making it too difficult for her to blog effectively. I’m just as disappointed as everyone else is, as I’ve been reading her a lot longer than I’ve been dating her.  I do hope she’ll be back to blogging when she has time again.
Blogging is a huge time eater. I spent nearly all my non working hours on weeknights looking for stuff to blog about. I get up in the morning, look for stuff. Check in at lunch sometimes. After work, looking for stuff for the next morning. It’s very difficult to stay on top of the latest and make any meaningful contribution to the conversation. I can appreciate how it can burn people out. I do wish I could have convinced Bitter to stay around, but she’s got other things to worry about right now.
This blogger loves her daughter more than my gun. I’m just wondering what my guns ever did to her daughter. I keep them locked up at night. Maybe they are sneaking out. You’ll notice that much like other anti-gun blogs, this one also closes comments in order to promote reasonable dialog.
Hat tip to Thirdpower, who should get a blog :)
UPDATE: Sharp as a Marble has more.
I’ll be helping fill in for SayUncle while he’s on vacation. I will try to keep up the volume of material on here, but it might be hard. I’m going to try to avoid cross posting, since I’m pretty sure our audiences overlap a good bit. Pennsylvania stuff will stay over here, unless it involves juicy gun stuff.  But man, the news is dead lately. It’s like everyone is on vacation or something.
I’m not as addicted as Chris Byrne, but I’m within 10 points. I usually blog when I first get up in the morning, maybe a few posts around lunch time. And then at night. Some posts are timed to go up, but if I notice something interesting come up during the day, I might link it. I still have time to do things despite blogging, but I have to admit, it’s a very time consuming hobby if you want to be good at it.
Ryan mentioned his hits from DOJ were down. This got me rather curious. Since I’m self hosted, I keep records of every hit going back to the start of the blog. It would seem the DOJ has been visiting me too! But not as often as Ryan:
149.101.1.118 – – [06/Aug/2007:14:14:49 -0400] “GET /?p=1202 HTTP/1.0” 200 23498 “http://redstradingpost.blogspot.com/2007/08/atf-reneges-on-agreement-with-redsagain.html” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; DOJ3jx7bf; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; InfoPath.1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727)”
149.101.1.120 – – [23/Jul/2007:20:12:27 -0400] “GET /?p=1063 HTTP/1.0” 200 24243 “http://redstradingpost.blogspot.com/2007/07/atf-area-supervisor-and-2-new.html” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; DOJ3jx7bf; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; InfoPath.1)”
149.101.1.124 – – [14/Jun/2007:11:46:09 -0400] “GET /?p=814 HTTP/1.0” 200 18799 “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; DI60SP1001; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)”
149.101.1.124 – – [14/Jun/2007:11:46:43 -0400] “GET /?p=814 HTTP/1.0” 200 18799 “http://www.pagunblog.com/?p=814” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; DI60SP1001; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)”
149.101.1.121 – – [07/Jun/2007:16:37:26 -0400] “GET /?p=790 HTTP/1.0” 200 19986 “http://instapundit.com/” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; DI60SP1001; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)”
149.101.1.115 – – [07/Jun/2007:17:11:47 -0400] “GET /?p=790 HTTP/1.0” 200 21435 “http://www.instapundit.com/” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; DOJ3jx7bf; (R1 1.1); .NET CLR 1.1.4322; InfoPath.1)”
149.101.1.120 – – [08/Jun/2007:13:51:30 -0400] “GET /?p=790 HTTP/1.0” 200 23311 “http://www.instapundit.com/” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; DI60SP1001; InfoPath.1)”
149.101.1.116 – – [04/May/2007:09:13:45 -0400] “GET /?p=574 HTTP/1.0” 200 18895 “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; DOJ3jx7bf; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; InfoPath.1)”
149.101.1.118 – – [27/Mar/2007:08:32:04 -0400] “GET /?p=384 HTTP/1.0” 200 20202 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040804 Netscape/7.2 (DNJ72R1)”
149.101.1.120 – – [20/Mar/2007:15:25:16 -0400] “GET /?p=74 HTTP/1.0” 200 18412 “http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=kriss+gun” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; DOJ3jx7bf; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; InfoPath.1)”
149.101.1.118 – – [23/Mar/2007:14:20:37 -0400] “GET /?p=156 HTTP/1.0” 200 24271 “http://johnrlott.tripod.com/2007/02/governor-ed-rendell-and-gun-control.html” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; DI60SP1001; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; InfoPath.1)”
149.101.1.124 – – [15/Mar/2007:13:26:15 -0400] “GET /?p=278 HTTP/1.0” 200 24419 “http://churchoftheduke.blogspot.com/2007/03/hoplophobia-redux.html” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; DOJ3jx7bf; DI60SP1001; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)”
149.101.1.124 – – [15/Mar/2007:13:32:17 -0400] “GET /?p=253 HTTP/1.0” 200 36220 “http://www.pagunblog.com/?p=278” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; DOJ3jx7bf; DI60SP1001; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)”
149.101.1.118 – – [07/Mar/2007:12:00:20 -0500] “GET /?p=268 HTTP/1.0” 200 25575 “http://www.gunlawnews.org/Home/” “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040804 Netscape/7.2 (DNJ72R1)”
149.101.1.118 – – [28/Feb/2007:10:49:18 -0500] “GET /?p=230 HTTP/1.0” 200 20557 “http://www.google.com/search?q=Carolyn+McCarthy+&hl=en&start=20&sa=N” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; DI60SP1001; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; InfoPath.1)”
149.101.1.118 – – [01/Mar/2007:09:06:41 -0500] “GET /?p=268 HTTP/1.0” 200 22861 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.2) Gecko/20040804 Netscape/7.2 (DNJ72R1)”
Grand total DOJ hits are 306. Hi guys!
So I do really want to go to the gun blogger rendevous, and as of now I’m planning on it. I will make my final decision shortly. The basic hangup is the same weekend, my high school marching band is having a reunion. Right now, there isn’t enough people from my years saying they are attending yet, but I’m keeping an eye on it. If it comes down to getting the old mallet section together, along with some more friends from those years, I might be tempted away from gun blogger goodness, as I might not ever have a chance to see these folks back together in one place ever again. But right now, it’s not looking like it’s headed in that direction.
Put me down as a strong tentative, but I will know more definitely by the end of the month.
Joe’s didn’t get through. My guess is, it got nabbed by the spam filter for too many links. Other posts are getting through. I don’t think, due to the speed which comments appear, that there’s any moderating going on, but the slight delay would seem to indicate there’s some spam filtering happening.  Most spam filters use number of links as a metric.
In regards to Bryan Miller’s new blog, one of my readers, tkdkerry, comments:
Well, he finally changed the “boys†to “guys†and “fellasâ€.
My female girlfriend, who has her Virginia Concealed Handgun License, and who carries a SIG239, might take offense to gun rights advocates being referred to as “boys”, “guys” or “fellas”. Don’t forget about Tam, Zendo Deb, Denise, Squeaky Wheel, or Kit.
Careful about offending the feminist gun nut crowd there Bryan :)
I hadn’t realized in my past linkage I was actually dealing with a blog, rather than just a one off editorial. But yes folks, it appears that Bryan Miller, President of CeaseFire New Jersey and CeaseFire Pennsylvania has a blog over at New Jersey Voices. I notice a few people over there who I recognize, and a few I don’t.  Peter Hamm, Brady’s Communication Director, has made an appearance.  Be sure to stop over and hi (polite, respectful, yada yada). Tell Peter to say hi to Macca for us ;)