Snowflakes in Hell

Dave Hardy posts about an Army Times news article that talks about Delta Force’s new rifle, the H&K 416, and highlights the army’s reluctance to replace the M16.  For a while there was a lot of talk in the military about replacing the standard small arm, but that appears to be off the table for now.

It seemed the M16/M4 would be around a bit longer when they killed the H&K XM8, largely because they included a proprietary optics mount that would have also necessitated that the military switch out all its optics.  I think SOCOM has  adopted the FN SCAR for special forces, and I guess Delta is using the HK416 now.

The problem I have with H&K building our next generation rifle is that they have basically said there will be no semi-auto versions of them for civilians.  FN is working on a civilianized version of the SCAR.

It’s bad enough I can’t get an M16/M4 inexpensively.  It would be a real shame, if for the first time in American history, civilians can’t shoot the same type of rifle our soldiers do.

I think some gun folks may be a bit confused as to the law (an easy thing when it comes to the NFA. I won’t claim to be an expert either). I’ve heard a few pro-gun folks say recently:

Having a “machine gun” permit, you open up your house to the ATF to come in and search your house any time they want

Whether this is true or not depends. If you get a fully transferable pre-86 machinegun because you paid your NFA transfer tax, filled out ATF Form 4, and undergone the background check, police permission and fingerprinting, and the ATF issues your stamp, you’re good to go from that point. The ATF can’t just walk into your house without a warrant because you possess an NFA tax stamp (which is, in effect, your license. Legally, it’s just proof you paid the tax, which is required for possession.).

The only time ATF inspections become an issue is if you become a licensed Class III dealer (or SOT – Special Occupational Taxpayer). These days you can’t do that if you don’t have a fixed place of business, with regular hours, that’s zoned for such purposes. The “kitchen table” dealer is largely a thing of the past.

If you have a Class III SOT and FFL, you can obtain pre-86 and post-86 dealer samples. To obtain post dealer samples, you have to have a signed letter from the local police department on letterhead stating that they wish to have a demonstration of a certain machinegun. If you get a post-86 dealer sample, you’re permitted to possess firearm as long as you retain your SOT status. For pre-86 dealer samples, you may retain the firearm even after your SOT status expires or is relinquished. Pre-86 dealer samples are generally firearms imported prior to 1986, but after 1968, when the Gun Control Act made importation of fully transferable machineguns illegal. My understanding is that prices on pre-86 dealer samples are not really any lower than fully transferable machineguns.

Many collectors obtained their own FFLs and Class III SOT status to trade in these firearms before the practice was ended, so that’s where the idea that the ATF could come into your home without a warrant probably came from. If you hold a type 1 or 2 FFL, the ATF can conduct inspections at your place of busines, and if that’s your home, then they can come into your home for inspections.

If you’re thinking of getting into NFA collecting, don’t let that fear stop you. If you get a fully transferable pre-86 machinegun, along with your stamp, the only business you need have with the ATF beyond that point is filling out ATF form 5320.20, if you want to transport your NFA firearm out of your state of residence, or to a new residence out of state.

Interesting factoid. If you possess a valid C&R license, and your NFA machinegun is C&R, you do not need to fill out 5320.20; your Type 3 FFL will do. Type 3 C&R FFLs subject you to possible ATF inspection, but not in your home. If the ATF would like to audit you, they will arrange a time at an ATF office. You don’t surrender your 4th amendment rights by having a C&R license.

Ah, yes. The joys of “reasonable gun regulations”

In 2004, when the federal ban on “assault weapons” expired, many of us might remember the anti-gun people boasting that they would take the fight to the states, and had at least five to seven other states that they could get one passed in.

Well, it’s now two and a half years later.  I have one question for the gun control advocates:

How’s those state level assault weapons bans you’re working on going?  Looking real successful there.  Got a whole safe full of them.  Getting more too!  Still waiting for those bans you were talking about.  Any day now!

OK, so I’ll have a little fun rubbing it in their faces, but we still need to be vigilant.  I think we may have saved Maryland for another year, but that issue won’t die there, or anywhere.  We’re still the front line of the gun rights movement.

Someone go explain to this guy that you hunt birds with shotguns and not rifles, and that the vast majority of us that have so called “assault weapons” use them for competitive and recreational target shooting, and not for poaching bald eagles.

It’s amazing these people don’t even bother to learn anything about the people they malign.  I think it’s important to counter a lot of these bogus arguments, but we have to be polite and keep to the facts.  If you just insult people, no one will take you seriously, and you’ll just give them more reasons to justify their hatred of our community.

Pro-Gun Progressive has the scoop:

[T]he first question I was asked was universally “what do you need with an assault weapon.” I explained that it wasn’t a question of needs, but a question of rights, but then quickly moved into the pragmatics of the issue–I responded that the most commonly used target and competition shooting rifle in the US was the AR15, probably followed closely by the M1A. I pointed out that the weapons they were looking to ban do indeed have sporting purposes, and that hundreds of thousands of law abiding Americans use them lawfully every day.

I’m glad to see my evil twin representing us so well. It’s very important that the false meme that these rifles have no sporting use is debunked and stomped on. That’s never been true, except in the Bradys’ collective minds.

Good showing to everyone in Maryland. Two hundred and ten folks will definitely make the politicians pay attention. The best news of the day:

As for the bill’s fate, last I heard was that Sen. Jacobs was fairly certain it would die in committee. But this is a dangerous one, and needless to say it bears watching.

Indeed, but color me impressed guys. I think you just killed an assault weapons ban in a fairly anti-gun state! Good show!

There’s a few things about the making of this blog that I feel it’s time to reveal publicly. I once said it would be a cold day in hell when I left the LiveJournal world to start a real blog, because I had a hard time finding things to say, even on there, and figured blogging wasn’t worth the trouble. So what got me into it?

Well, the truth is, I started this blog to impress a chick. Some of you might have already figured out who I’m talking about. About three months ago, a love interest I had been persuing for some time finally said it wasn’t ever going to happen. A little discouraged, I was talking to a friend, when an idea popped into my head:

Sebastian: I think I totally need to figure out how to meet Bitter Bitch
Friend: ?
Sebastian: http://www.thebitchgirls.us/?p=5982
Sebastian: Namely the comments
Sebastian: She’s single and seemingly unattached!
Sebastian: I need to start posting crap on my LJ about how much is sucks not to have a girlfriend
Sebastian: Now… is she sort of quietly hinting she digs guys over 30? :)
Sebastian: Single, gun toting chick who only dates guys over 30? Where do I sign up?

This was really just a joke, because I figured it was a snowballs chance in hell of actually scoring a date with her, but eventually, Bitter made a fateful post:

I’m gonna be up forever now. Damn. Use the first day of the year as a sick day?

No, I’m better than that. But my ass may be dragging tomorrow. On Google Talk as bitter.chick if anyone else is up and bored.

I saw an opportunity, so I added her to my GTalk client. A  few days later, she responded:

Bitter: hello?
Sebastian: hi
Bitter: i saw you added me, so i thought i would be friendly
Sebastian: Yeah… saw your post last night…
Sebastian: I’m Sebastian… BTW

And then finally:

Bitter: why are you mostly just a commenter? you seem to have really good comments, how have you resisted the drug that is blogging?
Sebastian: I’ve thought about it, but I don’t know if I could keep up enough volume to keep people interested

Well, that was all that really needed to be said. A few days later, I registered the domain, set up Wordpress, and got started. There was no way I was going to miss a chance to impress Bitter! My inner traffic whore was to be released.

As we kept talking, it became increasingly obvious this was going somewhere. We agreed to meet at the National Aquarium at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, and then have some drinks afterwards. We lost track of time talking to each other, and didn’t end up leaving the bar until close to midnight, and I didn’t get back home until 2AM. After that it was definitely going somewhere. We haven’t gone a weekend without seeing each other since, and that was more than a month ago at this point.

We decided things were going so well, it was time to stop beating around the bush with undisclosed locations and mysterious other bloggers. We’ve decided we like each other enough to become an official couple, and be seen at parties and other social events together.

No matter how much time I spend with Bitter, or how much time I spend talking to her through GTalk, I never tire of her company or conversation. I can’t ever imagine that changing at this point either, because we seem to be wonderfully compatible. And I’m glad she got me into blogging, because it’s a lot more enjoyable than LiveJournal.

But don’t hate me, please, for taking an alluring, young female gun blogger off the market! It started out as a joke, I swear! I sure am glad that it didn’t turn out that way, though. We’ll be attending the NRA convention in April, so if you’d like to say hi (or strangle me for snatching her up), let me know. We’ll also be passing through Roanoke, VA, Knoxville and Nashville, TN, Waurika, OK, Northern Texas, and a few other places in that vacinity very soon, and we’re regulars in the Philadelpia and DC area, so if you’d like a chance to strangle meet me, and meet Bitter, be sure to let me know!

The other Sebastian says some very interesting things about the hearing for the MD Assault Weapons Ban. For one, the anti-gunners mentioned the Zumbo statements. For two, he says in the comments about 210 people turned out. That’s a good turnout for a committee meeting! State legislature committee meetings usually don’t attract any attention. That’s likely to get the politicians nervous, and that will work in our favor. I anxiously await PGP’s full report, and will link when it goes up. Good job Marylanders!

High powered lasers have the potential to completely change the nature of the battlefield.  A few years ago I read about the MTHEL – Mobile Tactical High Energy Laser, and later Northrop-Grumman’s SkyGuard.  This is a system meant to shoot down rockets and artillery shells on the battlefield before they have a chance to reach their targets.  The problem with the current systems is that they are powered by a chemical reaction, and are difficult and expensive to operate in the field.  They can also not maintain a very high rate of fire.

That’s why it was very interesting to read a few days ago that they’ve developed a 67kW solid state laser at Lawrence Livermore.  Solid state lasers would have the potential for more rapid and sustained fire, and would be vastly more practical to use on the battlefield.

This kind of thing is a transformational technology though.  If you can deploy it in sufficient numbers, it has the power to make conventional ballistic ordnance obsolete on the battlefield.

Of Arms an the Law has some thoughts about “false flag” operations:

The problem here is that folks who like the first may assume (as traditionalists) that traditional values apply. People may be taken at their word. The other side is not obsessive, but has rational limits. If they say they only dislike AR-15s and certain handguns, they must mean it. There are no “false flag” operations. A group with shooters and hunters in their name is a group of shooters and hunters, and a blog named “The Gun Guys” must be run by gunnies.

That’s an interesting observaton I hadn’t thought about before.  It’s my hope with “Gun Control and Hunting Day”, I’ll be able to unmask some of this.  It’s not my intention to drag out the whole Zumbo thing.  As far as I’m concerned that’s water under the bridge now.  But I would like to get a collection of writing out there that associates gun control with its effects on hunters.  Hopefully this will turn out.  I’ll be working on it a bit more tonight.

Back when I got the blog started, I decided to do an all day feature called Full Auto Day.  The entire Jim Zumbo affair, and the shooting and hunting communities response to it, has prompted me to start work on another all day feature called “Gun Control and Hunting Day”, where it’s my intention to highlight how gun control laws, both on the books and proposed, in the jurisdictions the anti-gun folks uphold as their models, has harmed the hunting communities in those states by making firearms difficult, or very risky to own.

I’m hoping that the feature will be seen by hunters, and help them understand that the same culture of urban sophisticates that wants to take away our black rifles, doesn’t really care what it does to hunting.  It’s all part of a lifestyle, way of thinking, and philosophy, that’s utterly repugnant to these types of folks.  None will be spared in the end.

Posting might be a bit light, as working out all the posts, along with the research, will take some time.  By all means, if you think you have something I should cover here, let me know via comment or e-mail.

Flare guns aren’t very useful as hair care products.

…they pick up the Zumbo story.  Not really that postworthy in itself, but check out the comments.  I have to wonder, is there’s any other group of people the left looks down upon more than shooters?  Even the religious right doesn’t seem to draw this kind of vitriol.

It’s pretty clear to me that the left fails to understand guns or the gun culture, because they are wholly ignorant on the subject.  I’ll extend an open offer to any left thinking people who come across this to introduce them to shooting, or offer some respectful dialog, either in the comments, or through other means, if you’d like to be better informed about these issues.

Tommorrow is the day the state wide assault weapons ban, Senate Bill 43, will be heard before the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee.  If you can, it’s important to show up in Annapolis to make your voice heard.  I don’t think I need to tell you all how important it is to stop this, and not just for folks in Maryland.

… to believe the government ought to respect the Bill of Rights? That’s what I’d really like to know from all the people tossing around accusations that we ruined Jim Zumbo because he deviated from the NRA orthodoxy.

And as someone who could be regarded as “liberal” on more than a few issues, and who’s vote is generally up for grabs for either party, how do the Democrat types expect me to identify with them when they like to argue that it’s extreme to shout down those who would disparage the Constitution, or give ammunition to those intent on doing so?

Again, the Zumbo thing wasn’t because he argued that “assault weapons” were a bad choice for hunting. I think most of us would have been happy to debate him on that point without trying to shout him down. The issue was that he said things the anti-gunners would happily latch onto and make sure policy makers knew that “even the top outdoor writer thinks these guns have no sporting use and should be banned”.

On a personal level, I feel bad for what happened to Jim. I do hope that Jim will work with us in the future, and that we can welcome him back into the community of shooters. But I don’t apologize for what happened to him. What he said was so potentially damaging to our community that we had to react, and react strongly. I don’t mess around when it comes to the Bill of Rights, and I would have hoped that was something we all could agree on. Maybe not.

Anyone else noticed the large number of comments from hunters on our blogs defending Jim Zumbo, while at the same time being rather derogatory toward our community? I can’t blame them for being a little angry given how some in our community have been behaving, but a lot of them seem to be pretty ill informed about the issues. So I have a message for them.

A Message To Hunters

We’re not pissed off at Jim Zumbo because we think hunting with “assault weapons” is great (though, if someone wants to, I don’t see what the issue is, if the game is appropriately small for those calibers). We’re pissed off at Jim Zumbo because he a) called our rifles “terrorist rifles” (the anti-gun folks will love to use that one), and that he suggested they be banned from the prairies (another great gem for the anti-gunners). It’s not so much we’re pissed off about the insult, though that is part of it, it’s that this gives a tremendous boost to the anti-gun organization who want to ban scary looking rifles.

Hunting is already in decline, and if you think the image of a guy chasing after a deer with an AK-47 might not be the best image for hunting, I think you’re entitled to that opinion, and I can see your point. But poor image is not the most serious problem for the hunting culture. The declining number of people who participate in the sport is, and that has more to do with fundamental demographic issues than image. But one sure way to make hunting go into a population free fall is for the anti-gunners to end up back on the offensive.

Oh sure, they claim they aren’t coming after your hunting rifle, but if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. Take a look at two states that the anti-gunners hold up as their examples of states that have gun laws closer to what they would like: Massachusetts and New Jersey. There are others, but these are states I know. Ask anyone in these two states how healthy their hunting culture is. Ask them how they like spending hundreds of dollars on the licensing that’s required to own a gun, even an air gun (in the case of NJ). Ask them how much they like having to ask the police permission to possess, or continue to possess, their deer rifle or duck gun. In Massachusetts, let a cartridge slip out of your case after a weekend of hunting, your wife takes the car the next day and doesn’t have the appropriate licenses, gets into an accident, and the police discover the round: say goodbye to your wife for a year. She’s now a felon, and there’s a one year mandatory minimum in Massachusetts for even very minor violations of their insane gun laws.

The anti-gun folks aren’t done in either of these states by far. So don’t believe them when they tell you they just want reasonable gun laws and are concerned about violence. That’s what they tell you to buy your acquiescence.

What happened in these two states, and others, is the future that the anti-gunners want to bring to hunting. If you hunters are OK with that, well, don’t cry to hard when most of your fellow hunters decide it’s not worth the hassle, and groups like the Humane Society of the USA and PETA get the political clout to ban hunting. Don’t think it would ever happen? Ask hunters in New Jersey how well their bear hunt went this year. They will ask, “What bear hunt?” Governor Corzine, under political pressure, stopped the bear hunt, despite a burgeoning bear population in The Garden State, and successful and safe hunts happening in previous years.

Understand one thing, hunters, we black rifle shooters are willing to stand with you on these hunting issues, because we recognize that hunters are a part of our community, and we need every man we can get. We understand giving even an inch of ground to the anti-gun and anti-hunting people is an inch closer toward prohibition on each of our respective sports. I’m sorry so many in the black rifle community are so angry that they are insulting hunting and hunters. It’s time for both sides to calm down and start figuring out how to work together.

From the comments:

Hi.

Long distance murder rifles? Ban .22s and shotguns for the children?

That was me.

I settled on this board by the complicated algorithm of flipping some coins. Now that the Brady Campaign has gotten myspace to return the /bradycampaign blog to their ownership, there’s no reason for me to not come out with what I have to say, and I have a lot to say.

For example, the amount of messages and comments I got stunned me. Thousands apon thousands. The blog itself was getting 10,000+ views every day. (I regret not screenshotting this)

I want to make some comments about how we have to accomplish standing together, “fudds” and EBR owners, as long as you guys want to hear me out. Oh, I’d have gone to ar15.com since they had 5+ threads about it, but the registration never emailed me. So you guys are stuck with me.

So it would seem Kevin Baker was right all along. It was one of our own. Now I feel kind of bad for screwing up his scheme :)

UPDATE: I didn’t realize my commenter was not the actual MySpace dude. He was quoting a post you can read over here. For future reference, you can quote sections using the <blockquote></blockquote> in the comment area, if you want to make a quote of something else.

I started a comment in the last thread and decided it would probably be a more effective post. Sailorcurt mentioned in a comment:

I disagree with the big picture conclusion however: the implication that we can’t be more effective if we mobilize on Washington Politics like we did on Zumbo.

I wouldn’t really assert that conclusion. I think Zumboing does make us more effective, but it’s just another tool, and we’re not at the point yet where we can expect that tool to have as much of an impact on Congress as it did on the industry as a whole, for the reasons I pointed out. I will never discourage people from writing their Congress Critters on the gun issue, and I think it’s a good idea to do that often. But the points I was trying to make, sorry if they weren’t clear, were:

• We have to continue bringing more people into the RKBA community.
• We have to continue traditional forms of political lobbying, and that is going to still represent most of our political muscle in Congress.
• We can’t count on Zumboing tactics to have the same effect on Congress they had on the industry.

But the more I’m thinking about it, the less I think we can talk about Zumboing as if it’s something we have under our control. The community saw an issue and, collectively, decided to go after it. It’s not like we had a leader sitting in an ivory tower, announcing “Smithers, release the hounds!”. I’m not sure that would even be desirable. When the next big thing comes down the pike, we’ll know, and will spontaneously organize.

I’m not saying it’s a bad thing at all, or that we shouldn’t do it. Just that we shouldn’t expect too much of it, and figure that other forms of activism (I hate that word) we’ve traditionally used are now less important, because this form will be effective.

I want to talk about another meme moving around in the gun blogosphere that goes something like this: “Wow, look at what we managed to do to Jim Zumbo! If we only applied that kind of pressure to Congress, we’d be buying MP5s from Wal-Mart in no time!”. Oh, how I wish that were true. But it’s not.

What we have done with the Zumbo thing is demonstrate that shooters, particular we evil black rifle shooters, are now a force to be reckoned with within the shooting community. When we talk, the industry listens. This makes sense for them, because we constitute one of the growth markets for the industry. We’re buying more rifles, we’re buying more ammunition, and we’re active politically. They can’t afford to piss us off, so it’s no surprise they dumped Zumbo like a hot potato when we started to squeeze them.

That doesn’t translate into political power outside of the community. Jim Zumbo was one man, and the number of players in this industry are few, and they depend on us. Once you’re talking Congress, you’re talking 435 memebers of The House and 100 members in The Senate. Now you’ve gone from a handful of people you have to infleunce, to 535 people. And those 535 people have hundreds of other interests they listen to, and can count on for votes and money. In short, we can rule our little estuary, but that’s not to say we’re the big fish once we swim into the sea.

The new voice we’ve found as a community with the whole Jim Zumbo thing is great, and useful. It will come in handy the next time we have a big political fight on our hands. But we still need to reach out to more people who might not be as involved or as informed as we are about these issues, and will still have to play the dirty game of politics as we have been. What I don’t want to see happen is people thinking, because we managed to destroy Jim Zumbo’s career, that we can just make demands on politicians and get our way; we can’t.

We’re still just another interest group, a powerful one, no doubt, but there’s still a lot of work to do. Zumboing will be another political tool in our arsenal, but we will have to be careful about how we use that tool. Using it in the wrong place or the wrong time could wear it out, and ruin it’s political effectiveness. So my advise to everyone out there is that we continue to work hard to bring more people into the issue, and not get too cocky with our new found power.

I’m not sure I’d agree with the assertion out there that we’re about to divide into Fudds and Shooters. I’ve seen few people defending Zumbos actual comments, but I think a lot of people lining up in his corner are defending Jim Zumbo the man, more than defending what he said. We do need to be careful not to be seen by the hunting community as sharks that are tasting blood in the water, and are ready to go into a frenzy.

I agree with folks who have pointed out that Jim is “Stuck on Fudd” with his comments that indicate he still only views AR-15s through the lens of their hunting utility. This really shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering Zumbo is a lifelong hunter. Now, don’t get me wrong, I want to see Jim jump back on the second amendment bandwagon and start helping reach out to hunters to make them understand what’s at stake, but you can’t expect the guy to change who he is, and what he loves to do. We should let Jim remain a hunter at heart, because that’s what he is. He’s never going to become one of us, in all liklihood. All we should ask of him is that he get on board with defending gun rights, all guns rights, period. If he wants to not like AR-15s because he doesn’t like to hunt with them, fine.

The reason it’s important, is because the majory of hunters that Jim can reach have absolutely no idea what went on this past weekend. Unless Outdoor Life runs a summary piece of the incident, you’ll have hundreds of thousands of hunters out there who will get subsequent issues and think “What ever happened to ol’ Jim Zumbo? I really used to love reading his great hunting articles.” It’s those people that we need to reach. Jim would be a good vehicle for that if he can be educated. But we must be patient an tolerant in that process. My vote is let The Nuge work his magic, and we’ll see where it goes from there.

Interesting. The MySpace page seems to have been altered, with different content being substituted streamed right from the Bradys:

Which means, that both the MySpace page is pulling content from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership’s main page, and the Brady Bunch is letting them (note the xshare/myspace/ subdirectory)

Possibilities are that the Brady Campaign managed to get MySpace to turn the blog over to them, which is Standard Mischeif’s theory (I agree), and they removed the content, or they convinced the person running it to remove the stuff, and accept their stream. Or they really did run the site and were a bit paniced when we caught them ;)

I think the Bradys were telling the truth about the blog not being associated with them, and got the blog turned over. It was using their trademarks, so they do have a legal leg to stand on if they demanded that.

Some of the google search words coming in are interesting. One thing GoStats does that Sitemeter doesn’t is keep a record of which phrases bring people in on an ongoing basis. One of my top searches is:

“panic gun buying because of democratic congress”

I have some suggestions if that’s what you’re coming around looking for:

Springfield M1A – Not a great panic buy, because it’s never had a pistol group, but still is named in most bans. I don’t have one, but should.

Barrett M82A1 – This rifle makes the anti-gunners weep, and they definitely want to ban it. If you can afford over 10 grand for one of these babies with some decent optics attached, go for it. I want one of these, but I also need a house.

FN Five-seven – Good for people who like pistols that might be banned.

SIG 556 – Like a Swiss watch, that goes bang. Extra scary looking to Congressional Democrats.

Arsenal SLR-108 Kalashnikov – Great panic buy! Nothing pisses of anti-gun folks quite like the idea of someone being able to buy and shoot an AK. Arsenal AKs are pretty decent. I have one myself. I recommend.

FN PS90 – Personal Defense Weapon. Fires the same round as the FN Five-seven. Hasn’t been in production long. Definitely scary looking. Good post-ban value if you ever have to sell it. SBR version available if you want to do the NFA thing. (I would, the 16″ version is fugly)

Robinson Arms XCR – Choose form three calibers. Easy switching of calibers. Extra scary looking to gun banners. Adjustable gas system. May be my panic purchase :)

So there you have it panic buyers! Nothing pissess off Carolyn McCarthy more than stocking up on your favorite black rifle, so spend away.

From Phil Elmore of The Martialist:

A man who presumes to tell you that you cannot own a firearm is not just pissing on the United States Constitution and the Second Amendment; he is presuming to tell you how much your life is worth. He is saying he sees no reason to make it easier for you to defend that life, or the lives of your family. He is declaring his supremacy over you by presuming to judge your life and its value. If there is a more tyrannical worldview, I don’t know what it might be.

Whenever your firearms rights are attacked, therefore, you have no choice but to see that attack, ideologically, as an attempt to devalue your life. You are fully within your rights to speak out, loudly and persistently, in opposition to such presumption. You are also correct to be outraged that anyone would presume to tell you what your life is worth.

Yup! Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Hat tip: Of Arms and the Law

Bitter attracts her very own token Animal Liberation Front teenage terrorist. I have to admit, I’m kind of jealous. The best I’ve done is some loser from Minnesota and a Brady staffer who didn’t even have the decency to appear menacing.

I’m going to guess that the kid’s parents are probably whack jobs too, because if I were that uppity as a teen my parents would have put the smackdown on me.

But it doesn’t seem like a terribly good idea to me to go throwing threats, veiled or otherwise, around the gun blogosphere, a demographic which is decidednly more heavily armed than some countries.

Check out what PoliticsNY has to say about their Congressional Delegation. Particularly Carolyn McCarthy:

Those are rating for 2002 and 2003 respectively. You have to scroll all the way down to the “poor” section to read the comment:

Carolyn, it’s a year later and we’re still waiting for you to tell us about your second highest priority. McCarthy, a registered nurse whose life was changed forever when a lunatic on the Long Island Rail Road killed her husband and severely injured her son, got herself elected to Congress on the strength of the gun control issue – and the odd behavior of the Republican incumbent. Now seven years have passed, and McCarthy’s gun control agenda is no closer to passage than on the day she arrived in Washington. It’s time to get a new issue – or get out of Congress.

I couldn’t agree more!  Four years after this comment, she’s, thankfully, still no farther along.

Kim asks “So, children, your task for today is to study the list of semi-auto rifles on the list contained in the latest version of the Assault Weapons Ban, and see how many of them you own”:

`(i) AK, AKM, AKS, AK-47, AK-74, ARM, MAK90, Misr, NHM 90, NHM 91, SA 85, SA 93, VEPR;
`(ii) AR-10;
`(iii) AR-15, Bushmaster XM15, Armalite M15, or Olympic Arms PCR;
`(iv) AR70;
`(v) Calico Liberty;
`(vi) Dragunov SVD Sniper Rifle or Dragunov SVU;
`(vii) Fabrique National FN/FAL, FN/LAR, or FNC;
`(viii) Hi-Point Carbine;
`(ix) HK-91, HK-93, HK-94, or HK-PSG-1;
`(x) Kel-Tec Sub Rifle;
`(xi) M1 Carbine;
`(xii) Saiga;
`(xiii) SAR-8, SAR-4800;
`(xiv) SKS with detachable magazine;
`(xv) SLG 95;
`(xvi) SLR 95 or 96;
`(xvii) Steyr AUG;
`(xviii) Sturm, Ruger Mini-14;
`(xix) Tavor;
`(xx) Thompson 1927, Thompson M1, or Thompson 1927 Commando; or
`(xxi) Uzi, Galil and Uzi Sporter, Galil Sporter, or Galil Sniper Rifle (Galatz).

That’s 5 by name, but if Carolyn McCarthy wants gets her bill, she’ll ban nearly everything in my safe, because of this:

`(L) A semiautomatic rifle or shotgun originally designed for military or law enforcement use, or a firearm based on the design of such a firearm, that is not particularly suitable for sporting purposes, as determined by the Attorney General. In making the determination, there shall be a rebuttable presumption that a firearm procured for use by the United States military or any Federal law enforcement agency is not particularly suitable for sporting purposes, and a firearm shall not be determined to be particularly suitable for sporting purposes solely because the firearm is suitable for use in a sporting event.’.

I collect and shoot military and military patterned firearms.  That’s what I do.  If McCarthy gets her way, my days of collecting are going to be very numbered.

So, Congressworm McCarthy, care to explain to me how taking away guns from people like me would have saved your husband?