Month: January 2011

Wisconsin Carry

I’ve found some good news via Says Uncle for those of you living in the state east from mine. It seems Illinois will be the last state in the union that disallows any form of carry a concealed handgun as Wisconsin is planning on passing carry legislation:

Wisconsin, one of two states in the nation that prohibits citizens from carrying a concealed weapon, is expected to reverse this law during the upcoming state legislative session, according to a local newspaper.

Only Illinois and Wisconsin forbid carrying concealed weapons. A Republican was elected governor and Republicans won majorities in both houses of the Wisconsin legislature in November, bringing many more supporters of gun rights to the state government.

“You’re going to see a concealed carry bill pass the Legislature, I have no doubt,” Chris Danou, a Democratic legislator from Trempealeau, Wisconsin, told the LaCrosse Tribune newspaper. “The question is what kind of bill it’s going to be.”

Personally I can’t wait. I’m also hoping for reciprocity with Minnesota since Wisconsin is a state I visit with some semblance of frequency and really hate the fact I can’t carry there. It looks like Illinois will be the last holdout for allowing citizens a means of legal self defense.

Ron Paul on Gun Control and Violence

It’s no secret around here that I really hate politicians. I do have an exception to that rule and that exception is Ron Paul because he actually makes sense. He posted a very good writeup on his site about the recent surge in demand for more gun control. I think this sums things up very nicely:

Also troubling are the renewed calls for stricter gun control laws, and for government to “do something” to somehow prevent similar incidents in the future. This always seems to be the knee jerk reaction to any crime committed with a gun. Nonsensical proposals to outlaw guns around federal officials and install bulletproof barriers in the congressional gallery only reinforce the growing perception that politicians view their own lives as far more important than the lives of ordinary citizens. Politicians and a complicit media have conditioned many citizens to view government as our protector, leading to more demands for government action whenever tragedies occur. But this impulse is at odds with the best American traditions of self-reliance and individualism, and it also leads to bad laws and the loss of liberty.

Remember our government officials are like you and me only better.

By Popular Demand

OK I’ve finally been asked for a Twitter feed for this site enough times that I got off of my ass and enabled it. This involved me signing up for a Twitter account which burned like the fiery wrath of Loki. Never say I don’t do anything for you. My user name on Twitter is ComradeBurg.

Now leave me alone and enjoy your stinkin’ Twitter feed. And if any of you who has been asking me for this don’t follow me so help me I’m going to unleash a horde of velociraptors on you.

Also I’m still testing the Twitter feed so this may or may not shot up on there.

Determination

Some people have determination and some do not. While some people would rob a Gamestop by walking in and holding the store up others are more dedicated to their trade and prefer to tunnel through a wall.

The man being charged broke into a vacant building next to the Gamestop and dug a hole in the wall separating to two properties. He then walked off with $5,342 worth of merchandise and $288.55 in cash. You have to give the man credit, tunneling through a wall takes determination.

McCarthy Going for Full Gun Ban

I’m a little late with this news but Sebastian over at Snowflakes in Hell has posted information regarding McCarthy’s draft bill to ban ammunition feeding devices above an arbitrary size.

The transfer, importation, and manufacture of any ammunition feeding device (not just magazines it seems) would become illegal under this bill. I don’t know how they could enforce who I transfer magazines to as they usually don’t even have serial numbers to identify them and thus can’t really be tracked.

Likewise many firearms would also become illegal to transfer, import, or manufacture under this law. What firearms you ask? Basically any firearm that has a fixed magazine that can store more than 10 cartridges. Spare parts for standard capacity magazines also become verboten under the law.

What is funny though is police, active or retired, are exempt from this because they obviously need to kill as many people as possible (in McCarthy’s words describing standard capacity magazines). This makes sense because when you’re the government’s enforcement body you get special privileges over the peasantry.

You Can’t Have it Both Ways

The anti-gunners are clamoring for more stringent laws preventing the mentally messed up from obtaining firearms. Of course these same advocate never explain exactly how we’re supposed to detect crazy with 100% accuracy (as far as I’m concerned without 100% accuracy you can’t even talk about revoking somebody’s rights).

Besides blaming guns and gun laws many people are also blaming “right-wing rhetoric.” Of course this is also bullocks as the Arizona shooter wasn’t what you could call right-wing (he was basically just crazy if you read anything he posted).

With these two arguments in hand I bring up a third advocacy that these people should be making, requiring a mental health evaluation before you are allowed to post any material on the Internet. When I state this people making both of the above claims are quick to state guns kill people while words can’t. Well which way is it? Can rhetoric cause somebody to kill other people or not? Do words incite violence? If the answer to both questions is yes then you most certainly must support mental health evaluations for people wanting to post online. If the answer to both questions is no then you should shut the fuck up and stop being a hypocrite.

If you believe there should be mental health evaluations for things that can kill and you believe speech you don’t agree with can kill then you must support required mental health evaluations for people wanting to post on the Internet. Of course that would be a restriction of free speech which most anti-gunners are against.

Advocacy for NYPD to Boycott Glocks

We all know the true culprit in the Arizona shooting was the Glock pistol with high capacity “clips.” It certainly wasn’t the person wielding the gun and shooting people. That’s why idiots in support of gun control have been attacking Glock so heavily. It seems a new layer of stupidity has arisen with with people advocating the New York Police Department (NYPD) boycott Glock pistols because they sell 30-round magazines to peasants:

“If Glock will not stop selling these magazines to consumers, then the New York City Police Department should start buying the firearms they need from a different company,” Public Advocate Bill de Blasio said.

“The New York Post editorial board has rightly argued that the Glock-manufactured 30-round magazines, like the one used by clearly disturbed Jared Loughner, present an unacceptable risk to human life, and at the same time no justifiable civilian purpose.”

So in a time of budget crisis the NYPD should dump all of their pistols and buy all new guns, parts, retrain officers, and retrain armorers just because Glock does a perfectly legitimate and legal activity of selling magazines of an arbitrary size to peasants (saying civilians isn’t correct as the police are civilians as well).

What I find really stupid is the fact people are blaming the magazine. There are two conflicted reports going around on how the shooting was stopped. Some people are claiming he was tackled when he was in the middle of a reload while others are saying he successfully reloaded but the gun jammed when chambering a new round. Likewise tackling somebody during a reload requires you to already be in very close proximity since reloading a gun is a fast operation. If somebody is more than a few feet away it’s unlikely that they’d be able to close the distance before a shooter was able to get a new magazine into their gun.

If we’re going to blame tools we need to look at other things as well. Has anybody found out what kind of car the Arizona shooter drove? We should probably attack that as well since without it he couldn’t have driven there (if he used public transportation we need to ban that instead). We did the shooter buy his groceries? If he wouldn’t have been able to eat he wouldn’t have been alive and thus couldn’t have performed the shooting, we really should go after his preferred grocery story.

Mobile Hotspot on AT&T iPhone

One of the things Verizon advertised when they announced their iPhone was mobile hot spot. The latest iOS 4.3 beta includes this feature on the AT&T iPhone 4 as well. I have the beta in hand but am usually very wary about loading beta code on a device I use every day and I’m not paying AT&T $20.00 for tethering (which is required to get the hot spot feature working). It’ll be interesting to see what Verizon does for pricing vs. AT&T.

From the comments in the article is seems Verizon offers mobile hot spot on some Android phones at the cost of $20.00 for 2GB of data with each additional GB of data costing $20.00 (so it’s not included in the unlimited data plan). I wonder if Verizon will change the price of leave it alone for their iPhone.