PayPal Screws Gun Blogger’s Rendezvous

There is a post over at the Smallest Minority about PayPal once again using their draconian rules against using their service for anything relating to firearms…

http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/2009/07/no-good-deed-goes-unpunished.html

Kevin setup a gun giveaway through a charity organization called Soldier’s Angels. It was a simple idea, you buy a ticket and you enter in the raffle. The problem is PayPal suspended Soldier’s Angle’s account for twelve hours when this went online.

PayPal has a long history of screwing the gun community and this isn’t surprising but it is the reason I won’t use PayPal unless I have absolutely no other choice (this includes mailing checks through the ancient postal service).

Senators Move to Make Texting While Driving Illegal

Remember that post yesterday about the study that said people who text while driving are 23 times more likely to crash their car? Well to prove once again that no tragedy (or study in this case) should be left unexploited some senators on capital hill are going to introduce legislation to make texting while driving illegal…

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jQIakqMFgrC0KAeMfxrWUQCz2U2QD99O2NL04

The legislation will use the federal government’s favorite weapon against state rights, money. Pretty much if a state doesn’t introduce a law making texting while driving illegal they lose their federal highway funding.

It’s funny how the states only have rights when it’s convenient for the federal government. For instance the states have a right to make their own gun laws when national reciprocity is being voted on but they don’t have the right to make their own gun laws when they want to make any gun sold and used in their state exempt from federal regulation. Well it looks like states don’t have the right to make legislation when it comes to their drivers either.

That said texting while driving is just fucking stupid. But just because something is fucking stupid doesn’t mean it should be made illegal. The fact of the matter is there is no way to enforce this law since phones can be used for a great many things. For instance my phone has Google Maps on it which I use to navigate my way around. But being I’m holding the phone to look at the map it looks like I’m texting.

Likewise reckless driving is already illegal hence if you are swerving around on the road while texting you are committing a crime and will most likely be pulled over. This law in effect will only exist to give police another reason to pull you over without having any actual reason to do so (sort of like Minnesota’s new mandatory seat belt law).

Greenpeace Proves Once Again Zealous Environmentalists are Dicks

Greenpeace a group known around the world for pulling stunts such as ramming whaling vessels has taken time out of their busy schedules to prove once again how big of dicks they are…

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10297357-92.html

Some Greenpeace pricks broke into Hewlett Packard’s Palo Alto headquarters and painted the words “Hazardous Products” on the roof. This apparently was due to the fact that Hewlett Packard didn’t give a flying fuck that Greenpeace rated their company poorly on the so called green meter.

So let me get this straight. Greenpeace doesn’t like the practices of a company. They could simply not buy anything from that company and publicly berate them to prove their point. Of course this wasn’t radical enough to they revert to trespassing and vandalism instead. Furthermore the only people who are going to see this message are one flying overhead. To me this seems pointless since people flying overhead are already using a “non-green” form of transportation and hence probably don’t give a shit what Greenpeace things. If I were the head of Hewlett Packard I’d be suing Greenpeace for every penny I could squeeze out of them.

This guys are nothing more than low level terrorists. That’s right I said it, terrorists. If you don’t bend to their will they will take matters into the realm of property damage of physical attacks (I’m sorry ramming and potentially sinking a ship full of people in waters well below freeze, thus guaranteeing the death of the sunken ship via hypothermia, is a physical attack against those people). I don’t know how these guys don’t have federal agents crawling so far up their ass’ that they can taste them.

Here is a source of Greenpeace trying to ram a Japanese whaling vessel…

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=4049

BATFE Changes to Short Barreled Rifle Rules

Snowflakes in Hell did a post looking at apparent changes in the BATFE rule book regarding pinned and welded extensions on barrels otherwise too short to avoid being labeled NFA weapons…

http://www.snowflakesinhell.com/2009/07/28/pin-weld-no-longer-viable/

The BATFE hand book can be found here…

http://www.atf.gov/firearms/nfa/nfa_handbook/index.htm

In summary the newest version of the NFA hand book appears to have taken out language that would allow pinned or welded accessories on a barrel being added into the length measurement of the barrel. Hence if you have a 15″ barrel with a 1″ pinned or welded flash suppressor it would now be considered a short barreled rifle.

This could turn many law abiding citizens into instant felons since this method has been used by many people to make their otherwise too short barrel long enough.

A Case Against a Gold Backed Economy

I was reading Bruce Schneier’s block and came across an interesting story…

http://www.commodityonline.com/news/Swiss-banks-have-no-space-left-for-gold!-19698-3-1.html

Swiss banks are running out of space to put their gold. This is a larger issue than many would give it credit for since gold does take a lot of space and if you have a large quantity of it in one area you need to really secure it. I’m not talking just putting more guards around it but you need to fully secure it since criminals will be trying to steal that treasure trove of precious metals.

It’s an interesting thing to consider especially for those who want us to return to a gold based economy. I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know enough about economics to determine if backing our money with gold is a good idea. I will say it seems smart to back your money with something of value though. And if you set each denomination of money to be valued a specific denomination of gold it would prevent stupidity like a government printing up $1 trillion to give away to people who helped cause a major economic recession. I’m just saying.

Source: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/07/swiss_security.html

And Samuel Colt Made Them Equal

Remember that saying that God made all men but Samuel Colt made them equal? I think this story exemplifies that…

http://www.click2houston.com/news/20153320/detail.html

An 18 year old man decided he was going to steal a 74 year old man’s car. Normally the 18 year old would win any such fight due to the advantages of youth. But when Martin Baltazar put a knife to August Peters’s throat and attempted to steal his car he wasn’t expecting the aged man to whip out a gun. Furthermore I don’t think Mr. Baltazar expected the old man to shoot him.

Once again an average citizen uses a gun to stop a crime. But of course the gun banners would have you believe that Mr. Peters should have just surrendered his keys. After all criminals who are willing to put a knife to your neck certainly wouldn’t be willing to kill you even if you gave up your keys right? I mean getting rid of a witness was never a concern of a criminal… oh wait.

Captain Obvious Says Texting While Driving is Bad

In the realm of no shit Sherlock we have this study…

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10296992-94.html?tag=nl.e703

Apparently texting while driving increases your chances of crashing 23 fold. Who knew? I mean come on how can doing something that makes you take your eyes off the road increase your chances of having an accident? Man I’m glad this study was done to finally put this argument to rest.

If you couldn’t tell that last sentence was sarcasm.

Web Development Made Awesome

I’m doing some web development for work currently and have decided that there are two tools all web developers need to know. The first is Django…

http://www.djangoproject.com/

Django is an amazing web development framework. Think of it as Ruby on Rails but for Python. The Django framework allows you to do all you server side work in Python which to me make it an amazing tool. And get this unlike many development tools out there Django is very well documented. Their web page has a good tutorial for starting off to top off the documentation.

Then there is jQuery…

http://jquery.com/

jQuery is a JavaScript widget library. It let’s you “AJAXify” your site easily for buzzword compliance and make designing the page interface very easy. But I think the best part is that the data presented by jQuery will display if a visitor has disabled scripting. Granted the information won’t look nearly as pretty but it will display.

These two tools have made web development very easy on me.

Vltor Weapon Systems Acquire Bren Ten Name

Good news courtesy of The Firearms Blog…

http://vltor.wordpress.com/2009/07/27/but-i-read-it-on-the-internet/

For those of you out of the loop Vltor has been working on a project they dubbed the Fortis Pistol. This was a recreation of the Bren Ten which was a pistol made for the newly introduced 10mm cartridge. Many companies have tried to bring back the Bren Ten and because of these failures there is a joke about the curse of the Bren Ten.

I’ll be honest here I’ve been watching the Bren Ten because I watched way too much Miami Vice back in the day. The Bren Ten was the gun carried by Sonny Crocket in the first few seasons (actually it was a modified Bren Ten). Anyways it looks like Vltor is taking this project very seriously which is good to see.

Source: http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2009/07/28/baby-the-bren-ten-is-back/