Tag: You’re Doing it Right

Fixing Bribery

What’s one way to fix the problem of bribery that has run rampant throughout… well everywhere? A policy pointed out by Bruce Schneier’s blog looks to be effective and simple, legalize the giving of bribes:

Under the current law, discussed in some detail in the next section, once a bribe is given, the bribe giver and the bribe taker become partners in crime. It is in their joint interest to keep this fact hidden from the authorities and to be fugitives from the law, because, if caught, both expect to be punished. Under the kind of revised law that I am proposing here, once a bribe is given and the bribe giver collects whatever she is trying to acquire by giving the money, the interests of the bribe taker and bribe giver become completely orthogonal to each other. If caught, the bribe giver will go scot free and will be able to collect his bribe money back. The bribe taker, on the other hand, loses the booty of bribe and faces a hefty punishment.

Not only does this policy take away the incentive of covering up the fact a bribe was accepted but it also tosses in motivation to rat the bribe taker out. I like it. Obviously such a proposal will never likely be passed into law anywhere as that would go against the self-interest of those creating laws but it’s still a nice proposal.

Time For the ATF to Ban Staple Guns

The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives (ATF) went on a ban spree a while back because, according to them and nobody else, certain Airsoft rifles could be converted into real firearms. The ATF wrote up a report on this which coincided with their report on various unicorn sightings that their agents have observed over the years.

Well the ATF is going to shit bricks when they see this video explaining how to convert a regular staple gun into a 12 gauge shotgun. I’m kind of sad honestly, I use my stable gun a lot and there will be a void in my life when the ATF bans it for being easily converted into a destructive device.

Outbidding Police in Their Own Buy Back

Sometimes you find people doing their best to do good. Take the story posted up by No Lawyers – Only Guns and Money where a private organizations, Texans for Accountable Government (TAG), offer $110.00 cash to buy guns to complete with the Austin Police Department who were only offering $100.00 grocery cards in exchange for firearms. The best part though is that TAG will be giving these firearms to those in need (and can lawfully purchase them).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGovcSN07SU]

Criminal Use of Suppressors

Say Uncle linked to a very good study on the use of suppressors in crimes [PDF]. The study concludes that most crime involving suppressors are only crimes because the people in possession the suppressors failed to pay the government extortion tax to get a stamp saying it’s all good to own them. The use of suppressors in actual crimes is very rare. The other thing concluded by the study is the fact that banning suppressors is pointless:

A more telling criticism of laws against silencers is the ease with which they are avoided. Since one can ef- fectively muffle a firearm by doing nothing more than wrapping it in a towel it is unlikely that laws banning professionally manufactured (or home-made) silencers are likely to have any real effect on crime. In one case, for example, the murderer used a towel as “a make-shift silencer” and yet because it was only a towel this was not an additional crime (People v. Garcia, 2006 WL 3307392, *7 (Cal. Ct. App.)).

This is very near and dear to my heart because Minnesota has a complete prohibition against owning suppressors. Suppressors are only courteous to your neighbors as it reduces the amount of noise produced by firearms and therefore also reduces the number of noise complaints. I know one of the bigger headaches for firing ranges is when somebody new moves in and shortly afterwards complains about the noise from the fucking gun range that’s been there for over 80 years. Instead of realizing how stupid they were to miss a long established range these people try to get the range shut down and ruin it for everybody. Legalized suppressors would be beneficial for both the dip shit and the range members.

How It’s Done

Here is yet another reason that we need more people on Capital Hill like Ron Paul. Dr. Paul returned $141,580 of his budget to the government because he doesn’t go on rampant spending sprees:

Congressman Ron Paul has returned $141,580 of unspent office funds to the US Treasury. This represents just over 9% of the total office funds, and an increase over the $100,000 returned last year.

It would seem in a time of financial crisis that we could use more monetarily responsible representatives. Granted with the history of government spending I’m doubting we’ll get such people anytime this century.

I Love Watching Evil Plans Fail

If you haven’t heard of Righthaven I’ll give you a quick summary of the law firm. They’re scum. Seriously. What Righthaven does is buy up newspapers and then sue very site that has ever linked to the online sight of the purchased newspaper. Additionally newspapers can come on board without being purchased and use Righthaven’s “protection” services. Well it seems they just had their ass handed to them:

Last Friday, a judge in the Nevada federal district court patiently explained why fair use disposes of Righthaven’s copyright claim arising from the republication of an entire news article by a nonprofit organization. The hearing was in one of the now-250 Righthaven copyright cases. A written order, which will help set a persuasive precedent for other copyright troll cases, will be issued later.

Burn you sons of bitches.

I’m Losing Count

It seems Wyoming and New Hampshire aren’t the only new states pushing permitless concealed carry legislation. Montana has now jumped onto the band wagon. Montana’s is a bit different though as it would require people who carry to still receive training:

Republican Rep. Krayton Kerns’ House Bill 271 cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee Monday. The bill was amended to require completion of a training course to carry without a permit.

This seems unenforceable. How is an officer going to determine if a person carry a firearm received training? Is the person supposed to carry their training certificate at all times? In that case there is little difference in requiring a permit. Still it’s progress.