Archive for the ‘Guns’ Category

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Cahiers du Cinéma: Alphaville.

Sunday, May 19th, 2013

Last night’s movie was Alphaville.

Lawrence has said he’s not sure he wants to write a review of it, so I guess the duty of commentary falls to me. The problem is, I’m not sure what to say about it. I get the idea that Jean-Luc Godard is an important director, and Alphaville is an important film in the history of the French New Wave.

And the movie does have some things going for it:

  • The women are beautiful, especially Anna Karina.
  • “Hey, we don’t have a budget, so let’s use a Ford Mustang as an interstellar spacecraft, and Paris at night to represent an alien city.” Sounds good to me.
  • Godard does do a lot with little money in this movie.
  • It is shortish: 1:39.
  • I am not sure, but I believe this may be the first pop culture example of the “destroy the computer by setting it up with a logical contradiction” trope. TVTropes is not helpful in this regard, but Alphaville does predate Star Trek.
  • At least Godard had the good taste to give Lemmy Caution a 1911.
  • Wow. What great staircases.

Beyond those things, though…wow, this is one hot pretentious mess. Alphaville is the kind of movie that is great to be able to say you have seen, but not all that great to actually sit through.

(I have a feeling this is going to make it much harder to talk Lawrence and everyone else into seeing Made in U.S.A.. Indeed, Lawrence commented as I was leaving last night that next week, we need to watch “something where stuff blows up”.)

(And no great shock here, but my guess was right: you can buy Alphaville buttons online. However:

  1. Lawrence isn’t a button person.
  2. $6.25 seems steep to me, especially given that…
  3. …most of the things I’ve ordered from Zazzle have been disappointing, especially t-shirts.

Maybe if there’s a button maker at Worldcon I’ll get some done. Goddard won’t mind me infringing his copyright, will he? If he does, it isn’t like he has any room to complain.)

Posted in Guns, Movies | Comments Closed

Invisible airwaves crackle with life, bright antenna bristle with the energy…

Friday, May 10th, 2013

On Thursday, Defense Distributed founder Cody Wilson received a letter from the State Department Office of Defense Trade Controls Compliance demanding that he take down the online blueprints for the 3D-printable “Liberator” handgun that his group released Monday, along with nine other 3D-printable firearms components hosted on the group’s website Defcad.org. The government says it wants to review the files for compliance with arms export control laws known as the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR. By uploading the weapons files to the Internet and allowing them to be downloaded abroad, the letter implies Wilson’s high-tech gun group may have violated those export controls.

As Linoge says, you can’t stop the signal.

Edited to add: Quote of the day:

The right to download CAD files is the right to be free. 😉

—Tam

(Reference explained here for the non SF fans in my audience.)

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Law | Comments Closed

Random notes: May 8, 2013.

Wednesday, May 8th, 2013

“I have no idea, I have no idea,” said Philip Levine, the former United States poet laureate, who has lived in Fresno since the late 1950s. But his enthusiasm was tempered by worries over the proliferation of poets laureate. “If you gave the Congressional Medal of Honor to everybody who got drafted, in a way you water down the award,” he said. “Do all these towns need a poet laureate? That’s what I wonder. Does Fresno, for that matter?”

(Fresno is paying their poet laureate $2,000 for a two-year term.)

Paging Andy Ihnatko. Andy Ihnatko to the white courtesy phone, please.

(Seriously, this does not strike me as a good idea.)

“When things got tough or extremely difficult on the House floor, we could count on Jesse to bring levity to an otherwise daunting situation with a bad joke or a one-man skit,” she wrote. “Jesse was the highlight of our karaoke nights and always made everyone feel like an integral part of, and not apart from, various activities.”

“She” is Rep. Marcia L. Fudge (D-Ohio), chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Edited to add: Ken over at Popehat has a post up flaming the LAT and other newspapers (and, sort of by implication, your obedient servant) for seizing on the karaoke angle and taking out of the context it was in.

More guns, less crime.

The Statesman has been all over the collapse of RunTex (a local running shoe store, which was also active in various community events) like flies on a severed cow’s head at a Damien Hirst exhibition. I haven’t paid much attention to the story because I’m not a runner and didn’t care about RunTex. I remember my sister (who competes in triathlons) telling me about going there a while back and being totally unable to find any shoes that fit her. (And my sister does not have giant mutant feet.)

In that vein, I found this Statesman column rather interesting. It looks like my sister wasn’t the only person who had that problem…

On recent, long Saturday runs with my Gazelle pace group, when the conversation meanders from work and family stories to movies and smoothie recipes, someone occasionally would mention that they had tried to buy a pair of shoes from the Riverside location’s diminishing selection. Stories of failed attempts to buy new shoes resonated. “I used to shop there all the time” had become a familiar sentence.

Edited to add: A friend of WCD told us a similar story in email; he went in looking for the Nike shoes that would work with their iPhone application and transmitter. They didn’t have any shoes in his size, let alone the Nike ones. When he inquired, they told him “We’re not a shoe store. We support the running lifestyle.”

“We support the running lifestyle.” WHAT THE FRACK DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?

“We’re not a shoe store.” Yeah. Now, you’re nothing.

This is just further evidence towards my theory: the problems with the American economy have much to do with the fact that nobody wants to take money for goods and services any longer. I’m not kidding: I can’t count the number of experiences I’ve had, or been told about recently, involving wanting to make a purchase and not being able to get help, get questions answered, or get people to take money.

Posted in Books, California Über Alles, Clippings, Guns | 1 Comment »

Municipal corruption watch.

Monday, May 6th, 2013

Hey, remember the city of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania? Sold bonds to build a new trash incinerator? Then sold more bonds to pay off the earlier bonds? Remember some jackass saying

If you or I did this, they’d call it a Ponzi scheme, and we’d be going to Federal pound you in the ass prison.

Good times, good times. Guess what?

In the first such settlement ever agreed to by a U.S. city, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s state capital, has agreed to settle Securities and Exchange Commission charges accusing the city of securities fraud for making “misleading public statements” as the cash-starved city’s finances deteriorated in the late 2000s and debts piled up in the wake of a failed public incinerator project and other questionable borrowing.

Yeah. That wasn’t an individual charged with securities fraud, that was the city itself. Noted:

Under the settlement agreement, Harrisburg didn’t admit it did anything wrong, and agreed to stop doing it.

This comes to our attention by way of Shall Not Be Questioned, which also points out that Mayor Linda Thompson (who is running for re-election) is a member of Criminal Mayors Who Don’t Want You To Have Guns.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Law | Comments Closed

Random notes: May 5, 2013.

Sunday, May 5th, 2013

Mildly interesting NYT article: Revisiting L.B.J.’s Austin, One Address at a Time. I would have liked for this article to be a little longer, but some of the places I have in mind (such as El Patio) are actually associated more with Mrs. Johnson than the president.

Weer’d is at the NRA convention, so I’m going to step on his “Gun Death” territory: we must ban the deadly killer assault limos! Nobody needs a high capacity vehicle to get anywhere: you can get by with a Smart Car!

(Also.)

Posted in Clippings, Guns | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 4, 2013.

Saturday, May 4th, 2013

This is kind of surprising to see in the NYT: Tom Knapp, noted exhibition shooter.

From 1993 to 2004, Mr. Knapp made and broke his own records for the number of hand-thrown clay targets struck in a single round and for speed in doing so. His last record — 10 airborne targets hit (or “dusted,” in shooting-speak) in 2.2 seconds, each struck with a separate round — was set at an exhibition in Murfreesboro, Tenn., on Oct. 10, 2004.

More:

Mr. Knapp said he had been inspired by trick shooters of the next generation, most notably Herb Parsons, a showman who toured the country from the 1930s through the ’50s and often worked in Hollywood as a trick-shot stand-in for stars like Jimmy Stewart in “Winchester ’73” (1950), which involves a shooting contest.
“Parsons was probably the greatest of the modern era — and in my book, after him, Tom Knapp comes a very close second,” said Warren Newman, curator at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyo., a site of trick-shooting exhibitions. “What these two fellows did was always so much more than just shooting.”
He added: “What they did was amaze people, put on a real show. They were outstanding professionals.”

Posted in Clippings, Guns | Comments Closed

TMQ Watch: April 25, 2013.

Friday, April 26th, 2013

Yeah, we know, we’re late. We didn’t realize until Wednesday that it was that time of year again, and it took us a while to work up the gumption to do this. Part of the problem, of course, is that this is the column where TMQ mocks the mock drafts. As we’ve said in the past, TMQ thinks this is more amusing than it actually is, and there’s really no reason to go item by item through his attempts at humor.

But we have an obligation to our reader. So we might as well get into it…

(more…)

Posted in Clippings, Guns, NFL, Sports, TMQ watch, TV | Comments Closed

Random notes: April 18, 2013.

Thursday, April 18th, 2013

NYT headline:

Gun Control Effort Had No Real Chance, Despite Pleas

(I am still thinking about fisking the NYT Internet sales piece, but I’ve been tied up and haven’t had a chance. I might get to it tonight, if I decide to go through with it.)

The NYT is reporting that Kim Lene Williams, who was arrested yesterday and charged in the Kaufman County DA killings, is rolling on her husband.

According to an affidavit filed by the authorities, Ms. Williams confessed to her involvement in the shootings in an interview with investigators on Tuesday, and told them that her husband had been the one who shot Mr. Hasse in January and Mr. McLelland and his wife in March.
During her interview, she supplied investigators with details of both shootings that had not been made public. One law enforcement official confirmed that Ms. Williams was not a gunman in the murders, but had been the driver, and had also used the storage unit where Mr. Williams had kept a car and more than 20 guns.

I Am Not A Lawyer, but this did get me to wondering. Rule 504 of the Texas Rules of Evidence covers spousal privilege:

In a criminal case, the spouse of the accused has a privilege not to be called as a witness for the state. This rule does not prohibit the spouse from testifying voluntarily for the state, even over objection by the accused. A spouse who testifies on behalf of an accused is subject to cross-examination as provided in rule 611(b).

So she doesn’t have to testify against her husband, but she can if she wants to. And it sounds like she will, especially since she apparently wasn’t the actual trigger puller and can probably make a deal. (It sounds like whatever deal she does make will end up with her dying in prison, since the paper of record reports she’s 46 years old and has chronic health problems.)

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Law | 1 Comment »

Random notes: April 17, 2013.

Wednesday, April 17th, 2013

“anyone who has lived in Travis County for six months” and “is not currently under indictment”.

Heh. Heh. Heh. Personally, I would have waited until she was actually convicted, but that’s just my strategic thinking.

(Hattip: Lawrence.)

The “not yet named as a suspect” in the Kaufman County DA shootings had “more than 20 guns” in a storage unit. Or, as we call that in Texas, “just about average”.

And the firearms included two or three handguns and seven assault rifles.

I’d like to see these “assault rifles”; I don’t trust the NYT to know which end the bullets come out of.

Edited to add: Well. Well, well, well. Well. How about that Aryan Brotherhood?

Speaking of trusting the NYT on guns:

With no requirements for background checks on most private transactions, a Times examination found, Armslist and similar sites function as unregulated bazaars, where the essential anonymity of the Internet allows unlicensed sellers to advertise scores of weapons and people legally barred from gun ownership to buy them.

More:

The Times assembled a database and analyzed several months of ads from Armslist

Whooop! Whoop! Journalist with a database alert!

I have to head out the door shortly, but may come back to this NYT article later on.

Obit watch: Pat Summerall.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Law, Sports, TCDA, TV | Comments Closed

Happy BAG Day!

Monday, April 15th, 2013

I’d like to wish all of my readers a happy national Buy A Gun Day.

My celebration this year is going to be subdued for the following reasons:

  1. Money.
  2. Most of the interesting gun shops around here are closed on Monday. Generally, in this case, I would push BAG Day out to the weekend before (but I was busy having fun on Saturday), or the weekend after. But…
  3. Every day since at least January 20, 2013 has been “Buy A Gun Day”. Seriously, good luck finding stuff out there.

While I’m on the subject: I spent most of the day Saturday with my nieces and nephews at an elementary school carnival. I won’t name the school to protect their privacy. Suffice it to say that there were a lot of fun things going on: games for the kids, bounce houses, shaved ice trailers, a cakewalk, and even a silent auction.

One of the sponsors of the silent auction? LaRue Tactical. Can you say, “Winning!” I knew you could. (I didn’t get a chance to go into the auction, but the person I was with said they had donated a gift basket of some sort. Also represented was another company, whose name escapes me, that does CHL training.) Of course, this is Texas, where molon labe is a way of life. But I was still impressed.

Posted in Guns | Comments Closed

Speaking of guns…

Tuesday, April 9th, 2013

…stolen from my great and good friend RoadRich:

This is why I am such a big advocate of stricter knife control, and most importantly, a ban on assault knives. People don’t need knives that powerful for hunting… what are they planning to do, overthrow the caring, benevolent government? And those clips that hold more than one knife? Those… what are they called, ‘leatherman’ clips? Who needs those for so-called ‘hunting’? What are they hunting anyway, speaker wire and Phillips screws? Ban those too… because if even one person gets stabbed, even while trying to get at the tweezers, it is too many. Too many. Only the Army should be trying to clean a fish or strip a wire anyway.

The only thing I’d add to that is that I’m waiting for the victims of this particular act of violence to show up at a State of the Union address and testify before Congress, etc. etc. etc.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Knives, Law | Comments Closed

We have met the enemy…

Tuesday, April 9th, 2013

The LAT just put up a profile of noted gunsmith Terry Tussey.

I’ve heard of Mr. Tussey before. I’ve never had any work done by him, or handled any guns he’s worked on. But he is frequently mentioned in the pages of American Handgunner. I gather that he and the editor of AH are friends.

(I’m not implying that there’s anything wrong with that. Just saying.)

I’m happy to see this kind of thing in the LAT. I’m glad anytime I see gun ownership shown positively in the media.

But there are a couple of things that give me pause.

“Assault rifles and plastic guns are machines that shoot bullets,” Tussey says. “There is a big difference between machines that shoot bullets and firearms that shoot quickly, accurately and are beautiful.”

This comes across as kind of snobbish to me, even within the full context of the article. (Tussey is referring to “two revolvers purchased online” that cost “cost under $400 apiece” and are made of “polymer and metal”. No brand name is given.)

The reference to “plastic guns” also seems odd, given that:

He keeps a loaded 9mm Glock on his workbench and a 9mm Rohrbaugh in his pocket.

And then there’s this:

Tussey is sympathetic to efforts to restrict gun ownership, but he doesn’t believe any legislation would stop gun violence.
He favors background checks and hunter safety courses, and he can’t see a purpose for assault weapons or large-capacity magazines, but he is a passionate supporter of the 2nd Amendment.

“can’t see a purpose for assault weapons or high-capacity magazines”, but “is a passionate supporter of the 2nd Amendment”. Uh-huh.

I am hesitant to jump down Mr. Tussey’s throat: it is possible that he was misquoted or misrepresented by the LAT. I’ve used the contact form at his site to ask if this is the case, and will report back if I get any response.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Media | Comments Closed

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