Archive for the ‘Guns’ Category

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Random notes: January 15, 2013.

Tuesday, January 15th, 2013

Well. It is starting to look like I was…wrong, wrong, wrongity wrong! Sorry, folks. I need some more time to process this, and may have more to say after Thursday.

The HouChron has totally lost their stuff over the existence of Houston Armory. Houston Armory, which is actually located in Stafford, advertises itself as the largest Class 3 dealer in Texas, and sells things like twin .50 caliber machine guns for a mere $75,000, or a fully-automatic 12 gauge shotgun for $150,000.

Requirements are about the same as buying a regular gun. Owners generally cannot be felons, must be a U.S. citizen or legally residing in the United States and must promise to keep the gun properly secured.

The HouChron is lying here, and they know they’re lying. The $200 transfer tax was mentioned previously in the article; in the following two paragraphs, they also mention the “six month waiting period” for the application to be processed, and the requirement for a signature from the “chief law enforcement officer” of the owner’s locality. The HouChron totally omits the requirement for a photograph and fingerprints of the owner. So much for “about the same as a regular gun”.

Authorities have witnessed the wrath of machine guns in the wrong hands. In an especially infamous 1997 attempt to rob a bank in North Hollywood, Calif., two men in full body armor sprayed bullets at police while using illegal machine guns.

Note the phrase “illegal machine guns”. Specifically, note the word “illegal“. Previously in the same article:

Despite the discomfort some might have over private citizens owning guns that were made for soldiers, law enforcement authorities say they can’t point to a specific instance in which a legally registered machine gun was used by a private citizen to commit a violent crime. [Emphasis added – DB]

Another tag I don’t get to use as much as I would like: the Humboldt squid are swarming in California.

One night last week, about 15 anglers reeled in about 340 squid within about an hour near Dana Point, said Rob Armes of Davey’s Locker Sportfishing and Whale Watching.
The only reason they didn’t catch more was that they didn’t have enough anglers.
“If we’d had 40 or 50 people, we’d have gotten 800 to 900 squid,” Armes said. “They were floating all around the boat. They were jumping. They were everywhere.”

There’s no specific bag limit for the Humboldt squid, but apparently California has a “general invertebrate bag limit of 35”.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Sports, Squid | Comments Closed

You don’t say.

Monday, January 14th, 2013

Nearly 80,000 Americans were denied guns in 2010, according to Justice Department data, because they lied or provided inaccurate information about their criminal histories on background-check forms. Yet only 44 of those people were charged with a crime.

I come up with a figure of 0.055 percent.

In a memorandum provided to the administration, [Mayors Against Illegal Guns] suggested that “armed career criminals who have at least three prior violent felonies and/or serious drug offenses and would qualify for a mandatory sentence of 7 to 15 years” should be prosecuted if they lie on background-check forms. The group said that it provided a similar recommendation to the Obama administration in 2009.

Is it possible that Criminal Mayors Against Guns and other parties are starting to realize that we have plenty of gun regulation already, and one of the problems is that people who violate the laws frequently aren’t prosecuted?

(Remember the WP series “The Hidden Life of Guns“? Remember the WP pointing out that “straw purchasers” and other people who lie to purchase guns are rarely prosecuted? More to the point, does the WP remember?)

Posted in Clippings, Guns | Comments Closed

Gun show update.

Saturday, January 12th, 2013

The Statesman is reporting that the Travis County Commissioners could vote on a gun show ban as early as Tuesday.

However, the paper is also reporting that at least two of the commissioners are “backing away” from supporting the measure:

County Judge Sam Biscoe has said he asked the commissioners court to consider a ban of gun shows at county facilities after receiving emails from 200 people asking for one.
But after Tuesday’s legal briefing from county attorneys, he said the prospect of a ban was “not good.”
Commissioners Sarah Eckhardt and Gerald Daugherty told the Statesman they didn’t think the county had the power to enact a gun show ban. Daugherty, the lone Republican on the five-member court, said he wouldn’t support a ban even if he thought it were legal.

Before we give props to Eckhart and Daugherty, they are also quoted as supporting “background checks for anyone buying a gun at a gun show”. Oddly enough, so is Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson. I suspect that Daugherty and Patterson are just misinformed, not malicious; I’m not sure about Eckhardt.

In any case, now is not the time to back off. Keep those cards, letters, and faxes coming in, people. Contact information for all of the commissioners is right here.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Politics, Travis County | Comments Closed

TMQ Watch: January 1, 2013.

Wednesday, January 9th, 2013

Time for the backdated TMQ watch. What bloodshed and infamy did we miss last week? Let’s open the briefcase and find out.

(more…)

Posted in Firings, Guns, NFL, Sports, TMQ watch | Comments Closed

Gun show update.

Tuesday, January 8th, 2013

Austin Rifle Club sent out an email late last night stating that the Travis County Commissioners Court was considering the gun show ban today. I didn’t see that email until this morning, otherwise I would have considered going down to report.

According to the Statesman, the commissioners “discussed” the proposal, and heard testimony from residents, but did not take a vote. So you still have time to contact them.

A ban would not apply to an upcoming show on Jan. 26 and 27 and County Judge Sam Biscoe said that if a ban is approved, he would want it to apply three or four months down the line.

So Judge Biscoe thinks gun shows are a threat to public safety, but not one that we need to act on immediately? One that can wait “three or four months”? Option two is that Judge Biscoe is a political hack who wants to be seen as “doing something” when he’s really doing nothing. But that can’t be true: political hackery on the commissioners court? Why, that’s unheard of! (Option three is that Judge Biscoe figures things will blow over in “three or four months”, we can return to the current status quo, and voters will forget his actions. My message to Judge Biscoe: “He’d seen how ‘civilized’ men behaved. He never forgot and he never forgave.”)

…so-called “gun show loophole,” where private citizens selling firearms at gun shows can do so without requiring background checks, something licensed dealers are required to do.

And, again, I’ll make the points that:

  • Any dealer with an Federal Firearms License who sells guns at a gun show has to do a check, just as if they were selling guns in a physical store.
  • Any person who regularly sells guns at a gun show, or any place else, is required to get a FFL. Not getting one is a Federal crime, if you engage in the business of selling guns. If a relative dies and you engage in a private sale of a few of his guns, that’s not a crime. But if you sell guns regularly at the gun show without a license, the BATFE will come after you, and you may do time.
  • Those same private sales will take place in supermarket parking lots, subdivision driveways, and other places even if the county restricts gun shows. There’s nothing the county can do to stop that.

The Statesman does not give a breakdown of how many people spoke at the meeting, nor does it give any indication how many supported or opposed the measure.

Travis County does not have authority to regulate firearms sales, but Biscoe believes it can ban a gun show from being held at county facilities.

And, once again, I’ll mention that Judge Biscoe is wrong, wrong, wrongity wrong! Here’s some legal precedent from the 5th Circuit for you, Judge Biscoe. The tl;dr version: the city of Houston tried something similar and ended up paying $50,000+ in legal fees to a gun show operator.

The commissioners were discussing the possible ban after Biscoe received messages from about 200 people asking for a ban of gun shows at the Expo Center following a similar request at a commissioners court meeting by Ed Scruggs, an Austin Democratic activist.

Keep that in mind. The opposition managed to get 200 people to support their illegal proposal. I think we can do much better.

Edited to add: Forgot something else I was going to mention: I updated the .CSV files of the county commissioners and the city council members with fax numbers, just in case anyone finds that useful. Someone yesterday (and I forget who it was) made the comment that they can ignore emails, but they have to answer the phone and they have to put paper in the fax machine. I am slightly dubious about the latter, what with modern technology and all, but the fax numbers are there if you can use them.

Edited to add 2: Updated story from the Statesman:

Travis County commissioners delayed a vote Tuesday on banning gun shows on county property, as county lawyers appeared to cast doubt on the legality of such a move.

You don’t say?

After emerging from a private meeting with attorneys, County Judge Sam Biscoe said the prospect for a ban was “not good.”
Biscoe added that county lawyers will need to research further whether the county can legally ban gun shows ahead of an expected vote next week. A county gun show prohibition would shut down a regular, well-attended gun show at the county-run Exposition Center. Biscoe declined to comment further on the discussions from the closed session.

The Statesman reports eight people spoke in opposition, and two in favor.

And edited to add again: by way of Lawrence over at Battleswarm, ““If Austin or Travis Co. try to ban gun shows they better be ready for a double-barreled lawsuit.” Click through to find out who said that. Hint: it wasn’t someone who runs gun shows. Hint 2: it was someone who can unleash hell on the city and county.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Law, Sarcasm, Travis County | 1 Comment »

Fun. Nasty fun.

Monday, January 7th, 2013

Just finished calling all the Austin City Council members (none were available to talk to me, so I left messages with their staff), and sending emails through the forms on the city website.

My message was short and simple:

  • The Martinez proposal is a bad idea that will do nothing to solve any real problem.
  • It will expose the city to legal action under section 229 of the Texas local government code.
  • If the council member votes for this proposal, I will not only vote against them in the next election, but I will also give money to, and actively work for, their opponent.
  • It only takes 38,000 signatures to get a recall election going.

I can be a real mean SOB if I want to be. (“Take a jam to make you think. Take a challenge to make you great.”)

I plan to back this up with physical letters, which will probably go out tomorrow (assuming I can get my printer working).

Here’s something that folks might find useful: a MSWord merge file of all the council members, with addresses and office phone numbers. The email addresses come off the copies of the emails I sent through the contact forms; the “PO Box 1088” physical address is the one they all list on their contact pages. The phone numbers come from their contact pages as well.

(I could add fax numbers, I guess. If anyone uses fax machines these days.)

(Subject line hattip.)

Edited to add: At Lawrence’s instigation, here’s a CSV version of the Austin City Council members. And here’s a CSV version of the Travis County Commissioners Court, both commissioners and their executive assistants, including phone numbers and email addresses.

Posted in Austin, Guns, Law, Politics | 7 Comments »

This is intended to enrage you. (#4 in a series)

Saturday, January 5th, 2013

What we do instead of doing something:

City of Austin and Travis County officials plan to take steps to ban gun shows on city- and county-owned property — and potentially even curtail them on private property within the city limits, the American-Statesman has learned.

…

Additionally, [Austin City Council member Mike] Martinez said the city will likely explore the possibility of enacting a law that would require a special permit — granted only by the City Council — for gun shows held on private property in Austin. Martinez said he will seek legal opinions on that idea. Eckhardt said she doesn’t think state law gives county governments such authority.

And:

“I can’t think of anything dumber,” [Texas Land Commissioner Jerry] Patterson, a supporter of gun rights, said of the proposals. “It’s absolutely not going to reduce gun violence.”

Time to make some phone calls Monday morning.

Edited to add: Giving this some more thought, Charles Harris of Storied Firearms (who is quoted in the article) deserves some praise. He could easily have thrown the gun shows under the bus. After all, that’d drive business to his place. But no.

…he sees the measure as “a feel-good thing. Politicians saying, ‘Look what we’re doing. We’re doing something to curb gun violence,’ when in reality, it doesn’t do anything to prevent crimes. Criminals can still get a gun on the streets anyway. I think there are other laws that can do a lot more good to get bad guys away from their guns.”

If you live in the greater Austin area, why not stop by Storied Firearms and pick up a little something? I visit there fairly regularly and find it to be a very nice shop. If you’re not in the Austin area, but support gun rights, there’s a contact form on their website that you could use to send a “thank you” to Mr. Harris.

Posted in Austin, Clippings, Guns, Politics, Rage | 3 Comments »

Random notes: January 4, 2013.

Friday, January 4th, 2013

It looks like this is going to be a NYT heavy day. I apologize, but I go where the interesting stuff is.

This is a no-snark story. Even though I think the main idea is well known, and gets repeated by the NYT every few years, I still think it is worth noting,

Decades later, the operators say, the images are vivid. The slender fellow in the jacket and tie, bending his knees at the platform’s edge. The reveler stumbling on the tracks at dawn, wobbly in her evening best, unable to stagger away in time. An arm reaching up, hopefully, then disappearing in a flash.
“As cruel as it makes it sound, for the individual it’s over,” said Curtis Tate, a former operator whose train struck and killed a man in 1992. “It’s just beginning for the train operator.”

According to the NYT, operators expect an average of one death per week. (There were 55 in 2012, and the system has already had the first death of 2013.)

“I was always seeing it, you know?” Ms. Moore, 45, from Staten Island, said. “I see him alive and….”

Also in the NYT, an interesting article about the investigation into the Indianapolis gas explosion.

Even before they heard that family photographs were missing, investigators said they sensed something was not right with the scattered remains of Monserrate Shirley’s home.

I’ve heard more than once that family photos being missing, or obviously taken out of the house before the event, is a significant clue to investigators that they might be dealing with arson or some other deliberate act. But as we shift towards digital photos and storage in the cloud, how long is that going to remain a useful clue?

Officials believe the home, in the Richmond Hill subdivision, had been saturated with natural gas for six to nine hours before it erupted at 11:11 p.m. The explosion was seen and felt for miles. It shattered windows and collapsed walls throughout the neighborhood, shoving some homes off their foundations. John D. Longworth and his wife, Jennifer, who lived in the house next door, did not survive.

Conveniently, the people who owned the house were “at a casino 100 miles away”, their daughter was spending the night with friends, and they had boarded their cat.

This came to me by way of the NYT: I’m linking to the AZCentral web site, but both have about the same amount of detail. The jury in the trial of Erick Venola deadlocked on the second-degree murder charges against him. Mr. Venola is expected to be retried in late February; he was pleading self-defense in the shooting of his neighbor, James Patrick O’Neill.

Why is this worth noting? I don’t note every mistrial in Arizona. True that, but: Mr. Venola was a former editor of “Guns and Ammo” magazine, and I’ve seen absolutely no mention of this in the gun blog sphere (or anywhere else) before now. It may be that Mr. Venola is not exactly a sympathetic defendant: the prosecution claims he and Mr. O’Neill were both drunk at the time of the shooting.

Interesting set of stats from the NYT, by way of Jimbo: Arthur O. Sulzberger’s obit in the NYT was the fourth longest in the past 30 years. The top five:

  1. Pope John Paul II.
  2. Richard Nixon.
  3. Ronald Reagan.
  4. Arthur O. Sulzberger.
  5. Gerald Ford.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Law, Nixon, Obits, Safety | Comments Closed

Random notes: January 3, 2013.

Thursday, January 3rd, 2013

The shooting, on Nov. 26, was one more jarring reminder of just how common killings seem to have grown on the streets of Chicago, the nation’s third-largest city, where 506 homicides were reported in 2012, a 16 percent increase over the year before, even as the number of killings remained relatively steady or dropped in some cities, including New York.

How’s that strict gun control working for you, Chicago?

First they came for the large sodas, and I didn’t say anything, because I didn’t drink soda. Then they came for the energy drinks…

Obit watch: Patti Page. NYT. A/V Club.

The NYT profiles Christopher Tinker, auto mechanic in Baltimore. Why? Christopher Tinker’s great-grandfather was Joe Tinker.

Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,
Tinker and Evers and Chance.
Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,
Making a Giant hit into a double,
Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:
Tinker to Evers to Chance.

Yeah, that Joe Tinker.

In 1993, he paid $220 for one of the original baseball cards, which were issued by tobacco companies. But the card was eventually lost, and Tinker thought about how to replace it. One day he walked into a Baltimore tattoo parlor, and the idea hit him. Six hours and nearly $500 later, he had his great-grandfather’s image engraved on his arm.

Lake Tahoe has a bear problem. Actually, Lake Tahoe has two bear problems:

More than a thousand bear complaints a year are reported to officials on the lake’s California side alone. They break into homes to forage in refrigerators, at times surprising terrified residents. They den under porches and have learned to twist the tops off food jars. They make the trash-can exploits of the Southern California bruin nicknamed Glen Bearian look like the fumblings of an amateur.

Problem #2:

It’s not uncommon for people who have sought state approval to have a bear killed to receive an onslaught of threats. Homes have been vandalized. Even complaining about a problem bear to game wardens — who some see as the enemy — can bring scorn.
“People have been approached and yelled at in grocery stores simply for reporting bear activity,” said Placer County Sheriff’s Capt. Jeff Ausnow. “They’ll say, ‘You can’t do that because they’re going to kill it.’ This is a very emotional issue here.”

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Law, Music, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

More news from the Things That Suck Department.

Friday, December 28th, 2012

I don’t subscribe to that many gun magazines.

I should subscribe to SWAT, and will when finances are better and I get around to it; right now I buy it on the newsstand. I like Claire Wolfe’s and Louis Awerbuck’s columns, and I’m also loyal to people I like. I get American Rifleman with my NRA membership. I subscribe to American Handgunner because I like a lot of the content: Taffin, Ayoob, Conner and Smith specifically. Plus, the editor of AH did me a great personal favor several years ago; he wouldn’t remember, and the story is a long one, but I feel a great deal of loyalty towards the magazine and Roy Huntington.

I also subscribed fairly recently to Precision Shooting magazine, after purchasing it off the stand at my local gun shop for a while. I find it rare when the editor’s column in a magazine is the first thing I want to read, but Dave Brennan always had something funny or profound or wise or silly to say. A lot of the articles may have been a little ahead of where I am now, but I figured they might be useful in the future. And there was always something there for me; a recent survey of scout rifles, for example, or an article on double guns, or a discussion of how to get more accuracy out of a 10/22, or…

Dave Brennan ran a swell magazine, and managed to round up a good stable of writers. If I was allowed only one gun magazine, I would have picked Precision Shooting.

I noticed in the past few weeks that I hadn’t seen an issue since October. I know some magazines do a combined year-end edition, so I wasn’t too worried. But I didn’t see a December issue, and there wasn’t one on the racks when I went to my gun shop. Did my subscription expire? Did the gun shop sell out? I thought I’d check back in early January; perhaps they were just taking the holiday season off.

Various things led me to go out to their website, and, well…apparently, I’m the last person to find out that Precision Shooting stopped publishing in October. It looks like the usual reasons were involved – that is, money.

I’ll miss it. There are a couple of books collecting some of the articles, but it just won’t be the same. Thanks, Mr. Brennan, for keeping things going as long as you did, and good luck.

Posted in Guns | Comments Closed

There was a rumor, about a tumor…

Thursday, December 27th, 2012

The Statesman is reporting the death of Houston McCoy.

Mr. McCoy never got the fame he probably deserved, because that’s the way the media works. He was an officer with the Austin Police Department on August 1, 1966. Mr. McCoy and his fellow officer Ramiro Martinez fired the shots that killed Charles Whitman.

There’s always been some controversy over who actually killed Whitman, and that’s touched on briefly in Mr. McCoy’s obit. I expect to see this rehashed some more in the coming days. Gary Lavergne’s A Sniper in the Tower: The Charles Whitman Murders is considered by pretty much every person I know of to be the definitive account of events before, during, and after; he discusses this issue at some length, and I think comes to a wise and fair conclusion, echoed by Mr. McCoy himself:

From his bed in Menard Manor in 2011, McCoy recounted what he remembered: “I got him but it really doesn’t matter whether I got him or Martinez did. Martinez is a good man, and he was the first police officer on the deck to confront the sniper. There were many heroes that day, police officers and civilians.”

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Guns, Law, Obits | Comments Closed

Signs! Signs and portents!

Wednesday, December 19th, 2012

More evidence that the end of the world is coming: Lawrence and I actually disagree on something.

Specifically, what we disagree on is that I don’t think Thai Noodle House is the worst Thai restaurant in Austin. It has been a while since I’ve eaten at Thai Noodle House, but I don’t remember it being as bad as Chang Thai.

Posted in Food, Guns, Media | 2 Comments »

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