Archive for January 15th, 2013

Not all the news is bad.

Tuesday, January 15th, 2013

Travis County Commissioners unanimously voted Tuesday to reverse course on a proposal that would have banned gun shows from county facilities.

The county is going to honor the existing contract, which is for nine more shows at the Travis County Exposition and Heritage Center.

“I take very seriously the idea of abiding by the law. State law prevents this court from doing much of anything on this issue,” Commissioner Sarah Eckhardt said.

“I take very seriously the idea of abiding by the law.” That’s a quote for you. But:

…she would like to see gun shows require background checks for all purchases.

That’s nice, Commissioner Eckhardt. I’d like a freaking pony.

Federal law exempts private transactions from having a background check, something licensed sellers are required to do.

That’s the closest the Statesman has come to getting it right in their reporting on this subject.

The county will also meet with the gun show operator, Saxet Gun Shows, about the matter.

So probably if Saxet comes back for a contract renewal, the commissioners will pressure them to agree on a “no sales except through a FFL” provision.

Travis County Judge Sam Biscoe said county staffers would bring any other proposed events at the Expo Center with “unusually high safety risks” for commissioners’ approval. Previously, county staffers would not need to seek commissioners’ approval for events at the Expo Center.

Awesome! Since the county staffers are going to bring “any other proposed events at the Expo Center with ‘unusually high safety risks’ for commissioners’ approval”, I suggest they start with the Republic of Texas biker rally. I mean no offense to Jay G. or any of my other motorcycle riding friends out there: I don’t ride myself right now, but I love you guys. But if we’re talking about “unusually high safety risks”, there were at least three deaths during last year’s ROT rally, and another three the year before. I’d think that qualifies.

Anyway, we’ve won the battle, but the war isn’t over yet. You need to be contacting your Congressperson. I’ve added pages with contact information for the Texas Senate and House delegations. The lovely and talented Erin Palette has pointed out Ruger’s automated letter generator, so you can even do it with a couple of clicks of the bunny. If you have time, though, I recommend you hand compose and either fax or email your rep; most of the sites I visited while I was pulling that list together warned that physical mail is delayed up to two weeks. Anthrax, don’t you know?

If you live outside of Texas, or don’t know who your people are: find your House member here. Find your senators here.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Politics, Travis County | 2 Comments »

Art, damn it, art! watch (#34 in a series)

Tuesday, January 15th, 2013

Once upon a time, a man named Colonel Michael Friedsam, president of the B. Altman retail store chain, died.

The late Col. Friedsam left his extensive art collection to the Brooklyn Museum. Sounds great, doesn’t it? But there’s a catch. Actually, several catches.

Catch one: Col. Friedsam died in 1931. Over the years, the Brooklyn Museum has discovered…well…

… A quarter of the 926 works have turned out to be fakes, misattributions or of poor quality, and the museum potentially faces a hefty bill to store the 229 pieces it no longer wants.

This leads us directly to catch number two: the museum is paying to store stuff it doesn’t particularly want.

The problem of what to do with the unwanted items has arisen as the Brooklyn Museum tries to reclaim gallery space that has long been devoted to storage. When the museum accepted the Friedsam collection in the early 1930s, its sprawling Beaux-Arts building on the edge of Prospect Park had vast spaces to fill. As officials explain in their court filing, the opposite problem now plagues the museum, which at one point had as many as 1.5 million objects, some of them inauthentic, trivial or no longer in keeping with the museum’s mission — like a three battle-axes that came from Mr. Friedsam.

Of course, there are rules and standards on how museums are supposed to store art, so they can’t just shove stuff “willy-nilly into a closet”, as the NYT describes it.

So why don’t they just get rid of the stuff they don’t want? Surely, they can find a buyer, even for the fakes? I’d give them $5 for that Louis XI portrait.

Ah, but that’s catch number three: Col. Friedsam’s will requires that the museum get permission from the executors of his estate before they “deaccession” items. And the last executor died in 1962. The museum is working with the courts on this problem, but:

Noting that the will specified that the art should go to the colonel’s brother-in-law and two friends if the collection were not kept together, Judge Nora Anderson told the museum in December 2011 that it must search for these three men’s descendants before she would rule.

Left unclear in the article: why it took 80 years for the museum to figure out it was stuck with a bunch of crap. Or, alternatively, why there’s a crap crisis now.

Posted in Art, Clippings | Comments Closed

Quote of the day.

Tuesday, January 15th, 2013

This one goes out to Erin Palette at Lurking Rhythmically, as a possible response to her German citizen:

Posted in Guns | Comments Closed

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