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From The Boston Globe, via The War on Guns:

Boston police are launching a program that will call upon parents in high-crime neighborhoods to allow detectives into their homes, without a warrant, to search for guns in their children’s bedrooms.

As we’ve seen in the past, the gun grabbers don’t just hate the Second Amendment, they hate the Fourth and Fifth too.

The program, which is already raising questions about civil liberties, is based on the premise that parents are so fearful of gun violence and the possibility that their own teenagers will be caught up in it that they will turn to police for help, even in their own households.

Hmm, using irrational fear to trick people into giving up their rights? Isn’t this the exact same thing the left has been accusing Bush of doing for the last six years? Only in this case, instead of being a vague possibility that one might be wiretapped or whatever some time in the future, these fascists are proudly admitting door-to-door sweeps in an American city. Naturally, they try to justify it as somehow being voluntary or something:

The officers will travel in groups of three, dress in plainclothes to avoid attracting negative attention, and ask the teenager’s parent or legal guardian for permission to search. If the parents say no, police said, the officers will leave.

Because we all know that when a group of armed agents of the state show up to search a place saying it’s for the kids’ own good and promising not to arrest anyone, no parents will be intimidated into complying, right? Sounds to me like the mafia asking a business owner for a “donation” because “bad things might happen,” but okay..

Police will rely primarily on tips from neighbors. They will also follow tips from the department’s anonymous hot line

Joseph Stalin would be proud..

As bad as all that is, I find the following bit the most nauseating of it all:

“What I like about this program is it really is a tool to empower the parent,” [Rev. Jeffrey L. Brown] said. “It’s a way in which they can get a hold of the household and say, ‘I don’t want that in my house.’ “

What?! This program completely and unequivocally absolves parents of anything remotely resembling parental responsibility. If the parents want to “get a hold” of their household, they should look for themselves. Otherwise, the only entity which this program empowers is the state.

Finally, I can’t help but wonder how many kids will be arrested for terrorism when the police find Lite-Brites in their rooms.

I tuned in to the Democratic debate tonight in hopes there would be some comedy as Hillary!â„¢ and Edwards bicker like school children over who has flip-flopped the most. In that regard I was not disappointed. One thing about the debate was somewhat surprising though. Somewhere in the middle, Wolf asked the candidates if standing up for human rights in Pakistan is more important than national security. After some lengthy answers from the other candidates, Senator Dodd, who apparently lost track of the original question, basically said that defending the country is more important than defending the Constitution.

So, after years of Democrats bashing Bush for violating civil liberties in the name of security, Dodd feels the same way? Now, maybe it’s just me, but this is rather unsettling coming from someone whose father was responsible for passing a bill based on a direct translation of the Nazis’ 1938 Law on Weapons.

Oh, yea, and Hillary!™ agreed with Dodd that security trumps freedom. Umm, Senators, methinks Benjamin Franklin would like a word with you…

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

Once again, retired Virginia State Police Superintendent Massengill is out shilling for closure of the so-called “gun show loophole.”

Stepping into a volatile political issue that he said will take on a new urgency and tenor in the wake of the Virginia Tech massacre, Massengill described himself as a strong supporter of Second Amendment rights but

Ah, yes, there’s always a but. Just like when someone starts a sentence with ‘I’m not racist but,’ you know they’re about to contradict themselves.

“We can’t allow the proliferation of guns to continue,” he said, speaking before The Virginia Center for Public Safety, a nonprofit group that is part of a coalition of gun-control advocates.

You support the Second Amendment by supporting a gun prohibition group that wants to eradicate said Amendment? That makes sense. And, umm, you’re saying we can’t allow people to continue buying guns? But isn’t that kinda the opposite of supporting the people’s right to own them? Oooookay. Moving on.

Private sales or trades at gun shows involving unlicensed dealers are exempt from background checks, which can turn up information on criminal histories and hospitalizations for mental illness.

Supporters of the exemption argue that data is lacking to show a direct link between gun violence or crime and private sales. Such sales often involve a single weapon and another collector.

No. The data isn’t lacking. The data is rather clear, and it shows pretty much the exact opposite. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, gun shows account for less than 2% of guns used by criminals. But, hey, why let little things like facts get in the way when you can dance in the congealed blood of Virginia Tech students?

But he also recounted Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho’s ability to purchase guns despite findings that he was mentally ill, a matter since corrected through an executive order issued by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine.

But Massengill said even if a background check had turned up Cho’s name, Cho could have purchased weapons at a gun show.

So let me get this straight. Because Cho didn’t buy his guns at a gun show and would have passed the identical background check at a gun show anyway, we need restrict people’s rights based what didn’t happen and what could have happened? If you want to play a game of what-ifs, Cho could have walked into school with a chainsaw and started decapitating people. He could have walked in carrying a duffel bag filled with molotov cocktails and burned just as many people alive. He could have simply made a bomb from fertilizer and diesel fuel and killed everyone in the building. So why aren’t you rushing out to close the gas station and lawn care “loopholes” too?

Speaking of what-ifs, how about, oh, I dunno, we put an end to this “gun-free,” victim-disarmament zone nonsense so that students and faculty could defend themselves?

But he minimized the notion that Cho may have been stopped sooner had students or selected teachers been allowed to carry guns.

Allowing such a scenario may have deterred Cho, Massengill said, but law-enforcement officers realize that more guns on campus combined with what he called “the exuberance of youth” will eventually lead to a calamity.

“More guns on campus is not going to lead to a safer environment.” he said.

Riiight. Because we all saw how well it worked out when the only gun on campus was in the hands of a madman. And we all saw how well it worked out when the administration fought to keep it that way and proudly proclaimed their institution as a target-rich environment in the press so that every madman would know.

Spoken like a true Only One..

Given that CNN has been caught lying about “assault weapons” before, this story probably shouldn’t come as any surprise. But it’s just amzing how they keep parading out the same bullshit propaganda and expect people to believe it, or anything else they say for that matter. “Most trusted name in news,” my ass.

After rambling a bit about some new “arms race” between the police and bad guys which has led to police carrying AR-15s (despite the fact law enforcement has been using the carbine for decades), they jump right into the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership talking points.

Across the country, at least 62 police officers have been gunned down this year — a record pace, said Robert Tessaro, the associate director for law enforcement relations for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

As a result, the Brady organization supports police officers arming themselves with high-powered weapons “to protect themselves and their communities,” he said.

He lays the blame squarely on lawmakers who allowed the assault weapons ban to expire in 2004.

Never mind that the number of police killed with rifles– “assault” flavored or not –has decreased since the ban expired (and on that note, those new FBI numbers contradict those quoted in the story about the “surge” in cop killings I posed about last month). Ignore the fact more are killed with handguns and cars than with “assault weapons.” And most of all, ignore the fact that over the years, more officers have been killed with their own weapon than by so-called “assault weapons.” It’s easier to just blame the scary looking guns, right?

Designed to be fired from the hip, assault rifles such as the AK-47 can spray at a rate of up to 600 rounds a minute in full automatic mode. It is the weapon of choice for guerillas and gangsters.

First off, the semiautomatic rifles affected by the ban don’t spray anything, let alone at 600 rounds per minute. They fire one shot per trigger pull. And designed to be fired from the hip? Ummm…

See that big hunk off wood on the back of the rifle? That is designed to go against your shoulder. Ergonomically speaking, it’s eaiser to fire an old fashioned stock from the hip, as seen in this 50+ year old television show using a 100+ year old rifle:

There’s no doubt that urban street warfare, aided by a proliferation of cheap automatic weapons, has come even to Palm Beach County, once high society’s vacation mecca and a retirement destination for northern snowbirds.

“They don’t have .38s anymore. They have AK-47s. …They have automatic weapons now,” said Sgt. Pfeil.

“The streets of South Florida are being flooded by AK-47s and assault weapons from old Soviet bloc countries. It’s driven the price down, making the availability greater,” said Chief Timoney.

The Miami police department evidence room has seized AK-47s, AR-15s and an assortment of other automatic and semiautomatic weapons piled on shelves from floor to ceiling.

Chief Timoney says he started noticing an increase since the federal assault weapon ban lapsed in 2004.

Ahhh, now the whole bullet spraying thing makes sense. They’re mixing machine guns and, err, everything that’s not a machine gun. There are a couple of glaring problems here, however.

It has been illegal to import machine guns for civilian use into the US since 1968. This law did not change in 2004.

The sale of new, domestically produced machine guns to civilians was banned in 1986. This law did not change in 2004.

It has been illegal to import semiautomatic copies of AK-47s and such since 1989. This executive order did not change in 2004.

Or, in other words, CNN and Chief Timoney are lying about the lapse of the “assault weapon” ban flooding the streets with machine guns. Then they contradict themselves on how many murders involved so-called “assault weapons.” No doubt because they change the definition all the time.

Assault weapons have been used to kill eight people and wound 25 here over the last two years.

The Miami Police Department said 15 of its 79 homicides last year involved assault weapons, up from the year before. So far this year, 12 of 60 killings have involved the high-powered arms.

So of a total 8 people killed with “assault weapons” in two years, 15 of them were in one year, and 12 in the next? Were some of them zombies or something? Either way, the FBI indicates that twice as many people are beaten or kicked to death than killed with any type of rifle. Shall we ban hands and feet? Four times as many people are stabbed to death. Want to ban all sharp objects too? And “high-powered arms?” Err, assault rifles (even the real full auto ones) are, by definition, rifles that use an intermediate cartridge. Which means they are less powerful than a typical hunting rifle.

Over the weekend, anti-game activist Jack Thompson debated game developer Lorne Lanning at a gaming convention in Philadelphia. Like clockwork, Thompson tried to blame video games for school shootings. GamePolitics on the other hand, took issue with the fact Thompson doesn’t blame guns.

Regarding school shootings, Thompson repeated his mantra about kids going to school with guns for 200 years in this country in order to shoot their dinner on the way home. This was by way of saying school shootings cannot be traced to easy gun availablity. Cite a reference, please, Jack. Which kids? Which 200 years? It sounds apocryphal from here.

As I posted in the comments at GP: Jack is correct on the facts. His cause and effect theory is dodgy, but the timeline is about right.

Before the 1934 National Firearms Act, a kid (or anyone else) could buy a machine gun at a hardware store or through mail order, cash and carry, no questions asked. Until that point, the only known school massacre was the Bath School Disaster in 1927, in which an adult blew up a school with dynamite and killed 44 people and himself.

Before the 1968 Gun Control Act, one could still buy non-automatic rifles and handguns via mail order or from a store with no questions asked. Until this time, there were only a few school shootings, almost all of which involved adults at college. See also: Charles Whitman.

Before the The Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 (which was ruled unconstitutional and replaced by a new version in 1995), kids could (and did) carry rifles to school. Be it for hunting after class, or for varsity shooting teams. Up through the late ’70s/ early ’80s, even New York City had shooting teams in public schools. In a number of States, faculty and adult students could also carry handguns to school before the Federal law passed. And until this law, school shootings were still quite rare. Most of which, again, involved adult shooters. In all but a couple of incidents, no more than two or three people (including the shooter) died.

Long story short, it wasn’t until schools became “gun-free zones” that the shootings became a common occurrence. The timing just happens to coincide with the rise in violent games like Doom and Mortal Kombat. This is where I cease to agree with Jack though.

In my honest opinion, the main reason for all the shootings is that schools are a soft target now, which is quite attractive to people who want to kill lots of people. To me, this is obvious. Banning guns in single buildings in the middle of a city/state/country filled with guns is like tossing a cotton ball into a bath tub and asking it to stay dry. Much like the air pockets in a cotton ball create a void which the laws of physics demand the water to fill, a “gun-free zone” creates a power vacuum which attracts sociopathic losers.

Israel experienced a similar phenomenon, only in reverse. They started with ban on guns at schools, and after a number of terrorist school shootings, they armed the teachers and parents in the mid ’70s. And school shootings promptly ceased to exist; terrorist or otherwise.

Via Of Arms and the Law comes this hilarious piece of disinformation from the “Gun Guys” in which they try to whip up more pants-shitting hysteria over a .50 caliber “sniper rifle.”

It’s terrifying to think what might have happened if an officer was shot with such a devastating weapon. It’s ours, and certainly every officer’s worst nightmare. A weapon designed to shoot down civilian aircraft during takeoff and landing would devastate and rip apart a person’s body if shot by one of these powerful weapons.

So the question is why are these weapons of war available on the civilian market? Secondly, why is an “ex-con fighting demons in his life” in possession of the most powerful sniper rifle available on the civilian market?

The most powerful sniper rifle you say? Designed to shoot down civilian aircraft?! OMG, everybody panic!!1

Or, umm, you could read the rest of the story the “Gun Guys” are shrieking about first…

Jessica says they told police Casey had no black powder for the muzzle loader, but police say they can’t take that chance.

Black powder? Muzzle loader?! Sounds like a freakin’ musket to me. And last I checked, there were no aircraft around when muskets were designed. Civilian or otherwise. Never mind the fact it would be rather difficult to hit a parked plane with a musket from more than 100 feet away, let alone one that’s flying.

The best part of the “Gun Guys” story has to be this:

Another law abiding gun owner? Of course the gun lobby says that no crimes are committed with .50 caliber sniper rifles.

The gun lobby is clearly lying. The Violence Policy Center lists some of the criminal uses of the .50 caliber sniper rifle. Now they have another chilling incident to add their list.

No, it’s quite clear the “Gun Guys” are the ones lying here. But this really comes as no surprise. For those unfamiliar with the group (as well as the head of their hydra, the “Freedom States Alliance“), they are but one of many false flag operations set up by the rabidly anti-gun Joyce Foundation to give the appearance of support from gun owners for gun control.

And for those keeping score at home, presidential candidate Barack Obama used to be on the board of directors of this pack of liars.

While I rarely ever agree with Bill Clinton on anything, the man is smart, and knows a thing or two about the political game. Of the things he’s said that I agree with, there is one truth his friends in the “reality based community” just can’t seem to wrap their heads around.

Back ’94, after almost six decades in the political wilderness, the Republicans retook control of both houses of Congress by a landslide. Though it probably pained him to say it, President Clinton acknowledged that it was in part the ridiculous, newly inked “assault weapons” ban which cost them the election. Despite all their attempts to scare people into accepting it, it seemed that most Americans realized things like bayonet mounts have little to do with crime.

In 2000, after running on a platform which included even more Unconstitutional gun control, Al Gore lost the election by a razor thin margin which the courts ended up deciding. He even lost his own State, of all places. While lots of people were surprised by this– and even more blamed voter fraud –President Clinton again acknowledged that gun control lost them even more votes than fraud could have possibly eaten.

Did anybody listen this time? Apparently not.

In 2004, after staging a photo op with some hunters to try and gain some Second Amendment street cred, John Kerry flew back to DC a day or two later and voted to ban virtually all centerfire rifle ammo used by hunters. And people wonder why he lost to a rather unpopular incumbent…

Fast-forward to 2006, and one might be forgiven to think the Democrats had learned their lesson on guns. In July of last year, the House and Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of prohibiting gun confiscations in emergency situations when said people need them most (as happened in New Orleans). Just before the elections, Democrats far and wide told us the party was no longer interested in banning guns. In fact, a number of the Congressional seats they picked up– as well as a handful of Governors such as Ohio’s Ted Strickland –were won by pro-gun “blue dogs.” So, yea, all that means they learned their lesson, right? RIGHT?

Nope.

As of Thursday, there are 59 cosponsors signed up on Carolyn “Shoulder Thing That Goes Up” McCarthy’s draconian new “assault weapons” ban. Or, in other words, 25.3% of Democrats in the House of Representatives are seeking to ban virtually every firearm designed in the last hundred years. The last Representative to sign on was Dennis Kucinich, who is running for President. On the Senate side, Joseph Biden, who is also running for President, introduced a bill Thursday to ban all the “assault weapons” and close the so-called “gun show loophole.” I imagine that sponsorships from Obama, Dodd, and Clinton can’t be far behind.

Which would leave us with half the Democratic Presidential candidates who haven’t heeded Bill Clinton’s warning.

The real irony here is, some of the candidates like, say, Kucinich, are running on a platform that Bush is an evil dictator out to destroy the Constitution. Yet they want destroy parts of the Constitution themselves. And if you’ve every spent any time rubbernecking at sites like Daily Kos or Democratic Underground, you’re bound to have seen countless tinfoil-hat-induced threads about how Bush and Cheney plan to cancel the elections, set up a totalitarian government, then send Blackwater around in black helicopters to put all the Democrats into concentration camps or something. Yet they continue to support candidates who would give Bush a total monopoly of force, enabling him to do just that.

Go figure.

Ex-NRA pres Sandra Froman has an oped over on WorldNetDaily warning us that if we vote for a third-party in 08, we’ll lose the Second Amendment by letting Hillary!™ wins the election. While I have lots of respect for Ms. Froman (and have no doubt that Mrs. Clinton hates the Second Amendment as much as she hates the First), this article left me scratching my head. After filling in the back story about how some Christian conservatives are threatening to jump ship and that the Supreme Court’s balance is important, she hits us with this one:

Every Republican candidate – including current front-runner Rudy Giuliani – has promised to appoint originalists and textualists to the Supreme Court.

The same Giuliani who pretty much started the modern trend of trying to bankrupt the gun industry with frivilous lawsuits (which Emperor, err, Mayor Bloomberg has taken up)? The same Giuliani who supported Clinton’s cosmetic feature gun ban? The same Giuliani who said the NRA were extremists because they believe the Constitution means what it says? I’m sorry Ms. Froman, but if Giuliani told me the sky was blue, I’d go outside to double check.

The man has flip-flopped so much it would make John Kerry dizzy, yet we’re supposed to believe him now? Are we supposed to believe him more or less than George HW Bush, who nominated Justice Souter? A Justice, who, ironically enough, Ms. Froman goes on to label as the “third most liberal.” If that was Bush 41’s idea of an “originalist,” I shudder to think who Rudy might pick. Next up, the Democats:

Every Democrat candidate – led by Hillary Clinton – has promised to appoint justices who would continue supporting a liberal social agenda. History shows that the activist agenda includes holding that the Second Amendment does not give you the individual right to own a firearm.

Err, did you forget about Bill Richardson? Last I checked, he was a Democrat with a better record on gun rights than MSM anointed Republican “front runners” Giuliani, McCain, and Romney put together. Granted, he’s a bit of a long shot at this point, but if some group like, say, oh, I dunno, the NRA acknowledged his existence and supported pro-gun candidates on both sides of the isle, we wouldn’t have to play this stupid “lesser of two evils” game. And they wonder why the gun grabbers refer to the NRA as a Republican shill group..

As for the initial question of whether a “3rd-party vote = loss of 2nd Amendment,” well, speaking of supporting someone other than a Republican, you know, if the NRA urged its members to support a third-party, maybe one could actually win? Believe it or not, there were parties before the Republicans and Democrats who have gone the way of the dodo once the voters got sick of the “lesser of two evils.” Does nobody remember the Whigs or the Federalists?

At any rate, if it does come down to Giuliani vs. Hilary!™, we might actually be better off with the latter. As stupid as this may sound at first glance, at least with Clinton we’ll know where she stands. With Rudy, not only do we have to worry about him pulling out another Justice Souter (or two or three..), Republicans in the House and Senate will be more likely to let him get away with anti-gun stunts due to blind, partisan loyalty. Whereas with Clinton, they will fight tooth and nail to block everything she does.

Via GamePolitics comes this anti-freedom two-for-one piece from Time Magazine. Like clockwork, they’ve got a gaggle of statists seeking to blame inanimate objects for the recent “surge” in cop killings. Naturally video games and scary looking guns are the main target. First, the statistics:

As of September 18, the [National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund] showed shooting deaths up nearly 60% over last year, from 34 in 2006 to 54 this year (the worst year for such killings was 1975, when there were 99 deaths in the same period).

While the death of any police officer in the line of duty is tragic, that 60% increase doesn’t sound so bad when viewed in statistical context. According to the FBI, the average number of officers murdered per year from 1996 to 2005 was 57.5. In 2005, the year before the low cited in the article, the number was 55. If anything, 2006 was the deviant from the norm, not this year.

So with the fear-inspiring statistics out of the way, let’s get on with the finger pointing!

South Florida, along with the rest of the Southern U.S., where guns are easier to come by, has been particularly hard hit. In the past six weeks, two officers have been killed, and one recently got off life support after a gunman on a motorcycle shot him in the head. On Sept. 13, Miami-Dade police Sgt. Jose Somohano died and three other officers were injured by an assailant armed with an AK-47, three years to the day after the expiration of the Federal Assault Weapons ban.

Ah, yes, of course, things like this only happen in Southern States. This couldn’t happen in beautiful gun-free NYC, right? Oh, wait.. And it’s been three years since the so-called “assault weapon” ban expired, but just now we’re seeing an increase of, what, one or two shootings? I thought the streets were supposed to “run red with blood” when the ban expired..

Next up, we have Miami Police Chief John Timoney, who some of you may remember as a poster boy for the Brady Bunch, weighing in with this:

Timoney’s answer to the emboldened attacks on his colleagues is to give them matching firepower. Although it had been in the works prior to officer Somohano’s death, the day after the fatal shooting Timoney signed a new police directive authorizing Miami patrol officers to carry AR 15s, a military-grade assault weapon. “Cops understandably feel they are outgunned,” Timoney says.

Outgunned you say? That’s funny, because on the news footage of the search for the suspect, I saw no less than half a dozen officers carrying AR-15s.

Are we to believe that all of these officers were “outgunned” by a single man with an AK-47 lookalike? And did our eyes lie to us when we saw officers carrying the carbines before you claim to have authorized it?

But then, I suppose the anti-gun crowd has never been known for telling the truth..

Last but not least, we have retired Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, who, while generally quite pro-gun, sides with anti-gun politicians like Hillary!â„¢ when it comes to removing the First Amendment.

Grossman relates how officers raiding methamphetamine labs and gang hangouts often find violent video games left behind. “Every time they take down a gang house, there’s always one thing that will always be there,” Grossman says. “It’s a video game. The video games are their newspaper, their television, their all-consuming narrative. And their video games are all cop-killer, criminal simulators.”

Because we all know that there were no violent, drug-dealing gangs before video games. Or violence for that matter. Never mind the fact violent crime went into a near free-fall since Mortal Kombat and Doom were released in late 1992 and 1993, they obviously caused the non-existent rise in crime, right? So, if we just skip that whole pesky First Amendment thing and ban all virtual guns, crime will go away? I guess it makes almost as much sense as banning safety features on rifles.

Now that you mention it though, it seems that all the gang houses have another thing in common: They’re all houses. Quick, let’s ban all homes! Especially the dreaded “assault houses” which can hold ten or more occupants. Think of the children!

It’s been a while, but I’ve finally redesigned the site again, and made a shiny new blog to go with it. Now that there’s a proper system for posting stuff, hopefully I’ll be motivated to update more often.

If you’re feeling inclined to reply, the system works pretty much like any other blog, only with bbcode style tags instead of raw html. At the moment only [b], [i], [url], and [quote] tags work, but that should suffice. If there’s any problems, post them in this entry, or PM me at GTAForums if all else fails.