Boat/Ship porn

USS Grunion found 65 years after sinking.




USS Intrepid museum back home in NYC.



Pyotr Velikiy (Пётр Великий) Kirov class battlecruiser heads to Venezuela

My new candidate...

The Blogging Community

Bitter and Sebastian both talk about how many of the gun bloggers have formed an online community that works together and supports eachother to further enhance our rights as firearm owners and how it would be to ours and other firearm rights supporters advantage to be a part of this community. I couldn't agree more. It is one of our greatest strengths.

Because this community goes beyond just the internet. It crosses over into the real world.

Examples: Just last weekend I drove to Indianapolis to get together with other bloggers and friends. The regular poster Kaveman (who needs to start his own blog) contacted me the other day to ask if I would like a subscription to Guns & Ammo since he had a gift subscription available. Coming up in a few weeks is the Gun Blogger Rendevous III.

We get together to meet and enjoy eachothers company while sharing similar interests.

We have places where we get together with other firearm enthusiasts: Ranges. Shops. Shows.

We teach our children the shooting sports while spending quality time together.

In other words. We enjoy ourselves.


The anti's have nothing to compare that with.

There are no anti-gun shops. No anti-gun ranges. No anti-gun shows. No anti-gun magazines.

There is no quality time in teaching your children be afraid or just leaving them in ignorance.

What they have in common when they get together is fear... disgust... even hatred. Not exactly things to build strong, lifelong friendships on. Oh, they may find they have other interests in common, but most of the time it will just be the negative emotions that brought them together in the first place.

We are a community. They only want to disrupt that community.

That is our strength.

Obama TV

The Obama Campaign has apparently purchased their very own television station. I guess having the majority of media as their beck and call girls wasn't enough. Now it's all Obama, all the time.



(god,I can't believe I'm sourcing Kos.)

Funny of the Day

...only one out of 150,000 gun owners belong to the NRA

-Troll on Topix.net

Now, if we go by the low end of the membership numbers (3 million), that would put the US firearm owning population at 450 billion people.

75x the population of the planet. It would be like living in Hong Kong planet wide.

Conversely, if we went by the number of actual firearm owners in the US (80 million), then the NRA would have a membership of 533 people.

When did the NRA become the AHSA?

JAMA bias

A recent article in the Journal of the American Medical Assoc. (2008;300(13):1575-1577) shows that even Doctors can be fooled.

It's opening statement claims that the Heller v DC decision recognized that the BOR "grants" rights:

"In District of Columbia v Heller, The Supreme Court held, for the first time in its history, that the Second Amendment grants an individual right to possess and use firearms for personal use..."

Yet, in the majority opinion is written (page 19, first paragraph):

"The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it “shall not be infringed.” As we said in United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, 553 (1876), “[t]his is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed . . .”

In the Stevens dissent is written (page 17, first paragraph) wrote:

"And the Court’s emphatic reliance on the claim “that the Second Amendment . . codified a pre-existing right,” ante, at 19, is of course beside the point because the right to keep and bear arms for service in a state militia was also a pre-existing right."

Not a very astute beginning for a scholarly article, eh?

The conclusion is just as telling:

A bare majority of the Supreme Court—in the most strident
and dismissive terms—has thus sided with, and given
voice to, ardent opponents of firearm safety regulation.

Yep that's right. If we oppose bans defacto and dejure, we oppose safety. I'm surprised he didn't try the "give guns to little kids" bit.

His citations are just as entertaining. Wintemute, Hemenway, Cook, Ludwig, and Bloomberg. How much Joyce Foundation funding can we cite in one place?

No. No bias here. Not many facts either.

On to that giant scratching post in the sky..

Tam's kitten Mittens passed away.

My condolences. I know when 'my' cat (out of the herd of 7) goes, I'm going to be a wreck.

Regulate and Control

Bitter links to a letter from Rev. Snuffy Pfleger decrying the lack of 'gun control'. He claims we need to "regulate and control" the "flow of guns". Let's look at some facts.

Chicago has 5x the murder rate of the rest of the state.
Chicago has a 50% HS drop out rate.
50% of Chicago murders are gang related.
Chicago has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation.

Illinois outside of Chicago doesn't have these problems to anywhere near the degree Chi-town does. The gang-bangers are getting their guns illegally from their friends and family. The same ones who refuse to assist the police when their honor-student babies shoot up neighborhoods.

The solution is simple.

We need to Regulate and Control the flow of Chicagoans to the rest of the state.

King Bloomberg

The NYT is reporting that Bloomie is going to try and change NYC's law limiting him to two term limits w/o presenting it to the voters:

After months of speculation about his political future, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg plans to announce on Thursday morning that he will seek a third term as mayor, according to three people who have been told of his plans.

Right now, Mr. Bloomberg is barred by law from seeking re-election. But he will propose trying to revise the city’s 15-year-old term limits law, which would otherwise force him and dozens of other elected leaders out of office in 2009, the three people said...

The chances of passing legislation in the City Council are strong, according to interviews. In August, a New York Times survey of council members — two-thirds of whom are scheduled to be forced out of office in 2009 — found that a majority of them were willing to amend the term limits law.

Laws for thee and not for me.

VA/MS Reciprocity

One more step forward. From VCDL:

What a day!

Tom Lambert, with the Virginia State Police, has just sent me a copy
of a new reciprocity agreement between Virginia and Mississippi!

The agreement will be posted on the VCDL web site shortly.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The agreement is BRAND NEW and is not on either the
Virginia State Police web site nor on Mississippi's site yet. I
SUGGEST **NOT** CARRYING IN MISSISSIPPI UNTIL VIRGINIA IS LISTED ON
MISSISSIPPI'S WEB SITE AS A RECIPROCAL STATE.

And even less police...

The other day, I mentioned the fact that Daley didn't think the vacancies in the Chicago Police Department would effect crime.

He's decided to emphasize that point by taking it one step further. He's not only not going to fill the vacancies but he's going to cut them from the job rolls:

Despite Daley’s promise to add 75 police officers in 2008, the Chicago Police Department has 329 vacancies and 424 openings for non-sworn police employees. That’s in addition to the 705 officers on medical leave and 625 officers in limited or convalescent duty status.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported this week that the police vacancies would be among 3,000 unfilled jobs eliminated from the mayor’s 2009 budget to erase a $420 million budget shortfall over this year and next.

Yep. Raise taxes. Cut police. That's sure to reduce crime.

Robert Levy in North Carolina

Co-Counsel in DC v Heller, Levy will give a talk in Asheville, NC at 7 p.m. Oct. 8 at the UNC Asheville Reuter Center.

Felon shoots CPD officer

CPD Officer Nathaniel Taylor Jr. was murdered while serving a search warrant. The shooter, unsurprisingly, has an extensive record and was released early:

According to public records, Cooper was first convicted of burglary in 1989 and got 4 years' probation. In 1991, he was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 6 years in prison.

He was again convicted of burglary in 2003 and sentenced to 6 years in prison, but was released late the next year.

So, convicted felon, early release, illegal gun.

This seems to be becoming the standard.

Update: It seems the 1991 conviction was for shooting at a police officer as well. He served only 3 yrs on that one.

Indy Blogmeet goes Tri-state

At the Broad Ripple Brew Pub :



Roberta
TurkTuron
Old Grouch
Friends



Tam
Ahab
Yours Truly

Walking around Hippieville:




A bunch of rocks.



And some standing stones too.

Good Company. Good Food. Lots of gun talk.

It was worth the drive.

Less Police won't increase crime..

According to Chicago Mayor Daley.

"No, no," said Daley when asked about the lack of new hires and the impact on safety. When pressed, Daley bristled and said, "It just won't."

SO is he saying that the CPD is so poor in quality that less of them won't make a difference?

With murder up 16% so far this year and overall violent crime up 3%, it makes one wonder what does effect crime in his fair city. Oh, right, it's all those gun owners in the rest of the state that are the cause.

I wish my deceased family members would stop voting for him.