Must Be Nice

Must Be Nice!

So, what happens when you're a lawmaker and you violate the law? Write a new one!

Ald. Richard Mell (33rd) is a former hunter with an arsenal of weapons that reportedly features shotguns, rifles and pistols, including a Walther PPK of James Bond fame.

But there's a problem.

Mell forgot to re-register the weapons as required every year by the ordinance that he helped to pass as one of the City Council's most senior members.

So, what does an alderman do when he finds himself in violation of the law? He writes a new law. Mell has quietly introduced an ordinance that would reopen gun registration in Chicago and create a one-month amnesty for himself and other gun owners in the same predicament.

As others have pointed out that the law as written makes it illegal to re-register any grandfathered handguns - forget to keep up the registration once, and you can never re-register them again.

But here's the part of the story that really irks me:

"I knew it was the law. I thought it was being done [by a staff member]. If you have a person you trust to do it and they don't do it, then it doesn't get done. I'm not gonna say it's embarrassing. I'm just gonna say I should have done it," the alderman said.

So a staff member was supposed to take time on the clock to do Alderman Richard Mell's personal business? What else does he do on the public's dime? Pick up Mell's dry cleaning? Do his grocery shopping?

This, too pissed me off:

Mell said he first realized he was in violation of the re-registration requirement about a year ago. When he tried to re-register his guns belatedly, the Chicago Police Department's Gun Registration Section refused to bend the rules. Mell appealed that ruling to the city's Department of Administrative Hearings but decided to re-write the law instead."When we looked at the law, we saw the possibility of winning [the appeal] wasn't gonna happen," he said.

Had one of his constituents come to him in a similar predicament, what would Mell have done or said? "Sorry, tough luck" is my bet. Now it's been a year - so what happened to all of his guns?

He should be hoist on his own petard.

Or tarred and feathered.

AFTER he gets the stupid damned law repealed.

I Talk Up Haloscan...

I Talk Up Haloscan...

...and then it goes TU on me.

Oh well. First time in a while. Nothing is 100% reliable, it seems.

UPDATE: Comments are back online! That was fast!

UPDATE to the UPDATE: Nope, not quite there yet.

Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day

(Obama) just told his core supporters that they’re fat dumb and happy, and that he’s going to do something about the fat and happy, and they cheered for him. The Federal power to control your diet and house temperature comes straight from the Grapefruit Diet Clause of the Constitution, which is in the 53rd Amendment, which also establishes the Right to Free Health Care and its companion piece (and some would say necessary precursor), the Right to Consequence-Free Sex.

It tells you something about the Obama supporters that he just promised to make them cold and hungry in order to win the approval of some vaporous guy known as “world opinion,” and they’re still orgasmic over him, perhaps even moreso.

Cold Fury

OMG

OMG... (Ok, ONE More Post)

So much truth in Monty Python and the Holy Grail...

One Post Before Bed

One Post Before Bed

Here's everyone who said they were coming to the 2^nd Amendment Blog Bash, with the ones I know I met marked with an asterisk:

A Keyboard and a .45*
AIM Blog
An Ol’ Broad’s Ramblings (She was there, I didn't meet her.)
Angry White Boy
Another Gun Blog*
Bloggo the dog boy
Blue Grass, Red State
Call me Ahab* (With the charming and lovely Mrs. Ahab!)
Captain of a Crew of One*
Chicago Handgun Rights* (Poor Quixotic bastard... ;-)
ConservaChick
damnum absque injuria* (One of the 1% of lawyers that don't suck!)
Dave Kopel* (And another!)
Days of our Trailers*
Elendil's Journal
GreatBlueWhale* (Saw him, didn't get to shake his hand.)
Gun Legislation & Politics in New York
Gun Owners Against Violence* (Nice lady! But her blog is down for the count.)
Gun Pundit*
GunTruth
Kentucky Progress
Mary Katharine Ham (Didn't see her, dammit!)
Michael Bane*
Of Arms and the Law* (1% Lawyer in sandals!)
Osi Speaks!
Outdoor Wire*
Politisite
Rustmeister's Alehouse*
SayUncle*
Sharp as a Marble* (FUNNY dude!)
Snowflakes in Hell*
Squeaky Wheel Seeks Grease* (Look! A pony! ;-)
The Adventures of Roberta X (No, dammit.)
The Bitch Girls* (Well, the Bitter one, anyway.)
The Carden Chronicles
The Maddened Fowl
The Outdoor Newshound
The Outdoor Pressroom
The Ten Ring* (Both Denise and Yosemite Sam)
The Unforgiving Minute*
The View From North Central Idaho*
USCitizen*
View From The Porch* (Yaaaa! Tam came back!)

I also got to meet Robert Cottrol, another one-percenter, and David E. Young. I spoke for a few minutes with Cam Edwards (who attended the GunBlogger's Rendezvous once before, so this is the second time I've met him) I got to sit down for about thirty minutes and talk with Sandy Froman, too! A one-percenter in pumps!

Next year the Annual Meeting in in Phoenix - just about two hours up the road from here, so I'll definitely be attending that one, so long as work does not interfere. (And it better not!)

I'm HOME!

I'm HOME!

I went out to dinner with Bitter, Sebastian, and Joe Huffman last night, then we stood around in the hotel parking lot until about 10:00PM talking (and yes, I'm very glad Joe is on our side!! ;-) before we called it a night. I awoke at 4:30AM (Eastern time) and got home about thirty minutes ago. It's 11:30 Pacific time, but on that clock I've been up since 1:30 this morning.

My posterior is dragging.

I thought I'd walked my a** off at the convention, but somehow it found me again, and is dragging the ground like an anchor.

Now I need to move a bunch of files, go through a bunch of pictures, and do a bunch of posting, but I think that will happen during the remainder of this week. I also need to rearrange my blogroll, because the "Bloggers I've Met" section just got a LOT bigger, and I'm going to have to do away with the redundancies. (That left sidebar is quite crowded.)

More posting later - probably tomorrow. I'm wiped out.

Waiting for Tam

Waiting for Godot Tam

Half a dozen of us are sitting in the pressroom at the convention center waiting for the Empress of Snark™ to arrive: Squeeky, Unforgiving Minute, U.S. Citizen, Bitter Bitch, Sharp as a Marble, Rustmeister, and me.

OMG, we're groupies.

UPDATE: Now there are twelve awaiting her arrival.

For Breda

For Breda:

More Shots from the NRA Convention

More Shots from the NRA Convention

Back on the exhibit floor today, I thought I'd just take some shots of stuff I find interesting. First up, another bitter clinger:

And some DSA STG58 gun pr0n:

And the one I personally lust after:

Pink guns are a theme here this year. Here are some guns that will make Sarah Brady cry:

That's a cute little Rossi.

The single-shot, not the model holding it. I didn't get her name.

Here's one to REALLY make Sarah cry:

A DPMS Panther Arms pink AR.

But this is just wrong:

That looks like something Uday or Qusay ("Dead" and "Deader") would have owned.

And, finally, the great reward for any blogger, a fan stopped me in the middle of an aisle and said he had been specifically looking for me. Ladies and gentlmen, one of my sixteen regular readers (presented as evidence that this really happened!):

Major ego booster, I'll tell you.

OK, THAT Went Well

OK, THAT Went Well...

The gunbloggers were supposed to have a private hands-on with FH Herstal at their booth at 8:00AM, so I dragged my butt out of bed at 7:00 and got to the convention center.

Surprise! Didn't happen.

Even better, the NRA Pressroom which was supposed to open at 8:00 was locked.

Until 9:00.

As someone commented (not a gunblogger), the NRA just doesn't deal well with the media.

You know, I can kinda see his point.

Quote of the... Decade?

Quote of the... Decade?

I hate the dentist. My teeth are like little vaginas.

SayUncle (attributed with his permission, even.)

First runner up, Rob Allen from Sharp as a Marble:

Rob: Do they have anti-gun conventions?

Me: No. They can't get enough people to show up.

Rob: What would they do? "Here's the anti-gunrange..."

.
.
.
.
.
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I guess you had to be there.

A Few Shots From the NRA Convention

A Few Shots (So to Speak) From the NRA Convention

I was there for the gate opening at 10:00AM. What a crowd! I've never seen so much high-speed, low-drag hardware in one place in my life.

And there were a lot of very political statements. Here's one I particularly liked, on the back of a young man's T-shirt:

(click each for full size)

Here was the display at the Kentucky State Rifle & Pistol Assoc. booth:

I'll try to post much more shooty goodness tomorrow, but now I have to get ready for tonight's blogger get-together.

One other thing, though: I watched most of the speakers at this afternoon's "Leadership Conference" (starting with Ollie North - since they had a hard time getting us a video feed in the Press room). The general gist of pretty much every speech (as I heard it) was "Please don't stay home this November. McCain may suck, but he's better than the Democrat alternative, no matter which one it is!"

What a resounding endorsement of Senator Cylon.

OK, I'm in Louisville

Made it to the hotel, & unpacked. The weatherweenies were right - it's wet here. And the jacket I brought with me that I thought was water-resistant surrendered immediately. It's now hanging in the bathroom in shame, trying to dry.

It's 8:40 local time (and still light out), 5:40 Tucson time, and I have had a Snickers bar and a Pepsi today. (Breakfast of champions!) I need to find something resembling food. And maybe some Scotchguard.

If there's anybody else staying at the Executive Inn, drop me a email - gunrights-at-comcast-dot-net. Maybe we can get together later. For right now, it's back out into the rain and something to EAT.

Word of Advice

Word of Advice

I'm at the airport, waiting for my plane to arrive. It's probably NOT a good idea to fire up the laptop in the waiting area when you've replaced Window's "Startup" chime with a soundclip from the movie Serenity. Especially when the speaker volume is set to "High".

And most especially when the soundclip says this:

This is the Captain. We're having a little problem with our entry sequence, so we may experience some slight turbulence, and then... explode.

And I wonder why I'm on a TSA list.

STILL On the List

I just tried to check in online with Frontier Airlines for my flight out to Louisville tomorrow. Despite the nice letter I received from the TSA back in March, I'm apparently still on their list of suspicious people, even though the FBI recently gave me a clean bill of health:

So now if I want to fight it, I have to go to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and appeal under 49 U.S.C. §46110.

In other words: "Go away. You're bothering me."

I don't have the time or (especially) the money to pursue that option, so here's the deal from now on - no matter what gas prices are, if my destination is 15 hours or less away, I'm driving. If it's vacation, I'll take TWO days to get there.

Mr. Jim Kennedy of the "Traveler Redress Inquiry Program" is kindly invited to lave my nether regions, neglecting not the 'taint, and that goes for the entire employment roster of the "A Security Theater" department of "Homeland Security."

I wonder if I should wear my Proud Member of the Triangle of Death t-shirt tomorrow, or my Achmed the Dead Terrorist one?

Quote of the Day

The fact is that the Democrats will control Congress. If they also control the White House, we will have a series of legislative packages that will make the Great Society look like a libertarian government. In opposition the Republicans rediscover their principles; it's power they haven't been able to handle since Newt Gingrich was Speaker.

The country is in trouble. We have forgotten our founding principles, and we move inexorably toward a European style socialist state, with the only winners being an enormous bureaucracy. This will accelerate the economic decline.

The argument is to give the Democrats their head, and pick up the pieces after the inevitable crash. I think that overlooks the resilience of tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect regimes. We haven't seen much in the way of reforms in Europe. The Democrats will create new bureaucracies that can never be dismantled: an example is the Department of Education. Reagan came into office determined to abolish it. Now it owns US education, and No Child Left Behind is entrenched. The Iron Law of Bureaucracy is inexorable.

Jerry Pournell via Instapundit

RTWT.

That's 35 in Dog Years

The Smallest Minority turns 5 today. Five years ago, Wednesday May 14, 2003, I put up three posts; one of which was "What is a Right?"

Interestingly, we're still discussing that topic.

This will be my 2,936^th post, an average of about 1.6 posts per day. Two years ago I was at post 2,117. (Obviously I've either slowed down, or I've made up for a decrease in quantity for an increase in quality length.) Sitemeter says the current visit count is 1,089,044 as I write this. Two years ago it was 557,464. Haloscan tells me that I have 14, 374 comments, up from "over 10,000" as I recorded it a couple of years back. (Apparently y'all have gotten much quieter!)

On the first anniversary of this blog, I posted 40 Things About Me and This Blog. I just re-read it.

Nothing much has changed except I'm older, I'm no longer Pistol Director at the Tucson Rifle Club and I don't run the IHMSA matches there anymore, my grandkids are four years older (and STILL living with me), and I've read a lot more books.

I'm still arguing with people, and trying to educate both myself and others. Over the last five years I've watched as the defenders of the right to arms have grown stronger and more active, and I've watched as those who want the State to provide cradle-to-grave "care" have, too. They don't see it like that, but it's what it boils down to in the end. Over the last five years I've watched our military fight enemies armed with small-arms, crew-served weapons and IEDs (some of which are made in Iran), and enemies who control the checkbooks that pay, feed, and supply them. I've watched our political masters on both sides of the aisle behave like angry children. (It was Heinlein who said that "civil servant" is the semantic equivalent of "civil MASTER".) I've watched the Supreme Court make decisions that, as Antonin Scalia has noted, create a Constitution for a country I don't recognize. I've watched as the Chief Executive has spent money like water, and asked the people to just keep shopping! while doing dick-all about our porous borders. Yeah. That's sustainable.

And now we're at a point, politically, where there are three candidates running who have a realistic shot at the Presidency, and I wouldn't urinate on any of them if their hair was on fire.

Where the hell is the space colony they promised me when I was a child, watching men leave bootprints and tire tracks in the lunar dust? Where is my new frontier, my place to go to so that I may live free? (I mean, I appreciate Scaled Composites and its competitors, but we should be living up there now, not floating around in low-Earth orbit in a tin can.)

Oh. Yeah. NASA. Right.

We're headed for the nanny-state. We're voting for it. I've been watching the petri-dish of Western Civilization that is the UK, and that's the direction we're headed, once they figure out here how to disarm the few of us who really mean it when we say we don't want to live like that. (You can almost hear the gnashing of teeth over the Founders putting the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights.)

Five years. That's a lot of words. And mostly it's been an exercise in trying to teach the horse to sing.

But I'm not quite ready to give up. After all, SCOTUS hasn't handed down it's decision in D.C. v Heller yet!

Here's to one more year.

30 Months in Prison, Two Years Probation

According to a post at AR15.com, that's the sentence David Olofson just received.

Do you own a semi-automatic rifle, pistol or shotgun?

You'd better keep 'em clean and in perfect working order, or you too can be a felon!

An appeal has been filed. It should have been filed as soon as the verdict was read, but I'm not a lawyer nor do I play one on TV.

You cannot imagine how pissed off I am right now.

I'm going to the NRA national convention in Louisville this weekend. I imagine this case will be a MAJOR topic of discussion.

It had BETTER be.

The Secret Service Doesn't Trust Us

The Secret Service Doesn't Trust Us

There's a shocker. I guess they heard the reaction to McCain's Plan on Global Climate Change.

By email from Ashley Varner of the NRA, apparently the Secret Service will not allow anyone carrying anything more lethal than a shrimp fork (if that) in His Presence:

I know there's very, very little time, but i just received confirmation about guns in the forum.

This came down from the Secret Service--it was not our call, nor Sen. McCain's.

NOTICE: By mandate of the U. S. Secret Service, no firearms will be allowed in Hall A of the Kentucky Exposition Center, the location of the Celebration of American Values Leadership Forum, on Friday, May 16. Please be prepared to go through security screening to enter the venue.

Honestly, I'm not at all surprised. I was in fact shocked that they were going to let him appear at a venue where a significant portion of the audience would be A) not government employees who were B) armed.

My Boss Has a Sense of Humor

My Boss Has a Sense of Humor

You've got to read this post.

Heh. Indeed. (Always wanted to say that.)