One More Time: A firearms tracking bill has many bloggers up in arms over a federal requirement that would purportedly force gun owners to list their firearms on federal income tax returns. But while the bill implements sweeping gun-control measures - including one that would prohibit citizens from owning a gun without a license - the income tax provision doesn't exist. The Blair Holt Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act, or H.R. 45, was introduced Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Il., on Jan. 6. While the bill does not include stipulations about reporting guns on tax forms, it does contain numerous gun-control proposals that are drawing fierce criticism from gun-rights advocates... The bill has been referred to the House Judiciary, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security and does not have a single co-sponsor, leading many to believe passage is highly unlikely [emphasis added]... (Since the most crucial sentence, which I have italicized, is buried halfway through the article, I'm no sure why World Net Daily even posted this article at this time.) http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=112728 --- Is "Gun Control" Racist?: ...The fact of the matter is this: Dating back to the Antebellum South and beyond, the State has enacted laws specifically designed to keep black folk unarmed. This is not debatable, nor a matter of perspective. It is a matter of fact. The jailing of Plaxico Burress should not be viewed as an isolated event, simply the fallout of a careless high-profile citizen. It is the fruit of a racist tree planted in 18th century America, a tree that continues to bear fruit even in 2009. Consulting a paper on the racist history of gun control in Georgia produced by GeorgiaCarry.org, one finds this informative quote from Florida Supreme Court Justice Buford commenting on the practice of developing seemingly race-neutral gun control laws that - in reality - selectively applied only to blacks... http://www.lewrockwell.com/alston/alston60.1.html --- Bloomberg's Latest Sting - the Rest of the Story: A sting operation was used by the city of New York to try and catch violations of federal gun laws at multi-state gun shows. Even for an anti-gun advocate like New York's Mayor Bloomberg, hiring a firm to go undercover in states other than his own under the guise of stopping the flow of guns into his city raises eyebrows, and some serious questions. Over 40 investigators from Kroll Associates were hired to go undercover, posing as gun buyers hoping to slide under the radar of the background checks via a straw purchase or various other scenarios, and visited seven gun shows in Nevada, Ohio, and Tennessee during the summer. (A straw purchase is the term for when an accomplice of the real gun purchaser signs the papers and receives the background check - and then the goods, but with the actual purchaser not present and not participating.) The undercover detectives attempted to buy guns over and over in the hopes of catching gun dealers in illegal gun sales... This excursion into other states cost the city over $1 million, something the citizens themselves should be up in arms about. Bloomberg has zero power over gun sales outside of New York. Certainly there is plenty of real crime in New York City that he could attend to, if he were serious about stopping crime... (Technically, it is only a straw purchase if it is illegal for the next recipient of the firearm to possess it.) http://www.jbs.org/jbs-news-feed/5474-ny-mayor-bloomberg-goes-gun-hunting --- Bill Would Promote New Shooting Ranges: The expansion of America's urban and suburban areas has crowded out many shooting areas and made it increasingly difficult to find a place to shoot. On September 24, 2009, Senators Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and James Risch (R-Idaho) introduced S. 1702, a bill that would help remedy this problem by promoting the construction and maintenance of target ranges on public lands. The bill would amend the Pittman-Robertson Act, a 70-year-old federal law that uses federal excise taxes on firearms and ammunition to fund wildlife conservation programs and the construction of shooting ranges. The bill's improvements to the Pittman-Robertson Act would allow the states far greater ability to purchase land, build new target ranges, and improve the ranges that currently exist. Currently, Pittman-Robertson only allows the federal government to use these funds to pay 75 percent of the cost of building or maintaining a range. S. 1702 would change the funding requirements under Pittman-Robertson to allow the federal government to finance up to 90 percent of target range construction and maintenance with Pittman Robertson funds... http://www.ammoland.com/2009/10/12/bill-promoting-target-shooting-ranges-s-1702/ --- Important Decision from South Carolina Supremes: The S.C. Supreme Court on Monday overruled decisions on more than two-dozen murder and assault cases dating to 1894 when it ordered a new trial for a 42-year-old man convicted of killing his cousin. In overturning the 2006 murder conviction of Johnny Rufus Belcher, the high court set a precedent for cases involving weapons and self-defense arguments. The jury could have chosen murder, voluntary manslaughter or self-defense. The high court said the jury was inappropriately told it that could infer that the killing involved malice because a gun was used. Defense attorney Rauch Wise argued it's an unfair assumption when both people are armed. The high court agreed, saying the malice inference should no longer be used when the defense gives evidence that, if believed, would justify the actions of someone charged with murder or assault and battery with intent to kill. http://www.thesunnews.com/news/local/story/1114175.html --- Meanwhile, in Canada...: Saskatchewan's top court has shot down arguments that Canadians have a constitutional right to bear arms for self-defence - but the court didn't blow away the case completely. Instead, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal implied it might reconsider Edward Hudson's constitutional challenge if the gun rights activist can muster expert and other evidence to bolster his contention that the right to bear arms for self-defence is an inalienable natural right, which supersedes the Criminal Code. The court's Sept. 21 ruling apparently marks the first time appellate judges have specifically addressed whether Canadians might have a right to bear arms for self-defence... http://www.lawyersweekly.ca/index.php?section=article&volume=29&number=22&article=5 --- Another Reason to Leave California: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today signed into law a bill that requires buyers of handgun ammunition to leave thumbprints and detailed personal information with registered ammo sellers, as well as put restrictions on online bullet sales. "Assembly Bill 962 reasonably regulates access to ammunition and improves public safety without placing undue burdens on consumers," Schwarzenegger said in a letter explaining his decision. The new restrictions will take effect Feb. 1, 2011. Authored by Assemblyman Kevin de Leon, D-Los Angeles, the bill bans direct shipping to Californians who buy bullets via mail order or over the Internet. Instead, any ammo they buy would need to be picked up at a licensed handgun ammunition dealer, similar to the way guns are currently bought and sold. The bill doesn't require a waiting period to pick up ammunition as there is when purchasing firearms. All handgun ammunition must be kept behind store counters. Ammunition that can be used in both pistols and rifles -- like the popular .22 caliber round used by target shooters and small game hunters -- fall under the new restrictions. The bill also would require that those purchasing ammunition provide photo ID and a thumbprint... (Unfortunately, the bill probably does recognize the difference between "bullets" and "cartridges.") http://www.redding.com/news/2009/oct/12/gov-signs-ammunition-sales-bill/ http://www.news10.net/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=68596&catid=2 ...If by improving public safety Arnold means making it lucrative for criminal gangs to smuggle in more ammunition from out of state, he's got a point. If he means it will provide more opportunities to harass everyone who jumps through each new stupid, evil hoop the state of California imposes on the "law-abiding," and further throttle a revenue-generating segment of the economy at a time when the state is issuing worthless IOUs, then no argument... The question now is, will any manufacturers follow the principled lead of Ronnie Barrett? ... (Barrett, the maker of the best known .50-caliber rifle in the US, announced his refusal to sell his product to California law-enforcement agencies after the state banned its sale to private citizens.) http://www.examiner.com/x-1417-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m10d12-Schwarzenegger-signs-handgun-ammo-registration-bill --- Prohibitionists Try to Make Hay of Shooting Death: It didn't take long for anti-Second Amendment fascists to try to capitalize on the Oct. 7 murder of Meleanie Hain. Just as they tried to benefit from the murders of the Chicago boys walking home from school - how that becomes a call for gun control in a city that bans guns is a mystery - they wasted little time in blaming responsible gun owners for Hain's death. Take, for instance, Josh Sugarmann, the executive director of the Violence Policy Center in Washington, D.C. On Oct. 9, he posted the following tripe on huffingtonpost.com: "The Oct. 7 murder-suicide involving Pennsylvania mother of three Meleanie Hain - who gained national note and pro-gun fame as the result of a legal battle stemming from the revocation of her permit to carry a concealed handgun by local law enforcement after she openly carried a loaded Glock 9mm pistol to her daughter's soccer game - is a macabre lesson in easy irony. A woman who preached the National Rifle Association gospel that guns make you safer and protect your family is shot dead by her husband in a murder-suicide, her surviving family devastated." ...(The "macabre lesson in easy irony" that I see is that her murdering husband was a sworn LEO, part of the small minority that Sugarmann and his ilk are willing to trust with firearsm.) http://www.outdoorlife.com/blogs/gun-shots/2009/10/anti-2a-zealots-try-capitalize-gun-advocates-murder --- A Failure of Ohio Law?: A shootout involving at least five people occurred Thursday night in front of Route 66 Kitchen, a bar in Toledo near the University of Toledo campus... Ohio law prohibits customers from bringing firearms into any liquor establishment. regardless of whether the person is drinking or even if they've jumped through the state-mandated hoops to obtain a concealed handgun license (CHL). Ohioans For Concealed Carry has introduced legislation to allow CHL holders to carry into an establishment that serves liquor as long as they are not drinking, but legislation like that has been introduced in the past always with opponents arguing if it passed that there would be shootouts at bars. Yet the law didn't stop hoodlums from bringing their guns in. The law also didn't stop them from dealing drugs, which started the fight. After a man was asked to leave by a bar employee for allegedly attempting to sell marijuana, the confrontation escalated into the initial fight. Criminals by definition break laws. Allowing law abiding citizen the means to defend themselves will not change the behavior of the lawless. Unless, that is, the criminal targets someone who does have the means to fight back. http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-2206-Cleveland-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m10d12-Ohio-law-fails-to-stop-bar-shootout --- Oops, Wrong House: An 81-year-old man shot and killed a masked gunman during a home invasion early this morning at a residence north of Brewton, Escambia County [AL] Sheriff Grover Smith said. The sheriff said the robber had been released from a Nebraska jail just two days before he was killed. Smith declined to identify the homeowner, but said the man and his wife were in bed in their home along U.S. 31 north of town about 3 a.m. when the intruder kicked in the door to the home and entered their bedroom, demanding money. Smith said the homeowner managed to retrieve a pistol from the bedside table and pointed it at the robber, who told the homeowner to drop the weapon. Instead, Smith said, the homeowner fired the gun, striking the intruder in the forehead, killing him instantly... "The man was in his home, in bed with his wife, and he acted in self-defense," Smith said. "And as far as the wife, she had armed herself with a shotgun by the time I got there." (Einstein defined insanity as repeatedly doing the same thing and expecting different results. I have spent a week in this general area of Alabama and know that it prides itself on a high proportion of its law-abiding population being armed. Amazingly, the criminals do not appear to have figured this out.) http://blog.al.com/live/2009/10/81-year-old_man_shoots_home_in.html --- Rule Three Reminder: A man suspected of robbing a south side pizza place Monday apparently shot himself in the leg while committing the crime, police said. John B. Catania, 31, suffered a non life-threatening gunshot wound to his upper right leg, said Sgt. Fabian, a Tucson Police Department spokesman. Just after 10 p.m. Monday Tucson police received a 911 call from a woman saying her boyfriend had been shot. When police responded to the 3500 block of East Lee Street they found Catania, who said he had been shot for unknown reasons by two men, Pacheco said. About a half-hour earlier, Tucson police had also received a report of an armed robbery at the Little Caesar's Restaurant, 1998 E. Irvington Road. Witnesses told police the robber shot himself as he placed his handgun in the front waistband of his pants, Pacheco said. He fled with an undetermined amount of cash, police said... (Rule Three: Keep your finger [and material such as shirt tails] of the trigger guard until your sights are on the target and you're prepared to fire.) http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/hourlyupdate/313046.php --- Bringing a Harmonica to a Fistfight: A Broken Arrow [OK] man is facing the music after being accused of beating his roommate on the head with a harmonica. According to Decai Liu's arrest report, his roommate was in the bathroom getting ready for work when Liu burst in and started beating him with the instrument. Liu, 52, was charged Thursday with assault with a dangerous weapon in the attack last Saturday in the 4500 block of West Norman Street in Broken Arrow, court records show. When officers arrived about 9:30 a.m., the roommate was covered in blood from cuts on his head and face. Medics took him to St. Francis Hospital, the report states... In addition to the felony assault charge, prosecutors also filed charges of resisting an officer and assaulting an officer, according to court records. Liu is being held at the Tulsa Jail in lieu of $6,500 bail. Officers took the harmonica as evidence http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=298&articleid=20091008_318_0_ABoero9452 --- Kahr Arms in the News: The Rev. Sun Myung Moon, now approaching 90 and still one of the world's most controversial religious figures, is handing over day-to-day control of his Unification Church to three U.S.-educated sons... The youngest, 30-year-old Rev. Moon Hyung-jin, was tapped last year to take over as the church's religious leader. Moon Kook-jin, 39, is in charge of business ventures in South Korea, while 40-year-old Moon Hyun-jin oversees international operations. The church said all the brothers have Harvard degrees... Moon Kook-jin, who has headed the church's South Korean business operations since 2005, praised his youngest brother. "I think he's doing a good job," he told the AP. A Seoul businessman and owner of the New York-based gun manufacturer Kahr Arms, Moon Kook-jin says he sees no contradiction in owning a weapons factory. "To build a peaceful country, we need the police and an army," he said, a black Kahr Arms baseball cap perched on his head... (Moon Kook-jin is better known to American gun owners as Justin Moon. While the Kahr Arms website does list a Blauvelt NY address for Kahr's wholesale division, the primary address is listed in Worcester MA, as is marked on their excellent short-stroke DAO pistols.) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/12/AR2009101202354.html?hpid=sec-religion --- Front Sight in the News: The radio network that broadcasts Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck balked at running ads for a handgun training class that came with a free gun, unless the sponsor called the firearms "free gifts." Dr. Ignatius Piazza, the founder and director of the Front Sight Firearms Training Institute that provides the course and is touting the gun giveaway, refused to make the change and is calling on his fans to protest Premiere Radio Network's decision... Gun Week reported that part of Front Sight's curriculum included a "sales pitch" similar to those given by time share groups in which students were encouraged to buy memberships to the facility, some of which cost as much as $175,000. In return, those members would be allowed to take classes for free and given a one-acre home site at the shooting "resort," where Piazza said he planned to build a residential development. The lawsuit alleged that Piazza had created a Ponzi scheme in which he continued to sell the memberships knowing that he was not raising enough money to ever "proceed with the plan as presented." Piazza settled the lawsuit in 2007, but violated the terms of the agreement and in May, a judge ordered the court to seize the shooting facility and all assets, according to the Pahrump Valley Times. Now a court-appointed administrator is in charge of all financial transactions. http://rawstory.com/2009/10/limbaughs-radio-network-yanks-ads-for-free-guns-unless-theyre-called-free-gifts/ --- Some Historical Perspective: Time has posted its March 24, 1941 report on the Marine Corps testing of the "Garand Rifle." Seemingly, while Marine headquarters went along with the Army decision to adopt Garand's rifle as the M1, the Marine board in question preferred retention of the 1903 Springfield for greater reliability after the type of exposure a rifle would receive during an amphibious landing. This is not too dissimilar from SOCOM dropping rifles that share the M16's buffer tube in the stock because it can fill with water, particularly when it accompanies "underwater swimmers," rendering it a single-shot rifle when it hits the beach. The Marines, however, suddenly developed a fondness for the M1 Rifle during their extended service on Guadalcanal. This interested in the history of military rifles will find this link worth clicking. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,884292-1,00.html --- Tangentially Related: Boy Scouts are supposed to "Be Prepared." But how could a New York Eagle Scout prepare himself to have his dreams derailed by a school's imbalanced "zero tolerance" policy? Matthew Whalen's plan to attend the U.S. Military Academy at West Point may be in jeopardy because the high school senior had a 2-inch pocketknife locked in his car. The Lansingburgh Central School District initially suspended him for five days and later added another 15 days to his sentence. The honor student, who became a soldier last summer and completed Army Basic Training, including learning the safe use of automatic weapons and a bayonet, kept the pocketknife in a side compartment of his car as part of a survival kit along with a sleeping bag and bottled water... http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/oct/13/tarnishing-a-scouts-honor/ Finding character witnesses when you are 6 years old is not easy. But there was Zachary Christie last week at a school disciplinary committee hearing with his karate instructor and his mother's fiancé by his side to vouch for him. Zachary's offense? Taking a camping utensil that can serve as a knife, fork and spoon to school. He was so excited about recently joining the Cub Scouts that he wanted to use it at lunch. School officials concluded that he had violated their zero-tolerance policy on weapons, and Zachary was suspended and now faces 45 days in the [Newark DE] district's reform school. "It just seems unfair," Zachary said, pausing as he practiced writing lower-case letters with his mother, who is home-schooling him while the family tries to overturn his punishment... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/education/12discipline.html?_r=1 ...Hundreds of people were expected to attend a school board meeting Tuesday evening to object to the suspension of 6-year-old Zachary Christie from Downes Elementary School for bringing the camping utensil from home. The folding knife is banned as a dangerous instrument under the Christina School District's zero-tolerance policy in the student code of conduct, and officials said they have to act regardless of his age or what he planned to do with the instrument... http://townhall.com/news/us/2009/10/13/del_1st_grader_faces_reform_school_for_camp_tool Have you, or a person you know, ever been falsely accused of domestic violence? Targeted with a restraining order? Put in jail? Each year more than 1 million Americans are hit with a false or trivial accusation of partner abuse. It's now reached the point that domestic violence laws represent the largest roll-back in Americans' civil rights since the Jim Crow era! Our nation's domestic violence laws have gone too far, harming innocent citizens and diverting scarce resources away from the true victims... (Unfortunately, this article fails to list the loss of the RKBA as a major consequence of these arrests and restraining orders. Some recent studies suggest that a significant proportion of domestic-violence situations are two-sided, with many of the incidents being initiated by wives against their presumptively guilty husbands.) http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20091013/OPINION03/710139998 -- Stephen P. Wenger, KE7QBY Firearm safety - It's a matter for education, not legislation. http://www.spw-duf.info .