Because this broke while I was tied up with Armadillocon, I haven’t had a chance to blog it before now: the proposed EPA lead ammo ban appears to be as dead as the Roman Empire.
At least, for now. What was that someone said about the price of freedom?
The EPA’s proposed lead ammo ban is being covered by pretty much everyone, including Lawrence. I don’t have a lot to add to either Lawrence or Tam’s takes, but I do want to say “I told you so.”
(This in turn, for no particular reason, reminds me of the Robert Conquest story.)
A post by Sebastian led us to this post at the Defensive Handgun Blog, about the possible legal issues associated with using an Evil Black Rifle in self-defense. (I’d actually be more concerned about over-penetration in an apartment than the legal issues, but I’ve heard other people say that .223 tends to break up and not go through sheet rock. Does anyone have some definitive knowledge on this?)
A link in that post, in turn, led us to one of our favorite tales from “The Ayoob Files” feature in American Handgunner: the story of Gary Fadden, or as Mr. Ayoob puts it, “F— you and your high powered rifle!” As a matter of fact, we were just thinking about this story the other night, and are delighted to find a linkable online version.
Short version of the story: Mr. Fadden and his fiancee were out for a Sunday drive when they got into a confrontation with a group of bikers. The bikers chased Mr. Fadden and his beloved for over 20 miles (this was prior to ubiquitous cellphones) before Mr. Fadden decided to make a stand at his office.
Mr. Fadden’s office was at the Heckler and Koch plant, where he worked as a salesman for H&K. In the truck with him was a legally-owned personal Ruger AC556 (the full-auto version of the Mini-14; one question that isn’t answered in the article is why a salesman for H&K was using a Ruger product, but we figure that’s none of our beeswax). Mr. Fadden made his stand, fired a warning burst into the air, the biker uttered the phrase that pays (quoted above), charged Mr. Fadden, and Mr. Fadden put a six-round burst into the biker, killing him deader than the box office of “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World”.
What makes this story interesting is that the local prosecutor, who was apparently up in arms that someone would use a full-auto rifle in self-defense (as opposed to an engraved Perazzi over/under, perhaps), chose to charge Mr. Fadden with first degree murder. Mr. Fadden was found not guilty in a somewhat unusual trial (an undercover police detective actually broke his cover and testified in Mr. Fadden’s defense; the prosecutor spent so much time waving the AC556 around that the judge actually gave special instructions to the jury), which resulted in the local prosecutor throwing another temper tantrum.
We commend both Mr. Ayoob’s article and the one at the Defensive Handgun Blog to your attention.
In other news (blogged elsewhere, too, but we can’t let it pass without comment) the WP has discovered that people in other parts of the country do things differently. For example, some of them carry…guns! And they take their kids shooting! (The WP user poll, “Should parents teach their children to use guns?” is running 87% “Yes” at the time I write this.)
This has also been blogged in a few other places, but we did want to highlight this post by David Kopel over at the Volokh Conspiracy about the latest questionable activity by the Obama administration; blocking South Korea’s efforts to sell 100,000 surplus antique rifles in the United States.
pdb has a link up to a report produced by the Border Security Operations Center on a massive drug cartel shootout in Nuevo Laredo. This was a running gun battle between opposing groups (with, according to BSOC, some involvement by Mexican armed forces) over a two to three hour period.
The BSOC presentation includes photos, and some of those photos are graphic. Viewer discretion is advised. Skip to page 21 for the summary, if you don’t want to deal with the photos.
Edited to add: Jay G. has a post up at his site in which he points out a remarkable similarity between the right-hand photo in the second row on page 20, and this photo of a Suburban supposedly holed by F-16 fire when it wandered onto the wrong part of a military base. There’s some speculation in the comments about whether someone inserted an unrelated photo just to make things look better, or whether this is part of an evil master plan to play up the “drug gangs armed with American assault rifles” canard and get more funding. I’m leaving this post up, but Jay G.’s post makes me a lot more skeptical.
Saturday was kind of a rough day at DEFCON 18. But then, Saturday is always a rough day at DEFCON.
I don’t feel it’d be fair to review or summarize the “Extreme-range RFID Tracking” panel; I came in about 20 minutes late. (We lingered a bit over a very good breakfast at Blueberry Hill.) What I was able to gather is that Padget’s set a new record for long distance RFID reading, and that upping the radio power works for increasing RFID reading range up to a point. (Edited to add 8/10/2010: added link to Black Hat 2010 version of paper. Here’s a link to Paget’s blog entry about the session.)
I was not able to get into “Jackpotting Automated Teller Machines Redux” due to extreme overcrowding. (Edited to add 8/9/2010: The Black Hat website has what purports to be MP4 video of Jack’s version of the presentation at Black Hat 2010. I have not sat down and watched it yet.)
I did attend the “This is not the droid you’re looking for…” panel, mostly because I was camping out for the next talk. This panel turned out to be more interesting than I expected; the presenters demonstrated a proof-of-concept rootkit for Android phones that allows you to do all sorts of fun stuff; grab contact information, grab SMS messages, grab location information (all three of these are stored in SQLite databases on the Android), and even make phone calls from the phone. The presenters haven’t weaponized the attack yet, but claim it should be easy to do so.
“Practical Cellphone Spying“: Another nifty panel. Padget discussed the concepts behind IMSI catching, and gave a live demo of cellphone interception on the AT&T network. The key takeaway here for me was that the same technology used by law enforcement to intercept calls is now coming down to the point where it will be wrapped in a turnkey package and sold to people with more questionable motivations. (Edited to add 8/10/2010: added link to Paget’s blog entry which includes slides.)
“How to Hack Millions of Routers“: I went to this because Lawrence put in a special request. The short version is that a large number of commercially available routers (such as those used by Verizon FIOS) are vulnerable to a clever attack using DNS rebinding and load balancing. Heffner has also released a tool that automates this attack. (This is another Black Hat talk that got a lot of attention in the press; the link above includes a copy of Heffner’s white paper which details the attack vector.)
(Edited to add 8/9/2010: I’ve added a link to Heffner’s Black Hat version of this talk, which as far as I can tell, is pretty similar to the DEFCON 18 version.)
I didn’t attend either “Hacking with Hardware: Introducing the Universal RF Usb Keboard Emulation Device – URFUKED” or “Programmable HID USB Keystroke Dongle: Using the Teensy as a Pen Testing Device“. (Edited to add 8/10/2010: added a link to the Teensy project from the Irongeek website. The bottom of that page has a link to the DEFCON presentation. I’ve also added a link to HackerWarrior.com for the USB Keyboard Emulation Device; that directory appears to contain a copy of the presentation, plus code.)
Instead, I left a little early, had a very nice sake fueled dinner at Shabu-Shabu Paradise in Henderson (a restaurant I enthusiastically endorse), sidecars at the iBar in the Rio (sadly, we did not get to play with the Microsoft Surface), and Penn & Teller.
The three of us saw Penn and Teller back in 2006, and we wondered how much the show had changed since then. Mike the Musicologist estimated that about 50% of the show was new; I think the percentage is a little higher than that, but my memory may be faulty. I was not unhappy that they ended the show with the .357 magnums; the bullet-catching illusion fascinates me, and I’m still trying to figure out how Penn and Teller do it. (Jim Steinmeyer’s The Glorious Deception: The Double Life of William Robinson, aka Chung Ling Soo
The other thing we all noticed is that Penn and Teller’s show has become a bit more explicitly political; in addition to the .357 magnum closer, which has always included 2nd Amendment references (and big kudos to P&T for reciting the Four Rules), the show also included references to flag burning, the Chinese Bill of Rights (“What Chinese Bill of Rights?” Exactly.) and the stupidity of the TSA. Penn and Teller even sell the Security Edition of the Bill of Rights in their gift shop for a lousy $5. (Quote: “We want McCarran Airport to be flooded with these.”) Not that any of us were bothered by the politics; I think all three of us lay claim to at least some form of Libertarianism. And if you’re the kind of person who would take offense at Penn and Teller’s politics, I won’t tell you “don’t go”; I’ll tell you “go, and have your world view challenged”.
(I’d also like to give Penn and Teller kudos for keeping gift shop prices low. Both Andrew and I picked up DVDs
My regular readers (and my irregular readers, too; come to think of it, “Whipped Cream Irregulars” would be a good name for a band) may have figured out by now that I’ve spent much of the past week on the road. Specifically, I was in Tucson for the annual convention of the Smith and Wesson Collectors Association. (You might have been able to guess that I also made a brief trip to the Phoenix/Scottsdale area so I could visit Taliesin West.)
I’m not going to talk much about what went on at that convention here, since it is a closed private convention, and I’m not comfortable discussing the organization’s affairs on a public blog. (Jay G. and the rest of the Vicious Circle gang might be amused to know that there was an actual S&W police bike, manufactured in Springfield, MA and complete with lights and siren, on display at the convention. I didn’t get a chance to take a photo.) I will say I had a great time at the convention, and in Tucson in general. Sadly, I didn’t have time to hit any used bookstores or gun stores in the area, but maybe next time.
This is the first extended road trip I’ve taken since last year’s DEFCON, so I thought it might be interesting to do some notes about what worked and didn’t work on this trip.
I saw this post over at Borepatch’s earlier in the week, but I didn’t get curious until I saw this one over at Crider’s place about the Christie’s auction of the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans art collection.
One Google search later, and I found out that the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Musuem is closed.
Seriously, that’s a shame. Roy, Trigger, and Dale were really more of my father’s time than my own, but I have a certain amount of respect for Roy and his legacy. I’m kind of sad the museum couldn’t stay open; according to Roadside America, they got an estimated 200,000 visitors a year, but that wasn’t enough to keep the lights on.
Of course, you know I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t ask: are they going to sell Trigger? I actually expected that Trigger would stay in the family, since Roy Jr. is still performing in Branson. Then I found this AP article, and after much searching of the auction lots…here’s Trigger. Here’s the link for Buttermilk. If you have an estimated $200-$300 to spare, you can buy horseshit from Christie’s. Here’s Bullet. And here’s Trigger, Jr.
Speaking of LA, the LAT has a long and somewhat sad feature story on the Polaroid photographers of MacArthur Park and their dying way of life. These are older men who spend their days trying to make a few bucks by taking photos of folks in the park. For a long time, they were able to make a good living at this; many immigrants would purchase photos and send them home to show how well they were doing in America. Disposable and digital cameras have mostly killed off this business (“These days, on a good day, they earn $10, $30.”) but they’re still out there, still hustling.
Meanwhile, the NYT would like for you to know that “The Constitution Trumps Arizona“. I, personally, am delighted at The Paper of Record’s new-found respect for the Constitution of the United States, and the applicability of same to state and local governments.
Happy Canada Day, everyone. I hope you’re able to celebrate in the traditional way, with beer and back bacon.
The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has overturned the death sentence for Ronell Wilson. Mr. Wilson was convicted of shooting two NYPD detectives, James Nemorin and Rodney Andrews, who were engaged in a gun purchase sting. According to the NYT, Mr. Wilson was the only defendant sentenced to death by a jury between “1988 through March 2008” (?), though prosecutors asked for the death sentence 19 times during that period.
In this case, the court just overturned the sentence, not the conviction:
The WP is reporting that serious consideration is being given to awarding the Medal of Honor to a living person. That person is not named in the WP article, and the nomination is still being reviewed by the White House. This is significant because every Medal of Honor awarded since Vietnam has been posthumous.
Edited to add: Florida has banned ownership of “Burmese pythons and six other large, exotic reptile species” effective today. As noted in this space previously, the state has a bit of a python problem:
The ban applies as well to reticulated, northern African, southern African and Amethystine pythons, green anacondas and Nile monitor lizards, but the main focus is on Burmese pythons.
Estimates of their presence in the wild have ranged as high as 100,000, but the state’s first python hunting season ended in April without a single snake reported caught. Conservation officials said unseasonably cold weather, instead, may have killed up to half the pythons.
No snakes caught? Darn. (I was actually discussing the possibility of getting together a python hunting expedition with some of my co-workers, but none of us owns the proper weapon.)
The City of Austin has flushed the low-flow toilet rebate program. However, you can still get a free low-flow toilet: you just have to fill out an application and, if you’re approved, pick up your toilet from an approved toilet vendor.
The 2010 Bulwer-Lytton contest results are out.
Edited to add 1: Oh, what the heck. By way of Ace of Spades, a WP review of the greatest concert ever. Where “greatest concert ever” is defined as “complete disaster”.
Edited to add 2: Derek Lowe has a new post up in the “How Not To Do It” series. It appears that a lab at the University of Missouri underwent explosive renovations after some hydrogen and oxygen got together for a hot date. Photos of the aftermath at the link.
Edited to add 3: The HouChron has interrupted their “WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!” watch to let us know that Dr. Demento is ending his radio show. Why, yes, this is the same story that Slashdot and Lawrence brought you almost a month ago.
Edited to add 4: As I’ve noted in the past, my newspaper reading during the weekends can be spotty. So I missed this Ben Wear article in the Statesman about the MetroRail ridership figures. (Hattip: Blue Dot Blues, by way of Battleswarm.)
Edited to add 5: Headline from the HouChron: “Dear Abby says what to do when grandma spoils the kids”. Somehow, I suspect Dear Abby’s answer does not involve a Taser.
Speaking of Popehat, I think this is a great post by Patrick, but I’m a very bad person; whenever I read the phrase “Res Ipsa Loquitur”, all I can think of is “Ipsa this, you p—y little b—h!“
The news is still coming in. I’ll try to link to good commentary as it comes in, and I’ll have some thoughts of my own up later, probably tonight.
I have my own concerns about the decision and What It All Means, but for right now: There. Will. Be. Cake.
Edited to add 1: For right now, I think the best source of information I can point folks to is Sebastian’s live blog over at Snowflakes in Hell. Also noteworthy: Jacob Sullum over at Reason’s “Hit and Run”.
Edited to add 2: SayUncle is in his usual short but pithy commentary mode. Some good stuff there, too.
Edited to add 3: As promised, some thoughts of my own. With these and $2, I think you can get a large cup of coffee in most places.
…even apart from the States’ long history of firearms regulation and its location at the core of their
police powers, this is a quintessential area in which federalism ought to be allowed to flourish without this Court’s meddling. Whether or not we can assert a plausible constitutional basis for intervening, there are powerful reasons why we should not do so.
Echoing Root’s point, Stevens apparently believes that the Second Amendment is somehow special and different from the others, in a way that allows experimentation and tinkering. Is there anyone who thinks Stevens would endorse experimenting with the First Amendment? (Sebastian has another solid post up about Scalia’s shredding of Stevens’ “reasoning”.)
Rule #1: Have a gun.
Rule #1a: Not a caulk gun.
Apparently, I have been out of the loop, as I was unaware until today that Smith & Wesson has introduced a pistol version of the M&P15-22 which uses the standard M&P15-22 magazines. I guess they’re trying to compete with things like the GSG-5.
After handling one, I really can’t see the point; the gun is too big and heavy to shoot like a handgun, and can’t really be fired effectively like a rifle. It looks like it’d be a fun gun for plinking and other putzing around, except for size and bulk considerations.
Other than that, the only purpose I can see is making Sarah Brady and her ilk scream and cry and wet their pants. That’s a pretty good purpose, but I’m not sure that it would be worth $400+ to me.
(I will add that Austin Gun Liquidators is a very nice store. They don’t have quite the used selection Tex-Guns has, but they’re about five minutes from work and open until 6 PM Tuesday-Saturday. Their price on M&P15-22 magazines was pretty reasonable as well.)
When I first started shooting, I needed ear protection. So I bought a $20 pair of no-name passive ear muffs, and have been using those for the better part of the past nine years.
There were two problems with the passive muffs:
After I shot the USPSA match in April, I decided it was time for a change. Karl recommended the Pro Ears line to me, so I ordered a pair. I didn’t actually get a chance to use them until I took Karl’s “Competition Pistol” course at the end of May. Now that I have…
Wow. The difference between the Pro Ears and the $20 passive muffs is like night and day. I had no trouble hearing range instructions; at the same time, the active muffs actually seemed (and this may just be a subjective perception on my part) to do a better job of muffling gunshots. I probably wore the Pro Ears for close to four and half hours without ever feeling the need to remove them.
I won’t say the Pro Ears are perfect. They are not cheap. (The set I purchased was the Predator Gold
If you’re serious about shooting and haven’t tried active hearing protection, like the Pro Ears, I strongly recommend that you do so. If you’ve had good experiences with brands of active hearing protection other than Pro Ears, you’re welcome to post recommendations for those brands in the comments.
According to the Statesman, yesterday’s gun buyback brought in 343 “guns”:
166 handguns, 96 rifles, two assault rifles and 79 shotguns.
I put “guns” in quotes because it is unclear if this figure includes any BB or replica guns collected.
One of the interesting aspects of this, as you may recall, is that the gun buyback supposedly had a $10,000 budget. However, they actually spent $30,000 yesterday, according to the article; somehow, it appears that the Greater Austin Crime Commission was able to pull an additional $20,000 out of their neither regions in a matter of hours. I would very much like to know where that money came from.
