In a demonstration of pure political pandering regarding the Martin/Zimmerman case, House Democrats excel:

House Democrats said Tuesday they will offer an amendment to push to overturn stand-your-ground self-defense laws in states like Florida.

The amendment, which would withhold some grants from states that have such laws, will come as part of the House’s debate on the Commerce Department spending bill.

One of the sponsors says it would be no different than withholding highway funds from states that don’t require seat belt use in cars.

“‘Shoot-first’ laws have already cost too many lives. In Florida alone, deaths due to self-defense have tripled since the law was enacted. Federal money shouldn’t be spent supporting states with laws that endanger their own people,” said Reps. Raul Grijalva of Arizona and Keith Ellison of Minnesota, the two Democrats who are offering the legislation.

The law only endangers thugs, muggers, rapists, home invaders, and other mutants. Now, if a citizen can’t properly protect himself, he/she’ll become the statistic.

From the Wyoming Tribune:

Emmanuel Huitron-Guizar of Gillette, Wyo., had argued that illegal aliens are guaranteed certain other rights by the U.S. Constitution, such as the right to due process. The Second Amendment provides that “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,” and Huitron-Guizar argued he was part of “the people.”

But the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver ruled that Huitron-Guizar fell under the Gun Control Act of 1968, which forbids gun possession by nine classes of individuals, including illegal aliens. It conceded there is some argument about the meaning of “the people” and U.S. citizens _ but found that Congress had lawfully exercised its power to distinguish between citizens and non-citizens.

I’m inclined to agree. Illegal immigrants shouldn’t even be here. They’ll just illegally vote for Democrats.

David Codrea takes a closer look at the Independent Firearm Owners of America which is led by ex-NRA lobbyist and HuffPo writer Richard Feldman.

Apparently the City of Salina, Kansas, has long had an ordinance prohibiting anything fun:

While the city of Salina for years has offered archery classes through parks and recreation, a discovery by city staff that shooting arrows — and other projectiles — is against the law within city limits forced the city to make an exception for educational programs.

City commissioners voted unanimously Monday to legalize shooting of air guns, air rifles, bows and arrows, slingshots, paintball guns and BB guns through parks and recreation or education institutions’ programs in city parks or on property owned by educational institutions. The parks and recreation department can also issue permits for programs held in city parks.

So, you can still only — for instance — have fun with your Airsoft if it is part of an organized program and only if you first obtain permission to hold that program. Forget doing anything in your backyard.

Update: I goofed. It’s Salina, Kansas, not Salinas, California. Sorry for the confusion.

Did they really need a study to show that?

Yawn next to your dog, and she may do the same. Though it seems simple, this contagious behavior is actually quite remarkable: Only a few animals do it, and only dogs cross the species barrier. Now a new study finds that dogs yawn even when they only hear the sound of us yawning, the strongest evidence yet that canines may be able to empathize with us.

I think they could have simply asked any dog owner if their pet shows empathy when the owner is in pain, is depressed, is feeling joyful, etc. The answer would be a resounding, “Yes!”

An article mostly about how more women are arming themselves. Yes, even in California. From KFSN:

A growing number of women are arming themselves with self-defense knowledge and weapons, they say, to protect their families and property from crimes.

The report (from a Fresno TV station) goes into further details. All well and good until we get to this:

Fresno County reports a dramatic increase in applications for CCW permits, doubling from 2010 to 2011. To the point where the wait now is almost a year.

You have to wait A YEAR now for your CCW permit approval? Doesn’t the state have some sort of time limit for processing these requests? Yipes!

My thanks to No Starch Press for sending me a PDF of a new book due out in a week or so, LEGO Heavy Weapons, by Jack Streat. Subtitled, “Build Working Replicas of Four of the World’s Most Impressive Guns,” Amazon says they’ll be shipping it shortly but of course you might want to pre-order it.

I can tell you this: LEGO has come a long way since I was a kid and so has the sophistication both of what you can build, and how you go about designing your creations and recording them.

LEGO Heavy Weapons shows you how to build functioning replicas of the Desert Eagle, the AKS-74U, the Lee Enfield Jungle Carbine, and the SPAS 12. The guns have working magazines that you load with ‘bricks’ and can fire about 10-20 feet with impressive accuracy.

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He might be the only conservative attending the University of Wisconsin - Madison. From the Badger Herald:

. . . This is the exact same process we have with our Constitution. For example, courts could not rule, based on their own social opinions, that our Constitution was dated and claim that denying the vote to women did nothing but demean them as second-class citizens. They couldn’t abolish such laws because such a right — at that time — didn’t exist. A constitutional amendment was needed to change this, not the partisan agenda of any particular court “modernizing” the Constitution to reflect our present values.

On firearms control: Advocates of gun control may point out modern firearms didn’t exist 200 years ago, so if we abandoned the flawed “living document” view, any modern weapons could potentially be banned. Such a draconian viewpoint ignores the entire context of the Second Amendment. The word “arms” was never intended to be limited to weapons available in that timeframe, at the exclusion of all future inventions. No serious scholar would ever attempt to manifest such a case; future firearms inventions were meant to be protected, just like modern methods of utilizing free speech are protected.

A wise op-ed. More at the link.

And, apparently, Rep. Issa is simply a stooge of the N.R.A. From the Daily Caller:

A spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, a left-wing anti-gun group based in Washington, D.C., told The Daily Caller his organization doesn’t believe firearms trafficked to Mexico in Operation Fast and Furious have killed hundreds of civilians in that country. That those guns have been used often to kill Mexicans is a position articulated by both Attorney General Eric Holder and Mexican authorities.

Much more at the link. Even when presented with evidence and testimony from Holder and others, the CSGV spokesman denied that people died because of the gun walking scandal. Why? I’m not sure.

Sounds like a good idea.

At his scathing best:

Just in case you’re having difficulty keeping up with all these Composite Americans, George Zimmerman, the son of a Peruvian mestiza, is the embodiment of endemic white racism and the reincarnation of Bull Connor, but Elizabeth Warren, the great-great-great-granddaughter of someone who might possibly have been listed as Cherokee on an application for a marriage license, is a heartwarming testimony to how minorities are shattering the glass ceiling in Harvard Yard. George Zimmerman, redneck; Elizabeth Warren, redskin. Under the Third Reich’s Nuremberg Laws, Ms. Warren would have been classified as Aryan and Mr. Zimmerman as non-Aryan. Now it’s the other way round. Progress!

Read the whole thing; it’s laugh-out-loud funny.

Ted Turner was interviewed by Piers Morgan last night on CNN. Via NewsBusters, here’s a bit of the transcript:

PIERS MORGAN: What would you do about Iran if you were the American President?

TED TURNER: Well, first of all, I believe in total nuclear disarmament. That’s the only way we’re ever going to get there. We all got to play by the same set of rules. We have 2,000 or several thousand nuclear weapons. Iran has none at the current time. It’s okay for Israel to have 100, but it’s not okay for Iran to have two. That’s, that’s, you’re not treating everybody equally.

You have no strong position except force. Only by force can it be done. I think we’ve already voted at the U.N. and the Security Council to get rid of nuclear weapons. Let’s get rid of them. Let’s get rid of ours, and then Iran will stop, I believe, and everybody else will because if everybody doesn’t have them, then we’re safe - at least safe from a nuclear attack.

This is the same defective rational used by gun control advocates who would like to ban all gun ownership. They think that if the law abiding citizens don’t have (or surrender their) guns, then the bad guys won’t have or will surrender theirs.

If you ban guns, only the criminals will have them.

If the good countries like the U.S.A., England, and Israel get rid of their nuclear arms, rogue states like Iran and North Korea will terrorize at will.

Here’s an even simpler equation: Ted Turner = Idiot.

But, will other Republicans have the balls to support it? From Fox News:

Republican Rep. Darrell Issa has circulated a lengthy pair of documents making the case for holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress over his “refusal” to cooperate in an investigation of the ill-fated Fast and Furious operation.

Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, on Thursday sent to every member of his committee a 64-page draft contempt order against Holder, as well as a 17-page memo outlining the history of the scandal.

“Operation Fast and Furious’ outrageous tactics, the Justice Department’s refusal to fully cooperate with the investigation and efforts to smear and retaliate against whistleblowers have tainted the institutional integrity of the Justice Department,” Issa wrote.

Much more and video at the link.

The L.A. Times editorial staff has a piece on how proposed legislation in California to ban the open carry of long guns (rifles) is silly and not needed. We might think, “Gee, the L.A. Times? Really?” Don’t marvel too much because if you read the editorial, you’ll see on display the usual anti-gun, anti-self defense bias from this sorry-assed newspaper.

Update: Meanwhile, the State Assembly just passed the ban. It now goes to the Senate. Gov. Brown will sign the measure — judging by the other gun control measures he has signed this term.

Governor Scott has done the right thing:

Florida Gov. Rick Scott has rejected a request from the Tampa mayor to prohibit the carrying of guns downtown during the Republican National Convention this summer because it would infringe upon “sacred constitutional traditions,” according to a letter released Wednesday.

From AmmoLand:

Montana’s Congressman, Denny Rehberg, successfully offered an Amendment to fight an attempt by the Obama Administration to use an obscure regulatory process to track the purchases of firearms in four border states.

Rehberg’s amendment to the FY13 Commerce, Justice and Science House Appropriations Bill would prevent the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) from using federal funds to track the purchases of gun owners who buy multiple rifles within a certain time period.

If the amendment survives intact, it would prevent this:

Federal agents in South Texas have opened 123 criminal investigations as a result of a new requirement that border-state gun stores report customers who buy two or more large caliber rifles in the same week, especially those preferred by Mexican drug cartels.

Even the liberally-bent Washington Post gives Obama four Pinocchios:

Calling out the Republicans at the Brent Spence bridge was bad enough, given the bipartisan support for its reconstruction. But pointing to the Sherman Milton Bridge, which already has been repaired without funding from the president’s jobs bill, is ridiculous.

Perhaps the president was using outdated talking points, but that’s little excuse. Given that the president earned Three Pinocchios before, we have little choice but to up the ante this time.

I can guarantee you that NBC, ABC, CBS, PBS, NPR, the New York Times, the L.A. Times, et al will not point out all of the fallacies of Obama reported in the linked story above. I will, however, give credit where it is due. The blogger at WaPo wrote the above “fact-check” so, kudos to him (Glenn Kessler) for that bit of honesty.

From CIOL News:

Just 20 minutes of playing a violent video game turned players into more accurate shooters when firing a realistic gun at a mannequin and were more likely to aim for and hit the head, a new study found.

Players who used a pistol-shaped controller in a shooting video game with human targets had 99 percent more completed head shots to the mannequin than did those who played other video games, as well as 33 percent more shots that hit other parts of the body.

Given the cost of ammo these days, maybe we should all play a “violent video game” before heading to the range. Nah, shooting the real stuff is way more fun!

Naming your baby after a firearms manufacturer:

Bristol Palin’s baby daddy, Levi Johnston, has named his second baby-to-be ‘Breeze Beretta’ after the Italian gun maker Beretta.

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