Posts Tagged ‘Guns’

News Flash: Colt Firearms Moving to Texas

Monday, April 8th, 2013

Details later, since blogging from an iPhone sucks. Link.

LinkSwarm for April 4, 2013

Friday, April 5th, 2013

Been a while since the last Friday LinkSwarm, so here it is!

  • The problem with Europe’s economy? It’s the spending, stupid.

    Government spending on bailouts, subsidies, grants, salaries and entitlements commands a much larger share of these economies than it did just a few years ago. European austerity has been focused on the private sector — namely, taxpayers with high incomes.

    That is the second thing the PIIGGS have in common. The highest income tax rate was recently increased in every one of the troubled PIIGGS except Italy (where it was already too high at 43%). The top tax rate was hiked from 40 to 46.5% in Portugal, from 41 to 48% in Ireland, from 40 to 45% in Greece, from 40 to 50% in Great Britain, and from 48 to 52% in Spain.

  • Immigration “reform:” Distrust and Then Verify.
  • News flash: Getting a PhD in Literature is not a surefire path to financial security. Stop the presses!
  • Female Princeton grad tells current Princeton women that maybe they should consider getting married in college. Naturally the Ivy league/feminist/MSM complex threw a fit. (Pro-tip: There are few surer signs of leftwing PC think than the word “hetronormative.”)
  • Homicide Trends in the US: 1980 to 2008.
  • Dwight brings up another case of journalistic malpractice. “Meet the Sniper Who Killed 2,200 People in Iraq.” As Dwight notes, anyone with even passing knowledge of snipers should know that this claim is ludicrous from the git go. In sports terms, it’s like someone claiming they threw 20 Major League no hitters, or ran a two minute mile. It reminds me of Scott Thomas Beauchamp’s smears about troops in Iraq in The New Republic. (If you remember the Beauchamp affair, it turns out that he was engaged to Elspeeth Reeve, who just happened to be a TNR fact-checker. Somebody should make them read Stolen Valor.)
  • Also from Dwight: This interesting piece about a gay man talks about coming out at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University.
  • Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott: UN Treaties don’t trump the Bill of Rights.
  • Left-wing bigots pat themselves on the back.
  • Larry Gonzalez Goes Hunting Gun Manufacturers

    Thursday, March 28th, 2013

    Texas House District 52 Representative Larry Gonzalez announced today that he’s inviting gun manufacturers from around the country to relocate to his district.

    “Recently, you received correspondence from our Texas Governor, Rick Perry, inviting you to consider moving your company to Texas – a pro-gun, pro-2nd amendment, pro-business, right to work state,” says the opening line of the letter. The letter continues, “Texas has created an economic infrastructure which allows business to thrive. We understand government’s role is to get out of the way of private business and allow them to do what they do best – create jobs and help build our economy.”

    “My pitch was specifically for the cities within House District 52,” said Gonzales. “I feel many variables make the cities of Round Rock, Hutto and Taylor very attractive places to locate a company. Chief among them is our roadway infrastructure. Our mobility is the envy of this state.”

    You might remember that I’ve suggested something of the sort before at the state level…

    LinkSwarm for March 23, 2013

    Friday, March 22nd, 2013

    Another Friday roundup of random news:

  • Republicans offer bill to outlaw Cyprus-like bank account seizures.
  • What did Dianne Feinstein’s gun-grabbing “assault weapons” bill actually accomplish? “These efforts have driven some law-abiding Americans into the loving arms of the NRA.”
  • “In Harry Reid’s Senate there are more votes against Chuck Hagel than there are in favor of an assault weapons ban.”
  • “[Ted Cruz’s] infraction was asking the right question. What Cruz wanted to know was this: Why do liberals cherish the First and Fourth Amendments, but trash the one in between – the Second Amendment?”
  • Bill Maher wakes up and suddenly realizes he’s getting ripped off by California taxes.
  • Dwight has an update on the laughable, doomed boondoggle that is EarthQuest.
  • Surprise! The U.S. is now more hated in the Middle East than under Bush.
  • Iran exporting Chinese-made portable antiaircraft missiles to terrorists. I’m sure that will make the Middle East all the more stable.
  • ObamaCare is slowing hiring.
  • Tides Foundation vs. Koch giving, in graphical form.
  • The UK decides that they don’t need any stinking freedom of the press.
  • Germany abandons some of its green energy fantasies.
  • Louisiana judge rules that ex-felons can own guns. Some caveats: This is based on a newly passed, pro-gun amendment to the Louisiana Constitution, and Louisiana law (as opposed to the other 49 states) is based on the Napoleonic Code rather than English common law.
  • Don’t suspect a neighbor; report him!
  • Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead Not Taking Our Guns

    Tuesday, March 19th, 2013

    The “assault weapon” ban of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-osen’t Know the Constitution) died before it could even reach the Senate floor.

    What happened? The NRA-ILA happened. Ted Cruz happened. Actual voters happened. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid evidently didn’t have the clout to put the squeeze on members over gun control the way Nancy Pelosi did on Obamacare and taxpayer-funded abortions. That, or the fact there’s no way in hell the Republican House would pass a ban, Reid decided the political cost would be too high (including, very possibly, the loss of the Senate) for no legislative gain.

    This is one of the times that the Senate’s glacial pace helped prevent knee-jerk liberal opportunism from making it’s way into law.

    There’s still a lot of other bad gun control ideas floating around Washington, DC (not to mention out in the states), but at least we managed to kill this one.

    Maybe in a few months I can buy an AR at a decent price…

    Ted Cruz Schools Dianne Feinstein

    Friday, March 15th, 2013

    Nice exchange over gun control:

    I’m pretty sure David Dewhurst would never have gotten under Dianne Feinstein’s skin, which is all the more reason we in Texas are happy we elected Cruz…

    Conservative Blog Meetup Dinner Query for Saturday, March 23, at 6 PM

    Thursday, March 14th, 2013

    Dwight of Whipped Cream Difficulties and I are contemplating a conservative/gunner blogger meetup Saturday, March 23, at 6 PM, venue TBD (but not too close to the SXSW madness downtown). Drop me a line at lawrenceperson at gmail dot com if you’re interested in attending.

    LinkSwarm for March 14, 2013

    Thursday, March 14th, 2013

    This week we’ll do it Thursday rather than Friday:

  • Obama is trying to work the same magic on America’s economy that a half century of Democratic rule has worked in Detroit. More details here.
  • And Detroit’s former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is going to prison.
  • Since 2002, total federal spending has increased 89% while median household income has dropped 5%.
  • In Iran, 5 of top 10 porn search terms are for gay porn (no nudity, but NSFW-ish terms, and the usual warning that it’s (ick) Gawker).
  • Thanks to ObamaCare, your veterinarian bills are going up as well as your medical bills.
  • Thomas Friedman hates the Keystone pipeline because the oil is dirty, but loves China, where industry is a thousand time dirtier than here in the U.S. And where will that oil go if the pipeline isn’t built? China. Maybe Friedman just wants all the jobs to be in China. That, or actual checks from the Chinese government or their business subsidiaries, would explain an awful lot of Friedman’s writing over the last few years…
  • “Most developed nations are fundamentally broke.”

    The degrees of broke-ness varies: from completely and utterly broke, like Greece or Italy; to wobbly, like the U.K., France, the U.S., or Japan; to getting poorer like Germany. But all of them are going to have to raise the percentage of gross domestic product they collect in tax — and many of them very significantly.

    The U.S. deficit is more than 7% of GDP. The U.K.’s deficit is just as high. There is very little sign that spending cuts to close gaps of that magnitude are on the cards, nor is there any sign that growth will be sufficiently strong to make up the difference — certainly not in countries like the U.K. or Japan.

    Huge sums of additional revenue will have to be raised.

    Willie Sutton once famously remarked that he robbed banks because “that’s where the money is.”

    In the same way, governments will look to raise more tax from companies because that’s where the money is.

    Or they could, you know, actually cut spending…

  • I’ve not been following the Prenda Law case closely. Fortunately, Ken over at Popehat has. Exceptionally brief background: Scumbag copyright troll lawyers operate shakedown operation, filing dubious (at best) copyright infringement lawsuits. Then they compounded the problem by suing bloggers and lawyers in an attempt to silence them. As you might expect, that strategy isn’t working out very well for them… (Hat tip: Dwight)
  • Florida Democrats want mandatory anger management classes for people buying ammo.
  • From Popcap Games, the makers of Plants vs. Zombies, comes Trees vs. Rockets. Wait, did I say Popcap Games? I meant the Israeli Defense Forces.
  • White House journalists as Ring-Wraiths.
  • Third round of Climategate documents released?
  • Michael Totten says that Lebanon is ready to explode from the spillover effect of the Syrian Civil War.
  • News of the horrific 5-year old terrorist who brandished her fearsome Hello Kitty assault bubble gun (link fixed).
  • Vetting the “Pro-Gun Democrats” Part 2: Kirsten Gillibrand

    Wednesday, March 13th, 2013

    After putting up this look at Max Baucus, I haven’t had a chance to look at other top “pro-gun” Democrats.

    Fortunately, S. E. Cupp has already done that for me with this look at New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. When she represented an upstate House district, she earned an “A” rating from the NRA. And after she moved to the Senate?

    She was appointed to Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat in 2009, following a messy selection process by then-Gov. David Paterson. On the day of her appointment, Mayor Bloomberg publicly criticized her for her staunch opposition to gun control.

    Suddenly, the moderate Gillibrand of 2006, who had earned the affection of the ultimate moderate Democrat in Bill Clinton, needed a makeover, and quick, if she was going to make it as a senator, not just an upstate representative.

    So a new and improved Gillibrand, one who was more politically palatable to downstate liberal elites, was born, practically overnight.

    Within two years, she had impressively turned that “A” rating from the NRA into an “F.” NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam remarked at the time that he couldn’t recall a similar instance in recent history of a politician’s score changing so drastically, so quickly.

    When it comes to Democrats at the national level, there are two types: Those who have betrayed gun owner rights already, and those who are going to betray them when enough pressure is applied.

    When push comes to shove, there’s no such thing as a pro-gun Democrat.

    It’s All the Same Fight

    Tuesday, March 12th, 2013

    Rand Paul has won some liberal plaudits for his filibuster against extra-judicial drone strikes against Americans on U.S. soil. Fine and dandy. But what liberal don’t realize is that debate, the debate over government spending, the debate over gun control, and the debate over ObamaCare are not separate fights, they’re the same fight over the central issue: what is the proper size and scope of the federal government in a constitutional republic with limited, enumerated powers?

    The founders were deeply and rightly suspicious of centralized government power. They set up a system in which the federal government’s power was not only limited, but balanced against competing power. Not only were the executive, legislative and judicial branches balanced against each other, all were balanced against state governments, and against the power in the people themselves, which is why the Bill of Rights is an enumeration of what the federal government could not do to its citizens. The state exists not to do things for people, it exists to keep things from being done to them.

    Those right have been eroded by the excessive expansion of the federal government, and those checks and balances thrown off by the creation of a permanent parasite class in Washington D.C. that benefits from raking its percentage off the top of an ever-expanding redistributionist state.

    Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, etc. all know, understand, and believe this. To them, the Constitution is a constant, a vessel of liberty to hand down from generation to generation to keep America strong and free. To liberals, the Constitution is an obstacle to be nullified by left-wing federal judges who ignore provisions like the 2nd and 10th Amendments because the limit how much power Democrats can take from the people and give to government.

    The larger government’s sphere, the smaller that of the American people. Drone strikes on U.S. soil are a big, bright line even liberals can understand. But gun control, outrageous deficits, and ObamaCare are all chipping away at the constitutional republic left to us by the founding fathers, day by day. Barry Goldwater once said that “A government big enough to give you everything you want it is big enough to take away everything you have.” Rand Paul and Ted Cruz understand that. Liberals either don’t, or actively want to participate in the taking.