Low-rent phase music made affordable.

Persistent Ringdown  (01:49)

Since Paul Helmke stepped down last year, Dennis Henigan has been serving as active president. Today, the Brady Campaign announced that Daniel Gross would be taking the reins.

Gross was formerly the director of the Center to Prevent Youth Violence. I can't find much about their funding. They were previously known as PAX, who received a $200,000 grant from the Joyce Foundation in 2004, but the trail appears to stop there.

Given that the Brady Campaign's budget has fallen into the four-digit range, I'm curious as to whether this guy is bringing in further funding, as they can't be paying him much.

Or, it might just be a part-time gig for him to build his resume.

Attorney General Eric Holder testified before the House Oversight Committee again today. As with his previous appearances, we were treated to a litany of evasions and excuses. Long story short:  he doesn't know what's going on in his department, and he claims to have had no knowledge of any gunwalking operations prior to the death of Brian Terry.

It's been over a year since he promised an internal investigation, and he has yet to provide any explanation or any proof of action. Representative Labrador pointed out that Holder continues to show up for Congressional hearings unprepared, and that he seems oblivious to happenings at Justice. Representative Farenthold took it a step further, asking Holder, "knowing what you know, do you think you're qualified to lead the Department of Justice?"

Holder's response? "If you're going to ask me to resign (…) you've asked the wrong question."

I don't think we are.

Continued »

Attorney General Holder gets another chance to testify to the House Oversight Committee Thursday morning.  Just in time, Representative Elijah Cummings has released a report [pdf] in which he claims to clear the White House and Department of Justice of any complicity in this matter.  Of course, if they were already clear, then why is this unsolicited "report" even necessary?

He doesn't go so far as to claim ignorance, only that,

[t]he Committee has obtained no evidence that Operation Fast and Furious was a politically-motivated operation conceived and directed by high-level Obama Administration political appointees at the Department of Justice.

Instead, Cummings settles for declaring that the administration did not conceive or direct Fast and Furious.  He seems to think that justification hinges on such semantic differences.

Of course, this flies in the face of facts.  US Attorney Dennis Burke has resigned after being caught providing false claims to his superiors, and newly available documentation [pdf] from NPR shows that Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer and ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson still approved of the operation's details as of February of 2011.

Continued »

A glitch in cubic interpolation. Sometimes the most novel results are the least expected.

Allais Loop  (01:03)

I'm uncertain how effective the Wikipedia blackout truly was. Most people who've mentioned it to me saw it as a massive inconvenience and little more. That's a shame, because a some lessons are being lost there.

1. SOPA is a bad bill, and one with potentially dire consequences for the entire internet.
2. At least one major pillar of the online community was willing to step up to protest it.
3. Most people don't care and would rather not be bothered. They had to endure 24 hours being deprived of a resource for which they pay nothing, and for which there are alternatives.

I hope just a small fraction of those folks will actually follow up and research the bill. If even some people choose to get active about it, all the better.

Speaking of which, those of us in Georgia really need to reconsider our choices in representation. Both Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss are cosponsors of the Senate version. Both men also voted for S. 1867. Remember that one? Chambliss has until 2014, and Isakson until 2016, but I won't be forgetting this.

Phil Gingrey is supporting the House version, and he is up for reelection this year. I'll vote for a Democrat who respects his constituents before I will a Republican who sells them out.

The FBI reports that there were 500,000 NICS checks performed for gun purchases in the week before Christmas. That's a record, beating even the whole post-election rush. There were 129,166 checks this Black Friday, beating the previous record of 98,000 in 2008.

The media, few of whom are in touch with the gun culture, are postulating all sorts of reasons for the boom, but they're missing the real factors. I submit that this year's record numbers are more due to increased interest in the hobby and confidence in the economy than they are to paranoia, crime, or politics.

In 2009, panic buying was the order of the day. They were coming for our guns! Get 'em before the ban! Society was on the verge of collapse. People were buying guns just to buy guns. I worried that few, if any, would actually get training or take up shooting as a pastime.

I'm relieved to say I was wrong.

The character of this year's rush was completely different: happier, calmer, more informed, and more inquisitive. A much larger percentage of buyers are repeat purchasers, and they're getting guns with the enjoyment of shooting in mind. Enrollment in training courses has risen exponentially. Folks aren't yelling about politics anymore. Rather, they're getting advice on being better shooters.

What a breath of fresh air! Now, can we just get past the whole zombie thing, please?

(Incidentally, that figure is only the number of individual checks, not the actual number of firearms transferred. Multiple firearms in the same transaction only get one check. Additionally, purchasers in many states can bypass the check if they have a carry permit, so we can likely assume the real number is 30-50% higher.)

H.R. 2055, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, has passed the Senate and is on its way to the President's desk. The NRA managed the inclusion of three pro-2nd Amendment provisions in the final draft.

The first is quite self-explanatory, and very encouraging.

None of the funds available to the Department of Defense may be used to demilitarize or dispose of M-1 Carbines, M-1 Garand rifles, M-14 rifles, .22 caliber rifles, .30 caliber rifles, or M-1911 pistols, or to demilitarize or destroy small arms ammunition or ammunition components that are not otherwise prohibited from commercial sale under Federal law, unless the small arms ammunition or ammunition components are certified by the Secretary of the Army or designee as unserviceable or unsafe for further use. [p. 23]

The second provision is in Section 503 of Title V, and it puts the kabosh on the use of any funds from the National Institute of Health to promote gun control:

The prohibitions in subsections (a) and (b) shall include any activity to advocate or promote any proposed, pending or future Federal, State or local tax increase, or any proposed, pending, or future requirement or restriction on any legal consumer product, including its sale or marketing, including but not limited to the advocacy or promotion of gun control.  [p. 325]

The same language appears in Section 218 of Division F [p. 300], which seems to have the President a bit miffed.  According to a statement he released today,

Additional provisions in this bill, including section 8013 of Division A and section 218 of Division F, purport to restrict the use of funds to advance certain legislative positions. I have advised the Congress that I will not construe these provisions as preventing me from fulfilling my constitutional responsibility to recommend to the Congress's consideration such measures as I shall judge necessary and expedient.

Of course he can still make his recommendations, but he can't use government money to do the legwork for him.

Two years after the election, gun sales are still going through the roof.

Two years after the boom in sales, violent crime is still dropping.

As I've pointed out before, correlation does not equal causation. We can't attribute the drop in crime to an increase in gun sales. What we can show, however, is that a vast increase in civilian gun ownership does not lead to more crime.

In other news, Eric Holder's trotting out the race card:

This is a way to get at the president because of the way I can be identified with him, both due to the nature of our relationship and, you know, the fact that we’re both African-American.

"Nature of the relationship?" Like being the Attorney General of the United States? Or maybe it's due to the fact that he's so incompetent he can't keep rogue elements in line, can't orchestrate a decent coverup, and doesn't have the political acumen to throw anyone under the bus, even if it means saving his own lying skin.

Or maybe it's just that wretched walrus mustache.

But it did. Blaine Tyler was openly carrying his handgun in a Richmond gas station when a teenage sociopath grabbed it. Unarmed, Tyler gave chase and was fatally shot with his own gun. To make things worse, his assailant went on to kill a second person hours later.

Tyler was deliberately targeted for his weapon, something people keep telling me never happens. Well, here we have it. Perhaps better situational awareness, equipment, or training might have helped, but at the end of the day, he would not have been targeted if his weapon wasn't plainly visible.

Having the weapon exposed adds a significant element of risk back into an equation meant to mitigate risk in the first place.

The Supreme Court has refused [pdf] to hear United States v. Masciandaro. That leaves Woollard v. Sheridan, which still has decent odds of making it to the calendar.

There's been some scuttlebutt that the Court would rather hear a "pure" case in which the petitioner isn't someone appealing a criminal conviction. Both the Heller and McDonald cases fit this bill, as they were brought by law-abiding citizens appealing unjust laws. In such cases, the Court can address a constitutional issue directly, without having other logistical issues getting in the way. Woollard is a compelling case that gives them that opportunity.

In happier news, that's the CZ P-01 with a Ka-Bar pistol bayonet at the top. Sure, CZ made one a few years back, but this one is lighter, and it has a really good blade. I don't know why the world needs more of these, but hey: it looks cool.

I still haven't figured out a holster solution for it.

I finally got to shoot the P210 on Saturday, and Earl here volunteered to take a few rounds for the sake of experimentation. The group is a mix of 147gr Hydra-Shok, 9BPLE, and 127gr +P+ Ranger. It was shot at a measly 20' since I haven't had a chance to shoot for nearly six months, and my skills have atrophied a bit.

The gun doesn't seem to care much about bullet shape or weight, and it's very consistent. Given its heritage, I expected it to prefer hotter European ball for target purposes. I was pleasantly surprised that this wasn't the case. It fed the mild Atlanta Arms 115gr loading quite well, the only issue being that the slide failed to lock back after the final round.