Wanted: the rest of the freakin story

Update at the bottom.

A Virginia man was arrested in New Jersey yesterday on weapons charges. The NBC 4 Washington article goes well out of its way to paint this in the most harrowing light possible, but something smells fishy; notably, the absence of any important details, and the overwhelming amount of journalistic accoutrements.

OK, so this guy is wearing body armor and runs from the cops, who then tackle him and find a rifle on him? Were these uniformed cops? If they were plain cloths, I can see how someone would run from them. How many cops have you met that would tackle a guy with a rifle? They had to have seen it on him. More likely they would surround him with weapons drawn, and then shoot him if he grabbed the rifle. These are New Jersey cops we're talking about, and the article says that the guy was acting suspicious, whatever that means these days.

The central part of the story is that the guy had a map of a military installation on him. Whoopty do. Perhaps he had an AAFES map, of even worse, a Google satellite image. I mean, this could mean just about anything; that he had an easily acquired map of a military base doesn't automatically make him Al-Qaeda, despite how desperate the media would like it to be so. If I turn out to be wrong, well, I've eaten plenty of crow in my day.

Next, we have positive confirmation that the onslaught of emails correcting news monkeys on the differences between semi-auto and full-auto weapons seems to be sinking in, but we still have some work to do with that childish "assault thingy" term that they sit around all day waiting to use. And apparently it now only takes two weapons to equal a "cache," or otherwise known as a "host" of weapons. One of these dreaded beasts is what's reported to be a M240 grenade launcher, but that can't be verified right now because a) it's being reported by a goon who works in a news organization that is using a picture of a M240 found on the internet, and b) because cops in New Jersey generally don't know the make and model of any firearm that is not issued to them.

Man arrested in possession of Winchester Model 70, and Ruger 10/22. What the cops report - "Man, I'm tellin' youse right now that this is the same gun used in dat movie Eraser!"

How the news reports it - "Cops tonight report that they caught a dangerous, sex offending, transvestite "teabagger" with a massively large cache of what appears to be two of those R2D2 lazer thingies used in the movie Under Siege 2. Here's Tom with the weather."

Also of interest, our esteemed bad guy had "high power ammunition," which probably means WWB ammo from Wal-Mart. Let's hope he didn't have any of that super deadly Extreme Shock ammo, because things could have really gotten out of hand. Note that he was charged with having "armor penetrating bullets," which I'm guessing that in NJ means that it was ball ammo, but I could be wrong. It really doesn't matter, as any .223 Remington ammunition, or centerfire rifle cartridges for that matter, can penetrate a bullet resistant vest. That's a fact.

The only thing that points to him being a possible scumbag is the defaced serial number. I'm sure that there's still more to that than meets the eye.

Again, he may turn out to be a bona fide scumbag, but I'm just not seeing it. That cops in general, and reporters specifically, don't know jack about what type of firearm is which, and adding the fact that both parties are well known for pouring on USDA Grade A+ awesomesauce onto anything they do, I have to have doubt. When there is a documented effort to accurately report the facts as they really are, then I will start to give merit to stories like this.

I'll post more on this if I can get it.

Update: The FBI is saying that the guy is not a terrorist. The press goes into full blown BS mode and is saying the guy had an anti-tank rifle because it was chambered in .50 caliber - meaning it was chambered in the .50 Beowulf cartridge from Alexander Arms. The other rifle is a 308, and the grenade launcher is a Cobray 37mm, which to my knowledge only launches flares. So much for that. Also, tremble in your boots knowing that this guy had a "middle eastern head scarf." Hopefully the cops don't find any more of his deadly stash.

Pro-gun media spotlight

Two great articles from the press on firearms that are of note. One from The Washington Times:
EDITORIAL: The forgotten virtue of firearms

The other, covered by Captain of a Crew of One, is from the Richmond Times Dispatch:
A. Barton Hinkle column: Gun-Control Advocates Play Fast and Loose

These are the types of gun related articles that should get read by the masses, and not the factually empty ones that are so common these days. Way to go!

Rubber rifle, you're the one. .. .

. . .you make gun buybacks lots of fun!!!

The VCDL blog The Sentinel is quick to point out that the Assault Thingies turned in during a LA gun buyback program were as fake as fake can be. Good eye!

Also pointed out in comments at the LA Times article is that since the guns are made of rubber and scrap metal, they can't actually be "cleared" because they don't fire cartridges and they don't have removable magazines! What were those deputies thinking?

Nothing like getting $5,800 for some junk!

This story is cross posted at Captain of a Crew of One. Stop by and check it out!

Guns of the NBA

No doubt you've heard about the two Washington Wizards players pulling guns on each other, and if you haven't, then read up here.

To level things out, lets get to the bottom of the details of what's going on here.

Some facts:

1. The NBA Commissioner David Stern doesn't like guns, and the NBA forbids possession of them in any facility where the players are.
2. The former owner, Abe Pollin, said the word "bullet" reminded him of "guns and violence," and this idea was somehow reinforced when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, so he changed the teams name from the Bullets to the Wizards.
3. One of the players who pulled a gun in the locker room, Gilbert Arenas, kept his firearms unloaded, locked in a box, because he had kids at home and wanted to keep his home safe.
4. It is illegal to keep firearms of any kind outside of your private residence in DC.

Now, despite Arenas effort to keep his guns separate from his kids, he is a negligent moron if he really did point a gun at his teamate for any reason except to prevent a violent criminal act. This is not the case; and there seems to be little dispute that the two players pointed guns, so they are both idiots who should be treated as such by the legal system before they are punished by NBA by-laws.

If the NBA is going to continue on with creating and enforcing fascist laws that prevent the thousands of non-negligent players from using firearms to protect themselves, than they need to come up with a way for their players to safely store their guns instead of leaving them with no recourse other than to break said laws and jeopardize their careers. And regardless of David Stern's uneducated opinion, it is not "fact" that guns make people less safe. He announces this opinion without any supporting evidence, which is what is expected from such moral cowards who would prevent players from exercising their basic human rights using fiat laws in their contract. There is substantial Fact showing that gun ownership actually makes people more safe.

Lastly, the family of Abe Pollin seemed to be on the right track with their statement about the two players pulling guns, but then they run right off the rails by stating that "the fact that guns were brought into the Verizon Center is dangerous and disappointing and showed extremely poor judgement," and "Guns have absolutely no place in a workplace environment and we will take further steps to ensure this never happens again." Wow. It would seem that imposing contractual by-laws, not to mention DC code, had no impact whatsoever of preventing two jackasses from bringing firearms into a league arena and pointing them at one another. So I take it they're going to make things illegaller this time. Let's try again!

The MAC 10 Machine gun menace strikes again

This time in New Jersey where DEA agents find a MAC 10 Machine gun Kel-Tec SUB 2000 semi auto carbine. From the Spike TV show DEA:





Aaahh, fellas. . . .you should probably know that the gun is definitely not a machine gun.

Most law enforcement is not at all familiar with weapons other than the ones that they are issued, and even then they sometimes have problems. I realize that these guys probably don't know or care about the exact details of the gun that they just confiscated, but they do make it a point to throw around the words "MAC 10" and "Machine gun" quite a bit, and the difference is no small potatoes. This guy was probably charged as being in possession of such, and if so than he would have to defend himself against those charges. I don't know NJ firearm law, but federal firearm law is what the DEA is accusing this guy of breaking with that weapon, even going as to tell him that the sentence will be 10 years.

There is also the fact that they caught him with like 40 pounds of pot, and that having a gun in conjunction with pot ups his sentence. I got that. It just makes one wonder what other kind of simple stuff they get wrong, and what the impact of that could be.

I also note that in this episode, these agents pull up next to a guy who had gone into and come out of a store that they were watching, and basically jumped out at him while in plain clothes and took him down. One of the agents didn't have even his badge visible. I shudder to think of something like that happening to me in a case of mistaken identity. What would your reaction be if you were walking down the sidewalk when two cars come to a quick stop next to you and several guys dressed like scumbags come jumping out at you? Scary huh?

Some more perspective

I was skimming through pictures on MilitaryPhotos.net this morning and when I came across the thread about Weapons Seized from Drug Cartels by Mexico's Military and LE, I saw something that I'd like to point out.

Notice the first picture on post #187: those shiny gold thingies that were confiscated from some cartel members are 40mm grenades, the same exact type of grenades that can be seen here on post #8889, third and fifth picture down, in the hands of the Mexican military on their MK19 grenade launchers.

Weird huh? I wonder where the cartels got those grenades from? US gun shows?

If you cruise on through those pictures of the cartels, you'll notice that those grenades appear in lots of photos. There are also hand grenades galore.

I just wanted to keep discrediting the "Mexican drug cartels outgun the Mexican government with guns bought from US gunshows" meme.

Speaking of weapon reliability

It looks like the little punk that shot at his teacher with a rifle at the Northern Virginia Community College didn't know how to use it. Armed Canadian has a rundown on why the shooting isn't getting wall-to-wall media coverage.

This might start a flame war, but all firearms are capable of jamming at some point, and if you shoot them enough they surely will. The young scumbag was using a bolt action 30.06 rifle without an optic, which is the epitome of simplicity when we're talking about guns, and it still jammed. I've jammed just about every bolt action, as well as pretty much any other type of gun that I've ever owned, and that is because if you shoot them a lot they will eventually malfunction. Man made things always do. Learning to overcome jams may just save your life, and can only be accomplished with practice.

Crime guns: a look inside a gun free zone

A Monday night sweep of the D.C. Jail discovered several weapons, including a 9 mm Glock found in a pay phone accessible to inmates.

Several knives and cell phones also were recovered by corrections officer.

That's not even the surprising part! The gun is thought to be the same one used SIX YEARS AGO!!! THE SAME ONE!! Not only that, but the jail has had shootings in it before - from drug deals gone bad to inmate conspiracies to shoot one another and sue the jail for it.

What a perfect little world they live in. The most trusted guards in our nation's capitol can't keep guns out of a jail full of inmates.

I KNOW!! We should bring that style of safety to every American city!! Yay safety!!!!

Vetting The Military Channel

I just got done watching Ultimate Weapons on The Military Channel, and I have to say that this show was worse than most of their other ones. I love watching the channel, really, but so do millions of other people, most of whom are not military, and the amount of errors that this channel racks up is just ridiculous.

The first thing that I noticed was the suppressor noise from the rifle that made number ten, ***spoiler alert*** the M110 SASS. They had to do it, just had to add that "pfft" noise over the normal sound of the rifle. Not only that, they sometimes switched to the James Bond type "fweeep" noise instead of the "pfft" noise, and then sometimes they forgot to add it in altogether. Why go out of your way to be retarded? Why not just let the viewers hear what a suppressor really sounds like? Leave the fake special effects to Hollywood.

Also, they note that the M110 was developed by Eugene Stoner because the military needed a "7.62" round - which is captioned by the 7.62x39mm Russian round - so he up sized the M16. Eugene Stoner did not design the M110, because he was dead like ten years before it was designed. What they meant to say was that he designed the "7.62" AR-10 before he designed the AR-15 which fires the 5.56 NATO. Also, it's humorous that they distinguish Stoner as designing the M110 when they interview Reed Knight about the weapon.

Next, they highlight the Marine Corps M40A3 sniper rifle, but say it shoots the 6.5x47mm Lapua cartridge, and show it as having the Accuracy International folding stock.

Lastly, I'd like to poke fun at their rating system. The Accuracy International AS50 gets a full five points for being portable because it can be broken down in order for its tremendous size to be carried, and weighs 31 lbs according to the show, but a 16 lb bolt gun only gets three points despite it not needing to be carried in several pieces on the battlefield.

One would think that the show could fix these errors before viewing, especially since they have people like Ronnie Barret talk over several of his guns which made the show.

Hey Military Channel, how about a little accuracy?

Gun control in Chicago

Steve Chapman at Reason.com casts a light on the hypocrisy of Chicago politicians and their insistence of disarming everyone but themselves.

An enlightening and quick read.

If firefighters didn't have firetrucks

Then they wouldn't be so gung-ho about running into fires, which would actually make them safer.

Jacob Sullum at Reason.com does a great job of tearing down the latest anti-gun study released on the American Journal of Public Heath.

It's quick and worth your time.

Give me fuel, give me fire, give me that which I desire

"Assault weapons, as we now know here in Mexico, are helping to fuel extraordinary violence," he said. "Having said that none of us are under any illusion that reinstating that ban would be easy."

So it's the Mexican drug cartels that are driving up AR15 prices, not your stupid reputation and cabinet/Sureme Court Justice picks? That's not what the douchebag is implying, but that would be the case if he weren't really lying through his teeth.

I love how Obama's ignorance inadvertantly placed blame on a federal agency, when he was trying to blame US gun laws:

The camcorder shakes as it films the thud of thick .50 caliber bullets ripping through a steel plate target in the heat of the Arizona desert. Panning across the jagged rocks and cacti, the camera then focuses on the shooter: a smiling Mexican sitting down on the dust as he uses both hands to fire the huge state-of-the-art weapon that can tear through tank armor. He was the happy customer, having bought the killing machine from an Arizona gun shop for about $21,000.

That's a smokin deal on a Browning M2 machine gun! Too bad that it has been regulated by the ATF since 1934! Oooops!

For a Mexican cartel scumbag to be able to buy it from a gun store in the US, he would have had to go through the tedious and lengthy machine gun buying process that is run by the BATFE.

So president Obama, who really fucked up? Was it US gun law, or the ATF?

There is so much more in this article to fisk, but I don't have the time.

The stupidity has begun

Three of the four guns found with Sodini were traced back to him, and authorities are in the process of tracing the fourth, Moffatt said. They were two 9 mm semi-automatics, a .45-caliber revolver and a .38 in his pocket. Sodini also had 30-round ammunition clips that were illegal before the assault weapons ban was lifted in 2004, police said.

Here we have CNN's Susan Candiotti typing off at the mouth without doing a simple search for the facts.

From an exhaustive 38 second Wikipedia search on "Federal Assault Weapons Ban":

"The law prohibited newly-manufactured detachable magazines with a capacity of more than ten rounds manufactured after enactment of the law from sale, transfer, or importation. One effect was the increased importation from other countries of large quantities of magazines manufactured before the ban."

My emphasis. The magazine that the scumbag used was not "illegal before the assault weapons ban was lifted," it is perfectly legal then as it is now.

I'm not seeing as to how it makes one bit of difference either way; the guy had four handguns on him. Where it does make a difference is to what the public knows as the truth. It's my understanding that journalists have a responsibility to show the truth, and that means that they have to verify the correctness of what they're writing about.

Obviously that's too hard for just about anyone in the media these days.

Why not register guns?

Because it's stupid!

Problem solved!

If you would like to know more about why it's stupid, than head on over to Armed Canadian for a fantastic write up about this very subject.

Activism at its finest!

LTE on spree shooters

Written by a former FBI Agent in The Free Lance Star, it mostly covers the elements of stopping a active shooter from a law enforcement perspective.

"All patrol cars must be equipped with military-style rifles and sufficient ammunition to sustain a firefight. The length of many institutional hallways is beyond the marksmanship capabilities of most police officers armed with handguns. A competent and aggressive rifle program must be part of every patrol officer's skill."

That might make some people suck air, but if you were a cop responding to a shooter in a building, would you rather enter with a rifle or a handgun? I would pick the rifle every time, and agree that a good rifle program is paramount.

As for the other elements of the equasion:

"Teachers, administrators, students, and others are most likely to confront the shooter. Some adults must be armed, trained, and courageously willing to defend themselves and other innocents."

Again, I agree. To some, if a person is not wearing some sort of uniform with a shiny thing on their chest then they are totally incapable of handling a weapon. How ridiculous.

I have heard the arguement that teachers are too busy concentrating on students to be able to handle a weapon, and that multi-tasking in that way will cause them to, like, randomly fire rounds in every direction in the event of a shooting or something. They simply can't do day-to-day things with a firearm on their person. It's too complicated.

I don't think that they realise that cops don't wander around with their hand on their weapon all day, and that most of what they do does not involve using it. If they can write tickets, break up fights, chase down bad guys, and chew gum while walking with a holstered handgun, then so can any other human being. Sending school faculty through a voluntary firearms training course and having them qualify annually, if not more, would put them on a level where they would be of use in the event a spree shooting.

If none of them volunteer, then so what? I'm sure many teachers in many states wouldn't want to participate, and I'm not saying that they would have to. But they shouldn't be denied the opportunity.

The last taste of the article, which should be read in full, is this:

"For many reasons, we will experience more of these incidents in businesses, restaurants, shopping malls, and religious centers, as well as in institutions of learning. In particular, shooters seek "gun free zones," because they know they will more likely not be opposed."

"Instead, let's be ready for them."

That's sound advice.

A severe flogging

Kevin of The Smallest Minority responds to an anti-gun blogger's assertion that he has not proved anything with facts by posting an Uberpost that does just that.

I do note that criticizing someone for not trying hard enough, and then criticizing them when they put out a tremendous effort is wrong on every level.

Kevin definitely put in the effort, so go and give it a read.

Can gun control work?

ABC News, in a drastic change of direction on their anti-gun stand, interview Jim Jacobs, a New York University professor and criminologist who has studied gun control for most of his life, and has authored a book with the above title, who says that it's not possible to keep firearms out of the hands of criminals. Not with laws or otherwise.

The question of "if it saves at least one life, shouldn't we just try?" comes out, but he says the cost of countering that with gun control would be too high, and that there may be other consequences.

Of course the Brady Campaign was quoted in all of this, but Jacobs casts that aside by saying that the Brady Law may have "some very limited" impact in the attempted purchase of a firearm by felons, but that they would just get a gun from else ware.

Excellent work by ABC News. Go give it a look.

And the truth shall set you free

FOX News did some investigative journalism on the Mexican Gun Fiasco and managed to find some truth.

It's about time.

The "90% of guns seized from cartels" line that you keep hearing? It's more like 17%.

The article goes on to state that many of the automatic weapons come from over 100,000 Mexican soldiers that left their post and took their guns with them.

"The predominant source of guns in Mexico is Central and South America. You also have Russian, Chinese and Israeli guns. It's estimated that over 100,000 soldiers deserted the army to work for the drug cartels, and that ignores all the police. How many of them took their weapons with them?"

Ed Head, an instructor at Gunsight Academy in Arizona said:

Some guns, he said, "are legitimately shipped to the government of Mexico, by Colt, for example, in the United States. They are approved by the U.S. government for use by the Mexican military service. The guns end up in Mexico that way -- the fully auto versions -- they are not smuggled in across the river."

And there you have it.

Read the whole thing.

Update: Watch the video. Good stuff, huh? The reason most of the weapons such as select fire AK47s seized from the cartels are not traced back to the US is because they don't have serial numbers. How can they be traced without them? US firearms must have a serial number in order to be legally owned and transferred, with the exception of weapons made or imported before 1968. Good luck finding any of those in the US.

Update: AG Eric Holder is now saying that the US is not looking to change gun laws to stop over and under shotguns from being smuggled into Mexico:

Holder said the U.S. is not seeking to change any of its gun laws as part of the effort to curb weapons smuggling.

"I don't think our Second Amendment will stand in the way of what we have begun," he said.

Let's hope he means it.

Update: ABC News is still saying that guns are coming from the US, but tries to change the tone into something subtle that the casual reader will not pick up:

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives reports that up to 95 percent of guns seized at scenes of drug violence in Mexico can be traced to U.S. commercial sources. These weapons are increasingly higher-powered, including .50 caliber rifles and armor-piercing ammunition.

So now it's 95%, huh? I would love to know where they got that number from, and why they didn't bother to tell the readers that the weapons were originally sold to the Mexican government.

Update: Damn!! ABC News put out a ton of articles on the Mexican Gun Farce yesterday. This one is the most interesting though:

Try to bring a refrigerator into Mexico in the back of your pickup, and you are almost certain to get stopped by Mexican customs officials.

Stick a couple of AK-47 rifles in your trunk, and chances are you'll whiz right through.

Chances are that if this article was printed on paper it wouldn't be worth letting your dog whiz on. This fantasy crap is somewhere in the vicinity of the "teddy bears are more regulated than guns" fiction that the media loves to spread. But there's more:

North of the border, however, the cartels simply pay straw buyers to pick up weapons at gun shops, gun shows or flea markets, then resell the arms to smugglers.

Perhaps in small amounts, and most of them are handguns. Now, we're getting into the good stuff here, and ABC News uses their single source of information, ATF Agent Tom Mangan, to disseminate the same lies that they have been spreading for at least a year:

"A year ago, we never saw those guns [Barrett .50 cal] going south into Mexico," said Tom Mangan, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. "Now we refer to it as one of the weapons of choice."

Did you mention the hundreds, if not thousands of Barrett rifles that were sold to the Mexican army? Of course not. But Associated Press Writer ALEXANDRA OLSON did think it noteworthy to point out this garbage:

And while cartels get most of their high-caliber assault rifles from the U.S., they are turning to Central America for other military-grade weaponry like grenades and even the occasional rocket launcher.

"High caliber" weapons come from the US? Like M16s? The M16s that we sold to the Mexican government so they can outfit the army with them? Sorry, they fire the 5.56x45mm round which is a far cry from "high caliber."

"You're seeing truly military-type guns, like grenade launchers," Mangan said. "They're not coming from the U.S. The hand grenades that are being used, you're looking at that stuff migrating up from Central America."'

Wow! ATF Agent Tom Mangan says something true! Weird. But not so fast:

Experts also agree that the Mexican military, which is often outgunned by traffickers, has not been a significant source of weapons despite the potential for corrupt soldiers to sell out to the cartels.

Many of the cartels' grenades and other heavy weapons could be leftovers from Central America's civil wars, Mangan said.

Just who are these experts? I presume that you actually meant Agent Mangan, since he is the only person you retards seem to be able to get information from and he has no problem being your sock-puppet when you need him to be.

What your "expert" is saying is that the corrupt Mexican government has too big of a heart to sell US made M16s and M203s to the cartels, and that the Mexican soldiers don't bother to keep their issued M60s and M4s when they walk off the job. If I was "outgunned" by the cartels because I only had an M16 or an M60 I probably wouldn't keep it either. Who wants to fight with such inferior hardware anyways. We all know that real narco-terrorists outgun the army and their silly H&K G36s with those AKMSUs.

What do you get when you don't bother to investigate to find the truth, but instead rely on one idiot ATF agent? Junk.

(H/T to Seth)

Vetting Wikipedia

Those of you who stop by Legion's Fate every now and then know that I have taken personal issue with the claims made by the mainstream media regarding the flow of weapons from the US into Mexico.

Now I'm sure that the cartels in Mexico are acquiring semi-auto rifles from the US in some amount, but the claims of every media outlet, as well as the ATF (who are driving the media's claims) border on the absurd. The story goes that these cartels are sneaking across the border into the US and paying soccer moms $100 to straw purchase full auto AK-47s, RPGs, M60s, .50 caliber M2 Heavy Machine Guns and smuggle them into Mexico. Those of us who are knowledgeable in the US firearms market and US firearms law know that this is patently untrue.
My investigations have led me to believe that this whole fiasco is the result of one tall tale telling ATF Special Agent who has led a retarded media to the cool waters of ignorance to drink.

My argument is that the cartels may be buying semi auto AK and AR copies from the US to some extent, but that the bulk of the weapons are coming from South American countries who have as standard issue all of the weapons that the ATF and Mexican government says the cartels are using, or the Mexican government itself. I'm sorry, but these weapons are just not available in sufficient quantity in the US to outfit an army of 100, much less the army of 100,000 that the cartels are known to have. They are, however, readily available from foreign countries for prices a fraction of the cost lower than that here in the states, and many of these failed socialist foreign countries wouldn't hesitate for a second to sell a truckload of grenades to some druglord.

But CTone, what the hell does any of this have to do with Wikipedia? I'm glad you asked.

I'm an advocate of Wikipedia. While you can't take anything said there as the absolute truth unless you check a secondary source, it does provide a handy base of information to start a search. Since anyone can change any article, there are sometimes crazy things posted (like what happened with the Chuck Norris page), but it does give those who are knowledgeable a means to make the information correct.

So there I was, this past Monday, reading through one of the many fraudulent stories about soccer moms buying RPGs at gunshows when I happened upon the Wikipedia entry for the Mexican Drug War. Seeing that the article lacked a great deal of fact, I created an account and proceeded to edit the page, adding a few legitimate references to round things off. Two days later the information I had added was removed by what I can only determine as a moderator of some sort named BatteryIncluded, who you may notice is knowledgeable in Viking Biological Experiments, Mars Science Laboratory, and Paragliding, but not Small Arms. It is also apparent that he (or she) is not knowledgeable in economics either, and neither am I for that matter, but I digress. As I am just learning the voodoo that is Wikipedia editing and don't want to step on any toes, I find my way into the discussion tab under the entry and proceeded to make my case.

I was informed that my argument on the price and availability of select fire AK-47s and RPGs and such was "interesting," but that I had not "[brought] forth any references," (which I quickly provided) and then I was provided dissent to my argument with exactly one link to a news report written in Spanish. I translated the linked page to English and showed that it reaffirmed my point, and I provided more information with references.

Boy, open forums for the exchange of ideas sure are great, huh!?!?

Not so much.

I was rewarded for all of my work with "The published reports by the FBI, ATF and DEA disgree with your opinion."

That's it. No linkage, no reference, not even a single solitary quote from a discredited ATF agent.
Now how is a website like Wikipedia supposed to keep any hope of correctness if the other person doesn't even bother to read the information provided? How do I know that my information wasn't read? Because when I noted that US regulations like the NFA, GCA, and FOPA kept prices of select fire AK-47s high, and also made them rare, BatteryIncluded responded to my point with:

"PS: due to its durability, low production cost and ease of use, the AK-47 remains the most widely used assault rifle in the world - so much so that more AK-type rifles have been produced than all other assault rifles combined. (Reference: AK-47). So much for your expensive and rare asumption."

The obvious problem in this statement is that US firearms regulations have absolutely nothing to do with production costs of foreign made weapons that were last imported into the US in 1968, but have everything to do with supply. The less supply, the more the demand, and the higher the cost, but BatteryIncluded would know all of this because I had already said it twice; he or she just didn't bother to read it (we wouldn't want something as trivial as fact to interfere with someone's opinion, now would we?)

I have provided a substantial rebuttal of facts, complete with legitimate and respected references, that is totally void of Spanish and not written by some idiot reporter late on a Friday afternoon, but I am asking my readership to take a stroll over there and provide some facts of your own.

This issue is important as it has a political impact on public opinion and US firearms law, and Wikipedia is used worldwide, and it would be a shame to let truthful information get trumped by media hysteria.

If anything, do it for the children!

Update: It seems he had a change of heart. I'm pulling together my sources to come up with something closer to the truth.

Maybe Wikipedia is not so bad after all.

Update on the California courtroom stabbing

From my post yesterday, the guy who stabbed a judge in a courtroom had a six inch knife that he made while in prison, and it looks like he smuggled it in inside of a knee brace.

There's a ton of stupidity going on here as there's questions of "how he got the knife," as well as a boatload of blame going everywhere but where it really should go: on those responsible for searching his murderous ass before he got to the courtroom. One spokesman from the Sheriff's Dept. actually blames the law for the incident.

First, it's pretty obvious from the pictures that he didn't "get" the knife; he made it with his own hands. I guess someone else could have made it for him, but he certainly didn't have it smuggled in by some guard who bought it from Gander Mountain.

Second, why the knee brace wasn't properly searched for a weapon is a good question. The guy was on trial for murder, so you would think that the officer(s) searching him would be thorough.

Third, and the point that I made yesterday, is that even in the most controlled environments, with armed police presence just a few feet away, and with an attacker already in restraints, an attacker is still able to cause severe harm or death to someone. It only takes seconds.

The idea of a sterile, 'safe', "Gun Free," "Drug Free" environment is fantasy even under the best conditions, so expecting schools, stores, office buildings, or hospitals - which have no armed cops a few feet away, no controlled searches of those entering, no restraints - don't have a chance in hell of stopping someone from doing harm by putting up signs or making violence illegal. It will not stop an attack.

Do you think this had any impact whatsoever on Paradiso:


Do you think it would stop a crazy gunman at the door of your nearest Wal-Mart?