Quantum levitation

Tonight's levitation video - from a demonstration at the Association of Science-Technology Centers 2011 conference, held in October at the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore:

Gun Rights News Roundup

Articles, news stories, and op-eds of interest to gun owners:

[Maryland] House panel approves two gun-related domestic violence measures:

A key legislative panel in Maryland yesterday approved central portions of Gov. Martin O'Malley's agenda for combating domestic violence, two measures that would give judges more authority to confiscate firearms from domestic abuse suspects.

At the same time, the House of Delegates' Judiciary Committee approved a separate bill that would make it easier for victims of domestic violence to obtain permits to carry handguns.

The three bills will now be considered by the full House. ...

Another David Codrea article on racism and gun control:

...

"These men are here to freely exercise their divine and, yes, constitutional rights...to defend ourselves and carry armed and loaded weapons..."

No, the speaker is not Charlton Heston, or anyone else associated with the NRA or other "gun rights" groups. These words were spoken by Malik Z. Shabazz, an attorney for the New Black Panther Party, commenting on about 50 armed black activists counterdemonstrating against the Ku Klux Klan in Jasper, Texas.

The Panther's affinity for Marxist dogma notwithstanding, their stand demonstrates the true meaning and power behind the Second Amendment's guarantee that the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. But the incident also speaks loudly for how rights are selectively recognized by the authorities.

Imagine the reaction had the police moved in and attempted to disarm the demonstrators. The reality is, they dared not. For had they met with resistance, they would have been forced to call in overwhelming power, which would surely have resulted in Panther deaths. Ever opportunistic politicians and a feeding-frenzied media would then do their utmost to inflame the situation to their best advantage. Can anyone doubt that this would further result in nationwide riots and the very real possibility of urban warfare?

Fifty men with guns exercised their rights, and the state was afraid to do anything about it.

[D.C.] More propaganda on the bill to give D.C. a House vote:

... Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District's nonvoting delegate to the House, said the Senate-approved provision allowing people who live within blocks of the White House to own military-style sniper weapons "is so reckless and radical that it puts at risk everybody from the president down to the kids that the amendment would allow to possess weapons."

The NRA and its many allies in Congress have been targeting the capital city since the Supreme Court, in a historic 5-4 decision last June, affirmed that the Second Amendment right to bear arms applied to private citizens and ruled that the District's 32-year-old ban on handgun possession was unconstitutional. ...

Via Hotair: Guns, guns, guns video:

Steve Crowder gives a hilarious look at both the gun-control policies of the Obama administration and the intellectual honesty of Michael Moore. The argument on guns is excellent, but the highlight comes when Steve demonstrates how Moore edits his interviews for, er, clarity:

Article on the the Obama administration and the National Parks carry rule:

... And, given Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's comments Friday, Obama might not reverse that policy any time soon -- if ever.

Salazar, a former Colorado senator and state attorney general, said he is reviewing the decision allowing park patrons to carry loaded and accessible weapons, but quickly pointed out the administration's respect of gun rights.

"I'm a defender of the Second Amendment, and President Obama also has a respect and understanding of the Constitution and particularly the Second Amendment, but we will take a look at the issue with respect to the environmental and public-safety issues that have been raised," Salazar said in a round-table discussion with reporters. "And we will, at the appropriate time, have a decision on that issue."
...
The groups say they understand the Obama administration is handcuffed in its ability to immediately toss the Bush-era decision, and they laud the review as a step in the right direction.

"There's a lot of interest in it and … they have to take their time on it; they can't just make swooping decisions on it," said Bryan Faehner, a spokesman for the National Parks Conservation Association. "They have to be careful and this review of environmental considerations is a very good step in the right direction."

Scot McElveen of the Association of National Park Rangers said the fact the Interior Department is doing a review "shows that they have some concern that maybe part of the process didn't follow the law."

And he warned that the groups -- while pursuing an injunction and now awaiting a response from the Interior Department -- won't be silent for long. ...

[Alaska] State lawmaker drafting bill modeled on one in Montana:

FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP) - State Rep. Mike Kelly says he's drafting a bill that would allow firearms restricted under federal law to be built and used in Alaska.

The Fairbanks Republican says the Alaska Firearms Freedom Act is inspired by a similar bill that passed the Montana House of Representatives. It allows someone to own firearms or components restricted by the federal government, as long as they are built and kept entirely in the state. ...

[Utah] The Salt Lake Trib editorializes against guns in company parking lots:

... Senate Bill 78 is the latest attempt by legislators to keep employers and other property owners from prohibiting gun storage in vehicles in private parking lots. Sen. Mark Madsen, R-Lehi, the perennial sponsor of this and similar bills, argues that this is not a clash of private property rights versus the right to keep and bear arms. Rather, he says, it is a clash of real property rights versus personal property rights, that is, the right of people to keep their personal possessions within the vehicles they own, regardless of who owns the land beneath the car. By that rationale, hazardous chemicals, explosives or livestock in private vehicles could not be prohibited from parking lots. ...

Dave Kopel provides an unofficial translation of Mexican gun laws (translated text available at the link, with link to the Spanish text as well):

... Some notes on the translation: This is not an official translation. None of the translators speak Spanish as their first language. Punctuation follows the Spanish text, even when the punctuation does not comply with modern English usage, such as the use of commas in places where modern English would not use a comma. In general, this translation does not attempt to rewrite the Mexican statute as if it were an American statute. Rather, the attempt is to provide a translation of the Mexican statute into English. For example, “la portación de armas” is often rendered by other translators as “bearing arms” or “carrying arms,” to match modern English usage. However, we have rendered the term as “the carrying of arms,” which is a more literal translation, and preserves more of the flavor of the Mexican text. Likewise, “requisites” is generally translated as “requirements.” We instead sometimes translate it as “requisites,” which, again, adheres more closely to the Mexican text. ...

Just your local neighborhood deer hunter

From Maryland:

A year ago, this would have been illegal: Mark Eakin, a federal oceanographer and avid deer hunter, sat in a portable tree stand with his bow at the ready, overlooking a small creek and two Rockville back yards on a cold January morning. As the camo-clad Eakin peered down, the weekday routine rolled down the street behind him, school buses, trash trucks and commuters heading toward Wootton Parkway.

"The worst is when people are out here with their leaf blowers," Eakin said. "You don't see a lot of deer then."

But Eakin, who has bagged eight deer since bow season began in September, isn't complaining about the suburban conditions. In fact, he's one of several hunters, game officials and residents to hail Montgomery County's surprising emergence as something of a deer-hunting haven.
...
Behind Montgomery's new openness to hunting, officials said, is public frustration with the whitetail population boom. Crumpled fenders, ruined gardens and the risk of Lyme disease have made residents much more receptive to hunters.

"They've gone from 'How dare you propose shooting the deer' to 'When are you coming to my neighborhood?' " said Rob Gibbs, head of Montgomery's Deer Management Working Group.

Article here.

The failure of ballistics databases

Short article on the failure of gun ballistics databases:

Seven years ago, New York started a database of "ballistic fingerprints" for all new handguns sold in the state. The bill's backers sold it as a crime-solving device, arguing that the state would now have a sample of a spent shell and bullet for every new gun sold. This, they said, would help police connect future evidence from crime scenes to specific guns.

Since then, the authorities have entered 200,000 newly purchased guns into the database and spent $1 million dollars a year on the system. Yet it hasn't led to a single solved crime. The only other state with such a database, Maryland, can attribute at least one conviction to the system since it was created in 2000-more than zero, but few enough that the state's own Police Forensics Division has suggested scrapping the program because of its demonstrated lack of benefits.

This hasn't come as a surprise to gun rights activists, who pointed to several potential problems when the databases were originally debated. Among them: The markings left by a gun are not guaranteed to be the same over the long term and can be deliberately changed with simple expedients such as filing inside the barrel; the vast majority of guns used in crimes are stolen or otherwise obtained in a black market, not used by their original legal owner; devoting so much record keeping to every gun sold guarantees wasted effort, since less than 1 percent of all guns sold will ever be used in a crime.

Article here. Apart from the almost complete failure of the existing databases in helping solve crimes, the other, more pernicious attribute of such databases is that they create a de facto gun registration scheme. And as history has shown us time and again, gun registration is often the first step towards gun confiscation. Indeed, registration is a necessary first step. And governments have murdered hundreds of millions of their own disarmed citizens within just the last century. Such atrocities are far more likely against an unarmed populace than an armed one.