Griping about Games, Government, and Guns
(1) a shotgun having a barrel or barrels of less than 18 inches in length; (2) a weapon made from a shotgun if such weapon as modified has an overall length of less than 26 inches or a barrel or barrels of less than 18 inches in length; (3) a rifle having a barrel or barrels of less than 16 inches in length; (4) a weapon made from a rifle if such weapon as modified has an overall length of less than 26 inches or a barrel or barrels of less than 16 inches in length; (5) any other weapon, as defined in subsection (e); (6) a machinegun; (7) any silencer (as defined in section 921 of Title 18, United States Code); and (8) a destructive device.
Under federal law, all such “firearms” must be registered. From the definition, regular handguns, rifles, and shotguns are not included. Only short-barreled rifles & shotguns, machine guns, silencers, destructive devices, and AOWs are “firearms.” Possession of unregistered firearms is a felony punishable by up to ten years in prison and/or a fine of up to $10,000.
So when you read, gentle reader, that President Obama has pardoned someone for “possession of an unregistered firearm,” it means that the person pardoned had either a short-barreled rifle/shotgun, a machine gun, a silencer, a destructive device, or an AOW that was not registered with the ATF.
Now, it could be that Obama now thinks that heavily restricting the possession of firearms is a bad idea. If so, I agree, and I look forward to any proposal for repealing the NFA the president brings forward. Suppressors are great safety devices, and short barrels make rifles far less unwieldy. I shouldn’t have to pay a $200 tax stamp to the government to possess them, and I certainly shouldn’t be prevented from lending them to friends or family (I’m not even going to address the ridiculous necessity of gun trusts the NFA has foisted on us).
Considering Obama’s continued push for standard capacity magazine bans and a reinstatement of the ban on so-called assault weapons, I doubt that’s the case.
Donate to Honored American Veterans Afield by the end of March, send Linoge a enough of a copy of your receipt that he can verify you donated, and you’ll get one entry to win nifty prizes for every $5 donated!
I know A Good Day to Die Hard just came out, but instead of getting overpriced, overcooked movie popcorn, use that money to help returning veterans transition to life in the US.
It’s win-win!
Help veterans and win prizes!
Well, probably not so much winning prizes, but win-lose doesn’t sound as good. But who cares! After all, it’s only money! What else are you going to do with it?
I haven’t played a multiplayer FPS in some time, but Destiny looks awesome:
The Jack Reacher novels suck.
The action is okay, but the plots are predictable, and Lee Child’s ignorance of firearms is staggering.
If you’re reading a Reacher novel, prepare to be lectured about shotgun cones of death, how a .22 to the back of the head will take a person’s face off, and how FBI special agents are issued long-barreled revolvers.
You can’t escape the ignorance–Reacher was an Army MP, and any time someone is shot or he handles a gun, he inflicts on the reader his munificent experience (as distorted by the British author). Especially glaring is the constant reference to 12 bore shotguns (here in the US, we say gauge, not bore).
The Jack Reacher movie, on the other hand, focuses on the action and plot, and Tom Cruise does not narrate incorrect firearm information.
I wouldn’t have read the first Reacher book if I hadn’t seen the movie first; if I had read the book first, I wouldn’t have seen the movie, and it wouldn’t have been because Cruise doesn’t match Child’s description of Reacher.
It would have been because no book that bad could have been adapted into a movie of any worth at all.
As it is, the Jack Reacher film is a solid action movie, and the books are suitable for leveling that table that has one uneven length leg.
I know I said I would post a review of Wreck-It Ralph, but I got distracted by the new semester. And also by a few other movies. I also forgot to review Jack Reacher after I saw it in December, so I’ll get to it in a future post. Probably.
First, Wreck-It Ralph: it’s good (of course it’s good; it’s Pixar). John C. Reilly is funny, Sarah Silverman manages not to annoy, but Jane Lynch and the rest of the Halo-knockoff characters make the movie. My only complaint was that far too much of the story was set in the sickeningly pink girly-girly kart racing game instead of one of the other games. Disney also played the excellent short film Paperman before the movie, which would have almost been worth the price of admission alone (assuming you got tickets for really cheap, and not at standard ticket prices).
To cleanse the palate of animated Disney fare, I saw The Last Stand, Arnold’s post-governator return to moviemaking. The action was decent, but a lot of the film felt like they were just going through the motions–especially Arnold’s cracks about how old he is now. “I’m too old for this shit” jokes weren’t funny when Danny Glover was making them in the Lethal Weapon movies, and they’re still not that funny.
The great thing about Jason Statham movies is that you know exactly what you’re going to see: Jason Statham generally kicking ass and taking names. Parker is no exception. If you’re the kind of person who likes Jason Statham movies, you’ll like Parker. If you like the Parker novels, then I have no idea if you’ll like Parker, because I haven’t read any of them.
Which brings me to the last review for the day, and my favorite of the bunch: Hansel and Gretel, Witch Hunters. It’s tastefully gory (well, maybe just gory), funny, anachronistic (I have no idea what year they were going for, but they missed–not that there’s anything wrong with that), and action-packed. Hawkeye Jeremy Renner and Io Gemma Arterton are witch hunters, and they get hired to defend the town against the evil witch Jean Grey Famke Janssen, despite the objections of the town sheriff, Lucifer Peter Stormare. It’s everything a movie should be. Rotten Tomatoes puts it at 17% fresh, right in the so bad it’s good sweet spot.
Yesterday, inspired by the inauguration and Roman History, I tweeted:
The inauguration really ought to close with some random nobody following the newly sworn in president around, repeating "Memento mori."—
Bill Godbold (@wfgodbold) January 21, 2013
This morning, I awoke to a response to that tweet in DestroyTwitter that had sadly been deleted before I could get a screenshot on the actual Twitter page:
Now, I am fully aware that threatening the POTUS is a crime. It is a serious crime, and rightly so.
However, I did not threaten anyone; I suggested that the pomp of the inauguration might be best offset by having a non-politician, regular person follow the president around and remind him that he too, is mortal, and that this shall pass.
Robert VerBruggen over at NRO highlights a major problem with New York’s new seven-round magazine limit: chiefly that most modern handguns don’t have seven-round magazines.
At all.
One commenter asked whether “high” capacity magazines gave an advantage in a gunfight, but not against unarmed targets, and I responded with this:
Increased magazine capacity confers an advantage when one is limited by magazine quantity. If one wears gear making it feasible to carry a large number of magazines (as the Aurora shooter did), then the capacity of those magazines does not confer so great an advantage.
In other words, if you’re ammunition-limited, magazine capacity doesn’t matter. If you’re magazine-limited, magazine capacity does matter. Mass shooters have generally been the former, and the law abiding the latter.
I don’t carry because I want to shoot someone, just like I don’t have a first aid kit in my car because I want to practice emergency medicine.
I carry (when I can) because should I need immediate protection, the government has no obligation to provide it.
Apropos of David Gregory’s violation of Washington, D.C.’s strict liability standard capacity magazine ban, and the D.C. attorney general’s decision to forego prosecution:
Historically, selective enforcement is recognized as a sign of tyranny, and an abuse of power, because it violates rule of law, allowing men to apply justice only when they choose. Aside from this being inherently unjust, it almost inevitably must lead to favoritism and extortion, with those empowered to choose being able to help their friends, take bribes, and threaten those from they desire favors.
Of course, if you’re not David Gregory, and don’t have David Gregory’s connections, the D.C. attorney general is not nearly so understanding.
image via Patriot Outfitters
Tens–likely hundreds–of millions of such magazines are lawfully possessed in the United States by law-abiding gun owners. More than 1 million PMAGs are backordered from Magpul. Brownells sold through three-and-a-half years worth of magazines in three days.
Magazines like the one Gregory displayed on Meet the Press, and Magpul’s PMAG, are not complicated; they are made up of a box and a spring. Given the sheer number of standard capacity magazines in the United States, and the infrequency of mass shootings (they are not becoming more common, and your chances of being killed in a mass shooting are about the same as your chances of being struck by lightning), these magazines, as well as the AR-15 rifle (and all semi-automatic weapons) are in common use for lawful purposes.
If in common use is to mean anything at all, it must cover the AR-15–America’s most popular rifle–and standard capacity magazines.
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, あけましておめでとう、etc.
I hope everyone had a good holiday season, and that if you lost power (like I did), it wasn’t out for too long.
I have a few posts percolating (including a review of the hilarious Wreck-It Ralph), but I’ve been “busy” (those video games I got for Christmas and during last semester aren’t going to play themselves (if you import gamers were curious, Tales of Xillia 2 is pretty good), nor are the case surveys I’m doing for the law review going to write themselves!).
Also, I have finally read Cold Days. Jim Butcher is my master now. Ghost Story, while good, was a bit sedate for the series, and Cold Days returns to the nonstop action and wham lines. Hopefully Butcher will be back to his ~1 year per book schedule, instead of the almost 1.5 year per book he’s taken for the last two.
Next on the pile is Iain M. Banks’s Consider Phlebas, the first in his SF series on The Culture.
I may have to start sleeping even less.
