Gun Free Zone

On an earlier post I mentioned that any gun owner worth his salt would make a bill of sale when transferring a firearm to a private seller. Some reacted quite harshly at the idea demanding to know if I was some sort of gun grabber/fascist/etc. My guess is that they don’t like the idea or have not though about it some.

Why a bill of sale? Basically you are looking to have some sort of documentation that proves you are no longer the owner of a firearm that might be involved in a crime later down in the timeline and for one specific reason: I do not want to give investigators a reason to check on me, but to send them down the line with a question answered fast and efficiently. This goes double if the firearm is a handgun bought from a FFL and you filled the dreaded form 4473.

Yes Virginia, sometimes Law Enforcement officers will trace the ownership of a gun from crime to manufacturing. As I heard it from former Taurus USA President Bob Morrison, any LEO organization investigating a crime can contact ATF to trace a firearm. ATF access the manufacturer’s database and in seconds knows where the gun was shipped to and the only thing they need to do is to contact the FFL who will go into the bound book and produce the name of the person who bought the firearm. If the name of the person does not match the name of the suspect or they do not have a name of the suspect, they may go ahead and drop by the address as it appears in the form and have a chat with the resident. If the resident is the person that appears in the 4473, there will be some questions asked until they are satisfied that person has nothing to do with the event or was not a contributing factor or is somebody whose character is less than stalwart or can be charged with a crime if they are really desperate to make progress or show a result.

I am particularly fond of mailing myself any possibly important document that needs to be time-stamped. Some call this “The poor man’s Copyright” as many songwriters have used to establish date of creation of a particular piece without having to go through the expense in time and money of registering the song by the usual means. Some advocate the use of registered mail and even leave it at a safe deposit box or mail it to your lawyer’s address with your name clearly in the envelope and instructions to your lawyer not to open and to be pout away in your file for possible future use. Any which way, it gets hard for any agency to say that the document in question is somehow suspicious if it bears marking of a federal institution. I will admit to certain amount of laziness and say I am satisfied with mailing the well-sealed envelope to myself. By the way, make some sort of notation on the outside of the envelope to know what the contents are inside.

In the unlikely event that you are visited by members of the badge, you can produce the sealed envelope and after demanding a receipt for it, you can turn the contents to the LEOs. And, of course you have a copy of the bill of sale tucked somewhere as back up till they end their investigation and return the document. I this age of digital everything, why not take that extra effort?

So, why give them a chance to screw with your life when a piece of paper can send them down the road in an expeditious matter and leave you alone?

Now, if you find this procedure an egregious assault against your rights as a citizen, just don’t buy a gun from somebody who requests a bill of sale. It is that simple.

I am wondering if it is also an egregious assault against your rights as a citizen to check if the firearm you are buying from private citizen is stolen or not.

Just a thought, you know?

According to AP, at least one of the bombs used in the Boston Marathon was made with a pressure cooker:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The explosives used in the deadly Boston Marathon bombing were contained in 6-liter pressure cookers and hidden in black duffel bags on the ground, a person briefed on the investigation told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

We have at least two of those things at El Castillo Gonzalez and I am well versed in their regular use. They are amazing items to use since they exponentially accelerate rate of cooking without compromising flavor. Whatever takes hours in a crock-pot, takes minutes in a pressure cooker.

However, keyword here is pressure. Accidental explosions with pressure cookers are very few and far between, but when they happen they are catastrophic. They usually happen because the user has disable the double security measures that come with the cooker by tampering with them or not checking them and maintaining them. When I was a kid, I remember seeing a report on the news about a small pressure cooker accident that left a 4 foot hole on an outside wall (made of cement blocks,) a destroyed stove, a kitchen that needed total remodeling and fortunately no casualties.

So if the report from AP is accurate, I can see how the horrendous damages inflicted on the victims happen. Beside any shrapnel added to the device itself, the flying pieces of metal coming out of the cooker itself made for very nasty cutting devices.

Here is a DHS Report on Pressure Cooker IEDs if you care for it. BTW, dear DHS, we use ours for cooking mostly beans, chick peas and making beef or pork stews. Mom would have a fit if they were used for any other purposes.

PS: If you feel like give pressure cooking a try, buy PRESTO and I particularly favor the steel ones. I am just not comfy with the ones made of aluminum.

If the Saudi guy in custody turns out to be the Boston Marathon bomber, DHS was watching other people who are much dangerous in their opinion.

But in Bizarro World, that makes sense.

From CNN, Students in other countries assessing where to study abroad are increasingly scared of coming to the United States because of gun violence, the nation’s top diplomat said Monday.

via Gun Save Lives John Kerry Says Foreigners are Afraid to Come to US Because of Guns.

I had to laugh hard at this one. I wonder how many F1 visa petitions are stuck somewhere in the processing department from students living in the 100+ countries that have a higher murder rate than the USA.
But I am guessing if you do politics at an international level, you must BS with extreme candor to help your boss who is taking a beating on the whole gun control issue.

…when lazy, coat-tail-ridding gun owners realize they can’t talk shit about the NRA.

I am getting a ton of pop-corn for this week.

As I type these words, there is an on-going and highly-distributed, global attack on WordPress installations across virtually every web host in existence. This attack is well organized and again very, very distributed; we have seen over 90,000 IP addresses involved in this attack.
HostGator Blog – Global WordPress Force Flood

Go and read the post above and then take action. I had installed Better WP Security about 3-4 weeks ago and forgotten about it. After reading that article, I decided to double-check my setting, improved on some stuff and checked the logs. To my surprise, I found out that I had 9222 404 errors! Apparently that is the way bad boys search for vulnerabilities and ways to break in.

If your blog is not secured or you suspect you may want to beef it up, do give Better WP Security a try. It install easy and the settings are explained. If you find it complicated or you are unsure, find something else, but get your blog secured.

Eddie Colosimo runs Holy Hill’s Bikers for First Amendments Rights restaurant and bar. It’s a non-profit that helps support military veterans.

Colosimo, a wounded Marine Corps vet, is passionate about United States Armed Forces. His granddaughter, grandson, and son-in-law are all serving in different branches of the military. So, Colosimo decided to fly military flags representing all our servicemen and women in front of his the restaurant.

“These flags represent our men and women all over the world for us today!” he said

via Vet defies city ordinance banning display of military flags – FOX 35 News Orlando.

Sometimes I think Mickey Town USA (A.K.A. DisneyWorld) has a nasty influence on Central Florida. They are so Stepford Wives is uncanny and one thinks local politicians are nothing more than PC Animatrons.