BusinessWeak says ... (with multiple choice quiz)

"Big Shots Go Down at Gun Show."

See, "big shot," "gun show." Clever play on words. Get it? Huh? Get it?

It's a quick and dirty report from the SHOT Show which in vintage wire-service speak might be called "a short book," meaning a couple hundred words or less on a story that could be ignored but which some editor decided deserved a mention.

This one hit BusinessWeek because of the FBI sting that corralled the SW sales veep along with about 20 others for bribery of an African, otherwise known as doing business in Africa. BusinessWeek seemed to agree with the feds that it would be just cuter than a baby monkey to make the actual pinches at the big industry trade show.

The piece also included the word we've been breathlessly awaiting, gun sales are down a little from the (pick one):

(a) 2008-2009 panic buying by mouth breathing rednecks driving rusty pickups with Confederate flags and hounds with fleas and ticks.

(b) elevated 2008-2009 sales level due to citizens who, fearing the new and more authoritarian government might decide that the Second Amendment was obsolete, chose prudently to equip themselves for whatever eventualities might occur.

Aftermath

A libertarian mentality can't get all that excited about Senator-elect Brown except in the sense that he derailed an even greater danger and that he seems to understand our respect for Amendment Two.

There is a certain pleasure in the confused annoyance with which the forces of His Obamaness are reacting to Massachusetts, 2010. A colleague who is still an active professional in the political game is betting that one result is Harry Reid announcing his retirement quite soon.

That would be nice, but the fallout I want to see before Valentine's Day is Rahm (I am a political genius) Emanuel back in Chicago, approving driveway permits for ward heelers.

More politics

Look, I know I'm guilty of almost live-blogging this Massachusetts senate race. But it is interesting, funny even, and I invite you go over to Politico and read, especially, Ben Smith's stuff. These guys -- Coakley staff on one side and Obama/Democrat national apparatchek on the other -- are all but imploding in real time, right before your eyes, even before it's known whether Coakley will lose to Brown. It is the Bickersons writ large.

Smith and Wesson; Bribing the Customer

SW vice president Amaro Goncalves has been pinched for allegedly bribing a couple of FBI guys posing as henchmen for the defense boss of an unnamed African government. Bribing is bad and y'all shouldn't be doing it. But l think that moral outrage would be most seemly coming only from men and women who have been required to do business with third-world thugs.