Giggle-snort gun report

Multiple layers of fact checking and editorial oversight  at the New York Times:

Correction: February 2, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the type of weapon that President Obama fired in a photo released Saturday by the White House. It was a shotgun, not a rifle.

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Some years ago a teacher's wife here went public with an anti-gun rant which included a charitable bone to us blasters. Something very like: "No one wants to take away your pistols for shooting skeet..."

The nice old lady didn't work for the New York Times. But she could have.

H/T Roberta.

Loophole report in, mostly, .22 LR

Scads. Hordes. Gobs. That's a former reporter's finely-honed estimate of the Saturday morning crowd size at the 80-table loophole over in Estherville. You could imagine yourself at Phoenix or Las Vegas, trying to (politely) elbow your way to the tables.

We talked with a number of people who probably never would have acted on a vague urge to "get a gun someday" were it not for the antics of Feinstein, Biden, Schumer,  &  Obama, Inc. I wonder if those clowns really know what they have done?

The psychology may be quite simple. Tell an American citizen he can't do some perfectly innocuous thing and he will grin and do it -- if only to remind the government,  "Who the Hell is in charge around here, anyway?"

We didn't notice much traffic in assaultish-looking rifles Only a few  were there, and they met resistance at the $2,000-plus askings.

But my oh my was it a different story with the Glocks and other hi-cap 9mms made of coal tar and Gorilla Glue. They moved out as fast as dealers could fill out 4473s and call NICS. (Note to Diane: These forms and the calls are how we evade the law and loophole most of our guns.) 

At our three tables, we had no truck with the 21st Century.  Two were resplendent  with the work of Genius Jeff, the gunsmith, who displayed an assortment of Lazarused Marlin lever guns, Winchester .22 pumps, and, especially, Stevens single rifles. 

The third, mine, was resplendent with what the unkind might call junk, leftover (or never wanted in the first place) shooty stuff and other items for field and stream jocks. I often set up that way because (a) it generates interesting conversations and (b) it nearly always yields enough small-denomination Federal Reserve Cartoons to finance some pleasant acquisitions. To wit:

The long drink of water is a hi-cap (16 rounds or  more) Remington Speedmaster, probably from the 60s. Didn't need it, but for an amazingly small amount of FRC "money" and a brick of .22s, I couldn't resist something so pretty.

Miss Short is, of course, a Browning Challenger, Belgian, an early piece but I don't know how early yet. Those waggish gnomes of Herstal like to get together, slurp pilsner to excess, and giggle at one another. "Hey! I'm bored. Let's make our serial numbering system even more obscure."

She joined my arsenal for a very modest dowry, but I'm afraid I stretched a sacred rule: "It is a mortal  sin to sell a gun."  I confess to  venal error. The Colt New Police  (.38 Colt /.38 SW) lives elsewhere. I rationalized the trade  --  I could shoot the Colt only by reloading for yet another caliber. Balderdash! Too many diameters already. The Browning will be shot and shot and shot.  I've coveted one for years.

Hmmm. Lots of .22s moved here lately. At least I'm ready for a gopher apocalypse.

Saturday Wish List

I don't think I'm a compulsive wisher, but sometimes I do get a yen for stuff.

--Like being the first guy at the garage sale to spot the old wood box containing a couple of disassembled GI Colt 1911s and most of an artillery Luger for about five bucks.

--Like having three or four fools linger at my loophole table this weekend -- guys who think that my stratospheric asking prices are really quite fair. And who, of course, are packing enough high-quality trading material to back their judgement. 

-- Like having the damned Super Bowl over. Also the post-game analyses and the extended video of the winner's homie thugs getting drunk, puking, and tipping over cars when the teevee lights go on.

Murder math in Chicago

Let me impose on your kindness. I know I'm know I'm giggling in public, a breach of taste and good manners.

Please forgive me. You see, I was just reading about Chicago, the political womb of one Barack Obama, sometimes known as His Ineptness, the lawyer-cum-neighborhood organizer. He is the politician who is, at the moment, busily explaining to us what the Constitution of the United States actually means.

As you have read, Chicago -- actually Cook County which is about the same thing --  lost a murderer the other day. The perp had been serving 60 years in an Indiana pen. Chicago borrowed him so he could be tried on an old "drug and armed violence case." Never mind that the case was closed, dismissed, six years ago. Never mind that Cook County prosecutors told Sherf Tom Dart that no prosecutor or  judge had a yen to talk with the Hoosier convict. But Sherf Tom Insisted, so the killer got a nice ride to Chicago, accompanied by a polite note from Indiana, "Y'all wanna please make sure and send this fella back when you're done with him?"

The sherf lost the paper. Somebody in uniform opened the jailhouse door and wished him  good luck. Hilarity ensued. Somebody caught the crook. Game over?

Not quite. That gradual warming trend for upper Illinois can be attributed to the hot breath of Chicago pols, screaming blame at one another. The sheriff finally admitted he and his troops were guilty of misfeasance, but not too guilty. Budget cuts, don't you know. An outdated computer. A Homeric load of work piled on his poor shoulders.

"It's our fault but we move 100,000 people a day and it's all done with paper," Dart said.

(Gratuitous full-frontal arithmetic follows. Reader discretion is advised.)

So, Sherf, you are telling us that you and your acolytes move the equivalent of the entire population of Cook County every 52 days? (5.2 million divided by 100k). Or that you can move every man, woman, and kid in Illinois  between Spring Training and the All-Star Break?  If you have enough paper, of course.

All that may be unfair to Officer Tom as a person. After all, he works in a mysterious numerical environment where a ward of 200,000 human beings can easily deliver 200,001 votes for Rahm, Daly, & Obama, Inc.

Besides, how could this Indiana killer have been part of "armed violence" in Chicago? Guns were (and generally still are) illegal there prior to McDonald, so he couldn't possibly have been armed. This principle has been carried to the White House whose occupant these days is offering it as a paradigm for America.