Intermittent Internet Connection Today: There are many desirable features of living in a small, relatively isolated community but one of the downsides of this one is inconsistent connection to the internet. This has caused undue delay in getting out today's mailing. --- Ninth Circuit to Review Nordyke: A federal appeals court in San Francisco set aside its ruling Wednesday - the only one of its kind in the nation - that allowed private citizens to claim a constitutional right to bear arms in challenging state and local gun laws. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a new hearing on a challenge by gun show promoters to a ban on firearms at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton. The plaintiffs say the ban, which county supervisors enacted in 1999, violates free speech and the constitutional right to possess guns. A three-judge panel of the court ruled in April that the Second Amendment is binding on state and local governments and allows individuals to challenge a county ordinance as a violation of the right to guns... But the court also said the Alameda County law was a valid public safety measure. The gun show promoters prepared to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. But Wednesday, the full appeals court said a majority of its judges had called for a new hearing before an 11-judge panel, nullifying the April ruling... http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/30/MNAA19177V.DTL --- Ohio Senator Maligns Southerners: One week after ignoring thousands of phone calls from his constituents and helping a Democrat filibuster kill nationwide CCW reciprocity, Republican Senator George Voinovich of Ohio told editors at the Columbus Dispatch he knows what the Republican party's biggest problem is. According to the anti-gun Senator, who has decided to retire after recognizing a 2010 re-election bid would meet the same fate as anti-gun Mike DeWine's did in 2006, Ohioans just can't relate to pro-gun Republicans from the South. On Monday, Voinovich told Dispatch editors "We got too many Jim DeMints (R-S.C.) and Tom Coburns (R-Okla.). It's the Southerners. They get on TV and go "errrr, errrrr." People hear them and say, 'These people, they're Southerners. The party's being taken over by Southerners. What they hell they got to do with Ohio?'" Judging by the 2006 defeat of Mike DeWine and the fact that Voinovich is not running again, the real question that has been asked, and answered, by Ohio voters is "what the hell do these anti-gun Republicans have to do with Ohio?" ... http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/node/6805 --- Tennessee City Delays Park-Carry Vote: Knoxville City Council locked and reloaded Tuesday night in the debate on guns in parks, postponing a vote on whether to opt out of the new state law. One group is setting its sights on stopping the ban. "I guess we're all a little bit disappointed. We came to speak and talk and hear the vote, but that's okay," Mike Mollenhour says. Mollenhour and a group of other gun rights supporters, the only ones who admitted they came out for this issue, say they'll continue to fight for their freedom under the Second Amendment. "We've not gone out and shot people in parks or kids. You can't find any evidence that any of our people have committed those kinds of things," says NRA member Bill Noll. "When they ban the parks, what they do is they ban us who have the carry permits. They don't ban the felons. What they do is they create a safe workplace for the armed felon," says Liston Matthews, a member of the Tennessee Firearms Association. The new state law will allow guns in parks starting September 1, unless a local government decides otherwise... http://www.wate.com/Global/story.asp?S=10807245 --- Burress Expresses Remorse over Shooting Himself: Plaxico Burress, the former New York Giants receiver, asked a Manhattan grand jury for sympathy when he testified about a November night when he accidentally shot himself in the leg at a nightclub in Midtown with a handgun he was carrying illegally, he said Wednesday. After more than two hours, Mr. Burress emerged from the Manhattan district attorney's offices, where the grand jury was convening, to express remorse over the incident, which could land him in jail and decide the fate of his once-surging career. "I was truthful and I was honest, and I'm truly remorseful for what I've done," Mr. Burress said. Dressed in a gray pinstripe three-piece suit, he towered, at 6-foot-5, above the jostling throng of reporters and cellphone-camera-wielding onlookers. He finished the brief statement by thanking his fans, friends and family for their support... (As I recall the incident, Burress shot himself when he grabbed for the unhlostered gun that had slipped from his waistband.) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/nyregion/30plaxico.html?ref=nyregion --- Oops, Wrong Apartment: Orange County [FL] Sheriff's deputies say a robbery victim turned the tables on two robbery suspects. "I was in my bedroom sleeping and all of a sudden I heard a pow, pow, pow," said eyewitness Barry Quintin. Deputies say Miguel Jimenez was walking into his apartment at Villa Tuscany near Ocoee when 18-year-old Andri Benjamin ran up, put a gun in his face and tried to rob him. But Jimenez was carrying a loaded revolver and a concealed weapons permit to go along with it. He pulled his gun out and shot Benjamin several times, killing him. Neighbor Barry Quintin says his roommate opened their front door moments after the shooting. "We saw the person laying down on the ground and I was like shut the damn door, and he's like, he's bleeding, and I'm like shut the door and call 911," said Quintin. Deputies rushed to the scene while Jimenez was holding the second suspect at gunpoint.... http://www.wftv.com/news/20179569/detail.html --- Oops, Wrong House, Nevada Version: An attempted home invasion late Tuesday in North Las Vegas resulted in an exchange of gunfire and a woman and an intruder being shot. Police said someone tried to enter a home shortly before midnight in the 4100 block of Karma Drive, between West Craig and Alexander roads, when the homeowner opened fire. The intruder fired back and injured the woman, authorities said. Officers were dispatched to the home at 11:52 p.m. and upon arrival found a 31-year-old North Las Vegas resident with gunshot wounds to her leg. The injured woman said she had exchanged gunfire with unidentified men who had entered her home and threatened to shoot her 14-year-old son. The boy wasn't injured... http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2009/jul/29/woman-intruder-shot-during-home-invasion-attempt/ --- Oops, Wrong House, Ohio Version: A man fatally shot an armed intruder while protecting his 5-year-old relative late Wednesday, authorities said. Columbus police continued to investigate an overnight shooting on the city's Southwest Side. CPD said the incident started with a home invasion but it was the suspect who was fatally shot. CPD was called to a home on the 1500 block of Autumn Village Drive on reports of a shooting at about 11 p.m. Wednesday. Officers found a man on a front porch with a gunshot wound to his neck. The armed suspect broke into home shortly before he was fatally shot, CPD said. "There was a knock on the door. The resident went to the door, at which time the victim out front entered the house with a firearm in commission of an aggravated robbery," said CPD homicide Sgt. Dana Norman. As the armed suspect entered the home, a man picked up his 5-year-old relative to protect child as well as a firearm and fired shots, according to authorities. The suspect attempted to flee the home after being wounded but collapsed on the porch. He died a short time later... http://www2.nbc4i.com/cmh/news/crime/article/Home_Invasion_Suspect_Shot_Killed_By_Resident/20108/ --- Oops, Wrong House, Oregon Version: Everett Skinner says when a bear broke into his home, he grabbed his shotgun and killed it. The animal ripped off a screen and climbed in through a window late Saturday, Skinner said. The man told the Daily Courier he hadn't killed a bear before or even hunted in awhile, but makes it a point to keep the shotgun handy. "In this case, I'm glad I did," he said. Bear and man saw each other at about the same time. Skinner said the animal stood up and headed toward him, so he fired....In all, he said he fired four times. The Skinners say they don't know why the bear invaded their home, about eight miles from Grants Pass. Daughter Nicole Skinner, who awoke around 11:30 p.m. Saturday to a strange shuffling sound, was the first to spot the bear. She quickly retreated to her parents' room to get help... Family members have done what they can to clean up the den, but Skinner notes they're probably going to have to replace the carpet... And the Skinners won't be leaving the window open at night anymore... http://www.statesmanjournal.com/article/20090729/UPDATE/90729003 Video: http://web.thedailycourier.com/video/vidpage.html?v=072809Bear --- Oops, Wrong House, Texas Version: Investigators say they were definitely going to rob him - possibly even kill him. But an 80-year-old North Texan wasn't about to let that happen, so he took action. One of the suspects is in the hospital and both are facing charges. Two men obviously thought James Pickett, 80, was an easy target when they showed up at his home on Saturday with a knife... What the men didn't know is Picket had taken a pistol and put it in his pocket before opening the door. "He jumped and turned and I shot him," Picket said. The two brothers, Paul and Holden Perry, ran but didn't get far before calling an ambulance. A bullet just missed Paul Perry's spine. "The only problem was I run out of bullets," Picket said... I think I'm a ten times better shot than and he is... But they best not come back," he said. http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa/latestnews/stories/wfaa080214_lj_hawes.bfc57dff.html --- Oops, Wrong Son-in-Law: A man died Wednesday after being shot in Murfreesboro. According to police, a young man shot and killed a 56-year-old man early Wednesday morning at an apartment located in the 600 block of Maple Street. Neighbors said the young man shot his father-in-law in self-defense. According to the neighbors, the 56-year-old man pulled a gun on his son-in-law first. Police confirmed that the shooting was classified as domestic related homicide; although, investigators have not ruled out self-defense or accidental shooting... http://www.newschannel5.com/Global/story.asp?S=10809214 --- NYPD Ignores Muzzleloader Exemption: Like America's first soldiers at the Battle of Brooklyn, Michael Littlejohn is fighting for his right to bear arms. The Revolutionary War buff charges the Bloomberg administration with tyranny for trying to seize his handmade flintlock rifle - a dead ringer for the weapon once used against the redcoats. "This is the last legal gun that you can have without registration in New York," Littlejohn said. "And yet Mayor Bloomberg is driven crazy by my flintlock gun - the one that won the American Revolution." ... Police claim it's illegal for Littlejohn to keep the flintlock without a gun license. Littlejohn, 50, cites the earliest American patriots as his inspiration while refusing to surrender his firearm or apply for a license. The social worker is also clinging to a little-known exemption in the city's strict gun laws. The loophole allows license-free ownership of "antique firearms" - defined as rifles that require the bullet and gunpowder to be loaded separately. Littlejohn's rifle appears to fit the bill... http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/brooklyn/2009/07/29/2009-07-29_replica_rifle_has_brooklyn_man_at_odds_with_cops.html http://www.examiner.com/x-1417-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m7d29-NYPD-antigun-zealotry-extends-to-flintlocks --- NYPD - CRS: It was forged out of steel and given a walnut handle 60 years ago. It made its way to New York City, where it was sold by a well-known gun shop in Little Italy, and eventually passed through the hands of a law enforcement officer, who reported it lost in 1976. More than three decades would go by before the weapon, a .32-caliber revolver, resurfaced on Sunday on a Queens street, where it fell from the waistband of a man under arrest and discharged a bullet that hit Police Officer Rodney Lewis... The revolver was traced to the Smith & Wesson plant in Springfield, Mass., according to law enforcement sources. It was manufactured in 1949, and the model, known by gun experts as a long caliber, hand-ejector postwar model, was popular at that time with police forces, until they went to bigger-caliber guns. But, when a .32-caliber revolver is fired, it keeps the casings inside its rotating chamber instead of spitting them out like a semiautomatic pistol, making it hard for forensic investigators to determine whether it had a criminal past... (Until the advent of hammer-forged rifling, firearms were normally matched to shootings by the toolmarks transferred to the bullets they fired and this can still be done with those autoloaders whose barrels have cut rifling. The only thing that could keep a revolver such as this from being linked to a particular shooting would be if the recovered bullets were too deformed for comparison of the toolmarks. While the hammer-block safety, which should have kept the revolver from firing when dropped, was introduced to this model in 1944, I have seen a revolver in this caliber that may well have left the factory after the war, built from pre-war components. When NYPD still distinguished policewomen from policemen, the women were issued .32's. "CRS" is an old military expression - Can't Remember S###. Can the NYPD sources be that ignorant or is that a function of The New York Times?) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/30/nyregion/30gun.html?_r=1&hp --- When Toy Guns Are Outlawed...: "Crackdown on illegal toy guns," the headline intoned. I literally did a double take, convinced I could not possibly have read that correctly. "Illegal toy guns?" I thought. "What is this, a George Carlin routine?" The reality is, though, that this is no joke. New York's Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is going after retailers for selling realistic-looking toy guns. He's sent cease and desist letters to more than 100 retailers, demanding they stop selling this contraindicated technology. Toys, you see, are an aspect, a category, of technology. The more advanced a society's level of technological advancement, the more elaborate are its toys. "Technology-enabled" toys are more prevalent than ever... http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=105369 --- Taurus Seeks Incentives to Remain in Florida: A Northwest Miami-Dade firearms company is gunning for $369,000 in incentives to keep a planned expansion in the county, even as other locales take aim at the importer and manufacturer's promised 258 jobs. A nearly three-decade veteran of the county, Taurus USA employs 135 workers and says it will add 123 jobs in an expansion that has drawn incentive offers from beyond Florida's borders, according to CEO and President Bob Morrison, who cited Georgia's courtship in particular. "The [Georgia] governor sent his plane down for us and then took us on a helicopter tour for three days,'' Morrison said. ``From free land to new buildings to tax abatements for 25 years, there were lots of opportunities to do better in that state than we could here." But Morrison added that if he can win incentives to expand in Miami-Dade, he would prefer to remain, as he doubts his primarily Cuban workforce would leave the area. "Virtually none of them would move with us. About 92 percent of our workforce is of Cuban heritage, and to leave Miami and their families would be very difficult," he said. "It would be gut-wrenching for those folks." http://www.miamiherald.com/business/story/1163267.html --- Tangentially Related: Copper's 76 percent rally this year may soon end on signs that China has stockpiled more than it can use in new homes, cars and appliances. Inventories monitored by the London Metal Exchange posted their first back-to-back weekly gains since February, increasing 8.3 percent from an eight-month low. Sumitomo Metal Mining Co., Japan's second-largest smelter, said Chinese imports are slowing after record purchases boosted domestic supplies, and U.S. copper-scrap exporters report shipments to Asia are dropping. Prices will also decline because the 4 trillion yuan ($585 billion) of economic stimulus spending by China, the world's biggest metals user, won't make up for weak demand elsewhere, said Michael Pento, the chief economist at Huntington Beach, California-based Delta Global Advisors, which manages $1.5 billion. The global economy will contract 1.4 percent this year, deeper than forecast in April, and a sustained recovery from the worst recession since World War II may be a year away, the International Monetary Fund said July 8... (While not good news for the economy of my home state, lower copper prices are good news for purchasers of ammunition. Copper is the primary ingredient in brass and in most bullet jackets.) http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=anEd3WTPQWLg -- Stephen P. Wenger, KE7QBY Firearm safety - It's a matter for education, not legislation. http://www.spw-duf.info .