Was sorting through some photos last night and realized that I had never posted this shot of the huge billboard along I-90 in Boston just outside of Fenway Park:

We Sell Guns Billboard in Boston

No ID Required. No Background Checks. Criminals & Terrorists Welcome!

What I find most amusing about it is that not only is it NOT accurate as far as gun shows go, it’s actually pretty accurate as far as US border policy goes. These folks want to close a “gun show loophole” that doesn’t exist but (and I’m guessing here) would probably not support building a wall to close the “border loophole.”

I don’t know who funds this billboard.

A lethal gun battle

The Boston Globe:

Will it really kill legal gun owners if we restrict them to one gun purchase a month? It may kill children if we don’t.

In some neighborhoods, it’s as easy to get your hands on a pistol as on a bag of Cheetos. We’re battling an epidemic of gun violence in this state, with 14-year-olds dying. We have to do something about gangs. But we also have to do something about guns.

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives traced 1,000 of the illegal guns recovered from criminals and crime scenes in Massachusetts last year and found that more than a third were originally bought — legally — right here.

How did they get into the bad guys’ hands? Some were stolen. And some were acquired through straw purchases: That’s where legitimate buyers purchase multiple weapons, then sell them illegally on the street.

Legislation being considered on Beacon Hill would limit gun buys to one every 30 days, making it impossible for traffickers to buy in bulk in Massachusetts.

So by their own admission, only one-third of the guns were bought legally. How many of those were bought more than one per month?

It seems that doing something about the other two-thirds of the crime guns would be more effective than limiting the rights of legal gun buyers. But that’s just Murdoc.

And they don’t quite get the “straw purchase” definition, either.

126 WWII-Era Grenades Caught With Clams

Full cases dredged up with daily haul.

In the hotel here and just saw a news story about an incident in Boston where a couple of dogs attacked another resident’s poodle. Neighbors claim that the dogs, belonging to someone in the neighborhood, have been terrorizing folks for some time. The poodle’s owner had to pull the dogs off of the little dog and he was injured doing so. When police showed up, both dogs attacked them. So the cops ended up shooting and killing the dogs. Duh.

In the Fox 25 TV news report, the on-the-scene reporter made it clear (rightly, I believe, from what I know of the story) that he thought the cops were completely justified. But there is apparently a bit of a question about why they fired 11 shots. The reporter made the statement “I’m not sure why they even had that many bullets” which is crazy. Does he think that they run around with one round like Deputy Fife?

This sounds a lot like the thinking that seems to come up when gun owners carry a second magazine or speed loaders for their revolver: “If the gun is just for personal defense why would you have so many bullets?”

Mass. man planned terror attacks on US malls

The three men often discussed their desire to participate in “violent jihad against American interests” and talked about “their desire to die on the battlefield,” prosecutors said. But when they were unable to join terror groups in Iraq, Yemen and Pakistan, they found inspiration in the Washington-area sniper shootings and turned their interests to domestic terror pursuits while they plotted the attack on shopping malls, authorities said.

And get this:

Mehanna had “multiple conversations about obtaining automatic weapons and randomly shooting people in shopping malls,” Acting U.S. Attorney Michael Loucks said. Prosecutors would not say which malls had been targeted.

Loucks said the men justified attacks because U.S. civilians pay taxes to support the U.S. government and because they are “nonbelievers.”

The mall plan was abandoned after the men failed to track down automatic weapons, Loucks said.

We’re all told how simple it is for just anyone to pick up assault weapons at gun shows. We’re all told how automatic weapons are flowing over the border and fueling the drug war in Mexico. We’re all told these things over and over by government officials, the media, and activists.

Yet three wannabe terrorists were unable to arm themselves with automatic weapons.

Cat Attack on a turkey hunter.

Police in Western Massachusetts collect 98 firearms in Gift for Guns program

The “gifts for guns” exchange conducted on Saturday at six area drop-off locations netted 98 firearms, including a German World War I pistol and a Japanese World War II rifle.

“You could clearly see the relief on those people’s faces” when they turned in the guns, said Baystate Health spokesman Benjamin C. Craft.

Criminals are known to favor century-old German pistols and WW2 Japanese rifles.

As for “off the street,” these aren’t “off the street” if, by “street” you mean out and in use. These are obviously NOT in use and owned by someone who will NEVER use them. Otherwise they wouldn’t have, you know, been turned in for a grocery card.

Sent in by a reader who writes:

All the content you’ve come to expect is there: the little old lady with the valuable turn-in that goes to the blast furnace instead of a dealer or musuem; the accompanying photo of weapons turned in, comprising antiques and scoped rifles; and the language of how it’s x guns now “off the street”, although the article clearly explains that most of this stuff is antique or in peoples’ homes and NOT under someone’s trenchcoat.

Anything valuable could have been sold, or even given as a gift-in-kind for a tax benefit. It would have been worth exploring whether the Springfield Armory Museum operates as a 501c3, and would have accepted a historic weapon. Might have been nice to get rid of a firearm you don’t want AND get yourself a nice deduction too.

I knew times were tough in Massachusetts, but I had no idea about this:

Since 1994, the number of federal firearm licenses – FFLs – issued in Massachusetts has declined from 4,109 to 531, or by 87 percent. [emphasis Murdoc's]

That’s what Murdoc calls a shockingly large number. These two issues are where a lot of it comes from:

The first is the Brady Bill, named after White House press secretary James Brady who was shot in an assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan in 1981. It increased the license fee from $10 per year to $200 for the first three years and $90 for each three-year renewal.

The second piece of legislation was the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, also known as the Crime Bill. It requires applicants for the federal licenses to notify their local police department, submit fingerprints and a photo with the application, and certify that their businesses adhere to local zoning regulations.

It also requires gun dealers to have an established location for their shops that must be separate from their residences. This eliminated many hobbyists and part-time dealers.

But, what does “eliminated” really mean here? In at least some cases, it probably means “Many hobbyists and part-time dealers stopped legally selling firearms.”

Here’s a bit more background:

At the time, the Clinton administration was concerned about smaller gun dealers operating under the radar and potentially outside the law.

Ah. We’re concerned about potential law-breakers, so we’ll make it more expensive to follow the law. That will keep people from doing it illegally.

And:

Police departments complained that with dealer licenses easy to obtain and difficult to track, they were often the last to know to whom the licenses were issued.

Ah. We used to be the last to know who legal dealers were. Now we’ll never know about any of those folks.

So, as a recap, the increased fees and paperwork hurt everyone except bigger businesses and crooks.

Hat tip to the reader who forwarded this story!

Apparently there’s going to be a follow-up to the state quarters program from the US Mint, and the state of Massachusetts has a page where you can vote for the historic location to use.

Under Hampden County is this little spot: Springfield Armory National Historic Site

Lot of great hardware came out of that place. Got Murdoc’s vote.

Big hat tip to the reader who sent this in.

Failed to post this when it came out, but here it is: Pelham chief, Westfield Sportsman’s Club plead innocent in boy’s machine gun death

Innocent pleas to the charge of involuntary manslaughter were entered in Hampden Superior Court on Monday on behalf of Pelham Police Chief Edward B. Fleury and the Westfield Sportsman’s Club, accused in the accidental death of an 8-year-old Connecticut boy.

The charges followed the Oct. 26 death of Christopher K. Bizilj, of Ashford, Conn. The boy died from a head wound when he lost control of a Micro Uzi submachine gun he was firing at the Westfield Sportsman’s Club gun show.

The police chief owns COP Firearms & Training, the place of the accident.

The father will, apparently, not be charged. I can understand that he’s suffered a lot and will suffer more, but it’s difficult to see how someone else can be legally at fault while he isn’t.

The state law which prohibits furnishing automatic weapons to persons under the age of 18 was broken. State Rep. Michael A. Costello (D-Newburyport) says he will support a bill raising the the age requirement to 21.

And that would have helped how, exactly?

And, inevitably, in the comments section of the news item:

I don’t think this is what our forefathers had in mind when they wrote the second amendment to the Constitution.

No, it’s not. Most people would be shocked if we made provisions for what the Second Amendment is really about.