Event

Activists from around the country will converge on Houston, Texas for the 18th annual GRPC on September 26th through September 28th. They will meet at the George Bush International Airport Marriot Hotel to compare notes on the gun rights movement in their local communities, and to learn about the future of the movement to secure our freedoms.

US involvement in the Middle East since WWII has been motivated by two primary concerns: propping up Israel against the Arab nations and protecting our supply of oil. As a libertarian, I'd like US foreign policy to consist of merely staffing our embassies, as opposed to stationing troops all over the globe and intervening in every region that is of "national interest". I also realize that this will not happen anytime soon.

(CBS) They look innocent enough, and the names sound like things you might find in a baker's pantry or a chemistry set. But when they're mixed the result is a compound called flash powder that can cause a powerful explosion.

This isn't the work of terrorists using sophisticated materials. The ingredients and the know how to build extremely powerful explosives are easy to come by.

A joint investigation by CBS News and affiliate KCNC found the chemicals needed to build a bomb right out in the open at a Denver-area gun show, along with the printed instructions on how to make them explode.

The article glosses over it, but it's already illegal to sell these chemicals are explosives components. There are most likely a wide variety of places to get them and legitimate uses galore -- even legitimate uses for explosives. The fact is, even basic knowledge of chemistry can teach you how to make things explode -- and there is such a wide variety of potential explosives that you can't ban them all.

Chicago police are expected to videotape anti-globalization demonstrators today under intelligence-gathering powers they have regained from the courts after a two-decade ban.

Department rules that took effect Oct. 25 also permit officers to pose as members of groups as long as the intelligence-gathering has a legitimate law-enforcement purpose. And the rules let officers surf the Internet to scan groups' Web sites for information about them.

Chilling effect, anyone? How many people will be willing to get videotaped and shoved into police archives to express their opinion?

One of the only major races focused on gun control has been called in favor of the Republican (and pro-gun, relatively) Ehrlich, over Townsend, who has aggressively called for more gun control following the sniper shootings.

TACOMA, Wash., Oct. 28 ý Upstairs above his gun shop and behind a door marked "Employees Only," Brian Borgelt huddled today at a laptop computer on a desk piled high with paperwork. Mr. Borgelt, the owner of Bull's Eye Shooter Supply, flipped through a wad of business cards from journalists. Outside in the parking lot, television cameras were fixed on the store's entrance.

Mr. Borgelt's eyes were heavy and his manner abrupt. He was not enjoying the attention that came with owning the most scrutinized gun store in America.

Downstairs, agents for the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were sifting through records, seeking information about a semiautomatic Bushmaster XM15 rifle that the authorities say was used by John Muhammad in the sniper attacks.

The arrests of two suspects on Oct. 24 may bring to an end a three-week shooting spree around Washington, D.C., in which a roving sniper killed 10 people and seriously injured three others. Yet the manhunt for the killer, during which the police at times seemed almost desperate for clues, again raises questions about whether having more information about guns and gun owners might help head off crimes or solve them faster -- and thus save lives.

Couple points worth noting on this survey:

• They compare guns to cars (for registration and licensing purposes).
• They do not offer a full range of opinions -- responses to one question ranged from "the status quo is correct" to "lots more gun control". No option to roll back existing controls.

The Maryland police decided to stop and handcuff everyone driving a white van after the latest sniper shooting. This is a clear violation of the fourth amendment. Sure, stop them, and search the van, if the van matches the description -- but putting the driver in handcuffs is out of line.

This link is to a photograph.

Dr. Patrick Neustatter wrote an eloquent piece regarding the gun violence that we see all too commonly today ["Doctor finds evidence that guns can be dangerous to your health," Oct. 20].

He explained some of the facts that we all fail to see or understand and in doing so he clearly states his position.

What concerns me is not his support for the anti-gun agenda but that, as a learned man, a doctor no less, he would write such a biased piece without researching his facts.

A brief account of an interview where the FBI, finally, differentiates between the various unofficial militias and the various unofficial racist groups. They are not the same thing, although it's tempting for the government and media to lump them together. It's nice to have that acknowledged.

The first couple paragraphs are sniper speculation.

Privacy advocates want to know the how and why behind U.S. government surveillance done in the name of the USA Patriot Act.

On Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center asked a federal court judge to force the Justice Department to respond to their Aug. 21 Freedom of Information Act request for documents related to the Patriot Act's surveillance provisions.

Now that the off-year campaigns for office have come to a close, the political parties start an assessment process that follows any election. It is considered key political strategy to debrief properly after an election to examine how successes were achieved; and, some times more importantly, what caused the failures. The former is easy. Everyone wants to take credit for political victories. Success is claimed by all, from the individual voters right up to the candidates themselves; so, everyone involved is able to declare victory. However, the former is a horse of a different color. No one wants to take credit for a failed campaign.

Remember Bill Clinton? Before life got serious, Bill Clinton used to work incredibly, just amazingly hard fixing the problems that plagued America. It did not escape his capacious concern that we had a serious crime problem. And so, as he did on so many other issues, President Clinton presided over meetings running late into the night, consumed heroic amounts of Domino's Pizza and came up with a plan! What we needed, he declared, was a new federal program to fund 100,000 new cops on the streets by October 2000.

The Second Amendment Sisters (SAS) today announced that Maria Heil is the featured "pro-gun" Mother in the upcoming "Guns & Mothers" documentary, which is scheduled to air on PBS's "Independent Lens" during the week of May 11th. Mrs. Heil is the National Press Coordinator and Legislative Liaison for SAS, and mother of four.

Dr. John R. Lott Jr. will speak on the campus of St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas. The event will begin promptly at 6:30PM, and take place in Moody Life Science Building, Room 101. This event is free and open to the general public, and all are ecouraged to attend. Copies of Dr. Lott's books; More Guns, Less Crime and The Bias Against Guns, will be available for purchase before and after his speech.

Gun Control and the Second Amendment a debate featuring

• Alan Dershowitz, HLS
• Eugene Volokh, UCLA School of Law
• Dennis Henigan, Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence
• Elena Kagan, HLS (moderator)

The deadline for Saddam to leave Iraq is 4:15 a.m. Iraqi time (0115 GMT) and most observers expect the fighting to begin soon after.

France's ambassador to the United States, Jean-David Levitte, said Paris could yet join U.S.-led action if Iraq used biological and chemical weapons, saying such a move would "change the situation completely and immediately."

Iraq was doing some psychological warfare of its own. Iraq's U.N. ambassador warned all Americans would be at risk, whether inside or outside Iraq, if war came.

An individual motorist's account of a police/customs/INS checkpoint: "I requested to know if the stops being made were based upon individualized probable cause of wrongdoing. He indicated there was no probable cause & everyone was being treated the same.

The officer in charge asked me for my drivers license again. I asked him if he had any reason to believe my drivers license wasn't in order or whether or not he had probable cause to believe I was in violation of any statute of the State."

I just went to the NRA-ILA and affiliated official websites to see what they had to say about the Ninth Circuit ruling. Not a word. [Screenshots, time stamped from earlier today: MyNRA, NRA-ILA Main Page, NRA-ILA News Page, NRAHQ.] The Ninth filed their decision on December 5th. This is being written on the 8th.

Everyone else interested in the decision jumped on it--especially the anti-defense crowd, who are crowing to anyone who will listen that the end game has been won. The Brady campaign tells us the "Founding Fathers...would be cheering." The Violence Policy Center is claiming this "drives a stake" into the heart of the individual rights argument.

Tucked inside a funny story about a bus trip gone awry is the reason why some people are worried about the direction we're taking with homeland security.

A Hamilton County judge Tuesday refused to order the city of Cincinnati to turn over documents that gun manufacturers say might be evidence supporting the city's allegations that gun makers are responsible for the unauthorized ways criminals obtain firearms.

So they don't even need to provide evidence now, is it?

Capitol Hill -- After reaffirming the Second Amendment's prohibition against government encroachment on the rights of individual firearms owners last week, the White House is now calling for more study into the possibility of a nationwide so-called "ballistic fingerprinting" system that would implement de facto registration of gun owners.

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence was one of the first national gun control advocacy groups to call for so-called "ballistic fingerprinting," creating a database of sample bullets and shell casings from otherwise unused, new firearms.

The sniper has become the latest instrument of persuasion among gun-control advocates.

Their kind is popping up on cable news shows almost as frequently as ex-FBI profilers, most of whom refuse to speculate until the host rephrases the highly speculative assignment before them.

The logic of gun-control supporters, as always, breaks down soon after the opening exchanges. The logic is based on the premise that another piece of legislation or another layer of bureaucratic thoroughness just might impede or thwart or dissuade the next wacko killer. This overlooks the obvious law against killing, as strong a law as there is, sometimes resulting in the death penalty in Virginia.

A Second Amendment group says the shooting of a 13-year-old boy outside a Maryland middle school on Monday bolsters its argument for allowing parents and teachers to carry guns on school grounds - specifically, in the parking lot outside.

Ed Helleher, president of the pro-gun group GrassRoots South Carolina (GRSC), believes the presence of legally armed parents in the parking lot at Benjamin Tasker Middle School in Bowie, Md., could have provided a "deterrent effect" on the still-unknown sniper who shot and seriously wounded the child.

IT'S 10 a.m. on a quiet Sunday morning in Oxford Circle. The coffee's making, the birds are chirping.

An elderly widow is in her bathroom, toweling off after a shower.

A four-member Philadelphia Police Department SWAT team arrives - clutching a search warrant for guns and drugs - and pounds on her Sylvester Street door.

A neighbor hollers to the cops they've got the wrong house. They tell her to shut up and go back inside.

Whenever I see this kind of case, I have to ask... exactly how much investigation was put into this search warrant?