The long strange trip of a Singaporean Cold-War-era assault rifle into the hands of Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden, and what it reveals about the unintended consequences of the global trade in small arms and ammunition.
[slnyt]
posted by killdevil
on Jan 26, 2012 -
9 comments
Even as medical marijuana activists in states like
Arkansas,
Ohio, and
Massachusetts look to legalize medical use in 2012, the ATF has sent
letters to gun shops in existing medical marijuana states. The letter says that shop owners cannot sell guns or ammunition if they have
"reasonable cause to believe" that the customer is a drug user, even if their use is legal under state law -- and that having or even mentioning a medical marijuana card constitutes reasonable cause. The entire text of the letter can be viewed
here.
[more inside]
posted by vorfeed
on Oct 5, 2011 -
145 comments
The Secret History of Guns. "The Ku Klux Klan, Ronald Reagan, and, for most of its history, the NRA all worked to control guns. The Founding Fathers? They required gun ownership—and regulated it. And no group has more fiercely advocated the right to bear loaded weapons in public than the Black Panthers—the true pioneers of the modern pro-gun movement. In the battle over gun rights in America, both sides have distorted history and the law, and there’s no resolution in sight."
[Via]
posted by homunculus
on Aug 10, 2011 -
36 comments
My new favourite internet celebrity Dmitri panders to every gun-nut's fantasy and demonstrates various firearms with humour, spectacle and cool Russian accent :)
I give you:
FPS Russia.
posted by 00dimitri00
on Aug 1, 2011 -
36 comments
Holy Smoke - "The process of having cremated ash placed in live ammunition begins when you contact us. You tell us what type of hunting or shooting that the decedent practiced and we can help you decide what will best suit your needs....1 Pound of ash is enough to produce 250 shotshells."
posted by madamjujujive
on Jul 31, 2011 -
46 comments
I have, by now, got rather fond of Mr. James Bond. I like most of the things about him, with the exception of his rather deplorable taste in firearms. In particular, I dislike a man who comes into contact with all sorts of formidable people using a .25 Beretta. This sort of gun is really a lady's gun, and not a really nice lady at that. If Mr. Bond has to use a light gun he would be better off with a .22 rim fire; the lead bullet would cause more shocking effect than the jacketed type of the .25. -
The letter that changed James Bond's gun, and gave his armourer a name.
posted by Artw
on Jun 2, 2011 -
102 comments
How two American kids became big-time weapons traders - "Working with nothing but an Internet connection, a couple of cellphones and a steady supply of weed, the two friends — one with a few college credits, the other a high school dropout — had beaten out Fortune 500 giants like General Dynamics to score the huge arms contract. With a single deal, two stoners from Miami Beach had turned themselves into the least likely merchants of death in history." (
via; previously on
arms contractors)
posted by kliuless
on Mar 21, 2011 -
69 comments
In the wake of the
Port Arthur massacre, in 1997 Australia implemented a gun buyback program that reduced the stock of firearms by around one-fifth, and nearly halving the number of gun-owning households.
Leigh and Neill (2010) find that the buyback led to a drop in the firearm suicide rates of almost 80%, or about 200 lives per annum (with no significant effect on non-firearm death rates). This translates into an
annual benefit of $500M, or $800 000 per weapon destroyed. However,
Baker & McPhedran (2006) have previosuly concluded that there was no impact on homicides.
posted by wilful
on Aug 29, 2010 -
131 comments
Today, June 28, 2010, marks the last day of the 2009-10 session of the Supreme Court of the United States. This day will mark a number of
historical events, not only in terms of the cases to be handed down.
[more inside]
posted by valkyryn
on Jun 28, 2010 -
193 comments
In 1936 in the Jim Crow South,
Robert F. Williams was an 11-year-old black boy in Monroe, North Carolina, who watched helplessly as
Jesse Helms Sr. (father and namesake of the
former senator) beat an African-American woman to the ground and
"dragged her off to the nearby jailhouse, her dress up over her head, the same way that a cave man would club and drag his sexual prey." Years later, after a stint in the segregated military, Williams returned home to Monroe and worked as an NAACP organizer, where he brought international attention to the
Kissing Case, a 1958 incident in which two black boys under the age of 10 were sentenced to a reformatory for kissing a white girl. By then, Williams had also attracted controversy for his advocacy of armed self-defense, a position he outlined in the book
Negroes with Guns. But it would all change overnight in 1961, when Williams landed on
FBI's Most Wanted list, after being charged with kidnapping a white couple that Williams claimed he was trying to save from an angry black crowd.
[more inside]
posted by jonp72
on Jun 8, 2010 -
36 comments
Arms dealers affiliated with 22 companies, including one with a former Joint Chief of Staff on its board of directors, have been
indicted for soliciting kickbacks on multimillion dollar deals to supply munitions to representatives of a fictitious African government.
[more inside]
posted by minimii
on Jan 21, 2010 -
41 comments
