Archive for September, 2014

60 Minutes: The Results of ISIS Brutality

, , , , ,

No Comments

Bill To Remove Race From Form 4473

From Guns.com:

The measure, sponsored by Reps. Diane Black (R-TN) and Ted Poe (R-Texas), would place a prohibition on the Federal government’s current practice to require race or ethnicity to be disclosed during the transfer of a firearm. This comes after an article in the Washington Times earlier this week brought attention to the practice, quietly implemented two years ago by the ATF, of mandating that patrons buying or receiving a gun select a series of questions on Form 4473 to better identify their race and whether or not they are Hispanic.

 

, , , , ,

No Comments

Natalie Foster: Not Guilty

, , ,

No Comments

Bill To Require Background Checks on Homemade Guns

From Guns.com:

“The laws should be the same for the gun you buy and the gun you make,” said Honda. “Our system of background checks and registrations are in place to ensure public safety. There’s absolutely no reason these checks and registrations should apply to guns made by a licensed manufacturer, but not apply to other, equally dangerous, weapons.”

How exactly is this going to be enforced? Unless you get rid of the Fourth Amendment to check everyone’s home for guns, this law cannot work.

, , , ,

No Comments

Anti-gun Zealots File Lawsuit Against Online Ammo Seller

From Washington Times:

“The lawsuit alleges that the websites negligently supplied Holmes with the arsenal he used to kill 12 people and wound at least 58 others by failing to use any screening mechanism to determine his identity or intent for the products,” the Brady Center said in a media release, Fox-affiliated KDVR reported.

, , , , ,

No Comments

Single Mom and PA CHL Holder Avoids Prison Time in NJ

From The Gun Writer:

mother facing prison time for bringing her legally registered gun into New Jersey will be allowed into a diversion program, after the attorney general clarified a directive that had expanded New Jersey’s gun law.

Shaneen Allen was arrested last year after a motor vehicle stop on the Atlantic City Expressway in Hamilton Township. She told the state trooper that she had her loaded gun and a concealed carry permit with her.

, , , ,

No Comments

Natalie Foster: Billionaire Bullying

, , , , ,

No Comments

DARPA and Lockeheed Martin Test Airborne Laser Weapon

From Lockheed Martin:

Innovative Design Promises to Expand Laser Weapon Effectiveness on Fighter Aircraft  

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Sept. 15, 2014 – Lockheed Martin [NYSE: LMT], in partnership with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and the University of Notre Dame, has demonstrated the airworthiness of a new beam control turret being developed for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and AFRL to give 360-degree coverage for high-energy laser weapons operating on military aircraft. A research aircraft equipped with the Aero-adaptive Aero-optic Beam Control (ABC) turret conducted eight flights in Michigan.

“These initial flight tests validate the performance of our ABC turret design, which is an enabler for integrating high energy lasers on military aircraft,” said Doug Graham, vice president of advanced programs, Strategic and Missile Defense Systems, Lockheed Martin Space Systems.

The ABC turret system is designed to allow high-energy lasers to engage enemy aircraft and missiles above, below and behind the aircraft. Lockheed Martin’s flow control and optical compensation technologies counteract the effects of turbulence caused by the protrusion of a turret from an aircraft’s fuselage.

All turret components met U.S. Air Force and Federal Aviation Administration airworthiness requirements.

Subsequent flight tests over the next year will demonstrate the turret in increasingly complex operations.

Lockheed Martin has pioneered the development and demonstration of high-energy laser capabilities for more than 30 years and has made advances in areas such as precision pointing and control, line-of-sight stabilization and adaptive optics and high-power fiber lasers.

Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin is a global security and aerospace company that employs approximately 113,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products and services. The Corporation’s net sales for 2013 were $45.4 billion.

, , , ,

No Comments

Paul Howe Tactical Carbine

Wilson Combat is producing the Paul Howe Tactical Carbine

, , ,

No Comments

Turkey Must Tread Carefully Against Islamic State

Turkey Must Tread Carefully Against Islamic State is republished with permission of Stratfor.”

Summary

As the United States begins its full assault against the Islamic State in Syria, backed by Arab allies, the absence of NATO ally Turkey is drawing attention and comment. Just days before the Sept. 22 beginning of U.S. airstrikes, Turkey managed to broker a deal with the Islamic State to return 49 diplomats held in Iraq for 101 days. Contrary to diplomatic and media speculation, however, Turkey is not supporting the transnational, Syria- and Iraq-based jihadist movement known as the Islamic State.

While the details of just how Ankara retrieved its diplomats are sketchy, Ankara likely negotiated their release through its contacts among the Iraqi Sunni community and its ally, Qatar. This influence, especially among Sunni locals in not just Iraq but also Syria, will be critical if Turkey is going to be able to manage the jihadist threat long after the United States declares mission accomplished and moves on.

Read the rest of this entry »

, , , , , , , , ,

No Comments

New Sofware From Apple and Google Better At Protecting Your Information From Government

From Reason.com:

Observant tech journalists have noticed something big in their latest privacy notes. Apple has changed its encryption so that the company itself cannot access the data on its users’ phones and iPads without the passcode. Thus, if police or the feds come to Apple with warrants to grab potentially useful private data off a device, they couldn’t comply even if they wanted to.

From ArsTechnica:

The Washington Post is reporting that Google will finally step up security efforts on Android and enable device encryption by default. The Post has quoted company spokeswoman Niki Christoff as saying “As part of our next Android release, encryption will be enabled by default out of the box, so you won’t even have to think about turning it on.”

The move should bring Android up to parity with iOS. Apple recently announced enhanced encryption for iOS 8, which Apple says makes it impossible for the company to decrypt a device, even for law enforcement. While Android’s encryption was optional, it seems to work in a similar way, with Christoff saying “For over three years Android has offered encryption, and keys are not stored off of the device, so they cannot be shared with law enforcement.”

 

, , , , ,

No Comments

CDC: Ebola Could Infect A Half Million By January

From Washington Post:

The Ebola epidemic sweeping West Africa could infect up to 500,000 people by the end of January, according to a new estimate under development by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC projection assumes no additional aid by governments and relief agencies. But the United States this week launched a $750 million effort to establish treatment facilities with 1,700 beds in Liberia, the hardest hit country. And the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Thursday to create an emergency medical mission to respond to the outbreak, with an advance team in West Africa by the end of the month.

 

, , ,

No Comments

NRA News: Microstamping

, , , , ,

No Comments

Concealed Carry Is Like Insurance

, ,

No Comments

Americans Who Fought For Jihad

From The New York Times:

They walked parallel paths to trouble, never graduating from high school and racking up arrests. They converted to Islam around the same time and exalted their new faith to family and friends, declaring that they had found truth and certainty. One after the other, both men abandoned their American lives for distant battlefields.

Today, both are dead. While their lives ended five years and over 2,000 miles apart, their intertwined journeys toward militancy offer a sharp example of how the allure of Islamist extremism has evolved, enticing similar pools of troubled, pliable young Americans to conflicts in different parts of the world. The tools of online propaganda and shadowy networks of facilitators that once beckoned Mr. Kastigar and Somali men to the Horn of Africa are now drawing hundreds of Europeans and about a dozen known Americans to fight with ISIS, according to American law enforcement and counterterrorism officials.

, , , , ,

No Comments