Under a Gibbous Moon

I’m a huge fan of MST3K and was hugely disappointed when it was canceled back in ’98. On the bright side though, Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy (Tom Servo) and Bill Corbet (Crow II) got together and continue to make fun of movies via Rifftrax.

From the movie Jaws comes a heartfelt love ballad to the monsters of the abyss.

This is an example of what I like to call Cartman syndrome. For anyone who is a fan of South Park, you might recall the episode where Cartman ran around pretending to be a cop. He was beligerent toward anyone and abused any and all aspects of the position. While this incident is no where as extreme as that episode, it is an example of the police getting butt-hurt about someone not bowing to their supreme “authoritah”.

In this op-ed, New York mayor, Michael Bloomberg urges voters to support legislation that will require firearms to have microstamping technology. A short version, microstamping is a technology that attempts to imprint each bullet casing with some type of serial number at the moment it is fired.

First, I shall disassemble Bloomberg’s premise. He starts off by listing victims of handgun violence and then claiming that, if only the spent casing had been stamped this litany of death could have been prevented. Yes, I know, it doesn’t make any sense. If that was true, the unique markings left on a bullet as it travels through the barrel would have ended handgun violence years ago.

Secondly, unlike the rifling marks left by the barrel (which in itself is easy to change), the tiny markings on a firing pin and ejector would be trivial to remove (and as with the barrel simple to replace).

Thirdly, microstamping would make it so that legitimate shooters would leave the equivalent of easily plantable DNA evidence whenever they fired their pistols.

Finally, according to the infographic provided in the article, about 1/4 of handguns recovered by the NYPD last year were revolvers which, since they don’t eject spent casings, would render microstamping useless (and undoubtedly drive up the usage of revolvers for gun crime).

I’m not opposed to reducing crime. I’m not opposed to keeping firearms out of the hands of criminals but there is no point in spending money on a “solution” that won’t work.

Paparazzi evidence of the long suspected affair between Princess Leia and Han Solo’s best friend.

Drunk police officer discharges her weapon in squad car. Must be Texas.

What makes this story interesting is that this police officer, who was off duty at the time, was so drunk that two on duty police officers were summoned for her. They put her in the back of the squad car. She argues with them, pulls out her service pistol and fires it.

Luckily, no one was injured. It is, though, a double standard that because she was a police officer they didn’t attempt to find out if she was armed or, that if they knew or suspected, attempt to disarm her. If it had been anyone else that is one of the first thing the officers would have done and this whole even would never had occurred.

This is what happens when segment of the population is deemed to be above the law.

Bonus double standard. The suspects name is strangely withheld in the article.