SECOND AMENDMENT UPDATE: Eugene Volokh has more criticism of the Washington Post’s lame editorial referenced below. And there’s also a post on the Volokh Conspiracy webpage from Sasha Volokh, explaining some things about guns that get left out of most media discussion.

And, finally, in a Volokh trifecta, another post adds this point:

By the way, note also that the Washington Post article mentioned below mentioned the “gun lobby.” I wonder: Would they have called NARAL and other groups on NARAL’s side of the issue the “abortion lobby”? Would they have called the Reporters’ Committee for Freedom of the Press the “press lobby”? Would they have called the NAACP the “black lobby”?

I somehow doubt it.

Yep. So do I.

THIS PIECE BY ANDREA DWORKIN starts to look like it’s going to make sense — but she pulls off a save at the end. I knew you could do it, Andrea!

SECOND AMENDMENT UPDATE: TalkLeft — apparently part of the growing (or at least more visible) gun-friendly left wing — says I was right to criticize the Washington Post’s dumb gun editorial today.

BELLICOSE WOMEN UPDATE: Well, it’s one bellicose woman, really: Anh Duong, explosives expert for the Naval Research Center, who took the lead in developing thermobaric cave- and bunker-busting bombs. Excerpts:

Much of the world would gasp. Greenpeace called it inhumane; a Russian geologist blamed it for deadly earthquakes; critics would dub the weapon “thermo-barbaric” – so unfathomably lethal that it should never have been created.

Fulfilling an obligation

But, for Duong, a former refugee from Vietnam who came to the United States in 1975 and studied science in Maryland’s public schools and universities, it would fulfill an obligation that she had pledged to repay her whole adult life.

When she settled in Maryland 27 years ago, Duong promised herself she would fight for the principles of her adopted homeland. And now, if all went as planned, the BLU-118/B would slice into a tunnel in the Afghan mountains, unleash the chemically engineered hell that she and the rest of the country’s top explosives experts had wrought, and America’s enemies would die.

“It was different than anything we had done before,” said Duong. “Not making a new explosive; we’ve done that. But having a purpose – knowing where it was going and what it was going to be used for. This was one of the proudest achievements of my life. Not just professionally, but personally. We were fighting a war. And it was the chance for me to give something back to the country that had adopted me so generously.” . . .

A slight woman with a broad smile, Duong becomes fiery when she talks about America and opportunity, and the history that has made her appreciate her home with such passion.

“I had this ideal of mine, and I wanted, in some way, to get involved in the fight for freedom, to preserve this great country that had taken me in,” Duong said. “Working for the U.S. Defense Department seemed like the right thing. I felt like I could do something good there.”

Yet another reason to be in favor of immigration — so long, at any rate, as it’s immigrants like Duong, who come here to be Americans.

UPDATE: Reader Thanh Nguyen writes:

Some day, it might go down into history that OBL died at the hands of a bunch of American female scientists! How ironic!

I am so proud of Anh Duong. In Vietnamese, her name means “a ray of sunlight”. Well, she turned out to be a very lethal ray of sunlight indeed for cave-dwelling OBL and his terror gang, who represent the darkness of evil.

It would be ironic. Delightfully so.

DAVE KOPEL’S (AND ROBERT RACANSKY’S) GUN CONTROL FOR COPS PROPOSAL is looking better all the time:

WASHINGTON (AP) – Five agencies under Justice Department jurisdiction, including the FBI and DEA, have reported 775 missing or stolen weapons and 400 missing laptop computers, says a report released Monday.

Some of the weapons were used to commit crimes and the classification level of 218 of the missing laptops is unknown, said the audit report by the department’s Office of Inspector General, an internal investigative unit.

The bulk of the missing weapons belonged to the FBI and the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

The report noted that “it is possible that the missing laptop computers would have been used to process and store national security or sensitive law enforcement information that, if divulged, could harm the public.”

Before last year, the FBI had not taken a complete inventory of laptops and weapons in almost a decade, despite an agency policy requiring such an inventory be taken every two years, said Inspector General Glenn A. Fine.

Well, that certainly relieves my concerns about Homeland Security.

THE WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL BOARD EMBARRASSES ITSELF AGAIN with this extraordinarily lame editorial on the Second Amendment. The editorial attacks Attorney General John Ashcroft for adopting an individual-right view of the Second Amendment, using a particular case (in which a Maryland man, licensed to carry in Maryland, was arrested for carrying a gun in D.C.) as its springboard.

Here’s the dumbest passage, from among many candidates:

Our point is simply that the government cannot both embrace an individual rights view of the Second Amendment and prosecute people for wielding guns.

Well, the Post here seems to lose sight of the distinction between carrying a gun and “wielding” it, something that seems rather crucial. More importantly — as the editors of the Post would know if they bothered to read anything on the Second Amendment beyond (suspiciously similar) press releases from the Brady Campaign and the Violence Policy Center, both of whom incestuously feature a lot of Post editorials on their webpages — prosecution for illegally carrying guns doesn’t violate the right to keep and bear arms anyway. Scholarship on the Second Amendment is almost completely in agreement on this point. Nor is that all.

The vast majority of states have state constitutional provisions protecting the right to keep and bear arms, yet — even in states where the provisions are treated as fundamental rights getting the highest protections — “carrying” weapons in public is treated differently from owning them. So there’s no inherent conflict in Ashcroft’s position at all. The Post is just, once again, gullibly recycling sound bites from gun-control activists, and diminishing its already-limited credibility on this subject still further.

Had the Post’s editorial writer even bothered to read the academic articles cited in Ashcroft’s letter stating his position on the Second Amendment, or the sources in this letter from eighteen state attorneys general supporting Ashcroft, he/she would have known that the editorial was nonsense. Which makes me wonder: is the Post really this clueless on a subject it editorializes about so often? Or do the editors of the Post simply not care about the truth?

UPDATE: Hey, maybe this is why, as Howard Kurtz reports, the press’s reputation is in the toilet. Well, given that three quarters of Americans support Ashcroft’s position, the Post’s effort to portray it as outlandish certainly can’t be helping.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Asking “Are all the Post editors on vacation?” Mickey Kaus finds another example of the Post falling for bogus interest-group spin. Maybe they should just print the advocacy-group pressreleases directly, with the contact numbers so we’ll know who to call if we have any questions.

Kaus, who’s on a roll today, also identifies a major Krugman error, which Krugman has only corrected on his webpage, presumably next to the item about rhinoceri, and not in the Times where it appeared. Interestingly, in the poll cited by Howard Kurtz, above, most Americans thought Big Media were lousy at correcting errors. Looks like they’re right again.

I GOT AN EMAIL FROM A U.S. MARINE with an Arabic-sounding name. It was the very first abusive email I’ve ever gotten from someone in the military — and I’m pretty sure this guy really was a Marine, because it came from a USMC domain, though I suppose he could be a civilian employee just pretending. Why was I so hard on Syria, he demanded to know. Syria’s never done anything to us. It’s all the fucking jews’ fault that we’re having these problems anyway.

The guy didn’t include his rank, which I hope is low. But if you’re reading this post, buddy, then read this.

UPDATE: Okay, a bunch of people have emailed me to say that I should publish the guy’s name and email. Well, it’s not like I promised him confidentiality. He didn’t even ask for it. On the other hand, I looked him up and discovered that he’s a lance corporal (though, believe it or not, in a Public Affairs unit! — thanks to the miracle of Google I’ve even got his CO’s direct number). Anyway, it’s not like this is a guy wielding a lot of discretion, and I think he was just popping off. So I don’t think I should publish the information, even though I’d certainly be within my rights to do so. Here’s the letter, in its entirety (you can see that my earlier paraphrase, er, cleaned it up a bit):

WHATS WRONG WITH SYRIA.. COCKSUCKER.. THERE NOT DOING ANYTHING TO YOU… STOP SUPPORTING THE JEWS. AND AMERICA WOULDNT BE IN THIS MESS..

This certainly isn’t boosting my opinion of the Marines, but I’ve known enough Marines in my time that I’m not going to generalize here, either. Any Marines out there think I’m handling this wrong?

BOBBY FISCHER may be spouting anti-American claptrap from some hideyhole somewhere, but Garry Kasparov — who can also kick Fischer’s lardy ass around any chessboard anywhere — sees things rather differently:

America’s European allies will join the action against Saddam Hussein, or at least not openly oppose it. But the pressure will be strong to then declare the war won and the offensive stage over. That would be disastrous.

Those who instigated the current war must remember that Coventry and Pearl Harbor backfired on Dresden and Hiroshima. There will be no peace in Gaza, no freedom from fear in Jerusalem, until we have prosecuted the war on terror in Baghdad, Tehran, Damascus and elsewhere. U.S. leadership saved Europe from fascism and communism. It is again the last hope.

Smart guy.

IF YOU’RE INTERESTED IN COPYRIGHT LAW (and people today should have the same interest in copyright law that sheep have in shears, or steers have in mallets) then you’ll want to read this piece by law professor Tom W. Bell. Bell says that modern copyright law is corporate welfare — and calls for welfare reform.

I’VE MISSED TAPPED. They promise me that it’ll be back with new stuff later this morning. About time! Individual bloggers going on vacation is one thing, but you’d think that huge media organizations flush with cash would have substitute bloggers for their house blogs.

MATT DRUDGE has picked up on the Ted Turner land grab story. Still no word from Doonesbury (which is savaging only Republican billionaires today), Michael Moore, Molly Ivins, et al.

UPDATE: Reader Ken Summers writes:

Apparently, Mr. Trudeau doesn’t realize (or doesn’t care and has decided to lie about it) that most of the bigwig dotcommers were Democrats. Gray Davis took in a hell of a lot of money from Silicon Valley, and not just from Larry “The Dumpster” Ellison.

Funny, that. My guess is that this is based on ignorance, not dishonesty — Doonesbury seems to have been stuck in 1981 for, oh, about 21 years. But it’s lame either way — which Doonesbury has also been for about the same length of time.

Me, I wish he’d take out after Joe Biden, Fritz Hollings, Harold Berman, and all the other corporate-whoring Dems who are carrying the entertainment industry’s water in exchange for huge campaign contributions. But I’m not holding my breath. Trudea is One Of Them now, even though he pretends not to be.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jeez, did I say stuck in 1981? Judging by this strip from yesterday he’s stuck in 1971! Next we’ll see Ahmed, the cute’n’friendly Al Qaeda terrorist, a rehash of Phred, the cute’n’friendly Viet Cong.

In retrospect, knowing what we know about the Viet Cong, Phred was equivalent to Horst, the cute’n’friendly brownshirt. But Trudeau seems to be a living embodiment of Baby Boomer generational narcissism.