Dave Kopel wrote on April 7:

The Boston Globe reports that gun sales in Israel are skyrocketing, “particularly since an Israeli shoe salesman used his own weapon to fatally shoot a 46-year-old Palestinian who had opened fire in a Tel Aviv restaurant March 5 and killed three Israelis. The Interior Ministry says applications for licenses have tripled during the past month, overwhelming its staff and forcing it to shift employees from other departments to handle the deluge. The Israeli government, meanwhile, has moved to ease once-tight restrictions on owning a gun . . .” More Guns, Less Terrorism.

This surprised me. I had the impression that a large fraction of Israëlis were already armed.

Sasha Volokh says “Sunday is also Take A Friend Target-Shooting Day” (responding to his brother’s having done so on Tuesday). Hear hear.

In or about 1995-6 I had this conversation:

Seth: “Is Vince there?”
Anton: “He’s not back from church yet.”
Seth: “He goes to church??”
Anton: “He goes to the target range every Sunday.”

Vince was tickled, and ever since he has spoken of “services at the shrine of Saint Ayn,” etc. One day he mentioned this running joke to one of the range safety officers, who said, “Well, the Good Book says you should make a joyful noise unto the Lord!”

Hey, a blog by a law professor.
I refer of course to Eugene Volokh, who last week hung up a joint shingle with his brother Sasha, a student at Harvard. (Sasha recently made the news by organizing a gun club there, and folks said hm, is he related to Eugene? Now we know.)
I’ll be watching, just as if it did not already take me six weeks to cycle my “sites to watch” list.

E.V.’s remarks on the “I don’t know any people like that” phenomenon remind me of something that happened to me.
On a Sunday in 1996, as I blasted away at a defenseless paper target with my Ruger KP90D, a shell bounced off the wall and was caught behind my glasses, burning off a bit of skin. Next day, of course, a coworker asked what happened; once word got around, another said “I didn’t know they scatter shells about”; another asked what caliber; and yet another said, “I’m thinking of trading in my rifle; what caliber do you think I should use for elk?” —
Five years later, getting ready for a trip to Front Sight, it was the elk guy that I asked to sign for my good moral character.

And of course E.V. says exactly the right thing about nail-clippers on airplanes.

The latest from that great hypocrite Don Perata: Calif. lawmaker wants 5-cent tax on every bullet to support trauma centers.

Perata said there was plenty of precedent for taxing bullets, noting that California has been taxing smokers 50-cents for each pack of cigarettes since 1998 to help pay for health and education programs.

Never mind that most of this tax would be paid by the people least likely to hurt someone with their bullets, i.e. private citizens who go to the range and practice.

California leads the nation in numbers of youth gun suicides and homicides.

Gee, does that mean gun control in California – already one of the five or so most repressive states – isn’t working? Or only that California is a big place?

Google cites 28 pages for perata+hypocrite, but not all of them apply the epithet to Perata himself.

David Kopel in Reason:

Most cities do prohibit property owners from storing their cars in an unsightly manner (say, on cinder blocks in the front yard), or from parking too many cars on the public street in front of their homes. Fair enough. Gun owners will have to accept laws against leaving nonfunctional guns strewn about their front yard, and they will not be allowed to leave excessive numbers of guns on the street. (Anti-gun groups frequently complain that there are “too many guns on the street.”)

Is anyone pushing a boycott of Dell Computers over the Weigand Combat Handguns matter? Please don’t.

An example of why unnecessary proliferation of SSNs bothers me: Worker Accused of Selling Colleagues’ ID’s Online (New York Times). Incidentally:

. . . investigators seized . . . a shotgun with a silencer . . .

Is such a thing possible?!

Meanwhile: It’s a beautiful day. The rainy season gave way to spring while I wasn’t looking.