Elderly Hostage shoots captor in home

An 84-year-old Dickenson County man who was held at gunpoint for hours by two robbers shot and killed one of them after one of them shot him in the leg, according to authorities. Clyde Colley, a retired businessman, is recuperating under medical care following the Dec.  14 ordeal in which one man ransacked Colley's Sandlick house while another kept his gun pointed at Colley and his wife. "He's a hero in my book," Dickenson Sheriff Bobby Hammons said of the gun-wielding octogenarian yesterday.

So... where did all those votes found in King County for the Governor's race come from?

The number of King County ballots counted in the final tally was 899,199 -- 3,539 more than the number of participating voters reported in the county's list.

The "Quiet Gun" that might help keep urban gun ranges open

An inventor in Minnesota might have the answer. "The gun is much quieter than traditional shotguns because the long barrel uses a series of holes, or ports, to bleed away the blast-producing gases that come from discharging the shot shell."

New Zealand says no to gun registration

The New Zealand government decides not to go forward with reintroducing gun registration. As Don Kates writes me, "in 1995 Canada undertook a $2 million effort to register all guns by 2004. As of last month the deadline for the registration had  to be extended once again w/ millions og guns unregistered -- and the total cost so far at more than a BILLION dollars. It is now estimated that roughly 40-50% of guns remain unregistered and the cost of registering them will be at least another billion dollars."

Op-ed on new National Academy of Sciences Report

The New York Post has my op-ed on the recent NAS report. The key point of the report, something that the media hasn't been covered at all by the media, is that: "The big news is that the academy’s panel couldn’t identify any benefits of the decades-long effort to reduce crime and injury by restricting gun ownership."

Update: World Net Daily has a news article on the NAS report. See also the discussion on keepandbeararms.com.

British Tories introduce self defense bill

While some have argued that there is no problem using self defense in Britain, apparently many British MPs see the problem differently. The proposed legislation apparently has support from members representing all the political parties and the backing of the Conservative Party, though it is not clear what Labor will do on the bill. The article claims that if a free vote was allowed the legislation would pass. The proposed text is very straightforward:

"Where a person uses force in the prevention of crime or in the defence of persons or property on another who is in any building or part of a building having entered as a trespasser or is attempting so to enter, that person shall not be guilty of any offence in respect of the use of that force unless - a) the degree of force used was grossly disproportionate,  and b) this was or ought to have been apparent to the person using such force." Crucially, the Bill then states that: "No prosecution shall be brought against a person. . . without the leave of the Attorney General".