God, I hope not. But Randy did make me…. answer a silly meme, so here goes:

1. I have lived in Orange County, California, for approximately 3 1/2 years. Prior to that, I have not lived in any one county for more than 3 consecutive years since 1981.
2. I was a socialist from my junior high years through most of college.
3. I suck at golf.
4. I was a Libertarian candidate for State Assembly in 1992.
5. I am not a sock puppet of Tim Lambert, nor vice-versa.

Here’s a bit of free advice for all gun control advocates thinking of “proving” how lax our gun laws are publicly committing “legal” acts: don’t. CNN tried it earlier this year by sending a correspondent to buy an “assault” weapon in Texas, and ended up violating at least one, possibly two federal statutes in the process. CNN and the correspondent were never charged, most likely because the statutes in question are only criminal offenses if committed “willfully,” and CNN could only have acted “willfully” if it had known about the laws it was flouting. And we all know news organizations don’t know the first thing about half of the crap they report on, so there’s your reasonable doubt right there.

Aubrey Ellen Shomo (h/t: Say Uncle) tried a comparable stunt under Colorado’s citizen-friendly concealed carry law. While CNN sought to show how easy it was to obtain “assault” weapons “legally” in other states, Shomo sought to show how easy it was for nutcakes with long psychiatric histories to carry concealed weapons. Shomo writes:

I’m a pacifist, but, recently, I’ve been thinking about getting a concealed weapons permit. I want to be able to call myself “The Packing Pacifist.” It would go over well with my conservative relatives. Also, it could be fun to show people my permit and my psychiatric records at the same time.

Really clever, eh? For more on her psychiatric records, go here.

The class was in a little shop in a little strip mall, in an industrial part of town. There was an 8 1/2″ x 11″ paper sign in one of the windows that announced the school. I could tell this was a high-class establishment.

Don’t you love the anti-gunners’ elitist attitude? The only thing she forgot to say is that there wasn’t a Starbucks nearby. Horrors.

Inside, I filled out a standard form to make sure I was legal. Restraining orders? None. Felony? Nope. Ever been committed? Snicker. Technically, no. Not by a court.

Neato, but the form didn’t ask whether she was committed by a court, did it? She doesn’t say what the form was, but the smart money says it was either ATF Form 4473 or something very similar. The ATF form doesn’t t say anything about “by a court,” nor is there any good reason why it should, seeing as 18 U.S.C. 922(g)(4) doesn’t, either. That statute provides, in relevant part:

It shall be unlawful for any person … who has been adjudicated as a mental defective or who has been committed to a mental institution … to … possess in or affecting commerce, any firearm or ammunition.

The “commerce” bit is there to keep the Supreme Court happy, and accomplishes little else beyond that. Rely on it at your own peril. Better yet, if you’re trying to get a concealed carry permit in Colorado, don’t rely on it at all. Colo. Rev. Stat. 18-12-203(1)(c), the operative section of Colorado’s shall issue law, requires that the applicant not be ineligible to possess a firearm under federal law – and the Colorado statute, unlike its federal counterpart, has no “interstate commerce” requirement at all. Thus, if Shomo was committed – not committed by a court, but committed – she lied on the form. And if the form was ATF Form 4473, that lie was under penalty of perjury.

So, is Shomo a criminal? Based on what she’s written, it’s unclear. For one thing, the same statute that requires CNN’s violation to be “willful” also requires Shomo’s to be “knowing.” To the extent a “knowing” violation must be made with knowledge that she was violating the law, as the “willful” violations do, Shomo may be able to invoke the “forgive me, for I know not what the hell I’m talking about” defense available to CNN. Also, there’s a long line of interesting case law discussing what does or does not constitute being “committed” to a mental institution for purposes of federal law. There is no bright line rule, but there does seem to be a general pattern of cases suggesting that a person who was institutionalized voluntarily from start to finish will not be deemed to have been “committed,” so it’s at least arguable to that to the extent her time in the institutions was all agreed to voluntarily by her parents (as opposed to, say, a hospital administrator), she may be able to claim she was never “committed,” and is therefore not a prohibited person under federal or state law. Of course, if you also believe her own take on her medical history, it’s not really clear why she should be, either. After all, she claims to have “a clean bill of mental health,” and that she never should have been institutionalized in the first place. If both statements are true, why shouldn’t she be allowed to own a firearm (setting aside, of course, the karmic reason of wanting to deny that right to others)? And if she concedes she should be legal, then what’s the point of “show[-ing] people my permit and my psychiatric records at the same time?”

Shomo has either written a really, really dumb screed against Colorado’s concealed carry law, or she has done something even dumber by breaking the law and writing about it in a public forum. Either way, one thing is clear: she ain’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.

UPDATE: Gun Law News says parental commitment doesn’t count. That sounds right.

FINAL UPDATE: Shomo produces the permit in question, and explains her prior commitments were voluntary on the part of her parents, and therefore did not constitute “commitment” for purposes of federal law. Oddly enough, she also all-but-admits that this is a good thing, arguing that she herself should be allowed to own a firearm. Which kinda makes you wonder what the point of that whole exercise was supposed to be.

Meanwhile Shomo’s brother in arms down under, Tim Lambert, repeats his earlier canard about Michael Fumento’s denials of Lambert’s sock puppet charges not constituting “real” denials, and that this supposed lack of denials constitutes as an admission of guilt. Then again, during that same period I insinuated that Lambert may have forged the messages attributed to Fumento’s alleged sock puppet, and Lambert has not responded to that statement at all. So by Lambert’s own standards, the mere fact that he has not denied flatly and unequivocally (or, for that matter, at all) my charges that he may have forged the Fumento sock puppet comments, must mean he did in fact forge them. Right?

UPDATE: Well, now he denies it. Query whether he’d accept such a late repeat denial from Fumento anyway. My guess is he would put about as much stock in that as he does put in John Lott’s denials of all that other stuff Lambert’s accused him of doing over the years, but that’s just me.

Michael Crook, the worthless, racist pile of crap who maintained forsakethetroops.com and falsely claimed to have been murdered by a group of angry soldiers, is at it again (h/t: Michelle Malkin). This time, he’s proudly admitting to having sent a nasty handwritten note to Joshua Sparling, a soldier injured while defending Crook’s right to be an ass. The note read in full:

Dear, Soldier
Have a great time in the war and have a great time dieing in the war.
From, [illegible] Miguel

Really clever – in a single handwritten note, Crook managed to attack the troops and defame another race. Crook goes on in the usual, self-important way to imply he’s rearing to off himself again:

Look, at this point, the only way for anyone to stop me is to put a bullet in me. I am unable to be stopped..strike that..the truth will never be stopped.

Any questions?

OK, I’ll bite: WTF makes a sorry little loser like you think you are important enough for anyone to give an airborne coitus about you, let alone “stopping” you? You’re barely worth the minimal effort it takes to post a nasty blog entry or two over the course of a year. It’s one thing to assassinate Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Adolf Hitler, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or that idiot running in Bolivia, and take the inevitable punishment for the greater good. It’s quite another to risk life imprisonment, or worse, just to rid the world of one pathetic, attention-starved nobody in Syracuse who never has and never will accomplish anything, and whose only real beef with the military is that they wouldn’t let him in (h/t: IowaVoice). Sorry, Mikey, you’re just not worth it. Don’t be too surprised when no one believes your next fake murder, or the next, or the next, or the next. It would be a shame, however, if anyone were to start sending him any of these notices.