Many firearms manufacturers, from Mossberg (who is now in Texas) to Ruger (who is now in North Carolina) have joined an already large contingent of firearms manufacturers who were born in the South or have made their home here, including Daniel Defense (Georgia), Wilson Combat, (Arkansas), FN (South Carolina), Palmetto State Armory (South Carolina), etc.

Troy Industries may be the most recent to relocate, as they have begun building in Tennessee.

But there is still a large portion of firearms still manufactured in the North.

Based on data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which analyzed five categories of firearm production (pistols, revolvers, rifles, shotguns and others), the report identified the states where most firearms are manufactured. In 2019, New Hampshire accounted for the most firearm production of any state, with 1.2 million guns, followed by Missouri, Florida, North Carolina and Mississippi. Those five states made up more than half of all licensed firearms produced in the country.

New Hampshire produced the most rifles, at nearly 328,000, and pistols, with more than 700,000, in 2019, while Florida manufactured the most revolvers: nearly 190,000. Texas produced the most shotguns, at about 191,000, while Mississippi followed closely behind with 188,000. The two states made up 79% of all shotgun production in 2019.

I’m not certain who is in Mississippi, Florida or Missouri, but the obvious big actor in New Hampshire is SIG Sauer who has at least six plants in that state, with no manufacturing left in Germany.

Massachusetts also accounts for a large firearms manufacturing portfolio.

The American firearms industry was born in Massachusetts. As recently as 2018 the Commonwealth ranked as the largest producer of guns in America, according to Bloomberg News, accounting for about 1 out of every 4 of guns made each year — including military-assault-style rifles …

The gun industry in Massachusetts is a source of jobs, with companies that make guns that are used for recreational purposes and by officers of the law. But it also manufactures assault-style weapons that are sold to civilians out of state, such as the AR-15.

New Hampshire may be a tough nut to crack, as New Hampshire gun laws are quite favorable, and as best as I can determine, their plants are not unionized.

But this may all be about to come to an end for Smith & Wesson in Massachusetts.

BOSTON — State Rep. Frank Moran and three other Democratic legislators are proposing a bill which would outlaw the manufacturing of assault weapons in Massachusetts that are banned from being sold in the state.

The state has banned civilians from buying or owning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines for decades, but companies like Smith & Wesson, with headquarters in Springfield, can still make the guns in Massachusetts and sell them elsewhere.

Backed by parents who lost children to mass shootings and the Stop Handgun Violence organization, Moran, who represents Lawrence, launched the effort Tuesday with the support of fellow lawmakers. They filed legislation that would extend the existing assault weapon ban to cover the manufacturing of guns sold to civilians.

There are of course a host of ways to address this, including [but not limited to] refusing to sell weapons to police in states that have such bans.

One of the most obvious for S&W will be relocation.  If they can’t fabricate their S&M M&P ARs to sell to anyone but law enforcement, they’ll go bust (at least, this is my prediction).

One has to wonder anyway why they would still wish to be ensconced in a state who doesn’t want them.

Prior: Gun Valley Moves South

Many politicians will answer in eternity for putting the sons of America in harm’s way for unnecessary foreign misadventures, sometimes for personal or corporate gain.

But the sons of America never fought for the personal gain of the politicians or corporations.  It’s appropriate to remember the fallen, and no, this isn’t just a “long weekend,” contrary to what airheads might think.

It’s memorial day, 2021.  It’s not a long weekend, it’s not veteran’s days, it isn’t fireworks day.

I watched this video today.  Deal with the language, or just don’t watch it at all.

BLUF: The Trijicon MRO is awful.  Trijicon has apparently tried to fix it, to no avail.

I’ve read comments before at various websites where readers were giving other readers a hard time about buying Holosun (even Primary Arms has Chinese products).

The problem is that the Chinese are whipping America at producing good quality products for cheaper.  That’s America’s fault, not China’s.

What are we supposed to do – throw good, hard earned money after bad?

And do any other Trijicon optics suffer from the problem of lack of glass clarity, magnification in 1X optics, etc.?

Does the Trijicon RMR produce a screwed up sight picture due to fish bowling?

I’m just asking for a friend before the friend throws away good money.

Don’t underestimate the damage he can do to firearms manufacturers through rule making.  I’ve often lamented rule making through the federal register, effectively a bypass around law making through the senate and house (not that that’s routinely any better than rule making, just a bit more difficult).

And never forget his involvement in the killing of women and children in Waco, Texas.  Proud of it, he was, stopping in the aftermath to pose for a picture in front of the wreckage he helped to create.

Background checks.  More.  Give us background checks.

A record number of gun sales along with the disruption to normal life by the coronavirus pandemic have contributed to a 25% surge in homicides and non-suicide-related shootings in 2020, according to a gun control advocacy group.

“What we know is the year will be remembered for two conflicting, compounding public health crises — COVID-19 and gWith more guns being purchased and trafficked than ever, Suplina is calling for a nationwide mandate on background checks, “so that gun traffickers and criminals don’t go shopping across state lines.”un violence,” said Nick Suplina, the managing director for law and policy of Everytown for Gun Safety.

[ … ]

With more guns being purchased and trafficked than ever, Suplina is calling for a nationwide mandate on background checks, “so that gun traffickers and criminals don’t go shopping across state lines.”

Oops.  Maybe they didn’t get the memo.

After a shooting in America gets national attention, the debate usually centers around a few gun control measures, particularly universal background checks and an assault weapons ban. That’s what happened after the April mass shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis — with President Joe Biden calling on Congress to pass both measures.

But if America wants to make a real dent in gun violence, it might want to consider another approach: requiring a license to buy and own a firearm.

For one, the evidence on the effects of universal background checks and assault weapons bans is pretty weak. Several studies in recent years have found that universal background checks, at least on their own, don’t seem to have a big effect on gun deaths. Similarly, the research on assault weapons bans, including the national ban that Biden helped pass in 1994, found they have little effect on gun violence, largely because the vast majority of such violence is committed with handguns.

But there’s some solid evidence that a license system reduces gun deaths. A 2018 study from researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that universal background checks alone correlated with more gun homicides in urban counties, while license systems were associated with fewer gun homicides. Other studies have similarly found that license requirements lead to fewer gun deaths.

[ … ]

In Massachusetts, one of the few states with a license system, obtaining a permit requires going through a multi-step process involving interviews with police, background checks, a gun safety training course, and more. Even if a person passes all of that, the local police chief can deny an application anyway. That creates more points at which an applicant can be identified as too dangerous to own a gun; it makes getting and owning a gun harder.

Whatever one makes of all of this, the evidence strongly suggests the license requirement works. Massachusetts, for one, has the lowest rate of gun deaths in the country.

Don’t give us background checks – they don’t work.  Give us license requirements.  Oops.  Maybe they didn’t get the memo.

Mass shootings in Massachusetts increased to eight in 2020 from five the year before, while nationally mass shootings jumped nearly 50% during a pandemic with crippling unemployment, violent protests and idle youth.

In 2020, Massachusetts reported eight mass shootings that killed five and injured 33. A year earlier, the state had five mass shootings that killed seven and injured 17.

Among Massachusetts’s deadliest shootings last year was one Dec. 26 in Lynn that killed one and injured five.

Or the other memo.  Gun owning Wyoming is much safer than Massachusetts.

They just want to control you.  They want to disarm you and make you subjects of the globalist power system.  All of the arguments aren’t really intended to be logical or consistent.

At Ammoland.

I don’t have experience with four of the five, but I can tell you that the Radian Weapons Raptor is a great product.

It’s also amazing when you outfit your rifle with (a) a good BCG, and (b) a good charging handle, how easily and smoothly it operates – like butter.

Some of the easiest improvements to the gun are not just just convenient because they’re modular, but they’re also fairly inexpensive.

Field & Stream.

The .30 Remington AR was introduced by Remington in 2008, just in time for the Obama-inspired AR buying frenzy. It couldn’t have come at a worse time. Everybody wanted an AR15, but not for hunting, which is the 30 Remington AR’s forte. The same stupidness that would eventually lead Remington to bankruptcy pushed the cartridge into obscurity. Some early advertisements for the 30 Remington AR listed the cartridge’s 300-yard velocity as its muzzle velocity. Even more foolishly, Remington never offered a blister-packaged complete upper receiver and magazine to allow shooters an easy conversion from an AR-15 in .223 Remington.

Designed specifically for the AR-15 platform, the .30 Remington AR will push a 150-grain bullet to almost 2600 fps and a 125-grain bullet to about 2800 fps. Nothing else in the AR-15 platform comes close, and with that rifle twice as popular now as it was a decade ago, it’s time for this cartridge to return and make the AR-15 all that it can be for the hunter. Some folks get it through. Every year Melvin Forbes at New Ultra Light Arms sells several .30 Remington AR rifles in his less than five-pound bolt-action Model 20-Short rifles. I have mine and the deer in West Virginia hate me for it.

I have little interest in the rest of them, but I sure would like to see a comeback for this particular round.  I missed this when it came out, probably because no one chambered a rifle for this round.

Dean Weingarten.

He saw the grizzly coming at them. He dropped the arrow and bow and drew his Taurus .45 1911 semi-auto. He yelled at the bear and started backing away. As the bear saw the two other hunters behind the lead, it momentarily paused, giving him time to rack the slide and chamber a round. The Taurus had eight rounds in its magazine.

The pause was momentary; not a full stop of the charge. The lead hunter was able to start shooting from a range of six feet. The grizzly grabbed the lead hunter by the left thigh and the hunter went down with the bear on top of him.

As the bear closed with the lead hunter, the middle and last hunters had seen the bear, dropped their bows, and drew their pistols, a .44 magnum and a 9mm. They started shooting.

With the lead hunter down and the bear in his lap, he put the .45 against its head and shot his last rounds. The bear went limp. The lead hunter was able to crawl out from under the big bear.

Shortly afterward, the bear was seen to move, and the hunters fired two more rounds into the chest cavity from the side. The hunters estimated they had fired 19 cartridges at the bear; 8 rounds of .45, 6 rounds of .44 magnum, and about 4 rounds of 9mm.

[ … ]

At the scene, they collected 12 cartridge cases, including 9mm, .45, and .44 magnum.

The wardens found seven bullet wounds in the bear, five of which were from the front, and two of which were from the side. They recovered four bullets from the bear in three different calibers.

Good Lord.  That bear was hard to put down.

Yet more lessons learned.  Pistols, not bear spray.  Next, the bow hunters thought they had discharged 19 rounds.  They actually discharged 12.  Finally, don’t always assume you’re going to hit your target in that sort of situation.  They connected with 7 out of 12.

Via David Codrea, this piece at Reason is sad both in its signal tale for where America is, and for further development down the road to tyranny.

… the Supreme Court declined to intervene in a major case that promises to further obstruct people from holding the government accountable when their rights are violated.

In 2017, Euclid Police Department (EPD) Officer Matthew Rhodes shot and killed Luke Stewart, 23, shortly after waking him up in his car around 7 a.m. in Euclid, Ohio. Along with Officer Louis Catalani, Rhodes had attempted to forcefully eject Stewart from his vehicle. Neither officer announced they were law enforcement, nor was Stewart ever informed he was under arrest, as he had not committed any known crime.

After a brief struggle that lasted just over a minute, Rhodes shot Stewart five times.

A jury in civil court could deduce that Rhodes infringed on Stewart’s constitutional rights, said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit last August. One would assume so. But the court then turned around and awarded the officer qualified immunity, barring Stewart’s estate from suing.

[ … ]

That decision—and the high court’s demurral in considering it—could have major implications for how Congress addresses qualified immunity. Sen. Tim Scott (R–S.C.) has been one of the few congressional Republicans willing to come to the table on the issue, proposing a compromise last month to hold cities liable for nefarious actions committed by officers in their individual capacities. Yet if the federal courts now consider those same cities eligible for qualified immunity by association, then that plan may be a dud.

It’s well known to readers here that criminals have been using tactical clothing and gear to pretend to be police, and with the SCOTUS refusal to grant cert, they can now even go plain clothes, beat people up with no way of ascertaining that they are actually police, and people need to lay down and take it.

Cops have shot people through doorways in their own home, and in none of these cases can the police be held accountable for their actions.

That’s because according to precedent, the police aren’t there to protect the public.  They exist as a standing land army of occupation, for the purpose of conducting state stability operations.

The supreme court essentially said this in their refusal to overturn this case.  The case couldn’t even garner four justices to get a hearing.

When the police wonder why people hate they, they should look no further than themselves.  And you can fold the judiciary into this analysis.  If there is justice in the system of justice, it’s only spurious and by accident.