Archive for the 'Firearms' Category

These are must see videos.  If you don’t do anything else today, watch these. Act accordingly.

Fred Tippens sends this.

WESTFIR — A cougar was shot and killed Sunday at Casey’s Riverside RV Park in Westfir after it had spent at least a week prowling around the mobile home portion of the park, residents said Thursday.

“It was after the feral cats,” Gayle Murphy, 68, said. She lives at the park between Highway 58 and the Middle Fork of the Willamette River, just west of Oakridge.

The 100-pound, male mountain lion was full grown but thin, Murphy said. Recently, she said, the animal had crawled onto the porches of her neighbor. It would come in from the nearby forest, following a dry creek bed.

“The cat had a pattern,” she said. “He was (at the park) about every other night.”

The cougar was shot about 100 yards from Murphy’s fifth-wheel trailer, where she’s lived for the past year, she said.

The man who shot the cougar has parents who live in the mobile home park, said Randy Christian, owner of the park. He said the cougar, which residents had seen off and on for at least a week, came into their backyard and the son shot at it.

“There were two shots,” Christian said. “One shot hit the cougar, and it ran down into the trees and they found it dead down there.”

He said the man then called Oregon State Police. An OSP wildlife trooper responded, didn’t issue any citations and took the cougar’s carcass.

Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife spokeswoman Michelle Dennehy in Salem said the shooting was allowed under state law. “The person who took the cougar was legal to do so under statutes that allow killing of cougars causing damage or public safety issues,” she said.

She confirmed that the cougar had been at the mobile home park recently and it had killed house cats. She added that the mountain lion was two or three years old and thin for its age.

ODFW officials estimate about 6,400 wild cougars live in Oregon, Dennehy said, particularly in the southwest Cascades Range and the Blue Mountains in Eastern Oregon.

Nestled in the foothills of the Cascade Range, Westfir is in mountain lion country.

“There is a healthy population of cougars that live in that area,” Dennehy said.

The presence of the mountain lion had unnerved mobile home park residents, Murphy said.

“This cat was definitely too used to this environment, and he either needed to be moved or shot because he was a danger to us,” she said.

Mid-way through the article I was about to say that they only made one mistake – they called the police.  On the other hand, it sounds as if he reacted with some wisdom.

Look, for all of you environmentalist types who think we’re invading their territory and we should just learn to live with them because we’re in their back yard, not ours, you’ll think that way until a mountain lion takes the scalp off a friend or family member and kills them (it’s happened before).  Then you’ll change your mind if you have any sense at all.

Always carry guns.  You can no more let an animal harm you and destroy your belongings than let a man do it.

Reader David Dietz sends this from Recoil.

Amid ongoing reports of deteriorating sales in the black rifle market, firearms manufacturer Daniel Defense laid off an undisclosed number of employees. According to conversations with those affected and social media posts, on Friday, Sept. 29 and Monday, Oct. 2., the firearms manufacturer eliminated approximately 100 full-time positions.

A former employee of Daniel Defense affected by the layoffs said, “This was very unexpected. All of us were handed a blanket packet that explained everything. The paperwork didn’t even have my name on it. All they said about my job was that my position was being eliminated. There was no severance package, we were just fired.”

The scope of the layoff is unknown, but firsthand sources including current and recently laid off employees speaking under the condition of anonymity said anywhere from a third to a half of the company’s workforce was affected.

Speaking about the terms of employment at Daniel Defense and the layoff, one laid off employee said, “We all had to sign a non-compete. I think the non-compete I signed was for 2 years. The outgoing talk and paperwork didn’t specify the non-compete being lifted. It’s unfortunate for a lot of people who don’t have skills outside of the industry.”

According to former employees, Daniel Defense’s post-termination non-compete clause is contained in a standard employment agreement employees sign as they are brought aboard. It is used to protect the employer’s interests by preventing employees from working for a competing company for a certain amount of time, stipulated in the non-compete clause.

When asked about the existence of a post-termination non-compete agreement, the terms, and whether it will be enforced, officials from Daniel Defense refused the opportunity to comment.

Well, Daniel Defense has a right to force employees to sign non-compete agreements as a condition of employment.  But this is a shame for the former employees of Daniel Defense, who only know how to do one thing.  Hopefully they can keep their machinist skills up-to-date enough to return to the workforce when the agreement has been fulfilled.

On the other hand, one has to question the wisdom of Daniel Defense.  If they were prepared to throw good money after Super Bowl commercials (and apparently they were), and if their rifles are almost priced out of the market, and they are, then it seems wise to cut costs and MSRP, tighten the belt, and even cut employee salaries in an attempt to stay afloat.

This way (with the history of the non-compete agreement preventing employees from seeking other similar gainful employment), it would seem to me hard to hire good employees in the future.

The Alaskan remarks thusly.

Had he been a precision sniper, given the target rich environment and the ability to follow up shots in such an environment, his gruesome tally would’ve been much deadlier, I believe.

The manner in which he carried out his mission seems to have been weighed more heavily towards the political sphere and the “shock” of it all, than the actual “targeted” killing of individuals, as would have been the the case if optics and precision shooting had been the tactic.

Bump stocks just aided in his mission of “shock and awe,” which really seems to have been his motive to his madness.

I believe so too, and that’s just the point made by Mark Quimby (via Codrea).  I believe that this is the Mark Quimby here.

News from South Dakota:

That Wednesday morning began with a gruesome discovery: a bloodied goat lie dead on the ground behind Streff’s house, 10 miles south of Custer near Pringle. The owner of Black Hills Goat Dairy, single mother of six, and grandmother to nine, soon discovered it was one of the young bucks she keeps pastured behind her home.

For better than a decade, Streff has milked 38 others, as well as eight dairy cows, making deliveries to Custer on Tuesdays and Rapid City on Fridays. But this was the first animal she had lost to a hungry mountain lion.

“We can see the goats right off the back porch, and we saw one lying on the ground back there,” she said on Tuesday. “We went right out and looked, and it was dead. We also saw a trail of destruction from the chicken coop with a dead cat, a dead duck and a bunch of chicken feathers.”

Streff said she feared the mountain lion would return for more.

“It’s unnerving because I really have a smorgasbord of animals here,” she said. “It’s like Golden Corral. If you don’t stop it, you’ll be at the mercy of the lions. I also have grandchildren out back occasionally, and I was worried.”

Read the rest at Rapid City Journal.  I think’s its awesome that this young man is home-schooled.  I also think it’s awesome he got the dangerous critter.  A man can’t let a dangerous animal destroy his belongings and endanger his family any more than he can let a man do it.  Despite the title of the article, I don’t think this has a thing to do with revenge.

As for fancying himself a hunter, I don’t think so.  This young man has guts, and a lot of patience to boot.  He doesn’t fancy himself a hunter, he knows he’s a hunter.

Or Slide Fire stock.  Hey, the dude can hardly hold onto that M203.  Hey, I suddenly want a slide fire stock if it comes with a free grenade launcher.

NYT:

The National Rifle Association on Thursday endorsed tighter restrictions on devices that allow a rifle to fire bullets as fast as a machine gun — a rare, if small, step for a group that for years has vehemently opposed any new gun controls.

Twelve of the rifles the Las Vegas gunman, Stephen Paddock, had in a high-rise hotel suite when he opened fire on a crowd on Sunday were outfitted with “bump stocks,” devices that allow a semiautomatic rifle to fire hundreds of rounds per minute, which may explain how he was able to shoot so quickly, killing 58 people and wounding hundreds of others. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has ruled that bump stocks do not violate laws that tightly limit ownership of machine guns, and some lawmakers have called for them to be banned.

The bureau should revisit the issue and “immediately review whether these devices comply with federal law,” the N.R.A. said in a statement released Thursday. “The N.R.A. believes that devices designed to allow semiautomatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations.”

Ignoring the small issues of “shall not be infringed,” the NRA caves on bump fire stocks, as surely as most of the senators and congresscritters will cave, many of whom will have high marks from the NRA.

The NRA is still conflicted as to whether it wants to be a hunter and sportsman organization of a second amendment and gun rights organization.  As I mentioned, I don’t have one, and consider them to be mostly a novelty and range toy.  I would never put one on a personal defense weapon, accuracy and control being too important for such things for me to consider a high rate of fire as more important, especially near or around other people.

That said, I cannot be convinced that the shooter who landed all of this crap in our lap would have been less effective if he had aimed and fired in a controlled manner than with the bump fire stock, if in fact such a device was used.

The point to be taken here is not that of the bump fire stocks (the senate and congress is always looking for ways to further regulate your rights, even if not constitutionally allowed).  Bump fire stocks are merely the latest incarnation of the boogeyman.  Tomorrow it will be something else.  The point is that there is a world of difference between knowing that you’ll lose a fight, and actually going on record stating that you agree with your enemy.

The NRA.  Always squishy, never completely fulfilling their stated purpose, and always disappointing.

Daily Gun Story:

An elderly Delaware man stopped a home invasion when he wrestled with four burglars and ultimately grabbed his rifle and fired a single shot.

Tyson B. Beckett, 26, Anthony Long, 18, Brandon D. Satchell, 25, and Joshua T. Walker, 29, have all been arrested after they were confronted by an elderly man as they attempted to enter his home, according to the Milford Beacon.

The elderly man fought off one of the home invaders, but eventually found his rifle and fired a round into the floor, which was just enough to scare off the four alleged burglars.

They were eventually caught.  I’m no fan of shooting warning shots, and it would have been tactically better for him had he discharged the firearm at them.

Either way, it’s always nice to see reports of guns being used for their intended purpose.

Daily Caller:

Former FBI agent Manny Gomez claimed on MSNBC on Monday that hunters use suppressors so that deer cannot hear the gunshots.

Firearm owners actually use suppressors to prevent hearing loss, and even with a suppressor, a firearm would still be loud enough to spook a deer or other wild game.

“Sportsmen, hunters would make an argument that they need that so that their target, whether it’s a deer, etc. don’t hear the shot,” Gomez claimed, “but numerous other sportsmen have shot from muskets–when the founding fathers started the Second Amendment–up until now successfully killed game animals without the use of a silencer.”

So here’s a news flash for “Agent” Gomez and MSNBC.  The rounds most hunters use for deer are supersonic (I can conceive of the use of a subsonic round like a suppressed .300 Blackout, but most hunters would consider than an unethical kill).

That means … hold on to your breeches … the round gets there before the sound does.  I know physics is hard to the uninitiated, but please do try to keep up.

NRA-ILA:

At 3 a.m. on September 14, David Dunstan was alerted to a suspicious noise on his Bungowannah, NSW farm where he lives with his wife and three children. When he went outside his house to investigate the disturbance, Dunston came upon a man armed with a piece of wood and a knife.

Concerned for his family’s safety, Dunstan, a licensed gun owner, retrieved a .22-caliber rifle from a locked gun cabinet, and without loading it, confronted the trespasser. Describing his mindset to the Herald Sun, Dunstan said, “I went into protection mode … I yelled out to Andrea (his wife) to get the key to the gun cupboard.” Dunstan then used the unloaded rifle to detain the knife-wielding man until police could arrive. Police later determined that the trespasser had attempted to enter a child’s bedroom at another home before going to the Dunstan property.

[ … ]

When law enforcement came to Dunstan’s farm to investigate the incident, police confiscated the rifle he used to defend his family, along with two others. Upset, Dunstan told the Herald Sun, “What are you supposed to do if someone was breaking into your house… I don’t know what, as a law-abiding citizen of Australia, we’re supposed to do?” Dunston went on to say, “The police have handled this the wrong way (and) I can’t get an answer out of them.” 

Lamenting the lack of respect for armed self-defense in Australia, Dunstan told Yahoo7 News, “You go and break into someone’s house you can be expected to either get arrested, shot or you could be maybe killed… And until that happens this sort of stuff keeps going on.”

Gun rights advocate and Liberal Democratic Senator for New South Wales David Leyonhjelm has come to Dunstan’s defense. In an interview with Yahoo7 News, Sen. Leyonhjelm said, “Dave was defending his family against a threat. He did what any normal father would do.”

Speaking with the Border Mail, Dunstan remarked, “I just don’t know what I should have done, what would have been the right way to do it.” Sadly, in the Land Down Under there doesn’t seem to be a “right way” for the law-abiding to fight back against criminal violence.

Thanks to the NRA writers for bringing this to our attention.  This is what it looks like with state monopoly on violence at the worst inflection point, the extremum.

A man must allow a criminal to violate his home and property, harm his children, and potentially rape his wife of even kill his family members because only law enforcement is allowed to have firearms.

A government that abuses its people and violates or gives up that “mandate of heaven,” as Mike Vanderboegh used to call it, must confiscate weapons because of that fear.  Confiscation of weapons cannot admit to any stipulation or suffer any exception.  Weapons means all weapons, for any purpose at all.

Having no weapons means that a man cannot perform his God-given duty of defense of family.  Thus, you cannot allow the state to confiscate weapons, no matter how much they fear you and want you disarmed.