“We don’t want to bother anyone,” Smith said, “but we’re not gonna let anyone come and break into our house at two in the morning and sit there and wait for the police to come, and get killed in the interim. We’re gonna protect ourselves.”
That belief seems to be gaining traction: According to a 2014 Pew Research study, the number of African Americans who believe gun ownership does more to protect people than endanger them nearly doubled in two years. And even as it urged its members to exercise their rights to keep “the thugs, gang bangers, illegal immigrants, the terrorists” at bay, the NRA broadened its outreach to ethnic communities. One of its spokesmen is lawyer and gun rights activist Colion Noir, who has become well-known for his appearances on NRATV.
Even if it’s legal to carry a gun, if you’re black, does having a gun actually make you safer? Stand Your Ground author Caroline Light isn’t so sure. “When you look at what really happens out in the world,” she said, “and the way that, especially, African-American men are treated when they’re armed, already the deck is stacked against people who are judged or perceived to be a threat. Particularly people of color,” she said. “Particularly men of color in the United States.”
After Trayvon Martin’s death in 2012, the Tampa Bay Times conducted an investigation in which it noted almost 200 stand-your-ground cases, and cited their outcomes. In addition to finding that such cases are on the rise “largely because defense attorneys are using ‘stand your ground’ in ways states never envisioned,” the paper noted that defendants claiming stand your ground “are more likely to prevail if the victim is black.” Blacks who use stand your ground are almost 15 percent more likely to face a penalty for doing so than their white peers.
Ah yes, I hadn’t thought about all of those white boys going into South and West Chicago tearing into defenseless black folks and raiding their homes, and not only there, but inner city Atlanta and Birmingham, where house robberies and home invasions against black folks are primarily perpetrated by white folks.
The Fourth Circuit made a very good decision in the case of Nathaniel Black. They didn’t seem to care about that decision and specifically violated their own precedents and showed they couldn’t care less about consistency in the case of U.S. Versus Robinson. Now they have gone off the deep end.
A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld Maryland’s ban on semiautomatic guns with certain military-style features that the state passed after the 2012 mass shooting at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school.
The 10-to-4 ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit vacates an earlier panel decision that cast doubt on the constitutionality of the ban that is similar to laws in seven states, including California, Connecticut and New Jersey.
The ruling from the Richmond-based court goes further than other appellate courts that have reviewed similar laws in stating clearly that “assault weapons and large-capacity magazines are not protected by the Second Amendment.” The majority opinion, written by Judge Robert B. King, refers to the banned firearms as “weapons of war” that the court says are most useful in the military.
In a strongly worded dissent, Judge William B. Traxler Jr. said his colleagues have “gone to greater lengths than any other court to eviscerate the constitutionally guaranteed right to keep and bear arms.”
That they have, and they have also added language to both the second amendment and Heller that isn’t there.
“It’s unthinkable that people could say that those weapons of war are protected by the Second Amendment,” Frosh said Tuesday. “Especially when you look at the carnage at Newtown and elsewhere around the country.”
[ … ]
Like Maryland, Connecticut’s ban was expanded after a gunman used a military-style semiautomatic weapon to kill 20 students and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
The 81-page opinion issued Tuesday opens with a detailed description of that day, including the number of rounds of ammunition fired, and goes on to describe mass shootings involving similar military-style firearms in a long list of other U.S. cities.
“We have no power to extend Second Amendment protection to the weapons of war that the Heller decision explicitly excluded from such coverage,” King wrote in the 4th Circuit opinion, referring to the Supreme Court case known as District of Columbia v. Heller.
The court also found that Maryland lawmakers were justified in passing the ban in the interest of public safety because magazines holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition “enable shooters to inflict mass casualties while depriving victims and law enforcement officers of opportunities to escape or overwhelm the shooters while they reload their weapons.”
Forget the fact that Charles Whitman used a bolt action long gun (Remington 700), that storied Marine sniper Carlos Hathcock used a Winchester Model 70 .30-06, that Marines initially in Iraq during the push to Baghdad used the same rifle for long distance shooting, and that Marines in Now Zad, Afghanistan, used 12 gauge shotguns for room clearing operations. Left unsaid is why the laws don’t regulate assault hammers. This is what happens when idiots try to make legal decisions who have no knowledge of the facts.
It’s also what happens when men and women who have no moral compunction about violating their oath of office get to make judgments that affect the rest of the country. Recognizing the right of every citizen to have the weapon that best allows him to defend his own family isn’t an expansion of the second amendment. And Heller said nothing about forbidding semi-automatic firearms from its scope, semi-automatic firearms having been around for more than a century when Heller was decided, in use by both civilians and the military.
This neat, clean bifurcation between civilian and military weapons is non-existent, an imaginary phantom concocted by judges to make themselves feel better for depriving citizens of their rights, pretend sociology wrapped up in legal language. These are God-given rights, not subject to the whims or vicissitudes of judicial political leanings.
Here is the ruling. Frosh said “It’s unthinkable that people could say that those weapons of war are protected by the Second Amendment … Especially when you look at the carnage at Newtown and elsewhere around the country.” Well think it, collectivist hack. I’m telling you flat out that weapons of war are protected by God, and included within the scope of the second amendment.
Whether citizens of Maryland choose to stay and fight or move to a free state, remember Matt Bracken’s advice. “If you have eighteen guns and twelve of them are declared illegal, how many do you have? Eighteen. Your move.”
STOP USING YOUR RIFLE. Any unintended discharge has the potential for causing injury or death. Immediately stop using your rifle until Remington can inspect it to determine if the XMP trigger has excess bonding agent used in the assembly process, which could cause an unintentional discharge and, if so, replace the trigger mechanism. If you own a rifle subject to this recall, Remington will provide shipping, inspection, replacement of the trigger mechanism if necessary, and return at no cost to you. DO NOT attempt to diagnose or repair your rifle yourself.
Contact Remington
For the safety of you and those around you, Remington strongly encourages you to STOP USING YOUR RIFLE immediately and contact Remington for inspection and repair. To participate in this recall, visit the Remington Recall Center at xmprecall.remington.com. Or call Remington on its toll-free XMP-Recall Hotline at 1-800-243-9700 (Prompt #3 then Prompt #1) Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. EDT. You will be asked to provide your name, address, telephone number, and the serial number of your rifle.
E-mail: ucamdn28@prodigy.net.mx
We apologize for this inconvenience. We want our customers to enjoy the shooting sports safely. It is imperative that owners of Model 700™ and Model Seven™ rifles subject to this recall do not use their rifles until they have been inspected as part of this recall program.”
So this is the right way to do a recall, unlike what they did with the Walker Fire Control System. Remington should be commended for accepting responsibility right up front and getting out ahead of this problem, whatever it is.
Speaking of which, what is it? What can’t Remington get right about their trigger systems? I just don’t understand why this is a recurring theme with Remington. Their engineering department needs to do a serious gut check on what they’re doing and why they’re doing it.
I’m not likely to buy a Remington anyway, since they’re owned by Freedom Group, which is owned by Cerberus, which is owned by Steve Feinberg, who owns DynCorp, which – along with the CIA – is involved in nation toppling in North Africa for the purpose of trafficking in money, oil, weapons and children.
There are a lot of articles and discussion forum threads on barrel twist rate for AR-15s. So why am I writing one? Well, some of the information on the web is very wrong. Additionally, this closes out comment threads we’ve had here touching on this topic, EMail exchanges I’ve had with readers, and personal conversations I’ve had with shooters and friends about this subject. It’s natural to put this down in case anyone else can benefit from the information. Or you may not benefit at all. That’s up to you.
This is a discussion about 5.56mm ammunition and barrel twist rates (and later, about the shooter and ammunition quality). If you wish to debate the effectiveness of the 5.56mm round generally, or wish to disparage the choice of the Eugene Stoner system, I’m sure there are forums for you. This is not it.
In the real world, ammunition isn’t concentric, and even if it is almost precisely concentric, pour density can be slightly different throughout the ball, and voids can develop. This causes gyroscopic stability problems with bullets, even in the best manufactured ammunition. But much ammunition would not be considered the “best manufactured ammunition.” Ammunition will only be as good as the QA under which it was made.
When center of gravity is off-axis it can cause bullet lateral throwoff, yaw and a host of other problems with bullet trajectory. In order to overcome these problems, rifling twist achieves this gyroscopic stability for the bullet, thus negating the effects of the manufacturing process (at least in part).
Conventional wisdom taught us that slower twist rates wouldn’t properly-stabilize a bullet, causing it to yaw. On the other hand, faster rates could over-stabilize lighter bullets, causing similar problems. This is correct in theory—however, modern ballisticians have pretty much de-bunked the over-stabilization theory as a practical matter. All things being equal, it is better to have too much twist than not enough.
While his statement is a bit imprecise, there is something very precise about it. It is precisely wrong. Yet there are much cleaner and simpler explanations of why high twist rate is not always good. One commenter at this discussion thread summed it up well.
You can certainly overstablilze (sic) a bullet if you spin it so fast it doesn’t nose over at the top of its trajectory … Best thing to do is not spin bullets any faster than what’s needed for best accuracy.
Correct. If a bullet is overstabilized, it tends to stay pointed along its axis of rotation, even on the final (downward) part of its trajectory. This can cause keyholing, odd aerodynamic effects (flying sideways through the air) and even bullets to wildly spin off trajectory.
Bullets from rifled barrels eventually achieve stability by yawing back and forth, while undergoing a larger revolution about the major axis of the trajectory. So quite obviously, it’s necessary to spin the bullet, and to spin it enough to give it stability, while protecting the need to nose over on the final part of its trajectory. Getting this twist rate and spin right has been a matter of much testing, internet fights, and lot of engineering study and heavy spending by the taxpayers. I know that my guns perform well, and so I decided to contact my manufacturer for his opinion on the matter.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have two Rock River Arms rifles, one Elite CAR A4 with a 16″ Barrel, twist 1:9, Quad Rail, and another competition gun with a muzzle brake and 18″ SS barrel with a twist rate = 1:8. I have recommended RRA rifles to my readers before, but there are many good guns on the market. Your probably have one. I sent a list of three questions to RRA, and Steve gave me these responses (the question isn’t included because it wasn’t forwarded back to me, but it’s apparent what I asked except for the first question, which was basically does RRA warranty their 1 MOA for both M193 and M855. This is Steve’s response.
Herschel,
Thanks for your questions. I’m going to take them in reverse order.
3. 1:9 is adequate for many, but not all rounds typically used in an AR platform. Between .223 Remington and 5.56mm NATO, there are rounds from 45 to 90 grains (that I am familiar with) and I know of, but have never shot, lighter and heavier rounds. No single twist is going to handle all of them. 1:9 is adequate for a sizable number of them, however…including the two most commonly available, in bulk and at reasonable prices…55gr FMJ (M193)and 62/63gr FMJ (M855). It is not ideal for rounds lighter than 50gr nor those over 68 or 69 grains, which is why there are other twist rates commonly available…including from RRA. We offer a 1:12 24” bull barrel for our Varmint hunters who prefer to use the lighter bullets for prairie dogs and other targets, and both 1:7 and 1:8 barrels in a variety of configurations for those who want to shoot heavier bullets…up to and including the newer 77gr loads and 80gr VLDs. We’ve also run custom twists for a limited number of contracted purchases.
2. Yes. 1:9 does well with both M193 and M855. Different barrels perform differently, but 1:9 generally stabilizes both weight/length bullets fairly well, It neither over nor under spins either and does not produce key holing.
1. The hardest question to answer. Neither M193 nor M855 are notoriously accurate rounds. They meet military, not match, requirements. Our accuracy claims are the rifle’s capability…but the shooter and ammo have to do their parts. There are loads that are commercially available and claimed to be “M193” and “M855” equivalents that clearly aren’t, and they aren’t capable of ”minute of bad guy” at 100 yards, let alone the .75 to 1.5 MOA claims that we make for our different rifles. That is no reflection on our rifles or barrels, or the shooters…unfortunately there is some real crappy ammo on the market today, which will not perform well out of any barrel, of any twist rate.
Thanks.
Steve/RRA
This is a good response, but let’s not stop here. While perhaps not recalled by some, American Rifleman has given us a fairly comprehensive look at 5.56mm ammunition and barrel twist rates in an article entitled Testing The Army’s M855A1 Standard Ball Cartridge. It is rich with history on how the Army fielded the M855A1. Ignore the issue of the M855 versus the M855A1 for a moment and consider the background.
Accuracy cannot be assessed without addressing the rifle barrels’ twist-rates. In the early 1980s the M855’s 62-grain bullet was developed for the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW). For purposes of interoperability, the same load was adopted as the M16A2 rifle’s standard ball as well. A February 1986 U.S. Army study noted that the M855’s bullet required a “1:9 twist [which] would be more appropriate for the M16A2 rifle, improving accuracy and reliability.” Multiple studies confirmed the 1:9-inch twist requirement.
But then a problem arose. The U.S. military’s standard M856 5.56 mm tracer round was longer, heavier (63.7 grains) and slower than the M855 ball, and simply would not stabilize with a 1:9-inch twist barrel. Thus, despite it doubling M855 group sizes, the M16A2 (and later, the M4) specified a 1:7-inch rate-of-twist barrel to stabilize the tracer round. It remains so to this day. Therefore, M855A1 was test-fired with both 1:7- and 1:9-inch twist barrels, and it was verified that this new cartridge is consistently more accurate in the latter barrels-as was its predecessor.
Don’t slip past these paragraphs, because they explain why “Milspec” is 1:7. It isn’t because 1:7 shoots M193 or M855 more accurately. It’s because of the weight of tracer rounds. As we’ve discussed before, the term Milspec doesn’t mean better, or worse, or anything at all except that it precisely meets the specifications outlined in the purchase order(s), excepting whatever variance notifications they might make on a given batch of guns.
The M855A1’s developers have described it as yielding “match-like” accuracy, which most rifle shooters would define as one minute-of-angle (m.o.a.), or groups measuring no more than 1 inch at 100 yards. While the new ammunition has proved more accurate than the green-tipped load it replaced, testing did not yield match-like accuracy, especially in the standard 1:7-inch twist-rate found in today’s M4s and M16s. At 100 yards, the best group with a 1:7-inch barrel was 1.62 inches (1.6 m.o.a.). At 300 yards. it similarly fired 1.6 m.o.a. (4.9 inches) and widened to 1.8 m.o.a. (7.5 inches) at 400 yards. At these same distances, firing the M855A1 through a 1:9-inch twist barrel reduced group sizes by approximately half.
The tests demonstrated that 1:9 twist produced better accuracy, approximately twice as accurate. Now take note what the testers found with the newer M855A1 regarding repeatability.
On average, the new ammunition produced one flyer in roughly each five rounds, which, it can be argued, exaggerated the group sizes. Since the Army announced that, “On average, 95 percent of the [M855A1] rounds will hit an 8×8-inch target at 600 meters,” each group’s most errant bullet impact was discarded and group sizes recalculated. Statistically they improved, but not enough to place 95 percent of rounds so close at 600 meters, at least when using the standard 1:7-inch barrel-which may explain why accuracy was less than expected.
There is one “flyer” in every five rounds. This seems to me to be a significant problem with this ammunition combined with the barrel twist, and the commenters don’t seem to like it very much either. Finally, this.
When U.S. Army shooters twice fired public demonstrations of the new round, they did not employ standard 1:7-inch twist M16A2s or M4s, but accurized, match-grade, stainless-barreled rifles from the Army Marksmanship Unit (AMU). I contacted the AMU and learned that these rifles did not have standard-issue 1:7-inch barrels, but most likely 1:8-inch twist, which probably accounts for their “match-like” accuracy.
Isn’t that rich? The Army made claims of “match-like accuracy,” and proved the rounds shooting out of different barrels than are deployed with Soldiers, using 1:8 twist, not 1:7 twist.
The American Rifleman article goes on to discuss in some detail the performance of the M855A1 with slim-profiled targets like malnourished tribal fighters in Afghanistan (so-called “ice picking” the target without fragmentation), performance at barrier penetration (concluding that it is better than its predecessor), and its lethality once it does penetrate barriers. I recommend this reading to you. It’s well worth the time.
So to summarize what we know, remember some basic things. First, the bullet has to be spun to give it gyroscopic stability. This spin needs to match the bullet (including mass and length), and care must be taken not to over-stabilize the bullet. If you shoot typical .223 ammunition (55 gr.), or M193 or M855, a twist rate of 1:9 is probably just about ideal. You’ll probably lose some accuracy with a higher twist rate.
This loss of accuracy is likely not significant for a lot of shooters. If you shoot much heavier ammunition (and there is a lot on the market), you probably need to consider a twist rate of 1:8. Finally, none of this matches the value of good ammunition or good shooting.
That’s the good news. Most guns can outperform the shooter, and I know that’s the case with me. I’m a decent shooter. Not great, but decent. I’ve taken my Tikka T3 .270 bolt action rifle and literally put rounds through the same hole at 100 yards (with slightly more tearing of the same hole in the paper). On the other hand, this is with a good scope, no wind, a cool and comfortable day, all day to work my craft and thus no time pressure, no one else to be concerned about, lots of coffee to wake up, and a full belly.
But if I had kept records, it wouldn’t have happened again exactly like that since, theoretically, even with perfect ammunition, considering barrel harmonics and that physical processes like this are a heuristic phenomenon, if I had continued to log my shots this way, it would have doubtless shown a standard distribution (distance between each shot and mean).
But regardless of the details, you’ve done it before. Control breathing … get good sight picture … back out of the shot if you’re not mentally right … know where your trigger breaks … and so on. You know the drill, since you’ve done it many times. It’s perhaps the purest pleasure a shooter can have.
Now throw in simple annoyances like a whining partner at the range, losing daylight and time pressures, hunger, and any of the other 100 possible nuisances that can sap your accuracy. Then your accuracy goes to hell, doesn’t it? Now, combine that with wearing heavy gear and being shot at, and I’m sure it diminishes your control over your weapon. Thankfully, I only have the experiences of my former Marine son conveyed to me.
The good part of this is that regardless of your barrel twist rate, if your AR-15 is reliable, even if it’s not top of the line, it can probably outperform you. That means getting better isn’t a matter of getting a new rifle or barrel with a different twist. It means practicing with your rifle, sometimes under duress. It also means buying good ammunition. Steve at RRA is right. The shooter and ammo have to do their part. I object to cheap ammunition just like I object to cheap engine oil. I’m trying to develop the discipline at the store or online to buy better ammunition.
Right, I’ve got it. I feel your objection. Good ammunition (e.g., Hornady $2 per round .270 for my Tikka) hurts. This is my wealth, and it’s hard to part ways with it since it’s hard to earn it. But using bad ammunition at the range makes it hard to impossible to assess your practice. Use of my value pack Federal .223 at the range means that my accuracy is irrelevant if I’m using the same reticle holdovers I would for 5.56mm since the muzzle velocity is different (and very slightly lower than the 5.56mm). You’ve got the picture.
The best way to get better accuracy is probably not to get a better gun. It’s to practice with the one you’ve got.
Here is a related video I found interesting on gyroscopic stability. He’s wrong about the math being incomprehensible, but it is rather difficult if you’re involved with partial differentials or worse, the Navier-Stokes equations in CFD. You need some specialized training in mathematics in order to tackle that. You don’t have to know any of that in order to understand the basics of shooting.
This discussion probably won’t end the debate on barrel twist rate, and it certainly won’t end the fight between the Army and Marine Corps (who doesn’t want to deploy the M855A1). But I hope it was helpful to you.
One way to look at a 60-year-old, battle-worn M1 U.S. service rifle is as a cherished historical relic unfit for any duty more rigorous than color guard. Another way is as a military-grade firearm likely to be snatched up by street toughs and used for common crime. Over the past six years, the Obama administration has seen the gun both ways, leading to a saga that has incensed legislators and gun collectors alike.
Helpfully for the executive branch, Republican Rep. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming filed the “Collectible Firearms Protection Act.” While Lummis’s bill sounds wide-ranging, it actually targets a strange and singular quandary that’s given the State Department fits since 2009: What to do with almost a million vintage, American-made M1 Garand and Carbine rifles now moldering in the arsenals of their custodian, South Korea.
“Legislation shouldn’t even be needed for U.S. citizens to purchase perfectly legal and regulated firearms, especially in this case, with storied, American-made rifles that are pieces of U.S. military history,” Rep. Lummis said in a statement. In fact, legislation wouldn’t be necessary if President Obama were okay with the purchase, which in this case, his administration was in favor of. Until it wasn’t.
There was never any quandry for the State Department, and the Obama administration has never been in favor of this.
I was unaware of this proposed legislation. It’s about time. This is something else President Trump can do for liberty in America. To call the M1 obsolete is ridiculous. Depending upon price, every one will get bought in the states.
I can see the market supporting $400 – $1000, depending upon condition, and even higher for collectibles in very good condition. But if the typical price is several thousand dollars even for well-worn rifles, you’re entering the range where you can buy a precision chassis rifle for that kind of money.
The South Koreans will have to be smart about this, or if not, the market will tell them how to be smart about it. Let them know your support for this bill.
The deep state is putting its players in place and defenestrating the threats. Regular readers know what we’re talking about when we say the “deep state.” We don’t mean whatever idiot Bill Kristol thinks it means. Nor does it mean what this Breitbart author thinks it means.
Those “deep state” officials include the intelligence, law-enforcement and national security officials who worked in President Barack Obama’s administration but who are still working in permanent or temporary positions in the White House and in surrounding agencies. Many of those officials are believed to be leaking information from within the White House to allies in the anti-Trump media, including Kristol.
That’s a children’s bedtime book version of the deep state. Regular readers know that the deep state means DynCorp, the CIA, portions of the FBI and DHS, much of the State Department, some local LEOs who have previously worked for DynCorp, former generals, The Clinton Foundation and Clinton Global Initiative, and some others, involved in money laundering, nation toppling, child and organ trafficking, oil trafficking, weapons trafficking, assassinations, and other wicked things to enrich the already wealthy and bring them more power.
Donald Trump was clearly in a war with the deep state and their mouthpiece, the MSM, during most or all of his presidential campaign. He has lost the war.
Donald Trump has asked a New York billionaire to conduct a review of U.S. intelligence agencies and other aspects of the federal government, current and former officials told NBC News.
Trump’s expected appointment of Steve Feinberg, co-founder and chief executive of Cerberus Capital Management, is causing consternation inside the intelligence agencies, former senior intelligence officials say.
A senior administration official says Feinberg still needs to be cleared by the Office of Government Ethics, which is complicated because Cerberus owns many different companies, some of which have financial relationships with the U.S. government.
But there were indications Thursday that Trump’s plans could be changing.
Current and former intelligence officials told NBC News that Trump’s pick to be director of national intelligence, Sen. Dan Coats of Indiana, was annoyed that the news of Feinberg’s role was breaking before Coats’s Senate confirmation, expected next week.
Asked at a White House news conference if Feinberg would conduct an intelligence review, Trump said, “I think that we are going to be able to straighten it out very easily on its own.”
Trump called Feinberg “a very talented man, very successful man,” and said, “he’s offered his services and you know, it’s something we may take advantage of.”
One former official, who speaks regularly to current senior officials, called Feinberg’s expected role an “extra-constitutional process,” and said Trump believes the intelligence community “needs to be threshed and cleaned and bent to the will of the executive.”
It does, and I’ll bet Feinberg “offered his services.” But this won’t bend the intelligence community to the will of anyone but the deep state.
Folks, Feinberg is DynCorp, DynCorp is the CIA, the State Department is the political wing of the CIA, and through the JTTF and Fusion Centers, the CIA has infiltrated the DHS, FBI and local law enforcement. DynCorp has been the hinge pin neck deep in nation toppling in North Africa and grabbing of the resources that became available after the nations of Libya and Syria degenerated into chaos.
Trump will be coopted or molded, or intelligence will be completely hidden from him. Either way, he will be neutered. The deep state has won. We always knew that Trump only gave us more time, not a real change. Make use of that time. Regular readers know what to do with that time.
As for Cerberus Capital – which Feinberg owns, my previous articles on Cerberus pointed to a bit of puzzlement on why this conglomerate wanted to buy up firearms manufacturers. At the time I thought it was a bad idea for small firearms companies to sell to conglomerates like Cerberus, and I said so. But I hadn’t mentally connected the dots between Feinberg and firearms manufacturers. Well, I have now.
As best as I can tell, Cerberus still owns Remington, Bushmaster, DPMS, Marlin, Para USA and other companies. At one time, since Para is located near me, I offered to drive to their offices and interview workers, management, or whomever, take some pictures of guns, discuss their gunsmithing and write a post to promote their work. I was considering buying a Para USA 1911.
The reaction from Para USA was nothing short of creepy and weird. “No. We don’t do that. Please see our web site.” It was like no communication I’ve ever had with a firearms manufacturer, and I’ve had more than I can count. Now that I understand Feinberg and his secrecy, it makes better sense.
Readers can make up their own minds about Cerberus, but I won’t be buying any firearms from them (Freedom Group). It’s my little way of starving the beast since I will be accountable for all of my actions before a sovereign God, but it won’t be enough. What? You didn’t think that those hundreds of millions of dollars that supposedly went to train “freedom fighters” in Syria actually went to train “freedom fighters in Syria,” did you? And you didn’t really think that any of this war against Michael Flynn was accidental, did you?
Keeping up with George Webb is difficult, but a couple of his latest are embedded below. They touch on some of these things.
This is an open letter to all North Carolina State Senators and members of the House of Representatives. I am speaking out in favor of H.B. 69, the “Constitutional Carry Act.” I have spoken out with open letters of this sort before. At one time, I had to relinquish all health records to the county sheriff (CLEO) in order to receive a concealed handgun permit. Now, based on recent changes to N.C. law, this is necessary even for handgun purchases for those who don’t hold a CHP.
As we have covered even recently, mental health professionals have told us in no uncertain terms that mental maladies have no correspondence to propensity to violence, and when people choose to commit suicide, they don’t usually use guns. They have also told us that the mental health profession cannot bear the burden you are trying to place on them, as they don’t have the wherewithal to predict violent behavior. Science doesn’t do that. These mental health checks are helping no one, and yet like a pagan village worshipping a witch doctor, legislators nationwide still turn to doctors to predict the future for them. I’m almost waiting for a new N.C. law invoking participation of palm readers. The notion that violence has to do with things completely beyond the control of legislating apparently doesn’t occur to lawmakers.
Upon renewal of my permit to carry after moving from one county to another within the last two years, I had to reapply for a new permit from my CLEO, and instead of just signing over my medical records to him and filling out the necessary countless forms, I had an even higher mountain of paperwork to complete. But these forms do nothing to effect change in anything, as you certainly have to know by now. Only the peaceable and law abiding follow such laws and processes.
I and my readers have asked, even demanded, that you rid North Carolina of these bigoted, prejudiced and ridiculous Jim Crow era laws like CLEO permitting of handgun purchases and concealed carry. We still demand this, but there is another bill that needs our attention as well. It is H.B. 69, Constitutional Carry Act. We are speaking out in support of it. Oh, you’re going to see the usual hysterical naysayers and end-of- the-world doomsday prophecies, and are even seeing them now, the most recent being from the Raleigh News and Observer.
A proposed bill from 10 Republicans in the General Assembly to remove North Carolina’s concealed-carry permit requirement for handguns has the odor of a gun-lobby sponsored maneuver. There’s no other way to say it: the idea is absurd, and dangerous. One hopes GOP leaders will stop this idea before it goes any further.
Goofy measures like this one usually get put away by party leaders, but in this environment, who knows?
Basically, the proposal would remove the requirement, with some exceptions and footnotes. The very complexity of those things shows how ludicrous the bill is. For example, concealed carry permits wouldn’t be required anymore, except it would still be illegal to carry a concealed handgun at a parade or funeral, in a place where alcohol is sold and consumed, while drinking alcohol, on picket lines and at certain demonstrations — and this is interesting — on the grounds of the State Capitol, Governor’s Mansion or the governor’s western residence in the mountains.
Anything that loosens already minimal gun laws should not be enacted. North Caroilna gun owners, and there are tens of thousands of them, can indulge their fancy for guns at a multitude of ranges, with hunting, collecting and other gun-connected pastimes. Asking those who want to carry concealed weapons to get a permit to do so is hardly a great burden, especially considering the risk of a gun in the wrong hands.
I suggest that you replace the idea of a concealed handgun permit with a permit to preach, say, a sermon on the deity of Christ. So in the future, it shouldn’t be too much of a burden to obtain state approval for your sermon topics. And if you did what I suggested, you see how awful this sounds. You see, the editorial board at the Raleigh News and Observer don’t actually believe that personal defense is a right. They think it’s a privilege. They think what they do is a right, but defending one’s personal safety or the safety of a family warrants approval by the state.
But my regular readers have seen that self defense is not only a right, it is a duty ordered by God Himself because man is made in God’s image. It’s loss is not to be taken lightly, and that image of God is to be cherished and protected. As for the more practical and pedestrian considerations, the Raleigh News and Observer editorial board underscores just how out of touch they are with North Carolinians when they say that there are “tens of thousands” of gun owners, and that we can “indulge our fancies at ranges.” There are hundreds of thousands of us, and ranges have nothing whatsoever to do with the conversation.
Moreover, it should be noted that while I have followed virtually every change to state laws in the U.S. concerning constitutional carry and open carry in the past four or five years, and written about most of them, in every instance of changes like this, the hysterical doomsday prophets always tell awful stories of blood running in the streets, wild west shootouts and rampant crime. And it never happens. I have quotes from CLEOs I can share if you would like where they all said that it ended up “much ado about nothing.”
But opponents said it would have serious financial consequences for the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, which administers firearms licenses issued under the Oklahoma Self Defense Act.
A fiscal analysis performed for the House indicates the measure would reduce OSBI’s revenue by at least $6 million and would lead to the loss of jobs and reduced operating expenses at the agency.
The reduction in revenue would be because firearms owners would no longer seek concealed carry licenses – which cost $100 for initial 5-year license and $200 for 10 years – if they could carry a gun openly without a license. There are now more than 238,300 Oklahomans with active licenses to carry handguns, according to state figures.
I suspect that a little truth-telling by North Carolina CLEOs would yield similar results. What a miserable excuse for a law. Filling out paperwork, relinquishing medical records, causing lost days at work because of appointments at the Sheriff’s department, and clerks sitting in offices pushing paperwork – all for revenue and a jobs program for people who should be working in business or industry. This is just absolutely wretched.
But you can begin to end all of this onerous, nanny-state, control freak collectivism by passing H.B. 69. And then you can rid yourselves of the embarrassing Jim Crow era laws currently on the books as we speak. Even if this doesn’t pass with enough votes to override a veto by this progressive governor, let it move out of committee and get a vote on the floor. That way, we’ll see who we need to target for replacement in the next election. We will ultimately win this fight, now or later, and the only question is this. Will you be on the winning side with us?
The gun restriction rule is a well-meaning policy that gets some things right, notably its support of federal efforts to improve detection of risky people who should not have legal access to guns. But despite its good intentions, what the policy actually does is take away the gun rights of a large category of individuals without any evidence that they pose a risk of harm to self or others, and without legal due process protections commensurate with abridging a constitutional right.
All we really know about many people in the affected category is that they have been found unable to work full time due to a mental health problem and an examiner for Social Security has decided, with some input from a licensed medical or psychological consultant, that they need help managing money. The mental health conditions in question might range from moderate intellectual disabilities to depression, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. Based on one person’s judgment call, arrangements are made to have the government’s check sent to a representative payee. But this isn’t an index for whether or not someone should be allowed to own a gun.
Research on the relationship between gun violence and mental illness shows that the vast majority of mentally ill individuals are not violent or suicidal. Our group at Duke recently published a study of approximately 82,000 people diagnosed with serious mental illnesses in Florida between 2002 and 2011. We found that those with serious mental health disorders with records in the public behavioral health system were no more likely than the general adult population in Florida to use a gun to harm others (about 213 vs. 217 gun crimes per 100,000 people per year), and they were only slightly more likely to die in a gun-related suicide (about 13 vs. 9 gun suicides per 100,000 people per year). Thus, people with mental illnesses are no more dangerous to others when they have equal access to guns.
Our study, like many others, found that mental illness substantially increases the risk of suicide in general. Many, if not most, people who die from suicide have suffered from a mental illness. But our data also show that they are less like to use a gun when they do end their own lives, and are more likely to use other means. While 48 percent of suicides in the general Florida adult population involved guns, only 20 percent of suicides in our study population of people with serious mental illnesses involved guns. The annual rate — 13 gun suicides per 100,000 people with mental illness — shows that gun suicide is a rare event in this population. Moreover, only a tiny fraction of all people with mental illness who are at risk of suicide are Social Security disability beneficiaries with representative payees. Thus there just isn’t evidence that reporting these particular individuals to the National Instant Criminal Background Check system will prevent suicides.
No doubt, the ban on Social Security recipients buying guns wasn’t a well meaning policy. We’ve discussed this at length before. But ignoring the professor’s leftist leanings for the moment, he’s actually given some very good information from the perspective of a mental health professional.
His view comports with that of other mental health professionals as I’ve noted.
In a paper published in the American Journal of Public Health, Jonathan M. Metzl and Kenneth T. MacLeish investigate a number of common beliefs about mental illness and gun violence, including the idea that “psychiatric diagnosis can predict gun crime before it happens.” They write that “legislation in a number of states now mandates that psychiatrists assess their patients for the potential to commit violent gun crime.” New York, for instance, “requires mental health professionals to report anyone who ‘is likely to engage in conduct that would result in serious harm to self or others’ to the state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services, which then alerts the local authorities to revoke the person’s firearms license and confiscate his or her weapons.”
However, they argue, asking psychiatrists to judge who’s likely to become violent may be the wrong approach. They cite research showing that most gun violence isn’t committed by people who are determined to have mental illness — and that most people with mental illness don’t commit violence. According to one study, “the risk is exponentially greater that individuals diagnosed with serious mental illness will be assaulted by others, rather than the other way around.”
Random gun violence is a terrifying fact of American life, because of both the violence and the randomness. Terror bred by violence does not really require comment; they are twinned. But terror bred by randomness does, especially when it leads people to accept as true a reasonable story that is false, when a myth functions as an explanation. And that is what is happening with the way we talk about mental illness and random gun violence. Thankfully, a just published report in the Annals of Epidemiology pulls together the facts we need to consider if we really want to adopt evidence-based policies to reduce random gun violence.
Jeffrey W. Swanson, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Duke University School of Medicine and lead author of the article in Annals of Epidemiology was quoted in the UCLA Newsroom saying ”but even if schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression were cured, our society’s problem of violence would diminish by only about 4 percent.”
That is not very much. When people with mental illness do act violently it is typically for the same reasons that people without mental illness act violently.
“We’re not likely to catch very many potentially violent people” with laws like the one in New York, says Barry Rosenfeld, a professor of psychology at Fordham University in The Bronx….
A study of experienced psychiatrists at a major urban psychiatric facility found that they were wrong about which patients would become violent about 30 percent of the time.
That’s a much higher error rate than with most medical tests, says Alan Teo, a psychiatrist at the University of Michigan and an author of the study.
One reason even experienced psychiatrists are often wrong is that there are only a few clear signs that a person with a mental illness is likely to act violently, says Steven Hoge, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University. These include a history of violence and a current threat to commit violence ….
And we’ve discussed Dr. Swanson’s views before. Furthermore, I deny with prejudice that social security recipients who want someone else to handle their finances constitutes mental illness. Most married couples have one individual who handles the finances, not two. The entire edifice of regulation was ridiculous in the supperlative anyway.
It was never intended for the protection of anyone. It was always intended as a trial balloon for gun regulations, first social security recipients, next those who are deemed by the courts as worthy of bans of some sort or another, perhaps because the individual believes in the second amendment, or better, that God gives us our rights and therefore they are as immutable as His nature.
Dr. Swanson has done us yet another service. He has explained that if the ban for social security recipients is based on the notion of prevention of suicide, then that was always a pretext. The elderly don’t use guns if they intend on committing suicide.
With GRNC feedback and support, Representative LARRY PITTMAN (R-Cabarrus) today introduced House Bill 69 for what will be GRNC’s main legislative thrust for 2017: constitutional (permitless) carry. In addition to Rep. Pittman, primary sponsors for the bill include Reps. MICHAEL SPECIALE (R-Beaufort, Craven, Pamlico), BEVERLY BOSWELL (R-Beaufort, Dare, Hyde, Washington), and JAY ADAMS (R-Catawba).
Establishes a new Article 54C, under which handguns may be carried concealed without permits;
Removes the need to have a concealed handgun permit to carry a concealed handgun in restaurants, public assemblies, parades and funerals, and (with the same limitations as currently in law) onto educational properties; and
Retains the current CHP system for purposes of reciprocity with other states.
HB 69 is designed to be a “clean” reciprocity bill (i.e. without other measures) in order to draw fewer objections from potential supporters. GRNC will shepherd the introduction of additional legislative initiatives in other bills.
GRNC has a number of actions you can help with at the link. I will. But I remain skeptical about this. Oh to be sure, there are a lot of actions we North Carolinians need, including repeal of the idiotic Jim Crow era requirement for CLEO approval of gun purchase permits.
But we have this stupid governor named Roy Cooper, who is a full on Social Justice Warrior. He’s all bathroomed up, and he’s anti-gun. I hate with every fiber of my body that Pat McCrory was defeated by this asshole, but honestly, I’m not convinced that HB2 (the infamous bathroom bill) is what did it. I think it had as much or more to do with the toll lane on I-77, which cost him a huge number of votes North of Charlotte. We Southerners don’t like toll roads. Don’t even float the idea of a toll road in the South. Nothing will get you hanged any quicker than the notion of being nickeled and dimed for driving from here to there.
Unless we have the votes to override Cooper’s veto, we won’t win this one. But what it may be useful for is forcing a vote on the floor to see just who we need to target for replacement.
You know what I mean, right? Floor votes are good. Committees are for cowards.
8 years, 5 months ago
