Archive for the 'Firearms' Category

City Pages:

The first is “permitless carry,” granting anyone in Minnesota the right to carry a gun wherever they go. The gun lobby prefers to call it “constitutional carry,” and it would invalidate all state laws on carrying or possession of weapons in public.

The second is “stand your ground,” which has two prongs. In your own home, you can shoot to kill in order to prevent a felony — such the stealing of a TV or the writing of a bad check. Anywhere else, you can shoot to kill if you feel like you’re being personally threatened. You don’t have to try to run away first. And you won’t have to prove that you had a solid reason to be afraid in the first place.

These gun bills (HF188 and HF238) were both introduced in the Minnesota House on Thursday, signed by a litany of Republican authors. They do not yet have Senate versions, but the Senate too is controlled by Republicans this year so it’s may be a matter of time.

So here’s how it currently works in Minnesota.

In order to carry a gun, you have to get a permit from your county. They’ll check if you can legally have a gun — that you haven’t gotten that right revoked because you were convicted of a felony or because you beat up your spouse. Then you have to take a class and pass a range test. After that, you can walk around with that gun on your hip.

Minnesota also allows you to kill in self-defense. Obviously, if someone’s threatening your life, you aren’t expected to just lay down. But you do have to prove that you at least tried to get away, that killing was your last resort, and that any reasonable person in your position would have done the same thing.

“This is huge,” says The Rev. Nancy Nord Bence, executive director of gun control organization Protect Minnesota. “Yes, it’s bad that now you could shoot someone if you think they’re going to steal your TV in your house. That’s terrible. But the part we have to really pay attention to is this completely changes our understanding of how we prove self-defense in this state and what self-defense means.”

[ … ]

“Look at the fear of immigrants we have in this state,” Nord Bence says. “You have been told that we have to worry about these Somali immigrants because they’re terrorists, and now you see a guy who looks like a terrorist, and you have no duty to retreat before using deadly force, and the presumption of innocence is with the shooter. … It’s going to lead to a wholesale arming of communities that feel threatened by this because if you were, say, a Somali immigrant in St. Cloud right now with all of the racial tension that’s going on, this bill is reason for you to be afraid.”

Then the author (or editor) gives us this picture.

The caption reads “Please make make sure it’s not just a woman looking for her lost dog.”

I think the major problem with this discussion is that it assumes that situations of self defense can be neatly pigeonholed and bifurcated into those in which the person or persons intend to do you harm, and those in which they are in your home unannounced and uninvited but only intend to walk away with your television set.

You don’t know which situation it is if someone is in your home unannounced and uninvited, and if you claim you do you’re naïve.  You simply don’t know the intentions of the heart, and moreover you don’t know how the situation will evolve.  You cannot sit down and eat dinner while the perpetrator steals your television, only to find out later that he intended all along to rape your wife and beat you to death and burn you to a crisp with gasoline.

Furthermore, that’s my problem with LEOs who recommend that you simply sit still and allow perpetrators to wave guns around while they rob an establishment.  If you do, the breaths you take may be your last, and if you have a weapon, you’d better consider using it.  Not only may the perpetrator shoot you intentionally, he may do it negligently while he’s waving the gun around if he has no trigger discipline.

Finally, go and read the article the author uses to illustrate the point on shooting people looking for dogs.  The person who was looking for her dog didn’t break and enter, and it’s illegal to kill people for trespassing and I’m sure it will be under the new law.  In the picture shown above, the girl holding the shotgun had better be prepared to shoot, while deliberate with her judgment if it could be a family member who happens to have a key.  She better know who has keys and who doesn’t, as well as their typical schedules.

In every possible way, the articles linked here and the opinions they convey are tactically stupid.  The only real problem I see here is that Benelli M4 may knock that little girl for a couple of loops.  You’d better pack that buttstock into your shoulder, little miss.  You’re sporting the same gun the U.S. Marines used for room clearing in Now Zad, Afghanistan.

This is rich.

When Kai Kloepfer points his .40 caliber handgun, it fires like any other weapon. But when someone else gives it a try, it doesn’t work. It’s the first firearm with same built-in security as many smartphones.

If the gun is picked up by an authorized user, a sensor recognizes the fingerprint and it will fire.

Guns that only work for their owners used to be the stuff of movies, like James Bond’s gun in “Skyfall,” but Kloepfer thinks he has the technology to make them a reality, reports CBS News correspondent Tony Dokoupil.

“I think this could be huge. I think it could really be the future of firearms,” Kloepfer said.

He’s the founder of BioFire, a start-up still headquartered in his parent’s house in Boulder, Colorado. Now a freshman at MIT, Kloepfer started work on his gun as part of a science project when he was 15 years old.

“There’d be days when I’d sit down … I’d look up 14 hours later. I hadn’t moved from the spot. I hadn’t thought about anything else,” Kloepfer said.

He realized he couldn’t stop mass shootings, but he thought he could still save lives.

After all, in one year alone, nearly 600 people died in firearm accidents. There were thousands more suicides, many committed with guns that do not belong to the victim.

“Why did it take four and a half years to put a fingerprint reader on the side of a gun?” Dokoupil asked him.

“Well, it’s not as simple of a process as you might imagine,” Kloepfer said. “It’s also not something anybody has ever done before.”

Kloepfer’s weapon doesn’t only lock like a smart phone – it charges like one.

The invention has won him some deep-pocketed allies.

“Kai is the Mark Zuckerberg of guns,” Ron Conway said.

Conway was an early investor in Google and Facebook, and now he’s a putting his money behind Kloepfer’s smart gun.

“What Kai has done is used all of the latest technology available us to innovate a truly authenticated gun. You couldn’t do this five years ago,” Conway said.

But a push for similar guns misfired memorably in the late 1990s. A Colt prototype failed in a major demonstration, and Smith & Wesson dropped its smart gun program after resulting boycotts nearly bankrupted the company.

“What has changed from then until now to make it possible to make a smart gun like the one you’re working on?” Dokoupil asked.

“I would argue pretty much everything,” Kloepfer said.

Well, almost everything.

“Good intentions don’t necessarily make good inventions,” said Stephen Sanetti, president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation. They’re the main trade group for companies that make and sell guns.

Sanetti expressed concern about the reliability of any firearm that depends on battery power.

“The firearm has to work. And a firearm is not the same as a cell phone,” Sanetti said. “The consequences of a cell phone not working are inconvenience. The consequences of a firearm not working could be someone’s life.”

Kloepfer said his gun is “relatively reliable.”

How many of you want a gun, a more expensive gun I might add, that is “relatively reliable?”

So young engineer (I’m so sorry, I’m an engineer and I hate that you’re getting ready to throw your career away on something like this, but apparently there is no one around who can counsel you any better).  Here is what you need to do.

… let’s talk yet again about smart gun technology.  I am a registered professional engineer, and I spend all day analyzing things and performing calculations.  Let’s not speak in broad generalities and murky platitudes (such as “good enough”).  That doesn’t work with me.  By education, training and experience, I reject such things out of hand.  Perform a fault tree analysis of smart guns.  Use highly respected guidance like the NRC fault tree handbook.

Assess the reliability of one of my semi-automatic handguns as the first state point, and then add smart gun technology to it, and assess it again.  Compare the state points.  Then do that again with a revolver.  Be honest.  Assign a failure probability of greater than zero (0) to the smart technology, because you know that each additional electronic and mechanical component has a failure probability of greater than zero.

Get a PE to seal the work to demonstrate thorough and independent review.  If you can prove that so-called “smart guns” are as reliable as my guns, I’ll pour ketchup on my hard hat, eat it, and post video for everyone to see.  If you lose, you buy me the gun of my choice.  No one will take the challenge because you will lose that challenge.  I’ll win.  Case closed.  End of discussion.

Unless you can design a gun that has a delta of precisely zero (0) greater failure probability, is as light, aesthetically pleasing, no more weighty or roomy, and just a cheap as classic guns, there is no market for your toy.

Sorry.  And actually, there wouldn’t be any market anyway even if it met all of those stipulations because the government or a perpetrator (perhaps I’m being redundant) might be able to use the electronic features to turn the gun off when they wanted to.

But I don’t want to be too negative on this, because I want to see companies go bankrupt funding the research.  So carry on.

News from Florida:

Last week’s shooting at the Fort Lauderdale airport hasn’t put a dent in Sen. Greg Steube’s plan to allow concealed weapons permit holders to carry their firearms in airports. In fact, it’s only strengthened his resolve to pass the legislation, which he says is desperately needed to prevent future mass shootings in the Sunshine State.

“The situation at the airport further puts a big spotlight on the fact that gun free zones and laws that prevent law abiding citizens to carry.. the only person that protects is the criminal,” Steube told Sunshine State News Wednesday.

Steube’s proposal, SB 140, would lift some “gun free” zones in Florida where carrying firearms is prohibited, even for concealed carry permit holders.

If passed, the bill would allow Florida’s 1.7 million CCW permit holders to openly carry their firearms. The more sweeping part of the measure, however, would eliminate gun-free zones in places like secondary schools, local centers and government meeting areas.

Airports are also included.

Since last week’s shooting which left five dead and six wounded, Steube’s phone has been ringing off the hook. On Tuesday, the day the bill was supposed to be heard in the Senate Judiciary Committee, his district office received 120 calls alone.

He doesn’t understand why there’s such a resistance to CCW permit holders carrying their firearms around since they have to undergo background checks.  Statistically speaking, permit holders follow the letter of the law.

A 2015 report found CCW permit holders committed crimes at a much lower rate than police officers did. A Police Quarterly study from 2005 to 2007 saw an average of 103 crimes by police per 100,000 officers.

Well, all of that is true, but notice that the argument he uses to persuade others is based on data rather than fundamental and properly basic rights.  Very well.  Remember what we’ve discussed – incrementalism.  A bill doesn’t have to be perfect to get my support.  We can go for constitutional carry later.  One step at a time.

As for the airport shooting, someone remarked to me that things like this make our argument harder.  I disagree.  It makes our argument crystal clear.  As to how the shooter got a gun in the airport, he did so legally, just like a perpetrator can do it on virtually any street corner or grocery store in America.

Imagine this being on a street corner and someone asking, “just exactly how did this person come to have a gun to begin with?”  This is a stupid question, of course.  It’s likely he bought it.  If not, he stole it.  What does it matter?  Criminals intent on crime don’t care how they prepare for perpetration of their crime.

The only defense against this is to allow others (law abiding men and women) to carry weapons, openly and concealed.  Make your choice.  Don’t dictate how a man carries his weapon.  People who do that piss me off.  Word. They should drop their pink panties and put on big boy shorts.  Grow up and leave everyone alone instead of trying to be mommy.

How a man carries his weapon is analogous to what color he paints his car.  It’s his business, not yours.

Letter from a reader.

Greetings Herschel, I have been fascinated by the Garand rifle for sixty years, ever since I was handed one in ROTC and taught its operation and care.  I have since been able to acquire two of them, a 1942 Springfield Armory one I am in the process of back-dating to its original form, and  Korean War era rifle from International Harvester. Sixty years ago we were told that Mr. Garand was an employee of the United States Government, and that he developed his rifle “on the clock.”  The patents, and any royalties, were not his to assign.  I don’t know where Click magazine got its information, but I tend to believe the story as I heard it. I get nervous about disagreeing with Sgt. Emery, who has “been there and done that,” but in what you quoted, I think he is wrong.  Let me explain. The U.S. Rifle, caliber .30, M1 was designed to fire a specific cartridge (Ball M2 or AP M2), which used a powder of medium burning rate, usually IMR4895 or IMR4064. Slower powders will get much more performance out of the .30-06 cartridge, but the higher pressure at the M1’s gas port will quickly beat the operating rod out of spec. The rifle won’t “blow up,” but it will quickly become a manually operated bolt action, and eventually become useless, if fed improperly.  People like Hornady sell ammunition loaded to Ball M2 spec specifically for use in Garand rifles. The newer cartridge used in the M14 rifle fired the same bullet (150 grains) at the same velocity (2750 ft/s), and did so by using different powder and pressure.  The round of the M14 is smaller than that of the M1, but the punch is identical. Even in civilian use, the .30-06 (7.62×63) surpasses the .308 Winchester (7.62×51) only slightly until bullets heavier than 180 bullets are used, after which the difference becomes noticeable.  But in military usage, the M14 is the equal ballistically of the M1, because of the latter’s need to limit pressure at its gas port. Although I disagree with Sgt. Emery on this one point, I would still consider it an honor to buy him a beer. Thanks for your blog, Herschel, and best wishes for a Happy New Year,

[Name redacted because I never know if readers are okay with me publishing names]

(and please be careful when you walk in the park)

Thank you sir.  I’m circumspect.

LA Times:

The gun lobby certainly is adept at promoting counterintuitive (and probably counterproductive) policy positions, such as that the answer to gun violence in America is more guns. Politicians certainly are adept at giving their bills titles that conceal their purpose, like calling a bill that narrows privacy rights and constrains civil liberties the “Patriot Act.”

Put these proclivities together, and you get the “Hearing Protection Act,” introduced Monday by Reps. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) and John Carter (R-Texas). From the title alone, you’d have no idea that it’s about deregulating the sale of gun silencers.

Stiff federal regulations on silencers date back to 1934, when they were enacted as part of a crackdown on machine guns and other instruments of mobster violence. (Thanks to the Washington Post’s Michael Rosenwald for some of this history.) In recent years, they’ve stuck in the gun lobby’s craw, as do most restrictions on the sale of firearms and related equipment.

But treating the use of silencers as a public health issue is a relatively new twist. It was first tried in connection with a precursor bill to the Duncan-Carter measure that was introduced in 2015 and died in committee.

[ … ]

Gun control advocates don’t buy these pro-silencer arguments and neither should you. The argument that silencer sales promote public health by protecting hearing is a smokescreen, they say, for a deregulatory initiative that would largely benefit the firearms industry while increasing the dangers of firearm violence.

“There’s no evidence of a public health issue associated with hearing loss from gunfire,” says Kristin Brown of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “There is evidence of a public health crisis from gun violence, and we think that’s where legislative efforts should be directed.”

[ … ]

The real flaw in the silencer lobby’s efforts, however, may be the patent obviousness of their fakery. Calling the Duncan-Carter bill the “Hearing Protection Act” is so absurdly transparent an effort to deceive that voters may be prompted to ask an obvious question: “What are they hiding?”

Okay.  Your insightful analysis has got me.  I have to admit it.  I have to confess, and I expect it will be good for the soul.

No, I don’t want to be a mobster.  I’m just fed up as hell with having to take off my ear muffs when I need to communicate something to a fellow shooter, only to have to sustain damage to my hearing if I don’t move back while I’m at a range.  I’m just fed up as hell with having ear muffs interfere with my cheek weld when I’m shooting a rifle.

As for the notion that you won’t be able to hear gunfire if people actually purchase suppressors, I wouldn’t worry about that too much.  I think you’ll still have time to “run, hide and fight” in the case of an attacker.  I don’t really take you for the kind of guy who would run to the sound of gunfire to assist others anyway.  And I’m sure you wouldn’t have the means to stop a shooter if you did do so.

You can just wait that precious 12 -15 minutes for the LEOs to get there and another 30 for them to assess the situation and send in a SWAT team.  Whether you or your loved ones perish will be a function of a number of things, but hey, take heart!  California has that awesome law that limits the number of folks he can kill to ten at a time until he slaps the next magazine in (about a second or so).  I’m sure a criminal won’t have access to those terrible 30 round mags.

CBS:

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said Monday he was uncertain whether support exists in the Legislature for so-called “constitutional carry,” which would give all Texans the right to openly carry a firearm — with or without a permit.

In a radio interview, Patrick noted that last session lawmakers passed legislation allowing the open carry of handguns, a proposal whose support he had also questioned at the start of the session.

“On constitutional carry, I’ll say the same thing: I don’t know if the votes are there,” Patrick told San Antonio host Trey Ware.

Patrick did express some wariness about constitutional carry, citing law enforcement concerns. Patrick has made championing police a priority, especially after a shooting last year in Dallas that killed five officers and wounded seven others.

Let’s deal with the second issue first.  I would lay good money down that Dan Patrick has been listening to communist Art Acevedo, who is leaving Austin and going to Houston, who opposed open carry, and who enabled the federal government to come into his county and take forced blood draws during random traffic stops in violation of the constitution.

Or he has been talking to someone equally as communist as Art.  So the strategy he has chosen is a common one and is designed to protect his boys in the Texas Senate and House from exposure.

He simply says that he doesn’t know if there are enough votes.  That way, it gets killed in committee and the anti-gun politicians never out themselves with a formal vote on a bill.

I hate the idea of committees anyway because they are a good way to formulate compromise legislation that ends up bilking people for money, sending that money to constituents and then ultimately doing no good with meaningless legislation.

The solution for this is to call out his strategy as the ruse and lie that it is, bring a bill to a vote, and then use that information to destroy the political careers of the gun controllers.  It’s what Dan doesn’t want to happen, but it must happen.

Fox59:

BARTHOLOMEW COUNTY, Ind. – A 29-year-old woman fought off intruders by firing a gun. On Wednesday afternoon, deputies received a 911 call from the victim reporting there were just two masked men inside her Bartholomew County home.

“I mean it’s pretty quiet out here. You don’t hear of anything like that going on that often,” said Elliot Keen, a neighbor.

The victim told detectives she confronted the intruders, pulled out a gun, and fired one shot as they took off.  It’s unclear if the bullet hit one of the intruders.

“Being a woman, as young as she is, I’m very proud of her and pleased to know that she was gutsy enough to do what she did,” said Kaye Coffman, a witness.

Just yesterday we discussed the fact that two other women in different locations and under different circumstances were under threat and used guns to defend themselves, neither of them trained in all of those super stress management ninja warrior tactical techniques.  Not that I recommend not getting training, because I recommended then and I recommend now training as much as you can reasonably afford.

But the notion that people cannot effect self defense with a firearm is so foolish it’s not even worthy of serious discussion or consideration.  Progressives know that, and they know that when they throw up these objections they’re just throwing up a smoke screen.

Reasonable people see through the smoke.  But shhhh … don’t tell the progs that their smoke isn’t effective.  We want them to continue to claim that no one can use a gun to defend themselves while reports continue to come out where people do.  It makes the progs look stupid.

Tallahassee Democrat:

Gun advocates in Florida didn’t take a break over the holiday weekend. Florida Open Carry Inc. began rallying its troops New Year’s Eve with a mass email in support of “the most important pro-Second Amendment rights bill of the 2017 legislative session.”

SB 140 repeals laws forbidding guns on college campuses, in airports terminals, and at government meetings.  Sen. Greg Steube, R-Sarasota, will introduce the measure to the Judiciary Committee Tuesday.  Florida Open Carry Inc. urged its members to call lawmakers and tell them to line up behind Steube’s proposal.

Campus carry and open carry measures have died in the committee the past two years when the chair failed to schedule it for a vote. Advocates believe 2017 will be different because Steube is the committee’s new chair. He served the past six years in the Florida House where he was one of the Legislature’s fiercest opponents to gun-free zones.

“If you want to kill as many people as possible before the cops arrive then you are likely to go to a place where law-abiding citizens can’t carry,” Steube explained when he filed the bill last month.  “That’s what we’ve seen, time and time again and why I think we shouldn’t have them.”

After the ouster of Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, R-Miami, over this very issue, it ought to be clear that gun owners are serious.  Also, I admire how they know this is going to be a fight and are gearing up for the battle.  If they don’t succeed this time, I advocate ousting the committee chair who doesn’t allow it to come up for vote, and try again next time.  Never give up.

Say, what’s going on with South Carolina open carry?  I don’t even see a proposed bill on that.  How sad.  It’s sort of like gun owners in South Carolina have given up, satisfied with being second class citizens if they want to be comfortable in their carry options or quicker with their weapon presentation in a crisis.

It’s not just a fantasy, it really happens, and it happens all of the time, contrary to what you might be led to believe by the main stream media.

First up, there is this report from Texas.

Rebbie Roberson wasn’t having it.

A man wearing a mask and gloves was standing in her house after he broke in Sunday night.

“When I started to get up, he was in here on me with a gun facing me right to my face,” she told CNN affiliate KSLA.

But the 74-year-old grandmother from Bowie County, Texas, had something for him.

“I reached over there (a nearby table) and grabbed this gun. And when I swerved around, I pointed it at him and he ran.”

As the intruder hightailed it out of her house, Roberson gave chase, firing her .38-caliber revolver at the fleeing man.

“I tried to kill him,” she said. “Anybody break in on me, I’m going to kill them. He’s going to kill me or I’m going to kill him.”

It was the first time — and she hopes the last — that Roberson ever had to use her weapon.

Next, there is this report from North Carolina.

Kay Dickinson kept her gun in the bedroom of her Wilmington, North Carolina, apartment — right on top of a Bible on her headboard, WWAY-TV reported.

But the StarNews reported that over the course of the year that she’d owned her gun, she’d never fired it.

What happened to Dickinson Monday night changed all of that.

She came home around 11 p.m. after work, turned the key to her door and then a man she’d passed turned around, grabbed her from behind and forced her inside her apartment, the StarNews reported. And he had a gun, Dickinson said.

“We had a tussle, and he choked me and gagged me, and I dropped everything right there in the kitchen,” she told the StarNews. “He knew my name, he knew my boyfriend’s name, and he was like, ‘Give me the money.’”

[ … ]

In the bedroom, he tied Dickinson’s hands behind her back with a belt and wrapped a cellphone charger cord around her mouth, the StarNews said. But while the intruder searched her apartment, the paper said Dickinson managed to wriggle her hands free.

“I got loose from the belt,” she told WWAY. “And I had a gun sitting on a Bible on my headboard. I jumped up on the bed, grabbed the gun, turned around and just pulled the trigger.”

Dickinson fired one shot, and it hit the intruder in the chest, the StarNews said. He headed down the hall but fell down in her doorway where he soon died.

She had never fired the gun, and it was sitting atop a Bible.  Pardon me while I smile and chuckle, but that is absolutely rich.

So much for the notion that people who haven’t been trained in all of those super secret stress management ninja warrior techniques can’t use weapons to defend themselves and that only LEOs are capable of self defense.  We know that’s not right.

To be sure, I don’t recommend that you purchase a gun and never use it.  You need to be at the range and practiced with it to the extent you can afford, but that’s my personal counsel, and it shouldn’t be legally mandated.

If we’ve not learned anything else from these and other examples, we know that people who are defending their lives use what’s at their disposal and are oftentimes very successful.

David Codrea:

… the text of the bill, available as a pdf file on Rep. Hudson’s official House website, will codify that a person “carrying a valid license or permit which is issued pursuant to the law of a State and which permits the person to carry a concealed firearm or is entitled to carry a concealed firearm in the State in which the person resides, may possess or carry a concealed handgun … in any State that …. has a statute under which residents of the State may apply for a license or permit to carry a concealed firearm; or … does not prohibit the carrying of concealed firearms by residents of the State for lawful purposes.

Read the full text of the bill here.  The first time I read the bill it seemed weak to me.  It took me twice through to recognize its strength.

The operative phrase is “has a statute under which residents of the State may apply for a license or permit to carry a concealed firearm.”

I would like legal minds to weigh in on this, but to me that means that I can carry virtually anywhere except Hawaii (which has no permitting system at all).  Every other state to the best of my knowledge has a permitting system, whether it’s a shall issue system or may issue system (where only the rich and politically connected are allowed to carry).

Now I see that the comments already forming on the issue of constitutional carry.  No, this law would require a permit from your state, and likely your CLEO.  It’s not perfect.  Remember folks.  I’m not a pragmatist, but I recognize the value of incrementalism in our battle.  The progs use it to their advantage.  We must learn to use it to ours.