Archive for the 'Firearms' Category

Travis prints only a little bit with his appendix carry, and I admit that he makes a very good case for the superior tactical advantage of appendix over 3:00 carry.

But I also have to say that I cannot get comfortable with appendix carry.  My carry is more like 2:00 – 2:30.  I just can’t move it around any more and be comfortable.

How do you carry?

Manisha Krishnan:

What I learned, through the process of becoming a firearms license holder, trying out several types of shooting sports, and—for the sake of comparison—joining the National Rifle Association in the US, is that Canadian gun culture is quieter and far more anal than American gun culture. And most Canadian gun owners seem to be just fine with that.

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The Americans I spoke with generally consider having to get a license an affront to their personal liberty, but on a practical level, unless you have a criminal record or something to hide, I don’t see the issue.

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Not long after, I shot a long-range rifle—a beast of a gun, that I’m told is used by snipers in the military. I hated it. It felt like a literal bomb going off …

[ … ]

In late May, I headed to Louisville, Kentucky for the NRA convention after signing up to become an NRA member. I had never—and probably never will again—see that many guns (or old white men) in one place. There was an exhibition space the size of two large airplane hangars filled with every type of gun and gun accessory possible, even special bedside holsters. The NRA is an extremely slick operation with a tightly controlled message. Everywhere I looked, there were television screens showing various gun advocates who spoke about protecting the Second Amendment, and protecting themselves against “terrorists” and the other evils of the world. Inside one of the auditoriums, waiting for then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to speak, a gentleman beside me started showing me photos of all his guns on his phone. He assumed I was black and said it was “nice to see an African-American here for a change.” When I asked why he thought there weren’t many black people in the NRA, he replied: “They’ll tell you that they don’t have the money for it. But they have money for rims. They have money for Air Jordans.” With my first racist experience under my belt, I proceeded to watch Trump get the NRA’s official endorsement. Most NRA members I spoke to said Donald Trump was not their ideal choice but that they would still vote for him, because they truly believed that Hillary Clinton would take away their guns. One woman, who runs a gun school for women, asked me how I would react to being attacked if I wasn’t armed. I responded that where I’m from, it’s not really something that I often have to think about it.

To all of my Canadian readers, I’m sure you’re proud of her, as proud as we are about our MSM.  Well there you have it.  All of the money quotes in one minute.  I’m willing to bet that she has never had a real bomb “go off” in her hands.  No, I’m sure of it.

It’s nice to hear that there’s no crime in Canada.  At all.  Ever.  Otherwise she might have to thing about things like self defense.

As for Hillary Clinton taking away my guns, I’ve never worried about that in the slightest.  All she could have ever done is declare civil war, and the shooting goes both ways when that happens.  I’m certain that she wouldn’t think of us as old white men if that happened.

David Codrea:

True gains will depend on the effectiveness of the caucus. Much of that depends on who its members are, and if gun owners make their continued expectations known. To that end, the following table lists each member along with two important grades they’ve earned: one for gun owner rights as assigned by Gun Owners of America, and the other for their immigration rating by Numbers USA.

David’s done a very good job of outlining their views on two issues that will most affect the work on the second amendment.  Go read his table for the context to the money quote.

Bottom line, it looks like a pretty good team (although team leader Massie could use some work on immigration). The task now is for them to actually do something so they continue earning those high marks. Let’s hope we don’t see preemptive true due-process surrenders on “mental health” and “no fly/no buy.” Let’s hope we see “Enforce existing gun laws” replaced with “Repeal existing gun laws.”

He took the words right out of my mouth.  We need not words, but action.  We’ve already outlined what it will take for starters: (1) national carry, (2) suppressors taken off of the NFA items list, (3) SBRs taken off of the NFA items list.  That’s just for starters.

As for grass roots advocacy, I’ll leave that to you.  While it may not seem like it, blogging like this – finding the interesting issue that doesn’t overlap with what everyone else is talking about, creating good analysis to assist the reader in understanding the context, advocating world view and framework of understanding, pushing the number of visits by pimping your articles to contacts – is all very exhausting and sometimes even embarrassing.  Not all of your contacts want to be bothered by the constant pimping of your content.

There are good men to work with.  I’ve known about Jeff Duncan and Dave Brat for a while now.  They will listen to you.  Get busy.  If you do nothing else, you can send the URL of this article to them and recommend that the read and implement the ideas.

It’s about time.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Greg Steube, R-Sarasota, introduced a controversial measure Friday that would allow the more than 1.67 million Floridians with concealed-weapons licenses to openly carry handguns.

Steube’s bill (SB 140), which is filed for the 2017 legislative session, also would expand the places where people with concealed-weapons licenses are allowed to carry guns. It would allow them to be armed at legislative meetings; local government meetings; elementary and secondary schools; airport passenger terminals; and college and university campuses.

License holders would still be prohibited from carrying weapons at locations such as police stations, jails, courtrooms, polling places and most bars.

During the 2016 session, the open-carry measure was approved 80-38 in the House but failed to advance through the Senate Judiciary Committee, which was chaired by former Sen. Miguel Diaz de la Portilla, R-Miami. Diaz de la Portilla lost a re-election bid in November.

Yea, I hope I helped in some small way to ensure that it was a failed re-election bid.  But what we see here is permitted open carry, with the same failings of the Texas permitted open carry law.

Police don’t know how to enforce it, given that there is no stop and identify statute in Texas (and all stops must be so-called Terry stops anyway).  Florida is a stop and identify state, specifically for loitering and prowling.

So how does this apply to open carry?  What role does the permit play in all of this?  There is an easier way to do this, and it’s to make the state constitutional carry with legal open carry.  Stop taking half way measures.

Richard A. Nascak, executive director of Florida Carry, weighs in on the coming kerfuffle.

U.S. Representative Frederica Wilson’s viewpoint, published by the Sun Sentinel on Dec. 2, is a mini-case study on irrational fears. She flatly states that the proposals to legalize open, campus, and airport carry are a “notion that sends chills down my spine.”

The reason is revealed by her own admission. “It’s almost too easy to imagine the horrific effect and consequences that such laws would have in urban communities.” And there we have the source — her imagination. Unfortunately, Rep. Wilson’s imagination does not represent the experiences of 45 other states with regards to open carry.

In recent years, several states have legalized open carry of firearms — Oklahoma in 2012, and Texas in 2016 (adding handguns to the already lawful open carry of long guns). Similar concerns were voiced by officials in those states prior to open carry becoming lawful. For example, both Tulsa Police Chief Chuck Jordan and Oklahoma City Police Chief Bill Citty strongly opposed open carry citing a myriad of unsubstantiated reasons.

Likewise, the first vice president of the Dallas Police Association, Austin Police Chief Art Acevado, and a host of other Texas officials opposed open carry. Here in Florida, we hear the same rhetoric from the Florida Sheriffs Association and in particular Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri who, like his predecessor Jim Coats, threatened to shoot those seen openly carrying firearms.

So, what were the results of the legalization of open carry in Oklahoma and Texas? As pro-gun rights organizations predicted, much ado about nothing. Quoting from several media sources after passage:

•”We’ve not been responding to any calls, we’ve not had any complaints, we’ve not been taking reports. No, no issues here,” said Maj. Shannon Clark with the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Department. “We have not seen anything alarming or attention-grabbing at all,” said Tulsa Police Officer Leland Ashley.

•”I think it proves our point just a little bit that good, responsible people don’t get in trouble with firearms and that thugs and hoodlums get into trouble with firearms every day,” said Rogers County Sheriff Scott Walton.

•”We do not have anything interesting to report,” Cpl. Tracey Knight, spokeswoman for the Fort Worth Police Department, said last week. “Two calls so far, no issues. We have no concerns and we have had no problems.”

•”I said before this became law that I thought it was going to be much ado about nothing but I didn’t know it was going to be this much nothing,” Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson said.

Rep. Wilson appears to be primarily concerned with black youths in urban areas. However as cited, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Houston, and other urban centers with a black youth population belie that concern. The fears are unsubstantiated.

So we get to the meat of the objection – she’s worried about those black boys carrying guns around.  But some of them do anyway, you just can’t see them.  Furthermore, I don’t object to peaceable men carrying guns.  If they pull them and threaten anyone, then that’s considered brandishing, and you can swear out a warrant for their arrest and have them charged.  Problem solved.

Unless of course the real problem is that you’re worried about undisciplined black boys being irresponsible with those guns and going to prison for it.  In this case, your problem doesn’t have a solution in the law.  You need to speak to the families and churches about that.

I have to say that I am beginning to agree with Jeff.  Since I have been covering #Pizzagate, when I go out more often than not I’m now carrying two guns, not one.

Also, I’ll briefly comment on his choice of guns.  I do love the 1911, and I have the S&W E Series 1911, full size.  I shoot it better than I shoot anything else.  I have been thinking about a smaller 1911 like this one, and the fact that it’s a Performance Center gun impresses me.

But why does every gun that catches my interest cost $1500 and up?  I need a rich friend.

CNBC:

The Remington Arms Company, which is seeking court approval of a landmark class action settlement involving alleged defects in its most popular rifles, said in a series of court filings that its critics have “ulterior motives” in objecting to the deal.

In one instance, the company claimed, an objector first tried to extract more than $1 million from the company to buy his silence.

Remington has agreed to replace the triggers in millions of guns, including its popular Model 700 bolt-action rifle, to settle allegations that the guns are prone to firing without the trigger being pulled. But the company continues to maintain that the guns are safe, and that the accidents and deaths associated with the alleged defect are the result of user errors. Several gun owners have filed formal objections to the settlement as a result, alleging the company is deliberately downplaying the risks.

Remington reserved its harshest criticism for Richard Barber, a Montana man who says his nine-year-old son was killed when a Remington 700 went off during a family hunting trip in 2000. Barber has been a central figure in multiple CNBC reports about the company since 2010. Remington settled a wrongful death claim by the Barber family for an undisclosed amount in 2002, but Barber went on to amass a huge trove of internal company documents and became a sought-after expert on the alleged defect.

Barber initially served as a paid consultant to the class action plaintiffs, but resigned in early 2015. Last month, he filed a formal, 40-page objection to the proposed class action settlement citing what he called “deceitful and misleading statements” by Remington and plaintiffs’ attorneys.

But in a scathing response filed on Tuesday, Remington said Barber only objected to the settlement after first demanding that the company pay him $1.5 million, and supply him with two Remington Modular Sniper Rifles—which we found listed for sale online for $21,000 apiece—plus 4,000 rounds of ammunition. In exchange, the company claimed that Barber offered to support any class action settlement, stop making disparaging statements about the company, and destroy all of his research.

“In light of Barber’s vexatious conduct, his objections to the class action settlement should be summarily rejected,” the filing said.

In an interview, Barber acknowledged making the demands but said Remington is mischaracterizing them in an attempt to deflect attention from the real issues in the case. He said the demands were drawn up by attorneys who no longer represent him, and said he ultimately withdrew the demands after concluding that he would be “making a deal with the devil.”

I’m not sure what all of that means.  To be fair, the claim isn’t that the rifle just “went off.”  It’s that it fell to the ground (with the safety on) and discharged.  That’s a little different than has been characterized in the article, and also to be fair, Remington’s own records indicate that the Walker fire control system is defective and has been proven to discharge when the bolt was placed into battery, discharge when the safety was taken off, and so on.

No one wins, no one has won, no one will win.  The only winning scenario was rejected, and that would have been for the engineers at Remington to force Remington to recall the trigger two decades ago.  It’s always a bad thing when corporate executives call the shots in matters like this, and it’s never a good thing when the corporate lawyers get involved.  Lawyers aren’t technically qualified to make these decisions, and corporate executives can only be trusted if they have been proven to be ethical.  In Remington’s issue with the Walker fire control system, that was not the case.  In matters like this, the engineers have to rule.  If my own sense of things down at the gun stores is any indication, Remington has taken a huge hit anyway, with the reliance on military contracts, the union-driven labor force, the Northern states based manufacturing, and so on.  As I said, no one wins, not even Remington.

On the other hand, the request for two modular sniper rifles and ammunition as a part of a multi-million dollar settlement is the most bizarre thing I’ve seen in a long time.  Why on earth would he make this kind of request if he had the money in hand?  It makes no sense unless he intended to test the rifles to see if the design flaw had been modified out of the system.  If that was the case, it would have been more discrete to have a third party purchase and test the rifles.

Again, as I said, no one wins, and it will be better for everyone when this goes away.  This has nothing to do with guns, and everything to do with the dark underbelly of American corporatism.  I say this as one who has staunchly defended Remington from the invasive demands of the Sandy Hook Families lawsuit.  I defend when it’s appropriate, and I criticize when it’s appropriate.

The Trace:

I published a story on Monday that has generated some of the strongest pushback — indeed, ridicule — of anything I have reported for The Trace.

My piece examined how gun manufacturing trends influence the criminal market and what changes in the types of guns being produced might mean for public safety. Gun companies are producing a greater number of semiautomatic handguns of the sort used as police sidearms and military service weapons — those that shoot 9mm, .40, and .45-caliber bullets — than in decades past. They are selling them to civilians who increasingly buy firearms for the primary purpose of defending themselves from other people, and believe that more powerful guns will make them more safe.

The increasing prevalence of powerful guns also means that criminals encounter them, and acquire them, more often. I also found in my reporting evidence that illegal buyers prefer high-caliber guns for the same reasons as legal buyers.

Law enforcement officers are recovering more of these weapons at crime scenes, and fewer of the kinds of cheap, small guns that criminals favored during the crime waves of the late 20th century.

The story was based on publicly available data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which shows a sharp uptick in the number of high-caliber guns recovered by police in a short time period, just four years. The data makes clear that in the underground criminal market, the supply of semiautomatic handguns chambered to shoot 9mm, .40, and .45-caliber bullets is increasing faster than the supply of smaller calibers, like the .22.

Forensic evidence shows that larger bullets tear larger holes in human bodies, and thus are more likely to severely damage a vital organ or rupture an artery. Public health research indicates that an increasing number of people who get shot are dying from their wounds.

In an editorial on firearm news site Guns.com, Greg Camp said my article was “confusing.” Robert Farago of The Truth About Guns dismissed the piece as well. On his popular gun blog Bearing Arms, Bob Owens called the story “the second dumbest thing you’ll read about guns all day.” I’m not sure who crowded me out of the top spot.

Owens and others criticized my understanding of caliber and the gun industry’s last century and change of history. As they pointed out, the kinds of weapons at the center of my story have been around for more than a century. That’s true: the 9mm round was first designed in 1901, and the .45-caliber in 1904. My critics also argued that these rounds are far from the largest calibers available today. That’s also true: The weapons I wrote about don’t approach the power of the .50-caliber bullet shot by the Desert Eagle pistol so often favored by action movie villains.

As they made their criticisms, these gun writers did not engage with the point of my story. I never claimed that the calibers I wrote about were only recently invented, nor that they were the biggest rounds in history.

Rather, I pointed about that the production of more powerful handguns has surged, while production of others — revolvers and semiautomatic calibers considered too small for police sidearms, like .22, .25, and .32 — has grown comparatively slowly, or even withered away. The guns that make up an ever-greater share of the American arsenal often shoot larger, faster rounds than those weapons that are losing ground, and the handguns now most prevalent nearly universally accommodate higher capacity magazines.

I was ridiculed for noting these differences, cast as an ignorant fear-monger and outsider who lacked standing to comment on the gun world.

Ignored, in these critiques, are the public safety implications of a larger supply of more powerful guns flowing from the legal to the illegal market.

It seemed that they didn’t so much contest the conclusions I reached so much as they took offense that I would pose these questions about the relationship between the gun supply and crime in the first place.

I object that Alex didn’t interact with my assessment of their work.  You can go assess the data for yourself.  Alex is misrepresenting the data and isn’t quite at the point of truly understanding what he’s looking at because he isn’t a gunner.  To repeat myself from the first analysis of this issue, he isn’t educated on his subject.  Let’s take a closer look.

The data is only available on this site for the years 2012 – 2015.  From a technical perspective (and given that I’m a PE, I’m qualified to make judgments concerning mathematics and statistics), I deny that this is enough data to develop a trend line with a reasonable correlation coefficient.  In other words, the data isn’t statistically significant.  Much more is needed before Alex can reach any conclusions like he did.

But to engage the data as if it’s meaningful, let’s outline what we know.  In 2015, the following recoveries were made: 55,691 (9mm), 28717 (.40), 20,729 (.45 ACP), 9,417 (.357 magnum), and 35,382 (.22LR).  This list isn’t complete.

In 2012, the following recoveries were made: 42,560 (9mm), 20,674 (.40), 17,280 (.45 ACP), 9,979 (.357 magnum), and 42,560 (.22LR).

This data doesn’t show what Alex wants it to show.  First of all, it shows that more recoveries occurred (due to whatever reason, increased police work, presumably).  It shows that approximately the same number of .22LR recoveries occurred in both years, while recoveries in 9mm and .40 went up in 2015 (although not significantly).  But it also shows that recoveries in .45 ACP stayed about the same.  It also shows that recoveries in .357 magnum decreased.  No one would argue that the .357 magnum is a weak round.  It has about the same bullet diameter as the 9mm but with approximately 400 FPS greater muzzle velocity than the 9mm.  It packs a punch, enough to shatter windshields and keep moving, which is why LEOs transitioned to this round from the .38 Special.

But buyers are rejecting this round in favor of the much weaker 9mm (a judgment I reject given my love for the .357 magnum round).  The higher ratio of 9mm to .22LR recovered in 2015 versus 2012 is analogous to the higher ratio of 9mm to .45 ACP in both years, meaning that buyers favor the weaker 9mm over the much stronger .45 ACP.

It’s what I told you in my earlier analysis without looking at the data.  That’s how sure I was of my judgment – I didn’t even look at the data to write my analysis.  And I was right.  No one has ever preferentially selected the .22LR for self defense (although I’ve argued that the .22 magnum is a feasible self defense round even if not superior).  Shooters may use it (including criminals) if it happens to be around.

But buyers are preferentially selecting medium calibers (9mm, .38 ACP) over larger rounds and rounds with higher muzzle velocity like the .357 magnum.  Buyers simply are not purchasing higher caliber weapons (.40, .45 ACP, .44 magnum) or weapons with higher muzzle velocity (e.g., .357 magnum) in the same quantity as the 9mm.  Instead, the 9mm is the ubiquitous round in America today.  That’s why, during the ammunition shortage a few years ago, I could always buy .45 ACP, and when I looked for 9mm just to see what the other guys are doing, I could never find any.

Ironically, it isn’t the guns that have changed.  Yes, technology has developed to some degree, but the real development has occurred in ammunition.  So for example, the development of high performing personal defense ammunition has made buyers more confident in purchasing the 9mm (e.g., open tip bullets where the jacket is chemically bonded to the lead core, ensuring symmetrical expansion of the bullet).

Alex is wrong in his analysis.  Just wrong.  He’s trafficking in fake news.  He has misread the data, and he is seeing what he wants to see.  We firearms experts are always around to help him out before he writes the next gun piece, but remember, Google considers folks like me to be “fake news.”  So Alex better be careful associating with folks like us.  He may lose his reputation.

How Guns Are Getting Bigger – And Possibly More Deadly.

Not only are guns getting bigger, they’re getting into the hands of more criminals, according to a recent investigation by The Trace, with deadly effect.

While all bullets could kill if they hit vital organs, arteries, or the head, experts told The Trace that the bigger the bullet, the more likely any wound will be fatal. Bullets are measured in calibers, or the diameter of their width, in fractions of an inch or millimeter.

In the past 20 years, higher demand from law-abiding citizens and criminals, both claiming concern about self-protection, has led gun manufacturers to make more of these deadlier guns. Legal and illegal citizen buyers alike are scooping up higher-caliber pistols like those originally designed for police from the civilian market and illegal gun runners. As a result, guns with higher caliber bullets are showing up at more crime scenes, leading experts to expect the lethality rate of gun violence to rise, too.

“Demand is shifting because supply is shifting,” SUNY-Albany sociologist David Hureau told The Trace. “Bigger, badder guns are just more available on the secondary market.”

This is a stark change from just 50 years ago, when the criminal’s gun of choice–dubbed the “Saturday Night Special”–was smaller and cheaper. Since then, gun companies have marketed bigger, higher-caliber weapons like 9mm, .40, and .45 caliber pistols as adequate for keeping average citizens concerned about self-defense—”citizen protectors,” as one sociologist called them—safe.

I sent this to myself today with that subject line (“The dumbest gun headline of the day).  I see that Bob Owens has already posted on this, and I basically concur with his sentiments.  The article is nonsense, and the writers obviously don’t know anything about their subject.

The .45 ACP has been around and in use by both military and civilians for more than a century, and the large revolver cartridges have been around for an even longer time than that.  In fact, the .38 Special is approximately the same diameter as the 9mm, or in other words, the “Saturday Night Special” to which the author refers is about the same as the 9mm that she calls a “bigger, higher caliber” round.

Actually, I see the opposite happening because I actually know something about guns.  I use .45 ACP and always will, but the most popular cartridge in America is the 9mm and I see people leaving the larger calibers for the smaller ones (e.g., 9mm, .380 ACP, etc.).

But I’ll observe something about this article that Bob missed.  It was “written” by someone named Carla Javier with Fusion.  Within an hour, another writer with Fusion wrote an article that could be mistaken for the one you just read, by someone named Alex Yablon, entitled America’s Obsession With Powerful Handguns Is Giving Criminals Deadlier Tools.

Some editor at Fusion, if they have such a thing there, made the decision to publish virtually the same article under different bylines within one hour of each other.  In and of itself that is only moderately interesting and goes to show their utter disdain for Americans whom they think they can beat into submission with words.  But here’s the really interesting thing.

Guess how I found these two articles?  That’s right, by a Google News search on the word “guns.”  Think about that for a moment.  These articles are quite literally fake news.  There is nothing in them but propaganda, and any pseudo-educated gun owner can debunk the data in there, and if a Google employee cared to convert inches to millimeters, s/he could easily have called bullshit on the two articles.

But no, these are seen by Google news feed as newsworthy.  Here’s the kicker.  The Captain’s Journal, which provides vastly superior analysis to anything Fusion could ever hope to put out, cannot get on the Google News feed.  Bob Owens is on the Google News feed (for which I don’t begrudge him), and Bob didn’t say anything different than I did.  But I connected the dots to propagandizing by Fusion.

You didn’t read that anywhere else but TCJ.  But remember boys and girls, Google thinks I’m not news worthy.  Perhaps Google is trafficking in fake news, yes?

Handgun optics have become popular, and I admit that they look promising for those who cannot see as well as they once could, and I also like the fact that it eliminates the needs for front and rear sight alignment.

American Rifleman has an article up on this, embedding an instructive video.

So the obvious downside of all of this is that installation of an optic on your pistol requires either purchase of an optic-ready pistol (relegating your non optic-ready pistols to the gun safe if you like optics), or cutting the slide to install the optic (which can be expensive, and is certainly irreversible).  Unless, of course, you have an installation kit for your specific firearm.

The California Aggie:

Only California, Florida, Illinois, New York and South Carolina prohibit the open carry of handguns. That means 45 American states allow the intimidation of the public, wasting of law enforcement resources and endless opportunities for accidental injury caused by firearm misuse.

In a heart-wrenching moment following the July shooting of five police officers, Dallas Police Chief David Brown addressed the public and spoke on issues ranging from race to open carry laws.

“It’s increasingly challenging when people have AR-15s slung over and shootings occur in a crowd… We don’t know if they’re the shooter or not. We don’t know who the good guy is versus who the bad guy is if everybody starts shooting,” Brown said.

Especially during an emergency, trying to weed out the bad guys from the good guys — likely with limited information about the shooter to go off of in the first place — detracts from time that could be used to stop senseless violence and instead makes an officer’s job infinitely harder.

In this sense, times of crisis or high political tension should call for a limit on open carry laws. On the eve of the Republican National Convention, the head of Cleveland’s police union called for a temporary ban on the open-carrying of guns for fear of impending violence from protestors and dissented individuals. Stephen Loomis, the president of Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association, accused open carry participants of irresponsibility, going on to say “you can’t go into a crowded theater and scream fire. And that’s exactly what they’re doing by bringing those guns down there.” Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s right. And openly carrying a firearm during a volatile situation isn’t right.

Open carry laws also scare the public into thinking there’s more wrongdoing than really exists. According to a San Mateo County Sheriff’s report, several incidents have arisen where people called police dispatch in response to seeing an individual carrying a revolver or a semi-automatic handgun on them. This leads to a waste of time when, consequently, police officers have to investigate these citizens who are simply “exercising their right,” but are really engendering unnecessary fear and trepidation in the minds of other citizens.

Yet sometimes this fear is more than justified. 10 minutes before an armed shooter walked into a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood, the Colorado Police Department received two calls regarding the shooter. One of the callers reported him as looking “scary” at several points during the call, but the emergency response technician acknowledged that Colorado is an open carry state so, technically speaking, he was not breaking any laws. He left three people dead and nine wounded just minutes later.

Open carry is a double-edged sword. Seeing an individual with a weapon displayed is undoubtedly scary, but reacting on this fear can have wasteful consequences on law enforcement resources if the individual carrying has no bad intentions. On the other hand, a lack of response from police dispatch can also have deadly ramifications.

What’s more worrisome, however, is the prospect of accidental misuse of a firearm in a public setting. Deputy Chief of the Davis Police Department Ton Phan said that states like Texas, where it is now legal to openly carry a handgun on college campuses, are especially at risk for these types of misuse.

This is what happens with little girls who don’t know anything about guns try to write articles about guns.  First of all we’ve covered the Dallas shooting.  No one in engaged in the fire fight stopped, went to Twitter, and tried to determine who the shooter was based on Twitter or any other social media.  That’s ridiculous.

They engaged the shooter until he was dead.  All of the additional work to identify whether there were other shooters was done after the fact.  Open carriers didn’t stop or adversely affect anything.  Furthermore, whether someone was open carrying is irrelevant.  That’s just a psychological issue the writer has, and the Police share it because they want to be the only ones who get to carry weapons.

Someone could just as easily have been a concealed carrier and been a shooter, so the act of open carrying meant absolutely nothing.  The same goes for the Colorado shooter, who open carried to his crime.  Make open carry illegal, and he’ll conceal carry to his crime.  It’s a matter of convenience for him.  Nothing more.

The write is equally confused concerning the danger open carriers pose compared to LEOs.  She is apparently unaware of the danger this assumption can be.

The catalog (even at this web site) of the awful muzzle and trigger discipline and behavior with guns is staggering: wrong home raids, pulling shotguns on a ten year old, pointing a pistol at a seven year old, being known as dog butchers, abusive treatment of innocent victims during a botched raid, dangerous gun play with other cops, lack of knowledge of the state of their weapons, negligent discharges, negligent discharges in an airport, killing dogs for sport, negligent discharges in police precincts, shooting each other while cleaning their weapons, hitting people on the head with guns, 600 rounds discharged in a rolling gun battle through the inner city, mistakenly shooting a gun instead of a taser, killing a man, firing a gun on a junior high campus, more negligent discharges in police stations, accidentally killing each other, shooting men in the back during raids, killing innocent men because of negligent discharges, throwing flash-bangs into baby cribs, pointing guns at city councilmen during meetings, firing rifles in court, negligent discharge of an AR-15, losing guns, 23 police officers firing 377 rounds at two men with no guns, losing machine guns, shooting each other while trying to kill dogs, and in the author’s own city, shooting 84 rounds at a man, missing with 83 of them.

So, little miss, go back to the drawing board, spend some time with gun owners and open carriers, interview them, go to the range with them and observe their safety protocols, and come back and write something less biased and more useful.  This one failed to hit the target.