Archive for the 'Firearms' Category

Herald Tribune:

Lee Williams’ Note: Here’s a great guest column from Arden Tams. Arden served 24 years in the U.S. Army, the last 17 in Special Forces. As a Green Beret, he attended a host of high-speed SF schools, as well as some of the country’s most-prestigious private shooting academies. Arden, who retired as a CW2, deployed overseas 10 times, including multiple tours in Afghanistan. He’s trained Africans, Arabs and Afghans. I know no one with more downrange time. This is his first column.

by Arden Tams 

Now more than ever the gun community is under a microscope from both the anti-gun community and liberal politicians alike.

For too long the gun community has barked loudly about the infringement of our Second Amendment and done nothing about addressing concerns with proper instruction, training and safety.

There is an old analogy that house built on a foundation of sand will eventually collapse. Well, that holds true for initial firearms training too.

Since I retired from the military last year, I have not only witnessed improper training, I have been told by several instructors who are very proficient that many of their colleagues are not competent whatsoever.

Examples we all hear are instructors using starter pistols, or firing one shot down range for concealed carry classes.

This falls on both the instructor and student.

So how do we combat this as a gun community if there is a minimal standard in place set forth by states and the NRA?

We exceed the standards to ensure accidents like this last weekend do not happen.

Gun ownership is not only a right, it is also a privilege and a stewardship …

You can read the rest here.  I too have pressed for greater and more mechanically based training, mastering the mechanics of the weapon and mechanics of the person.  I’ve pressed for learning to field strip your weapon, getting more range time, practicing good trigger and muzzle discipline, having that hard-to-have conversation with your elder parents or grandparents on whether they really need to have a gun since they are being provided for and protected 24-7 (and you’re worried about Alzheimer’s disease, and no, I don’t mean protected by some irresponsible bureaucrat sitting at a desk in the middle of the night answering the phone), knowing where every firearm in your house is and being able to locate it blindfolded, lay your hands on it and say whether there is a round chambered from memory, and continually raising the bar of your own standards.

And he’s right in that folks who act irresponsibly do us no favors.  They only provide more fodder for the anti-gun crowd to trumpet.  But turning to the state to require increased standards in order to prevent the progressives from being able to trumpet our failures isn’t the solution, if that’s what he’s suggesting.

I agree with his sentiment, but saying that gun ownership is both a right and a privilege is simply wrongheaded.  Something that is a right cannot be a privilege.  And while sad, failures of personal gun owner responsibility don’t justify intrusions by the state.  If there are standards to be raised, it’s best left to the individual, the family and the gun owner community to do it.  Intent to exceed legal standards for the purpose of proving ourselves worthy to the collectivists only justifies the very legal standards that shouldn’t be codified in the first place.

David Smalley at Patheos:

I live in Texas. I’m a gun owner. I have a concealed handgun license. I’ve taught my kids how to fire weapons.

I also understand and appreciate our Constitution. I’m fully aware of the 2nd Amendment, and how its authors wanted to prevent government tyranny. Considering what they had gone through, they had every right to demand such a thing.

When an author begins by giving you his bona fides, watch out.  There’s no better way to start an anti-gun rant than to claim that you own guns and truly do, honestly do, sincerely do, understand gun owners.  True to form, he treats us to this.

I know enough about weapons to have a near perfect score on my firing test, to know that the “c” in SR9c stands for “compact” to make the weapon easier to hide; and to know that the AR in AR-15 doesn’t stand for ‘Assault Rifle,’ but ‘Armalite’ after the original company who made the gun.

Am I a gun nut? Maybe. But I like to keep myself skeptical and informed. And that includes realizing when I’m being illogically influenced by my culture, and taking necessary steps to correct it.

You see, one thing that’s more important than situational knowledge, patriotism, tradition, or protection, is common sense.

At this nation’s beginning, it made sense for the citizens to be armed similarly to the government to prevent tyranny.

Today, that’s ridiculous. The very concept is outdated. Some have said to me; the point is for the citizens to be “as armed as well as the government.”

For starters, today, the military has fully automatic M-16s. Citizens can’t buy that. You have to get a tamer version: AR-15.

You can’t have flame throwers, bombs, bazookas, Z10 attack helicopters, bradleys, tanks, fighter jets, nuclear reactors, or a plethora of other secret military weapons you don’t even know exist.

So even today, with the 2nd Amendment in full effect, we don’t have the rights to be “armed as well as our government.”

Secondly, what if you were? I could hand you 50 AR-15s, give you 1000 illegal bombs, steal you a couple of tanks, and smuggle in some bazookas, and even let you fully train 500 of your closest friends.

If the government wants your shit, they’re going to take it.

You still wouldn’t be a match for even a single battalion of the United States Marine Corps. Not to mention the Air Force, Army, Navy, National Guard, Secret Service, FBI, CIA, and Seals.

So stop acting like your little AR-15 is going to stop tyranny.

First of all, he’s assuming that the armed forces wouldn’t frag officers who issued such a command.  But assuming that the entirety of the armed forces participated in whatever operation Smalley is conjuring, if only several hundred thousand armed Americans fought back, it would be a bloodbath.

This argument – and I’ve seen it numerous times – is locked in the mindset of early twentieth century warfare, oblivious to MOUT, CQB, insurgencies, and fourth generation warfare.  A nuclear weapon is of no use when the enemy lives among friend, and friend and foe all look the same.  Ask any veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom how easy it is to ferret out insurgents from among the population or fight insurgents in the shadows.

As for “If the government wants your shit, they’re going to take it,” perhaps so.  But then again, perhaps not.  You see, the mere existence of the argument itself is evidence against the affirmative and in favor of negation.  The government wouldn’t want to ban weapons if they were of no use in destabilizing tyrannical governments.  Hitler wouldn’t have wanted the Jews disarmed if he hadn’t intended to do them harm.  Also consider the role of gun confiscations in the Armenian genocide.  See Dave Kopel, et. al, at National Review, and also Brett Stortroen, Gun Confiscation as a Prelude to the Armenian Genocide.

Finally, those Marines to whom Smalley refers are somebody’s sons.  I recall very distinctly a missionary from the European theater years ago during communist rule (I refuse to give his name or specific location) who gave my church the back story behind the falling of the wall in Germany.  Night after night the crowds began to grow to tear down the wall.  The German army was eventually deployed to shoot the protestors, but remember that the East German army, while working for a communist country, were sons of mothers and fathers in East Germany.

As soon as the army was deployed, grandmothers went to the wall.  “Shoot us,” they yelled.  The sons of German mothers and grandmothers refused to shoot their own family, and the rest is history.  Now recall reader and commenter Fred’s comment on one post.

As for the military; are they still trained on illegal orders? My nephew is in tech school (navy) and I told him before he went in to seek a deep understanding of illegal orders and to make sure they trained him on it. I also told him that if he took his training and turned it on his fellow citizens I would hunt and kill him, this child that I love and helped to raise up. He understood that this is no small matter.

Smalley makes this sound much easier than it will be, that is, if the government ever decides to harm civilians based on their religious viewpoints, gun ownership or some other reason.  But war always sounds easier than it will be, yes?

Hickok45 is a lot more disciplined than I am, but he gives good (but simple) advice on how to keep care for your weapons when not in use, avoiding rust and scratches.

WISTV:

LYMAN, SC (FOX Carolina) – Deputies with Spartanburg County said a man faces multiple attempted murder charges after opening fire outside a nightclub early Sunday morning.

The shooting happened around 3:30 a.m. at Playoffz nightclub on Inman Road in Lyman.

Deputies said 32-year-old Jody Ray Thompson pulled out a gun after getting  into an argument with another man and fired several rounds toward a crowd that had gathered out in front of the club.

“His rounds struck 3 victims, and almost struck a fourth victim, who in self-defense, pulled his own weapon and fired, striking Thompson in the leg,” Lt. Kevin Bobo said.

Bobo said the man who shot Thompson has a valid concealed weapons permit, cooperated with investigators, and won’t be facing any charges.

“Thompson was still on the scene when deputies arrived, but the initial scene was chaotic,” Bobo said. “It wasn’t until victims and witnesses were interviewed, and video from the scene was  reviewed that Thompson was identified as the suspect.”

Thompson was charged four counts of attempted murder, possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime, and unlawful carrying of a weapon.

Bobo said none of the victims’ injuries were life threatening.

Thompson is being held at the Spartanburg County Detention Center.

Wait!  What?  This is unpossible.  Concealed carriers are supposed to go all Rambo and shoot everyone up!  We’re supposed to wait for the cops to show up because of all of that super-cool tactical training and uncanny ability to wax perfect in tense situations.

Or not.  See, anti-gun nuts, this is how it happens in thousands of cases.  In the absence of a concealed carrier, dozens might have perished or been injured.  The concealed carrier is free to go.  Spartanburg police are generally fairly good to gun owners and concealed carriers.  The next step in the honoring of rights in South Carolina is legal open carry.

Let’s press for that during the next legislative session.

Yahoo:

When James Carville sat with Sarah Palin for a Politicon conversation on Sunday, he was polite. He praised her 2008 Republican National Convention speech. He even seemed to sympathize with her for being scapegoated in John McCain’s presidential campaign.

But then he challenged her on wanting to “take back the country,” a common Tea Party phrase that has morphed into Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again,” and their conversation quickly turned into a debate over gun control.

Carville, the Democratic strategist, said to the former vice presidential nominee: “When you say you want to take back the country, what is it you want to take back?”

“I want to take back the interpretation of our constitution that is being wrongly interpreted today,” Palin said.

“Where are we going haywire on the Constitution?” he asked.

Palin’s response: the Second Amendment.

“It is black and white, and we have a right, of course, to bear arms,” she said. “People who can interpret that to, ‘Oh that means not everybody has that right.’ Or to take certain things like ammo, ‘Well that doesn’t apply.’ Or we can get rid of AR-15s because AR-15s weren’t invented for hunting. I say, ‘Yeah, the Second Amendment wasn’t written in the case the moose turn on us.’ Of course it wasn’t mean for hunting.”

Carville, though, pressed her further.

“Do I have a right to possess a bazooka? Do I have the right to have a surface to air missile and live close to the Los Angeles Airport?”

“Well, that is such a stupid question,” Palin responded.

The Palin-Carville conversation was among a number of marquee events at Politicon, a gathering of political junkies with panels, standup comedy, film screenings and art displays at the Pasadena Convention Center.

Carville went on. “I was in the Marine Corps. I have guns. I grew up rural. Why do I need a 40-clip magazine?”

I’ll concede Carville’s point.  I can say with certainty that I don’t need a 40-clip magazine.  Depending upon what that beast is, it might even make my rifle too heavy and out-of-balance to shoot accurately.

But I reserve the right to have one whether I need it or not.  I might buy one just to have it – just as soon as I figure out what it is.  As for Carville, even the US Marine Corps graduates a Gomer ever now and then.

Prior:

High Magazine Clips And The Shoulder Thing That Goes Up

High Ammo Clips

Automatic Bullets In Rapid Fire Magazine Clips

Duck Hunting With Bullets

The Fully Loaded Ammunition Cartridge

My goodness.  I do love me a good wheel gun.  I do indeed.  There’s just a feel of the machinery and a tactile connection with the revolver that I don’t get with the plastic guns, and perhaps even the 1911, which is probably my favorite platform.

Advocating concealed carry of small revolvers for self defense.  He’s got a good point about all of the lint.

This is interesting.  Rob Leatham wins the USPSA revolver championship.  I’ve always thought of him as a pistol guy.  Congratulations to Rob.  I wish I was as good as he is.  But I do have a question.  Look at this grip he’s using.

It looks like he’s using a grip customary for pistols rather than revolvers, where he is putting the thumb of his left hand near the forcing cone where it could get injured.  I don’t suspect for a minute that Rob Leatham visits the pages of this blog, but could someone explain what he’s doing and why it’s okay?

Well, I guess I didn’t see this one coming.  Kydex holsters for a number of different revolver designs.

When revolvers had safeties.  Hmm … don’t think I like the idea.  No, not at all.

Ruger SP101 review.  Ruger is making very nice revolvers these days, and I would carry this gun for personal defense in a heartbeat.  It doesn’t look nearly as pretty as the Ruger GP100 Match Champion, but then again, you can’t conceal a GP100 Match Champion.  I do think they should have made the entire grip that nice looking wood rather than embedding it in the rubber grips.

I still want someone – anyone – with personal knowledge to give me a story of someone in OIF or OEF (Iraq or Afghanistan theaters) carrying a revolver rather than a pistol.

Or otherwise called, “thumb over bore” grip.  As I’ve pointed out, it started in the gaming community, and it was taken up by SpecOps, and so you see folks like Chris Costa and Travis Haley using it.

I ran across this report today of a 3-gun competitor who is also using the C-clamp grip.

The folks at Magpul explain why they like the grip.

The GOP is getting ready to do what the GOP always does – cave to the force of progressive bullies.

According to CBS News’s Steven Portnoy, McConnell has a meeting with FBI director James Comey and Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson on Wednesday. Portnoy Tweeted that McConnell has signaled he may be willing to consider new gun controls after that meeting.

Via SSI, it might be claimed that this is all being done for a purpose and by design, effecting no change except for raising money.

The Republicans have had the White House and the Senate and the House and they have never passed real pro-gun legislation. Bought a full auto lately?  Heck, have you priced a full auto lately?

The Democrats as recently as a few years ago had Obama and the Senate and the House. They didn’t pass gun confiscation legislation either.

It’s a game to keep us distracted.  The Republicans get to scare us with threats of Democrat gun control and we send them money and vote them into office.  For the Democrats, it keeps their rabid base energized to send the Democrats lots of money and get them voted into office.

Heck, even the famous NRA would go broke if real gun rights legislation ever passed into law.

So, how does this lead us to the shootings in Florida?

When things like this happen, I always implore the motto, “follow the money”. Who wins with a shooting of this type?

Obviously, the two political parties do. It’s unlikely that any real legislation will be introduced between now and the election.  Republicans want to be reelected.  Of course Republicans and the NRA are now pushing a “real” bill to keep guns out of the hands of the terrorists.  The Democrats will whine and cry that it isn’t enough but will go along.  Of course once it’s passed and folks want to exercise due process over being on the terrorist watch list, we’ll all be told that national security trumps any legal protections.

And both sides will continue their fund raising.

Well, this is a jaded view, and I’m not above being quite jaded, but this analysis seems to me to ignore several very important things.  First of all, many republicans come from the Northeast where they do want gun control, but they actually fear the loss of that percentage of voters who can put them out of office.  Second, the democrats haven’t passed gun control for one simple reason, i.e., lack of votes.  If they had the votes, you can be assured they would have most white, conservative Christians hooked up to mill wheels turning grain into flour and corn into grits.  The rest would be in concentration camps (Fusion centers).

Ideology trumps donations because enslavement of the working class produces wealth for the elitists.  They will always find a way to enrich themselves.  So if mere interest in campaign donations isn’t the impetus behind this, what is?

Before we get to that, take careful note of what Donald Trump said about this push for gun control.

In an abrupt shift in message, Donald Trump indicated Wednesday that he might be taking on a Republican tenet: the party’s long-standing opposition to gun control.

Trump said he would talk to the NRA about not allowing “people on the terrorist watch list, or the no fly list, to buy guns.” In typical fashion for the presumptive Republican nominee, the announcement came via Twitter:

I will be meeting with the NRA, who has endorsed me, about not allowing people on the terrorist watch list, or the no fly list, to buy guns.

The NRA, for its part, says there’s no conflict:

Happy to meet @realdonaldtrump. Our position is no guns for terrorists—period. Due process & right to self-defense for law-abiding Americans

In a statement, the NRA said it would be “happy to meet with Donald Trump.” But that:

“The NRA believes that terrorists should not be allowed to purchase or possess firearms, period. Anyone on a terror watchlist who tries to buy a gun should be thoroughly investigated by the FBI and the sale delayed while the investigation is ongoing. If an investigation uncovers evidence of terrorist activity or involvement, the government should be allowed to immediately go to court, block the sale, and arrest the terrorist. At the same time, due process protections should be put in place that allow law-abiding Americans who are wrongly put on a watchlist to be removed. That has been the position of Sen. John Cornyn (R.-Tex.) and a majority of the U.S. Senate. Sadly, President Obama and his allies would prefer to play politics with this issue.”

Trump doesn’t tell the democrats on capital hill to go to hell because first he is a Northeast big government liberal, and second he doesn’t understand the predilection to evil in fallen mankind.  The goal is not now and has never been gun control.  The progressive goal has always been people control.

You know this because when they advocate the total disarmament of the population, they always exclude the police.  It isn’t that they don’t want people to have guns, it’s that they don’t want some people to have guns.  If they could be assured that you would never use your guns to upset their progressive social planners and their designs for society by killing others (even to defend your loved ones), or to prevent their tyrannical designs, they wouldn’t mind you having all the guns your heart desires.

But they cannot trust you with those boundary conditions, and so every machine of the state must be properly tuned to work at their disposal.  Thus, no one can ever get off of the no-fly list once they have made it on.  The decisions for the terrorist watch list and no-fly list are made in secret by the federal executive, and are subject only to the FISA court, which ends up being a rubber stamp for the federal executive.

The terrorist watch list and the no-fly list is different, and they leverage this difference and use it to their advantage when they discuss this in front of the cameras.  Furthermore, there is nothing to stop them from, say, adding all NRA members to the list, or adding you to the list, if you’re reading this article.  After all, they have said they believe that the “right wing terror threat” is the biggest threat facing America today.

No one in the MSM has the guts to ask why someone who is a “terrorist” is allowed to be in America to begin with.  It would force the executive to admit to all of his plans for social change, his open borders policy, the fact that none of these lists are subject to due process, no jury has decided on the fate of pitiful souls who have run afoul of the system, and all such souls are left to the devices of an out-of-control executive who doesn’t care, and sends their problems to judges who have been educated at Harvard, Yale and Emory.

Is anyone really surprised at this?  After all, a Syrian immigrant who said 9/11 changed the world for good is a homeland security advisor.  They will call light darkness and darkness light.  If you believe that the second amendment is in place to ameliorate tyranny, you must be eradicated because you’re the enemy, a right-wing terrorist.

Or so they seem to think.  And that’s the point, isn’t it?  Guns are good, and they know it.  They are wonderful machines, just like cars, stoves, and HVAC.  But in the “wrong” hands they can prevent the grand social designs of the ruling class.  Again, the goal isn’t to destroy the gun companies.  That would mean no one had guns, and no one includes them.

The goal is to control whether you have them, and to do that they won’t be so obvious as to pass a law against all gun ownership.  The Fuds in the hunting clubs will be left alone to purchase their shotguns for dove and quail hunting.  They don’t want to anger the gentlemanly class.

They will go after you by the terrorist watch list, the no-fly list, and any other assortment of executive powers and decisions and regulations and rulings.  They will never confiscate your guns.  They will prevent you from renewing your driver’s license, your hunting license, your fishing license, your professional license, your bank cards, your concealed handgun permits, and in short, all the framework you have built your entire life as a law abiding, peaceable citizen.  Then they will go after your wife and children and their ability to enroll in education.  They will go after what matters most to you.

If you’re focused on guns rather than people and their relationship to the ruling class, you need to be recalibrated.  Don’t ever give up your guns, but think smart and be strategic.  If they can’t take you guns directly, they will attempt to control you by other means.

If you’re disappointed in Donald Trump, be prepared for more to come.  This is only the beginning.  The GOP elitists cannot be trusted, and couldn’t care less for your ability to defend your family.  The democrats want your soul, but will settle for your servitude.  If they can’t come in through the front door, they will come in through the back door.  Conspiracy theories are sometimes correct, but sometimes they blind you to the real situation.  This is about more than campaign donations.  This is about controlling you, and therefore, controlling your guns by extension.

The reaction is virtually ubiquitous across the progressive world, and it pays to know what’s going on.  I won’t have a long analysis of any one commentary, but I have brief comments on multiple commentaries.

First up is Bill Clinton, who is lying when he says that his AWB did anything to drive down any sort violence whatsoever, using any metric at all.  The trend on crime has been decreasing from since before his AWB and continues to decrease today.

On another front, Jeh Johnson says that gun violence is a matter of homeland security.  What he (and the administration) wants to do here is promulgate rules, directives and regulations separate from and unreviewed by Congress, accountable only to a FISA court (which is just a rubber stamp on the executive).

According to NBC, the shooter was racist, belligerent and toxic.  Not Muslim, mind you, but something else.  Because this certainly couldn’t come down to Islam.

Heather Digby Parton at Salon, with whom we’ve interacted before, thinks we don’t need an AR-15.  No one needs an AR-15. Because she says so.

Would a ban on semi-automatic rifles end Islamic extremism? No. But it won’t make it worse, the way that religious bans and calls for torture and killing of suspects family members will. And it would sure make it a lot harder for any of these twisted souls, Muslim or otherwise,  to spray bullets at a room full of first graders or movie goers or gay guys dancing the night away. You can’t fix what’s in these people’s hearts. That is beyond anyone’s ken. But you can make it harder for them to act on their hate. Nobody needs an AR-15.

So bans won’t end the problem, but it won’t make it any worse.  That’s a pretty low threshold for passing laws.  But wait.  She modifies the assessment.  It sure would make it a lot harder, she says.  But how does she know?  How does she know that someone couldn’t bring multiple handguns to the shooting and perpetrate the same carnage?  She doesn’t.  She just made that up.

Amanda Marcotte, writing at Salon, tells us that we are a bunch of puckered old farts except when it comes to guns.

Conservatives might be opposed to “politically correct” ideas like same-sex marriage, religious tolerance, due process for all, efforts to end race and gender discrimination, and even a freedom so basic as the right to choose when you give birth, but hey, you get to spend a cool grand on an AR-15 and all its trimmings, and isn’t that the only thing that really matters?

Amanda doesn’t hang with enough of us to know.  Hey, we support low or almost no taxes, minimal government regulation, oppose the war on drugs, and believe in small government.  I’m not sure who Amanda is referring to, but she needs to expand her horizons a little.  I think we’re more gun – um, excuse me, fun – to be with than she does.  Care to hang out, Amanda?

Mark Follman at Motherless Jones doesn’t remember his history.  As I read his histrionics I couldn’t help but think of Charles Whitman and scoped bolt action rifles wielded by someone in a sniper’s hide.  For hours and hours and hours.

Josh Earnest doesn’t know what an assault weapon is.  It’s okay, Josh.  It doesn’t matter to me what you call it.  It’s just a machine, like any other machine.  It can be used for good or not, just like a car, or a hammer.  It’s a shame when they send a ventriloquist dummy out to perform without the ventriloquist, huh?

Justin Peters with Slate has issues with what we call the black gun.

The term modern sporting rifle, evoking outdoorsy competition and good, clean fun, sounds incongruous when applied to weapons like these …

Well, it can be used for hunting, or 3-gun competition, or target shooting, or self defense, but since Justin is having difficulty with this, let’s just be clear.  To dispel the myth surrounding the gun, some folks don’t like it at all and prefer an AR-10 or some other weapon (M1A, etc.).  Tall tales about how this gun can inflict carnage on a scale like no other weapon in history are usually written by ignorant boobs who are just pushing an agenda.  It’s just a rifle firing an intermediate cartridge.

But I like it and always will because of a number of reasons I’ve rehearsed before (e.g., the modularity, the fact that the recoil is on-axis rather than being coupled about a point, etc.).  And one reason not mentioned is that we have guns as a remedy for tyranny.  That’s right, Justin.  Got it?  That’s the close quarters battle thing you mentioned and didn’t really flesh out.  As for a field rifle, it may not be the best option if you’re talking over 500 yards.  One may decide not to use the “black gun” for that.  Is this too much detail, Justin?  All the talk about remedies for tyranny?

David S. Cohen, professor at Drexel University, thinks it’s time to repeal the second amendment.  He spends a lot of time talking about how deeply flawed the constitution is.  In fact, I think Cohen is deeply flawed and the constitution pretty good.  But his prose is cute.

The Second Amendment needs to be repealed because it is outdated, a threat to liberty and a suicide pact. When the Second Amendment was adopted in 1791, there were no weapons remotely like the AR-15 assault rifle and many of the advances of modern weaponry were long from being invented or popularized.

Oh horse shit.  The founders wrote the second amendment specifically as a remedy for tyranny.  If they had been able to craft the AR-15, they would have used it and ended the war of independence much more quickly.  Guns, rather than a threat to liberty, are the practical surety of liberty.  But the disconnected professor should give it a go if he thinks he can repeal the second amendment.  Any time he feels froggy.

Finally, writer Charles Pierce at Esquire writes about Stanley McChrystal on guns.

If an Army general says this is a weapon that should not be in civilian hands, like a grenade launcher or an F-16, then we should be able to agree as a nation that this is a weapon than should not be in civilian hands. I wonder why “both parties” can’t “talk about it in a rational fashion to dial it down.”

Well, we’ve already talked about what a complete ass clown and worm Stanley McChrystal is, or really to be more honest, a murderer with his ROE (see many engagements in Afghanistan, and I used Ganjgal as one stark example).  But beyond having to use an adulterer (Petraeus) and a murderer (McChrystal) as your touchstone for gun control, what kind of analyst asserts that being a general has anything whatsoever to do with public policy?

Seriously.  Staff and flag officers spend time in TRADOC, strategy, logistics, and so on.  Why would anyone conclude that a general had to have any knowledge of operation of weapons or any special insight into public policy at all?  What kind of juvenile did Esquire hire with Pierce?  Here’s a bet.  The gunsmiths down at Hyatt Gun Shop can out-gunsmith McChrystal or anyone he knows every time, and I’d lay good money on that.  And a random selection of people in the phone directory (and testing those people) would yield better policy results more focused on the maintenance of liberty than Stanley McChrystal at his very best and most studied.

During my coverage and commentary on Operation Iraqi Freedom And Operation Enduring Freedom, I never liked David Petrarus or Stanley McChrystal.  As for the campaigns (because that invariably comes up), I didn’t agree with OIF1 or in other words the initial invasion of Iraq, I did agree with OIF2 and OIF3 because 80-100 jihadist fighters were coming across the Jordanian and Syrian borders per month to fight U.S. troops who might have crossed American borders instead if we didn’t finish the campaign, I agreed with the initial stages of the campaign in Afghanistan, but when I saw that we had busted the Northern Alliance with were courting the Pashtuns, I opposed the remainder of the campaign, and when I saw the complete debacle we made of both campaigns, I called for total, immediate withdrawal from both theaters.  Now that roadblock is out of the way, let’s proceed.

Aside from the campaigns, Petraeus and McChrystal are part of the class of generals who believe in COIN and waging “armed social work.”  Their rules of engagement were a function of that, and the rules got many good men killed and maimed.  You may drive or walk right by young men who are getting along with no legs or arms, but I don’t.  I stop, sometimes shed a tear, and beg forgiveness for not finding the son of a bitch who started all of this and cutting his balls off and feeding them to the dogs.

Petraeus and McChrystal won’t cease and desist showing us what kind of men they are either.  Just recently we learned that they don’t take their oath to the constitution seriously, or better yet, they lied when they took their oath.  They are leading the charge on gun control for the progressives.

Retired Gen. David Petraeus is teaming up with former astronaut Mark Kelly to form a gun-control advocacy group that “respects the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans.”

Kelly has made frequent appearances on the 2016 campaign trail with presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, as well as his wife, former Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords, who sustained a serious brain injury after being shot in Tucson in 2011.

Petraeus and Kelly are joined by other military veterans, including retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal and retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, in launching the “Veterans Coalition for Common Sense.” The group’s stated purpose is to urge lawmakers to do more to prevent mass gun tragedies.

Shamefully, there’s even a Marine in the mix.

“I believe that our Constitution affords responsible Americans the right to own guns, but we need to keep dangerous people from having easy access to guns. Felons, domestic abusers, even known terrorists can buy a gun here without something as simple as a criminal background check. This has to stop,” retired Marine Brig. Gen. Stephen Cheney said in a statement. “Our laws don’t support responsible gun ownership, and far too often guns fall into the hands of dangerous, irresponsible people.”

So let’s rehearse what I said about Stanley McChrystal when he first came out as a gun controller progressive.

But the irony is that McChrystal, who issued the most restrictive rules of engagement ever promulgated on American troops, waxes know-it-all on what it takes to keep our people safe.  He can micromanage the campaign, release a bunch of inept, bureaucratic, PowerPoint jockeys into highly protected mega-bases to command the troops under fire in the field, turn so-called general purpose troops into constabulary patrolmen, and become a laughingstock when his juvenile staff turned party-animal with Rolling Stone.  But he didn’t manage the campaign in such a manner as to keep our children in uniform safe in Afghanistan.  If he didn’t do that, why should I care what he has to say about anything else regarding my safety?

This is what happens when media stars think they know something about policy.  So here is a suggestion for Mr. McChrystal.  You go read the lamentations at this article from the families and widows of SFC Kenneth Westbrook, Gunnery Sgt Aaron M Kenefick, Corpsman James Ray “Doc” Layton, and others in the Ganjgal engagement.  You know the one I’m talking about, even if others have forgotten.  You and I will never forget.  The one where they left our men to perish without fire support because of your rules of engagement.  You sleep with this reality, if you can, you ponder on those men and their lives morning and night, and you lament with the widows and families.  And then you tell me why I should give a shit what you have to say about anything, much less what it takes to keep my children or loved ones safe?

I don’t retreat one iota from what I said there.  McChrystal, with his ROE, is a murderer.  I don’t give a shit what he says about anything.  As for Petraeus, he is an adulterer and that during deployment when men under his charge were suffering and dying.

I’m glad those are the best two men this ungodly bunch could come up with.  Those two men should be embarrassments to the gun controller crowd.  It gives me amusement and pleasure to have them as enemies.  Sometimes good things do happen.