Archive for the 'Firearms' Category

David Codrea gives a thorough fisking to the folks at Politifact.  Sorry, but I almost can’t type or say the word “Politifact” without belly laughing.  I put them in the same category as Snopes.  Ignore all of it.

Alabama Senate on guns in cars.  Well, it’s a start.  Let’s see what the governor does with this.

Nice review of the Springfield Armory Range Officer.  It’s affinity for light ammunition and occasional FTF/FTE is troubling, but then again, the notion of a 9mm 1911 is troubling too.  If I ever got one, it would certainly be .45 ACP like God and John Moses Browning intended them to be.  I’ve been thinking about getting a RO compact for IWB carry.  Then again, Sig makes a nice desert tan Cerakote small/medium 1911 that’s on display at Gander Mountain right down the road.  Oh, life is filled with such hard choices.  What to do, what to do?

Why the U.S. Navy didn’t shoot down that Russian fighter that buzzed our ship.  I rather think it has to do with being pussies.

Only a bigot would be offended by the sight of another woman’s penis.

Beaten for being white.  This is partially why public schooling sucks.  Home school.  Your children will be better off, and so will you.

Remember just eight short months ago Senator John Cornyn tried to get his bipartisan guns and mental health bill passed?  Well, the worm is at it again.

The Hill:

The fight over gun control is threatening to scuttle a bipartisan mental health reform effort in the Senate as lawmakers rush to get the issue to the floor.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) is in talks with leaders of the Senate health committee to combine his mental health bill with one that passed the committee last month.

But Democrats object to certain sections of Cornyn’s bill that they say would make it easier for mentally ill people to acquire guns, and the controversial provisions could shatter Democratic support for the bill.

Provisions in Cornyn’s bill would require a full judicial hearing to ban someone from buying guns due to mental illness and would allow people previously committed for mental illness to purchase a gun as soon as a judge’s commitment order expires.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), one of the sponsors of the health committee’s bill, said such provisions would prevent him from supporting the bill.

“We’re still talking to [Cornyn] about whether we can move forward without those provisions,” Murphy said. “Obviously I can’t support a bill on the floor that has those provisions in it.”

Cornyn disagrees with Democrats’ argument, calling the position “unrealistic.” But he said he is open to discussing changes.

“I’m certainly open to discussing it, but I mean this whole idea that we’re not going to have a fulsome discussion about mental health and [the] problems it creates with the criminal justice system, housing and the healthcare field seems kind of unrealistic to me,” Cornyn said.

Still, he added: “I’m more interested in getting a solution and advancing the ball than I am trying to make a point.”

Murphy is one of the Senate’s strongest proponents of gun control, representing the state where the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting took place in 2012.

Asked if Cornyn has been open to dropping the problematic provisions, Murphy indicated the talks are still in an early stage.

“We haven’t gotten there yet,” he said.

Also involved in the talks are Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and health committee leaders Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.).

Both sides are still hopeful that some agreement can be reached. Mental health reform is seen as one of the few issues on which a meaningful bipartisan bill could pass this year.

About one in five adults, or 44 million people, experience a mental illness per year, but the number of available psychiatric beds has declined 14 percent in recent years, and families are often prevented by privacy laws from accessing crucial information to help care for family members with mental illness.

But gun politics has long been an obstacle for mental health reform.

Republicans argue for mental health reform as a response to mass shootings, while Democrats contend that mental health reform, while important in its own right, is no substitute for new gun control laws.

“The two work in tandem, not one as a substitute for the other,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said at a hearing in February in which he denounced the gun-related sections of Cornyn’s bill. “If we did gun legislation, we’d need mental health legislation with real dollars. If we did mental health legislation with real dollars, we’d need gun legislation.”

One fear is that if Cornyn’s gun-related provisions made it into the final bill, it could spark a back and forth with Democrats putting forward their own gun-control amendments, disintegrating the bipartisan calm that would be crucial to passing the bill in an election year.

Murphy is trying to convince other Democrats not to introduce gun-related amendments of their own.

Even so, a Senate Democratic aide said that moving forward with a clean mental health bill is more likely now than it seemed a few weeks ago.

Murray said in a statement she is proud of the bipartisan bill that passed committee last month.

“I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to move our bill to the floor and continue building on that bipartisan foundation as soon as possible,” she said.

Will the GOP ever learn?  We don’t want any of this.  I don’t care what kind of protections Cornyn has in the bill, or what he claims are protections.  The court system is corrupt, and appeal to mental health professionals is the twenty first century equivalent of appeal to the village witch doctor.  I don’t want bipartisan cooperation.  I don’t want kindness and collegiality.  I don’t want both sides to come to agreement.  And I really, really don’t care if the NRA supports this bill or not.  I want war.  Not one more gun law, not a single one, not even a hint of one.  The only gun legislation that should be passed should be to undo the past obscenities such as the Hughes amendment.

And remember what reader Menckenlite said about psychiatry?

Control freaks love psychiatry, a means of social control with no Due Process protections. It is a system of personal opinion masquerading as science. See, e.g., Boston University Psychology Professor Margaret Hagan’s book, Whores of the Court, to see how arbitrary psychiatric illnesses are. Peter Breggin, Fred Baughman and Thomas Szasz wrote extensively about abuses of psychiatry. Liberals blame guns for violence. Conservatives blame mental illness. Neither have any causal connection to violence. The issue is criminal conduct, crime. Suggesting that persons with legal disabilities are criminals shows the nonsensical argument of this politician and his fellow control freaks. Shame on them.

Mental health, if it can be consistently defined by the village witchdoctor, has no causal bearing on or connection to the perpetration of evil.  The perpetration of evil is done by those with mental maladies and those without alike.  It has to do with federal headship in Adam, the first man, and whether that fallen nature has been redeemed.  Leave the issues of morality and the soul to the doctors of the church, Johnny boy.  Your doctors aren’t good enough and don’t really understand.

Stamford Advocate:

A city man cleaning his revolver Thursday night was charged with reckless endangerment after the gun accidentally went off and blew a hole through his apartment wall, police said.

Capt. Richard Conklin said Hadrian Gardner, 24, was in his Tresser Boulevard apartment cleaning the revolver when he pulled the trigger, thinking there were no bullets in the chamber, about 8 p.m. Thursday

The bullet went through the wall and entered the adjacent apartment where his neighbor dove to the floor for cover, Conklin said.

Gardner checked on his neighbor and found him unharmed and then reported the shot to police.

Gardner was charged with illegal discharge of a weapon within city limits and two counts of reckless endangerment.

Conklin said Gardner’s pistol permit was seized and will be sent to state police, who will hold a hearing to consider revoking his license to carry the gun. Two other handguns were also seized from Gardner.

It “went off.”  Because he pulled the trigger.  Good grief.  Listen man, this isn’t even a semiautomatic where you have to cycle and lock the slide to observe the chamber.  This is a revolver, smart guy.  Open the cylinder, look for empty spaces in each of the chambers.  It’s that simple.

There is no excuse.

I think he’s saying don’t try to be cool.  Try to improve.  Yea, that’s a good idea, and he does a lot of things I would like to do, but I don’t know about you, I don’t have access to a range like the one he’s using and where he’s the only shooter.  The range Jerry Miculek shoots at is similar.  Where do these guys come up with resources like that?

This is a good report of a concealed carrier who both stops a burglary and detains the burglar.  But my goodness, watch the way he holds that firearm.  I’ve seen one other person do this in my life, and we asked him to stop and tried to teach him better, but to no avail.

I applaud the man’s determination, but you can do better than that.  Do not hold the gun this way.  And for heaven’s sake, tell him to get on the ground and put his hands behind his back.

Prior: Do Not Ever Shoot A Gun This Way

I stumbled across this interesting video.

I think the test is a little less than “scientific” regardless of the words they throw at it.  No gelatin tests, no discussion of terminal ballistics in tissue, etc.  The video could have gone on a lot longer investigating some of these things.

Interesting nonetheless.  I have always known that the 1400+ FPS velocity of the .357 magnum is a powerful thing, which is why I have two .357 magnum handguns (S&W R8 M&P and Ruger GP100 Match Champion).  I love shooting them both.  But it comes down to more than just what runs down the range faster.  What can you carry?  What can you conceal?  I cannot conceal the S&W R8 or my Ruger GP100 Match Champion.  But I can conceal a smallish compact 1911 on my waist or a S&W .38 Spl. +P Air Weight on my ankle.

Each tool has its own purposes.

Army Times:

The Army just bought a new sniper rifle.

The service on Friday announced that it awarded a contract to Heckler & Koch to supply a precision rifle to replace the M110 made by Knight’s Armament.

The Army wanted to acquire a shorter, lighter, more accurate, more ergonomic and more reliable gun for marksmen, according to Program Executive Office Soldier’s product portfolio. The new Compact Semi-Automatic Sniper System should be easier to carry and use in close quarters than the M110 without sacrificing performance or accuracy, PEO said.

The FedBizOpps.gov award notice said H&K will produce a maximum of 3,643 rifles over 24 months, as well as spare parts and depot support, at a max contract value of $44.5 million. There’s a minimum purchase of 30 rifles for quality assurance testing.

The Army did not immediately respond to requests for comment, nor did Heckler & Koch. It is unclear from the FedBizOpps posting which model rifle won the contract, and whether it’s a commercially available gun, modification of one, or a new weapon.

The gunmaker’s website lists two precision rifles, one of which fits the Army’s desire for a rifle smaller than the M110: the G28. The gas-operated rifle fires the same 7.62mm ammunition (NATO standard) as the M110. Heckler & Koch lists a minimum length of 96.5 cm (about 38 inches) and weight of 5.8 kg (12.7 lbs). That makes it nearly 6 cm (2.5 inches) shorter and 1.3 kg (3 lbs) lighter than the M110 (unloaded and without a suppressor).

A Knight’s Armament spokesman said the company had no comment at this time.

It’s shorter but it doesn’t sacrifice accuracy.  Hmmm … or so says the Army.  What model?  Who knows, except the Army.  Available to whom?  Probably no one, except the Army.  Test results to be made public?  Eh, probably not, nothing said about that.  No comments from the Army, no comments from H&K, no comments from Knight’s Armament.  Except this from the always ubiquitous H&K marketing department.

At HK, we stuck a piston on an AR15, just like a bunch of other companies have done, dating back to about 1969. However ours is better, because we refuse to sell it to civilians. Because you suck, and we hate you.

Our XM8 is the greatest rifle ever developed. It may melt, and it doesn’t fit any accessories known to man, but that is your fault. If you were a real operator, you would love it. Once again, look at Rainbow Six, that G36 sure is cool isn’t it? Yeah, you know you want one.And by the way, check out our new HK45. We decided that humans don’t need to release the magazine with their thumbs. If you were a really manly teutonic operator, you would be able to reach the controls. Plus we’ve fired 100,000,000 rounds through one with zero malfunctions, and that was while it was buried in a lake of molten lava, on the moon. If you don’t believe us, it is because you aren’t a real operator.

By the way, our cheap, mass-produced, stamped sheet metal guns like the G3 and MP5 are the bestest things ever, and totally worth asinine scalpers prices, but note that cheap, mass-produced, stamped sheet metal guns from other countries are commie garbage. Not that it matters, because you’re civilians, so we won’t sell them to you anyway. Because you suck, and we hate you, but we know you’ll be back. We can beat you down like a trailer park wife, but you’ll come back, you always do.

Buy our stuff.

Sincerely

HK Marketing Department.  Because you suck.  And we hate you.

So there.

New York Magazine:

The Great State of Mississippi is offering an illustration of this principle as we speak with the march toward enactment of legislation to recognize a right of concealed-carry in churches. And the Republican salons, who are promoting the cause of honoring the Prince of Peace by insisting on the right to shoot and kill people right there in His sanctuary, are preemptively concerned that the godless socialists in Washington might interfere. So once again, they’ve gone back to that fine antebellum doctrine of nullification to deny the power of the Feds — or at least the executive branch — to regulate firearms at all.  The Jackson Clarion-Ledger has the story:

The bill would allow churches to create security programs and designate and train members to carry concealed weapons. It would provide criminal and legal protections to those serving as church security.

The bill also would allow concealed carry in a holster without a permit in Mississippi, expanding a measure passed last year that allowed concealed carry without a permit in a purse, satchel or briefcase, and another recent law that allows open carry in public.

The bill also seeks to prohibit Mississippi officials from enforcing any federal agency regulations or executive orders that would violate the state constitution — an attempt to federal gun restrictions not passed by Congress.

Senators argued whether this last provision would violate the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

“Where did you go to law school?” Sen. Hob Bryan, D-Amory, asked Tindell during the debate. “Are they telling people there that the Mississippi constitution trumps federal law?

[ … ]

It’s also entirely predictable that people who think the absence of guns is more dangerous than their omnipresence would extend the principle everywhere, even to bars and, yeah, churches. Beyond that, we see the ongoing radicalization of Second Amendment ultras who think gun rights are not just part of the Constitution but fundamental to it and superior to any other provision — in effect, an object of worship. At some point, the Second Amendment could run afoul of the Bible’s Second Commandment against raising up idols.

The author, Ed Kilgore, doesn’t really believe the things he has written, any more than the Kos kids do when they write things like this.  Here’s how you know.  He doesn’t argue for a prohibition of law enforcement from killing people who are themselves trying to kill people in churches.  In fact, he argues exactly the opposite in his first paragraph, when he says “Of all the cultural divides in these allegedly “United” States, probably none is more stark than the chasm in attitudes toward possession of lethal weaponry. There used to be a general consensus that deadly force should, generally speaking, be monopolized by police officers; possession of, say, a handgun in one’s home, was an exception in recognition of exceptional circumstances. Shooting irons for hunting were another thing, but those were reserved for occasions when one was, you know, out in the woods hunting.”

There’s that notion again about the state having a monopoly of force.  Except in this context, he goes too far for his argument and betrays his plot.  Since he argues for the state having a monopoly of force generally, he has no right to connect it to being in a house of worship and attempting to argue theologically that there shouldn’t be means of self defense in worship.  In other words, the author tries to place himself inside your system, if you’re a Christian, and argue from your perspective, but he taints his argument with the broad appeal to statism and a monopoly of force by the state.  He didn’t stay disciplined.  Rarely do writers stay disciplined when they are throwing everything but the kitchen sink at you, a lazy version of the ten leaky buckets logical problem.

This is what happens when men pretend to be thinkers, try to enter systems they don’t believe, and convince others of world views outside their own when they give up before the end of their own arguments.  In the mean time, we have all been properly briefed on the theological basis for self defense, with worship being no different (man doesn’t suddenly cease being made in God’s image because he engages in worship).

On a related topic, I noticed that Reverend Franklin Graham told the Mohammedans that they would one day bow the knee to King Jesus.  True, that.  And they will confess with their mouths that their “prophet” is a sham and fraud before the Lord of Lords.  But in the mean time, Christians are being slaughtered across the globe because ignorant teachers have taught them that Jesus was a Bohemian hippie pacifist flower child who expects them to lay down and be walked on like rugs.  That’s what Kilgore believes about Christianity too.

Drink a good glass of wine tonight as a toast to a more robust and informed Christianity.  Remember Herschel’s Dictum: “There aren’t too many human interaction problems that can’t be fixed with a .45 ACP 230-grain fat-boy.”

In order to draw as much traffic away from Gawker as I can, I am using the same post title as they did.  In order to enable you to read the entire commentary, I’m reposting it here in full so you don’t have to visit their URL unless you want to.  From the depths of the sewer that is his mind, Hamilton Nolan gives us this.

We live in scary times: sharia law, foreigners, and rape gangs haunt the streets of this once great nation. Some old people believe that they must arm themselves in order to find peace and safety.

Wrong. Old people. Wrong. Want to find safety? Can you even “find [the] safety” on the handgun you’ve purchased? Probably not very quickly, with your poor eyesight and fingers ravaged by arthritis.

The Wall Street Journal reports that interest in guns among retirees is booming. In just the last five years, more old people are buying guns, training with guns, and cupping their hands over their ears to try to hear whether the instructor at their gun safety course said “Shoot” or “Stop.” In this day and age when you have Obama, ISIS, and Chief Keef, you—an elderly American—are thinking seriously about getting yourself a gun, for protection.

Might as well get yourself a dragon, or a unicorn trained to be your bodyguard. That would help you just as much.

When you’re old you’re slow as hell and decades of muscle erosion have made you weak. Pretty much any healthy young person can beat you up. Is a gun gonna even things out? Nope. In order for that gun to work you have to pull it out and aim it in a moment of crisis. While you’re fumbling to do that, all slow, a young person is just pushing you on the ground. And taking your gun out of your feeble hands.

Leave the guns to the young nuts, oldie.

Smoothly drawing a gun from a holster, aiming it quickly, and firing it accurately despite the kickback require a level of strength and dexterity that you just don’t have. I’ll lay 5-1 odds that any street criminal can kick you in the knee and chuckle as you roll around on the ground, grasping for the gun you dropped, as they rifle through your purse and then steal your gun, too. That gun you bought will end up in a pawn shop before you ever get to blow a hole in one of these disrespectful young menaces. Were you to somehow squeeze off a shot in the course of being attacked it’s as likely as not that you’d shoot yourself in the knee replacement as shoot the bad guy. It’s time to wake up and realize that though your irrational age-induced fear of the outside world may be here to stay, so is your physical inability to defend yourself. And where are you going anyhow that’s so scary? The grocery? Those teens may be delinquents but they probably aren’t a stickup gang. Please return that Beretta to the nice gun dealer before you mistake a stray rap lyric for a death threat and put a bullet in some poor C student cutting class. Yes, yes, Have Gun Will Travel was one of your favorite shows, but you’re no Paladin and there ain’t any bandits on horseback in your subdivision. Stop watching cable news so much. All it does is scare you. Failing to take your medication is the greatest threat you need to worry about now.

Your reflexes are faded as hell so you might as well just learn to get along with people. Who do you think you are, Charles Bronson? More like Charles Osgood. Stop acting crazy.

This is Hamilton Nolan.

Yes, that’s really him.  He makes this too easy, yes?

So this commentary is such sewage that it’s difficult to know where to begin, and I won’t offer a complete commentary on his evil antics.  Ignore for a moment what a steaming pile of shit Gawker is.  Ignore the falsity of this premise on guns and the elderly.  Those of us who do gun news searches every day, multiple times per day, know how much guns have helped the elderly and how they need them in an era of increased crime (especially in gang infested areas).  Getting into the details of his premise is what he wants you to do.  I want you to understand the boy, Hamilton Nolan.

How could such a monster exist, you ask?  Well, I am reminded once of a group of Deacons at a church (not mine) whom I overheard at work, and they were having to assist a divorcee woman whose husband left her because he wanted to screw around with a younger woman.  Their assistance involved moving furniture because she could no longer afford the home, repair to the home so that it could sell, and all manner of things families do when they are together.  They didn’t begrudge it, mind you, but every minute they spent doing this was a minute they couldn’t spend doing the same thing for their families.

They decided that they were going to track down this dude and whip his ass for what he did.  There are no longer consequences, they believed, and there had to be some.  No-fault divorce was for the piss ant court system.  They found fault, and they were going to enforce their punishment.  I don’t know what ended up happening.  In a way, Hamilton is like that adulterer husband.  Honoring your father and mother is one of the ten commandments too.  And recall what we’ve discussed regarding the ten commandments – it is called constitutional law, or the moral law.  All sorts of case law and other principles come from it.  So for example, we are told to “rise before the hoary head” in respect for our elders (Lev 19:32, or “stand up in the presence of the aged”).  Boy-Hamilton needs to have someone take him out behind the building and whip his ass.  It won’t happen of course, and that goes to show you how morally corrupt America has become.  In a morally upright America, Hamilton would get his ass whipped for disrespecting his elders.

The final thing I want to leave you with is just what kind of boy Hamilton is.  Hamilton lives in a very dark world, where he sees himself aging (even though apparently at his age he still has acne, he will one day grow old).  He doesn’t want to age because he probably believes that when you die, your body cools to ambient temperature and that’s the end.  Hamilton probably never had a spanking as a child.  His mommy and daddy – if he had one – let him do whatever the hell he wanted to do.  He had no boundaries.  He needed boundaries.  He probably begged for boundaries.  But his parents probably listened to the progressives on family health.

The awful public school system taught him to hate everything and everyone, including himself.  His hatred is so intense, so sweeping and so ubiquitous that he hates the very predecessors who brought him into being.  He hates his elders because he hates who he is and wishes he didn’t exist, even though he wants the monster inside him to keep on living.  He wears effete, metrosexual clothing as an act of self deprecation, and his writing consists of venom to be spewed towards anything that gets in the way.

Hamilton is a sad, sad boy.  Don’t be like Hamilton.