Archive for the 'Firearms' Category

The Denver Post:

Ronny Flanagan took pride in his record as a police officer in Plano, Texas. He had an incident-free career. He took safety training regularly. He was known at the range as a very good shot.

Yet he killed a man when he was simply trying to press a flashlight switch mounted beneath the trigger on his pistol.

In a deposition, Flanagan expressed his remorse and made a prediction.

“I don’t want anyone to ever sit in a chair I’m in right now,” he said. “Think about the officers that aren’t as well trained, officers that don’t take it as seriously, and you put them in a pressure situation, another accident will happen. Not if, but will.”

Here’s what’s happening.  In order to depress the pressure switch, shooters (in this case, cops) are squeezing their third finger, and because they have no control over their sympathetic muscle reflexes, they are also squeezing their trigger finger at the same time.  Suing the manufacturers of flashlights is about as nonsensical as I can imagine.  That’s like suing a hammer manufacturer because I may choose to hit someone over the head with it.

But what does this also show us?  The astute reader says, “that cops are (a) using their weapon mounted light as a tactical light to see things in the dark, violating requirements for muzzle discipline, and (b) they have their finger on the trigger of their weapon, showing that they are violating requirements for trigger discipline.

Recall what I said about this?

My son was a SAW gunner in the 2/6 infantry, Golf Company, 3rd Platoon, during the 2007 combat tour of Fallujah and the pre-deployment workup.  The senior Marines had experienced a tour of Iraq, and wanted their SAW gunners to have a round in the chamber, bolt open (the SAW is an open bolt weapon anyway), and finger on the trigger.  They had seen combat and they wanted their SAW gunners with zero steps to shooting.  Their lives depended on it.  They also did CQB drills with live rounds, along with squad rushes.

My son had an ID (if I’m not mistaken it was during training at Mohave Viper).  He tripped and had a sympathetic muscle reflex, squeezing the trigger of his SAW.  He spent an extended period of time in the “room of pain.”  They wanted him trained to overcome that sympathetic muscle reflex (which can be done, but it takes hundreds or thousands of hours of drills).  He spent the time learning to overcome that reflex, and performed well during his tour.  He also tried to teach his “boot” Marines the same way he was trained, but the Marines had begun to change and focus more on cultural sensitivity training and other COIN tools.  He got out of the Marine Corps.

Why am I discussing this?  Because no matter who you are, no matter how much time you spend, no matter how earnestly you wish it, no matter how many directives you write, if you are a SWAT team member, you will never be trained in such a manner.  Never.  You will never be trained like a U.S. Marine who has spent every day for a year and a half in pre-deployment workup to do a combat tour of Iraq.  Because you will never be trained in this manner, your tactics are dangerous, all of the time, and in all situations.  I don’t care how many times you have inexperienced Soldiers spend a week with you doing CQB drills.

As for cops, if they obey the same rules as we do, this kind of thing won’t happen.  And I don’t care how sad Ronny Flanagan is over this.  The shooting is his fault.  Period.

If you keep your booger hook off of the bang switch, the gun won’t go boom.  And for the sake of everything that is sensible, good and righteous, don’t use your weapon mounted tactical light as a flashlight so that you can see things in the dark.

Offbeat:

Steve Maloney, OffBeat’s web editor, texted me a photo that his uncle took in the French Quarter on Tuesday. Note the handgun on this young man’s right hip. My jaw dropped.

Did you know that the state of Louisiana recognizes “open carry,” which is apparently what this guy is practicing as he strolls down a street in the Quarter. “Concealed” guns require a special permit.

Scary.

In my personal opinion, New Orleans should be a gun-free zone, period. Politically, no one locally has the moxie to stand up for this concept. What you’ll hear is if we get rid of guns, “then only criminals will have guns.” Yeah, like this young man. Why does he need to carry a firearm with him in the French Quarter? Are we in the Wild, Wild West or something?

It make take a couple of decades, but there’s no reason why we need guns in our society for “protection.”

What are you going to do over that two decades to ensure that we don’t need or have guns, Jan?  Are you going to send the police after folks with guns?  Because if you are, then your entire philosophy is a lie.  You just want only certain people to have guns.

But if the police aren’t going to confiscate guns, then how are you going to get them?  We won’t willingly give them up, Jan.  And what are you going to do about the criminals who want to use theirs for untoward things, Jan, like raping you or harming you in other ways?  The police can’t take care of you.

As for open carry, do you carry all of your belongings – purse, credit cards, car keys, cell phone – inside your waist band?  Why do you expect me to do that with my gun?

You do understand, don’t you, that making New Orleans a “gun free zone” won’t do anything to ensure that there aren’t guns in New Orleans?  You do understand that rapists, thieves, robbers and muggers will still carry weapons, don’t you?

And you understand that folks who conceal carry consists of two groups: those who do so legally (like me), and those who do not do so illegally.  You do understand that there are folks who carry concealed illegally, don’t you Jan?  And you do understand that the whole notion that the gun being concealed makes you feel safer is entirely a false psychological construct, don’t you Jan?

Or perhaps not.  Perhaps you haven’t thought through any of this.  And perhaps you should.

Bloomberg Businessweek:

In the 1970s, Colt and other American gunmakers, following the bad example of Detroit’s Big Three automakers, grew smug and lazy. Like Japanese and German car companies, more nimble foreign gunmakers grabbed market share. By the 1980s, Smith & Wesson had lost the U.S. police to Austria’s Glock, while Colt saw Italy’s Beretta snatch its main U.S. Army sidearm contract. In 1985, Colt plant employees who belonged to the United Auto Workers launched a protracted strike for higher pay. Replacement employees weren’t up to the task, and “quality suffered badly,” says Feldman, then an organizer for the National Rifle Association. In 1988 the Pentagon gave Colt’s M16 contract to FN Herstal of Belgium. Four years later, Colt filed for bankruptcy court protection from its creditors. “With the end of the Cold War,” says Hopkins, the firearms marketer, “it seemed like the company might never recover.”

[ … ]

Complicating matters, Colt then blundered into the vortex of American gun-control politics. In a December 1997 editorial in American Firearms Industry magazine, Zilkha’s handpicked CEO, Ron Stewart, made a pair of proposals that set off alarms in Second Amendment circles. He urged “the creation of a research and development program to further firearm technology toward more advanced methods that promote safety (such as personalized firearms).” And he recommended that Congress require gun owners to obtain a federal permit. “All hell broke loose,” says Feldman …

Zilkha relieved Stewart of his CEO duties in late 1998; by the following year the Colt smart gun was dead …

The withered commercial handgun business—by now reduced almost exclusively to producing copies of classic handguns—was left behind under the name Colt’s Manufacturing. The two companies shared the West Hartford factory. To the consternation of workers, a metal fence was erected to denote the corporate split …

Among other failings, the severed halves of Colt somehow missed the post-2008 “Obama surge” as much as other U.S. gun manufacturers. Whipped up by NRA warnings that the Democratic president intended to toughen gun control, consumers cleared gun store shelves of ammunition and weapons. Better-prepared manufacturers such as Glock saw sales rise sharply. Under the terms of the Colt split, however, Colt Defense could reach the booming civilian market only by first selling its rifles to Colt’s Manufacturing, a debilitated company with sclerotic lines of distribution. Colt’s Manufacturing, for its part, offered only a limited selection of the handguns so much in demand. …

S&P projects that company revenue will fall by 5 percent to 15 percent in 2014. It cites “declining commercial rifle sales as demand returns to more normalized levels following a surge in recent years” and a sharp reduction in Pentagon demand for new M4 rifles following the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “The government’s plan to shrink the size of the Army also poses a threat to long-term demand for the rifle,” S&P notes. On May 14, Colt reported that revenue for its first quarter of 2014 slumped 22 percent, to $50 million. The company suffered a loss of $7.8 million for the period. During an investor conference call, CEO Dennis Veilleux said, “I’m not pleased with these results.”

Ignoring the source (Bloomberg), this is actually good reporting and analysis and a good rundown of the troubles that have plagued Colt.

Colt got fat from military contracts, lost control over good QA, and lost interest in the civilian firearms market.  This happens often to manufacturers for the military, since making milspec parts means that there is very little innovation and contracts aren’t as flexible to customer feedback as in the civilian market.  Soldiers and Marines have to use what they’ve been issued.  I get to choose my guns, and hence I have a Rock River Arms AR-15 instead of a Colt.  I have always said that a gun isn’t truly tested until it hits the civilian market.

There is one aspect of Colt’s demise that isn’t mentioned here, and that is the role of labor unions.  All gun manufacturers in Northern states (which are not “right to work” states) have suffered from the same erosion of quality and cost problems or they will in the future.

The lessons for all gun manufacturers should be clear.  First, labor unions kill companies.  The future of industry is in right-to-work states.  Second, any flirtation with gun control is death to a gun manufacturer.  Gun owners punish cooperation with gun controllers.  Third, fat-ass government contracts tends to corrupt a company.  The most healthy market for guns is the civilian market.  It also happens to be the least fickle and most reliable.

Finally, overseas production (in Japan, for instance) is a loser proposition.  I turned down the chance to buy a Browning bolt action rifle because of that very thing (made in Japan stamped on the barrel), and thought that Winchester rifles were now made exclusively in Columbia, S.C.  I later found out that parts are now made in Columbia, while assembly is done in Portugal.  Instead I purchased a Tikka T3 Hunter 0.270.  In other words, I went with a foreign manufacturer who actually knows how to make guns.  The Remington and Ruger bolts were so loose they flopped like dog ears.  The Tikka was tight and is a tack driver.

Bottom line: move South to right-to-work states, make guns for the civilian market, make them well, and avoid the corruption that goes along with being in bed with the government.  It’s too late for Colt.  They will go belly up before long.  It isn’t too late for others – you know who you are.

David Kopel has a nicely argued brief filed with the Ninth Circuit on the history of magazines holding 11 or more rounds.  The context is the case of Fyock v. Sunnyvale, where the district court upheld the California ban on standard capacity magazines because “magazines did not exist at the time the Second Amendment was ratified.”

Some of the history I knew, and some of it I didn’t.  In Either case, the brief is very interesting, filled with both facts and analysis, and much better than Eugene Volokh’s ill-advised (and unripe) commentary on magazines.

Kopel colors outside the lines when he says this:

If the firing of several shots has wounded one attacker, and has resulted in the other attacker putting up his hands, the defender needs to control the situation until the police arrive. That is why reserve capacity is so important for law enforcement and for citizens. Reloading is very difficult when the second hand is holding a cell phone. Even a two-handed reload will likely make the gun temporarily inoperable and cause the gun to move off target for at least a few seconds, giving the criminal(s) a new window of opportunity. Citizens do not carry police radios, and police response to a cell phone call about citizen in trouble is often slower than the response to a radio call about an officer in trouble. The reasons why magazines for greater than 10 rounds are the overwhelming choice for law enforcement officers for lawful defense of self and others apply a fortiori to citizens, who rightly  look to law enforcement officers as good models for gun safety practices.

The point is fundamentally sound, but I have never in the past, do not currently, and will never in the future look to law enforcement for gun safety practices.

News from Pittsburgh:

Pittsburgh police are reviewing an incident in which they say an officer accidentally fired a gun while chasing a suspect in Crafton Heights, an official said on Tuesday.

Public safety spokeswoman Sonya Toler said Detective Martin Kail accidentally fired his gun when he fell while pursuing a suspect on foot about 9:40 p.m. May 21 in the 1400 block of Crucible Street.

No one was hurt.

“No one was shot, no one was injured,” Toler said.

She did not know what prompted Kail, a member of the narcotics and vice squad, to chase after the suspect.

Toler said the suspect was not apprehended.

Supervisors were notified of the incident and arrived at the scene, she said.

Kail was hired in 2007, records show.

Officer Howard McQuillan, president of Fraternal Order of Police Fort Pitt Lodge No. 1, the labor union that represents city police officers, declined to comment.

Yea, I’ll bet he “declined to comment.”  Notice the term accidental.  I suspect another example of negligent discharge because someone stumbled with their finger on the trigger, squeezing due to sympathetic muscle reflex, which I discussed here again.

Can’t they at least train these guys at the same level as we civilians?

Anastasia Basil:

Yes, I am a Godless American and a devoted mother of two who believes that the highest form of love doesn’t come from a supernatural being but from human beings. I make ethical decisions based on empathy and a deep appeal for fairness. So if you’ve ever wondered what a Godless American might be like, here’s an opportunity to know one. I like to bake birthday cakes from scratch and take in stray dogs. I am a Girl Scout leader.

As citizens, you openly prize two things: Jesus and the Second Amendment. Your cries for more God and more guns ring from sea to shining sea. We hear you. Believe me. But here’s the thing: As an American citizen of equal value, I can’t let you claim this country as a gun-loving Christian nation. I live a life of moral decency, as I’m sure you do too. But I do it gunless. This makes me indisputably more Christ-like than you.

In response, you will say I’m stifling your right to religion. Quite the opposite: I’m encouraging you to pick up your Bibles and live more in accordance with your religion. I’m asking you to choose between the right to bear arms and the right to quote Jesus. If you won’t give up your guns, then give up your identity as a Christian. Be disciples of Wayne LaPierre. Make your mantra “From My Cold, Dead Hands,” not “Turn the Other Cheek.”

Personally, I would love to stifle your right to the Second Amendment … I’m going to pray to Christian pro-gun senators like Tim Scott — a man with real power to intervene.

Dear Anastasia,

None of this works like you think it does.  I know what you’re thinking.  You think that Jesus was some long haired hippie peacenik who traveled Israel waving peace signs and singing Kumbaya.  The reality is much more complex and difficult for people like you to deal with.  Passages like this one:

Think not that I came to send peace on the earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law” Matthew 10:34-35

Make no more sense to you than the notion that Jesus told his disciples to get swords for their self defense.  You say that “As an American citizen of equal value, I can’t let you claim this country as a gun-loving Christian nation.”  But see, you cannot stop me.  I can claim what I wish, and the real test of endurance is whether I am telling the truth.

God doesn’t regard your prayer since you don’t believe in Him (Proverbs 28:9, Psalm 66:18, Isaiah 59:2, and so many other passages).  And as for your prayer to Mr. Scott, he doesn’t hear you either.  And Mr. Scott isn’t omniscient.  But God says:

Declaring the end from the beginning, And from ancient times things which have not been done, Saying, ‘My purpose will be established, And I will accomplish all My good pleasure’ (Isaiah 46:10).

But since you don’t believe in God, you have no means to effect anything.  God doesn’t hear you, and Mr. Scott doesn’t control anything.  It wouldn’t matter.  You wouldn’t change God’s law with your prayers anyway, you would only be asking God to change your own heart.  It seems to me that you don’t want your views to be changed, so your heart is hardened.  You’re at a dead end, Anastasia.

As for me, you cannot possibly do anything to my views of the Bible and guns.  I see things through the eyes of the holy Scriptures.  I’ve pointed out that God’s law requires me to be able to defend the children and helpless.  “Relying on Matthew Henry, John Calvin and the Westminster standards, we’ve observed that all Biblical law forbids the contrary of what it enjoins, and enjoins the contrary of what it forbids.”  I’ve tried to put this in the most visceral terms I can find.

God has laid the expectations at the feet of heads of families that they protect, provide for and defend their families and protect and defend their countries.  Little ones cannot do so, and rely solely on those who bore them.  God no more loves the willing neglect of their safety than He loves child abuse.  He no more appreciates the willingness to ignore the sanctity of our own lives than He approves of the abuse of our own bodies and souls.  God hasn’t called us to save the society by sacrificing our children or ourselves to robbers, home invaders, rapists or murderers. Self defense – and defense of the little ones – goes well beyond a right.  It is a duty based on the idea that man is made in God’s image.  It is His expectation that we do the utmost to preserve and defend ourselves when in danger, for it is He who is sovereign and who gives life, and He doesn’t expect us to be dismissive or cavalier about its loss.

So while you claim to be a lover of the children, you actually advocate abuse of children because you would disarm the very people with the sworn duty to protect, nurture and provide for them.

I know, Anastasia, this is difficult to hear.  It’s a world view to which you aren’t accustomed because, as we’ve discussed, you think Jesus was a hippie peacenik rather than the Son of the living God.  But the truth scatters the darkness, and if I must be the one to purvey the truth so that it can trouble your soul, then so be it.

Oh, there is one final thing for you to ponder.  As for Christians and their guns, you were never taught this in your schools because public schools are incubators of communism who specialize in telling lies.  But the war for American independence would never have been fought had it not been for the sermons preached by preachers in pulpits who taught the folk about covenant theology in the best tradition of continental and Scottish Calvinism.

America would never have been America had it not been for Christians and their guns.  Now, it may be that you would rather be a subject of the Queen.  I hear that gun laws are stringent in her country.  But be careful.  If you move there, you might have to convert to Islam and wear a burqa, and your husband might beat you for the slightest thing.  If anyone ever tries to do that to my women or children, I’ll shoot them.  Because as a Christian, I care about women and children.

Eugene Volokh:

I don’t support laws that mandate smart guns, chiefly because there’s no reason to think that such guns will be reliable enough any time soon. But I certainly see the advantage of such guns, as a means of preventing the 100 or so fatal gun accidents and the greater number of nonfatal gun accidents involving kids that happen each year in the U.S.

If I had a child, and smart guns were reliable enough, I might well be willing to spend some extra money to get a smart gun instead of my current gun. And if (as I asked you to assume) such smart guns became generally about as reliable and about as costly as ordinary guns, I think smart gun mandates might be constitutional under the theory that they do not materially interfere with the right to keep and bear arms in self-defense.

Only a lawyer could make a set of statements like this.  I take the view that all federal laws concerning firearms are unconstitutional because of the second amendment.  But even if you don’t take my view, the case of so-called “smart guns” should be easy to dispose.

First of all, Eugene has posed a false hypothetical.  “Reliable enough” is a matter of judgment, and it seems manifestly unconstitutional and even immoral for a government to make the decision to sacrifice any reliability at all in matters of self defense because of a felt social need (that the courts have not been asked and have no authority to address and the Congress has no business addressing).  Furthermore, electronic gadgetry as a means to prevent a firearm from functioning will never be as reliable as ordinary weapons today.

Don’t take my word for it.  Ask any engineer who has experience in the airline, space or commercial nuclear power industry and knows anything about fault trees and failure mode and effects analysis.  Use the NRC fault tree handbook for starters.  Construct a fault tree with all of the right logic gates, and if you end up assigning a failure probability of anything other than zero (0) to any electronic component and that component can prevent the proper function of the weapon, then you have just proven to yourself that smart guns won’t be as reliable as ordinary guns of today.  Case closed.

Second, smart guns will cost more.  Glenn Reynolds makes the point that “punitive controls on ammunition, designed to make gun ownership or shooting prohibitively expensive or difficult, would be unlikely to pass constitutional muster” (Second Amendment Penumbras).  It isn’t clear why Glenn restricted this to controls “designed” to make gun ownership prohibitively expensive.  Intentionality would appear to be immaterial.  With a result that certain classes of people could not afford to own firearms because of the cost, laws mandating smart guns are discriminatory.

Third, smart guns will be more complex, necessitating more in maintenance costs, inability to do basic gunsmithing yourself, and large down time with your weapon should it ever need maintenance (due to a smaller subset of technicians who are capable of working on the guns).  In part one can ascribe the popularity of AR-15s to the modularity, simplicity of operation and ease of maintenance and basic gunsmithing.

Finally, electronic gadgetry will be vulnerable to interference, including governmental interference.  This interference could take the form of violation of due process, and more to the point, Eugene truncates the intent and scope of the second amendment by limiting it to self defense (which is nowhere to be found in the constitution or contextual documents).

For these (and other) reasons, smart guns will never be a vital, meaningful, or trusted part of American life and heritage.  No man will pass down a “smart gun” to his children or grandchildren.  They will forever be good for nothing more than a gun controller’s wet dream.  But for obvious reasons, I’ve recommended that billions of dollars be invested in development of the “technology” by gun controllers, just don’t ever think you can force them on me or take away the ones I’ve got.

Prior: Smart Guns tag

Kurt Hofmann:

The ongoing, and evidently accelerating, militarization of law enforcement has for a while now been of real concern to those of us who realize that the Posse Comitatus Act is of little value when state, and even local, police departments are allowed to arm themselves as if going to war (war with whom?). That’s fine with the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, who caution us to “not pile too much on the militarization of law enforcement,” but more than a little alarming to those of us who have vowed not to permit a “government monopoly on force.”

Stop by and read Kurt’s transcription of comments by Josh Horwitz (follow the links).  How rich.  Gun control for thee, but not for me and my army.

It just goes to show, gun control isn’t about guns.  It’s about collectivist visions of state control.  It always has been from the time of Adolf Hitler and even well before (e.g., in ancient times, Philistine control over the manufacture of metal and other instances).

Star Tribune:

The families of four New York state firefighters are suing St. Paul-based Gander Mountain, alleging that the retailer could have prevented a “straw buyer” from purchasing a rifle used in a deadly Christmas Eve 2012 ambush.

The suit, which has the support of prominent gun control advocates, said the rifle used in the bloody predawn incident should never have been sold to a woman who came to a Rochester, N.Y., store in June 2010 with the eventual shooter at her side.

The families said in a joint statement that they originally believed the four had been shot in “yet another random act of violence. … But as time went by, new and very troubling facts emerged. These facts suggest that the loss we have endured could have been avoided. If only the store had acted responsibly.”

A spokesman for Gander Mountain, the nation’s largest outdoors outfitter, said the company had been forthcoming in the investigation and is committed to safety.

“We will vigorously defend ourselves in this matter,” spokesman Jess Myers added.

Shelley Leeson, who heads the Twin Cities Gun Owners & Carry Forum, said trying to hold Gander responsible for the incident was “bogus.” She accused the advocates behind the suit of “playing the emotions of the victims’ families to further their gun control agenda to punish manufacturers and retailers.”

She added that it appears Gander Mountain followed the legally required procedures for the sale and “cannot be held responsible for second-guessing the intentions or future actions of every purchaser.”

To be fair I don’t know the facts of the case, but no gun seller can reasonably be held responsible for lying on form 4473.

Is it any wonder that this lawsuit is ensconced firmly in New York?  And is it any wonder that Remington is moving much of their operations to Huntsville, Alabama?

As for Remington, I’ll purchase a Remington shotgun when they move their operations out of New York for good and never return to that communist state.

UPDATE: Quite obviously, I had a bad misspelling in the subject line.  That’s rare for me, but it does happen when posts are made late at night.  I’ve corrected the title, but for those who use URL names sent via e-mail to read these links, I apologize for the correction, which will change the URL.

Lake News Online:

Shades of the Wild West on the Strip in Lake Ozark have prompted the Lake Ozark Police Chief and other city officials to tighten the rules on openly carrying firearms.

Chief Mark Maples told the board of aldermen Tuesday night he has received complaints that individuals are openly carrying firearms as they move from business to business. Maples said he recognizes that people who have conceal and carry permits have the right to carry weapons, but the open display of guns is causing some alarm.

“I don’t see why someone would want to carry a firearm in the open,” Maples said. “If a weapon is concealed it doesn’t cause any issues.”

The LOPD has had to send an officer more than once to investigate the complaint.

“It’s a real safety concern,” he explained.

As a result, the board gave first reading to an ordinance that prohibits people from openly carrying a firearm “readily capable of lethal use in a public place.” A public place is defined as any indoor or outdoor area ― whether publicly or privately owned ― to which the public has access. Exempt is a location used exclusively for a private gathering or personal use.

City Attorney Roger Gibbons said a city can regulate the use of firearms.

“We don’t want people to carry open firearms in the city,” he said.

Missouri is generally an open carry state, but the only allowable preemption is open carry.

Of course, Mark Maples is lying.  He certainly does understand why someone would want to carry a gun openly.  If he claims otherwise, tell him to order his officers to carry concealed.  And when he tries to explain that they are law enforcement officers, remind him that the Supreme Court decided in Tennessee Versus Garner that law enforcement officers carry their weapons for exactly the same reason that we do, i.e., self defense, which is the only legitimate use of a weapon by LEOs.

As for open carry being a “safety issue,” he’s just making things up.  Open carry is no more a safety issue than concealed carry, and if he has a problem with open carry because of “safety,” then he is lying about his alleged support for concealed carry.

As for the city attorney, his job is to represent the city in legal problems without prejudice.  Whether the city allows open carry is none of his damn business.

Folks, I know that there are those who prefer to carry concealed, and honestly I would prefer not to carry at all.  I don’t wear rings, necklaces, or jewelry of any kind, and it highly annoys me even to carry a wallet or my car keys.  I don’t like things on me, around me or weighing me down.  It’s a wonder I am able to go backpacking without throwing all of my gear down somewhere on the trail.  Staying alive is the only reason I don’t get rid of all of my gear.

And speaking of staying alive, I carry despite my desires, not because of them.  Tucking a gun into my waistband is about the most hideous thing I’ve ever tried to do.  It digs into my hip and I sweat the weapon.  It’s bad for me, and bad for my gun.  I much prefer concealed carry some other way (than IWB) if I must conceal.  But I don’t like to conceal, and find open carry somewhat less irritating than concealed carry.  Note that I didn’t say I like it.  I find it less annoying.

Since my desires in this matter are in line with our wise founders (who expected men to carry weapons to church with them and practice on Sunday), I feel that it’s my detractors who bear the weight of burden, not me.  My practices are in line with our history.

One writer from Michigan weighs in this way.

When a man was seen carrying a rifle down Cork Street recently, people called the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety.

There is a national movement among some gun-rights advocates to carry their guns openly in public, arguing they are exercising their Second Amendment rights.

But at what point do those rights supersede the average citizen’s right to feel safe while also walking down the street?

Where is that “right to feel safe” written in the constitution?  Tell me, chapter and verse.  I’ve told you about the historical and constitutional basis for what I do.  Now tell me about your “right to feel safe.”  And stop complaining about seeing a gun on my hip.