Archive for the 'Guns' Category

David Codrea:

Taking the cake for media manipulation may be PressTV, a state-owned affiliate of Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. They borrowed a photo of a cute little girl reaching for an unattended handgun to illustrate their take on the story, as if that’s what anyone is talking about, but with a headline like “Iowa approves bill to let children aged 14 and under have guns,” their job is done.

I noticed that sort of thing in my coverage of OIF and OEF for years.  When it comes to gun rights, I sure am glad that American journalists are fair and balanced.  They aren’t anything like journalists in Iran.

Rubio and Trump on guns.  We knew this about Trump, but until now I hadn’t know the truth about Rubio and gun rights.  I do now.

In Scotland they now have to license air guns.  Such is the sad road when you start down it.

David Codrea:

LTC Robert Bateman presumes to lecture us on the militia and the Constitution, choosing Esquire Magazine as his forum so that, near as I can figure, we can also educate ourselves on the latest fashion tips for men, join in “progressive” attacks on conservatives, and catch up on all-important information about pop star Prince and his surprise concert tour. Bateman’s bottom line: The militia is what the government says it is, and if you join with others to defend against criminal acts of usurpation committed against you by those with government titles, you’re committing treason.

[ … ]

The Second Amendment only protects a well regulated militia, he argues. “As of 1903,” he maintains, “the ‘militia’ has been known as the National Guard.”

Actually, the resulting United States Code also recognized the “unorganized militia” to include “members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia,” but Bateman dismissed that, claiming, “Weapons are there for the ‘well regulated militia.’ Their use, therefore, must be in defense of the nation.”

There are two problems with Bateman’s assertions in addition to the obvious one that he doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about: First, as the Subcommittee on the Constitution of the United States Senate Ninety-Seventh Congress documented, “Congress has established the present National Guard under its own power to raise armies, expressly stating that it was not doing so under its power to organize and arm the militia.”

There’s more.  Make sure you read David’s analysis.  We’ve run into Bateman before on issues of concealed (or open) carry, the offense he takes at seeing someone who carries, and his idiotic proposals for national gun control.  Finally, we’ve caught him lying about gun control during Operation Iraqi Freedom when my son explained what really happened there (I suppose Bateman didn’t believe anyone who was there would jump into the conversation to call him out).

Bateman has a long history of telling you he is good at everything and that he is a scholar and historian and that he’s special.  But Bateman fails miserably on what constitutes the militia, and David provides him a bit of teaching.  To see just how badly David spanks him, read David’s piece, which is both educated and educational.

Pray for Mike.  I am

David Codrea:

“College students in Brooklyn are about do to something the National Rifle Association has refused to — build a smart gun,” a purported “news report” by the New York Daily News proclaims in what it’s labeled an “Exclusive.” Right off the bat, and unsurprisingly to anyone familiar with how the rag compulsively lies about guns, they start off with a misdirecting falsehood.

Good.  Here’s what I want you to do, students.  Spend a lot of time on it.  Put your best and brightest on this project.  They can use “smart guns” to build their CV for when they apply for jobs.  I want you to pour money into this, enough to bankrupt the school if the gun isn’t sold.  Then I want you to market it at local guns stores.  If you’re in New York, you might have to drive a long way, or market it to your local police.  Write me a note and tell me how it goes.

Fred sums in football:

When people have no cause for conflict, they invent it. For this we have football teams in which armored felons having no connection to us attack somebody else’s felons—and we become deeply involved emotionally.

Courthouse News Service:

A Ninth Circuit panel on Tuesday refused to set aside a California law banning depictions of handguns on gun store advertisements.

I guess the first amendment doesn’t matter any more.

Perspectives from down under:

On a recent trip to the US while filming Unplanned America, we visited three groups of what some may call extreme gun nuts. And for a group of anti-gun Australians, we found them surprisingly hard to argue with.

[ … ]

When I popped my cherry and shot the vintage “Sten” sub-machinegun, the rapid pop pop pop of the bullets down the indoor range was deeply satisfying and the action movie-loving eight-year-old boy inside me was in heaven.

But when the next weapon came out, s**t got real and kick-arse elation turned to sickening shock. Legend has it that the Geneva Convention bans the Barrett M82A1 from being shot at human targets, due to it being a war crime. And while this may not technically be true, the US Army does train soldiers not to shoot it at personnel.

We were speechless. So why does the weapon exist, we asked? Tony replied that it’s to shoot at “material”. Like a building or vehicle or army equipment — even military issued zippers or military issued glasses. And if a human happened to be attached to that equipment, well it might be the case that the massive 50 caliber bullets accidentally ensure that human becomes nothing more than “red mist”.

One by one we leant over the huge weapon and pulled the trigger, and each time everyone within a two meter radius felt a shock wave from the barrel like a punch in the chest. Boom! And the chilling thought of a cloud of red mist left behind was felt in the pit of my stomach.

So why do Americans love guns? Why the hell do they need them? Why do they take such joy in owning and shooting these things, when so many Australians would be terrified to even touch them?

The way Tony explains it is that due to the prevalence of violent crime in the US, and given the remote location of his own home, he’d be crazy not to have a gun. He says if an armed intruder broke into his house to kill his loved ones, by the time the county sheriff eventually got there, he would be trying to solve a slaying, not prevent one.

Secondly, Tony says there are so many guns in the US it would take a government generations to entirely rid the nation of them. And most gun owners would never agree to it, indeed many would respond in violence.

This point is key. Once you consider that the guns might be here to stay, the issue gets infinitely more complicated.

Let’s stop and assess what we’ve read so far.  First of all, self defense is a legitimate reason for weapons ownership, and it’s partly why I own them.  But it isn’t the basis for the second amendment.  Amelioration of tyranny is the reason, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

Second, these authors need to get their information reviewed and checked before publishing it.  The Marine Corps Scout Snipers shoot the .50 rifle if needed, and some carry it as their primary weapon.  The Marines have two larger caliber rifles for this purpose, the .308 and the .50.  The Army uses a more filled out version of calibers, including the .300 Win Mag and the .338 (they also employ the .50 as needed, all calibers against personnel).  All of these calibers are used and have been employed for anti-personnel work, and the only reason the .50 is brought up as an anti-material round is because it is most effective for that type of work versus the .308.  Again, the authors need to get their stuff reviewed before publishing it.  Do they have editors in Australia?

The next group of presumed gun nuts we spent time with was the Virginia Open Carry group. Remarkably, in most states in the US it is totally legal to openly carry a firearm on your hip. Without a license of any kind. We could’ve even done it.

This immediately conjures up images of a lawless Wild West that has no place in a modern civilised society. But as we sat down for a lunch of BBQ ribs (what else) with the open carriers we found them to be intelligent and thoughtful in their views.

There was not a nut among them, but each was staunchly attached to their view and their gun and would never ever let them go. It’s the opinion of these guys that the tragic daily mass shootings in the US are the result of a mental health problem in America, not a gun problem and that the government misdirects the issue so they don’t have to tackle the more complex and expensive issue.

Where it gets tricky for our open carry friends however is that while they agree that psychologically disturbed people are the ones that carry out mass murders, they still believe they have a constitutional right to own a gun, and a God given right to privacy that means the government shouldn’t be allowed to dig into their backgrounds when they want to purchase a firearm. Tricky.

Stop it!  Just stop it.  Stop connecting violence to mental health.  We’ve discussed again and again and again and again how this just isn’t the case, so says mental health professionals.  It is counterfactual to say that when a shooter kills people, it was because of mental health issues.  And pimping this falsehood only leads to the conundrums that writers think they find in the gun rights community.  So just stop it.  Don’t do it any more.

The final group we shot the s**t out of a bunch of cans with were the ones we were most scared of before we met them. They were the Texas State Militia — a self-styled army consisting of ex-military men who have armed themselves to the hilt to protect the American way of life.

We were expecting racist rednecks, paranoid about Muslims and Mexicans taking over their country. This was far from the case. When we spoke to Matt, the young leader of the 1100 strong group we found an ex-soldier who feels deep guilt for the things he did in Iraq and thinks that the US wars in the Middle East are based on government lies.

His group for now however is still keen to work with the government like a terrifying Neighborhood Watch, until such a time where the government stops respecting the rule of law.

And herein lies the crux of the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, the part that most Australians don’t understand.

All of those we spoke to believe that it is a citizen’s duty, as explicitly stated in the founding document of the United States, to be armed in order to keep the government in check. They say that the country was founded after their British rulers became corrupt and an armed uprising saved a whole nation from tyranny. They say it will happen again, and they’re ready to protect their freedom if and when it does.

And they might stand a decent chance, given there’s more guns that people in the US right now.

So we are at the crux of the issue, yes?  These folks explained why the second amendment exists, and why we will never give up our guns.  That would run contrary to the very justification for having them in the first place.  As to the soldier who feels guilty for his participation in the war, I wish I could talk at length with him and explain why he has no reason for such guilt.

If only they could find a way to stop turning their weapons on each other. Ending gun violence is one of the most serious and complex problems this country faces. And the most unique to the “land of the free”.

As a note to the authors, in case no one talked to you about this, the gun violence America faces is primarily an inner city black-on-black problem due to the breakdown of the family caused by entitlements (see here and here).  Guns aren’t responsible and bear no relation to the problem.

News from Massachusetts:

LOWELL — Police confiscated four replica guns from a 22-year-old Lowell man Saturday afternoon in the first instance of the new city ban on such weapons being enforced, according to police.

Officers were called to the area behind CVS at 1815 Middlesex St., Saturday at 2:53 p.m., after getting calls reporting a man who appeared to have a rifle, according to police.

Officers found Sharif Eltobgi and two females, whose identities were not released, on the train tracks that run under the Rourke Bridge, and Eltobgi had four weapons that are banned by the new ordinance, according to Capt. Timothy Crowley.

Police say what the rifle callers saw was actually a pellet gun, and that Eltobgi also had two BB handguns and a starter pistol that are covered by the ban.

“This incident is a prime example of the alarm that can be caused to the public when confronted with a subject armed with a replica firearm,” Crowley wrote in a press release.

The City Council passed the ban on replica guns with a 7-2 vote at its meeting on Feb. 9 to address police concerns about the confusion that can be caused by such weapons.

William Taylor is responsible for this, the very same one who wants to review your essay before approving your handgun permit.

This is the Lowell police at their finest, protecting the public from Islamic terrorism and Hispanic and Latino drug gangs.  Don’t you feel safer?

And how long is Smith & Wesson going to stay in this horrible state before relocating to America?

Via Uncle, 9mm is the best round for the 1911.

The 1911 is probably the most iconic handgun design ever. No pistol in history has done more – from battlefield to CCW to every single flavor of competition, there are 1911s. It’s just a great gun. It’s also at its finest when it’s chambered in a cartridge it wasn’t originally designed for: 9mm. Now, before you come burn my house down, hear me out because there’s a method to my madness. Yes, I know that it’s harder to make a 9mm 1911 run right than a .45. Yes, I know that the 1911 was originally designed for the .45 ACP cartridge, and that saying it’s better when chambered in 9mm is tantamount to heresy. But it’s heresy like Galileo’s heresy, because I’m actually right.

Let’s look at defensive uses first: we know for a fact that there’s no difference in terminal performance between .45 ACP and 9mm (cue the ballistards), so there’s no point in giving up 2-3 rounds of ammunition capacity, right?

We know that for a fact, do we?  So I didn’t preserve the original title of the post, which was 9mm is the best caliber for the 1911, since the definition of caliber is in units of inches (i.e., it’s English, not SI).  I corrected it for the author.

So wait, I hear the phone ringing.  Hello, [talky talk …].  Thank you sir.  Hey, that was John Moses Browning.  He said … ring, um, hold on.  Hello, [talky talk].  Thank you sir.  That was John Basilone.  Both Browning and Basilone said you’re wrong.

So there.

News from the great Northeast:

First came the rat — and then, the rat-a-tat-tat.

A Harlem postal cop, startled early Thursday by a rambling rodent outside the W. 125th St. post office, accidentally fired his gun while investigating a building alarm, sources said.

Both the rat and U.S. Postal Service Inspector Neville Harper escaped injury in the 12:35 a.m. shooting that came after the rodent bolted suddenly from a pile of garbage, the sources said.

Harper was doing a perimeter search of the building with his service revolver drawn when the rat appeared and the gun went off, sources said.

I’ve heard of those guns that just “go off” with no one pulling the trigger, mostly from cops under investigation when their gun “goes off.”  But in this case, this particular gun “went off” when the rat bolted.  That must be some sensitive trigger (trigger pressure of, oh, I don’t know, a nano-Pascal?).  Those changes in air pressure when things move, you know.

And remember kids.  Only the cops can be trusted with guns.

WFLA.com:

HOMOSASSA, Fla. (WFLA) — School officials have identified the owner of a gun that was found at Rock Crusher Elementary school Tuesday morning.

School staff and detectives found out the gun fell out of a man’s pocket while he was dropping his child off. Roy Caffera said it fell through a hole in his cargo shorts.

When parent Monique Guertin heard about the gun at her child’s school, she panicked. “Yeah, it’s very scary,” Guertin said.

Citrus County school authorities said the weapon was discovered sometime after 8 a.m. in the area where parents drop off their children for a pre-care program in the back of the school.

“A parent noticed the weapon, contacted one of the employees. They came out, secured the weapon. They thought the weapon was a pellet,” Asst. Superintendent Mike Mullen said.

A janitor fired the weapon, trying to discharge the pellets. That’s when he learned it was a pistol.

That’s what I do too when I’m not sure.  If I’m not sure whether it’s a gun, I just pick it up and pull the trigger to see if I can dislodge anything in it.  If it fires, we all laugh, and laugh, and laugh.  As long as no kids get hurt.

Bloomberg:

With Hopkins’s approval, I spend three days observing from behind the counter at Westside Armory, on the condition I won’t risk driving away customers by interrupting to ask to quote them by name. On the floor, I listen to the sales patter and consumer comments. I observe diligence, for the most part, about following the rules. And yet I also witness some troubling slip-ups, including one that leads to a visit to the store by two agents from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “We’re not perfect,” Hopkins says.

Yea, that’s right.  A Bloomberg hack was allowed in the building to write his propaganda.  One thing that struck me was the nexus of memes.

The persistence of demand for firearms in the U.S. becomes the subject of a get-together at the store with Stuart Anderson Wheeler, a visiting fellow big-game hunter who runs an eponymous business in London that manufactures bespoke hunting guns. Anderson Wheeler finds American gun culture perplexing, especially the shrill tone of the National Rifle Association. “I mean, all the talk of terrorism and shootings—it’s pretty extreme. Can they be serious?” he asks.

“They know what sells,” says Hopkins.

“I’m all for guns,” Anderson Wheeler responds. “But how many does a person need?”

“You Brits don’t have our traditions,” Hopkins says. “To Americans, owning a gun is a connection back to the settling of the Western frontier: cowboys and Indians and all that.”

“And fear,” says Anderson Wheeler.

The store owner and a hunter (not just a Fudd, but a British Fudd), engage in a bit of condescending snark towards American gun owners.  “Fear.”  “Extreme.”  “They know what sells.”  That’s right, Hopkins.  It’s the extreme language of the NRA or the NSSF which convinces us to buy guns.  If it weren’t for them, we’d just park our ass on the couch and watch sitcoms at night and football games on the weekend.

Truthfully, it’s folks like these who don’t understand how the NRA and NSSF is being dragged kicking and screaming into the twentieth first century.  They are even less informed than the progs, because at least the progs get the significance of their gun control schemes and why we buy guns.  Their (NRA and NSSF) irrelevance to the current trends is missed by the Fudds and the sellouts like Hopkins.

David Codrea noticed this (I couldn’t bring myself to read this far).

Like many FFL holders, Hopkins would have no objection to universal background checks for all gun transfers. 

David comments:

Anyone in the business who’s not leading in the fight against universal registration, especially now in the time of great need, and actually telling that to a Bloomberg reporter, deserves to have his business go belly-up as far as I’m concerned. And the FFLs who look forward to it as a new business opportunity are no better than damn kapos.

Yea, Hopkins just went from being a stooge to being an enemy.  Understand, Hopkins, that universal background checks will bring out the guns, and not in a good way, if you know what I mean.  That is a line that cannot be crossed by anyone.  It won’t happen, and your willing adultery with the Bloomberg position is most disappointing.  As for this particular shop, I would drive hours before I would do business with them.  I hope the good folks in Nevada read this article and adjust their business practices accordingly.

News From Texas:

Some predicted that the law would lead to a surge of 911 calls, but according to Cpl. Tracey Knight, spokeswoman for the Fort Worth Police Department, not much has occurred:

“We do not have anything interesting to report. Two calls so far, no issues. We have no concerns and we have had no problems.”

Sheriff Dee Anderson adds:

“I said before this became law that I thought it was going to be much ado about nothing, but I didn’t know it was going to be this much nothing.”

Carolyn Daniel, a volunteer with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, argues it’s “too soon to tell” what effect this law will have:

“Changes in legislation can take years to determine an impact.”

Fox News reports that a number of local businesses are now banning firearms on their premises, “as well as national chains, including Starbucks [and] Jack in The Box.” But other businesses, like Home Depot and Bass Pro Shops, have embraced open carry.

But if we look to another state in which open carry was signed into law, the evidence suggests the new Texas legislation will not be an issue.

Mississippi began allowing open carry on July 1, 2013. Fourteen months later, virtually no issues had arisen.

WAPT reported in September 2014:

“The Mississippi Highway Patrol and the Jackson and Byram police departments said there have been little or no incidents reported. Utica police had one incident, where a man forgot he had his weapon on, but he put it back in his truck, authorities said.”

WAPT also quoted Vicksburg Police Chief Walter Armstrong:

“We have seen several [people utilizing the open-carry law] over the last year. I would imagine somewhere between 10 and 12…

I have to admit, initially I was a bit nervous about the debate of the law and the passing of the law. But to my surprise, we have not had one single incident as it relates to open-carry.”

Some Mississippians had similar fears regarding open carry, specifically relating to open carry at bars or pubs.

Prior to the Mississippi law going into effect, Hinds County Constable Jerry Moore argued it would be “total chaos” if the law were to be implemented:

“You get enough fights at the clubs and things that we have to respond to now. Can you imagine running up into a club of 50 to 100 people and trying to get order?”

Law enforcement also has mixed feelings about the Texas law. A survey conducted by the Texas Police Chiefs Association yielded some interesting results.

I told you so.  I said this.

Oooo … boogey man gonna getcha!  Hold me Uncle Bob!  I askeerd!  “Walking disaster.”  “Trouble.”  “Volatile and deadly situations.” Oooo …

Again, as a citizen of a traditional open carry state, I’m going to tell you what’s going to happen here.  Nothing.  That’s right, nothing.  Life will continue in the lone star state unabated, and the doomsday predictions of law enforcement and the progressives will go down as a monument to their hatred of the common man.

And this.

Really, folks, this has become a silly, exaggerated, inflated, dramatic, overly-complicated, hysterical fit.  I can say that because my home state is a traditional open carry state, and I have open carried, and seen others doing the same.  It’s just not the problem you are making it out to be.  When it’s time for open carry to be legal, some men will decide to open carry, and life will go on.  Business will occur, and the only crimes that may spiral out of control would be SWAT call-outs from politically motivated callers who use the cops to drive their points.

Here’s a note to Texas police departments.  If you don’t want to be used, don’t oblige.  Don’t do it.  Just say no.  Stand up for yourself.  Be men.

Blood won’t run in the streets, I have said.  The sky won’t fall, chicken little can go back to sleep, and the world can know that open carry isn’t the problem the “Moms demand [fill in the blank]” and LEOs say it is.

Florida is next.  And then comes South Carolina, if communist State Senator Larry Martin gets out of the way.