Archive for the 'Guns' Category

CheaperThanDirt.com:

In October 2015, Winchester issued a recall and important safety notice for Winchester XPR rifles.

XPR rifles have the potential to fire an unintended round when the safety switch is manipulated. During continuous product testing, Winchester found that moving the safety switch on the XPR rifle “may cause movement in the trigger system that could result in unintended firing of certain XPR rifles.”

As such, Winchester is recalling all XPR rifles. Winchester is replacing certain trigger group parts in all Winchester XPR rifles free. Winchester requests all owners of XPR rifles send their rifles for retrofitting.

This is the right way to do it, the responsible and ethical way.  If you find a problem, recall it and fix it.  Unlike what Remington did with the Model 700 Walker Fire Control.

Chicago Tribune:

Authorities say no charges will be filed against an Uber driver who shot and wounded a gunman who opened fire on a crowd of people in Logan Square over the weekend.

The driver had a concealed-carry permit and acted in the defense of himself and others, Assistant State’s Attorney Barry Quinn said in court Sunday.

A group of people had been walking in front of the driver around 11:50 p.m. Friday in the 2900 block of North Milwaukee Avenue when Everardo Custodio, 22, began firing into the crowd, Quinn said.

The driver pulled out a handgun and fired six shots at Custodio, hitting him several times, according to court records.  Responding officers found Custodio lying on the ground, bleeding, Quinn said.  No other injuries were reported.

Authorities say no charges will be filed against an Uber driver who shot and wounded a gunman who opened fire on a crowd of people in Logan Square over the weekend.

The driver had a concealed-carry permit and acted in the defense of himself and others, Assistant State’s Attorney Barry Quinn said in court Sunday.

A group of people had been walking in front of the driver around 11:50 p.m. Friday in the 2900 block of North Milwaukee Avenue when Everardo Custodio, 22, began firing into the crowd, Quinn said.

The driver pulled out a handgun and fired six shots at Custodio, hitting him several times, according to court records.  Responding officers found Custodio lying on the ground, bleeding, Quinn said.  No other injuries were reported.

Now, go to Google News and search on Logan Square for any other reporting of this event.  There is none.  America has been saturated with reporting on gun violence and this administration’s call for more gun control, but nothing on the prevention of another mass shooting by a concealed carrier.

It doesn’t fit the narrative, does it?  And yet, he didn’t wait for the police (who would have been too late to do anything about it anyway), he didn’t run for cover, he didn’t go wild and shoot up the entire area and kill innocents, but instead he apparently ran towards the sound and laid his own safety aside for that of others.

Who could ask for anything more out of concealed carriers?

“He makes my feet like hinds’ feet, and sets me upon my high places.  He trains my hands for battle, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze.  Thou hast also given me the shield of thy salvation, and thy right hand upholds me; and Thy gentleness makes me great,” Psalm 18:33-36.

The New York Times has published a call for gun control in the wake of the Islamist actions in San Bernardino.  An excerpt follows.

Certain kinds of weapons, like the slightly modified combat rifles used in California, and certain kinds of ammunition, must be outlawed for civilian ownership. It is possible to define those guns in a clear and effective way and, yes, it would require Americans who own those kinds of weapons to give them up for the good of their fellow citizens.

The Washington Post has a pitiful, confused and yet halting agreement with the editorial, as if the writer, in terrible fear for her life, doesn’t know what else to do.

Then, there are those matters that are beyond practical political reach. Suffering, death, danger and maltreatment aside, a policy solution to these problems simply has no real path, no viability at all.

And in this moment, it would seem that any and all policy related to guns would belong in that third group. Gun control — or any discussion of a coordinated effort to stem the tide of gun deaths that set this country apart from almost every other industrialized nation — is going nowhere. It’s a reality we acknowledge regularly on this very blog, most recently on Saturday morning, the day the New York Times saw fit to devote its first front-page editorial in 95 years to gun control.

There are numerous reactions to this editorial, most of them edging towards the “this means war” sentiment.  I want to take a different approach to this call for more gun control, and all of those like it across America.

It’s tempting to take the approach of commenter Mike Bishop at WRSA, who says “The Manhattanites have about as much relevance in my personal, local, life, as a rookery of penguins.”  Mike is right, and such gun control will never obtain, but it goes much deeper than relevance.

There is a war between light and darkness, and it has been advancing since the very beginning.  Statism and Islam are different facets of the same stone (there are other facets), and they are merely the societal manifestations of the struggle between light and darkness.  The war occurs individually and corporately, and while men see the consequences and effects of the war, and get brief glimpses into the deeper things, in large measure we don’t truly see the battle in the heavens.

Angels and demons are warring in the heavenly places, and there is war within the souls of men.  God isn’t barely victorious, nor does be barely win.  Nay, He sits and the heavens and scoffs at the rulers of the world.  It will all end as He has said it will.

“For I am God and there is no other; I am God and there is no one like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things which have not yet been done, saying, ‘My purpose will be established, and I will accomplish all My good pleasure’,” Isaiah 46:9-10.

As for individual men, there are those who are lost.  The New York Times editorial board is lost.  No, not collectively, but individually, each and every one of them.  The war is over in their soul, or better, it never occurred.  There are those men who have been given a taste, and who know the truth, but who suppress it in unrighteousness.  They will never find peace or rest, not now and not in eternity.

But there are those who would be lost if left to their own devices, who know their sins, but who have been awakened by the sovereign hand of Almighty God, who reaches down in His kind providence and bestows His love on them.  They are saved by grace and through faith, not of their works, lest they should boast.

For this last category, God “chose us in Him before the foundation of the world … He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself … according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will,” Eph 1:4,5,11.

If the former believes that upon death their bodies cool to ambient temperature and then get planted or burned, and that’s the end, they are merely observers to the great war, not even pawns.  They are worse than irrelevant.  They see the effects, but cannot effect change.  For those of us who believe, there are no volunteers to this war.

We were created for it, and we were drafted to this army.  Our volunteering occurred simultaneously with our being called, and upon being called, we had no other choice.  The sheep know their master’s voice, and only follow Him.

Oh, to be sure, I won’t give up my weapons, not a single one of them, and I will defend myself and my family as we are threatened, whether by the state or other actors.  I will do so because I have been taught by my master that I must do so.  But it goes deeper than a few guns.

I know that the New York Times editorial board, for all their bluster, isn’t relevant to this war because they don’t even know there is one.  Looking for peace, they may as well slash their wrists and bleed before Baal for fire to come down from heaven as to look to the state for a solution to evil.

I have been called with a heavenly calling, like all of His people, not of themselves, but of His great mercy and from before the foundation of the world, to fight this great war.  The war is present everywhere and all of the time, whether visibly and by implements of fighting, or in our souls for our devotion and affection of the divine.

It has become commonplace to charge people carrying weapons with cowardice.

PARIS—For most of the last two centuries, Europeans have been puzzling over their American cousins’ totemic obsession with guns and their passion for concealed weapons. And back in the decades before the American Civil War, several British visitors to American shores thought they’d discerned an important connection: people who owned slaves or lived among them wanted to carry guns to keep the blacks intimidated and docile, but often shot each other, too.

In 1842, the novelist Charles Dickens, on a book tour of the United States, saw a link between the sheer savagery of slave ownership and what he called the cowardly practice of carrying pistols or daggers or both. The author of Oliver Twist listened with a mixture of horror and contempt as Americans defended their utterly indefensible “rights” to tote guns and carry Bowie knives, right along with their “right” to own other human beings who could be shackled, whipped, raped, and mutilated at will.

Charging us with sin is the devil’s game, and in my corner as defender is the Son of God who has paid the price, past, present and future.  I’ll just let Him handle it.  I am unaffected by the game.  Since I am a warrior in the great war of all time, how can any man say that I am a coward?

Coward if left to his own devices, sinner, and even worthless worm.  But saint by the shed blood of the lamb, warrior in the great war, at battle ever since being called, at battle until the end of my life, servant of the most high king.  My days are in His hands.  I will live all of the days to which I have been ordained, and will not perish until it is time that I meet my savior and master.  Who can understand this except those who have been called?

“You will not be afraid of the terror by night, or of the arrow that flies by day,” Psalm 91:5.

David Codrea:

… his defense centered on the protest that in New York politics, everybody does it.

That’s probably true, and no doubt goes a long way toward explaining why criminals are so concerned about making sure everyone but they and their enforcers are disarmed. No one has been more rabid about that than Silver, abusing his influential political position to betray his oath of office and subvert the rights of his constituents, and not just the ones dumb enough to trust him with power over their lives.

I’m certainly not surprised.  Collectivists aren’t keen on recognizing or defending the rights of others, but certainly quick to leverage their position to increase their own standing.

Speaking of which, Ray Kelly, I don’t support more guns.  Of course you don’t.

Via Uncle, who says we don’t need to carry guns to church?

The TSA on how to fly with firearms.  Except that I’ve been told by American Airlines to put the ammunition outside the locked container where my gun is, contrary to what the TSA is saying here.  You know, because someone doesn’t have their act together, perhaps the TSA, or perhaps the airlines, or perhaps both.

Breitbart.com:

Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “Special Report,” French Ambassador to the United States Gerard Araud defend a tweet he had posted in response to Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump immediately following the terror attacks in Paris earlier this month. Araud described Trump as a “vulture” for a tweet Trump had made earlier in the year following the January attack on Charlie Hebdo.

Araud acknowledged he deleted the tweet, explaining it was immediately as his home country was reeling from the attacks, but doubled down on the sentiment he originally conveyed, which was using a gun to defend themselves in such a situation is something “only in the movies.”

“Well, actually I received this message just as the moment we were under the shock of the attack,” Araud said. “So I am a fighter and I am a diplomat, so I decided to respond the way you did, but actually I erased the tweet I think 10 minutes later, saying it’s of no use.”

“But of course, I am supporting of the substance of it,” he continued. “It doesn’t makes sense. It was a theater, a theater hall. Imagine a theater hall and suddenly people enter with machine guns and are really killing people … It is only in the movies someone is using his gun to defend himself.”

Meanwhile, in Aiken County, a gun was used in self defense.

Authorities say a man trying to rob a couple who thought they were going to buy a car off Craigslist has been shot and killed.

Aiken County deputies said in a news release that officers are looking for the second robber after he ran away following the shooting Wednesday afternoon.

Investigators say the would-be robbers pulled out a gun and demanded money when they met the couple at an Aiken gas station where they planned to buy a car listed on the Internet site.

Deputies say while the gun was pointed at the man, his girlfriend pulled her own weapon and shot at the robbers.

Coroner Tim Carlton says 23-year-old Frank Frazier Jr. died at the scene of the shooting.

The couple was not hurt.

It’s always nice to have empirical data to substantiate your assertions when your assertions pertain to empirical data.

David Codrea:

True to form, and consistent with Rahm Emanuel’s advocacy to never let a serious crisis go to waste, citizen  disarmament swindlers and other totalitarian lobby shills have taken to social and “regular” media to lay blame for Friday’s Colorado Planned Parenthood murders on groups that stand in the way of their goals. Those include gun owners, right to life activists, Republicans, Christians, white males, and others “progressives” view as impediments and threats to their objective of total control.

[ … ]

… he may be a peeping tom/cruel to animals … [and apparently doesn’t understand gender differences].

See also Mike Vanderboegh’s comments.  Look folks, this is a broken record.  The next criminal who wields a gun is the justification du jure for more control over people who didn’t do the act, wouldn’t do the act, who could be reliably depended upon to stop people who do the act.  It matters not to the controllers, and it needs to matter not to us.  Molon labe.

I hope you had a blessed Thanksgiving.  I know I did.  I appreciate it as being not just some amorphous holiday to be thankful to who knows what or who knows who for whatever, but to a sovereign God to has favored us with His kind providence.

David Codrea’s thanksgiving essay is here.

Fast-forward to present-day Boston, a place of sacred tradition, the literal forge for our heritage of individual liberty. Except Boston is now a place where traditions have been betrayed. Its current overlords have succeeded in disarming the whole people in a way that General Gage could never have conceived possible.

So successful have these rulers been that the city that gave us Sam Adams and Paul Revere is now a city under siege, and this is fittingly ironic if you think about it, by wild turkeys. So helpless and hapless are Boston’s modern-day patriots, they can do little except retreat from the aggressive gobblers, escape, hole up and plead for rescue from the very authorities that enforce public impotence.

Read it all.  Well, my reaction is that I would be surprised if the king’s men don’t hunt them down, since it is, after all, the king’s royal forest and men can only hunt by permission of the king.

Mike Vanderboegh links Strategy Page on the proliferation of personal defense weapons.  I haven’t developed a strong opinion on the value of these guns (or for that matter, pistol-caliber carbines).  I would be interested in reader reaction and opinion.

Gateway Pundit:

Seventeen people, allegedly belonging to specialised committees of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, were arrested Friday on charges of planting two explosive devices and attempting to block rain drainage in Alexandria.

The Interior Ministry said, in an official statement, one bomb exploded near the Al-Atareen police station, but the other one was defused before exploding in the same area.

The statement added that defendants dumped a cement mixture into the drainage canals to block the water and cause floods, consequently causing the repeated flooding in the city. The cabinet allocated EGP 6bn to maintain drainage infrastructure in Alexandria and Beheira in a bid to contain the damages resulting from the floods.

The drying of concrete is an exothermic reaction, one that occurs chemically rather than thermodynamically.  In other words, the presence of water doesn’t stop the drying of concrete.  This is a clever ploy to cause damage and vandalize infrastructure.  See how easy it is to cause terrorism?  The existence of a relatively peaceful America is a consequence of it having been primarily a Christian nation, with men who observed Biblical law towards other men.

As John Adams observed, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”  I don’t consider Muslims in that category “moral and religious,” since it is a political religion intended for domination over other men, crafted by a pedophile for keeping his band of warlords and fighters together.

USA Today:

French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo published a new edition Tuesday with a defiant front cover addressing the attacks in Paris.

The cover shows a man riddled with bullets quaffing an alcoholic drink. The headline reads: “They have weapons. (Expletive) them. We have champagne.”

Something tells me that the French won’t be any better prepared for this kind of event next time.

Prior: Guns N’ Roses

News from France:

Central Maine:

I agree that gunfire is a loud noise. What is curious is what is the actual benefit of making that noise less audible?

Is it to avoid hurting the shooter’s ears? Is it to not scare off nearby wildlife? Is it so people don’t know a gun is being fired in their immediate area?

Understandably, when James Bond wants to do away with an evil villain, it’s to his benefit to do so with a bit of stealth.

The state of Maine just passed a law that allows people with possibly no conceivable training in firearms to carry one among unknowing people. Before this law, people who wanted a concealed weapons permit had to be totally vetted by a number of state agencies, including the state police and/or their local police chief. Now it’s go to a gun shop, pick up a 9mm and a shiny concealed holster, and off they go.

The insanity continues with lessening the sounds of a firearm being used nearby. That means game wardens would have less opportunity to arrest night hunters, neighbors wouldn’t be sure how far away they are from guns being fired, and careless hunters would have more opportunity to fire closer to neighborhoods than legally allowed.

As a past hunter and active skeet shooter, I wear ear protection, practice safety to the highest degree and am well-versed in the safe handling of firearms. I wish I could say the same for the masses that tramp through the woods and walk into public places with a seriously dangerous machine that they may not know how operate, thus causing potential danger to themselves and an unknowing public.

A quiet gun. No one seems to have a viable answer for why we need one, except that it might mean more sales for gun sellers.

Well thank you Mr. Fudd.  With friends like you, who needs enemies?  Actually, I jest.  I consider you the enemy.  In fact, come to think of it, I think you’re lying.  I don’t think you’re really a past hunter and active skeet shooter.  You sound just like a collectivist, statist windbag who’s making things up for the sake of drama.

But if you are, you got yours, didn’t you?  And you don’t trust anyone with guns except you, your Fudd buddies, and the cops, even if we all lose our hearing, outside or inside at the shooting range.  Do you?  And don’t give me that crap about wearing hearing protection.  We both know better.

We both know that even with ear plugs and muffs, it’s better for us all to have suppressed weapons.  It’s better for our quality of life as we grow old, and it’s better for long term health costs for our progeny who must watch over us.  But that doesn’t matter to you, does it?  You’d rather sacrifice our hearing, preferring that Mr. Fudd pal around with other Mr. Fudds in the woods once a season, and go shoot clays a couple of times a year.  Are you a member of an an exclusive country club too, Mr. Fudd?

Does the encroachment of technology scare you, Mr. Fudd?  Does freedom offend you?  Good.  I hope you’re appalled at the likes of me.  As I said, I consider you the enemy, just like the collectivist windbags.  So don’t bring up anything else about being a hunter and clay shooter.  I’m not interested.

WTKR.com:

Camden County, NC – A Virginia Beach Police lieutenant was accidentally shot by a VBPD captain on Wednesday evening during firearms training, according to the Camden County Sheriff’s Office.

The officers were conducting firearms training at Academi, located at 850 Pudding Ridge Road in Camden County.

At the conclusion of the training, Captain Michael Ronan was cleaning his weapon and it discharged, striking Lieutenant Johnny Gandy in the arm.

The victim was taken to Chesapeake Regional Medical Center with non-life threatening injuries. He was treated and released and is recovering at home.

No criminal charges are expected. However, the Virginia Beach Police Department will complete an internal investigation and review training and safety protocols.

Gosh, I hate it when that happens to me.  I remember the last time I shot somebody while cleaning my gun around other people, gun loaded and everything.  It sucked because they did a “safety protocol investigation” and all that crap.  No charges though.  I’m glad the dude I shot understood that shit happens.