Archive for the 'Guns' Category

Communities Digital News:

The Greenville News:

Jon Bailey spent a Friday afternoon over Christmas break taking his 13-year-old son, Connor, to shoot pistols at Allen Arms Indoor Range in Greenville.

He showed Connor how to load, aim and fire the weapon, but he also instructed him on what to do if he ever saw friends playing with a gun or found a gun lying around.

“He knows to get the heck out of the room and talk to adults,” Bailey said.

Bailey doesn’t call himself a gun fanatic. He wanted to demystify the idea of guns for his son.

But he does think more children should have knowledge of gun safety.

Who instructs children on the gun rights and safety has traditionally been left out of the state’s school systems, but bills pre-filed in both chambers of the South Carolina Legislature would bring gun rights squarely into focus in the classroom.

Whether schools are the right place to instruct students about firearms will be up for debate.

Zero-tolerance policies regarding guns at South Carolina schools has led to a backlash against citizens’ gun rights and a lack of knowledge on how to safely use firearms, Republican state legislators said as they prepared to open a new session in the state Legislature.

State social studies standards that instruct teachers to explain how the Constitution and Bill of Rights helps protect limited government. But schools don’t go far enough to explain gun rights, they said.

One bill — pre-filed in the state House — would create a Second Amendment Awareness Day to be held on Dec. 15 each year in all state schools, complete with a poster or essay contest centered on the theme “The Right To Bear Arms: One American Right Protecting All Others.”

Students — at every grade level — would receive at least three weeks of education on their gun rights based on a curriculum chosen by the state Department of Education and approved or recommended by the National Rifle Association.

[ … ]

His idea for the bill came after an incident in a Summerville high school in September where police were notified and a 16-year-old student’s locker searched after he wrote a fictional essay that mentioned purchasing a gun to kill his neighbor’s pet dinosaur.

The student was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct after police said he became belligerent.

Clemmons said the incident “shocked” and “offended” him.

“In this case, it squelched a student’s first amendment rights, in responding to an assignment, to talk about the second amendment,” he said.

Students are being punished when they choose to “write about one of their precious American rights,” he said.

Rep. Garry Smith, R-Simpsonville, who co-sponsored the bill, along with Rep. Richard Yow, R-Chesterfield, said the second amendment deserves more instructional time than other amendments because it is the lynchpin for the rest of democracy.

This is all well and good, but I have a better idea.  If South Carolina citizens really want to teach children about the second amendment, then get rid of gun-hater and elitist establishment ruler S.C. State Senator Larry Martin (from Pickens) and institute open carry throughout South Carolina.  Patriots need to initiate a beat-down to establishment GOP in South Carolina.  Until then, it’s just all bluster and hot air to me.

David Codrea:

With an administration policy abetting immigration by disparate cultures with incongruous goals, such attacks may be inevitable. If and when one does happen, the probability is that it will occur in an area where private carrying of firearms has not been normalized, and is discouraged or outright prohibited. As for any and all laws in place, the attackers will ignore them, as they always do.

I think David is saying – with some degree of regret for those to whom he refers – that there will be a price to pay for your collectivist voting history.  You are an easier target for the terrorists.

David Codrea:

New House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz took his first action for the new congress by renewing the subpoena to compel Attorney General Eric Holder to produce documents related to Operation Fast and Furious “gunwalking” …

We’ll see where this goes.  But Jason Chaffetz, for all of his appearances to oppose the establishment, is an establishment kid.  If he likes Boehner, that says something about his character.

Kurt Hofmann:

So now, any gunsmith or machinist who is hired by the “gun” owner to complete the machining is going to be ruled to have “manufactured” a gun, and will thus be held to the same restrictions that apply to all commercial gun manufacturers. The BATFE is insisting on having its cake and eating it, too. They have previously argued that an 80% receiver ceases to be an 80% receiver, and becomes a “firearm,” if the manufacturer does so much as scratch an outline showing where material needs to be milled away; but now, if the buyer of what the BATFE recognizes as an incomplete receiver similarly removes some of the material that must be removed in order to make the receiver function in a firearm, and then turns it over to a skilled professional gunsmith or machinist to finish the work, the professional ends up being considered the one to have “manufactured” the gun.

In order to understand how Kurt got to this point you have to read his entire article.  I was shaking my head.  I shouldn’t be, but I’m surprised almost daily at the control freaks who make up the federal government.

Mike Vanderboegh on the thin blue line.  So here are two questions.  First, when is the last time you “lost a rifle?”  Second, when is the last time you shot at a dog, missed and killed someone?  Readers can weigh in.

Mike Vanderboegh: Ghostly Echoes From History, Part IV.  Mike begins with my favorite quote from John Adams.  “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”  This is a pregnant statement and perhaps we’ll explore it in detail one day too.  In the mean time, read Mike.

Robert H. Scales wrote a piece for The Atlantic entitled Gun Trouble, with the catchy subtitle as follows: The rifle that today’s infantry uses is little changed since the 1960s—and it is badly flawed. Military lives depend on these cheap composites of metal and plastic. So why can’t the richest country in the world give its soldiers better ones?

Scales then proceeds to rehearse the history of flaws after the initial rollout of the M-16 in Vietnam, well known flaws (and failed to mention others, such as the fact that the chamber and barrel weren’t chrome-lined in the initial stages of production).  He pans the 5.56 mm NATO round, and ends up recommending two (what he considers to be) improvements.  First, he wants a larger caliber round, and second, he wants a gas recirculation system rather than the current DI system in use in the Eugene Stoner design (He fails to mention that the gas recirculation system weighs the front end of the rifle down and makes it more difficult to maneuver in CQB such as room clearing.  This is a point made to me by my son, who didn’t even like my quad-rail on the front end of my RRA rifle due to its weight).  Scales points to Wanat as proof positive that American lives are being wasted by a bad design.

The M4, the standard carbine in use by the infantry today, is a lighter version of the M16 rifle that killed so many of the soldiers who carried it in Vietnam. (The M16 is still also in wide use today.) In the early morning of July 13, 2008, nine infantrymen died fighting off a Taliban attack at a combat outpost near the village of Wanat in Afghanistan’s Nuristan province. Some of the soldiers present later reported that in the midst of battle their rifles overheated and jammed. The Wanat story is reminiscent of experiences in Vietnam: in fact, other than a few cosmetic changes, the rifles from both wars are virtually the same. And the M4’s shorter barrel makes it less effective at long ranges than the older M16—an especially serious disadvantage in modern combat, which is increasingly taking place over long ranges.

In spite of the high number of kills in the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, Scales calls the 5.56 mm a “varmint round.”  We’ve seen all of this before, much of it coming from experience many decades ago.  But we’ve seen testing that simply shows much of the bad press for the Stoner design (and good press for the Kalashnikov design) to be false.  Recall the testing done on the Knights Armament rifle, and reader Pat Hines sends two more examples here and here.  The point is granted that Rock River Arms, Knights Armament, LaRue Tactical and Daniel Defense isn’t the Colt produced under milspec for the Army and Marine Corps (these are all superior to the Colt M-16 and M-4).  Furthermore, recall that we’ve discussed what it means to be milspec and what it doesn’t.  Not milspec isn’t always worse, and milspec isn’t always better.

Still, my own son Daniel tells me that he never had any problems with either his SAW or an M-4 when he used that in training and in Fallujah, Iraq (while still claiming that my RRA rifle was better than the Colt he used).  The biggest problem with Scales’ argument isn’t that it doesn’t rely on hard evidence regarding quality battle rifles today (and it doesn’t, and some AR-15s are better designed and manufactured than the M-4 it must be admitted).  The biggest problem with his argument is that it blames the wrong culprit.

My coverage of the Battle of Wanat goes back to before the Cubbison report, from 2008 until recently.

Analysis Of The Battle Of Wanat

Investigating The Battle Of Wanat

The Contribution Of The Afghan National Army In The Battle Of Wanat

The Battle Of Wanat, Massing Of Troops And Attacks In Nuristan

Second Guessing The Battles Of Wanat And Kamdesh

And many other articles.  I am proud to have contributed in some small way to the Wanat report still on file at Fort Leavenworth (on page 255 three of my articles are cited).  Specifically, it was published by the Combat Studies Institute Press, U.S. Army Combined Arms Center.

The kill ratio was indeed lower at Wanat than has been noted at other engagements, but the fact that Soldiers had to put 400 rounds through their weapons in such a short time frame is indicative of a different problem than the gun.  First of all, with all due respect to the Soldiers who were there, fire control and long distance optics would have been a valuable commodity.  When training his “boots,” my son worked first, middle and last on rate of fire and fire control.  And use of a larger bore weapon wouldn’t have helped barrel temperature (have you ever shot a large caliber weapon?), and would certainly have hurt the ability to regain sight picture after firing due to significant recoil.

Use of DMs with M-14s or bolt action sniper rifles would have helped (the Marines make use of such tactics), as would have training in shooting uphill (to which very few units train – I know this from conversations with Army trainers).  But the biggest problems with Wanat were associated with command choices that could have been done differently.  Vehicle Patrol Base Wanat (it was a VPB rather than a FOB), took entirely too long to set up, allowing enemy massing of forces, something I’ve noted on a number of occasions in Afghanistan (it’s a favorite tactic when the Taliban think they can greatly outnumber their opponent).

Furthermore, terrain was critical in that the U.S. troops didn’t control the high country surrounding the VPB which was in a valley.  One Marine Captain commented to me as follows:

The platoon in Wanat sacrificed control of the key terrain in the area in order to locate closer to the population. This was a significant risk, and I don’t see any indication that they attempted to sufficiently mitigate that risk. I can empathize a little bit – I was the first Marine on deck at Camp Blessing back when it was still Firebase Catamount, in late 2003. I took responsibility for the camp’s security from a platoon from the 10th Mountain Div, and established a perimeter defense around it. Looking back, I don’t think I adequately controlled the key terrain around the camp. The platoon that replaced me took some steps to correct that, and I think it played a significant role when they were attacked on March 22nd of 2004. COIN theorists love to say that the population is the key terrain, but I think Wanat shows that ignoring the existing natural terrain in favor of the population is a risky proposition, especially in Afghanistan.

The force was simply too small (platoon size versus virtual battalion size Taliban force), and they were simply outgunned.  It’s remarkable that they didn’t have even more casualties.  Blaming the gun we deployed with the Soldiers is the easy thing to do.  It’s also the wrong thing to do, and it’s disingenuous.  Blaming the men who made the decision to deploy the way they did would be the hard thing to do because it gets personal.  But at least it would be honest.

See also:

Battle Of Wanat Category

War is Boring, The M-4 Carbine Is Here To Stay

Dan Morgan on Wanat

WeaponsMan Part 1 and Part 2

The Firearm Blog

As an update to my article on the arrest of Danny Gray Lambeth for open carry of a rifle, I do not know Mr. Lambeth and have no way of contacting him.  I would like to know more about the story, but cannot afford the time to travel and sit through a court hearing, especially given that hearings can be postponed on the spot multiple times depending upon what the lawyers and judge want to do.  I have also searched new reports every day since the original report, only to find no updates.

But I did forward a complaint to the office of the North Carolina Attorney General, and heard back the next day.  Basically, I stipulated to the caller (himself a former prosecuting attorney) that I didn’t know all of the facts of the case, and he stipulated to me (after I pressed the point) that arrest for open carry in the county of Davidson while leaving me alone in Mecklenburg County to open carry is capricious and arbitrary, unless there are other facts of the case such as brandishing or threatening (which are both illegal anyway).

And I insist that readers and the legal system stipulate as follows: arrest in one county while allowing open carry in another allows LEOs capricious and arbitrary choices, and by the very definition this isn’t justice.

The New Yorker:

The news that the parents of the children massacred two years ago in Sandy Hook, near Newtown, Connecticut, by a young man with a Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle, were undertaking a lawsuit against the gun manufacturer was at once encouraging and terribly discouraging. The encouraging part is that those parents, suffering from a grief that those of us who are only witnesses to it can barely begin to comprehend, haven’t, despite the failure to reinstate assault-weapons bans and stop the next massacre, given way to despair. Like Richard Martinez, after his son was murdered by a weapon that should never have been in the hands of a lunatic, or anyone else, for that matter, they’re allowing themselves to be angry, and then turning their anger into action: they’re naming the business that helped kill their children and asking a court to hold that business responsible.

The filed complaint—the numbered paragraphs give it an oddly religious feeling, like theses nailed to a church door—is worth reading in full, however painful that might be, not only because of the unbelievable suffering and cruelty it details on that terrible morning but also because it offers, in neatly logical fashion, an indisputable argument: the gun manufacturer is guilty of having sold a weapon whose only purpose was killing a lot of people in a very short time. Despite the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives having previously declared that such weapons “serve a function in crime and combat, but serve no sporting purpose,” Bushmaster sold it anyway—and precisely on the grounds that it could kill many people, quickly. “Forces of opposition bow down. You are single handedly outnumbered,” the advertising copy read.

… one of the ironies of the whole story is that there already is a long-standing ban on truly automatic weapons—machine guns—whose legality not even the N.R.A. or their allies dispute. If anything, they tend to make a sniffy point of discriminating actual machine guns from mere semi-automatic ones, among them the Bushmaster. (Back in the twenties, the availability of the tommy gun to gangsters meant that the police were often brutally out-gunned.) But all of the talk about legal and illegal weapons, automatic and semi-automatic—as about the treatment of the psychologically troubled—evades the simple, central point: it ought to be very, very difficult, as it is in every other civilized country, to get your hands on a weapon whose only purpose is to kill people quickly. The N.R.A. and their allies make it very, very easy.

There are replies to Gopnik, but thus far I have yet to see one that targets the fundamental flaws in the argument.  To begin with, I don’t stipulate at all to the notion that the ban on fully automatic weapons is legal regardless of what the NRA believes.  I believe that the Hughes amendment is an unconstitutional and obscene abomination.  Adam needs to get out of Manhattan a little more and see the world.

Second, his categorization of weapons “whose purpose is to kill” shows fundamental ignorance of guns and the history of them.  The sporting purposes test applied by the ATF and codified into law is circular reasoning as I commented on the ATF study on importability of certain shotguns.

Wrapped up in this paragraph we have not only an amusing logical blunder but also the real crux of the problem. Authors have presupposed the answer (so-called circular reasoning) at which they must arrive, i.e., the statute must remain useful. Thus, all interpretations by ATF are biased to yield that result. It is not the responsibility of the ATF nor is it within the purview of their authority to ensure the continued usefulness of a statute, if in fact it is rendered useless by advances, common practices, evolution in sporting, or lack of wise crafting of the statute (such as the fact that nowhere in this discussion of “sporting purposes” is there any latitude given for personal protection and home defense under the second amendment to the constitution of the United States). This single paragraph renders the study itself as useless as the statute has become.

Let’s use another example in order to make the point clear.  Short barrel revolvers.  While some hunters use long barrel revolvers with scopes for hunting, no one uses a short barrel revolver for hunting.  It has no purpose except to kill (whether used in crime or in self defense).  And yet these aren’t the weapons Adam refers to when he discusses guns with a single purpose.  He is referring to AR-15s and other similarly-styled weapons, which ironically are used quite a bit for hunting (as well as for other sporting purposes such as 3-gun competitions).  You see, the ATF has written the rules by formulating a list and then trying to ban anything on the list – which is circular reasoning.

Scoped bolt action rifles are used as sniper rifles – or for hunting deer.  Shotguns are used for turkey – or to clear rooms in Now Zad Afghanistan by the U.S. Marine Corps.  There is no list that doesn’t ‘beg the question’ (as a formal logical fallacy) when it comes to military or sporting purposes.

Furthermore, a weapon’s capacity to kill is precisely what makes it valuable when it comes to the amelioration of tyranny, which is what the second amendment is all about anyway.  You see, death comes to us not from an imperfect society that lacks the proper state supervision, needing just one more law or the right kind of leadership in order to be the utopia on earth envisioned by Gopnik.  Death comes to us at the hands of criminals, petty and state-sanctioned, due to something called federal headship in Adam and original sin.  Gopnik must return to Genesis Chapter 3 in order to craft a meaningful and consistent anthropology that explains reality.

As with all statists, their god fails them.  They will forever be waiting on the providence of an impotent totem, and may as well slash their wrists and bleed before Baal.  God sits in the heavens and mocks them (Psalm 2:4).  Their attempts to bring heaven down to earth through lawfare and social programs will only end in failure and suffering.  Statistics on guns and crime aren’t relevant to Gopnik’s problem.  He needs to jettison his fundamental world view in order to understand who he is, who man is, and what man must do to be saved.

David Codrea:

It’s not often I find myself in agreement with a “gun control” zealot, but in this case, I’m on board with Rejina 100 percent. By all means, if you don’t want her to think you are a coward, please share. Some may even want to start with these guys.

It might actually be rather nice if the whole thing got a little more legal scrutiny than it has to date.

David Codrea:

Perhaps when enough citizens realize the police can’t protect them and won’t allow them to protect themselves, their attitudes and political choices will change, or at least their inclination against proud and defiant civil disobedience. Some of us would love to help, but we can’t force people not to enslave or harm themselves. Meanwhile, those of us who already know the score will continue to protect ourselves and our rights, and oppose that New York state of mind whenever the fascist Mayor of Everytown tries to impose it beyond the five boroughs.

I’ve said before and will continue to drive the point that totalitarians will answer for every crime committed upon their people that could have been prevented or ameliorated if they allowed their people to defend themselves.  Politicians and police who lobby against the God-given right of self defense will ultimately answer to the one who gave those rights.

Kurt Hofmann:

And that’s another problem for your side, Diamond–the principles on which our republic (as opposed to your “democracy”) was founded are indeed worth dying for, in the eyes of many of us, and perhaps an even bigger problem for you, worth killing for. So if you and your “decent Americans” decide to appeal to “authoritarian government” to deal with us, bring it.

As I survey the ideological landscape, it’s not entirely clear to me yet that the totalitarians get the fact that the civil disobedience we see now in New York, Connecticut and Washington are based on irreducibles, axioms that define character and circumscribe actions.  Let’s hope they do before they do things from which there is no return.

Mike Vanderboegh:

Faith in God (Part III)

The Long Game (Part II)

Squirrel Away As Much Powder As Possible (Part I)

Read them all.

Winston-Salem Journal:

Davidson County deputies arrested a man who was walking around a neighborhood with an assault rifle, according to a news release today from the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office.

Danny Gray Lambeth, 51, of Old U.S. 52 in Winston-Salem was charged with going armed to the terror of the public.

According to the sheriff’s office, deputies responded to the area of 10711 Old U.S. 52 on Saturday after receiving a report of a man walking around residences with an assault rifle. During the investigation, Lambeth was identified as the suspect.

Let’s ignore for the sake of argument the idiotic press report about this being an “assault rifle” (which is wasn’t unless it had select fire mode).  As I’ve discussed many times before, I open carry from time to time as a resident of North Carolina.  We are a traditional open carry state.  I have never had any problems from Baker 2 of the CMPD (who usually ignore me or wave and smile), but even the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department had to be reminded by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals that the open carry of a firearm in North Carolina does not create a “reasonable suspicion” to effect arrest.

It simply doesn’t, so says a federal court.  Case closed.  End of discussion.  Moreover, North Carolina has no stop and identify statute.  Case closed.  End of discussion.  It couldn’t be clearer.  If LEOs aren’t being taught that in their classes, they are being misled and put on the street without the proper training.  That’s malfeasance on the part of the chief LEO.

We have dealt with this before, where I have noted instances where LEOs have unholstered their weapons and pointed them (I assume with a round chambered) at men simply for openly carrying a weapon.  Someone will be killed in such an exchange one day, I have admonished.  And yet, we still see arrests for open carry in North Carolina.

I want to know why?  What about North Carolina being an open carry state don’t CLEOs get?

USA Today is carrying an editorial that has no apparent author (except perhaps Remington Arms).

For nearly 50 years, the Remington Model 700 rifle has been the preferred choice for millions of hunters, shooting sports enthusiasts and military and law enforcement personnel.

Despite emotional reporting of baseless and unproven allegations and plaintiff lawyer assertions, several undisputed facts remain:

The Model 700 is the most popular, reliable, accurate and trusted bolt-action rifle in the world, with over 5 million rifles produced and billions of rounds fired over nearly five decades.

The Model 700 is the firearm of choice for elite shooters from America’s military and law enforcement communities, and has been the platform for the United States Marine Corps and the U.S. Army precision sniper weapon systems for over two decades, both of which specifically require the “Walker” trigger mechanism.

The Model 700, including its trigger mechanism, has been free of any defect since it was first produced and, despite any careless reporting to the contrary, the gun’s use by millions of Americans has proven it to be a safe, trusted and reliable rifle.

Both Remington and experts hired by plaintiff attorneys have conducted testing on guns returned from the field which were alleged to have fired without a trigger pull, and neither has ever been able to duplicate such an event on guns which had been properly maintained and which had not been altered after sale.

Remington takes safety very seriously. We support hunter safety and other educational programs nationwide, and include with every Remington firearm the “Ten Commandments of Firearm Safety,” which urgently remind every gun owner that if proper firearms safety rules are followed, no accidental injuries would ever occur.

The men and women who build, own and shoot the Remington Model 700 take great pride in a product that, over the last half century, has set the bar for safety, reliability and performance.

I just don’t know how else to say it: this is false.  The evidence shows that numerous malfunctions occurred during internal Remington testing, from the firing pin moving forward during the bolt locking cycle to firing when the safety was moved to the “off” position.

As I’ve said before as a registered professional engineer, if I designed a machine that had such malfunctions I would immediately demand “stop work” on the manufacture of the machine until I understood what exactly had happened in the design or manufacture to cause the malfunctions.  Only when those problems had been corrected would I have allowed manufacture to continue.

I wouldn’t do this because I fear retribution from customers, or neglect to do it because I fear retribution from the employer.  I would do this because it is the right thing to do, because it is the ethical thing to do, and because I swore an oath to protect the safety and health of the public in order to be granted my license to practice engineering.  There are things more important than money.

Remington didn’t do any of this, but rather, fought it all the way through the process, even ignoring their own internal reports and concerns of their testing engineers.  Don’t take my word for it.  Go read the evidence for yourself.  In my estimation, Remington is suffering for their ethical failures even as I write.  And I don’t understand why Remington is still trying to rewrite the history of the Model 700.  This is just befuddling.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!

David Codrea:

Perhaps one day, applying St. Ambrose’s admonishment to Mumbai will mean JPFO members will feel right at home with a “gun culture” that supports the dignity of all peaceable human beings by not infringing on their choices. That’s the beauty of freedom, and something “Ugly Indians” seem incapable of grasping, as they use their media megaphones to demand colonial mindset defenselessness be imposed on the country that welcomed them in.

But letting ideas do battle in the marketplace and recognizing God-given rights to self defense would run contrary to the collectivist world view of our ruling elite!  That’s why our ruling elite are so anxious to let so many in who would further empower the rulers.

Kurt Hofmann:

When elected officials undertake actions that they fear would anger those they claim to “represent”–fear so strongly, in fact, that they seek to hide their involvement from the voters–they dodge accountability for their actions. The residents of these legislators’ states are their employers–their superiors. In what other line of work is it acceptable for the hired help to do their jobs in a manner that’s hidden from their employers?

But if they did things in an open manner that would return us to the very republic our founders envisioned and mitigate the power of the ruling elites.  We can’t have that happening.

Mike Vanderboegh:

This opinion piece in the LA Times by Jared Diamond was also mirrored at RealClearDefense. Diamond is no Media Matters collectivist putz. He is a Pulitzer Prize winner and thought of as a deep thinker in certain quarters. So when he writes of “the enemy within,” you have to take him seriously. And who are “the enemy within?” Why us, of course.

Read the piece at Sipsey Street Irregulars.  Use of the military would violate the law and recognized historical precedent.  But failure to do so would mean that the ruling elite might actually be held accountable for the tyranny they perpetrate.  Expect to see more calls for use of the U.S. military in counterinsurgency and stability operations in America, as well as further militarization of the police.

Lead ammunition ban passed in California after the federal government knowingly and intentionally (with malice) withheld key technical data and information.  That doesn’t surprise you, does it?