Archive for the 'Guns' Category

Washington Times:

Magpul Industries, a firearms-accessories maker, announced Thursday that it will relocate its extensive manufacturing facilities to Texas and Wyoming, in angry response to the Colorado legislature’s passage of sweeping gun-control legislation in 2013.

At the same time, the company plans to maintain a toehold in Colorado in order to continue to fight the gun bills passed by the Democratic-dominated state legislature and signed in March by Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper.

“Moving operations to states that support our culture of individual liberties and personal responsibility is important,” said Magpul CEO Richard Fitzpatrick, who started the privately-held company in 1999 from the basement of his home in Longmont, Colo. “This relocation will also improve business operations and logistics as we utilize the strengths of Texas and Wyoming in our expansion.”

Magpul officials plan to split up the company’s corporate and manufacturing arms, both of which are now located in Erie, Colo. The corporate headquarters will relocate to Texas, and a site-selection committee has narrowed the final destination to three locations in the state’s north-central region.

Meanwhile, Magpul’s manufacturing and distribution facility will move about 80 miles north to Cheyenne, Wyo. Company officials say they plan to lease a 58,000-square-foot building for two to three years while they construct a 100,000-square-foot custom facility in the Cheyenne Business Parkway.

Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead, a Republican, said in a statement that “Wyoming and Magpul are a great match.”

“Bringing an innovative and growing manufacturing operating to Wyoming is a significant step for the state,” Mr. Mead said. “We offer Magpul an attractive tax environment, stable and reasonable regulations, not to mention a firm commitment to uphold the Second Amendment.”

Magpul must have gotten some deal on taxes to have decided to split the manufaturing and corporate offices like this.  Unless I knew the details, it sounds like an odd move.

Trust me when I say that we’ve been watching.  Magpul promised to leave, and we would have been furious with them if they had broken that promise.  My next rifle is a Winchester Model 70 Sporter, .270, made right down the road from me in Columbia, S.C., at the FN plant.  It’s on order and paid for.  I liked what I saw, but one factor in my decision was to avoid purchasing a Remington from New York, first because of the union shop, and second because I won’t reward a communist state like New York.

We gun owners are patient, but diligent to reward those with whom we agree.  Hopefully, all other gun and parts manufacturers are watching.

First in dealing with this subject, a bit of background is in order for my readers who were not around for my military coverage and commentary.  My son Daniel was in the 2/6 Marines and conducted a combat tour of Iraq in 2007 to Fallujah.  At this time, the foreign fighters were retreating from Ramadi due to robust Marine Corps (and other) operations there combined with the so-called tribal awakening.  Fallujah was a bad place, and the baddest of the fighters had ensconced themselves there.

The people were so aligned with the insurgents that upon the initial patrols by the Marine Corps, the Marines found themselves to be surrounded by the children of the city, carrying black balloons, the balloons being used to assist the insurgents to sight mortar fire.  As I said, it was a bad, bad place.  The people were willing to send their children out to assist the insurgents.  My son was a SAW gunner, and in addition to patrols and other city-wide operations, he shot insurgents crossing the Euphrates river attempting to enter Fallujah.

Robert Bateman isn’t limited to one idiotic article (indeed, he has written a multitude of them) – he has penned yet another one.

Way back in 2007, I personally invited Wayne LaPierre, the director of the National Rifle Association, to live in Baghdad. I had been there, less than 24 months earlier, and I thought LaPierre might appreciate the opportunity to live in a society which lived up to his standards. Surprisingly, he never took this offer up, nor did he ever visit the troops in Iraq, or Afghanistan for that matter, which is, well, normal for him. He likes his guns, but he is really not cool with being surrounded by them, like he would have been, had he ever visited our troops in Baghdad, or Helmand, or Kabul…or basically anywhere.

In Iraq, every single household (with a male that is) may have one assault rifle. This seems to be Mr. Wayne LaPierre’s ideal. And interestingly, we have a country (a couple, actually) where his vision exists. Iraq and Afghanistan.

This article isn’t really about Wayne LaPierre so much as it’s about Bateman’s false presuppositions.  So I talked with Daniel today and he gives me the following assessment.

Bateman is a dumb ass.  The insurgency in Fallujah ended because we locked down the city and made it to where the people had to deal with it or live in utter isolation from everyone else and with no means of transportation, with two ways into and out of the city.

Lt. Col. William F. Mullen (now Col. Mullen) was the unmitigated sovereign of the city.  Nothing happened without his approval.  The Iraqis may have had a right to automobiles too, but we took them away.  If Mullen had wanted to confiscate AK-47s from the folk we could have done that.  The chain of command in Baghdad left us alone, and we did what we wanted to do.

Every family had a fully functional, fully automatic AK-47.  It wasn’t a problem.  I was never shot at except by the insurgents, and mainly the foreign fighters – bad people from Syria, Egypt, Iran, blacks from Africa, and some fighters with slanted eyes from the Far East.  I looked in the face of every man I killed, and some of them had slanted eyes and were of Far Eastern descent.

We did confiscate some weapons caches, but only the ones hidden by the insurgents when the people gave us the intel.  The AK-47s were used by some of the people to fight the insurgents, but they weren’t used on us.  We were fighting the insurgents, and mainly foreign fighters.  We were not afraid of the AK-47s owned by the families.  The families helped us shut down the insurgency when we made it clear that they had to do that.

Now, it may be that this experience doesn’t apply to Baghdad, but that’s the point, isn’t it?  Guns are just machines, and can be used for good or ill.  Because Bateman cannot control people like he wishes (as the good social planner we wants to be, given that the Army has turned into a cadre of fruitcakes and social “scientists” – I use the word sarcastically), he wants to control their machines.

But this doesn’t work either.  The foreign fighters brought their own weapons with them.  The families would have been left utterly defenseless without their own AK-47s, which is the way Bateman wants us left.  Bateman wants us defenseless because that’s what the state wants.  The concern to them isn’t our own protection – it is the protection of the state from it’s people.

So that summarizes a brief conversation with my son.  Much more could be said, but I’ll leave it there.  Oh, and to Mr. Bateman, Daniel thinks you’re a dumb ass.  Or did I mention that already?

NYT:

A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that New York’s strict new gun laws, including an expanded ban on assault weapons, were constitutional, but struck down a provision forbidding gun owners to load more than seven rounds into a magazine.

The ruling offered a victory to gun control advocates at the end of a year in which efforts to pass new legislation on the federal level suffered a high-profile defeat in Congress, although some new restrictions were approved in state capitals.

The judge, William M. Skretny of Federal District Court in Buffalo, said expanded bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines were legally sound because they served to “further the state’s important interest in public safety.”

Mike Vanderboegh is also covering this.  I’ve told you guys before – really, I’ve told you before – that it is a mistake to look to federal courts and the Second Amendment to protect your rights at the state level.  It’s the wrong strategy.  All politics is local, and that includes gun politics.

Kurt Homfmann resolves to be a gun criminal.  What will the gun owners of New York do?

Kurt Hofmann:

As a wheelchair-bound paraplegic (and owner of multiple so-called “assault weapons”), this correspondent is quite familiar with the issue.

Yeah, read all of Kurt’s article here.  He’s dealing with the fact that the so-called assault weapons ban is highly opposed by the disabled.  I’ll bet so.  I was entering a home just yesterday in which I didn’t know who or what (animal) was there to do me harm (I won’t go into the details of what home or why I was there). I did room clearing exercises for about ten minutes before I went to work on what I went there to do.  I moved freely and without hindrance, but as dictated by the room layout and the general rules for performing such tactical maneuvers.  I never paused to think about how something like this would be done if I was disabled.  Limiting the weaponry you allow a disabled person to use – or anyone for that matter – is morally obscene.

David Codrea:

Since this column was published, the errant link now goes to a page that states …

Read the rest.  My bet is that David’s column pressured the Illinois police into doing their jobs.  Speaking, you know, of the morally obscene as we were.

Via Uncle, Only Guns and Money reports:

The National Shooting Sports Foundation has released a poll today that shows only 40% of Americans want universal background checks at gun shows. The difference in the poll results is because contextual detail was added to the question. Instead of asking do you want to close the “gun show loophole” or other such nonsense, the poll points out that most sales at gun shows are conducted with background checks and are by FFLs.

The poll goes further. Only 39% of respondents thought that requiring a background check for transferring a firearm between friends or family members would reduce violent crime. That’s a long way from 90% in my calculations.

But my readers always knew it was a lie from the beginning.

Mike Vanderboegh is pressing ahead with his “Toys for Jerks” program, which he covers here, here, here, here, here, and so on.  Go read his site for updates periodically.

The New York Times admits gun reporting screw ups here.  If you’re interested go take a look.  It goes to show that the writers for the NYT don’t know anything about guns – or even rudimentary mathematics like measurements and fractions.  But you knew that already, didn’t you?  Perhaps before landing a job reporting for the NYT, they ought to require that their reporters go get a real job for ten or fifteen years first, you know, something like pouring and finishing concrete, doing steel rigging, welding, roofing, carpentry, etc.  A real job.  Instead of what they do.

A couple of weeks ago Slate reported on mass shootings in America.  It turns out that they aren’t on the rise, and that they are not committed by mentally unstable people who suddenly snap.  They are committed by evil people bent on wicked behavior, and their numbers have been pretty stable.  But as a regular reader, you knew that already, didn’t you?  No, seriously, you already knew this.

Denver Post:

The man credited with the design of the AK-47, Michail Kalashnokov, is dead at 94.  The boys at reddit/guns are in mourning and shock.  But it’s Soviet propaganda that makes him the sole designer of the weapon.

Exactly how the winning design was created remains murky, but contrary to Soviet propaganda, it is clear that Kalashnikov got plenty of help — not only from other Russian konstruktors but (more embarrassing) from a captured German arms designer, Hugo Schmeisser, who during World War II had created an early assault rifle (the Sturmgewehr) that bore an uncanny resemblance to what became the AK-47. But even though the AK-47 was the product of considerable collaboration, it was Kalashnikov who got the glory. He was twice named a Hero of Socialist Labor and acquired sufficient riches to buy a refrigerator, vacuum cleaner and automobile — all scarce commodities in postwar Russia. Eventually he would become a lieutenant general and a world-famous symbol of the Soviet arms industry.

I will always be a fan and advocate of the Stoner design, and as an engineer I like and appreciate the tight tolerances on my AR-15.  It’s a precise and well functioning weapon, and I don’t like the feel of the clanking and rattling of the AK-47.

Around my house we speak the name of Eugene Stoner with hushed reverence.  However, there is no questioning the fact that the name Kalashnikov is significant around the world, and the weapon named after him has been an important feature of modern world history – just as has the Stoner design.

Reno-Gazzete-Journal:

If we have learned anything in the year that has passed since 20 young children and six adults were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. (also dead were the shooter, Adam Lanza, and his mother, Nancy), it’s that Americans are incapable of having a rational discussion of the role of guns in our lives no matter how many tragedies they have endured.On the first anniversary of the shooting, President Barack Obama called for new gun-control measures, but there will be none. There won’t even be a serious discussion of the possibility of trying to stanch the flood of guns in this nation. Congress and most states gave short shrift to gun-control measures in the past year, and, in Colorado, one state that approved minor changes in the law, lawmakers found themselves the target of a well-financed recall campaign. Already, two have lost their posts.

Oh, we’re quite able to talk about guns.  We have non-stop for more than one year now, and before then always when the collectivists are in office.  It’s just that the country has listened and replied a resounding no.  The collectivists don’t like the answer, and thus the charge that “we can’t talk about it,” or in other words, we can’t talk you into our plans for national disarmament and reservation of the use of force to government forces of occupation no matter what falsehood we purvey.

Joe Manchin knows the same to be true.

Sen. Joe Manchin says rounding up the votes to pass a bill creating background checks for gun purchases next year is going to be “difficult.”

While saying he’s “hopeful” that some would change their minds, the West Virginia Democrat acknowledged there are Democrats who opposed the bill creating background checks for gun purchases.

“Hopefully, they would maybe reconsider,” Manchin said in an interview aired Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “It’s going to be difficult to get the extra votes that we need. I’m going to be honest with you.”

Manchin, a gun owner who had a top rating from the National Rifle Association, negotiated a background check bill with Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut. But the measure stalled in the Senate in April when it failed to get the needed 60 votes to advance.

Manchin said gun owners didn’t oppose background checks in theory but were concerned that government wouldn’t stop with checks.

Note that Joe still has hopes of disarmament of the American people, he just thinks it won’t work.  He hasn’t lost his progressive, collectivist credentials.  Once a totalitarian, always a totalitarian – a lesson we hope that America has learned well when it comes time to cast a vote for gun grabber Chris Christie.

And as for universal background checks, we all know that it wouldn’t stop there.  But that doesn’t mean that we don’t oppose universal background checks on principle.  I oppose it whether it leads anywhere else or not.  It has nothing to do with crime.  That’s just a lie told by the hive.

Salon:

Imagine you’ve volunteered to participate in a study on a college campus. You arrive to find the lab somewhat cluttered: There’s a badminton racquet and some shuttlecocks on a table. The researchers tell you to ignore that stuff — it’s for a different study. They hook you up to a machine that administers electric shocks, and hand the controls to another participant like yourself. He zaps you. Repeatedly. (He’s secretly part of the research team, following specific instructions — but as far as you know he’s just being a jerk.) Now it’s your turn to zap him. How many shocks will you administer?

Leonard Berkowitz and Anthony LePage repeated this experiment with 100 male students at the University of Wisconsin, sometimes replacing the badminton equipment with a revolver and shotgun (or no stimulus at all). They found that participants administered more electric shocks when in the presence of guns. According to Berkowitz and LePage, the weapons were “aggressive cues.”

A later study at the University of Utah refined our understanding of the weapons effect. Psychologists watched the behavior of drivers stuck at an intersection behind a truck that wouldn’t budge when the light turned green. Sometimes there was a gun displayed in the truck’s rear window and sometimes there wasn’t. The researchers observed that people honked more often when they saw the gun.

Recent experiments have shown that even when nobody has been tormenting you with electric shocks or inciting your road rage, you’ll react to a gun differently than you’d react to other objects in your environment. You’ll automatically see the gun as a threat, without even realizing it.

“The ‘threat superiority effect’ is the tendency for people to be able to pick out very quickly in their environment things that might pose a threat to their security — anything that might be dangerous,” explains Isabelle Blanchette, a professor of psychology at the University of Quebec. “People have a tendency to be able to see these things before they see other things.”

When I read this article I didn’t imagine at all that I volunteered for a study.  What I did imagine is a world in which psychologists have to train in something useful and worthwhile to mankind and get a real job that earns a living doing something good and productive with their time.

But it was all just a day dream.  The “threat superiority effect.”  There you have it.  I assume that there were some government dollars in their somewhere.  And that’s what you’re promulgating to the world when you openly carry a weapon.  Threat superiority.

Okay.  If they say so.

David Codrea:

Against armed sociopaths, unarmed protection is severely limited, and New Jersey gun laws ensure the advantage goes to the predators.

Like I discussed here, you can contrast that with shall issue states.  The picture is stark and self explanatory.  Gun control laws are unsafe.  They prevent people from doing their duty of defending themselves and their loved ones.  Thus they are all evil.

David  Codrea:

What is immediately noticeable is a total absence of anyone even remotely sympathetic to an individual and uninfringed right to keep and bear arms having a position of influence in the seminar. While some with an eye toward safeguarding America’s unique intended protections may attend to keep apprised of the latest developments, others with a less tolerant and patent view of meddling internationalists plotting to undermine their rights …

I’ve covered their meddling here.  To me this is simple.  If I won’t allow the U.S. federal government to steal my firearms, I certainly won’t allow foreign bodies – armed or not – to do the same.  Case closed.  If you want conflict, bring it.  ‘Nuff said.

Kurt Hofmann:

Comparing gun control to the Holocaust is one of a number of faulty and offensive analogies the gun rights movement has used to illegitimize [sic] gun reform measures.

Kurt is covering the progressive Jewish reaction to the use of the holocaust to assess gun control measures.  I saw this too and hadn’t commented on it, and Mr. Abraham Foxman says to us, “No matter how strong one’s objections are to a policy or how committed an organization is to its mission, invoking the Holocaust to score political points is offensive and has no place in civil discourse.”  Well, let me respond by saying that a hit dog always yelps, and if the comparison is valid, I’ll make it any time I want.  Oh, and don’t tell me what to do, Mr. Foxman.

Uncle notes that Mayors against guns merges with Moms Demand Action.  I see this as a sign of weakness rather than strength.  Sort of like when Ansar al Sunna merged with al Qaeda in Iraq when both began to lose to the U.S. Marines deployed in the Anbar Province.  Did I just really make that comparison?  I guess I did.  So be it.

David Codrea:

“He has given his life to the community,” Owens said in court. “I’m not sure how much more punishment is actually appropriate.” [More]Maybe you could find instances where someone without a badge has “accidentally” shot a cop and that would give you a pretty good benchmark…

Gave his life to the community?  You mean to tell me that he didn’t get paid for his work all of those years?  He did it all for free?

Star Tribune:

A northeast Minneapolis man interrupted an armed and bloody robbery at a corner market in his neighborhood, saying he sent the two suspects fleeing when he drew his handgun from his holster and had it “at the ready.”

Store owner Mohamed S. Ahmed, 41, had the “back of his skull split open pretty good” from being pistol-whipped by one of the suspects, said Matt Dosser, who came upon the unfolding crime scene and cared for Ahmed until police arrived.

Police said Wednesday that the armed citizen, who said he has a so-called “permit to carry,”  acted with honor and probably saved Ahmed’s life. But, they added, holding such a permit does not mean having the same law-enforcing rights as a police officer.

[ … ]

Dosser said he was out for a walk and the two people, possibly in their late teens, “were pounding on the window of the store. … They seemed really agitated, super agitated.”

At first, “nothing made sense, then I saw the gun” that one of the two had, Dosser continued.

The gunman “turned around and looked at me,” Dosser said. “He stared at me. I had my weapon up. I didn’t point the gun at the person. I had it at the ready, out of the holster.

In 2003, Minnesota’s so-called “shall issue” permit law took effect, making it easier for residents to carry loaded weapons in public.

Police spokesman John Elder said that what Dosser did “was a noble thing. He acted honorably. Did this person possibly save [Ahmed’s] life? Absolutely.”

However, Elder continued, “The permit system is different, obviously, than having a police officer’s license. … When people get a permit to carry, they are instructed not to intercede into a crime that is occurring. It’s solely for personal protection.”

Leave it to the police to throw a wet blanket on the honorable act by setting themselves apart from citizens, just so that you know.  It’s important to them that you know they are special.

He’s lying anyway (see Castle Rock v. Gonzales).  Regarding the incident above, the man’s life was probably saved, and even if not, he got medical assistance sooner than would otherwise be the case.

In contrast, folks in Newark, New Jersey are facing an epidemic of crime.

Short Hills, New Jersey (My9NJ) – The two suspects wanted for the recent shooting of a young lawyer in front of his wife during a carjacking gone terribly wrong at Short Hills Mall, are still at large.

The couples’ stolen SUV was found the following day abandoned in Newark and New Jersey’s largest city ranks among the top in the nation for vehicle thefts.

There are about 400 carjackings a year in Essex County alone. While Los Angeles and New York rank high in carjackings, Newark takes the cake.

In fact, people in Newark are known for posting videos of stolen cars doing drag races, donuts and drifting in the streets. Often times, in the videos, you can see cop cars chasing the reckless divers on the city’s main streets.

Perhaps the motorists need guns for protection, and I’m willing to lay good money on the notion that the carjackings would stop if several of these criminals got shot during the act.

Er … oh yea.  New Jersey isn’t a shall issue state.  And Chris Christie – presumed candidate for the highest office in the land in several years and who made his fame pushing gun control – was unavailable for comment.