Archive for the 'Guns' Category

Someone who calls himself The Reverend:

Fewer Americans own guns, yet more and more guns are being purchased by fewer and fewer Americans. 44% of Republicans feel that armed revolution against government will be necessary in the near future. So, my question today is this: Are Republicans and conservatives in America stockpiling guns to prepare to fight their own government in some armed revolution they believe is coming in the near future?

Oh, it would be possible to wax on about hundreds of trillions of dollars in unfunded liabilities, or the cost of $6.3 trillion to U.S. taxpayers for amnesty, the coming attempt to avoid collapse of the Keynesian economic system by forcible confiscation of our 401K and retirement, or any of the other tyrannies and moral maladies with which our government and the elite are afflicted.

But rather than wax on about this, I’ll tailor my answer for him by focusing on brevity.

Yes.

I’m glad I could be of assistance.

On patrol through the neighborhood, that is:

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WTVR) — In the wake of the attacks the country has dealt with over the past year many people are thinking of taking their safety into their own hands.

In fact, 19-year-old John Schultz has been spending his days patrolling his Charlotte, North Carolina neighborhood with a WWII rifle strapped to his back.

Schultz said his grandfather used the gun in the war and that he is ready to keep his neighborhood safe.

However, the 19-year-old patrolling the subdivision does not sit well with everyone.

Neighbor Vanessa Aidara said the rifle frightens she and her children. She also said the it is a bad image for Walnut Creek.

“He could be good without the rifle,” Aidara said. “I think the rifle is what scares everybody because why do you need a rifle to pick up trash. Get a trash bag. “

On the other hand, Schultz said many other folks in the neighborhood thank him for his service.

“I won’t brandish a firearm or anything, I won’t chase somebody around,” he promised. “I will ask them to stop.”

So far he says he has spotted peeping toms and potential burglars, who he said ran off after seeing him. But for the most part, he’s just been picking up litter.

Police said Schultz is not breaking any laws since he’s not pointing the gun at anyone or threatening anyone with it.

I’ll let you reach your own conclusions about this specific instance.  What interests me is that North Carolina is an open carry state, and as I’ve made clear before, I openly carry at certain times.  I don’t do it to make a point.  If I am openly carryng it is usually because I am doing something where I don’t want the weapon to interfere with my movements, get in the way or get lathered up with sweat (such as IWB carry while walking my dog in the middle of the summer).  And as I’ve note before, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police wave and smile as they drive by when they observe me openly carrying a weapon.  No problems, no stops, and no women or children running or screaming in fear.  In fact, this has led to more amicable discussions with neighbors than I can count.

It isn’t always this way.  Sean Sorrentino notes an instance where the 4th Circuit had to reprimand the Charlotte Police for using openly carrying a weapon as a reason to stop an individual, even someone who later turned out to have been guilty of a crime.  Even worse, I know individuals who live around the Lake Norman / Huntersville area (North of Charlotte) who openly carry, and one particular individual has been stopped by both local and state police.  Both times the law enforcement officer unholstered his weapon and pointed at my friend for doing nothing more than walking on the sidewalk.

Note to law enforcement in North Carolina.  The answer above by the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police (“not breaking any laws …”) is the right one.  You cannot lawfully detain or arrest someone for openly carrying a weapon.  It is legal in North Carolina, as North Carolina is a traditional open carry state.  LEOs need to know and understand the law.  If you continue to unholster and point your weapons at someone who is behaving legally, an innocent person will eventually be harmed or killed and you will be responsible for it.  Don’t be ignorant.  Be thinking men and women.

University of Georgia:

A University of Georgia student used a rifle to chase away a burglar who kicked in his door while the student was napping Monday evening, according to a Athens-Clarke County police incident report.

The 25-year-old student told police he heard the door bell ring once, then four to five more times at his residence on Old Winterville Road at 7:50 p.m. He thought his roommate locked himself out or a neighbor needed him, so he started going downstairs when he “heard a loud bang.” He called downstairs and only heard a mumbled voice in return. The student grabbed his Marlin .270 rifle and called 911, according to the report.

When police arrived, they found the door frame torn off in the doorway.

A neighbor told police she saw a black male running from the victim’s residence to East Broad Street. She described him as wearing a white long sleeved shirt and a navy striped shirt on top. He was also wearing white pants and a white do-rag on his head. Other police units were notified, and they concluded the description matched that of a man who was suspected of other property crimes.

Later, Tolbert Lee Stanley, 44, of North Peter Street, was caught and charged with burglary. He was booked into the ACC jail Monday at 10:45 p.m. Stanley was named as a suspect on the incident report.

See the wonderful things that can be accomplished with a rifle?  It may be an AR-15, but it doesn’t have to be.  You use the tool you’ve got, and you fight government attempts to limit the tools at your disposal.  It can just as well be a bolt action .270 if this is the tool of choice for you.

The .270 is a sweet round.  You don’t want to be on the receiving end.  The point is to make your choice and then make sure that your tool is ready for your use.

See also Another Example Of AR-15s Benefiting Mankind

From Shingleton, Michigan:

Police say an Iraq War veteran thwarted two would-be burglars at his northern Michigan gas station by kicking one of them and ordering them away with an AR-15 rifle.

State police said Shawn Schank was inside the gas station about 4:10 a.m. Sunday in Shingleton, an Upper Peninsula community in Alger County, when two people wearing ski masks forced their way into the building and approached the cash register.

Police say Schank kicked one of them, retrieved the AR-15 from his office and ordered the burglars to leave.

Police say one of the burglars took off his mask and pleaded with Schank not to shoot him before both suspects fled on foot.

Police say they arrested a 17-year-old from Shingleton and an 18-year-old from Munising. They’re jailed pending charges.

“Pleaded with Schank not to shoot him.”  “Jailed pending charges.”  Could this report get any better?  It’s yet another example of AR-15s benefiting mankind.  It makes me all warm inside.  How about you?

Prior:

No One Needs ARs for Self Defense Or Hunting

Save The Planet – Buy An AR!

AR Category

Watch.  Learn.  Think tactically.  Why would we practice a drill like this?  Spend time.  Practice.  Get good like Jerry.  Be like Jerry.

I’ll only note one thing that pops out to me. Jerry doesn’t use a forend grip. Also consider Travis Haley’s advice concerning forend grips (“Art Of The Tactical Carbine”), for guys who grip it like a broomstick. It lends itself to over-sweeping the target rather than landing on it, as well as rocking of the carbine.

Haley recommends use of the magwell-style grip, where the hand is firmly on the firearm and using the forend grip as a brace. Jerry avoids use of the forend grip altogether. I’m not recommending anything – merely observing and taking notes for my own drills to see what works best for me.

After the draconian gun laws that the Connecticut Legislature and Governor just enacted, even though firearms manufacturers are threatening to leave Connecticut, it’s still an open question what will come of the gun makers.  Only a small part of Colt has left for greener pastures in Texas.  After showing their hand on both the state and national stage, two Connecticut Democrats have put an interesting twist into gun politics.

In a move that an antigun group calls “lousy timing” and “bizarre,” Connecticut lawmakers are pushing to create a national park out of the historic former site of the Colt firearms plant in Hartford, just 50 miles from the site of the school shooting massacre in Newtown.

“If you want to glorify a gun maker, there’s other ways to do it, other than to create a new national park,” said Ladd Everitt, a spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, a group made up of 47 organizations and associations.

Two Connecticut Democrats, Rep. John Larson and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, reintroduced the legislation this year to create the “Coltsville” National Historical Park on the site, which includes the Colt Armory and other buildings that were part of the 19th-century industrial enterprise founded by Samuel Colt. The entire congressional delegation supports the legislation.

But while some might say the effort is inappropriate in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting on Dec. 14–and perhaps out of step with gun-control efforts in Congress that both Larson and Blumenthal have supported–the lawmakers say they see nothing untoward.

“The senator does not see a connection” between his efforts to get the national historic park established and his efforts at gun control, said a Blumenthal spokeswoman.

Rather, both he and Larson argue that the Coltsville complex is a “historic treasure” that they say enshrines Colt’s role in advancing the industrial revolution and manufacturing in Connecticut and nationwide.

Indeed, there is no disputing the role that Colt played in the history of Connecticut and the United States. Samuel Colt founded his Colt’s Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company in the mid-19th century. It wasn’t long before its Peacemaker six-shot revolver revolutionized personal firearms.

[ … ]

While family members of victims of the Newtown shootings have remained quiet on the park issue, Ron Pinciaro, executive director of CT Against Gun Violence, said that it has crossed his mind that one motivation for elected officials to rally behind the national park effort could be to show that Connecticut values and wants to retain major companies in the firearms industry.

This is just rich – American politics at its best, or worst.  We know that there have been untold number of Connecticut citizens who have told the political authorities that they intend to ignore the most recent Connecticut gun laws.  We know that Colt has threatened to leave Connecticut.  And we now know that gun control fizzled at the national level, so political alignments of convenience in supporting gun control don’t look like such a good plan in retrospect.  Is this Blumenthal’s attempt to stay relevant in Connecticut?  Is he simply trying to prevent manufacturing from leaving and taking jobs and revenue with them?  Does he really believe that there is a distinction between the legendary single-action revolver and an AR-15 in the recent violence in Connecticut, given that the shooter had no opposition due to schools being gun free zones?  Does he really believe that others will believe such a thing?

Ah.  The questions are so promising, the potential discussion so pregnant, textured and rich.  And I welcome the remarkable hypocrisy with open arms and a joyful heart.

David Codrea:

Citing an observation in Politico that “Immigration reform could be a bonanza for Democrats [and] cripple Republican prospects in many states they now win easily,” Gun Owners of America warned members and supporters yesterday against S. 744. The bill, introduced by Sen. Chuck Schumer, prompted GOA to predict that if it passes, “by 2035, the American electorate will have changed so fundamentally that California-style gun control could become a very real possibility in this country!”

Read it all at Examiner, and then return here for some additional analysis.  There are reasons why amnesty has always been pushed by the progressives and crony capitalists, and reasons why amnesty empowers the progressives in perpetuity.

Regarding the issue of crony capitalists, I have explained that before.

The use of illegal immigrants (migrant workers) is a form of price supports for the agri-industry.  The employers who “hire” them do not supply them with medical insurance or pay them enough to afford automobile insurance.  When these workers become sick or injured, they do not forgo medical care – they go to the local hospital.  Our medical bills and insurance coverage premiums pay for these services to the illegals.  Similarly, our uninsured motorist coverage pays for the insurance that the illegals should be purchasing.  These are merely two examples (a legion of examples could be given) that show that the employer is receiving a form of corporate welfare at the expense of the middle class in America.  The employer is in favor of the use of illegals to do work because it is beneficial to their purse, not because it benefits America.  The employer will always favor the reassignment of financial burden to someone else in order to help the “bottom line.”  But the bottom line for the employer and the bottom line for the taxpayer and ratepayer is not necessarily the same bottom line.  The free market argument to support the hiring of illegals is a smokescreen.  America had a free market before the advent of illegal immigrants and migrant workers.  The existence of illegals is not essential to the existence of the free market.

The reason that progressives want open borders should be clear enough, although I have also discussed this issue.  … “for historical reasons to do with the nationalisation of the land under Lázaro Cárdenas and the predominant form of peasant land tenure, which was “village cooperative” rather than based on individual plots, the demand for “land to the tiller” in Mexico does not imply an individual plot for every peasant or rural worker or family. In Mexico, collectivism among the peasantry is a strong tradition … one consequence of these factors is that the radical political forces among the rural population are on the whole explicitly anti-capitalist and socialist in their ideology. Sometimes this outlook is expressed in support for guerilla organisations; but struggle movements of the rural population are widespread, and they spontaneously ally with the most militant city-based leftist organisations.”

One of the reasons for this reflexive alignment with leftism has to do with the the mid-twentieth century and what the Sovient Union and allied ideologies accomplished.  South and Central America was the recipient or receptacle for socialism draped in religious clothing, or in other words, liberation theology.  Its purveyors were Roman Catholic priests who had been trained in Marxism, and they were very successful in giving the leftists a moral platform upon which to build.  This ideology spread North from South and Central America into Mexico, and thus the common folk in Mexico are quite steeped in collectivist ideology from battles that were fought decades ago.

GOA is correct.  Open borders would cause (and has already caused) a tilt towards collectivist ideology in America, and it is a tilt from which there is no return.  Grandparents teach it to parents, parents teach it to children, and those children grow up to teach it to their children.  Collectivist ideology is inimical to freedom and gun ownership.  Take whatever position you wish, but realize that the politics of control doesn’t want you to know the truth.

There is one other player I should mention in this debacle, and that is the American church, both Roman Catholic and Protestant.  My readers know about my lamentations over the ignorance and stupidity of the church.  The ignorance of the church doesn’t stop with pacifism, but extends as well to advocacy for broken borders in the name of compassion.  This compassion conflates personal morality with national identify and security, but don’t try to explain that to the pacifists.  Just know that this problem exists.

If you care about freedom and liberty for your family, you should care about firearms and preparing for the coming national difficulties.  In order to understand the context for the difficulties, you should assume that politics isn’t ever really about compassion.  It’s always about control.

Prior:

Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment

Mexican Cartels: Warlords

Changes In The Mexican Border Strategy

Counterinsurgency On The U.S, Southern Border

The New Yorker in a piece on The Tsarnaevs and Their Guns:

At nineteen years old, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev wasn’t old enough to legally own most guns. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, at twenty-six, was, but he reportedly didn’t hold the permit that Massachusetts requires of gun owners. But according to published reports, there were at least four on the scene in Watertown: an M4 carbine rifle, which is, the Times notes, “similar to ones used by American forces in Afghanistan,” along with two handguns and a BB gun (the only one that Dzhokhar could have legally owned). If nothing else, these facts ensure that the Tsarnaevs’ names won’t just come up in relation to the discussion about immigration reform that is taking place in Washington right now, but in the ongoing debate about gun control as well.

 Some on the right have already begun arguing that the fact that the Tsarnaevs apparently owned their guns illegally is evidence that gun laws simply don’t work. “Since they didn’t obey the laws already on the books, maybe more laws for them to ignore would have helped,” Doug Powers wrote for Michelle Malkin’s Web site. “Maybe a separate law with slightly different wording that had ‘seriously, pay attention to this one – we’re not kidding’ written in bold would have gotten their attention.” Many other conservative bloggers have expressed similar sentiments over the past day.

That the Tsarnaevs had guns doesn’t “prove” that criminals disobey the law and that guns laws don’t work.  We knew that anyway.  Violation of laws is a function of the fact that someone is a criminal.  Furthermore, the problem isn’t that the author of this petty piece doesn’t know “how the Tsarnaevs got their guns.” He doesn’t know this information any more than he knows my favorite color or what I ate for lunch today, and none of it is any of his business.

The real problem is the way this article has been framed, and the stated assumption that any of this has a part in the “ongoing debate about gun control.”  That they had guns may be analogous to the fact that they may have had parking tickets, but it just isn’t related to the use of bombs to kill and maim innocent people.  Only the left could turn this event on its head like this, and rather than debating and discussing the religious motivations for the action, debate how inanimate objects sitting in their clauset at home should affect the rest of us because of something completely unrelated to those objects.

For the progressives among us, I know what you’re thinking, or at least what you want your fellow progressives to think.  It took on all the hallmarks of a major defeat, the gun bill fiasco did.  Your President, your progressives in the Senate, and the turncoat Republicans all conspired to push your agenda, and it crashed and burned.  You’re heartbroken and outraged at the same time.

You’ve tried to convince yourself that it wasn’t really the defeat it seemed.  The tactics are to blame.  “While an A rating from the NRA has long been a point of pride for politicians, MAIG is hoping its grades soon will carry the same weight to ensure votes and donations. The Mayors Against Illegal Guns Scorecard will incorporate the voting records, bill co-sponsorships, and public statements of members of Congress to determine a letter grade, NRA-style. MAIG will look at politicians’ stances on high-capacity magazines, background checks, and state authority to establish standards for concealed carry.”

So the evil NRA just outdid you at your own game.  Copy their tactics, you will.  It must be the tactics, for it couldn’t be that America doesn’t want your gun control.  Yet another tactic you’re investigating is to convince yourselves that the NRA isn’t really as powerful as they seem.  You will talk enough to make people comfortable with your plans.  But you can’t decide if you’ve got the clout.  Joe Manchin even admitted “ff the NRA didn’t score this, we would’ve had 15 more votes.”

And oh, there are the excuses.  Poor Michael Hirsh has perhaps the best one.  ” … it is practically a iron law of politics that the larger the interest group—in this case, the 90 percent of all Americans who want background checks—the less likely it will be able to mobilize against a smaller, more organized and passionate interest group, such as the National Rifle Association.”  Nine out of ten people can’t win anything against the one holdout.

But Michael concludes that with enough money, threats, and primaried Senators, you should be able to construct a Senate that is more conducive to your interests.  So we’re back to the NRA tactics again – because, you know, it couldn’t be that people aren’t interested in your proposed gun control measures.  Surely 90%+ of the people think like you do, sensible people, who just didn’t play a role against that evil behemoth, the NRA.  Everyone was bullied by those monsters from the NRA, Wayne and Chris.

I know, you don’t want to believe that the polls are badly misleading when they ask about those ethereal platitudes, as opposed to when the specifics are presented, complicating things for you.  You don’t want to believe it even when your own press tells you this.  So the 90%+ number must be right, and the evil NRA is to blame, or your own tactics, or lack of money, or something like that.  It cannot be that the people aren’t interested in your gun control measures.

So you hate the evil NRA, and harbor even worse thoughts for the gun manufacturers who makes these ever improving products of death, convince Americans that they need them, and hand over the propaganda points to the NRA.  They all must be stopped, you think.

True enough, Wayne and Chris get beaten up a bit in the media, but that’s okay.  We gun owners expect them to take it, and pay them well for it.  We don’t feel too sorry for them.  But there is something that you really don’t understand about all of this, and I feel a bit apprehensive in telling you this, rather like I am divulging our secrets.  But I just have to say these things.

The way it really works is different than you think.

The NRA is hearing from its constituency (that would be us), and the firearms manufacturers do our bidding.  We’re the boss.  A firearm hasn’t been fully vetted until it hits the American civilian market (the military forces its folks to use the bidder of choice), and the manufacturers respond to us.  They make what we want.  They earn our money, and if you think that we sit back and wait for the manufacturers to tell us what to think, just ask Smith and Wesson what happened as a result of their agreement with the Clinton administration.

We send Wayne out with his talking points.  We set Chris up to succeed in the printed media.  They’re our front men.  But we know things you don’t.  You see, we have the guns.  We know gun owners … we know them at work and church and in our neighborhood.  We talk to them.  We see them at the range, we discuss things, we learn from each other.  We know that this 90% number you’ve thrown around isn’t right.  It’s an outright lie.  These 9 out of 10 gun owners you’re talking about just don’t materialize in reality.  We know.  We’re around gun owners every day.

The hard realities of life are sometimes difficult to digest.  But the reality is that we own the NRA.  You’re directing your hatred at the wrong folks.  The firearms manufacturers make what we want.  We keep them financially strong.  The Senators aren’t really afraid of the NRA or Smith and Wesson or Ruger.  They are afraid that smart analysts will figure out what they’re really doing and the gun owning public will be well educated in the finer legal points of the proposed laws.

They may be spewing their hatred for the NRA, but it’s us they really hate.  We are the overlords.  We are gun owners, and you don’t control the gun base you thought you did.  All your base are belong to us.  Make your time.