In case you’re an idiot and were wondering.

Two Senate Democrats falsely claimed Monday that the AR-15 is not used for hunting and isn’t “viable for home protection” in a tweet promoting gun control proposals.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) and Sen. Chris Murphy (D., Conn.) penned an op-ed in TIME calling for the banning of AR-15s and similar assault weapons.

“Guns like the AR-15 aren’t used for hunting and they’re not viable for home protection. They have only one purpose, and that’s to fire as many rounds as possible, as quickly as possible,” they wrote. “Outlawing these weapons, an action supported by 60 percent of Americans, will bring down the number of mass shootings and reduce the number of casualties, just as it did when the ban first passed in 1994.”

However, the AR-15, the most popular rifle in America, is used for hunting and home defense. MRC-TV noted a poll showing more than 25 percent of hunters reported using the rifle to hunt big game. In addition, the rifle is popular for home defense given its light weight and limited recoil, making it easier for owners to handle.

It’s only good for shooting at multiple home invaders, and managing recoil while regaining sight picture quickly, and ease of handing, and so on, and cops use them all the time, but they are no good.

Every day is opposite day, I guess.  I feel like I’m listening to a child explain calculus.

News from Florida:

LAKELAND — A 32-year-old woman was arrested on June 15 when she gathered her husband’s guns to turn them over to the Lakeland Police Department.

According to Courtney Irby’s arrest affidavit, she told police her husband had been taken to jail for trying to run over her with a car. Irby said she went to Joseph Irby’s apartment on Village Center Drive in Lakeland and searched for the guns she knew he had.

When she told a Lakeland police officer she had the guns with her to turn them in, he replied, “So are you telling me that you committed an armed burglary?” and Irby answered, “Yes, I am, but he wasn’t going to turn them in, so I am doing it,” according to reports.

Oh don’t even think that the cops had any sympathy for the husband or disagreement with the confiscation of guns.  The main problem here for the cops is that she broke the law.  It would have been okay if the cops did the deed.

Don’t you know – we can’t let people enforce the law, only LEOs can do that.

So there is yet another post about magazine springs and whether they should be replaced, and if so, when.  This is in the same theme I wrote about several years ago when there was another little flurry of articles and posts about this.  I’m going to cover this ground one time for everyone.

Metal creep is caused from slippage of crystalline structures along boundary planes, whether FFC, BCC, or whatever.  One reader writes that “springs don’t wear out from compression.”  This is along the same lines as most of the [mistaken and incorrect] articles I linked the last time I addressed this issue that claimed that stainless steel doesn’t creep below the yield limit.

Do you know any piano tuners?  I do.  Yea, they have to go back a few days later and retune because of metal creep.  But most piano wires are carbon steel under high stress.  What about stainless steel?

Do not make the claim that stainless steel (like SS304) doesn’t suffer creep below the yield limit and at low temperatures.  Yes … it … does  (“In all tests at applied stress/yield strength ratios above 0.73 some plastic deformation was recorded”).

No offense, but don’t try to be an engineer if you’re not one. If you make the claim that SS304 (I presume the material of most magazine springs) doesn’t suffer from metal creep, you’d be wrong, and then you’d also be answering the question the wrong way.

The right way to look at the question is one of whether the creep is significant.  It usually isn’t, and it is less significant than for carbon steel.  It’s also not significant for applied stress/yield strength ratios lower than what the authors tested.  Where your specific magazine spring falls in this data set is best determined by the designer, not me (I don’t have drawings or any other design information).

Besides, for most readers, you aren’t loading 34+ magazines per day and putting 1000+ rounds downrange for 300+ days per year as a workup to deployment.  For 99.99% of the world, this is a pedantic question.  For those who do put that many rounds downrange and have to use the magazines bequeathed to you by predecessors who did the same thing for years, you will want to watch your feed and ensure that it’s smooth, consistent and reliable.  If it’s not, then change the magazine springs (or get new magazines – there could be another issue).  They’re cheap, and it’s no big deal.

Note: No warranty express or implied is included with this article.  Nothing here constitutes formal engineering counsel – you have to pay to get that.  Nothing here includes claims on any specific magazine spring, whether said spring is loaded to the right applied stress/yield strength ratio to cause deformation, or whether anyone reading this article needs to change magazine springs in any given situation.

Breitbart:

Here are seven reasons why action against suppressors is politically risky:

1. A Suppressor Has Been Used in One Mass Shooting — A suppressor was used on one of the two guns in the Virginia Beach mass shooting. In other words, of all the mass shootings and/or high profile shootings constantly beamed into homes via the establishment media, a suppressor was used in one of them.
2. Police Still Heard the Gun Shots and Moved Toward Them to Find the Gunman — On May 31, Breitbart News reported Virginia Beach Police Chief James Cervera’s observation that police officers located the Virginia Beach gunman by moving toward the sound of his gun shots.
3. Suppressors Are Not Silencers — The fact that police moved toward the sound of the gunman’s shots, and that witnesses recalled hearing shot after shot, illustrates the fact that suppressors are not silencers. Rather, they are mufflers that remove the dangerous, high pitches associated with a gun shot.
4. Suppressors are Already the Most Highly Regulated Firearm Accessory in America — The acquisition of a suppressor requires the submission of fingerprints and photographs, and an in-depth background check. It requires the would-be buyer to pay a $200 federal tax and to register the suppressor with the government. The process of doing these things takes seven to nine months. The would-be buyer is then allowed to come in and receives a federal tax stamp, showing the suppressor is in the buyer’s name, and the buyer is then allowed to take possession of his suppressor.
5. Suppressor Acquisition Involves Many of the Democrats’ Favorite Gun Controls — As seen in the above paragraph, acquiring a suppressor involves a background check and registration, as well as fingerprinting and photographing the buyer. Yet when these gun controls fail–even in a single instance–Democrats push for more, more, more.
6. Suppressor Ownership is Legal in 42 States — The American Suppressor Association reports that suppressor ownership is legal in 42 states. Many of these states allow use of suppressors in hunting, for the noise-reducing benefits that hunters and the environment gain through suppression use.
7. Smacks of Bump Stock Ban — The fact that suppressors are not silencers; that they have been used in only one mass shooting; that police in that shooting could still hear the gunshots and run toward them; that witnesses could hear the shots and run from them; and that suppressors are legal in 42 states (which only magnifies their infrequent use in crime) is reminiscent of the way bump stocks were banned after they were used only once in a crime. Ironically, the one criminal use of bump stocks, and the criminal use of suppressors, were related in that the accessories were legally purchased both instances, then used against citizens in a situation where the citizens could not shoot back.

This doesn’t even begin to touch the risk he faces, and there may be no way to mitigate the risk even now.

First of all, let me say that if suppressors completely silenced a gun shot, there still wouldn’t be a basis for banning them.  “Shall not be infringed” means what it says, and you and I know it.  I just hate it when people stipulate the high ground to the opposition, inasmuch as admitting that in certain circumstances it just may be a good idea to regulate something-or-other.

Trump has already alienated gun owners with: “Take them first, follow due process later”, his choice of AG, his choice of ATF head, his bump stock ban, and now his statement of hatred for suppressors.  With his bump stock ban he turned more than half a million peaceable men into felons overnight with the stroke of a pen.

He thinks, or he has been told by his idiot advisors, that stunts to appease the Fudds will fix his problems with being a gun control advocate.  His idiot advisors are wrong in the superlative degree, and he will find that out in little more than a year.

But I said that “it wouldn’t surprise me to see a bill pass the House and Senate headed for Trump’s desk to outlaw them completely, something that is no more than a muffler intended to save the hearing of target shooters and sportsmen.”

True to form, when the controllers see an opening and a weakness, they’re waiting to pounce.

Gun silencers like the one used in a recent lethal shooting in Virginia Beach would be banned under legislation that U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey introduced Friday.

The Democrat unveiled the legislation at news conference in Trenton alongside Democratic Trenton Mayor Reed Gusciora and representatives from the gun-control group Moms Demand Action.

Well, Mr. 3D-chess is in a pickle now, yes?  He’s gone on record saying that he hates suppressors, and that they are looking at what can be done.  The democrats have the House, and effectively the controllers hold the Senate.  They’ll send him a bill, and you can count on it.  What will he do then?

If he signs it, he will finish the alienation of the balance of the gun control crowd.  There are many more suppressor owners than bump stock owners.  If he doesn’t sign it, he’ll be pointed out as an inauthentic liar.

Does he even care at this point which it is?

David Codrea:

Unsurprisingly, Biden either doesn’t know what he’s talking about or he does and doesn’t care that he’s spreading lies. While we’ve seen numerous abortive attempts over the years to bring the technology to market, recent ones involve technologies relying on fingerprint recognition, bracelets and rings, and embedded RFID chips. If DNA is to be added into the mix, it would be interesting to see that idea fleshed out, including how the sample will be extracted and then analyzed to allow for immediate firing by “authorized” users under all conceivable real-world conditions.

Herschel grins and chuckles, begging for someone to take his challenge.

Perform a fault tree analysis of smart guns.  Use highly respected guidance like the NRC fault tree handbook.

Assess the reliability of one of my semi-automatic handguns as the first state point, and then add smart gun technology to it, and assess it again.  Compare the state points.  Then do that again with a revolver.  Be honest.  Assign a failure probability of greater than zero (0) to the smart technology, because you know that each additional electronic and mechanical component has a failure probability of greater than zero.

Get a PE to seal the work to demonstrate thorough and independent review.  If you can prove that so-called “smart guns” are as reliable as my guns, I’ll pour ketchup on my hard hat, eat it, and post video for everyone to see.  If you lose, you buy me the gun of my choice.  No one will take the challenge because you will lose that challenge.  I’ll win.  Case closed.  End of discussion.

Yet another note to the controllers.  Just ponder how awesome it would be for you to get a picture of a gun advocate eating crow (or in this case, his hard hat), covered with the thing he hates the most, Ketchup.

I beg you again, controllers, take my challenge, signed and sealed with the stipulations – you get me eating crow, or I get my choice of guns.

Any takers?

Advocates for Self Government:

Biden was the Senator who introduced the Gun-Free School Zones Act in 1990. In this same tweet, Kirk called out Biden saying that he “has done more to allow school shootings than the NRA or any Republican ever has.”

Although Biden deserves the brunt of the blame for creating this terrible piece of legislation, Kirk conveniently ignores on a key point in his Biden hit—the 1990 GFSZA was signed by Republican President George H.W. Bush.

It takes two to tango in today’s status quo of ever-expanding government. Gun rights have not been excluded from this trend. Indeed, the Democrats held both chambers of Congress during that time. However, it stands to reason that a Republican president, who is supposedly “pro-gun”, would veto such legislation. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

[ … ]

Generic Republicans can huff and puff about being pro-gun, but they too have been complicit in advancing gun control. As a matter of fact, it was a Republican Governor, Rick Scott, who signed Florida’s most expansive gun control law to date following the Parkland shooting.

There is something more at play with regards to why gun control continues to move forward. It’s not just about electing the “right” Republicans.

Ultimately, it boils down to changing the culture and the political environment around politicians in order to get them to behave accordingly. Bad politics follows bad ideas.

The author still hasn’t put his finger on exactly what’s wrong.  He understands the ailment, but not its cause.  Thus he cannot prescribe a cure.  Here it is for you.

In God’s economy, there are three institutions: Family, Church and State.  When either usurps the role of another and takes to itself the province belonging elsewhere, it is an affront to God’s laws.

God has decreed that the family would raise children and teach them moral values as well as create a society of education, work and play.  The Church is the moral institution for the family – not against it, but as an aid.  The state’s rightful task is to punish evil-doers and protect boundaries of the state.

It isn’t the state’s proper function to teach ethics, encourage morals, attempt to eradicate sin, or enhance man’s behavior towards good.  That is a usurpation of the power and authority belonging to other institutions.  It also isn’t the job of the government (the state) to dispense grace, e.g., largesse, meals, clothing, goods, wares, etc.  That’s the province of the family and church.

God never blesses disobedience to His law-word.  He will never bless the state’s usurpation of the province of another.  That is an insult to the Almighty, high-handed sin, a declaration that the creature is wiser than the creator, the same sin that afflicted Adam.

Republicans have bought into the great lie just like democrats.  That’s why republicans often lead the charge for do-gooder, meddling, nanny-state programs to lift the poor out of poverty and control over weapons to combat crime.  Those programs will always fail.

Only obedience to God’s law will be blessed.

Yahoo News.

The National Rifle Association suspended its top lobbyist and one of his deputies, adding further turmoil to the gun-rights group’s leadership ranks as it wages legal battles on multiple fronts and prepares for a bruising 2020 election cycle.

The NRA confirmed Thursday that it had suspended Chris Cox, the lobbying chief who was viewed widely as a future leader of the group, and his deputy chief of staff, Scott Christman.

David Codrea has this bit of wisdom.  “Never f*** with a guy who got to where he is by eliminating his superior.”

The link he supplies has this interesting (and to me, previously unknown) bit of history.

The core issue was how the NRA’s PR company, Ackerman McQueen, was drawing millions of dollars a year from the organization and improperly controlling NRA staff. The Board directed Wayne to sever ties with Ack-Mac, and Wayne promised to do so, then claimed to have done so, by bringing in a new PR company called Mercury Group. The “new” PR company turned out to be a wholly owned subsidiary of Ack-Mac, with all of the same players in all of the same positions, still bleeding the association of the same millions of dollars.

So it would appear that NRA politics is as dirty and ugly as American politics, and that chasing the money is the name of the game.

It’s too bad for Chris, really.  I know very little of him, and were I to know more, I might hate him as much as I do Wayne LaPierre.

But I maintain that Wayne is trash.  He’s an unmitigated scoundrel, a ne’er-do-well, a rapscallion, a wretch.  As long as he is at the helm of the NRA, I won’t be connected with it again.

Guns.com.

The competitor, Sgt. Benjamin Cleland of Swanton, Ohio, pulled off the feat at the National Rifle Association’s 2019 Charlie Smart Memorial Regional in Oak Ridge, Tennessee on June 2, with a score of 800-34x. This means Cleland not only notched 80 back-to-back hits in the 10-ring but that 34 of those nailed the even smaller “X” ring at the target’s dead center. For reference, at 600 yards, the 10-ring measures 12 inches while the “X” is 6 inches.

[ … ]

The 80-shot course is fired in four stages. This begins by firing 20 rounds from 200 yards in a standing position, followed by 20 sitting/kneeling, rapid-fire rounds before delivering 20 rounds from a prone position at 300 yards. The final stage, at 600 yards, consists of a further 20 rounds. A perfect score is 800, or 10 points for each round in the 10 ring.

The previous high score with a service rifle was a 798 set by Marine Gunnery Sgt. Julia L. Watson.

Service rifles in the match are limited to M16s, M14s and M1 Garands with a maximum of a 4.5x power scope.

That’s 1-2 MOA shooting for 80 straight rounds, some of it rapid fire.  That’s extremely consistent shooting.  That’s something we should all be striving for.

News from New Zealand.

“Some of the offered prices for higher-end firearms are well out of kilter,” Nicole McKee, a council spokesman, was quoted by The New Zealand Herald as saying.

McKee said gun owners are “angry and they’re frustrated” because the government reneged on a promise not “to rip us off.”

You didn’t really expect otherwise, did you?

“The component prices are horrible robbery,” David Tipple, who owns a gun shop where the Christchurch shooter bought weapons, tells the Herald.

Tipple says he expects to lose “tens of thousands of dollars” in the buyback. Even so, he encourages owners to hand in their illegal weapons.

“We want them to comply,” he said. “Let’s get them paid quickly so we can get compliance. Nobody wants a black market.”

Oh, I suspect most gun owners want a black market.  Regardless of what anyone wants, that’s what’s going to happen.