I am reproducing this entire post brought to you by AmmoLand because if I am not mistaken it is a release by the ATF and not unique to AmmoLand.

ATF has found that Federal firearms licensees are often involved in the disposition of National Firearms Act (NFA) firearms in estates of decedents.

As a result, ATF receives questions from licensees about the procedures involved to comply with the law.

Information regarding registered firearms is protected tax information and the release of the information by ATF is restricted. In general, the release can only be made to the executor (administrator, personal representative, or whatever term is used for the person appointed and tasked with disposing of any property in an estate).

ATF can respond to general procedural questions by the licensees, but, for specific questions, the response can only be to the person noted above.

Prior to the release of any registration information, the person requesting the information must provide documentation of their status to the NFA Branch.

The firearms must remain in the possession of the executor, until a transfer application has been submitted and approved. A transfer would include the disposition of an NFA firearm to a licensee for consignment or safekeeping.

Any unregistered NFA firearm(s) in an estate are contraband and there is no means by which these firearms can be registered. The executor should contact the local ATF office to arrange for the disposition of these firearms. The disposition of an NFA firearm to a beneficiary of an estate is on a tax-exempt basis (using ATF Form 5 to update the registry). However, in the case of multiple beneficiaries, ATF will request a release from any beneficiary who is not receiving the firearm. The laws of the State in which the decedent resided determine who is a beneficiary. The application for transfer to the beneficiary must include the beneficiary’s fingerprints and photographs.

The disposition of a serviceable NFA firearm to a person who is not a beneficiary is on a tax paid basis (using ATF Form 4). The disposition of an unserviceable NFA firearm to a person who is not a beneficiary is on a tax-exempt basis (using ATF Form 5). As noted above, the requirements of the NFA apply for these dispositions.

If the disposition is to a person in another State and the person is not a Federal firearms licensee or a beneficiary, then the firearm must be transferred to a Federal firearm licensee in the recipient’s State. After approval of the transfer and receipt by the licensee, the licensee would then apply to transfer the firearm to the purchaser.

Good grief.  None of this would be an issue if the Congress had not passed the NFA (and you know my position, i.e., that the Second Amendment frames in the federal government and restricts their actions, making all gun laws passed at the federal level unconstitutional).  Furthermore, none of this would be a problem were it not for the ATF, which in my opinion is an illegitimate arm of the federal government given the way I see the Second Amendment.

But here we are, with armies of lawyers trying to figure out ways to comply with the regulations, with armies of lawyers inside the beltway trying to figure out ways to make it hard to comply with the regulations.  This is what happens when the federal government is too big and powerful, which is exactly what our wise founders tried to avoid.

Preppers have been in the news lately.  Since there is increasing interest in this topic, CNN recently had a fairly extensive article on the “doomsday prepper convention.”

More and more Americans are spending money to get ready for an uncertain future — gathering food, water, tools, and skills to help them weather anything from a hurricane to a pandemic. Contrary to images of deluded or gun-obsessed “lone wolves,” many preppers are average consumers reacting to concrete worries, and their way of thinking is spreading, fueling an emerging lifestyle trend. That lifestyle is generating demand for a broad spectrum of products offering survival — or even comfort — when large-scale systems go down.

An array of preparedness expos and conferences have cropped up around the country to serve this emerging and fast-changing market. To get a closer look, I visited Life Changes, Be Ready!, or LCBR, a new expo that held its second event on the weekend of November 2^nd and 3^rd, in Lakeland, Fla. LCBR gave an immediate sense of one big way that the preparedness crowd isn’t marginal at all — economically. The show floor was packed with a dizzying array of small businesses and products that defied stereotypical “prepper” classification — not just ammunition and crossbows and camping gear, but also seed banks, beehives, financial planning, and acupressure.

According to many of the entrepreneurs on the floor, business is trending upwards. John Egger of Self Reliance Strategies has been producing and selling prepackaged seed banks for nearly four years and sees his market expanding. “It’s definitely picking up. It’s not just country people anymore. We really cater to a suburban market … We call it suburban homesteading.” You can see this broadening of the market in the range of price points, from the $5,600 portable solar charging stations flogged by Alternative Energy, Inc., to the $649 “Stomp Supreme” field medic kit offered by Doom and Bloom, LLC. (“This is the one recommended for people expecting civil unrest.”) Clearly, LCBR’s vendors saw a crowd ready to drop major cash today to assuage their worries about tomorrow.

There are still uncertainties in the preparedness market, some driven by ideology, according to Charley Hogwood of Personal Readiness Education Programs. “All last year it was up and up and up. But after the [presidential] election, it flattened out.” Hogwood thinks that some in the market were overwrought over doomsday scenarios surrounding the reelection of Barack Obama. “Last year, I heard 100 different conspiracy theories” about what a second Obama presidency might mean. But when the election wasn’t followed by martial law and FEMA camps, both the rhetoric and the market cooled off a bit. “I rarely hear the crazy theories now. Now everyone’s worried mainly about the collapse of the dollar,” says Hogwood, referring to widespread prepper fears of hyperinflation triggered by the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing.

Hogwood, friendly and round-faced, reflected the resolute averageness that permeated the show. He snorted derisively at conspiracy theorists, and also acknowledged some of the ironies of a preparedness trade show. “Sometimes it’s like a toy store, and people buy stuff because they like it.” But in a real survival situation, “the more you know, the less you have to carry. A lot of people don’t know much and think they can buy their way out of it.” He sees some of the extremism surrounding the prepping industry as hype, maybe even fearmongering. “It’s so much more fun to worry about martial law than a hurricane. People like zombies as a marketing tool.”

But there are horrible reports that show the bottom feeders of society.

Nuclear war. Volcanic eruption. Terrorist attack.

Though the scenarios of how an apocalyptic event would paralyze or destroy society varies, a group of like-minded individuals in East Pierce County believes a good defense is the best way to prepare for doomsday.

And some believe a good offense is even better.

“We’re not in it to stockpile. We’re in it to take what you have and there’s nothing you can do to stop us,” Tyler Smith says. “We are your worst nightmare, and we are coming.”

Smith, 29, is the leader of Spartan Survival. The group has more than 80 dues-paying members. Smith founded the organization in 2005 to train and prepare others on survivalism.

Analysis & Commentary

There is another report of a family that, readying for nuclear war, builds underground tunnels from 18 recycled school buses — with enough supplies for 500 people — and buries them under a foot and a half of concrete.  Some of the terrifying scenarios for preppers include dirty bombs and a rising sea from global warming.

I am not a prepper by practice, although I tinker a bit in weapons, ammunition and wilderness survival.  But I do have a number of suggestions for preppers to assist them in spending their money efficiently and avoiding the more dangerous situations they seem to choose for themselves and their families.

My reaction to this round of doomsday preppers is about the same as last time.  NatGeo seems to find some of the weirdest folks to do this special, making preppers appear to be crackpots and neglecting to cover some of the more normal people involved in this loosely connected and loosely coupled group.

On the other hand, there are some seriously confused people involved in the movement, and there are a number of misconceptions that need to be set right.  On one episode a year or more ago, some poor lady (a former LEO) who lived near a commercial nuclear reactor wanted to be prepared in the event of an explosion and nuclear fallout from this reactor.  In the same vein, many prepper web sites feature so-called “anti-radiation pills” for protection from, I suppose, nuclear war, “fallout” from nuclear accidents and according to one report, dirty bombs.

So that preppers can stop worrying over at least one subset of concerns, let me state unequivocally and without reservation that commercial nuclear reactors don’t explode like nuclear bombs.  Folks, if I may lapse into pointy-head mode for a moment, by requirement of the code of federal regulations, American commercial nuclear reactors must be designed with an overall negative power coefficient.  This means that the combination of void, Doppler and moderator feedback must shut down the reactor in situations of unintended power increase.  It’s more complicated than that, but that’s the simplest way I know to explain it for those of you not involved in the field of nuclear engineering.

The Russian RBMK reactor (e.g., Chernobyl) was designed as a loosely coupled graphite moderated reactor where the coolant was a neutron poison, not the moderator.  Thus it has a positive void coefficient and overall positive power coefficient.  Even so, the accident at Chernobyl was still a rapid power excursion leading to a steam explosion that destroyed the reactor systems and containment.  So it wasn’t a nuclear explosion, but it was a catastrophe.  Russian reactors, however, are under no such design requirement as U.S. nuclear reactors.  Furthermore, the there was no hard containment design for Chernobyl.

The U.S. had a Chernobyl, i.e., Three Mile Island.  There was essentially no dose to the public because of the slow progression of the accident and the hard containment design.  The most hazard to which you can expose your family in a commercial nuclear reactor accident is to put yourself on the road trying to escape it along with all of the other fear mongers who believe that a nuclear reactor can explode.  Stay home.

Next, and listen to me very closely on this one, there is no such thing as an anti-radiation pill.  These web sites are selling Potassium Iodide tablets.  Their design is to saturate the thyroid gland with stable iodine, thus preventing radioactive iodine from seeking this organ if it has been released and is available for intake or uptake.  But the thyroid isn’t the only target organ for radioactive fission products, and iodine isn’t the only fission product.  Cesium, strontium and the actinides are bone seekers, and in fact a perusal of Federal Guidance Report No. 11 will show that there are a whole host of potential pathways of exposure to radioactive effluents.

Furthermore, Potassium Iodide has potential side effects, and before you saturate your thyroid gland because you are afraid of nuclear power or some other nuclear event, take note that you’ve been warned.  Finally, the concept of dirty bombs is unfortunate because it appeals to the fear of the unseen and misunderstood.  It isn’t possible to disperse nuclear contaminants far enough to be more effective than conventional explosives unless the device deploys inside a confined space with forced ventilation.

Furthermore, if there is a general lack of technical understanding in prepper designs for amelioration of nuclear events, I’m equally concerned about the structures and domiciles that are being built.  Folks, most of you are not registered professional engineers, and you aren’t having registered PEs do the designs of these buildings and tunnels and other things.  For a primer on exactly what happens when an engineer designs something and a contractor does it his own way instead of following the plans, see the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse.  An awful lot of money is being spent on plans that may or may not be safe, effective or necessary.

But of course, that’s exactly what the con artists and shysters want.  They want to take your money.  But it’s your job to keep your money, or at least, not give it away to unscrupulous people who don’t care about you.  So what do you really need?  Do you need a home in the forest or desert or somewhere else in the American redoubt?  Do you need tactical training?  Do you need more money, or gold and silver?

I don’t have an answer, but I do.  I wouldn’t presume to tell anyone what they should or shouldn’t do in any specific situation, but I think that the answer to the questions above is to take tomorrow on as an opportunity to be more prepared than you were today, in whatever endeavor you work and live, whatever your station in life.  And I think it’s wrong for anyone to tell you what you should believe that you need, except to have means of self defense and defense of your family.

Like many of my readers, I couldn’t conjure up faith in the soon-to-collapse Keynesian, dept-based economic system if my life depended on it.

But concerning Mr. Tyler Smith, preppers shouldn’t ever be associated with people like that.  First of all, he is a liar.  He cannot possibly deliver on his promises of taking things from other people.  Second, it shows a dark underbelly, not just of preppers, but of mankind in general.

I recall having a conversation with my son Daniel, my former Marine, some time around his combat tour of Iraq.  The backdrop is that Colonel William Mullen had shown me his pre-deployment PowerPoint presentation to the Battalion, and I took particular notice of the last slide or two.  Essentially, Colonel Mullen had issued die-in-place orders to the Battalion.  The orders were never to surrender to the enemy.  It would only hamper the efforts of the Battalion, unnecessarily tie up resources attempting to locate you, and put your family through agony.

There are things worse than death, I recall telling Daniel.  For instance, dying without honor or for me, having denied my Lord.  So if I ever face death for my Christianity, I hope to recite the Apostle’s Creed as loudly as I can until a 7.62X39 rips through my skull.  If that sounds gruesome, I would remind readers that none of us get out of this alive.  We will all perish, and the only question is how.  Rather than planning to steal from others in an apocalypse or other disaster, the goal of all of us should be to work in order to have something for those in need (Ephesians 4:28).

If you want to live a more sustainable life style, there are guideposts and examples to follow, but it’s hard and serious labor, and there is no room for gimmicks or con artists.  And there is certainly no room for thieves, ne’er-do-wells or thugs who threaten to take the means to protect or feed your family.  Preppers should continue to prepare, as should everyone.  But preppers need to beware of shysters, wicked men who bring threats, and doing things that actually end up making their family less safe than if they hadn’t prepared at all.  A man who threatens to take what you have (and wants to teach you to do the same) is no different than the one who will sell you an expensive shelter in the case of an “explosion” from an American commercial nuclear reactor (that will never happen).  They’re both con artists.  Beware of con artists.

In closing:

…We are not given to know all the ripples our words and deeds might produce. In this as in all things, God is good. What man could bear to live with the knowledge that his lightest utterances would disrupt the entire future of Man? It’s for the best that we deem ourselves, and our effects, finite. I wouldn’t want to be able to see too far ahead; it would distract me from what I must do today.

But in reflecting on the above exchange, and the one before it, it occurs to me that the one and only predictable thing in life is its end: we shall all die. At the Particular Judgment, when I must answer to God for my deeds in life, a verdict will be rendered from which there is no appeal. It will be clear to me from the absolute self-knowledge conferred by one’s entrance to eternity that it could be no other way, and all I will be able to say is So it is.

May God bless and keep you all (quote via WRSA).

Guns in parks … it’s complicated:

Two months ago, as the busy summer season was winding down at Yellowstone National Park, 3-year-old Ella Marie Tucker found her father’s gun and shot herself.

Park rangers tried to resuscitate her. But Ella died, the victim of the first fatal shooting in the park since 1978.

Her death came almost four years after Congress passed a new law allowing loaded guns in national parks. At first, the tragedy seemed a realization of critics’ worst fears: a child’s death, all because guns were allowed in the quintessential embodiment of America’s backyard.

The reality is much more complicated.

Officials at parks throughout the country say the law change has so far affected little, beyond complaints from visitors surprised to see an assault rifle openly carried on a visitor’s shoulder or a handgun secured to a belt. Statistics from the National Park Service show no clear spike in crime, violent or otherwise. The parks had 282 million visitors last year, and police investigated six homicides. On the whole, parks appear safe.

In 2011 I filed a FOIA request to supply me with the NPS data on crimes in national parks after guns were legalized in 2010. The data can be found here.  We are missing the metrics from 2011, but the overall trend for homicides can be summarized (redacted) as follows:

1. 2005 – 17
2. 2006 – 11
3. 2007 – 9
4. 2008 – 5
5. 2009 – 4
6. 2010 – 15
7. 2011 – not included
8. 2012 – 6

It isn’t complicated at all.  Guns in National Parks doesn’t in the least lead to the catastrophe predicted by the gun control lobby.  We can close the books on another fear mongering collectivist lie.

Prior:

Brady Campaign Lies About Guns

Backpacker Shoots Grizzly In Denali, First Life Saved Since Firearms Legal

David Codrea:

Invoking Lee Harvey Oswald to produce a calculated emotional effect while showing total disregard for laws on the books, “reporter” Dan Freedman of the Hearst Washington Bureau made his case for so-called “universal background checks” Saturday in a “gun control” propaganda piece presented as straight news …

Were Freedman to make good on his assertions and demonstrate the equivalency he would have readers believe exists, he would next demonstrate how he can “buy” a gun online and have it shipped to him through the mail. But he knows he can’t because that would be against the law.

Of course it’s against the law.  And even if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t prove his case for universal background checks unless he could demonstrate that there was no other way for a perpetrator to obtain guns.  Read all of David’s piece.

Kurt Hofmann:

Over the past year or so that 3-D “printing” of guns has become a hot topic, one entity that would seemingly have a major interest in the subject has for the most part been surprisingly quiet. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) has said very little about this transformative–and rapidly evolving–technology. Until now. National Public Radio reports that the BATFE has decided that now is the time to frighten the ill-informed public:

“When these 3-D firearms are manufactured, some of the weapons can defeat normal detection such as metal detectors, wands, and it could present a problem to public safety in a venue such as an airport, an arena, a courthouse,” says ATF assistant director Richard Marianos.

Marianos, of course, did not bother to mention that security scanner technology has advanced a long way since the days that non-metallic objects were invisible to scanners, or that effective metal-free ammunition does not appear to be particularly imminent.

This isn’t about firearms.  The ATF is yelling about something that may threaten their monopoly on control.  You can’t make it through most scanners today with a penny in your pocket without setting it off, and the ATF knows it.  Read all of Kurt’s piece.

Mike Vanderboegh links this piece, which provides interesting results.  As I said earlier, don’t tell me that we can simply substitute steel for brass and be just fine.  By the way, take note of the AR-15 grip used in this photo.  This brings me to Mike’s next post on AR-15 furniture.

The evolution of the AR rifle grip began not long ago when shooters realized they no longer fired their weapons using stances developed in the 1960′s. Back in the day, armorless shooters were taught to use the bladed stance and a high elbow. But today, body armor and enhanced understanding of body mechanics during shooting and weapon manipulation has lead to changes in how a rifle is shouldered. Emerging doctrine now teaches us to shoot with shoulders squared up to the target and elbows tucked in for stability–and to keep from getting shot in the arm.

While I had shot firearms for years, I had not purchased an AR-15 until my son Daniel went into the Marine Corps.  This is the way the Marines taught him to shoot, and thus it’s the way he taught me to shoot my AR-15.  As a sidebar comment, the high grip on the forend of the AR-15 in the picture I linked comes from the 3-gun and gaming community, adopted by Special Operations for its utility in target acquisition because it increased stability when moving the rifle.

Star Tribune:

Howard Kidder has traveled to Egypt, Pakistan and places all over the globe on medical aid missions, but the 90-year-old got the scare of his life right outside the St. Paul church where he earned his Boy Scout badges and has worshiped for 78 years.

Kidder was making one of his regular trips to Mounds Park United Methodist Church on the East Side about 12:30 p.m. Thursday when a suspect donning a Halloween mask from the hit horror movie “Scream” accosted him and asked for money. The confrontation escalated within seconds, and the suspect flashed a gun at Kidder.

“I doled out a five dollar tip and told him he had a spectacular costume, or words to that effect,” Kidder said Friday with a laugh. “Things deteriorated at that point.”

The suspect, whom Kidder believes is a teenager, took the $5 and pulled up his shirt to reveal the butt of a handgun protruding from his pants pocket. Kidder, a retired Honeywell electrical engineer who knows a thing or two about guns, didn’t toy with the suspect.

“Well, it got my attention right away,” Kidder said with a mix of humor and seriousness. “I backed off right away because I was afraid I was going to be shot.”

Kidder threw his billfold to the ground and the suspect fled with it, joined by two plainclothes teenagers who had been standing off to the side.

“It was pretty obvious to me that they knew the character in the mask,” Kidder said of the two teens. “We didn’t introduce each other.”

The wallet contained more cash and two credit cards.

The crime is especially egregious, said those who know Kidder, because Kidder has served as a cornerstone of the community and church, and has spent his life giving back to causes that benefit the less fortunate. Kidder lives in his childhood home just blocks from the church, and has been a member longer than anyone else.

“He brings me flowers all the time,” said church secretary Kaite Knack. “He brings me lunch. He’s too sweet a guy for something like this to happen to.”

But criminals and bad people don’t care.  This is yet another case study for carrying guns to church.  Church as a gun free zone – whether by law or voluntarily – enables this sort of thing.  We’ve discussed this before, how in Colonial days men were required to carry guns to worship.  We should resurrect this practice, and crime around churches would drop to virtually nonexistent frequency.

ABC:

An airport security officer lay helplessly bleeding after a gunman opened fire at Los Angeles International Airport as paramedics waited 150 yards away because police had not declared the terminal safe to enter, according to two law enforcement officials.

It would be 33 minutes before Transportation Security Administration Officer Gerardo Hernandez, who was about 20 feet from an exit, would be wheeled out by police to an ambulance, said the officials, who were briefed on the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity because the probe was still ongoing into the Nov. 1 shooting.

For all but five of those minutes, there was no threat from the suspected gunman — he had been shot and was in custody, they said.

While it’s not known when Hernandez died or if immediate medical attention could have saved his life, officials are examining what conversations took place between police and fire commanders to determine when it was safe enough to enter and whether paramedics could have gone into the terminal earlier, one of the officials said.

The head of the TSA union on Friday said he was appalled at the news, calling the delay “absolutely unacceptable,” according to KNBC-TV.

This is a shame, and I agree that it’s absolutely unacceptable, just as absolutely unacceptable as Jose Guerena laying helplessly bleeding out in his own home for one hour and fourteen minutes without medical assistance, even though first responders were on the scene and waiting for permission to treat him.

I will await the head of the TSA labor union mentioning Mr. Guerena’s treatment as unacceptable.

David Codrea:

The prevalence of guns in the Philippines is complicating efforts to bring relief to survivors of Typhoon Haiyan, the diplomatic correspondent for The Daily Telegraph asserted yesterday.

[ … ]

He appears to be getting those numbers from GunPolicy.org, a project of the Sydney School of Public Health that “promotes the public health model of firearm injury prevention, as adopted by the United Nations Programme of Action on illicit small arms.” It’s hardly an endeavor sympathetic to private gun ownership, but nonetheless provides a useful resource for unwittingly showing the utter failure of globalist citizen disarmament edicts at living up to their promise of a safer world. And as with other countries this column has reported on that used the website as a resource, a summary of gun laws for the Philippines is instructive.

“The regulation of guns in the Philippines is categorised as restrictive,” the policy assessment reports, but adding “In the Philippines, private possession of handguns (pistols and revolvers) is permitted.”

That would seem to exclude rifles …

Read the rest of David’s piece.  When the report came out I looked at what they’re citing as the rate of gun ownership, and concluded that this couldn’t possibly be the cause of the problems.  The problem is that this is on the other side of the world, they should have evacuated people before the storm, and the government is inefficient (what government is efficient?).  Guns have nothing to do with it, or so I concluded.  It’s just another chance to bring up personal freedoms and stomp on them if they can.  Oh, and by the way, I disagree wholeheartedly with the idea of using what used to be the most effective and violent fighting force on earth, the United States Marines, for missions of benevolence.  We need to find another way to conduct relief efforts.

Kurt Hofmann:

LA Times columnist George Skelton nevertheless takes Governor Brown to task for not being anti-gun enough, because one of the vast number of models of rifle the vetoed bill would have banned is supposedly the one used in the LAX “gun free zone” killing. From the LA Times:

Not that it would have mattered for Gerardo Hernandez, 39, the TSA agent who was murdered. The bill would not have taken effect until Jan. 1. And Paul Anthony Ciancia, 23, the disgruntled, alleged assassin, could have kept his semiautomatic rifle by registering it.

And, yes, he also could have armed himself with a handgun and probably inflicted the same damage.

Yep–Skelton admits that the incident he is using to bolster his argument condemning Brown’s veto would not have turned out any differently if Brown had signed the bill …

Kurt is doing what he does best.  He’s undermining the arguments of the gun controllers by examining their inconsistencies.  Gun control, like control of everything else, doesn’t work.  A person bent on killing will always do it, even if he has to learn to fabricate the tool himself.  The Texas tower shooter, Charles Whitman, used primarily bolt action rifles to inflict most of his damage.  The best option is always deregulation, i.e., get rid of gun free zones.  Gun free zones are for killers and their protectors, the lawmakers.

On another front, I didn’t know that we have U.S. federal agents doing the bidding of the Polish government?  I guess they don’t have anything else to do.

Chris Christie:

“If you look at what we’ve done in New Jersey, we want to control violence,” Christie told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. “And some of that may involve firearms, but a lot of it doesn’t.”

Just reminding you again of what we’ve already discussed.  Chris Christie is an anti-gun nut from way back.  There could almost be no better reason to stay home during the next presidential election than if the GOP were to nominate him for office.  There isn’t a dime’s worth a difference between Hillary Clinton and him.  The former is a cackling, collectivist, totalitarian control freak, the later is the same thing except with a loud mouth.

Here I discussed my good experience with Springfield Armory.  It looks like I’m not the only one.

Michael Bane has some interesting comments:

… we have been having a “dialog” about the role of firearms in American society at least as long as I’ve been alive. IMHO, the “dialog” ended when the war began.

Let me say this again…we are at war with a segment of society whose sole goal is total civilian disarmament. We are not in a dialog. We are not in a debate. We are not in a healthy give-and-take in the Cornell University academic lounge. The primary weapon used by our blood enemies is the Big Lie.

It works like this…our enemy states a Big Lie, and I could list dozens, and we run around like little bitty chickens with our heads cut off, marshaling our arguments, footnoting our learned responses, bullet pointing our facts…and after the whole charade is over the enemy repeats the Big Lie, the lapdog media reports it as truth, and WE LOSE AGAIN!

Look at the thoroughly discredited “a gun in the home is 43% more likely to harm rather than protect the homeowner.” Probably more words have been written debunking that fake piece of trash than all Shakespeare’s plays and the complete transcribed Wikipedia, yet 2 weeks ago I read it presented as gospel truth in a daily newspaper website.

During the fight on the Colorado gun laws earlier this year, thousands of us came with our carefully prepared remarks, charts, studies, bullet points, facts — real honest to goodness facts. Our blood enemies, most notably Michael Bloomberg, shipped in a parade of liars…heads of fake organizations created by Bloomberg, a presentation of “polls” that wouldn’t meet even the most basic rules for polling, etc. We had the “indisputable” facts; they had the Big Lie. Who won?

Hint: It wasn’t us.

Good points all around, Michael.  But then, I’m not sure sure about this from Michael!  By the way, concerning Metcalf’s position that I discussed here, I don’t back down one bit from my position that the state is the right level for regulation of any kind, including firearms.  Of course, that’s not to say that there should be onerous regulation of firearms even at the state level.  Recall our previous discussions where I have said the fight is at the level where the founders wanted it, i.e., near the people and not with a centralized government.  The state constitutions, all of them if I am not mistaken, recognize the right to bear arms, although Illinois was late to the game (and some states are stronger than others).  The corollary to my position, of course, is that all laws made at the federal level are unconstitutional.  All of them.  Every last one.  When the states are weak, voters need to fire the politicians and put in honest men.

Josh Horwitz:

By now, it’s clear to most Americans that dangerous, suicidal individuals like Ciancia have ready access to military-style firepower because of the lobbying of groups like the National Rifle Association (NRA). They might not be aware, however, that the pro-gun movement is also equally responsible for disseminating violent, anti-government rhetoric, much of it aimed at the TSA specifically.

[ … ]

Pro-gun bloggers have follow the NRA’s lead and directed their own attacks at government agents, including the TSA. Robert Farago, a blogger at “The Truth About Guns,” called TSA agents “blue shirted goons” after Nugent’s wife was arrested for illegally carrying a gun into a terminal at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in August.

Mike Vanderboegh, the former Alabama militia leader and Fox News commentator who made national headlines after calling for the offices of Democratic Members of Congress to be vandalized during consideration of the Affordable Care Act, referred to TSA agents on his blog as “nanny state fascist perverts.” Pro-gun activist Andrew Johnston chose a similar slur, describing TSA agents as “filthy perverts.” And so on…

Oh good grief.  There he goes again blaming the big ole’ bad NRA.  Frankly, I’m deeply offended that he didn’t mention me for my coverage of TSA and TSA Ineptitude.  But I would have thought the major animus against the TSA had to do with the facts that their programs don’t do one thing to help transportation safety, and the department being a jobs program for ne’er-do-wells, abusers of the elderly, child molesters, ignorant hicks and uneducated morons who cannot find productive work any other way.

I guess you learn something every day, including the fact that you’d better watch your six (and twelve, and three, and nine) when the TSA gets hold of guns (via Glenn).

During this day at the range in Pickens, S.C., the range officer that day, a gunsmith named Donnie Lostraglio, noticed that the discharged casings from my Springfield Armory .45 XDm were scorched on one side.  He felt that the barrel was possibly out of round, and pointed this out to me and recommended that I take the gun by a gun shop where I live.  I had put perhaps 2000 rounds through the weapon and either I hadn’t noticed this or the issue developed over time.

Several weeks later I took the weapon by Hyatt Gun Shop, where the gunsmiths are excellent.  They measured the barrel to be 4 mils out of round, and recommended that I send it back to Springfield Armory to see if this might be an issue covered by warranty.

I began interacting with Mr. Robert Dominacki of Springfield Armory, and I noticed that it did take several e-mails to flush out exactly what I should do.  Springfield wanted my entire weapon as opposed to just sending in the barrel in order to see if any other part of the gun was malfunctioning.

In order to make this happen, Robert issued a return merchandise authorization to have the Springfield technicians examine my gun.  Springfield paid for the shipment through FedEx, both to the factory and back to me.  While Robert told me that it could be up to six weeks, I received it back within a week of receipt by Springfield with a new barrel, tested by their technicians to function just fine with the replacement barrel, a match grade 4.5″ .45 ACP just like I sent to them.

My interaction with FedEx wasn’t so precise.  The shipment back to me was made in such a manner that it could not be held at the FedEx hub because it is a firearm.  Furthermore, when you call FedEx you cannot reach their hubs, you can only reach their national number.  I started an account with FedEx in order to hold my shipment at the shipping hub but that option wasn’t allowed for this shipment.

FedEx attempted to deliver the package once and left a door tag because I wasn’t at home (I have a job).  I just happened to be at home when FedEx made the second attempt so I got my package.  Had this been attempted three times by FedEx I’m not sure what would have happened (would it have gone back to Illinois?).

I have complaints about FedEx being unreachable and unwilling to work with me on shipment of the firearm.  I have absolutely no complaints about Springfield Armory.  Some readers may complain that the barrel was out-of-round to begin with, but with that many firearms being made, some issues will be found.  I don’t expect manufacturers to be perfect.  I expect them to make good on their promises.  Springfield Armory did exactly that, and I continue to enjoy my fine firearm from them.  All around, this was a good customer experience.

David Codrea, discussing the firing of gun writer Dick Metcalf:

From a strictly human point of view, it’s a tragedy. Being a professional gun writer is a specialized craft, and opportunities to earn a living at it are few and far between. Devoting oneself to that as a career, getting it right most of the time and suddenly becoming not just unemployable, but widely excoriated, is a terrible outcome.

It’s fair to ask if some of the concerns raised by writer Bob Owens might soften demands for Metcalf’s head, and the uproar also raises inevitable comparisons to the way gun owners have reacted in the past to similar major foul-ups.

Bob Owens makes the following statement:

A modern well-regulated militia—one that is smoothly functioning and in proper working order as an irregular small unit militia force of the kind the John Mosby and Max Velocity train—requires blood, sweat, and tears. It’s hard work. It’s exhausting duty. It’s a promise to future generations that you ready, willing, and able to fight and live (any unprepared idiot can die) to preserve liberty for posterity.

On the other hand, “shall not be infringed,” taken without any responsibility, is a hedonist’s choice. It implies no responsibility, obligation, or duty. It is the cry of, “Why, we should have anything and everything, just because!”

Some of us are very selective in cherry-picking which parts of the Second Amendment we want to support, aren’t we?

I’ll speak to the subject of tactical training viz. Max Velocity and John Mosby later.  I don’t have that difficulty because of my methodological approach.  The Second Amendment circumscribes the power of the federal government, and its limitations are complete and comprehensive.  The Second Amendment doesn’t speak in the least to the power of the state, and we’ve discussed this before (please don’t slip in an argument over the fourteenth amendment at this point without reading the history of that subject here at this web site).

The State does indeed have the right to regulate firearms just like they have a right to regulate traffic laws, and this places both the authority to do so and the ability to remove those leaders from office who abuse that authority, right where it should be, near the people.  For example, the State has a right to expect that I will secure my weapons in such a manner that they will not become a danger to the neighborhood children should they come over to play (while at the same time no one has a right to illegal search or seizure to inspect my home “just because“).  The State also has a right to prohibit drunk driving.  I have never argued, nor will I ever argue, for anarchy or having everything I want just because.  God gives me rights, and the state recognizes those rights.  If it does not, I must hold the state accountable because God says I must.  All of life is a covenant, and the government is just as much in covenant with me as I am with it.  The wise founders left the centralized government out of this conversation as they should have.

As to the issue of gun owner reaction, to me this is simple.  Gun owners have the right to expect what they want in publications, and to refuse to purchase products if they don’t get what they expect.  Do consumers of other products not have that right as well?

Kurt Hofmann continues the conversation we engaged here concerning the closure of the last lead smelter plant in the U.S.

This could carry dire consequences with regard to availability and price of ammunition, prompting some to speculate that the anti-gun Obama administration’s EPA is motivated less by the claimed concern for “cleaner air” than by desire to squeeze private gun ownership from a new, less obvious angle.

Perhaps, perhaps not, but regardless, the squeeze is likely to be felt quite keenly by gun owners. All the more keenly because of longstanding federal law banning the use of many other materials in the construction of bullets used in “handgun ammunition.” If lead is unavailable/unaffordable (and now verboten, to California hunters), and if a great many other possible bullet materials are illegal, the remaining options are both few and of limited utility.

Yes, and that’s why this may be problematic as we discussed.  It isn’t as simple as substituting steel balls for lead, copper for brass, or steel for anything else like casings (which can tear up chambers).

Mike Vanderboegh reminds us yet again why it is an awful idea to talk to the police.  I know that some people have a hard time considering the exercise of their right to silence, but you need to watch all of this video again.  Please.  Watch it all.  And don’t ever talk to the police about anything.  They are an arm of the court, and exculpatory evidence discovered during questioning is inadmissible because it is hearsay.  Again, watch the entire video.  So have you watched the video, or just listened to me talk about it?