Outdoor Life:

There’s nothing new about the quest for a good bear-country sidearm, and what we’re carrying is evolving. Giant revolvers, though still popular, are somewhat antiquated. The Glock 20 is rapidly becoming the preferred arm of choice, and for good reason. It is more streamlined, more shootable, and it carries more ammo than a revolver, yet it is still dependable and powerful. My pal Andrew Brady of Lone Star Armory showed me a few tricks to improve a stock Glock.

Replace the Sights

Chances are an encounter with a bear that requires using a pistol will happen very fast. You may not even have time to aim, but any edge you can give yourself helps. XS Sight Systems makes by far the fastest-acquiring sights that I have used. In particular, I recommend its Big Dot express sights ($125).

Swap the Barrel and Recoil Assembly

A quality aftermarket barrel ($140) will increase accuracy. The new barrel, along with a guide rod and recoil spring ($40), can be easily swapped out while your pistol is field stripped.

Modify the Grip

The grip angle on Glocks is a big turnoff to some shooters. Their relatively “steep” angle gives a shooter the feeling of awkwardly having to point the pistol down, compared to a 1911, in order to level the sights. We outlined the steps to change the grip angle below. Grinding on a new pistol might feel counter­intuitive, but you end up with a better-shooting gun.

It just keeps going on in this article.  I am a fan of the 1911 with its eleven degree grip angle and narrow profile, and I don’t like the feel of the sharp edges of a Glock.  If you don’t want to shoot a 1911 but want a double stack higher capacity magazine, why not choose a Springfield Armory XD or XDm which is modeled in the same fashion of the eleven degree grip angle?

Or why not choose a .357 magnum or .44 magnum revolver?  Why would anyone spend the kind of effort and money necessary to pull this off when you can buy a new gun for the same amount?  I think the gunsmiths at Hyatt Gun Shop would look at you weird if you brought them these plans.

And for the record, a .45 ACP has proven enough to turn a bear away.

By now you’ve seen that a truck attack has strewn bodies for a mile along the Mediterranean coast in France.

At least 80 people have been killed and more than 50 injured after a 25-tonne lorry mowed down crowds for more than a mile before the driver got out and sprayed fleeing revellers with bullets as terror struck Bastille Day celebrations on the French Riviera.

One eyewitness described seeing ‘bodies flying like bowling pins’ and ‘hearing noises, cries that I will never forget’ as the horror unfolded on a busy promenade in the southern city of Nice at around 11pm last night.

Identity documents belonging to a 31-year-old French Tunisian were later found in the bullet-riddled truck after the gunman at the wheel was shot dead by police marksmen, security sources said.

The source added: ‘The identification of the truck driver is still underway.’ The recovered papers indicate the man is a resident of Nice.

The truck driver was said to have shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ – God is greatest – before being killed.

The driver is in hell now, so it would be redundant to tell him to go to hell.  As for the cause, we may all say with one voice, “we must ban trucks.”  For the children.  And when they learn to use fertilizer to make bombs, we must ban the planting of crops.

As for counsel that makes a difference in your life, you can fully expect this to come to America.  This is a guy with a truck, and anyone can do it. I actually heard the “security experts” on one channel (CNN) try to convince listeners that this man must have been a part of a large cell, that one CANNOT get guns in France (forget the Charlie Hebdo event and the Bataclan), and one CANNOT get bombs in France.  Period.  And that in order to learn to drive like this, you must have had military training, even through SpecOps level.

Seriously.  CNN tried to convince people that driving a truck through a crowded street required SpecOps level training.  What they were really doing is trying to convince people that the boogeyman was out there somewhere, rather than some radical Muslim who lives among us.  They even lamented that this event, like those before it, would push France even more to the right in its politics.  It was actually refreshing to listen to CNN (I hadn’t for perhaps twenty years).  This is how the other half lives.  It requires SpecOps training to drive a truck through a crowded street shouting Allahu Akbar.  Seriously.  You can’t make this up.

Carry a gun, avoid large crowds, and avoid confined spaces.  The counsel to avoid confined spaces might not make sense in this context, but seriously, think about a roadway with concrete and brick buildings on the sides and people in front and behind, and tell me how this is different than sitting in a worship service in any church in America waiting for a shooter to attack?  Think differently about your safety and security.  Begin now.

Remington filed a motion to withhold certain information concerning its Bushmaster brand of AR-15s, based mainly on the proprietary nature of said information.  For those of us who deal with technical information or trade secrets, this is routine and customary.  It is certainly not out of the ordinary, and the motion could have to do with information Remington wants to keep from being disclosed.  What if they have studied the rifling twist rate to  tweak it to produce a little more stable bullet flight, or studied barrel length to make it effective at longer distances, or whatever.  I don’t know, I’m just making this up as I go because I don’t know what they know after having invested their time and wealth in making a better rifle.  That’s the point, and that’s why Remington wants its information withheld from public disclosure.

Enter the Sandy Hook families again.

The families suing the maker of the AR-15 rifle used by gunman Adam Lanza in the Sandy Hook massacre called a request by Remington Arms to keep company materials secret so that the company keeps its competitive advantage “repugnant,” according to a new filing in the case.

“Remington did not become the country’s leading seller of military weaponry to civilians by accident. It ascended to that position through its calculated marketing and pursuit of profit above all else,” lawyers for the Sandy Hook families wrote in a response objecting to a protective order filed by Remington.

As part of their lawsuit, families of victims have asked Remington to turn over its marketing materials in the belief that they will show that company intentionally marketed its high-powered rifles as “weapons of war” to civilians who had no business owning such guns.

“Plaintiffs lost family members, including children, in the service of that bottom line. Now Remington wants them to do more to protect its profitability,” the motion reads.

So let me translate.  We, the Sandy Hook families, don’t care about your God-given rights to defend yourself and your families the best way you see fit, nor do we care about the fact that in the court of public opinion, we lost and these weapons are entirely legal.

Furthermore, we don’t care that we don’t know what we’re talking about, and that virtually every gun in civilian use has a military application, from shotguns used for room clearing in Now Zad, Afghanistan by the Marines, to Remington 700 bolt action rifles used by Marine snipers in Iraq, nor that virtually every military weapon has a civilian application.

We don’t care about the fact that there isn’t the distinction between the two that we’re claiming, and we don’t care about the fact that weapons truly get tested by the civilian community, who has to spend their own money for the guns and reviews them on blogs and YouTube, rather than the military who has to use what the Pentagon buys for them, nor that vast improvements have been made to military weapon systems by applying civilian-based gun modifications or tactics developed in 3-gun competitions or the gaming community.

Hell, we don’t even care about the fact that there is a federal law against what we’re doing, called the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, and that we’re basically relying on a raving-bitch SJW judge named Barbara Bellis to help us through what would otherwise be dismissed with prejudice.  We don’t care that the weapon used in Sandy Hook was stolen.  No, we don’t care about anything but us.

The real morally reprehensible actions are being taken by the Sandy Hook families, not Remington.  How utterly despicable.

Prior:

Judge Barbara Bellis Says Sandy Hook Families’ Lawsuit Against Remington Goes Forward

Update On Sandy Hook Families’ Lawsuit Of Remington

Discovery In The Sandy Hook Families Versus Remington Case

WTOP.com:

Prince George’s County prosecutors have dropped 10 charges against a 25-year-old pizza delivery driver in Bladensburg, who says excessive force was used during a traffic stop.

Christopher Jeffries had used his cellphone’s camera to videotape the Jan. 17 traffic stop, in which a Bladensburg police officer approached his vehicle with gun drawn, after Jeffries made an abrupt turn and failed to immediately pull over when police followed him.

Jeffries repeatedly asked why he had been pulled over, while handing over his driver’s license.

In the video, which was posted on YouTube, Jeffries asked the officer to put away his weapon and said he was afraid having it pointed at him.

Eventually, after several warnings, Jeffries was pulled out of his car by more than one officer and brought to a police car, where he was assaulted, according to his lawyer J. Wyndal Gordon.

Jeffries was charged with 10 counts, including second degree assault, resisting arrest and attempting to elude a police officer.

Monday, Prince George’s County prosecutors dropped all charges against Jeffries, according to Gordon.

John Erzen, spokesman for Prince George’s County state’s attorney Angela Alsobrooks said “after we screened the case, we found there was insufficient evidence to sustain the charges against Mr. Jeffries. ”

Bladensburg police Lt. Tracy D. Stone said the police department was “disappointed” with the county’s decision not to proceed with the case.

When asked about the department’s policy on approaching a vehicle with a gun drawn, Stone said in an email that an officer may draw their firearm if they believe they “have to employ lethal force” or when the officer “believes that doing so will provide a tactical advantage.”

Well damn.  That about covers it, doesn’t it?  Whenever an officer believes that doing so will provide a tactical advantage?  By covers it, I mean all of the time, in any situation, any time, for any reason, you could have a LEO stick a gun in your face and argue that it was to his tactical advantage to do so.

And he would be right.  But he would also be in the wrong.  Moral wrong, that is.

I’ll let the lawyers weigh in on this one as to the legal ramifications of what this fellow did.  Readers can weight in too, but I wanted to focus on whether this was wise (h/t Uncle).

There is an interesting discussion here about this.  My take is that a mob, or any potential assailant for that matter, can close the gap very quickly.  I don’t fault the man for unholstering his weapon.  Neither do I fault him for walking backwards and very carefully while trying to pay attention to his surroundings.

What I would say though is that if he thought he was under threat, when he was out of range he should have retreated and gotten away.  I would have.  Remember, egress, evasion and escape.  That he came back will probably be a problem with a prosecutor.

Defense News:

Two years after the Air Force tried to force its aging A-10 Warthog fleet into retirement, officials are exploring whether to procure a potential replacement for the aircraft famed for its powerful defense of troops on the ground.

But whether the service chooses a clean-sheet design or tries to modify a currently available jet, experts say the service will face an uphill battle in terms of getting funding during a tight fiscal climate where it may have to battle other modernization programs for money ­– despite hopes that foreign customers may be interested in such an aircraft.

The Air Force in recent years has had a complicated relationship with the Warthog, the common name given to the Fairchild Republic A-10 Thunderbolt II. The service attempted to retire the plane in fiscal 2015 and 2016 due to the spending constraints caused by mandatory budget cuts, and was rebuffed by Congress both years. Finally, in its fiscal year 2017 budget request, it opted to retain the aircraft until 2022 in part due to the platform’s utility in the fight against the Islamic State.

Both the outgoing and incoming Air Force chiefs of staff have been banging the drum for a follow-on close air support (CAS) aircraft in recent weeks, describing one that would be cheaper to operate and incorporate modern technologies. That would require an expansion of the service’s budget, former Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh told reporters days before his June retirement.

“I’d like to build a new CAS airplane right now while we still have the A-10, transition the A-10 community to the new CAS airplane, but we just don’t have the money to do it, and we don’t have the people to fly the A-10 and build a new airplane and bed it down,” he said.

Starting a new program is never easy, but the service doesn’t necessarily have to spend huge amounts of time and money to develop a new platform, he told Defense News in an exclusive interview earlier in June.

“I think you can do it much quicker than people think you can,” he said. “We don’t have to come up with sensors and weapons that are cosmic. That’s not what we need. We’re talking about something that can do the bulk of the low threat, maybe a little bit of medium threat work in rugged environments all over the world.”

But it all comes back to that “we don’t have enough money” bullshit.  Woe is us, the Congress won’t fund out stupid fifth generation warfare video games.  Oh, oh, whatever shall we do?

In his interview with Defense News, Welsh said he believed the development of a new close air support platform could generate numerous foreign military sales.

“It’s something we can teach our allies to fly, something we could probably sell overseas. There’s lots of air forces looking for this kind of capability,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of interest in lots of places to developing this kind of a platform.”

Analysts, however, were skeptical that an A-10 replacement would find a wide market, particularly if it was a single-mission aircraft.

“The A-10 is arguably the best CAS aircraft of its generation, yet to date the U.S. has remained the only operator,” Douglas Barrie, IISS senior fellow, said in an email. “At a time when defense spending in many countries remains under pressure, finding the resource for a single-role platform, rather than a multi-role combat aircraft, strikes me as a challenge.”

Talking up the export potential of a new CAS plane is beneficial to the Air Force if it can get industry to start investing their own funds into new designs or concepts, said Richard Aboulafia, vice president of the Teal Group. However, most countries would rather funnel their money to multi-mission fighter jets.

Some analysts even suggested the Air Force’s newfound enthusiasm for replacing the A-10 with a new CAS plane should be understood as a backdoor approach to finally mothballing the Warthog for good.

That’s because it is, and mothballing the A-10 and pouring money into that piss-poor aircraft, the F-35 – that sucks at everything and costs virtually everything the Air Force has, from first born to right testicles – is stupid to everyone who has two brain cells.  But it has the Air Force and Pentagon hooked like a cheap hooker and drugs, to the point that they want a inspired manufacturer to market a small prop plane for CAS that would get shot out of the sky to the point that pilots would refuse to fly it, if it didn’t get laughed out of the sky first.

This is all a solution in search of a problem.  I recently spoke to a retired A-10 mechanic, and almost the first words out of our mouths was what a bad ass aircraft the A-10 was.  It is the manliest, best designed air frame in history for what it does.  It makes enemy troops tremble in fear and run for their lives.  The F-35 cannot ever be a replacement for the A-10.  The Air Force isn’t interested in the A-10 anymore because the Air Force couldn’t care less about supporting ground troops with CAS.  They want to play video games.

Got it, Soldiers and Marines?  By trying to kill the A-10, the Air Force is saying you can die for all they care.  The next time you see a fly boy, let him know what you think of their disdain for you.

I hadn’t thought much about it or researched it, but I stumbled on this Inquisitr article where the weapon used in the Dallas shootings was an SKS, not an AR-15.  The New York Times also mentioned this.  Dean Weingarten writing for Ammoland spent a good deal of time on this.

The rifle used by the Dallas sniper was an antique East Block rifle designed in the 1940’s, an SKS.

The SKS was considered obsolete by the Soviet military in 1956, 60 years ago. 

It is a simple semi-automatic design that does not use detachable magazines and holds 10 rounds of ammunition. It uses the intermediate powered 7.62 x 39 cartridge, about as powerful as the .30-30, a common deer cartridge in the United States for a hundred and twenty years.  From nbcnews.com:

Dallas police said Friday that detectives found bomb making materials, ballistic vests, rifles, ammunition and “a personal journal of combat tactics” in Johnson’s home.

Johnson used a SKS rifle and a handgun in the attack, multiple law enforcement sources told NBC News.

The Dallas Morning News:

When rifle shots rang out in downtown Dallas during Thursday night’s protest, some of the demonstrators were also carrying rifles.

In the ensuing chaos, one of them was labeled a “person of interest” after police released a photo of him carrying an AR-15 rifle. Others were stopped and questioned by police.

It was not immediately clear Saturday whether any of those who were legally armed delayed or hampered the police response to the shooter, Micah Xavier Johnson, 25, of Mesquite. Dallas police did not respond to questions.

But Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings said: “It’s logical to say that in a shooting situation, open carry can be detrimental to the safety of individuals.”

No Mayor, that’s not logical at all.  How is carry of a gun, concealed or open, a detriment to safety?  Please explain yourself.

Rawlings said Dallas police Chief David Brown told him that people running through the shooting scene with rifles and body armor required officers to track them down and bring them to the police department. Whether that was time that could have been spent trying to find and stop the shooter is something police will have to comment on, Rawlings said.

So let me get this straight.  So you assertion is that if open carry wasn’t legal, the shooter would have shot cops, continued to open carry for all to see, and that would have made it easier to find him, as opposed to say, a concealed carrier shooting, concealing his weapon, and making it harder for the cops to find him?

“There was also the challenge of sorting out witnesses from potential suspects,” Geron said. “Texas is an open carry state, and there were a number of armed demonstrators taking part. There was confusion on the radio about the description of the suspects and whether or not one or more was in custody.”

Okay look, you’re just trying to find someone to blame for this being chaotic rather than clinical, but such things are always chaotic rather than clinical, and open carriers didn’t cause anything or impede any investigation.  If an open carrier had been at the scene he could have helped to handle the situation, but apparently no one was at the scene who had access to weapons (concealed or open).

At least initially the shooter was in a standoff position, and frankly if he had wanted to maintain his effectiveness he would have maintained that standoff position and ensured means of egress.  He chose to engage in CQB and thus he showed himself.  I’ve told you guys time and time again, the most dangerous situation of a sniper’s hide with a “shooter’s rifle,” a scoped bolt action rifle that will shoot  << MOA.

That kind of weapon can be pre-deployed in a sniper’s hide with proper planning.  You’re thinking too small by focusing on guys running around the street and open carriers.  You need to expand your thought framework.

New York Times:

“The shooting had nothing to do with race and everything to do with the presence of that gun,” Mr. Kelly said in an interview, noting that Officer Yanez is Latino.

Mr. Castile “was not following the directions of the police officer,” Mr. Kelly said, but he declined to provide further detail.

Much of what is known about the shooting comes from a Facebook Live video of the aftermath streamed by Mr. Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds.

Yea, I’ll bet he didn’t want to elaborate further.  Consider that.  The presence of a gun.  Let it wash over you again.  The presence of a gun.  Consider its implications for you and anyone carrying a gun.

His lawyer is floating his case now in an attempt to get the prosecutor to drop any potential charges.  This is his case.  “The presence of a gun.”  He shot the man because of the presence of a gun.

Julia Dahl with CBS News:

On Wednesday evening, police in Falcon Heights, Minn., fatally shot Philando Castile in his car. According to a video filmed by Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, who was sitting beside him when he was shot, Castile informed the officer that he had a firearm.

“He let the officer know that he had a firearm and he was reaching for his wallet and the officer just shot him,” Reynolds tells the camera.

“I told him not to reach for it,” says the officer, whose face is unseen but whose gun is still pointed at the bleeding Castile in the driver’s seat.

“You told him to get his ID, sir,” responds Reynolds.

Minnesota law enforcement have yet to confirm whether Castile did indeed have a permit to carry a firearm, but if he did, he is one of more than 230,000 such licensed gun owners in Minnesota, according to Andrew Rothman of the Minnesota Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance.

Since 2003, Minnesota has been what is called a “shall issue,” state, which means that county law enforcement must issue a permit to carry a concealed weapon if the applicant meets certain standards. And, Rothman says, 13 years after this expansion of the right to carry, Minnesota police should know how to interact with legally armed citizens.

[ … ]

Bill Johnson, the Executive Director of the National Association of Police Organizations, an advocacy and education organization focused on advancing the interests of law enforcement officers, says that the presence of a gun other than the officer’s in a police-civilian interaction “does ratchet up the stress of the situation.”

Reynolds, who gave an emotional statement outside the Minnesota governor’s mansion Thursday on Facebook Live, says that they were pulled over because of a broken taillight, which she says wasn’t broken.

Reynolds said the officer asked to see Castile’s license, and Castile reached into his back right pocket where he keeps his identification. She said Castile told the officer he was carrying a firearm, and Reynolds said she told the officer he was legally licensed to carry.

That’s when, she said, the officer fired five shots into Castile’s chest. She said the officer told them not to move: “How can you not move when they ask you for your license and registration?”

In a situation like what Reynolds describes, Johnson says that there are multiple ways for an officer to make sure he and the citizen he pulls over are safe once that person has disclosed that he has a firearm.

“Most officers will say, I appreciate you letting me know: here’s what we’ll do,” Johnson said. The officer can then, for example, ask the subject to step out of the car while he secures the firearm until the encounter is finished. He can also ask his partner to secure the firearm while the civilian keeps his or her hands in plain sight.

Oh dear.  It’s going to take some unpacking for this one.  First of all, I sure am glad that with ISIS in the twin cities, we have cops focusing on the right things such as broken tail lights.  We wouldn’t want the inspection process to handle it or anything.  We need to pay cops good money to conduct stops to tell drivers about their tail lights.

Next, there’s just nothing more a peaceable, law abiding citizen can do.  He pulled over, came to a complete stop, rolled the window down, and announced that he had a gun.  He did everything he is expected to do.  And no, silly counsel to call what you have a “firearm” rather than gun or weapon has no bearing on anything at all.

Whether he is black, white or some other race is irrelevant to the issue.  He was exercising his rights, not just rights under the law (which is a covenant for living together), but incorrigible rights granted by God.  In addition to other things like departments possibly hiring the wrong kind of people, police officers are simply being taught the wrong things in the academy and by the example of their superiors.

According to the Supreme Court in Tennesse versus Garner, police can use their weapons only in the same instances I can, i.e., when their lives are in danger.  If I cannot legally do it, then police officers cannot legally do it either.  The fact that they get away with it because prosecutors won’t bring charges doesn’t make it okay.

Continuing, it isn’t okay for an officer to unholster his weapon and point it, showing no muzzle discipline, in the direction of someone who isn’t an immediate and clearly discernible threat.  I cannot legally do that, and it’s called assault with a deadly weapon.  It isn’t okay to assume that when someone is doing what you tell him to, he is really intent on doing you harm.  People cannot read minds, and Mr. Castile had no way of knowing that you thought he was reaching for his weapon.  If you cannot do any better than that as a LEO, then quit your job and go find one you can handle.

It isn’t okay to discharge your weapon in the direction of someone just because you surmise he might be doing something you don’t understand.  And finally, it isn’t okay to take another man’s life for obeying the law.  The notion that the mere presence of a weapon “ratchets up the stress” is ridiculous.  I’m around people with guns all the time.  I’m not stressed out.  I’m careful, but I don’t swing my weapons around and threaten people because that’s unwise, immoral and illegal.  What the cop did was unwise, immoral and illegal.  I don’t care if a jury exonerates him – he is guilty of at least second degree murder in my book, or perhaps manslaughter.

Here’s a note to cops everywhere.  Assume everybody is carrying a firearm.  Take a deep breath.  Be a friend to the person you have stopped.  Stay calm.  If a man pulls his car over, rolls his window down and announces pursuant to the law that he is carrying and agrees to produce his permit, don’t unholster your weapon and kill him.  He hasn’t done anything illegal.  These are basic childlike things that any fifth grader should know.  And don’t tell him to put his hands up.  That’s stupid.  Grow up.  Ask him to put his hands on the steering wheel if you can’t take the stress.  But don’t tell him to produce his license and then shoot him for moving his hands.  That makes you out to be the moron, not him.

The problem, notwithstanding Julia’s lede, isn’t that both cops and civilians have guns.  LEOs and civilians have always had guns, and they always will.  This is nothing new, but what is new is the reaction we see with LEOs.  And this reaction is itself causing problems.  Witness dead LEOs in Dallas from the Black Lives Matter protest.  BLM is quickly becoming a terrorist organization, and just to remind you, none of this has in my mind to do with Michael Brown, a criminal who stole, trespassed, and beat a cop nearly senseless.  Don’t mix these two things if you want to think clearly about the issue.

Our friend Amanda Marcotte at Salon reacted with disdain not at the police, but the NRA.

Right in the midst of a national outrage over  a video of police in Louisiana shooting Alton Sterling while holding him on the ground, yet another video of a police shooting of a black man has come out.

This video, filmed in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, shows a man named Philando Castile writhing in pain with blood splattered all over his car while his girlfriend says that a police officer shot Castile after asking Castile, responding to requests for his license, reached for his wallet. Castile later died of his wounds.

Beyond being yet more videos of senseless violence by police against African-Americans, what these two videos have in common is the police in question excuse their actions by citing the presence of a gun.

In the Minnesota video, the woman tells the camera that Castile informed the office that he had a licensed gun on him before he reached for his wallet. The officer then returns, arguing, “I told him not to reach for it. I told him to get his hand out.”

In the Louisiana video, officers can be heard yelling, “He’s got a gun!”

In both cases, there seems to be no question that the shooting victims were armed. It’s a point that’s already being flogged by conservatives in an effort to excuse these officers.

However, and conservatives should be the first to remember this, guns are legal in this country.

Guns are legal in this country. Louisiana is an open carry state. Minnesota allows concealed carry. Police officers in these states know full well that people have a legal right to carry. They have, according to conservatives themselves, no reason to believe that a man with a gun is a bad guy. Why, he could very well be one of those good guys with a gun, at the ready to stop crime, that we keep hearing about from conservatives

Which brings up a critical question: Where is the gun rights lobby?

Here are two American citizens that were killed while doing what the NRA claims is a constitutional right. Surely this must be a gross injustice in the eyes of the NRA! Surely they will be demanding action, petitioning congressmen, demanding the Department of Justice to step forward and make sure that every American has a right to arm themselves without fear of being gunned down by the police! Right?

Oh Amanda, there’s no reason to be bitchy about this.  The NRA doesn’t usually get involved in individual cases, but they usually do stay more on track for larger legislative actions they can effect (some to my liking, but if it ends in yet another gun control law, I’m always opposed to it).  But if you want conservatives to come to the defense of the man shot in Minnesota, why not use my example?  I am the NRA.  I say the cop did something that was evil, but I don’t think that’s the real issue with your commentary.  I think you’re being disingenuous.  See, you no more believe in Mr. Castile’s rights than you believe in mine.  You’re just using this event as an opportunity to be a SJW, aren’t you?

One final point as I close out and give readers free reign to analyze as appropriate.  If you’re a LEO and you actually touch another man’s gun in the process of a stop, or you have a partner touch his gun, much less unholster it, “secure” it or anything else you think you are doing to it, let me be as clear as I can be.  You … are … an … idiot.  If your procedures have you doing this, then your procedures were written by idiots.  You can tell them I said so and send them this article.

You have no business risking NDs or taking possession of property that isn’t yours, even temporarily, and especially since you don’t know of modifications that may have been made to the firearm that would make it unfamiliar to you.

Don’t do it.  Just say no.  I wouldn’t walk up and presume to take possession of another man’s gun at a range or while in his home.  You have no business doing that either.  It’s weird, creepy, and unsafe.