Archive for the 'AR-15s' Category

Someone has been reading my Save The Planet – Buy An AR concerning the blight of feral hogs on the landscape, American ecology and farming industry.

Rolling Stone:

For gunmakers, the political fight over assault rifles and high-capacity pistols is about more than just profits – it’s about the militarization of the marketplace and represents a desperate bid by gunmakers to prop up a decaying business. The once-dependable market for traditional hunting guns has fallen off a cliff. To adapt, the firearms industry has embraced a business strategy that requires it to place the weapons of war favored by deranged killers like Adam Lanza and Jared Loughner into the homes and holsters of as many Americans as possible. “They’re not selling your dad’s hunting rifle or shotgun,” says Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center, a top industry watchdog. “They’re selling military-bred weaponry.”

The Violence Policy Center.  But who else would Rolling Stone go to but the Violence Policy Center?  Of course.

So this article makes it sound like gun manufacturers are just struggling to stay in business, and have had to adapt to give people what they want, which is not really old fashioned rifles, but rather, these awful, evil black guns.  If this is true, I guess the cost for a nice Remington 700 series rifle has dropped like a rock.

Oooopppps!  I guess not, since the MSRP is still $800 – $1200.  Not good.  A broken narrative.  But let’s continue.

Less than 20 percent of Americans born after 1980 report having a gun in the home. “For the industry, the problem is ‘Who is going to buy the guns?'” says Sugarmann. “To borrow the language of the tobacco industry,” he says, “they need to find ‘replacement shooters.'”

Good grief.  Maybe he should have focused on people born between 1980 and 1990, since people born much later are prohibited by law from owning firearms.  What a dumb ass.  And any shooter knows just how hard it is to order firearms now, what the demand is, and how many new and young shooters there are at ranges.  But this author isn’t a shooter.  He is a dumb ass.  The narrative has changed too, from one of simply meeting creepy customer demand to making that market themselves by a slick strategy.  Does this guy have an editor?  Was he drunk when he wrote this crap? But going backwards in the article, we get this little gem.

AR-15 enthusiasts brag they can fire up to 400 rounds in 60 seconds. Paying roughly 50 cents a bullet, such shooters are blowing through $200 worth of ammo in a hot minute.

Maybe he should have gotten up with me.  I could have told him that the going price for 5.56 mm is about $1.00 per round.  I want to know what store told him they could sell at 50 cents per round?

Oh well.  This is what you get when writers at Rolling Stone weigh in dramatically and breathlessly on things about which they are ignorant.

UPDATE: Oh look!  It’s like watching a train wreck.  Rolling Stone was picked up and parroted by … you guessed it … MSNBC.  The only thing better than progressives choosing to look like dumb asses is progressives falling in line to be like each other and looking, well, like dumb asses.  Daily Kos, anyone?  What other progressive rag will run with this meme?  How rich.

Montana Outdoor:

Jeramiah Mathis, of the Hamilton, Montana area, has been hunting his entire life, and before he was legally able to hunt, he was tagging along with his Dad while he was hunting and laying traps.  Jeramiah wasted no time having his first successful hunt and shot his first deer at the age of 12.  His passion for hunting increases with every hunt he does.

Now 29 years-old, Jeramiah went on ”his” first cat hunt up the West Fork on February 10th of this year.  He had been out before with his father-in-law, a local outfitter at Rocking W Outfitters in Darby, assisting out-of-state hunters with their mountain lion hunts, but Jeramiah hadn’t ever been the one trying to fill his own cat tag.

Jeramiah’s hunting buddy on this particular trip was his six year-old daughter.  “Hunting is in her blood”, Jeramiah responded with when I asked him if his daughter has any interest in hunting when she is old enough.  “She is always asking me to take her up in the snow to look for animals” he added.  This lucky youngin got to be right there with her parents when her Mom shot her first whitetail and her Dad shot his first mountain lion.

The cat was taken with Jeramiah’s AR-15 sporting rifle.  This particular gun is his gun-of-choice while hunting nowadays, and it certainly proved to be effective with this hunt!

You mean you can actually hunt with an AR-15 – or as some prefer, a modern sporting rifle?  Maybe it’s sort of like hunting feral hogs, the ones that run in such huge packs that you need a high capacity magazine for them, except that with hogs you take a lot of shots and with the big cat he apparently took one.

And Stephen Bayazes defended his life with one too.  I guess you can just do all sorts of things with them.

UPDATE: Rick Keyes comments over Facebook that “I have used mine to deer hunt for 8 years since my last shoulder surgery.”

This guy finds it “disturbing that people feel they need to be armed against the government.”

He tore up his AR (Armalite Rifle, not “assault rifle”) in order to prevent nut jobs from getting hold of it.  He’s a nut job alright.  I’d say he succeeded in his goal.  One less nut with a gun.

Via David Codrea, international scholar Jim Carrey has escaped from the asylum and taken a formal position on assault weapons.

Any1 who would run out to buy an assault rifle after the Newtown massacre has very little left in their body or soul worth protecting.

Says the man with body guards.

The window was open and we could see everything because they were filming right below the window 20 ft. away. We could see Jim Carrey and hear what he was saying. It was so great. After watching for an hour, they stopped for a lunch break. His bodyguard drove a big black van right below the window and opened the car door. Jim Carrey walked over to the door. I leaned out the window and yelled, “Hey Jim Carrey!!!” and he looked up at me smiled, waved and said, “Hey!” I lost it and started screaming. It was the best thing that ever happened to me in my life.

Prior:

Sylvester Stallone On Assault Weapons

International scholar, Rocky, has some brain damage.

“I know people get (upset) and go, ‘They’re going to take away the assault weapon.’ Who … needs an assault weapon? Like really, unless you’re carrying out an assault. … You can’t hunt with it. … Who’s going to attack your house, a (expletive) army?”

Well, first I’ll answer on your level, dude.  Like, assault weapons are all cool and stuff, and you’re just being, like, you know, grodie to the max.  Dude.  Gag me with a spoon.  Just be awesome and chill.  Like, you know.

The next answer may require some reading.  Go read the Federalist Papers.  Then read the constitution.  Then read about Mr. Stephen Bayezes, who is alive today because he owned an AR-15 and used it with a 30-round magazine during a home invasion.

Finally, read all about the newest trend in home invasions all across America, i.e., 2-, 3-, 4- and 5-man teams of criminals to ensure the highest rate of success and safety for the home invaders, and lowest rate of successful resistance by the occupants.

Like really, dude.  Don’t be grodie to the max and stuff.

One fellow writes in simply indignant that there is such a thing as an assault rifle.

I grew up an avid hunter in the 1950s. At that time, federal law required using a shotgun with a plug limiting it to holding three shells … to hunt DUCKS.

That law still stands.

But today, we keep electing federal legislators who don’t even have the courage to limit assault rifles to holding fewer than 30 rounds … to hunt little 6- and 7-year-old CHILDREN.

I always like it when writers mention the fact that they are hunters, or former hunters from their childhood, or have served in the military – as if any of that is supposed to mean anything to me.  It’s markedly special, too, when one of those writers uses words like clip to refer to magazine.

If the perpetrator of the shooting in Connecticut had been using a revolver he would have accomplished the same horror.  He was unimpeded, and that is the problem that isn’t being addressed by any of the tyrannical laws being proposed.

The Governor of the State of New York is waxing know-it-all on hunting too.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called for tougher state bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines of ammunition as part of a progressive agenda in a sometimes fiery State of the State speech Wednesday.

“No one hunts with an assault rifle. No one needs 10 bullets to kill a deer,” Cuomo said. “End the madness now!

Okay.  I’ll acquiesce.  No one needs ten rounds to kill a deer.  But apparently Mr. Bayezes needed 30 rounds from an AR to defeat his home invaders, and lot’s of guys hunt feral hogs with ARs, assuming that the bay dogs can bay up the hogs.  We are losing the war on hogs, and need to kill as many as possible.

Finally, there is one other thing that we might find useful about an AR that Governor Cuomo hasn’t mentioned, i.e., suppressing tyrannical dictators like him.  After all, that’s the point of the second amendment anyway.

Addressing the objection that “Gun advocates will be hard-pressed to explain why the average American citizen needs an assault weapon with a high-capacity magazine other than for recreational purposes,” Kevin Williamson writes “The answer to this question is straightforward: The purpose of having citizens armed with paramilitary weapons is to allow them to engage in paramilitary actions. The Second Amendment is not about Bambi and burglars — whatever a well-regulated militia is, it is not a hunting party or a sport-clays club. It is remarkable to me that any educated person — let alone a Harvard Law graduate — believes that the second item on the Bill of Rights is a constitutional guarantee of enjoying a recreational activity.

There is no legitimate exception to the Second Amendment for military-style weapons, because military-style weapons are precisely what the Second Amendment guarantees our right to keep and bear.”

Special and protected, it is.

That the AR-15 is the single most protected firearm under the clear intention of the Founding Fathers for citizens to be armed with weapons of military utility is not up for debate or discussion. By function and role, it is the firearm of the American Patriot and militiaman.

Any attempt to strip the American citizen of the AR-15 or similar firearms is an attack on the very fabric of our Republic, an affront to the clear intent of the Founders, an assault on the plain meaning of the Constitution, and an attempted rape of Liberty.

Yes it is.  Read the entire case by Bob Owens.  He does a splendid job of developing the context and crafting the logic.  While you’re at it, read the predecessor article too.

Of course, I concur.

Some reactionary commentaries achieve little more than the following result: “A .223 caliber weapon (or an AR) killed the children in Connecticut, therefore ban those guns and this won’t happen any more.”  Or something thereabouts.

But occasionally a more technical argument is presented, and (ret.) Lt. Gen. John Castellaw has recently given us one.

The marksmanship and weapon handling skills I learned gave me a good start when I became a Marine. — But if my grandfather were alive today, he would be sorely disappointed that a major reason for gun ownership has changed from being a sportsman to being a “resistance fighter in waiting.”

[ … ]

This generation of assault weapons and ammunition weighs less than previous combat rifles, allowing more ammunition to be carried, hence increased lethality of the basic infantry unit. The wounds produced are more traumatic; the bullet tends to yaw or tumble when it hits soft flesh as it transfers kinetic energy to the body. The reason most cited by purchasers for the frenetic buying is the fear of “the government taking away our Secnd Amendment Rights,” the rallying call not for sportsmen but for aspiring resistance fighters.

This resistance fighter mentality has been stoked by those who seem to feel deeply that our country is in the hands of illegitimate political leadership. The calls for “secession” reveal an inability by a vocal group to abide by the results of our democratic process and instead call for state and local governments as well as individuals to refuse to work within our system. Extremists decry political positions other than their own on topics from immigration reform to forging a plan for government fiscal responsibility. The words used to attack and defend political and cultural beliefs are words of war, not of civil discourse.

We must stop and ask ourselves if our country has gotten to a point where a substantial portion of our citizens has a fear, and maybe hatred, of our popularly elected national leadership and our fellow citizens who may look different or worship differently or vote differently. And is willing to endure multiple Newtowns materially enabled, if not caused, by the easy purchase of combat assault-style weapons.

There are many things we can do to reduce these scenes of carnage, ranging from dealing more effectively with those with severe mental illness to improving the security in our schools to returning to civil political discourse to reducing our culture of violence. One that seems a no-brainer is to make a distinction between a gun designed to hunt game and a gun designed to kill people and act now to keep those weapons for use where they were made for, combat.

He trots out his credentials at the end of the commentary, including being retired USMC.  My son was a Marine who saw combat in Fallujah, and earned the combat action ribbon.  He knows Marine officers who are idiots, and I’ve talked to some of them myself.  His having been a Marine Lt. General means absolutely nothing to me.

My son remarked after the Connecticut shooting that a trained shooter isn’t going to choose an AR anyway.  He will going to use a bolt action rifle with expensive glass and ensconce himself in a protected, stand off position to wreak the most havoc.  But I’m willing to concede the point that a shooter may not be trained like my son.  He was a SAW gunner, but also completed some of the Scout Sniper training and was a designated marksman for his unit.

So what of the AR and its round?  I will also grant the point that I’ve called an AR a legitimate home defense weapon.  If that’s the weapon you choose to defend yourself and your family, it’s immoral to force you to choose otherwise.

But notice the equally absurd (but analogous) arguments he didn’t make.  At the place where the gun aficionados hang out, there are many folk who still (and will always) believe that the best close quarters battle (CQB) weapon every invented by mankind is the .357 magnum revolver.  But note that General Castellaw didn’t argue for making the .357 magnum round illegal because it achieves a velocity that causes hydrostatic shock.

Instead he chose to focus on the fact that it yaws when it strikes tissue.  Even in this, he is wrong.  The 5.56 mm round doesn’t just yaw when it strikes tissue.  It yaws in flight, even with boat tail ammunition.  That’s one reason that it is an effective round for CQB while being inferior to the 7.62 round at distance.

But it was larger caliber rounds that allowed the Texas tower shooter to achieve his nefarious aims.  Those larger caliber rounds don’t yaw and fragment like the 5.56 mm round does.  And that’s the point.  The general knows that the whole issue of the weapon pattern is irrelevant.  Magazine changeout on an AR takes 1 – 2 seconds, and even if you’re shooting a revolver, speedloaders can essentially make the weapon the equivalent of a semi-automatic handgun.  Typical (Bolt Action) deer hunting rifles can be used with great effectiveness to wreak havoc.

He knows that hating on the AR platform is a loser’s argument, so he invokes caliber and ballistics, still a losing argument because of the implications of allowing other calibers and rounds that have other ballistic (but equally deadly) performance.  The argument the general really wants to make in advocating that we distinguish weapons of war with any other is that in his opinion, only the police and military should have those weapons of war, and thus only the police should make war on the civilian population and only the military, under the control of the politicians in approved campaigns, should have the option of sanctioned violence.

But of course, the analogue is that the general also believes that you shouldn’t have the option of choosing certain kinds of weapons for your own defense.  That, dear people, is a political rather than a technical position.  The general is in over his head on ballistics, and it’s better to heed my counsel: “It isn’t the caliber of the weapon one is holding that’s the problem.  It’s the caliber of the one holding the weapon.”

So ban ARs or their round – I cannot stop you, although I can certainly stop you from confiscating mine.  But if you do it, don’t be a coward and hide behind disingenuous and silly arguments that focus on the platform, the round or its ballistics, the pattern, or the safety of the public.  We see through all of those arguments.  Do your deeds because you’re a statist and want to see the public disarmed.  Admit the truth.

As if you didn’t know it was coming.

President Obama on Wednesday urged Congress to vote on measures banning the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines and requiring background checks before any firearm sale, part of an emerging White House response to a massacre last week at a Connecticut elementary school.

[ … ]

In an effort to demonstrate the shift in political thinking since the Newtown shooting, Democrats have tapped Rep. Mike Thompson (Calif.), a lifelong hunter and gun rights activist, to lead their gun-related efforts. Thompson said Wednesday that several Democratic proposals “certainly make sense,” including the ban on high-capacity magazines.

“I’ve been a hunter all my life, and there’s no reason to have a magazine that holds 30 shells,” Thompson said.

I don’t care that he is alleged to have been a hunter his whole life.  That brings with it absolutely no authority to me.  He is a nobody.  And he is no gun rights activist.  But I guess no one who is hunting really does need 30 rounds in a single magazine if you’re hunting regulated game such as deer.  If you’re hunting feral hogs you want as many rounds as you can get,  and if you are defending yourself against a home invasion, you want the best weapon suited for the purpose, including a high capacity magazine, just like Mr. Stephen Bayezes who saved his life with one.

Here is a prediction.  The majority of shooters who are intent on harming people choose multiple firearms (including a mix of guns), or in the future will choose to fabricate their own high capacity magazine if they want it for their nefarious aims.  This ban won’t affect the level of gun violence in the least.  It will, however, increase the power and control of the federal government, and that’s its purpose.