Archive for the 'Guns' Category

Seen at TTAG.

Open carry is materially different from concealed carry. It’s often designed to be menacing, to intimidate the public and public officials. And after the debates around Rittenhouse, it’s time to rethink open carry, as a matter of ethics and law. https://t.co/2daiagOyJI

— David French (@DavidAFrench) November 16, 2021

What a foppish, effete, dainty man.  He and Robert Bateman may want to meet and have some egg plant and bean sprouts together.

I was sitting in a casual seafood restaurant on the Eastern Shore of Virginia not long ago. It is a place well known for the quality of their crab and inshore fish. It was early on a quiet Sunday morning. The brunch hour approached and, more importantly, we were hungry. We were passing the Delmarva Peninsula at the time, an area I know well from my youth. My wife sat opposite me across a plain varnished pinewood table and my baby daughter sat in a high-seat next to me. Three tables of this roughly sixty-table restaurant were filled.

As we ate, looking over the beautiful waters at the Island House Restaurant in Wachapreague, I noticed over my wife’s shoulder the large man sitting in the table next to ours. It is not all that often that I notice people significantly larger than I am, but this guy qualified enough so that one could not help but look when he got up a few feet away. Going I know not where, I also noticed something else, the obvious presence of a concealed weapon at his hip, nominally, loosely “concealed” beneath his oversized T-shirt.

Really? A gun, at Sunday Brunch? Are you seriously that afraid of the 75-year-old farming couple, the only other people in the restaurant, who probably raised the daughter who babysat you 30 years ago? Or is it the middle-class transient family of three, with the baby, us, who frighten you? I mean, really, there were eight people in that restaurant at the time.

Then, over the next hour, as the 30 or-so retirees and perhaps 20 more obviously in for a post-Church-service special Sunday Brunch folks came in, I came to realize how absolutely delusional the fellow must be. What kind of idiot carries a gun in a family restaurant for family brunch? Well, that would be one of the folks influenced by the NRA-approved “Molon Labe” movement.

He can’t even hide his disdain for the man, not even as it pertains to his weight.  Of course, he didn’t have the guts to tell the man he thought he was fat, nor to ask him why he openly carries.

I have always believed, and continue to, that gentlemen carry their weapons openly.  The founders and their sons did, with John Adams carrying a rifle to shoot squirrels on the way to school in the morning.

Criminals try to hide their weapons.  As for everybody else, it’s all psychological.  The fact that a weapon isn’t in plain view doesn’t mean it isn’t there.  Notice that Bateman begins with his disdain for open carry (or loosely concealed, as he called it), and then to the fact that he had a firearm at all.

It isn’t really open carry to which they object – it’s carry at all.  They don’t want you armed.  As for French, well, it’s David French.  What do you expect?  Realistically, though, he should replace “designed to be menacing” with “he obviously hates IWB carry and sweating and corroding his weapon.”

Sometimes a rose is just a rose.

Tim does a convincing job, as least for me.  I’ve not seen nor used his recommended product, Bore Tech Eliminator Bore Cleaner.

However, I never liked the idea of putting steel or brass brushes down my barrels.

I think it’s time to order some new supplies.  I’ll make sure to stock up on nylon brushes, and I may give this cleaner a try.

I’ve done the barrel break-in procedure once.  I thought it was sort of dumb when doing it.

Here is the Sniper’s Hide discussion thread he’s talking about.

Opinions of readers are welcome.

At Outdoor Life.

It comes with a 1 MOA guarantee, and available calibers include .223 Rem., 7.62×39, 224 Valkyrie, .308 Win., 6mm Creedmoor, 6.5 Creedmoor, 6.5 PRC, .30/06 Sprg., .300 Win. Mag., 8x57JS. MSRP: $749.

I don’t get paid for advertising this rifle.  I don’t have one.  CZ (unfortunately) didn’t send me one to review.

But for an MSRP like that with a 1 MOA guarantee, this rifle will compete with rifles like the Bergara and maybe even the Tikka.

I’m just keeping readers informed by stuff I stumble upon.

The judge [correctly] dropped the weapons charge.

The problem with the Wisconsin statute is not a problem of pluralization but definition. It is not clear that the statute actually bars possession by Rittenhouse. Indeed, it may come down to the length of Rittenhouse’s weapon and the prosecutors never bothered to measure it and place it into evidence.

In Wisconsin, minors cannot possess short-barreled rifles under Section 941.28. Putting aside the failure to put evidence into the record to claim such a short length, it does not appear to be the case here. Rittenhouse used a Smith & Wesson MP-15 with an advertised barrel length of 16 inches and the overall length is 36.9 inches. That is not a short barrel.

Of course it’s not an SBR.

One might claim that he found a gunsmith to shorten the barrel for him, reinstall the flash hider, and not inform Rittenhouse that it was now an SBR.  But of course that would be stupid.  Kyle would gain nothing whatsoever from losing an inch or two off his barrel length.

Besides, I can look at it and tell that it’s not an SBR.  And besides again, I know how to use a tape measure.

And besides one more time, the entire team of prosecuting attorneys needs to be flogged in broad daylight, stripped naked, and marched to the town square and put in stocks as an example to children everywhere.

I have previously called for criminal charges against Thomas Binger, the PA in the Kyle Rittenhouse case, for having suborned perjury in the case.  He’s an awful man without scruples or ethics of any sort.

Now we find out that he’s just plain dumb.

Prosecutor takes the AR (an admitted exhibit), says his assistant has “ checked it to be sure it isn’t loaded.” Then, without himself opening the action to confirm unloaded, raises it and points it in the direction of the jury!

Source.

Folks, this isn’t a game, show or circus act, even though the PA’s been allowed to turn it into that.

Let’s make it clear.  It wouldn’t have even mattered if he had performed a chamber check himself, or if 100 people had done that.

It’s called defense in depth, where there are redundant means of ensuring safety.  Nuclear Power Plants are designed that way.  Commercial aircraft are designed that way.

Gun safety is managed that way.  Perform a chamber check, and then handle the weapon as if it’s loaded.

Do not point the weapon at anything you don’t intend to destroy, and know your backstop.  In this case he has his finger inside the trigger well on the trigger.  He’s violating two of the most sacred rules of gun safety.

It would have been entirely legitimate had someone from the jury stood up and shouted, “Stop pointing the gun at us, you moron!”

Source via TCJ correspondent, WiscoDave.

Outdoor Life, What Really Happened to Jim Zumbo.

In his blog, Zumbo slammed ARs and the hunters who use them.

“We [meaning traditional hunters] don’t need to be lumped into the group of people who terrorize the world with them,” he wrote, and suggested that game agencies should “ban” ARs from the field. “Excuse me, maybe I’m a traditionalist, but I see no place for these weapons among our fraternity…. I’ll go so far as to call them ‘terrorist’ rifles.”

The rest of the article seems like an attempt at rehabilitation of Zumbo’s reputation in the firearms community.

I don’t really care what he thinks about hunting with AR-15s, or anything else.  He owes me no apology, and I don’t demand any.

In fact, I don’t care what you hunt with, as long as you do your dead level best to ensure an ethical kill that leaves little room for pain and suffering.

If you want to bow hunt, that’s fine with me.  If you want to use a crossbow, that’s fine with me too.  I own a crossbow because I have shoulder issues that prevent a good, full length draw.  If you want to hunt with an air rifle or a rock, that’s fine with me, or a muzzle loader, or a bolt action, or a lever action.

If you wanted to hunt indigenous game (e.g., white tail) with a machine gun, I would probably object because you’re killing for the sake of killing rather than for meat.  I agree with killing for the sake of killing if it’s an invasive species or a pest like wild pigs (if we continue to let them roam and reproduce, soon enough we won’t be able to grow the crops necessary to feed ourselves).

But I do have a problem with Zumbo, and this is it.  He sees the hunting and shooting community as a “fraternity.”  He wants to sick law enforcement on those who don’t agree with him or who are different.  Or at least, he did.

Any man who wants to turn law enforcement on me is my enemy.  Sports shooting, precision rifle shooting, 3-gun competition, 2-gun competition, IDPA competition, hunting, tactical training, or just plain range shooting for the fun of it, are in my book all legitimate sporting endeavors, not fraternities.

A fraternity gets to decide who becomes a member and what the rules are.  Liberty and freedom means not having to join a fraternity.  Jim can think whatever he wishes about hunting with modern sporting rifles.  I couldn’t care less.  What he cannot do is tell law enforcement to tell me I’m under arrest.

And no, I wasn’t a member of a fraternity in college.  I won’t be part of Zumbo’s fraternity either.

This, seen at Ken’s place.

Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, ATF, raided the Skelton Tactical gun shop, in Osage Beach, at approximately 8:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 9.

According to the gun shop owner Jim Skelton, approximately fifteen agents entered the shop, seven deep, in full riot gear, bearing automatic weapons.

[ … ]

He sold an 1898 black powder 30-40 firearm over the counter, without a background check. According to Skelton, the sale of an 1898 30-40 does not require a background check.

And I bought a CVA inline muzzle loader and had it shipped directly to my door.  Look mom, no FFL!

Because.  You know.  The law.

Stupid.

Tikka can’t make a bad rifle.