Archive for the 'Guns' Category

Long ago I posted on Jeremy Bryant who hitchhiked with a .357 magnum wheel gun openly carried.  He did it “For the peace, good and dignity of the country and the welfare of its people.”  I respect that. Unfortunately, the URL changed and the link went dead (the embedded video wouldn’t respond).

I quite accidentally stumbled across this video again, and I can’t think of a better way to ring in the new year than to commit to making gun carry commonplace among gentlemen of good character.

Stupid Getty Images.

Get your thumb away from the forcing cone and cylinder gap, lady.

Source.

Gaston Glock, the man responsible for developing the namesake weapon, died on Wednesday at the age of 94.

Glock developed the famous handgun in the 1980s, when the Austrian military was looking for a new, innovative weapon. Until then, the Glock company had made military knives and consumer goods including curtain rods.

Glock assembled a team of firearms experts and came up with the Glock 17, a lightweight semi-automatic gun largely made of plastic. The revolutionary design – with a frame made of a high-strength, nylon-based polymer and only the slide made of metal – beat several other companies’ blueprints and secured his upstart outfit the contract.

The easily assembled weapon became a global hit, with the Austrian winning loyal followings among police and military across the world.

The Glock has been referenced in numerous films and rap songs, including Snoop Dogg’s “Protocol” and Wu-Tang Clan’s “Da Glock.”

U.S. soldiers found toppled Iraqi President Saddam Hussein hiding with a Glock in a hole in the ground in 2003. They later presented that weapon to U.S. President George W. Bush.

Glock faced criticism from gun-control advocates who complained that he popularized powerful guns and made them easy to conceal and hold more ammunition.

Glock himself was reclusive, rarely granting interviews, and shunned public debate. In 2000, he refused to join other weapons manufacturers in signing a voluntary gun control deal with the United States.

At the age of 70, he survived an attempt on his life when an investment broker who managed his assets hired a former wrestler to attack him with a rubber hammer, a court heard.

Glock had grown suspicious of how the broker was managing his affairs and had flown to Luxembourg to confront him, lawyers said. He suffered seven blows to the head but fended off the assault. The broker, Charles Ewert, and the attacker, Jacques Pecheur, were both jailed.

His 49-year-old marriage with Helga Glock ended in divorce in 2011 and the pair embarked on a lengthy legal battle over alimony. Soon after, he married his second wife, Kathrin, more than 50 years his junior.

He owned a lakefront mansion and a state-of-the-art equestrian sports center in the province of Carinthia, where celebrities showed up for parties.

With divorce, alimony disputes, theft and attempted murder, it sounds like he lived a troubled life. But there’s no question as to the fact that his gun is ubiquitous.

I don’t own or shoot Glocks or any other striker fired handgun.

Source.

A federal judge in Massachusetts shut down an attempt to block the state’s assault weapons ban Friday, arguing that the law does not break with recent Supreme Court precedent that has severely shaken gun control legislation.

District Judge Dennis Saylor said the state ban keeps with “historical tradition” of gun control regulation, after the high court ruled last year in the landmark New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen decision that all gun control legislation must keep with that tradition.

“The relevant history affirms the principle that in 1791, as now, there was a tradition of regulating ‘dangerous and unusual’ weapons – specifically, those that are not reasonably necessary for self-defense,” Saylor wrote.

The judge added that the assault weapons in question are “not suitable for ordinary self-defense purposes, and pose substantial dangers far beyond those inherent in the design of ordinary firearms.”

And that, dear folks, is all it takes to prove yourself an idiot.

Not suitable for ordinary self-defense purposes.  Substantial dangers far beyond those inherent in the design of ordinary firearms. Now, try to reconcile those two passages.

No, you can’t. Because that 30-06 or 700 Rem Mag sitting in your gun safe will do far more damage than a 5.56mm round. And there were no precedents in 1791 regulating weapons, and there is nothing unusual about AR-15s when so many tens of millions of people own them.

And you know what I see after Heller, McDonald, Caetano and Bruen? I see the supreme court running away from this issue like cowards, especially Barrett. I don’t care whether the court wants to see a full stack of prior decisions on this issue. There is nothing more necessary to make this decision. All the facts are in and have been for decades.  It could be a single paragraph long. Or even shorter.

“AR-15’s are not unusual weapons in America. Therefore, they cannot be banned.”

There, I did it for them.  No muss, no fuss. It wasn’t hard. But it must be hard for them.

Epoch Times.

ILION, N.Y.—In the village of Ilion, New York, 80 miles west of the state capital in Albany, residents are mourning the departure of gunmaker Remington Arms Co. after two centuries of continuous operation.

Without fanfare, the company announced last month that the manufacturing plant would be closing its doors on March 4, 2024.

“I feel like a family member has died,” Ilion Mayor John Stephens told The Epoch Times. “My dad raised four kids on a paycheck from there for 37 years. He walked to work and carried his lunch every day.”

Mr. Stephens said no one expected the announcement a week after Thanksgiving that the plant was set to close.

On Nov. 30, at 3:26 p.m., the company notified village officials of the decision by email. The message noted that “all separations” with the village would be completed by March 18, 2024.

Likewise, the company notified its 270 employees that they would soon be out of a job.

“They brought the second and third shifts in and said they were done,” Mr. Stephens said. “They notified the first shift in person. I found out through the media. The owner’s group didn’t even contact me.”

Mr. Stephens said the company made the announcement just five months into a newly ratified employee union contract.

“To say we were shocked [by the announcement] is probably an understatement,” the mayor told Ilion’s Village Board of Trustees at a public meeting on Dec. 11.

“In my opinion, it’s unfortunate and extremely unprofessional.”

Remington Arms didn’t return messages from The Epoch Times asking for comment.

Publicly, the company attributed the plant closure in part to a hostile political climate in Albany regarding firearms production.

“I am writing to inform you that RemArms LLC has decided to close its entire operation at 14 Hoefler Avenue, NY 13357,” Remington Arms said in a letter to employees. “The company expects that operations at the Ilion facility will conclude on or about March 4, 2024.”

The Georgia-based company said it would continue to make firearms at its facility in Huntsville, Alabama, which opened in 2014, a year after New York’s passage of the Safe Act, which created stricter gun laws.

The anti-gun political climate in Democrat-controlled Massachusetts prompted competitor Smith & Wesson to move from its longtime base in Springfield to Maryville, Tennessee. The company announced the opening of its new headquarters there in October.

In Ilion, the community reaction to the Remington plant closure has been a sense of loss and bewilderment, Mr. Stephens said.

Many are wondering what will become of the 10,000-square-foot plant and the village’s Remington identity.

Mr. Stephens said residents see the two as synonymous, interwoven by history, culture, and economics.

“Remington is Ilion—Ilion is Remington,” residents here like to say.

Eric Kennedy, who runs the Copper Cafe in the downtown village retail plaza, believes the ripple effect of the closure would impact the businesses that served Remington employees for years to come.

“I’m sure it will affect us. Any time you lose jobs, it affects the area’s economy. It definitely will hurt the economy—small town, big business in the village. It’s going to hurt a lot of families,” Mr. Kennedy told The Epoch Times.

“New York state is not friendly to hunters and sportsmen. That makes a big impact. I don’t blame [Remington] for moving out of state, [but] it’s going to hurt.”

I’m sure it will hurt and it’s all extremely sad, but there are some lessons. I’m not sure why anyone would be “bewildered” by this move.

Similar to the assembly line workers at Ford and GM who believed they should make enough money to be able to send kids to college, buy a house, buy two or three cars and a boat for the lake, there is no way on earth that the wage structure can support that sort of lifestyle for pistol and gun mechanics. It just can’t and that’s the hard truth. Wages must be set by the market or they won’t last.

In this case it’s surprising they lasted as long as they did. Where Remington moved is a right-to-work state. Where Remington left is an anti-gun, anti-business control freak show. Long ago it should have caused the Remington workers to pause and ponder that they were manufacturing firearms that they weren’t allowed to carry on their persons, or weren’t allowed to carry in their car or into the field. Long ago it should have dawned on them that they were funding with their union dues the very people who would kill their business.

To be sure, corporate missteps are always harmful, but pressing on every American worker is the fact that corporate interests are not their interests. Corporate officers will never put individual workers above the price of stock. Boards of Directors will always incentivize officers to maximize profits, ROE, EBIT and stock prices. That’s what they will do. In response, unions always seem to hurry the demise of corporations. Rather, individual workers must expand their capabilities, improve their standing, earn new credentials and increase their worth. This is the American way.

There is no such thing as a stagnant, reliable work location or job function. They disappear, and workers must be prepared. And if they had wanted to keep jobs as gun mechanics, Remington probably would have been happy to hire them in Alabama.

This reddit/Firearms thread discusses dehumidifiers and the process of trying to keep your guns from rusting.

There is some confusion in that thread and I know this comes up sometimes so I thought I would clarify this issue for readers.

Customary dehumidifiers are nothing more than strip heaters.  What happens is that when sensible heat is added to air, it moves horizontally across the psychrometric chart and (a) increases the dry bulb temperature while also (b) decreasing relative humidity.

Relative humidity is not absolute humidity. The number of grains of moisture per pound of dry air doesn’t change when sensible heat is added (or even removed, as long as we stipulate not condensing moisture out of the air).  Changing the relative humidity changes the amount of moisture the air can contain.  At a higher temperature, the air can contain more moisture, and lower temperature lower amount of moisture.

The air contains more energy at higher temperatures and thus it’s more difficult for the moisture to condense out of the air. Try moisture removal only occurs when the air is passed across a cooling coil down to the condensation line, passing that condensate to a drain pipe (usually with a running trap that needs to be inspected at least yearly to ensure no clogging and filled with Clorox). Then when the air must be sensibly heated again, with a true reduction in absolute humidity for use in the designated space. This is what happens when you air condition your home.

It isn’t usually practical to pass the air in your gun cabinet or gun safe through a cooling coil to remove moisture. The only other option for conditioning the air is to pass it over a strip heater thus changing the relative humidity, not absolute humidity.

As long as the space where your guns are located is already conditioned, i.e., your home, that’s usually not necessary. However, I do a little extra by putting desiccant in my gun safe to ensure the driest possible environment.

I don’t like the idea of a strip heat causing an increase in dry bulb temperature in my gun safe, mainly because of possible malfunctions.

If your gun safe is located in an unconditioned space like a basement, you may have to consider strip heating. The better option would be to remove your safe and put it in your home. I don’t have a safe in my garage for that very reason (and also because of possible theft).

From a reader, source.

Concealed carry gun owners in our state are now allowed to have their firearms in places of worship; even if they are held on school grounds. They can also now carry guns on some school properties, during specific times. The new law also launches a two-year statewide awareness initiative for safe gun storage and gun lock distribution programs.

This is referring to Senate Bill 41.  It doesn’t require that the weapon holder get permission from the church to carry.  It requires that the church conspicuously post that no weapons are allowed before prohibiting the carry of weapons, as it should.

They had to override a veto by the Goobernator of NC, Roy Cooper.

Source.

Liberal activists are preparing to file a lawsuit against the board of one of the largest gun manufacturers in the United States, alleging that the company exposed shareholders to unnecessary liability by selling and promoting AR-15 rifles and thus violating their fiduciary duty.

In a draft of a lawsuit viewed by Fox News Digital expected to be filed this week, liberal activist shareholder plantiffs alleged that the board of Smith & Wesson “knowingly allowed the Company to become exposed to significant liability for intentionally violating federal, state, and local laws through its manufacturing, marketing, and sales of AR-15 style rifles and similar semiautomatic firearms.”

The draft explains that the company’s board has expressed “unwillingness to exercise any oversight whatsoever” when it comes to manufacturing and marketing AR-15s, which the shareholders say has exposed the company to unnecessary liability.

The lawsuit is the latest in a series of moves made by liberal activists across the country using the legal system to go after gun manufacturers as a part of a larger movement known as environmental, social, and governance (ESG), which puts pressure on investors to be more “socially conscious.”

[ … ]

Two of the plaintiffs in the case are led by Sister Judy Byron, an anti-gun activist who recently participated in drafting a statement from the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, where “investors representing $634 billion in assets” called for pressure on gun manufacturers and companies associated with them “to review their operations, supply chains and policies and take meaningful action on this public safety concern.”

Sisten Judy Byron.  Part of a false and anti-Christian church, pushing a false agenda, destroying the hard work of good men, and ruining the lives of millions.

Here is Jared Yanis on the subject.

S&W will need to play rough in order to turn this threat out before it takes roots or they’ll end up another Remington.  Kill this movement in its infancy inside your group of shareholders.  Hire the best lawyers.  Buy them out.  Boot them out of meetings.  Boot them out of stock ownership if possible.  Amend the rules if needed.

Play rough.  They already are.

Source.

A gun factory in upstate New York with a history stretching back to the 19th century is scheduled to close in March, according to a letter from the company to union officials.

RemArms, the current version of Remington Arms, will close its facility in the Mohawk Valley village of Ilion around March 4, according to the letter sent Thursday. The letter said the company “did not arrive at this decision lightly,” according to the Observer-Dispatch of Utica.

Remington, the country’s oldest gun maker, began making flintlock rifles in the region in 1816. The factory site in the village dates to 1828, with many of the current buildings constructed early in the 20th century.

More recently, the company faced temporary closures in Ilion, bankruptcy and legal pressure over the Sandy Hook school massacre. The current company no longer makes the Bushmaster AR-15 rifles used to kill 20 first-graders and six educators in the Sandy Hook shooting in Connecticut in 2012.

Investors doing business as the Roundhill Group purchased the Remington-branded gun-making business, including operations in Ilion and Lenoir City, Tennessee for $13 million. Owners announced plans in 2021 to move the company’s headquarters to Georgia.

Union officials called the news this week disappointing.

“The workers in Ilion enabled RemArms to rise from the ashes of the Remington Arms bankruptcy in 2020-21,” United Mine Workers of America International President Cecil E. Robert said in a prepared statement. “Without these workers and their dedication to producing the best firearms in the world, this company simply would not exist.”

I have a completely different take on things.  First, they had bad lawyers for the Sandy Hook lawsuit. Next, they ensconced in a gun control state and left only when it was too late. Third, they didn’t acknowledge and correct the errors and malfunctions of the Remington 700, even when they duplicated weapon discharge in their own labs without anything even being near the trigger. Fourth, they never got a handle on poor QA.

Fifth, and maybe the most significant error, they never left a union state to move to a right-to-work state. The union can blame it on others all they want to. When you extort employers rather than allow the market to set wages, this is the result.

Savage enters the 1911 market.  They have a .45 ACP gun and a 9mm gun.

I hate cheaply made firearms, and I hate the idea of paying $3000 or more for a 1911.  I like the price point of around $1500 for a 1911.  It doesn’t appeal to folks looking for a steal to get a good 1911 (there is no such thing as a 1911 for cheap, just cheaply made 1911s), and it doesn’t break the bank.

If they work right, I’d like one of each, but it’s very easy for manufacturers to make bad 1911s.  Has anyone had a chance to shoot either of these builds?