Mike Vanderboegh:

Yet even the so-called “gun rights” media has been ignoring the story, apart from David Codrea, Kurt Hofmann and Anthony Martin.

I wouldn’t have expected the “prags” to cover it, of course. I have always made them nervous and occasionally, apoplectic. But there are others who I would have expected some coverage out of. Nada.

I’m not sure if I’m considered so-called gun rights media, but I’ve tried to send folks Mike’s direction and provide a brief bit of commentary here and here.  Mike is a semi-daily stop for me, as is Codrea, and you should spend a few minutes there every day yourself.

Regarding the “prags,” my experiences is somewhat different.  My article GOP Ready To Cave On Gun Control was linked by Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit.  Sebastian responded with Is The GOP Preparing To Cave?  The reason I know that it was a response to my article is that it was published after mine, and none of the organic links had any title even approaching “GOP Ready To Cave.”  This is what Sebastian said:

My big fear is that stories like this encourage the fatalistic among us, who will then fail to act because they think this is already a done deal, and nothing they do or say will matter. Let’s be focused on the real threats, and not rumors of threats, created by people who are drawing, to be charitable, questionable conclusions.

I don’t need Sebastian’s charity when I’m right, and I turned out right.  Cantor and Ryan pushed universal background checks, just like two GOP Senators are even now trying to push an unwarranted and intrusive expansion of mental health checks.  I know what Sebastian was thinking.  He wasn’t remembering the Barnhardt axiom (via WRSA).  At any rate, Sebastian responded to me without even linking my article and sending traffic my way, of course, unlike me where I follow proper internet protocol.  Bad form, I thought.  Still do.  The prags ignore Mike.  They respond to me without even linking.

David Codrea:

Running as an independent after being turned down for consideration by NRA’s nominating committee, Colandro promises to be the type of director capable of shaking up paid staff’s heretofore unbreakable grip on the board, paving the way for other candidates who would reform management policies away from an unsettling trend of offering compromises, political deal-making, and questionable political ratings …

David gives me a good reason to renew NRA membership, if for nothing more than to support folks like this.  As a nugget of gold, there is also a brief discussion on national right to carry in David’s article.

Kurt Hofmann:

I have never asked anyone to give my views any more weight because of my stint in the Army, and I will never claim that a person who has never served is therefore less qualified to comment on gun rights and “gun control.” Military service, past or present, plays no role in one’s authority on the issue of the right to keep and bear arms …

Oh, the progressives don’t really believe that as they claim.  They just believe that for cases like Robert Bateman because Bateman agrees with their view of gun control.  They don’t listen to those who have had military service and who disagree with their views, and they would just as soon throw Bateman under the bus when he’s finished pimping for them.  And military service doesn’t any more exclusively qualify one to comment on guns than it does for him to comment on driving a car because he drives away from the base for the weekend.

NSA phone spying is useless in preventing terrorist attacks.  But of course, that isn’t the point or purpose of the phone spying, is it?

On a different note, looks like another booger hook on the bang switch thing.

David Codrea:

“Study shows over 60 percent of weapons in El Salvador come from U.S.,” a Tuesday report from inSerbia claims. “The United States government agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), along with the federal and municipal governments of El Salvador set out to see just where the weapons are coming from.”

Bah.  I don’t believe it.  David takes us down a litany of embarrassing admissions by the U.S. government, sequentially stated, where they backed down from their initial claims in the gun walking scandal (which still needs accountability from the criminals who perpetrated the crimes).

But here is an offer.  I deal with mathematics, physics, mechanics and measurements all day long as part of my day job.  And I know how to tell if the data and conclusions meet the central limit theorem (since as you know their statistical sample is a finite size which is claimed to be an adequate model of the entire system).  Send the data to me.  I’ll analyze it and report back, without charge and without bias.  If it’s true, I’ll tell you so.  If not, I’ll tell you that too.  Does the ATF want to take me up on that offer?

David Codrea:

What’s clear from the outrage and disappointment is, contrary to what the name of Bloomberg’s front group implies, it’s not just illegal guns that are being attacked. All guns, and the means to lawfully obtain them, are targets.

Of course.  It’s always a wonderful thing when the enemy self-identifies and admits to the truth.  It makes my job easier.

Kurt Hofmann:

To cover their embarrassment over the fact that every high profile shooting carried out by someone who passed the vaunted background check system drives another nail into the coffin of the credibility of the claim that “universal background checks” are the key to stopping “gun violence,” Horwitz and friends respond with the only argument left to them–not nearly enough background checks result in the violation of the checked person’s Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental human right of the individual to keep and bear arms.

Kurt … parting the smoke and driving to the root of the argument again.  He has a way of doing that.  And as for the enemy self-identifying, remember that this is exactly what they want.

The only way we can truly be safe and prevent further gun violence is to ban civilian ownership of all guns. That means everything. No pistols, no revolvers, no semiautomatic or automatic rifles. No bolt action. No breaking actions or falling blocks. Nothing. This is the only thing that we can possibly do to keep our children safe from both mass murder and common street violence.

Unfortunately, right now we can’t. The political will is there, but the institutions are not. Honestly, this is a good thing. If we passed a law tomorrow banning all firearms, we would have massive noncompliance. What we need to do is establish the regulatory and informational institutions first. This is how we do it.  The very first thing we need is national registry. We need to know where the guns are, and who has them.

That’s the enemy giving his strategy away.  Did you listen carefully to him?  If not, read again.

Police tearing stuff up, at which they seem to be good.

“It’s not about money. It’s about the lack of notification,” said Elana Andrew.

She wasn’t on her property in Sheridan when the raid happened early Saturday morning. Officers in an Oregon State Police armored vehicle rammed a metal gate and plowed down a wooden fence  to gain access to a neighbor’s property.

Police were going after Michael Abo, 34, a Yamhill police reserve officer accused of abusing his girlfriend’s four year-old son.

It took Andrew filing a police report of her own with the Yamhill County Sheriff’s Office to figure out the damage was from a McMinnville Police tactical operation. McMinnville Police were the lead agency, working with OSP, because the sheriff’s office couldn’t arrest one of its own. Andrew said the abuse case is tragic.

“I don’t really mind them trespassing to effect an arrest. I think that that’s important that they be able to do that,” said Andrew, “No one took any time whatsoever the next day to find out who owned the gate or who owned the fence.

“There’s a house there. This is the house I own. And to me, it would be reasonable to assume that whoever owns this fence would live in that house,” said Andrew.

She contacted McMinnville police about the damage. Captain Matt Scales responded to her on Tuesday afternoon with an email.

He wrote, “Elana, we assumed the fence was owned by Abo as this was the information we had. We had no idea who owned the gate, so notification to the property owner in regards to that specific piece of property would have been impossible in our opinion.”

Andrew wrote back, “Sure seems like you had a duty to find out. You could have started by knocking at the foot door of the house you come to after entering the gate.”

That’s what I was going to say.  Instead of tactical operators performing tactical maneuvers while they are operating tactically, why don’t they just knock on the door?

S.C. is making themselves very friendly to recent Northern transplants doing gun manufacturing.

From beat cops to cashiers to Gov. Nikki Haley, South Carolina’s newest gun manufacturer has received an “absolutely tremendous” amount of support since leaving Connecticut for The Palmetto State, according to the firm’s CEO.

Josh Fiorini, CEO of PTR Industries, formerly of Bristol., Conn., told FoxNews.com that the firm’s new facility in Aynor, S.C., remains a week away from production, but 11 local employees began sorting inventory on Monday along with a team of training personnel from Connecticut. The manufacturer of military-style rifles announced in April that it intended to leave Bristol following the passage of gun-control legislation after the shooting deaths of 26 people, including 20 children, at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown.

[ … ]

“The facility that we’re going to move into is fantastically better than the one we’re coming from,” he said. “It allows us to consolidate two facilities into one and it’s much more modern, allowing us to set up our line in a more efficient way and hopefully expand.”

So Smith & Wesson, Colt, Springfield Armory, Rock River Arms, Remington, Mossberg … are you listening?  What are you waiting for, hell to freeze over and your current environment to be as welcoming?

David Codrea:

The comment period for the HHS proposal will end in 62 days, on March 10. Comments can be submitted via an online form at Regulations.gov.

David is covering the proposed mental health rollout by the Justice Department as part of the new executive orders on gun background checks.  Go to the Examiner article for links to online forms for submitting comments.  This is something I will be doing.

We’ve covered this before, and you know my position.  The mental health profession cannot sustain the weight and burden being placed on it by the presuppositions inherent in the new rules.  It behooves us all to make comments so as to protect our neighbors as well as veterans who are swept into this category from PTSD and related maladies.

Kurt Hofmann:

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) reports that U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has written a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, asking how the BATFE will be defining “armor piercing” ammunition, which would thus be denied to the general public.

I’m glad that Kurt is following this.  I was unaware that this was still an issue, preferring to think instead, perhaps wishful thinking, that this was all just a bad idea floated by the tyrants to see how we would react.  This has become habit for them, i.e., law-making by federal register.  So would 5.56 mm “green tip” ammunition become illegal?

The secret courts have approved three more months of NSA phone snooping.  Of course they did.  And the number of times this has been done by the secret courts?  Thirty six.

I do love Jerry Miculek, but it appears that he has talked S&W into making a 9mm, eight shot revolver.  I’m not sure what Jerry was thinking, but I won’t be buying one.  Thanks, but I’ll stick with my .357 magnum (and maybe spring for a .44 magnum and .22 magnum).  I’m certain that Guns.com has it wrong when they say:

While there will always be people who want 9mm revolvers in service-sized and snub-nosed packages — 9mm offers a lot more power over standard .38 Special loads in a considerably shorter cartridge and doesn’t have the sting, flash and bang of full-house or even reduced-power .357 Magnums — in truth 9mm revolvers have never seen a lot of success in the U.S.

Sorry, this just has to be flat-out incorrect.  The 9mm cannot possibly offer more power out of a revolver than the .38 or .357 magnum.  The point of the 9mm in the striker-fired pistol is the high chamber pressure, which approaches 35,000 psi because of the confined space.  Put into a revolver without the enclosed chamber and the pressures won’t reach that high.

On a related note, there are two competing issues regarding chamber pressure in handguns.  First, the larger the round (and thereby the higher the charge), the higher the chamber pressure – up to a certain point.  For very large calibers such as the .45 ACP, the enlarged barrel opening through which pressure can relieve (almost half an inch diameter) causes a lower chamber pressure for the .45 (which approaches 25,000 psi).  The turnaround point for chamber pressure (i.e., the peak pressure where larger barrels reduces the pressure and smaller barrels reduces the load) is the S&W .40, which is why the .40 has such a “snappy” feel to it when you shoot it.

Mike Vanderboegh covers the issue the dishonestly named affordable health care act, veterans, PTSD and guns.  To all of my military and former military readers, please, please, please go read Mike’s piece.  And be very careful what you say to doctors, who you choose for doctors, and for what maladies you seek treatment.  Big brother is listening.

Finally, WRSA has a piece on urban centers and government center of gravity (CoG) operations within that context.  It’s an interesting article and I recommend it to you, along with the comments.  I have a piece coming at some point on David Kilcullen and his focus on what he sees as the future of state warfare being in littoral, urban centers.  I’m still developing my thoughts on the subject.

David Codrea:

Much of the current mess we find ourselves in can be attributed, at least in part, to gun owner detachment, apathy, and unwillingness to personally share in the burdens of gun rights activism. That’s a shame, because it really doesn’t require a lot of effort to get and stay engaged, and the personal rewards and friendships made can be invaluable.

Of course, he’s right, and this could be extrapolated to lack of involvement in education (I am an advocate of home schooling for reasons I will explain at some point in the future), lack of involvement in the politics of wealth redistribution, and so on down the line.  I have chosen to spend at least some of my free time (there isn’t much of it) on gun rights.  As I’ve said, I write until I cannot do it any more since I have a day job, and annoy many of my closest friends by shamelessly pimping my content (sometimes I wonder why I still have any friends).  But just when it seems that it’s all a waste, we need a sermon like the one David is preaching.  Go read his piece.

One more thing concerning David.  All I can say is “come South, young man, come South.”

Kurt Hofmann:

And again, Judge Skretny clearly knows that a law requiring that magazines not be loaded with more than seven rounds gives a clear tactical advantage to the criminal willing to violate that law, over the “law abiding gun owner” who is not willing to do so, but seems somehow to have failed to realize that a law banning “assault weapons” similarly favors the criminal who ignores the law.

Oh, this is rich.  Kurt is doing what he does best.  He points out that the very reasoning the stupid judge uses to deem the magazine cartridge limit “arbitrary” isn’t applied to the guns themselves, and should have been.  And this judge is supposed to be a degreed lawyer with judgment and wisdom.  Yea, not so much.  Kurt is a better one that he is.  Read Kurt’s assessment here.  I’ll have more observations on this ruling later.

Mike Vanderboegh is still pressing ahead with his toys for totalitarians program.

Looney said he was informed by Capitol Police Sgt. Timothy Boyle of the present late Monday.

The majority leader said he didn’t accept it and a spokesman for the police said the three empty magazines have been turned over to the Connecticut State Police major crime squad.

Sorry, but this doesn’t do it for me.  Someone took possession of it, and I want to know who?  And why aren’t they being prosecuted under the new law?  I repeat: someone took possession prior to the police.  If they don’t prosecute, they are ignoring enforcement of the law.  I want to see a Connecticut resident in prison for it – preferably someone associated with making the law to begin with.

Instapundit:

Concealed carry means fewer murders, says new study.

Of course, but the first thing to remember when reading these studies and citing them is that they will be followed by another “study” done by some progressive group of researchers, and regardless of what the data proves, we have God-given rights to possess weapons.  My rights do not depend on data to substantiate or undergird them.

I had said before that The Daily Caller gun pieces annoy me.  Here is another example of why.  The world’s greatest hunting rifle.  They’ve found it.  The … world’s … greatest!  Ever!  It reads like they’re shilling for the company which produces it (and I won’t even mention it by name, regardless of how good it is supposed to be).  Folks, when I purchase a gun or ammunition I’ll give the low down – the good, the bad and the ugly (I like Rock River Arms, but I hate their customer service, and I love my Springfield Armory XDm and their customer service, but I had an out of round barrel on my .45 after 2000-3000 rounds, and I absolutely hate Armscor ammunition because of the bad manufacturing tolerances, and I have a review coming soon on my Kel-Tec PMR-30 that will have both good and bad, etc.).  Because I don’t shill for anybody.

Infowars has a piece on the U.S. government purchasing Potassium-Iodine tablets for Fukushima fallout in order to block the uptake of radioactive iodine to the thyroid.  But there’s a problem.  The longest-lived radioactive iodine isotope is I-131 which is about 8 days.  The radioactive iodine from Fukushima is all gone (unless it is a daughter product from the decay of Tellurium, but that is mostly gone too).  Folks, don’t ever put anything in your mouth and swallow it because the government says to.

Kurt Hofmann:

As a wheelchair-bound paraplegic (and owner of multiple so-called “assault weapons”), this correspondent is quite familiar with the issue.

Yeah, read all of Kurt’s article here.  He’s dealing with the fact that the so-called assault weapons ban is highly opposed by the disabled.  I’ll bet so.  I was entering a home just yesterday in which I didn’t know who or what (animal) was there to do me harm (I won’t go into the details of what home or why I was there). I did room clearing exercises for about ten minutes before I went to work on what I went there to do.  I moved freely and without hindrance, but as dictated by the room layout and the general rules for performing such tactical maneuvers.  I never paused to think about how something like this would be done if I was disabled.  Limiting the weaponry you allow a disabled person to use – or anyone for that matter – is morally obscene.

David Codrea:

Since this column was published, the errant link now goes to a page that states …

Read the rest.  My bet is that David’s column pressured the Illinois police into doing their jobs.  Speaking, you know, of the morally obscene as we were.

Via Uncle, Only Guns and Money reports:

The National Shooting Sports Foundation has released a poll today that shows only 40% of Americans want universal background checks at gun shows. The difference in the poll results is because contextual detail was added to the question. Instead of asking do you want to close the “gun show loophole” or other such nonsense, the poll points out that most sales at gun shows are conducted with background checks and are by FFLs.

The poll goes further. Only 39% of respondents thought that requiring a background check for transferring a firearm between friends or family members would reduce violent crime. That’s a long way from 90% in my calculations.

But my readers always knew it was a lie from the beginning.

Mike Vanderboegh is pressing ahead with his “Toys for Jerks” program, which he covers here, here, here, here, here, and so on.  Go read his site for updates periodically.

The New York Times admits gun reporting screw ups here.  If you’re interested go take a look.  It goes to show that the writers for the NYT don’t know anything about guns – or even rudimentary mathematics like measurements and fractions.  But you knew that already, didn’t you?  Perhaps before landing a job reporting for the NYT, they ought to require that their reporters go get a real job for ten or fifteen years first, you know, something like pouring and finishing concrete, doing steel rigging, welding, roofing, carpentry, etc.  A real job.  Instead of what they do.

A couple of weeks ago Slate reported on mass shootings in America.  It turns out that they aren’t on the rise, and that they are not committed by mentally unstable people who suddenly snap.  They are committed by evil people bent on wicked behavior, and their numbers have been pretty stable.  But as a regular reader, you knew that already, didn’t you?  No, seriously, you already knew this.

David Codrea:

Against armed sociopaths, unarmed protection is severely limited, and New Jersey gun laws ensure the advantage goes to the predators.

Like I discussed here, you can contrast that with shall issue states.  The picture is stark and self explanatory.  Gun control laws are unsafe.  They prevent people from doing their duty of defending themselves and their loved ones.  Thus they are all evil.

David  Codrea:

What is immediately noticeable is a total absence of anyone even remotely sympathetic to an individual and uninfringed right to keep and bear arms having a position of influence in the seminar. While some with an eye toward safeguarding America’s unique intended protections may attend to keep apprised of the latest developments, others with a less tolerant and patent view of meddling internationalists plotting to undermine their rights …

I’ve covered their meddling here.  To me this is simple.  If I won’t allow the U.S. federal government to steal my firearms, I certainly won’t allow foreign bodies – armed or not – to do the same.  Case closed.  If you want conflict, bring it.  ‘Nuff said.

Kurt Hofmann:

Comparing gun control to the Holocaust is one of a number of faulty and offensive analogies the gun rights movement has used to illegitimize [sic] gun reform measures.

Kurt is covering the progressive Jewish reaction to the use of the holocaust to assess gun control measures.  I saw this too and hadn’t commented on it, and Mr. Abraham Foxman says to us, “No matter how strong one’s objections are to a policy or how committed an organization is to its mission, invoking the Holocaust to score political points is offensive and has no place in civil discourse.”  Well, let me respond by saying that a hit dog always yelps, and if the comparison is valid, I’ll make it any time I want.  Oh, and don’t tell me what to do, Mr. Foxman.

Uncle notes that Mayors against guns merges with Moms Demand Action.  I see this as a sign of weakness rather than strength.  Sort of like when Ansar al Sunna merged with al Qaeda in Iraq when both began to lose to the U.S. Marines deployed in the Anbar Province.  Did I just really make that comparison?  I guess I did.  So be it.

David Codrea:

“He has given his life to the community,” Owens said in court. “I’m not sure how much more punishment is actually appropriate.” [More]Maybe you could find instances where someone without a badge has “accidentally” shot a cop and that would give you a pretty good benchmark…

Gave his life to the community?  You mean to tell me that he didn’t get paid for his work all of those years?  He did it all for free?

David Codrea:

Heated divisions among activist gun owners have surfaced with a December 2 announcement on Facebook by Brandon Webb, a former SEAL and author, that he is considering running for the National Rifle Association Board of Directors. Webb’s statement and reactions to it were noticed by The Patriot Perspective, which took him to task for, among other things, his assertion that the NRA was “not willing to compromise and create gun legislation that makes sense.”

David continues to explain what Webb has said, and laments the lack of involvement of gun owners in deciding NRA leadership and policy.  I do too, and I don’t know what more I can do.  I’ve made calls to the NRA, and I blog until I’m too tired to go on.  I do have a day job that gets in the way of blogging.  Gun owners need to do more.  And as for compromise of any sort, recall what I said just recently.

… there is no grand bargain on guns.  There is no compromise.  There is no cooperation.  There is only war between us as long as the collectivists want to enforce their will upon us.  There will never be peace.  That’s a promise.

I don’t need to hear more of his positions.  I call for political and ideological battle, not compromise.  I would rather hear a call to arms than speechification and pontification on the politics of liberty – as if I need a lesson in philosophy, theology or politics from this guy.  Sorry buddy, but you’re trying to “teach your granny to suck eggs,” as the saying goes.  Been there, done that.  I can pontificate with the best of them.

Kurt Hofmann:

Ah . . . “to ‘effectively‘ convert semi-automatic weapons into machine guns,” with “effectively” in this context basically meaning “not really.” What they are referring to here are “bump fire” stocks …

One might inquire about the three gun competitors, some of whom (at the professional level) get so good that they don’t need either fully automatic or bump fire, having to modify the bolt mass and buffer springs of their weapons to keep up with the rate of fire they can accomplish with their fingers.

But it isn’t really about rapid fire.  It’s just another way to go after liberty.  This is just one more front in the progressive war on guns.  It will be interesting to see what Amazon does with this.  I’ll keep my eye on this – and I would ask Kurt to follow it too – in order to modify my shopping practices if Amazon folds like a cheap suit.

Mike Vanderboegh has a number of interesting posts today, but this one caught my eye from Rolling Stone.

All over America, communities are failing. Once-mighty Rust Belt capitals that made steel or cars are now wastelands. Elsewhere, struggling white rural America is stocking up on canned goods and embracing the politics of chaos, sending pols to Washington ready to hit the default button and start the whole national experiment all over again.

But in Camden, chaos is already here. In September, its last supermarket closed, and the city has been declared a “food desert” by the USDA. The place is literally dying, its population having plummeted from above 120,000 in the Fifties to less than 80,000 today. Thirty percent of the remaining population is under 18, an astonishing number that’s 10 to 15 percent higher than any other “very challenged” city, to use the police euphemism. Their home is a city with thousands of abandoned houses but no money to demolish them, leaving whole blocks full of Ninth Ward-style wreckage to gather waste and rats.

It’s a major metropolitan area run by armed teenagers with no access to jobs or healthy food, and not long ago, while the rest of America was ranting about debt ceilings and Obamacares, Camden quietly got pushed off the map. That was three years ago, when new governor and presumptive future presidential candidate Chris Christie abruptly cut back on the state subsidies that kept Camden on life support. The move left the city almost completely ungoverned – a graphic preview of what might lie ahead for communities that don’t generate enough of their own tax revenue to keep their lights on. Over three years, fires raged, violent crime spiked and the murder rate soared so high that on a per-capita basis, it “put us somewhere between Honduras and Somalia,” says Police Chief J. Scott Thomson.

“They let us run amok,” says a tat-covered ex-con and addict named Gigi. “It was like fires, and rain, and babies crying, and dogs barking. It was like Armageddon.”

Not long ago, Camden was everything about America that worked. In 1917, a report counted 365 industries in Camden that employed 51,000 people. Famous warships like the Indianapolis were built in Camden’s sprawling shipyards.

Part of the problem is corrupt police and the police union.  Another part of the problem is that – as engineers like me know all too well – large scale steel manufacturing and ship building is no longer done in the U.S.  It is outsourced to Japan and China, neither of which culture understands QA and none of which can produce the quality of American products.  Nonetheless, it allows corporations to hire overseas workers, or better yet, hire Mexicans at facilities in Canada or the U.S., where the ratepayer and taxpayer picks up the tab for welfare, food stamps, medical care and other expenses, which is a form of corporate welfare.

Another part of the problem is corrupt people who revert to killing and harming each other when times get tough, lacking any values because the country has rejected God.  The prescription is multifaceted and difficult because no one will implement all of the cultural changes that need to be made.  This is why folks who understand aren’t sanguine about the future.  America as you have known it is dead, and it isn’t coming back – at least in the same form.  It will need to be multiple countries very loosely coupled, and states will have to become the true laboratories of democracy, uninhibited by the federal government so that there is immediate and unmistakable feedback when the state goes adrift.

David Codrea:

The paid staffer who heads anti-gun billionaire and outgoing New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns revealed the strategy the group will use to advance its demands across the nation, a report by the Associated Press documented Wednesday.

David goes on to discuss the statist threat that Bloomberg is, and what 2014 might portend for gun owners and our rights.  Bloomberg is a threat indeed, but this only heightens the diligence we must bring to bear on opposing every piece of his agenda, even when (and perhaps especially when) it comes under the rubric of cooperative efforts with the gun community (here for example, think NSSF).

Kurt Hofmann:

Dr. Ben Carson, considered by some a potential “conservative” candidate for President in 2016, stumbled badly back in March, at least among gun rights advocates, when he blithely told Glenn Beck on Beck’s The Blaze radio show that the right to own semi-automatic firearms is contingent on where one lives.

This is a very good article by Kurt.  Go read the rest of it to find out what Dr. Carson believes concerning the fountain of our rights.  I’ve said it here and here in great detail, but I’ll sum it up again.  God grants our rights.  The states (formerly colonies) recognizes them, and to the degree to which they infringe upon them, those administrations deserve to be overthrown.  The second amendment stipulates that the federal government has no right whatsoever in the making or enforcement of any gun law of any kind at any time.  All federal gun laws are unconstitutional.  And to remind you of what you already know, Dr. Carson is no conservative and won’t protect your rights.  I like it best when candidates talk before their handlers get hold of them.  The truth generally comes out then.

A Grand Bargain On Guns?

A year ago, in the days after 20 schoolchildren and six adults were gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., it seemed for a moment that something had changed in America’s long-running cultural debate on guns. A new kind of national conversation — even some consensus — seemed possible. But that was then. Today the voices on both sides of the gun policy debate are back to being as shrill as ever.

David Codrea:

Proving once more that unintended consequences of “gun control” actually increase dangerous crime, The Detroit News reported Thursday that “Guns are being stolen from vehicles downtown, in part because nightclubs and the NFL ban firearms.”

Unable to bring their firearms into venues that ban them, many gun owners are nonetheless unwilling to travel to and from such locations without the means of defense, and are opting to have their firearms with them as long as they legally can, then storing them in their cars.

So instead of allowing gun owners to bring them into the stadium to keep them safe, they’re requiring that gun owners turn them over to criminals.  They’re doing this for the children.  Consider the children …

Kurt Hofmann:

Apparently believing that the American public had not yet been subjected to enough ridiculous fearmongering over the supposed “undetectability” of firearms printed from plastic, ABC’s Katie Couric ran a short segment on her show, “Katie,” last week, titled, perhaps not surprisingly, “The Dark Side of 3D Printers.”

Who is Katie Couric?

Here is the NSSF on smart gun technology.  I said before that Daily Caller annoys me, and increasingly so.  Notice that NSSF doesn’t have any prima facie objections to smart guns, but they point out that they might be unreliable.

Pfft!  I object to smart guns because they’re unreliable too.  But I also prima facie object to smart guns because of government interference and potential usage in gun confiscation or registration shenanigans.

Uncle links this post on revolver science, entitled why heavy, slow bullets hit higher than light, fast bullets.  Okay, since the original author starts the science lesson, I’ll finish it.  He’s dealing with the gun and bullet as a system rather than individually, considering the affects of recoil on the trajectory.

But rather than titling the post about heavy bullets, he should have stayed on point about the overall system.  It isn’t an enigma why heavy bullets and light bullets have the same drop given the same velocity, or another way of saying it is that he should have left out the discussion of heavy and light altogether and stuck with velocity and the affects of recoil on the pivot point of the firearm.

If you take a bullet of 180 grains and one of 230 grains, and hold them the same height and drop them, they will land at the same time due to the acceleration of gravity, which is the same and constant regardless of mass.  Alternatively, drop a marble and bowling ball from the third floor of the stairwell of your college physics building, and they’ll land at the same time (remove people from the stairwell before attempting this experiment).

Of course, I’m leaving out a complex discussion of aerodynamic drag, from which I could explain why it’s better for folks with trucks like my F150 to leave the tail gate up instead of down, but I’ll save this for another lesson.

This is why BDC is a function of muzzle velocity (and aerodynamics for such rounds as hollow points), but not bullet mass.  Okay, is that clear to everyone?  This is basic physics, and everyone should understand this, especially shooters.  If you have to adjust BDC for your rounds given different bullet masses, it’s because of different muzzle velocity due to mass (and because lower velocity rounds won’t go as far), not because heavy objects drop faster than light objects.  Heavy bullets do not drop faster than light bullets.  Finally, in order to get an idea how quickly your bullet is hitting the ground, hold it at the height of the gun you’re shooting, drop it, and time it.  When it hits the ground, it would have hit the ground if you had shot the bullet out of the barrel of your gun, just some hundreds of yards away.

David Codrea:

As there is clearly no pressing justification for imposing draconian citizen disarmament edicts under the guise of crime-fighting, the “benefits” being touted are that the new measures will curb arms trafficking.

The smart money says this is a cynical ruse, and that imposing the new controls will benefit those in a position to create and capitalize on a lucrative new black market — that is, those in power.

That’s what most laws do.  And gun control isn’t about fighting crime.  It’s about controlling the population and making them subservient to their centralized masters.

See other recent articles by David.  He has been busy over the last several days.

Kurt Hofmann:

Killing the filibuster–one of the most important “speed bumps” that has helped make the Senate the more deliberative of the two Congressional bodies, is seen by Sen. Murphy and friends as what is needed for Congress to “do something” against private gun ownership.

And this could be harmful.  Of course, the House could hold strong in spite of the sniveling lackey Boehner.  A potential good thing coming from all of this is that the collectivists in the GOP tilt just enough for us to see their hand.  Oust them, we can, assuming that the vote still means anything, a proposition that I’m not sanguine about.

Kurt also turned my stomach and brought back bad memories by discussing Chris Murphy.  Readers know we have had our run-ins with ole’ Chris.

John Dodson gives us a teaser for his new book on Fast and Furious.  Doubtless he is an honorable man and I believe his account.  But there is a nagging suspicion that what he sees as incompetence was planned and thoughtful foresight by his superiors for the purpose of beefing up the 90% myth, just made to look like incompetence to him.  In other words … well, you know what I mean.

And finally there is this.

Benjamin Johnson faces a charge of negligent endangerment after shooting through the ceiling of his apartment with his handgun, while he was sleeping.

“He woke up from the smoke and the alarm going off in the apartment. He realized something had happened, his gun was on the floor and didn’t make the connection until he looked up and saw a hole in the ceiling,” said McLane.

According to court documents, Johnson’s firearm was not on his headboard, where he had put it before he went to bed, one round was discharged from it and there was a hole in his ceiling.

Uh huh.  It just “went off.”  No rhyme or reason, no one pulling the trigger.  Actually, there is a possibility that is as dangerous as the idea that he didn’t keep his booger hook off of the bang switch (and maybe worse).  It is that he is a sleep walker and didn’t know what he did.  Um, time to move or make him lock his firearm away in a small biometric safe.