David Codrea:

The State of Connecticut’s Office of the State’s Attorney for the Judicial District of Danbury released its long-awaited report Monday on the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School. While representative mainstream press accounts seem focused on the killer taking his motives with him to his grave and other aspects of the report, a paragraph on page two in the Executive Summary contains the most important revelation applicable to future mass murder attempts …

Read the rest of David’s report.  This is why the notion that the police can be the amelioration for crime and all of its affects is mistaken and dangerous.  Self defense is the most reactive and quickest way to change the boundary conditions for the system.

David Codrea:

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the firearms industry’s trade association, has written letters to Congress urging both houses to reauthorize the Undetectable Firearms Act before it expires on Dec. 9 …

Oh, and I’m sure that the NSSF doesn’t have any skin in the game, do they?

But according to Kurt Hofmann, there may be a champion in the hall.

In other words, Schumer had hoped to pass the bill without any debate, and without any of the other procedural “speed bumps” intended to prevent legislation from being forced through before anyone has an opportunity to object … Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) thwarted Schumer’s plot.

Good for him.  Actually, according to Emily Miller, there is a nuance of this legislation I hadn’t thought of.

His scam was to have the bill expire again during the Senate’s lame duck session in 2014.  At that point, Mr. Schumer and his compadres could tack on the gun-control expansions that their vulnerable Democrats in rural and western states would not support in an election year.

Mr. Schumer and some Democrats on the Judiciary Committee had been trying recently to expand the scope of the ban to include millions of existing and non-threatening polymer magazines.

This is easy folks.  If someone brings this up in conversation with you, tell them that you cannot so much as take a penny through the detectors at the airport.  The notion that they are undetectable firearms is a lie.  Case closed.

Concerning off-duty cops and NFL games:

Yet when we contacted the business manager for the St. Louis Police Officers Association, he told us, he’d been given assurances by the Rams Security Director that this was only a recommendation and the Rams intended to continue to allow off-duty police to carry their service weapons into the Dome.

I sent a note to the NFL inquiring as to the accuracy of this report, i.e., that it is only a recommendation and not policy.  To the chagrin of the LEOs at reddit/guns, I supported the ban on high capacity magazines for LEOs in California if citizens weren’t allowed to have them either.  If citizens must be defenseless, then LEOs should be as well.  What’s fair is fair.  And I won’t likely hear back from the NFL.

Terry McAuliffe is already making moves on gun control in Virginia.  Because when you elect communists to office, they enact totalitarian measures – it’s who they are and what they do.

Uncle gives us a blast from the past on the Hughes Amendment when the honorable Ronald Reagan sold us out.  It might be a little more complex than that, but still, he shouldn’t have signed such an unconstitutional abomination.  And we still labor under that awful piece of legislation today.

David Codrea:

If passed and signed into law, his bill would effectively negate the ability of concealed carry permit holders, or gun owners in states that recognize “Constitutional carry,” to lawfully carry their firearm when dropping off or picking passengers up, rendering them defenseless for the duration of the trip to and from an airport. And importantly, it “would take precedence over any city or state laws that allow weapons in any airports nationwide.”

Go read David’s piece and see what he’s talking about.  If something involves federal preemption of state laws, you know I’m going to be against it.  The federal government, in my view, has a right to raise armies for the common defense and build roads to enable interstate commerce.  Beyond that we’re in unconstitutional territory.

David:

… absolute hypocrisy of a billionaire who can afford an around-the-clock armed presence devoting a substantial amount of his time and untold millions of dollars with the goal of disarming everyone of more modest means.

That’s always the way it is with the people of means and fame.  Gun control for thee but not for me.

Kurt Hofmann:

… it becomes difficult to decide what is the most appalling–the unbridled savagery of the attacks: “One victim shown in the footage is a 46-year-old man from Hoboken, N.J., who was found dead with his neck broken and head lodged between iron fence posts, according to NJ.com,” or the chilling callousness of the descriptions of the “game” …

Kurt makes an excellent point about the size of the mobs doing this savagery and the need for more rounds than most of the gun control states allow in your weapon.

Michael Bane cites Charlie Rangel:

“No one makes a big deal of it, but if you’re a fly on the wall in any of their homes — I’ll tell you what: If you track the Confederate Army to the Dixiecrats, to the conversation of the Republicans, to the districts that were affected, you may be dealing with different labels, but if they were ever able to track down their ancestors, there’s a Confederate general in every damn living room.”

Michael then makes his way through his living room looking for a Confederate general and can’t find one.  Charlie doesn’t have to be a fly on the wall.  My picture is very prominent.

Finally, a New Yorker’s view of guns from Adam Gopnik.  After admitting that gun violence mostly doesn’t happen outside of minority neighborhoods, he nonetheless wants to ameliorate a medical problem you have.

But it’s good, at least, to hear someone arguing the details and filling out the fact-picture, good to be reminded that the cultures and rituals of the gun, however irrational in nature, are still felt to be essential by the people who engage in them. Curing the irrationalities of human culture later depends on understanding them now.

He’s a collectivist and loyal hive member, and he wants to “cure your irrationalities.”  On a related note, sometimes I feel that I have nothing in common with New Yorkers except a language, and I’m beginning to wonder about that.

David Codrea:

Invoking Lee Harvey Oswald to produce a calculated emotional effect while showing total disregard for laws on the books, “reporter” Dan Freedman of the Hearst Washington Bureau made his case for so-called “universal background checks” Saturday in a “gun control” propaganda piece presented as straight news …

Were Freedman to make good on his assertions and demonstrate the equivalency he would have readers believe exists, he would next demonstrate how he can “buy” a gun online and have it shipped to him through the mail. But he knows he can’t because that would be against the law.

Of course it’s against the law.  And even if it wasn’t, it wouldn’t prove his case for universal background checks unless he could demonstrate that there was no other way for a perpetrator to obtain guns.  Read all of David’s piece.

Kurt Hofmann:

Over the past year or so that 3-D “printing” of guns has become a hot topic, one entity that would seemingly have a major interest in the subject has for the most part been surprisingly quiet. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) has said very little about this transformative–and rapidly evolving–technology. Until now. National Public Radio reports that the BATFE has decided that now is the time to frighten the ill-informed public:

“When these 3-D firearms are manufactured, some of the weapons can defeat normal detection such as metal detectors, wands, and it could present a problem to public safety in a venue such as an airport, an arena, a courthouse,” says ATF assistant director Richard Marianos.

Marianos, of course, did not bother to mention that security scanner technology has advanced a long way since the days that non-metallic objects were invisible to scanners, or that effective metal-free ammunition does not appear to be particularly imminent.

This isn’t about firearms.  The ATF is yelling about something that may threaten their monopoly on control.  You can’t make it through most scanners today with a penny in your pocket without setting it off, and the ATF knows it.  Read all of Kurt’s piece.

Mike Vanderboegh links this piece, which provides interesting results.  As I said earlier, don’t tell me that we can simply substitute steel for brass and be just fine.  By the way, take note of the AR-15 grip used in this photo.  This brings me to Mike’s next post on AR-15 furniture.

The evolution of the AR rifle grip began not long ago when shooters realized they no longer fired their weapons using stances developed in the 1960′s. Back in the day, armorless shooters were taught to use the bladed stance and a high elbow. But today, body armor and enhanced understanding of body mechanics during shooting and weapon manipulation has lead to changes in how a rifle is shouldered. Emerging doctrine now teaches us to shoot with shoulders squared up to the target and elbows tucked in for stability–and to keep from getting shot in the arm.

While I had shot firearms for years, I had not purchased an AR-15 until my son Daniel went into the Marine Corps.  This is the way the Marines taught him to shoot, and thus it’s the way he taught me to shoot my AR-15.  As a sidebar comment, the high grip on the forend of the AR-15 in the picture I linked comes from the 3-gun and gaming community, adopted by Special Operations for its utility in target acquisition because it increased stability when moving the rifle.

David Codrea:

The prevalence of guns in the Philippines is complicating efforts to bring relief to survivors of Typhoon Haiyan, the diplomatic correspondent for The Daily Telegraph asserted yesterday.

[ … ]

He appears to be getting those numbers from GunPolicy.org, a project of the Sydney School of Public Health that “promotes the public health model of firearm injury prevention, as adopted by the United Nations Programme of Action on illicit small arms.” It’s hardly an endeavor sympathetic to private gun ownership, but nonetheless provides a useful resource for unwittingly showing the utter failure of globalist citizen disarmament edicts at living up to their promise of a safer world. And as with other countries this column has reported on that used the website as a resource, a summary of gun laws for the Philippines is instructive.

“The regulation of guns in the Philippines is categorised as restrictive,” the policy assessment reports, but adding “In the Philippines, private possession of handguns (pistols and revolvers) is permitted.”

That would seem to exclude rifles …

Read the rest of David’s piece.  When the report came out I looked at what they’re citing as the rate of gun ownership, and concluded that this couldn’t possibly be the cause of the problems.  The problem is that this is on the other side of the world, they should have evacuated people before the storm, and the government is inefficient (what government is efficient?).  Guns have nothing to do with it, or so I concluded.  It’s just another chance to bring up personal freedoms and stomp on them if they can.  Oh, and by the way, I disagree wholeheartedly with the idea of using what used to be the most effective and violent fighting force on earth, the United States Marines, for missions of benevolence.  We need to find another way to conduct relief efforts.

Kurt Hofmann:

LA Times columnist George Skelton nevertheless takes Governor Brown to task for not being anti-gun enough, because one of the vast number of models of rifle the vetoed bill would have banned is supposedly the one used in the LAX “gun free zone” killing. From the LA Times:

Not that it would have mattered for Gerardo Hernandez, 39, the TSA agent who was murdered. The bill would not have taken effect until Jan. 1. And Paul Anthony Ciancia, 23, the disgruntled, alleged assassin, could have kept his semiautomatic rifle by registering it.

And, yes, he also could have armed himself with a handgun and probably inflicted the same damage.

Yep–Skelton admits that the incident he is using to bolster his argument condemning Brown’s veto would not have turned out any differently if Brown had signed the bill …

Kurt is doing what he does best.  He’s undermining the arguments of the gun controllers by examining their inconsistencies.  Gun control, like control of everything else, doesn’t work.  A person bent on killing will always do it, even if he has to learn to fabricate the tool himself.  The Texas tower shooter, Charles Whitman, used primarily bolt action rifles to inflict most of his damage.  The best option is always deregulation, i.e., get rid of gun free zones.  Gun free zones are for killers and their protectors, the lawmakers.

On another front, I didn’t know that we have U.S. federal agents doing the bidding of the Polish government?  I guess they don’t have anything else to do.

Chris Christie:

“If you look at what we’ve done in New Jersey, we want to control violence,” Christie told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. “And some of that may involve firearms, but a lot of it doesn’t.”

Just reminding you again of what we’ve already discussed.  Chris Christie is an anti-gun nut from way back.  There could almost be no better reason to stay home during the next presidential election than if the GOP were to nominate him for office.  There isn’t a dime’s worth a difference between Hillary Clinton and him.  The former is a cackling, collectivist, totalitarian control freak, the later is the same thing except with a loud mouth.

Here I discussed my good experience with Springfield Armory.  It looks like I’m not the only one.

Michael Bane has some interesting comments:

… we have been having a “dialog” about the role of firearms in American society at least as long as I’ve been alive. IMHO, the “dialog” ended when the war began.

Let me say this again…we are at war with a segment of society whose sole goal is total civilian disarmament. We are not in a dialog. We are not in a debate. We are not in a healthy give-and-take in the Cornell University academic lounge. The primary weapon used by our blood enemies is the Big Lie.

It works like this…our enemy states a Big Lie, and I could list dozens, and we run around like little bitty chickens with our heads cut off, marshaling our arguments, footnoting our learned responses, bullet pointing our facts…and after the whole charade is over the enemy repeats the Big Lie, the lapdog media reports it as truth, and WE LOSE AGAIN!

Look at the thoroughly discredited “a gun in the home is 43% more likely to harm rather than protect the homeowner.” Probably more words have been written debunking that fake piece of trash than all Shakespeare’s plays and the complete transcribed Wikipedia, yet 2 weeks ago I read it presented as gospel truth in a daily newspaper website.

During the fight on the Colorado gun laws earlier this year, thousands of us came with our carefully prepared remarks, charts, studies, bullet points, facts — real honest to goodness facts. Our blood enemies, most notably Michael Bloomberg, shipped in a parade of liars…heads of fake organizations created by Bloomberg, a presentation of “polls” that wouldn’t meet even the most basic rules for polling, etc. We had the “indisputable” facts; they had the Big Lie. Who won?

Hint: It wasn’t us.

Good points all around, Michael.  But then, I’m not sure sure about this from Michael!  By the way, concerning Metcalf’s position that I discussed here, I don’t back down one bit from my position that the state is the right level for regulation of any kind, including firearms.  Of course, that’s not to say that there should be onerous regulation of firearms even at the state level.  Recall our previous discussions where I have said the fight is at the level where the founders wanted it, i.e., near the people and not with a centralized government.  The state constitutions, all of them if I am not mistaken, recognize the right to bear arms, although Illinois was late to the game (and some states are stronger than others).  The corollary to my position, of course, is that all laws made at the federal level are unconstitutional.  All of them.  Every last one.  When the states are weak, voters need to fire the politicians and put in honest men.

David Codrea, discussing the firing of gun writer Dick Metcalf:

From a strictly human point of view, it’s a tragedy. Being a professional gun writer is a specialized craft, and opportunities to earn a living at it are few and far between. Devoting oneself to that as a career, getting it right most of the time and suddenly becoming not just unemployable, but widely excoriated, is a terrible outcome.

It’s fair to ask if some of the concerns raised by writer Bob Owens might soften demands for Metcalf’s head, and the uproar also raises inevitable comparisons to the way gun owners have reacted in the past to similar major foul-ups.

Bob Owens makes the following statement:

A modern well-regulated militia—one that is smoothly functioning and in proper working order as an irregular small unit militia force of the kind the John Mosby and Max Velocity train—requires blood, sweat, and tears. It’s hard work. It’s exhausting duty. It’s a promise to future generations that you ready, willing, and able to fight and live (any unprepared idiot can die) to preserve liberty for posterity.

On the other hand, “shall not be infringed,” taken without any responsibility, is a hedonist’s choice. It implies no responsibility, obligation, or duty. It is the cry of, “Why, we should have anything and everything, just because!”

Some of us are very selective in cherry-picking which parts of the Second Amendment we want to support, aren’t we?

I’ll speak to the subject of tactical training viz. Max Velocity and John Mosby later.  I don’t have that difficulty because of my methodological approach.  The Second Amendment circumscribes the power of the federal government, and its limitations are complete and comprehensive.  The Second Amendment doesn’t speak in the least to the power of the state, and we’ve discussed this before (please don’t slip in an argument over the fourteenth amendment at this point without reading the history of that subject here at this web site).

The State does indeed have the right to regulate firearms just like they have a right to regulate traffic laws, and this places both the authority to do so and the ability to remove those leaders from office who abuse that authority, right where it should be, near the people.  For example, the State has a right to expect that I will secure my weapons in such a manner that they will not become a danger to the neighborhood children should they come over to play (while at the same time no one has a right to illegal search or seizure to inspect my home “just because“).  The State also has a right to prohibit drunk driving.  I have never argued, nor will I ever argue, for anarchy or having everything I want just because.  God gives me rights, and the state recognizes those rights.  If it does not, I must hold the state accountable because God says I must.  All of life is a covenant, and the government is just as much in covenant with me as I am with it.  The wise founders left the centralized government out of this conversation as they should have.

As to the issue of gun owner reaction, to me this is simple.  Gun owners have the right to expect what they want in publications, and to refuse to purchase products if they don’t get what they expect.  Do consumers of other products not have that right as well?

Kurt Hofmann continues the conversation we engaged here concerning the closure of the last lead smelter plant in the U.S.

This could carry dire consequences with regard to availability and price of ammunition, prompting some to speculate that the anti-gun Obama administration’s EPA is motivated less by the claimed concern for “cleaner air” than by desire to squeeze private gun ownership from a new, less obvious angle.

Perhaps, perhaps not, but regardless, the squeeze is likely to be felt quite keenly by gun owners. All the more keenly because of longstanding federal law banning the use of many other materials in the construction of bullets used in “handgun ammunition.” If lead is unavailable/unaffordable (and now verboten, to California hunters), and if a great many other possible bullet materials are illegal, the remaining options are both few and of limited utility.

Yes, and that’s why this may be problematic as we discussed.  It isn’t as simple as substituting steel balls for lead, copper for brass, or steel for anything else like casings (which can tear up chambers).

Mike Vanderboegh reminds us yet again why it is an awful idea to talk to the police.  I know that some people have a hard time considering the exercise of their right to silence, but you need to watch all of this video again.  Please.  Watch it all.  And don’t ever talk to the police about anything.  They are an arm of the court, and exculpatory evidence discovered during questioning is inadmissible because it is hearsay.  Again, watch the entire video.  So have you watched the video, or just listened to me talk about it?

Continuing a theme we discussed earlier, David Codrea gives us this good summary of his review of the issue.

The real racists are the ones with evil ulterior motives doing the projecting. Gun rights advocates are not the ones trying to disarm peaceable people of all races — they are.

David also discusses fault lines within the gun rights advocacy community.

“Don’t buy Obamacare insurance just because the government tells you to,” Gun Owners of America advised members and supporters in a Thursday alert. “Don’t buy insurance just because the President tells you to and threatens to fine you if you don’t.”

A civil disobedience stance represents both a landmark step for a national organization as well as a bold departure from the direction taken by other national gun rights groups, particularly the National Rifle Association.

I am of course still a member of the NRA.  That doesn’t mean that I agree with every one of their positions.  The NRA hasn’t taken a position, as best as I can tell, on whether someone should participate in Obamacare exchanges.  If I take David correctly, his use of the word “silence” on the part of the NRA means that they simply haven’t taken a public position.  So be it.  I’ve issued a warning concerning gun owners and their doctors.  Be careful, boys and girls.  See also WRSA.

Kurt Hofmann discusses the federal government’s desire to affect state self defense laws such as stand-your-ground.

Even a nodding acquaintance with the Constitution would be sufficient to inform Schumer and Durbin that the federal government has no authority over any state’s self-defense laws. That fact, after all, is one that even their fellow anti-gun Senate Democrat, Barbara Boxer (D-CA), remembers–at least when it does not suit her purposes to forget it. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) evidently shares Durbin’s and Schumer’s wish to require that people under attack be forced by law to run and hide, rather than stand their ground, but seems at least to know that any such change would have to come from the states, rather than Congress.

Of course John McCain opposes stand-your-ground laws.  His record is to oppose things good and support things bad.  As I’ve said before, don’t trust the Leviathan.  They will find a way to impose their will, whether through civil rights laws or interpretations thereof, or the code of federal regulations.  You know, don’t you, that these problems will only become rectified when we secede?

Michael Bane:

Always great to wake up and learn something new! This from Business Insider, everything you ever wanted to know about the AR-15!

Very little separates a civilian AR-15 from the M-16s that are the standard-issue rifle for the American military. The military versions are semi-automatic, but also come with the ability to fire in a three-round burst; this feature is rarely used.Well, who knew? I was handling a modern military M4A1 last Friday morning, and to my uneducated eyes it appeared to be full auto. In fact, I thought the 3-round burst went away when the M4 upgraded to the M4A1. I guess since the President lies on a daily basis, it sets the tone for his busy little bee minions in the media.

Well, the idiot mayor of L.A. stated that the LAX shooter had enough ammunition to “kill everyone in the terminal.”  Oh, um, er, well it looks like he had only five magazines.  In other reports it has been called an “assault rifle,” but also semi-automatic, which as readers know is a contradiction in terms.

Don’t believe anything you hear in the media, unless it’s about democrats who want to control your soul or republicans who want to sell out to the democrats because they’re fearful, or really just collectivists in their heart of hearts.

David Codrea:

“At the Burlington City Council Meeting on Monday, Councilor Norm Blais, the driving force behind the gun control ordinance campaign in Burlington, proved what [we have] stated from the beginning,” VFSC explained. “Burlington [is pursuing] the dismantling of the Vermont Sportsmen’s Bill of Rights so that towns and cities all over Vermont will have the power to enact gun control, hunting, shooting, fishing and trapping regulations. We would then face a patchwork of conflicting municipal ordinances.”

I am a long standing and diehard advocate of State’s rights, even to the extent that I don’t think the federal court system should be invoked when local gun control is concerned.  All gun politics is local, I have said.  The corollary is that in order to prevent local hicks, ne’er-do-wells and criminals from acting out their Napoleon fantasies upon other men, association with the state means that – assuming robust gun rights laws already exist – local municipalities and townships shouldn’t be able to preempt state laws.  The state is the right size for law-making and control.  Our founding fathers were wise.  Oh, and David is of course correct.  The goal of progressives is complete control over everything.  They’re control freaks and they think they know better than you.

Kurt Hofmann:

And it’s all bogus. As this column has noted before, John Fund debunked the claim handily in the National Review. More surprisingly, the shrilly anti-gun, fawningly pro-Obama Washington Post found the claim very unconvincing (soon updated to even less convincing than that, with a much more defensible figure being 14-22%), and when Obama continued to repeat the “40%” fiction, they realized that they had still been giving him too much slack.

Kurt covers some lies told by the collectivists.  There are so many from which to choose.  Kurt is of course correct to note that a good tactician goes after the weakness of his opponent – in this case lies concerning polling statistics – while at the same time Kurt acknowledges that polls or not, we’ll keep our guns.  Good.  Very good.

Michael Bane notes what he believes to be the utility of AR pistols as a PDW.  I’m not so convinced that one needs a high velocity round like this, but I’m more convinced than ever that a SBR has specific utility as a PDW, especially inside homes (regardless of caliber or muzzle velocity – and I would probably choose a pistol caliber SBR).  Of course, SBRs are illegal unless registered as such with the ATF, and I’ll have my fingernails pulled off before I’ll ever register any weapon with the ATF to get a tax stamp.

Mike Vanderboegh:

John Lott has written another book. No big surprise there. The surprise, forwarded to me by David Codrea, is that Lott has sanitized the story of the Fast and Furious scandal by writing me out of it.

John Lott has written another book. No big surprise there. The surprise, forwarded to me by David Codrea, is that Lott has sanitized the story of the Fast and Furious scandal by writing me out of it.

Now, it is no surprise that John Lott doesn’t like me very much. He took the trouble to personally look me up when I was resting and chatting with supporters on the steps at the side of the Connecticut state house right after my Hartford speech back in April (he also spoke at the rally) to take me to task for my “lawbreaking,” saying that I was alienating the vast majority in the center and playing to gun confiscationists’ worst characterizations of American firearm owners.

I told him if he was waiting for the “vast middle” to agree with us or to save us from the determined minority of collectivists who sought to disarm us he would be waiting a very long time. He left, frustrated and obviously angry that I could not see his “wisdom.”

John Lott is a jerk.  I’ve known this for some time now.  I interacted with him on an article I wrote about cases involving firearms in national parks and also so-called “assault weapons” and their ban in D.C.  John responded by saying that neither case was good to take to the supreme court and that, basically, me thinking so showed that I didn’t read his blog and should and I’d know more than I did.  Or something like that.

Frankly, I hadn’t known about him or his blog until just before that note, and so his point was irrelevant.  But his ass-clownery towards me wasn’t irrelevant at all.  Never read John Lott, never will.  That fact that Lott wrote Vanderboegh out of F&F only shows again what a jerk he is.

David Codrea:

That’s the type of rhetoric anti-gun hive mind “monopoly of violence” zealots like those at the National Coalition to Ban Handguns call “insurrectionist,” sprinkled with words like “treason” and “traitor.” It’s the type of speech that would prompt U.S. News and World report editor and PBS contributor Bonnie Erbe to demand rounding up its practitioners. And citizens like Vanderboegh, and those who cheered and applauded him, are the type of people that “progressive” cartoonist Ted Rall wants declared enemy combatants and bundled off to Bagram, adding “If ever there were a reason for suspending civil rights, this is it.”

And that’s why it’s important to have guns and ammunition.  They can talk all they want.  We get to vote, and my vote won’t happen in a voting booth if any of the preceding obtains.  David is making a very specific point about how America is subdivided along ideological lines, a point with which none of us can argue.  My reaction, of course, is visceral and pedestrian as usual.

David is talking about the reaction to Mike Vanderboegh’s speech at the Alamo.  His speech is entitled One Country?  Or Two?  There is a video of the speech, but I read it – I’m old school.  I recommend that you read it even if you listen to it later.  It’s must reading.

Mike and David both have earned a debt of gratitude from us for the work they do on our behalf.  As a side bar comment, I notice that somebody said to Mike: “After reading a few of your articles, you so self absorbed it has to be shooting out of every opening you have. Change the name of this “blog” to “mikey can’t get enough of himself”. Your a worthless communist, a welfare junkie, and a general waste of human space.”

First of all, I’m reminded of the following comment to me concerning this article: “You are one of the stupidest assholes on the Internet, and Jim Hoft and Bob Owens are on the Internet.”  The commenter goaded me about not letting the comment see the light of day.  Not only did it see light, I put it up in lights.  So if my commenter is right, I’m a bigger asshole than either David or Mike.  Second, as for the two country thing, that issue was settled for me a long time ago.

Update on Magpul:

Magpul Industries Corp., the Boulder County-based maker of gun accessories, threatened to pull out of Colorado if new gun-control laws passed. The laws passed in March, but Magpul is still here.

The Boulder Daily Camera reports that it visited Magpul’s Erie headquarters and found the parking lot full of employees’ cars … According to the Camera, some customers have been leaving comments on Magpul’s Facebook page, criticizing it for not yet leaving Colorado as it vowed.

Well, it takes time, but let me be clear about this.  Magpul had better be about their business.  That’s all I’m going to say right now.

From Michael Bane:

… a local man was attacked by 3 coyotes…he fought them off with a flashlight. As much as I like flashlights, I think there are better anti-coyote strategies … Of course the first recommendation is carry dog/bear spray.

Hey, there’s nothing wrong with OC spray.  It works very well.  But, you know, carry a gun.  That’s all I’m going to say about that.

Finally, cops are appealing the decision on their not being allowed to carry guns to NFL games if they’re off duty.

The crackdown on firearms concerns Minneapolis Police Federation President John Delmonico. He believes a call for off-duty officers to give up their weapons at the gate violates an officer’s rights, as determined by state law.

The Minneapolis Police Federation sites state law, Chapter 624, which gives police officers full police powers 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In other words, they should be allowed to carry their weapons in any public place in the city.

“State law governs the facts that we can carry our guns off-duty in any public facility and any facility in the city of Minneapolis, which encompasses the dome,” Minneapolis Police Federation’s John Delmonico said.

So, Delmonico drafted a letter to Minnesota’s Attorney General.

They’re up in arms because it’s their Ox being gored.  And I have the perfect solution for them.  If they firmly believe that they cannot attend the game unarmed without violating their oath, then don’t attend the game at all.

People sometimes pay good money for counsel like that.  Should I send a bill to the cops?

David Codrea:

“At Nouria Energy, our employees are our most cherished assets,” they unctuously proclaim on their website home page. “Their safety and the safety of our customers is priority number one.”

Somehow, the immortal line spoken by John Vernon in “The Outlaw Josey Wales” comes to mind.

It’s like this for ever company that prohibits its employees from bringing weapons to work, as if security is enough to keep people safe.  And David gets big style-bonus-points for quoting from Outlaw Josey Wales.

Illinois legislators are touring the sites of Rock River Arms, Armalite and Springfield Armory.  What’s going on?  Are we about to see more defections from the North, or are these manufacturers just jumping for all the largesse they can get?  Come to the South, boys, where both the weather and people are more inviting.

Uncle is smoking some strange weed.

Revolvers are obsolete. Oh, they’re fun to shoot. I like shooting them. And they’re fantastic as a hobby gun. I’ve only ever owned two (one was given to me) because auto loaders are just superior.

Uh, you better rethink that one boy.  I have a Springfield Armory and S&W polymer frame pistol, and I’ve never been a fan of the boxy look of Glocks, so I’ll pick on Glocks.  So who out there is thinking, “Boy, I’m sure proud of my scratched up, beaten up, plastic pistol that I can turn over to my sons and he can turn over to his sons?”  If you’re out there, keep it to yourself because it would be embarrassing for you.

On the other hand, as the comments to Uncle’s post point out, if revolvers are so outmoded then they should be cheaper.  They’re not, and for good reason.  I’d rather have a good revolver in my hands when the shots count than anything else.  They are more fun to shoot, they’re prettier, they’re more reliable, and I will indeed turn over my revolvers to my sons and their sons.  My polymer frame pistols are throwaway, even the pricier ones.  They will be outmoded when the revolvers are still working well.

Gabby Giffords is being honored again, this time by the military.

“Gabby continues to be a great inspiration and a role model for her community, her state, the Army, the American people and members of Congress. She cared about soldiers and their families and worked hard on their behalf,” Westphal said during a ceremony at the Pentagon Oct. 10.

As a member of Congress from January 2007 to January 2012, she “was a dynamic leader, tirelessly working to ensure that our men and women in uniform had what they needed to keep our country safe,” states her award citation, said Under Secretary of the Army Joseph W. Westphal.

What about Congressman Walter Jones, who repeatedly called attention to the immoral rules of engagement under which our men labored in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially when McChrystal took over?  Oh, I see.  Jones called attention to something that embarrassed the administration (including the gun grabbing McChrystal), while Giffords is still a shill for the philosopher-kings inside the beltway.

What this tells you is that the conversion to the dark side is almost complete.  The generals, strategists and thinkers in the armed forces have been replaced with political hacks.

So the GOP caved.  Of course they did.

At the last GOP conference meeting of the two-week government shutdown, no lawmakers went to the microphones to give their take.

Instead, after Speaker John Boehner told Republicans they had “fought the good fight,” they all rose up to offer a standing ovation. “It was one of the easiest meetings we’ve ever had,” says Representative Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina.

“I think he has strengthened his position in leadership,” Representative John Fleming says about Boehner. “He hung in there with us. He’s been reluctant to go to these fights and now that we have stood up and fought for our values and he’s been there with us, leading, I think his stock has risen tremendously. He has great security as our leader and our speaker.”

The message from Boehner and majority leader Eric Cantor was unity, with warnings not to point fingers of blame.

“Everyone in this room ran on the Republican ticket,” Cantor told colleagues.

“We all agree Obamacare is an abomination. We all agree taxes are too high. We all agree spending is too high. We all agree Washington is getting in the way of job growth. We all agree we have a real debt crisis that will cripple future generations.

Yes, and they did nothing about it.  Instead, they posed, preened and pretended, and pursued power instead of practiced principle.  It’s what they do.  If every GOP Senator had fallen in line with Ted Cruz and filibustered any spending increase until Obamacare had been defunded, it would have happened.  If the GOP House cared enough they could have stopped it all in its tracks.

But Obama didn’t move one inch because he knew the GOP would.  The GOP is to blame for every bit of this debacle.  If they never intended to finish this out – and they didn’t – they should never have started the “fight.”

As far as I’m concerned, they may as well go ahead and proclaim their fealty to Satan and publicly embrace the witchcraft of Keynesian economics.  The GOP is dead.  America as you knew it is dead.  An entitlement once delivered won’t be turned back, and there is no way to save the economic system.  It is a house of cards that will soon collapse.  And who would fear the “warnings” of Boehner and Cantor?  They’re a couple of cowards who fold like a cheap suit.

Finally, Mike Vanderboegh has a U.N. stamp worthy of its name concerning the proposed U.N. gun controls.

David Codrea:

So how smart is a gun that requires a separate and nearby fingerprint sensor/wristwatch to activate a chip, and has built-in lights to tell an aggressor where a defender in the dark is, and whether or not they that gun is enabled to fire?

Not very smart.  And we’ve discussed this before.

In a very important development, the Supreme Court is going through its backlog of stuff to consider, and rejects an important one.

The Supreme Court won’t review a decision upholding a Maryland gun law that requires residents to demonstrate a “good and substantial reason” to get a permit to carry a handgun outside their own home or business.

Allow me to summarize.  We’ve all noted that Heller and McDonald were weak decisions, and didn’t envelope carrying outside the home.  Many had suspected that the SCOTUS would continue to develop post-Heller case law that fleshed out Second Amendment rights.  This is important in that what the Supreme Court rejects is as important as what they decide.  In this case, they have decided that Heller doesn’t apply outside the home, or at least, they won’t intrude on decisions they will leave to the state.

Folks, if I’ve said it once I’ve said it a thousand times.  The Second Amendment frames or boxes in the federal government.  It is a mistake to look to the federal government to delineate your God-given rights at the state and local level.  All gun politics is local.  Marylanders, you must fight the fight where you are, or leave for a free state.

Thomas Sowell discusses the appointment of Janet Yellen to the federal reserve.  She is a true believer in Keynesian witchcraft.  Be careful.  Chicken bones flying around, thrown by Ms. Yellen.  You know, the thing that impressed me most about the article was his quote of Yellen.

Ms. Yellen asks: “Do policy-makers have the knowledge and ability to improve macroeconomic outcomes rather than making matters worse?” And she answers: “Yes.”

For those of you who have read Plato’s Republic, she appears to be a believer in the concept of philosopher-kings, just as is Obama.

Kurt Hofmann:

For one thing, while the supply of legal machine guns in private possession has been capped since 1986, with the (very questionable) passage of the Hughes Amendment to the Firearm Owners Protection Act, driving the price of the artificially limited supply well out of range of most gun owners, the number of suppressors in private hands has been spiking dramatically, according to the Wall Street Journal.

There is no rational reason to require CLEO approval for purchasing silencers (which Kurt correctly points out should be considered safety equipment).  I have worked in a plant environment all of my working life, as well as operated power equipment outside of work.  I love the fact that I can still hear (albeit less clearly than 35 years ago), and I want to continue being able to hear.  Prohibiting equipment that can protect hearing (part of your set of PPEs) is immoral.

John Jay gives us an update on the armored personnel carriers in Montana.

Finally, see my disapprobation of the federal leviathan from this weekend.