Dec 7, 2011
Posted by Bitter in Military Stuff | 0 comments
If pictures are worth a thousand words, then here are a couple of thousand to honor those who gave their lives 70 years ago.
According to this article, the ashes of another survivor from the USS Arizona who passed recently will be placed on the ship this week. As of November 14, there were 18 known survivors of the Arizona. We can also find this profile of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association which served any veteran who survived the day that reflects on why they are being forced to shut down this year. It’s the struggle of an organization which is rapidly aging and literally has no one from which to recruit new leaders. Read it because history is wrapping up in front of us.
John Micek of the Morning Call linked to these scans of the AP bulletins from December 7, 1941. It also includes the story of what was happening behind the scenes in the newsroom as the story broke. The details on their experience of the day are incredible, including tidbit at the end about the reporter who wrote the second “flash” of the day and could never eat the peanut butter & bacon sandwiches they were all having for lunch that day again (at least until the time the account was dictated more than a month later).
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Dec 7, 2011
Posted by Sebastian in Gun Rights | 12 comments
Extrano’s alley speculates it could happen, and we should force the point. It wouldn’t honestly surprise me if we could be successful here. To say that the massive increase in NFA transactions, many of which are in the forms of trusts, has been a problem for ATF is an understatement. Trusts are particularly problematic because they are harder to clear than individuals. Many people are driven toward the use of trusts because of being unable to obtain LEO sign off. In this day in age, it really is a useless requirement, and should be dropped. I no more know my local police chief than I know the examiner who would process the NFA paperwork.
Granted, there are still a lot of good reasons to use trusts over individual. If Bitter and become NFA collectors, we’ll likely go the trust route, just because if both of us are on the trust, we can both be in legal possession of the same object. This is not true if you do it individually. If you lent your wife your can to take to the shooting range, unless you were with her, that would be an illegal transfer. A trust eliminates that.
The better solution to deal with the backlog would be to remove silencers from the NFA and deregulate them. They are representing most of the growth in NFA interest. Eliminating the requirement for SBRs would help as well.
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Dec 7, 2011
Posted by Sebastian in Carrying / Self-Defense | 13 comments
Miguel has a rather graphic story from Spain, where a bystander was hit by a ricochet and lost an eye when a police officer had to fire at a knife wielding suspect. The reaction is one I have experience with:
The prosecution is also demanding monetary compensation to Mr. Castro for the loss of the eye and to Manjon for being shot by Officer Sanchez. According to the prosecuting attorney, Officer Sanchez did not need to use his firearm to stop the attack because he could have used his night stick or talk the subject down or him and his fellow officers rush Manjon and subdue him.
I have had European people I know express this exact same sentiment in a similar circumstance. For me it’s very difficult to understand why you’d expect a police officer to risk life and limb to save the life of someone who’s decided his life isn’t worth spit. I’ve pondered whether police officers are just not very highly respected in European culture, or whether Europeans put a higher value on the lives of violent criminals. Either way, it’s difficult for an American to understand.
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Dec 7, 2011
Posted by Sebastian in Government, Guns | 2 comments
CBS News’s report should put to bed any last remnant of credibility that ever was attached to the whole “90% of weapons in Mexico come from the US” line of crap our opponents were pushing for several years. From now on, any hint from our opponents on the whole Mexican trafficking topic ought to be met with demands they stop lying, and refuted with the ample facts.
I have no doubt that guns do get trafficked to Mexico illegally, but it’s looking like a significant aspect of that problem has been fueled by our own government, either through illegal activities like Fast and Furious, or through legal sales of firearms to the Mexican government.
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Dec 7, 2011
Posted by Sebastian in 2nd Amendment | 9 comments
It looks like the GOP held together on a filibuster for a strongly anti-gun judge Obama wanted to appoint to the DC Circuit. This greatly pleases me, because it means we can likely defeat a Supreme Court nominee as well. The great difficulty is that you’ll likely never get a pro-Second Amendment candidate out of Obama, but he will be at least forced to find someone who’s never said anything about it, in which case we at least both roll the dice, rather than just letting Obama pack the Court with people we know will be against us.
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Dec 7, 2011
Posted by Sebastian in Anti-Gun Folks | 8 comments
It’s tough being a gun control advocate these days, I guess especially if you’re a professional one. Miguel shows us how the Brady Campaign is having difficulty accepting the Black Friday gun rush, by suggesting gun ownership is on the decline, despite polling indicating otherwise. The news we reported on yesterday, on investment analysts suggesting that increased gun sales represent a permanent cultural shift, really can’t have sat well with our opponents. I think they are essentially correct. It’s becoming OK again to be a gun owner. Much of that change, I think, has been in the past three years.
I think the primary reason our opponents are failing is because they have not been good advocates. They’ve shied away from making their arguments in forums they don’t control, and thus have largely removed themselves from serious public debate, which in the Internet age is a lot more important.
Gun control advocates don’t have much to celebrate these days. They haven’t seen much love from Obama, and the latest dog and pony show being brought forth by Kirsten Gillibrand is going to be dead on arrival. They’ve been spread so thin they are forced to retreat to college campuses as a last stand, while groups like NRA keep educating college students on the Second Amendment and shooting. No wonder they are resorting to lashing out any way they can.
NOTE: We also call this post how to clear out a lot of tabs in a short space :)
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Dec 6, 2011
Posted by Bitter in Anti-Gun Folks | 23 comments
Sebastian sent me a link to Joan Peterson’s latest ramblings, and I truly could not believe what was on the screen before me. I don’t mean the standard non-sensical ramblings with her own set of facts that change depending on what argument she wants to make. She’s actually questioning whether people who even own gun-themed clothing are reasonable enough to have children. She asserts that people who make such decisions may not be acceptable role models. This is what she has to say about the 17-year-old who was stopped by TSA for having a gun design on her purse:
The teen is pregnant so one has to wonder what role model this will be for her young child? There’s a message here and it’s not one of “peace on earth, good will towards men.”
This is not some sort of fantasy of a random gun banner in a thoughtless Facebook comment or careless tweet. This is “thoughtful discussion” from a board member of a group that some members of Congress actually take serious when it comes to policy on our fundamental rights. She considers it reasonable to question whether a home with a women who merely owns a purse with a gun design on it makes her a fit parent.
It almost makes me wonder what Joan would really have to say about the NRA tricycle and NRA jeep. Or, even better, what would she really say about the fact that there was a bidding war for the tricycle at our Friends of NRA dinner in September?
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Dec 6, 2011
Posted by Sebastian in Carrying / Self-Defense | 15 comments
I think if people are going to open carry, it’s a wise idea to use a quality holster with some retention features. This is why I think it’s a wise idea. Retention holsters aren’t perfect, but they at least give you some time to react to a grab.
UPDATE: This post had no content earlier. One of the risks of blogging ahead, because I don’t have access at work, is that I can’t log in to fix things. I put this post up hastily over lunch, and then didn’t manage to find out about it until later.
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Dec 6, 2011
Posted by Bitter in Guns | 5 comments
The initial reports about the Black Friday gun sales surge were met with denials from Brady Campaign Acting President Dennis Henigan.
Today, it seems as though they have come around to the idea that there really was a verifiable sales spike. However, their spokesperson now claims that while they accept that it happened, it was clearly a one time event due to marketing. That’s not the funny part of the article.
The article notes that if it’s just a spike due to marketing, it’s marketing that works. Even better are the quotes from two investment types who note the consistent performance of the firearms industry over the last few years.
“Whereas five years ago it was politically incorrect (to own guns), … what seems to be changing is social acceptance,” said Bret Jordan, analyst at investment firm Avondale Partners. “I think there might be a changing view of firearms.”
If you feel like it, MSNBC posts a poll at the bottom of the article asking people if guns make good Christmas gifts. I know I loved unwrapping a gun on Christmas Day. Apparently, I’m not the only one. Right now the poll is running 80%-20% in our favor.
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Dec 6, 2011
Posted by Sebastian in Carrying / Self-Defense | 4 comments
Joe Huffman describes a scenario. Go ahead and read. I’ll wait. You’ll need to read to understand my take.
Given that you have a force disparity (two younger men against an older man), I tend to think that this is legitimate self-defense, and thus a DGU. But two likely unarmed men against an armed man, you may be facing charges, and likely find yourself having to argue disparity of force, which is always an ambiguous enough a situation to want to avoid.
Based on his description (15 to 20 yards as described), he’s out of the range of most less than lethals. But I would point out that given the threat “I guess I’m going to have to fuck up your camera,” would completely warrant the immediate and un-threatened use of chemical defenses, regardless of how the situation progressed from there.
Given the situation, I think this person acted prudently. But the real question, if it came down to that, is how a jury would see it. That’s the ultimate question, and the only one that matters in the end, really. That’s why I advocate carrying defense that runs the whole spectrum of force. You’re generally going to be far better off defending the use of less than lethal force than you are defending the threat of deadly force. The important thing is to have options.
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