Some GBR impressions
- NRA event went well, I think. I was happy to see that.
- Chris Byrne’s technical
knowledge of guns, and ARs in particularis scary. - Brownell’s has done some really fantastic work on AR-15 magazines.
More later.
Month: October 2007
GBR Blogging
Blogging might be kind of sporadic while I’m at the GBR. Brad and Ahab should still have posting rights. If they want to put up a few things I shan’t complain.
As always while at the GBR, I will be on Skype while we’re gathered as a group. My Skype name is “snowflakesinhell”. Skype is free, and it can be downloaded at Skype.com
At GBR
I made it to GBR. Those you with Skype should log on if you want to see everybody. My login name is snowflakesinhell
By the way, did you know the average human being eats eight spiders in a year?
Recording of the Show
In case you folks missed the Ahab on Cam & Company, I have an mp3 of it here. The quality sucks, because it’s just a recording of my MacBook’s mic. If you listen carefully, you can hear AR-15 parts going together in the background. At the end you can also hear Ahab calling me, and the first part of my congratulating him on a great interview :)
Getting Ready for Reno
So much to do before I head of to Reno, Nevada for the Gun Blogger Rendezvous tomorrow at an ungodly hour.  First, I have to put my AR-15 back together! I needed to clean it, because it was getting FTFs at the range earlier in the week. Apparently we’ll be shooting steel targets at like 400 yards, so I needed to take the scoped AR, which I haven’t cleaned up in forever. Needless to say, I’ve never shot at that distance in my life, so I’m eager to try.
Also, don’t forget to listen to Ahab on “Cam & Company” over at nranews.com at 11.
Reconsidering
Earlier this week I posted something I’ve been mulling over:
Now, some of you aren’t going to like this, but the public rhetoric needs to be that we support the National Firearms Act. The only way, you’re ever going to convince the public and the politicians to repeal the 1986 Hughes Amendment is to convince them that the NFA was just fine, and that the 1986 ban went too far, and is too restrictive. Even this is going to be a hard sell, I’m sorry to say. But if you just say “repeal it all†the public and politicians are just going to say “no†and dismiss you.
I think I chose my words poorly here, and didn’t really get the point across that I wanted to make. I shouldn’t say that we ought to proclaim our faithful support of the National Firearms Act. I don’t believe that, and I know most of you don’t either.
But I’m not going to take on the National Firearms Act any time soon, and I don’t think it’s realistic to expect our public interest groups on the issue to do so either. If there’s anything I think might be possible on machine guns, my shorter term goal is the 1986 ban on new registrations.  I would like to either eliminate or weaken that. If I have to tell a politician, media person, or other person of influence “It’s not that big a deal. We still have the NFA, and all its requirements, and I’m not asking you to get rid of those. But this ban is a problem for reasons x, y, and z.”, I’ll do it.
Once that happens, and the sky doesn’t fall, we might be able to ease more restrictions. Get people comfortable taking baby steps, and it all adds up. It certainly has with concealed carry. This will take a long time. It’s hard to get bad laws repealed, even when most people agree they are bad laws. It’s even tougher to get bad laws repealed that most people actively support.  We can’t even get the Veterans Heritage Firearms Act passed, which is only a minor period of amnesty from the ban on new registrations.
So just to clarify I’m not suggest anyone switch their position and embrace the NFA with heart and soul. But we might need to stand on it to convince people to take that baby step forward.
Ahab on the Air
Our friend Ahab of Call me Ahab will be appearing on Cam and Company tonight at 11PM. He’ll be talking about the whole CBS fiasco the blogosphere uncovered last week. We all owe ourselves a pat on the back for getting this story out there. I’m sure Ahab will make a great spokesman for us.
You can tune in on Sirius “Patriot” 144 or head over to nranews.com. I’ll definitely be tuning in.
Politics Trumping Science?
We Only Disagree on Solutions
Paul Helmke is absolutely correct that this incident, and many like it, are horrible:
And then, on September 22, their family life was shattered by a man who walked up to their adopted son, Daren Dieter, and shot him in the spine. The shooter left Daren in a parking lot in Philadelphia, paralyzed from the neck down. Daren happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, a young man simply trying to buy a late-night snack for himself and his date.
Now he’s permanently attached to a respirator.
I don’t like hearing about a family having to go through anything like that, and I hope by some miracle their son recovers. I don’t disagree with Paul that criminal violence is a a big problem, and that it can strike anyone if they are at the wrong place at the wrong time.
I can’t agree with him on how to solve the problem, because what his organization advocates simply won’t work. The scumbag who shot this young man is Tyree Bohannon:
Court records show Bohannon has been arrested three times in the last two years on numerous charges, including robbery, assault, firearms violations, receiving stolen property, and providing false identification to police.
He has been convicted only of false identification and was placed in a program for first-time offenders after his arrest last November.
So he had previous arrests for some very serious crimes, yet the DA in Philadelphia thought he was a good candidate for the ARD program, which lets first time offenders off easy.
Philadelphia’s crime problem will not be solved by taking guns away from law abiding citizens. It won’t be solved by one-gun-a-month, by restricting good people from getting concealed carry licenses, or by any of the other measures the city has been begging for in Harrisburg. Until they get tough on the criminals causing the violence in Philadelphia, the problem will continue. The measures Paul Helmke and his organization want to take will only serve to make good people defenseless against cretins like Tyree Bohannon.
UPDATE: More over at Days of our Trailers
Return Fire
Scott Bach has composed a very well written response to Bryan Miller’s earlier post attacking him, which seems to have been toned down from the original version.
Bryan should be aware that you lose credibility in the blogosphere if you alter posts because you regretted something you said. Editing for grammar or style is fine, but making statements go down the memory hole is something you don’t do; you man up to it and say as much in another post, or in an update. I’m about to do that later today, in fact.