Tonight my silhouette shooting was pretty good. Shot a 37 in the first round, open sights, and got my remaining two pins, Pig and Turkey. I shot 29 animals in a row before I dropped one. Now I’m getting used to the Kimber Model 82 Government that I got from the CMP, I’m shooting pretty well with it. Dropped to 34 on the second round, but it’s a heavy rifle, and I got tired. Got some good advice from some of the guys who were watching me shoot, so I’ll have to work on some technique, and maybe I can start hitting high 30s consistently.
Month: April 2008
Gun Crime Distortions in Massachusetts
Bruce documents the cases that hit the press of licensed gun owners there (to own a gun in Massachusetts, you have to be licensed, and licenses are may issue to be able to own handguns), and finds that licensees seem to get a lot more negative coverage than non-licensees when they commit crimes.
This is an important reason to oppose licensing in my view. It’ll never be spun in the media as an unusual case, but precisely because it is unusual, it will be guaranteed to attract media attention. That will only strengthen the case for total prohibition, as our opponents will be able to point to many stories of violence at the hands of licensed gun owners.
Exit Polling
John Lott points to some evidence that Obama’s “bitter” comments did him no favors among gun owning Democrats. Obama learned a hard lesson about Pennsylvania voters: It’s not like Illinois, where he could safely thumb his nose at downstate people from his posh 1.6 million dollar home on the South Side of Chicago, knowing full well they can’t outvote his urban constitutents. Pennsylvanians can and do outvote Philadelphia. Politics here is hazardous for the inexperienced, and Obama didn’t have what it takes to navigate the minefield.
Porn For Soldiers
Rachel is absolutely right on this one:
Wanna know what I think, as a bona fide military girlfriend? I think they should have porn in the PX, especially if all we’re talking about is Playboy and Penthouse. Men need to see naked women, and these men happen to be spending months at a time in forced celibacy, and if they want to look at a pretty girl’s boobies and release some of that, uhhh, energy, more power to ‘em. I have absolutely no problem with it and like I said, I’d send those mags to my own boyfriend if I could, once he gets to Iraq.
It’s not a good idea to deny these kinds of things to young men who are forced to spend all their waking hours in the company of other men. Bad things happen when you do that, especially in a high stress environment, like a combat zone. It would seem to be this is just moralistic grandstanding on the part of a certain politician.
How To Tell Someone is From Illinois
They don’t seem surprised at the idea of the state funding gun control groups.
VPC Lies About Cannons
VPC tries to argue that we can’t hunt with black powder cannons. Pretty clearly, this is a bald faced lie. They also work for cutting down the feral cat population.
Pizza Hut Boycott
I’m with Uncle on this one, but for me it’s no biggie. Pizza Hut pizza just plain sucks. It’s easy to boycott that which I wouldn’t eat anyway.
Student Discounts for Glocks?
They have them for cars, so why not? Peter Hamm and Josh Sugarmann aren”t happy about it though:
“He’s arming the criminals and then telling the rest of us to buy guns so we can protect ourselves from the criminals he’s armed,” said Peter Hamm, communications director for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.
While gun control advocates acknowledge that Thompson has a right to make this offer, they say this is yet another example of the gun industry trying to profit from gun violence.
“What this shows is that to the gun industry, gun violence is at best an abstract concept and at worst a business opportunity,” said Josh Sugarmann, the Executive Director of the Violence Policy Center.
“No matter how these products are used against citizens, the answer is always more guns when in fact these problems stem from the fact that there are too many guns out there already,” Sugarmann told ABCNews.com.
When the standard playbook no longer works, keep repeating it, only louder! If Mr. Thompson is selling guns to criminals, shouldn’t Josh and Peter be complaining to the ATF instead of a newspaper? Or are they merely hoping the public doesn’t realize that Eric Thompson can’t ship any firearms directly to the public, but must ship through a licensed dealer who will run the federally mandated criminal background check?
Also, college students are adults. They can vote, get married, get drafted, sign contracts, and what have you. You have to be 21 to get a license to carry one in all but one state (Indiana, I think). So what’s the problem?  A lot of these guys were toting automatic weapons around Iraq before they became students. If you’re old enough to bear arms for your country, and possibly die for your country, you’re old enough to buy a gun.
New Server Time
We’ve been experiencing too many outages lately, largely due to one of the drives in the server acting up. This is something I need to remedy, but I’m thinking maybe it’s time to remedy it with a new server for the blog. I’m looking at getting the parts in to do it.
More on SCCC Empty Holster Protest
Over at Dustin’s Gun Blog, which includes some video.