According to The Firearms Blog even the Canadians will be able to get them. This version will be chambered in 5.56mm NATO and will take STANAG mags. Will they be available here? Or are they not considered “sporting purposes” enough?
Month: August 2008
More Sunday Competition
Looks like we have a new World Steel Challenge Champion from the Army Marksmanship Team. Mr. Completely scored 24th of 84. Not too bad for an international competition!
Pennsylvania State NRA Airgun Silhouette Championships
Well, today I shot the State Championships for NRA Airgun Silhouette which was held at My Club in Falls Township, Pennsylvania. We’re loacated just north of Philadelphia, and do an NRA sanctioned airgun match every Thursday evening starting at 6PM in summers, and an unsanctioned indoor air/smallbore silhouette match during the winter months. It’s great fun, really. At states, I managed to score second out of four in my class with a 39 (out of 80. 22 on the first match, bombed the second with a 17). We started off with five AA shooters, but one guy shot well enough to move his classification up to AAA. I decided to take some pictures so folks who aren’t familiar with silhouette, and what club competitions are like can see for yourselves.
It was a very fun match, and Dave did a great job putting it together. He knows how to run a fun match. I never thought I would get as much enjoyment out of air gun as I do.
Olympic Update
Vincent Hancock, of the USA Shooting Team, takes the gold in men’s skeet at the ripe old age of 19. Halfway around the world, in India, Abhinav Bindra’s gold medal win in 10 meter air rifle has created a surge of interest in the shooting sports in that country. Peter Hamm will no doubt be looking for native Hindi speakers so that The Brady Campaign may spread the message to that country that all this will bring is dead children, burned villages, and plagues of locusts.
Against Gun Ownership Indeed
If the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership isn’t against people owning guns, why are they gloating over the fact that one of McCain’s advisors got prosecuted for having an unloaded shotgun in his car in DC? I would think in a world where people hunt, and shoot clays, a common pastime in DC politics, that it should be common and accepted, even by the Brady Campaign.
Unless, of course, you believe all guns should be illegal, and all hunters and shooters who transport their firearms in compliance with federal law (but maybe not DC’s now unconstitutional law), should be in jail. Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership, Indeed.
Second Amendment As Applied to Aliens?
Eugene Volokh discusses the topic. I would imagine that, if the second amendment is to be a fundamental right, that all people lawfully in the United States would have a right to keep and bear arms. But could Congress regulate foreign nationals coming to the United States, purchasing firearms, and taking them back home?
How Commies Win at the Olympics
They cheat. That leaves one of our shooters with a bronze.
State Championships This Weekend
This weekend my club is hosting the NRA State Championships for Air Rifle and Air Pistol Silhouette, which I will be shooting in. It’s going to be tough, becauase I ended up shooting a AA score a few nights ago and am now classified as AA, even though I’m normally in the A range.
Right now I’m shooting one of these. It works fine for IHMSA in the production category, but there are a few things about it that are problematic. For one, the trigger pull is brutal. The pull is so long and rough, you probably ought to buy travel insurance for your finger. I cleaned it up a bit by polishing the engagement surfaces, but it only helps a little bit. Still, I think I need to learn to shoot well with a sloppy trigger. Someone at the club last night showed me how to clean the trigger up, but doing so would put me in the unlimited category.
I’m thinking about getting one of these. A lot of shooters seem to use them, and it also solves the problem of not having to worry about my CO2 running low and my shots dropping. Our master shooter who uses the same gun I do, and can shoot much better than I, can compensate for that pretty well. As a novice, it’s another variable that’s distracting me from the fundamentals. Of course, I also don’t know how I feel about a Russian airgun knowing my money will be going to help The Bear maul infant Republics in their cradles.
Pistol Packing Texas Teachers
Interesting Justification on DV Prohibitions
A court used this reasoning in upholding Lautenberg:
A useful approach is to ask whether a statutory prohibition against the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill is similar enough to the statutory prohibition against the possession of firearms by persons convicted of the misdemeanor crime of domestic violence to justify its inclusion in the list of “longstanding prohibitions” that survive Second Amendment scrutiny.
The Court concludes it does. To reach this conclusion, the Court starts by comparing the constitutionally-sanctioned prohibition against firearm possession by felons with the prohibition against persons convicted of misdemeanor crimes of domestic violence. A person can, of course, be convicted of a felony which had nothing to do with physical violence and which would not necessarily predict future misuse of a firearm. Nevertheless, the law forbids any convicted felon, regardless of the nature of the felony, from possessing firearms and Heller constitutionally sanctioned this broad prohibition.
Whether you like the result or not, it’s a powerful argument. But where does it end? May Congress bar any misdemeanant from their second amendment rights?  Must their be some finding that the misdemeanor in question was violent in nature? If that test is required for misdemeanors, why is it not for felonies?
I think these are useful questions, but I would argue that we’re probably going to be stuck arguing these things out in the legislatures rather than the courts. I believe the courts will tend to defer to the legislature when it comes to stripping second amendment rights of people convicted of crimes.