Thompson M1, Full Auto – Traction Control has much better toys than I do.
Different kind of Thompson – Looks like a decent big bore silhouette pistol.
Cannons at TAMU’s Firearms Museum – I wish my college had a firearms museum.
Year: 2009
Sad Story About a Gun Accident
This woman’s son was killed in a gun accident, and she’s become an advocate for safety training:
She’s convinced that gun-safety courses, especially for teenagers, can avert tragedies such as the one that forever changed two families.
The foundation is circulating an online petition — about 440 people have signed — asking for mandatory safety training. Stein plans to send the petition to Barack Obama.
”People who don’t have bad intent should at least be taught how to handle guns,” Stein said. “You don’t let [teens] behind the wheel without knowing how to drive . . . This is not about taking people’s rights; it’s about keeping people safe.”
Morris Stein bought a gun after graduating from Dr. Michael Krop Senior High School. It was a choice more whimsical than ominous: an antique French rifle.
”I’m allowed to have a long gun,” he told his mother. “I’m an American citizen . . . No one knows where the clip is but me.”
Mandating gun safety training in high schools is a proposal I would gladly stand by Robin Stein and advocate. I think everyone should know how to safely handle a firearm, including not pointing it in unsafe directions, or keeping firearms gratuitously loaded and unsecured. But I won’t get behind any proposal to make training a prior restraint on purchasing a firearm.
Religion in the wrong hands can be quite deadly, yet we do not require training in peaceable religion before purchasing Bibles, Torahs or Korans. We do not require people first read The Gulag Archipelago before purchasing a copy of The Communist Manifesto, or the Diary of Anne Frank before buying Mein Kampf. I agree that we need more education on firearms, but that education cannot be a barrier to the exercise of a constitutional right.
Last Day of Bush
Today will be the last day we’ll be saying “President Bush”, and it’s been a long eight years. While I am not happy with the result of the election of 2008, in a lot of ways, I’m happy to put George W. Bush behind us. Not having voted for him in 2000 (or Al Gore for that matter), I was never his biggest fan. But I always supported him on the decision to invade Iraq, and I still support it. The future success of Iraq and the Arab world will be the yard stick by which his administration’s success is measured.
For a coalition that deserves a lot of credit for getting him elected twice, Bush never treated the gun rights community with the respect I think we deserved. Nonetheless, I think the state of gun rights over the eight years of Bush is one of continued improvement. Bush came into office arguing for renewing the Assault Weapons Ban.  It never happened. We passed or expanded right-to-carry in several states. We got the National Park rule on concealed carry changed (for how long remains to be seen). We ended the continual threat of lawsuits that threatened to bankrupt gun makers. We got Heller, despite Bush’s Solicitor General’s best effort to scuttle it. And despite noise on our side that Heller is worthless, it’s already toppled more gun bans in the few months that it’s been in effect than we could ever have hoped to accomplish legislatively in a decades long campaign.
While Bush was no great friend to gun rights, nor was he a great enemy. By not using the bully pulpit to beat the drum for greater gun control, he allowed us to make some cultural progress on the topic of guns. Both 9/11 and Katrina probably helped facilitate that a great deal. But I don’t think it can be denied that it’s far better to have a half-hearted friend in the White House than an avowed enemy.
It remains to be seen yet how much political capital Barack Obama is going to be willing to gamble on the topic of guns. Clinton gambled a great deal on it over his entire presidency. I’m both comforted and terrified that Barack Obama seems a good deal politically smarter than Clinton. Comforted that he probably understands he would burn signficant political capital fighting a contentious culture war issue, but terrified because in his heart he is an avowed enemy of civilian gun ownership. Bill Clinton, when it came to gun control, was a backgammon player. Obama will be a chess player. The latter has the potential to be more dangerous played over the long run.
Great SHOT Pictures
Take a look at some of the great photo coverage of SHOT over at Gun Pundit. Just keep scrolling.
Two Virginia Gun Bills
Two Virginia gun bills will be given a hearing tomorrow in subcommittee. One of the bills will allow people with concealed carry licenses to carry into restaurants. Hopefully this will pass this time around. The relevant section in the bill is below. Additions are in italics, while the struck out sections are being removed:
J3. No person shall carry who carries a concealed handgun onto the premises of any restaurant or club as defined in § 4.1-100 for which a license to sell and serve alcoholic beverages for on-premises consumption has been granted by the Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Board under Title 4.1 of the Code of Virginia ; however, nothing herein may consume an alcoholic beverage while on the premises. A person who carries a concealed handgun onto the premises of such a restaurant or club shall inform a designated employee of the restaurant or club that he is carrying a concealed handgun. A person who carries a concealed handgun onto the premises of such a restaurant or club and consumes alcoholic beverages is guilty of a Class 2 misdemeanor. A person who becomes intoxicated while carrying a concealed handgun on the premises of such a restaurant or club is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor. However, nothing in this subsection shall prohibit any sworn apply to a federal, state, or local law-enforcement officer from carrying a concealed handgun on the premises of such restaurant or club or any owner or event sponsor or his employees from carrying a concealed handgun while on duty at such restaurant or club if such person has a concealed handgun permit while actually engaged in the performance of his official duties.
It seems like an eminently reasonable bill, though I would prefer it not have the requirement to inform the restaurant of the fact that I am carrying. If you’re going to require this, I might as well just open carry, which is already legal.
Philadelphia Gun Show
Went to the gun show today at the Pennsylvania National Guard Armory. Got there an hour before closing, and things were pretty well picked over. Was looking for someone selling .308 ammunition, but there was none to be had. The ammo dealers were picked to the bone. Found one guy selling CCI .22LR Standard Velocity for $27 bucks a brick. That’s 8 bucks cheaper than Midway right now, so I bought 1000 rounds.
Crowd was pretty good for getting close to closing on a Sunday. Not much in the way of AR-15s that weren’t 1400 bucks and up. Lots of Mosin-Nagants left over at the end of the show. One thing is magazine prices don’t seem to be spiking too much in price. I didn’t notice any shortage of those at the show, at least there were plenty of AK and AR magazines left toward the end. Magazine prices never spiked very much during the assault weapons ban, because supplies were never really short, except for a few brands (15 round Glock 19 magazines being among them).
“Easy Access”
David Codrea takes on the notion that youth today are violent because of “easy access” to firearms over at the Cleveland Examiner.
Frozen Pipes
A few years ago I redid my master bathroom. Not two weeks after I had moved in, my pipes froze up on me. Since I was redoing the bathroom, I figured I’d head into the floor and fix the problem. The supply pipes coming up to the bathroom had been installed along the outside wall on the first floor. Not code. Nothing I could do about that for the time being, so I rerouted, insulated, and sealed what I could in the master bathroom. I had known it was freezing there, because the shower and the toilet always worked. It was only the sink, which ran closer to the outside wall, that was a problem.
Woke up this morning. Go to brush my teeth. Turn on the faucet. Nothing. Crap. Had I not actually fixed the problem? Opened up the sink faucets, opened up the shower, and heard gurgling. My repair to the sink three years ago was working fine. We had flow between all the water consuming appliances, so the blockage has to be in the supply coming up the outside wall on te first floor. Got a spigot outside for a hose fed off the same line. Put some heat into that with a torch turned way down. That frees up the cold water line. The hot water line is still frozen. I need to keep the taps open to prevent more damage than may have already been done.
At some point I need to reroute 90% of the plumbing for this house to fix the problem for good. Pretty clearly someone at the township wasn’t paying attention when they built the house. This was an owner-built house, meaning the guy who built it lived in it. He didn’t always (usually) know what he was doing. He’s dead now, and if I knew where he was buried, I would go piss on his grave, except that it would freeze before it got anywhere. Dang.
UPDATE: Several hours with Bitter’s hair dryer, and turning my heat up has freed the water from its ice prison. The best part is, there is no torrent of water flowing down my outside wall. I have several holes in my wall that weren’t there before, however. I drilled into the drywall with a 1″ auger bit so I could a) locate the pipes, and b) put some direct heat on them with the hair dryer. Annoying, for sure, but 1″ holes in drywall are a hell of a lot easer and cheaper to fix than burst pipes. This cold spell lasts one more day. I’m going to run the faucet on a slow drip all night. Once the single digit temperatures recede, we should be good. I will definitely need to reroute all the plumbing for that bathroom to remain inside. Can’t have pipes freezing up in really cold weather.
Rifle Standoff in Philadelphia
Apparently the Philadelphia Police were in a standoff with an armed suspect earlier today:
So, how did you folks spend your day? We spent it trying to coax a gun-toting piece of garbage out of his car. You know, because we couldn’t have him off himself with his Chinese assault rifle, right? That would have made our lives much easier.
At least he didn’t start firing at anyone else, and surrendered peacefully. Funny thing is, the Chinese variants of the AK have been banned for a number of years from further importation. Since 1989, if I recall, yet you often hear about them showing up on the streets. Which is odd, because they aren’t that common on the range. I have to wonder if a large shipment of them got diverted to the black market some time ago, and they’ve been circulating on the streets since.
Holder Vote Scheduled for January 21st
The hearings are finished at this point, with the vote scheduled to take place on January 21st. If you’re going to write, call or e-mail your Senator, be sure to do it before then.