June 2011 – Page 12 – Shall Not Be Questioned

MAIG Poster Child is Already Prohibited

The gun blogosphere is ablaze with this video hawked by Mayors Against Illegal Guns showing a one Adam Gadhan, a high ranking American-born Al-Quaeda operative, naively posting that machine guns can be had at US gun shows without background checks. Most people have focused on the ridiculousness of this assertion, but I think more interesting is the fact that Adam Gadhan is a prohibited person under current federal law because he’s currently under indictment for treason against the United States.

While it’s still an open constitutional question as to whether an indictment is sufficient due process to warrant even temporary removal of a the Second Amendment right, the chances are, because of the temporary nature of the prohibition, it very well may be sufficient. For instance, it’s sufficient to keep a person in jail if a Judge perceives they are a threat to the public, are a flight risk, and the crime is sufficiently heinous. Courts would weigh that against a temporary restriction of one specific right. Since indictments are generally only requires for sufficiently infamous crimes, this might be sufficient to remove the right pending trial on the charges.

So I think it’s safe to say MAIG is full of crap when it’s suggested that our current laws are insufficient to stave off the possibility of known terrorists getting their hands on firearms through legal channels (as opposed to black market channels, where they can get them readily — see Mumbai). Personally, I feel safer living in a country where my fellow citizens are ready, willing and able to shoot back, than I would be in a country like India, where the population has neither the ability, inclination, or training to do so (which apparently applies even to the police). I don’t give a Mumbai style attack much chance even in a place like New York City, where emptying the magazine into the suspect seems to be the standard drill. Our cops shoot back, and in most of other other cities, our citizens do too.

Tactical Nerf

It’s just so wrong.

Police as Super Heroes

I think one of the protesters in my video may really live in Illinois since the opening of this letter to the editor sounds awfully familiar:

Rep. Jim Sacia calls a concealed carry law, â€œpretty common sense stuff.â€

As I see it, itâ€™s all a bunch of B.S. conceived by the biggest lobbyist in the country, the National Rifle Association. The NRA declares everyone should have the right to have a stockpile of weapons. The only interest the NRA heeds is the gun and ammunition manufacturers.

That’s right, there aren’t really 4 million members who actually support the NRA and their goals. But that’s not the real meat in this hysterical letter. Oh no, it gets so much worse.

Our legislators are voting on a bill to allow the average citizen to carry a concealed weapon and to use it when they deem it necessary to take the law into their own hands. The only super heroes are the police who deal with crazy people every day and are putting their lives on the line for all of us.

Do we all feel unsafe?

The police are in uniform with a badge and a gun in plain sight for a reason. We know who the good guys are.

Super heroes? Really? And what about the officer who shot his ex in front of their child with innocent bystanders around, then led other officers around on a police chase that involved not one, but two other shootouts with innocent people nearby? Is that the kind of behavior that the “good guys” exhibit in the context of their “super hero” work? I’m not anti-police officer, but that’s really on the edge of being delusional to think that sometimes bad people don’t make their way into a uniform. It’s also delusional to believe that just because we hire police means that we are somehow protected from criminal activity. If that were the case, then we wouldn’t have crime at all in this country.

When I read this to Sebastian, he suggested I look up the writer to see if he’s an anti-gun activist. It is such a far-fetched and extreme letter that it seemed impossible that it would come from an average citizen. Not surprisingly, he is an activist. Whether he’s done any specific work with anti-gun groups, I did not focus on after I found his other letters to the editor. They publish him every few months, and he is specifically targeting his local lawmaker in every single letter. One of the letters also defends the HSUS agenda, so he’s pretty clearly not on the side of any lawful gun owners – whether they carry concealed on the sidewalk or carry openly in the fields & woods.

Dusting Off the Shooty

Like the tin man from the Wizard of Oz, I found myself having to oil my reloading setup into working condition for the first time in a long time last night. I decided, after a while of shooting air gun silhouette and smallbore silhouette, to try out field pistol again at our monthly IHMSA match. The load was .44 Special, with 8.3 grains of Unique topped off with a 180gr hollow nose bullet. You just want enough to take the animal down, but not too little that you have to aim way over the rams at 100 yards for lack of muzzle velocity.

The only firearm I have that really works for IHMSA field pistol is my Smith & Wesson 629. Smaller caliber pistols are generally preferred for this category, such as ones that shoot .32 S&W Long, .32 H&R Magnum, or .22 Hornet. Not being one to spend a lot of money on special purpose guns, I stick with something general purpose. The end result is that I scored 13 out of 40. For air pistol or smallbore, I’d be embarrassed at that score, but for shooting modified isosceles starting at 25 yards and moving out to 100 yards with a factory .44 revolver, I’ll take hitting 13 out of 40. One guy I shoot with got 21 out of 40 with a 4 inch barreled Ruger Blackhawk in .44 Special. He is not a believer in long barrels, and he doesn’t need to be.

Metallic Silhouette is one of those games where your fundamentals have to be pretty much perfect to hit anything. Shooting production category is difficult because most handgun manufacturers that aren’t Thompson Center don’t imagine their customers wanting fine enough sight adjustment for shooting at 50 or 100 yards. On rams, one click can be the difference between missing off its nose, and shooting it in the ass on some pistols. I generally don’t like mucking with my elevation settings, so I tend to just eyeball elevation. With .44 Special, you’re pretty much straight from 25 to 50 yards, a little up on the turkeys at 75 yards, but you have to aim over the backs of the rams at 100 yards. Between 75 and 100 yards, the bullet starts to drop more substantially.

I was thinking a reshoot, because I thought I might be good for 15 or 16 a second time around, but I only loaded 50 .44 Specials. I’d have to do the reshoot with .44 magnum, which would throw my sight settings, and to be honest, my wrist wasn’t up to it. Maybe next time.

Jealous of the Pro-Gun Toaster

Mz. VRWC is one lucky bitch. I say that with the utmost love and respect – and jealousy. Our friends at Great Satan, Inc. are the newest owners of the NRA toaster available through the Friends of NRA dinners.

I already know there will be a bidding war at our local dinner in the fall for the toaster that can meet all of your pro-gun bread needs. As I mentioned on Facebook once, there’s not a person in the world who can’t use an NRA toaster. Perhaps you don’t want your toast to be pro-gun. That’s fine, it could be pro-restaurant toast (National Restaurant Association) or even pro-New Deal toast (National Recovery Administration). Of course, Ian Argent then pointed out that it would be unconstitutional toast. But, as I responded at the time, I’d much rather that anyone who truly longs to relive the early days of the New Deal do it via toast than actual public policy.

For you Southeast Pennsylvania people & random New Jersey folks in the area, you can buy tickets to the September 15 event and someone will get back to you. In fact, if enough of you are interested in coming out for the dinner, I’ll see what I can do to put together an unofficial “Snowflakes” table.

UPDATE: We have the first report from Arizona: “Pro-gun toast is the breakfast of champions!”

New Living Room Set, Among Other Things

So the auction for my company’s assets is just about over, as we speak, and it turns out I’m walking away with a couple of thousand dollar living room set for about 450 bucks. Two years ago our company spent a little bit of money to set up an employee lounge, so we’d have a place to relax and spend some quiet time during the day. Turns out it made a much better area for all hands meetings and various other company presentations. The sofa sets were barely used, were leather, and will look great in whatever I end up turning my den into eventually.

More importantly, my long month nightmare of preparing our entire technological infrastructure: sorting, cataloging and archiving data, shutting things down in an orderly manner, and finally making sure not a hard drive leaves the place that wasn’t either physically annihilated (total around 250 so far) or electronically shredded (total maybe 50), is almost at an end. I should soon have more time for blogging, and more importantly, thinking about what comes next. I appreciate everyone’s patience through what are and may continue to be difficult times for me. I am still on the payroll until the end of the month, but hopefully the rest of the ride down on the bomb has a certain inevitability to it, and won’t be as draining. In a few days I will celebrate my tenth year with this company. I am one of the few remaining of the early employees, having survived four different CEOs, just as many directors.

Speaking of Kids & Guns

Kevin has the cutest post about how he has raised his kids around firearms in the home. And it comes with a video that shows what shooting sport his youngest son might be interested in trying one day…

Celebrate Father’s Day with Shooting Pics of Your Kids

NSSF is hosting a photo contest this month asking people to post photos of family outings to hunt or to the shooting range. They are suggesting a father-child theme in honor of Father’s Day. I suggest you enter if you have any good photos or have the chance to get to the range to take any photos this month. It’s a $50 Cabela’s gift card to the winner.

It’s an odd topic for me since my father passed away before I got involved in the issue, so I don’t even know how he would feel about it. I introduced my mom to shooting as an adult. I kind of did things backwards from how most people got involved in the shooting sports.

The Gunnie Award

Many thanks to all of those who voted for me in the Lucky Gunner “Gunnie” award voting without me even asking. It’s a really well done piece, done by TechnoFrames. I’m really jazzed about the case it came in too:

I’ll leave it to the readers to ponder whether it is ironic my award category was politics, yet I have difficulty with the kind of self-promotion that entices other people to expend their effort so that I can have something for myself.

Not a Peep From Our Opponents

The shooting that held me up in traffic for several hours on my way back to from the Lucky Gunner shoot has turned out to be quite a scandal, raising quite a number of questions about who knew what and when. If you’re looking for excellent coverage of the matter, go see Curses! Foiled Again!

One thing our opponents are always quick to counter with is that they are activists against gun violence. That is their issue. They aren’t about gun control for control’s sake anymore, just about common sense measures to cut down on gun violence. Well, it seems to me that someone shooting his ex-wife, and then a police officer after a high speed chase is a pretty notable act of gun violence, and worth a mention at least. But the response from our opponents would appear to be crickets. I guess it’s not a concern if a police officer does it? It’s only gun violence when it’s perpetrated by a civilian? Or is it that there are only common sense measures that restrict civilians? I eagerly await our opponents to talk about what common sense solutions could have prevented this tragedy, but so far I only hear gun bloggers talking about it. I’m not holding my breath.