February 2013 – Page 4 – Shall Not Be Questioned

College Pistol Team Ammo Bleg

I received this via e-mail. If anyone can help these guys out, leave a comment:

By way of introduction, I am a member of the Oregon State University pistol club and a follower of all of your blogs.Â Since you all strike me as being somewhat connected in the firearms community, I am coming to you with a plea for help.Â Our club is one of the few remaining collegiate shooting clubs in the nation, and I view it as important to continuing the introduction of shooting sports to young people.Â However, given the current industry situation, ammunition is difficult to come by (but you already knew that).Â We might have enough ammunition left to last until the end of the school year in June, if weâ€™re lucky, but that would be the end of all of our supplies.Â As such, I am coming to you asking if any of you know of people or dealers who have access to bulk .22LR ammunition.Â I recognize that it is unlikely that anyone does these days, but weâ€™re pretty much desperate.Â Our club has been in operation pretty much continuously since 1948; I do not want to see it die due to an ammunition shortage.Â If you can help at all, if you have any information, I would be eternally grateful.

I’ve been very concerned about the effect the current ammo shortages are going to have on the shooting community. If anyone knows where they might find ammo, can you point them in the right direction?

Astroturfing

Twitchy has some hard evidence that the gun control crowd is engaging in astroturfing efforts. We know that the call went out in New Jersey, and that the Obama people paid for busses in order not to have an embarrassing turnout last week, and SEUI is also on the hook to help Obama screw fellow union members out of jobs. You can hardly blame them, since without astroturf efforts, this is what the anti-gun movement looks like. Meanwhile, the Day of Resistance seemed to have good turnout in a lot of places, such as this demonstration in the Idaho Capitol. There was a successful counter-demonstration outside of John Runyan’s (R-NJ) Â office as well. Nonetheless, I do get concerned about our people wearing down with demonstration after demonstration. I think the purpose is to try to wear us down.

UPDATE from Bitter: Even Buzzfeed, which leans pretty far left on most things politics, concludes that the fake Twitter gun control astroturf is likely real. I searched the results on our lawmaker, and I found several egg accounts that were legit and underused, but just as many that were suspiciously devoid of any tweets except the one OFA-ordered message. They had no followers, they only followed the recommended celebrities pushed by Twitter, and they had no other interactions.

What Gun for Cattle Rustlers?

From The Firearm Blog:

As many readers know my family and I have a cattle ranch in the highlands of central New Mexico. In order to effectively manage our herds and mitigate calf mortality, coyotes and other predators must be culled. Aside from coyotesâ€¦there has been a recent surge in cattle theft across the Western States. The idea of coming across cattle thieves armed with a scoped 30-06 hunting rifle personally does not sit well with me. Usually when I go to the ranch I have at least a handgun, but with the rise in cattle theft a Smith and Wesson M&P15, accompanied by a handful of standard capacity (30 round) magazines, has been my primary ranch companion.

Joe Biden will tell you that all you need is a double barrel shotgun. Most of the people who are advocating for banning modern firearms have never done this kind of work in their lives. They can’t even imagine this kind of work. Oh, but they’ll certainly tell you what you do and don’t need to do it.

Ripping the Insurance Gun Control Proposals Apart

The Editorial Page Editor for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review rips apart various gun control proposals that violate not just Second Amendment rights, but also our Fourth Amendment rights. Whether it’s insurance, warrantless searches, or the terrible firearms advice from the Vice President, Colin McNickle holds nothing back. He even demonstrates how, if we applied the logic of many gun control advocates to the First Amendment, the modern media would not exist. This is a column that absolutely deserves some pro-rights clicks and praise.

More on the Illinois CCW Debate

Thirdpower has more Todd Vandermyde, at a Chicago “Town Hall” meeting on concealed carry. Todd has been quite willing to engage in this issue at a very grassroots level, and I wish more NRA liaisons would take that cue. It is going to be increasingly necessary, going forward, for the strategy in every state to involve a combination of grassroots outreach and lobbying. Lobbying alone is simply no longer a recipe for overall success, and additionally, tends to drive mistrust and skepticism among the grassroots with the most energy to offer the cause.

Video Weekend, Part II: Todd Vandermyde

Todd is the NRA State Liaison for Illinois, and is thus tasked with implementing the 7th Circuit’s edict, which demands Illinois pass a constitutional carry scheme by June 9th. A few days ago, there was a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee before which Todd testified. The subtitles are my own, special addition, where I translate politicianese into ordinary language.

A lot of folks have been asking about why NRA doesn’t just run the clock out, and we’ll have Constitutional Carry for everyone after the court deadline passes. That is not really in the realm of reality. Reality is we don’t know what the Court’s further course of action will be. Will they enjoin Illinois? As Todd mentions in the video, NRA will move for that if the deadline passes. Will the Court do it? Or will they just extend the deadline?

Secondly, there’s no reality where the Illinois legislature is going to allow the situation to go from no carry to Constitutional Carry. They will pass something to try to satisfy the courts, so the choice is to stand back and let the politicians in this video try to pass something on their own, or participate in the process and try to get a good shall-issue bill. Todd has been working on this issue for years, and has come within a razors margin several times. The ruling by the 7th Circuit on carry offers the possibility of picking up the extra needed votes, in addition to the possibility of getting a better bill than would have been possible in the past.

Working with the current ruling to get a good shall-issue bill is the best course of action going forward. Anything else is trusting in the courts and politicians to do the right thing, and when they don’t, having to go back to the federal courts and re-litigate.

h/t to Chris from AK to pointing me to the video. Chris has the unedited version, which includes all 3 an a half hours of testimony.

Video Weekend, Part 1: Clarence Thomas

I’ve built up a number of videos worth watching during the week. It’s a good thing to keep on as background noise while I’m working. I enjoyed this video from Harvard of a visit with Justice Thomas:

Via Ann Althouse.

In the same series, they also have a visit with Justice Ginsburg that’s worth watching too. Ginsburg is looking a lot better these days. She’ll probably retire during Obama’s term, but I’d love it if she held on another four years into the next Administration.

Weekend News Dump

Due to my being busy for the past few days getting everything ready for the demo, I haven’t had much time to blog, but I’ve managed to build up some tabs of news items:

Fastest growing demographic among gun owners: women.

Mexico wants a registry of border state gun owners. How about this one liner ASCII art for an answer: oIoo.

Absolute moral authority. Victims only matter when they are on the side of gun control, don’t you know?

Comcast bans gun ads. Comcast is an enemy of freedom, which is why they will never get my business back. Well, that and the fact that they suck.

Clayton Cramer notes that this is the third time Washington Democrats have proposed door-to-door confiscation. It was no accident. Also in PJ Media, Clayton has an article about fixing our mental health system.

More on door-to-door confiscation from Ace. Remember kids, door-to-door confiscation is an imagined paranoid delusion of crazy gun owners, not something that’s ever been seriously proposed.

Is the copycat effect real? Experts keep saying no, but it’s hard to see how it’s not the case. It’s almost like they are ignoring evidence. I don’t get why either, because it’s not like anyone has a political agenda to silence the press.

Chris in AK notes that Obama is looking for gun violence stories, and thatÂ hey, know you we have a lot of those on our side too.

What they really want. Of course, this is all gun nut delusions.

Looks like Iowa is getting ready to heat up.

OFA is getting behind gun control in a big way. I think OFA is a huge threat and needs to be countered with our own grassroots action. OFA is also busy tugging at heartstrings, knowing quite well gun control won’t win on the pure logic of it.

A Little Happy, Feel Good Gun News

The Lancaster (Pa.) Sunday News features this 950+ word article on the success of area school rifle teams. The focus is on how these are well-balanced kids who compete in other activities more commonly associated with high school, such as cheerleading, soccer, drama club, swimming, and field hockey. Yet, they use firearms in a safe and lawful manner, and their sport doesn’t get the same kind of cheering and high five response from a crowd when they do well. But they keep doing it because they enjoy it. (h/t @patrickhenry2nd)

Sorry for Lack of Posting

Monday we demo our new product to the first potential customer, so this is the culmination of a lot of work happening in the next few days. I just don’t have time for the blog right now. I’ll be posting a bit over the weekend, but until we pull off the demo, I’m a busy bee. If the potential customer shows real interest, then it’s going to be a crash program to get this whole thing ready for the real launch. It is tremendously exciting and scary at the same time.