I’ve covered the positive news about gun magazines here before, but this is quite a shocker. American Rifleman is now in the top 25 of publications in the US, and it knocked Maxim out of the list of top magazines.
Year: 2014
Bearing Arms
Last fall, the National Constitution Center proposed an idea to repeal the Second Amendment and replace it with a version that assures “public safety departments” could use firearms in the course of their job. They took a beating in the associated poll.
It seems they just might have learned a little something from just how off base they were from mainstream thinking because now they are running a blog post reporting on the issue of bearing arms, as opposed to simply keeping arms. The post really focuses on reporting the issue rather than calling for more drastic restrictions as they did before, but that may only be due to the fact that they have Lyle Denniston from SCOTUSblog contributing on the topic.
Firearms Shopping on a Budget
Exurban Kevin writes that he wanted to do a blog post about inexpensive guns for carry. Unfortunately, none of the online retailers will allow price sensitive customers to sort by price.
It’s interesting to think about that problem since the vast majority of retail websites, even for other major items that you will use every day, typically have a sort by price feature. Is the industry potentially losing sales by people who are price sensitive, but also may not have the time to learn everything they can about all possible pros and cons of the guns in their price range. Can they even easily figure out what models are in their price range without a trip to every gun store in half a day’s drive?
SHARE Act Passes House
SHARE or Sportsmen’s Heritage and Recreational Enhancement. While there’s a lot of pro-hunting stuff here, it’s also by virtue a pro-carry initiative. You can find the text here. Key point:
Title VI: Access to Water Resources Development Projects Act -Â Recreational Lands Self-Defense Act of 2013Â -Â Prohibits the Secretary of the Army from promulgating or enforcing any regulation that prohibits an individual from possessing a firearm at a water resources development project administered by the Chief of Engineers if: (1) the individual is not otherwise prohibited by law from possessing the firearm, and (2) the possession of the firearm is in compliance with the law of the state in which the project is located.
That’s basically the same language that was inserted into the 2009 Credit Card Bill to force the NPS to allow carry in National Parks. This is a good victory, but will the Senate take it up? It’s an election year. A “yes” vote on this would help a lot of troubled Democrats who are up in 2014, and Obama, as a lame duck, no longer needs to be protected. It would be interesting to see whether this could get sent to Obama, and what he’d do.
Local Improvements in Gun Laws
Firearms attorney Josh Prince recently sued Erie, PA when they enforced a local ordinance banning guns on some of their town property in violation of the state’s preemption law. While it may seem like a small effort for gun rights, it did apparently scare the leaders of a town 432 miles away into not only stopping a march toward banning guns on government property, but also repealing old laws in violation from the books. (h/t to Josh Prince)
CT State Police Won’t Aid With Compliance
Bearing Arms is reporting that the Connecticut State Police are refusing to help firearms manufacturers comply with their new gun control law. I think the response should be to withdraw from the Connecticut market, including law enforcement. Then we’ll see if they want to do their jobs.
Happy Ice Storm
We were supposed to get more of the white stuff, but it’s turned into a full on ice storm! Power is out and we’re running on generator. The blog will remain up as long as I have gasoline and the fiber stays on. We already had one large branch come down. My UPS equipment is less than thrilled with the output of the generator, but they are taking it most of the time. You might have noticed a brief period of downtime earlier, as the outage happened when we were asleep and the UPS drained down before we could fire the generator.
UPDATE: Power came back just as I went out to get more of the precious juice for the generator. Everything is back to normal now, except for the fact that I have several large tree branches down in the yard.
Video Day: FEMA Camps Edition
Watch as college students in Southern California sign a petition to send us all to the FEMA camps:
h/t to Dave Hardy.
Video Day: Charlton Heston at the 1998 NRA Annual Meeting
This was held in Philadelphia. I can’t imagine NRA hosting an Annual Meeting in Philadelphia today. I did not go, because I wasn’t into guns back then, but I thought it was interesting that it got Ed Rendell to say something nice about the NRA. I was surprised this video was out there:
Video Day: Toying With a Sniper
I came across this on Facebook last night, and I just realized I can’t embed it. Syrian rebels toying with a sniper. Not a very good sniper if he’s falling for it. Each shot risks giving away his position. If the rebels aren’t busy trying to flank him, find out where he’s hiding, and take him out while he’s distracted with the dummy, they are dumber than he is.