Sebastian – Page 1295 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Resolved: John Mashek is Clueless

John Mashek has published his new years resolutions, among them:

I resolve to continue to jump all over the National Rifle Association and its unwillingness to compromise on anything.

Perhaps Mr. Mashek is completely blind that he is not aware of this. Or perhaps Mr. Mashek is simply unaware that the very existence of NICS was a compromise that gun owners made in the early 90s to avoid waiting periods and ineffective background checks run, or not run, depending on their mood that day, by local police.

John Mashek’s problem is not that the NRA doesn’t compromise; clearly it does, and it’s taken a lot of heat from membership for doing so.Â John Mashek’s problem is that the NRA won’t become a party to his desire to crap all over the Bill of Rights.

One wonders whether John Mashek would be willing to add to his list of resolutions “I resolve to respect the Bill of Rights in its entirety, and agree to support other citizen’s second amendment rights as actively as I defend my profession’s first amendment rights.”Â I doubt you’ll see him resolving that.

Virginia Speeding Shenanigans

Bitter is too busy to blog about Dave Albo’s latest attempt to stick it to the citizens of Virginia, but I’m glad TD did.Â It needs to be told.

Pennsylvania, Sportsmens Paradise

It’s Louisiana’s moniker, but we pretty impressively rank:

Texas may have more hunters and anglers than Pennsylvania, and Texans may spend more money on their outdoor pursuits, but Keystone State hunters spend more days hunting than those in any other state.

A study released last week by the National Shooting Sports Foundation and the Congressional Sportsmenâ€™s Foundation ranks Pennsylvania among the top five states in all five hunting-related categories.

That includes first for days afield (16 million), second for number of resident hunters (933,000), spending ($1.7 billion) and hunting-related jobs (28,000), and fourth for number of out-of-state hunters (111,000).

When the stateâ€™s 830,000 anglers are added to the mix, Pennsylvania ranks fifth in the country in total number of resident sportsmen with 1.4 million, following Texas (2.6 million), Florida (2 million), California (1.7 million) and Ohio (1.48 million).

And the folks in Philadelphia would be happy to throw it all away for the sake of looking like they are doing something about violence in Philadelphia, instead if, you know, doing something.

Civilian KRISS?

Check this out:

To reach the civilian market, the company developed the .45-caliber carbine. Plans call for marketing it primarily to shooting enthusiasts who would use it for competitions and target practice, but it also could be used for hunting.

“This is not going to be a gun for everyone,” Kushell said.

Company officials said the Super V mechanism can be adapted to any caliber weapon. Work currently is under way on a 12-gauge shotgun.

I’m not a huge fan of pistol caliber carbines, but I’d definitely pick up one of these.Â Clearly TDI thinks more highly of the civilian market than H&K, and I hope sales of their civilian line of firearms is brisk.

Philly Homicide Rate

Despite all the hewing and hawing that the city needs gun control in order to get control of its skyrocketing homicide rate, it is actually on par to drop 3% in 2007. That’s not to say there’s nothing to worry about; this is still way too high. But notice this:

And what does Mooney attribute this 3% drop to?

“I think with the difference this year; you have to give credit to increased community awareness and involvement in the violence.”

John Appledorn of Citizens Crime Commission whole-heartedly agrees:

“Basically what you have is that people are fed up. They are sick and tired of the criminals running this community. They’re getting away with murder, they are terrorizing people and they are going to make that phone call and get them off the street.”

Appledorn says the Citizens Crime Commission has helped police with tips on cases from graffiti to murder. That number is 215-546-TIPS.

So communities being more willing to work with police can make a difference? I’m shocked, really.

Great Holiday Family Activity

Take them to the range.

NRA Response on Contact Form

I got a response from NRA regarding the member form:

Per this post: http://www.pagunblog.com/?p=2253, let me both thank you and apologize. In reading this, I went back to double check the functionality of this ILA web form only to find there is a problem with it delivering e-mail to us. We had no reason to suspect a problem as the web form used by the PVF site was functioning fine, and we were receiving a steady stream of direct e-mails to ILA.

Just so you and others who usually contact NRA for legislative and political matters are aware, the direct (and recommended) ILA e-mail address is ila-contact@nrahq.org.

Please feel to share with other interested (and aggrieved) parties, and again, my thanks and apologies.

That was from Glen Caroline, Director of NRA-ILA Grassroots, who was kind enough to come talk to us at the Gun Blogger Rendezvous in Reno last October. Hopefully this problem will get fixed shortly.

Chrony Goodness

I went to a range just north of Blacksburg, VA today to try out the new Chrony.Â Â I got the Alpha model Shooting Chrony.Â I have to say, it’s a cool piece of a equipment.Â Cool in the sense that I now know my loads are pretty inconsistent.Â I’m on par with Wolf ammo, which isn’t good enough for my likes.Â I shot five rounds of everything I had.Â Velocity for .223 averaged 2717 fps out of my 16″ barrel, with high being 2775 and low being 2640.Â Velocity for the 6.8 Remington SPC upper was 2149 on the low, 2212 on the high, with 2181 being the average.

One thing I will say, is that Silver State Armory’s 6.8 Remington SPC loads are consistent with 2421 being the low, and 2453 being the high, averaging 2436 fps.

I’m using Sierra Game King 55gr jacketed soft point, with 20 grains of IMR 4198, using CCI small rifle primers.Â For the 6.8, I’m using the Sierra 115gr open tip match bullets, 22 grains of IMR 4198, with CCI small rifle primers.Â I’m guessing my variability has to do with not precisely measuring each load?Â But for plinking I don’t really care too much.Â It’s consistent enough for that.

Holiday Baked Goods Suggestion

Best….. cake….. ever!Â Their butter cream icing is to die for.

Lessons in Stereotyping

This guy has to have hit over at least half of the stereotypes of gun owners in this incident. Folks, if you’re going to drive your dirt bike drunk, and without headlights, don’t sling your MP5 over your shoulders and put your beer on the handlebars. Of course:

The weapon was an MP-5 semi-automatic sub-machine gun, fully loaded, and was slung across his back, according to Officer David McIntyre of the Ashville Police Department. The suspect also had a six-pack of beer hanging from a sack off the handlebars of the dirt bike.

We do have to get some sloppy reporting. If it’s semi-automatic, how exactly is it a machine gun?