Just when I think there’s no new gun that could hit the market that would get me buying again, Remington comes along and proves me wrong. I’d have to put it through the paces before deciding whether it’s worth carrying or not, but something about it speaks to the lizard part of my brain that makes me want to add it to the collection.
Author: Sebastian
The White Menace
Posting will resume once I dig my vehicle out of the snowstorm that came through last night. The Weather Channel likes to call it Hercules, but naming winter storms is among the dumbest ideas I’ve ever heard of so screw the Weather Channel. Normally I’d just wait out the melt in my home office, but I wasn’t expecting to have to start building a data center this weekend, and I need to go to New Jersey to pick up a piece of equipment I need to get started. I hope the bridges are clear.
The Science is In: More Guns Really Does Equal Less Crime
The purpose of the present study is to determine the effects of state-level assault weapons bans and concealed weapons laws on state-level murder rates. Using data for the period 1980 to 2009 and controlling for state and year fixed effects, the results of the present study suggest that states with restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons had higher gun-related murder rates than other states. It was also found that assault weapons bans did not significantly affect murder rates at the state level. These results suggest that restrictive concealed weapons laws may cause an increase in gun-related murders at the state level. The results of this study are consistent with some prior research in this area, most notably Lott and Mustard (1997).
You can’t argue with science!
Liberals Who Don’t Care About Their Gun Rights
I can completely understand why folks like this wouldn’t really appreciate the GOP:
It’s the Liberal Gun Club, the left-leaning version of the National Rifle Association.
The group’s members share the same fascination with guns that many assign to NRA members, but Liberal Gun Clubs members eschew the NRA’s notoriously right-leaning politics.
I don’t care how sick you are of hearing about the “Kenyan Muslim socialist,” the fact is that this Administration is outrightly hostile to your right to keep and bear arms. That is an unarguable fact just a year into his second term. NRA endorsed quite a number of Democrats in the 2010 elections, a number of whom were facing tea party backed Republicans. Where were all of you liberal gun owners then?
The group, like the NRA, supports the right of American citizens to own and carry a wide array of firearms. Most members of the Liberal Gun Club even think recent calls for expanded background checks on gun owners go too far.
Great. I agree with you. But if you’re going to vote for people who are against every single one of those concepts, what use are you? Give me a list of anti-gun Democrats you’re going to try to primary with pro-gun Democrats. Let me know how you’re going to work for gun rights within the Democratic party. Forming a shooting club doesn’t mean jack. If you’re not voting your gun rights, to be blunt, you don’t really care abut gun rights, and no one will ever give a crap about what you think on this topic. If all you’re doing is saying you love guns, but keep voting for people like Obama, DiFi and Boxer, you’re part of the problem rather than part of the solution.
“It’s Working”
I think Miguel gets credit for the picture that speaks 1000 words for 2014. That’s a snap of Moms Demand Action Facebook page, where they note that their plans are coming together. Gun owners are lined up in compliance to their tyranny, and registering, as they properly should.
IT’S WORKING: Hundreds of gun owners lined up to register their assault rifles and high-capacity magazines with Connecticut state authorities before a Jan. 1 deadline.
I’m fairly certain they’d say the same thing if it were cattle cars we were lining up for. I’m not going to discuss my plans for “if this comes to my doorstep,” but I will say that lining up like the compliant fool they want everyone to be is not part of my plan.
First News Links of the Year
Happy 2014 everyone. Let us hope that 2014 is more pleasant for us than 2013 was. If you had told me this time last year that by this time the following year, that our only substantive losses would be New York, Maryland, Connecticut and Colorado, well, Colorado would still have confounded me, but I would have been surprised as hell. We all thought we were going to have to bend over for something federally. Our opponents got greedy and overcommitted. I feel like none of the gun control groups want to admit that gun bans are dead, and the best they can hope for is a modest background check bill. More importantly, I doubt they want to admit that to their donors.
Here is the news:
This photo is sending chills up and down people’s spines. It should. Especially for those of us in Pennsylvania, because this is our future if gun owners don’t get their shit together. This has never been about crime.
This is a bunch of self-gratifying nonsense. They don’t propose anything the anti-gunners haven’t already tried and failed at. The only difference now is they have a boatload of money from a moralizing crusading billionaire. But hey, self-gratification is one thing anti-gunners are good at.
Gun laws at work. I think Uncle is correct. Prohibited is prohibited. There’s no LEO exception to the federal prohibition on the mentally ill possessing firearms, except for the “look the other way” exception that you know none of us would be given.
Lowest police officer shooting death rate since 1887. I’d like to know whether accidental shootings by police is going up or down as well.
America’s Internal Checkpoints. Well worth reading. I’d like to believe if more Americans knew about this stuff, they’d be outraged, but I’m not really sure about that anymore.
PA Game Commission wants to reel in more students to hunting.
Chris Christie declines to defend gun laws. He must be serious about 2016 then.
Where’s the coalition to stop ax violence?
Someone turns an STG-44 into a gun buyback. It makes one cringe.
Magpul’s Going to Texas
Magpul announces a move to Texas and Wyoming. The corporate HQ will be in TX, and manufacturing Wyoming. A lot of people have been upset with Magpul for not moving fast enough, but anyone who’s ever been involved in a corporate move knows that you can’t pick a company up and move it on a dime. I expect it’ll take another year or so before they execute on their decision. The left has made it abundantly clear they are more concerned about fighting cultural crusades than keeping jobs in the states they control.
2013 Year in Review
It was good to end the year 2013 in better shape than we came into it. This time last year we were all still waiting in dread for the hammer to fall, as the unscrupulous tried to pin the actions of a madman on  the whole of our armed citizenry, and tried to ride the hobby horse all the way to every restriction they ever wanted. I think one of the bigger news stories of the year is that Mike Bloomberg leaves office, and with it MAIG is seemingly going poof, and merging with Moms Demand Action. I haven’t even completely thought through what this means, but I think it likely means a few things. For one, this was about Bloomberg’s ego. He’s not a Mayor anymore so what point does MAIG serve? For two, I think it has to be at least a tacit admission that the MAIG approach has been a failure. Overall, I don’t think much changes for us, because the real threat from Bloomberg was always his money, and now Shannon Watts gets to be the face of the movement backed by his money. The upside, as I see it, is that Shannon Watts is a radical. She’s chocked full of nonsense that’ll play well in terms of mobilizing our people.
But enough about that. I’ll follow Thirdpower’s example in looking at the past year’s stats.
Top Five Referrers of 2013 (That Aren’t Search Engines or Social Media)
Top Five Posts of 2013
Federal Court Upholds SAFE Act
This is not surprising news for those of us who do not expect the courts to do much in terms of helping uphold a robust Second Amendment right. According to Judge William Skretny, a George H.W. Appointee, the states get to determine what is and what isn’t useful for self-defense:
Unlike handgun bans elsewhere, which affect weapons commonly used for self-defense, wrote Judge Skretny, New York’s law “applies only to a subset of firearms with characteristics New York State has determined to be particularly dangerous and unnecessary for self-defense; it does not totally disarm New York’s citizens; and it does not meaningfully jeopardize their right to self-defense.â€
So can we ban any subset of handguns, like semi-automatics, and that’s just fine by the Second Amendment? But we do get a consolation prize:
Judge Skretny struck down a provision of the law, however, that limits a gun-owner from loading more than seven rounds in a gun at a time, calling it “largely an arbitrary restriction that impermissibly infringes on the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment.â€
It’s all arbitrary. There’s no public safety issue. They are just trying to ban what they can get away with. If the Second Amendment can’t save NY from SAFE, it might as well not even exist in the Bill of Rights.
Fighting the One Percent
Mike Bloomberg’s fortune went from 4 billion to 27 billion while he was in office. Bloomberg is wealthy enough that he doesn’t have to ever worry about getting his hands dirty with his own security. He can afford all the private security money can buy. It’s a shame he doesn’t understand how wrong it is to interfere with the personal security of the 99% who can’t afford personal bodyguards.
h/t to Cam Edwards of NRA News for the story.