All Nine Yards continues to do superb citizen journalism uncovering the tactics of Mayors Against Illegal Guns. His latest posts shows an e-mail exchange that must be read to be believed. I’m going to bet this is a pretty ineffective tactic. Not only is it creepy, but I doubt you’ll find too many ministers in Florida willing to preach a pro-gun control message, given that Florida is more culturally gun friendly than many states, and most of the churches who would be willing to preach such a thing are going to be in communities that already have a disposition in favor of gun control. Another revealing e-mail here is that she requested an intern position solely for outreach to the faith community. One wonders whether or not that is a paid intern position, which would likely be at taxpayer expense.
Author: Sebastian
Rich Lowry of National Review on the NRA
Writing in Politico, Rich Lowry, Editor of National Review, writes of NRA as a model organization:
By the standards usually set for our politics, the NRA is a model organization. We say we want people more involved in the process. The NRA’s more than 4 million members are highly engaged. The organization’s recent national conference in St. Louis attracted 73,000 people — one of the largest conventions ever held in the city.
We say there’s too much partisanship. Single-mindedly committed to its cause, the NRA endorsed about 60 House Democrats in 2010.
And we say that we value the Constitution. Gun-control advocates, nonetheless, treat the Second Amendment like an “ink blot†(to borrow Robert Bork’s famous phrase for the Ninth Amendment). They consider it an anachronism, an unfortunate lapse by James Madison, a forlorn leftover from the 18th century.
To be fair, they don’t really claim that it was an unfortunate lapse by James Madison, they suggest that James Madison would have agreed with their position, and that his only concern was the preservation of the militia system, which since has fallen into disuse and disrepair, making any right of the people a complete non-barrier to anything they wish to accomplish, up to and including draconian gun bans. I think it’s important that we on the right get the exact crazy precise, but regardless of that, Mr. Lowry has done an excellent job with this article.
More on Cheap Safes: The DAC Fast Open Sportsafe
Following up on my previous post about portable gun safes, Bitter had a DAC Fast Open Sportsafe sitting around that she had long lost the key for, and thought contained her passport. I decided to have a go at this, after watching some of the more detailed videos this guy produced explaining the common vulnerabilities. The good news is that the DAC Sportsafe, based on my non-expert attempts to crack, is good for protecting a gun from a young child. It doesn’t seem to open if you impact it any way that I could find, and rather than a latch, the electric motor extends and retracts a thick crossbar, which is held in the closed position by reasonably strong spring. The motor likely uses a worm gear to retract it against the spring. The mechanism from the inside is protected by plating, so any attack on the latching mechanism through the door or from exposed bolt holes will likely fail.
The bad news is that I did get into it, and now that I know how to do it, I could develop a tool to do it quickly. So for burglary, it’s not so great for someone who has knowledge on how to defeat it, and if it’s left unsecured to a floor or heavy furniture. The DAC’s fatal flaw is the rubber keypad, which if removed, allows both the electronics to be accessed through several holes. The DAC Sportsafe has an external power adapter that can be easily removed, also allowing access to the electronics inside. I did not explore attacks on the electronics, except to try a quick shorting attack on the external power adapter which did not work. With the cover off, a small gap can be noticed between the outside plate, and the plate they used to to “cover” the electronics. This gap allowed me to slip a blade from my Leatherman inside to push the crossbar out of the latch, pry the door back a bit, and then remove the blade, causing the door to open. The disappointment is that this could have been easily prevented by extending the steel plate a few millimeters so the plates overlapped. Bitter’s safe did not have power, so I could not try a learn button attack, to reprogram the access code, but a learn button attack on this safe is simple enough if you do not have the  base plate on, and the safe secured. You can do it with an old coat hanger. If you have a DAC Fast Open Sportsafe, the best thing you can do to helps is security is to properly secure it to a floor or furniture.
This is all making me wonder if people would pay 200-300 dollars for an electronic quick-open safe that is secure enough that you’d force an intruder or burglar to attack from the outside with cutting tools or drills. Most of these flaws are easily avoidable with a little engineering thought, and wouldn’t end up adding a whole lot to the overall production cost. Any cheap, portable safe is going to be vulnerable to cutting tools and drills, so the primary purpose of a safe like this is securing the gun against unauthorized access by children and burglars who don’t have the knowledge, tools, or time to engage in drilling or cutting. No safe is going to stop a determined professional who knows what he’s doing. I’d have to say the DAC Fast Action Sportsafe does a better job than most that we saw in the last post that had flaws, especially if properly secured to a floor or heavy piece of furniture, with the bolts installed properly and with thread lock used. I’d say if you’re going to buy a portable, Fast Open safe, this is a better option than many of the others that were exploited in Marc Tobias’s videos.
Beware of Cheap Gun Safes
Forbes does a report on gun safes, and shows many common, cheap gun safes are way too easy to circumvent. In some cases the child here was told by an adult how to circumvent, but there are several cases where a a kid could pretty easily do some of this stuff just being a kid.
Some of these problems could probably be solved by securing it to a floor, wall or heavy piece of furniture, but parents who own guns should be aware that not all safes are created equal. Generally speaking, good security costs some bucks.
Working on My Skee Ball Game
Company outing today to Hersheypark. Just got back. Thanks to Bitter for filling in. I basically tend to hit all the roller coasters I used to like as a kid (that I’m almost too fat for these days) and then spend the rest of the time cooling off in the arcade parked at a Skee Ball machine. I could play Skee Ball all day if I had enough quarters. I liked it as a kid, and still like it today. Spent part of the day with sometimes co-blogger Jason and two of his older kids, while his wife was back home with the baby. Hershey Park has changed a lot since I started going there as a tyke, but it’s nice that you can still take kids on the same rides that you went on when you were their age. The Coal Cracker is still fun after all these years, and The Comet can still shake the fillings out of your teeth, just like it’s been doing since it was built in 1946. When we were kids, we used to use the cable cars called “Sky Ride” that traveled high above the park to go from one side of the park to the other, but they seem to have torn that down in 1992. In the intervening years they’ve added a lot of steel coasters, but I’m still a fan of the complimentary chiropractic treatments the wooden coasters give you. I stick with the classics of wooden coasters and Skee Ball.
Schumer Attempting to Attach Magazine Ban to Cybersecurity Bill
In a way I’m glad for this. I could stand a good fight to all this sneaking around:
S.A. 2575 would make it illegal to transfer or possess large capacity feeding devices such as gun magazines, belts, feed stripes and drums of more than 10 rounds of ammunition with the exception of .22 caliber rim fire ammunition.
The amendment would only affect sales and transfers after the law took effect.
So there we have it folks. Our opponents have made their move. Now we have to counter.
Brady Out of Politics?
The nation’s largest anti-gun violence lobby is taking a step back this week in the wake of the Auoroa, Colo., shootings. No aggressive pushes for specific policy from The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Instead, they’ve launched the “We Are Better Than This” national campaign to get the public talking about gun violence.
They believe they are in hearts and minds territory, and they are correct. This is a good place to have them.
A 3D Printed AR-15
Gun control is fast becoming impossible, whether our opponents in the gun control movement want to admit it or not. This was printed on a plastic 3D printer:
In short, this means that people without gun licenses — or people who have had their licenses revoked — could print their own lower receiver and build a complete, off-the-books gun. What a chilling thought.
Just our brief experiments with 3D printing magazines and CNC milling an AR15 and a CNC 1911 have shown the technology is already there, pretty much. All it would take is the gun control crowd getting their way to create the proper underground market. You’ll have less luck locating clandestine build shops than you will marijuana grow operations. It’s also likely only a matter of time before criminals get wise to this tech regardless.
The Tyranny of the Low Information Voter
I believe it was Jim Geraghty that coined the headline of this post, but it keeps turning around in my mind. Tam highlights a particularly vacuous campaign video appearing this season in Indiana. The worst part about an election like this is that the partisans, on both sides, have already made up their minds. Studies have shown that partisans are generally the best informed voters, when it comes to the issues, no matter what side you’re on. The rest of this silly season is bringing the folks, who barely pay attention, over to your side so you can actually win the election. Whether anyone likes it or not, you need these people to actually win.
So you get politicians making these vacuous ads, because they want the low-information voters* to like and identify with them — I’m a great politician, you see. I care about our troops, and you care about our troops too, so don’t you think I’m a great guy to vote for? I not only care about our troops in general, but out troops from your very specific tribe! How wonderful! —  The low-information voter won’t know much in November, but politicians will be hoping ads like this strike an emotional chord, and stick strongly in the memories of people who barely pay attention. This is how elections are won and lost, unfortunately, when partisans can’t decisively win on the strength of their base. That’s the case for neither party today.
In parliamentary systems, partisans are more free to be loyal to parties that most closely match their beliefs, and leave the coalition building to the politicians in the government. In our system, coalition building happens outside the apparatus of government, and compromises are forged in civil society. Some argue the former is better, but I tend to think the latter is. I’d much rather trust civic entities to make compromises than state entities. But the unfortunate side effect of forging coalitions in civil society is having to persuade the low-information voter that your guy is really their guy, and the result are ads like Tam highlights. I wish I knew how to fix that problem, without putting more power in the hands of politicians, but I don’t really have a good answer.
* Before libertarians get offended that I’m suggesting they are low information voters, rather than partisans, they are not. Libertarians are among the most partisan and informed around. But not enough people don the wookie suit to be a real factor in elections. You have many people who are libertarianish, but  a strong ideology that doesn’t involve a deity is a rare breed, whether your deity is God or Government. Winning the unwashed masses will take some degree of pragmatism.
CSM on Post-Massacre Gun Sales Spikes
The Christian Science Monitor talks to a few gun shop owners, and concludes that it’s largely fear of gun control that drives the spikes in sales after mass shootings, and not people rushing to gun shops with a desire to protect themselves. Clayton Cramer pins this increase in sales on the gun control crowd, and notes:
So gun control advocates, when you keep talking about gun control, remember that when at least some of these reactionary purchasers do something stupid or tragic, it is because you panicked them into it.
What makes us evangelize firearms so much, other than the fact that as people who enjoy a hobby and lifestyle, we want to share it with other people, is that we need more political allies to defeat the likes of Brady, CSGV, MAIG, and VPC. Sometimes I think the gun control groups have done more to create new shooters than the NRA has.
Another thought is, if these post-massacre spikes are being driven by people worried about new gun control, it goes to show that rational political ignorance is alive and well among gun owners too. Even in a hostile political environment, it’s rare that legislation pass so quickly one needs to run out the next day. I wish some of them would get seriously engaged with the political fight, rather than engage in panic buying.