Sebastian – Page 462 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Japan Looking to Ease Gun Laws?

Maybe I shouldn’t have changed the blog name:

Farmers in rural areas have been reporting increasing damage to their crops by wild boar, deer and other animals. To make firearms more accessible, a bill that would loosen the currently tight restrictions on hunting rifles has been proposed in the Diet. But, the Sankei Shimbun (Dec 4) reports, the police remain adamantly opposed to changes in the law.

You hear this a lot in foreign countries, but you have to wonder how often it’s true that “police” opposition in these countries is also nothing but political appointees.

Don’t Try This At Home Kids

The Mythbusters screwed up in a big way. It’s one of those things that’s funny since no one got hurt, but that could have very very easily been a different story, given what a cannonball is capable of doing. I’m sure the Alameda County sheriff’s office is pretty spooked too, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t let them do projectile experiments there anymore.

Personally, if it were me, I’d be happy to settle with Discovery Networks in exchange for them fixing what they broke, and letting me be on a Mythbusters show :)

A Days Blogging

The real difficulty with working at a job that doesn’t have as much flexibility is that I can’t just blog when I’m inspired and make up the time. So when I come home, if I’m just not feeling it, the next day’s posts will suffer. Such was the case last night, so today I got up early to post. I appreciate everyone’s patience. If you don’t notice any difference, then success, but I have about 20 minutes to get a whole day’s worth of posts up.

County Wasting Money on Gun Buybacks

It looks like the County (my the County) officials are busy allocating public funds to cover the costs of gun buybacks in Bristol Township:

BRISTOL TOWNSHIP: $50,000 for municipal building roofing project; $35,000 for a 80 kw portable generator; $17,000 for GIS mapping services for GIS system upgrade; $200,000 for road improvements; $58,000 to the township public works department for a diesel bypass pump; $48,000 for a township public works department roofing project; $60,000 for a storm water inlet replacement project; $30,000 for a municipal complex solar lighting project; $22,000 for a municipal complex sign project; $25,000 to the township police department for a gun buyback program

The authority that is responsible for distributing these funds is the Bucks County Redevelopment Authority. No doubt Bristol Township officials requested it, but the redevelopment authority still approved. In other news, it looks like the County SWAT team will be getting some money for new toys.

My concern here is that this a waste of money that could be better spent on measures more proven to actually do something to reduce crime. The amount being allocated here would cover a decent portion of the cost to hire a whole extra police officer. I thought I’d let me local readers know in case anyone wants to go stake out the buy backs and make sure no one turns in history for destruction; my other big issue with buy back programs.

CLEO Sign Off Going Away for NFA Paperwork?

Extrano’s alley speculatesÂ it could happen, and we should force the point.Â It wouldn’t honestly surprise me if we could be successful here. To say that the massive increase in NFA transactions, many of which are in the forms of trusts, has been a problem for ATF is an understatement. Trusts are particularly problematic because they are harder to clear than individuals. Many people are driven toward the use of trusts because of being unable to obtain LEO sign off. In this day in age, it really is a useless requirement, and should be dropped. I no more know my local police chief than I know the examiner who would process the NFA paperwork.

Granted, there are still a lot of good reasons to use trusts over individual. If Bitter and become NFA collectors, we’ll likely go the trust route, just because if both of us are on the trust, we can both be in legal possession of the same object. This is not true if you do it individually. If you lent your wife your can to take to the shooting range, unless you were with her, that would be an illegal transfer. A trust eliminates that.

The better solution to deal with the backlog would be to remove silencers from the NFA and deregulate them. They are representing most of the growth in NFA interest. Eliminating the requirement for SBRs would help as well.

European Notions of Self-Defense

Miguel has a rather graphic story from Spain, where a bystander was hit by a ricochet and lost an eye when a police officer had to fire at a knife wielding suspect. The reaction is one I have experience with:

The prosecution is also demanding monetary compensation to Mr. Castro for the loss of the eye andÂ to Manjon for being shot by Officer Sanchez. According to the prosecuting attorney, Officer Sanchez did not need to use his firearm to stop the attack because he could have used his night stick or talk the subject down or him and his fellow officers rush Manjon and subdue him.

I have had European people I know express this exact same sentiment in a similar circumstance. For me it’s very difficult to understand why you’d expect a police officer to risk life and limb to save the life of someone who’s decided his life isn’t worth spit. I’ve pondered whether police officers are just not very highly respected in European culture, or whether Europeans put a higher value on the lives of violent criminals. Either way, it’s difficult for an American to understand.

Mexican Gun Canard Well and Truly Dead

CBS News’s report should put to bed any last remnant of credibility that ever was attached to the whole “90% of weapons in Mexico come from the US” line of crap our opponents were pushing for several years. From now on, any hint from our opponents on the whole Mexican trafficking topic ought to be met with demands they stop lying, and refuted with the ample facts.

I have no doubt that guns do get trafficked to Mexico illegally, but it’s looking like a significant aspect of that problem has been fueled by our own government, either through illegal activities like Fast and Furious, or through legal sales of firearms to the Mexican government.

An Important Harbinger of Things to Come

It looks like the GOP held together on a filibuster for a strongly anti-gun judge Obama wanted to appoint to the DC Circuit. This greatly pleases me, because it means we can likely defeat a Supreme Court nominee as well. The great difficulty is that you’ll likely never get a pro-Second Amendment candidate out of Obama, but he will be at least forced to find someone who’s never said anything about it, in which case we at least both roll the dice, rather than just letting Obama pack the Court with people we know will be against us.

A Difficult Time Coping

It’s tough being a gun control advocate these days, I guess especially if you’re a professional one. Miguel shows us how the Brady Campaign is having difficulty accepting the Black Friday gun rush, by suggesting gun ownership is on the decline, despite polling indicating otherwise.Â The news we reported on yesterday, on investment analysts suggesting that increased gun sales represent a permanent cultural shift, really can’t have sat well with our opponents.Â I think they are essentially correct. It’s becoming OK again to be a gun owner. Much of that change, I think, has been in the past three years.

I think the primary reason our opponents are failing is because they have not been good advocates. They’ve shied away from making their arguments in forums they don’t control, and thus have largely removed themselves from serious public debate, which in the Internet age is a lot more important.

Gun control advocates don’t have much to celebrate these days. They haven’t seen much love from Obama, and the latest dog and pony show being brought forth by Kirsten Gillibrand is going to be dead on arrival. They’ve been spread so thin they are forced to retreat to college campuses as a last stand, while groups like NRA keep educating college students on the Second Amendment and shooting. No wonder they are resorting to lashing out any way they can.

NOTE: We also call this post how to clear out a lot of tabs in a short space :)

Retention Holsters

I think if people are going to open carry, it’s a wise idea to use a quality holster with some retention features. This is whyÂ I think it’s a wise idea. Retention holsters aren’t perfect, but they at least give you some time to react to a grab.

UPDATE: This post had no content earlier. One of the risks of blogging ahead, because I don’t have access at work, is that I can’t log in to fix things. I put this post up hastily over lunch, and then didn’t manage to find out about it until later.