The big problem with flashlights attached to your gun is that they make the gun bulky and heavy. Crimson Trace came up with a solution to that problem. The stairwell the light is illuminating in that review looks strangely familiar.
Author: Sebastian
More on Gun Culture 1.0 and 2.0 in Clubs
Willshoot.com, who started the whole thread with his post here, has some more good points on the whole subject Gun Culture 1.0 and 2.0 in clubs:
The solution would be simple: vote the board out and remake the club in the image that you desire.
However, in practice, the issue is that the GC1.0 can make the environment so undesirable for members of GC2.0 that they simply decline to participate. If ranges weren’t so monopolized, it’d be easy for members of GC2.0 to start their own.
That’s one of the problems with the aging of clubs. If those clubs close, or go belly up, they won’t ever be replaced. We can’t easily make more shooting clubs, especially in urban and suburban areas. My own club was founded in 1958, at a time when this guy was busy fueling the post-war construction boom, and transforming Bucks County from a more rural county with a lot of open space into this. Our club moved in the 80s, due to encroachment by development, and was relocated at the cost of the developer. It is highly doubtful that today, someone could find land to create a new club at a price anyone could reasonably afford.
Because of this, I think it’s important for clubs to change hands from one generation to another, so that they don’t die with their members. That is actually not that remarkably hard to execute a complete takeover of a club if you look at elections results. The reason it doesn’t happen is largely the following factors:
- Most members don’t vote in club elections. This seems especially true of younger shooters who would be most likely to be brought up in GC 2.0.
- Very few younger people have the time to serve as officers, or if they do have time, lack the willingness. A desire for change won’t do any good if you’re not able or willing to step up to do the work of running a club, most of which is mundane and unglamorous, and has little to do with a club’s cultural direction.
- Younger GC 2.0 people are less likely to join clubs to begin with, or try out GC 1.0 shooting sports, which means many clubs have no pool of shooters who would even be interested in something different.
- Many GC 1.0 are too old to do GC 2.0 run-and-gun tactical stuff and be competitive. IPSC and IDPA are more athletic sports than bullseye shooting, trap, or silhouette. Even if they don’t harbor any misconceptions or prejudices against practical/action shooting, they might not feel great about those kinds of competitions competing match and range times at their club, and may resist those kinds of matches.
So if you have a local club, my advice is to join. If you want to run a more practical-style match, take your match idea before the Board. Be prepared to make concessions to deal with their concerns. Once you have a match, you’ll start building a constituency. Once you have a constituency, you’ll get people engaged with the club, and from those people, you can draw candidates for the club’s Board.
My club has 1100 members. Even at that size, 50 people showing up on club election night could elect an entire slate of new candidates if it was committed. Most clubs are smaller than mine, and the only practical match I know of around here was drawing 60 or so people even in the dead of winter with snow covering the ground. Change is difficult, but it is not impossible. If you want to change a local club, it can be done, but you need a plan, and you have to be prepared to make concessions. Maybe shoot from ready instead of holster, or limit the run-and-gun action in your early stages. This might mean your matches won’t be sanctioned for a while, but as long as people are still having a good time, and you’re drawing people in, that’s all that matters. If they are dedicated to more of what you’re offering, you’ll start flipping club leadership quickly, and once you start doing that, you’ll find yourself needing to make fewer concessions.
More Odd Grassroots
I have observed previously that our opponents seem to be whipping up some real grassroots opposition to HR822, as evidenced by the high rate of signatures in opposition to the bill. The problem is, I’m not convinced that our opponents are capable of whipping up this kind of opposition, and it has to be coming from somewhere. I have found some more evidence that something is certainly very odd about the opposition here. Take the continued success of this latest Twitter hash tag campaign featuring Newark, NJ Mayor Cory Booker. Except I’m unconvinced this campaign has its genesis on Twitter itself. Take a look at some of the re-tweeters:
This person only has a handful of Tweets. 30 to be precise. This Twitter handle also only follows 5 people, none of whom tweeted about Booker’s video. This is not the only example I’ve found. I’ve found numerous examples, such as this person, this person, and this person. These are not people who spend much time, if any time at all, on Twitter. I believe, however, that they are real people. I’m not suggesting someone is creating users for the sake of astroturfing, since several of the accounts are personalized. So the question is, who’s prompting all these people who normally aren’t Tweeting to suddenly Tweet? Is it Cory Booker’s magnetic personality? Is MAIG really growing as a force?
One thing is certain, the campaign MAIG has put together is doing everything right. Under Booker’s video, you’ll note all the standard social networking buttons. The site is very well done, and it’s pretty clear they are using professionals. At some point we were going to push far enough to fire up the other side. HR822 is pretty clearly it. Whether the opposition they are whipping up is going to be thinking about HR822 on election day is another matter, but it does seem MAIG has been successful at gaining some grassroots support that can at least make some noise on their issue. The big question is whether they are getting help from some of the major left-wing outfits like MoveOn, or Obama for America. It seems hard for me to believe this much activity is happening just on people sharing Booker’s video in a viral manner.
Obama Administration Takes a Position on Second Amendment
The Supreme Court must be interested in the case of Masciandaro v. US, which involves a man who was convicted of violating the gun ban in National Parks by having a loaded pistol in his vehicle. The Supreme Court asked the Obama Administration for its opinion, which you can read here. Lyle Denniston has a very good article about the opinion over on SCOTUSblog.
While recognizing there is a right to carry a firearm outside of the home, the Administration’s position is that this is only deserving of some form of mid-level scrutiny, and that a ban on carry is not among those regulations which could be deemed unconstitutional under this standard. The Administration is asking the Court here to deny review.
Some Excellent Self-Defense Advice
Go visit Misfires and Light Strikes for some excellent self-defense advice. I’m no kung-fu master, and nor do I have time to become one, but I’m an advocate of having options up and down the force spectrum. The best response for someone throwing a punch at you is physical force, and often that force can be something like defensive spray. If you shoot someone trying to fist fight you, your chances of going to jail are pretty high, and even if you’re acquitted, the trial will certainly ruin your life.
New Jersey Gun Laws Explained
Gun Culture 1.0 v. Gun Culture 2.0
SayUncle says he doesn’t get ranges that ban carry. I think it’s one of the sillier things you’ll find out there in the gun community, but their is an explanation for why it’s more common than it should be. The most frequent retort is that insurance is the reason, but I don’t actually believe that’s the case most of the time. As someone who is currently an officer at a local club, I can probably speak to what’s driving some clubs to adopt this.
Part of it goes back to Michael Bane’s assertion of there being a Gun Culture 1.0, and a Gun Culture 2.0. I’m reluctant to use this analogy, because there’s not really as clean a division among the gun culture as it implies, but it is useful for illustrating the mentality difference from those in the culture who are self-defense oriented, and those that are more connected to the traditional hunting and shooting culture. There is significant overlap between the two cultures, but there are even generational differences in how one approaches the subject of concealed carry, for instance.
The vast majority of clubs are run by people from Gun Culture 1.0. This is certainly true of my club. Except my club does allow concealed carry, you just have to keep it concealed, and aren’t permitted to draw or shoot your carry piece except in an emergency. Pennsylvania has had concealed carry longer than most other states (since 1989), so even most people in Gun Culture 1.0 here carry, even if they aren’t shooting IPSC, IDPA or any of the other action or practical shooting disciplines. The reason clubs are run by Gun Culture 1.0 is because those are the people with the time to invest in overseeing a club. It takes a lot of work, and it’s not something most people in their 30s and 40s have time for. I barely have time for it, and I just basically try to do my job and not much else.
The other major factor that plays into rules like this is that most club boards are responsible for dealing with range incidents. If the club is large enough, the board is typically going to see a parade from the small minority of people who’s gun handling and safety mentality is either poor or non-existent. It’s relatively easy to fall into a mindset that your members are not to be trusted, since you’re dealing with grave stupidity on a regular basis. You’ll never see the 99% of people who are safe. You’ll spend a lot of time interacting with the 1% who aren’t.
I’ve always wondered whether it would be better to set high standards for getting into a private club, but once those standards are met, you are essentially bound only by a handful of safety oriented rules. Our club has a qualification, but it’s essentially being able to hit a rather large piece of paper at ten yards with a pistol. You have to be a real wild man with a gun to fail our qualifier. If you were going to allow someone to, say, draw from holster, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to make them qualify to do so, so someone can verify they know how to do the task safely. The unfortunate fact, at least based on my experience at clubs, is that if you allowed it broadly, it’s not going to be too long before someone puts a round in their leg, or even worse, someone else’s leg. There are a few local commercial ranges that allow draw from holster, but both have armor plating between stalls. Most clubs don’t have the money for that kind of setup, and most people don’t want to be next to a Cletus who can’t avoid finger f***ing his trigger guard every time he draws if the only thing separating you is a few feet of air.
My club probably implements a reasonable compromise between Gun Culture 1.0 and 2.0, when it comes to carrying on the premises. Not all do, and that’s unfortunate. But it’s also a product of the fundamental nature of clubs, and the membership. Clubs are civic organizations, and not really structured like businesses. People in the GC 1.0 age group are more familiar with and better at navigating that kind of organization than people in the GC 2.0 age group, who tend to want to think of shooting facilities as a product they buy or don’t buy, rather than a civic, membership driven enterprise. This is understandable, but without GC 2.0 stepping up, eventually we’re going to lose a lot of good places to shoot, and that will really be unfortunate.
LAPD Missing Some Submachine Guns
Apparently some 30 MP5s have disappeared from the LAPD arms locker. And LAPD spokeswoman is saying they were MP5s altered to fire blanks. This didn’t make sense to me, because I thought you only needed a blank firing adapter on firearms that needed gas pressure to cycle the action. The MP5, as I recall, is a roller locking, delayed recoil mechanism. Can anyone who’s an expert comment on this? Can you fire blanks from an MP5 unaltered? Even if you need a blank adapter, I can’t imagine it’s difficult to remove, as is claimed by the LAPD spokesperson.
A Sign of the Times
I figured the Obama Administration was never going to live up to people’s high expectations. What I did not expect is that Congress would need to insert a funding amendment that would essentially tell the Administration that it can’t traffic firearms to drug cartels anymore. This funding rider passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. I am pleased that not trafficking firearms to drug cartels is a position that draws support from both parties.
Funding riders like this have actual teeth. While F&F arguably broke a number of federal laws, misappropriating funds is also a crime, and one that’s easier to prosecute for.
“Florida Loophole” in the Press
This time in St. Louis, but still using Philly as an example. We’ve documented previously that these articles have been popping up all over. The purpose of this article is to help defeat HR822, it would seem. It’s worth noting that HR822 does not extend to residents in their home states, so both before and after HR822, this Florida issue is still completely a matter of state prerogatives.
The city argues that it needs latitude in determining who is a threat, because of long-standing problems in the court system. A Philadelphia Inquirer report last year noted that while prosecutors in other big cities win felony convictions in half of violent-crime cases, in Philadelphia, prosecutors had been winning only 20 percent.
It seems to me that this is the real problem to fix. You can’t have a revolving door justice system and expect to turn your city as a whole into a kind of low-level prison, where we all have to deal with more restrictive laws because the City can’t serve basic functions such as controlling crime. It is also absolutely inappropriate to consider arrests, rather than convictions, in determining who is permitted to exercise a constitutional right.