It is very important to make sure you have the trigger guard pin extensions on your lower receiver properly support when you drive in the trigger guard pin. Don’t ask me how I learned I did not have it well enough supported.
Author: Sebastian
Reasoned Discourse Strikes Again
A Washington gun control group sets up a Facebook promoting banning assault weapons in Washington State, and it’s quickly found by pro-Second Amendment Facebook users who are quick to correct all the lies and distortions. So what happens?
I can sympathize with a family who just wants to grieve in peace, but when your process of grieving involves taking away or limiting my constitutional rights, we’re not just going to sit back and let it happen, especially when the arguments involved are based on lies and distortions. The pro-2A has been fighting the assault weapons issue for two decades now, and we have it down to practically an immune response. I think that’s partly why groups like MAIG haven’t, so far, touched that issue.
Bad Liars
Jacob points out that Paul Helmke is a bad liar, and outlines why. They really don’t have any choice, though, other than to downplay the significance of McDonald. There’s a very high probability they are going to lose no matter what they do, and after playing up Heller as much as they did, then losing, they aren’t going to want to repeat that performance, so they’ve decided on a tactical retreat. Not good ground to fight on for them. There will be other fights, but they will be on the defensive from here on out, and they know that.
More on Bloomberg’s 95 40 Theses
From the Sarasota Herald Tribune, we find at least some of the secret recommendations. Yes, that’s right, MAIG isn’t nailing his 40 Theses up to any door, though we are trying to locate them. Let’s look at a few of them:
Greater funding for ATF. The bureau “lacks resources to effectively police gun trafficking across state and national borders,” according to The Washington Post’s report on the coalition recommendations. ATF also has too few inspectors.
Help pass ATF reform and we’ll talk. I’m not opposed to more money for ATF’s inspection arm, but they need to be nailing dealers for truly bad stuff, and not for crap like forgetting to put county in the right box, or failing to put a “Yes” instead of a “Y”.
More aggressive federal prosecution of violations, including those by people who fail the gun background check.
Of violent felons to fail the background check, fine. Of a guy who had a fight with pop when he was twenty, and didn’t realize that was a disabling conviction until he failed the background check? No. Not everyone who is prohibited from owning a gun is a hardened criminal, and not everyone who fails the background check will serve any public safety interest by taking up space in a federal prison that could be taken up by actual criminals.
Tightening oversight of gun shows, especially those whose weapons later turn up in crimes.
As long as that oversight doesn’t look like this. Competence on the part of ATF brass is a problem. It’s not just a matter of funding or attention.
More thorough tracing of seized weapons, and better sharing of that information with state and local law agencies.
Except that ATF and the FOP are opposed to this.
A new policy of stamping guns with a second, hidden serial number. This could help thwart the common practice of removing serial numbers on stolen guns.
Because criminals won’t learn where the hidden serial numbers are? How are you going to get them on there? There’s only so many ways to hide a serial number on the serial numbered part. Surely you don’t mean putting serial numbers on parts that can be replaced, right? Â I can still fix my gun without being guilty of obliterating a serial number, right? This was written by someone who doesn’t know much about guns, or how serial numbers are regulated.
This is just five recommendations though. What do the other 35 look like? We’ll try to find out, so stay tuned.
God Help Me, I Can Relate to Barney Frank
He was interviewed on NPR about the gay rights march that happened this Sunday:
I think too many people, frankly, who share my view that this is going to be a waste of time, are afraid to say so because they will be considered insufficiently devoted to the cause. Rather than chanting broad slogans about equality when most members of Congress won’t even be in D.C., time and energy would be better spent on old-fashioned lobbying for specific legislation. The most successful, militant, political organization in America is the National Rifle Association. And they’ve never had a march, they’ve never had a shoot-in. They don’t do anything other than lobby members. They write, and they call, and they talk to members.
Emphasis mine. There’s a tendency to any movement to want to oust heretics, and people that question the faith. But I can relate to Frank’s irreverence, and his assertion of all that comes along with it.
Getting Hunting Ban Overturned in the UK
It would be a good first step toward reversing the long slide. The question is whether the Tories will take up the issue. It appears they are willing, but don’t want to burn up a lot of political capital over this one issue, and end up getting bogged down in Parliament.
More on Those M4 Failures
Must… Shoot… Trapdoor
You can never quite predict what gun is going to scratch your itch, but looking at Uncle’s refurbishing of an old Trapdoor Springfield, I feel like I just have to try shooting one of these, and maybe get one for myself.
Getting a Long Gun
SayUncle probably does a better job of laying out what I was trying to say than I did, which wasn’t really that people should “stop open carrying, right now, all of you!” but more making the point that it doesn’t seem to me to be remarkably effective at carrying the pro-gun message. My style is more aggressive and confrontational than Uncle’s, which is probably why I get more hate coming my way when I post this stuff. But I do think having the debate is important for the community.
This is one of those cases where we all just have an opinion. No one has ever focus grouped open carry to see how people perceive it, and I don’t know if anyone ever will, so that means we’re not arguing based on hard facts and data. Since this movement has started in a period where gun control is on the decline, and public opinions about guns are drastically improving, I believe we will very likely be proven wrong if we predict dire legislative consequences arising out of this issue. To some degree, I should just be happy we’re in such a favorable environment that we don’t have to worry as much about a backlash.
But the pro-gun movement was flying pretty well from the passage of FOPA, until the assault weapons issue hit like the hammer of Thor in the late 80s and early 90s, and we weren’t really prepared to deal with it. Sometimes it can be hard to predict what the other side will get traction on, and that’s something I spend a good deal of time worrying about.
Caring What Other People Think
I was thinking of an idea for a post, but as I was thinking it up, I got that dejavu feeling you get if you’ve been blogging a while “I know I’ve blogged about this before.” So rather than revisit the topic again, I’ll just link to it. Why you don’t have the option of not caring what other people think about your movement. I think a lot of gun owners are independent minded libertarian types that ideally prefer to do what they want, and screw what other people think. In a world dedicated to libertarian principles (i.e. not the world we live in) you could get away with that. But in a world where a minority is trying to convince a majority to accept its culture and habits, you have to care what the average joe thinks. It’s tempting to believe the average joe accepts what you do, or doesn’t care, and that might even be the case, but the fact that I know I need Joe’s consent to continue doing what I do is one of the reasons I get paranoid about this stuff.
The media environment has changed greatly for us in the past decade, and it’s largely been in our favor. I know it sounds crazy to believe, because a lot of gun owners believe the media just hates us, and we shouldn’t care what they think, but that’s courting disaster. If the media’s treatment of the gun issue today turns your stomach, it would have given you a full case of dysentery in the 90s. One of the reasons I’m skeptical of open carry as activism is every time I read coverage of the issue in the media, it reminds me of the 1990s media, and I don’t want to go back to that. In addition to that, in various reports or commentary, you’ll notice plenty of gun owners who aren’t particularly enamored with the practice. It’s not like some of the places where open carry has created a backlash in Pennsylvania are hotbeds of anti-gun sentiment — it’s coming from very pro-gun areas. Then you have incidents like in Idaho. Idaho! You don’t get a much more pro-gun culture than that. If all this were limited to anti-gun urban areas where I’d expect people to freak out, I wouldn’t worry as much, but when I start seeing people freak out in Idaho, I wonder whether we may be pushing the issue a bit beyond what we can defend in the public space.
You can disagree with me about open carry, and think I might be worrying too much, but I think it’s hard to argue there’s absolutely no cause for concern at all.