Looks like they’ve been busy. Joe says they are misleading the public on several fronts with a story he points to. Agents also appear to be harassing homeowners who lawfully store things that can go bang in their garages. Let’s not forget Bill Akins either.
Category: Guns
Evan Nappen on HR2640 Passage
Evan Nappen has another editorial defending against attacks by folks less than happy with the passage of HR2640. For those of you who don’t know, Evan is probably the foremost legal expert on New Jersey’s gun laws; not a simple task, they are monstrously complicated, and even the lawmakers don’t really understand that body of law.
Improving Georgia’s Carry Laws
As I’ve said before, I generally find myself being the damned yankee that complains about restrictive carry laws in The South, particularly in the onerous number of “off limits” places. Georgia is looking to remedy that with HB 915:
GCO fully supports the Second Amendment Protection Act of 2008, introduced today by Rep. Timothy Bearden, D. 68.  GCO’s top legislative priority for 2008 is the passage of HB 915.
Do you know:
Georgia has more places off limits to carrying a firearm than California. In fact, Georgia has more places off limits to carry than any state in the nation. Shocked, surprised, disgusted? Fed up? Finally ready to do something about it?
Sounds good to me. Now if we can pass this, maybe we can convince Tennessee to ditch carry restrictions on federal lands, and state parks.  Same for Florida too, for that matter.
Conservative Sacalawag [wants to know where the NRA is with all of this]*. I would imagine they’d be behind lifting carry restrictions, as they have been in many other states, but I suspect we’ll see more movement on this after the holidays.
* Link dead
Resolved: John Mashek is Clueless
John Mashek has published his new years resolutions, among them:
I resolve to continue to jump all over the National Rifle Association and its unwillingness to compromise on anything.
Perhaps Mr. Mashek is completely blind that he is not aware of this. Or perhaps Mr. Mashek is simply unaware that the very existence of NICS was a compromise that gun owners made in the early 90s to avoid waiting periods and ineffective background checks run, or not run, depending on their mood that day, by local police.
John Mashek’s problem is not that the NRA doesn’t compromise; clearly it does, and it’s taken a lot of heat from membership for doing so. John Mashek’s problem is that the NRA won’t become a party to his desire to crap all over the Bill of Rights.
One wonders whether John Mashek would be willing to add to his list of resolutions “I resolve to respect the Bill of Rights in its entirety, and agree to support other citizen’s second amendment rights as actively as I defend my profession’s first amendment rights.” I doubt you’ll see him resolving that.
Civilian KRISS?
To reach the civilian market, the company developed the .45-caliber carbine. Plans call for marketing it primarily to shooting enthusiasts who would use it for competitions and target practice, but it also could be used for hunting.
“This is not going to be a gun for everyone,” Kushell said.
Company officials said the Super V mechanism can be adapted to any caliber weapon. Work currently is under way on a 12-gauge shotgun.
I’m not a huge fan of pistol caliber carbines, but I’d definitely pick up one of these. Clearly TDI thinks more highly of the civilian market than H&K, and I hope sales of their civilian line of firearms is brisk.
Great Holiday Family Activity
NRA Response on Contact Form
I got a response from NRA regarding the member form:
Per this post: http://www.pagunblog.com/?p=2253, let me both thank you and apologize. In reading this, I went back to double check the functionality of this ILA web form only to find there is a problem with it delivering e-mail to us. We had no reason to suspect a problem as the web form used by the PVF site was functioning fine, and we were receiving a steady stream of direct e-mails to ILA.
Just so you and others who usually contact NRA for legislative and political matters are aware, the direct (and recommended) ILA e-mail address is ila-contact@nrahq.org.
Please feel to share with other interested (and aggrieved) parties, and again, my thanks and apologies.
That was from Glen Caroline, Director of NRA-ILA Grassroots, who was kind enough to come talk to us at the Gun Blogger Rendezvous in Reno last October. Hopefully this problem will get fixed shortly.
Chrony Goodness
I went to a range just north of Blacksburg, VA today to try out the new Chrony.  I got the Alpha model Shooting Chrony. I have to say, it’s a cool piece of a equipment. Cool in the sense that I now know my loads are pretty inconsistent. I’m on par with Wolf ammo, which isn’t good enough for my likes. I shot five rounds of everything I had. Velocity for .223 averaged 2717 fps out of my 16″ barrel, with high being 2775 and low being 2640. Velocity for the 6.8 Remington SPC upper was 2149 on the low, 2212 on the high, with 2181 being the average.
One thing I will say, is that Silver State Armory’s 6.8 Remington SPC loads are consistent with 2421 being the low, and 2453 being the high, averaging 2436 fps.
I’m using Sierra Game King 55gr jacketed soft point, with 20 grains of IMR 4198, using CCI small rifle primers. For the 6.8, I’m using the Sierra 115gr open tip match bullets, 22 grains of IMR 4198, with CCI small rifle primers. I’m guessing my variability has to do with not precisely measuring each load? But for plinking I don’t really care too much. It’s consistent enough for that.
Lessons in Stereotyping
This guy has to have hit over at least half of the stereotypes of gun owners in this incident. Folks, if you’re going to drive your dirt bike drunk, and without headlights, don’t sling your MP5 over your shoulders and put your beer on the handlebars. Of course:
The weapon was an MP-5 semi-automatic sub-machine gun, fully loaded, and was slung across his back, according to Officer David McIntyre of the Ashville Police Department. The suspect also had a six-pack of beer hanging from a sack off the handlebars of the dirt bike.
We do have to get some sloppy reporting. If it’s semi-automatic, how exactly is it a machine gun?
Sebastian Permit Update
I just have to wonder if this is the kind of discretion the Brady Campaign thinks is just dandy:
That makes two separate incidents documented by the BPD of assaults and/or threats against me. The Major put it simply: he simply can’t see any way that they can not make the right decision here. I agreed, and pointed out that if what the Corporal at the Jessup MSP Licensing Division said to me on the phone was true (he rather testily suggested that he “knew what I was up to†and insisted that I was engaged in both vigilantism and an active campaign to misrepresent what he was saying in regards to my case), if in fact I really wanted to be a V For Vendetta style vigilante shooting up the neighborhood and taking the enforcement of the law into my own hands…why the hell would I be handing the MSP a copy of my fingerprints? My mugshot-style photograph? The serial number for my Glock pistol from which the MSP have a spent shell casing on file? Why would I apply for a permit at all? Why go on TV talking about my efforts to save Pigtown from itself?
If he lived in Philly, he would have had his license months ago. Of course, that’s not stopping Philly from wanting to be like Maryland.