Peter Hamm says you might want to consider dropping out of college if you don’t like the fact that you can’t carry on campus.
Category: Guns
Winchester Model 70 Returning
TD talks about some issues with the Model 70 that’ll be coming out of FN’s factory in Colombia, South Carolina.
IL Gun Laws
So Uncle sent me a sneak peek at this article yesterday, which prompted me to look up some Illinois gun laws, and let me tell you, I’m really glad I don’t live in Illinois.  What appears to have happened is this guy had his FFL revoked, and decided to sell off his inventory in private sales, which is legal in Illinois, provided that you aren’t “in the business” of selling firearms. Illinois law does specifically mention liquidating a collection as not being “in the business”. But even so, operating as a dealer without a license is a misdemeanor under Illinois law for a first time offender.  This article states that he is charged with a Class 1 Felony.
But what did this guy do? Well, he didn’t apply the waiting period required under IL law, which is three days for a pistol, and 24 hours for a long gun. Apparently you have to do this even in a private sale. Violation here is a Class 4 Felony in Illinois.  But what got him the Class 1, the most heinous of felonies?  Well, it turns out a recent law makes it a Class 1 Felony if you don’t ask to see the other fella’s FOID card before you sell him the gun.
Get that folks?  If you do a private transfer in Illinois, and fail to ask to see the other person’s FOID card, it’s the same as if you pulled out the gun, and instead of handing it over to him, shot him dead. Illinois politicians apparently feel that selling a gun to your buddy or neighbor, and not asking to see the FOID, is an offense deserves to be up there with murder.
Remember that next time a gun control idiot tells you that most gun owners aren’t affected by gun control, and that all they want are reasonable laws.
Meager Progress
Ryan took a look at the 2008 appropriations bill and found this:
The Committee has heard reports that ATF has pursued violation revocations and denials against firearms dealers based on violations that consist largely of record keeping errors of various types that are unlikely to impede tracing investigations or prosecution of individuals who use firearms in crime. The Committee encourages ATF to consider lesser gradation of sanctions for record keeping errors.
The Congress Critters are aware of the problem, so why don’t they actually do something about it beyond talk? In 2006, before the Democrats retook Congress, we had H.R. 5092, the “BATFE Modernization and Reform Act of 2006.â€Â If the Democrats want to do something for us, other than lip service, they could reintroduce this bill, and move it forward.
Huckabee on the Second
About 4 minutes and thirty seconds into the video, until about 7 minutes. Mike Huckabee talks about his views on the second amendment:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKHve5gd5yM[/youtube]
A sharp contrast from Hillary’s “I support the second amendment” nonsense. Hell, a sharp contrast to Bush if you ask me.
1895 Nagant
Well, the new revolver arrived, so I cleaned it up for it to get it’s picture taken:
Cleaned up pretty nice. I cleaned the thick greasy oil out of it and replaced it with some nice Friction Defense Gun Oil, from Brownell’s, and now the cylinder rotates into place and pushes forward rather nicely.
The downside to the Nagant revolver is the price of the ammo. Bitter asked “What’s so unusual about it?”, and my response was “Have you ever seen an uncircumcised penis?” Either way, 40-50 cents a trigger pull is steep, but someone said the other day there’s a way to reload for it. It’s also a pretty weak cartridge, only generating 157 ft-lbs of muzzle energy. No wonder Rasputin lived:
Determined to finish the job, Yusupov became anxious about the possibility that Rasputin might live until the morning, which would leave the conspirators with no time to conceal his body. Yusupov ran upstairs to consult the others and then came back down to shoot Rasputin through the back with a revolver. Rasputin fell, and the company left the palace for a while. Yusupov, who had left without a coat, decided to return to grab one, and, while at the palace, he went to check up on the body. Suddenly, Rasputin opened his eyes, grabbed Yusupov by the throat and strangled him. As he made his bid for freedom, however, the other conspirators arrived and fired at him. After being hit three times in the back, Rasputin fell once more. As they neared his body, the party found that, remarkably, he was still alive, struggling to get up. They clubbed him into submission and, after wrapping his body in a sheet, threw him into an icy river, and he finally met his end there
The trigger pull is brutal too. It’s almost a two stage like trigger. Take up the slack and it rotates the cylinder, but then it takes a quite a pull to push the cylinder into the barrel and drop the hammer.
We’ll have to see how it shoots once I get some ammo, but I got it mostly just to have one.
More on the “Musket Loophole”
… I don’t see the Governor spending a lot of time on this issue. I don’t see the legislature spending a lot of time on this issue either …
Read the whole thing. I think Spitzer’s dodgey answers on this issue is a good sign that closing the “musket loophole” probably isn’t going anywhere. No doubt Spitzer is no friend of gun owners, but it seems from what he’s saying he’s hoping this issue just goes away. We can only hope.
Definitely Not Getting It
I’ve come to expect garbage from the Philadelphia Inquirer who’s never looked at replacing the wood furniture on a domestically assembled firearm made from some foreign parts, and having to figure out whether doing so will up the foreign part count to a sufficient quantity as to run afoul of Title 18 Section 922 Subsection (r) of the United States Code, causing your domestically assembled firearm to suddenly morph into an evil imported assault weapon.
Anyone who thinks gun laws are only about fighting crime, and can’t innocently trap honest gun owners, doesn’t have nearly enough experience with them.
Take an Anti Shooting Day
The other Sebastian takes an anti-gun person shooting. It takes quite a leap to go from activist on the other side to the shooting range, and I have to hand it to Sebastian, that was quite a feat. His entire post is a must read, but here’s a quick excerpt:
The more interesting part of the evening was the drive home. Becky’s first time firing a gun had been a success, and she clearly had had a good time. I joked that much like Luke Skywalker playing with the laser droid thing…she’d taken her first step into a larger world. Becky remarked that since she’d left the gun control lobbying world, she’d realized that we gunnies aren’t a bunch of crazed maniacs trying to arm criminals for kicks; she further remarked that she thought the rhetoric was too heated all the way around, and that yes, much of what the Brady Bunch and the VPC promulgated was hysterics designed to provoke a reaction, not really anything that was meant to be factually accurate or sound grist for the public policy mill.
Sebastian’s new shooter-fu is clearly much better than mine.
Closing The Musket Loophole
New York Governor Elliot Spitzer promises to at least look at the possibility. Remember folks, they just want reasonable gun laws.