Guns – Page 400 – Shall Not Be Questioned

The Inquirer: Thinking It’s Readers are Fools Since 1829

The Inquirer editorial board is incensed that the legislature is even thinking about enforcing state law. Do they even bother to look at the facts? Of course not. Facts are optional in today’s journalism:

Pennsylvania legislators, forever beholden to the gun lobby it seems, want to kill lost-or-stolen ordinances enacted by a number of Pennsylvania towns to help fight illegal gun trafficking.

The ordinances, passed by 30 communities, require lawful gun owners to report it to police when their firearms have been lost or stolen.

Can the Inquirer name a single case where any of these towns or cities have used to ordinance to go after straw buyers? Can they even name a case of anyone being fined? No, they can’t. They can’t because to the best of my knowledge, this critical, badly needed law has never been used. That’s rather shocking when anti-gun activists and anti-gun politicians acted like the sky was going to fall if they didn’t pass these ordinances.

I am also amazed that the Inquirer has the temerity to suggest Pennsylvania does not have adequate “straw buyer” laws, when it imposes felony sentences on the behavior, and the state outlaws all private transfers of handguns, and has since 1934. Very few other states have such a restriction. If the Inquirer wants to editorialize like these laws don’t exist, pardon us if we get busy working to make that a reality.

The Best Defense

Is a good offense. We all know the term, but so does Rahm Emmanuel. Illinois has gotten dangerously (in Rahm’s view) close to shoving concealed carry down Chicago’s throat, and if they succeed in doing that, they can succeed in preempting a log of Chicago’s post-McDonald ridiculousness. I think he wants to get an anti-gun bill moving in Springfield as a defense to that. If we all have to rally to stop a bad bill, that runs us out to push a good bill. It’s smart, but it assumes Rahm can get it moving.

The Vacuous Media

I’ve recently watched The Today Show, only to be reminded of that scene in the movie Fargo where Mrs. Lundegaard is watching some super cheesy daytime talk show, right before Grimsrud and Showalter come crashing through the sliding glass door. Today is pretty much that same vacuous dreck.

So it’s not surprising they are latching on to gun control. This reeks of Bloomberg. Here’s the press release regarding the promotion of the reporter doing this story. They are losing women fast. What they don’t realize is that fewer and fewer people are watching, particularly in the age groups they need to reach to hold on to women.

A Bullpup .50BMG?

This looks like a quite interesting idea, to make a Bullpup .50BMG semi-auto, but I’m skeptical for a few reasons.

Weight is a counter to recoil. 50s are generally heavy, but that also significantly reduces perceived recoil. These are lighter. How hard do they thump shooting offhand?
Do I really want to weld my cheek centimeters away from that much explosive power? All guns models made have kabooms every once in a while. I’d hate to be the unlucky shooter who experiences that.
I’m not sure what situation I’d need to employ that kind of firepower offhand or kneeling, and it’s certainly not something I’d want to shoot competitively with. If I wanted to do long range marksmanship in the .50BMG class, I think there are probably alternatives I’d prefer.

What do you think? The big advantage I can think of, offhand, is this might be a .50BMG that will actually fit in my safe. But my impression of this is that it mostly looks like a neat toy.

A Better Rail System?

The Firearm Blog posts about a new type of module rail system that looks a lot better, to me, than Picatinny rails. All my AR-15s, save one, have standard ribbed hand guards. I find the Picatinny rail hand guards uncomfortable to shoot. On my one AR with Picatinny rails, I have ribbed hand guards attached to the bottom for comfort. This system looks immensely comfortable compared to current rail systems.

Allergic to Diversity?

Joan Peterson mistakes a zombie for a “black man,”Â and then proceeds to be horrified that zombies are an largely just fun and games, and became an internet meme, just like lolcats. I can’t recall when the zombie internet meme actually started, but it started as a joke. The earliest stuff I can remember being this:

It doesn’t have to be your humor, but this stuff was all over the Internet several years ago, and started, if I recall, largely outside the shooting community. Then some clubs started doing zombie shoots. A club near me had one each halloween and it was very popular, and a lot of fun. You get that Joan? Fun! Some people think shooting is fun, and shooting at zombie targets on halloween? Double fun!

Why is this so hard to deal with and understand? If shooting wasn’t fun, many of us wouldn’t be so energized by this issue. Imagine how it feels for us. It would be like being a golfer, and having petulant busybodies constantly trying to limit access to golf courses, country clubs, and golf clubs, all the while talking about what scary, horrible people golfers were. This is exactly what you people are doing applied to another pastime. Is it so difficult to understand that in a free society, different people have different ideas of fun and humor? Shouldn’t those who value a free and tolerant society embrace such diversity of thought and pastimes? The only answer I can come up with is that Joan and her ilk value neither freedom, tolerance, or diversity, if it people happen to enjoy things they don’t understand or approve of. We have a word for people like that.

Personally, I think the whole zombie thing has jumped the shark. It’s gotten old, and at this point even I’ll agree the joke isn’t funny anymore. But I get how it started, and kept going. Even the Puritans had more of a sense of humor than the anti-gun folks, geez.Â It reminds me of an old saying about people who wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, terrified at the prospect that there might be people out there having fun. It would seem for many of the leaders of the anti-gun movement, this is an accurate description!

Emily Finally Gets Her Gun

Hear the final tale of her story of Emily getting her gun. But this is not over for her:

Now, this series is far from over. As I’ve found, the hurdles placed before gun owners do not end here. I need to figure out the laws on getting ammunition and transporting the gun to a state that allows practice shooting.

Most of all, I intend to keep pushing the Council of the District of Columbia to rewrite the its laws to make them fair and constitutional for law-abiding Americans.

Excellent. One of the great advantages to getting more women involved in shooting is that when they feel something is wrong, they have more tendency to try to do something about it than men do. Some of the most passionate new advocates for the Second Amendment I’ve met are newly minted female gun owners. I also believe politicians tend to be more sympathetic to women standing up for their Second Amendment rights than men.

Media Mislabeling Preemption Enforcement

I’m tired of seeing the media characterize the new preemption bill thusly:

The state House of Representatives is scheduled to vote today on a bill that would outlaw ordinances in 30 municipalities – including Reading – that require gun owners to report lost or stolen firearms within 24 hours of discovering them missing.

This bill would not outlaw those ordinances. Those ordinances are already outlawed under state law. All this would do is to put the cost of defending those laws on the municipalities that pass them in violation of state law, and give plaintiffs who challenge them attorneys fees and damages. All this bill does is place the burden where it belongs: on towns which violate state law by passing ordinances that relate to gun regulation.

Holder Recommits the Obama Administration to More Gun Control

Holder has been known for getting the Administration into hot water by pushing a gun control agenda publicly (as opposed to the Administration’s actual strategy, which is to push it behind the scenes). Chris Cox, NRA-ILA’s Chief Lobbyist, points out what Holder has recently been saying, but I wanted to present the full video of the actual statement. If you’ve just eaten, I apologize, for the poor, and shameless dramatic acting here by Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) is liable to make your stomach churn:

I do have to note that Issa is quite the fisherman rhetorically. After Connolly is finished his sorry display of dramatic acting, Issa casts the bait out there, and with the help of Connolly, Holder takes it hook, line and sinker. Issa asked the Administration to present to Congress the package of gun control it wants. I can promise you during the election year, this will not be forthcoming. In fact, Connolly should probably be happy Rahm is now mayor of Chicago. Getting confronted in the Congressional showers by a naked Rahm would be the least of Connolly’s problems with the now former Chief of Staff, given that he helped Issa bait Holder, and was probably too dumb to realize it.

We would dearly love to have the Administration on public record as pushing gun control heading into the 2012 election. That would make my job as a volunteer a lot easier, not to mention the folks back in Fairfax.

Lucky 13

According to NRA, 13 anti-gun amendments have been filed in attempt to scuttle a bill to strengthen Pennsylvania’s pre-emption law. The House may take it up today.

It will be interesting to see how many get any votes outside of the standard liberal strongholds.

UPDATE: They adjourned until Monday.