Category: Guns

Someone e-mailed me asking to pass this along to everyone. Dave Hardy has it here, so I’ll reprint his post:

Harold Volkmer, the very pro-gun former Missouri Congressman, played a key role in the evolution of the gun rights movement. His biggest feat came in pushing the Firearm Owners Protection Act thru the House, at time when the leadership (including Peter Rodino, chairman of House Judiciary Committee, who announced “the bill is dead on arrival in the House”) was in solid opposition. He won a discharge petition (almost impossible under the rules at the time), got it to the floor, led the fight that defeated a rival and much weaker bill and essentially led the revolt that beat his own party’s leadership.

The Congressman’s 80th birthday is April 4. He just survived a serious bout with pneumonia, weeks in the hospital, and will be returning to Missouri tomorrow to finish recuperation. His friends and family want to see that he gets a blizzard of birthday best wishes. His address will be:

Congressman Harold Volkmer
Beth-Haven Nursing Home
2500 Pleasant St.
Hannibal, Missouri 63401

Given what he’s done for us all, I think it’s the least we could do.

Some of Markell’s bills are getting a hearing in the Delaware House Judiciary Committee today. HB 46 is one bill, which allows the state to dispose of firearms it’s accumulating from people who had restraining orders and have not claimed them after the order expired. It only allows disposal 60 days after the owner was notified he needed to claim them. I don’t see any reason the state should be forced to hold on to someone’s property indefinitely, so I don’t think this is unreasonable. The bill does not seem to call for destruction, so presumably the state could sell them. HB 48 merely implements the federal requirements for reporting mental health adjudications to NICS, including the relief from disabilities requirements for people that have undergone successful treatment post-adjudication.

Not all of Markell’s agenda is innocuous, so keep an close eye out if you live in Delaware.

A North Carolina man who moved to Pennsylvania got tired of having to dig out his car this winter, and ended up brandishing a gun at the guy operating the snowblower. Unbeknownst to him, apparently the snow blower operator was strapped too. Yet somehow this did not result in a shootout. If you believed the Bradys, the snow would have run red with blood that day, because clearly people can’t resist shooting each other. This guy pretty clearly needed shooting, and yet the legal gun carrier in this confrontation exercised restraint.

SayUncle notes the folks in the comments on NRA’s Facebook aren’t so hot on suppressors. My experience the comment section of NRA’s Facebook page is that it’s a great thing to read if you want your faith in humanity destroyed.

Generally speaking we’re limited in what we can accomplish by what our own people will demand. Many people online spend the vast majority of their time only talking to other people who agree with them, and don’t grasp that the main reason we’re not seeing a repeal of Hughes is that a vast majority of gun owners don’t support civilian machinegun ownership. Many feel the same way about suppressors. I’m not speaking of here of people who happen to own guns, I’m speaking here of people who culturally identify as gun owners (a big difference). We have a long way to go on these issues, but it’s familiarity that breeds comfort.

I’d be a hypocrite if I said everyone should buy a suppressor, and use it at their range, since I don’t yet own one myself. But I’m thinking of soon taking the plunge.

Jacob reports the numbers. New York State has collected approximately 312,000 shell casings, spent 40 million dollars, and solved no crimes. NYSRPA press release on it is here:

NYSRPA calls upon Governor Andrew Cuomo, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and state legislative leaders to publicly recognize these boondoggles for what they are, defund the CoBIS program and stand up to the fringe special interests advocating microstamping.

I wouldn’t put any money on that happening any time soon. The standard government answer to something that doesn’t work and wastes lots of money is that it was not properly funded or managed, so the solution is to spend even more money on the failure.