Guns – Page 568 – Shall Not Be Questioned

More on “The Rules”

I had one commenter, and Joe Huffman say they prefer the NRA’s rules more than Coopers. I have no beef with NRA’s rules. If you really try to pin me down, I’m really more in Tam’s “just don’t be stupid” camp. But given that people tend to communicate socially through the use of memes, both rule sets seem like they are well adapted to serve the purpose intended.

NRA’s rules have often been latched on to by our opponents, because they don’t consider a gun carried or kept nearby for self-defense to be “in use,” but I see that as a poor reason to reject them. I’m more interested in winning the mnemonic struggle for safety, so our opponents don’t get to use the stupid against us. I’m not really too concerned with what accomplishes that, as long as the right ideas get across.

They Don’t Always Get it Right

NRA does not always get grades and endorsements correct. There are few state liaisons that don’t have more than one state, and the number of races to keep track of is in the hundreds. I’ve said before, there’s value in having a working relationship with the local people if it’s a topic you’re really concerned about — and the movement needs people who are concerned about it. That’s manifested itself this election more than others.

The late-in-the-season Castle Doctrine fight has complicated things. NRA has the problem of not only having a key vote that we’d like to consider heading into this November election, but the additional problem of magazines and endorsements needing to go out, and having all of its state legislative resources being focused on ensuring eventual victory on this issue.

That’s lead to me bringing into question some grades this particular election season. These are issues I am raising privately with them, and it’s probably best to do it that way, so I won’t go into details about particular races where I think they got it wrong. My greater point is, if you think they got it wrong, to raise the issue, and have some concrete things to point to as to why you might thing a grade is in error.

One race I can speak about, which illustrates the problem with late legislative fights, is that of endorsements. We just got our magazine, which has our local State Senator Robert “Tommy” Tomlinson listed as an A and endorsed. If you look on the web site, he’s listed as a B+, and carrying no NRA endorsement. The web site reflects the fact that Tomlinson voted to amend the Castle Doctrine bill with an amendment that would weaken LTC reciprocity by removing the ability of Pennsylvania residents to carry firearms on a permit recognized as valid by the commonwealth.

I’m glad NRA dinged Tomlinson for it. He’s been good on our issue in the past, but decided to drift on this matter. It’s a shame, however, that the magazine isn’t going to reflect that. I think that’s probably good, longer term, because it’ll give Senator Tomlinson a chance to talk to some of us about the issue, and hopefully make amends. It’s worth noting the Democrat running against Tomlinson is F rated, and no friend at all. I’m not willing write off Tomlinson yet, but in my role as volunteer coordinator, I’m going to be spending my resources on other races this election year.

UPDATE: I’m pleased to report that in regards to the local race in question, the error has acknowledged, and corrective action has been taken. Far too often people paint this stuff as some kind of conspiracy to sell out gun owners, when in reality sometimes it’s just an honest oversight. If you had hundreds of races to think about every two years, you’d probably misjudge a few of them too. That’s why NRA needs local people paying attention.

Fighting Over Us

Kind of like the guys fighting over the pretty chick at the prom. No doubt some folks in Fairfax are probably annoyed with this kind of stuff, but it’s a good situation to be in if you look at the bigger picture.

Four Rules: Kind of Like Religion

Alan over at Snarkybytes takes issue with the four rules. I tend to think of the rules as being a construct to help people understand safe gun handling, more than literal commandments that must be taken at their very word. In that sense it’s kind of like religion — if you get all fundamentalist with it, it loses its point.

We know that there is, of course, such a thing as an unloaded gun. Cooper’s point is more that we should not assume a gun is safe just because we’re certain it’s unloaded. More than a few people have been killed by guns that someone was certain wasn’t loaded. That’s the problem rule one is meant to solve. I’m not sure how concerned we should be about how we accomplish cleaning, dry firing, and smithingÂ conceptually within the framework of rule one, because that seems to be missing the forest for the trees. That ends up getting into debates that go something like, “Well, if you take the slide off, and remove the barrel, is it still really a gun you have to treat as loaded? I mean, if I’m staring down a barrel out of the firearm, how is it different than staring down a pluming pipe?” All reasonable technical observations, and interesting in an academic sort of way, but I’m not sure we need to argue about such things when thinking about promoting safe gun handling.

I tend to think the four rules are fine, but I think they have to be taken for what they are; a conceptual framework for safe gun handling. One could certainly make literal arguments for why they do or don’t apply in this situation or that situation, and where they fall apart if taken literally, but to me that’s in the realm of an academic exercise. I think in terms of promoting safe gun handling, they’ve suited the community just fine.

Just Like Floppy Disk Drives …

… floppy holsters suck. I can’t tell you how many holsters I went through before figuring out you get what you pay for. I only have two I use regularly, a leather pocket holster for a Kel-Tec P3AT, and a kydex Comp-TacÂ Infidel for a Glock 19.

I also own, and for two years carried a Sidearmor IWB holster. Both the Comp-Tac and Sidearmor are good holsters, and each have advantages and disadvantages. It really depends on the trade-offs you want to make. The Comp-Tac’s clip makes it easy to take off the gun in the holster at the end of the day, which is a much safer way to handle. My Glock only leaves the holster if it’s being shot, cleaned, or going into the safe for a while. Other than that, I leave it loaded, in the holster. The disadvantage of Comp-Tac’s easy to remove clip isÂ it’s also easy for the gun to work its way of the belt and dump onto the floor. I had this happen to me once, fortunately in a situation where it wasn’t a problem. With the Comp-Tac clip, I’ve found it’s very important to wear the correct size and girth of belt. If you pay attention to how well a belt secures and carries the gun, you shouldn’t have a problem. With the Comp-Tac, you need to select a belt around the holster, not the other way around.

The Sidearmor holster has more belt attachment options, for making the holster work with a wider variety of belts. Once worn, it provides a very stable fit, even on some thinner belts that could never hold Comp-Tac’s infidel line well. The downside is theirÂ belt attachment options make it impossible to take the gun off in the holster without removing your belt. Even the J-hook option is difficult to remove without at least undoing the belt and loosening. The attachment pieces will also break about once a year and will need to be replaced, in my experience. Overall it’s a solid platform, it just depends on what’s important to you.

Ultimately I’ve opted to favor ease of gun removal, lest Bitter think I’m getting frisky if I come in from a night out and start undoing my belt, when all I was doing was trying to remove the Glock.

Why We Win

Chicks dig the black magic.

Fun Toys

The Zel Custom .50 looks pretty sweet. Personally, I think every law professor should get some .50 caliber trigger time.

GOA Not too Cozy With Pink Pistols?

In an interview, GOA executive director isn’t feeling too lovey dovey with the Pink Pistols, a GLBT gun rights group:

Stallard told me that the â€œPink Pistols has good relations with national gun rights groups.â€ Â Larry Pratt did not think so. Â His views can be summarized thusly: they should not have any rights; but, they do not deserve to be stoned to death.

Pratt began the discussion of gays by stating that â€œhomosexuality is wrong. Â So is adultery.â€ Â He objected to gays pushing gun rights just as he would object to â€œAdulterers for Gun Rights.â€ Â But, Pratt stated that while he objected to Pink Pistols â€œpushing it in my face, they do have a right to be offensive.â€

In the man’s defense, down the page he at least states for certain he doesn’t believe gays should be stoned to death. Regardless of what Pratt may personally think about the Pink Pistols or homosexuality, it’s not really relevant to his organization’s mission, so why talk about it?

McCarthy Still Struggling

Jacob mentions she’s won an editorial board endorsement based on her record for gun control. He alsoÂ and points out her record even on this pet issue is practically non-existent, and completely non-existent on other issues. In addition, Democrats in her district are worried about turnout being low. I’m sincerely hoping the gig is going to be up for McCarthy in a few weeks. That victory would be so sweet it would rot my teeth.

UPDATE: Becker is running campaign ads trying to tie McCarthy to Nancy Pelosi:

Gun Control is For the Birds

Now it is literally. The Center for Biological Diversity is our latest gun control group. “For the children” didn’t work too well. Now we’ll see if “For the Birds” has any better luck. As we’ve said time and again, there are legal problems with replacing lead with other materials in ammunition, in that depending on the material and composition of the bullet, it will magically become “armor piercing,” and thus be illegal for civilian use.

(B) The term `armor piercing ammunition’ means-

(i) a projectile or projectile core which may be used in a handgun and which is constructed entirely (excluding the presence of traces of other substances) from one or a combination of tungsten alloys, steel, iron, brass, bronze, beryllium copper, or depleted uranium; or

(ii) a full jacketed projectile larger than .22 caliber designed and intended for use in a handgun and whose jacket has a weight of more than 25 percent of the total weight of the projectile.

(C) The term `armor piercing ammunition’ does not include shotgun shot required by Federal or State environmental or game regulations for hunting purposes, a frangible projectile designed for target shooting, a projectile which the Secretary finds is primarily intended to be used for sporting purposes, or any other projectile or projectile core which the Secretary finds is intended to be used for industrial purposes, including a charge used in an oil and gas well perforating device.

Unfortunately, I don’t think Jeff Miller gives a birds butt about the legal issues. If this guy gets his way, we’ll only be able to possess ammunition that’s frangible, or under exceptions granted by the feds, or calibers for which there is no handgun made (which is almost none of them). This is a huge can of worms, and Jeff Miller is delusional if he thinks we’re not going to fight him and his group of bird loving hippies every step of the way.

UPDATE: It should be pointed out that hunting in California has not been unharmed, as the CBD is claiming:

Last fall, in the first hunting season after California imposed a ban on lead ammunition in the stateâ€™s condor range, hunting license sales fell considerably after three years of steady gains. In the affected regions, the number of deer hunters dropped nearly 5 percent and hog hunters dropped 15 percentâ€”costing the California Department of Fish and Game more than $200,000 in lost tag fees alone, according to a March 13 story in theÂ San Bernadino Sun.

So Jeff Miller is either ignorant or a liar. You generally can’t win in this issue being honest.