Guns – Page 640 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Gun Control on Defensive in Canada

They are fast approaching the final vote to repeal the long gun registry in Canada. The gun control groups there are doing everything they can to prevent it from happening. To me the greatest argument against the registry is the cost, and the fact that it diverts law enforcement resources from catching actual criminals toÂ bureaucraticÂ administrative functions that have little or nothing to do with catching criminals and preventing crime. Canada’s number look somewhat similar to ours in this respect:

There are nearly 7 million registered long guns in Canada, the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics reports. Yet, the public safety department adds, of 2,441 homicides recorded in Canada since mandatory long-gun registration was introduced in 2003, fewer than 2Â percent (47) were committed with rifles and shotguns known to have been registered.

So we’re talking two percent of homicides. Imagine if the billions of dollars the registry cost were instead spent on increasing the number of police on the streets of Canada’s major cities?

Crazies Didn’t Used to Get Licenses

This big story in the Washington Post is that a Washington man was charged with threatening to kill Senator Patty Murray over her vote on health care. It has implications for us:

Wilson has a .38-caliber revolver registered to him and has a concealed weapons permit, Woodbury wrote.

You know, it used to be the really hard-core anti-government whack jobs didn’t get concealed carry licenses, because they didn’t want to be on “some government list”, or didn’t want to have to go beg to “the man.” Â I yearn for those good old days.

Afraid of the People

Clayton Cramer is co-author on a law review article in George Mason Law Review. The title is â€œThis Right Is Not Allowed By Governments That Are Afraid Of The Peopleâ€: The Public Meaning of the Second Amendment When the Fourteenth Amendment Was Ratified. Go have a read.

Cleaning and Lubrication Tips from NSSF

NSSF is producing some interesting videos helping people maintain their firearms. This is one of them:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uZTM6WnICY[/youtube]

It’s a great service, I think, because a common mistake gun owners make isÂ over-lubricatingÂ their guns. I will admit, when I was a beginner gun owner, I used WD-40 to lubricate a gun, which catches fire once it gets hot enough. One advantage to having a Kalashnikov as your first gun is it’ll take pretty much all the abuse you can throw at it with beginner mistakes.

Remington Golden Bullets

Tam speaks the truth. I bought several boxes because they are cheap, and I still have most of them. They take the joy out of shooting because they jam up my 10/22, Mk.II and Mk.III. It’s worth it to pay a few extra bucks for quality ammo.

Obama the Gun Salesman

We’ve all seen the jokes about how Obama is “salesman” of the year for most gun shops in the country. We’ve seen the consistent reports about high gun sales since mid-2008. We’ve felt our wallets grow lighter due to higher prices caused by this short supply. The ammo shelves, while not bare anymore, hasn’t exactly been flush in the last few years. Primers? Heh, good luck because reloading didn’t even save folks from the surge in demand.

But how is this for perspective: All of the top 10 months for NICs checks – save two – have been since it became obvious that Obama would win the election.

November 2008 1,529,635

Notable Event: Obama Election

December 2008 1,523,426

Notable Event: More of the nation realizing the new president’s buddies are former terrorists.

December 2009 1,407,155

Notable Event: It’s Christmas & Obama is still president.

March 2009 1,345,096

Notable Event: Eric Holder announces renewed push for gun bans.

March 2010 1,300,100

Notable Event: Pelosi announces she no longer expects to hold actual “votes” in Congress anymore.

February 2009 1,259,078

Notable Event: January’s paycheck went to pay off all of the holiday gift bills. Holiday gifts included many guns & stockings full of ammo, as shown by the 2nd highest NICS month.

December 2006 1,253,840

Notable Event: Democrats take back the House of Representatives & Nancy Pelosi is announced as Speaker-elect in the weeks after the election.

December 1999 1,253,354

Notable Event: I have absolutely no idea. The only thing I can figure out is that it was about this time that media attention was shifting to Al Gore’s candidacy and the start of the Democratic primaries. (I don’t remember December of 1999 too well. I was in college & I had mono that month. I drank until finals, crammed until I flew home, and then slept for the rest of the month.)

February 2010 1,243,211

Notable Event: Obama is still president, and he really starts to twist the arms on health care. Many to start to wonder what is next on his agenda.

October 2009 1,233,982

Notable Event: Obama is still president.

Thanks to NSSF for this data. Â I love random facts. Â If any of you can think of other notable events in these months (or in the few days before the month) that might have influenced sales, feel free to add them in the comments.

UN Filing Trace Requests?

According to NSSF, apparently the UN believes they have lawful authority to demand manufacturers turn over information about guns they have sold. Manufacturers and Dealers are required to run trace requests at the request of their regulating agency, which is the ATF. The UN is not the H&K USA’s regulating agency, last I checked; all they can do is ask nicely. If you look at the PDF of the UN request, you will note in the bottom right corner a request to “Please Recycle” which is exactly what I’d do with this “trace request” if I were the manufacturer.

More L&S Ordinances

NRA is alerting on Baldwin Borough as the next jurisdiction considering Lost and Stolen, which is in Western Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. CeaseFire PA and MAIG had concentrated their resources here in the Southeast recently, so now it looks like we’re seeing some action in the western part of the state again. It should be noted that the Mayor of Baldwin Borough is a member of MAIG, which has been the case with most towns that take up these illegal ordinances.

Turning to the VPC

I decided to look at the VPC finances to see how they were doing. The last time I checked them out was nearly 3 years ago! How could I have let so much time pass without checking in our pals Josh and Kristen? Only this time, I think the only way to fully express their situation is in a graph.

You can actually see Josh drove them in the hole to the tune of more than $40,000 in 2006. I guess that’s when Helmke drew all the gun control donations back to the Brady Campaign. At the end of 2008, the reserves he has built back up are still less than his salary for one year. Between 2002 and 2008, their reserves are down by 86% and revenues are down by 47%. What board of directors allows this to go on? I can’t fathom that any leader of any organization I’ve worked with would be allowed to stay on if they delivered the same kind of performance. Regardless, lead on, Josh! Heckuva job!

Even with this very handy overview of their finances, it doesn’t tell the real story of VPC’s changes over the years. For that, I realize we needed one more data point. So I fixed it.

The Gun Culture

Michael Bane has a very excellent post on where the shooting culture has gone, and how the industry has consistently still remained stuck in a hunting mentality. He talks about a suggestion he made here:

In a white paper several years back I argued for a 2-tier recruitment and retention system for the industry and the culture. My argument was that for newcomers participation in formal and informal shooting sports faced 1 major barrier, purchase of a firearm, while participation in hunting had 2 major barriers, purchase of a firearm and killing an animal. Rather than pour huge amounts of money into a 2-barrier jump hunter recruitment with what amounted to very low success rates, I suggested we put the lions’ share of the money into recruitment for target shooting (both formal and informal), focusing on self-defense as the primary driver, and get them past Barrier 1. THEN create a mentoring system â€” which has been repeatedly shown to work very well â€” to introduce newcomers who got past the first barrier to the sport of hunting.

I think he’s essentially correct in this, and my experience, the second barrier to get into hunting is far far higher than the first. I am someone who would be willing to go exactly the path Michael is describing. I got into the shooting culture through the first path, and would be willing to make the second jump to hunting. The problem? You have to take hunters education to obtain a hunting license in most states, and hunters education is a multi-day course. Generally speaking you have to be willing to give up a weeknight and weekend day to complete it.

My time is not exactly plentiful, and this represents a fairly significant barrier for me, all things considering. Sure, maybe if I disrupting the blogging schedule for a few days, or took a few days off work, I could get it done. But my interest in hunting is pretty peripheral. I would like to try it, but I’m not driven to try it. But I can tell you for sure if I had not come into the shooting culture at all my interest would be pretty close to zero.

I could be pushed over the number two barrier, given sufficient motivation, which perhaps I will get at some point. I think Michael’s two part strategy is a reasonable one if the industry wants to keep hunting alive.