Guns – Page 646 – Shall Not Be Questioned

New Jersey Finally Wises Up

They are instituting a bear hunt in New Jersey for the first time in five years. This is badly needed. There are many groups, including HSUS, the Sierra Club, and the North Jersey based BEAR group. They are already filing a lawsuit to try to stop the hunt. This is going to be a doozy for the folks who decide to do the bear hunt. Animal rights activists are a lot battier than even the battiest anti-gun activists. Expect the PSH to be particularly flowing and smelly on this issue.Â So fierce we might have to suggest one of these to animal rights activists, along with this handy chart.

HSUS claims that people hunt bears for trophies and nothing more. This is false. Otherwise how do you explain bear recipes here, here, here, and here. This is just the tip of the iceberg. And the great part about bear is you get a nice rug when you’re done with all the bearÂ recipes. How often do you get a free rug when you stock up on meat at the local Sam’s Club?

AWB Moving Again in Illinois

Daley and his Chicago machine are going to be eager to pass this to get back at gun owners. How dare we stand up for our rights! He’ll make the downstate rubes pay for this one! Todd Vandermyde is making the argument, and it’s a good argument, that the several firearms manufacturers that are located in Illinois will leave the state if this passes. It’ll also shut down high-power competition in the state. Hopefully this can be defeated, but it’s amazing to me the IL legislature is willing to ignore a seven thousand plus rally at the State Capitol. If we turned out those kinds of numbers at our Harrsiburg rally, our politicians would crap themselves in fear. I guess when you’ve been gaming the system as long as the Daley crew have, you get a certain amount of arrogant cockiness about you.

Another L&S Ordinance

We had no warning of this one before it passed in Conshohocken. MAIG is getting very good at sneaking these things in before we have a chance to react. They are depending on that, in fact, because when we show up and make a case against the ordinances, and point out that they are unlawful, we’ve generally been winning. This round goes to Max Nacheman, Bloomberg’s hired gun, but it’s worth noting that he can only win by subverting the democratic process and trying to sneak these ordinances in under the radar before we have a chance to organize and respond. This is how these people operate. If they can’t beat us by using above board tactics, they’ll beat us by being sneaky weasels. If you live in Conshohocken, I’d be sure to give your elected officials trouble over this. Show up at the next meeting and demand to know why they passed an illegal ordinance without any public notice.Â You can find contact information here.

UPDATE: I’ve corrected the record. All pro-gun channels were silent on this town, and I heard nothing in the media about it. These are the traditional channels through which we find out. As it turns out, this was put on the agenda in the February Borough Council meeting, and we missed it. MAIG has paid resources to identify and target towns to try to pass this ordinance. We rely on volunteers to keep us abreast of happenings, and sometimes these kinds of things slip by without notice. So I apologize for the accusation that there was no public notice, but Max Nacheman and Bloomberg are still weasels ;)

Indoor Steel

Mr. Completely is preparing to once again head to the European Steel Championship in Holland. What intrigues me is that the entire event is conducted at an indoor shooting range. It looks like they surround the steel with a ring that would appear to prevent ricochet and splatter. I actually talked to Mr. C. about this in Reno, and he assured me you could step up a steel course on an indoor range that was safe,. The Dutch certainly seem to be doing it! Given that Steel Challenge competition rules don’t require draw from holster for rimfire, it’s at least one speed game we might be able to do at my club if people could be convinced it could be done safely. When I tired Steel Challenge out at the Gun Blogger Rendezvous in Reno, it sure was a lot of fun.

A Perennial Issue

Sailorcurt is not alone in his disappointment that NRA has picked an off limits venue for the Annual Meeting. I would obviously rather be at a venue that allows carry as well, and this has been a constant complaint I’ve heard from members. It was nice in Kentucky and Phoenix because it was allowed. But NRA has competing interests to deal with in this regard.

NRA moves its Annual Meeting every year so that every once in a while, if you’re an NRA member, one will be coming to your neighborhood and you’ll have an opportunity to attend. They try to have it in places where as many NRA members as possible are within the radius of a day’s drive. Because the NRA Annual Meeting draws approximately 60,000 to 70,000 people, prominent political figures, a fair amount of media, and has some very significant space requirements, the number of venues that are capable of handling it is very limited, and it’s getting more limited as the meeting gets larger. For instance, Phoenix’s convention center is brand new and was built large enough to handle a convention of our size, and that opened that city up as a possibility which NRA took advantage of last year. We set a record for the largest single meal ever served in the history of Arizona. The Annual Members Banquet drew, if I recall, something like 6000 people.

The fact is there just aren’t that many venues scattered around the country that can handle a convention that large, with NRA’s room and space requirements, that also don’t have issues with carry. NRA’s alternative would be to always have the convention in Pittsburgh, Louisville, Houston and Phoenix. That would be great for people who carry, but would kind of suck for people who would never get to go because there was never any venue that was good enough.

I would also consider that the amount of money NRA brings to an area is not an inconsiderable incentive to improve laws in an area. Governor Jan Brewer, at the Phoenix Convention, announced support for cleaning up the restaurant carry situation while we were in Phoenix, and it wasn’t that long after we left that we had a fix. If we go back to Phoenix, that’s going to be nice not to have to deal with having to run back to the hotel to dump off a gun because you go to a place for lunch that serves alcohol, even if you don’t plan on drinking. I’m not saying we’ll be able to repeat that performance with North Carolina, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility. If politicians are impressed enough with the amount of money we bring into the region, and the positive publicity we get for their convention center (a favorite pork project of state level pols everywhere), they just might come asking what they have to do to get us to come back.

Just some things to keep in mind before getting angry about the situation. Nobody really likes it, but choices are limited, and someone is going to end up getting stiffed one way or another, no matter which direction you go.

Knowledge vs. Skill

Many people who are unfamiliar with firearms, which includes many people who work or volunteer for gun control organizations, don’t really understand shooting as a skill. They tend to want to treat is as knowledge. Knowledge is beneficial, but it can’t make one a proficient and safe shooter. I’ve spent my whole life in pursuit of some form of skill based discipline at one time or another, and I find shooting to be most accurately compared to playing the piano, in terms of what it takes to achieve proficiency. Actually, piano is much much harder, but it’s learned the same way, just piano takes much more self-discipline to master.

I took concert piano from the time I was four years old until my junior year in college. I was far more proficient at that than I am, and probably ever will be at shooting. But ask me to play something now, and I’d be lucky to clunk out the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata (if you listen to the Wikipedia recordings of it, they are appalling, just to warn you). At one time, I could play all three movements. The last piece of music I ever played in public was this one, my junior year in college. I couldn’t even begin to play it now, despite a working knowledge of the piece, knowledge of how keys are laid out on the piano, what the pedals do, and knowledge on how to read sheet music. Why? Because when I quit piano, I really quit. I never went back to it, and that skill I spent all those years building up has been purged from whatever part of my brain controls muscle memory. Granted, if I picked the piano up again, I would pick up the skill much faster than someone who had never played piano, as my brain rebuilt all those connections from long term memory.

Shooting is the same. I can spend an afternoon and give someone enough knowledge to go out and become a safe shooter, and that’s really all training can do. Shooting, and shooting safely, is a skill. Skills must be practiced, over and over again, until they are muscle memory. Firearms training is a good thing, because it can impartÂ knowledge, and help you on your way to skill, just like piano lessons can help you learn how to play piano. But proficiency, and safety in the case of shooting, are entirely up to the person to develop. If you aren’t committed, and don’t practice, you’ll never be any good at either piano playing or shooting.

Some might try to argue that this means no one except police should carry a firearm, but police aren’t immune to this problem either, and many of us who’ve been shooting long enough have a story about cops at the range who have appalling shooting skills and gun handling practices. And those are the ones who at least practice some! Imagine how bad the ones are who only ever shoot their qualifier? I can put someone in training for twenty or forty hours, and I won’t make a good shooter. I can promise you over that time they will improve, but that won’t last long once they head out the door if they aren’t committed to polishing and maintaining the skill on their own.

This is why I say training is a good idea, but shouldn’t necessarily be a requirement. I think we should teach the basic knowledge of gun and shooting safety in schools as part of PE requirements. But I am about as much in agreement that legally mandating a training requirement for firearms ownership or carry will result in safe and proficient shooters as I am that mandating taking a piano lesson as a condition to buying a piano will result in more concert pianists. People who believe that don’t get the difference betweenÂ knowledgeÂ and skill.

I can almost hear the gun control crowd now, “But Sebastian, aren’t you concerned with all those people who might carry a gun and have no idea what they doing with it?” No more than I worry about cops. The people who will end up carrying regularly are going to be, far more often than not, the people who are committed and serious about their skills. The person who gets a permit for the macho/cool factor or some other bad reason is going to very quickly tire of it once the novelty wears off, and once they realize that carrying a gun around with you is a pain in the ass. Most people who get toters permits don’t stick with it, and even if they renew their permits, they aren’t carrying very often if at all. It makes sense even in a musical context. If you see a guy on the subway every morning with a violin case, I’m going to bet you serious money he can play. He might not be Itzhak Perlman, but I’m going to bet he can play well. He wouldn’t be carrying it if he wasn’t committed. I’d be willing to take the same bet with a guy who carries a gun every day on the subway too.

Response from Insight Firearms Training Development

Go see over at Michael Bane’s. It doesn’t help make me feel any better. Especially this:

We are supporters of the Second Amendment and are not against peopleÂ exercising that right. We also believe that every Right has a correspondingÂ Duty. We believe training may very well be a key factor in retaining orÂ losing the very right our Second Amendment provides. We applaud those whoÂ have willingly sought out training on their own to become educated on gunÂ ownership.

That being said, as firearms instructors we see many students come into ourÂ courses for training who have no clue or idea what the laws (both StateÂ Statutes and case law) are in regards to owning or using a firearm in selfÂ defense or any other purpose, let alone how to safely and properly handle orÂ store their firearms. We feel that it is the informed and knowledge gunÂ owners who will play an important role in allowing us to protect our SecondÂ Amendment Rights, not those who choose to remain ignorant of theÂ responsibilities that come with that right. ItÂ¹s sad to say, but there areÂ many in our society who will not seek appropriate training on their own.Â ItÂ¹s those who choose not to get training, act negligently and make stupidÂ careless mistakes, who are the greatest threat to protecting our SecondÂ Amendment Rights. Mandated training is not the enemy, yet, it could play aÂ very important role in saving our rights in the long run. Therefore in orderÂ to protect our rights we will support mandated training whenever it isÂ available.

This is like a love letter to the Brady Campaign. They support making exercising of your right conditional on training. How much training is enough? Do I have to take four hours? If four hours is great, twelve would surely be fantastic. If twelve is fantastic why not forty? Why not limit the right to anyone who hasn’t gone thorough police academy? Why not require it for every gun you buy, just to make sure you stay fresh, and all.

Insight wants to make sure no one bothers to become a gun owner. They do not want the option of gradual introduction into the culture. What they propose will destroy our numbers and our political power right along with it. Once you make gun ownership a priestly class, it will cease to exist as a right issue, and as a political issue. There will not be enough gun owners left to preventÂ tighteningÂ the ratchet. In effect, Insight are slitting their own throat, and ours along with it, by signing on to this. If you live in Arizona, and need training, I would take your business elsewhere.

I am not against training. I think it’s valuable. But if it had been a requirement prior, I would not be a gun owner today, and you would not be reading any of this. I was not unfamiliar with firearms when I bought a gun. I was introduced, or reintroduced into shooting in my mid-20s by a friend who took me out shooting, and I used his firearms before I bought my own. After some initialÂ guidanceÂ to break a few bad habits I had, I decided to buy my own guns. I enjoyed my time on the range, but I was not committed to getting back into shooting at this point. If there had been hoops to jump through, I doubt I would have.

Once I got my own guns and started practicing, I started to really enjoy it, and got more committed to the sport. But I did not seek out formal training until I started carrying.Â Though it is not required in Pennsylvania, training is a good idea. But it’s not the end all be all, and the reason is because of the kind of skill shooting is. I’ll explain that later.

Teaching the Other Side About Protesting

Thirdpower shows Abby Spangler what a protest is supposed to look like.

Mitt the Panderer

Jeff Soyer notes that Mitt is a panderer. Ask Bitter about Mitt. She had to live under him in Massachusetts, and being very involved with the pro-gun community there, is decidedly not a Mitt fan. The thing is, though, that all politicians are panderers. You really don’t have that many true believers out there among politicians. Everything is up for negotiation depending on where there’s money and votes. But you want your pandering politician to be a rational actor. The problem with a guy like Mitt is, you never know when he’s going to double cross you.

In the end, I don’t care if a politician only agrees with my policy preferences out of rational self-interest rather than true conviction. But I do care whether or not he can be relied on. That’s one reason I’m very wary of Michael Fitzpatrick getting his political careerÂ resurrectedÂ by the Bucks County GOP. Â Fitzpatrick was one of those guys that never really got tested, and I have a lot of reason to believe he wouldn’t be reliable when push comes to shove. Mitt has a lot of work to do to convince gun owners. So does Fitz.

You Can Blame Lawyers

The Brady Campaign asks why Starbucks allows customers to carry guns, but doesn’t allow employees. That’s a good question. I think they should allow their employees to carry if they are legally entitled to do so! But I have no plan to make that part of this debate. A restaurant can rule its employees have to wear a uniform if they want to, even though it would be absurd to demand the same thing of customers. There’s a difference between customers and employees. But you can blame a lot of this on lawyers.

The primary reason that businesses have weapons policies is CYA. Businesses are far less liable for the actions of their customers than they are for the actions of employees when on the job acting as agents of the corporation. This doesn’t have much specifically to do with guns, it’s just a general fact. Your company has far moreÂ liabilityÂ issues if you get into an accident driving a company car on company business than they would be if you hit someone on the way to work in your own vehicle. That doesn’t necessarily say anything about the danger of driving.Â It doesn’t have to make sense to get a jury award. Juries are sucker for a sympathetic client and a big, rich corporation. If that wasn’t the case, John Edwards never would have been rich enough to pay off a staffer to take the fall for a baby he sired with his mistress.

It comes down to this. If a pizza delivery guy pops an armed robber, we’d all completely agree that he was acting in self-defense, and that such an act would not be a misuse of firearms. But suppose the family of the armed robber decides to sue the pizza shop? What if the pizza shopÂ allowed their employee to be armed? Doesn’t that make the shop more liable? For a mom and pop shop, they probably value the lives of their employee (often a relative) more than they worry about being sued. They have insurance for that anyway. But for a large chain pizza joint, they have entire HR departments that fret and worry about how the company may get sued. They get blamed for stuff like that, especially if an HR policy, or lack of one, becomes an issue in a lawsuit. Corporate HR departments are risk averse and veryÂ eagerÂ to avoid blame for anything. Blame in a lawsuit is far worse than dealing with a dead employee, who quite honestly, has more of a case against the armed robber than they do against the employer. Corporate HR would also like to inform your family of the wonderful death benefit they provide for employees.

The fact is that the life of an employee means far less to a big corporation than than the possibility of a giant lawsuit, especially one that results in finger pointing at corporate headquarters. They might make a public face about being concerned about violence in the workplace, but the real concern is liability. Everyone knows that someone intent on violence isn’t going to suddenly remember the corporate policy and change his mind. That’s the elephant in the room. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is having a workplace violence policy that forbids employees from having effective means of self-defense shields the corporation from liability for an employee acting in self-defense. Dead employees are an acceptable sacrifice on that altar. You can blameÂ lawyers.