This weekend, reports of increasing demand for concealed carry permits came from Missouri, Ohio, Kentucky, and North Dakota. It’s almost as if people don’t trust that the Democrats in power won’t try to crack down on gun rights.
Category: Guns
Brady Dropped the Ball on The Hill?
There were some real shocking yes votes on the Coburn National Park carry amendment, highlighted in this CQ Politics article:
At least 11 House Democrats (not including freshmen) who have typically sided with gun-control advocates on past votes this time around favored allowing state and local gun laws to take precedence over federal law in national parks.
Those 11 were Reps. Adam Smith of Washington, Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey, Ed Perlmutter of Colorado, Joe Courtney of Connecticut, Gregory W. Meeks of New York, Shelley Berkley of Nevada, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, Hank Johnson of Georgia, Melissa Bean of Illinois, Patrick J. Kennedy of Rhode Island and Diana DeGette of Colorado.
“It was a mistake,†said DeGette’s deputy chief of staff, Kristofer Eisenla.
Meeks said he sided with the NRA “by accident.â€
Several of them are expressing remorse over the vote, but I have to wonder, are things at Brady HQ so dour these days they don’t even have the energy to get someone up to The Hill and get their ducks lined up?  Granted, the votes here wouldn’t have made a difference, but having traditional allies fall out of line doesn’t exactly make your organization look good. Just look at how quickly NRA responded to Bredesen. If you’re an advocacy group, you can’t have your folks wandering off the reservation, even accidentally, especially accidentally. I would have imagined this is something even a phone call to their office should have been able to fix.
Cheer up Brady Campaign. Are things really that bad?  Someday you might have an overwhelmingly Democratic congress, and President in the Oval Office from a gun unfriendly urban stronghold.  Oh wait…
Travel Guide for Hoplophobes
June E-Postal Match: Flying Aces
This is the June edition of Mr. Completely’s E-Postal Matches. Many thanks to Manfred for hosting last e-postal.
My recent play with flight simulators got me in the mood for an aviation themed match this month. The flying ace was any fighter pilot who managed to down five planes over the course of his fighting career. World War I and World War II saw a lot of aces, but in recent years, with the decline of air-to-air combat, we haven’t heard much about flying aces. Our e-postal match this month puts you in the cockpit, and try to take down some planes.
The target for this month’s match is here (click to download):
Many thanks to Bitter for creating the target for me on short notice. Note that this target needs to be printed in landscape. If you try to fit it in portrait mode, it’ll be impossibly difficult.
Rules
Place the target at 10 yards or 25 feet, whichever is available at your range. Your goal is to hit enemy planes and dirigibles around you without shooting your own plane, and see if you can become a flying ace. Fifteen planes means you could be an ace three times over! The large plane in the center is your plane, the smaller ones around it are enemy aircraft. There are fifteen planes on the sheet, and you have 25 shots total for the match, so you can try to hit a plane more than once, but you may not fire more than twenty-five rounds in the match. This is a test of accuracy.
Scoring in this match is a bit unusual, because your goal is to become a flying ace without getting shot down. Each enemy plane hit counts as a single point. If you get five planes, you get an ace bonus, which is to add five points to your total score. If you get ten planes, you get two ace bonus points, and if you get all fifteen three ace bonus points!
But here’s the catch. If you shoot your own plane, you can lose bonus points. Any shot on the wing, guy wires, or tail, and you lose one ace bonus. Any shot landing on the round fuselage part, the landing gear, or the propeller, and you lose all your ace bonus points. This means if you shot all fifteen planes, but hit the propeller, you scored 15 points. If you shot all fifteen planes, but shot the wing, you lose one ace bonus point for a score of 25 points. If you shot all fifteen planes, but shot the wing twice, you lose two ace bonus points for a total of 20 points. Now, if you shot 5 planes, but shot the fuselage, you still have 5 points. Hitting your own plane only causes loss of the ace bonus points. Enemy planes with holes always count for one point. Maximum score is 30 points. Standard scoring rules apply, meaning anything that touches part of the target counts as a hit.
Shooting position for all classes is offhand standing, unsupported, one or two hands allowed.
CLASSES:
CLASS ONE: Rimfire – Iron Sight. Any rimfire handgun with no more than a 12″ barrel. Optical sights such as red dots, lasers, or scopes are not allowed.
CLASS TWO: Rimfire – Optic Sight. Any rimfire handgun with no more than a 12″ barrel. Red dots sights, lasers, or scopes can be used.
CLASS THREE: Centerfire – Iron Sight. Any centerfire handgun with no more than a 12″ barrel. Optical sights such as red dots, lasers, or scopes are not allowed.
CLASS FOUR: Centerfire – Optic Sight. Any centerfire handgun with no more than a 12″ barrel. Red dots sights, lasers, or scopes can be used.
I’ll also score anyone who wants to enter with an air pistol, but e-mail me if you want to do this category. I will be happy to shoot it with someone, so we at least have two entries.
MULTIPLE ENTRIES: One entry will be taken per gun per class, though you may shoot the match as many times as you like, and submit your highest entry. You can make multiple entries in a single class as long as you use a different gun. You can use the same gun in two classes if you add or subtract optics.
Don’t worry if your score is low. This match is meant to be difficult, and will be especially difficult for centerfire pistol shooters. There’s no embarrassment in scoring low, only in not submitting an entry!
Entries should be mailed to snowflakesinhell at gmail dot com by midnight on the 29th of June, which is a Monday. Results will be posted soon after.
Germany Also Solving Non-Problems
One of the provisions of the new German gun laws, passed in response to the mass shooting at a school:
Under the new law, the government plans to increase to 18 from 14 the minimum age at which people can use large-caliber weapons at shooting clubs.
Did the previous killer go berzerk at a shooting club?  What possible relationship does what caliber a kid uses under supervised conditions of a gun club have to do with kids who steal guns from their parents and go on a shooting spree?
Wisconsin DNR Bans Phasers, Coil Guns, for Hunting
CSM Looks at Why Democrats are Relenting on Guns
The Christian Science Monitor looks at why Democrats are retreating from the gun issue, in a very detailed article that talks to a lot of people on all sides. It really comes down to the Democrats having made great strides running people who can win in their districts, and in many cases that means you have to be in favor of the Second Amendment.
BTW, the reporter here is the same one that did the article on gun blogs at the NRA Annual Meeting.  I appreciate that’s he’s continuing to offer fair treatment for the subject, and get views from many different sources.
Where To Stand on Sotomayor
The GOP is pissed the NRA isn’t jumping in head first battling, taking the position:
But a spokesman for the organization said it’s staying on the sidelines for now.
“Right now we have a lot of concerns and questions and we hope to have those addressed during the confirmation hearing and throughout the process,†said Andrew Arulanandam, an NRA spokesman. “As far as our actions, we reserve the right to do anything based on what we find out.
“All options are on the table,†he added. “As we speak today, we’re waiting for the confirmation process. A research team is looking into her record on our issue.â€
No doubt they are also going to be taking a close look at the possible alternatives that would come behind Sotomayor if she is rejected by the Senate. Jim Shepherd thinks she ought to be fought:
Fresh off the win for concealed carry in federal parks, it seems the pro-gun groups are content to take the short-term victory, and let what looks like a losing battle pass without any pushback whatsoever on Judge Sotomayor. This is despite the fact that she has consistently been anti-gun in her decisions. Even in a decidedly thin body of work, her position on firearms has been clear – she’s again’ em for “average folks”
I am not sure Sotomayor is the worst we could get. She is a political choice, meaning she’s intended to please constituencies in the Democratic Party. From the point of view of left-wing legal theory, there are greater legal minds Obama could have picked for the seat, even if it was his intention to nominate a woman. There’s no doubt in my mind that Sotomayor will be a reliable leftist vote on the court, but I don’t think she’ll be an intellectual leader, in the way Justice Stevens has been for example.
My worry in scuttling Sotomayor is what’s behind her, waiting in the wings if she’s not confirmed. Given that, I think caution is prudent. The best we could hope to get out of this administration is that Obama digs up someone who hasn’t said much or anything about the Second Amendment, and they say the right things during the confirmation process.  That, however, is no guarantee they’ll be a pro-gun vote on The Court. In the philosophy of the left-wing legal establishment, there is no room for an individual right to bear arms. That cuts to the heart their very collectivist core. For that reason, I don’t believe we will get a pro-gun Justice out of President Obama, no matter what we do.
The key to saving the Heller majority is ensuring that Barack Obama is a one term president, and I don’t care if that means I have to vote and volunteer for Mitt “The Sh*t” Romney. When the greater evil is an unashamed socialist, any lesser one will do.
UPDATE: See this article by Patrick Ruffini. I think he makes a good case for fighting her nomination, but correctly points out:
Supreme Court fights are inherently elite D.C. fights. Don’t expect voters, even Latino voters, to passionately engage. Most people correctly perceive the Court as being far removed and even irrelevant to their daily life and whether they will keep their job — and that’s as it should be. Has there ever been a mass movement for or against a Court nominee, even a Thurgood Marshall, a Sandra Day O’Connor, or a Clarence Thomas?
I think that’s actually a significant problem for the pro-gun movement, with these kinds of nomination fights. Getting the grass roots fired up (and no, a handful of people on the Internet does not constitute the grass roots. People who read blogs, forums, etc, actually tend to be more in the “elite” crowd discussed here.) is a particular problem. Also keep in mind that Ruffini is speaking from a GOP point of view, and I’m speaking as a single issue activist that has to work with Democrats to survive in this Congress. I agree with Ruffini that the GOP, and gun rights folks, can’t just roll over on Sotomayor’s record, but at the end of the day, there’s other considerations as to whether arms get twisted on the eventual vote.
Guns as a Disease, a Public Health Menace
Kevin Baker points out that the meme is back! I guess they will try all the old tricks in the hopes that something works. I think the gig is up though, at least for the time being.
Are the Brady’s Contaminating the Water in Tennessee?
First Lamar Alexander wanders off and votes against National Park carry, and now Phil Bredesen vetoes the restaurant carry bill. NRA has a statement on it here. Having been in Arizona, which also prohibits carry in any establishment that serves alcohol, it’s a major inconvenience, especially if you don’t have a car.
When we were in Phoenix, we were going to find some lunch with some of the Arizona bloggers, and found a nice place, then realized they had a liquor license. Even though none of us had any intention of drinking, we had to go leave firearms in cars and hotel rooms to avoid running afoul of the law.  Critics of restaurant carry, including Bresdesen, express concern about how the law would be enforced. But wouldn’t that be a concern for concealed carry in general? The whole thing is based on the honor system, which is why it’s stilly to even require licenses in the first place. Only those with honor will participate.