The difference between the “last winner” and the “first loser” for a board seat last year was 1,664 votes. The last winner’s name was selected on approximately 63% of the valid ballots.
Your vote can make a difference!
Category: Guns
Helmke vs. Feldman, Part III
UPDATE: Feldman says:
Finally, Paul, I never said I favored background checks on all gun transfers. It’s no wonder the NRA leadership doesn’t want to meet with you — it could cost them their jobs. I stated very clearly that I support instant criminal background checks at gun shows where sellers do not know who the buyer is — and only at gun shows. Last year, I sold an AR-15 rifle to my buddy in Vermont; he’s a former Chittenden County prosecutor. I know who he is. There are four kinds of people to whom I might ever sell guns outside a gun show: a friend, a neighbor, a relative or a co-worker. In each case, I know the person, period. If your “gun show loophole bill” overreaches to everyone at all times, I’m dead-set against it. It wouldn’t work, would create another bureaucracy and would put off those already suspicious of your real motives because you aren’t limiting the solution to the actual problem: sellers who don’t know the buyers.
The only guns I’ve ever sold are to people I know. Regardless, I don’t agree that a “gun show only” bill is acceptable, because gun shows have never been shown to be a serious problem in terms of availability of firearms for criminal purposes. I don’t think that is a smart trade.
If the Brady Campaign wants a compromise on the issue, they can work on making the NICS system more available to people other than FFLs. Anti-Gun folks would probably do a lot more than bellowing nonsense if they set up booth at guns shows, and ran free NICS checks for anyone who asked, no questions asked. No gun owner wants to sell a gun to a criminal or a whack job, but we don’t want to be forced to go through the FFL dance either. We’d use a free system voluntarily, if it just gave a thumbs up or thumbs down. If the Brady Campaign is really concerned, what could be the objection to a system like this?
Smallbore Shooting is For Everyone
Local Montana papers promote the shooting sports while the rest of the media is busy trying to destroy them:
Unless you are actually involved in the sport of shooting, you may not realize that there are five smallbore shooting clubs in the area; Pondera Valley, Brady, Ledger, Valier and one in Shelby.
The are made up of men, women, and students that thrive and participate in a lifetime sport. The sport is also handicap accessible, especially when the new Shooting Club building is complete just north of town.
What you’ll really love is where they have some of their competitions:
Right now the local shooters use the basement of the Brady Community Center, which has five lanes for firing. Ledger Community Hall has five lanes as well, Valier has six and the Shelby Club has eight lanes.
Shooting in the Brady Community Center? I think I knew where I’m moving when I retire!
Boston Globe Highlights Preserve Hunting
One of HSUS’s big targets is preserve hunting, where they try to make it sound like you’re shooting these caged up animals. The sad thing is, other hunters join in condemning this.  The Boston Globe article actually manages to be pretty balanced:
abral shot a hairy Russian boar inside the Hillside Game Ranch, 400 acres enclosed by a 6-foot wire fence in this speck of a town between Bangor and Calais. It is one of 11 big-game shooting preserves that operate with little notice in northern New England, drawing people with the promise of killing a European red stag, say, or American buffalo, held within the compound.
Four hundred acres is hardly what I’d call confined. If you look at the descriptions of how people are hunting in these preserves, it looks an awful lot like hunting outside of these preserves:
The camouflage-clad Cabrals climbed into a tree hunting stand, knelt down, and silently waited. Mulgrew climbed into one a few hundred feet away.
And now, you have hunters who are siding with the animal rights whack jobs:
Nuse is president of Orion – The Hunter’s Institute, a Montana-based group dedicated to the preservation of ethical hunting. The group supported a 2000 ban on captive hunting in that state.
“Is it the same as wild hunting? Absolutely not,” said William Hart of Pembroke, an avid hunter in the wild and in game parks. “But there are people who have huge mortgages and not a lot of time, but they want to hunt . . . so they go to the game preserves.”
HSUS is using the same tactics on hunting that the anti-gun groups used on assault weapons. Divide one politically weak portion of the community away from the main body, destroy it, and then go back and do the same. Repeat until you have what you want: total prohibition. Unless hunters bind together, and stand up for all lawful hunting, they are finished. HSUS will succeed in what they are trying to do.
I don’t think there is anything unethical about hunting on a large game preserve, provided the animals are free to move about, and the hunts are in accordance with standard practices. If we can raise animals on a farm for slaughter, I don’t see the problem with raising animals to be hunted. If you outlaw one, how long before HSUS begins questioning the other?
Jack Weaver Dead at 80
On a completely unrelated note, the shooting world lost one of its best-known names last week. Former Los Angeles County Deputy Jack Weaver, 80, died Tuesday in Carson City. Weaver, for those of you not familiar with the name, is the man for whom the Weaver Shooting Stance is named.
A Very Special Reminder
For the next week or so, reminders will be popping up to make sure people mail in their NRA Board Election ballots. These reminders come from some of our favorite people. We do hope everyone will consider our endorsements for the NRA Board Election, and check out our interviews with the candidates that can be found at the link above. Your vote only counts if the ballot arrives by April 26th, so get them in the mail.
And Now It’s 60 Minutes
I just watched 60 minutes short segment on the Great Obama Gun Rush. It’s pretty clear to me at this point that the media is doing everything it possibly can to bring gun control back into the public spotlight, and create a favorable environment for the Democratic Congress to pass it. Gun Geek Rants has a pretty good run down of the show.
It featured Philip Van Cleave, President of Virginia Citizens Defense Leauge. I thought he handled himself well, for it being a hostile interview. The only problems I saw with his performance was nit picky stuff like using “guns” in the context of “These politicians are good for guns” rather than “These politicians are good on Second Amendment Rights.” We should be careful to remind people that this issue isn’t about guns, it’s about freedom. It’s about the Bill of Rights. These are things that everyone generally agrees it’s important to preserve.
UPDATE: Michael Bane notes that Newsweek is in on the gun control game too.
The Endowment Member Gift
NRA finally got my endowment member gift to me a few weeks ago. We’re cleaning up today and putting everything in its place. The problem is, where to put the endowment member gift. You can see my dilemma below:
It’s a lovely knife. It would be nice to put it on display. But it’s also a weapon, and I don’t particularly relish the idea of performing a Tueller Drill half asleep at three O’Clock in the morning because a home invader has decided to arm himself with my commemorative NRA Endowment knife. I don’t like to leave functional weapons laying around the house.
I figure I have two choices. Epoxy the knife to the display rack, so that it can’t be easily removed, or mount it on the wall in the bedroom. I don’t know if I honestly want a knife mounted in my bedroom. I liked the civil war bullet set I got for the Life membership. Unless a burglar brings along an 1861 Sprinfield, there’s not much that can be done with that.
Not that I don’t like the knife, but can you imagine the headline? So I would suggest to NRA gifts that are a bit more, shall we say, inert. How about an NRA commemorative deactivated 5 inch naval shell? I could put that right by the fireplace!
You Know You’re a Gun Nut …
As you can see there is lots of empty space in this underground garage. And with the aid of my trusty laser range finder I found places where it was 345 yards from wall to wall. It’s not really practice for Boomershoot (minimum range is 375 yards) but it’s close. And it’s would be better than anything else within 20 miles or so.
I was discussing this with some Microsoft friends at lunch the other day and they had a concern about the ceiling height. As the range gets longer the midrange height of the bullet gets larger too. Would people start hitting the ceiling beams? In particular Jim was concerned about using a 45-70 which has a trajectory resembling artillery.
It’s a valid concern. With a 340 yard zero a typical .45-70 cartridge is going to have a midrange height of over 50 inches. My AR-15 shooting it’s favorite ammo is going to have only a 7.1 inch midrange height. And my .300 Win Mag would have only have a midrange height of 6.3 inches.
Go over and see Joe’s dream indoor range. It certainly looks the part. We have significant unoccupied space in our building too, and I’ve thought it would make a great air gun range, or even a smallbore range if you could get the right backstop. We have a good 45 yards inside in the unoccupied part. Joe is more of a long range shooter than I am, and his preferred targets a bit more, shall we say, reactive. Thus his dreams are bigger too :)
ABC 20/20 Hatchet Job
Sensibly Progressive has a great run down of the 20/20 special, which basically informs us that we’re all way too stupid to defend ourselves with a firearm.
UPDATE: More from VSSA:
We’re only ten minutes in to this and it is very clear that the theme of the program is that ordinary citizens are not prepared to use a firearm in self defense. They give several hours of training to three students at a small college then put them in a scenario to see how they react. Predictably, they fail.
And put them in a scenario as a trained shooter, namely a police instructor. They should have put them up against another untrained person. This is an excellent timeline from Found: One Troll:
Active shooter breaks in and Jimmy is unable to draw his sidearm from under his concealing sweatshirt. Looks like he needed more practice. Jimmy is shot and “killed†before he can draw. Jimmy did not seek concealment behind his desk. Sawyer trots out the canard that Jimmy could have been disarmed by the active shooter, his own gun used against the other students after he falls. The active shooter is a police officer and firearms instructor, trained and experienced in shooting while moving and recognizing threats. Not a realistic simulation, it seems to me.
Definitely not realistic. If a highly trained individual goes ape shit, the body count is going to be high, and even trained police officers are going to have difficulty taking him down. Also, the person playing the role of crazed shooter expected resistance. A real shooter will not be. But it does bring up an important point: you have to be better than the person you’re going up against, and what I’ve long suggested to get better is training and competition, particularly practical shooting.