Category: Guns

Loaded chamber indicator.  I agree, they are highly stupid.  They are also dangerous.  Remember the original Mk.III’s that could go off if you dropped them on the LCI? You can’t make guns that are safe in the hands of the ignorant.  The key is educating the ignorant.

Tonight we went to Cabela’s for a bit of random shopping and just to get out of the house. Sebastian wanted to look at a few miscellaneous shooting-related items, and I was happy to learn that I could exchange the shotgun shell Christmas lights in for a set that actually works. (We ordered two strings online, and one didn’t function at all. I was not pleased.) So yay for a Cabela’s trip, right? Uhhh…no. It’s not looking good for shooters who want somewhere to shop in person. Sadly, I think the non-hunting among us can look forward to mostly shopping online at other stores.

1. Missing: Shooting Sports. Sebastian wants to try shooting jackets. Rather than having us wander all around, I always go find a salesperson and ask them because it’s typically faster. However, I made the mistake of assuming that a salesman in the shooting department actually knew there were more shooting sports than just trap. He didn’t even point us to the vests, he took us to the shell pouches and asked if that’s what we wanted. I reminded him a) shooting jacket, b) for competitive shooting. Deer in headlights with a suggestion to look near the back of the camo.
2. Looking for a clue. I asked other salespeople hoping that he was just incompetent. One guy said they didn’t have anything remotely like that which, it turns out was partially true. However, I don’t exactly have full faith in their customer service at this point. A woman I spoke with said they don’t carry much of that type of stuff anymore. She actually gave me the most information, even noting that shooting pads and many of the other supplies for non-shotgun shooting sports were mostly catalog and online items now. They apparently weren’t very profitable in the stores. (Sebastian is instead going to take a nicer quality shooting vest that I had from a shotgun shoot and see if he can make that work for now.)
3. Christmas lights. I wanted to return the Christmas lights that didn’t work. This is great. Remember to have about 10-30 minutes to spare if you need to go to the customer service desk. Every time we go, they are understaffed and the front line staff have managers interrupting them every few minutes so that they can’t get customers out quickly. (Hint: When more people are getting in line, it may not be the best time to start shutting down registers.) But good luck finding the holiday decor. Normally, it would be easily found along the major aisles, but not this time. Instead it was scattered into various little corners. And the lights? Not anywhere that I could find. That’s because the Christmas lights were in their own little corner. But then it gets better because it turns out that the shotgun shell Christmas lights are not 50% like all of the other holiday home decor. Our cashier informs us that since we could use them for things like camping, they are clearly not Christmas lights. Continue reading “Cabela’s Sends Competence and Selection Out the Door”

Matt Carmel, the inventor of the Palm Pistol, got a pretty fair shake in this story from a Fox affiliate out in Colorado. He believes that the registration was canceled because of politics surrounding the Second Amendment.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms classified it as a standard pistol, but inventor Matthew Carmel wanted to spread the word to senior citizens. So he spoke with the FDA and was advised to register his company as a manufacturer of medical devices and list the pistol as a “daily activity assist device.”

On Monday, the FDA said it had determined the Palm Pistol was “not a medical device,” the Associated Press reported.

Carmel said, “I would assume it’s due to political pressure…I most certainly do see this as a Second Amendment issue.”

There’s also a poll on whether or not the Palm Pistol should be considered a medical device.  So far, the results are only about 21% in Matt’s favor.  So go click through and tell them what you think.