Category: Guns

Positive Article in LA Times on Open Carry

Sometimes the media can be fair to us.  They are very right about this statement:

Most of the time people don’t notice Jensen’s gun. That’s not uncommon, said John Pierce, a law student and computer consultant in Virginia who is a co-founder of OpenCarry.org.

“People are carrying pagers, BlackBerrys, cellphones,” Pierce said. “They see a black lump on your belt and their eyes slide off.”

I’ve often had people ask me why I carry, like it’s some kind of great burden.  In most cases, people just have a gut reaction to the idea.  It’s not that they are afraid, though some are, it’s more that they tend to assume “Well, normal people don’t do that.  Why would anyone want to carry a gun around with them?”

Reality is I find a gun to be far less of a burden to carry than a cell phone or a Blackberry.   For one, the gun doesn’t bug me regularly to pay attention to it.  It’s a passive device.  For two, I can’t count the number of cell phone clips I’ve broken by clipping it in doorways or againts walls.  I’ve had my Glock do the same, and I think the doorway is getting damaged before the Glock.  It’s made to last.  Thirdly, I don’t have to worry about whether my Glock is charged sufficiently to make it through the rest of the day, and I’ve never had to scramble around looking for an outlet because it went dead unexpectedly.  Of course, if the Brady Campaign gets its way, we’ll all be carrying around smart guns that barely work and has all the same burdens as a cell phone.

The electronics we carry around are quite a burden if you think about it.  A gun, comparitively, doesn’t see much day to day use, but if you do need one, you really need one, and I’ve always been one to err on the side of caution.

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Blaming Pennsylvania Again

In the Trentonian yesterday: “Jersey gun problem PA’s fault”:

New Jersey’s biggest obstacle to controlling gun-related crimes could be the state of Pennsylvania, according to federal data analyzed by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

The vast majority of gun crimes committed in Jersey involve guns that were sold from another state, and most of those recovered firearms came from the Keystone State in 2007.

This data, compiled by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, show that only 27.9 percent of crime guns recovered last year in New Jersey came from Garden State dealers. Of the 1,467 out-of-state crime guns seized by law-enforcement agencies in Jersey last year, most of them (285) originated from Pennsy gun dealers.

Of course, what they don’t mention is that most gun shops in New Jersey have closed down due to the opporessive gun regulations in that state.  The shooting and hunting culture in that state has all but been completely extinguished by regulations that can land you seven years in prison by stopping at a Dunkin Donuts drivethrough on the way back from the range for a cup of coffee.

They don’t have to make guns illegal if they just make owning them so legally risky that no one bothers, except the criminals.   Now they want to do the same thing to Pennsylvania; to destroy its hunting and shooting culture, and close down thousands of gun shops in the state.   No thanks.   The end result will still be criminals getting guns, they will just smuggle them from somewhere else.

People like Bryan Miller won’t stop until they destroy the second amendment.  They might not destroy it outright, but they can destroy it through attrition.  It happened in New Jersey, and we can’t let it happen here.

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Pro-Gun Bills Up for Vote in Senate

Looks like HB 1845 is going to be up for a vote in the Senate Judiciary Commitee next week.  This includes the provision allowing carrying of firearms into Pennsylvania State Parks, prevents confiscations in the event of a state of emergency, and allows for sheriffs to issue emergency LTCFs for people who’s lives are actively threatened.

Let’s get this onto the floor and up for a vote in the full senate, so that we can get this on Rendell’s desk.

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Don’t Try This Here

Hat tip to Eric for this incident in Holland:

At a fashion show to promote tolerance of gay people on April 30, a national holiday in Holland, celebrating the birthday of the late Queen Juliana, a group of ten Muslim youths dragged gay model Mike Du Pree down from the catwalk, beating him up and breaking his nose. A second model who tried to help out was also attacked.

Our gays can shoot back. If I see a bunch of violent thugs of a proportedly peaceful religion beating up on a gay guy in broad daylight on a public street, I can too.

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Taco Grip Banned

Mr. Completely’s club banned the Taco Grip for bowling pin matches after he apparently won too much:

Last Fall it was finally coming together, and although still not as fast as other techniques, having few misses made up the slack. This year I won the first three of four matches of the season. The “Rule Maker” decided that my shooting style should be banned, and he changed the rules, banning the way I shoot. There is no rules committee or any rules oversight of any kind, so he can do whatever he wants, and there is no appeal process to his decision.

There are a lot of jackasses out there, unfortunately.  The guys I shoot IHMSA and Indoor Silhouette with at my club all seem to be nice folks to shoot with, so I’ve been lucky in that regard.  They’ve all been encouraging and have helped me out.

But there are a lot of clubs out there that are run by jackasses.  I’ve heard lots of stories from folks about various problems like this, or other things, such as black rifles being frowned on, or various definitions of “rapid fire” that tend to boil down to “we don’t like the way you look so you’re rapid firing, and we don’t like it.”  Basically, it’s a lot of crap that’s going to destroy the shooting community.  Shooting should be fun, and the goal of any club should be to maximize people’s enjoyment of the shooting sports.  Yes, clubs need rules, and we can’t comprimise or cut corners on safety, but if your club is driving people away, you need to start looking at ways to change the leadership.  The future of the shooting sports depends on a healthy and welcoming club culture.

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Legal Question

Blackwater is opening a training facility in San Diego.  How exactly are they getting around California’s assault weapons ban?  I know they are able to get new machine guns because of the contractor exemption, but that doesn’t exempt them from California’s ban, does it?

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Best… T-Shirt… Ever

If you’re of the Jewish persuasion, and like guns, this is for you.  Pretty clearly she’s clinging to religion and guns out of a sense of bitterness, and all on the same t-shirt.   If you want to buy one of those, you can here.  If you’re Jewish, I’m going to bet your chances of being victim of an anti-semitic hate crime go down if you’re wearing that.  Just a guess.

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VCDL Open Carry Dinner

Remember that VCDL open carry dinner we posted about a month ago?  Seems the reporter left out some important context.  Go to the VCDL Web Site and scroll down to watch the video.  It seems it was a bonafide VCDL event, compete with a state delegate.  I would have updated on this sooner if I had known.

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Comments Go Poof

According to Thirdpower, the old comments over at the Brady Campaign Blog have gone poof, before Reasoned Discourse set in, have all gone poof.  I’m not much of a betting man, but if I were, I kind of wonder of these slides from my presentation, which you couldn’t see on the video, but could hear me referring to, had something to do with it.

I’m willing to bet the Brady Campaign is pretty fanatical about controlling their message.  What advocacy groups need to understand is, there’s no doing that in new media.  You speak with the message you have, and hope others follow it, but you don’t get much control.  Others will argue, and disagree.  A few days of studying the gun blogosphere will find as much disagreement as agreement.   But what happens if you’re trying to penetrate new media with a message that’s based on obfuscating issues and deception?  It’s not easy, that’s for sure.

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