Shall Not Be Questioned – Page 756 – The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …

Suppressor Sales Booming

Dave Hardy reports, and it seems Texas is leading the pack:

Marsha McCartney, a Dallas volunteer for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said she doesn’t understand why people would buy silencers in the first place.

“It would only be a concern if they were buying them because they are doing something illegal,” she said.

So does this mean Brady would be OK if we could buy suppressors with just a NICS check? It’s been a while since we’ve seen or heard from our old favorite Brady Board member, but I’m glad she seems interested in this idea. Lets face it, suppression of muzzle report is just basic courtesy. You know how nice it would be when shooting an air gun match if we could politely ask firearms shooters on the next line if they could stick a can on that thing so we didn’t have to wear hearing protection? But you can’t do that now because no one wants to bother with the regulations, so they are generally not common. In most European countries, suppressors are about as regulated as pencils.

UPDATE: Our new favorite Brady Board member seems to agree with our old favorite Brady Board member. I’m not honestly sure what the feds thought they were accomplishing by restricting them. They inherently aren’t all that dangerous, and to my knowledge were never that seriously used by criminals (they make the gun much harder to conceal).

Most of what people know about suppressors come from movies, but the fact is, on most firearms, they are just going to make the report of the gun not quite as loud. Most bullets travel faster than the speed of sound, and so some of the crack you hear from a rifle or handgun is the sound of a small sonic boom as the bullet breaks the sound barrier. Even a suppressed .22 is going to make about as much noise as an air gun. Stupid people who do stupid things with guns are going to do those stupid things with or without a can on it, and criminals have pretty limited use for them anyway.

UPDATE: SayUncle has the answer: “Originally restricted to prevent poachers on federal land during the depression.” Can’t have people feeding themselves illegally, I guess.

How Times Have Changed

It used to be in lame duck sessions of any given legislature in this country, that’s when you had to worry about the knives coming out from the anti-gun forces. It was a great time to get a controversial gun control bill through when the consequences has already been decided in the previous election. New Jersey, particularly, is famous for lame duck anti-gun bills. Now it seems that we’re going the opposite direction in Ohio:

One bill, Senate Bill 239, would allow permit holders to carry concealed guns in bars and restaurants that serve alcohol. It also would loosen restrictions on how guns must be carried in vehicles. It was opposed by a number of major state law-enforcement associations, but Gov. Ted Strickland said this summer that he would sign it.

The other, Senate Bill 247, would allow people with certain misdemeanor drug convictions to carry guns.

SB 247 is being mischaracterizeÂ here, and has more to do with prohibited persons under Ohio law than it does with carry in particular. Currently any drug conviction at all makes you a prohibited person, not just for carry, but for possession as well. This would up the requirement so that the drug conviction would have to be a felony. The bill would still prohibit someone who is an unlawful user or dependent on drugs or alcohol from possessing or carrying a firearm. The bill only gives relief to someone who is denied because they may have had a misdemeanor drug conviction in their past. The bill also changes the application for relief from disability somewhat, presumably to cover someone who may have been adjudicated an addict or drunkard, but who has gotten clean.

But it’s interesting that now we’re running pro-gun stuff in lame duck legislatures rather than the other way around.

Wisconsin Carry Article

A reporter for the Daily Page in Madison takes a serious look at the carry movement in Wisconsin, in what I think is a fair look at the subject:

I know some people in Madison think the open-carry crowd is a bit off its rocker, but Auric Gold doesn’t seem crazy to me. He’s a nice guy, friendly, smart. And after spending some time with him, I’m convinced he’s a well-trained and responsible gun owner.

[…]

Gold spends what seems, at least to me, an inordinate amount of time preparing to shoot his way out of dangerous situations. Besides going to the range regularly, he practices firing while moving, running and crouched behind barriers. He practices how to react when being assaulted while loved ones are nearby, learning how to push or pull them out of the way while still being able to fire off some shots.

[…]

Perhaps one day, Gold’s training will come in handy, but I doubt it. I’ve traveled the world and walked on streets at night alone in cities around the U.S., Central America and Asia, and never once been accosted. It seems far more likely that both he and I will end up falling victim to a distracted motorist, clogged artery or cancer cells than armed bandits.

I think it’s very difficult for people who are not part of the shooting community to understand carry, but I think the reporter here makes a good faith attempt at trying to. Read the whole thing and decide for yourself. Gold spends a lot of time practicing these scenarios because the guy is an instructor. If you’re an instructor, you have to take it to a much higher level than your average toter if you want to have something you can teach them.

I actually agree with the reporter on the last paragraph. Most of us are in demographics that are highly unlikely to be targets of violent crime. If death were a true fear, I’d be much better off giving up shooting as a hobby, giving up beer and booze, eating better, and spending my weekends hiking through the woods. But the truth is, I think most of us carry because we shoot, and we shoot because it’s fun. Carrying is a consequence of the hobby, rather than the hobby being a consequence of wanting to tote a gun around everywhere. At least I think that’s true for a large majority of toters. No doubt for some, it’s also a political statement.

But what really on an emotional level makes someone say “Well, I know the odds are long that I’m going to need a gun today, but I’ll take one anyway.” I wouldn’t say fear of death, or fear of crime, is the primary motivator. It’s certainly not a paranoid belief that you’ll need the gun. So what is it? I think people who carry have a certain way of looking at themselves and others that is difficult for a person who thinks more collectively to understand.

Gun owners are highly individualistic people, on the whole, and for highly individualistic people, there’s absolutely nothing more unpleasant for them to think about than someone else forcibly taking control of their person, and violating their dignity as an individual.Â Violating another persons dignity as an individual is the highest crime you can commit to a highly individualistic person. We have difficulty understanding someone who says, and we’ve all heard this, that they’d rather be robbed, raped, etc, than to have to kill another human being, but who will go off on raving diatribes over a criminal like Bernie Madoff. The individualist will see the rapist or mugger as more of a violator than the swindler, because the swindler still had to convince an individual to willingly surrender what was his or hers, whereas the violent criminal subjugates the individual by force, and takes what he wills. Ask yourself what sticks in your craw more, Bernie Madoff or a mugger? I think that’s an interesting exercise in sorting out whether you think like someone who would carry a firearm.

Improvised Weapons

In Ohio, apparently a flare gun will do just fine in a pinch.

Mysteries I’ll Never Fully Understand: Copyright Law

I’m a little peeved. I’m madly in love with Alfie Boe’s voice.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYNN_OpNUIA[/youtube]
(He’s sadly silent until he really belts it out at 2:11.)

So I want to buy some beautiful Boe tunes. iTunes has very little to choose from at the moment, as does Amazon. In cd form, most of what I was most interested in simply wasn’t available or wasn’t available in any reasonable time frame. The 2010 album from Les Mis available in the US is a cast recording from the international tour, not the concert with Boe. The 2010 dvd of the concert isn’t available in the United States as far as I can tell, even though I knew in listening to interviews that it was available in the UK. So, a little clicking over to Amazon.co.uk, and I find all of the Alfie Boe albums in stock and ready to deliver, along with the 2010 concert dvd. I’m thinking it’s time to place an international order* when I decide to double check their shipping rules for international shipments. This, my friends, is where copyright law blows my mind.

Books, Music, DVD and Video items
Most countries in the world. Please note that customers in the US and Canada may be restricted to one copy of certain book titles because multiple copies may infringe US copyright laws.

I could understand a warning about dvd country encoding. But what the hell do they mean that my purchase of more than one copy of a book could violate US laws? I thought copyright law was about stealing the work of others. If you offer that item for sale, I agree to your price, and we complete the transaction, that should not be a violation of copyright laws.

That said, I need to figure out what the price would be to ship everything over here since apparently the music companies don’t want our damn Yankee money paying to enjoy the songs of hot English tenors. Pardon me as I go get my fill of my new musical crush.

*I also can’t buy the mp3 versions of said albums due to generically cited “geographical restrictions.”

Pardoning Aitken

The Daily Caller is noting the growing pressure on Governor Christie to pardon Brian Aitken.

UPDATE: More from Fox News.

‘Twas the Night before Christmas

When all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse – because creatures that go bump in the night know we’re well armed in the Snowflake household.

Christmas presents have started to arrive here at the house, and now it’s time for me to really get crackin’ with decorations so I can start wrapping them. However, one is still in production and won’t be here until a few days before the holiday. When it is finally wrapped, I’ll have to punch holes in the box and wrapping paper. Is it a cat? Lord, no. I’m not bringing any of those demons home. Is it a dog? If so, it would have my name on it and this gift is solely Sebastian’s baby. Nope, it’s not an animal at all. It’s a holster. The holes are so I can smell it from time to time because I know the leather will smell that good.*

MitchRosenPSF — Photo from MitchRosen.com - The Pocket Softy

We got a preview a week or so ago after I placed the order for a Mitch Rosen holster and they sent a catalog. OMG, I have never wished for a scratch and sniff catalog before, but oh how I wanted one for his holsters and belts. I don’t even care that we wouldn’t have a need for many of his products, I wanted to order one of everything the second I opened it up. If we don’t have a gun that would fit some of his designs, we could buy one later. In fact, that’s what we’ll be doing with this piece. We don’t actually own the gun yet. But, I know that Sebastian will order one sometime soon, and then he’ll have a nice new custom holster for it.

Mitch’s work is incredible, and I can’t wait to see what arrives shortly before Christmas.

*If I wasn’t trying so hard to stay off of Santa’s naughty list, I would wrap the holster in the girliest wrapping paper we own and slap my own name on it – at least until Sebastian gets the gun.

Interesting Article on Condie Rice

From the Philly Inquirer. It almost seems like Harold Jackson is afraid to say too many good things about her, but what tripped over my alerts was this passage:

Rice’s recollection of events that night comes pretty close to my own, although we were in different households. “The men of the community took up their neighborhood watch,” she said. Rice explained that these watches had begun months earlier, after homes and churches were bombed.

She said that when her father was on watch, he would sit on the porch with a “gun on his lap . . . looking for white night riders.” Because of that experience, seeing her father take up a weapon to protect his family, Rice said, she was “a fierce defender of the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms.”

My father and other men in our housing project also armed themselves to protect us after Sixteenth Street Baptist was bombed. That never made me want to join the NRA. But as I said, my life and Rice’s were very different. The little gun violence I saw as a teenager convinced me that it should be harder to get a gun.

Except it it had been harder to get a gun, you can bet the hoops one had to jump through would be enforced vigorously against the black community, while the Klan would have had all the guns they want. What few gun control laws exist in this country were mostly targeted at disarming minorities. Read the whole article. It’s quite good.

Not Something You See Everyday

Lancaster County is taking a look at park rules, and getting rid of some. Among them are the rules banning firearms in county parks:

Currently, the regulations manual outlaws the carrying of firearms in county parks by anyone except law-enforcement officers.

“Obviously, that is not consistent with the Uniform Firearms Act,” Weiss said.

The Act authorizes people to openly carry handguns in Pennsylvania, or to carry them with a concealed weapons permit, anywhere in the state except for a few places, such as schools and court facilities.

Technically speaking, the act doesn’t authorize open carry. There’s just no law against the practice, and the UFA preempts the counties from making one. But that’s nitpicking. Lancaster County is doing the right thing here, and for that they should be commended. Most of the time, government loves to just add laws. You hardly ever see them looking existing laws over to see if they still make sense. We need more of this.

Displeasure Among the Gun Control Ranks

Seems some didn’t particularly care for Ed Rendell’s departing surrender on the issue of gun control. Chief among them Joe Grace, who Kinney reports as “pained by the glum talk about guns.”Â Joe’s pain is my content. It doesn’t look like Representative Tim Briggs thinks to highly of it either:

Montgomery County progressive Democrat Tim Briggs became a loyal CeaseFirePA soldier in his first term, but frets that building a broad coalition might be for naught if Corbett and Co. “try to push an extreme social agenda.” Indeed, Corbett has said he would happily sign the “castle doctrine” expansion.

Broad coalition? 159 Pennsylvania representatives voted for Castle Doctrine the first time, only 38 voted against it. 38 out of 202 seats is a broad coalition? I’d say you were tilting at windmills out of the gate, Rep. Briggs. Second time around he lost two votes from his “broad coalition.”

Ed Rendell sees the writing on the wall because he can count. I have no doubt Rendell did what he thought he could to advance the issue, particularly pushing Democrats who would run on gun control vocally. But that ultimately failed. Having failed, Ed is giving up, and riding off into the sunset, leaving suckers who bought his line on the issue, like Tim Briggs, in the dust.