It's Not That We Aren't Listening

It's that we've heard it all before. Gun control, yadda yadda, scary rifles, blah blah blah, FOR THE CHIIIIILDRENNNNN (and may I point out to you that accusing us of not loving our children is not conducive to getting us to agree to your inane schemes that have proven to a) not work and b) be extremely destructive of personal liberties).

Observe:

Evil AR-15 thundercannon murderstick

 This is an AR-15. It is the generic term for a rifle originally designed by the Armalite Corporation (hence the A in AR) and sold to Colt in 1959. It is a semi automatic magazine fed rifle chambered in .223 Remington. It has been available to the civilian market since 1964, but after the original patents expired in 1977 the market really exploded. The select fire version, designated the M-16, went into service in 1961when the US Air Force purchased 8500 of them. The AR-15 is the most popular sporting firearm in America today. I probably should own one some day.

Nice Ruger Mini-14 like Grandpa used to have

This is the Ruger Mini-14. It is also a semiautomatic magazine fed rifle chambered in .223. Functionally there is absolutely no difference between the two rifles; they are chambered in the same cartridge, have the same size magazines available, and have the same rate of fire (just as fast as you can work the trigger). The Mini-14 is also a very popular sporting firearm.

If you show these two pictures to a hoplophobe they will most likely wet their pants in sheer terror of the first one and not mind the second one so much since it looks so much like Grandpa's squirrel rifle. After all, they are trying to be reasonable, they don't want to take your guns...right?

Ruger Mini-14 Tactical

yeah...

And In Other News

I have no further reason to go to Virginia.

Range Partner calls it "Occupied Virginia" and it looks as if his assessment is spot on. VA has now joined the Northeast in it's idiocy.

Shame really...it was such a nice state once.

What If

My "adopted sister" who is a black woman 15 years older than I am lost her grandson a little more than a year ago. He answered a knock at the door and was gunned down. I don't know the details to that case, and I don't know if they ever caught the gunman.

Last week another one of her young relatives was shot eight times in an armed robbery. He saw the robbers face, you see, and the robber didn't want him to be able to identify him to the police. This young man is alive today only by the grace of God and the miracle of modern medicine.

You have heard it all before; give them what they want, it's not worth your life, better that you be beaten, robbed and raped than lose your life, it's only possessions and what possession could possibly be worth your life (an assessment that I am in vehement disagreement with, BTW). But what if what they want IS your life? What then?

I carry because I set the amount of my own worth, and the worth of those I love, and I set that value far above that price which most criminals would be willing to pay. It is up to me to enforce that price.

So what is your life worth?

Think about it.

So

something pretty amazing happened a couple of days ago. We will have to see how much of that gets rescinded, overturned or flat ignored, but at least a blow was struck.

Something else is coming up the pike, let's see what happens with it as well. My guess is it doesn't get out of the Senate, and if it does it gets vetoed without enough votes to override.

At any rate, looks like the gun control pendulum is swinging back this way.

It's Not That Liberals Know Nothing...It's That So Much Of What They Know Is Wrong

I am a gun owner.

I have bought several guns.

I have bought guns from private individuals and I have bought guns from retail outlets.

If you buy a gun from a retail outlet you are GOING to get a background check...yes, even at a gun show...either on the spot through NICS or through your permitting process when you get your concealed carry permit (or in NC, your pistol purchase permit).

In some states you will even have to wait a week or so to take your purchase home, even though the background check has been done and the only thing that is happening is the clock is ticking.

If you are legally buying a gun from an individual, it is likely going to be someone you know personally or someone that someone you know personally knows personally.

Either way, a legitimate gun owner transferring a firearm in a private sale is NOT going to leave him/herself open to the tender mercies of the courts by knowingly selling a gun to someone who may use it in a crime.

If you think buying a gun is so easy let's run a simple check. Go buy a gun. Legally. Used or new, it doesn't matter. Now go buy a car. Buy a knife. Buy a bow and arrow. Which is easiest?

Criminals get their guns from many places. NONE OF THEM LEGAL. One more law is not going to stop them.

Please stop trying to "educate" me on how much easier it is to buy a gun than a *insert whatever object your internet meme tells you* or gun show loopholes or if we only had universal background checks, etc. etc. ad nauseum. Whatever the Facebook meme of the day is you can be sure of one thing, and one thing only.

It's probably bullsh!t.

Brought To You

by the War on Certain Drugs and exacerbated by the anti-Patriot Act: wholesale violation of your fourth amendment rights!

Libertarians have long gotten to be the butt of jokes because they argue against the drug war, and I have often said they are approaching it from the wrong angle. The problem isn't so much that you have the right to put various toxic substances into your body - you do -  the problem is the extremes to which authoritarian totalitarians are willing to go to in order to prevent you from doing so.

And once you get the nod for extremism against one thing that makes you feel ooky the door is wide open to do the same thing to other things you find ooky...like that pesky second amendment thing, or the belief that you actually have the right to keep some of your own money.

Note to Deputy Ron Hain of Kane County IL, your advocacy of “turning our police forces into present-day Robin Hoods” is fallacious at it's core.

Robin Hood, so the story goes, fought illegal seizure of the populace's money and goods by a government out of control. Today's police forces are being turned into a very stark example of that out of control government.

In other words, they are turning into the Sheriff of Nottingham.

But hey, if you aren't doing anything wrong...

Stones or Stupid

The definition of which I leave up to you, the reader. It's either one or the other.

Justice

I do not think this word means what you think it means.

Family court is like one of those daytime hatefest shows (Springer, Povich, etc). If you are male you don't want to be anywhere near it.

I'm seriously glad I'm out of the kid raising business. If I were in my 20's right now and faced with the possibility of raising teenage girls I'd castrate myself and join the monastery.

I can't count the number of times one of our sailors would find out he was getting divorced (not always due to his own actions, but to be fair not always not either) and then get hit with a child endangerment charge as well just as an added "f**k you" to keep him away from his kids. Most of them had the "wink wink nudge nudge" implication that if he didn't contest the divorce/custody hearing that charge would quietly go away.

One of them told me once upon a time that when he heard all the things he was supposed to have done he cursed himself for a perverted sonofabitch, so he knew he didn't have a chance but to let her have everything she wanted - and he had all boy children. Talk about rape-rape, he really got his ass handed to him in divorce court.

And it happened all the time.

Makes me wonder how we are even able to propagate the species.

As an aside, I'll spare you the rant on "blaming the victim" here.

Once Again

I like open carry. I'm an open carry advocate, although I'm not rabid about it. I belong to a group here in the greater Raleigh area that goes to different places for lunch while open carrying. Our goal is to show the normal folks that we are more like them than the nuts they see on the TV.

Chipolte restaurants recently became the latest battleground on the War on Guns, and as is typical once the jackasses got wind of it they thought it would be a good idea to bring their Evil Black Rifles in to, I don't know, "make a statement" or some such bullshit as that. (I have been informed that there was no organized response, it was a photo taken while having an after-event meal that the antis jumped on and another completely unrelated photo that they astroturfed on to increase the visibility.)

Chipolte has now "made a statement" and that statement is, don't take your guns to town.

It would serve our cause much better when the antis pick the next battleground (as they have picked Starbucks and now Chipoltes) and the business in question says they will follow state law, to just say "thank you," perhaps with a nice letter to Corporate, and let it go at that. Leave the EBRs at home, don't bother the individual storefronts with our "show of support" (the exception would be to have a quiet word of support for the manager of any store that is besieged with antis), and most of all...DO NOT ENGAGE ON A BATTLEFIELD OF THEIR CHOOSING (please do take the time to notice very carefully where that last link points. It was deliberately picked. Know your enemy).

 We may be winning the legislative war so far, but the activists will always win the PR battle if we choose to engage them on their own ground. Let the public see them acting like nuts, not us, is what I say. I'll carry the Glock in a holster on my hip in plain view, but I haven't ever run into a situation where I've said "Man, it sure would have been handy to have that Saiga with me." (Yes, yes, I know, a pistol is what you use to fight your way back to the rifle you shouldn't have left behind in the first place, but seriously folks, the biggest point of risk assessment is determining likelihood and in my mind the risk of alienating the public on an otherwise unremarkable day is far far greater than the risk that I will have to engage zombies at range on the same unremarkable day.)

Starbucks and Chipoltes, all they wanted to do was run restaurants, but we...yes WE...allowed ourselves to get carried away and now both of those places have decided they don't want our business. Boycott if you like but given the numbers I don't think there is much danger of them folding, and keep in mind our goal is not to alienate John and Jane Public, it's to show them we're not rabid foaming at the mouth lunatics. What do you think they think of us now?

Nice job jackasses. I guess it stops when every business in America posts signs to leave the guns outside.

That Hollow Sound

is me smashing my head against the brick wall otherwise known as Pop.

His new pals both have arrest records, but he assures me that they are "good kids".

I've finalized plans to go put some holes in something. Lord knows I need the distraction.

Something non-organic, that is. No bail required.

yet...

A Question

Do we, as free American citizens, have the right to defend ourselves against criminal actions by invaders of our own homes?

What if those doing the invading have the sanction of the State?

I am watching these shenanigans happening in Connecticut and now they are happening in a couple of other places as well (New York, for example).

(Note: It would serve lawmakers well to remember that the American Revolution started in the New England states over government attempts to seize privately owned weaponry, and while such sentiments seem to have been squashed out of most of the residents there it doesn't appear to be gone altogether. This pleases me.)

I am hopeful that calmer and cooler heads will recognize that, much like the 55 mph speed limit, Americans will ignore laws they don't feel are good ones.

I fear, however, that the point will have to be made by bloodshed.

Lawmakers would do well to recognize that "don't want to" doesn't mean "won't" but given their amazing ability to ignore every bit of evidence around them I'm not sanguine about the prospect.

Current Whereabouts Unknown

But if any of my readers can help...

Let This Be A Warning To You

No good deed goes unpunished (for varying degrees of "good").

Any man who donates genetic material in any way shape or form these days is a bleed'n idiot.

Or will be, as soon as the courts are done with him.

(Yes, I know there are supposed to be legal shields for anonymous donors, but the inmates are now running the asylums. Good luck with that.)

Bound To Happen

Keep pushing your luck thugsters.

Books and Bad Guys

Last night I did something that I've never done before. I deleted a book from my Kindle reader.

The book was called "Navy SEAL Sniper" and predictably it was about snipers. More to the point it was about the technical aspects of being a sniper, from the ammunition and weaponry to the mindset required to do the job. Because I'm an overweight over 40 casual shooter at best I found the material kind of hard to slog through, but when I got about halfway through the book the author started bemoaning the fact that there is no standardized training for police department SWAT team snipers. This is where I stopped reading and deleted the book.

I do not deny the need of snipers for training. What I deny is the need of police departments for snipers.

Friend and fellow blogger Mark of a Free Man ran a post once upon a time about a police force acquiring tactical armored vehicles for their SWAT teams (I would spend the time to dig for a link, but it's early and I've been up all night). His contention was that there was no need for a local police department to have such equipment, a sentiment I happen to share and for the very same reasons. In my opinion police departments need to base their training more on the teachings of Robert Peel and less on the teachings of Robert Rogers.

The long and short of it is this; when your only tool is a hammer all of your problems start to resemble nails.

Local police department SWAT teams (and this can be expanded to include sheriffs departments as well) are usually trained (to varying degrees of "training") and equipped at high taxpayer cost. Before too long you have a lot of money riding around in tactical black clothing and large Chevrolet vans, and it isn't too awfully long afterwards that the questions start coming from politicians and constituents alike...namely, what benefit are we getting out of the money we are spending?

Very soon afterwards all of a sudden a crop of nails starts sprouting up, and the next thing you know you are killing Grandma at 3AM over Japanese maples because some low-life scum sucking toad traded information that she was growing pot plants on her back patio for a reduced sentence.* If it wasn't a problem we wouldn't be talking about it, unfortunately the fact that we are talking about it is another excuse for the "us vs them" mentality. It has to stop because history shows this path leads to some very dark places.

Police departments need to be intimately attached to the communities they serve. Every police officer needs to remember that the person in his crosshairs (yes I'm being sexist. My blog, piss off) is a citizen of these United States, not a foreign combatant, and as such deserves the right to a trial if he/she can be apprehended instead of swift dispatch by the crack of a supersonic round.** Police are first and foremost civilians just like us, not military, no matter how paramilitary they act (refer once again to Robert Peel's teachings).

I will not deny that occasionally there is a need for snipers. I will only say that should such expertise be needed it should be gotten from the nearest Nat'l Guard unit or SBI or FBI office, and if you really need a bullseye shooter quicker than you can find one from those sources, surely someone knows a deer hunter that owns a scoped Remington 700 and never misses who can be deputized for the purpose. I'm quite certain that in most areas of the country one can be found in the very same police/sheriffs departments that are needing the services of a sniper at such short notice.

But in all cases the police need to abide by this very basic tenet: "the police are the people and the people are the police".

*The war on drugs is yet another subject, but while we're touching on it...still think you don't have a dog in this fight?

**I will also acknowledge the fact that some folks just need a good killing, and in these instances the police are in the completely un-enviable position of having to make split second life or death decisions. It's a fine line and it's easy to be the armchair quarterback. Hand me the remote, will ya?

Hey Gun Grabbers

You lose.

It's Almost As If

those crazy lunatic gun nuts...weren't so crazy after all...

http://gunfreezone.net/wordpress/index.php/2013/07/29/i-dont-mean-to-gloat/

Submitted without comment...because really, what more can be said?

Predictable Results

I don't remember where I saw this story first, but I'll give Old NFO the credit because that's where I saw it last. At any rate, the line that jumped right out at me was “We don’t feel neighborhood watch is sufficient, and we don’t feel the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office is sufficient.” (emphasis mine)

I think it was Sean that remarked the laws aren't there to protect me from you, they are there to protect you from me. I couldn't find the post, but his point was the laws are agreements between the Citizen and the State whereby the State will prosecute criminals via the courts and save the Citizen the trouble of having to deal with the criminals themselves (not to mention cleaning up afterwards).

The flip side of that, of course, is that when the State fails in that bargain eventually the Citizen can - and will - take care of the problem themselves. This was in fact one of the reasons the Second Amendment was adopted, so the Citizen would have the means necessary to defend himself (and the State).

More and more it seems the Citizen is becoming aware of this, which in my opinion is a good thing.

(For anyone who will cry vigilantism, you would do well to look up the etymology of the word.)

Shameful Conclusion

There has been a lot of controversy surrounding this incident that happened not too very far from the Refuge. Long story short, kid went shooting over the weekend and left the gun in the car, took the car to school, realized what had happened and called his Mom to come and get it. The call was overheard and the kid was expelled and arrested.

Sure, the suspension was itself suspended so he will graduate on time, but he still faces charges...and in North Carolina they are felony charges. There is a chance that he won't be on that stage for his graduation because he will be behind bars. The time to celebrate will be if the outcome in court is positive (he's scheduled for a hearing on May 16th).

The shameful conclusion that I have reached is, if you have done something wrong don't say a damn thing to anyone (a lesson that criminals and politicians already know...but I repeat myself). If he hadn't called his mother no one would have ever known the gun was in the car. Denials, lies and obfuscation gets the rewards, trying to do the right thing gets the punishments.

This is not really the lesson I'd like to teach my kids.

Public Service Announcement

from MB Studios:



Carry your guns, people, and learn how to do quick reloads.

HT: The Rott