Month: July 2012

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Sounds Like A Good Time Was Had By All

July 19, 2012 by

The Crimson Trace Midnight 3-Gun Invitational was held this past Monday night-Tuesday morning. From all reports, it sounds like a good time was had by all.

Here is Michael Bane’s report of the match as well as Tam’s report(s) from competing in it.

Iain Harrison sent this out this morning about the match.

World’s First Ever Night Time 3 Gun Match a Huge Success

(Bend, OR) Crimson Trace wrapped up their Midnight 3 Gun Invitational match in the wee small hours of Wednesday morning, after two days of extreme intensity multigun action in the high desert. World-class competitors from across the USA gathered to see if the skills that earned them respect in daytime worked equally well in the inky darkness. Scheduled specifically for early July, when the moonless skies would force shooters to rely heavily on their equipment, mother nature threw just about everything in her repertoire at the attendees, ranging from harsh daytime sun, to thunderstorms, to freezing night time temperatures. Blowing dust ensured that weapons were never more than a dropped magazine away from a complete meltdown, which several shooters discovered to their cost during the eight stages which tested marksmanship, movement, speed and strategy.

Shooters were thrown challenges that were completely outside the realm of the ordinary match. On stage 8, they were expected to engage special targets provided by MGM which glowed brightly in the FLIR thermal scope which was mounted on an FNH Mk46 light machine gun. The signature stage of the match though involved full auto short barreled rifles from PWS, a shoot house and pvs14 nigh vision goggles provided by I2 Technologies, which looked like a scene from a video game. Because of its unusual nature, the event attracted senior members of the 3 gun community such as veteran match director Jeff Cramblit.”I was amazed at how well the match was organized,” said Cramblit. “For Crimson Trace to pull this off without any prior experience speaks volumes about the professionalism of the company.”

Continuing his winning streak, SSGT Daniel Horner of the Army Marksmanship Unit took top honors in a fiercely contested battle with Team Noveske’s Rob Romero and fellow AMU teammate Tyler Payne. Horner equipped his pistol, rifle and shotgun with Crimson Trace lasers and white lights in order to win the champion’s crown and pocket a check for $10,000 from the match organizers. Kay Miculek was victorious in the women’s division, while junior title was won by local boy Cody Leaper.

I’m not sure if I would have competed in it given a chance but it sure would have been fun to watch the action.

Maps of the stages are on-line. Stages 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8. Click on the stage number for the link to that stage.

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And I Thought Otters Were Supposed To Be Playful

July 19, 2012 by

Otters are cute and playful except when they aren’t.


A Minnesota tri-athlete who was practicing open water swimming in a lake outside Duluth ran into one of the non-cute and non-playful otters. She had 25 bites on her feet, back, and legs.

Fangs pierced Leah Prudhomme’s legs as she swam across the deep, dark rum-colored northern Minnesota lake. It could be anything, she thought — muskrats, beavers, maybe a muskie. But it didn’t let up.

In the middle of Island Lake near Duluth, the triathlete struggled as the animal sunk its needle-sharp teeth into her legs, feet and back, leaving 25 bite marks, some 2 inches deep.

“It just kept coming after me,” said Prudhomme, 33, of Anoka. “You never knew where it was going to bite next.”

In between peppering her with puncture marks, the animal’s head popped up a few feet away. That’s when Prudhomme noticed its distinctive long tapered tail, small beady eyes and gray head. An otter.

Wildlife officers are not sure whether the otter was rabid or merely a mother protecting her young. Prudhomme received treatment at a local hospital and has started the shot series for someone presumed to have been bitten by a rabid animal. Her injuries might have been worse if she was not wearing a wet suit which gave her some protection from the otter’s bites.

Prudhomme is a trouper and will be returning to the same lake next month to participate in the Duluth Triathlon. She is not letting this incident stop her from competing.

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There Is A Special Place In Hell For These People

July 19, 2012 by 2 Comments

I don’t usually comment on things like this but I’ll make an exception here. For the last 4 1/2 years of her life, my mother was in a nursing home with dementia. The nurses and CNAs took exceptional care of her for which I’ll always be grateful.

Thus, when I read about a story like this one from Connecticut involving unionized nursing homes and workers affiliated with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), it makes my blood boil.

“In the hours leading up to the strike by the New England Health Care Employees Union, District 1199 SEIU (the Union) against five HealthBridge Management Health Care Centers in Connecticut, Union members engaged in multiple illegal and dangerous acts against Center residents,” reads a statement released by HealthBridge on Tuesday afternoon.

According to police reports obtained by The Daily Caller and reported Monday by the RedState blog, HealthBridge Management Health Care Centers alleged that union employees in at least three of its facilities intentionally mixed up or removed patient name plates, photos, medical bracelets and dietary advisories as they began their strike. Additionally, the police reports include allegations of both vandalism and larceny.

The median daily cost for a nursing home care in Connecticut last year was $385 per day. By contrast, the national median is $213 per day while the median cost in North Carolina is $190 per day.

There is absolutely no excuse for ever putting the patient’s health at risk, union work action or no union work action. As I said in the headline, there is a special place in hell for these people.

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Ambassador John Bolton On The ATT

July 18, 2012 by 2 Comments

Former US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton has an op-ed in today’s New York Daily News on the proposed Arms Trade Treaty and why he considers it a stealth attack on gun rights in the United States.

Ostensibly, UNATT is about regulating government-to-government arms transfers or direct sales by manufacturers to foreign governments. But the hidden agenda of the gun controllers is to craft treaty language that, while seemingly innocuous, has long-range implications for the use and ownership of guns here in America.

The real danger lies in vague, ambiguous stipulations gun-control advocates could later cite as requiring further domestic restraints. In other words, they hope to use restrictions on international gun sales to control gun sales at home.

Indeed, the theme underlying the negotiations is that the private ownership of guns is inherently dangerous.

Bolton goes on to say that strong arguments on regulating the trade in crew-served weapons such as mortars, machine guns, and shoulder-launched missiles can be made. However, he notes that the US does already regulate our international trade in these weapons through the Arms Export Control Act and they we have strong controls on the ultimate users of these weapons. That said, he doesn’t think the Arms Trade Treaty will have much impact on trade in such weapons. Rogue nations and even developed nations less scrupulous than the United States (can you say Russia?) will just go around the treaty or ignore it.

He concludes his op-ed by saying:

They may have waited too long, because their current frantic efforts betray their fear that Obama could lose in November, replaced by a pro-Second Amendment Romney administration. Significantly, a bipartisan letter signed by 58 senators has already rejected any treaty that seeks, however cleverly, to impose gun-control obligations on the U.S.

The gun-control crowd’s strategy of trying to do through treaties what it cannot accomplish in America’s domestic political process is not unique to that issue.

We have seen and will undoubtedly see many more examples of frustrated statists, unable to prevail in free and open debate, seeking to take their issues global, hoping to find more sympathetic audiences.

Stopping UNATT will be one clear way to send a message that such strategies are doomed to failure.

If anyone knows what evil lurks in the hearts of the gun controllers at the UN, it would be John Bolton.

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2011 – A Mixed Bag For Firearms Production

July 18, 2012 by 6 Comments

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives released their 2011 interim Annual Firearms Manufacturing and Export Report on Tuesday of this past week. These summary statistics provide a view of the trends in the firearms industry over the past year and especially when compared to the prior year’s report. The table below shows both the absolute and relative changes by category in firearms production in 2011 from the prior year.

If 2010 was the Year of the .380, 2011 certainly was not. Production of .380 pistols fell by 128,449 or 19.3%. It appears that demand for small pistols has shifted from the .380 to the micro-nines such as the Ruger LC9, the Kimber Solo, the Beretta Nano, and the Kahr family of small pistols. In their letter to shareholders for the first quarter of 2011, Ruger attributed new introductions such as the LC9 (and the Gunsite Scout rifle) for 29% of the quarter’s sales.

There was significant growth in the medium and larger pistol calibers with 9mm production growing by 33.3% and the greater than 9mm calibers growing by 32.9%. With the way the ATF compiles manufacturing statistics, it is impossible to break out production of the .40 S&W from the .45 ACP. I did suggest last year that I expected to see an increase in this category as 2011 was the centennial of the 1911. While the 1911 did garner a lot of attention in 2011, I just don’t think the amount of growth in the category can be attributed to that alone. I do think that a good deal of the growth in these categories can be traced to what Michael Bane calls Gun Culture v. 2.0. That is, That is, those who have come to guns not through growing up in a hunting family – Gun Culture 1.0 – but as a result of the concealed carry movement.

Change in Firearms Production From 2010  to 2011
Pistols
Revolvers
To .22
3,162
0.84%
To. .22
22,196
16.8%
To .25
-2,555
-11.76%
To .32
-3,423
-39.8%
To .32
-25,903
-65.1%
To .357 Mag
-1,288
-1.01%
To .380
-128,449
-19.3%
To .38 Spec.
-3,371
-1.6%
To 9mm
209,872
33.3%
To .44 Mag
-9,588
-21.1%
To .50
173,209
32.9%
To .50
10,551
29.2%
Total Pistol
229,336
10.15%
Total Revolver
25,880
2.48%
Total Rifles
462,691
25.27%
Total Shotguns
118,915
16.0%
Total Misc. Firearms
114,801
169.0%

While overall production of revolvers was up 2.48%, production fell in all categories except the very smallest and the very largest. The detailed report which shows production figures in each category by manufacturer are not yet available. Thus, I can’t say the 29.2% increase in revolver production in calibers larger than .44 Magnum is only due to increased production of the Taurus Judge and S&W Governor as opposed to a large growth in the number of Single Action Army revolvers in .45 Colt. Nonetheless, it is a reasonable assumption given the marketing campaigns for both the Judge and the Governor by their respective manufacturers.

I think we can safely say the market for long guns has rebounded. After experiencing a significant decline last year, production of both rifles and shotguns grew by double digit percentages for 2011. Even more importantly, both categories saw more shotguns and rifles produced in 2011 than in the banner year of 2009. I anticipate that rifle production in 2012 will be even greater given the continuing unease that gun owners and would-be gun owners feel about President Obama and potential gun control measures his administration might enact in a second term.

One final category of note is what the ATF calls miscellaneous firearms. They define this category as consisting of items that don’t fall into the normal firearms classifications of handgun or long gun. Included within it are silencers. As the American Silencer Association pointed out last month, applications for the NFA tax stamp for silencers are growing by leaps and bounds. That would be consistent with the 169% growth in production in this category.

This last year was a good year for the firearms industry. If the continuing year-over-year growth in NICS checks is any indication – and I think it is – 2012 will be an even better year for the firearms industry.

CORRECTION: In my original chart, I compared the Interim 2011 numbers with the Interim 2010 numbers. I have corrected the 2010 numbers to reflect the final report for that year. It does not change the trends but it does change some of the percentages. I have corrected them within the original post.

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#gunvote

July 17, 2012 by 1 Comment

The National Shooting Sports Foundation has just released a 30-second public service ad reminding people just what is at stake in this election. They remind people that one vote is what made the difference in the Heller and McDonald cases and that the next President of the United States will likely nominate at least one new Supreme Court Justice.

I think it is an effective and well done adverstisement. The NSSF has a special section on their website devoted to the #gunvote campaign. It has news, lets people find where their polling station is located, and has a registration guide for all 50 states plus the District of Columbus.

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A Politician Worthy Of Parody

July 17, 2012 by 2 Comments

California Democrat State Sen. Leland Yee introduced a bill, SB 249, that would have outlawed the “bullet button”. This is the device that converts a detachable magazine to a fixed magazine so that a semi-automatic firearm remains in compliance with California’s assault weapons (sic) ban. Sen. Yee has since amended his bill to only prohibit conversion kits such as the “Mag Magnet”.

Yee was prompted to introduce the bill after seeing a breathless report on the evil bullet button by a San Francisco TV station. California gun groups such as the CalGuns Foundation are fighting back. They have set up a website, StopSB249.org, as well as starting an ad campaign to defeat the bill.

One of the more amusing push-backs against Sen. Yee and SB 249 by CalGuns is this parody mash-up seen below. They’ve taken a CBS 5 report produced last week and added their own special touch to it.

Sometimes ridicule is the best way to deal with pompous politicians such as Sen. Yee.

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Rifle Shooting Techniques From Ryan Cleckner

July 16, 2012 by 3 Comments

The National Shooting Sports Foundation released this video with Ryan Cleckner today. In it, he goes over some of the basics for good rifle shooting such as sight alignment and trigger control.

Cleckner is the Director of Government Relations for the Freedom Group. He held a similar position with NSSF. He served as a sniper and sniper instructor with the 75th Ranger Regiment at an earlier time. I would say he knows a thing or two about shooting a rifle accurately.

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That’s A Good Question, Mitt!

July 16, 2012 by 4 Comments

Mitt Romney has been attacked recently by the Obama campaign for not releasing his 2011 tax returns. He appeared on Fox’s Fox and Friends show this morning as part of his counter-attack. You can see the full interview here but this is the part that I found relevant.

Instead of asking why Romney hasn’t released his tax returns, Romney said the question should be why hasn’t the Obama Administration released the documents relating to Operation Fast and Furious. As one Tweet said elsewhere, Romney’s tax returns never killed anyone.

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Just Like A Bad Meal It Keeps Repeating

July 16, 2012 by

Just as a bad meal keeps repeating on you due to indigestion, so do the Democrats in the Senate keep bringing forth the DISCLOSE Act. After passing the House in the last Congress, it died in the Senate. It has been resurrected by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). He introduced S.3369 this past Tuesday and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has scheduled it for a vote today. That is mighty fast action for a Senate that hasn’t bothered to pass a budget for the past three years.

Unlike in 2009, the NRA is opposing this bill. In fact, they are making a record vote for future candidate evaluations.

Next week, the United States Senate will once again take up the latest version of the DISCLOSE Act, in yet another attempt to curtail the First Amendment rights of Americans. The bill, S. 3369, has been fast-tracked on the Senate calendar and is set for a vote on Monday, July 16.

NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris W. Cox sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), as well as all members of the Senate, expressing the NRA’s steadfast opposition to the legislation.

“Due to the importance of the fundamental speech and associational rights of the National Rifle Association’s four million members,” Cox wrote, “and considering the blatant attack on those rights that S. 3369 represents, we strongly oppose the DISCLOSE Act and will consider votes on this legislation in future candidate evaluations.”
You may read the full text of the letter here.
Provisions of the DISCLOSE Act that violate First Amendment rights include disclosure provisions that require organizations to turn membership and donor lists over to the government. In recent weeks, we have seen media attacks on political donors that illustrate the danger this legislation poses, and that expose its true intent: to stifle free speech.Also, the bill would create complicated regulation of political spending and campaign activity, creating immense costs to comply with the law and cause a severe chilling effect on free speech.

While the act would have minimal impact on some institutions, such as labor unions, its biggest impact would be limiting the ability of the American people to join together to make their voices heard on issues of every sort. It would also magnify the power of the mainstream media, severely limiting the information available to the American people and threatening the integrity of our electoral process.

Please contact your United States Senator before the Monday vote and urge him or her to vote against this assault on our First Amendment rights. You can find contact information for your U.S. Senators by using the “Write Your Representatives” tool at http://www.nraila.org/. You may also contact your Senators by phone at (202) 224-3121.

GOA or Gun Owners of America is also in strong opposition this bill. Leave it to the Democrats to find a way to unite the NRA and GOA. The GOA release is below:

Anti-gun Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (NV) really does not want gun owners’ voices to be heard in Washington, D.C.

Democrat leaders have scheduled a vote for Monday, July 16, on the so-called DISCLOSE Act.

You may recall that the DISCLOSE Act passed the House in 2010 but died in the Senate after an intense lobbying effort by Gun Owners of America and other groups.

The bill coming to the floor on Monday, S. 3369, sponsored by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, puts severe and unconstitutional limits on GOA’s ability to hold individual congressmen accountable in the months leading up to an election.

Instead of protecting the most important type of speech protected by the First Amendment — political speech — this bill would force groups like GOA to “disclose” the names of donors in certain political advertisements.

Since Gun Owners of America is not willing to disclose its membership lists to the Federal Election Commission, we could be prohibited from running radio or TV ads exposing a federal candidate’s voting record during the election season.

This is just another attempt by pathetic, anti-gun politicians like Harry Reid to save their jobs before the political earthquake in November strikes. Indeed, if GOA candidates are victorious in Senate races in November, Harry Reid will no longer be the Majority Leader.

And, as has been the case so often with Reid, there have been no committee hearings to debate the merits of the bill, thus the American people have no opportunity to see just how egregiously DISCLOSE violates the Constitution. In fact, the bill was introduces less than a week ago.

Please urge your Senators to protect ALL of the Bill of Rights. Remind them that your ability to protect the Second Amendment relies on the safeguards of the First Amendment.

ACTION: Contact your Senators and urge them to oppose the DISCLOSE Act. You can use the Gun Owners Legislative Action Center to send your Senators a pre-written e-mail message.

UPDATE: The Republicans actually hung together for once and prevented the Democrats from invoking cloture on the debate of the DISCLOSE Act. The vote was 51-44 and it needed 60 to pass. As to why the Democrats brought the bill forward at this time, the Daily Caller has this explanation.

Democrats revived the act during a presidential election campaign in which political action committees and nonprofit organizations, funded by deep-pocketed and largely anonymous contributors, are dominating the airwaves with largely negative political ads.