Month: September 2012

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Comment Of The Day

September 12, 2012 by

The comment of the day comes from Ann Althouse’s blog in response to her post titled, “Dead Ambassador dragged through streets, MSM furious at Romney criticism of Obama.” It was made by someone named Matthew Salban in reference to the media and their coverage of the Islamofascist attacks on the US Embassy in Cairo and the US Consulate in Benghazi.

If you’re more worried about whether Romney was mean to Obama rather than how the Executive Branch failed to protect our diplomat and other Americans, your priorities: Fix them.

I couldn’t agree more. I well remember the 444 days that Americans diplomats were held by Iranian “students” after they invaded our embassy in Tehran. I would have thought security had improved a bit since then.

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Quote Of The Day

September 11, 2012 by 3 Comments

The quote of the day comes from Cemetary’s Gun Blog. After noting that The Who’s Won’t Be Fooled Again is quite appropriate for this political season, he asks this question:

But I have to wonder, since they sing about ‘fighting in the streets’, ‘shotguns singing songs’, ‘hat tipping to the revolution’, would CSGV put Pete Townshend and The Who on the insurrectionist timeline?

Given that Ladd’s musical tastes run more to America, they probably would.

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Fast And Furious IG Report, The Hearings, And A Whitewash

September 11, 2012 by

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee had originally scheduled hearings for today to hear from the Justice Department’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz. He was to testify on his report regarding Operation Fast and Furious. These hearings have been rescheduled for next Wednesday, September 19th.

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa today announced that the hearing previously scheduled for tomorrow to examine the Department of Justice Inspector General’s report on Operation Fast and Furious has been rescheduled for Wednesday, September 19. Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz has confirmed his attendance for the September 19th hearing where he will discuss his report of the investigation into reckless conduct in Operation Fast and Furious.

Some reports attribute this delay to the Inspector General’s report not being completely finished.

Horowitz in his letter also advised Issa that he may not be able to testify as scheduled Sept. 11 at a committee hearing about the inspector general’s Fast and Furious findings, if the report is not finished and publicly released by then. “As of this date,” he cautioned, “I do not yet know the precise timing for the release of our report.”

Horowitz noted that Justice officials on Wednesday “provided us with its initial sensitivity review for law enforcement sensitive information” including wiretaps, grand jury material and sealed court records.

“We are in the process of discussing these proposed sensitivity redactions with the Department,” Horowitz wrote in the letter, which arrived Wednesday. “We also are awaiting comments from the department regarding whether any material discussed in the report is covered by the president’s assertion of executive privilege.”

The Inspector General is also allowing Justice Department officials to read the report and provide comments/objections before it is released. It is this last part which concerns former Justice Department attorney J. Christian Adams. He believes a “fix” is in and notes that the Inspector General never allowed any Bush-era DOJ appointees this opportunity. He suggests that the Oversight Committee ask to see the draft report as it existed before Eric Holder and his minions got a hold of it. I think this is a worthwhile suggestion that will probably be ignored.

Adams believes that this report will be just another whitewash of Obama’s political appointees at DOJ.

It has been amusing watching all the anticipation about the release of the Department of Justice Inspector General’s report on Fast and Furious. Some folks in Washington actually think that it will be the key that unlocks the door to the scandal. Balderdash. I’ve watched defective report after defective report come from the Justice Department internal affairs units. In the end, they always protect the institution, unless of course conservatives are in the cross hairs.

Unfortunately, I believe Adams to be correct in his assessment. I don’t think anyone who has followed Project Gunwalker from the early days ever expected the Inspector General’s report to be anything other than a whitewash.

One new development that was reported yesterday is the discovery of some of the gunwalked firearms in Colombia. The Colombian newspaper El Tiempo reports that 2 rifles and 14 FN Five-Seven pistols seized during a raid of a Colombian crime syndicate have been traced to Project Gunwalker.

U.S. weapons that were exported to Mexico as part of the controversial “Fast and Furious” program ended up in the hands of Colombia crime syndicate Oficina de Envigado, reported newspaper El Tiempo Monday.

According to the newspaper, investigations by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) have established that some of the weapons found during the arrest of Oficina boss “Sebastian” were part of the thousands of arms lost in the Fast and Furious program.

“Two rifles that were seized in February with ‘Frank’, the brother of Sebastian also are part of the tracking operations of the ATF, the same with 14 Five-seven guns we have found in several raids,” an anonymous high-ranking source within Colombia’s National Police was quoted as saying by El Tiempo.

The source added that ATF agents are in Medellin where the Oficina operates and inspect every seized firearm found in raids in Colombia’s second largest city.

I think we will see these guns turn up at crime scenes throughout the Western Hemisphere for years to come.

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More On Gun Rights Policy Conference 2012

September 11, 2012 by 1 Comment

The Second Amendment Foundation released information on a number of their confirmed speakers. These include Emily Miller of the Washington Times and “Emily Gets Her Gun” fame, perennial favorite Alan Gura, George Zimmerman’s attorney Mark O’Mara, and Congressman Joe Barton of Texas.

The 27th Annual Gun Rights Policy Conference attracts leaders from across the country, including Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms; Joseph Tartaro, president of the Second Amendment Foundation; Maria Heil, board director of the National Rifle Association; Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America and many others.

Also scheduled: Attorney Alan Gura, winner of the landmark Supreme Court Second Amendment Heller and McDonald cases; Criminal Defense Attorney Mark O’Mara; Columnist and Fox News contributor John Fund; John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime, and Emily Miller, senior editor of The Washington Times.

Texas Congressman Joe Barton will be the featured Saturday luncheon speaker.

The Gun Rights Policy Conference offers an opportunity for grassroots gun rights activists from across the country to gather under one roof for the opportunity to network, exchange strategies and hear from national gun rights leaders on major issues relating to firearms litigation and politics.

This year’s agenda includes panel discussions on Campus Concealed Carry, Gun rights litigation after the Heller and McDonald rulings, the UN threat to gun rights, Federal and State legislative updates, Media Bias, Self-Defense and Right-to-Carry, Open Carry and Stand Your Ground laws.

For more information and registration: www.saf.org.

Alan Gottlieb was the guest in the first hour of Tom Gresham’s GunTalk on Sunday, Sept. 2nd. During the interview, he said that there will be a surprise guest speaker whom he couldn’t name for “security reasons”. The speaker will be announced on Saturday, Sept. 29th when he (or she) is scheduled to speak.

I have no special knowledge and no one has tipped me off to who he or she might be. However, I could think of at least two to three people that might fit that bill given that the conference is in Florida.

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Kachalsky v. Cacace – Oral Arguments Before The 2nd Circuit Court Of Appeals

September 11, 2012 by 1 Comment

Kachalsky v. Cacace was the second case filed by the Second Amendment Foundation after their Supreme Court win in McDonald. It challenged the State of New York’s requirement to show “good cause” before the issuance of a carry permit. Judge Cathy Seibel using intermediate scrutiny found for the defendants and against the plaintiffs saying that the State of New York had an important governmental interest in regulating carry. She also said that the Second Amendment protections as affirmed in Heller only applied to “hearth and home.”

Alan Gura filed a notice of appeal on September 12, 2011 to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. The oral hearings were finally held late last month on August 22nd. The judges hearing the case were Judge Robert Katzmann (Clinton appointee), Judge Richard Wesley (George W. Bush appointee), and Judge Gerald Lynch (Obama appointee).

The 2nd Circuit does not automatically publish the audio file of the oral hearings unlike some other circuits like the 7th. Fortunately, thanks to a generous donor who paid for the audio files, Maryland Shall Issue was able to get a copy and has posted them on their website. You can find it here. The entire hearing runs for about 36 minutes.

Thanks to the contemporaneous notes sent to me by a reader who attended the hearings, I was able to follow most of it. The primary questioners of Alan Gura were Judge Wesley and Judge Lynch with the occasional question from Judge Katzmann. I have to admit that their accents are so similar to me that it was hard for me to distinguish between them.

Judge Wesley did admit to being an avid hunter but then went on to say that he didn’t know if handguns were the preferred weapon of choice for home defense. I guess it wouldn’t be too smart to call a judge a Fudd.

I think it went well enough and I share Sebastian’s cautious optimism on the outcome of the case. Alan Gura is an exceptionally skilled appellate attorney and held his own very well. When the judges would go off on tangents he would still make sure to reiterate his essential points regarding the Second Amendment, Heller, and carry.

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27 Months And Counting

September 10, 2012 by

I missed posting on this last week but the NSSF-adjusted NICS checks show a 27th straight month of increases compared to the same month in the prior year.

The August 2012 NSSF-adjusted National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) figure of 1,042,924 is an increase of 27.8 percent over the NSSF-adjusted NICS figure of 815,858 in August 2011. For comparison, the unadjusted August 2012 NICS figure of 1,514,696 reflects a 16.5 percent increase from the unadjusted NICS figure of 1,300,433 in August 2011.

According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, this is the highest August on record.

As I note when reporting these figures each month, there is not a direct correlation between sales and NICS checks for a variety of reasons. The primary one is that a number of states such as Kentucky, Iowa, and Michigan use it for CCW purposes For example, as one reader pointed out to me last month, the Commonwealth of Kentucky runs a NICS check on each and every carry licensee monthly. Moreover, in many states, a concealed carry license substitutes for a NICS check. Thus, purchases by these CCW holders are not counted in the NICS check totals.

Nonetheless, the rise in NICS checks does show the broader trends in the firearm marketplace.

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What Is It With Bloomberg And His Illegal Mayors?

September 10, 2012 by 2 Comments

Yet another member of the Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns was arrested.



From NBC NY


The FBI early this morning took Trenton, NJ Mayor Tony Mack into custody on Federal charges of conspiracy and extortion. From NBC New York:

Mack faces federal charges including conspiracy to obstruct commerce by extortion. Joseph “JoJo” Giorgianni, a top campaign contributor, and six others were also taken into custody. Information on their attorneys wasn’t immediately available. Specific charges against the suspects are expected to be outlined by Paul Fishman, the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, later Monday.

Mack and the others arrested Monday were brought to the FBI office in Hamilton for processing and are scheduled to appear in federal court.

The arrests are the latest development in an ongoing federal investigation into alleged corruption within Mack’s administration, which has been marked by accusations of nepotism and reckless spending. In July, FBI agents searched offices in Trenton City Hall a day after raiding the mayor’s home. They also searched the home of his brother, Ralpiel Mack, and that of Giorgianni.

Mack is listed as one of the New Jersey members of MAIG as seen here.

As I said in the headline, what is it with these Illegal Mayors? You have them being arrested on corruption charges, extortion, assault, and the list goes on.

UPDATE: According to Bitter, MAIG has scrubbed Mayor Tony Mack from their list of members.

Silly gun prohibitionists! The Interwebs never forget. And besides, David Codrea put up a screen shot of the MAIG website and Mayor Mack when he posted on this earlier this morning on his WarOnGuns blog.

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Crimson Trace Releases Their First Green Lasers

September 10, 2012 by 5 Comments

Crimson Trace has released their first four green lasers to the market. These include Laserguard models for certain 1911s, full sized Glocks, and the Springfield XD/XDm and the Rail Master for any firearm with a Picatinny rail.

Crimson Trace Releases Four Green Laser Sights to Market

(Wilsonville, OR) Crimson Trace announced today the release of the highly anticipated green Laserguard® and Rail Master™ products. This initial release of the green laser sight line includes Laserguard models for Kimber and Smith & Wesson 1911 frames, Glock Full Size and Compact and Springfield XD/XDm firearms. The Rail Master model is designed to fit on firearms equipped with a Picatinny rail – making it the ultimate in universal green laser sighting systems. All four of these models are available now through normal distribution and from www.crimsontrace.com starting at $269.

“By now, most consumers are savvy enough to know that green lasers have always been power-hungry compared to their red counterparts,” explained Kent Thomas, Director of Marketing for Crimson Trace. “By mounting them in front of the trigger guard, we’re able to utilize battery power in both a functional and design friendly way significantly more than ever – which means our customers never have to compromise on run tim e.” Just as important as the green laser product introduction, holsters from BladeTech, Mitch Rosen, De Santis, Crossbreed and Galco will be available to fit these new green laser sights.

The Laserguard platform is the ideal and ultimate additional to conceal carry firearms. The unit is quickly and easily installed by the user simply by securing around the trigger guard with provided screws. The profile for the pistol does change which is why Crimson Trace works with top holster manufacturers to create holster solutions for all Laserguard equipped firearms. Check out the Holster Resource Guide for details on all models.

The Rail Master platform has become a success story virtually overnight. This unique design attaches to any firearm with a Picatinny rail and will not move due to the Secure-Lock Technology™ system. Each unit comes standard with four inserts that are easily interchangeable to fit a wide range of pistols and long guns equipped with a Picatinny rail and activate with simple, easy to reach activation.

Both the Laserguard and Rail Master are pre sighted from the factory at 50’ and are fully adjustable by the user to fine tune it to their chosen self defense ammunition. Featuring the most powerful laser allowable by law, the units offer an industry leading 2 hour run time on one, easily replaced CR2 battery.

All Crimson Trace products are proudly designed, engineered and built in the USA. For further information contact;

Iain Harrison
iainh@crimsontrace.com
1-800-442-2406 x1303

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Quote Of The Day

September 7, 2012 by 13 Comments

In an anti-conceal carry opinion piece written for the Daily Nebraskan, the student paper at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Amanda Keenan has this howler:

A final argument against concealed carry on campus is the level of discomfort generated from having a gun around. People go to institutions of higher learning mainly to get an education. Allowing guns in classrooms would prove to be a distraction more than they would be a necessity. Students would lose their concentration during tests and stare aimlessly as the lights reflected off the steel of a .57 magnum.

Not that college students don’t already stare aimlessly during exams but seeing the lights reflecting off the steel of a .57 magnum must really be something. Imagine a pistol that makes the .500 Smith and Wesson – currently the most powerful production handgun cartridge around – look puny. Wow!

I have a serious suggestion for young Ms. Keenan. The next time she plans to write on guns and gun issues I would suggest that she check out the NSSF’s “Writer’s Guide to Firearms and Ammunition.” It would help her look a little less foolish even if she decides to stick with her backward ideas on campus carry.