Month: November 2012

Uncategorized

I Just Shake My Head

November 3, 2012 by 2 Comments

Yesterday I received an email from Leonard Embody with a link to the picture below.

Obviously, he wasn’t happy with how the US District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee and the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals treated his original complaint (they both dismissed it) and now is seeking a writ of certiorari from the US Supreme Court. His petition can be found here.

I am sure Mr. Embody believes he is right and believes his cause is noble. However, as the longshoreman-philosopher Eric Hoffer noted in his book The True Believer, nothing is as dangerous as the true believer. The danger here is to our Second Amendment rights for this is a case that the gun prohibitionists would love to use in their efforts to stamp out carry outside the home.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court receives many cases and accepts few. The odds that this is the carry case accepted by the Supreme Court are infinitesimally small for which we all should be grateful.

UPDATE: Dave Hardy at Of Arms and the Law provides his take on Embody’s quest. Make sure to read the comments as well. As Dave notes:

It was lucky — actually, luck had little to do with it, it appears to
have been SAF’s strategy as amicus — that the Second Amendment didn’t
take any damage.

Uncategorized

Using Your Lower Body To Stay On Target

November 2, 2012 by

In another of the excellent short training videos from the National Shooting Sports Foundation, cowboy action shooter Jim Finch aka Long Hunter shows how to use your lower body effectively to increase both speed and accuracy.

While Jim is discussing this in the context of a SASS competition, I think his technique is transferable to other competitions like IDPA. More importantly, I could see this as being transferable to defensive situations where you face multiple attackers and no effective cover or concealment. While moving may be preferable, it isn’t always possible.

Uncategorized

The Choice – Bad Versus Perhaps Coming Around

November 2, 2012 by

Ammo.net has released a new infographic which compares Mitt and Barack on gun rights issues and what they’ve done in the past. Let’s face it, both have things in their past which should rightly concern gun owners.

However, Obama has doubled-down and called for a new AWB as well as restrictions on “cheap handguns” while Romney has said we don’t need new laws. I’d rather take the guy who is coming around to our side than the one who still in his heart of hearts looks at us with disgust.

Shooting Straight: A Surprising Look At How Both Presidential Candidates Have Changed On Gun Control [INFOGRAPHIC]
Via: Ammo.net

Uncategorized

Go Darrell!

November 2, 2012 by

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) is questioning the amount of money that the White House spends on certain events such as state dinners for leaders from Mexico and India. To illustrate what he considers excessive spending, Issa has released the following video.

I say, “Go Darrell!” If Obama wants to pontificate about being responsible and being frugal, he needs to be called out on it.

Is the timing somewhat political? Probably but I can live with that.

Uncategorized

Scary Picture Of The Day

November 2, 2012 by 1 Comment



Senators Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) toured Staten Island yesterday to see the destruction wrought by Hurricane/Tropical Storm Sandy and brought with them promises of aid. The south shore of the  “forgotten borough” was one of the hardest areas in New York.

Gillibrand had the good sense to wear a normal fleece jacket. Schumer, on the other hand, was wearing an official navy windbreaker from FEMA. Now if that isn’t a scary sight, I don’t know what is. The most anti-gun senator in the Senate wearing a jacket from one of the most inept agencies of the Federal government. I won’t even mention that FEMA is the topic of more than one conspiracy theory.
 

Picture from the Staten Island Advance

(Do keep the people of Staten Island in your prayers and thoughts. My cousin Tom and his wife Meryl still live in my grandparent’s old house on Staten Island and came through OK. Unfortunately, there are plenty of others who’s lives and homes were devastated.)

Uncategorized

In Denial

November 1, 2012 by 2 Comments

The media and the gun prohibitionists try to argue that President Obama supports the Second Amendment and has, in fact, been fairly pro-gun over the past four years. You have an expectation that they would overlook his “under the radar” efforts and his statements regarding firearms over time. However, you don’t expect to hear that line when you are in a store looking at guns.

Yesterday, I had some time to waste so I stopped into a pawn shop in Asheville (NC) to see what they might have in the way of interesting guns. Other than an overpriced Ruger Security Six .38 Special revolver in marginal condition, nothing else caught my eye. I asked the clerk about how often they take guns on pawn or in trade. He said it had been light recently due to the election – people are hanging on to their guns.

I made the comment that if Romney wins that would probably change. Another older clerk, presumably the manager, chimed in that it wouldn’t make any difference. He went on to say that “despite what the NRA says, Obama has been the most pro-gun President in the last 18 years.” He gave as his example Obama signing the credit card bill that had a rider that allowed for concealed carry in National Parks.

When I challenged him on Obama being pro-gun, he did acknowledge that the Obama Administration had implemented the reporting requirement for multiple sales of semi-auto rifles in the Southwest. I asked him about Fast and Furious but he blew it off. I left quickly after that as it wasn’t worth my time arguing with a fool.

I can understand why the gun prohibitionists and media distorts facts regarding Obama’s record on guns. I shake my head at Fudds who think their hunting rifles and shotguns are off-limits. However, I am just perplexed that someone who works in a place that deals in cold, hard reality could be so deeply into denial.

Maybe it is being in Asheville, maybe it is just willful ignorance. Either way, I know of many other places where I’d rather spend my money.

Uncategorized

NRA-PVF’s Ad Buying Strategy Captures Attention Of The LA Times

November 1, 2012 by

Normally, the only way the National Rifle Association can capture the attention of the Los Angeles Times is when there is a shooting. And then they are usually blamed for “pushing loose gun laws” or some such nonsense.


Fortunately, the NRA-PVF’s campaign ad strategy is what is attracting the attention of the LA Times. If you live in a battleground state like I do, you have been inundated with campaign ads around the clock. However, they really are most prevalent around the time of the local news broadcasts. The NRA-PVF is taking a different tack in an effort to have their message stand out.

But the NRA this year is spending a premium to place its spots lambasting President Obama during popular sports programs such ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” in key markets in battleground states.

The influential gun lobby is also buying time during late-night shows such as “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” “The Late Show with David Letterman and “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.”

The
NRA is not the sole political advertiser in those time periods, but it
is one of the most prevalent, often running several spots in one
football game, said Republican media strategist Brad Todd, who is
crafting the group’s ad campaign.

“We don’t have to compete with
18 other political ads,” said Todd, who said the group tested the
strategy during this year’s Wisconsin gubernatorial recall to reach
independent blue-collar voters.

The LA Times goes on to say that the demographic being targeted by the NRA is men under the age of 55. They also give attention to the NRA’s army of volunteers who will reach approximately 50 million voters before Election Day through calls, knocking on doors, and mail. Of course, this army of volunteers is something the gun prohibitionists and their top-down organizations can never hope to match.

Uncategorized

CCRKBA Reacts To Preckwinkle’s Partial Retreat On Violence Tax

November 1, 2012 by

The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms issued this statement after the announcement that Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle was “compromising” on her violence tax. As it stands now, the tax will only apply to firearm and not to ammunition. I like Alan Gottlieb’s comparison of this tax to the poll tax in the Jim Crow South.

BELLEVUE, WA – Wednesday’s partial retreat by Cook
County, Ill., board President Toni Preckwinkle on her proposed “violence
tax” is a good start, but the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and
Bear Arms said the entire idea should be scrapped.

CCRKBA panned
the proposal more than a week ago, when Preckwinkle announced she was
mulling a 5-cent tax on every cartridge and a $25 tax on firearms to help
close a budget gap. Today she backed off on the “bullet tax” but still
wants the tax on firearms adopted.

CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb
today was delighted with the partial victory, but said a “full retreat
from this proposed gun ownership penalty is necessary.”

“Gun owners
have won a partial victory,” Gottlieb observed, “but Preckwinkle is still
trying to make them shoulder more than their fair share with this tax
proposal. Face it, illegally-armed criminals are not going to pay any tax,
so waging class warfare against legal firearms owners is way off target,
and we brought attention to it.

“Besides,” he continued, “it’s not
gun owners but government that got Cook County into the budget mess. How
does a county government come up short by an estimated $3 billion,
anyway?

“Experienced shooters and hunters know enough to conserve
their ammunition,” Gottlieb said. “Public officials like Preckwinkle
should take a lesson from that when it comes to spending taxpayer dollars.
Instead, she wants to just dig deeper in everyone’s pockets, whether they
are gun owners, smokers or gamblers.”

Newspaper reports said the
county budget could run in the red next year because of the costs of
public health clinics, two hospitals and the criminal justice
system.

“What Preckwinkle wants is to penalize gun owners for
exercising a constitutionally-protected civil right,” Gottlieb stated.
“The penalty should be on Preckwinkle and her political allies for
spending the county that far into the red.

“This proposal smacks of
the same social bigotry that produced poll taxes on minority voters in the
South,” he concluded. “Preckwinkle should know you can’t tax the exercise
of a civil right.”