Why Check If You Won’t Prosecute

Dom Raso has another excellent commentary video up. This time he takes on background checks. As he correctly notes, to the average person background checks sound like a good idea. Unfortunately they do nothing to stop violent crime.

In the most recent statistics, 76,000 people lied about their eligibility to purchase a firearm on the Form 4473. Of these, only 13 were prosecuted according to Dom. We in the gun culture know that it is a Federal felony to lie on the Form 4473 and each question lied about counts as another chargeable crime. We don’t lie because we are honest people. Criminals lie because that is what they do and because they are smart enough to know that virtually nothing is going to happen to them if they do lie. Given that, what incentive is there not to lie if you are a criminal? The answer is none and that is why background checks do nothing to stop crime.

Management Changes At Colt

A month and a half after reuniting the two halves of Colt – Colt Defense and Colt’s Manufacturing Co. – they have announced a management change. Even though Colt’s Manufacturing Co., or New Colt Holding Co. as it was legally known, was the one bought, it is their CEO, Dennis Veilleux, who will now become the CEO of the reunited company.

While I know the rationale for reunification was to secure the consumer market for Colt Defense in the face of an uncertain and turbulent defense market, one must wonder if the directors of Colt also had in mind new leadership as well. It is one of those things that we’ll never know unless someone privy to the private discussions among the directors makes it public.

The Outdoor Wire has their release and I’ve reprinted parts of it below:

WEST HARTFORD, Conn. – Colt Defense LLC, a leading developer and manufacturer of small arms for the global military, law enforcement and sporting markets, today announced the appointment of Dennis Veilleux as President and CEO effective immediately. Mr. Veilleux was most recently President and CEO of New Colt Holding Corp., which was acquired by Colt Defense last month. Mr. Veilleux replaces Gerald R. Dinkel, who will remain on Colt Defense’s Governing Board.

Commenting on the leadership transition, Governing Board Chairman Daniel J. Standen said, “During his tenure as CEO, Gerry Dinkel has been instrumental in Colt’s transformation into a more diversified business, including the recent completion of the acquisition of New Colt Holding Corp. We are grateful to Gerry for his valuable contribution to the Company and look forward to supporting Dennis Veilleux as the new CEO of the re-unified Colt. Dennis has 27 years of experience in the firearms industry and has achieved considerable success in his stewardship of New Colt Holding Corp.’s growth in the commercial firearms market. We believe this succession positions Colt Defense well to address the different opportunities and challenges faced by the business.”

We Didn’t Skip Starbucks This Saturday!

In honor of “Skip Starbucks Saturday”, the Complementary Spouse and I treated ourselves to some nice coffee at our local Starbucks this afternoon. They weren’t busy when we got there but that soon changed.

Since the demanding Moms like to use handwritten messages so much, I decided to do the same as you can see below.

The Complementary Spouse went a step further and wore her Keep Calm and Carry t-shirt that we picked up at last year’s Gun Rights Policy Conference.

I, by the way, was pocket carrying my little Sig P238 in my cargo shorts. The Starbucks was not posted so everything was cool.

One of my favorite pictures of the day comes from Brandon Combs of the Firearms Policy Coalition who snapped a picture with the barista holding a “I Love Guns and Coffee” patch. He made it into a nice poster shown below.

Cheers, North Dakota!

In the list of states with the highest consumption of beer, North Dakota is number one. Drinkers of legal age in North Dakota drank an average of 45.8 gallons per person. The overall US average is 28.2 gallons per drinker of legal age.

Rounding out the Top Five after North Dakota are, in order, New Hampshire, Montana, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. I would have expected the drinkers in Wisconsin, the home of beer and brats, to have come in higher. I also thought Texas would have made the list.

The other thing I notice about this list is that all are Northern states with long and dark winters. I guess beer helps the residents get through them.

Journalism Ethics? Yeah, Right

In a column posted earlier this month, Rob Cox, global editor of Reuters Breakingviews, says it would be good business for Starbucks to ban guns in their stores.

Still, the economic downside for Starbucks may be much greater than the company has let on. The current furor could explode into a nationwide call for a boycott – something that many gun control organizations are now publicly embracing, particularly following an insensitive, though legal, call by one gun rights group for its members to parade their weapons at the Starbucks in Newtown, Connecticut – where 20 children and six educators were massacred in an elementary school last December by a gunman wielding an assault weapon with high-capacity magazines.

The truth is, Starbucks and its shareholders may have more to lose than gain by resisting the adoption of a policy like the one it has for its own corporate headquarters that asks gun owners to check them at the door.

This column predated the call by Moms Demand Action to boycott Starbucks today by a few weeks. However, I think it highly likely that Mr. Cox was well aware of the impending boycott today.

Why?

Because Mr. Cox, in addition to his work for Reuters, is a founder of the gun control group Sandy Hook Promise and is their Development Director. He discloses his role as a founder of Sandy Hook Promise at the bottom of his column.

I don’t know whether Mr. Cox is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists. If he is a member, shame on him for ignoring the Society’s Code of Ethics. It states that journalists should “Act Independently”.

Act Independently
Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public’s right to know.

Journalists should:

  • Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived.


  • Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.

  • Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and shun secondary employment, political involvement, public office and service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integrity.

  • Disclose unavoidable conflicts.

  • Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable.

  • Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.

  • Be wary of sources offering information for favors or money; avoid bidding for news.

If Mr. Cox and the rest of the mainstream media ever wonders why gun owners (and conservatives and libertarians) have such a distrust of the media, he need only look to this column and his role as a founder of Sandy Hook Promise. Knowing of his role in a gun control organization, who would ever believe anything that he wrote or edited for Reuters that concerned firearms? The answer is no reasonable person because it would be it be slanted against guns whether consciously or unconsciously.

How To Inspect Your M&P Shield

Smith & Wesson has issued a recall on their popular M&P Shield pistols made before August 19, 2013. They have identified a condition whereby the trigger bar pin could damage the lower trigger in such a way as to cause the drop safety feature not to work. If a pistol with this condition were to be dropped, it could fire unintentionally. While S&W thinks this condition may only be present in some more recently manufactured Shields, they are being cautious.

To help determine if your M&P Shield is one of the pistols with this defect, Smith & Wesson has released a YouTube video showing exactly how to determine if the trigger bar bin is not functioning correctly.

Kudos to S& W for not only issuing the recall but posting this video showing owners on how to inspect their pistol for this potential defect. If a picture is worth a 1,000 words, then a video ups that by a factor of 10.

Assaulted: Civil Rights Under Fire To Be Shown In California State Capitol Building

The movie Assaulted: Civil Rights Under Fire will be shown, in of all places, the California Capitol Building. Given the assaults on gun and civil rights that have taken place in both the California Senate and Assembly, I can’t think of a better place to show that movie. While I doubt that it will change any of the narrow minds of the gun prohibitionist politicians, the symbolism is enough.

From the release about the event by Cal-FFL along with details of this showing and another public one in Sacramento:

CAL-FFL, California Assemblyman Tim Donnelly to Co-Host Showing of Gun Rights Documentary Inside California Capitol Building

Aug. 28th public screening at the Crest Theatre follows private Capitol screening at noon; CAL-FFL giving away 100 free movie tickets and posters for the public screening.

SACRAMENTO, CA (August 22, 2013) — Second Amendment civil rights are under fire by the California Legislature, according to leading industry and consumer group California Association of Federal Firearms Licensees (CAL-FFL). To help underscore the point, civil rights advocates have taken their argument to the big screen — and are now bringing the big screen to the Capitol Building through the efforts of top-rated Assembly member Tim Donnelly (District 33 – Hesperia) and CAL-FFL.

In conjunction with CAL-FFL, Donnelly, who’s already declared his candidacy for the 2014 gubernatorial election, will host a private screening of the Second Amendment-focused documentary ‘Assaulted: Civil Rights Under Fire’ inside the State Capitol to educate members of the Legislature and staff about this historic civil rights struggle.

“We are honored that Assemblyman Donnelly chose to present our film on civil rights to his colleagues – the very elected members who are working hard to pass bills that would effectively end the Second Amendment in California for many years to come,” said Emmy Award-winning producer and writer Kris Koenig, the film’s writer and director. “Most of these bills aren’t even rationally related to actual crime data. Our research and film clearly shows that these bills won’t improve public safety. If they watch the film they will come to understand why.”

“I spent the last eighteen months of my life creating this film because I saw our rights being wholesaled off for political gain with no real benefit to public safety,” continued Koenig. “It’s like the NSA invading our privacy with no real connection to global terrorism.”

The Los Angeles Times called ‘Assaulted’, narrated by critically-acclaimed rapper and actor Ice-T, “a reasoned counter to Michael Moore’s ‘Bowling for Columbine’.” The film takes a step back from the public discourse on issues like banning assault rifles and restricting magazine capacity. Instead of heavy rhetoric, ‘Assaulted’ offers a unique historical and legal perspective on the Second Amendment’s significance over the years since America’s founding, taking a critical and objective look at current gun laws and their effect on civil rights and liberty. The film includes commentary by preeminent UCLA constitutional law professors Adam Winkler and Eugene Volokh as well as attorney Alan Gura, the lawyer who secured 2 major victories for gun owners in landmark cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Interviews include Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign, Margot Bennett, executive director of Women Against Gun Violence, and the advocate/entertainer Ted Nugent.

“California’s gun control movement has always been about keeping ‘those people’ from exercising their rights,” said Craig DeLuz, CAL-FFL’s Legislative Advocate. “In the 1800s, ‘those people’ were the Chinese and Native Americans. In the 1960s, it was the Black Panthers. Today, you and I are ‘those people’ – ‘Assaulted’ shows how we got here and why we have to avoid repeating the same gun control mistakes we’ve made in decades past that continue to cost innocent people their lives.”

“The opportunity to educate the members of the California Legislature and their staff about the civil rights aspect of the gun control bills they’re working to pass as we speak is just tremendous. We simply cannot thank Assemblyman Donnelly enough for his generosity and tireless efforts to defend our fundamental Second Amendment rights,” said Brandon Combs, President of CAL-FFL and Managing Director of the national Firearms Policy Coalition.

Continued Combs, “We hope that all public officials and senior staff of agencies like DOJ will watch the film and give real thought to the arguments made regardless of their personal views. When lawmakers make mistakes writing gun laws innocent people go to jail, period. Getting caught in the dangerous, confusing, and expanding gun control spider web is not a very pleasant future for millions of law-abiding California gun owners, visitors, and local businesses.”

CAL-FFL will be hosting a public screening of ‘Assaulted’ at the Crest Theatre, located at 1013 K St., at 6 p.m. that same evening. CAL-FFL is giving away free tickets to the first 100 people who RSVP and request tickets at http://www.calffl.org/assaultedtickets. All Crest attendees will receive an ‘Assaulted’ movie poster that can be signed by Koenig.

Government officials, staff, and members of the press can request a complementary ticket to the 6 p.m. screening at the Crest Theatre by emailing Craig DeLuz at cdeluz@calffl.org or by calling him at (916) 595-0264. Tickets may also be purchased for $12 from Tugg at http://www.tugg.com/events/5116.

Participants are invited to join Kris Koenig, Craig DeLuz, and Brandon Combs for discussion and Q&A about the film, gun control in California, and the status of Second Amendment litigation immediately following the 6 p.m. showing at the restaurant Pizza Rock, located at 1020 K St., just steps away from the Crest Theatre.

DETAILS

WHAT: Assaulted: Civil Rights Under Fire (Private Screening)
WHEN: August 28, 2013 – 12 Noon

WHERE: California State Capitol Building

WHAT: Assaulted: Civil Rights Under Fire (Public Screening)
WHEN: August 28, 2013 – 6 p.m.
WHERE: Crest Theatre (1013 K St., Sacramento, CA 95814)

I Know Where I’m Getting Coffee Tomorrow!

By now, you may have heard of the call by the gun prohibitionists to “Skip Starbucks Saturday” in response to the coffee chain’s determination to remain neutral in the gun debate and to allow carry in accordance with each state’s law. To those of the gun prohibitionists’ ilk, neutrality – while smart business – is an affront to their crusade to make everyone unsafe. While they would not consider a gun-free zone unsafe, those zones have become one of the favorite places for the mentally deranged to commit their heinous acts.

So, of course, I do plan to go to one of the local Starbucks on Saturday to have some nice frou-frou coffee drink that I might not otherwise buy. The Complementary Spouse has a couple of gift cards for Starbucks that we need to use and this seems like a good time to do it.

The good folks at Grass Roots North Carolina note that this is also an opportunity to reinforce the message that it is in all restaurants’ best interest to support the expanded carry provisions of HB 937.

No support is more clear than doing business with those who cooperate with us. We need to demonstrate, in a practical way, that standing behind North Carolina’s gun owners is a winning proposition for restaurants. Inducing failure of this anti-Second Amendment boycott will provide initial momentum for when HB 937 becomes effective in October.

Support Starbucks Saturday…

As you make weekend plans be sure to include a Saturday stop at your local Starbucks for a beverage and snack. Make sure to let your barrista know that you appreciate their respect for carry laws. Drive this message home by printing-out and handing your server the message below.

The alert isn’t up on their website yet so I’m posting their card below. I don’t know if other state-based gun rights groups are doing this but I’d suggest checking their websites for details.

This is certainly an easier way of the getting the message across than try to find a bank that has any $2 bills.

Jim Shepherd in The Shooting Wire also has some wise words about this counter campaign with which I tend to agree. I like his statement about it being a personal choice and not a political one.

I think a gun-neutral position is smart for the company, but it seems that some groups are determined to make guns a polarizing issue. That, I don’t like- no matter which side of an issue you fall on.

So….we may find it advantageous to show up at a Starbucks (or two) this weekend, order one of their innumerable combinations of coffee and simply say “I wanted to thank Starbucks for not taking a side in the gun debate. I think it is a personal choice, not a political one.”

Feel free to put that into your own words- but speak them if you have the opportunity.

Oh, The Mental Images

Checking my university email this morning, I found a security alert due to an off-campus stabbing in the vicinity of the campus. Read the alert below and see if it doesn’t conjure up an “interesting” mental image.

Jackson County Sheriff Department is reporting a stabbing at River Park Trailer Park. This is located off of Old Cullowhee Rd. approximately 1/2/ mile from the rear entrance. Suspect is described as a White Female, Blonde Hair, slender build, approximately 5’5″ tall, poor dental hygiene. No clothing description available. May be armed with a knife. Suspect was last seen on foot in the area of the trailer park. Due to the proximity to campus, the community should be aware of this event. There have been no sightings of the suspect on campus and officers are checking the area.

Stabbing. Trailer park. Poor dental hygiene.

Sometimes the stereotypes about the Southern Appalachians exist for a reason. This may be one of them.

TSA Needs Some “.347 SIG” Training Ammo

The Transportation Security Administration issued a solicitation on Friday for training ammunition. This solicitation is a Request for Proposal for the following:

3,454,000 rounds of .347 SIG Caliber Training Ammunition including shipping (See specifications attached.)

It seems that the TSA in addition to not catching any terrorists can’t catch typos either.

They do clarify in the next paragraph that they are seeking 115-130 grain .357 SIG training ammunition.

Given that the Federal Air Marshal program is under the auspices of the TSA, I presume this ammo is for them. I certainly hope the TSA doesn’t have any intention of arming the gropers at airport gates with anything more than nitrile gloves.