Let me start off by thanking everyone who served in the military regardless of branch. Without your service, in both peacetime and war, we wouldn’t have the freedoms that we have today.
I was thinking about my Dad this morning. He served 28 years of active duty in the Army and was medically retired in 1972. He was 53 and was suffering from a wide range of health conditions probably brought on by his military service.
My Dad died at age 62 and 10 days. He was actually born on April 3rd and not April 13th like it says on the grave marker.
On May 5th, I officially outlived him. Unlike him, I never smoked, I never was in a war zone, and I was never exposed to Agent Orange. With the exception of not smoking, I wasn’t exposed to the things he was thanks to his service and that of millions of more men and women just like him.
So on this Veterans Day, remember and thank those family members and friends who did serve. Thank them for the lives we live thanks to their hard work and sacrifices.
The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission runs a number of shooting ranges that are open to the public. The one closest to me is the Wayne E. Smith/Cold Mountain Shooting Range. It is in the shadow of Cold Mountain in the Pisgah National Forest. The range first opened in 2008.
When I first went to the Cold Mountain Shooting Range, it was an unmanned 100-yard range with a gravel parking lot. The only improvements were the berm, the covered shooting line, and concrete walkways to the 25, 50, and 100 yard lines. There was no range safety officer, no toilets, and no pistol only range.
This is what it looked like looking towards the shooting line.
Fast forward to yesterday. There are now dedicated rifle and pistol ranges. The rifle range has a series of steel strike baffles going out to 50 yards. Each of the five rifle stations is universally accessible and have sound suppression baffles.
More importantly, there is a range safety officer hired by the NCWRC there at all times. All first time users must go through a safety briefing. Everyone gets a shooting range pass which can be used at any of the ranges run by the commission. The RSO assigns shooting lanes, maintains control of the range, calls cease fire, etc. In other words, the often unsafe practices of the unmanned range are gone.
I think the Wildlife Resources Commission should be applauded for how they have continually upgraded this range as well as the other ones. It takes money and it appears they have spent it wisely. Given most of these ranges are free, that money has come from licenses and Pittman-Robertson monies.
Resolved, That two Battalions of marines be raised, consisting of one Colonel, two Lieutenant Colonels, two Majors, and other officers as usual in other regiments; and that they consist of an equal number of privates with other battalions; that particular care be taken, that no persons be appointed to office, or enlisted into said Battalions, but such as are good seamen, or so acquainted with maritime affairs as to be able to serve to advantage by sea when required; that they be enlisted and commissioned to serve for and during the present war between Great Britain and the colonies, unless dismissed by order of Congress: that they be distinguished by the names of the first and second battalions of American Marines, and that they be considered as part of the number which the continental Army before Boston is ordered to consist of.
Ordered, That a copy of the above be transmitted to the General.
Since that time, the US Marine Corps has been defending America.
And it isn’t just men doing the defending.
As my fellow Polite Society Podcast co-host Amy Dillon will attest. Among other jobs in the Marines, Amy served as a drill instructor at Parris Island.
Since 1921 the Commandant of the Marine Corps has released a birthday message on November 10th. Commandant David Berger has continued that tradition and his message is here. He says, in part:
The strength of our Corps is our Marines. Our success depends on all Marines embodying the values in which our Corps was founded; it requires leveraging the talents and ingenuity of every Marine to strengthen our Corps. Since 1775, courageous Marines have answered the call to fight for freedom and shaped our reputation as the most feared fighting force the world has seen. Marines from each generation approached every battle with a lethal combination of versatility, perseverance, and adaptability that has allowed us to prevail in any clime and place.
Even though I come from an Army family, I recognize that the Marine Corps, more than any other branch of the US Armed Forces, seems to make the greatest effort to transmit their values, history, and tradition to the next generation of Marines.
So to all my friends and readers who served in the United States Marines Corps, Semper Fi and Happy Birthday!
The NRA officially dropped their lawsuit against the City and County of San Francisco yesterday. The lawsuit was brought due to a resolution approved by the Board of Supervisors branding the NRA a “domestic terrorist organization”.
NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(a)(1)(i), Plaintiff the National Rifle Association of America voluntarily dismisses without prejudice the above-entitled action against all Defendants. This notice of dismissal is being filed with the Court before service by Defendants of either an answer or a motion for summary judgment.
San Francisco, in their reply to the original complaint, contended their resolution was a “statement of policy” and “non-binding”.
Mayor London Breed had already told city staff that the measure did not limit the city’s dealings with any vendors doing business with the NRA. Stefani said her resolution was a legitimate public denunciation with no binding consequences.
At the time Mayor Breed made her statement that the resolution would not impact dealings with vendors, NRA outside counsel William Brewer III indicated that the lawsuit would continue until the the resolution was formally revoked. As of yesterday, the resolution had not been revoked but nonetheless the case was dismissed.
Both sides are now claiming victory in the lawsuit.
“We’re pleased the NRA backed down on its frivolous lawsuit. This was a baseless attempt to silence San Francisco’s valid criticisms of the NRA and distract from the gun violence epidemic facing our country. San Francisco will never be intimidated by the NRA. If the NRA doesn’t want to be publicly condemned for its actions, it should stop sabotaging common sense gun safety regulations that would protect untold numbers of Americans every year, like universal background checks, an assault weapons ban, and restrictions on high-capacity magazines.”
The NRA and its attorney proclaimed victory in a multipart Twitter post:
Today the NRA withdrew its lawsuit in SF – and now celebrates the important victory it obtained on behalf of its members. As has been widely reported, after the Association challenged the unconstitutional resolution, the City beat a hasty retreat and backed down from its wildly illegal blacklisting scheme. The censors are on notice. The NRA will always fight for the Constitution, and will re-file if the City tries anything like this in the future.
So it appears that each side got a participation trophy allowing both sides to claim victory. The NRA got San Francisco to declare that the resolution was non-binding and San Francisco got the lawsuit dismissed without officially revoking the resolution.
I don’t think anyone can question that the NRA had to sue San Francisco in this case. However, I did find it interesting that the NRA didn’t use attorney Chuck Michel and his firm to handle the lawsuit. Michel and Associates has traditionally been the NRA’s go-to law firm for California related cases. Instead they used Las Vegas based Garman Turner Gordon as their attorney on the ground and Brewer, Attorneys and Counselors, as “of counsel”.
Ed Stack, the anti-gun CEO of Dick’s, said the buycott of his chain really didn’t help his company’s bottom line. However, the boycott of Dick’s by Second Amendment supporters did hurt the company’s finances.
“Buycott” is of more recent vintage and means just the opposite. You go out of your way to buy the product or services of a company as a show of support for their political position.
Stack noted that while he appreciated all the support for stopping sales of modern sporting rifles, it was short lived.
“The buycotts were really nice and we appreciated it, but they were kind of short-lived,” Stack told Business Insider.
Stack said that alienated consumers included both hunters and non-hunters who felt “angry” over Dick’s decision to back away from the gun business. All in all, striking guns from the stores ended up costing the company.
“By the time we got done, it was about a quarter of a billion dollars,” Stack said.
It is one of the tenets of sales that it costs more to gain a customer than to keep one. Moreover, the lifetime value of an existing customer far outweighs that of a one-time purchaser. The person who spends $750 on an AR and comes back to you to buy ammo on regular basis is worth more to your company than the mom who drops in once in a blue moon to buy running togs.
Stack should have read Joe Girard’s book How to Sell Anything to Anybody. Joe Girard was the world’s greatest car salesman. He found that the average person has about 250 friends and acquaintances who will show up to your funeral. If you make that person angry by your service or attitude, he or she is likely to influence 250 other people. Unfortunately for Stack, people are more likely to complain than to give kudos and his bottom line proved it.
Last month In Halle Germany, a murderous psycho tried to enter a synagogue, intent on killing Yom Kippur worshipers while live streaming his violent rampage on the social media platform Twitch.
(Sebastian Willnow/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images)
In light of the recent increase in anti-semitism in Germany, the synagogue had requested a police security detail for the holiday—but the request had been denied. Fortunately synagogue leadership did institute their own security protocol which included security cameras and locked doors. This surely saved lives! During the Torah reading, a loud booming noise was heard and a man dressed in black was seen amid a cloud of smoke via the security monitor.
An assailant shot repeatedly at the door and ignited several Molotov cocktails and homemade grenades attempting to force his way in, but the door held. Amid his frustration for failing to enter the synagogue, he shot a forty year old woman who was passing by. He then drove down the street and killed a twenty year old man in a kebob shop.
The weapons used by the perpetrator were hand-fashioned from wood, steel pipes, sheet metal and plastic, using plans he had found readily available on the Internet. Additionally some components did appear to be manufactured using a 3D printer found at the assailant’s home.
There have been concerns voiced that this extremists’ use of homemade weapons will—by example—usher in a new era of violent attacks. I hate to be the one to break this news, but terrorists and criminals have always been able to manufacture their own weapons with a simple trip to any hardware store! This of course assumes that they choose not to shop on the black market where fully functioning, commercially manufactured weapons of every description, are available at bargain prices to any criminal willing to break just one more law, before they go break even more consequential laws.
There were also several commentators who stated with great certainty that this event would have been much worse had it taken place in the United States where real guns are so easy to obtain. What this line of thinking fails to recognize is the possibility that in the United States, the worshipers hiding behind the locked door of the synagogue might be armed and trained to protect themselves and their community from just such an attack! Or the possibility that the woman passerby might have been carrying a concealed pistol and could have ended the entire incident right there. Another possibility could be that upon hearing gunfire up the street, a concealed carrier in the kebob shop might have had time to draw his pistol from concealment and readied himself to fire upon the murderer as he entered, thus saving the life of the young man in the restaurant.
God forbid I am ever unlucky
enough to be caught up in an attack where someone is shooting at me.
However—if it did happen—I would hope for two things: Number one, the
attacker is using a homemade weapon, and number two, I’m not defenseless
in Germany!
If you’ve read my blog for any amount of time, you know I love infographics. The Babylon Bee, a Christian satire site, has come up with an explanation for “assault rifles” (sic) which is a hoot.
If you had told me that a former president of the Brady Campaign was going to speak at the 2A Rally Saturday, I would have wondered what substances you had ingested.
Dan Gross, former president of the Brady Campaign, was an unannounced speaker at the 2A Rally. What he said took a lot of people by surprise including me. You can listen to his short speech below:
Since then he has done a few interviews. The first probably was with John Crump who writes for Ammoland. His full candid interview is here. One thing Gross said really stood out in my opinion.
I think there are people on the “gun control or gun safety” side that have too loud of voice that really believe that there’s no place for guns in our country. Those are the people that lead to a lot of exhaustion that leads me to where I am now.
While Gross believes in background checks, he said he had no problem with someone selling a firearm to a friend without such a check. He also said it was wrong to focus on an assault weapons ban.
Given the tweets from Brady today, I can see why Gross has moved on. What they are calling for in the way of “gun violence prevention” will really have no impact. It is the mag bans, the “assault weapon” (sic) bans, and other such “gun safety” (sic) proposals.
Repeat after us —
❤️ Virginia is for gun violence prevention lovers ❤️ ❤️ Virginia is for gun violence prevention lovers ❤️ ❤️ Virginia is for gun violence prevention lovers ❤️ ❤️ Virginia is for gun violence prevention lovers ❤️#VirginiaVotes#GunReformNow#EndGunViolencepic.twitter.com/EnHh05O60m
Dave Workman of the Second Amendment Foundation also interviewed Gross for Liberty Park Press. As he notes in his piece on it, they had a 50-minute phone conversation. Gross stressed that there is a common ground and government doesn’t have to be involved.
Gross acknowledged his apprehensions about appearing at the rally and speaking to a crowd of Second Amendment activists. His fears dissipated when it became evident that people who attended are interested in the same things he’s interested in, which boil down to safer homes and safer families.
“We still disagree on some things I am sure,” he emphasized, “but we can’t let that get in the way of a real opportunity to accomplish some things.”
Some of those things are keeping firearms secured from young children and getting more training. I can agree with that.
Gross said that he and Rob Pincus have been working together for the past year on creating a Center for Gun Rights and Responsibilities. It will be interesting to see what comes of that.
Thanks to Paul Lathrop of the Polite Society Podcast, I have a YouTube of my GRPC presentation. I posted the text of it earlier but this lets you hear it warts and all.
I am not a public speaker. I do much better one on one. However, at the risk of tooting my own horn, I think I did OK.
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