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Omnibus Gun Reform Bill Introduced In North Carolina

February 14, 2019 by 1 Comment

House Bill 61 – Omnibus Gun Changes – was introduced into the North Carolina House of Representatives yesterday. The primary sponsors of the bill are Rep. Larry Pittman (R- Cabarrus and Rowan), Rep. Larry Potts (R- Davidson), and Rep. Keith Kidwell (R- Beaufort and Craven).

The most salient thing this bill does is to reintroduce permitless concealed carry into North Carolina. As open carry of firearms is a constitutional right in the state, this bill would extend it to concealed carry of firearms. Concealed Handgun Permits would still be available and the bill has language that encourages people to obtain them if they plan to travel out of state or want to facilitate the purchase of a firearm.

The bill would also make it an infraction as opposed to a misdemeanor to carry concealed on posted private property. It would remain a misdemeanor to carry while one has alcohol or a controlled substance in his or her bloodstream. Exceptions are made for controlled substances that have been prescribed and are being taken in therapeutic amounts.

Much of the bill just reiterates where one can or cannot carry a firearm such as courthouses, the grounds of the Legislative Buildings, or the Executive Mansion. It goes on to state that one can carry open or concealed at state rest stops and state parks.

Finally, the bill orders the State Board of Education to develop an elective course on comprehensive firearms safety in consultation with law enforcement agencies and “firearms associations”. This course would be an elective to facilitate the learning of STEM principles. The bill also orders the State Board of Election to develop another elective course on wildlife conservation based upon the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation. Consultation for the course development would be with the NC Wildlife Resources Commission, the Division of Marine Fisheries, and the Wildlife Management Institute.

The full text of the bill can be found here.

H. 61 is similar to H. 746 which was the last sessions’ bill that authorized permitless carry. As you may remember, it passed the House in 2017 but stalled in the State Senate when the spineless Republican leadership failed to even schedule hearings of the bill. Ostensibly the Republicans wanted to preserve their super-majority. Given the 2018 election results, that was a failure on their part as they lost their super-majority anyway.

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A Blog For The Gun Curious

February 7, 2019 by 1 Comment

My friend David Yamane has started a new blog called Gun Curious. It is aimed at those who don’t yet have a firearm but are curious about it.

He says:

As someone who had little exposure to and no interest in guns for most of my life, I know what it is like not to understand guns and gun culture. For nearly a decade now, I have burrowed deeper and deeper into American gun culture. I hope to translate what I have learned to the gun curious – those interested in but unsure about guns.


This uncertainty about guns can be coupled with attraction, repulsion, or neutrality. Whatever your orientation, if you are open-minded and hope to learn more about guns and gun culture, you should find something of interest here.

 If you have a friend or colleague that is curious about guns and would like to read more from a non-judgemental perspective, I would highly recommend sending them to David’s new blog.

He explains more about why he decided to start a second blog at his GunCulture 2.0 blog. 

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Where The 1A Meets The 2A

February 6, 2019 by 2 Comments

As I mentioned the other day, the website sponsored by a coalition of civil rights groups was threatened by prosecution if they didn’t take down certain code files. CodeIsFreeSpeech.com was put up after the anti-gun Attorney General of Washington State and a host of fellow traveler AGs went to court to suppress computer code assembled by Defense Distributed. These groups were not a party to that lawsuit and were not enjoined from distributing them on the Internet.

It turns out that the threat of prosecution came from New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal. Grewal had demanded server company Cloudfare delete CodeIsFreeSpeech.com’s files or charges would be filed for them being in violation of a NJ state law.

Grewal had been recently successful in getting a lawsuit against him by Defense Distributed filed in the State of Texas dismissed on the grounds that it should have been brought in New Jersey. Mind you, that the dismissal was not on the merits of the case but rather merely whether a US District Court in Texas had jurisdiction.

He should have remembered the old saying, “Be careful what you wish for”, as suit has now been filed in US District Court for the District of New Jersey. Now he will not be facing just Defense Distributed but also the Second Amendment Foundation, the Firearms Policy Coalition, the Firearms Policy Foundation, the Calguns Foundation, and CAL-FFL. The individual plaintiff in the case is Brandon Combs who is executive director of the Calguns Foundation and president of both the Firearms Policy Coalition and the Firearms Policy Foundation. So now Grewal is not facing merely one plaintiff but six institutional plaintiffs and one individual plaintiff.

In a press release sent out yesterday, the groups had this to say about the lawsuit:

TRENTON, N.J. (February 5, 2019) — Today, attorneys for six advocacy organizations and one individual, Firearms Policy Coalition founder Brandon Combs, filed a new lawsuit and a motion seeking a restraining order and preliminary injunction against New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal. The case was filed just days after Grewal’s Office of the Attorney General sent a threat of prosecution to Cloudflare, a major Internet services company headquartered in San Francisco, about www.CodeIsFreeSpeech.com. A copy of key court filings can be viewed or downloaded at www.codeisfreespeechlawsuit.com.


According to the complaint, on Saturday, February 3 the CodeIsFreeSpeech.com website’s act of republishing some of Defense Distributed’s digital firearms information “was met with yet another of Grewal’s Orwellian take-down orders,” demanding that Cloudflare “delete all files described within 24 hours or [Grewal’s Office] will be forced to press charges.”


“By issuing a takedown demand against” the entire website, “Grewal sought to compel the complete and total suppression of the political speech at CodeIsFreeSpeech.com, the links to other advocacy websites and their educational and political resources, links to political tee shirts, and even the very text of the United States Constitution itself,” the plaintiffs said in the filing. Attorneys for the plaintiffs also filed a motion seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction against Grewal. The Attorney General’s threats of prosecution and other civil enforcement actions under New Jersey laws, the plaintiffs say, violate their constitutional rights.


Last November, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy signed a new speech crime into law, in Senate Bill 2465. Among other things, it created a new “third degree crime” for “a person to distribute by any means, including the Internet, to a person in New Jersey” certain kinds of speech, including “digital instructions in the form of computer-aided design files or other code or instructions stored and displayed in electronic format as a digital model that may be used to program a three-dimensional printer…”


CodeIsFreeSpeech.com “is a publicly available website for the publication and republication of truthful, non-misleading, non-commercial political speech and information that is protected under the United States Constitution,” the complaint says. “Its purpose is to allow people to share knowledge and empower them to exercise their fundamental, individual rights. It was created and developed during the week of July 22, 2018—long before the State enacted Senate Bill 2465.”


The plaintiffs are represented by attorneys Chad Flores, Daniel Hammond, and Hannah Roblyer of Texas-based Beck Redden LLP and Daniel L. Schmutter of New Jersey law firm Hartman & Winnicki.


The CodeIsFreeSpeech.com website can be additionally accessed through URLs GurbirGrewalisaTyrant.com and PhilMurphyisaTyrant.com.

The plaintiffs have filed a suit seeking declaratory and injunctive relief. Moreover, at the same time they also filed a motion for a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction. They are asking the court to declare the New Jersey law in violation of the First and Second Amendments, the Commerce Clause, and the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the 14th Amendment. Moreover, they want the court to declare Federal law preempts the New Jersey law and immunizes the plaintiffs from prosecution.

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2019 NRA Board Of Directors Election – A Round-Up Of Endorsements

February 4, 2019 by 5 Comments

Voting members of the National Rifle Association – Life or higher members and five-year continuous annual members – should have received their Board of Directors ballot in the February 2019 issue of the NRA magazine that they have chosen. Mine came in my American Rifleman. The ballot this year contains 35 candidates. 33 of these candidates were chosen by the Nominating Committee and two are on the ballot as petition candidates. The Nominating Committee per their usual named a mix of politicians, celebrities, the usual hanger’s on, and, believe it or not, actual gun people.

Out of these 35 candidates, you are allowed to vote for up to 27. However, to be very blunt about it, if you vote for 27 people you are an idiot just checking boxes and you really don’t give a damn about who is on the board or the direction it takes. I say this because you are giving equal weight to both the best candidates and to the worst candidates out of the 27. If you bullet vote or pick a small number of candidates, then they stand a greater chance of actually being elected to the Board of Directors. In other words, the vote for your favorites isn’t diluted.

Lt. Col. Robert Brown of Soldier of Fortune magazine is a long-time NRA Board member who is not afraid of shaking things up. He traditionally publishes a list of his endorsements and this year is no exception. He has endorsed six people for election this year. They are Anthony Colandro, Tom King of the NY State Rifle and Pistol Assn, Adam Kraut, Willes Lee, former NRA President Jim Porter, and Dwight Van Horn. I think it is interesting to note the Lt. Col. Brown has endorsed the two candidates overlooked by the Nominating Committee – Adam Kraut and Anthony Colandro.

The hunting and conservation organization Safari Club International has endorsed Paul Babaz for the Board of Directors. Given he is their current president this is not surprising and should be expected. Babaz was appointed to the Board last year to fill an empty position and is up for election this year.

David Codrea is a journalist and blogger whom I greatly respect. He and the late Mike Vanderboegh were the ones who first brought the BATFE’s gun walking to light. Their articles on Project Gunwalker aka Operation Fast and Furious exposed the plan that ultimately led to congressional hearings and a finding of contempt for former Attorney General Eric Holder. David has endorsed only one person for the Board – Anthony Colandro – based upon his answer’s to David’s hard-hitting questionnaire.

Ammoland.com has been instrumental in collating a number of candidate statements and endorsements. In addition, they have asked that you consider both Anthony Colandro and Adam Kraut for the Board.

Knife Rights traditionally doesn’t make endorsements for the NRA Board of Directors. However, this year they are endorsing a few individuals running for the Board who also serve on their Advisory Board. They sent this out in an email on Jan 31st. The people they endorsed are Sandra Froman, Lt Col. Ollie North, Pete Brownell, Anthony Colandro, Esther Schneider, and Paul Babaz.

My friend Amanda Suffecool of Eye on the Target Radio is bullet voting for Willes Lee. On her ballot she also highlighted Ted Nugent, Oliver North, and Allen West as people she would endorse.

Rock Island Auctions is endorsing their president Kevin Hogan for the Board of Directors. The endorsement points out that in addition to being a collector, he has raised $2.1 million for NRA-ILA.

Lt. Col. Willes Lee has too many endorsements to count. Included in his list of endorsements are Alan Gottlieb of the Second Amendment Foundation, Maj Toure of Black Guns Matter, Kenn Blanchard, the Virginia Shooting Sports Association, and many others. You can find all of them on his Facebook photo page.

Of all the people issuing endorsements and recommendations, the one I examine most closely is that from Jeff Knox and the Firearms Coalition. I say this because I trust Jeff’s judgment, I recognize his unparalleled institutional memory regarding the NRA, NRA-ILA, and the Cincinnati Revolt, and because I think he truly loves both the NRA and the Second Amendment and he is willing to fight for both. Jeff has endorsed both Adam Kraut and Anthony Colandro for the Board. He goes on to say that he would give consideration to Mark Vaughan, Mark Geist, and Mark Robinson.


I think all of these guys would probably be good additions to the Board, but it is very unlikely that all 5 can win seats, and every vote for one of them, reduces the likelihood of the others winning. It’s something of a conundrum, and there’s no simple solution.


Personally, I am going to cast a Bullet Vote with only Adam Kraut’s name marked.

As for myself, I’ll start by saying that I’ve long held that 90% of life is just showing up. Ted Nugent, Karl Malone, and Marion Hammer have not attended one BOD meeting to the best of my knowledge since winning election to the Board. I find that reprehensible. You either serve and show up or you resign. I don’t care if the reason for not showing up is due to a health issue, a family issue, or a prior commitment. Running for the NRA Board was a promise that you would serve and these people failed.

I’ve never been keen on the celebrities on the Board with the exception of R. Lee Ermey who took the role of serving on the Board seriously. The same goes for former politicians. I’d make allowances for Rep. Don Young (R-AK) as he is still in Congress and still carries weight.

People whom I consider worthy of your vote include Sandy Froman, Pete Brownell, Willes Lee (whom I consider a personal friend), and Adam Kraut (whom I also consider a personal friend). Mark Robinson of my hometown of Greensboro would also be worth your consideration. My fear with Mark is that he is a newbie to the defense of the Second Amendment and was nominated due to “optics”. However, I don’t doubt his sincerity in the least.

I think Sandy Froman, Pete Brownell, and Willes Lee have enough backing to get re-elected without my vote. I fear the same cannot be said of Adam Kraut and for that reason I will be bullet voting for him. I hope my friend Willes will understand.

Change needs to come to the NRA or we will have lost all we have won in the last few decades. I see the gun prohibitionists getting stronger, better organized, and certainly better funded. Their misleading messages are repeated daily by the mass media. In an era of changing demographics, they are doing a better job of targeting women and suburban voters as well as the younger voters. If the NRA doesn’t return to its Second Amendment roots and leave the broader social conservative commentary to other organizations, we will lose.

I think Adam is the change that the organization needs.

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Threat Of Prosecution?

February 4, 2019 by

I got a cryptic text from a friend this morning sending me to www.codeisfreespeech.com. That is the website which has established after the Attorney General of Washington State challenged Defense Distributed‘s settlement with the Department of Justice regarding ITAR. The District Court granted an injunction against Defense Distributed’s ability to put its files on the Internet. Note that it only enjoined Defense Distributed and a couple of others. It didn’t enjoin the any of the coalition of civil rights groups that set up www.codeisfreespeech.com.

Here is what I found when I went to the website.

It says that file access was being restricted due to a threat of prosecution. I don’t know which government entity is threatening them and infringing on the right of free speech but I’m sure we will find in the near future.

As an aside,  I sat next to two guys from Defense Distributed on part of my trip home from the SHOT Show. They told me that the Ghost Gunner 2 mini-CNC machine would now be able to finish the Polymer 80 Glock-ish 80% lower as they had released the code to do it.

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I Thought SHOT Show Crud Was A Myth

February 1, 2019 by 2 Comments

I have attended the NSSF’s SHOT Show for four years out of the last five. I had prided myself on not getting the supposed “SHOT Show crud” and thought it a bit of a myth.

I was wrong. It is not a myth. It is a real thing.

I was fine while in Las Vegas and on the extended plane trip home. However, on Monday I started getting a bit of a raspy throat and a tickle which led to a cough. Wednesday I started sneezing. If the “SHOT Show Crud” includes a typical winter cold, then I have the SHOT Show Crud.

My roommate for the SHOT Show was David Yamane of the GunCulture 2.0 blog. He took Airborne every morning and every evening. I should have done the same!

I was meticulous about hand washing and trying to stay hydrated as well as getting enough sleep. These are some of the preventives usually mentioned.

I just wish the pharmaceutical companies could come up with something like this for humans. If you can inoculate your dogs against the canine version of a cold, why not humans?

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Reflections On The SHOT Show

January 28, 2019 by 1 Comment

This year’s SHOT Show felt different than in years gone by. It may have been because I have attended a few of them and the mystique is gone. It could also be because there didn’t seem to great excitement about new introductions which were few and far between.

If anything, this year’s SHOT Show could be characterized as the year of the line extension. This was a common theme I heard from multiple people and sources. For example, CZ-USA has expanded their striker fired line of pistols from just the compact P-10C to add a full size P-10F. Conversely, FN expanded their FN 509 line to include a compact model. Even Hi-Point came in with a more compact version of their pistol.

Industry Day at the Range could be called the year of high winds. While not cold, there was a constant wind that increased throughout the day. Wind speeds were in the 20 MPH and higher. Other than shooting a bolt action Savage in .224 Valkyrie early in the day, I really didn’t shoot anything at longer ranges. I will say the .224 Valkyrie seemed to do OK in the wind as I was on target at 780 yards.

I did get to shoot the new Mossberg MC1sc pistol. They said distributors had already purchased their entire first run of these subcompact 9mm pistols. The distinctive feature of the Mossberg is the take-down. Unlike some striker fired pistols, you don’t pull the trigger for take-down but rather first remove the back plate and then the striker. Once you’ve done this, you can remove the slide and barrel. The MC1sc is meant to compete with the S&W Shield, the Glock 43, the Springfield XD-S, and the Ruger LC9s. Retail is in the $425 range with lower prices probably available. The Mossberg was a decent gun. However, my feeling is that most people would rather go with a pistol at the same or lower price from a company that has been making pistols for years.

I also got to shoot the Seismic 180 grain 9mm cartridge. The rep had me fire three rounds of regular 115 grain ammo followed by three rounds of the new Seismic 180 grain ammo. Despite the difference in weight, they felt about the same. The 180 grain cartridge is subsonic so I’m sure it will have a market from those who want to shoot 9mm suppressed. Tam has a good review of the round at RecoilWeb.

Paul Lathrop of the Polite Society Podcast had asked me to check out the new Kel-Tec KS7 bullpup shotgun. I did and wasn’t wowed by it. The loading gate on the shotgun has such sharp edges that it cut my finger while I was loading it. The supposed advantage is the length. For the price of $475, I thing you could do much better with a new or used Remington 870 or Mossberg 500 with an 18-20 inch slug barrel. Kel-Tec also introduced their CP-33 .22 LR pistol. The key feature is that it has a quad stack magazine. The CP-33 is a large pistol but was easy to shoot, accurate, and the quad stack magazine fed flawlessly.

The Supplier Showcase was on Monday and Tuesday. It featured suppliers to the industry ranging from raw materials to parts to subcontractors. The raw materials included everything from nylon webbing to steel barrel blanks. A couple of vendors caught my eye for different reasons. Toolcraft makes high quality AR bolt carrier groups. I didn’t realize until I talked with them that their plant is about 30 miles away from home. The other vendor that caught my eye was RCC Brass. They manufacture brass using CNC machines and can make any obsolete, wildcat, or bench rest grade brass that you desire. If you have the measurements, they can make it. It is not cheap – about $5 per piece – but it might be the only option for some guns. Moreover, if you want brass made to the exact chamber dimensions of your firearm, they can do it.

Finally, NSSF and the SHOT Show are making a great effort to give new vendors a chance to show their wares. They had what they called the Pop-Up Preview on Wednesday in a separate ballroom. Vendors had small booths compared to the regular show but they were larger than the Next Level booths. The SHOT Show will also be adding two new exhibit locations over the next two years – MGM Grand in 2020 and the new Caesars expo in 2021.

The SHOT Show gave me a chance to see a lot of old friends from both industry and media. I also made new friends such as Lara of the Liberal Gun Club and Craig of C4 Defense. I was fortunate to have David Yamane of the GunCulture 2.0 blog as my roommate. I couldn’t have asked for a better roommate as we had a lot of good times together. Ultimately, for me, the SHOT Show is about the people and not the product and there were a lot of good people in Las Vegas this past week.

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NY State Rife & Pistol Case Unnerves Brady Campaign

January 24, 2019 by 6 Comments

I had been waiting to see the response of the gun prohibitionists to the Supreme Court granting certiorari in NY State Rifle & Pistol v. City of New York. Jonathan Lowy, head of the Brady Campaign’s Legal Project, didn’t disappoint. A fundraising email was sent out yesterday under his signature yesterday afternoon.

He said, in part, that the stakes are high and it is a case of “life and death”.

The Supreme Court announced yesterday that, for the first time in almost a decade, it will hear a Second Amendment case – the first gun case to be decided by a Court with two Donald Trump-appointees. The case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. City of New York, challenges a city ordinance governing transportation of firearms. Make no mistake: the stakes could not be higher. Commonsense gun safety laws across the country are at risk. We need your support to make sure that the voices of Americans who want stronger gun regulation are heard loudly in the Supreme Court.


The stakes for this case are nothing short of life and death. Whatever the Supreme Court says in its decision will help determine whether Americans maintain the right to enact the strong, commonsense public safety laws they want and need to protect loved ones and communities from gun violence, or if judges will take this right from us. But the Framers put “well-regulated” in the Second Amendment and “the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence for good reason. We are committed to making sure the Supreme Court doesn’t write the gun industry’s guns-everywhere vision into our Constitution.

 He goes on to say that the Supreme Court never meant the Second Amendment to apply outside the home as evidenced by the Heller decision. In my opinion, he has misconstrued the late Justice Scalia’s decision.

What is interesting about all of this is that none of the gun prohibitionist organizations bothered to file amicus briefs against the Supreme Court granting cert in this case. The only amicus briefs were from a coalition including GOA, another organized by the Attorney General of Louisiana on behalf of a number of states, and another from the Western States Sheriffs Association and various law enforcement groups. These all were in favor of cert being granted. I don’t know whether it was hubris or ignorance that explains the casual approach of the gun control industry to this case but I am certain they will now be submitting amicus briefs fast and furiously in support of the position of New York City.

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This Makes Me Sad

January 23, 2019 by 1 Comment

For many years I have been posting the SHOT Show videos created by Jeff and Boge Quinn of Gunblast.com. I just learned that they won’t be at SHOT this year due to Jeff’s health issues.

I’ll let Boge fill you in at the video below. As for me, I hope and pray his health improves and we see him at SHOT next year.

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“What Is The DC Project” – Watch And See

January 23, 2019 by

The DC Project is the brainchild of competitive shooter Dianna Liendorff Muller. Launched a few years ago, it seeks to have one women from each of the 50 states to go to DC to lobby on behalf of the Second Amendment. These dedicated women converge on DC at the same time and seek meetings with various representatives and senators to discuss why they support gun rights as women’s rights. That is kind of a hard proposition for a rep to turn down without looking virulently anti-woman.

Amanda Suffecool of Eye on the Target Radio and the Ohio representative to the DC Project clued me in that they had just released a couple of videos explaining it. One is a short one-minute video talking about the women of the Project while the second is longer and explains it.

First, an explanation of the Project:

And then an overview of the women.