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Walking Dead Fashion Line?

September 22, 2015 by 5 Comments

I am most certainly not a fashionista. However, I do from time to time watch Project Runway with the Complementary Spouse. So I do have some exposure to the world of fashion. Thus, when I saw the picture below of Kanye West’s line of clothing my eyes rolled. What would Tim say and how soon would Heidi be saying “Auf Wiedersehen!”.

From NY Mag

I probably saw that picture of his clothing line in the Wall Street Journal. My immediate thought was that it was zombies from the Walking Dead. Given that Kanye is a big gun control supporter, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Gun control does tend to attract zombie-like supporters.

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An Interesting Bullpup From South Africa

September 21, 2015 by 2 Comments

The Vektor CR-21 was a bullpup carbine made in South Africa. It was based upon their R4 rifle which was a derivative of the Israeli Galil. The internals of the CR-21 were similar and it used the same magazines as the video shows.

The CR-21 never made it out of the prototype stage but it would have been interesting to see how with a little more development it would have stacked up against the Tavor and other bullpups. It really is futuristic looking

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Say What?!

September 21, 2015 by 6 Comments

Jean Fontaine is the “data lead for South Carolina Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.” She lives in Greenville, South Carolina. I’m not sure what a data lead is but I imagine it to be somewhere between a mailing list manager and someone who clips articles from a newspaper.

Ms. Fontaine had an op-ed in the Greenville News regarding a training session she attended in Minneapolis, Minnesota this summer. She started the column by saying:

This summer, I took training in Minneapolis for Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a nonpartisan organization that supports the Second Amendment. It was created after Sandy Hook to advocate common-sense gun reforms that are straightforward…

Either the training Ms. Fontaine took in Minnesota was on how to be a commedienne or she just told a whopper. The Demanding Moms for Illegal Mayors are neither non-partisan nor pro-Second Amendment.

Fortunately, those who bothered to read this screed long enough to comment thought she was full of it as well. There was not one comment supportive of her position.

A quick Google search reveals that Ms. Fontaine is a former educator who objected to constitutional carry in South Carolina when it was proposed in 2013. She also served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Peru in the late 1960s. I’m sure Ms. Fontaine, bless her heart, is a nice person and means well but her advocacy is misguided and dangerous.

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Quote Of The Day

September 20, 2015 by 2 Comments

There was a column a couple of weeks ago in the Raleigh (NC) News & Observer. The columnist, Ned Barrett, blamed legal gun owners who had their guns stolen for fueling “criminal gunfire”. The column said that legal gun owners who had their guns stolen were “the headwaters in the river of guns that flows to criminals.”

Grass Roots North Carolina President Paul Valone did not let this lie go unchallenged. As Tom Gresham always says, “A lie left unchallenged becomes the truth.”

Paul said:

Blaming gun owners for theft of guns lawfully locked into cars is like blaming rape victims for wearing their skirts too short; it faults victims, not perpetrators.

 Paul is absolutely correct. The victim should not be blamed. If anything, the blame lies with the so-called gun free zones that force people to lock their legally owned and carried firearms in their cars.

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2015 Gun Rights Policy Conference

September 19, 2015 by 2 Comments

The 2015 Gun Rights Policy Conference opens next weekend, September 25-27, in Phoenx. The free event is sponsored by the Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and has been for the past 30 years. You can still register to attend and I believe that they do allow in person registrations on Friday night and Saturday morning. The event is being held at the Sheraton Crescent Hotel.

My colleagues and I on the Polite Society Podcast will be livestreaming the event. We will also feature interviews with some of the presenters during conference breaks. You can watch the livestream either on our webpage or on our YouTube channel.

C-Span will be broadcasting the Sunday portion of the conference. I’m not sure which C-Span channel it will be on but I’m sure you can find it if you check their website later in the coming week.

The final agenda has been published and I have uploaded it to Google. A number of state level organizations will be participating including Grass Roots North Carolina, Georgia Carry, the Virginia Citizens Defense League, the Illinois State Rifle Association, Florida Carry, and many more. Cody Wilson of Defense Distributed will be speaking on Saturday about the impact of 3-D printing on the future of gun control. This is just a taste of what is being presented at GRPC.

If you check the agenda for Sunday morning, there is a panel on Using Media to Advance Gun Rights. It will feature people like Dave Workman of Gun Week, Charles Heller of Liberty Watch Radio, and someone else whose work you may have read a time or two.

If you can’t be there in person, I would encourage you to partake of our livestreaming of the event. It was a grassroots effort to put it together. I would thank the New Jersey Second Amendment Society, Ammoland.com, and those who contributed to our GoFundMe campaign for their monetary support in making this a reality.

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Absurd Ruling In Terry Murder Trial

September 19, 2015 by 2 Comments

US District Court Judge David Bury ruled on Friday that no mention of Operation Fast and Furious aka Project Gunwalker could be made in the trial of two men accused of the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

The U.S. asked the judge this summer to keep the details of Fast and Furious out of the murder trial, stating it was irrelevant.

Bury agreed. “I agree with one exception. I can’t find any relevance expect if the government should open the door,” he said.

If the government brings up the origins of the guns found, Bury ruled that defendants can then bring up Fast and Furious.

Bury ordered the defendants “not to refer to … or elicit any testimony regarding Operation Fast and Furious. Understood?”

Excuse me?

The defendants, Ivan Soto Barraza and Jesus Leonel Sanchez Meza, used AK-47s to kill Agent Terry that the BATFE had allowed (encouraged) to be walked to Mexico as part of Operation Fast and Furious. Given that the Department of Justice and BATFE were complicit in providing the firearms used to kill Agent Terry, ICE Special Agent Jaime Zapata, and 300 or more Mexicans, I’m not surprised that the US Attorney’s Office doesn’t want it mentioned. However, I am surprised that a judge would deny the defense of the opportunity to use it in defending their clients.

It is obvious that burying the details of Operation Fast and Furious is important to the prosecutors. In addition to the judge’s order above, they have a whole series of questions for potential jurors asking about their knowledge of Project Gunwalker.  One does have to wonder if this was a local decision to suppress mention of Operation Fast and Furious or did the order come down from DC.

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Friday Follies

September 18, 2015 by 1 Comment
FireClean is supposed to be a revolutionary gun lube that actually helps keep your gun clean, so saith the likes of Larry A. Vickers. However, if you’ve paid any attention to firearm forums and/or gun blogs over the last week or so, you’ve found out that this miracle product which Amazon has for $29.95 for a two pack of 2 oz. bottles isn’t quite so exotic as it would seem. Actually, it is just vegetable oil, specifically canola oil. 
I’m not here to hash out this controversy but if I had some corned beef hash, I’d want eggs with it. Eggs cooked in oil. 
Well maybe not FireClean gun oil but that is exactly what Karl and Ian have done. They fried up some eggs in FireClean and ate them. We all should thank them for taking one for the team in the name of science.
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Call Roger Goodman At 1-800-BAD-GUNZ

September 17, 2015 by

Comedian Steven Crowder calls out gun controllers in this parody called “Rogue Guns”. I think one of the reasons that parody is such an effective political tool is that it is so close to the truth.

In this case, how many times have we heard the gun blamed rather than the person using it? The answer is much too often. A gun or a knife or even a Martha Stewart marble rolling pin are all tools until they are misused.

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That’s Senator Insurrectionist Thug To You!

September 17, 2015 by

I find some things the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (sic) post on their Facebook page amusing given how absurd they are or maybe it’s just this codeine cough syrup I’m taking for the crud. Either way, they unloaded on Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) with both barrels.

Ooops. I shouldn’t have put it that way. That would have been a little too microaggressive. Or is it macro?

Senator Rand Paul tells The Daily Caller that Republican Presidential front runner Donald J. Trump “deserves both barrels” before having himself photographed today firing an AR-15 at a shooting range. This man isn’t a politician. He’s an insurrectionist thug who will never attract anything other than fringe support.

They illustrated their little macroaggression with this microaggressive picture.

If you ask me, Sen. Paul looks like he’s about to indulge in a bit of 3-gunning. His AR-15 has a full rail, a 1-4x scope, 18″ barrel, and a  Miculek compensator.

I find it amusing that they characterize Sen. Rand Paul, MD Duke, as an “insurrectionist thug”. CSGV feels free to indulge in character assassination and name calling at will. However, if someone who supported gun rights referred to CSGV leaders and supporters by an appropriate epithet, they would be screaming “microaggression!”, try to get the person’s kids taken by DSS, and possibly even “swatting” them.

There is a name for people like that:  hypocrites.

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A Passing Is Noted

September 17, 2015 by 4 Comments

Frank W. James, retired farmer, blogger, and gun writer extraordinare, passed away on Tuesday evening. He was 69.

I only got the chance to meet Frank once. It was at an impromptu meeting of gun bloggers before the 2012 NRA Annual Meeting in St. Louis arranged by Jay G. I thought here was this legend sitting down to have a drink with us mere mortals. I honestly don’t remember what, if anything, we said to one another.

I’ll let those who know him much better take it from here.

Michael Bane has a remembrance here. Frank served as one of his experts on Gun Stories.

Tam, who knew him much better than me, has this to say.

Unfortunately, his earlier blog, Corn, Beans, Spent Brass, An Empty Page – And  A Deadline, is gone and the Wayback Machine archive doesn’t have it. I guess memories will just have to do.

UPDATE: Tom Gresham has posted an interview he did with Frank from 2010 as a remembrance of Frank.