by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) was another member of the House Judiciary Committee who asked pointed questions on Operation Fast and Furious during the House Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday.
Month: May 2011
Sixteen!
On the Brady Campaign’s recently released “scorecard”, North Carolina scored a 16 out of 100 points total. While this contrasts well with states like California, New York, and Massachusetts which score 80, 62, and 65 respectively, it sucks compared to other Southeastern states such as South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and Florida. They all score 10 points or less.
Now if we could get HB 111 passed allowing guns in restaurants that serve alcohol and do away with the Jim Crow era pistol purchase permits, the state would almost be at their level.
What I fail to understand is how the Brady’s can give Wisconsin which doesn’t even have a concealed carry permit system an 8 and then give North Carolina with a shall-issue permit system a 16. There is no understanding the gun prohibitionists sometimes.
ATF Coverup In North Carolina?
The Confederate Yankee, Bob Owens, has a story today about how the BATFE Charlotte Field Division and its offices in Greensboro and Fayetteville are stonewalling an investigation into how a convicted felon came to control three firearms companies as well as be in possession of firearms and parts.
According to Bob, Lee Booth of Greensboro was the owner of Detonics USA and has a controlling interest in Victory Arms and Templar Consulting. Mr. Booth was convicted of 2nd Degree Kidnapping in 1981 and served a four year term. Bob wrote an article for Pajamas Media on this back in October 2010 detailing Booth’s involvement with these companies. He also issued a correction and clarification on the story in early November.
Today’s story states:
As part of a current BATF investigation being run out of the Charlotte office, the investigating ATF agent instructed other employees to pick up Form 4473s linked to Booth to be picked up from numerous gun stores in North Carolina.
One of the more crucial sets of documentation comes from Ed’s Guns in Vass, North Carolina.
Records show that Booth has run literally hundreds of weapons through this particular store, including hundreds of Detonics pistols and an alleged “straw sale” of a .50 BMG sniper rifle from Booth’s personal collection. According to sources, Booth is also alleged to have purchased gun parts from other stores, and is alleged to have been a frequent Saturday visitor to Caliber’s Indoor Gun Range in Greensboro. All of these allegations are potential felonies, and most are easily proven by simply obtaining records from the locations in question.
But the agent in charge of the investigation has run into a stonewalling effort being orchestrated by local agents and auditors that failed to act upon numerous felony violations in the past due to their own incompetence and breaking of procedure. Sources indicate that BATF employees in Fayetteville that obtained the 4473s from Ed’s Guns in Vass are refusing to provide those documents to the Charlotte-based agent in hopes of protecting the BATF agents and auditors in Greensboro.
You’d think that the ATF would welcome the chance to nail the owner or former owner of a firearms company as being a felon in possession. They certainly jumped on Shawn Nealon, former head of Cavalry Arms, with their full force when they found Nealon had dealt weapons illegally to an out-of-state resident. They seized all the assets of the company and essentially forced it out of the firearms business. Getting a conviction on a felon in possession would seem like a no-brainer compared to that. However, if you need to cover up the incompetence of your employees, then I guess not.
The Swiss Join Team Glock
Back in mid-March, I reported a story that the Swiss Army was considering switching their service pistol from Sig Sauer to Glock. According to the news release from Glock, they have made the decision to switch to Glock 17’s and Glock 26’s. Both of these will be the Gen4 versions.
Swiss Army Selects Glock As New Service PistolSmyrna, GA – Today, GLOCK Ges.m.b.H. located in Deutsch-Wagram, Austria, announced that the Swiss Army has chosen GLOCK as the new service pistol for the Swiss Army Special Forces. The evaluation process was conducted by three independent elements of the Swiss Army: The Army Reconnaissance 10 (AAD 10: Armee AufklÄrungsdetachement), a specialized unit of the Swiss Army (Special Forces) and the Swiss Military Security Agency (MilSich) tested the capabilities and efficiencies of the GLOCK pistol in the field of operations, while the technical evaluation was handled by the national evaluation and procurement agency “armasuisse”.
The GLOCK Pistol models ultimately selected were the GLOCK 17 Gen4 and GLOCK 26 Gen4 9×19 semi automatic pistols, as well as the Blue GLOCK Training pistol, the GLOCK 17T Gen4 and GLOCK 26T Gen4 which will have the ability to fire both FX and ATK Force on Force marking ammunition.
The Swiss Army began their search for a new duty pistol in 2009, in hopes of finding a firearm that would provide greater soldier superiority and survivability in battle, lighter carry weight, simplicity of use under stress and uncomplicated maintenance. GLOCK pistols excelled during field testing as the Army found them superior in ease of handling which provided evaluators superior capability to score hits during target acquisition drills.
Initially, several suppliers were invited to provide pistols and accessories. With this decision, initial orders in 2012 will go to supply the Swiss Special Forces units, provided the Swiss Parliament has approved the proposed budget.
“GLOCK is very proud to have been competitively chosen by the Swiss Army over all other competition,” said GLOCK Vice President Josh Dorsey. “GLOCK was chosen for this project due to the reliability and durability that have made GLOCK pistols famous. GLOCK’s focus remains on providing safe, simple and fast pistols to those that go in harm’s way. Our firearms are designed for these individuals to succeed and survive in any situation.”
The first round of GLOCK pistols will be issued to replace the existing SIG 220 and SIG Pro pistols being de-commissioned.
Cam And Tom Gresham On Project Gunwalker And Other Things
Cam Edwards interviewed Tom Gresham of GunTalk on the floor of the NRA Annual Meeting. Among other things, they discussed Project Gunwalker. That is in the latter half of the video.
Black Man With A Gun
We got to meet the Rev. Kenn Blanchard at the Second Amendment Foundation booth in Pittsburgh. Kenn puts out the Urban Shooter podcast. I’ve listened to Kenn for at least a couple of years now. He is both knowledgeable and incredibly funny.
You can download his podcasts on iTunes or listen on his site.
Kenn is also the author of Black Man with a Gun.
Now if only the GunDudes had been there. I guess I will have to wait until the Gun Rights Policy Conference provided I can make it.
Darrell Issa Puts Eric Holder On The Hot Seat
Unfortunately, I didn’t get to watch the live feed from the House Judiciary Committee hearings this morning. From the video just put up by CBS News, it looks like there were some fireworks!
In the prepared statement submitted to the Committee, Holder made no mention of Operation Fast and Furious and only brief mention of anything to due with the border with Mexico.
Over the last year the Department has continued to aggressively combat violence along our country’s Southwest border. We have dedicated significant anpower resources towards working with our Mexican government counterparts to ssist their crime-fighting capacity, and prosecute the cartel members whose drug trade is the root cause of violence in that region.
With regard to firearms, he made only one brief mention and it was only in the context of protecting law enforcement officers.
At the same time, we must work to prevent gun crimes before they occur. I am committed to strengthening systems that prevent individuals who are legally prohibited from possessing firearms from obtaining weapons. This is a critical public safety goal we can achieve without infringing on the rights of lawful gun owners.
If the Judiciary Committee releases a transcript of the hearings, I will post relevant excerpts as they pertain to firearms and Project Gunwalker.
UPDATE: A less edited version of Issa grilling Eric Holder can be found on YouTube. Unfortunately, embedding has been disabled so you will have to watch it here.
UPDATE II: Here is a hot link to Mike Vanderboegh’s report along with reactions from ATF agents to Holders testimony today.
1911’s In .22LR
There were a handful of 1911’s at the NRA Annual Meeting in .22 LR. The one that was getting a lot of attention was the Browning 1911-22. It was the one pistol that everyone had to handle when they went to the Browning booth from what I saw.
It is supposed to be a 7/8’s version of the standard 1991 pistol. I’m not sure I’d agree with that. It felt smaller when you handled it. It almost had “cute” status. If I planned to get a 1911 in .22 for training purposes this wouldn’t be the one to get. The MSRP on the Browning 1911-22 is $600 which makes it bit expensive just for plinking.
The other 1911 in .22 LR that caught my eye was the one put out by Sig Sauer. Their 1911-22 is a full-size Government model pistol. I think it does have great potential for training as it is a full-size pistol. You have a pistol that fits your existing .45 ACP 1911’s holster, has roughly the same weight and operating controls, yet shoots ammo that costs about 2 cents a round instead of 35-40 cents a round. To top it off, the Sig Sauer 1911-22 has a MSRP of only $400. If it were me, I’d go with a dedicated pistol like this than with a conversion kit. As it is, this pistol is on my “to-buy” list.
Looking at the pictures, you can get a good size comparison because both pistols are held by the Complementary Spouse. You will notice that the Sig Sauer 1911-22 is much larger than her hand while the Browning 1911-22 fits almost in the palm of her hand.
Great Balls Of Fire!
With apologies to Jerry Lee Lewis, great balls of fire from Boomershoot 2011.