Though fewer and fewer grocery stores give you the choice anymore, the next time you are in a store that asks “paper or plastic?”, answer paper.
Thanks to a post by SayUncle about a guy using a selection of Priority Mail boxes to make cardboard silhouette targets, I found this:
You can make two paper silhouette targets from one large paper grocery bag. That is what I call ingenuity! Full instructions are at the link above.
Jim Shepherd, editor and publisher of the The Outdoor and Shooting Wires, just had a one-on-one interview with Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain. The full interview can be found here.
With regard to participating in outdoor sports, Cain said he fishes irregularly, has never hunted, and has camped maybe one time. However, he does shoot but not on a regular basis.
The part of the interview that is really relevant here is what he said about the Second Amendment. Shepherd does bring up Cain’s past statements on it that have seemed wishy-washy.
SHEPHERD: OK, let’s segue from that to the Second Amendment. You have said “the Second Amendment, I support it”. Yet at the same time you’ve said the states should have the right “absolutely” to regulate firearms. How do you reconcile what sounds like a double standard?
CAIN: That wasn’t what I said.
SHEPHERD: OK….
CAIN: …for example, if a state wants to require some sort of background ID check that should be the state’s determination. If the state wants a different requirement for carrying concealed…those are the kinds of things I’m talking about.
I did not say that I believed the states should regulate firearms, that was a misinterpretation. Somebody will go back and dig that up, but if it was said – and I don’t think that it was – I never intended that. I was talking about IDs, that’s what I was talking about.
SHEPHERD: Do you then believe that Chicago and Washington, D.C. have the right to have so restrictive a local regulation that it virtually assures that you can not own a handgun, even if you meet the federal requirements?
CAIN: I don’t agree with those decisions.
Herman Cain then goes on to make a more definitive statement on the Second Amendment and the right to self-protection and self-defense.
CAIN: Let me say one other thing about the Second Amendment.
SHEPHERD: Please do..
CAIN: And I have to say it this way: the founders said people are endowed with certain unalienable rights and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
I happen to believe there’s another certain unalienable right included in that, and that is the right to defend yourself, to defend your family and to protect your property which I call the Second Amendment to the Constitution.
So, it’s not only an Amendment..
I happen to believe that it’s an unalienable right, right there with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Jim Shepherd details how this interview came about at the bottom of today’s Outdoor Wire.
I am a little uneasy about Cain saying that states could have a more stringent background ID check as it seems that is a carte blance given to the gun prohibitionists in places like California, Illinois, and Massachusetts. I am glad that Cain recognized that we have a right to protect ourselves, our families, and our property. Read the whole interview and decide for yourself.
Thanks to Jim Shepherd for doing what it took to get this interview. Stuff like this doesn’t regularly appear in the mainstream media.
Firearms training is serious stuff. You remember “we do dangerous things”. However, just because it is serious doesn’t mean it can’t be fun and innovative.
In this video – released on Halloween – Rob Pincus shows a class how to counter a Zombie ambush. It could just as easily be a mob of crazed anarchists from Occupy (Insert City Name) on a rampage who have surrounded your stalled vehicle.
It looks like a fun – and challenging – exercise.
H/T Soldier Systems
Alex Wagner is a political analyst on MSNBC, contributor to the Huffington Post, and is reputed to be getting her own daytime show on MSNBC. She appeared on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher this past Friday evening. Along with Ms. Wagner were former NY Gov. David Patterson, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), comedian Bill Engvall, and Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden.
Maher posed the question what would you change in the Constitution. Wagner’s answer?
“Well, I’m going to be pilloried for this. I think get rid of the second Amendment, the right to bear arms. I just think in the grand scheme of the rights that we have; the right of assembly, free speech, I mean, owning a gun does not, it does not tally on the same level as those other Constitutional rights. And being more discreet about who gets to have a firearm and right to kill with a firearm, I think is something that would be in our national interest to revisit that.”
You can watch a video excerpt of it here on RealClearPolitics. I love the look on Darrell Issa’s face when she says it. Then when Maher asks Bill Engvall what he thinks about it, Issa quips “she has a right to be wrong.”
However, Engvall has lost me as a fan when he says he doesn’t see any reason for a person like himself to own an AK-47. This was just after he said he should be able to protect his family and that he is a avid hunter and fisherman. Fudds like Engvall need to realize that the gun prohibitionists see his deer rifle with a scope as “high-powered sniper rifle” and they will be coming after that as well. Jeez!
Fortunately, Issa gets serious and says the reason for the Second Amendment is for self-protection from the criminal element and from a tyrannical government. He says the Second Amendment is why we don’t have dictators like Col. Gaddafi and never will.
Brian Searcy of TigerSwan who taught our one-day Introductory Pistol class stressed efficiency and economy of motion.
This really came out when he showed us how to do a pistol reload efficiently and effectively.
The first step obviously is to drop your empty magazine out of the pistol. You don’t need to engage in any side-to-side wrist flips to accelerate the process as this will just slow things down. Rather tip the muzzle up just enough so that the magazine is vertical to the ground and hit the mag release. The empty mag will drop to the ground.
At the same time that you are dropping out the empty magazine, you are indexing your weak hand with your thumb on your belly button and sweeping along your belt until you hit the mag pouch or carrier. It doesn’t matter if you keep this pouch in front of your hip bone, at the hip bone, or behind it, indexing in this manner will get your weak hand to where it needs to be quickly.
The next step follows the traditional method of keeping your index finger along the front of the magazine touching or almost touching the bullet of the first round as you remove it from the pouch and turn it up to reload the pistol.
At this stage it was stressed that we should not drop our strong hand with the pistol down towards our waist. Brian said we should keep the pistol at eye level with the mag well pointed at our weak side elbow. Keeping the pistol at eye level when reloading means that it only takes a small turn of the wrist and you are back on the target again. Moreover, you are better able to keep your eye on the threat if you are in a self-defense situation.
To aid in keeping the pistol at the proper point, Brian suggested painting a line as shown above in the mag well of the pistol. You should be able to see the line as you are bringing the magazine up to the pistol. If not, you probably have dropped the pistol below the proper level.
You finish the reload by firmly seating the magazine, regripping the pistol, and then turning your wrist back to vertical. You hit the slide release and you are back on target ready to go.
Of course, practice makes perfect and I intend to practice this daily. It is just like dry fire practice in terms of building muscle memory and just as important.
To paint the line in the magazine well, I used a paint pen. You just as easily could have used a little paint brush and a bottle of Testor’s enamel. I plan to do this to all my pistols as it is a great aid.
As Rich of Knitebane Manor blog said of TigerSwan and the instruction from Brian Searcy, “the average teacher explains complexity; the gifted teacher reveals simplicity.” Thus, it was with this method of efficiently and effectively reloading your pistol.
Sheriff Chuck Wright of Spartanburg County, SC made national news with his call for women to get their concealed carry permits. And it sounds like the women of South Carolina listened.
According to the report from WSPA in Spartanburg, Jennifer Reeves was home alone with her kids when a shooting happened in her neighborhood. While she had a gun, she didn’t know how to use. In response to the shooting and to Sheriff Wright’s call for women to get concealed carry permits, she organized a class for women in her neighborhood.
What is perhaps surprising about this report was the pro-gun tone throughout. Christine Scarpelli of WSPA concludes her report by saying it “let’s you take your safety into your own hands.” She is absolutely correct and is to be applauded for stating the truth on the air. And from the comments on her Facebook page, it sounds like she may have participated as well.
Miguel at Gun Free Zone has a post on why we are winning that illustrates the difference between gun rights activists and those organizations that would prohibit guns if they could.
Both Brady and CSGV do not update their Facebook pages on the weekends. We do our thing 24/7/365. Extrapolating to the rest of the social & regular media, it means that in an average year, we put (in) 105 more days of effort than our adversaries.
The price of Freedom is eternal vigilance. Wishful Overlords work office hours.
And we are not getting any grants from the Joyce Foundation either.
We work harder than our opponents and we do it because we believe in freedom. I think Miguel has hit the nail on head.
Sen. Chuck Grassley was interviewed by Cam Edwards and Ginny Simone about Assistant AG Lanny Breuer’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. Grassley said Breuer was a perfect example of what happens to people who try to stonewall Congress on oversight. He said the longer they hold off cooperating, the more egg they will get on their face when the facts eventually come out as they always do.
Holder and the rest of his cronies should heed this advice but I doubt they will.
Sen Richard Burr (R-NC) has always been concerned about the proper treatment of veterans during his time in Congress. He is currently the Ranking Member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.
One of his major beefs with the Department of Veterans Affairs is that they report any veteran who has an appointed financial fiduciary to manage their financial affairs to the FBI’s NICS system as being ineligible to own a firearm. These are not, mind you, individuals who have been adjudicated mentally deficient, incompentent or a danger to themselves or others but rather veterans who need help managing their finances. Currently, 114,000 veterans have been reported by the VA to NICS because of how Veterans Affairs has interpreted the law.
In July, Burr introduced S. 1707 – the Veterans Second Amendment Protection Act – to remedy this. The bill currently has 18 co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle including such gun control backers as Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT). A companion bill, HR 1898, was introduced in the House by Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT). This bill was merged into HR 2349 which passed the House of Representatives and was sent to the Senate on October 11th.
These bills say that a veteran will not be considered adjudicated mentally defective unless a finding or order has been rendered by a judge, magistrate, or other competent judicial authority saying the individual is a danger to himself or to others.
To put the 114,000 veterans who have lost their Second Amendment rights into perspective, currently there are 7.6 million people receiving Social Security benefits who have an assigned fiduciary. None of these 7.6 million people with assigned financial fiduciaries has been reported to NICS nor have they lost their Second Amendment rights.
Cam Edwards interviewed Sen. Burr about this problem and his bill on Tuesday. While the Senate has not been able to pass a budget for over 900 days, let’s hope this is one bill they can get their act together on and pass.
I have held a Curios and Relics FFL since the 1990s and was due to renew it for another 3-year period. I sent in my renewal application on October 17th and received my new license on November 2nd. To be quite frank, I was amazed that ATF’s Federal Firearms Licensing Center turned this renewal around so quickly.
I have criticized the ATF strongly over Project Gunwalker and the agency’s management. However, I believe in giving kudos where they are due and the Federal Firearms Licensing Center turned my renewal application around in record time.
On a side note, if you have an interest in older military firearms or in historic firearms, you really should investigate getting a Curios and Relics FFL. It costs $30 for a 3-year period and allows you to receive eligible firearms directly. The golden days of being a cruffler may be fading but there are still some good deals to be had. Moreover, companies like Midway USA and Brownells will give you a dealer discount on purchases which pays for the C&R FFL if you order just a few things. It is something to think about.
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