by Ed Head of Gunsite Academy and Downrange TV discusses the new firearms introduced by Sturm, Ruger for 2013. They include the SR1911 in Commander length, the LC390, new variants of the Scout Rifle, the Ruger Guide Rifle, and a number of .22 LR pistols.
Month: January 2013
Maryland Shall Issue Needs Your Help
The President of Maryland Shall Issue has requested our help in getting the word out. We’ve seen what happened in New York and Maryland could be next. Gov. Martin O’Malley (D-MD) like Andrew Cuomo has his eyes on the White House and is not above trashing the Second Amendment to get there.
From Patrick:
We published our “Call To Action” a few days back and folks have been hitting their reps in the statehouse pretty solid. Lawmakers are on alert, and we haven’t even seen the full text of the coming bills yet. We are told that O’Malley was looking to catch up to Cuomo, but this was before yesterday’s presser with Obama. That is being viewed by some up here with mixed feelings. It seemed more propaganda than motion, and with Harry Reid suggesting he won’t let an AWB move, there are bets back and forth on which direction O’Malley will swing, and just how hard he will press. I think we are going to have one hell of a fight, either way.
The Call To Action can be found here. If you are a Maryland resident, you need to keep checking the Maryland Shall Issue website for updates.
I had the pleasure of meeting Patrick at the 2012 Gun Rights Policy Conference. He and Maryland Shall Issue are really on top of things and know how to leverage technology to their advantage. I’m glad he’s on our side and not the side of the gun prohibitionists.
I’m Proud Of My Local Military Surplus Store
I’ve written in the past about Old Grouch Military Surplus. They are my local military surplus store and harken back to the days when surplus stores were just that. On Tuesday, they took a stand in support of the gun owners of New York who just had their Second Amendment rights trampled upon.
In support of our customers in the state of New York, effective today we are cancelling all orders to any state or municipal government agency customers in the New York and will accept no more. While we can’t stop the trampling of rights that is occurring there, we certainly can make sure we don’t assist in it in any way going forward.
They do a substantial mail order business and are one of the only places to find some items. I’m proud of their stand and I hope the majority of firearms manufacturers will emulate Tim’s approach – or as others have called it, the Barrett approach in honor of Ronnie Barrett’s stand against California and their .50 BMG ban.
Interesting Connections
Americans for Responsible Solutions is the new PAC formed by Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly. It will seek to promote candidates that pursue “solutions to prevent gun violence and protect responsible gun ownership.”
Their registration with the Federal Elections Commission has now been processed and is available on-line. They list their official address as an office complex adjacent to Rock Creek Park in Washington, DC.
Their custodian of records is Vickie Winpisinger. Ms. Winpisinger serves or has served as treasurer for a number of other PACs and political campaigns with connections to Democrats. They include the House Majority Fund and Gabby PAC. She also was the campaign treasurer for Democrats including Nydia Velazquez, Eric Massa, Mike Ross, John Lewis, and Giffords. Winpisinger’s late father William was the long-time president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and big in left-wing circles.
The treasurer of the PAC is Texas personal injury lawyer J. Steven Mostyn. He is currently serving as the president of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association. According to the website Texas Trial Lawyer Watch, Mostyn gave over $10 million in campaign contributions in the 2010 election cycle plus another $400,000 to the Democratic Governors Association. There is even a website called The Truth About Steve Mostyn. According to the Dallas Morning News and Bloomberg, Mostyn has donated $1 million to Americans for Responsible Solutions.
According to a story in Time, Mostyn is good friends with Gifford’s husband Mark Kelly as well as Democratic consultant Paul Begalia.
Until then (Newtown), the couple had decided to avoid the activist path, treating the 2011 Phoenix shooting largely as a personal trauma that needed to be dealt with in private. “It’s not what we wanted to do,” he said. But now they went all-in, drawing up plans for two new organizations: a nonprofit to build grassroots support for changes to gun laws and a super PAC to run ads supporting members of Congress on the issue. Kelly decided to start working full time on the effort and began calling those he thought could help.One of his first calls was to Steve Mostyn, a wealthy trial-lawyer friend from Houston who happens to be one of the biggest contributors to Democratic super PACs. Like Kelly and Giffords, Mostyn is a gun owner. He sleeps with a handgun by his bed, in a safe that opens by his fingerprint. He has a gun range on his West Texas ranch and invites friends out to shoot. But when Kelly called, Mostyn had just dropped off his 5-year-old daughter at school. “I told him it was time,” Mostyn says.
The subject of gun laws was on his mind even before Sandy Hook. A few months earlier, he bought a couple of pistols, both with high-capacity magazines, and 3,000 rounds of ammunition for his gun collection at a local gun store. “The kid who walks me out to the car says to me, ‘It looks like you are going to start a war,’” Mostyn says, noting his shock at how easy it was to stock up on enormous amounts of lethal firepower.
“I’m not anti-gun. I’m just not pro-dumbass,” he continues, citing the more than 30,000 Americans who die every year from guns, mostly from suicide. “We’ve got a gun problem. That’s what differentiates us from other cultures.” He told Kelly he would seed the new group, which they called Americans for Responsible Solutions, with $1 million and begin fundraising with a goal of more than $14 million to support members of Congress in the 2014 elections who cast tough gun votes. “If a representative wants to vote their conscience, we are not going to allow you to bully,” he said of the NRA. “We will counter.”
$14 million to support representatives who “want to vote their conscience” sounds like an effort to buy votes for the gun prohibitionists. Like I said when last week, we need to keep a close eye on this group just like we do on Bloomberg.
New Introductions From Mossberg
When I read the release last week on the new youth/compact models of the Mossberg 500 and Maverick 88 in 20 gauge, I was very interested. I had been looking for a home defense shotgun in 20 gauge for the Complementary Spouse.
Ed Head interviews Linda Powell of Mossberg about their new introductions which includes the shotguns above as well as their MVP rifle in both Flex and patrol versions. I think they will be going head to head with Ruger when the MVP is released later this year in .308 Winchester.
Rights Watch Files Park Carry Suit Against Winston-Salem
Rights Watch International, the non-profit arm of Grass Roots North Carolina, has filed suit in Forsyth County Superior Court against the City of Winston-Salem. The case, Childs et al v. City of Winston-Salem et al, is seeking a declaratory judgment and a permanent injunction against Winston-Salem over the city’s park carry ordinance on the grounds that it exceeded its authority, is unconstitutionally vague, and violates both the North Carolina and US Constitution.
The plaintiffs in the case are Rights Watch International and four individuals – David Childs, David Phillips, Shannon West, and Christopher Hjelm – who are claiming injury from the Winston-Salem park carry ordinance. The defendants in the case are the City of Winston-Salem, its Department of Recreation and Parks, Mayor Allen Joines, and Recreation and Parks Director Timothy Grant. The two individuals are being sued in their official capacities.
North Carolina, like most states, has a pre-emption statute that retains regulation of firearms as a state prerogative and limits what counties and municipalities may do. HB 650 which was passed in the last session of the North Carolina General Assembly said concealed carry in state, county, and municipal parks was legal. The only limitations that counties and cities may impose are prohibitions against carry in “recreational facilities” which were defined to be only “a playground, an athletic field, a swimming pool, and an athletic facility.”
The problem is that the city decided to play fast and loose with how they defined recreational areas and athletic facilities. From the adopted Ordinance No. 4735 which amended Section 38-10 of the Code of Ordinances:
(1) Recreational facilities include only the following: a playground, an athletic field, a swimming pool, and an athletic facility owned or operated by the city.
(2) Athletic field means a piece of land traditionally used for organized athletic or sporting event(s), including the adjoining spectator area.
(3) Athletic facility means a building, structure or place including a walking trail, greenway and body of water such as a lake for engaging in sporting events, recreational activities, fitness or physical training.
(4) Playground means a piece of land used for and usually equipped with facilities for recreation especially by children including the adjoining area and shelter used by children for respite, eating and playing sedentary games.
Not only has the city stretched the definition of athletic facility and recreational facility, they have failed to fulfill their responsibilities by consistently posting the recreational facilities in which concealed carry is prohibited. Since it is a class 3 misdemeanor which carries a fine of up to $500 to carry in prohibited locations, this is problematic for the plaintiffs and their desire to both obey the ordinance and to provide for their own self-protection.
All Plaintiffs have sought to determine where the ordinance does not allow concealed carry in the parks which they use, but have been unable to obtain a listing of the designated areas from the Defendants nor have they been able to identify the prohibited areas from posting in the parks due to the vagueness of the definitions in the Ordinance and the inconsistency or failure of Defendants to post restricted areas.
The lawsuit alleges that Winston-Salem, by their defining recreational facilities so expansively, has engaged in an “action in excess of statutory authority”. The suit further alleges that the city ordinances are “unconstitutionally vague in that they do not provide adequate notice to Plaintiffs as to what conduct is and is not legal and do not offer sufficient notice to prevent discriminatory and arbitrary enforcement..” Finally, the suit alleges that Winston-Salem’s ordinances violate the plaintiffs’ right to keep and bear arms because they operate in such a way as to be a total ban on the right to keep and bear arms.
The suit asks for a declaratory judgment saying the ordinances in question are null and void due to the above allegations. It further asks for attorneys’ fees and a permanent injunction prohibiting Winston-Salem from enforcing the ordinances.
Winston-Salem was chosen for this suit because their ordinance was the most egregious of all North Carolina municipalities which chose to post athletic and recreational facilities. They knowingly pushed the envelope and now they find themselves in court as well they should.
2013 SHOT Show – Day Two With Michael Bane And Ed Head
Michael Bane and Ed Head return to report on day two of the 2013 SHOT Show for the Outdoor Channel. Among the firearms discussed are the Armscor MIG-22 which is an AR clone in .22 LR and the Beretta Nano which will be coming out with various colored frames.
They both agreed that the overriding theme of this year’s SHOT Show was fear. That is, the fear of what would be coming out of Washington. However, after Obama made his speech yesterday, they sensed a rise in optimism along with a sigh of relief.
Some SHOT Shows feature a lot of new innovative product introductions. This isn’t one of them. Ed said the industry seems to be on an even keep with nothing really different. It was more about introducing different colors, sizes, and styles of existing products. Both Ed and Michael agreed that there seems to be a renewed interest in reloading all of a sudden which they attribute to the ammo shortage and proposals coming out of Washington. They will cover this in more depth tomorrow.
2013 SHOT Show – Day 2 With Gunblast.Com
Jeff Quinn of Gunblast.Com is back for day two of the SHOT Show with more firearms, knives, and accessories. It was interesting to see the Caracal 9mm carbine as I had heard about it on the GunDudes mini-podcast from the show.
One of the manufacturers interviewed was Newtown Firearms of Placerville, California. You have to wonder how much grief they have been getting from the gun prohibitionists over their company name.
You can see more photos from day two here.
Obama’s Proposals Attack Crufflers Directly
The Obama Adminstration’s blueprint for gun control, Now Is The Time, directly targets those of us affectionately known as Crufflers. Crufflers are those of use who hold Curios and Relics Federal Firearms Licenses for the purpose of collecting older firearms. Many who collect these firearms do so out of an interest in military history.
Our ability to collect weapons from overseas that have a military connection such as the M-1 Garands and M-1 carbines in South Korea are directly impacted by Obama’s proposals.
From page 7 of Now Is The Time:
Eliminate restrictions that force the ATF to authorize importation of dangerous
weapons simply because of their age:ATF is required to authorize the importation of
certain “curio or relic” firearms, and outdated regulations include all firearms manufactured more
than 50 years ago in the definition of “curio or relic.” But today, firearms manufactured more than
50 years ago include large numbers of semiautomatic military-surplus rifles, some of which are
easily convertible into machine guns or otherwise appealing for use in crime. Congress should
get rid of restrictions that prevent ATF from changing this definition, enabling ATF to ensure
that firearms imported as curios or relics are actually of interest as collectibles, rather than letting
these rules be used as a way to acquire fully functional and powerful military weapons.
So if you have a collection of SKS carbines with examples from the Soviet Union, China, Yugoslavia, and other Eastern European countries and need just to get the Albanian variant to complete your collection, Obama says no unless it is in the country already.
Say your tastes are a bit more esoteric and expensive and you want either a FN-49 in 7mm from Venezuela or a AG-42 Ljungmann from Sweden, you can forget it because they both are semi-automatic military-surplus rifles.
I wonder if someone in the Administration can explain just how screwing collectors is going to stop crime in the streets. For some reason, I don’t think so.
The Ground War
The fight to preserve our gun rights in the face of the attacks that have been launched by the Obama Administration will come down to who has the better ground war – us or them.
On Monday, Vice-President Joe Biden met with a group of House Democrats regarding the proposals that would be put forth to advance gun control. In addition to laying out the proposals he was going to present to President Obama, he discussed the campaign to get them enacted by Congress.
But Biden did indicate that the remains of the Obama campaign apparatus may be activated in the effort.“He said that this has been a real focus on the policy and that the politics of this issue, that a strategy on the politics of the issue hasn’t been undertaken yet,” Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) told POLITICO. “He did remind us that the campaign infrastructure is still accessible.”
Not only is that campaign infrastructure still in place but Obama for America is still actively raising money even though Barack Obama is Constitutionally limited to two terms.
In an article in The Atlantic today, Ron Fournier discussed how Obama and his advisers plan to use his personal political organization, Obama for America, to fight for everything from gun control to higher taxes.
Former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, a confidant of the president, signaled the high-testosterone approach shortly before Obama’s announcement on guns, telling MSNBC, “The president has the most exciting campaign apparatus ever built. It’s time to turn that loose.”He speculated that the National Rifle Association is lobbying lawmakers with the names and numbers of new NRA members in each congressional district, gun-rights supporters galvanized by the Newtown elementary school massacre. “If the NRA has a list,” Gibbs said, “then Obama for America has a bigger list.”
OFA is the president’s personal political operation, affiliated with the Democratic National Committee. One of the great failings of Obama’s first term was his inability to mobilize his election coalition to advance his policy goals from the White House.
He’s going to try again.
Gibbs is probably right that Obama for America has a bigger list than all the gun rights organizations put together.
However, the people who have supported Obama in the past have a multitude of interests and causes ranging from economic issues to gay rights and everything in between. By contrast, gun rights supporters regardless of whether they belong to the NRA, GOA, CCRKBA, SAF, or any of a number of state-level organizations are focused on one thing – gun rights.
The Pew Research Center for People and the Press released the results of their most recent poll concerning gun control on Monday. According to this poll, a majority of Americans favor more background checks and a new assault weapon ban. A near majority favor restrictions on magazines. In and of itself, this is not good news. Overall, a bare majority (51% vs. 45%) think it is more important to control guns compared to preserving gun rights.
Fortunately, the Pew Research Center did not limit their research to just who favored what ban and in what numbers. They also studied how committed and how active supporters on each side of the gun control debate were. The results were interesting.
There is a wide gap between those who prioritize gun rights and gun control when it comes to political involvement. Nearly a quarter (23%) of those who say gun rights should be the priority have contributed money to an organization that takes a position on gun policy, compared with just 5% of those who prioritize gun control. People who favor gun rights are also about twice as likely as gun control supporters to have contacted a public official about gun policy (15% vs. 8%).
While the numbers expressing an opinion on social media or signing a petition are roughly equal with a slight edge to those favoring gun rights, petitions and posts on Facebook don’t get the attention of those in Congress nearly as much as money and calls from constituents.
Make no mistake that we are in a war but it is a ground war that we can win. Those on the side of the Second Amendment put our money where our mouth is and back it up with calls and letters to politicians.
If you haven’t called your Congressman or Senators yet, do it tomorrow. If you don’t like talking on the phone, send them a fax. Indeed fax it to both their local offices and their Washington office. If you don’t have time to do either of those two, at least go to the Ruger website and use their tool to make your views known. Since it went live on Saturday, almost 450,000 people have taken advantage of that tool which sends a simple letter to your congressman, both senators, governor, lt. governor, and state representatives.
And continue contacting them each and every week for the next few months!