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Going Old School

July 18, 2016 by 3 Comments

Ian from Forgotten Weapons blog goes old school at this run and gun steel match in Arizona. Who am I kidding. Ian always goes old school!

In this video, Ian uses a Roth Steyr 1907 made in 1910 to run the match. He said this about the pistol:

The 1907 was used by the Austro-Hungarian cavalry, and is in my opinion one of the best pistols of World War I. It is a solid and durable design firing a reasonably powerful cartridge (for the time, at least – 8mm Steyr is a 113gr projectile at about 1070fps) and with reasonable sights and good handling. It is mechanically innovative, with a firing mechanism functionally identical to today’s “safe-action” systems. The striker is halfway cocked by the action of the gun cycling, and the remaining half is done by the trigger press. The 1907 uses a proprietary stripper clip holding 10 rounds, with a movable follower built in. Pressing down on the clip’s follower puts an even pressure on the cartridges, helping to make it a very smooth design to use – I would rate it as equal or better than any other type of stripper clip I have used.

Even with an antique gun using an antique cartridge Ian still comes in 17th out of 21. Considering he was using stripper clips to reload and not magazines, that is pretty damn good.

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So What Is Long Range?

July 14, 2016 by 3 Comments

Long range can have a lot of meaning to shooters. If you live in the East and deer hunt in heavily forested areas, it might be 50 yards. Out West, it might mean 4-500 yards.

Brian Litz of Applie Ballistics does a good job of explaining long range and extended long range in this new video released by the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

Brian will be holding one of his 2-day Advanced Ballistics seminars in Sophia, North Carolina this November. Sophia is a farming community just south of Greensboro. The cost of his seminar is $500. However, if you use the promo code ABSEM100 at checkout, the price falls to $400. For two full days plus all of his books, DVDs, and software, that’s quite a deal.

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Trying To Decide Between #NeverTrump Or #NeverHillary? Ponder This.

July 13, 2016 by 8 Comments

This presidential election may be historic if for no other reason than both presumptive nominees are grossly unpopular. Now if you like Donald Trump or you like Hillary Clinton and you object to that statement, then you are probably in the minority. Both candidates had unfavorability ratings of over 50% as of late June. Frankly, I don’t see that changing.

I’ll admit right up front that Donald Trump was not my first choice. Heck, he wasn’t even my fourth choice. At the start of the primary season, I considered Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz as potential recipients of my vote. I added Carly Fiorina to that list after I saw how she handled the press.

As to Hillary Clinton, oh, please. Her primary qualification to me seems that she married the right guy to have pulled her along with him to national prominence. Without Bill Clinton, she’d be just another Yale educated lawyer with political ambitions. It is doubtful that she would have ever been elected a US Senator from any state especially given she had held no prior elected offices. She would never have been Secretary of State as she wasn’t one of the “wise old men” like a Warren Christoper, a college professor specializing in foreign policy like  Kissinger or Madeleine Albright, or a general like George Marshall.

To those who would say I’m forgetting about Gary Johnson, I’m not. While he has gathered more support than prior Libertarian candidates, his role in this election is that of a spoiler. He will either take just enough #NeverTrump Republican votes from Donald Trump for Hillary to win or he will take just enough Bernie supporting Millennials from Hillary for Trump to win. I’ve participated in every election since 1976 and have studied American presidential politics at the graduate level. Gary Johnson being elected President just isn’t going to happen.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was interviewed by the New York Times on Friday. What she said should clarify for any gun owner or any Second Amendment supporter what this race for President is really about. This holds true for both the deer hunters in Gun Culture 1.0 with their .30-06 Remington 700s and the non-hunting concealed carriers in Gun Culture 2.0 with their Glock 19s.

This election is about the Supreme Court which now stands in a four to four split between conservatives and liberals. Another way of putting it is that neither the Originalists nor the Living Constitutionalists hold a majority.

Justice Ginsburg was asked whether there were any cases of recent memory that she would like to see overturned. Here is what she said:

Asked if there were cases she would like to see the court overturn before she leaves it, she named one.


“It won’t happen,” she said. “It would be an impossible dream. But I’d love to see Citizens United overruled.”


She mulled whether the court could revisit its 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder, which effectively struck down a key part of the Voting Rights Act. She said she did not see how that could be done.


The court’s 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, establishing an individual right to own guns, may be another matter, she said.


“I thought Heller was “a very bad decision,” she said, adding that a chance to reconsider it could arise whenever the court considers a challenge to a gun control law.


Should Judge Garland or another Democratic appointee join the court, Justice Ginsburg will find herself in a new position, and the thought seemed to please her.


“It means that I’ll be among five more often than among four,” she said.

Rest assured that Michael Bloomberg would spend big bucks to get a gun control case before a Supreme Court in which Justice Ginsburg was now among the five who believe there is no individual right to own a weapon of any sort (firearm, knife, sharp stick). The Wall Street Journal noted yesterday in an editorial that Justice Ginsburg thinks the Second Amendment obsolete and that there isn’t even a need for the militia anymore.

So unless something untoward happens this week or next at the Republican National Convention, Donald Trump, warts and all, will be the nominee. He is on record as supporting the Second Amendment as an individual right and is on record as opposing gun-free zones.

The coronation of Hillary Clinton will take place in Philadephia the following week. She is on record as saying she’d “change the gun culture”. To think that a President Hillary Clinton would appoint anyone to replace Justice Scalia that believed as he did that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right is ludicrous.

I still don’t really like Donald Trump. However, I am adult enough to realize that stomping my feet and saying I’m not going to vote or that I’ll vote for Gary Johnson is giving aid and comfort to Hillary. This election has become a zero-sum game for the Second Amendment. If Hillary wins, we lose.

I’ll boil it down to the essentials:  If you are #NeverTrump, then you are #NeverGuns.

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Amazon Prime Day

July 12, 2016 by 3 Comments

I don’t push the affiliate links that much. However, I would like to remind you that all (as in 100%) commissions earned are donated to gun rights organizations such as the Second Amendment Foundation, the NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund, Grass Roots North Carolina, and others. If you have a favorite non-profit gun rights group that you’d like me to consider supporting, let me know in the comments section.

Today is Amazon Prime Day with special offers throughout the day for members of Amazon Prime. I use Amazon Prime and like it. It’s nice ordering something and having it here in a couple of days. Just as nice are the movies and videos that are available through it such as the the original TV run of Firefly, all six seasons of Justified, the Amazon Originals like The Man in the High Castle, and much more. You can also pick up an 8 GB Kindle Fire Tablet for $33.33. Think of it as a mini iPad that costs a whole lot less.

You can click on the banner below if you are an Amazon Prime member and be linked to the deals. If you aren’t a member, click where it says “free trial” which will get you the deals and a month to try it out. For every person who is not already a member of Amazon Prime who does try it out, that means $3 will go to support our Second Amendment rights. Think about that.

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Colion Noir Calls Out The Media

July 11, 2016 by 1 Comment

The media has been trying to use the shooting of Philandro Castile in Minnesota as a wedge between the African-American community and the National Rifle Association. They are saying that the NRA doesn’t care about black gun owners. Moreover, as this article in Inquisitr makes clear, they continue to try and make this a wedge issue because in the NRA’s call for an investigation in Minnesota they did not mention Mr. Castile by name. They are saying the NRA is facing an internal split. I don’t see it.

Colion Noir calls out the media and commentators who pushing the meme that the NRA doesn’t care about black gun owners. He notes that just like Philandro Castile he is a 32 year old black man with a carry permit that was stopped for a traffic infraction just two weeks ago.

Colion Noir is usually somewhat laid back and cool. Here he is not. He’s angry and he’s tired of putting up with the crap that the media and other critics have spewed towards him personally and to the NRA.

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Ah Yes Except The NRA Did Issue A Statement

July 10, 2016 by 3 Comments

I picked up a story this morning from a website called .Mic. It is a website devoted to, among other things, bashing the NRA and gun owners. I guess this plays well with their intended audience of “educated Millennials”. In a story written Friday by Emily Cahn for their “Policy.Mic” section headlined, “NRA Responds To Dallas Police Sniper Shootings, But Completely Ignores Philando Castile”, she noted the NRA release regarding the Dallas murders. Ms. Cahn then wrote:

But missing from the NRA’s response was any reaction to the death of Philando Castile, a black man who was killed by police officers during a traffic stop in Minnesota, after he informed them he legally had a gun in his car.

The lack of response to Castile’s death is perplexing, given that the NRA staunchly defends Americans’ right to lawfully own and carry firearms.

The group has even helped defeat gun control legislation in the wake of the Orlando shootings that would prevent suspected terrorists on the FBI’s “no-fly” list from purchasing guns.

I would be troubled if the NRA ignored the shooting of Mr. Castile in Minneapolis. However, they didn’t. While not mentioning Mr. Castile by name, they issued the following statement on Friday.

As the nation’s largest and oldest civil rights organization, the NRA proudly supports the right of law-abiding Americans to carry firearms for defense of themselves and others regardless of race, religion or sexual orientation.


The reports from Minnesota are troubling and must be thoroughly investigated. In the meantime, it is important for the NRA not to comment while the investigation is ongoing.


Rest assured, the NRA will have more to say once all the facts are known.

Given that the NRA statement and the Cahn article were both published on Friday, I don’t know which came first. Even assuming the Cahn article was published before the NRA released their statement, journalistic ethics demand that a correction or clarification be released acknowledging the NRA statement on the Castile shooting.

Ms. Cahn is a graduate of George Washington University and has worked for papers including the Houston Chronicle, the Washington Post, The Hill, and CQ Roll Call. She is currently .Mic’s Senior Political Reporter. Given that background one would have hoped she learned something about journalistic ethics along the way. Sadly, it appears she hasn’t.

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Really?!

July 8, 2016 by 2 Comments

Miguel at Gun Free Zone pointed out this Facebook post from the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence (sic) from just soon after the murders in Dallas. As Miguel said on Facebook, even vultures will wait before they start feeding on the corpses.

I downloaded this screenshot at about 8:30am EDT. That means it was posted somewhere around 11:30 EDT last night. According to a timeline of the attack in Dallas, the first reports of gunfire was around 9pm CDT or 10pm EDT. Thus, within two hours of the first notice of the attack, the posting below appeared on the Law Center’s Facebook page. Notice that it is gun laws that are being blamed. The top commenters are also blaming the NRA and, believe it or not, libertarians and the Koch brothers.

As things stand now, we know the Dallas PD have some suspects in custody, that one potential shooter was killed last night by the DPD bomb squad, and that is about it. We don’t know if the murderers were white, black, brown, or purple. We don’t know if they were Baptist, Catholic, or Muslim. We don’t know if they were affiliated with ISIS, Black Lives Matter, the NRA, or the Boys and Girls Club of Dallas. We don’t know if the firearms used were purchased at Billy Bob’s Gun Emporium, at the local gun show, out of the back of a car, or smuggled into the country by a drug cartel

The lone exception of the one suspect killed by the bomb squad who justified the attack as retribution for the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philandro Castile. Other than that, we just don’t know because the details have not been made public. This, however, did not stop LCPGV aka LCAV from making the post below.

If you want to keep informed about really what is going on with the investigation in Dallas, I suggest the Dallas News. They are not the cable news stations bringing in “experts”. They are the local folks on the ground who work the police beat.

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This Is Really Kinda Sad

July 7, 2016 by

I received a press release yesterday from the Pride Fund to End Gun Violence (sic). From what I can gather it is a new LGBTQ group that has jumped aboard the gun control bandwagon and is setting up a political action committee (PAC) to support candidates who support gun control.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – In response to the nation’s worst mass shooting in history and stalled efforts in Congress to implement gun reform, members of the LGBTQ community today announced the formation of the Pride Fund to End Gun Violence (Pride Fund). This political action committee (PAC) will support federal candidates who will act on sensible gun policy reforms and champion LGBTQ equality.
In the first few days of fundraising, the organization has raised nearly $20,000. Pride Fund plans to have a strong impact in November and is well on its way to raising its initial goal of $500,000 for this election cycle.
“The Orlando massacre was yet another senseless act of gun violence in America and the LGBTQ community and our allies are united in the call for action on commonsense gun reforms. We are tired of Congress’ inaction, so we are adding the strength and organization of the LGBTQ community to help end gun violence,”said Jason Lindsay, Pride Fund founder and executive director. Lindsay is a seasoned political operative with 12 years of experience working in politics, government and campaigns. He also served for 14 years in the U.S. Army Reserve and was deployed to Iraq in 2003.
During the 2016 election cycle, and beyond, Pride Fund will actively support candidates at the national level who are willing to take on the gun lobby. The safety of our community depends on electing LGBTQ-supportive candidates who will also vote for gun reform measures.
Pride Fund will be working with like-minded groups all across America. Together, we aim to:
  • Mobilize the LGBTQ community and our allies,
  • Raise funds to counter the gun lobby, and
  • Campaign to ensure victory in November 2016 and beyond.
“This is a call-to-action for all Americans to stand up and take political action to end gun violence. Pride Fund gives the LGBTQ community and its allies a strong, concentrated voice to fight back against politicians who are unwilling to act on this important issue. While it will take strong citizen action, fundraising and political muscle to take on the robust financial power of the gun lobby – the LGBTQ community, with the help of its allies, has succeeded before and we plan to do so again,” Lindsay said.
Pride Fund seeks grassroots engagement and donations that will allow our community to meet its goals. Each year, the gun lobby spends tens of millions of dollars to influence Congressional elections and legislative action. Pride Fund gives our community a unique voice to fight back by supporting candidates who champion diversity, equality, and – most of all – sensible gun reforms.

Coming on the heels of the fantastic work that Erin Palette has done with her Operation Blazing Sword and the growth in membership of the Pink Pistols, I find it sad. This is because the LBGTQ community has long been the target of violence due to their sexual orientations. Rather than promoting self-reliance and advocating for the right of self-defense, this organization is actively seeking to remove the one tool that gives the equality of strength. A firearm, properly used, makes a 110 lb. lesbian equal in stopping power to a 220 lb. man who objects to her sexual orientation.

A quick note on Jason Lindsay. According to LinkedIn, Mr. Lindsay is a long-time Democrat operative having worked as a field organizer for Hillary Clinton for President, a staffer for former Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC), and former Rep. Brad Miller (D-NC). He parlayed that experience into a job as a Congressional Relations Officer with the Department of Veterans Affairs where he has worked since 2011. I am presuming that he hasn’t updated his LinkedIn page to reflect that he has left Veterans Affairs to run this PAC. One has to wonder if Mr. Lindsay has, in the immortal words of George Washington Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, “seen my opportunities and I took them.”

What makes Mr. Lindsay’s efforts even sadder is that he himself is an Army veteran having served in Operation Iraqi Freedom and is a former Army Reservist. I don’t care if he was a REMF while serving in Iraq but, at the very least, he should understand the role of armed self-defense given his military service.

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Life Under The Safety For All Act

July 5, 2016 by 4 Comments

If you live in California or merely are a shooter visiting the state, you will want to watch the following futuristic video. If you think this could only happen in California, think again.

I had a similar experience in O’Fallon, Illinois many years ago when visiting Ron-Jo’s Gun Store. I saw some .30-06 ammo in M1 Garand stripper clips at a decent price. When I went to buy it I was asked for my FOID card. I was told that I needed either that that or a non-resident Illinois hunting license to purchase ammunition. Needless to say but I went away disappointed and without any ammunition. It was also the first time I had even heard of a FOID or Firearms Owner Identification card.

The Law Center Against Gun Violence (sic) helped draft this ballot initiative for Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom. Their push for gun control may seem idiotic but they do have access to very good attorneys who can draft initiatives like this with no wiggle room. Let’s put it this way – they are smart enough to realize that without ammunition, a firearm is merely an expensive piece of metal (and wood and plastic).

I see this initiative as another move by the elites to keep the masses under their thumb. The elites will always have their own armed guards and police forces. Without a means to self-defense, the masses will become even more dependent upon a government controlled by the elites for protection. Protection that as we have been told by the Supreme Court they are not required to provide.