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The Question Not Asked On 60 Minutes

November 2, 2015 by 2 Comments

Lesley Stahl had a long piece on so-called smart guns last night on CBS’ 60 Minutes. She talked to a lot of people including New Jersey State Senator Loretta Weinberg. Here is the part of the transcript where Stahl speaks with Weinberg and intersperses it with comments from a Maryland FFL.

Loretta Weinberg, the New Jersey state senator who authored the law, didn’t foresee its consequences.

Loretta Weinberg: We passed that bill to help spur this technology.

Lesley Stahl: It appears it totally backfired because it spurred this passionate objection to the gun.

Loretta Weinberg: Because of the intervention of the NRA and the Second Amendment folks.

Lesley Stahl: That, they say, the reason they intervened is because of the mandate.

Loretta Weinberg: Right. It isn’t the law that’s stopped the development. It is the people who threatened folks who actually wanted to sell such a gun.

Andy Raymond came to realize that even if he had sold the Armatix gun in Maryland, it might’ve triggered the mandate, banning the sale of regular handguns in New Jersey.

[Andy Raymond: The people of New Jersey: my apologies. You got nothing to worry about from me.]

Andy Raymond: I did apologize. I’m… I’m sorry. Sorry to this day.

Lesley Stahl: Did you actually sell any of the Armatix guns?

Andy Raymond: No.

After his case came to her attention, the New Jersey senator offered to rescind the mandate if the gun lobby publicly removed its opposition to smart guns. She’s yet to hear back.

Loretta Weinberg: They seem to oppose almost everything. Anytime we suggest anything we’ve gotten very little cooperation back.

Lesley Stahl: If the law were completely repealed, do you think that the gun lobby would then let this go forward?

Loretta Weinberg: No.

Earlier in the story, Stahl said that the so-called smart guns could help on-duty cops because it would prevent criminals from using the cop’s gun on the cop as has been the case so often. As the story shows, it worked for James Bond in the movie Skyfall when a bad guy tried to shoot 007 with his own gun.

The New Jersey Childproof Handgun Law mandates that once the Attorney General of that state certifies that so-called smart or personalized handguns are available for retail sale anywhere in the United States that only these sort of guns can be sold to consumers in New Jersey. However, there are exceptions and the biggest one is this:

b. The provisions of this section shall not apply to handguns to be sold, transferred, assigned
and delivered for official use to: (1) State and local law enforcement officers of this State; (2)
federal law enforcement officers and any other federal officers and employees required to carry
firearms in the performance of their official duties and (3) members of the Armed Forces of the
United States or of the National Guard.

 Given this large and glaring exception to the personalized handgun mandate in New Jersey, why didn’t Ms. Stahl ask Sen. Weinberg something along these lines:

Stahl: Sen. Weinberg, given that police officers guns are often turned on them by criminals, why did you specifically exempt law enforcement officers from your bill?


Weinberg: Ummm. Because cops need a reliable gun and this technology is not reliable? Can we get back to talking about how it is the NRA’s fault that none of these guns are available for sale!

I would posit that Stahl did not ask the question because she already knew the answer or, at least, the producers of the segment knew it. To ask the question would have muddied the narrative and that just wouldn’t do.

You can see the whole episode here.

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Ted Kopel Writes A Book And Now The Media Notices A Problem

November 1, 2015 by 4 Comments

The lead story on CBS Sunday Morning was on the vulnerability of the power grid. The story revolved around a new book by former ABC News journalist Ted Kopel called Lights Out. He asserts that the power grid is very vulnerable to hackers due to its connection to the Internet. Kopel holds that both Russian and Chinese hackers, presumably affiliated with those governments, are already in the grid and could take it down at any time.

Kopel’s book also discusses prepping and food storage. He notes that the Mormons as a group lead the nation in preparedness. This portion got a mixed review in the Salt Lake Tribune.

You can see the CBS Sunday Morning story below:

View More: Live News|More News Videos

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The prepper community has discussed this for years. Indeed, Prof. William Forstchen’s One Second After reached number 11 on the New York Times bestseller list. Forstchen’s novel described the impact of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) event on Black Mountain, North Carolina. He has now followed this up with One Year After which continues the story.

Long before Ted Kopel wrote his Lights Out, prepper author David Crawford wrote his own Lights Out regarding the impact of an EMP event on a small Texas neighborhood outside of San Antonio. It, like Forstchen’s One Second After, is an excellent book.

Gun blogger Bob Owens has discussed other vulnerabilities of the grid with regard to domestic and/or international terrorism. He noted that power substations were often located near roads and trails where anyone could access them. A few well placed shots could drain the oil used to cool the transformers causing it to burn out.

While I’m glad that attention is finally being paid to the vulnerabilities of the grid, I think it sucks that the only reason the mainstream media is giving it a second thought is because one of their own wrote a book. If I didn’t know better, I’d think the CBS Sunday Morning story was merely an effort to push Kopel’s book and not an effort to urge both people and government to be better prepared.

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PTR-32 Shootout Test

October 30, 2015 by 3 Comments

The guys at the AK Operators Union tested out the PTR Industries PTR-32 KFR Gen 2 rifle. This rifle has a delayed blowback roller-lock system and comes in 7.62×39. Think of it as an HK-91 but in 7.62×39.

My nephew and I had an opportunity to test fire a prototype of this rifle back in the summer of 2014 when we visited the PTR Industries factory in Aynor, South Carolina. What impressed me about the rifle was that the designers at PTR were working to make it take any AK magazine. According to the comments here, they pretty much succeeded with their Gen 2 version.

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Infographic: All Things AK

October 30, 2015 by 1 Comment

I stumbled across this infographic on AKs this morning. It shows the defining details of the various AKs and how to tell them apart.

When I thought about posting it here, I said why not. AKs are the most produced rifle in the world or it may just be a recognition that Vladimir Putin, the despot running Russia, is more effective on the world stage that Barack Obama, our wannabe despot.

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Colion Noir Takes A New Shooter To The Range

October 29, 2015 by 3 Comments

All that Colion Noir knew about guns six years ago, he’d learned from TV or the movies. He never learned anything about it in school and that would include firearm safety. However, six years ago a friend took him shooting for the first time and his life changed.

In this episode, Colion Noir describes that first time and then takes a female friend to the range for the first time. We often pass around the phrase, “Take someone shooting”, but we need to do it. It is the best inoculation against the lies told by the Shannon Watts of the world.

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Fewer Prosecutions Under Obama Yet He Wants More Gun Control

October 29, 2015 by 1 Comment

The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms notes that while President Barack Obama wants more gun control, his administration is less likely to prosecute violations of existing law.

The CCRKBA was responding to this report released yesterday by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Interestingly, the Southern District of Illinois was one of the top ten judicial districts for convictions on Federal firearms charges. I’m not sure how the Northern District of Illinois (Chicagoland) is doing as I don’t want to have pay for the data. Nonetheless, it isn’t in the top ten!

Obama Prosecutes Fewer Gun Cases While Penalizing Honest Citizens

BELLEVUE, WA – While Barack Obama has been pushing harder for more gun laws to disarm honest citizens, his Justice Department has been prosecuting fewer gun crimes despite announcing more than two years ago he would increase such prosecutions, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today.

“Here we go again with Barack Obama talking tough on crime, but actually being less aggressive, while at the same time he’s been pushing for more gun control,” noted CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “This raises a question that the president needs to answer. Does he want to put criminals behind bars, or just discourage legal gun ownership?”

According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, gun crime prosecutions have been declining since 2013, the same year President Obama began ramping up the rhetoric about more and stronger gun laws as a response to the Sandy Hook tragedy.

“After the president spoke yesterday to the International Association of Chiefs of Police in Chicago,” Gottlieb observed, “he took some heat from the Chicago Tribune for not using three important words: Mandatory minimum sentencing. When your hometown newspaper calls you out for essentially being disingenuous about cracking down on armed criminals, your tough talk turns to hot air.

“According to the TRAC report,” he continued, “the federal government reported 6,002 new firearms convictions during Fiscal Year 2015. That’s down 5.8 percent from the 6,373 convictions reported in FY 2014, and an alarming 15.5 percent from five years ago, when there were 7,101 convictions. It represents a whopping decline of 34.8 percent from the 9,206 convictions reported in 2005, according to the TRAC data.

“Obama can talk all he wants about being tough on crime,” Gottlieb said, “but his agenda only seems to erode the Second Amendment and the privacy rights of gun owners. His answer to crime is to penalize the good guys while not punishing the bad ones.”

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FPC Is Building Opposition To Gavin Newsom’s Plan For More Gun Control

October 28, 2015 by

California Lt. Gov. and former San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom (D-CA) is sponsoring an initiative to bring even more gun control to the Golden State. However, he isn’t doing this without opposition. The Firearms Policy Coalition is working to build grassroots opposition to his outrageous measures which include having to have a permit to buy ammo and a total ban on all standard capacity magazines.

They released this statement last night:


SACRAMENTO – In response to the official filing
earlier today of California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s mis-named “The
Safety for All Act of 2016,” civil rights advocates at Firearms Policy
Coalition (FPC) and the Firearms Policy Coalition Second Amendment Defense Committee
(FPCSADC) political action committee have begun shipping out over
25,000 grassroots activism guides to volunteers and activism hubs
throughout the state.

FPCSADC President Brandon Combs expects to ship an additional 75,000 grassroots guides within the next week.

“We
are committed to building the biggest, most-organized, and highly
informed Second Amendment grassroots army ever seen in California to
fight and oppose Gavin Newsom’s assault on our civil rights,” said
Combs. “We want 100,000 volunteers working on this by the end of the
year. This initial deployment is just the beginning of our much larger
opposition plan.”

Newsom’s ballot initiative would make numerous changes to state law, including, but not limited to:

  • Instituting
    a total, confiscatory ban on the possession of “large-capacity
    magazines” – even legally-owned “grandfathered” magazines and those that
    are possessed by active and retired law enforcement officers;
  • Adding
    severe and expensive new restrictions on ammunition purchases,
    including a mandatory DOJ ammunition purchase permit for anyone who
    wants to buy ammunition, a ban on private ammunition sales, and a gun
    owner database of ammunition purchasers;
  • A ban on the private purchase and importation of ammunition from out-of-state retailers;
  • Requiring
    all ammunition sellers to acquire a special DOJ ammunition sales permit
    and to have every employee that handles or sells ammunition to have a
    DOJ-issued Certificate of Eligibility;
  • A $25 Million theft of fees paid by gun owners to fund the new DOJ ammunition program;
  • And other gun control regulations that have already failed passage in the Legislature or were vetoed by Governor Jerry Brown.

“FPC
and the Second Amendment Defense Committee are absolutely dedicated to
stopping Gavin’s unconstitutional gun grab,” explained Combs. “The
infrastructure is in place, and we have retained counsel and specialized
experts to maximize the success of our opposition campaign.”

“These
measures will do nothing to advance public safety, but they will
further undermine the Second Amendment rights of all Californians,”
continued Combs. “The time to draw a line in the sand is right now.”

Newsom
would need to collect about 366,000 valid signatures to qualify the
proposal for the 2016 general election ballot. From there, it would be
an up or down vote by the people of California.

“All California
gun owners and civil rights organizations must stand together, dig in,
and do whatever it takes to defeat this anti-rights initiative at the
ballot box,” said Combs.


“We are committed to working
with our friends at the National Rifle Association, California Rifle
and Pistol Association, Gun Owners of California, Citizens Committee for
the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and many other civil rights groups to
defend fundamental, individual Second Amendment rights against Newsom’s
unconstitutional attack.”

Concluded Combs, “When Newsom first
announced this awful gun control scheme, we promised to bring the fight
to him. Well, here we come, Gavin. Your move.”

You can support
FPCSADC, volunteer to fight the ballot initiative, and view the official
ballot initiative language at FPCSADC’s StopNewsom.com opposition campaign website, also available at fpcsadc.org.

FPC
first informed the public about Newsom’s gun control proposal on
October 14, the day before the Lt. Gov. held a press conference to
announce his plan.

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Faith And Begorrah! Irish Win International Sniper Competition

October 27, 2015 by 2 Comments

For the first time, an international team of snipers has won the annual sniper competition held annually at Fort Benning, GA. A team from the Army Ranger Wing (‘Sciathan Fíanóglach an Airm’) of the Irish Defence Forces (Óglaigh na hÉireann) won the 15th International and U.S. Sniper Competition. The Army Ranger Wing is the special forces unit of the Irish Army.

The competition featured teams (shooter and spotter plus team coach) from around the US military plus international teams from the UK, Denmark, Canada, Germany, and, of course, Ireland. Also there were teams from the FBI plus two Georgia police departments. The event was held October 19th through 23rd.

Capt. Nick Privette, commander of the US Army Sniper Course, describes the skills that the sniper teams would be tested on in this competition.

The Irish Defence Forces released this on the win:

The Chief of Staff of the Defence Forces Vice Admiral Mark Mellett DSM congratulated the Rangers, stating;


“The Army Ranger Wing have long been regarded as one of the finest Special Forces Units in the world. This victory is testament to their hard training and resolve.”

Consistency was the key to the win by the Irish whose names and pictures were not released at their request.

Col. William Thigpen, commander of the 316 Cavalry Brigade, pointed to consistency as the key to success for the Ireland team over the course of 16 events. Teams were tested in long-range marksmanship, observation, target detection, stalking, reconnaissance and reporting and the ability to move with stealth while concealed.


“They demonstrated the most consistency across the board,” Thigpen said.


The statistics haven’t been reviewed yet, but Thigpen said the Ireland team may be the first international team to win the sniper competition.


“I’m almost positive this is the first international team to win the competition,” the commander said. “We are fair in everything we do. That’s how the numbers registered. They were the best team in 2015.”


Over the years, consistency in shooting has been key for winners.


“We found out that over the last couple of years teams that stay within the top five in each event tend to have a better chance in winning the overall competition,” Thigpen said. “That’s a consistent trend at least over the last three years.”


The efforts of the Ireland team were noticed by Staff Sgt. Steve Curry and Sgt. Emmanuel Velayo of Camp Pendleton, Calif., who came in third place.


“The international teams were quite impressive,” Curry said after the ceremony. “The Ireland team did extraordinarily well. They were consistent, they were accurate and they did all the basic things right.”

Even local Columbus, Georgia TV took notice of the win by the Irish team.

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SAF, NRA, And NSSF Move For Summary Judgment In Seattle Gun Tax Case

October 26, 2015 by 5 Comments

After the City of Seattle imposed a “gun violence tax” on sales of arms and ammunition within their city limits, the Second Amendment Foundation, National Rifle Association, and the National Shooting Sports Foundation jointly sued the city. Under Washington State law, cities and counties are preempted from passing regulations that impact firearms. That is reserved for the state.

This suit is groundbreaking because it is the first time the three have jointly sued on a gun rights issue. Now comes word that they have moved for summary judgment in King County Superior Court.

Plaintiffs Move For Summary Judgement In Challenge To Seattle Gun Tax

BELLEVUE, WA – Plaintiffs challenging a so-called “gun violence tax” recently passed by the Seattle City Council have today filed a motion for summary judgment in their lawsuit, citing Washington State’s long-standing preemption statute which “fully occupies and preempts the entire field of firearms regulation within the boundaries of the state.” The motion was filed in King County Superior Court.

Attorneys Steven Fogg and David Edwards, with Corr Cronin Michelson, Baumgardner Fogg & Moore LLP filed the motion for the Second Amendment Foundation, National Rifle Association, National Shooting Sports Foundation and their co-plaintiffs. They allege that the city “is well aware of this restriction on its legislative power, in part because its most recent attempt to regulate firearms was emphatically struck down by the Court of Appeals.”

That case was Chan v. City of Seattle, brought by SAF, NRA and several other plaintiffs. Fogg also argued that case. It derailed an attempt by the city under former Mayors Greg Nickels and Mike McGinn to ban guns in city park facilities. But Washington State’s preemption statute, passed 32 years ago and used as a model by other states to adopt similar legislation, stopped that effort in its tracks.

“Seattle is trying to be too clever by half,” said SAF Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb. “Our motion shows that members of the city council brainstormed with members of local gun control groups to try to skirt the preemption law. This so-called ‘gun violence tax’ clearly seeks to limit access to firearms and ammunition by imposing what amounts to a regulatory fee on the sale of all firearms and ammunition within City limits. The city can’t do that, and we’re confident the court will tell them so.

“The city can’t even pass this off as a B&O tax, because it’s a flat fee, not a percentage of sales,” he continued. “In the final analysis, this is an attempt to skate around, and thus erode, our state’s model preemption law. That cannot be allowed to stand. The City of Seattle is not an entity unto itself, but still part of Washington State, and therefore the city has to abide by the same laws we all follow.”

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That’s Why It’s Called Capitalism, Ladd

October 24, 2015 by 3 Comments

The Huffington Post had a post about HR 3799 – the Hearing Protection Act of 2015 – being introduced by Rep. Matt Salmon (R-AZ). As with most PuffHo articles, it starts well and then goes over the edge. They waited until the 12th paragraph to link suppressors with CIA death squads.

In the past, the NRA had been hesitant to get into bed with manufacturers of silencers, largely due to image problems that have long plagued the devices. In 2013, Mother Jones reported on the history of modern silencers, going back to their creation in the late 1960s by a onetime CIA dark-ops contractor, as well as their early use by CIA death squads in Vietnam. The ASA was formed in 2011, suggesting that the silencer industry has lately taken more of an interest in public relations and political influence.

Supporters of stronger gun regulations regularly point to the potential hazards of making it easier for civilians to get hold of accessories that — as manufacturers readily admit — allow shooters to disguise their location by minimizing the noise and light produced by firing a gun. There’s little evidence to suggest that silencers are used regularly in criminal activity, but there have been a number of cases in which gunmen, or would-be gunmen, were found to have used the devices or at least been in possession of them.

Hiram Percy Maxim, son of Hiram S. Maxim, was awarded a patent for his Maxim Silencer in 1909. That is significantly earlier than the “late 1960s”. Moreover,  High Standard produced an integrally suppressed pistol for the OSS as early as WWII. I guess it is only a “death squad” to PuffHo if you are fighting communists and not Fascists.

More to the point of this post are the comments by Ladd Everitt of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (sic).

Ladd Everett, director of communications for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, says manufacturers are simply making a financial calculation in the current push to make it cheaper and easier for people to get silencers, despite the potential for misuse.

“The NRA and gun industry view accessories like silencers as potential profit areas, with guns themselves so well-saturated throughout their existing customer base. That’s why we’ve seen this multi-state effort to weaken laws in this area, the obvious consequences for safety be damned,” Everett told The Huffington Post. “It’s about profit, nothing else.”

Ladd, dude, profit is what capitalism is all about. Your bio says you worked for US Saudi Arabian Business Council so you of all people should understand that.

And what are these obvious consequences for safety that you speak of? As one of the many Americans with hearing loss issues due to damage from shooting unsuppressed firearms without hearing protection, I would think that making it easier to end noise pollution and protect hearing at the same time would be a win-win for safety. I guess since I live out in the hinterlands I’m just a bit clueless what is obvious to you inside the Beltway sorts.