Former Navy SEAL Dom Raso is one of the three new younger commentators for the NRA. In his latest, he takes on the attempts to limit our right to defend our homes, our families, and ourselves.
He makes an excellent point when he says, “For many people, home security isn’t worth talking about.” Too many people are both unprepared and unaware. They live in a world of denial that violent crime can happen anywhere and to anyone.
Now that the Zimmerman trial is over, gun prohibitionists and their political allies have declared a jihad on Stand Your Ground laws. Many of the attempts to repeal the protection that these laws give to persons exercising their right to self-defense will come in the state legislatures.
One of the latest attempts to repeal these laws is coming from the state of Alabama where certain Democrats vow to repeal that state’s Stand Your Ground law.
A Democratic lawmaker said Tuesday there would be an effort to repeal Alabama’s version of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law in the next legislative session, but acknowledged it could be a difficult fight.
“We know it will not just be uphill, but up mountain,” said Sen. Hank Sanders, D-Selma, at a news conference.
Alabama has had a Stand Your Ground law since 2006 when it was sponsored by then-State Sen. Larry Means (D-Attala). Much like in Illinois in 2004 where then-State Senator Barack Obama supported that state’s Stand Your Ground law, this law was supported by Democrats.
In the last session of the Alabama Legislature, they were presented with a bill to repeal the Stand Your Ground law. That attempt didn’t make it out of committee. Nonetheless, Sen. Sanders plans to attempt it.
Sanders said he did not know what the scope of any Senate action would be or who would take the lead on it, but said he would sponsor a repeal effort if no one else did. Republicans control large majorities in both chambers, but Sanders said he would work on repeal for “however long” it took.
Frankly, I’d rate his chances of getting his bill out of committee right up there with a snowball not melting when left out in the midday sun during a hot Alabama summer. In other words, it doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of passing.
The Hawaiian islands are having trouble with an invasive weed that is shading out natural plants and causes erosion.
The weed in question is miconia, a plant that has infested much of the Big Island and has been trying to gain a foothold on Oahu, Maui and Kauai. Miconia’s large leaves can block out sunlight for smaller plants, and its shallow root systems can increase erosion. A single miconia plant can produce eight million seeds a year.
“Miconia is the number one weed problem in the state of Hawaii that most people don’t know about because it’s impacting areas that people don’t have access to,” Leary told Hawaii News Now in an interview from the UH Maui Agricultural Center in Kula.
The solution developed by conservation scientists from the Hawaii Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Management is called Herbicide Ballistic Technology or HBT. In layman’s terms, they are using a paintball gun with special paintballs filled with herbicide to kill the miconia.
The scientists from NREM take to the air in helicopters searching for the miconia and shoot it with the herbicide-filled paintballs. It has been likened to helicopter hunting for feral hogs in Texas. It appears that they have have some significant success according to Dr. James Leary of the University of Hawaii.
“We have protected over 3,000 acres, eliminating 5,000 miconia targets, and reducing what we call incipient populations, or satellite populations, by 80 percent,” he said.
Who would have ever thought that paintball guns could be put to such important conservation use.
Last Friday, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) released a statement on the first anniversary of the shootings in the theater in Aurora, Colorado. It was, as you would expect from the source, nonsensical. Rep. Pelosi stated in part:
“In Congress, there can be no more fitting memorial to the lives lost in Aurora, in Newtown, and across the country than a concerted effort to enact commonsense gun safety legislation. We must uphold our oath to ‘protect and defend’ the constitution and all Americans by expanding background checks and keeping dangerous firearms out of the wrong hands.
Beyond misstating the Congressional Oath of Office that she took, the rest of the statement is just absurd.
The cartoonists at Failure To Fire nailed her on this today and they did a damn fine job of it.
The new Bloomberg-backed background checks law in Colorado has had an unintended and welcome side effect: it prevented a gun buyback. Together Colorado had planned a gun buyback for August 4th in the People’s Republic of Boulder. They had to call it off at the request of Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle.
Organizers have canceled a gun buyback at the request of Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle, who said Colorado’s new gun laws would make the Aug. 4 event nearly impossible to stage.
“The bottom line is what we anticipated doing would still be legal — but procedurally we can’t follow through with it at this time,” Pelle said Tuesday.
A stricter law that went into effect July 1 requires buyers to go to a licensed firearms dealer and undergo a background check. The InstaCheck systems used in the checks are not mobile, which means they couldn’t be used at the sheriff’s compound where the buyback was planned.
“It’s not a portable system,” Pelle said. “It can’t be done at the site.”
Essentially, for the event to work, Pelle said the group would have to find a licensed firearms dealer to host the event and then pay the dealer per transaction, “which becomes very unproductive,” he said.
That is just too bad for both Together Colorado and Sheriff Pelle who gave the event his full support.
It is also really too back for Boulder metalworking artist Jessica Adams who was to be given parts of the destroyed firearms to make a sculpture “creating gun violence (sic) awareness.”
It appears that the North Carolina General Assembly can get its act together when it is under time pressure. The amended HB 937 was passed by both houses of the General Assembly this evening. Earlier reports had it being on the calendar for tomorrow.
The vote was 73-41 in favor of the amendment from the Conference Committee in the House while the Senate passed it by a vote of 32-14. The roll call of the votes are not available yet.
The Conference Committee hammering out differences between the Senate version and the House version of HB 937 has reported back to the North Carolina General Assembly with an amended bill which can be found here.
The bill has been put on the legislative calendar for an up-down vote tomorrow. I would expect it to pass.
I will have more on the changes as I read the Committee’s report.
UPDATE: The bill stays the same except for Sections 17 and 18. The changes include:
Before there were carjackings, there were auto bandits and thieves. To protect oneself against bandits and thieves, you needed a Colt. Not just any Colt but the Colt Pocket Hammerless Pistol Model 1903 (.32 ACP) or Model 1908 (.380) According to the ad below, it was essential motoring equipment.
I found this wonderful old advertisement on Tumblr where it had been posted by Bubble Head Gun Nut.
Natalie Foster of A Girl’s Guide to Guns fame has a new commentary about about the abuse of language used by the gun prohibitionists. I’m glad to know that I’m not the only one whose hackles start to rise when they hear the words “commonsense”, “reasonable”, or the new buzzword du jour, “gun safety”. Natalie calls this condescending, manipulative language meant to confuse the voters. She is absolutely correct.
Alan Korwin of Gunlaws.com has pointed out many times that we need to change our use of language. Instead of being pro-gun, we are pro-rights. Natalie makes the point when she talks about the use of the word “gun safety” as a stand-in for gun control. If you are against the newest gun safety law aka gun control, it puts us in an uncomfortable position if we would be forced to say we are anti-gun safety laws. I think you get the point.
The Los Angeles Times has an article up today about Mr. Colion Noir. They call him an “Internet sensation” whose popularity is growing. The article is actually informative about Colion Noir and seems rather fair. As to the comments, not so much.
I’ve watched a number of his YouTube videos and am very happy that the National Rifle Association realized the potential in having him as a commentator (along with Natalie Foster and Dom Raso). Adding commentators like Colion Noir punches holes in the perception that the NRA is only for aging and overweight Caucasian males.
I think what is really going to infuriate the gun prohibitionists is that not only is Mr. Colion Noir black (well, duh!) but he is a practicing attorney in Houston with degrees from the University of Houston and Texas Southern’s law school. In other words, he’s not just some hip actor reading lines provided to him by the NRA.
Noir is a practicing attorney. He reads fashion blogs, loves gadgets and drives a sports car and a truck — neither with a gun rack, although he keeps a metal candy dish full of bullets in his living room.
Noir said he grew up hesitant to admit he liked firearms because it wasn’t something people talked about in his middle-class neighborhood. He fired his first gun, a little Taurus .40, about seven years ago at the urging of a friend who took him to a shooting range.
“I remember how exhilarating it was,” Noir said, comparing the experience to sky diving.
Soon afterward, he was going to the range weekly and researching guns. He later joined the NRA and bought about a half dozen guns. Noir, who once worked at A/X Armani Exchange and favors tailored suits, worries that a concealed handgun might “print,” or show through the fabric.
“Secret Service have the worst cut suits — big and bulky,” so their guns won’t show, Noir said.
Colion Noir has attracted detractors among some in the African-American community who consider him a “sell-out” and other worse epithets.
Now some in the black community have denounced Noir for what they say is selling out to the white pro-gun establishment, with critiques posted on theroot.com and the Black Entertainment Television website.
“He’s taking more heat from black people than anybody. The racism that exists now is mostly on our side,” said the Rev. Kenn Blanchard, 50, a gun rights activist who is black. He said he advised Noir to accept the NRA deal.
Noir said he expected attacks, but he gets frustrated when critics highlight his race.
“Calling me an Uncle Tom simply because I’m into firearms, it doesn’t even make sense. My entire identity as a black guy is based on my ownership of guns? Really?” he said. “Some of the most influential black individuals have advocated for the use of firearms, so how come when I do it, I’m vilified? Take a look at the Black Panthers, MLK, Malcolm X.”
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. supported gun rights? Noir noted that after King’s home in Montgomery, Ala., was firebombed, King applied for a handgun permit.
While most of the comments to this article are supportive of both gun rights and Mr. Colion Noir, there are some detractors who are appalled that a man of color would not only like shooting but that he would be a member of the NRA.
From “NoBeggrsPlz”:As a lawyer you could be a role model for the African-American community and work to reduce the amount of black-black violence and deaths.
Or is indulging and glamorizing your own fetish with guns more important to you?
How’s the glamourizaton of guns working out for the African-American community?
From “Pam00015”:
That was the stupidest video I have ever seen! It made no sense and was pointless. WOW! You have guns you are so powerful!
You are a coward!
Fetish? Stupidest? Pointless? Coward?
I guess you just can’t open some minds despite the good work that a commentator like Mr. Colion Noir does.
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