My friend Rob Morse had what I consider the comment of the day. He was commenting on how the media kowtows to the gun prohibitionists and provides them with positive media coverage every time they have a little “rally”.
President Obama’s group Organizing for Action gathers three members for an anti-gun rally and gets press coverage. Somehow this is considered newsworthy.
Pro-gun groups gather three members every time I go to lunch with friends.
I will have light blogging for the next week. We are leaving this morning for our annual multi-family trip to the beach. This will be our first time at Garden City Beach, SC. It is just south of Myrtle Beach. The house we are renting is supposed to have WiFi so I hope to get some posts up over the week.
One thing I plan to do on the vacation is organize a trip to the range. I’ll be taking some new and/or very inexperienced shooters to a local range for some shooting time. I hope to have some pictures of that.
The other thing I hope to do is catch up on my reading. I am in the midst of Mike Detty’s account of Operation Wide Receiver and will do a review when I’m finished.
So have a great week and don’t work too hard.
The Cato Institute held a symposium last week to mark the 5th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v Heller. It featured Alan Gura who argued the case before the Supreme Court, Robert Levy who had backed the case with his own money and was a co-counsel, Clark Neily who was the other co-counsel, and Emily Miller of the Washington Times.
The video below is from Alan Gura’s remarks.
Smith and Wesson (SWHC) released their earnings report for the fiscal year ending April 30th yesterday. With the growth in gun sales over the past three years, you would expect that they did well and they did. Net sales figures for the 4th Quarter were up approximately 38% over the same quarter in the prior year. Fiscal year net sales for 2013 were up 43% over FY2012.
So who should they thank for their sales growth? John Nolte at Breitbart has this to say:
It is hard to judge who Smith & Wesson should thank most: Gun-grabber President Obama, murdered-child-exploiter Piers Morgan, or insufferable-sell-out Joe Scarborough. Or maybe the gun maker should just send a big fat bouquet to all of the media:
JournOlist HQ
Hollowed-Out Volcano Lane
Water Carrier, DC 66666
Actually, Smith & Wesson should be and likely is grateful to a nation of Americans who instinctually understand and appreciate their God-give right to not be bossed around, intimidated, or swayed by a bunch of hypocritical, bossie-pants, fascists who hide behind armed guards in secured high-rises.
In what is generally a down day for Wall Street, S&W stock is up approximately 5% at midday.
While Bloomberg’s billions were enough to “persuade” both houses of the Nevada Legislature to pass SB 221, it wasn’t enough to “convince” Gov. Brian Sandoval (R-NV) not to veto the bill. SB 221 provided for universal background checks on all transfers in Nevada.
Bloomberg had blanketed Nevada with his lobbyists and spent a lot of money on ads pushing Sandoval to sign SB 221. However, Gov. Sandoval, who had pledged to veto the bill even before it passed, seems to have listened to callers to his office instead.
It is a significant defeat for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s gun control advocacy group, Mayor’s Against Illegal Guns, which spent hundreds of thousands of dollars working to get the bill passed.
The group bought numerous ads on social media sites, news websites and television, in addition to mailing out materials attacking select lawmakers who voted against the bill during the session. Video ads pressuring Sandoval to sign the bill surfaced immediately following the Assembly nod of approval.
But an automated system set up to field the flood of calls to the governor’s office about the bill showed an overwhelming majority of calls wanted Sandoval to veto the bill. The system did not record names, so it was possible for callers to call multiple times and distort the numbers.
The gun prohibitionists are still clinging to their mythical 86% of Nevadans in favor of the bill and are castigating the governor for ignoring their push poll.
Repeating an oft-cited result of a poll showing 86 percent of Nevadans favor background checks for private party gun sales, critics said Sandoval has made an unpopular decision.
“Clearly Gov. Sandoval is going against the will of the people,” said Brian Fadie, executive director of ProgressNow Nevada, a group that favored the bill’s passage. “He is standing with extremists who are mostly filled with paranoid fears of the government taking away their guns.”
Gov. Sandoval, in his veto message found here, said that the bill’s measure on the reporting of mental health issues were very good. However, he goes on to say that that bill’s background check provisions “constitute an erosion of Nevadans’ Second Amendment rights under the United States Constitution and may subject otherwise law-abiding citizens to criminal prosecution.” He adds that the bill would also alter the burden of proof for illegal sales of firearms under Nevada.
I congratulate Gov. Sandoval for vetoing the bill and for recognizing the “flypaper” nature of this bill written by Mayor Bloomberg’s Illegal Mayors. These transfer provisions were never meant to stop crime but are intended to create a new class of inadvertent criminals ultimately leading to the loss of their rights under the Second Amendment.
I know the thought of Barack and Michelle going on safari in Tanzania conjures up confusing images. It does for me. I just can’t see the anti-gun metrosexual president stalking a lion or shooting a charging Cape Buffalo with his Holland and Holland or Westley Richards double rifle in .500 Nitro Express while being urged on by both Michelle and his professional hunter.
According to the Washington Post, the White House decided to cancel the safari part of his African trip due to “costs”. Those costs would include snipers to kill any lion or cheetah that got too close to the First Family.
The president and first lady had also planned to take a Tanzanian safari as part of the trip, which would have required the president’s special counterassault team to carry sniper rifles with high-caliber rounds that could neutralize cheetahs, lions or other animals if they became a threat, according to the planning document.
But officials said Thursday that the safari had been canceled in favor of a trip to Robben Island off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa, where Nelson Mandela was held as a political prisoner.
When The Post first asked White House officials about the safari last week, they said no final decision had been made. A White House official said Thursday that the cancellation was not related to The Post’s inquiries.
“We do not have a limitless supply of assets to support presidential missions, and we prioritized a visit to Robben Island over a two-hour safari in Tanzania,” said spokesman Josh Earnest. “Unfortunately, we couldn’t do both.”
Internal administration documents circulated in April show that the Obama family was scheduled to go to both Robben Island and the safari park, according to a person familiar with the plans.
I’m sure President Theodore Roosevelt is spinning in his grave. After all, when he went on safari it was for more that two hours and, by God, he carried his own rifle which was a Winchester 1895 in .405 Winchester.
Soldier Systems is reporting that the Army has decided to cancel the Individual Carbine competition. This was the Army’s search for a replacement for their current carbines the M4 and M4A1. The cancellation was done because none of the contenders made a high enough score to make it to the next round of the competition.
From the Army’s release:
The IC program consisted of a three-phased competitive strategy to determine whether industry could provide a best-value, improved alternative to the M4A1 carbine. Phase I consisted of reviews of vendor proposals and non-firing evaluations of bid samples. All vendors successfully met Phase I criteria. In 2012, the Army commenced Phase II of the competition, which subjected IC candidates to rigorous evaluations that tested the extreme limits of weapon performance in such areas as weapon system accuracy, reliability, and durability. For Phase III, the Army planned to award between zero and three contracts for weapons meeting Phase II requirements for further environmental and operationally oriented Soldier testing. Upon completion of all testing, the Army planned to conduct a cost benefit analysis between the top performing competitor and the M4A1 carbine.
At the conclusion of Phase II testing, however, no competitor demonstrated a significant improvement in weapon reliability — measured by mean rounds fired between weapon stoppage. Consistent with the program’s search for superior capability, the test for weapon reliability was exceptionally rigorous and exceeded performance experienced in a typical operational environment.
Based upon Army analysis, test results may have been affected by interaction between the ammunition, the magazine and the weapon. The Army’s existing carbine requirement assumed use of the M855 ammunition; the weapons tested in the IC competition all fired the next generation M855A1 Enhanced Performance Round (EPR) currently in fielding. The use of the M855A1 round likely resulted in lower than expected reliability performance. These effects are unique to testing conditions and are not known to affect the reliability of any weapon in the operational environment.
The remaining monies from this program will now be reallocated to other Army budget priorities. There is some speculation that this is the real reason they ended the competition.
The end result is that that Army will continue to field the M4A1 and will not be buying such weapons as the FN SCAR, the Remington ACR, or the HK 416 or the like. Colt Defense and Adcor Defense were also in the competition.
The North Carolina Senate passed HB 937 today on its Third Reading and have sent it back to the House of Representatives for their concurrence. They also rejected an amendment by Sen. Angela Bryant (D-Nash ) which would have allowed the disclosure of non-personal statistics regarding Concealed Handgun Permits including the number of applications, revocations, and denials by both county and Zip code.
While the final roll call vote has not been posted yet, Sean is reporting the final vote was 31-16. After the House concurs, it will go to Gov. Pat McCrory (R-NC) for his signature. There has been no indication that he opposes the bill.
The CalGuns Foundation and the Second Amendment Foundation have filed a Second Amended Complaint in their case challenging Califorinia’s Handgun Roster. The amended complaint in Pena et al v. Cid now also challenges the handgun microstamping requirement.
From the CGF release:
CGF Challenges CA Handgun Microstamping Requirement in Federal Civil Rights Lawsuit
SAN CARLOS, CA – The Calguns Foundation announced today that attorneys for it and co-plaintiff Second Amendment Foundation have filed an amended complaint in the federal civil rights case Peña v. Cid that includes a challenge to California’s handgun microstamping regulations.
The plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment will be argued by the court’s deadline in November.
The lawsuit was originally filed in 2009 as a challenge to California’s handgun “Roster” regulations that arbitrarily bans handguns based on a list of “acceptable” handgun models approved by the state. The new filing addresses microstamping, which makes it even harder for Californians to legally purchase a handgun for self defense.
Gene Hoffman, chairman of The Calguns Foundation, said, “California’s attempt to limit the availability of handguns to her citizens is so broad that it makes it impossible to purchase the revolver that the U.S. Supreme Court has specifically ruled had to be registered to Dick Heller, whose case struck down the District of Columbia’s handgun ban and affirmed that the Second Amendment protects an individual civil right.”
“The state cannot dictate that some common arms can’t be bought just as they can’t dictate which versions of religious texts are acceptable,” Hoffman added. “Now that the state requires microstamping, it’s unlikely any new make or model of pistol will be added – making it even clearer that this is an incremental ban on firearms.”
“When the case was originally filed,” SAF Executive Vice President Alan Gottlieb recalled, “the state’s microstamping requirement was not active and was not part of the lawsuit. However, because of substantial delays involving the Ninth Circuit’s protracted Nordyke litigation, microstamping is now a significant issue. We’ve had to amend our complaint to address this new effort by California legislators to limit the types of handguns one can legally purchase.”
The amended complaint can be viewed at http://ia700204.us.archive.org/23/items/gov.uscourts.caed.191444/gov.uscourts.caed.191444.53.0.pdf
The May 17, 2013, California Department of Justice Information Bulletin on handgun microstamping regulation enforcement can be viewed at http://oag.ca.gov/sites/all/files/agweb/pdfs/firearms/infobuls/2013-BOF-03.pdf.
More information about the Peña v. Cid lawsuit can be viewed at http://wiki.calgunsfoundation.org/Pena_v_Cid.
The Town of Mayodan and the Rockingham County Partnership for Economic and Tourism Development have announced that “an industry-leading firearms company” is considered locating a major facility in Mayodan. The unnamed company will be hosting an open house on June 18th for potential employees. They are trying to find out if there are enough qualified employees to staff the plant.
As I posted in mid-May, Ruger had announced at their Annual Meeting that they had narrowed their search for their third manufacturing plant down to North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas. One of their major requirements was an existing manufacturing facility of approximately 250,000 square feet. Rockingham County has approximately six available facilities that would meet this qualification according to a list from
Rockingham County Partnership for Economic and Tourism Development. Mayodan has two facilities on this list that were former Unifi Textile plants.
Rockingham County is also home to the headquarters of Remington Arms/Freedom Group which has about 200 employees in Madison. However, as WGHP MyFox8 reports, the company considering Mayodan is not Remington.
Officials have not disclosed what the company is, but Graham Pervier, president of the RCPETD, said it is not Remington Arms.
Pervier could not say how many jobs would be created as a result of the possible expansion, but he said it is “a substantial number.”
The company is now working to decide whether the region has enough qualified candidates to support the expansion, Pervier said.
Town officials in Mayodan are quite excited about this possible new company and are strongly urging potential candidates to send their resumes.
“We’re pretty excited about what this could mean for our community,” Mayodan Town Manager Michael Brandt said. “This offers the potential to reuse one of our existing buildings and provide hundreds of much needed jobs for the area.”
Brandt said the amount of support demonstrated in this early candidate screening process would be a major determining factor in the company’s decision on location.
“So we really need people with the right skills and experience to apply as soon as possible,” Brandt said. “There’s a short timeframe here and we want to show the workforce is here and ready.”
The latest unemployment reports show that Rockingham County has a 10% unemployment rate. Mayodan, which is located in western Rockingham County, is located equidistant (or about 30 miles) from both Greensboro and Winston-Salem.
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