Quote of the Day

The quote of the day comes from Hershel Smith at The Captain’s Journal. He reviewed the testimony of BATFE Director B. Todd Jones at the Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday. During his testimony, Jones said all 5.56 rounds were a threat to LEO safety as more people buy AR-15 pistols.

Bearing in mind that virtually all rifle cartridges have the speed and power to penetrate kevlar vests, Hershel had this warning for those in the shooting community who only shoot their Remington 700s or Winchester Model 70s during the opening day of deer season and don’t want anything to do with those tacticool rifles and the people that shoot them.

Here’s a warning flag to all the Elmer Fudds out there who only care about your bolt action hunting rifles, and think this stuff about AR-15s is all just a bunch of made up theater to bother pampered folk like you. They want your rifles and ammunition too. You do understand that, don’t you?

One need only look across the pond to our British cousins to what can happen. First it was the fox hunters who got thrown under the bus. Then it was the pistol shooters post-Dunblane. Too many people said it was only the rich that can ride to the hounds and too many people said what do pistols have to do with shooting grouse and pheasants.

It is like that hit song from 1970 – United We Stand – from the British pop group Brotherhood of Man:  United we stand, divided we fall. Our opponents know that and we should always remember it.

Remington Outdoor Company recently cut more jobs at its plant in Ilion, New York. Part of the reason was declining sales of Remington firearms and part was due to New York’s SAFE Act passed in 2013 according to a letter from Remington CEO George Kollitides.

New Yorker Against Gun Violence Executive Director Leah Gunn Barrett says that public safety trumps economics.

Critics love to use the New York SAFE Act as a whipping boy, but let’s face it, that law is keeping New Yorkers safe and keeping New York communities safe and our kids safe and guns out of the wrong hands, to me that’s more important.

And just how many murders, robberies, etc. were committed with an AR-15 in New York, Leah?

Students and faculty at George Washington Carver High School in Rancho Cordova, California are upset due to a new indoor gun range being developed near the school. According to the city’s planning department, the land is zoned industrial and gun ranges are a permitted use. Translated from PlanSpeak, that means the gun range meets the previously established criteria to be located there and must be allowed to operate in that location.

So, you can guess what the students did next – they held a protest complete with what appear to be professionally made signs. They had slogans like “Legal? but WRONG WRONG WRONG” and “Way TOO CLOSE for Comfort”. It appears from the news story that the “protest” was organized with the full cooperation of school officials. One has to wonder if the students really organized it or were given it as class assignment for a grade.

Reason.com comments on the story and the slant given to it from the reporter from CBS Sacramento:

The local news story spins this as a beneficial lesson in participatory democracy for the high schoolers. True enough, I suppose. If nothing else, they learned that when it comes to politics and governance, think-of-the-children paranoia trumps property rights every single time.

 So much for the Lockean rights of life, liberty, and property.