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Creative Responses To “Too Many Victims”

January 9, 2012 by 8 Comments

There have been many creative responses to the Brady Campaign’s politicization of the anniversary of the shootings in Tucson. Yesterday, through the inspiration of Weer’d Beard, many blogger featured pictures of a lit candle and their means of protecting home and hearth. A couple have gone even beyond that.

The first comes from bloggers Joe Huffman and Barron Barnett who produced a video featured Joe’s daughter and members of the Lewiston Pistol Club.

The second comes from blogger Sean Sorrentino who held a counter-protest in Raleigh, NC across from the United Community Church of Christ. His counter protest garnered interviews from both the Raleigh News and Observer – the largest newspaper in eastern North Carolina – and from NBC17.

Sean writes about both of these stories here and here. Sean lives in Wake County which has a population of over 900,000 people. One person with an effective counter protest garners as much attention from the media as approximately fifty from NCGV.

The creative counter protests seem to be irritating the anti-gunners. As Miguel at Gun Free Zone reports, one south Florida anti-gun lefty blogger equates our countering the Brady Campaign’s plea for attention with that of the Westboro Baptist Church. That’s right – since we believe in self-defense and protecting our loved ones – we are branded as racist, ne’er-do-well homophobes. If that pathetic response is the best they can do, we’ve won.

UPDATE: Barron and Joe’s video generated many comments on the CSGV Facebook page including Joan Peterson’s “OMG”. Barron provides an admirable fisking to their comments here.

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Reflections On My 2011 Goals

January 9, 2012 by 3 Comments

Normally, one would reflect on their goals for the past year right around New Years. I’m just a week late. Life goes on!

1. Attend the NRA Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh. I really enjoyed the show in Charlotte. The difference will be that this time I’ll attend as a blogger.

I can say that I not only did this but I had a great time doing it. I met many of the other bloggers whom I had read over the year for the first time. I got to attend get-togethers put on by the NRA-ILA and the Second Amendment Foundation plus Breda’s Gunny After-Prom Party, Iain’s Tilted Kilt bash, and SayUncle’s impromptu cocktail party. It was a 9 hour drive each way but darn well worth it.

2. Take a training class. Last year I got my North Carolina Concealed Handgun Permit and it is time to get some more advanced training. There are lots of options available within a day’s drive so I don’t have much of an excuse for not doing it.

I was lucky enough to have been invited to the LuckyGunner Memorial Day Blogger Shoot which allowed me to get a good half day of training with Tom Givens of Rangemaster. This was an appetizer for more training which I followed up in October with a full day at TigerSwan. Two differing approaches but both were valuable.

3. Shoot more often. This goes along with number two above. I’ve got the ammo and now is the time to use it!

I don’t think I was as successful in meeting this goal as I would have liked. Taking time to go to the range can be a problem sometimes which reemphasizes the need to do daily dry fire training. While it doesn’t substitute for actual live-fire training, it is essential to build speed and refine technique.

4. Buy a 1911. I can’t think of a better way to commemorate the centennial of John Moses Browning’s masterpiece than to do this. While I have a Argentine Ballester Molina or, as my late friend Milo called it, a ballerina molester, it isn’t a 1911. I don’t know which one (or two or three) that I want to buy yet but am open to suggestions.

While I had a Springfield Range Officer on order which I cancelled for taking too long and still hope to obtain a Ruger SR1911, I stumbled across a Colt Wiley Clapp LW Commander at a local dealer. He gave me a good deal and I went home with not only a 1911 but a Colt. Enough said on meeting that goal!

5. Drink more whiskey. Obviously I won’t be doing this at the same time as numbers two and three above but life is too short to not to enjoy a good bourbon now and again. The Wall Street Journal ran a list of “cultural resolutions” from some well-known people on Friday and this was on fashion designer Nanette Lepore’s list. It makes sense to me.

When my internist said that one of the ways to improve my HDL cholesterol was to drink more alcohol (but of course in moderation), I knew I had a good doctor! And I have tried to follow doctor’s orders. It hasn’t always been good whiskey as I have also discovered rum and Tiki drinks. The Complementary Spouse and I have enjoyed going through Beachbum Berry Remixed cocktail book and picking out cocktails to try.

6. Keep blogging. I only started this blog in May 2010 and have been astounded by its growth. It has been exciting and rewarding on a personal level. My promise to you is I will try to keep finding and publishing important information as well as some things which just tickle my fancy.

As to whether I accomplished this, I leave it up to you the reader to decide if I succeeded. I have enjoyed this and definitely plan on continuing this blog for as long as I have readers.

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Quote Of The Day

January 8, 2012 by 1 Comment

The Students for Concealed Carry on Campus can be depended on to put things in perspective – and with snark and sass!

Brady Campaign lighting candles inside churches today to remember victims of gun violence. Of course, fires claim five times as many lives by accident every year than firearms, so let’s hope they don’t drop one.

And like the good students that they are, they provide backup validation of their claim here. They point to the bottom of page 19 and the top of page 20 as the place to find the relevant data.

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Do You Need Backup Iron Sights On Your AR-15?

January 8, 2012 by 3 Comments

Andrew at Vuurwapen Blog has just posted a video discussing whether you need BUIS on your AR-15 if you are not in combat arms, a LEO, or similar. He makes a lot of good points and notes that his M-4 wasn’t equipped with BUIS when he deployed as a Navy Corpsman with the Marines to Al Anbar Province in Iraq.

I think I’ll be taking another look at this for some of my future builds. Realistically, I can’t see the need for BUIS on an AR-15 set up for hunting coyotes or other varmints.

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Lighting A Candle

January 8, 2012 by 3 Comments

Weer’d Beard made the suggestion that we light a candle to stop violence and show that we have the means to do just that. I heartily concur and here is my entry.

It features my daily carry Ruger LCR loaded with Hornady Critical Defense .38 Special +P in a Don Hume holster, a Speed Strip, and a Yankee Candle Company candle in Lemon Lavender. I understand Lemon Lavender is supposed to have a calming effect.

Weer’d and Miguel have some roundups of other gun bloggers and their counter vigils. Linoge at Walls of the City has some really nice photos of his candles – and firepower to back it up. Finally, Cemetery goes old school with black powder pistols.

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Realpolitik In New Hampshire

January 7, 2012 by 1 Comment

As a longtime student of political behavior, it is rare to see any politician really express their utter contempt for the electorate in such bald terms. Usually they hide it behind pleasant smiles while uttering buzzwords that are meaningless when strung together.

This is what makes this appeal by New Hampshire St. Sen. Gary Lambert to New Hampshire voters so amazing. Lambert is an operative for the Romney campaign addressing the Republican City Committee in Nashua. Essentially he is saying that Romney is a soulless drone with no ideals and no beliefs but forget all of that because he’s our best chance to beat Obama. Of course, the perception that Romney represents the best chance to beat Obama is his perception and not mine.

The reason our country has a $15 trillion (give or take) debt is because we have too many of those soulless drones, both Democrat and Republican, who have no ideals and no beliefs in Washington.

Use the link above – the video is not currently embedding correctly.

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Quote Of The Day

January 7, 2012 by

The quote of the day comes from an open letter by Alan Gottlieb and Dave Workman of the Second Amendment Foundation to Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the City of New York which appeared in the Canada Free Press (and perhaps other papers).

Mr. Mayor, when your gun laws are so crazy that even a member of the city council is compelled to admit it, you’re in trouble. When you perpetuate such laws and pretend they are sensible, you’re in denial. When you defend laws that persecute honest citizens; laws that epitomize the term “infringement” and clearly violate the Constitution, you’re in the Twilight Zone.

New York is not a city-state, but part of the United States. The Constitution applies there as it does in the rest of the nation, from Fairbanks to Fort Lauderdale. It is time for you to admit that.

New York is not Renaissance Florence and Michael Bloomberg is not Lorenzo de’ Medici no matter how much of a Prince he considers himself.

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The Stasi Comes To Newark

January 7, 2012 by 1 Comment

The German Democratic Republic or East Germany was ruled by the Communist Party with an iron hand until things began to break apart with glasnost and the fall of the Berlin Wall. To enforce the will of the Party was the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit aka the Stasi.

The longest tenured head of the Stasi was Erich Mielke who ran the state police from 1957 until 1989.

His network of 85,000 full-time domestic spies and 170,000 ‘voluntary’ informers kept tabs on millions of people. So many people collaborated with the Stasi that when the records were opened, it was discovered that in every public building, at least one of its members kept the Stasi informed about everything that happened within it.

In a move aimed at emulating Erich Mielke and the Stasi, Newark Mayor Cory Booker is now trying to build a network of spies in that New Jersey city to turn in their neighbors who have guns.

I guess it comes as no surprise that a mayor intent on emulating one of the worst features of the Stasi has won the 2009 Sarah Brady Visionary Award from the Brady Center.

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ABC News And The Media Battle For A New AWB

January 6, 2012 by 9 Comments

Diane Sawyer led off ABC’s World News last night with a story that is claiming that cops are undergunned when facing criminals. According to the visuals in the story shown below, it is cops and their Glock 22s versus violent criminals armed with AKs and ARs. Diane introduces the story using buzzwords like “mow down”, “staggering numbers”, and “high powered guns”.

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The story by Pierre Thomas featured a recent shooting in Ogden, Utah that left one police officer dead and five wounded. The shooting involved a special drug enforcement team serving a warrant on a suspect who opened fire on them with an AK-47. His father said in other reports that he had PTSD.

Thomas says that cops are often facing career criminals who are willing to shoot it out rather than to go back to prison and that they are using “assault rifles” which can be bought a “virtually any gun store, online, or through a vast black market.”

The insinuation that career felons Joe Bob, An’twan, and Paco can walk into a gun store and buy anything is false. Every gun sale made or delivered through a FFL requires a background check by the FBI but that is never mentioned. Moreover, while you can purchase a firearm “online”, it still must be delivered to you at a local FFL who will do the background check. As to the vast black market, this is where criminals get their guns. It is illegal for them to possess these guns and illegal for them to buy them so why does anyone presume to think one more law would stop them.

AR-15s or “patrol rifles” are becoming almost a standard issue firearm in many police departments. Moreover, virtually every patrol car still carries a 12 gauge riot gun which is very effective in close quarters encounters. Of course, none of this was mentioned in the ABC report.

The only rationale I can see for this story is to build a case for a new assault weapon ban. If it was just a story about cops getting killed in a raid, that is all they would have featured. However, Pierre Thomas went well beyond that, Diane Sawyer led off with an introduction filled with emotion-filled buzzwords, and it was the lead story on the newscast. I have no doubt we will see more and more stories like this throughout the year. I just wish they would take time to point out the obvious stuff like how it is already illegal for a felon to possess not just an AK but any firearm. That really is wishful thinking on my part.