Uncategorized

Quote Of The Day

May 16, 2023 by

Sometimes you can find what should be the quote of the day in the most unusual places. In this case, I found the quote in some modern romance novel that I picked up so as to having something to read and kill time.

Not a book in sight. If someone’s character can be explained by the books on their shelves, surely no books means no soul.

By this measure, I have a lot of soul. An eccentric, wide-ranging, omnivorous soul as I’m surrounded by books on everything from modern financial theory to outdoor conservation to history with everything in between including fiction.

However, I get it naturally as my Mom spent half her career as school librarian and the first half as an English and History teacher. My Dad was a big reader as well though his tastes ran more to the Robert Ruark, Jack O’Connor, and Ben East.

Uncategorized

The Gloves Have Come Off

May 15, 2023 by 5 Comments

It is time to break out the popcorn because this is getting good.

First, the powers that be at the NRA (Brewer, Old Guard, Friends of Wayne, fill in the blank) pushed a bylaw change to allow Charles Cotton to serve a third term as President. This has only been done in the past to allow Charlton Heston to serve more than two terms.

Then, the Nominations Committee did not re-nominate Willes Lee to his position as First Vice President and replaced him with former Congressman Bob Barr. This was done while retaining David Coy in his position as Second VP. According to Lee, he only found out about the Nominations Committee’s move when the agenda was slid under his hotel door the evening before the Board meeting.

There could be many reasons Lee was pushed out but one of the leading ones is that he had resigned his position on the Special Litigation Committee. We don’t know whether this resignation was done because he disagreed with one of Bill Brewer’s legal stratagems or something else. Either way, his loyalty to Wayne and Brewer was deemed suspect and he had to go.

It is fairly well known that I’m not a fan of Willes Lee. While I had supported him in the past, when I was deemed a “hater” by him for disagreeing with the direction that Wayne and his cronies were taking the NRA that was beyond the pale.

I can’t say that I didn’t feel a little bit of schadenfreude when I saw the Twitter post below. I also think that the powers that be may have just created an implacable enemy who knows more than they would like known. This is going to continue to get more and more interesting as time goes on.

Uncategorized

A Previously Unknown Source Of Firearm Expertise

May 12, 2023 by 3 Comments

There are many ways to gain expertise in firearms. You can attend a training class, you can read books or magazines on firearms, you can watch a video, you can study manuals, and the list could go on. However, I stumbled across a new and previously unknown source for gaining expertise in firearms.

Porn flicks.

Specifically those from the 1980s and early 1990s or what is sometimes called “the Golden Age of Porn“.

Say what?

I came across a tweet by former porn legend Hyapatia Lee who explained what was a “weapon of war” to some guy on the Internet.

Lee, who was inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame, gained her firearms expertise while starring in such firearm-specific movies as “Sweet Young Foxes”, “Ribald Tales of Canterbury”, and “Centerfold”. Well they must have contained some firearms content or where else could Ms. Lee have gained her expertise in order to define a “weapon of war”.

Of course, all of this makes about as much sense as her explanation of what constitutes a weapon of war.

Uncategorized

“Swoopers”

May 12, 2023 by

I love memes. They can convey a ton of information in a humorous or sarcastic way.

I found this meme today on Reddit. The only change I’d make to it is to add Grass Roots North Carolina or your own state-level gun rights group that is unaffiliated with the NRA.

Uncategorized

Agreeing With RFK Jr.

May 11, 2023 by 4 Comments

It is a weird world we live in. I saw a tweet by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. with which I actually agreed.

We watched the CBS Evening News tonight and even the barest of facts had an editorial attached to them. The script that Norah O’Donnell was reading might just as well have been written by Chat GPT – or Big Brother.

Uncategorized

Most Unusual Press Release I’ve Ever Received

May 9, 2023 by 2 Comments

I get lots of press releases. Some are interesting, most are irrelevant, and the last one received was just plain weird. It was from Gary Ramey who is the CEO of Liberty Ammunition located in Bradenton, Florida. It appears that Liberty Ammunition is the manufacturer of lead-free, self-defense ammunition. Their ammo is available in most standard handgun calibers plus .223 and .300 Blackout.

The headline of this press release read: “Liberty Ammunition offers free ammo for Idaho firing squad”.

Umm, OK. I guess this is a nice gesture to lower expenses for the the State of Idaho which has adopted the firing squad as an alternative method of execution when lethal injection is not available. It appears Mr. Ramey was motivated by the murder of the four students last year at the University of Idaho.

The press release also contained a number of phrases describing their ammo. They include “most lethal ammunition available”, “ruptures in soft tissue”, and “Hits Harder”.

My concern is with the first two phrases and how they will be used by prosecutors, plaintiffs’ attorneys, and the anti-rights lobby. It is like waving a red flag in front of a bull. You can just imagine an assistant DA trying to make his or her bones asking a homeowner in a self-defense case, “Your pistol was loaded with Liberty Civil Defense ammunition. Did you choose it because it was the “most lethal ammunition” and you wanted to kill the intruder?”

Likewise, you can imagine a plaintiff’s attorney in a civil case asking the defendant who just wanted to save his own life, “When you shot my client’s husband, did you use this ammo because it would rupture his soft tissue and kill him?”

I have nothing against Mr. Ramey, Liberty Ammunition, or their products. However, the use of these descriptive phrases would seem to me to put both the company and any potential user of that ammunition at possible legal risk. When you have so many other viable alternatives why would you risk it.

Rather than embed the full press release as a PDF, you can find it here.

Uncategorized

Savage Chambers Firearms In 400 Legend

May 8, 2023 by 2 Comments

Winchester Ammunition, a division of Olin Corporation, announced a new cartridge called 400 Legend at the recent NRA Annual Meeting. It is a straight walled cartridge aimed at hunters in those states, primarily in the Mid-West, that prohibit the use of necked cartridges for deer hunting.

The cartridge is reported to have double the energy of a 12 gauge slug at 100 yards, 55% less recoil than a 12 gauge slug, and 20% more energy than the venerable .30-30 Winchester. It is an upgrade over the 350 Legend. The representative that I spoke with at the NRA Annual Meeting denied that they were trying to one-up the Federal/Remington 360 Buckhammer and that they had been working on it long before the SHOT Show.

In today’s email, I received a press release from Savage Arms announcing their plans to chamber a number of their rifles in 400 Legend.

Savage Arms is proud to partner with Winchester® Ammunition to bring deer hunters several rifles chambered in 400 Legend in time for 2023 hunting seasons. The new hard-hitting, yet mildly recoiling, caliber means new opportunities for deer hunters across the country. Savage will launch the 400 Legend in the 110 Apex Hunter XP, 110 Hog Hunter and Axis II XP—but will also chamber it in another 11 models in 2023.   

Straight-walled cartridges, and especially the 400 Legend’s predecessor the 350 Legend, were born for states like Ohio and Michigan. The premise being bring modern projectiles and cartridge technologies to areas, states and hunters originally limited to shotgun slug or historically limited rifle caliber options. Due to the popularity of these cartridges that has been driven by performance—straight-wall options have gained traction outside of traditional shotgun slug areas as well. The 400 Legend will no doubt continue this legacy and Savage has responded by adding it to so many rifles in its lineup.

You are probably saying to yourself, “That’s nice but so what!”.

Federal and Remington, makers of the 360 Buckhammer ammo, are part of the Sporting Products Division of Vista Outdoor. Savage Arms was a division of Vista Outdoor from 2013 until 2018 when it was spun off in a leveraged-buyout to return to its roots as an independent company. If they still had been part of Vista Outdoor, I would think that they would have gone with the Federal/Remington 360 Buckhammer from sister companies over the 400 Legend.

I am neither pro-Legend nor anti-Buckhammer. I just found it interesting that a former division of Vista Outdoor went with a competitor’s new cartridge instead of one from their old sister companies.

Uncategorized

A Juxtaposition

May 7, 2023 by 4 Comments

Checking my email this afternoon, I found links to two posts regarding the failure to pass HB 189, permitless concealed carry, in North Carolina.

The first is from the NRA-ILA and is a short post about the failure of the bill to meet the crossover deadline.

From NRA-ILA:

This week, HB 189, originally titled the ‘NC Constitutional Carry Act’, moved through several committees in the North Carolina House of Representatives. As drafted, this legislation would have removed unnecessary government permission slips to exercise your Second Amendment rights. ​Unfortunately, the bill was amended in committee to include a mandatory training and education requirement; as a result, the bill was no longer constitutional carry.

The bill title was changed to “Freedom to Carry Act,” but with the legislation facing other concerns, it was taken off of the floor calendar, and failed to meet the crossover deadline to pass the House of Representatives.​

Your NRA-ILA will continue to make it our mission for North Carolina to become a constitutional carry state, and bury any attempts to compromise on the issue.

If you’ve read my earlier posts, you know where I stand on this. I also find it ironic that the NRA says they will not “compromise” given their history of doing just that. Whoever wrote the above ought to ask Wayne about his compromise on 1986’s Firearm Owners Protection Act which may just have helped enrich his BFF.

Liberty Doll has a different take on it. Her videos have just that right amount of sarcasm mixed with cute rockabilly chick libertarian.

With Liberty Doll’s 263,000 followers on YouTube, I would wager she is much more effective in getting her (and gun rights activists in North Carolina’s) side of the story out than the NRA-ILA.

The sad thing in all of this is that the NRA could have been involved from the start and the bill could have passed the NC House. That would have involved working with GRNC and GOA cooperatively and openly in a joint effort to get the bill passed. As it is, the NRA was largely absent. They have one ILA lobbyist, D. J. Spiker, who has to cover North and South Carolina, Maryland, and Virginia. I don’t know whether it is a matter of finances or just mere disinterest combined with negligence but you need more than one person to cover one-tenth of the population of the United States.

Uncategorized

Grabbing The Credit

May 4, 2023 by 1 Comment

If you read my post from last night, you know that it was not Moms Demand Action, Giffords, Everytown, or North Carolinians Against Gun Violence (sic) who deserves the credit for killing the permitless concealed carry bill, HB 189, in the NC House yesterday. The credit really goes to the people in Fairfax.

Nonetheless, Becky and her minions at NCGV are claiming credit. Below is what they posted to Instagram.

In an email sent out at 1:34pm on May 4th, they said:

HUGE news! We did it: the Permitless Carry bill was WITHDRAWN from the NC House calendar last night! Our volunteers – YOU!! – sent hundreds of emails, phone banked, spread the word on social media, and showed up at the General Assembly to stop HB 189 — all in a few days!

This was not a foregone conclusion: the bill passed two legislative committees in two days, and had been scheduled for a vote last night. It was pulled at the very last minute. So for now, HB 189 is NOT advancing to a full House vote!
👀 We’ll keep watching to make sure this bill does not come back up for a House vote – but today, know that YOU stopped this bill in its tracks!!

Thank you for your support on stopping this dangerous bill – North Carolina is safer today because of you!

Becky Ceartas

Executive Director

North Carolinians Against Gun Violence Action Fund

Uncategorized

NRA May Have Killed Permitless Carry In NC

May 4, 2023 by 14 Comments

HB 189 – Freedom to Carry NC Act has been withdrawn from a vote by the full North Carolina House of Representatives and referred back to the House Rules Committee. The bill, formerly known as the NC Constitutional Carry Act, may be dead for this session unless Rep. Keith Kidwell (R-79) can add a fiscal note to the bill. It should be noted that Rep. Kidwell is the Deputy Majority Whip. As noted earlier, the crossover deadline for passage of a bill without a fiscal note is tomorrow, May 4th.

So who is at fault and what happened?

You have your choice.

You can blame Speaker Tim Moore who requested a training component be part of the bill, you can blame the NRA who has now come out in opposition to the bill at the last moment because it includes a training component, or Sen. President Pro Tem Phil Berger who says they’ve done enough on gun rights.

Given the NRA had a chance to testify either for or against the bill during the Judiciary 2 Committee hearing and did not, I think the blame rests more at their feet than that of Speaker Moore. I think Speaker Moore anticipated the opposition from some in law enforcement as well as from the anti-gun lobby and wanted to negate the rationale for their opposition to the bill. As for Sen. Berger, this is not the first time he’s decided to kill attempts at permitless carry. He did it in the 2017-2018 session after it had passed the House because he was afraid of losing his super-majority which he lost anyway.

From the Raleigh News and Observer:

Grass Roots North Carolina, a gun rights group that was one of the bill’s chief supporters, had strongly urged GOP leaders to take it up this week. The group’s president, Paul Valone, said he would continue to work on trying to get the bill passed this session.

Valone indicated that the National Rifle Association had concerns about education requirements that had been added to the bill on Tuesday while it was considered by a House committee.

“We are disappointed that the NRA, which has been largely absent in this session of the General Assembly, swooped in at the last minute and declared the bill unacceptable, due to the training provision we had added,” Valone said. “We are continuing to work on the bill, it is still alive, and we are by no means done.”

D.J. Spiker, the NRA’s North Carolina state director, said in response that the NRA “will never apologize for refusing to compromise on an issue as critical as Constitutional Carry.”

Sen. Berger said as the bill was being removed from the calendar that he thought the Republicans had done enough when they finally got rid of the pistol purchase permit. He also said he didn’t think the timing was right.

From an interview with Michael Hyland of WNCN Channel 17:

“We have passed a substantial bill dealing with some concerns about (the) Second Amendment. We’ve done away with the pistol purchase permit, which was the No. 1 goal of many of the gun rights groups for a long period of time,” Senate leader Phil Berger told reporters. “I just don’t know if if there’s a need for us to delve into additional issues dealing with guns and people’s Second Amendment rights.”

In my estimation, if the NRA had been willing to join with GRNC and GOA in support of the bill, flawed or not, then it would have passed and the NC Senate would have taken up the bill either in 2023 or 2024. As for the NRA’s rationale for opposing the bill of not being willing to compromise their principles, that is a joke. One of the things the NRA always seems willing to do is compromise even when it is not warranted.

I speculate that there was an element of retribution in the NRA’s 11th hour opposition to HB 189. The bill, like the repeal of the pistol purchase permit, was closely identified with Grass Roots North Carolina and not the NRA. The NRA got really pissy when they were called out for taking credit for the repeal and dumping on GRNC for taking the rightful credit. When that is added to the “if it’s not invented here” syndrome which pervades the NRA, it became more important to screw GRNC (and gun rights supporters in North Carolina) than to pass the bill.

Was the bill as clean as one would have liked? Of course it wasn’t. However, in politics it is the art of the possible and not the perfect. Getting HB 189 passed in time to meet the crossover deadline was the critical issue. Once the bill was in the Senate, it could have been amended any number of ways to make it better. Now, unless a miracle happens, thanks to the NRA we wait another two damn years.