Kids and guns

There are several tails attached to this beast, and I'm seeing that they're being addressed in clever ways these days.  When it comes to this topic, I have several questions.  How do you introduce firearm safety to young children?  My meaning here is not only one of having children shoot so they know how to control it, but also one of avoidance for the younger children.  How do you provide access to older kids so that they can become part of home defense?  Can you safely provide access to an older kid, but also keep younger kids away from them?

Some of my kids are still too young to even sit down with them and give them an Eddie Eagle talk, but two of my kids are old enough for instruction, but are not really ready for live fire.  In my day, my father and/or some of his trusted friends would give me firearm safety instruction, followed up with some .22 rimfire shooting.  That was safe and effective, but the airsoft and pellet gun sounds like it's overall the best way to get kids trained on firearm safety.  Some gun bloggers you may have heard about did just that, and provided an environment with many children at one time learning gun safety and how to shoot.  Perfect!  I missed out on the opportunity, but I plan on having my kids involved for the next one.

On the other end of the spectrum, having a well thought out plan for your older kids to defend themselves or the house while you're away is priceless.  Here's a great example of a well executed plan that fortunately didn't include gunfire.  Having a codeword that is only used during a no-B.S. moment of danger is good policy, and having your children disciplined enough to be trusted alone with access to firearms is what you want the end result to be.  I have a long way to go before that happens in my house, but I pay close attention to those with older kids and how they do things.

Ultimately, you have to have some sort of plan.  It's reckless and irresponsible to have firearms in the home and not tell your children about them.  Most of the friends that I have grew up with guns in their house, and none of them had any accidents or injuries, and none of the guns were hidden.  I can guarantee that you can't hide a gun from a kid for long.  Education is the only way to fly, you just have to start.

There's good training, and then there's bad training

Guess which this is?


I cringed too many times to count watching this video, with yayhoos firing weapons past each other and over their heads while spinning. Yikes!  There's a guy in comments defending this shooting school, but I wouldn't go there.

The concept of "Big Boy Rules" and firing weapons over or near someone else is absurd in my opinion, and is an accident waiting to happen. The Marine Corps does live fire with people forward of the firing line, as they would in combat, but those who are forward are not in front of those who are shooting, and even with that it doesn't look anything like this clown show. For starters, there's no choreographed spinning or twisting of the shooters, flagging one another as they transition from one target to the next. And for sure, in real world shootings there are those who have to shoot real close to their fellow Marine or Soldier or Officer, but surprisingly the Marines haven't felt the need to practice that one in peacetime, and it doesn't seem to have effected their lethality. With that in mind I have to question doing it in practice. As far as I know, only a select group or two within the Special Operations community routinely practices live fire with their own down range, and that's because their job description involves shooting bad guys who are in close proximity or direct contact with hostages. I just don't see surgical shooting being a skill set that black-clad mall security needs.

Now I'm going to be all paranoid when I see armed mall security, wondering in the back of my mind if they've been to one of these monkey business shooting schools.

How boaring

I found a video on an ARFCOM thread of a man shooting a pissed off charging boar with a .45 caliber 1911.  This a strong reminder of why handguns are poor at stopping dangerous flesh-and-blood things.  ***Warning: Graphic.  Lots of blood.*** -- turn it off after the first 20 seconds if you don't want to see blood spewing everywhere, but want to see the pig shrug off half a dozen rounds from close range.

A buddy and I once walked up on a huge boar in a field one day next to a jobsite; I had my 1911 in my hand and was aiming at it's head while it walked up to us within about six feet, curiously. After it got a gander at what we were, it wandered off back into the woods from where it came from, unimpressed, and I swear I heard it snort "Pffft! Sissies don't want nonna this!"

You've probably heard that .45 ACP knocks grown men clean off their feet with one shot up hill in the snow both ways, but that's clearly not the case even if you don't believe in physics. Keep shooting the beasty until it drops!! And when it comes to large, dangerous animals prone to charging, I would stick with rifles or arms that fire projectiles measured in ounces!

And sorry about the lite posting.  I spend about six hours in traffic today, and there may be much more of that in my future.

Torture is wrong

This post is about torture testing of firearms.  Andy has a post that links to a video where an AK47 is placed in a mud puddle and then picked up and fired as a way to showcase its reliability.

"It seemed that dirt simply didn't affect this weapon."

That is one of those perpetuated myths that keeps making rounds, much like the one the man says right before it that the M16 in Vietnam wasn't as reliable because -- he implies -- the rifle has tighter tolerances during machining and thus was built for accuracy and less for reliability.  Andy accurately points out that one little pebble could very well have ended his non-scientific reliability test of the AK, which is true of any similar test of any man made device that is built with complications.  Sure, his single example of a rifle fired just fine during the one test, and to give a hat tip to the AR family of rifles I could offer a similar but more in depth anecdotal test.  The thing about it is that it's one rifle put through a one series of tests.  Who's to say how many failures you would have if ten of the same rifles were put through the same series of tests?

The mud/sand/dirt/ceracoated-water-beetle tests are usually done on gun forums to show the AR fanboys that the AK family of rifles is more reliable in "dirty" environments.  I mean, AK rifles are used in dirty deserts by dirty people all over the world, and that's why they're so reliable, right?  Well, the reason AKs are used in poverty stricken countries is because they're so cheap to buy and easy to manufacture, not because they're any better than any other family of battle rifles.  I don't bother qualifying that claim because there's nothing to qualify: you won't find dirt poor militants fighting other dirt poor militants with FN F2000 rifles in dirt poor countries because they cost like $2,800, not because you can't bury one in dirt and expect it to fire.  Who buries their rifle in dirt, anyways?

Did you know that the M16 has a dust cover over the ejection port to prevent sand/dirt/mud/throwing-stars from getting into the action?  So does the AK-47.  Weird.  Now considering that, take a looksie at the receiver of a M-14 or M1 Garand.  Oooooo, there's no dust cover.  Do you think you could sling mud over the top of the action and have it fire without jamming?   Maybe it'll fire once or twice without jamming, but sooner or later it's going to.  Oh, CTone, everyone knows about the hell-and-back reliability of the Garand and M14!  Nothing can stop them!  I'm telling you that if you introduce foreign matter into a firearm's action -- any firearm -- it will not fire for long without a stoppage.  Likewise if you throw firearms out of airplanes; just because your gun survives a fall doesn't mean that it is airplane-drop-proof, it only means that it didn't hit the basketball sized rock six inches beneath the grass, and nothing more.

Wanna guess why military training and CONOPS don't include any procedures for running over or burying weapons in sand/dirt/mud or freezing them in a tray of mashed potatoes?  Because it's universally accepted that it will probably induce a malfunction when the weapon is fired.  I've never browsed an AK technical manual, but I doubt it will tell you that the gun is immune from jamming due to sand/dirt/mud/3/4" ball bearings, and I would bet a shiny nickle that it will tell you to keep the action clear from any obstructions, to include water.  Internet fanboys love pictures of SEALs, Rangers, and Recon Marines with painted faces coming up out of the water with their rifles at the ready, but what's not well known is that unless the gas tube of any rifle is clear of water, it will blow to smithereens if it's fired.  I bet there's a technique for not getting that to happen.  And sure, I've seen Elite Team Fighters dunk their favorite brand of rifle in a bucket of fluoridated tap water and then fire it without issue, but curiously I've never seen one of them pop out of a submarine in 50 feet of water and swim two miles to the shoreline, at night, while submerged, and then fire it two seconds after breaking the surface.  I just haven't.

Don't get me wrong, I love to see weapons tortured to see how tough they are.  But being a realist, I don't put much money on tests that try to show some resistance to foreign debris being forcefully transported either directly into the action, or right on the entrance of it, and then firing without a jam.  I also don't place faith in tests where an AK is fired out of a cannon.  You're basically only showing the favorable part of statistics.  The torture tests I like to see are ones like this, where an off-the-shelf production pistol is subjected to a lifetime of ammunition over several months, and lives to tell about it.  I can tell you that the only malfunction I've ever had in an M16 or AR type rifle combined was shooter induced.  I've actually found that as long as an AR rifle stays reasonably lubricated it will run like a sowing machine without cleaning for a long long time.

Me personally, I like to keep the nastiness out and off of my weapons.  They run better that way.  I don't clean them as often as I used to, but I make sure they stay lubed up with 10w50.

By the numbers:

President Obama has been a more successful gun salesman than president Clinton ever was.

Rules #1 and #2!!!!!

There's a firestorm going on over the pictures of a police sniper at Super Bowl XLVI. If you did not know, there are snipers at most major sporting events; but the brouhaha is not over the snipers so much, but that the guy in the picture is using a rifle as a pair of binoculars, which violates two of the four firearm safety rules.

I have to side with the folks who have their panties in a bunch: being tasked with protecting a stadium from an active shooter -- a rare occurrence -- does not make you so high speed that you can arbitrarily point a rifle at people. Being highly trained does not make one infallible, so the idea that one sudden sneeze can cause a marksman to sympathetically squeeze the trigger and lobotomize a wasted fan is just as plausible in a sniper's hide as it is on a police training range. That is why we have the four rules, which is why we don't point weapons at people.

The people who are defending this violation are under the impression that operators operating operationally in an operational environment are so Tier 1 that they can use their rifle as a spotting scope up in a skybox where nobody can see them. I say that a rifle is a rifle is a rifle. Treat it as if it were loaded and don't point it at anything you do not intend to destroy, including drunk fans and blue painted bewbies.

Double facepalm

I found two news articles about enacting gun laws in Nevada in the wake of the Carson City shooting last month, and both of them made my jaw drop. You have to be an airhead to write or say some of this stuff, and I thought I would fisk both articles this morning.

First up is this one, and this just begs to be pointed out:

"Nevada National Guard Sgt. Caitlin Kelley, one of the victims in the IHOP attack, responded to the shooting by calling for a ban on assault weapons, which can be purchased without a background check at many gun shows or through private sellers."

It would be better written if it said that most common firearms can be purchased privately, but are mostly subjected to a background check at gunshows. That would at least not be misleading or disingenuous, unlike this:

“I can’t imagine why we are even selling assault weapons to civilians,” said Kelley, who was shot in the foot and still uses a wheelchair. “There’s no reason for an AK-47 or an M-16 or an M-4 to be in a civilian’s home.”

AK-47s, M16s, and M4s are very very rare in the US. The weapon in question was illegally converted to full auto by a man who could have cared less for any law barring him from a tool to kill people; the response to this apparently is to have one of the victims of the shooting tell everyone that psychopathic killers shouldn't be allowed to buy automatic rifles.

Washoe County Sheriff Mike Haley agreed, saying: “I don’t see any logic to having assault weapons available to the public.” But he said banning such weapons would spark a sharp response by gun-rights advocates.

You correctly answered your own question there, chief. Way to go. The "logic" to having rifles available to the public is that the public wants rifles; and for every one scumbag that uses one for harm, hundreds of thousands or more peaceable men and women put them to good use. Because they are desired by far more good people than bad, they are available; and I reckon they will stay available for a long while to the good folks in Nevada.

Going now into a full blown lie:

Semi-automatic assault weapons can easily be converted into automatic weapons — which are the same thing as machine guns — with a simple kit available online or at gun shows, officials said.

Nope. Wrong. Erroneous. How this garbage keeps getting written is beyond me, but to clear things up, you cannot buy "simple kits" online or at gunshows, or anywhere besides criminals to make rifles fire automatically. You can purchase the fire control components to make an AR rifle fire automatically, but they're heavily regulated by the ATF, and so is the receiver that those fire control parts go into. The number of these receivers is finite, and the price to own one is high. I have seen booths at gunshows that will gladly sell you an automatic weapon, legally, which will set you back at least $10,000 for a cheap one, and you will have months and months of paperwork to do before you can own it. You can manufacture your own full automatic weapon in your basement out of scrap metal if you are mechanically inclined, or if you have access to metalworking equipment you could likewise turn some rifles into machine guns. You can also buy all the parts you would need to make a bomb from your local Home Despot, and assembling one would be way less effort than making a semi-auto AK into an automatic weapon, and the killing potential would be much higher. Chew on that for awhile.

This line was my first facepalm:

What happened at the IHOP “was as close to a war as most people will ever come, and they were helpless to defend against it,” Haley said. “But because of our love affair with weapons, we are subjecting the public to this type of violence. If this is going to change, the public has to stand up and demand change.”

This may sound cold, but being "helpless to defend" yourself is a personal choice. Sadly, the National Guard has largely taken away that personal choice by disarming Soldiers who, by their very title, are charged with guarding our nation. I'd say a lunatic shooting civilians with a rifle in an IHOP is threat to [the Nation] that could have been stopped had these Soldiers been armed, or by some yahoo eating breakfast who happened to be armed to protect his or her gift of life. How are you supposed to defend your people if you are not armed? How can you swear an oath to defend a nation and then be totally unprepared at keeping your charge? Does the public really believe that the National Guard is only supposed to shoot foreign enemies on some other soil? How the Sheriff can profess the above and then in the same breath advocate taking away the very tools to allow defense against it is bizarre.

If you really want to do a double facepalm like I did this morning, look no further than the comments to this story. It boggles the mind. A quick Google search then yielded this article that has almost the same shitty verbiage as the first, but with some extra pizaaaaaz!

"I think it's a good question to ask: Why does a typical citizen need to have an assault weapon?" he said. "I think we're at the point where we have to have that discussion. Can we protect citizens without impacting other people's rights?"

Go right ahead and have that discussion, because it's not going to go the way that you want it to go. I have to point out that a man's rights have absolutely nothing at all to do with protecting citizens, and are not measured by need. You have rights; either use them or don't, but get it out of your head that you can protect people by dishonoring them with a violation their rights.

Hey lookie! This article has lies, too:

Seven states have assault weapons bans: California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Virginia.

Not in Virginia; although if Old Dominion Dems have their way, they would scoop them up in a heartbeat, which is why it's been noted that we won't be seeing many of them winning elections in the near future.

Despite being diagnosed as schizophrenic, Sencion legally purchased the weapon from a private seller in California.

But you just said that these weapons have been banned in California! How can you say that they've been banned there, and then say that he legally bought them there? Great editing! These articles are the only reason why I bother to read the news.

Reloaders are so creative

Check out the video on hydro-forming cases at 6.5 Grendel Forums. Traditionally, handloaders will fire form the cases in their gun, but hydro-forming is a lot quieter and doesn't cost you primers, powder, or Cream of Wheat.

The fact that you can take 7.62x39mm Russian cases and turn them into 6.5 Grendel/.264 LBC-AR was a driving reason I went with the cartridge. If the supply of Grendel cases dried up tomorrow, there would still be usable brass for me for decades.

What cartridge?

If you're looking for a rifle for something in particular, one of the age-old problems is choosing a cartridge that will perform for your intended purpose. We live in a shooter's heyday right now in that the selection of bullets and rifles is getting close to the peak of what man can possibly do, so there is literally a cartridge and rifle platform that will fit perfectly for what you want to do.

If you want to know the particulars of specific cartridges, this thread on the topic at Sniper's Hide is the place to start. I also highly suggest using JBM Ballistics as a means of calculating the range and power of different cartridges that you may be interested in.

In my youth, the unchallenged answer to getting more range for hunting was to go bigger bigger bigger bigger with a side of as-fast-as-possible. In those days, hunters didn't use rifle scopes with turrets or rangefinding reticles to compensate for distance; duplex reticles were the most popular by far, so in order to get a gain in Point Blank Range, you had to have lots and lots of velocity. This is why there are cartridges like the .220 Swift and .300 Weatherby Magnum. What cracks me up is that even today I know plenty of people who still subscribe to this mindset, and have seriously overbored cartridges for shooting little Virginia deer at ranges that seldom go beyond 80 yards.

To each their own, I guess.

If you're not into being way overgunned, than a little bit of research combined with JBM Ballistics will lead you to the proper hunting/target/tactical cartridge that won't break your shoulder or your wallet. Why feed a barrel burning .338 Thorhammerlighningdragonslayer when you could accomplish the same job with a .270 Winchester?

A firearm on the loose!!

In California, an innocent gangbanger's gun animates itself and shoots a random bystander. At least it didn't hit its intended victim.

Fishing for gun news this morning

Other countries must think America is nucking futs with the crazy that is in the news these days. We must be modern day Sodom and Gomorrah with all the Slut Walks, Shania Twain Love Triangles, The Price of a Suitcase of Cocaine in DC - it looks pretty awful.

I did pick up on this article warning America of the obvious dangers of barring doctors from counciling you on having guns in the home where your children are. It's so full of the same ignorant anti-gun rhetoric that has been going on for decades that it could have been written in 1971 and just reposted. It's that bad.

I'm too lazy to fisk the whole thing, but here's a little bit of fun anyways:

Florida is set to become the first state to pass a law that would limit doctors' ability to council parents about gun safety in the home. Pediatricians decry the law as wrongheaded, and they're backed by statistics that suggest the law will kill kids.

This is the part that I'm going to attack most viciously - "backed by statistics." So if all of these studies that you claim really do back your story with statistics and all, then where the fuck are they? The first link you have in the article, in the paragraph where you say that the Florida Pediatric Society "expects" an increase in injury and death from having guns in the home with children, links to "The Top 10 Leading Causes of Death." Wanna guess what's not on that list? Yeah, anything at all to do with guns. Bummer.

I caution doctors and journalists from hanging too much of their hope on expectations, as reality can be a real drag. Expectations are also not solid conclusions to draw from a study.

Next up you cite the infamous Kellerman study from 1986 (and I notice that you don't link to that one. I don't blame you) where Dr. Kellerman found that having a gun in the home makes you 43 times more likely to be killed by some shit or something. It's been years since I read that piece, but I recall his statistics also came to the conclusion that innocuous stuff like having a garage or PeeWee Herman doll makes you about certain to be killed by something. That study has been so thoroughly debunked that it's almost laughable that the author even mentions it.

The next link about doctors "decrying" not being able to warn incompetent parents about guns in the home - the one hyperlinking over the words "injury and death in children" - links to a health article talking about running related injuries in active kids. Do doctors warn parents about the dangers of their kids running? If it's so dangerous and all, maybe it's a good idea for doctors to council all of us dumbass parents about the hazards of life. Do doctors even get training on how to council people? Are they like Chaplains, but with medical skills? I can identify so many dangers to kids from where I sit right now that maybe I should sign up for my pediatrician to council me every single day, that my kids might live longer than I did. . . . .oh, wait.

"For pediatricians, prevention is the name of the game," St. Petery said.

Huh. To think that this whole time I've been taking my tribe of ankle biters to the doctor for vaccines and illness related stuff, when it's now quite obvious I should be bombarding him with questions regarding the dangers of running, septicemia, and Alzheimer's. Aggghhhh, I feel so silly right now.

More than one-third of American homes have at least one gun at home, but a 2007 study found 70 percent of guns are not stored safely.

Oooooh. . . .another study. Check that one out for details of how a survey about how guns were stored in homes was construed by one pediatrician to mean that 70 percent of those guns were stored improperly. Doctor DuRant knows this shit for real Yo, because of that huge block of training he went through in medical school that covered how to properly store firearms in the home in every situation; you know, that instruction you get in your third year right in between lessons on how to council people and the one on how to conduct years long studies about such things like gun violence and autoerotic asphyxiation. Doctors are like Jack Bauer, but with stethoscopes and latex gloves instead of Sigs and H&Ks.

"I would think there should be a law that says if you don’t [council parents about gun safety], that should be malpractice," said David Hemenway, a professor of health policy at the Harvard School of Public Health who studies injury prevention.

Cool! I'm down with that, because if parents have a claim that you didn't council them about the dangers of guns in the home with their children and they got hurt, then they will also have remedy when their kids impail themselves on a pair of scissors, tumble down the stairs and bust their dome-piece, choke to death on a hermit crab, or wash their intestines out with peroxide. Does your doctor council you about every danger your kid could encounter in the home? Cause what your sayin is that you consider a doctor to be at fault for not giving parents fair warning about common hazards.

Children in the United States are 11 times more likely to die accidentally from a gun injury compared with children in other developed countries, he said.

Oh come on! You know that's bullshit right there; you don't even offer a link or the name of a study. But while we're on it, did you know that MyHealthNewsDaily writers and AAP doctors in the United States are 43 times more likely to die from a rare venereal disease they caught from licking their stamp collection than are MyHealthNewsDaily writers and AAP doctors from Botswana? Honest Abe!

The writer goes on to try and link child suicides using firearms to a study about the dangers of the internet - no guns mentioned in there. Here's the gist of the entire article summed up for you:

The best way to keep children safe from gun injury is not to own one, Hemenway said. This is also the position of the AAP.

Yup. We got that from you, boss. But I have to ask you: in your professional experience, what's the best way keep children safe from violent scumbags, home intruders, or dangerous animals? Counciling?

***Update: Ricky the doctor chips in to say that counciling you about everything imaginable because he thinks it's dangerous is "within the scope of his practice." Hey Ricky, does that include medical malpractice? Last I heard, doctors kill far more people every year from negligence than every firearm death combined. Is it absurd to suggest a law making it so doctors start their counciling with a disclaimer to stay the hell away from doctors because they are known to be extremely hazardous to your health?

Word smithing

Why is it that those who write an anti-gun piece feel the burning need to add "shooty" type words or conjure up the Wild West that really wasn't very wild? It's almost a subliminal thing, like those people who stick their tongue out when they draw, or those who bob and weave when watching kung-fu movies.

Here's an anti-gun opinion piece in USA Today (surprise!!) that starts out "When it comes to gun fights. . .", making the first thing the reader interprets a violent act, in an article regarding civil rights. Way to go, poncho.

I don't have the time to properly fisk this bird cage liner, but here's a taste (see what I did there?!):

Last month, for instance, Wyoming joined Arizona, Alaska and Vermont to become the fourth state to allow concealed firearms with no permit whatsoever.

Yeah, and it's already turning out to be such a bloodbath like in Arizona, Alaska, and Vermont, right? Oh, you didn't mention that absolutely nothing out of the ordinary has happened in those states since they passed those laws? Weird. You might want to mention that then because you make it sound like it was a disaster for other states, which isn't the case at all.

It goes down hill pretty fast from there. Perhaps another blogger will be by to give this piece the scrutiny it deserves?

On automatic weapons

Check out these 1st person videos of a submachine gun match over at The Firearm Blog.

I think this illustrates perfectly that full-auto personal weapons are not good for "mowing down" people. They are useful for putting several rounds onto one target quickly, but still have to be transitioned skillfully from one target to the next, and not while the trigger is held down. Also, they run out of ammo fast.

Home defense guns

***Update with links to more pictures***

This post at Snowflakes in Hell reminded me of a test that a friend and I did a couple of years ago shooting drywall with rifles, which I will get to in a minute. The article is about fake gun experts, and is spot on. The expert in question drops this little gem:

Our instructor further advised that shotguns are the weapon of choice for home defense. Unlike a heavy-caliber handgun, a shotgun will put an intruder out of business without a bullet passing through a wall and killing a sleeping child.

I have found this to be a common belief amongst folks at the gun counter at the local Ganderous Mountainous, and it's not even close to being true. With AR type rifles becoming so popular, I had one loaded up in my home in case the Boogey Man came, and thought that the idea that rifles were overpenetrative in a home defense scenario was bunk. A good buddy helped me find out.

I never did publish the results of the shooting test as we did not complete it; we shot five walls with rifles using various loads, and intended to do the same with handguns and shotguns. While we had the walls set up we did fire one round of Winchester Super X 00 buckshot and a few rounds from handguns just for our own edification.

The five walls were to residential spec; 1/2" drywall screwed front and back to 2x4 studs. The longest span in either one of our modest homes measured 30', so we did the shooting at 15' with the walls spaced out over 15'. We used an AR15 and a Ruger Mini-14 both chambered in .223 Remington for the test, and we shot many different types of loads from factory ammo to some handloads. The results told us both without a doubt that that cartridge is way less penetrative than buckshot or handguns.



Here is the impact on the 2nd and 3rd wall made by a Black Hills 52 grain jacketed hollow point fired from the Mini-14's 16" barrel:




Click to make bigger.

As you can see, the bullet was sideways when it hit the second wall, and was in pieces when it hit the third. This was pretty typical for most of the rounds fired, but this was the most notable example of the round breaking up so quickly. Those little pieces of the bullet may still have been lethal, but then again, they may have not. That particular round didn't make it through the fourth wall, leading me to believe that it didn't have much energy left when it hit the third wall. Also, the bullet fragments would lose velocity and energy very rapidly given a little more distance, and when applied to a home defense scenario means that if a round fired from your rifle misses the bad guy and goes through an exterior wall of your home, it will not be nearly as likely to enter your neighbor's house and harm someone.

The one round of buckshot told a completely different story. Fired into the first wall at a distance of 15' from an improved cylendar choke showed that you still have to aim:



The orange dots are one inch, making the spread from the buckshot about six inches. That busts the myth about only needing to aim in the general direction of an attacker with a shotgun. It does show why they will effectively put down a scumbag with one well placed shot; the trauma of twenty five .30 caliber holes concentrated over the vitals gives you a high probability that you won't need to shoot twice.

Here is the face of the 5th wall, and if you look closely you can see 18 shot holes marked with arrows:



That leaves seven pellets unaccounted for. Some of them may have stopped in the fourth wall, or may have gone off the 5th wall and into the woods. The bad part about launching so many projectiles with one shot is that you cannot account for each and every one of them, as they go off on their own program if given some distance. With a rifle, you are only firing one round at a time, so you have much more control.

For fun, we also shot a .38 Special MagTec frangible round, a .357 magnum Glaser Safety Slug, and a Black Hills 124 grain +P 9mm at the walls, and all of them went straight through the five walls and into the woods. High velocity small mass bullets hitting something hard like drywall makes them break up and slow down, and low velocity high mass bullets just keep going.

Food for thought.

Wading into the current gun control debate with expert commentary

My-oh-my has this country come a long way in such a short period of time. In the wake of the Tucson shooting, all of the predictable cries by the usual suspects for more gun control have been largely met with shoulder shrugs and silence from the majority of lawmakers.

This, and all of the media lies that circulate regarding guns, makes it notable that for once gun owners aren't the ones that will have to bear the blame for some psychopath's rampage.

"Loughner, for one, reportedly used an extended magazine carrying 31 rounds. (Congress outlawed such magazines in 1994, but let the ban lapse in 2004.)"

Aaaahhnnnggt!! Wrong answer sport. Congress temporarily stopped the new manufacture of magazines like the one scumbag-shooty-guy from AZ used; they didn't ban them. Don't worry though, I expected y'all media types to expend yet more of your credibility (isn't it in the red these days) buhleeeet buhleeeet buhleeeting about what you know nothing of in order to push your agenda. It's what you do, and I love pointing it out and doing my small part to make you all look like jackasses.

As for bearing the blame, I'm happy to see that the bulk of its weight rests so well on such petite shoulders, despite it being a juvenile accusation. Not that I'm saying it's right, mind you; I'm just happy that it's not placed on all of us; and something also tells me that there's an unintended consequence of the Palin haters throwing this mess at her, there being no such thing as bad press and all.

Now for the fun stuff.

Back to this article, do yourself a favor and scroll down to the video and watch it. We have the National Urban League's Marc Morial saying, and I quote:

"With respect to gun control, there is no doubt. . .ah. . .that. . .ah. . .the Assault Weapon Ban and the repeal of the Assault Weapon ban was probably a mistake for the nation."

Hmmmmmm, you see. . . .about that. . . . I don't see how such a presumably smart man can say in the same sentence that it's "no doubt" that "probably" something is bad. Mr. Morial, would you also say that there's no doubt that syphilis is probably bad for tigers? Is it your position that ninjas are no doubt, probably bad news for the samurai? That's awesome! I feel the same way too! - (about the tigers, ninja, and samurai, not the Assault Thingie Ban)

I do support his position though that a knee jerk reaction by lawmakers to strip rights from an already agitated populace - who are flocking to buy firearms at the moment - in the wake of a violent shooting is probably no doubt a bad thing to do, especially considering that a great deal of the people buying the guns are doing it not so much in the interest of one day stopping a spree shooter, but because they don't trust lawmakers.

Now go to this link and scroll down to watch the video about the popularity of Glock pistols. This one, for me, defines how utterly stupid newscreatures are. Witness the raw footage of a bona fide dumb ass attack:

Chris Jansing, to guest Jose Diaz-Balart - " I know that in your years of reporting you've had alot of years of experience with all different types of weaponry."

Diaz-Balart - "Sure"

Jansing - "Help us understand the popularity of this type of gun because I think if you're not part of the gun culture for a lot of people this is a weapon that is used to kill people. . ."

Diaz-Balart - "yes"

Jansing - ". . .we've heard it's used to kill people."

Injecting myself into the discussion here, what the hell does this chic mean by "for a lot of people this is a weapon that is used to kill people"? Is that something like "tell me now Rosie, for a lot of people, mayonnaise is a product used to fatten people. . . .we've heard it's used to fatten people." Or, "tell me Chuck, for a lot of people, ninjas are weapons used to kill people. . . .we've heard they're used to kill people." Is that what she's talking about? You can see that I've used Rosie [O'Donnell] and Chuck [Norris] there as an example because they are, presumably, because of their vaguely associated credentials, known as being part of the fat and ninja culture, respectively. Rosie more so considering that she is known to be the size of a barge, so she might be a little more authoritative.

Diaz-Balart, being a journalist and all and highly trained in the art of the gun culture, is no doubt probably the best bet to be on a national news network chatting with a fellow journalist about something he knows so much about. I mean he knows two people who have Glocks - one a law enforcement officer, and another a friendly gun collector - and these two individuals know without a doubt why Glocks are probably popular, because one of them dropped theirs down some stairs and the other dropped his out the window of a car at 60 miles per hour.

That makes Diaz-Balart a fucking Glock savant!

I guess that since I dropped my Glock yesterday, that qualifies me to say that both of these retards wouldn't make a pimple on a gun owners ass (don't ask, it's not my saying), and I offer to you more evidence to support my claim:

Diaz-Balart - ". . . .there's a number of different millimeters available in weapon sizes. . ."

Looking at the handy chart on Gaston's website, I direct you to the "models" tab, and ask you if they are listed by caliber, or are they listed by millimeters? It must be a hidden language no doubt that can only probably be decoded by gun culture experts well skilled in the art:

Standard model? Lots of millimeters.
Compact model? Not so many millimeters.
Subcompact model? A few millimeters.
Competition model? Huge number of millimeters, like totally a bunch of them n' stuff.

Man though, all this talk about Glocks, heatahs, and millimeatahs makes me want to take a ride to the range and bust me some caps, after I throw my Glock 17 out the window of my truck and make myself a gun culture jedi knight, of course.

And the hits keep on comin'

Diaz-Balart - ". . .it's [Glocks] a natural pistol to get if you're not an expert on weapons."

And again, he later backs that claim up by offering his law enforcement buddy's experience tossing them down stairs and all; you can't claim to be an expert unless you drop the thing down some flights of stairs, and to be able to master this feat, you have to have Glock perfection. It's that simple. So if you've never handled a gun before, and consider yourself to not be an expert, you need to get a Glock first, and then drop it to become a master. Taking what he says literally, one can only deduct that the reason 65% of law enforcement choses Glock is because cops suck with firearms.

I'll have to ask my friends in law enforcement if they learned Glock dropping at the academy. One of them is issued a Sig, a fore-tay millimeter I hear, so he must suck - I don't think they drop test those - but I did personally witness him shoot expert with a rifle once on an Army range, so who knows.

Diaz-Balart goes on to say that the reason for 30 round "clips" (magazines) are popular for the non-gun tossing/dropping/mass murdering population is so that at the shooting range, you don't have to reload as much. That's probably an accurate statement, no doubt, but I would also add that people keep 30 round magazines for their nightstands, glove boxes, and also for competition. I'm an expert, remember, so I know. Of note though is that he says to reload the gun with regular clips, you have to take the clip out of the gun and manually load it with "bullets" using your thumb, and doesn't mention that most shooters have many of these clips, and that they can be used to charge the gun with "bullets" very rapidly. Like this guy:



Fast, huh!!

Ultimately, these two MSNBC people are trying to be honest in that they are doing their best to tell the world why Glock pistols are not the choice of crazies, but are in fact popular to cops and every one else. They would have been better served though giving this task of explaining these truths to someone of more experience than a journalist, but it no doubt would have probably been less entertaining. Admit it!

About that straw purchase

Anti-gunners often chant about prohibiting straw purchases in bordering states with not as severe gun laws, but do they ever take into account that firearms are durable goods that last many lifetimes?

The reason I ask is due to this article showing that the gun used by Amy Bishop was straw purchased by her husband over twenty years ago. There is simply no way to determine that that gun would have ended up used in a mass murder.

Changing the laws would not have had the slightest impact on availability, since there are many hundreds of millions of guns in circulation, and there are millions more sold every year.

Playing devils advocate for a minute: what would happen if all of these guns in the US suddenly vanished? There would be gnashing of teeth amongst the millions of gun owners that didn't kill innocent people, but the criminals in this country would continue on with their trade by resorting to other effective means of controlling and destroying. That, and they would still be able to find weapons elsewhere, like from Mexico. Take away all of the guns in the world, and it would look something like this.

Not pretty.

We would be well served to concentrate our efforts on locking up the looney toon people like Bishop when they first show their tendency towards violence, instead of taking away every thing that they could use to hurt people with.

Ahhh, gun bigots make it so easy

Ralph Fascitelli of Washington Ceasefire, an advocacy group that seeks to reduce gun violence, said allowing guns in coffeehouses robs residents of "societal sanctuaries."

"People go to Starbucks for an escape, just so they can get peace," Fascitelli said. "But people walk in with open-carry guns and it destroys the tranquility."

Wow. Mr. Fascitelli makes an interesting case. Where have we heard this before? Oh yeah, I'm definitely going there:

Samuel Bowers of White Knights, an advocacy group that seeks to suppress Blacks, said allowing Negros in coffeehouses robs residents of "societal sanctuaries."

"People go to Starbucks for an escape, just so they can get peace," Bowers said. "But Negros walk in and it destroys the tranquility."

Jerry Falwell of Thomas Road Baptist, an advocacy group that seeks to reduce gays, said allowing queers in coffeehouses robs residents of "societal sanctuaries."


"People go to Starbucks for an escape, just so they can get peace," Walt Kowalski said. "But zipper heads walk in and it destroys the tranquility."

Bigotry comes in all forms. Clowns like Peter Hamm and Ralph Fascitelli can't seem to find that point when they spew this sort of discriminating noise.

Like it or not, there were no "gunshots" from those carrying guns at Starbucks. That's because the gun control crowd is barking up the wrong tree by pushing to take away protected rights from peaceable human beings. And interestingly enough, this article cites the shooting of four Washington police officers in a coffee shop by a psychopathic scumbag as reason for gun control advocate motivation, as in why the Brady Campaign wants Starbucks to be a "gun free zone."

Seriously.

These people honestly confuse everyday citizens who carry a firearm to preserve their life, and the life of their family or community, with a lone crazy gunman with a long and violent criminal past that several states failed to put away behind bars where he belonged. I can't see how making the place gun free would have made the slightest difference. A guy who wants to engage four uniformed officers in some gunplay is not the kind of guy who would turn at the sight of a "gun free zone" sign.

Really though, I love to see these quotes from the gun control crowd because it means that they are not people of reason with a valid argument to contest; there is no need to even converse with them at all. They are bigots. They try to deny basic human rights - in this case protected by local, state, and federal law - from decent human beings because they do not agree with them. That strengthens our points because they have none.

Wait? The "Iron Pipeline" runs North?

That's weird. Last I heard, that sucker was flowing like a river of deadly goodness to the South, where drug fueled crazies were using those easily purchased M16s and RPGs to take out the Mexican po-po.

Apparently, the gun control crowd was either wrong about the pipeline's direction, are stealing some other gun bigot's brilliantly clever term, or maybe they are just not creative enough to come up with a term of their own.

And how does a river flow from Georgia to New York anyways? That's like, against gravity and stuff. Come to think about it, iron doesn't really make a good river.

Silly people.

Notice that the prior restraint imposed on regular peaceable folk - which are legion in Georgia from my personal experience - in the form of instant background checks, wherein the gun shop owner calls the FBI about the buyer, is not really all that effective at stopping the bad guys. These laws were supposed to be the ticket for stopping the scumbags once and for all, and we just have to put up with the inconvenience because stopping scumbags saves babies. Period.

I'm not convinced.

This one particular store sold over 4,000 guns in three years, and had 83 sales denied. Not 83 felons convicted, or even caught for that matter, but sales denied, for whatever reason. I'm curious as to how many of those denials were overturned - probably most - and how many legitimate criminals were stopped from buying the gun because the ATF arrested them. My guess is somewhere around zero.

So why are we being inconvenienced again? Seems to me that the most logical way to stop this massive pipeline of molten hot iron from traveling in two directions simultaneously is to annihilate Interstate 95.

That put a smile on your face, didn't it?!?!

Virginia gun bills

Many pro gun bills were passed out of the senate this week, with one of them being a bill that makes it so someone who has not begged the state for a CCW card can put a loaded firearm in a locked glovebox of their vehicle or boat.

Of course some lawyers (it's always the lawyers) blee-ee-eet blee-ee-ee-eet that "oh no, now criminals will keep a weapon in their car!"

By an 8-7 split lawmakers said okay to that measure despite concerns from staff attorneys, who said the bill would be welcome news for criminals.

"If they found out that they could carry their guns in a locked glove compartment, I promise you they will do that," said Senate Staff Attorney Steve Benjamin.

Be careful out their my fellow Virginians. Once this is signed into law, the criminals are going to finally come out of the woodwork and keep their guns in their car - but legally this time!

It's important to know that criminals strive to follow the law.

So if a criminal is not breaking the law, then there's no impact whatsoever. There is no reason for them to get pulled over, and having the gun locked in a glovebox is a better alternative then having it in their waistband. Not that they care about abiding by the law anyways. And if they're committing some sort of crime, and they get stopped by the police, well, then it doesn't really matter if the gun is legally locked up, they are still gonna get charged for it.

So does it really matter in regards to the criminal element? The better question is whether we should restrict the rights of millions of Virginians because of the thousand criminals who care less about the law or who they hurt? My answer is a big negative.

This also reinforces my strong opinion that at the genesis of every bad thing in America is a brigade of clueless lawyers. No offense to my lawyer readers, if I have any, but beavers build dams, and lawyers build laws. Rarely do either beavers or lawyers take the time to look down the creek and see the carnage that they are about to be responsible for.

Update: Great minds think alike. SailorCurt has up a similar post on the same subject over at The Sentinel. SailorCurt is on a roll these days!

Update: Here's more Virginia gun law stuff from The Sentinel, with VCDL president Philip Van Cleave fisking a silly anti-gun article. What I wanted to point out is this:

"In case anyone is worried about the volatile mix of alcohol and firearms, naysayers should know that the Senate bill requires guntoters to abstain and threatens them with - shudder! - misdemeanors if they don't."

Casting aside the ridiculous notion that misdemeanors are small potatoes, this seems to be the main thrust of the anti-gun hate for this bill nation wide.

"Guns and alcohol don't mix."

Then why is it that lawmakers insist on putting a footnote in these bills that allow cops to drink and carry? Anyone? Maybe it's because we're talking about cops, and not us mere mortal citizens. It's totally cool for a cop to throw back a few while armed, because hey, they might have to run out of Applebees in a hurry and arrest some Virginian in Olive Garden for having a glass of wine while open carrying. Oh, wait, that's actually legal.

Why this constant effort to create two classes of citizens? Cops get their powers from, From the citizenry. We are not subordinate to police officers. They cannot possess powers that we do not possess. So, they cannot have a free pass from the law because they cannot have something we cannot have. Common law, people.

That's a stunning claim

"More women kind of have an interest in Tasers, preferred to a firearm," a gun store owner said.

That would be opinion not based on anything resembling fact. It's great that the guy is selling stuff and making a profit, and it's also good that women are looking into self defense; no qualms there.

What irks me is that this whole article is factually flawed.

Tasers don't always work, even for cops, and the advice from "safety experts" to just drop the thing after you shoot an attacker is pretty poor considering that Tasers can still be used to shock someone via contact with the front even after the single shot is deployed. So if you do happen to put an attacker on his ass with the probes, and then drop the weapon and run, there is always the possibility that he will get up and run you down. Then what? You dropped your weapon on the bad advice from an unkown source published in a local online article and are now unarmed. Well done.

What this is all boiling down to is that this shit article by an unknown journalist was not given even a passive attempt to verify defensive facts. We've come to expect this from them these days.

"If you use these and make a mistake, you're not actually killing somebody with it," Dalston said.

Uh-huh. And that is also the big downside to them. Why do all cops in the US carry a firearm, and only select few carry a Taser? Because if they make a mistake in the face of an attacker with a Taser, they might not effectively stop them with it, and must then resort to other measures.

"At least with the Taser, you have at least 60 to 90 seconds or more to actually get yourself to safety," Dalton said.

And typically when you use a firearm to stop an attacker, you have way longer than that. And more than that, you have up to 20 times more chances at stopping them too.

I'm not a Taser hater by any means, but they are not the most effective self defense tool in any way, shape, or form. My opinion is that they are a niche weapon. It just wouldn't hurt for some lowlife reporter or such to actually do their homework and point that out to their viewers from time to time, so that I don't have to.