The Truth About Guns
Exploring the ethics, morality, business, politics, culture, technology, practice, strategy, dangers and fun of guns
Updated: 1 week 2 days ago
What Gun for 15-Foot Long Man-Strangling Python?
Here’s one police don’t encounter every day. At least not on this continent.
Officers responded to the 1400 block of Church Street in Fogelsville (Pennsylvania) shortly after 2 p.m. for the report of a man in cardiac arrest with a snake wrapped around his neck, township police said.
When patrol officers arrived on scene, they observed a 28-year-old man who was unresponsive and lying on the floor of the home with the mid portion of a large snake wrapped around his neck, according to the news release.
Continue reading What Gun for 15-Foot Long Man-Strangling Python? at The Truth About Guns.
NY Governor Kathy Hochul Could Learn Something Important From the Indiana Mall Shooting. But She Won’t.
The recent heroics of an Indiana man to neutralize a murderer in a mall shows the folly of New York’s new law restricting where law-abiding citizens can legally carry a firearm with a state-issued permit.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s Bruen decision struck down New York’s “may issue” pistol permit law. In response, Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul pushed through a middle-of-the-night gun control bill that expanded new “gun free zone” designations. Recent events, however, are proving again that gun-free zones are deadly.
GATORZ Eyewear: 15% Off TTAG Discount Plus a Free Backpack
Today (July 22nd) through July 25th, GATORZ is including a free backpack with the purchase of any ANSI Ballistic eyewear from their website. As if that isn’t enough, you can use coupon code TTAG15 for a 15% discount on any GATORZ order. Normally I don’t pass along press releases related to sales and promotions and such, but I’ve been rocking a pair of GATORZ Delta shades since early April and I absolutely love ’em.
Continue reading GATORZ Eyewear: 15% Off TTAG Discount Plus a Free Backpack at The Truth About Guns.
Pound Sand: Missouri Tells FBI It Won’t Hand Over Concealed Carry Permit Holders’ Information
Over the past several years, states have become more and more comfortable exercising their power to tell the federal government “no.” Under the Trump Administration, these refusals to cooperate often took the form of immigration sanctuaries and then morphed into Second Amendment sanctuaries in response to hostile local and state governments, as well as the Biden Administration.
States are recognizing that, in certain instances, they have the power to tell the federal government that the state won’t cooperate.
Koehler: Being a ‘Good Guy With a Gun’ Means Being Armed and Scared…Always
As I wrote in my journal the next day: “The gun society is a no-nonsense social dualism, precisely divided between good guys and bad guys.”
And despite the “love in the room,” despite the respect and patience the instructors showed to everyone present, despite the wisdom and clarity of their words—shooting is a “Zen process,” one of them said—the weekend’s essence was the reduction of life to that one reptilian option: fight or flight.
BREAKING: LAPD Stops Enforcement of California’s ‘High Capacity’ Magazine Ban
By Lee Williams
The Los Angeles Police Department has stopped enforcing California’s state law banning “high capacity” magazines, according to an internal LAPD email obtained by the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project.
The email was sent Wednesday morning to all LAPD personnel by Commander Ernest Eskridge, assistant commanding officer of the department’s Detective Bureau.
Eskridge noted that on June 23, the “United States Supreme Court vacated the ruling in Duncan v.
House Democrats Pledge to Ban Guns In Common Use by Law-Abiding Americans
House Democrats, led by Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), are forging ahead with a so-called assault weapons ban even though it’s not clear that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has the votes to pass the bill.
Chairman Nadler ushered through H.R. 1808, the Assault Weapons Ban of 2021, with a party-line 25-18 vote passing the bill out of his committee. The bill could receive a full House vote early next week.
Obscure Object of Desire: Norinco Model 97 Shotgun
Shotguns are my favorite firearms. I like the recoil and I like the power. I like launching nearly a third of a AR-15 magazine per shot fired. As a shotgun fan and a lover of old guns I, of course, love old shotguns. One of my favorites is the Winchester 1897. While not the first pump-action scattergun, it was the first really successful one.
I love the Winchester 1897, but I settled on a Norinco Model 97 clone.
Continue reading Obscure Object of Desire: Norinco Model 97 Shotgun at The Truth About Guns.
The Dumbest $h!t We Heard During the House’s ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban Hearing
As was pre-ordained, the House Judiciary Committee passed HR 1808 on to the full House of Representatives yesterday. The bill moved on after a party-line vote which was preceded by some of the most entertaining debate and testimony in recent memory. And by entertaining, we mean in a facepalmingly sardonic, end-of-the-empire kinda way.
As was noted yesterday in a piece by the Outdoor Wire’s Jim Shepherd, this is all an exercise in election year kabuki.
HWFO: The Only Way to Reduce Mass Shootings Is for More Eli Dickens to Kill More Shooters
HWFO has discussed at length how media organizations such as Vox and CNN make millions of dollars by pushing freakoutery for clicks, and how their rampage shooting coverage approach increases the incidence of rampage shootings by one third because of copycat effects which are mathematically shown to be media driven.
As of July 20th, CNN.com had nine articles about the Greenwood Park Mall shooting, including one opinion piece devoted to “debunking” the idea that good guys with guns can stop rampage shootings even though one just did.
Gun Meme of the Day: Hating On Bullpups Edition
The enemy of my enemy is my friend? Well…no accounting for poor taste either way.
Continue reading Gun Meme of the Day: Hating On Bullpups Edition at The Truth About Guns.
No, 9mm Is Not A ‘One Size Fits All’ Defensive Caliber
There’s a tendency among gun owners to follow whatever law enforcement does when it comes to selecting a firearm for defense. When the police carried revolvers, many civilians had a revolver (yes, that’s mostly what was available at the time). When police departments switched to semi-auto pistols, the civilian world largely followed over time (with a few really obsessive holdouts, like these guys). We can see a similar thing with shotguns gradually falling out of favor for home defense in favor of the AR-15 in recent years
Calibers are the same way.
Continue reading No, 9mm Is Not A ‘One Size Fits All’ Defensive Caliber at The Truth About Guns.
Choosing The Best Concealed Carry Holsters: A Beginner’s Guide
So, you want to start carrying a gun, and are wondering what to look for in a good concealed carry holster. That’s a good thing to think about, to be sure. Not enough concealed carriers give enough thought to the right holster for their gun or the way they like to carry it.
Let’s start with the basics. There are a lot of brands out there, so we won’t get too deeply into that.
This is What ‘Commonly Owned’ Means: Americans Have Over 24 Million Modern Sporting Rifles
From the National Shooting Sports Foundation . . .
NSSF, the firearm industry trade association, updated the industry estimate of modern sporting rifles (MSRs) in circulation in the United States to 24,446,000 since 1990. That is an increase of over 4.5 million rifles since the last estimate was released in 2020.
The estimate is derived from NSSF research, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Annual Firearms Manufacturing and Exportation Report (AFMER) and U.S.
California Keeps Gun Ownership Lower by Overwhelming Citizens With Laws and Regulations
“One of the mechanisms by which California’s laws produce their effect is [that] we have a substantially lower prevalence of firearm ownership in this state than many other states do,” [UC Davis’s Garen J.] Wintemute says. “There are fewer of those tools in circulation…and no surprise, they get used less.”
Studies show that suicides account for more than half of U.S. gun deaths; and not to mention the casualties caused by mass shootings in schools, churches, supermarkets, and other public places.
Gun Meme of the Day: Gun Guy Problems Edition
True story. Literally found an empty 375 Raptor case in my laundry a few weeks ago:
Continue reading Gun Meme of the Day: Gun Guy Problems Edition at The Truth About Guns.
Sorry Gun-Grabbers, Eli Dicken Really is a Good Samaritan and He Deserves a Medal for Stopping a Mass Shooting
By Lawrence W. Reed
On Sunday evening—July 17, 2022—at the Greenwood Park Mall in Indiana, a gunman opened fire in a food court. He killed three people and wounded two others. He might have murdered many more but for the quick work of a man named Elisjsha Dicken, who pulled out his own gun and blew away the assailant.
Dicken, who was legally carrying a firearm under the state’s constitutional carry law, was hailed as a “Good Samaritan” for saving lives.
Uvalde School Shooting Response Failures Will ‘Set Back Law Enforcement 20 Years’
By Lindsay Whitehurst, AP
A total of 376 officers converged on Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas — more than the entire police force in a midsize American city like Fort Lauderdale, Florida, or Tempe, Arizona. But for more than 70 minutes on May 24, not one stopped the shooter.
Amid the sounds of continuing gunfire emanating from the elementary school they waited. By the time they entered and killed 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, 19 children and two teachers were dead or mortally wounded.
Knock, Knock: Video Shows ATF Straw Purchase Task Force Asking to See Delaware Man’s Guns
By Lee Williams
The homeowner was alerted there were trespassers on his property by motion detectors outside his front door. A live video feed from his doorbell camera showed three armed men wearing tactical vests, t-shirts and jeans. Two appeared to be ATF agents. The third was a Delaware State Police trooper. None wore body cameras.
The homeowner, who did not want his name used in this story, is a small businessman – a law abiding citizen who even ATF acknowledged had done nothing wrong.