The Truth About Guns

Tyler Kee is a little light on 5.56 ammunition these days. In fact, he has more .30-06 on hand at the moment than anything else. So when I invited him to join Robert and myself for a friendly carbine competition out at the Austin Rifle Club, he decided that his M1 Garand would be the weapon of choice and not his AR-15 rifle. While the 8-round clips probably slowed him down a little, there’s something to be said for watching someone literally blowing the targets off the stands with a rifle manufactured before the United States entered the Second World War.

A TTAG reader sent the following email to the NRA and SIG SAUER:

I like SIG. So much so that I bought my own when my my agency switched to one from the Beretta 92. But I do not like the new full-page ad I just saw in my April edition of NRA’s American rifleman. Below a photo of a police team executing a forced entry is the copy, “BUILT FOR THOSE WHO REQUIRE NO INTRODUCTION.” There are many appropriate things to celebrate about our police forces when trying to sell a firearm . . .

but no-knock raids shouldn’t be one of them, especially considering the plethora of botched “no-introduction” raids in our country’s recent history and their often shaky Constitutional standing. Please change your ad and remove this celebration of organized intimidation and brute for

The IWI Tavor was TTAG’s Rifle of the Year. No wonder, then, that the company’s U.S. facility in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania recently shipped its twenty thousandth Tavor. As you’d expect, the guns are starting to show up wherever you find American operators operating in operational environments. (Nick and I hung with a Tavor-wielding competitor at a recent carbine match.) The Israeli manufacturer’s PR company – the indefatigable Laura Burgess Marketing – let slip the fact that the gun will soon appear in olive drab. How great is that? [See: operators, above.] Not as great as the possibility that TTAG may soon be journeying to the land of the Israel

Last night TTAG received a link to an image in the Fort Hood News of a soldier named Ivan Lopez. We published that picture assuming it was the Fort Hood shooter. After receiving emails and comparing it to a picture of the shooter published at fox.com we discovered that the photograph we published was of a different Ivan Lopez, a man who served this country honorably in Iraq as a Marine Corps Infantryman. We apologize to Marine Ivan Lopez, his family and his comrades-in-arms for the mistake. We have removed posts referring to the image from Facebook, Twitter and the main site. We will learn from this error and endeavor to live up to our website’s name in the future.

Press Release:

Congressman Steve Stockman (R-TX 36) Thursday urged his House colleagues to pray for and support the victims and victims’ families of Wednesday’s fatal shooting at Fort Hood, and to support his bill, H.R. 3199, the “Safe Military Bases Act,” which repeals the Clinton-era ban on military personnel carrying weapons on base . . .

“This is the third mass shooting on a military base in five years, and it’s because our trained soldiers aren’t allowed to carry defensive weapons,” said Stockman. “Anti-gun activists have turned our military bases into soft targ

Last year, I reviewed the now discontinued Heckler & Koch SL8-6 after making an impulse buy at my LGS. My reaction to the rifle was a mix of hot and cold, but much of the “cold” was related to its horrible ergonomics. The ill-conceived thumbhole stock, of course, was a consequence of government-mandated restrictions. But even then, HK seemed to have gone out of their way to make it extra crappy. Well, for the last year I’ve been debating whether to go all in and convert my SL8-6 to a G-36 configuration, or simply stick with the designated marksman rifle concept. Either way, I knew TommyBuilt Tactical LLC had my six . . .

Nearly every state has enhanced penalties for armed robbery compared to your standard, garden-variety robbery. In Nebraska statute, for instance, to be considered armed, waiving a toy or replica gun isn’t enough.   If the robber can show that what he used during a hold-up wasn’t a real gun, then the enhanced penalty for the use of a firearm doesn’t apply.

From ketv.com:

“It looks like a real gun. You know it acts like a real gun,” Kleine said. He made the comments while showing KETV NewsWatch 7 a fake gun used by a teen to commit a robbery. 

But under state law, the fake gun isn’t a firearm, even if it’s used to commit a crime.

The current law gives robbers an incentive to use fake or toy guns in the commission of their crimes. That may actually be a good thing. I’d rathe

TTAG central keeps a close eye on all your favorite gun control groups. Despite some reader blowback about giving Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America the “oxygen of publicity,” most of our coverage has focused on Shannon Watts’ media machine. That’s because MDA is the most active of the antis, at least in terms of media coverage. In fact, MDA – a wholly-owned subsidiary of Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns – has supplanted both their billionaire benefactor’s bilious anti-ballistic bully boys and the [previous] leader in the civilian disarmament industrial complex: The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Which raises the question . . .

How many calls do you think the Brady Campaign can muster today? I’m thinking not a lot. Not in comparison

Harvard White Paper: Why Was Boston Strong? Lessons from the Boston Marathon Bombing. The italicized title of the just-released report assumes that the Boston was strong – without defining “strength.” Was Boston “strong” because the populace didn’t revolt when the government flooded the streets with militarized police, federal agents and National Guardsmen and put the entire City under undeclared martial law? That’s my working definition. Anyway, check out the Globe’s glorification and clock the reports less-publicized vilification . . .

A fast

Current Nebraska law grants broad powers to the governor, allowing him or her to ban the sale or transport of firearms during declared emergencies. Police and other government agents confiscated thousands of guns in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, though some troops refused to confiscate guns. A current scandal in Canada involves the Royal Canadian Mounted Police breaking down doors to confiscate firearms in High River, Alberta after they had cordoned off

Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America released the following statements in response to the shooting at Ft. Hood today in which four people were killed (including the shooter by his own hand) and 16 were injured. A fact sheet on the 2009 mass shooting at Ft. Hood is available here . . .

“Our thoughts are with all those at Ft. Hood tonight as another tragedy unfolds among the heroes who have given their utmost for our country,” said Mark Glaze, executive director of Mayors Against Illegal Guns. “We don’t know all the details, but days like this remind us that killers with illegal guns murder 33 more people every day across America. This March mark

“The NRA members are the current incarnation of the brownshirts from Germany back in the early ’30s, late ’20s, early ’30s. Now, of course, there came the Night of the Long Knives when the brownshirts were slaughtered and dumped in the nearest ditches when the power structure finally got tired of them. So I look forward to that day.” – Radio host Mike Malloy [via newsbusters.org]

We now know the Fort Hood shooter was undergoing psychiatric treatment, and taking psych meds for his condition. Will gun control advocates try to exploit this tragedy to further their agenda? Will they try to deny veterans their natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms, arguing that any veteran who seeks psychiatric help should not be able to exercise that right? Will they then continue their crusade to suggest – as National Gun Victims Counsel’s Elliot Fineman CEO did during a recent debate – that anyone taking any medicine for anxiety or other mental health challenge should not be able to keep or bear arms? How do you counter that assault on the basic human right to self-defe

At a 10:45pm EST news conference, Lt. Gen. Mark Milley, III Corps and Fort Hood commanding general [above] revealed that Fort Hood shooter Spc. Ivan Lopez, 1st Battalion, Warrior Transition Brigade [click here for a picture] served four months in Iraq in 2011. Although Lopez was not diagnosed with PTSD he was “undergoing behavioral health and psychiatric treatment” for depression and anxiety. He was taking psych meds as part of his treatment. Lopez murdered his fellow

Spc. Ivan Lopez, 1st Battalion, Warrior Transition Brigade, ties a fly during an instructional class Nov. 3 at Fort Hood. [h/t JA] Spc. Ivan Lopez has been identified as the shooter, now dead, who opened fire at Fort Hood.

In a recorded statement to the press that was just aired, President Obama addressed today’s Ft. Hood shooting, pledging to “get to the bottom of what happened.” He saluted the service members and their families and pledged to get the base and surrounding community what it needs to deal with the situation. Saying the shooting re-opens the wounds of the earlier Hassan massacre, he knows everyone around the country is keeping those involved in their prayers and that service members need to feel safe when they’re on their home base. Strangely, he didn’t address the fact that those stationed at Ft. Hood, like almost all other domestic military bases, are required to be disarmed.

TTAG reader Scottiac reminded us of Fort Hood’s police regarding concealed carry. Click here for the base’s policy. Pay attention to #11 on page 2:

11. The Texas Concealed Handgun Law does not apply on Fort Hood. Concealed handguns are prohibited on Fort Hood.

All official firearms are unloaded and locked away in vaults.

Chairman of House Committee of Homeland Security Michael McCaul just told CNN that there are four confirmed deaths at the Fort Hood shotting, including the shooter, identified as one Ivan Lopez. No doubt the press will use his middle name as and when. Meanwhile, updates as we get them here, on Facebook and Twitter.

News is coming from the Justice Department that the shooter in this afternoon’s incident at Fort Hood killed himself. As we know from other shooting incidents like this one it is fairly typical for a “spree killer” to take their own lives as soon as they meet any form of resistance, and this case doesn’t seem to be any different. We still don’t know any additional details about the incident, but reports also indicate that there is indeed only one shooter, and at this time there are only eight reported injuries and no additional fatalities. As to why such murderers (or attempted murderers) take their own lives, there’s an article from Wired that tries to explain some of the reasons. . .

Why are some mass shooters more likely to kill themselves? If we go beyond the a