The Truth About Guns

Mark N writes:

Click here for The State of California’s petition for en banc review of the Peruta decision, the ruling that struck down the “good cause” provision of San Diego’s concealed carry provisions. Although the document appears long, only the first 20 pages are the petition and the rest is attachments. The argument is pretty straightforward. 1) The panel was wrong because San Diego COUNTY (as opposed to th

The photo above is a high speed photo of a new muzzle device called the Ferfrans CQB Modular Muzzle Brake System. (Click to embiggen.) The idea behind it is to allow the recoil reduction of an aggressive muzzle brake while modulating the backblast that would normally assault anyone nearby. The photo was taken by Herra Kuulapaa, whose photos have been featured in this space in the past. There’s more (much more) at his site, http://kuulapaa.com/home/highspeed.html. Read on . . .

An 11-year-old girl, Shelby White, killed her first cougar on her grandfather’s ranch in Twisp, Washington, last week.

“Lockport [NY] police violated Paul A. Wojdan’s [fourth amendment] constitutional rights by counting the bullets in his gun and charging him with violating New York’s SAFE Act, Lockport City Judge William J. Watson ruled Wednesday,” buffalonews.com reports. “Watson dismissed a misdemeanor charge against Wojdan, filed because the magazine of his 9 mm Ruger handgun contained 10 bullets, more than the limit of seven bullets per magazine under the Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act.” Again, the SAFE Act ammo limit law was not at issue. It was the judge’s opinion that the cops counting rounds was an unreaso

Has it been a month since the SHOT Show? Seems like just yesterday I was comparing sexual aids to firearms innovations [link NSFW]. Although that post didn’t include the Bondhus Arms CL380, I can think of several parallels between the credit card-sized .380 not-a-derringer weapon and several discreet devices at the AVN Convention. When it comes to the Bondhus ballistic solution, you still can’t buy a thrill. The company website is promising June 2014 delivery for a mere $795. If DoubleTap’s extended roll-out is any guide, maybe later. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

An email blast from Bob Kustra, President of Boise State University:

I know many of you have heard about the bill to remove from the State Board of Education and the administrations of public universities and colleges in Idaho the right, currently held, to prohibit weapons on their campuses. It has passed the Idaho Senate and now awaits a hearing in the House. I have very serious concerns about the bill and its implications and have spoken out against it in recent media. I should note that every public college and university president in our state and every member of the State Board of Education, with responsibility for K-20 schools in Idaho, also oppose the bill. I think it’s

I agree with Moms Demand Action on one point: gun safety is extremely important. But while their definition of “gun safety” is the absence of even a picture of a gun, I believe that with a little training, anyone can safely enjoy the wonderful world of gunpowder and lead. So while I appreciate the fact that today’s winner was attempting to demonstrate how safe guns can be, pressing a gun against your head to demonstrate a clear chamber isn’t a method I’d advocate . . .

From the Oakland Press:

A 36-year-old Independence Township (Michigan) man is dead after he shot himself in the head while demonstrating the gun, deputies reported.

The girlfriend, who also lived at the Independence Township residence,

“My hand is on it, the bolt is open, it was safety checked,” Christopher Duffy tells WTNH after a picture of his six-month daughter “holding” a rifle went viral, causing consternation amongst the Unarmed Ignorami. Clearly, the baby’s hands were nowhere near the trigger. Nor were anyone else’s. So what, exactly, was the problem? The picture was taken at a gun store in Connecticut, a state where the anti-gun culture is strong (and three of its cities made the top ten for America’s most dangerous urban areas). After the “controversy” erupted, Woodbridge Firearms removed the imag

A firearm is a force equalizer. A frail old man with a gun can defend himself against a large, strong assailant with the simple squeeze of a trigger. Provided the elderly gentleman has a gun to hand, brings it to bear in time, shoots his attacker in the right place and doesn’t get assaulted while the bad guy is experiencing neurological failure, cardiac arrest, suffocation, exsanguination or some other form of lead poisoning. Yes, there is that. A gun is no guarantee that you will prevail in an attack. But it’s better to have one than not, right? Well . . .

Maybe.

First, let me say this: I completely reject the antis’ assertion that Americans are safer going through life unarmed than tooled-up. This incessant anti-gun agitprop relies heavily on studies that incorporate firearms-related suicide and domestic abuse homicides. The former is only tangentially related to firearms ownership (“gun fr

Paul Allen is one of the world’s wealthiest people, and he has put some of his many billions to good use. He’s amassed an impressive collection of science-fiction film and TV artifacts, including this unspecified ray gun from the original Men In Black film . . .

Here are several more. Quick, without Googling the answer: which gun belonged to Sigourney Weaver and which was wielded by Bruce Willis? (Here’s a hint: the very bottom rifle isn’t the droid you’re looking for. It’s from the original Lost In Space.) I was surprised not to see Detective Deckard’s pistol from Blade Runner or at least one Imperial Storntrooper laser blaster in the collection, but Allen is too discriminating a collector to go in for anything that mainstream.<

Yeah, yeah: I know: AR-15s look like M16s. They look military. And military is scary. Only . . . what about the cops who look like full battle dress military soldiers? What about their [often fully-automatic] assault rifles? Don’t those rifles scare gun control advocates more? Nope. The idea of a civilian having the power to be an effective militiaman – a soldier, essentially – is far more frightening to the average anti than the largely unaccountable standing army patrolling the city streets under the name “police.” The fact that criminals don’t use ARs (except in rare cases) has nothing to do with it. It’s all about social control. But haven’t gun owners won that battle? The assault weapons ban came, the assault weapons ban left. There are now millions of ARs out there, somewhere. Why can’t the antis just leave ARs

By Tom in Oregon

As a person of the gun, I learned about shooting and gun safety starting at about six years old. At the time, dad was an instructor for the US Navy, stationed at Miramar Air Station, across the highway from the famous top gun school. Shooting became a natural thing to do at about any time. Besides shooting, I was an avid reader and would become absorbed in a good book. I regularly borrowed books from the library about hunting adventures. I read about Teddy Roosevelt’s safari adventures, Karamojo Bell, Robert Ruark, and a host of other writers who hunted on the “Dark Continent”. I was also hooked on shows like, Mutual of Omaha’s ‘Wild Kingdom,’ Bill Burrud’s, ‘Animal World,’ and ‘Safari to Adventure,’ ‘Daktari,’ and of course, John Wayne in ‘Hatari’ . . .

As I grew older, the lure of Africa didn’t leave me. Quite the contrary, the siren song, that is a sa

The 21-Foot Rule predicts that a knife can beat a gun within…yes, 21 feet. But a deranged, machete-wielding intruder in Pocatello, Idaho might have forgotten that the 21-Foot Rule doesn’t apply when that gun is already drawn and aimed at your center of mass. For that slight miscalculation, he took three 9mm slugs to the torso . . .

According to the Idaho State Journal, defender James Cvengaros had been awakened by the sound of his deranged upstairs neighbor noisily breaking his own windows. Cvengaros had a bit of a history with this neighbor from hell, so when he heard him

TTAG reader James Mortimer [not shown] read an anti-gun op-ed that rubbed him the wrong way. He responded thusly:

Mr. Crisp [above],

It was with great interest I read your op-ed piece concerning the open carry of weapons and its psychology which recently appeared in my local paper. As is so often the case with op-eds on gun control, I anticipated a disingenuous, meandering diatribe based on little more than emotional appeals. You certainly didn’t disappoint . . .

Matters of great public interest should be debated with dispassionate facts and reason based argument. Your article contained nothing of the kind. You merely trotted out tired, discredited memes calculated to not-so-s

“In his efforts to curtail Second Amendment rights, Dr. Murthy has continually referred to guns as a public health issue on par with heart disease and has diminished the role of mental health in gun violence. As a physician, I am deeply concerned that he has advocated that doctors use their position of trust to ask patients, including minors, details about gun ownership in the home.” – Sen. Rand Paul, Rand Paul: Obama’s surgeon general pick will use position to attack Second Amendment [at washingtontimes.com]

A branch manager for Wells Fargo Bank in Oldsmar, Florida is out of a job after being fired for bringing her gun to work. Ivette Ros, pictured above with her attorney Noel Flasterstein, said she doesn’t know who found out she had it or how they learned of it, but bank security questioned her about it and she was fired three days later. Now she’s filed a wrongful termination suit. Wells Fargo released a statement saying that employees are strictly prohibited from bringing firearms onto company premises, except within the bounds of the law regarding vehicle storage in company parking lots. Her a

A regular reader saw our Gun Tattoo of the Day feature and emailed us this pic of her inked shoulder. As Sly and the Family Stone sang, it’s a family affair. “This is just the beginning of the firearms ink, my pops also has an M4 on the outside of his forearm, a ruger logo on his shoulder and the second amendment/flag/reticle sleeve on his other shoulder, Oh yeah and his matching Buckmark. We decided on the buck mark since it depicts a buck and a doe, and my first firearm was a BPS 20 ga I got for Christmas when I was 12. Me, I’m too busy shooting 3-Gun and working in the firearms industry to venture and get my next ink (the Colt Rampant). I guess you could call us Gun Nuts =]” In a good way? Shot of Dad’s arm after the jump

Reader American Spirit writes:

The Denver Post has been one of my local sources for news and information since I was old enough to read (and while I’m still young, those heady days seem farther and farther away all the time). But it both saddens and angers me that they’re willing to publish  a column by William Saletan equating gun owners with snake handlers. And at the same time, it’s very hard to find pro-RKBA opinions published by this same paper which operates under the mission statement of “Transparency is won through accuracy, compassion, intellectual honesty and an introspective mission to convey complete, contextual views of our world” . . .

After two examples of the worst that people

Some readers may reckon that the snowmobiler above could have ended this animal encounter without applying GLOCK perfection. All I know is that angry moose is not something I’d want to face without GLOCK perfection. And the caption underneath the video informs us that the shooter’s son was behind him on another vehicle, preventing a strategic withdrawal. So . . . result. And another reason why I never, ever go into the wild without a firearm. [h/t JT]

By Paul McCain

Like countless other red-blooded American males, I was attracted to the AR-15 rifle platform simply because it has been the rifle of choice for our military for a very long time. Some would say too long. I’ve grown to appreciate the numerous features of the AR in its semi-automatic configuration, the so-called “modern sporting rifle” version, that continues to make it a very popular military, competition and even hunting rifle. The chief features that I find most attractive include the AR’s innate modularity, its accuracy and effectiveness when used in the way it was intended. But . . .

Is it the be-all and end-all in assault rifles? [Note: I’m using the term “assault rifle” in its more technical sense, to describe a select-fire rifle, chambered for a cartridg

By DrVino

You may have heard that just after the ninth circuit’s Peruta ruling, the Orange County sheriff revised her policy on concealed carry license issuance, effectively making the O.C. a shall issue jurisdiction (background check and 16 hours of training notwithstanding). There is some anecdotal reporting that the Ventura County cheriff has made a similar move, but a quick Google search of headlines did not return any confirmation of this. In any case, not long after the change in Orange County, the San Diego sheriff announced that