The Truth About Guns

By Andy Spencer

My ears were still ringing from the report of my Tikka T3 30-06, as my Dad and I huddled under a soaring Sitka spruce on the edge of the Tuxecan Passage. I’d just shot the largest, most vicious predator of my life and now he wanted to go poke it with a stick. “Are you nuts? It’s not even been three minutes.” He was next to me leaning forward with his elbows’ on a downed spruce trunk, peering through binoculars where we’d last seen the bear running. Though it had disappeared, he was positive my shot was true. He started to get up to go look for blood, and then it roared . . .

I don’t have any brothers. Hunting in Alaska had long been a dream of mine, but actually doing it alone didn’t seem practical, safe or all that much fun. I was lamenting this fact one Christmas Eve to my mother, in that half-complaining half-joking way you can sometimes find yourse

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In the end, we left the nearly impossible task of picking the three winners in our Can Can Concealment give-away contest to the people at Can Can. The task was just too daunting. We’d received over 100 entries from women all over the country. And heaters? We saw them all, from little pink wheel guns to big bad Barretts. And some

Yesterday, I blogged the Washington Post’s love letter to smart gun technology (i.e. guns that won’t fire unless a computer chip recognizes the owner’s fingerprint or palm print). I missed this: “New Jersey passed a hotly contested law in 2002 requiring that only smart guns be sold in the state within three years of a smart gun being sold anywhere in the country.” Guess what? A smart gun is now for sale in California (‘na

“The images appear to show the live animals strung up as targets moments before being shot during a course at Nato’s training facilities in Jaegerspris, Denmark,” dailyexpress.co.uk reports. “The pigs are shot by marksmen to replicate battlefield wounds so military medical staff including British Army doctors can train in emergency surgery. The so-called Operation Danish Bacon has been described as ‘impossible to justify medically, ethically and educationally’ by animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) said.” Outed by the animal lovers, the Ministry of Defense (MOD) did their best . . .

A spokeswoman for the MOD said: “Our military surgeons undert

I’m a decent clays shooter. I won’t win any trap or clays tournaments, but I hold my own. Still, I can’t help but think that I’d be a better shooter today if I’d had something like Winchester’s AA TrAAcker shells back when I was learning to shoot a smoothbore. East Alton first released their new loads with the whirligig wads last year. If you’re not familiar, the wizards of Winchester have devised a wad that actually follows your shot string so you can see where you’re missing. That’s a great training aid and something that’s difficult for new shooters (and a lot of old ones) to figure out. Now Winchester has expanded the line to sporting clays loads in 12 and 20 gauge. The best part is, they’re relatively reasonably priced. At about

“The slaughter of the dwindling elephant herds in Africa grows worse by the year,” the New York Times opines, “as organized criminals get rich from selling elephant tusks in lucrative black markets around the world, where a pound of ivory can fetch $1,500. African elephants, whose numbers have been reduced in less than a century from several million to an estimated 500,000, are being killed at a rate of 30,000 to 35,000 a year.” I know! Let’s ban ivory! ‘Cause it’s not banned enough. “Last week, the Interior Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service announced that it will ban the trade in elephant ivory within the United States by prohibiting all imports and — with very narrow exemptions — exports and resales by auction houses and other dealers.” That sentence doesn&

“Nobody needs a 15-round ammunition magazine unless they are a domestic terrorist or a gangster.” - Bryan Miller, Executive Director of Heeding God’s Call [via washingtontimes.com]

About a month ago, I told you about an opinion issued by Virginia’s then-Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli which said that trusts were unable to register machine guns in Virginia as is required by state law. Shortly thereafter, Delegate David LaRock introduced legislation (HB 1266) to clear this oversight. Now the Virgina State Police has weighed in. According to attorney John Pierce, the VSP has no issue with the ownership of machine guns in VA. VSP’s practice was to have one of the trustees register machine guns owned by the trust in their own name (as trustee) when submitting the state registration form. This allowed the t

Dear Governor Malloy:

I’d like to address you regarding the crisis currently taking place in Connecticut with gun registration. But before I do, let me preface my statements contained herein, with my deepest condolences and sympathy to the victims and families of the Sandy Hook tragedy. First, let us remember what led to the shooting . . .

Adam Lanza STOLE his mothers LEGALLY OWNED guns to commit this heinous act. Bearing that in mind, the great state of Connecticut in their infinite wisdom felt more gun control laws were needed, despite the fact that Connecticut already had some of the strictest gun control in the nation already in place when Sandy Hook occurred.

So what did your state come up with

“Imagine this. You are having a dispute with a neighbor over noise late at night. You have asked him politely to keep it down and your politeness got you nowhere. You have filed complaints with the town, but nothing has come of them. Finally, you decide to go to the town council and voice your concern.” So begins delawareonline.com‘s editorial Gun laws, common sense are strangers. I’m thinking I wouldn’t be going to the town council to complain about Mr. Noisy neighbor. I’d be going to the police. While taking some extra security precautions: heightened situational awareness, a gun on my hip, that sort