The Truth About Guns

By Kirk Butts

Guns have been a part of my life since I could realize that I was, in fact, alive. From an early age I was taught by my father about firearms; how to handle them, how to shoot them, how to clean them and most importantly, how to respect them. We lived in the Indiana suburbs and never had the luxury of going shooting whenever we wished, but that love for guns stayed with me during those long gaps between the range. It grew throughout my childhood and into manhood. Squirt guns became cap guns. My ancient (and broken) Daisy BB gun gave way to a Crossman air rifle. In college, I purchased my first “real” firearm: a 1966 Yugoslavian M59/66A1 SKS. I am a proud conservative gun owner who comes from a family of proud conservative gun owners . . .

My girlfriend’s story doesn’t quite mirror mine. If she played baseball, her position would be so far out in left field that she’d be on the other

“Even as gun ownership per household has decreased over the last four decades, according to data from the research center NORC, that declining popularity hasn’t translated to a drop in sales,” huffingtonpost.com reports. And then . . .  ”Shannon Watts, the founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, a gun control advocacy group, attributes that trend to aggressive promotion from gun lobbyists looking to capitalize on tragedies like Newtown and other mass shootings. ‘The reality is that in America, fewer people are owning more guns,’ said Watts. ‘They have to keep marketing to [gun owners] to buy more weapons.’” They don&#8

As we pointed out earlier, the Empire State gun grab is a go. Make the jump for images of the rifles listed above . . . [h/t Don]

“This is not Tokyo, this is not Finland. This is the United States of America.” – Texas Lieutenant Governor candidate Dan Patrick, To GOP, gun rights a big weapon for votes [at dallasnews.com]

A gun dealer (not shown) who was prosecuted and sentenced to federal prison during the aftermath of Fast & Furious may soon walk free. A Federal magistrate ruled that Ian Garland deserves a new sentencing hearing due to errors made in the original proceeding, which saw him convicted because, according to prosecutors, he “had reason to believe the firearms he sold were destined for Mexico.” For his part, Ian is protesting his innocence, saying “I’m nothing more than a scapegoat. I’m here because the ATF let me sell for 18 months to people they knew were smuggling arms to Mexico…. It’s because of that stupid Fast and Furious operation.” His attorney added, “After these guns surfaced in Mexico and a Border Patrol agent was shot dead, they kind of reversed course and started prosecuting this firearms dealer that they were allowing to sell. And I honestly don’t think Ian fully knew what was happening with these guns.” But I bet Holder did&#823

“Brandon James was in for quite a shock Tuesday night,” myfoxdetroit.com reports. “He says he went to bring in the garbage bins when he realized his daughter’s car, just recently driven in from Colorado for Thanksgiving, had been stolen – right out of their Ridgewood Street driveway on Detroit’s west side. Inside the 2013 Nissan Ultima was one thousand rounds of exploding ammunition.” Holy gang bangers go BANG Batman! Exploding ammo! “Police treated this incident as a high priority; the massive amounts of explosive ammunition is said to be armor piercing.” Armor piercing exploding ammo? Now that IS a serious sitch. “In a matter of hours police located the vehicle only three blocks away, but it was up on blocks. The wheels and rims were gone – and so was all of the ammunition.” The

By Kristen May

I grew up in a family where wild game, from pheasant and duck, to antelope and deer, was a regular feature of the table. I can remember fighting with my siblings for the last piece of deer sausage from my grandfather’s last hunt, and winter meals of pheasant cacciatore. N.R.A membership simply was a fact of life for my grandfather and his brothers, and yet I was never afforded an opportunity to so much as see my grandfather’s prized hunting rifles. I don’t think it was any conscious decision on the part of the men in my family, I simply think it never occurred to them to buy the coveted Red Ryder BB gun for the nieces and granddaughters as they did for the nephews and grandsons . . .

As a consequence, my only gun education came from the: “if you ever see a gun anywhere call an adult immediately” and the “Little Johny

[h/t Aharon]

If you’re like a lot of us, you double up your hearing pro, especially when shooting indoors. Some type of in-the-ear plugs under a pair of muffs. On the plus side, it’s a cheap solution that does a good job of protecting your ears and making sure you’ll be able to hear your grandchildren someday. Assuming you want to. But it can be hard to carry on a conversation or hear range instructions. But Essency is has come up with a new solution, GunSonics!, for smart phone owners designed to turn your inexpensive passive ear muffs into active hearing protection that they say outperforms expensive electronic muffs. Basically, you buy their $10 app for your phone, shove standard earbuds in your audio canals, then put your passive hearing pro over the top. We’ll be giving GunSonics! a try to see if it’s worthy of that exclamation point or not. In t

By Andrew in AZ

The M16 rifle has been in U.S. military service for nearly five decades. Some features such as barrel length, calibers, sighting options, and choice of hand guards may have evolved over the years but the basic components and operating system designed by Eugene Stoner remains unchanged. With the M16’s continued use into the 21st Century, much has been written about preventive maintenance, care and cleaning of this rifle in recent times. With the present use of the M4 Carbine, it is easy to overlook the lessons of the past . . .

I don’t normally review books–there are those who doubt I can actually read–but I do come across a gem every once in awhile. One recent find is the M16A1 Rifle, Operation and Preventive Maintenance published by

By Jonathan Yaphet

Gun laws suck. Yes, truly groundbreaking stuff you just read, I’m sure. What I am addressing specifically, though, are state carry laws. People who carry (or in a few too many places, people who want to carry but cannot due to ridiculous laws) know that we don’t actually live in a single continuous country. We live in a group of 50 separate countries, each with really lax border security and a common language . . .

Each one of these sovereign states (see what I did there?) has their own set of gun laws and none of them are identical. Most of these laws are a hodgepodge of competing cultures, ideals, and generations spanning up to and over 200 years of legislation. While I am sure most of the readers are familiar with some of the more infamous examples, such as California, New York, and Illinois, even states that are considered to be gun friendly have

“Nearly 1,000 people have been charged under the NY Safe Act in the eight months since the tougher gun control law was passed, according to the state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services,” syracuse.com reports. “Nearly 90 percent were accused of a crime that pre-dates the new act – including having a sawed-off long gun or an unregistered pistol – but was elevated to a felony when the Safe Act went on the books Jan. 15. The arrests dealing with the more controversial portions of the Safe Act, including possession of a large capacity magazine or a newly defined ‘assault weapon,’ are far fewer . . . Across the state, 20 pe

When I first saw the Hera Arms magazines, I was excited. It was like they took Magpul’s design and improved the optics, making it look bad-ass with a space age twist. It was cool, and I’m always happy to give a cool new design some exposure in the hopes that they keep producing quality stuff. But my hopes were soon dashed the very first time I loaded up a magazine . . .

That, ladies and gentlemen, is what it looks like when the feed lips on a magazine split. I loaded this magazine exactly once, slammed it into the magazine well just like I’ve done with my Magpul PMAGs countless times before, and it started malfunctioning m

By John Sager

In my relatively limited time as a gun enthusiast, I’ve found that there are at least two groups of people who commonly get screwed over in the great wide world of firearms: 1) those with small hands, and 2) lefties. And of course, I fall into both of these groups. After taking a few classes from KR Training here in the Austin area (reviewed on TTAG), I became acutely aware of the idea of gun fit and trigger reach. Although I consider myself a card-carrying GLOCKophile, I realized I’d needed to compromise the grip on my Glock 19 in order to get my trigger finger off the frame. In short, the gun just didn’t fit me as well as it could . . .

So as I entered market for a competition-suited pistol, I knew I wanted something easy to shoot that would provide me the best fit possible. Any southpaw-friendly features would be a bonus. Enter the

Ohio State Seal

As with most states, Ohio pre-empts local governments from enacting gun ordinances that are stricter than state law.   To allow such laws would make the exercise of Second Amendment rights a legal minefield, as it would be practically impossible to keep up with hundreds of variations in the law that could make a perfectly legal act on one side of the street a serious crime on the other side. Cleveland challenged the preemption law in 2010, claiming that “home rule” prevented the state from restraining the cities’ power. The Ohio supreme court, though, upheld earlier rulings in favor of state authority to protect Second Amendment and state constitutional rights . . .

B

“This tragedy comes down to his access to guns of mass destruction. At a scrawny 112 pounds he was not much of a physical threat. With his Bushmaster AR-15 he was a killing machine. If anything, this report vindicates the passage of the tough new gun laws in Connecticut, broadening the definition of assault weapons that cannot be sold in the state, prohibiting the sale or purchase of high-capacity magazines like those used in the Newtown shooting, and requiring more in-depth background checks for all gun purchases.” – Editorial, Lanza report leads back to issue of guns [at theday.com]

The guys over at 3-Gun Nation had hoped that they would get a big response from the 3-gun community for the regional matches of 2014, but they never expected it to be quite this big. The plan was for the registration for the four regional matches to open at 9 PM the night of Thanksgiving, but as the appointed hour arrived the site was completely inaccessible. Apparently the load was simply too much, and everything stopped working. It was like watching the launch of Obamacare all over again. . .

My day job is working for a large hosting company, and so I see this all the time — companies that don’t have enough servers to handle the load and flop spectacularly when they have something big going on. It’s one of the reasons I have come to love the F5 LTM/GTM, and to a lesser extent the Brocade ADX. But I guess the 3GN guys skimped a bit on the hosting and are paying the price. Here’s the email that went out when they finally ca

I’m surprised, but every-YouTube-channel-and-it’s-brother didn’t put out a “blowing up a turkey” video for Thanksgiving. I’m not sure if it’s just because pumpkins are cheap and turkeys aren’t, but I’m strangely pleased, because even I wasn’t looking forward to a week+ of exploding turkey. In fact, only one of my subscribed channels did a turkey video, but it was Jerry Miculek, and he did it in style. No C4, no det cord, no .50BMG, not even Tannerite. Just a massive 400 grain .460 Weatherby Magnum at about 2600 feet/sec. Watch that bird come apart at 20,000 frames per second! After the jump, a few Black Friday sale alerts for your shopping pleasure. . .

First, the MidwayUSA .22LR ammo backorder deal that I told you about back on Halloween is still available. A 1400-round bucket of Remington Golden Bullet for $59.99 + shipping (limit 1) can be backordered with an expected in-stock date of 1