The Truth About Guns

After the Sandy Hook slaughter, NRA Veep Wayne LaPierre called for an armed cop in every school across the length and breadth of this great land. Wrong answer. The correct response: eliminate Bush the Elder’s Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990. (If Second Amendment protections didn’t end at the school doors, anyone with a gun could protect kids through force of arms.) As we discovered in our post-Newtown spree killing school simulation, an armed cop in the school is nothing more than a sitting duck. I lie. These “school resource officers” are more than “shoot me first” targets. They’re law enforcement officers. Bored law enforcement officers. What’s an armed school-bound cop to do (

Sometimes in life you do something for no other reason than, “Hey, that sounds cool.” When a company like KG Coatings offers to bake on a custom camo scheme that matches the area you hunt, the answer is, “Yes!” Always. Forever . . .

Maybe I should back up. Above is a photo of my trusty hunting gun. A Ruger M77 Mark II in .243 WIN. I’ve taken to the field for nearly a decade with this gun and have taken down countl

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) is expected to release a draft rule dealing with stolen firearms. The rule is under review by the White House, which has 90 days before it is required to release it to the public for comment. No one knows what the rule will do or what purpose it would serve, other than to make already burdened gun dealers subject to more bureaucratic snares and tripwires. Since this process started in 1992 in the Clinton era, the number of gun dealers has plunged from 248,000 in 1993 to a bit less than 51,000 in 2012, a decline of nearly 80% . . .

The smaller the dealer, the more burdensome the bureaucratic record keeping becomes and this concentrates the dealers into smaller

The above still was taken from the Flash game The Slaying Of Sandy Hook Elementary. Click here to play. Although one wonders why one would unless one was a very sick individual. Or wanted insight into the mind of Australian game designer Ryan Lambourn. Mr. Lambourn created the game (and Super Columbine Massacre RPG and V-Tech Rampage!) as anti-gun agitprop. “Here we are, a year after the Sandy Hook shootings, in which 26 people were killed, 20 of which were first-graders, and absolutely nothing positive has come out of i

“A recent Mayo Clinic study points out that mass shooters tend to meticulously plan their crimes weeks or months in advance, undermining the idea that the mentally ill simply “snap” and go on shooting rampages while also complicating the notion of effective gun control through gun registries, since a methodical planner has plenty of time to obtain weapons through illegal channels.” – Zach Weissmueller, The Truth About Mental Illness and Guns [at reason.com]

The two cofounders of Orcish Operator have created a series of six gaming targets (three above, click to embiggen) for arms and archery with the goal of creating a product that would not only appeal to current gun enthusiasts but attract new people into the world of gun ownership and shooting sports. The targets draw inspiration from fantasy games and movies and are available in two sizes, 24”x36” and 12”x18”. Unfortunately, they do not appear to be “visible shot” targets like Shoot-N-C or Dirty Bird. Images of their other targets are available at their website and they are currently seeking crowdsourced funding through Indiegogo. . .

Shoulda been a Philly DGU. Really thin on information, but police are

Chris Reeve makes some legendary knives and the Sebenza is his masterpiece. This amazing knife is sharp enough to shave with and tough enough to stand in harm’s way. But it’ll cost you almost the price of a brand-new GLOCK (which is obviously not shown here.) Tyler Kee kindly lent me his pride and joy and I’ve been testing and playing with it for far too long. Jump over to The Truth About Knives for the full review . . .

“In most parts of Florida, you can buy a rapid-fire assault weapon at a private gun show without a criminal background check. But you do need one, complete with fingerprints, to help consumers sign up for health insurance,” William E. Gibson of sun-sentinel.com reports. To be fair, Gibson goes on to make the distinction between Americans exercising a Constitutionally protected right and entrusting personal health data to strangers sucking off the tit of political patronage. For our purposes, the appearance of the term “rapid-fire assault rifle” is more worrying. It’s a brazen attempt to [further] conflate semi-automatic rifles with fully-automatic machine guns. The People of the Gun may laugh, but this kind of Orwellian dou

ShootingTheBull410′s been conducting extensive testing to find out if there’s any ammo out there that will turn a .380 micro-pistol into an effective personal defense weapon.  So far he’s conducted 25 different tests in his “Ammo Quest”.  Could this Cor-Bon entry be the one .380 round to rule them all?  Find out by playing the video below, and check back next week when the final results of all the testing will be released right here on TTAG.

It has been nearly six months since I received a care package in the mail from the fine folks at KG Coatings that contained a mixed bag of lubricants and solvents. Now that I’ve depleted my healthy stock of chemicals, it’s time to finally render judgement. All ratings below are subjective and based on a 5-star scale.

KG-1 Carbon Remover –

“Man Dies After Gun Accidentally Fires in Clairemont,” nbcsandiego.com‘s headline proclaims, in that Steven King Christine kinda way. “San Diego police confiscated several firearms from a Clairemont home after a man’s gun accidentally fired and killed his best friend, officials said. Officers were investigating the shooting that took place around 1 a.m. Sunday at the home in the 4900-block of Gallatin Way in Northwest Clairemont. The gun owner was showing his friend a gun when the gun dropped to the ground and fired, shooting the friend in the chest according to San Diego police.” Did someone attempt to catch a falling gun, perchance? Or are we to believe that this particular gun mi

A few weeks back we reported on Noam Bramson’s campaign in Westchester County to be elected to the position of county executive. Bramson is currently the mayor of New Rochelle (where I grew up), and was running to unseat the incumbent Republican Rob Astorino. Instead of sticking to issues like taxes and economic development, Bramson’s campaign decided that the best way to win the election would be to demonize gun owners through a series of television ads (such as the one above, still hosted on Bramson’s YouTube channel) and imply that his opponent was an uncaring and heartless bastard for allowing law abiding citizens to legally purchase firearms through dealers who require background checks. From the

It’s been almost 18 months since I put up my review of the SLR-106, Arsenal’s 5.56mm Bulgarian AK. I’ve been lucky enough to put another thousand-odd rounds through it since then, and it’s time for a long-term test update . . .

Reliability: Still Perfect, With The Right Magazines.

The Arsenal didn’t give me a single FTF during the initial 1,000 round testing. It’s given me a grand total of four malfunctions since then, (about one for each ten full magazines fired) and ALL of them came from the two non-Bulgarian magazines that I tried out last spring. I took a chance on a couple of U.S.-manufactured Pro-Mag magazines in the immediate aftermath of Sandy Hook when all things Circle 10 were sold out or priced out of reach.

The Pro Mags were only $12 each (and they were in stock) so I gambled that at least one of them might be reliable. In fact they both were, b

Ever since I first bought an AR-15, I’ve wanted a fire selector switch that went “all the way to 11.” There’s something amazingly fun about firing as many small bits of lead as fast as mechanically possible and the grin it puts on people’s faces is astounding. Now, TacCon has come out with a trigger that (according to sources) when placed in the “3rd” mode, uses the force of the buffer slamming home to assist in resetting the trigger. Fast. It’s kind of like a bumpfire stock in that you’re still pulling the trigger for each round, but the gun is helping you out a bit. Each trigger ships with a letter from the ATF proclaiming its legality and, needless to say, we’ve asked to be put on the list for one. Stay tuned.

Every time there’s a discussion about gun laws in the United States, someone invariably brings up the old line about how you “can’t yell fire in a burning building” as the example of a reasonable restriction on rights. But where does that phrase come from? What does it mean? And what’s the appropriate parallel for gun rights in the United States? I’m no lawyer, but having read the applicable case law and possessing a modicum of common sense, I think I finally have a handle on this.

Let’s travel back in time for a moment to 1919. The United States has just stepped into the first World War, and with the high death tolls being experienced by all sides Uncle Sam is kicking the draft into high gear and hoovering up all the able-bodied men.

As with all wars there are war protesters, and the most vocal of these is Charles Schenck. While most protesters are content to scream from the sidelines,

When I first saw this, I thought it was a troll — someone who knew enough about gun owners to get their blood boiling and have a good laugh. But the more I read, the more I’m not sure. I mean, it might still be someone trolling the gun owners, but this reads like a wish list of proposals that we’ve already heard from organizations like the Brady Campaign and Moms Demand Action, and fits in nicely with their agendas. And the guy that wrote it did an AMA on Reddit not too long ago and appeared to genuinely want this to happen. Anyway, read it for yourself and see what conclusion you come up with . . .

The 28th Amendment, as drafted, will implement a series of common sense gun laws and implement new revenue str

“You combine the high tax load along with the fairly restrictive and fairly anti-gun stance that the state has, it makes it difficult to do business selling a product that the state doesn’t like.” – Just Right Carbines GM Anthony Testa, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s new gun-control law targets gun makers [at nydailynews.com]

Anyone who’s come through an airport in the last decade is familiar with the sight of a bored looking TSA officer standing (well, let’s be honest, usually sitting on a stool) at the opening where the secure terminal area dumps out into the unsecure area for arriving flights. It’s the furthest into the airport you can go when you’re waiting for a friend or a loved one to arrive. That TSA officer’s sole job is to tell ignorant people who try to go the wrong way that they can’t do that. Apparently that isn’t secure enough for Syracuse Hancock International Airport in Syracuse, NY, as . . .

they’ve become the first airport in the country to install new automated exit portals as part of a $60 million dollar renovation. The justification for installing the pods is that they replace police or security guards who would normally stand at the exit, therefore saving money. “We need to be vigilant and maintai

“The Austin, Texas, city council will meet next Thursday to consider a resolution that could eventually ban ’fast-food food restaurants from locating near areas that children frequent,’” reason.com reports. And not without reason. The report, I mean. The idea that another city council reckons it can regulate the restaurant trade to influence children’s diets is worthy of note—especially when the politicians proposing the putrid paternalism ply their perfidious plebianism in the right-thinking Lone Star State. Of course, we