The Truth About Guns

“Chicago police officers are trained to use firearms to save lives and defend law-abiding citizens,” Chicago Fraternal Order of Police Prez Mike Shield told chicago.cbs.local. “It is an insult that a state certified law-enforcement officer cannot carry his duty weapon at an NFL event.” Does that mean that the existing ban against concealed carry for the general public now in effect at all NFL games throughout the country is not an insult against law-abiding citizens who want to defend themselves? The news org also quotes “two veteran Chicago police officers” who disagree with the policy. “If you don’t have someone that could respond to a deadly-force incident tha

We’ve been given access to some radical self-defense ammo specifically engineered for shotguns. Well, a shotgun. The Remington 870. According to our man Potterfield, it’s “top of the class” for stopping power. Then again, he said the exact same thing about the Marlin .30-30. Anyway, I could go out and buy an 870 but I already own three tactical scatterguns. Equally, I just blew the budget on $600 worth of police gear for an upcoming series. So if there’s anyone in the Austin area who has a Remmy 870 with which we can play, please send an email to guntruth@me.com with REMINGTON 870 in the subject bar. Oh, and if you have a high speed camera, a watermelon and a dead pig, that would be excellent too.

New information suggests that Mayor Bloomberg and his personally-funded Mayors Against Illegal Guns national gun control organization have teamed up with Mayor Rahm Emanuel and are indeed the people behind the new proposal in Illinois to slap anyone with a gun with a 3-year mandatory minimum prison sentence. Under this new proposal, people like Scotty Pippen and State Senator Donnie Trotter, both caught in recent years carrying firearms for personal defense, would be sent to the Illinois Department

Your humble correspondent was there on the fateful night when the Exeter Town Council shirked its responsibility to issue concealed carry permits to residents and punted the job to the RI Attorney General. This they did in front of dozens of townies and an equal amount of concerned NRA members. All of whom were pissed off because RI cities and towns are “shall issue” for the CCW permitting process, whereas the Attorney General’s office operates on a “may issue” basis—despite the RI Constitution’s crystal clarity on gun rights (“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”) The council’s excuse: they didn’t have the resources for the job. In other words, they wanted residents to jump through lots of hoops for their permit and didn’t want to be responsible for the hoopla. The

I’m not allowed to tool up in my workplace thanks to the big, bold 30.06 sign on the front door. A policy that I’ve questioned multiple times with my site leader to no avail. Subsequently, when I leave the building for lunch, I generally stop by my truck to grab my XD(m). If a coworker is driving, this makes for a conversation starter. One of my coworkers has repeatedly chided me for carrying. He’s also 6′ 6″ and a former collegiate athlete. I tried the usual approaches to change his mind, and while he was accepting of my decision to carry, he still felt it was unnecessary. Felt it was unnecessary . . .

This afternoon he relayed a story to me about a urban outdoorsmen [ED: homeless guy] physically threatening him as he got in his car at Starbucks yesterday. He managed

DoubleTap Defense pocket pistol didn’t get a lot of love in our latest grab-off competition with the Kahr PM9. It might have something to do with the masochistic pleasures of firing the .45 derringer. As Jeremy S. pointed out in his three-star review of the DoubleTap, shooting the entry-level .45 caliber version is a bit like shaking hands with a sea anemone. Diehard DoubleTap fans can solve the problem in two ways: buy the ported .45 or the the 9mm version (ported or non-ported). But what if you’ve already bought the non-ported .45

Brandy Vega wasn’t exactly thrilled with the Armed Intelligentsia’s response to her last video on off-body carry. So, in the great tradition of Margaret Thatcher, Ms. Vega is back, handbagging her on-body armed antagonists. Sure, Brandy repeats a lot of the points from the first video, but she also took the opportunity to re-enact her purse draw (after I pointed out that it was a bit, uh, hesitant). As Lola is wont to say, BA-BAM! As for me, nope. I reckon the downside of losing control of your firearm with off-body carry is greater than the downside of a slower draw. Once again, your thoughts?

Yes, Brandy’s video is :15 stem to stern. But the challenge remains: tell us why you carry a gun in a comment below using ten words or less. If you’re feeling slightly more ambitious, upload a ten second or less clip to YouTube and send the link to guntruth@me with the words “WHY I CARRY A GUN” (all caps) in the subject bar. We’ll post the good ones on our Facebook page. Meanwhile, Brandy’s in the studio today. I asked her to counter the antis’ argument that owning a gun puts you at more risk than not owning one.

There are people in the world who have an encyclopedic knowledge of firearms, ammunition and all things that go bang. They can tell you, down to the exact hour, when Maxim first figured out the mechanism behind his famous machine gun. As for me, I’m not quite that good — I still need to rely on Wikipedia from time to time. And even then, there are some obscure guns that even I can’t remember, much less know how they work and can’t find any schematics for. For those in need of a refresher, the Firearms Guide comes to the rescue — now available on DVD for PC and Mac . . .

Gentleman,

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. That statement was not a part in any of our discussions. Unfortunately, the EVOLVE Facebook page is run by interns and the current communication is abysmal. Rest assured that this matter will be handled as quickly as possible.

Dan was brought into this discussion to move towards a civil gun safety discussion…never a gun rights discussion.

I am on this and will be back to you soon. In the mean time, I respectfully request that cooler heads prevail here. I will have a reaction from Dan Coonan as soon as possible.

Dave Dietz
Director of Marketing
Coonan Inc.

Coonan, the premium pistol purveyor, is trumpeting their new association with Evolve. The organization bills itself as a “group of gun owners, gun store owners, moms, professionals, leaders, and NRA members” with a goal of creating “a new American gun culture where everyone is responsible for saving lives.” In their press release, Coonan says their goal is to encourage people to be ‘responsible gun owners, not dumbasses.’ That’s always good advice which Coonan could have benefitted from themselves. Maybe it would have kept them from being taken in by an obviously anti-gun false flag operation and proudly announcing the fact to the world . . .

Like the laughable

Are you planning to get up early and go out trolling for deals on Black Friday in your best Christmas sweater? Yeah, join the club. The good news is the FBI is going to make it easier to cross those ballistic baubles off your shopping list this year. If you can find a gun store that opens early enough (and uses the NICS E-check system), you’ll be able to pick up that P226 MK25 for your sister or the CZ 550 Medium Lux your kid’s been bugging you about as early as 4:30 a.m. Here’s the NSSF’s announcement:

The FBI NICS Section has announced extended hours of service on Friday, Nov. 29, 2013 (“Black Friday”), for E-check

“Like the broader Republican Party, the pro-gun movement is now dominated by slash-and-burn extremists who are ideologically extreme, disdainful of compromise, and incapable of critical, long-term thinking. There will come a day, probably sooner rather than later, when events like “Guns Save Lives Day” will no longer be viable fundraisers, when changing demographics will result in an American public that is totally offended and alienated by such antics. Alan Gottlieb and his ilk might be bloody rich by that point, but they will also be decidedly out of business.” – Josh Horwitz, What ‘Guns Saves Lives Day’ Tells Us About the Pro-Gun Movement [at huffingtonpost.com]

When you can’t use a gun, use your wits. A woman in Washington, D.C. scared off a would-be mugger Monday night by telling him she was an intern for the NSA and had no cash to give him. When he demanded her phone, she told him that due to her employment, it would be tracked “within minutes” by the NSA and would be more trouble for him than it was worth. Deciding that tangling with the NSA was more than he bargained for, he ran off. It’s good that it worked out well for the woman (who most assuredly does not work for the NSA), but I wouldn’t bet my life on it working twice . . .

In case you were wondering, yes, people are actually getting in trouble for having more than 7 rounds in a magazine in New York. A Lockport, NY man was

On paper, the TTAG 3-Star review DoubleTap has it all over the Kahr PM9. It’s cheaper ($499 vs. $786 retail). It shoots .45 caliber bullets (famous for stopping speeding locomotives with a single round) vs. the Kahr’s 9mm pills. The DoubleTap’s also more concealable in every direction and way more iPhone-esque. Then again, the Kahr gives you 6+1 chances to stop a credible imminent threat of death or grievous bodily harm and a seven-round spare mag to stay in the fight. The DoubleTap has (surprise!) two rounds and offers no reasonable expectation of a combat reload. I know which one I’

The Illinois State Police have released the legally-binding design for private property owners in the Land of Lincoln who want to turn their property into a criminal enrichment zone. Here’s the official 411:

Owners of any statutorily prohibited area or private property, excluding residences, where the owner prohibits the carrying of firearms must clearly and conspicuously post the Illinois State Police approved sign, in accordance with Firearm Concealed Carry Act, at the entrance of the building, premises or real property. Please refer to Section 65 (Prohibited Areas) of the Firearm Concealed Carry Act for more information on statutory requirement

By Don Urbatsch

The new release of The Hunger Games is coming out soon and it got me thinking. I’ve read the series as I have children in the target demographic and I like to be up on the popular culture and personally verify the media that they consume. What I was thinking however is, how can the concept of a tyrannical, elitist, overreaching government be such an easy concept to accept in a work of young adult fiction, but be dismissed as having the proverbial snowball’s chance in hell of ever happening in our reality? . . .

There must be a name for this social phenomenon. I wouldn’t know what it is, but I believe it’s a function of the length of time a society is removed from certain historical events. The founders of our country were acutely aware of their own history and if you tried to suggest that a government would never overreach its constitutional authority, I

“Horn Lake police say the gun of a Tunica County sheriff’s deputy, who received an apparently self-inflicted wound, has disappeared from the scene,” the newstimes.com reports. Now there’s something you don’t read everyday. Or take at face value. ”The shooting occurred about 6:30 a.m. Thursday in the parking lot of a Horn Lake apartment complex as the deputy, Angela White, was getting out of her car. The gun, which was inside her purse, fired and the bullet hit the deputy in the side. Investigators said she apparently dropped her purse a

“I support a civilian’s right to bear arms and protect the home and possess firearms,” Michael Mordaga tells northjersey.com, “if allowed to have one.” See what he did there? The civilian director of the Hackensack police supports New Jersey residents’ right to bear arms and protect the home. If a Hackensack resident wants to bear arms outside the home, fuhgeddaboutit. And clock that caveat: “if allowed to have one.” According to who, exactly? Why, the