Latest Round's Sausage

Plenty of folks reported on the failure of recent gun control legislation.  Yay.  Good.  Most of the prize showcases up for bid on the Gun-Bans Is Right were various flavors of gutting due process.  So an attack on the 5th Amendment, that Liberals normally really like, and not the 2nd.  Which is a change of pace for Bloomberg's flying monkeys.

We won?  No.  Not really.  We could only lose.  We didn't lose.

My question is, what did they offer our side?  You want us to yield on due process, that is a big leap.  You gotta pay a big price in return.  How come non of the gun control folks thought it necessary to throw a compromise in there to get this bill over the finish line. 

Like I said, it's have to be something big.  Vermont style conceal handgun carry nationwide?  My preference is to KEEP all the due process AND have Vermont carry, but I am talking politics here. 

Oh, right.  Election year.  These bills were never supposed to be about compromise.  They were about electioneering.  It didn't matter if they won or lost.  They had to draw lines, not rules.

But if you were making sausage, and you were a politician, and not someone that likes the Constitution or are a firearm enthusiast like us... Say you were John Cornyn or McCain; Tim Manchin or Kelly Ayotte.  What do you haggle over when Diane Feinstein calls for a big bite of the apple?  She gets a big bite of Apple A, but in return she gives up:  WHAT?  To ge the NRA off of folks backs they are gonna need to get something for us in return.  Again she is always asking for a LOT.  She has to reciprocate with something BIG. 

Or we can just watch the spectacle on the House floor as there is a sit-in protesting against civil rights led by a guy that 50 years did sit-ins protesting for civil rights.  Gross.

After a Ban

Nothing is accomplished.

In Australia, since enacting a gun ban that is impossible to do in the USA:

No change is homicides, increases in assaults and sex assaults.

So what did disarming regular folks gain the regular folks?  What did it gain for the Aussie gov't?  What did it gain the criminals class of Australia?  I guess criminals and government officials have to worry less about getting shot by regular folks they have ticked off...

Police Doctrine

Wasn't one of the lessons learned from Columbine is you get a few officers and go in to an active shooter situation?

Well, they did do that in Orlando.  But then they pulled back out.  Because of bombs or hostages or summat?

Didn't they have bombs and hostages in Columbine, too?

Does the doctrine NOW have to be "you get a few officers and go in to an active shooter situation, and you PERSIST."

It's a hard thing, I know.  And easy for me to say, a week later and in the safety of a chair behind a keyboard, and I mean no rancor to the Orlando PD, honestly.  I don't know if I'd have the huevos to do so, if I were a cop.

It Trump == Hitler

People are gonna think it might be ok to murder him or people that support him.  And by 'people' I mean easily malleable Democrat youts. Jacobins. Wait, LABOUR?

After this weekend's attempted Trump assassination, Dems need to moderate their language. https://t.co/30jQjFQu7t

— Instapundit.com (@instapundit) June 20, 2016

Range work

So a few weeks back I went to live fire with my trainer, after qualifying in the simulator.  .22lr only for now.  But I can work on my own.  While it has been a BUSY month, with 400 mile trips hither and yon every weekend for a while, I still got to the range once or twice because of the break throughs from the training session.  The skill is perishable, and I wanted to reinforce what I learned.

Good news and bad news.

The good news is I sorta held onto the improvement.  The bad news is, it's only sorta.

This is two weeks ago.  I marked the order I went with the targets.  I loaded a magazine and fired it off at #1, then switched to #2 with the second magazine, &c. 

One, crappy, Two, crappy, Three, no better.  Ok, darnit, calm down.  Think about the fundamentals.  Relax.  Trigger pull.  Don't hunch up your head and shoulders.  Don't grip tights as Dick's hatband.  It's .22, and he promised to transition to a tighter grip later.  For now, relaxxxxxxxxxx. 

Four is better.  Five is even better.  Hey, next session go ahead and run the target out and back to see how you did.  Maybe you could have caught yourself at Two.  Six... good.  Notice none of the shot are low and right on 4, 5, and 6...  Only 10 rounds left.  Seven.. meh.  Where is the fifth shot?  Dunno.  Eight, I had a negligent shot.  The 'Dammit' shot.  Finger was on the trigger before the sight was on the target.  Paused and calmed before shooting the next four rounds.  Seven and Eight is showing some fatigue.

Last week is this target. 

Again with the needing to settle in.  One Two and Three.... not so good.  Four...  THERE we go.  The flyer in the center is from the Three string.  I am forgetting my training again.  Glad I ended six that way.

It's quite humbling.  Maybe I'll be good enough in five years if I keep at it and put a ragged hole in the center.  But it's stall a long hill to climb, no?  It will be something to just have them all be like number Four.  With two or three shots in the seven ring and everything else in well inside the five.

Oh, my local range has improved the lighting, and that is appreciated.  But there is still a 25 foot minimum distance, so this is all that.  8 yards.  More practice this week.  Maybe tomorrow.  That's be good.  Maybe go twice a week.  Oooo, I should oil this gun.  Ceiner conversion kit.

What if?

What if?

What if, on a lark, we gave Obama carte blanch and he enacted ALL the gun control schemes that have been bandied about lately.

Universal Background Checks.  Sale denial if there is a HINT of anything the FBI or local police have a slight concern about.  Denial to everyone on the watchlist after it has been doubled and include all their family members, too.  Assault weapons ban and mandatory turn in of the 10s of Millions of so called assault weapons already out there.

Lets say he got his wish in January of 2013. 

Would there be any impact?  Would Orlando have happened?  Yes.  He was a security guard.  He coulda swung another weapon source if the Florida gunstores only had lever guns and revolvers. 

Give Obama more leeway.  Let him repeal the 2nd amendment 3 years ago.  Like we were Britain.  Mandatory turn ins.

Gun deaths would INCREASE dramatically then.

Because this isn't Britain or Australia.  They can't even get peeps in Connecticut to register their so-called assault weapons.  Some people would turn their guns in.  More people would ignore the order and dig in their heels.  And a non trivial number would resist, violently. 

I know a lot of gun bloggers.  Reasonable and nice folks.  Not the foaming at the mouth sorts you hear about and meet occasionally and know are out there.  But damned if a few of them reasonable sorts would get a bug up there and fight back.  Of course the foaming at the mouth sorts will. 

So, what is the point?  Nothing you propose for gun control will work, and what will work you don't dare consider if you can think beyond Stage 1 and consider the consequences that would be worse than the cure.

Pesky Constitution

Senator Joe Manchin, D-WV, tweets "Due process is what's killin us now"


If he gets to upend the 5th Amendment along with the 2nd, that I get to play alone.  I am going to ignore the 13th!  But not in a racist way.  That's been done before, and really, it's not my cuppa tea.


No, I am after a different type of chattel to add to my coffle.  Ima gonna run down and capture rich urban white Democrats!  To start, the prize of my stable, will be that matched pair of Rosie O'Donnel and Michael Moore!  I'll make em wrassle!  In the nude!  And covered in cooking oil.  I'll post videos to Youtube and make a mint.

I posit

I posit that we should do away with the NICS background check system altogether.  Every high profile shooting has been done by someone how had no trouble passing the check.  Therefore, NICS is a totally ineffective waste of resources.

It accomplishes nothing.

And if a felon is caught up by it... well no one goes to arrest him afterwards, anyway, so what is the point?  If you don't want a felon to get a gun then don't let him out of prison.  If he is safe enough to let out of prison and vote (now, in Virginia) you might well allow him the means to defend himself.

Rectum?

Damn near KILLED him!

And I see Everytown is using their usual source for statistics.

Help stop hate from turning into murder. #Filibuster to #DisarmHate pic.twitter.com/v3urbAyCX5

— Everytown (@Everytown) June 15, 2016

There goes another run

I was sorta thinking about getting me an upper, but... I will wait now.  They are probably all gone at this point.  May never come back with Hillary a presidency and Mitch McConnell capitulating even now.  At least I didn't NEED anything.

Oh my... the next gun show is gonna be PACKED.

I bought ammo last week, fortunately.  So at least I am topped off.  Pistol, rifle, rimfire.  Good good. 

Have... Have I... Have I learned my lesson?  Huh.  Not so stupid now, somehow.

Well, Everytown Hates the Trump Gun Control Too

So that's everyone.

.@NRA is pushing a Cornyn Fake Out bill designed to confuse. Not a real solution to keep guns from terror suspects. pic.twitter.com/DECK4r58hf

— Everytown (@Everytown) June 15, 2016

Metro

O'Reilly is a David Frum quality metrocon.  But we knew that.

That said, more than half the writers of National Review are enthusiastically supporting 2nd Amendment rights right now on various .  So that is great news.  Ones there that are a bit squishy on the subject are too busy grumbling about Trump and having Schadenfreude whenever it appears Trumps has a misstep.

Wow, what an admission

Even the Washington Post admits that thousands upon thousands of people use guns to defend themselves every year!

That's a big deal and up from previous admissions of 'near zero' defensive gun uses by ordinary people they've been trying to tell me all my life. 

I think they lowball their estimate, and 1:6 is too low in their survey. But, hey, at least they have budged on the legitimate use of firearms.  That's a big step for them.  Credit where credit is due.  Now maybe the Post will help improve that ration by helping us expand gun bearing by the good guys.

Black Mamba

Tam notes that... no one in the gun community has ever heard that model of piston 'AR' has ever been known to have the moniker Black Mamba.


Odd.


Maybe someone is pulling the clueless media's leg?


"And this one is universally referred to as Shooty McShootface.  Because it always shoots the bad guy in the face.  And this one is known as Whistling Death Tornada.   And, my favorite, this is the famous Two-Step Kaboom.  Isn't she a beauty.  Be sure to mention all those name in your news story or people will think you are a rube."

Holy Crap

It might not have been terrism.


It might have been self-hate.


That's F-ed up, Omar.

For the Record

I am not a Crazy Gun Rights Activist.  I am just a regular schmoe.  Like almost every other American, I own a gun or two.  I am so normal you'd barely notice me in public.

I am not the enemy.  At most I am your political opponent.

I didn't kill anyone in a club last weekend.  I didn't do that.  That is not my fault. 

The Constitution of the United States didn't kill anybody last weekend, either.

Stop trying to pin this on us.

None of your gun control schemes would have prevented last weekend had they been in place long ago.  Except maybe that one where you suspend the 5th Amendment for folks on secret government lists.  But, being a fan of the 2nd, it turns out I am a fan of the other rights listed in the Bill of Rights. 

Do you Lefties want to live in a world where President Trump can ignore the 5th Amendment?  Something to think on...

Background Checks

If the NICS system can't catch a guy like the Orlando shooter...  What's the point in having background checks? 


Oh.  For convicted felons.  I wonder if it even catches them.

Mass Shootings

I've never been a big fan of crowds.

And trapped crowds seem to be target of these Terrorists.  Nightclub here, nightclub there, gathering near the Olympics, a summer camp on an Island.

But they also hit schools and Navy offices.  The latest big crowd I was in was the bleachers of a High School for a graduation.  I'd have carried, but, school.  I did manage to get the family to sit on the top row, to help with egress, but even then, exits are limited by the fence. 

Before that?  Crowded gun show.  NRA convention.  The first isn't the safest option since you aren't supposed to be strapped with anything not zip tied, but...  And I am sure it is not the first option some monster considers when wanting to get his 72 virgins. 

I don't fly, so no crowded airport security line for me to be stuck in.  It is a rare event that I am eating at a restaurant THAT crowded. 

The subway is a death trap in more ways than one.

So, to start, I avoid terristy circumstances by not going to the waterholes that terrists like to drink at. 

But my life is pretty boring.  I don't go to concerts, I don't go dance clubs, I angle for doing things in states other than the restrictive on civil rights one I live in, which means non-local, thus, less likely.  Some people, their life isn't complete unless they are blackout drunk in a crush of thousands watching Jimmy Buffet try to relive the 1970s.

----

You know something?  I'm not the only one that thinks that way.  People with CCWs often consider this problem and go, "do I really want to go to a venue, crowded or not, that is more like to necessitate the use of my pistol?  No."

So when there is lament "if only a good guy with a gun was in that saloon, if only that was legal in Florida!"  then yeah, maybe.  But even if, quite a few carriers would still be choosing quieter less crowded pastimes.

I love Basil Fawlty

Is it OK to stigmatise someone who terminates the existence of a large number of other persons? Or is that prejudice https://t.co/dOhqVCSGEX

— John Cleese (@JohnCleese) June 13, 2016

Tam has a logbook

With it, she can tell you that that Glock over there was made in 1992 (notated when she looked up long ago) and has had its recoil spring replaced 428 round ago.


Hmmm.   Like many of Tam's notions this is one of those Good Ideas.  Well, for gun geeks with a bit of anal-retentiveness, for gun writers trying to accumulate data, and for regular Joe Schmoes, if they are of a mind.


I'm thinking I should do this NOW with my rebuilt and from scratch 1911s.  Since, A) I know precisely where they are and what is in them, and B) it's just them two, and maybe a 3rd later.  Or 4th on the outside.  Easy to monitor.  And the four chapter would look like this so far:

1. SpringRebuild:  307 rounds, plus extra on the barrel
2. 001:  2016 build, 0 rounds
3. 002: unbuilt
4. 003: unbought

Good ground zero there.


(And I need to pump the breaks and Tam-Queues.  The problem is she is one of the few active gun bloggers still blogging guns on my blogroll.  When there is only the one waterhole all the plains animals come for a drink.  I need to expand my reading list.)