Month: April 2009
Cowboy Fast Draw at GBR IV
Mr. Completely gives us an overview of what Cowboy Fast Draw is all about. He’s planning an event at GBR IV where folks will get to try out this kind of shooting, which involves wax bullets propelled by shotgun primers. Looks like a lot of fun.
NRA Ballots – Did You Get One?
You’ve heard us talking about NRA voting for months, but what if you didn’t get a ballot? Do you think you should have received one? Are you pretty confident you’ve kept your membership up for 5 years straight with no lapses or upgraded/purchased a life membership in advance of the ballot mailing?
We just got word that someone who we sponsored as a life member upgrade didn’t receive a ballot even though he qualifies for one. Not good. If you are in the same boat, today is the last day to request a replacement ballot.
You need to call 1-800-672-3888, choose option 6, and then dial extension 3700. They will promptly send you a new ballot. You will need to return it ASAP since they need it in hand by April 26. Call today – don’t delay!
UPDATE: Nevermind. Apparently someone in the Secretary’s office is giving out false information. Yesterday was the deadline, regardless of what I was just told less than an hour ago by the same office about how they would process requests submitted today.
Of course, the guy who is now answering that extension also tried to convince me that more than 550 people work in the Secretary’s office and “any one of them could have answered the phone.” Um, no. I do NOT appreciate being lied to. There are not that many staffers in the Secretary’s Office, and their phone systems don’t randomly transfer a call to the Secretary’s Office to say, Competitive Shooting. Apparently, the Jim Land’s staff thinks I’m dumb enough to believe that calling a specific extension could get any random staffer to pick up – even the Federal Affairs staff in the DC office!
So then he lectured me on how tight they must run clean, tight elections and they can’t have any room for error. Oh, really? How about misstating to the membership about how many votes they have?
Yes, something I purposely chose not to bring to light earlier is how the division that handles elections incorrectly told the membership about how many people they could vote for depending on which section of the voting information they read. The ballot itself says you can vote for 26 people (25 regular seats, plus filling the rest of a term emptied by a resignation). However, as an observant commenter here noticed, on the page facing the ballot, they warn members they are only allowed to vote for 25 candidates.
You could say it’s a typo and no big deal. However, you can also say that given the typo is on the official report of the nominating committee, it’s a means of denying members their 26th vote. I guess it depends on how much you hate NRA as to how you see it. Considering that their biggest problem for disqualified ballots are people who vote for the wrong number of candidates, it’s not exactly a minor issue. (Last year there were almost as many disqualified ballots for the wrong number of votes as the difference between the last winner and first loser. In other words, enough to potentially swing an election.)
So, those clean, tight elections? Yeah, so much for that. Giving out false deadlines, denying a 26th vote to members, and then lying about how many staff are in your division…not clean nor tight.
Total Bans on Juvenile Possession
Professor Volokh takes a look at the issue of under-21 possession on possessing any firearm in New York City.
Would the right to keep and bear arms not fully apply to under-21-year-olds, the way some constitutional rights today don’t fully apply to under-18-year-olds (consider the right to sexual autonomy, the right to marry, the right to abortion, which could be limited through certain kinds of parental consent laws, and likely the right to bear arms itself)? Or does the right apply to all adult citizens — unless otherwise disqualified by reason of felony conviction or the like — under today’s age of majority, regardless of what the age of majority was at the time? Or has the right always extended to everyone 18 and above, regardless of the age of majority for other purposes?
I’m going to guess, as with most rights, some restrictions will be permitted while others will not. At the very least, I would imagine it would be unconstitutional to ban all juvenile possession of arms, for any purposes.  But it’s a good question to start asking.
Those Urban Gun Blog Readers?
Looking through Google Analytics today, satisfying my curiosity about the makeup of my audience, I am surprised by where my readers come from. Out of roughly 30,000 returning visitors in the past month, they come from the following states:
| State | Visits | Percentage |
| Pennsylvania | 3,385 | 11.40% |
| Virginia | 2,315 | 7.80% |
| Texas | 2,218 | 7.47% |
| California | 1,837 | 6.19% |
| New York | 1,609 | 5.42% |
| Ohio | 1,293 | 4.36% |
What’s more interesting is that if you look at my top locales for those top states:
| Locale | Visits | Percentage (of state visitors) |
| Philadelphia, PA | 407 | 12.02% |
| Fairfax, VA | 327 | 14.43% |
| Austin, TX | 286 | 1.80% |
| Los Angeles, CA | 310 | 16.88% |
| New York, NY | 795 | 49.41% |
| Columbus, OH | 323 | 24.98% |
This is just a small example. But I was surprised to find the city of my largest readership is actually New York City, representing half of my total traffic from the State of New York. Philadelphia is the number two overall city. The number two city in California for readership is none other than San Francisco. Austin won in Texas, but all the big Texas cities were pretty well represented. Number three city overall? Wasington D.C. Not too surprising, really, considering how much I blog about politics. Traffic is mostly from federal government sources, defense contractors, and the Brady Campaign.
A lot of my readership is urban. Considerably more so than I would have expected. How’s that for breaking down stereotypes? We’re talking about return visits here too, not just people who happened across the site on a Google search, so these visits can be reasonably called readers. I’m not complaining. People in New York City, Washington D.C. and Philadelphia are exactly the kinds of folks we need to be reaching.
More Assault Foods
We talked about assault food a few weeks ago. Now we have another example of this menace. I bring you the BA-K-47.
Via Robb.
Anti-Aircraft Weapon?
The New York or LA Times I could almost forgive, but the Idaho Stateman should know a Browning .30 caliber machine gun from a .50 caliber anti-aircraft weapon.
The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has traced many guns seized at scenes of drug violence in Mexico to U.S. commercial sources. But determining the source of military-grade weapons such as grenades and fully automatic machine guns is more complicated.
The ATF says the grenades are mostly smuggled in through Central America, and have been traced back to the militaries of many countries, from South Korea to Spain and Israel. Some may be leftovers from the Central American civil wars.
Assailants have fired on government aircraft performing anti-drug missions in Mexico in the past, but apparently never with the caliber of weapon found Monday.
The Mexican government are lying about what they are finding, lying about where it’s coming from, and our media are buying it hook line, and sinker.
UPDATE: I realize the Idaho Statesman could use some help with terminology, as could some other journalists. This is an anti-aircraft gun:
Rendell Pushing Gun Control
Just last week, a Rendell spokesman said he wasn’t going to pursue gun control. It now appears that statement came with an expiration date:
Rendell, at the Allegheny County Courthouse to announce economic development grants, declined to give details on his gun control request. He plans to announce more at a press conference tomorrow in Harrisburg, he said.
At the very least, he said, he would like state legislators to allow local governments to set their own gun laws, something prohibited in 1996, he said.
It’s not going to happen Ed. We’ll fight for preemption like our gun rights depend on it, because they do. If local governments are allowed to set their own laws, any of us who travel with firearms, which we do regularly both for self-defense, to travel to matches, to hunt, or what have you, risk unknowingly committing criminal offenses. We will have no idea where we are and aren’t in compliance with the law.
Presumably Ed Rendell is OK with making millions of Pennsylvanians criminals because they happen to own guns. Preemption is a bedrock principle. There’s no negotiating on that. End of story.
UPDATE: It looks like Ed Rendell is using the Josh Sugarmann playbook by asking the Legislature to ban “automatic weapons”
Reasoned DiscourseTM Breaking Out Again
Another gun blog points to an entanglement with a blog that asks what evidence we have that Obama is anti-gun. Apparently she doesn’t want to listen to the answers. The greatest bit of evidence is Obama’s history with the Joyce Foundation. That sealed the deal for me.
So far, Obama hasn’t expressed any desire to burn political capital trying to push gun control in a serious way, but that has more to do with it not being smart politics, than because he’s a real believer in gun rights. Obama is anxious not to repeat the mistakes of Bill Clinton, which is smart on his part. But what happens when he’s done spending all our kids’ money?
UPDATE: Looks like the post linked was removed. Reasoned Discourse strikes again!
HK32
The Firearms Blog catches some Mexican Police with the unusual HK32.