Sorry for the lack of posting today, but things are going to be exceptionally busy for me into next year, so there will be days when things just don’t get off the ground blog wise. We’ve been finding it challenging to find a contractor to build our rather odd data center who doesn’t want to charge an arm and a leg. Because I’m cheap, I’m doing the plans instead of hiring out for it. The Township wants electrical plans. I don’t know much about making electrical plans, and after reading quite a bit about it, I still don’t know much about it, but I’m giving it a go anyway. Anyway, here is the news:
Looking for gun safe software for Android? Check out Seven Bit Software’s Gun Safe.
The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence Prevent Gun Ownership is now leaning on Visa to stop doing business with NRA. Visa offers and NRA credit card. Visa might get a whole dozen people really pissed off at them if they just ignore them!
A disarmed populace has nothing at all to fear from its government. No, nothing at all.
What a great time for some rifle OC, don’t you agree? I’m sure many people were educated.
The law on machine guns works the same in Pennsylvania as it does in Tennessee. Machine guns are illegal in Pennsylvania, except that it’s a defense to have complied with the provisions of the National Firearms Act. Affirmative defenses don’t necessarily keep you out of jail.
Rampage killings and the media.
This story talks about how Mom’s Demand Action is being dishonest, but more like MDAÂ played the rifle OC people for suckers. When anti-gun folks ask you to pose all scary with your rifles, don’t be a fool. It greatly worries me when I see “our side” being outsmarted by a group I generally think plays the game pretty poorly most of the time.
Prince Law Offices has more information about the 3D printed gun.
The 11 nations of America. I think that’s oversimplified, but interesting, nonetheless.
Did Dick Metcalfe deserve to be fired? I still maintain it’s not what he said, but that how he said it demonstrated a lot of ignorance, and it just so happened to be it’s the same ignorance perpetrated by our opponents in the gun control movement. Yes, the Second Amendment will have limits, like any other right. But Dick played into the notion that it is somehow quaint or different from other rights. That’s exactly what the Brady Center argues.
If any one had any doubts that many oc protesters are attention seeking losers who didn’t get enough hugs need only to look at that first story of the guy and his kid carrying in PHX. It’s AZ. He could have legslly carried concealed…. Or even a handgun OC. But no, he wanted to carry his rifle. And if he was ready scared of an attack, why even bring his son?
Personally, if fear of another shooter was his reason he should have left his kid at home and gone by himself, and carried both the sidearm and the rifle. Preferably and body armor…..
Make no mistake, the Clown Militia will fall over themselves trying to make gun owners look bad. Soccer game? Send in the clowns! Coffee shop? Send in the clowns! Airport in AZ? Send in the clowns, apparently!
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=clown+militia
If your political rivals ask for you to form a group and pose for a picture for them you’re being played.
Especially if it’s a group that’s known for smears and lies and exaggerations.
I’m sorry. I stand behind my belief that Guns & Ammo should have stuck to what it does best: review guns. Sometimes when the old gun “sportsmen” magazines venture into politics it brings a whiff of “good old [white] boys” who are just fine with what they own and find it peachy to start to define what’s good and righteous for the rest of us to own or what standards to measure up to to exercise a constitutional right. There is no strategy in Metcalf’s analysis, only, “sit down and shut up.”
We should not feel sorry for the uprising against his ridiculous screed, especially when he offers gun rights advocates nothing in this present day climate of “winner take all” for gun banners. The anger at things like this is part of why I see gun culture 2.0 taking shape more and more. Although sportsmen lead the noble charge and are responsible for as many people involved in the gun culture as there are today, we should also acknowledge that some are getting a bit long in the tooth. We can learn a lot from them, both good and bad, don’t get me wrong. Same thing with the politicians we thought were our “friends” as Andy B. continues to remind us.
“I stand behind my belief that Guns & Ammo should have stuck to what it does best: review guns.”
I’m grinning as I think of the irony, that in my time I have said the same thing about the NRA!
I have already gone way back down memory lane to recall that more than 50 years ago, G&A was in many ways the vocal voice of the nascent RKBA movement, while it was still not clear exactly what the NRA was, other than “interested and generally supportive.” However, there was no doubt at all that while G&A was a good mag, the preeminent “gun magazine” was the NRA’s “American Rifleman.” (Of course, the monthly feature “A Court Case of Consequence” in the old “American Rifleman” was of great interest to us RKBA zealots.)
On the Metcalf issue, it’s tough to say whether he deserved to be fired because we’re not dealing with all of the information that they had behind the scenes. If I was involved and saw anything closely resembling the “defense” he posted, then I would absolutely say that there’s no choice but for him to go. That reflected the fact that even if his column was simply poorly worded, he still didn’t understand how the issue and audience have evolved to a deeper understanding of constitutional rights. If he still didn’t get it even after the dustup, then he definitely didn’t deserve to keep his column.
Speaking of affirmative defense, what the hell is this? http://gunfreezone.net/wordpress/index.php/2013/11/06/state-attorney-tells-law-enforcement-to-stop-and-frisk-florida-gun-owners/
Metcalf made 2 major blunders;
1. He fails to take into consideration that gun owners have mortal enemies who are irrational, deceitful, and dishonest. If we give them the slightest opening, they will pervert it in the way most advantageous to their own position.
2. Therefore, we cannot discuss the issue in vague general terms (like “regulation”); it will be spun in a way to support the anti-gun position. Whenever speaking of anything related to regulation, we must be hyper-specific. For example, instead of speaking of restrictions on the “mentally ill” or “mentally defective,” we need to discuss separating the run-of-the-mill paranoid schizophrenics from those who are truly dangerous.
By failing to do this, Metcalf ended up giving aid and comfort to the enemy. This is rightly regarded as treason.
If Metcalf had argued for more gun control while demonstrating some knowledge of what he was talking about, it probably would have been controversial, but he’d probably still have his job. Instead, his op-ed was ignorant and disrespectful. Once you’ve outed yourself as someone who doesn’t know jack about gun rights and has little to no respect for gun enthusiasts’ opinions, you’ve basically given up any credibility on the topic. It’s as simple as that.
” When anti-gun folks ask you to pose all scary with your rifles, don’t be a fool.”
I learned that in 1964, the first time I was taking a municipality to court over a gun or hunting issue. A local paper asked me to pose with my gun, and I did. I didn’t look very scary, IMO, but then my varmint rifle may have looked like a “sniper rifle” to the uninitiated. I sort of became aware of deliberate “media bias” when another local paper printed that I had shot a “cow” (it was a “crow”) and then repeated that in what was supposed to be a retraction.
When the NRA Convention was in Pittsburgh CNN contacted me to do some sort of inane at-home spot. I anticipated what they would want, and when they got here refused to be filmed or shown with any of my guns. Instead I let them film me doing some reloading, but they were very disappointed. As I recall, what they showed on the air was five seconds or less. But since then, I have had second thoughts about having done even that.
Way before Sebastian’s time, our club held an “educational day” for the media, in support of New Jersey’s gun owners resisting their first “assault rifle” bans. It was held in Pennsylvania, rather than New Jersey, because a lot of the guns to be demonstrated were already banned in New Jersey. It did no good to speak of, and subsequently some of the footage filmed on our grounds turned up as carefully-edited anti-gun footage that totally misrepresented some aspect of what was filmed.
Long story short — public relations footage or photos MUST be kept under control by your own people, and never handed over to anyone else. It is no game for precocious amateurs or anyone who isn’t terminally cynical.
“Did Dick Metcalfe deserve to be fired?”
Seems to me Guns.com is asking for a dose of what G&A got immediately after the Metcalf column — and I hope they get it good and hard.
No rifles, just holstered pistols, and that picture would not have been manipulateable from any angle.
Leave the long guns in the trunk, there is exactly zero “upside” to OC-ing them for political reasons where pistol OC is legal and basically accepted.
Texas is not such a place. Long guns can be open carried, handguns cannot. Therefore, advocates of open carry in Texas who actually want to have an openly displayed firearm with them have to carry a rifle or a shotgun.
How’d that work out for them? Seeing a majority of the Legislature leaping forward to pass OC legislation?
Maybe CCW with signs and polite rational media responses by a designated spokesman might have done equally positive things with -zero- negative optics?