Guns – Page 1111 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Missouri Carry: “really a nonissue”

This article suggests that there has been no impact either way from Missouri’s concealed carry law:

â€œWhen they were debating this, one side was saying it was going to reduce crime and another was saying it was going to cause gunfights in the streets,â€ Franklin County Sheriff Gary Toelke told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. â€œI really havenâ€™t seen either. Itâ€™s really a nonissue right now. Youâ€™re not having fights in the streets, but itâ€™s not saving the world either.â€

Seems to be the story everywhere this has happened.Â I’m happy to see they close out the article with a great statement on why regulating concealed weapons at all is just about completely pointless:

In St. Charles County, sheriffâ€™s Lt. Craig McGuire said that while there have been no reports of such infractions there, by its nature a concealed weapon would not be obvious anyway.

Exactly.Â Which is why criminals don’t really think much of ignoring these laws.

They didn’t ask us Pennsylvanians…

… if our ban on private sales actually works.Â From Wisconsin:

With all of the violence on Milwaukee streets, three mothers who lost their sons in a triple shooting are working to keep guns out of the wrong hands.The three are rallying behind a gun-control bill to be introduced to the state Assembly Tuesday which also has support from Milwaukee’s most prolific gun dealer.

Hey folks, we already did this in Pennsylvania. Guess what? It doesn’t work. Now Philadelphia says one-gun-a-month will solve the problem. What happens when that doesn’t work? There’s no gun control measure that will fail spectacularly enough that the politicians and anti-gun groups won’t call for more of the same.

You’d think a gun dealer would know better than this. I have to wonder if he’s willing to sell out other gun owners so he can get more business by forcing people into using FFLs for background checks.

Hate Mail

According to SayUncle, the kid that shot the monster pig is getting hate mail from PETA types.Â Â I have to wonder how many of them would have been happier if the hog had killed the kid.Â Â I wonder how many of them know that was a very real possibility with a wild pig this large.

He understands the issue…

… about well as he can act. Kevin Costner is following the pattern:

The Dances With Wolves star admits he loves to hunt and often heads out with his dogs and a shotgun passed down through generations of his family, but he’s the first to admit that America’s gun laws are too weak. And following the recent tragedy (Apr06) at Virginia Tech college, where English student Cho Seung-Hui killed 32 people in what was the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history, Costner feels that legislators should get tough with firearms owners, who refuse to accept their practices could harm others.

Chalk up one more for the “I’m a gun owner but…” campaign.Â I’ll make Kevin Costner a deal. Â I’ll give up my guns when he learns how to friggin act.

Need More States

States that I have deposited hot lead in:

I think maybe I should make it my goal to shoot in all 50 states.

Memorial Day Shooting

Bitter and I went to Myrtle Grove WMA shooting range in Maryland.Â It’s a nice facility, except we learned a few things.Â Â For one, you need to bring string.Â Targets are placed on pieces of string strung between posts.Â Lots of string was cut, or not placed in the right places.

One guy had a neat contraption made of PVC pipe that hung off the baffling, and looked like it provided a much more stable target platform than string.Â My preferred platform would have been a thick twine, with the target held up with black clips.

On Pennsylvania PGC ranges, the state provides target backing, but it’s at fixed 25, 50, and 100 yard intervals.Â The nice thing about the string system is you can place targets at 10 yard increments all the way out to 100 yards.Â It makes shooting pistol easier.Â Maryland also allows up to ten rounds in a magazine, as opposed to Pennsylvania’s three, which means you spend more time shooting rather than reloading.

The other thing is to take bug spray.Â It was a hot sticky day, and the flies wouldn’t live me alone.Â Sunscreen probably would have been a good idea as well, though we managed a bench in the shade, not all of them were.Â One guy brought a big patio umbrella.Â I think he planned on staying a while.

The range was a little messy, and needed some cleaning, and maintenance.Â To be fair to Maryland, Pennsylvania ranges can get pretty ugly if they are at the end of their maintenance cycles, but shooters tend to keep them from getting too ugly.Â There was also brass everywhere that looked like it had been there a while.Â I’ve been to ranges at home where guys are there picking up brass quite literally as soon as they cooled down enough after being ejected from my rifle.Â Our grounds do tend to get littered with steel casings, but reloaders gobble up the brass.Â Are there no reloaders in Maryland?

All in all I liked the facility.Â It was run safely, and I was happy to see it busier on a holiday weekend than I see a lot of Pennsylvania ranges.Â Worth the yearly $20 dollar shooting permit.Â I will have to return sometime when the weather isn’t so hot and sticky.

Advice Needed: Shotguns

After doing some clay shooting with Countertop this weekend, it got me thinking two things:

I suck at skeet.
I think it’s high time I got myself a decent shotgun.

I would have been lucky to hit a fourth of the clays on the skeet range. I did 21 out of 25 on the wobble trap range. Skeet is a lot more difficult than other clay sports.As for the shotgun, I currently have a Mossberg 835 pump action, which I’ve generally found adequate for the few times I would go shoot clay birds. I never got out much to shoot at clays, but not because I don’t enjoy it, rather because there are few places in my area where you can shoot clay birds that aren’t private clubs. Well, now I’m in a private club that has a really good skeet and trap range.

So what should I get? I’m looking to move away from pump. I’m not sure semi-auto is the way I want to go either. So that leaves side-by-side and over-under shotguns. The only problem is, that class of shotgun will generally push you over the $2000 dollar mark if you want anything halfway decent, and I’m not sure I would use it enough to justify the cost.

I’ve always been partial to the look of side-by-sides myself, though, I suspect for clay shooting the over-under configuration is probably better. Any thoughts on that? I’ve also noticed that CZ makes shotguns at what seem to be bargain prices, but I don’t know much about the quality. I know CZ pistols are low cost and high quality, so I’m hoping their shotguns are similar. I have my eye on these:

I’ve also been considering these models from Charles Daly:

If anyone has any experience with these or can offer advice it would be appreciated. Also consider that I’m not about to spend $4000 bucks on a shotgun. I don’t envision myself getting serious enough about the shotgun sports to justify a ton of money being spent, but I would like to have something that’s a bit nicer than your bargain basement pump shotgun when I do want to shoot some clay birds, which should be more often now that I have the opportunity.

Why We Say No to Waiting Periods

Waiting periods are one of the more ridiculous “reasonable restrictions” the gun control movement has come up with.Â Â Kevin shows us why, along with some really awful media coverage, which, sadly, is to be expected.

Noo… We Don’t Need National Park Carry

A photographer was recently mauled by a grizzly bear.Â But really, National Parks are perfectly safe, and what kind of fool would feel the need to carry in one:

Â A man whose face was severely mauled by a grizzly in Yellowstone National Park is a photographer and author of books about grizzlies who also had been attacked in 1993. The National Park Service said Jim Cole, 57, was hiking alone, off- trail in prime grizzly habitat Wednesday when he was attacked by a sow with a cub. He apparently was carrying pepper spray but whether he used it was unclear.

Cole told rangers he walked two to three miles to seek help.

Cole, of Bozeman, Mont., was in fair condition Friday at Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center in Idaho Falls. He underwent seven hours of surgery Thursday to repair his face.

Remember, that the National Park Service bureaucracy respects you so much, that they are perfectly willing to risk this happening to you!Â I will grant that these types of encounters are rare, but it’s up to me to weigh the risk and decide which measures to take. Â Not some bureaucrat in Washington.

I will not comment on exactly how much respect I generally have for the National Park Service ban, but I will say that the kind of firearms you typically need in really wild areas are not typically easy to conceal.Â The time has long since passed for the National Park Service to recognize the basic right of citizens the means to defend themselves in our National Parks.

11 Year Old Ends Hunger in Africa

Well, no, but it looks like he could if he wanted to. Look at the size of the pig this kid killed with a friggin pistol. Holy Barbecue Batman!

Hogzilla is being made into a horror movie. But the sequel may be even bigger: Meet Monster Pig. An 11-year-old Alabama boy used a pistol to kill a wild hog his father says weighed a staggering 1,051 pounds and measured 9-feet-4 from the tip of its snout to the base of its tail. Think hams as big as car tires.

Seriously, my hat’s off to the kid.Â I still can’t get over how big it looks.

With the pig finally dead in a creek bed on the 2,500-acre Lost Creek Plantation, a commercial hunting preserve in Delta, trees had to be cut down and a backhoe brought in to bring Jamison’s prize out of the woods.

Manbearpig will kill us all!