Guns – Page 1140 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Bradys Bad Mouthing Good Gun Shops

This, rather shocking Philadelphia Inquirer article, shocking in the sense that it’s not virulently anti-gun, tells a tale of a Bucks County, PA (my county of residence, north of the city) gun shop that got wrongly blacklisted by the Brady Bunch:

Which is what happened last month when the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence released a report, “Shady Dealings: Illegal Gun Trafficking from Licensed Gun Dealers.” Tanner’s store was featured as one of the scurrilous.

What the Brady Center didn’t know is that the sale had been a sting, arranged in cooperation with the local office of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The rest of the article goes into more detail. They do get one thing wrong though:

While he considers the fine points, the woman will wander around, utterly uninterested. But when they’re ready to buy, she’ll be the one filling out the paperwork. If it can be proved she bought the guns for the man, it is a “straw purchase” – a felony.

This isn’t necessarily a straw purchase, since you are allowed to purchase firearms as gifts. Even in Pennsylvania, where private sales of handguns are generally illegal, there is an exception for spouses, and immediate family members.

But overall, it’s good to see stuff like this. I will have to send the Philadelphia Inquirer some praise for printing a good, balanced article on the issue. Oh, and Tanner managed to get an apology out of the Brady’s and a retraction, after getting a lot of phone calls from irate customers who read a newspaper article on the Brady’s report. I would have hoped that gun shop patrons would know ahead of time that the Brady’s are full of crap.

Ammunition Control

New Jersey is laying the groundwork for ammunition control. I can’t say this shocks me, because to be honest, I’m surprised they haven’t gone for an outright ban yet. New Jersey continues to provide me with reasons to support global warming, namely that, if the climate models are to be believed, it will return portions of the Garden State to the sea from whence it came. Can’t happen soon enough if you ask me!

I am not optimistic about the future of New Jersey for our 2nd amendment rights. It’s a lost cause. The only way they will be saved is for the courts to remind them that they are part of the United States, and are thus subject to the Bill of Rights, including the second and fourteenth amendments.

It struck me this weekend, that what I legally do regularly in Pennsylvania, which involves throwing a bunch of evil black rifles in the back of my car and disappearing for weekend, could land me in prison for years in New Jersey. The only difference being on one side of a river or another.

Since I’ve been involved in the shooting community, I’ve become much more aware of state borders than I was in the past. I envy the folks in the West and Southwest, who can drive for days and not really have to think about it. We don’t have that luxury in Pennsylvania. We’re surrounded by states that want to lock up law abiding gun owners on three sides. The real question for us, as gun owners and shooters, is explaining to folks that don’t ever give this much thought, exactly how absurd this sorry situation is. But in my experience, most people really don’t have a commitment to freedom. Freedom is lip service for most people; something you say you’re in favor of, but when the rubber meets the road, suddenly it’s suggested “Oh, no. I don’t like that. Freedom certainly doesn’t mean that”. To the folks in New Jersey, it seems to boil down to whether you have the right to cut a fetus out of your body or marry someone of the same sex.

I’m not trivializing these concerns, just that, there’s a lot more to freedom than the standard bullshit that the left cares about. I’m not convinced that either party has a monopoly on supporting or eroding freedom, but if New Jersey is the left’s example of how they view freedom, you can count me the hell out. I’ll move to Arizona. Better weather anyway.

You know you’re a gun nut when…

… You find yourself using SHTF (Shit Hits the Fan) with non-gun nuts, and are shocked they have no idea what it means.

It Was Only a Matter of Time

A new assault weapons ban has been introduced into the Democratic Congress.Â By none other than our great friend Carolyn McCarthy.Â Don’t despair yet, because it currently has no cosponsors, which I think says something.Â The subcommittee makeup doesn’t look all that good for us, so it’s possible this could make it out of the subcommittee.Â Hopefully, it’ll never make it to the floor.

If it does, there might not be votes to pass it.Â But if it does, I doubt Bush will veto it.Â He’ll trade signing it to get something else he wants.Â No cause for alarm yet, but we have to be vigilant here.

What’s Your .22LR Survival Weapon?

Ahab of WWJWD talks about Survival Rimfires.Â Pretty cool.Â Some good points I never would have thought of:

Noise signature – .22LR isn’t very loud. If your weapon has been so modified, it can be quite easy to suppress even further, which again is an advantage if you’re concerned about giving your position away while foraging for food.

I have a Ruger MKII pistol and a Ruger 10/22 myself, though I never would have thought of it as anything more than a plinker.Â But the ability to silently take down small game is a great observation for usefulness in the “oh shit” scenario.Â Read the whole thing.

Understanding Philly

Dave Hardy hits on a piece from a local paper that describes a situation not uncommon in our fair city, and speculates it might be a symptom of why the city has a crime problem:

a gun dealer has a stolen gun, it’s recovered in a drug bust. The arrested guy has a long record. He’s let out after posting a $100 bond, and charges are later dropped. The dealer requests return of the gun and is told he must file a motion and appear in court. “So the guy they caught with Craneâ€™s stolen gun doesnâ€™t have to appear before a judge, but Crane does.”

I congratulate DH, a resident of Arizona, for having a better grasp on the city’s crime problem than its politicians do. The sad thing is, the guy will probably not easily get his stolen gun back. Pennsylvania law is clear on this issue:

Â§ 6111.1 (b) 4. The Pennsylvania State Police and any local law enforcement agency shall make all reasonable efforts to determine the lawful owner of any firearm confiscated by the Pennsylvania State Police or any local law enforcement agency and return said firearm to its lawful owner if the owner is not otherwise prohibited from possessing the firearm. When a court of law has determined that the Pennsylvania State Police or any local law enforcement agency have failed to exercise the duty under this subsection, reasonable attorney fees shall be awarded to any lawful owner of said firearm who has sought judicial enforcement of this subsection.

Yet the City of Philadelphia routinely fail to return firearms to their lawful owners. At least they’ll have to pay this guy’s court costs when all is said and done, but personally, I think there need to be criminal penalties in regards to some of these sections, because Philadelphia cares not a whit for state law. The equation is very simple:

Spending sparse city resources to harass lawful gun owners = Good
Spending sparse city resources to harass criminals = Bad

And to think, we elected one of these boneheaded city politicians as our Governor!

You know you’re a gun nut….

… when it’s snowy out and you realize that you forgot your ice scraper and the only thing you can find in your car that can remotely scrape ice from windows is a spare AR-15 magazine. It works too!Â Not that well, but in a pinch it’ll do.

Philadelphia Navy Yard Shooting

Looks like we had our own incident in Philadelphia too. Lone gunman enters the Philadelphia Navy Yard Business Center and kills three people at a board meeting, then turns the gun on himself after a brief confrontation with Police.

UPDATE: Looks like the guy was a disgruntled investor from Newark, DE, who blamed the board for loss of his investment.Â According to KYW, the weapon involved was an AK-47.Â I can hear the editorials now “Clearly the blame can be squarely laid at the foot of Delaware’s inadequate gun laws that allow people have access to these deadly killing machines”.Â Well, at least that’s how it would go if the board meeting was being held across the river in New Jersey.Â Surely our Philadelphia media will use this as a reason to push for an across the board assault weapons ban in the state, even thought the weapon wasn’t purchased here, in all likelihood.

These are becoming incresingly more common, for people bent on suicide to go out in a blaze of glory. Carrying at work is not possible for most of us because of company policies against the practice, and social expectations in a business climate. But policies and social expectations aren’t going to protect anyone except the person who snaps and decides he wants to take a few hated coworkers with him.

I won’t advocate people risk getting themselves fired, but I’ve never understood why returning fire isn’t an acceptable means for dealing with workplace violence. You’ll never see that one in your company’s training video, I’d wager.

Anyone Know What This Is?

Michael Yon needs some help identifying what looks like some type of rocket launcher or recoilless rifle:

I’m pretty familiar with the world’s weapons sytems, but I have no idea. I’m prepared to say it’s a hack job.Â I don’t think the Chinese or the Russians produce anything that looks like this.

h/t: Instapundit

Photoblog – Arctic Weekend

Some photos of this weekend’s insane camping out in the cold and snow. We were on top of a mountain, about 2300 feet (which is high for Pennsylvania), so temperatures were close to 0 degrees F. I went with another blogger, who some of you might know, and met one of my coworkers and her husband up there. A few camping and shooting pictures here:

http://www.pagunblog.com/blogpics/arctic-weekend/taj-mahal.jpg

My coworker’s tent I nicknamed the Taj Mahal, because of its luxurious nature. The stove keeps it reasonably warm in side.

My coworker’s husband Steve packing the gear up at the end of the weekend. I owe him a Klondike Bar. I brought up a pack of them, buried them in the snow, then ended up skewering one of them with a bayonet as I poked around for them.
The best way to roast marshmallows is with a Mosin-Nagant bayonet. Nothing like mashmallows eaten with a hint of cosmoline and hoppes no 9. Mmmm.

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Your host enjoying the last of his non-corrosive 5.45x39mm ammo fired out of the AK74. I have a whole crate that’s corrosive stuff, but, unlike with a surplus bolt action, you have to clean out the entire gas system, the flash hider, bolt and bolt carrier in addition to cleaning the barrel out. I had no idea they made 5.45x39mm with corrosive primers, and found out the hard way. I don’t win any fashion awards, clearly, but when in cold weather, if you’re going to shoot a commie gun, in a pinko caliber, you should wear a red army hat.

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My AR-15 being shot by the mystery blogger. Maybe you can guess who this is?

I decided to take the Mosin-Nagant out into the cold so it could feel at home. Our mystery blogger had a lot of fun shooting it, despite the fact that the rifle brutalizes the shooter, much like the system that produced it. I’ve though about calling that soreness you feel the next morning after shooting that rifle “Stalin’s Revenge”.

Despite the casualty of a Klondike Bar, fun was had by all. Did a bit of hiking, including out onto the frozen lake, and a bit of dead reckoning through snow covered woods. Too much to drink Saturday night, combined with single digit temperatures makes for an interesting morning experience. Had to wait until the afternoon for the hangover to go away before heading out to the range. Both myself and the mystery blogger feel that arctic survival is a lot of fun, and would like to try it again sometime, perhaps for a more protracted amount of time. A bit of advise, though, about cold weather: water freezes. It’s a good idea to sleep with your drinking water, or when you get up in the morning thirsty, you’ll be screwed like I was. Fortunatly, the Taj Mahal had drinking water inside that wasn’t frozen, but I had to walk all the way over there with a dreadful hangover. Not fun! Because I was paranoid about carbon monoxide poisoning, I opted not to stay in the heated tent with my coworkers. Another bit of advise: 0 degree sleeping bags will keep you alive at 0 degrees, but they won’t keep you warm. It makes me want to try Alaska though sometime.