Guns – Page 1142 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Kydex

I know there are folks out there who think carrying in anything other than leather to be an abomination in the eyes of God. I got my carry license when I was 28 years old, which, I’m sorry to say, was five years ago, and I’m up for renewal this year. I went through the typical drawer full of holsters that didn’t work for me, along with the awkward phase where you always thought people could see your pistol.

I eventually settled on the Galco Royal Guard, in-waist-band holster. This worked pretty well for me, but I could never get over the fact that it added some significant dimension to my Glock. I decided at some point that it would be worth it to try a Kydex holster.

I started off with a Comp-Tac Pro Undercover holster. The first time I did a practice draw out of the kydex, I almost lost control of my grip, because kydex provided much less draw resistance than leather. Once retention is broken, the pistol comes clean out. After a few tries, I decided I really liked how the draw felt. The downside to the Pro Undercover was that the belt loop, after repeated removing and adding, kept breaking off. I went through two of them before I decided to give Sidearmor’s Glock IWB holster a try. The sidearmor holster is pretty good, and I like the fact that you can swap out the belt loop. My only complaint is that, unlike the Comp-Tac holster, you have to undo your belt to remove the holster, since the loop surrounds the belt.Â I like to take my holster off with the pistol still in it for storage in the drawer at night.

I’m really liking Comp-Tac’s Infidel line, and I think I might have to order one. It seems to combine the features I like about the Sidearmor holster with what I liked about the Pro Undercover. The Comp-Tac people were always prompt and friendly too. I had my holster in a matter of days.

Both Comp-Tac and Sidearmor make great holsters. I would recommend you try them if you’re thinking of switching to Kydex. I know a lot of people won’t carry in anything other than leather, but I’m never going back. The slim profile, combined with an easy draw, easy reholstering, and good support make it superior in my view.

A Warning to Democrats

Dave Kopel points us to a study done by the Independence Institute that showed the NRA can actually influence elections.Â I think they are using a limited number of elections here.Â You’d have to use more to draw solid conclusions, but it’s interesting, nontheless.Â Particularly in the conclusion:

So, does the NRA have any political impact? The answer is yes. This interest group gathers information on gun control and other issues important to the members, disseminates the information to the membership, represents its members to elected officials, reports to the membership the behaviors of elected officials, and helps shape public opinion on some issues. Put another way, the NRA is like a political party, but one that cuts across the current two-party alignment.

I’d like to see copies of this passed out on the Hill to all the Democrats, to inform them, and to serve as a very subtle warning; cross us at your own peril.Â Read the whole thing.

A Good C&R Carry Gun?

Ahab of WWJWD asks an interesting question about C&R carry guns:

After my recent experiment with the Hi-point pistol and the sundry disappointment that followed, I started thinking about â€œwhat if someone carried a C&R?â€ I ruminated on it for a while; and I did have a couple of germane thoughts. A lot of these older guns are military pieces, designed to ridden hard and put up wet. Apart from the abysmal sights on a good percentage of them, you could do a lot worse for a carry gun that packing a Star Model B (or whatever). Again, Iâ€™d say wait a month and buy a used GP100 for $300, but if all youâ€™ve got is a surplus CZ50 (.32 ACP) and you can shoot it, it beats a pointy stick.

Makarovs are pretty good carry guns. I carry a Bulgarian Mak loaded with Corbon Pow’rball ammo in 9x18mm in my front coat pocket, or on a belt holster from time to time, as a backup gun, or in situations where I can’t carry my Glock. Most Maks, including the Bulgarian, aren’t C&R eligible, but Soviet Military Maks are. There are some out there on the market. They cost a bit more, because they are more collectible, but you can get it delivered to your door by the brown truck of happiness, just like anything else on the C&R list. You’ll feel like you just joined the KGB!

The Media Assault

It definitely seems the media is currently engaged in a full court press against gun rights. But Why? And what does it mean? Believe it or not, I don’t think this necessarily is bad news for gun owners, but that doesn’t mean we can relax and stop being vigilant. It’s times like this that are important, but not because it’s a sign we’re about to start losing.

The main reason we’re seeing this media blitz is because of the Democrats taking over the legislative branch and generally gaining power. The anti-gun groups will be doing everything they can to get the gun issue back into the spotlight, so expect a lot of press releases, deception, and lying. And we must be aggressive about calling them out for it, and not let them an inch of breathing room.

This is an act of desperation, not an act of strength. The anti-gun groups know that if the Democrats actually abandon their issue, they are dead politically for the foreseeable future. I am not optimistic that we have won over the Democrats enough that they will actively work for us, but I think we have scared them enough that they are afraid to work against us, and that’s a tremendous accomplishment. But we have to keep them scared.

Keeping up the fight will mean writing letters to the editor challenging anti-gun editorials, and biased and inaccurate reporting. It will mean writing letters to politicians and your represenatives and making sure they are aware of your opinion on these issues. Probably most importantly, and I know a lot of people don’t like to hear this, it means making sure your NRA membership is current, and if it’s not, joining. Keep up your membership in the other groups if you like (I do) but the NRA is who the politicians in Washington and the state houses pay attention to, and how much attention the politicians pay is directly proportional to how many votes they bring to the table. Who knows, if we’re effective enough, we may even be able to get the Democrats to figure out they have more to gain by working with us than against us. Imagine how demoralized that would make you feel if you were a Brady supporter?

Rail Gun Porn

While we’re talking about futuristic weapons, how about some rail gun porn? Hat tip to powerlabs.org.

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=c4ZjGUFh_c4[/youtube]
This is a 15 Kilojoule shot at target. You can see the plasma arc coming out of the gun. On their site, they say a lot of the energy got wasted because of the metal vaporization. Sad.[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=tV7aB8_0R74[/youtube]
8.3KJ shot with aluminium/teflon projectile. Apparently sending the projectile supersonic.Take a trip over to powerlabs to get the details. You could build one of these yourself if you wanted to.

Laser Control & Futuristic Weapons

Without a doubt, eventually, someday, we’ll figure out a way to pack enough energy into a small enough space to basically render ordinary firearms obsolete. Indeed, materials technology is nearing the point, probably by the middle of this century, where body armor will be effective enough that standard small arms will not penetrate it, and light enough to be worn without too much burden.

But which technology would supplant the firearm? Well, lasers are one possibility. For various reasons, I think the least likely, but it’s interesting to take a look at the current legal regulations concerning lasers. From Sam’s Laser FAQ, we have:

Please don’t give the legislators ideas. Sales of lasers are unregulated except for medical and laser show systems, and a few systems under export controls. For all other systems, you just have to register as a manufacturer if you’re making them for public sales and submit your product for compliance, and maintain records of who it was initially sold to in case there is a need for a recall.

Of course, this is just the federal level. Apparently a few states regulate lasers.

NOW, where the crap hits the fan is at the state level. New York records the serial number of all lasers and requires licensed operators, transferring a laser in NY above class II to another citizen of NY without reregistering the unit is an offense. Transporting a laser through NY or selling it out of state from NY is not however a offense. Texas and Arizona have user fees to pay for their states radiologic safety programs, etc. I’m told by a friend that AZs fees are quite steep, on the order of $1,500 a year for large industrial lasers and that AZ inspects laser shows rather thoroughly. Other states may vary, but generally unless they have made misuse of pointers a issue, there are no worries except in NY and AZ. Possession is not illegal and they don’t deny permits to register in those states. However, they may disqualify a person who fails to pass the test.

Arizona is surprising. New York not so much, because New York likes to regulate everything. I don’t think you can take a dump in New York without a permit.

As I said, I think lasers are not likely to supplant firearms, because they take a lot of energy to be powerful enough to damage someone or something. Burning a hole through someone, other than through a vital organ, isn’t really all that serious, plus you could armor something just by putting a mirror on it.

What I think will likely supplant firearms are electromagnetic weapons. These are more commonly known as rail guns or gauss guns. While I don’t think these will supplant small arms for quite some time, they will probably start to appear on ships and heavy artillery platforms by the middle of the century. But if we ever figured out how to pack a lot of energy into a small space, in theory you could make a man portable electromagnetic weapon that could punch through tank armor. The ironic thing is, if you did this today, your device, as best I can tell, would be completely unregulated in most states (New Jersey, you’d still need an FID, sorry). But imagine an arm you could adjust a power setting on: low for taking out soft targets, and high for busting through hardned targets.

But I’m sure if you had one of those, it wouldn’t be long before the VPC and Brady’s would start preaching the evils of electromagnetism, and the need to ban assault magnets. It’ll come someday. ~~You heard it here first.~~Â Ooops, maybe you didn’t hear it here first.

More on Service Rifle Competition

I mentioned in my last post about service rifle competition being a legitimate sporting purpose for AR-15s.Â But if you have a G3, Kalashnikov, FN/FAL or what have you, you’re out of luck.Â For NRA people that might read this: want to do the EBR community a big favor?Â Create a class of competition for other military patterned rifles.Â Why restrict it to just the rifles the US military uses or has used?

I Really Hate Euphemisms

Over on a comment at Uncle’s site, Ron W Says:

Itâ€™s always assumed that so-called â€œassault weaponsâ€ are useful only for criminal assaults or military offensive tactics (from whence the name). Military assault weapons are full-auto and have been illegal to citizens since 1934 without an expensive and intrusive fed permit.

But the semi-auto legal weapons are great for personal self defense. They should be called self-defense rifles (or weapons) and those of us who believe in, defend and exercise the RKBA should focus on that aspect and point out repeatedly that armed self -defense is a basic human right.

This reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to blog about. I know the term “assault weapon” is a problem for us. I agree we ought to do our level best not to use it. But all the other terms I’ve heard people wanting to apply strike me as poorly thought out euphemisms.

So what’s the best thing to call an AR-15? Homeland defense rifle? Self-defense rifle? Sport utility rifle? All these terms make me gag, not because they aren’t accurate, AR-15s are useful for all those things, but because no one other than gun blog readers has any idea what the hell you’re talking about. Let’s call them “rifles” or if you want to be a little more specific “service rifles”, of which there is a specific class of competition. A service rifle is any rifle that’s made from a military pattern. For competition purposes, this would be the M1, M14, and M16. The notion that these rifles have no sporting purpose was always a myth perpetrated by the anti-gun groups and people like Charles Schumer and Mitt Romney. Any time you hear someone utter that load of crap, feel free to throw service rifle competition back in their faces. So can we go with service rifle? It’s not scary sounding, because it doesn’t have the term “assault” or “weapon” in it, and there are certainly legitimate sporting uses for them.

Why Don’t We Just Lie?

The VPC loses any semblence of credibility with this article:

Critics, however, say the NRA pressures lawmakers to ignore the problem.

“The people who are intimately familiar with these laws, the people at the NRA, they know exactly what’s going on,” said Kristen Rand, legislative director of the nonprofit Violence Policy Center. Florida’s gun lobby and the program’s administrators “know they’re permitting some bad people, but they don’t want the general public to know that.”

If criminals records are imcomplete such that some felons are getting permitted, isn’t that the government’s problem rather than lawful permit holders? Last I checked, the NRA, much to dismay of many of its members, was supporting the bill to improve the NICS system, which would fix a lot of these problems. Sorry Kristen Rand, but you’re a liar.

UPDATE: The media apparently doesn’t agree with due process, and many of the folks discussed here were never actually convicted, which means they aren’t felons at all. So it would seem the VPC aren’t the only ones who are liars.

Only The Police Should Have Guns

I’ve been meaning to blog about Countertop’s post from a week ago:

I work with a woman who was abused by her fiance. He happens to be a cop, working here in DC for a federal police force. She left him, and has a temporary restraining order against him (which was issued by a Prince Georges, Maryland county court).

But the anti-gun folks say only the police should be armed, because, in their minds I guess, they are above the same human nature the rest of us are subjected to. Consider this:

Two studies have found that at least 40% of police officer families experience domestic violence, (1, 2) in contrast to 10% of families in the general population.(3) A third study of older and more experienced officers found a rate of 24% (4), indicating that domestic violence is 2-4 times more common among police families than American families in general.

But they are also, you know, above the law when it comes to domestic violence issues:

Unfortunately, an early analysis of the effect of the Domestic Violence Gun Ban on police officers shows that law enforcement officers have been able to circumvent the ban and retain their weapons. A 1999 survey of the nation’s 100 largest police departments revealed that only six cities acted against officers because of the Domestic Violence Gun Ban and only eleven officers were affected. Part of the reason for the lack of enforcement is that police officers have their records expunged or plead to a charge other than domestic violence.

That being from the National Center For Women and Police. I’m principal, I’m against the Lautenberg restrictions, but I sure as shit think if they are on the book they should apply to the police equally. I don’t mean to malign all police officers, but it looks to me like this is a problem that people should be worried about.Â I hope that everything turns out OK with Countertop’s coworker.