March 30, 2017

If someone breaks into your house, your job isn't to go room to room and clear it.

Ideally, the gun is there to protect you and your family while the *police* come to clear it. And for defense rather than offense, nothing beats a long gun for precision under stress.

My house has a very narrow hallway and fairly narrow room doors, and a 16" barreled AR with an adjustable stock and light isn't unmanageable. The AR isn't as handy as a Tavor, much less a pistol, but is handier than a Title 1 shotgun and a lot easier to shoot accurately under stress than a pistol. The small, fragile rounds are less likely to exit an exterior wall and endanger one's neighbors than handgun rounds or 00 buckshot are, assuming intelligent choice of load.

March 29, 2017

For the purposes of Federal revocation of civil rights, I am pretty sure those 2- and 5-year crimes

count as felonies. A BATFE Form 4473 asks if you've ever been convicted of a crime *punishable* by more than 1 year in prison, even if the actual sentence was less. So it's a life sentence for him in terms of civil rights revocation.

March 29, 2017

NC elected a pro-gun Dem governor but rejected Clinton by 200K votes.

That margin of loss was less than 1/10th the number of North Carolinians who own "assault weapons" or over-10-round magazines, which Clinton directly threatened during the primary. And her staff and the DNC were so cloistered and ignorant on the issue that apparently no one in the campaign even realized how badly she stepped in it on the issue.

March 29, 2017

.223 Remington with civilian loads is about the least penetrating of all effective rounds.

55gr .223 JHP penetrates less in wallboard than 9mm JHP, .45 ACP JHP, and 00 buckshot, and is less lethal after penetrating even one or two walls than any of those. About the only thing that penetrates less wallboard than light .223 JHP is birdshot, and that isn't reliably effective.

Military M855A1 or other highly penetrative loads are a different story, of course, but one of the reasons my preferred HD gun is a .223 is its more limited penetration compared to good alternatives.

March 29, 2017

The best approach is to shelter in place, call out a verbal warning, and call 911.

Unless there are children in the house you have to get to (and my kids' rooms are adjacent to mine), you don't necessarily have to do a lot of moving. Defense of home is a big reason why 16" barrels (or 14.5" and pinned FS) are more popular these days than 20", even though 20" is ballistically superior.

March 12, 2017

I'd like to see a citation of even one Senate/House "assault weapons ban" bill in the last ten years

that merely banned open carry of modern-looking rifles or post-1860 magazines, rather than banning their transfer and/or possession.

March 11, 2017

And it never dawns on the national party leadership and the party platform writers...

that promising to ban the most popular guns and magazines in Wyoming homes (or Maine, or NC, or FL, or OH, or WV, or WA, or NV, or TX, or IA) might cost votes...

March 11, 2017

I respect your choice not to own them, but I insist on owning them. Does that disqualify me?

I respect your choice not to own them, but I insist on owning them. Does that disqualify me?


No, for two reasons. First, everyone "has to" give up cannabis under Federal law (never mind cocaine and meth), yet they are demonstrably easier to get than prescription cold medicine. Everyone "had to" give up alcohol during Prohibition, yet alcohol abuse increased, especially of harder distillates. In both cases, driving the commerce underground simply made it more violent, more lucrative, and more hardcore; it did not eliminate it.

Second, your "have to" part requires that there be *somebody* with guns to enforce the "have to" part. Gun control laws are enforced at gunpoint, after all. And the entire purpose of the Second Amendment was to prevent the executive branch from having a monopoly of force, since such monopolies have almost always turned toxic.

March 11, 2017

It would be nice if the gun-ban fundamentalists would acknowledge this fact from time to time...

....over thirty thousand gun deaths a year, they say, mostly either suicides or murders with small-caliber handguns by already-prohibited criminals, and the fundamentalists are tied up in knots obsessing about the size/shape of rifle handgrips and magazines, and how to prevent the peaceable and nonviolent from owning them.

Rifle Homicides, 2005-2015
2005: 442
2006: 436
2007: 450
2008: 375
2009: 348
2010: 358
2011: 323
2012: 302
2013: 285
2014: 248
2015: 252
(Source: FBI Uniform Crime Reports 2005-2015, Table 20, Collated)

Massachusetts has averaged less than one rifle murder per year for the last decade or so, and yet the fundies *still* pushed through a middle-of-the-night ban on the most popular rifles. That is irrational, and absolutely counterproductive.

If you are willing to throw away election after election because you are obsessed with rifle and magazine bans, you have totally lost sight of your goals, unless your goal is simply to screw people who live their lives differently than you do.

March 11, 2017

How about these weapons of war?

Ummmm, how about these weapons of war?





Or military infantry rifles like this?



Or this?



Or this military-style handgun?



Or this military-style shotgun?



Since most civilian guns are just as "military-style" as civilian AR-15's are, declaring that the Second Amendment doesn't protect "military-style" guns is a declaration that the Second Amendment protects pretty much nothing. Especially since "military-style" revolvers, pistols, and shotguns kill far more Americans annually than rifles do.

This court's opinion stemmed from ignorance and naivete on the part of some of the judges, and the willingness of the gun-control lobby to lie through their teeth about Title 1 civilian guns. And yes, this opinion hurts Dems nationwide.