A National Day of Strike

Contrary to the image presented of gun owners in the media, that is the gun owner is a sub-grade illiterate back woods hick, many if not most gun owners are well educated, well to do (guns are an expensive hobby) and extremely competent.

In the last ten years, I have met gun owners who are engineers, doctors, lawyers, government executives, business owners, millionaires..... you get the point. Gun owners are a big part of what makes our society work. They are your friends, co-workers and neighbors as many in New York found out when their addresses were published by the Journal News.

All this being the case, I have a modest suggestion. Maybe gun owners should have a national day of strike. The NRA or SAF should organize a day when gun owners stay home from work. We can all call in sick that day. Let them know how many of us there are and how much what we do affects their lives.

How when it gets down to it: They need us more then we need them.

YS

The party of gun control

I have said for a long time: There is no such thing as a pro-gun Democrat.

But, what about Reid, Manchin, Tester and...yeah it's a pretty short list. As we have seen Manchin has all but thrown us under the bus. Tester who knows; he'll be bought off with a sweet sinecure. Reid will do whatever his puppet master Obama wants.

When the rubber hits the road, they'll all vote to support the party's agenda unless it is deemed that their votes are unnecessary. It's the way things are done.

That being said, the Republicans are almost as bad. Almost. But.....they don't make elimination of gun rights a key plank in their party's platform. There are many Republican members of Congress that are strong, unwavering supporters of the 2nd Amendment.

Look at the states. Which states have the most rigid, inflexible restrictions on our firearm freedoms. That's right, all are states run and controlled by Democrats. The states with the most firearm freedom are by and large Republican leaning states. There are a few Democratic controlled states that have limited gun restrictions. Notice that in these states Democratic representatives are chomping at the bit to pass gun control like their big brothers in the big blue areas. I'm looking at you New Hampshire.

Vermont has been an exception to this rule but I did notice that Burlington, VT did pass a local assault weapons ban. Sooner or later Vermont will fall as well.

Democrats are the party of gun-control. If you support firearms freedom, never vote for a Democrat, not even for dog catcher.

YS

The wind is at their wings

In the last few weeks and certainly since the beginning of the current troubles, I have seen a surprising amount of what I feel is a very peculiar sentiment. In short, the idea that if Mitt Romney had been elected president he would be just as earnest in eviscerating our 2nd Amendment rights as the current occupant.

Since this is among friends I'll be polite and to the point. Bullshit.

But some of you will probably say: But he signed an Assault Weapons Ban(AWB). That's more than Obama ever did. Yes, you are right, he did sign a state continuance of the Federal AWB as governor of Massachusetts. He signed a bill that would have passed regardless of his support or rejection. Now, that was a very naughty thing to do and I will certainly agree that Mitt Romney is a two-faced flip flopper (e.g. a politician) but I still strongly disagree that he would have been as bad as Obama.

Why is that, you are probably saying? Several reasons. Firstly, that Mitt Romney is a politician. If he had been elected president and if he hoped to get reelected he had better keep his base happy. A big part of his base is us. People who care deeply about our freedom to keep and bear arms. Romney is a smart guy. He wouldn't have dared alienate a huge chunk of his voters to push what is essentially a Democratic Party issue.

Secondly, if Romney was a newly elected president he would be a newbie in the White House. He would be spending all of his time learning the ropes. A new president usually doesn't get all that much done in the first year. The last thing on his mind would be pushing a Democratic agenda item that most non-Democrats find anathema.

That takes care of the Romney side of the equation. What about the O Man? Well, his re-election has energized his base. They are frothing at the mouth to enact their agenda and gun control is at or near the top of their list. The wind is at their wings. Events have played right into their hands. If Romney had been elected they would be demoralized and in the corner licking their wounds. Unfortunately we don't live in that alternative reality.

The unfortunate truth is that elections are almost always the choice between two choices that are far from ideal. Romney for all his faults would have been far better than the choice we are stuck with.

--YS

Pittsburgh Bound

Well. It's been awhile. I guess it's more than past time to dust off this blog and put up a new post. As the title implies, we are on our way to Pittsburgh tomorrow at noon. This will be our seventh NRA convention. Time sure does fly by.

We are planning on doing things a little different for this convention. We are going to take our time and not rush as we usually do on the exhibit floor.

We also are not going to attend the Celebration of American Freedom Mom and Apple Pie Experience or whatever they call it.

This year I am calling it the Hucklefuck.

I really have no desire to listen to Mike Hucklebee gas on about whatever he gasses on about. I particularly don't want to partake the experience from uncomfortable stadium seats.

Denise and I really miss the banquet. But I suspect the banquet in Phoenix is the last one we'll enjoy. No, Denise and I will spend Saturday having a nice dinner at one of Pittsburgh's better restaurant's.

We'll raise a toast to the memory of banquet's past and T. Bubba Bechtol (I miss that guy).

We also plan to attend more of the seminars than we have in the past. We've always had to cut short our attendence to one seminar or the other because we were always rushing hither and yon to one event or the other. We plan to rush alot less this time around.

One of the plans we have for this convention is to sample a few of Pittsburgh's eating establishments. One of the places that we might try is famous locally: Primanti Brothers
Unfortunately, they have seem to have been involved in hosting a local event of Mayor Bloomberg's anti-gun jihad, MAIG(Mayor's Against Illegal Guns) More Here

Now my knee jerk reaction is to say: No way in hell am I going to visit this establishment.

But, my more thoughtful side has this reaction: Wouldn't it be better to kill them with kindness as the saying goes.

Think about it.

Instead of empty shops, thousands of hungry, POLITE, gun owners sporting NRA T-shirts and caps show up at Pittsburgh area Primanti Brothers shops and spend money like its going out of style. This shows the owners of Primanti Bros. that NRA members blow away :) the anti-gun community in both wealth and influence.

In fact this policy works well wherever we go in Pittsburgh. Let's show the dour, doommongering bitter enders that gun owners are happy, wealthy forward marching people and that the other side represents the ass end of history.

Couldn't hurt to try.

Anyway, hope to see some of you there!

YS

Sarah Palin's Speech

Sarah Palin visited the NRA Convention today. She received two standing ovations, one when she entered the stage and one when she exited. I've never watched her give a speech in person and have only seen snippets of other speeches. She's a much better speaker than the media wants us to believe.

Her theme included gun rights, hunting rights, and how much the media sucks on these topics. She poked fun at herself when she told us that she had collected some "You must be a Redneck" jokes and realized some of them fit her. She mentioned writing her speech on her hand.

She carries herself very well now and has learned a lot in the past two years. The progressives and media had better not underestimate her.

The speech included nothing about any of her further political hopes. If indeed she has any. But let's face it, she's laughing all the way to the bank now.

I like Sarah Palin. I don't know if she has what IT takes to be President, whatever IT is. But, she has a down home way about her that I find very appealing. She did one thing that I've never seen a speaker do that made me like her even more. After she gave her speech, she walked by the interpreter for the deaf who was standing on the corner of the stage. She turned toward the interpreter, touched her on the shoulder, and thanked her.

At one point, Governor Palin called herself an NRA gun-nut chick, or at least that's what the press thought of her. From one NRA gun-nut chick to another, you go Sarah!

NRA Thoughts and Convention

Hey, guess what?! I'm still alive.

It's the time for our annual journey to the NRA Convention. This time it's in Charlotte, North Carolina. We plan to blog about the convention as we have done for the past five six years.

As is my usual practice here, I need to discuss the NRA. There are many gunnies out there that find it too compromising. They believe the NRA has made deals in the past that hurt our gun rights. Some of that is true. The NRA has been at the table when compromises were made such as during debate on the 1968 Gun Control Act.

Here's the thing. When you see a political freight train coming at you, do you stand in front of it, wave the Bill of Rights, and order it to stop? That's moral and non-compromising. It may even be on the side of angels, but it's often not effective. There are times when it is better to coax the brakeman into slowing the damn thing down. Maybe even stopping it.

Enough metaphors. There are people in these United States who don't believe the Second Amendment means anything except maybe some nebulous forgotten right for a state to sponsor a militia now replaced by the National Guard.

They believe the Second Amendment is an anachronism that's better ignored. They do not believe you have gun rights no matter how many times you quote the Bill of Rights. No matter how good your arguments are. They think gun rights supporters are beneath contempt. They believe unicorns will descend upon us when the last handgun is melted down (well maybe not unicorns).

These people vote, they influence politicians, they have shattered the plain meaning of the Second Amendment in city after city and in a few states. The NRA had consistently been the only thing that had slowed them down and sometimes stopped them. Other gun rights organizations have done excellent work. But, the NRA is the only one that the gun banners hate and fear.

I think that's worth my support.

Fatal Coyote Attack

At one time, Ten Ring almost became a coyote blog (just go to the Google search on the sidebar and enter coyote, you'll see what I mean). A reader, Drew458, pointed me to this story.

A woman was killed by a pair of coyotes while she was hiking alone in Canada. Coyotes rarely attack humans, but they are wild animals. Their victim, singer Taylor Mitchell, was young and petite, based on the photo in the story. She was hiking alone and apparently unarmed.

Other people were close enough to call the police who responded quickly (if one of the bystanders had been armed the response would have been even quicker). The police wounded one of the attackers, but they got away.

It's possible that the coyotes were a coyote-wolf hybrid or rabid according to expert speculation in this article. Whether or not they are pure coyote, is not germane to my point. Humans are not equipped to meet a wild animal attack. Our teeth are not big enough. Our fingernails make lousy claws. We're not too good at fighting when we get knocked to the ground. Instead, we've used our giant brains to develop tools--we can turn a branch into a club, a sliver of metal into a knife, a billet of steel into a gun. That's how we defend ourselves.

In this modern world, we've become leery of weapons. We want to be at peace with nature and meet all its wonders in an innocent state free of knifes and guns. The same holds true for our relations with our fellow man. Many "progressives" want a civil society where carrying a weapon runs counter to our norms (see the end of this post for a brief discussion of just that point).

Well we may love nature, but nature doesn't give a fig if we live or die. The same holds true of many criminals. Hell, for that matter, it's true of aliens, zombies, werewolves, and any other imaginary creature (it's close to Halloween, so cut me some slack).

We don't live in a perfect world or have a civil society. We face criminals and animal attacks. Our elected representatives at many levels of government have passed laws that have no contact with that reality.

In some places we can't carry a gun at all, we can't own a gun, we can't carry a useful knife (one with a long blade and opens with one hand). Such laws disarm us in the face of predators. These laws are wrong and news stories about beautiful but dead young singers prove it.

Interesting Article on Hain and Open Carry

I only have a few minutes for a quick post here--while the boss is away, yadda yadda.

I stumbled on a story in Salon Magazine about Meleanie Hain. For the most part it's a dispassionate story about her recent murder, her involvement in the Open Carry movement, and that movement.

The author, Steve Kingaman, obviously doesn't like open carry and warns that it may be coming to a town near you. He mentions the laws that exists in 43 states and that 7 states ban open carry pointing out that most of them are in the South and the laws "...were enacted precisely to prevent African-Americans from carrying weapons in public."

The article is not snarky about Ms. Hain's murder, although that's not true of many of the commenters. Klingaman does show his true colors at the end. He refers to a handful of postings on a pro-open carry site that he considers ugly with their cites of "Molon Labe," confederate flags, etc. From that, he concludes, "The problem with open carry is that you never know who is on the other end of that holster. It comes down to competing visions of what constitutes a civil society." He advocates that people who don't want to see gun-toting on their streets advocate for their vision.

My biggest takeaway: Klingaman is less concerned about open carry per se than he is about those who carry and have views he finds repugnant. He would ban the whole thing than to have "those people" be armed. This attitude is little different from Southern states passing laws to disarm blacks.

Let's close with "civil society." That's progressive-speak for wanting a world where lions lie down with lambs. They fault Republicans, gunowners, hunters, and many others for not allowing them to move closer to that vision. We believe that such a society does not and cannot exist. There will always be criminals who will happily relieve you of your money, goods, "sacred honor," life.

We can strive to improve society, but we must realize that being armed doesn't prevent a civil society, it's only being realistic.

Whole Foods Buycott

Yosemite Sam and I aren't Whole Foods shoppers. Neither of us buy into "organic" hype and certainly don't want to pay extra for an organic rutabaga over a regular rutabaga (I've never cooked a rutabaga, just love typing it). As you might know, there's a buycott for Whole Foods. Breda supported them and inspired me to do the same.

If you haven't heard, the CEO of Whole Foods wrote an editorial about a week ago that suggested health insurance was an individual responsibility and should be a free market as opposed to a government thing. Some of their usual customer base got their knickers in a twist are boycotting the store.

I wanted to support the CEO and hence our lunch-time trip to the market. First off, the produce section shines and I know where I can buy quail eggs now. They stocked graffiti eggplant which was purple with white stripes or white with purple stripes. Pretty. I bought some stir-fry ingredients for this evening. Next came the seafood counter and a pound of wild salmon. Then a pound and a half of grass-fed beef steaks, some bacon and eggs, for breakfast tomorrow all went into the basket.

Finally, we hit the motherlode; the cheese counter. I've never seen such a good selection outside of a specialty store. They had stilton, morbier, various types of chevre, and so much more. I'm a cheese-a-holic and could've drooled there all day. Yosemite Sam dragged me away with only one wedge of white stilton. We had to get back to work after all. We grabbed some food at the hot bar for lunch.

So, our little foray in Whole Foods set us back almost $100.00, but we do have some good eats for a few meals. Sad to say, we didn't run into any smelly hippies or union thugs attempting to enforce their boycott. Oh well, there's always next time.

I won't go back on a regular basis, but I'm glad to have found the seafood and cheese counters. An occasional stop might be in order.

Open Carry and Your Responsibility

I haven’t posted at all (I think) on open carry. Some gun bloggers favor it while others claim it harms the gun rights cause. I can see both sides of the issue.

There are voters who’ll wet their panties, men too, if they see a gun on someone who’s not wearing a badge. More importantly, opinion leaders will rant about it convincing fence-sitters that gun owners are a bunch of loons. This column in today's Washington Post is an example.

I’m not sure that’s such a big problem. We’ll never win panty-wetters to the gun rights side. The fence-sitters will fall on both sides of the issue, particularly when even the White House says that there’s no problem with open carry where it's lawful (read some of the many comments at that link for examples of hysteria).

I’m sure that announcement was a shock to many anti-gun rights people. On the other hand, it can backfire on us. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, (quoted in the link above) “There are laws that govern firearms that are done state or locally. Those laws don't change when the president comes to your state or locality."

Anti-gunnies, like Obama, have used language like that to support draconian gun laws in Chicago, New York City, and else where. This is one country, under one Constitution. The Second Amendment should apply no matter where you live.

Some gunbloggers and others say that open carry normalizes the sight of guns on people who don’t carry a badge. I think normalizing guns is a good thing.

So, in general, I’m stuck in the middle. I think open carry causes some harm to our cause, but its good outweighs that harm. Having said that, I’m not sure I‘d practice open carry particularly in crowds. I certainly wouldn’t carry a gun in a holster that’s not a top of the line retention holster. This post by Rivrdog explains why.

This article spells out what you need in a retention holster that will make open carry safer for you.

Guns, particularly carried in public, are a big responsibility and we must take that responsibility seriously. Now, I'll stop preaching and apologize for the sermon.

Recipocity Amendment Results

Well, the big vote on almost nation-wide concealed carry failed. Still it was a close vote. Snowflakes live-blogged it. It was a close vote. It needed 60 to pass and won the support of 58 Senators, many of whom are Democrats. We’ve come a long way to get this far and may do better in the future. The Senate has a handy-dandy chart showing who voted for what.

I was struck by one thing in the chart: Senators from what I would call pro-gun states who didn’t vote for this amendment.

I didn’t include certain states in my list—none of the Great Lakes states including Ohio and Illinois. While there are a lot of gun owners up there, I personally don’t associate them with support of concealed carry or some gun rights. That is idiosyncratic and someone may argue with my choices (for instance, someone else’s list might have dumped the New England states). Still, it’s my opinion and without further ado here is my list:

Florida: Nelson (D)
Indiana: Lugar (R)
Iowa: Harkin (D)
Missouri: McCaskill (D)
New Hampshire: Shaheen (D)
New Mexico: Bingaman (D)
Oregon: Merkley (D) and Wyden (D)
Pennsylvania: Specter (D sort of)
Vermont: Leahy (D) and Sanders (I)
Washington: Cantwell (D) and Murray (D)
West Virginia: Rockefeller (D)

So, these senators do not represent the beliefs and traditions of their states’ citizens. It’s called a ballot box people. Use it in 2010 or whenever their term is up.

Sad Panda over Reciprocity

Lately, the New York Times has been a font of anti-gun sad-pandaism. The editors can’t stand that pro-gun people are winning victories in Congress, in the states, and in public opinion. They can’t stand the fact they’re losing. Sad, sad pandas. I feel (almost) sorry for them. At least I’m trying not to engage too openly in shadenfreude, which is not a pretty emotion.

This time our intrepid editors are bemoaning a proposed gun law. Senator John Thune of South Dakota hopes to add an amendment to a military spending bill that would provide gun owners with reciprocity throughout the United States or at least most of it.

The editorial is short on facts. There’s no mention of how the amendment would affect states that don’t have concealed carry laws at all, if there would be intrastate limits on where one could carry (meaning one would have to master the laws of all the states in which one travels), how it would handle Vermont-style systems, and other pertinent facts.

The editorial is long on emotion. It describes the proposal as “…the latest assault on public safety….” It states that it would make illegal gun trafficking between states easier (not sure how, but I’m just reporting here). If cites statistics that describe presumably unlawful killings by permittees, but the numbers cover a two year period and seem cherry picked (unable to tell without more facts--those are good things).

Finally, it hopes Chuck Schumer and Frank Lautenberg are able to defeat the amendment. But, the writers sound desperate. They sound like they’re crying panda tears.

Let’s really make them really unhappy and give our congresscritters a call and support this amendment.

More Gun Hypocrisy

Yosemite Sam and I took a brief, unplanned, unannounced, and totally necessary break from blogging and even reading blogs, newspapers, and magazines in all but a most superficial way. We were traveling, work has been hell, and we had a short visit from a relative. When you're in the Washington, D.C. area, that means hikes to The Mall, long Smithsonian visits, staring at monuments and memorials. My aching feet.

There's an editorial in the New York Times today that perfectly illustrates anti-gunnies' fervent hatred of gun rights. They allow this hatred to blind them to the implications of their own thoughts. The editorial board opposes an amendment to a bill that guarantee citizens living in public housing the right to keep guns in their homes.

We're talking about a Constitutional right. We're talking about the sanctity of the home. Yet, the anti-gun editors favor restricting the rights of law-abiding citizens. What if an atheist housing administrator regulated the ownership of Bibles or Korans in public housing? What if a housing administrator banned blogging in public housing? Someone, somewhere could make an argument that these are good ideas.

A right is a right no matter where someone lives.

The editors revealed even more short-sightedness where guns are concerned. They stated, "...Congress should be dealing with the national embarrassment that individuals barred from airlines on the terrorist watch list are free to shop for firearms." If Ted Kennedy showed up on the watch list again, the editorial board would decry the list is unfair, arbitrary, that it violates citizens' rights, that there is no way to know you are on the list or get off of it. They would call it a Bush travesty of justice and fairness.

When guns are concerned, it's fair and right that someone on the list, even if they don't belong there, should be denied a basic Constitutional and human right. What hypocrites.

Good Reason to Join the NRA

This morning, over my cup of coffee, I gave myself heart burn. I clicked on the New York Times. What did I see? Bob Herbert has an editorial that bashes the NRA and lays the responsibility for the recent "right-wing" shootings at their door. He believes that the shooters were afraid the government would take their guns and thus they went on a rampage.

Oh, he's careful to say the NRA isn't advocating violence, but he hits all the anti-NRA points. His screed is ahistorial (bashes the NRA over a statement that gun ownership is not about hunting, but to protect against tyranny). His screed has false statements (tying an NRA fundraising letter in with Tim McVeigh). His screed is just that, a screed.

He even makes the circular argument that gun-banners love to make; we do not want to take your guns, but we need more gun control. Hmm. What's wrong with that statement? He says the NRA is throwing gasoline on the fire. But, isn't it more true that the gun-banners are throwing the gasoline if anyone is doing so?

If you're not a member of the NRA (click to join) now, Herbert's editorial should convince you to join. If you don't wish to join, tell me why not.

Yet Another Sad Panda

The Saturday New York Times presents us with another bleating of a sad, sad panda. This time it's from the editorial board itself. It's about the recent death of the District of Columbia Congressional representation bill. The dreaded "gun lobby" added an amendment that would erase the District's onerous gun laws. Finally, gun-control people in Congress (here's looking at you Eleanor Holmes Norton) killed the bill.

The editorial writers were outraged and pull out every emotional stop. Here's the first paragraph. I took the liberty of illustrating how they try to manipulate the reader. The words in red/bold are emotional triggers used to feed your outrage against the "gun lobby." Green/bold highlights words they use to win sympathy for gun control people.

Congress has shamefully caved in, yet again, to the gun lobby and abandoned the effort to grant the long-suffering District of Columbia a voting representative in the House. Hopes for passage were high this year, until the historic measure was poisoned in the Senate with an amendment to strip the district’s government of its power to enact responsible gun control laws.

It goes on from there including the dubious point that the shooting at the Holocaust Museum illustrates the need for these laws. Hell, the murder illustrates the failure of the laws to prevent such an occurrence.

The editorial contains an out-right lie, "The gun lobby galvanized anti-gun control Republicans and timorous Democrats in both houses to stop the representation bill in its tracks. " Actually, it was pro-gun control supporters who stopped the bill. If it were up to the gun lobby, the bill, including the gun amendment, would have passed--for better or worse, given that District representation is probably unConstitutional.

The editorialists threw some blame at Obama for not standing up to the "gun lobby" and signing "a credit card reform law that included another senseless gun lobby diktat...." allowing licensed people to carry loaded guns in National Parks (there's those emotional heart-tugs again).

There's many more sad panda bleats, but finally they admit that the "gun lobby" is winning. Warms my heart it does.

Making Illegal Things Illegaller

I clicked over to Salon magazine a few minutes ago and saw an editorial by news editor Joan Walsh. There’s a bunch of stuff in it and I don’t have the time to get into it. Just a few samples are in order.

• She defends the Department of Homeland Security’s recently withdrawn report on right-wing extremism.
• She points to Holocaust Museum shooter, James von Brunn as an example of whom the report described.
• She wonders if right-wing talk is inspiring the likes of von Brunn.

One throwaway line in the last paragraph really got me (as if there wasn’t enough heartburn material in her piece). She wonders, “How von Brunn, a felon who'd used a gun in his earlier crime, still had the right to carry a gun, I'll never understand.”

She betrays a very typical liberal ignorance of gun laws with that one statement. Von Brunn had no right to carry a gun. He would commit a felony if he so much as held a gun or possessed one cartridge. It still didn’t stop him from illegaly acquiring a gun and ammunition. Other laws didn’t prevent him from shooting another human being. Other people with guns stopped his attack.

If people want to agitate for gun control that’s their right. But, they should know the gun laws they hope to change. If they don’t, they find out they’re trying to make something that is already illegal, well, illegal. That’s just dumb.

Sad Panda in Boston

Boston Globe columnist Derrick Jackson is shedding tears over the NRA this morning. You see, the NRA is appealing a federal Appeals Court decision that supported Chicago's gun laws. A Supreme Count decision, based on the Heller precedent, could end up overturning Chicago's gun laws.

Jackson fears that "the NRA wants one single, applicable rule of guns anywhere, anytime." Well, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is the same anywhere, anytime in the United States. Sorry, Mr. Jackson but a right's a right. He cries about recent NRA victories (guns in National Parks, success on prevented a new Assault Weapons ban, etc.). Poor Mr. Jackson, poor tired, sad panda.

Go read the editorial and the comments. But, here's one thing for those gunnies that don't like the NRA for whatever reason: It is an excellent lightning rod for the Derrick Jacksons of the world.

Jimmy Cater and the AWB

Once again, I am late with this post. Oh well, better late than never.

The anti-gun media is pulling out all the stops. They are desperate to win some sort of gun control and frustrated that government, so far, is not listening.

Everywhere you turn news shows, news magazines, and newspapers have some sort of anti-gun story. They mostly concentrate on renewing the so-called “Assault Weapons Ban” and are now flavored with the canard that Mexican drug gangsters are buying machine guns, grenades, and other equipment from American gun stores and shows.

This time, the New York Times enlisted a gun owner, hunter, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and former U.S. president. None other than Jimmah Carter. He writes about hanging a hand-made musket in his White House office, his two handguns, rifles, and shotguns. Then he goes on and bashes anyone who owns a rifle with modern styling.

To him and to too many gunowners like him, the only purpose for a modern rifle is to kill cops. This is what we have to fight. We know that black rifles are used for serious competition, hunting, plinking, and many other legitimate activities. We know that only about 2% of criminals were arrested with military-style semi-autos.

This illustrates a problem of perception. Non-gun owners, misinformed gun owners, out-and-out Fudds—which I define as those who own guns, but actively work to ban certain types of guns—and anti-gunnies fear these rifles. Facts and figures are dismissed (as Jimmy Carter does here) in favor of emotional arguments. They state that these guns are cop-killers. That somehow bullets from black rifles can pass through police armor while bullets from their more powerful but old style rifles are stopped.

Telling the truth about these popular rifles doesn’t seem to help. Showing pictures of pre-ban and post ban rifles doesn’t seem to help. Anti-black rifle people have made up their minds.

Perhaps our best recourse is to take someone shooting and present them the opportunity to shoot an AR-15 or AK clone. Then tell them that the rifle that they just shot is one of those that would be banned. They will be surprised and perhaps enlightened. Too bad most would never go shooting in the first place.

Green Ammunition

A few days back, CNN wrote a report about “green ammunition.” It was in their scary-titled “Planet in Peril” section.

I’m rather tired of all the scare nonsense, shouts of “we’re all going to die slowly and horribly because of….” Take your pick: global warming, global cooling, giant hurricanes, my washing machine. Lead in ammunition is just one more scary thing to add to a “Planet in Peril” list.

I’m not going to debate any of the so-called science in the article. I’m not qualified. I know that anti-gunnies use fear of lead to ban lead ammunition, making alternatives so expensive that no one would want to buy guns. Thus, I take any of the scientists’ quotes with a Red Sea worth of salt.

Unfortunately, anti-gunnies have seized on a germ of truth that makes this dangerous to gunowners--lead is toxic. They can harp on this and anything we say sounds defensive. Sigh.

There was one really interesting statistic though; Americans spent about $1.08 billion dollars on ammunition in 2008. This is truly big business and a vital sector of the economy. Way to go people. Let's strive for $1.2 billion in 2009.

One More Week

Next Tuesday, President-Elect Obama moves to the Oval Office. Last week, gun bloggers were concerned about a report from The Shooting Wire that the new administration would almost immediately pass an “assault weapons” ban (AWB).

I’ve long believed that will happen. Even though I’ve been somewhat relieved by most of Obama’s cabinet picks and other signs that he may not rule from the left, I believe that an AWB is in the offing. Obama has even promised to enact an AWB, but he doesn’t say when. Obama’s followers will force the issue maybe sooner than Obama would like. They can’t help themselves.

Most people on the left don’t understand guns. Most of them don’t want us to educate them, don’t want to accept our offers teaching them to shoot, don’t want to listen to logical arguments, don’t want to accept that gun ownership is a matter of choice. For too many of them, it’s a spiritual mantra, “Guns are bad, um mani om, guns kill, um mani om.”

There’s no reasoning with gun banners. I’ve spent a lot of time among people who want to ban certain or all guns. I’ve talked to other people who think that citizens should be able to own any gun they want so long as they’re not “assault weapons,” handguns, or .50 caliber guns. Their minds are closed.

We gunnies are very different from gun banners. When we pick up an AR-15 we see a finally crafted machine. They imagine war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam, but in our streets.

When we shoot at a paper target, they imagine ragged holes in flesh. When we point out the .223 round is a relatively weak round they imagine “high-powered death lightning.” When we see accuracy, they imagine sniping from the rooftops.

When we pick up a semi-auto AK-47, we see history and crude, but effective engineering. They imagine dead Africans, child soldiers, and gang-bangers killing citizens in Miami (even though rifles are used in about 3% of murders).

When we discuss action pistol competition, they imagine fat white guys wearing camo in a “compound.”

Gun banners can’t accept that we like guns. They want to ban them all especially black rifles, which they view as “weapons of war.” They think they’re creating a better society, but we know that it’ll end in tyranny. Sadly, they can’t help themselves.