The Gunner's Blog

Rule Three of the Four Gun Safety Rules states, "Keep your paws off the trigger until your sights are on the target." Or something to that effect. This news story from Sebring, Florida says that a fellow's dog stepped on a pistol that was on the floor of his truck, the gun discharged and the bullet hit the man in the leg. On the floor of his truck? That is an unusual way to carry a pistol. It created a situation that violated Rule Two. The shootee " thought the gun was unloaded ," so I'm going to have to score this one as a violation of Rule One and Rule Two for the gun's owner, and a Rule Three violation for his dog.

Vice President Joe Biden explains that you don't need an AR-15. If someone tries to come into your house, simply step out on your balcony and fire your double barrel shotgun. This seems to me to be out of touch. Many home owners prefer the AR-15 or similar rifles because rifles of modern design have several outstanding qualities for home defense. The shotgun's two shots are plainly an inadequate supply, since most shots fired in gunfights miss . In a home invasion by multiple bandits, thirty shots may be none too many, because most of those shots will miss, and because not all assailants are felled by a single hit. No, Joe, the AR-15 with its 30 round standard capacity magazine is a perfectly good weapon for home defense, and much better in the real world than a double barrel bird gun. Besides, not everyone has a balcony. The AR and comparable designs have become the de facto standard for defense rifles for honest and peaceable citizens, and with good reason. Such ...

Michael Ramirez

It is clear that most of the gun control proposals flying around Washington will do nothing to curb gun violence. What they will do is impede the exercise of a constitutional right, as it is now exercised by millions of peaceable citizens. It may be offered that the new proposals would not infringe the right too much. But they would infringe it to the extent that we would be less free afterward than we were before: Our choices and our privacy would be reduced. It is reasonable to ask what the legislation's purpose is. The pretext is not the purpose. Previous bans and registration schemes have not done what was advertised. They have often worked opposite their stated intent, making citizens less safe not more. So what is the value of such legislation? Let us grant that progressives are not stupid. They can look at Chicago or D.C., places where the Second Amendment has been infringed, and see that it hasn't worked well at all. They are not such fools as to be taken in by t...

As recently as this afternoon, CNN was repeating the canard that 40% of gun sales elude the present background check system. The number has been rather effectively challenged elsewhere in the media, but that makes no difference. Many media outlets still, as CNN does, uncritically repeat the 40% number just as if the claim had raised no questions. The number is a very old one, and though the situation has changed and the number is obsolete, it has been bandied for so many years by gun control agitators that it is now something like received truth to the anti-gun contingent. There is a good sound critique of the imaginary statistic in the National Review Online .   Among other red flags there is this: The dubious statistic of guns that avoided background checks — which is actually 36 percent — comes from a small 251-person survey on gun sales two decades ago, very early in the Clinton administration. Most of the survey covered sales before the Brady Act instituted...

Making the rounds on the Internet: Gun-free zones viewed from the other side of the law:

Dr. Ben Carson lays it on the line, politely but firmly.

(Click pic to enlarge it.)

I've written previously about Western culture's dual inheritance, moral reasoning from the Bible and logical reasoning from classical philosophy, especially the proto-science of the ancient Greeks, which later became natural philosophy and then turned into modern science. The two together form a rich patrimony. We did not always make the best use of it, but still achieved many things that were remarkable. We are now in the process of replacing both reason and faith. One of the replacements is Expedient Truth. This is the stuff you know is true because it serves the Cause. The corollary is that you know you are to disbelieve ideas and evidence that do not support the Cause. What cause? That varies. The other replacement is Relative Truth. These are the things that are true for you and not for me. Your truth, not necessarily my truth. Truths like this differ from Expedient Truth in an important way. Relative Truth is of no use if you want to convince me to do something I d...

Rule Four of the Four Rules of Gun Safety  requires that you "Be sure of your target and what is beyond your target." Police of Los Angeles and Torrance, California appear not to know that one. They have shot up two different blue trucks that resemble the truck of a suspect they are seeking, a suspect who has them very much on edge. Neither was the right truck. Two innocents were wounded in one of the trucks. No one was hit in the other. The point is, of course, that being sure of your target includes making sure you have the right one. Being on the lookout for a blue pickup is not an open season to shoot up any blue pickup that comes along. The callous disregard for the public's safety disturbs me. The L.A. Times story  offers the following: Two women who were shot by Los Angeles police in Torrance early Thursday during a massive manhunt for an ex-LAPD officer were delivering newspapers, sources said. The women, shot in the 19500 block of Redbeam Avenue, were...

Consider the UK: Handgun ban and turn-in, ban on modern rifles and almost no right recognized to defend yourself. Or consider D.C.'s ban on handguns (since overturned). The cartoon is funny because it seems far fetched to the point of absurdity, but to some people, in some places, it isn't all that funny. 

A hundred years ago the 16th Amendment was ratified, a horrible mistake. The Sixteenth Amendment removed the U.S. Constitution's built in limit on taxation. Now taxation could be limitless and government growth boundless. The mechanism that enforced founders' ideas about limited government was taken away. A hundred years later: What limited government!? We have bureaucrats everywhere with big thick books of rules for all occasions. Government has grown so costly and burdensome that it is a drag on the economy. It keeps getting bigger, more costly, more intrusive, and we inevitably become less free as a result. The people's economic independence is what the 16th Amendment took away. There is now a direct pipeline from your paycheck to the bureaucrats in Washington. What is more sinister, an increasing number of Americans receive more from the government than ever they contributed, or ever will. They will always vote for the gravy train. The present-day growth of gove...

Story here:  http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/news/man-shot-near-martin-luther-king-jr-high-school-in-detroit The details are still sketchy. What we know so far is that a basketball coach and two of his players were accosted and threatened with a gun. At this point the canny coach produced a pistol and shot both the assailants. Apparently the coach has a CCW ticket and is a police reservist. The bad guys pulled a gun on the wrong guy! Another serving of crow fricassee, please, for all the journalists, so called, who couldn't wait to demean and denigrate those calling for armed guards at school.

A number of citizens think that the "assault weapons" bill has to do with machine guns. The media outlets are doing nothing to dispel that disinformation. In fact, machine guns and military destructive devices such as cannons and grenades and so on have been very strictly regulated since 1934. The supreme court's Heller decision left the door open for restrictions of the kind. Arms, for the purposes of the Second Amendment, are the sorts of things an individual might reasonably use in personal defense. Here is--and I suppose it is funny in a snide sort of way--a cartoon suggesting that automatic weapons--machine guns--are legal and by implication need to be banned. Some of the weapons shown are entirely unavailable to private citizens. Some are mechanically operated, not automatic. Notice the revolver and the lupara.  Some are ordinary pistols. The implication, of course, is that the USA is awash in deadly machine guns, which is not the case. So sallies like the ...

Two apps, actually. There may be more like them but these are the one's I've found. You tell the apps where you live and they generate letters to the appropriate officials. The letters politely but clearly state opposition to the wrongheaded anti-gun legislation now being discussed by the Congress. From Ruger:   http://www.ruger.com/micros/advocacy/takeAction.html From S&W:   http://www.smith-wesson.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/Category4_750001_750051_787655_-1_757992_757992_image# We have some voices on our side in D.C., even in the Senate. What writing letters does for you is to make it easier for wobbling congresscritters to wobble over to our side, and support stances like this well articulated précis by Senator Ted Cruz: