The Gunner's Blog

My thinking is that #1 buckshot is the best choice most of the time, though #4 buck has a lot to recommend it some of the time. Today I'm launching a series that will be ongoing for some time. As I noted previously, my posts here will  be on a now-and-then basis. But I have a number of things to talk about on the topic of defensive shotgunning. Expect this to take a while. For years and years, the 12 gauge riot gun has been my preferred 'preparedness' weapon, for potential use during some sort of hypothetical societal crisis, such as a general breakdown of law and order, or perhaps a zombie apocalypse. It is also what I keep on hand for home defense. I like the shotgun for its outstanding hit probability at short range. Since nearly all lethal force encounters, apart from the battlefield setting, are at short range, I don't worry very much about the shotgun's uselessness at long range. I will be writing up a series of suggestions on how to use a riot gun ef...

To my profound lack of surprise, it now appears that  the Navy Yard shooter had mental health problems  of a serious nature and an obsessive interest in  violent video games . As I blogged previously, this country's high profile, big headline mass shootings have  a common denominator in the mental infirmities of the perps. A possible exception is the crime of Maj. Nidal Hasan; his motive may have been religious. Or crazy. You decide. Following the Navy Yard shooting there was a rush in the news media to blame the AR-15 , the 'evil gun' scapegoat du jour of the gun ban chorus, though at this point it is highly doubtful whether such a  weapon was used; if it was, it was obtained by the killer from a victim . No matter, Dianne Feinstein decried the "military-style assault rifle." These shootings form  a convenient pretext on which to hang calls for gun bans and other infringements. But what we need here is not more gun control laws, of which we have more t...

John Morse, ousted president of the Colorado Senate, was quoted this way by the New York Times: “We made Colorado safer from gun violence,” he said afterward, as his supporters trickled away from a hotel ballroom here in his district. “If it cost me my political  career, that’s a small price to pay.” The thing is, pushing through a packet of anti-gunner laws did not make anyone safer and everyone knew it. Coloradans saw the gun control push as funded from out of state and an imposition on their rights, a feel-good measure that burdened the innocent while skirting the very problem it supposedly addressed. I hope the rest of the country's Democrats are paying attention. Less than half the states have  recall election laws, but all of them have elections, and siding with Nanny Bloomberg against the Second Amendment is perilous. There is an undercurrent of resentment out here in the electorate, not just over ill considered gun laws but over a wider perception that we are se...