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...

Here is why they tell you to keep your eyes up and looking around while you reload your gun.

My posts about gun safety  draw only small numbers of readers, though the topic is among the most important I write about here. I suppose that people see a title about rules of gun safety and figure they know all about that. It is apparent, though, that not everyone does know, as witnessed by the gun accidents we read about in the news. If everyone really knew about safety such news stories would cease, or be so exceedingly rare as to be remarkable man-bites-dog stories. I want to challenge my readers to do something today or this week to promote gun safety, but be warned. There is some chance that you will be ignored. Order some pamphlets. Distribute my safety screeds, or someone else's if you prefer them, or have a frank talk with a shooting buddy. The gun safety problem won't go away until we recognize that it is a problem that belongs to all of us.

Gun rights advocates always find themselves plowing ground that has been gone over before. Consider the following passage from a very old book. Though from the eighteenth century, it presents a line of reasoning highly relevant to gun control arguments in our time.      A principal source of errors and injustice are false ideas of utility. For example: that legislator has false ideas of utility who considers particular more than general conveniences, who had rather command the sentiments of mankind than excite them, who dares say to reason, ‘Be thou a slave;’ who would sacrifice a thousand real advantages to the fear of an imaginary or trifling inconvenience; who would deprive men of the use of fire for fear of their being burnt, and of water for fear of their being drowned; and who knows of no means of preventing evil but by destroying it.      The laws of this nature are those which forbid to wear arms, disarming those only who are not disposed to c...

Among the complaints lodged against King George in the Declaration of Independence, we find this one: He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. We are no longer ruled by England, but we have managed to institute new swarms of officials using home grown replacements. The government in Washington feels no motivation to limit the numbers of public employees, but the reverse. The  millions of  positions  in government service, overseeing regulations that in some cases we do not need, comprise a reliable voting bloc for the status quo. Big government makes out their paychecks. Why would they ever feel that big government could be a problem? The Constitution is a brief and fairly straightforward document, thus its requirements could be met with fewer than the millions of workers, more numerous than all of our military, now employed at the task. At that, much of the citizenry...