Sleepless in Midland

Ammo shortages are panic driven

Who's buying up all the ammo? Score another economic win for gun salesman of the year, Barack Obama. He's also ammo salesman of the year.

Every time the President or Vice President talk about gun control it creates an anxiety among gun owners. And panicky shooters head for the store to stock up in case they are about to get hit by some new law or executive order on guns and/or ammo. They've emptied the retail shelves of the most popular brands and calibers of ammunition. Factories have been running at full capacity, yet they can't keep up with the demand.

Then shortages create more anxiety, and the demand is insatiable. Bullet making would be a good business to be in right about now.

Here's a good article on the topic at DailyCaller.com: Ammo maker: Ammo shortage fueled by ‘rumors and conjecture’ which cites a statement from Hornady Manufacturing Company which pleads for patience.

We are producing as much as we can; much more than last year, which was a lot more than the year before, etc. No one wants to ship more during this time than we do.

We appreciate everyone’s understanding and patience. We don’t know when the situation will improve, so please bear with us a little longer. And remember, when it comes to Hornady Manufacturing, if you don’t hear it from us, please don’t believe it.

So then we have James Carville talking about gun control this morning on ABC's Sunday talk show, "That's just going to happen. And the democrats are going to make it happen because they've got a 90% issue here. And they're not going to give it up."

Hmm, 90%. I'm not so sure about that, but Carville's pulse is pumping in tune with the mainline Democrats, so he's probably right that they'll keep trying. And the ammo customers will keep the shelves empty for a long time.

Columbine survivor speaks out about gun rights

Somehow I missed this in all the anti-gun news swirling about in the past several months. But that's understandable. The people who speak out for gun rights don't seem to get anywhere near as much attention as those who want to disarm them.

His name is Evan M. Todd. He was shot and wounded but survived the massacre at Columbine. The movement toward gun control got his attention, and he wrote a letter to the President expressing his concerns which got published in theblaze.com. After detailing why universal background checks, an assault weapons ban, and a ban on large capacity magazines would not deter criminals, he gave the President a couple of suggestions:

You said, “If we can save just one person it is worth it.” Well here are a few ideas that will save more that one individual:

First, forget all of your current initiatives and 23 purposed executive orders. They will do nothing more than impede law-abiding citizens and breach the intent of the Constitution. ...

Second, press Congress to repeal the “Gun Free Zone Act.” Don’t allow America’s teachers and students to be endangered one-day more. ...

He concluded with this:

Mr. President, do the right thing, restore freedom, and save lives. Show the American people that you stand with them and not with thugs and criminals.

Democrats love the personal story as a persuasion device. The victims' voices seem to prevail over all others provided they tell the right story. Well there's a survivor who told his own story.

Via Forbes.com.

NBC's Brian Williams -- hey look at me, I know the difference between full auto and semi auto

Last night as the local TV news was about to give us the weather report both NBC and CBS burst in dominating the news with reports of shots fired in Boston. And there were the star anchors filling time until the real news broke.

Granted, once the real news came an hour and a half later, it was real news of the second bombing suspect's apprehensive.

In the meantime, the star anchors had to keep blabbing away and injecting themselves into the news story. So we got to hear an NBC field reporter telling about having heard gun shots. Celebrity anchor Brian Williams interrupted with what could be the most inane question of the day.

"Did it sound like fully automatic or semi automatic gunfire?"

That question was extremely out of place. The odds that either of those kids would have a fully automatic weapon are extremely low. And if Boston law enforcement was using automatic weapons in a residential neighborhood that would be startling news. So there's only one reason for Williams' question.

He was showing off. Two months ago news celebrities were using "automatic," "semi automatic" and "fully automatic" interchangeably -- they're anchormen, how could they have known there was a difference? But now Williams knows, and anyone who still gets news from NBC knows he knows. And that was the real point of the question.

Yeah, thanks Brian. We get it. Now get off and put "Grimm" on.

Here's why background check was a bad idea

The prospect of a universal background check was so awful that even the ACLU was against it. (Although it wasn't exactly a full throated opposition. See Dailycaller.com.)

So along came Senators Toomey (R-Pa.) and Manchin (D-W.Va.) with an amendment which required background cheks for transfers at gun shows or resulting from published listings. It sounded reasonable initially.

However, now that the amendment has been defeated and President Obama raged at the Senate for not passing it one has to notice the red flags. Others had previously speculated the motive behind the gun control push was to try to make the Republicans in the House look bad and win back the House for Dems in 2014.

Now that the Senate has rejected the amendment, that plan has hit a speed bump. However, if anyone wasn't suspicious of Obama before, they certainly should be now. It's pretty obvious that he wants to disarm the populace and was using a tragedy to gain support. We can speculate on the reasons, but President Obama's push toward socialism has been so steadfast that it's become clear why he is hell bent on controlling guns.

As the nation gets more and more in debt and the deficit continues to grow, the nation will need money. And with a stagnant economy, the money will have to come from someone. Obama's war on the rich looked at first to be silly leftism. But all his rhetoric about sharing the wealth makes it more and more obvious. He will eventually have to start taking. Not just from the rich, but from anyone who owns more or makes more than some blue ribbon panel deems sufficient. As the government creeps closer and closer to Venezuelan style socialism, there will be calls to nationalize industries and take more and more property from citizens. The government will decide wealth issues, in particular, how much someone should contribute to the common good. Citizens will resist having their possessions, their savings, their inheritance, their land and their businesses taken away from them.

So the first things that gets taken are their guns. Then the rest will be easy. Oh sure, criminals will still have guns, but that's not relevant to the overall need to disarm anyone who might otherwise resist the government. (BTW, Venezuela has strict gun control laws.)

So something that sounds as simple as closing the gun show loophole is only the first step.

One final thought. The typical Obama voter probably thinks Ruby Ridge is a piece of jewelry and Branch Davidian Compound is an imported brew. For the rest of us, when President Obama says it's silly to think the government would ever confiscate guns, it's wise to remember that those two events resulted from an effort by the government to confiscate citizens' guns.

How hard must it be to find police officers who agree with Obama's gun control agenda?

 

PoliceOne.com released results from a survey they conducted in early March of this year. And the findings are interesting. PoliceOne.com has 400,000 members they verified as law enforcement officers, and their poll got over 15,000 responses.

The full survey results can be found here. Via WSJ.

Let's take a look at some of the questions and answers.

Q4 - almost 61% didn't think Obama's proposed legislation would improve their safety.

Q5 - 71% didn't think an "assault weapon" ban would reduce violent crime.

Q6 - a whopping 95.7% didn't think a ban of magazines that hold over 10 rounds would reduce violent crime.

Q7 - almost 80% didn't think a law prohibiting non dealer transfers of firearms between individuals would reduce violent crime.

Q15 - 61% said that if they were a sheriff or chief they would not enforce more restrictive gun laws.

Q19 - 91.3% said they supported concealed carry by civilians who haven't been convicted of a felony or been deemed psychologically or medically incapable.

Q22 - 80% thought that a legally armed citizen present at the shootings in Newton and Aurora could have reduced casualties.

Those are interesting survey results, and it shows a lot of common sense among those who participated in the survey. Many of those responders were probably state and local police officers, not employees of the federal government. And some of them might fear they too could be negatively affected by some of the anti gun sentiment prevalent today in the White House.

Anyway, take a look at the survey results and draw your own conclusions.

The political power of disgust

This explains so much. In The Gun Debate Is a Culture Debate Trevor Burrus explains that the anti-gun groups are powered more by emotional disgust than by common sense.

Excerpt:

One cultural tradition believes government is a necessary evil, best kept small, contained, and subordinate to the people.

The other tradition views government as a force for good that can often do better with fewer restraints.

One tradition views private gun ownership as important for resisting tyranny; the other views guns as, at best, a necessary evil, and at worst, something we should discard to become a fully civilized society. ...

Gun disgust is also one of the primary reasons gun-control advocates promote laws that have little to no effect on reducing gun violence. On many questions, the debate over the effects of gun-control laws on crime is surprisingly uncontroversial.

But it's very difficult to acquiesce to views of people one holds in disgust.  This explains so much. Republicans, libertarians, and fiscal conservatives in general have felt the power of this disgust for quite some time. Too bad so many Democrats lack the ability to tolerate opposing ideas.

Yoko Ono's anti gun photo

Yoko Ono Lennon has weighed in with her own anti-gun campaign. ABCNews published an Ono produced image of some bloody glasses which we are to presume belonged to the late John Lennon. And after seeing this image we are expected agree with the anti-gun crowd and ignore all the evidence that guns in the hands of honest people help said honest people stay safe.

I believe the lesson from John Lennon's murder that has been implemented the most is that high profile celebs should hire heavily armed body guards.

Personally, I wonder what kind of person would pick up her dead spouse's bloody glasses and use them as a photo prop. But then, I'm still wondering what "number nine, number nine, number nine," was all about, too.

Via BlameItOnTheVoices.com.

Guns on Campus – an upcoming lecture in West Texas

This looks interesting. It's a discussion titled Guns on Campus with John Lott and Michael Shermer on the panel and Patrick Canty moderating. It's scheduled to take place on March 21, 2013, at 7pm at the Wagner Noel Performing Arts Center located between Midland and Odessa, Texas. And it's free!

John Lott is the researcher famous for compiling voluminous evidence that civilian gun ownership reduces crime. Michael Shermer is a renowned skeptic, so can he be expected to say Lott is full of it? We'll see.

Dog shoots gun

This is a remarkable story. Via cw56.com in Massachusetts:

Digging through the snow with his paw, the German Shepherd not only located the gun, he fired it. It was a loaded Ruger semi-automatic.

One remarkable aspect of the story is that the reporter obtained and reported the make of the gun and that it was a semi-automatic. Maybe with all the clamor for gun control they are learning a little bit more about the mechanics.

I promise not to keep beating this dead horse, but if only the Ruger had a manual safety, or even a grip safety, that discharge likely wouldn't have happened.

TrackingPoint high tech rifle and scope

In this era of precision guided military projectiles it was inevitable that someone would apply some of that technology to sporting rifles. Austin based Tracking-Point has done it. And the result is an amazing rifle with integrated scope which does all the work to hit a target 2/3 of a mile away.

The shooter sees a red dot in the scope which he places on the target. Then he pushes a button. The computer in the scope calculates and compensates for wind, temperature, atmospheric pressure, Coriolis effect, spin, drift and other factors. The shooter sees an "X" in the scope along with the red dot. Squeezing the trigger arms the rifle, but it doesn't discharge until the "X" and the red dot are aligned. Then BAM! Bullseye!

There are a couple of videos about it. Here's the company's promotional video. However, this one gives a better overview, in my opinion.

They claim it even works on a moving target, but with prices ranging from $17,500.00 to $22,500.00 it should work on targets that have gone extinct.

Via uberreview.com.

Day of Resistance in Midland, Texas

Yesterday, February 24, 2013, was the day citizens celebrated the Day of Resistance here in Midland. The previous day was the day many other communities celebrated it, the number 223 coinciding with the caliber used by the rifle gun controllers call an "assault rifle."

The event was not very widely publicized -- I caught the announcement at CBS7 -- however, 30 or 40 people found out about it and cared enough to attend. And they were rewarded with some good talks about the freedoms we have here in the United States.

Outdoor rallies don't draw a lot of people in Midland. But contrast the 30 to 40 people attending this rally with the thousands who visited the gun show a couple of weeks ago. The attitude about the 2nd Amendment was evident at both places. But the gun show attendees voted with their time and their money. Perhaps the way to draw a crowd to any future gun rally would be to offer a gun related prize, a box of scarce .22 caliber bullets, for example.

Anyway, Paul Gossett (photo above) gave a good speech with lots of colorful examples to make his points. For example, the University of Colorado recently put forth a list of ten things a woman could do to avoid rape, such as urinating or vomiting. But the obvious omission was any suggestion that an armed woman would not only be less likely to be a target but could better fend off a potential rapist. (The list has since been removed due to blistering ridicule.)

He knew how to please those of us with short attention spans. Here are a few of his good one-liners:

Gun control isn't the problem. Self control is the problem.

Congress can't pass a budget. And the president can't pass a background check.

We don't need gun control, we need idiot control.

Mr. Gossett told how DEA agents recently swarmed his neighborhood looking for a dangerous suspect. He asked one of them if he should be worried. The response was that he had nothing to worry about, "if we get to him first." But what if they don't? That's the issue. Police aren't always around, and Americans have a right to defend themselves.

Former Navy Seal, Jason Pike, also addressed the crowd. He's the guy in the photo on the left. Then Mark Manning read William Travis' agonizing plea for help just prior to the storming of the Alamo by Mexican troops. What great timing.  The Travis letter was recently in the news as it traveled to San Antonio for public display.

Unfortunately, remembering the Alamo is probably politically incorrect in certain quarters these days. But it certainly makes a person think. The people defending the Alamo were willing to die for what they believed in. Yet we sit back and relax as our freedoms erode before our eyes.

Why Joe Biden is so fond of shotguns

Because the sound made when ejecting a shell is the same sound his brain makes when he has an idea.

Joe Biden: buy a shotgun, not an assault rifle, to protect your home.

Mexico wants Americans to register guns -- What's the Spanish word for chutzpa?

Mexico has some very tough gun laws, as anyone who has seen news reports about some hapless American who accidentally took a shotgun down there knows. But those stringent gun laws only serve to make the honest citizens helpless against the armed gang members.

Anyway, in this video clip at the Phoenix CBS news website KPHO.com the reporter says Mexico's congress voted to ask the U.S. Senate to create a registry of all commercialized firearms in U.S. border states to make it easier to trace guns used in violent attacks there.

Some of the more reactionary websites are assuming the Mexican government expects to get the list for themselves. Examples here, here, here and here. But to be fair, they all refer to the same KPHO.com video which says only that Mexico wants the U.S. Senate to create the list, not that Mexican politicians want it for themselves.

There are some law enforcement reports from time to time about real gun smuggling into Mexico, but since the borders are supposed to be so secure, one has to assume those are rare. The real problem was the U.S. government's involvement in the Fast and Furious operation through which guns were allowed to be sold to smugglers and taken into Mexico.

Atty Gen Eric Holder and President Obama got a free pass on that one. To those Senators considering Mexico's request, you need to refocus and find out what Holder and Obama knew about Fast and Furious and when they knew it.

Remington, bring your gun factory to Texas

The state of New York is breathing down the necks of gun owners and especially a Remington factory located there. We talked about this last August. See Talk of more gun control forces Remington to consider leaving NY.

Now we learn that the Remington factory owners are being courted by representatives of at least four states, South Carolina, Michigan, Arizona and Oklahoma. Source: Gun-friendly states attempting to lure Remington from New York.

Why isn't Texas on the list? There are some communities right here in West Texas that could use an economic shot in the arm in the form a new factory. Governor Perry is in the news for his efforts to persuade California businesses to relocate in Texas. But here we have a factory already in search of a home. Maybe they just need to feel a little Texas amor.

Y'all come now, hear?

65.4 million guns bought during Obama admin

That's the number of guns sold so far during the Obama administration according to Gregory Gwyn-Williams, Jr. at CNSnews.com. He used the stats linked at FBI's NCIS to compile the number of background checks to arrive at that number.

The dollars spent on each gun must have ranged from a few hundred to over a thousand. One has to wonder how successful the Obama gun control campaign could be given the amount of hard earned money consumers spent on those buys. With O's penchant for spending money, perhaps he'll expect taxpayers to fund some kind of national gun buy-back program. Actually, as ridiculous as that seems, that would be cheaper than a war on guns if it would be anything like the war on drugs.

Mr. Gwyn-Williams' total doesn't appear to have taken into account the number of checks that resulted in a denial of the right to purchase a gun, so the 65.4 number should be adjust slightly downward. In fact, another PDF shows almost a million denials between November 30, 1998 and January 31, 2013.

There are a few interesting entries in that set of statistics. For example, over half of the denials were for people convicted of crimes that disqualified them. In another category, item 8, Illegal/Unlawful Alien, 12,068, or 1.21% of the total, were denied. How might that change under President Obama's comprehensive immigration reform?

Item 9, Adjudicated Mental Health, is also interesting. In that category 10,429, or 1.05% of the total, were denied guns. That's the category to which the most recent headline making killers belonged, had they been adjudicated.

In any event, that 65.4 million is a lot of guns. If only I had bought shares in Sturm Ruger way back when.

Hat tip S.B.

Regime Uncertainty on display - gun version

We began talking about "Regime Uncertainty" way back in the Spring of 2009, but the theory has been around ever since Robert Higgs coined the phrase in explaining why the Great Depression lasted so long. It's a simple theory: fear of government prevented businessmen from making the investments needed to expand the economy.

Today we have a very good example of how fear of government affects the economy. Except this time the effect is positive, at least for one industry.

Gun and ammo manufacturers and sellers are thriving like never before. And the reason is fear of Barack Obama's ambitious drive to take guns away from honest citizens. As the president ramps up his rhetoric, fear envelops the country. And citizens are taking action to protect themselves by buying guns before they are outlawed.

President Obama seems intent on fulfilling a dream of many Democrats, and that's to disarm the citizenry. Why do they want to do that? The leaders want it because it enhances their own power over the people. As for why their followers are so willing to surrender their rights is up to them to try and explain. But my theory is that they have such an overwhelming faith in government that they think the government will step in to solve any problem that arises. The world would be a better place if people would just do what the government says. Free people just cause more problems.

So we end up with programs like Obamacare. Fortunately, there are still plenty of people around who think the better world is a place where the government leaves them alone.

And as long as there is an uncertainty about what rights citizens will have remaining after the president gets through with them then the gun market will thrive. If only I had bought Sturm Ruger stock back in the Spring of 2009. Sigh.

The gun show must go on - 2/2/13

As anyone who follows gun news would have guessed, the gun show in Midland, Texas, today was jam packed with customers. A lot of money was changing hands, and it surely must have been a good day for the vendors.

[Note to gun controllers: Each gun transaction I witnessed involved the ATF forms and procedures.]

It was scheduled to open at 9:00 am, and that's when I arrived in order to beat the crowd. No such luck. There was a long line of people there with the same idea. I was in the door by 9:30, so it wasn't a terribly long wait.

There was an interesting lesson in capitalism on display as we waited in line. The show sponsor walked along the line and offered to sell weekend passes which would allow the buyer to bypass the line and go directly inside, plus come back again on Sunday. Those passes were $15, while the regular entry fee for each day was $5. Wait your turn and pay the regular price or pay a premium and jump the line.

Collectivists would say "that's unfair," because only the rich could pay that premium. Nonsense. That's a free market at work. "Fair" does not factor into the equation. Anyone with the money and inclination should be able to do what he/she wants so long as it doesn't take anything away from someone else.

On that particular morning most of us in line were too cheap to take the offer, but a few did.

The national conversation about guns sometimes happens randomly

A random conversation yesterday morning in the grocery store with the lady behind me in the checkout line:

Stranger:

"I hope the fog clears up soon, there are some crazy drivers out there. All the cars were going 25 miles per hour and this lady passes everyone going 85 miles an hour!

"There's all this talk about carrying guns -- it's a good thing I don't have a gun because I would have shot her tires out! I don't own a gun, but if I did..." (Pause.)

Me:

"You're the type of person who shouldn't carry a gun."

Stranger: (Nervous laugh.)

"I don't own a gun but if I did I would have shot her tires out!"

Me walking away thinking to myself:

There's someone who is so absorbed with ideology that she thinks possessing a gun makes a person disregard the law, violate one's moral code, and abandon self control. It sounded like she was squeezing a political statement into a discussion about driving conditions. On the other hand, she should know herself better than anyone else, and maybe she really doesn't have any self control. If that's the case, she really shouldn't carry a gun. But hopefully she's aware enough not to ascribe that characteristic to everyone else.

Gun controllers are willing to settle for Plan C

The people and pundits who want to control guns in the U.S. are willing to settle for Plan C. Here are the plans:

Plan A - Disarm the criminals and the law abiding citizens;
Plan B - Disarm only the criminals.
Plan C - Disarm only the law abiding citizens.

They want Plan A, but they can't get it. They should want Plan B, but that's an impossibility. No laws can achieve that. So they are willing to settle for Plan C - disarm only the law abiding citizens.

If only they could see the folly in what they seek.

American guns and Mexican crime

The morning paper contained an article from Texas Tribune on the front page today. (Link.) And it's about how the proliferation of guns in Mexico should be a factor in the gun control debate going on in the U.S. Yes it should. Mexico has some very tough gun control laws, and several Americans have been jailed there for inadvertently taking a firearm across the border. But in spite of tough gun laws, gun violence in Mexico if off the charts.

So the point should be that tough gun control laws do not control crime.

However, the Texas Tribune article is remarkable in what it omits. The word "fast" does not appear in the article. Neither does the word "furious." So obviously, the phrase "fast and furious" is not there. Surely an article about American guns in Mexico should mention that the Obama administration oversaw an operation that allowed guns to be smuggled into Mexico which resulted in hundreds of murders. But no.

Reminds me of the White House Correspondence Dinner where Jimmy Kimmel was the guest speaker. He made a joke about Fast and Furious, and the audience, half of whom were reporters, scratched their heads and wondered what the heck he was talking about. It just show how a biased media can influence its customers, not by misrepresenting the facts, but by merely withholding items that would otherwise be news.

Gun Appreciation Day 1-19-2013

Someone designated today as Gun Appreciation Day to acknowledge the good that comes from gun ownership. And two men who are active with the Midland Shooters Association set up a celebration day at the MSA rifle/pistol range.

There was a swap meet with lots of interesting things for sell. Yep, someone had an AR-15 for sale, and judging from the asking price, that particular product is in short supply. But hot dogs were free! Yeah!

The event grew a small crowd, and it's refreshing to know there are plenty of people around who recognize the good fortune we have of living in a country with a constitution that gives its citizens the right to protect themselves in the most efficient way possible. It doesn't take much internet searching to find countless examples of how guns have saved lives.

The problem is the deep rooted anti-gun bias displayed by many pundits, members of the news industry, and politicians. Their desire to disarm the citizenry balances the scale with their faith that the government should take good care of everyone from cradle to grave. They say "safety net," but envision a "fishing net" ensnaring the populace to make them dependent on government. It's easier to enslave an unarmed citizenry.

AR-15 Magazine change on video

The people leading the move to disarm the populace are currently focused on high capacity magazines. I've mentioned in previous posts how easy it is to change magazines in the AR-15. See Mega-maga-phobia: The fear of large capacity magazines. The point was that the time is not significant enough to matter in a Sandy Hook school active shooter situation. And therefore banning hi cap mags would be pointless, other than making the gun control advocates feel good and encouraging them toward some other anti-gun measure.

Here's an even better video showing a magazine change. The shooter loads 20 rounds into a high capacity magazine and fires all twenty bullets through the AR-15 in 15.30 seconds. Then he fires 10 rounds from a single magazine, withdraws the empty magazine, inserts a second magazine containing 10 rounds, and resumes shooting until that magazine is empty. The elapsed time there was 15.57 seconds -- a difference of 27 seconds. Here's a link to the video. (Thanks, S.M.)

A half minute isn't significant enough to start banning firearm paraphernalia, especially at a time when citizens are in a highly suspicious mood about an administration that seems bent on disarming them.

Home Alone the movie -- good thing Kevin didn't have a real gun

It's Sunday afternoon, the TV is on, and I'm thumb surfing through channels. And right there on the small screen is little Kevin (Macaulay Culkin) doing some target practice with a pump action BB gun 20 minutes into the Christmas favorite, Home Alone.

All I could think was how grateful we should be that he didn't have access to a real gun. He would have dispatched those two burglars the first time they stepped into the house. The movie would have been over in about half an hour. And worst of all, there would have been no "Home Alone" 2 through 5 or the video game. The horror.

Gun toting educators

Readin', writin', 'rithmetic, revolvers. The media emotion minders are busy as can be trying to keep the emotions and interest in news stories about the Newtown shooting high.

And as is typical, someone has to say, "There oughta be a law," and the groups who want to disarm the populace are demanding just that.

One of the important lessons we learned from 9/11 was that we, the average citizens, are our first and sometimes only line of defense. And subsequently we've heard numerous instances in which quick thinking airline passengers have thwarted terrorists. It happens on the ground, too. But an armed madman in a gun free zone makes that difficult.

And so what seems like a common sense proposal has been tossed in the mix. It comes from our neighbor in Odessa, Derek New, who is circulating a petition for signatures to persuade the local school districts to get them to allow school district employees with concealed carry licenses to take their guns to school. See OAOA.com; KWES.com; MyWestTexas.com and Chron.com.

One would assume that the crazy gunman intent on killing would just stay home knowing the odds have been shifted against him by the possibility there may be bullets coming his way from anyone and any direction. The art of deterrence is creating in the potential killer's mind the fear of consequences of an attack. Not knowing who is armed would seem to be serve as a deterrence. On the other hand, knowing that all the law abiding citizens have dutifully turned in their firearms to be smashed would serve as encouragement, not deterrence.

---

The subject of guns in schools brings to mind an incident a few years ago in which a junior high school principal in Odessa accidentally fired off a round in the school. See The Two Recent Accidental Glock Discharges, detailed. In happened in 2006, two years after the school had been locked down when two youths escaped from a nearby detention facility. The principal surely knew that guns were prohibited in the school, but he may very well have calculated that protecting the children was more important than anti-gun the rules.

He could have been a hero. But there was that accidental/negligent discharge in the school. The gun in question was a Glock which has a light trigger pull and no manual safety. And apparently the gun discharged when the principal reached into the bag where it was kept. If the gun had a manual safety that may not have happened.

I'm not going to get on a high horse about Glocks here. But let me just add that teachers are smart. And any teacher or other school district employee who ultimately ends up carrying a gun to school will surely choose an appropriate gun for the circumstance.

Mega-maga-phobia: The fear of large capacity magazines

NBC's David Gregory and other gun opponents want to ban high capacity magazines, and people familiar with guns ask, "why?"

The theory is that the time it takes to change magazines would allow bystanders to tackle and disarm the shooter. That would assume the bystanders were within arms reach of the shooter, and yet the shooter emptied a full magazine and somehow missed them. Since all the advice we've been given about gun violence has at the top of the list to get as far away as possible, which also happens to be pretty good common sense, that theory assumes the bystanders were as crazy as the shooter.

What the gun opponents don't realize is that an empty magazine can be dumped and a fresh magazine inserted in one or two seconds. As for why gun opponents want them banned, it's a first step. Once that's done, it's on to another incremental step with the final goal of disarming the populace.

We talked about the magazines in a previous post. See High capacity magazine ban wouldn't make any difference.

Embarrassing story. A few years ago I had the crazy idea of trying to persuade a reporter to make a video showing how fast a magazine can be changed in a semi-automatic handgun to demonstrate the futility of banning high capacity magazines. Silly, silly me. People who have made up their minds will not assist in any endeavor to change those minds.

No need. There are plenty of videos already on Youtube demonstrating how quickly a standard magazine can be changed. Here are some that were linked in that previous post. As I stated there, the change takes less time than it would take to shout, "This is a gun free zone!"

First, AR-15 magazine change: here, here and here (this one is very fast).

Let's not forget the AK-47: here.

Murder methods in gun controlled Australia

While people in the U.S. grappled with their feelings about the mass murder that occurred in Newtown, Connecticut, a few weeks ago, invariably a sizable number of well intentioned but wrong headed people made emotional pleas for gun controls. And invariably attempts are made to compare the U.S. with jurisdictions with stricter gun controls. Australia comes up quite frequently. So let's look at crime in Australia to see whether gun control has controlled crime.

Australia instituted strict gun control laws following a mass murder in the 1990s known as the Port Arthur Massacre which generated a lot of publicity and the typical cry for more gun control laws. The lawmakers acceded to the gun controllers.

The crime rate in Australia has been on a downtrend for the past several years, but a claim can't be made that the gun laws caused the decline as the crime rate has also declined here in the country some call the gun capitol of the world.

Take a look at the two charts below, pulled from the Australian Institute of Criminology's Australian Crimes: Facts and Figures 2011:

Yes, the murder/manslaughter rate has been declining, just as in the U.S. But note one more thing. The percentage of murders by firearm has been falling, too, suggesting that murderers are finding substitute weapons. So it's very difficult to assign a cause and effect to gun control and crime decline.

In that regard, one more chart bears looking at. The one below comes from AIC.gov.au and shows how knife homicides have grown at about the same rate that gun homicides have fallen.

Bad guys will find a way.

Now the new fear in Australia is home invasions. An unarmed populace must be a tempting target to those who would threaten and steal whether the invaders are armed with a gun or knife.

- A future article at this blog will address the unintended consequence of Australian gun control -- the proliferation of illegal guns.

Obama on track to get gun salesman of the year title again in 2012

It started as a joke after he got elected in 2008. Americans swamped the stores buying guns for fear of what he might do. So someone tagged him with the satirical title "Gun Salesman of the Year."

Gun sales died down after a while, but the market has caught fire again. With everyone's emotion at a peak after the Newtown massacre and Obama attempting to take advantage of it to fulfill the liberal dream of disarming the populace, shoppers are buying AR-15s like crazy. And so many internet users were trying to reach the Bushmaster website that it went dead while I was looking at it just minutes ago.

It's likely to be another banner year for gun manufacturers, and they have Obama to thank for it. It's the "regime uncertainty" principle, but this time it's playing out to someone's advantage for a change.

the NRA -- liberals worst enemy

The left takes advantage of every opportunity it gets to vilify gun owners. And the murders at Newtown, CT, have presented them with a crisis they don't want to waste.

Gun groups are probably already organized and ready to combat the false narratives that will surely come forth about guns.

The NRA gets a lot of heat for its aggressive defense of 2nd amendment rights. Even gun owners get tired of it at times. I was an NRA member some time ago, but their relentless pandering for money got very annoying. However, they have provided a service to gun owners by attacking even the slightest attempt to restrict gun rights. They aren't the only ones doing it, and their work along with other pro-gun groups has paid off.

To see what would have happened had defenders of gun rights not been so aggressive look at cigarette smokers. The attack on smoking started out with just a few innocuous rules. Smokers said, "OK, we can live with that." Then came another, then another. And before long smoking was banned in airplanes, rental cars, office buildings, bars and seemingly everywhere. The war on smokers was over and smokers lost. Now you see small groups of them, outcast, shivering on cold stoops, smoke wafting about their heads.

The camel stuck his nose under the smokers' tent and upended the whole thing.

Oh, that's different, you say, because smoking is bad for you. The same argument is made about guns, and without aggressive resistance, expect the same result.

Addendum: Watch Louie Gohmert explain the need for 2nd amendment protection to Chris Wallace on 12/16/12.

Newtown shooter was a coward -- could have been easily frightened

Not only did he choose the most defenseless targets he could find, Adam Lanza shot himself as soon as he knew the cops were coming. See Gov.: Gunman shot self as 1st responders closed in.

The guy was deeply disturbed, but a proper diagnosis is something for the shrinks to excavate from the rubble of his pathetic life. However based on what the reporters are saying, he was not a brave person. When he heard the police, his fear kicked ink, and he checked out.

But it took the arrival of the police. And as the saying goes, when seconds count, police are just minutes away. So with that in mind, and while lawmakers get ready to slap some new emotion driven laws on us, let's do some speculating. If anyone at the school -- a teacher, a janitor, a visitor -- had advanced toward him pointing a gun the carnage might have ended earlier.

Mass shootings -- if you want to ban something ban news coverage

Well, maybe not ban news coverage entirely, just the breathless wall to wall coverage we get now.  All we needed was a perfunctory announcement then only the relevant parts as they come out.

As it is now, the networks obsess over these things. Yesterday, if you watched any TV news programs, the world stopped except for the mass killing of children in Newtown, Connecticut.

The call for new laws is loud and clear with liberal President Obama sending a message:

And we're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.

That's a gun-control dog whistle to give him cover and get his followers going.

John Lott and others say that the writings left by most mass shooters indicate that their motive is twofold. One is to commit suicide. The other is to get as much news coverage as possible, perhaps to get noticed in a world they perceive as ignoring them.

So if anyone wants action, focus on the news coverage and how to deny killers what they want.

Worried about 1st amendment rights? Apply that same level of worry to the 2nd amendment.