NC bill to allow carry in restaurants
From the Barrel of a Gun alerted me to NC Senate Bill 235, which would allow concealed handgun permit holders to carry in restaurants that serve alcohol.
I’ve already written my senator, and called the office. You do likewise, please.
The benefits of socialized medicine
Joe has a great look at the effects of socialized medicine in Australia.
We have two choices here, folks, when demand exceeds supply…price rationed health care, or bureaucrat rationed health care. Wait until going to the doctor is like going to the DMV.
A look at Obama’s agenda
I was chatting with a friend recently (Hi Liz!) and talk turned to…ahem…current affairs. I mentioned that our president was exactly friendly to gun rights. She asked me what BHO’s plan was for guns and gun rights.
So here you go, Liz…from the White House website:
Address Gun Violence in Cities: Obama and Biden would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent.
Let’s break that down, piece by piece. The Tiahrt Amendment was introduced to attempt to ensure gun trace information is restricted to law enforcement. It does NOT prevent law enforcement from tracing firearms. It prevents the results of that data from being shared with inappropriate third parties. And it prevents snooping by political hacks.
From the ATF’s 2007 trace report for North Carolina:
(1) Firearm traces are designed to assist law enforcement authorities in conducting investigations by tracking
the sale and possession of specific firearms. Law enforcement agencies may request firearms traces for any
reason, and those reasons are not necessarily reported to the Federal Government. Not all firearms used in
crime are traced and not all firearms traced are used in crime.
(2) Firearms selected for tracing are not chosen for purposes ofdetermining which types, makes or models of
firearms are used for illicit purposes. The firearms selected do not constitute a random sample and should not
be considered representative of the larger universe of all firearms used by criminals, or any subset of that
universe. Firearms are normally traced to the first retail seller, and sources reported for firearms traced do not
necessarily represent the sources or methods by which firearms in general are acquired for use in crime.
In other words…you can’t draw any conclusions from the raw data. But that is exactly the kind of conculsion that has been attempted in the past. Smith and Wesson, for example has been a target of this kind of harassment under the Clinton administration. “Smith and Wesson handguns are x% of traced guns. Thus, Smith and Wesson are the ‘guns of choice’ of criminals. We need to shut them down.” S&W was sued by Andrew Cuomo, then head of HUD. S&W was forced to settle out of court, and the resulting uproar in the gun community almost bankrupted the company. It did force its eventual sale. This kind of nonsense is dangerous to liberty. It’s an attempt to use civil lawsuits to force what cannot be accomplished politically.
And that’s why Tiahrt is important.
In my next post, I’ll take a look at the “Gun Show Loophole.”
Putting blame where it belongs
So, yeah. Turns out I was to blame on trashing my theme.
You would think someone who makes their living working with computers would know that they will do EXACTLY what you tell them to do.
Adding a link…
I’m adding a link to the Carolina Shooters Forum in the “Gun Culture” section…I’ve been lurking over there for a bit. It’s a great resource for local shooters.
Slow blogging
Slow blogging ahead. End of semester papers due. Oh, and my real job needs attention. And my kid is sick.
Back soon.
Why I love surplus rifles
I recently acquired a 98k Mauser. I had been leery of buying surplus guns for a long time…afraid that I would end up with an expensive piece of junk. But I decided that the time was ripe to pick one up. If nothing else, I figured I would have an action that I could use for something more tricked out.
What I ended up with was a Russian capture 98k. For those who don’t know what that means, let me ’splain. At the end of the war, the Soviets captured a whole mess of German rifles. Russians being Russians, they packed them away in cosmoline, waiting for the time that might be needed to arm peasants. Then, at some point in their history, the Soviets signed a disarmament treaty with the US. The treaty specified a certain number of arms needed to be rendered unfit for military service. The Soviets, a pratcial people, promptly disposed of the front sight hoods, cleaning rods, and action locking screws for these rifles, and declared them de-milled. Everyone left happy. The Russians later sold off them off for surplus.
When I got the gun home, I cleaned off the crusted cosmoline and wiped down the stock with Murphy’s oil soap. I looked up the manufacturing codes. It’s not a rare rifle. The bolt serial number doesn’t match the reciever. There is ugly Soviet electric pencil serial numbers scratched on the top of the bolt, where it was force matched at whatever Soviet arsenal it was refinished. My original intent was to strip it down to the action, and have it be a project gun that I could build up and practice my gunsmithing “skills.”
But the more I held it, and worked the action, and thought about the history behind the gun, I decided I just couldn’t do it. My wife is a history teacher…and this gun was a piece of living history. Did some poor German hold it while shivering on the Eastern front after being sent to his death by that madman in Berlin? Or did it sit in some arms room until being captured and maimed by the Russians and dragged back behind the Iron Curtain? And isn’t that maiming part of history, too, and a monument to silly, feel good treaties?
Firearms are history distilled into an object that you can touch and hold and smell. You can look at the rough workmanship on a ‘43 Nagant and really see the effects of the war on a country rushing to produce enough arms to defend itself. Or pick up the weight of a Garand and imagine, in your minds eye, what a trooper ready to hit the ramp on D-Day must have felt.
So, my 98k will go into the safe, unmolested, until some day in the future, when I tell my daughter stories of what her great-grandfather did during the war, at Normandy and beyond. And how her British great-grandmother had two houses bombed out from under her. And let her hold my my guns and touch and feel and smell a part of history.
A History of Gun Control in India
Abhijeet Singh has a comprehensive look at gun control in India. Shocking no one, it is a legacy of British colonial rule.
Hat tip to Steve at The Firearm Blog.
Am I the only one…
…who finds this disturbing? The Pentagon is planning on fielding 20,000 domestic troops for homeland security by 2011.
Reportedly still bound by the Posse Comitatus Act…for now.
The four rules
Roberta X reminds us all of the four rules. Including the why’s…and a few examples of what happens when we forget them.
Do your part!
-
-