When it comes to the allure of weighing your gun down tricking your gun out with accessories, it seems even the Russians aren’t immune these days. After you watch Vladimir Putin solemnly examining a ‘state of the art’ airsoft gun, zoom to 0:4o to see what happens when the Автомат Калашникова meets the дешевле, чем грязь* catalog.  It’s a good thing it features ‘reinforced plastic’ because that much tactical gadgetry might snap the barrel off an M2 .50-caliber machine gun. Please tell me no Russian soldier actually thinks this thing is cool. Does the Russian language have a term for ‘Mall Ninja?’

h/t Cheaper Than Dirt

This extraordinary product bundle combines two of Russia’s biggest exports: The vodka and the Kalashnikov. Kalaschnikow Red Army Vodka comes packed in a green wooden ammunition box and in shape of a glass replica of the legendary Russian assault rifle which is filled with 1L of high quality vodka made of finest spirit and crystal clear spring water. The vodka is very smooth with subtle notes of honey and vanilla.

In addition, the box includes a hand-grenade shaped flask filled with fine herbal liqueur and six shot glasses with “Red Army” emblems! On top of that, as an Urban Drinks exclusive, you get four extra cans of 9MM Energy Drink. The cans of this Hungarian energy drink come in shape of bullets! Quality wise, this drink definitely can keep up with the more known products.

Whether you are a gun fanatic or you just are a sucker for extraordinary packaging, you shouldn’t miss out on this great product!

Although most contemporary Russian vodka contains not-so-subtle notes of jet fuel and carburetor cleaner, I couldn’t have said it better myself.  This product unwittingly combines two of the defining concepts of the twentieth-century Russian experience: alcoholism and cheap, dependable firepower.

Here’s a better picture of the bottle itself, in the (admittedly vague) shape of an AK-74U with a really strange buttstock.

I really respect that this Kalashnikov-styled vodka is sold in a ‘high-capacity’ bottle (it holds nearly seventeen shots) but what good are only four rounds of a 9mm energy drink?  Everyone knows that ‘Forties’ carry a lot more punch.

На здоровье!

The headline pretty much says it all.

“Border officials say they caught a Fort Worth woman trying to smuggle more than a dozen assault rifles into Mexico in the trunk of a BMW,” kdfw.com reports.
“The 22-year-old woman, who is a U.S. citizen, was turned over to immigration and Homeland Security officials. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials did not release her name. On Tuesday, CBP officials took a second look at the woman’s 2001 BMW 740 as she drove across the border at Del Rio . . .

In the trunk they found 14 assault rifles, a shotgun, a pistol, 22 gun magazines and 25 rounds of ammunition, according to a news release.

Most of the assault rifles were AK-47s and AR-15s, said the CBP.

Man, don’t you know those ATF guys are stittin’ around thinkin’ “Whew! This will divert attention away from all that Gunwalker crap. People will believe that there are people smuggling assault rifles into Mexico.”

Yes but—where was the ATF in all this excitement? Isn’t this exactly the kind of action Project Gunrunner is supposed to tackle? What’s the point of sucking up $160 million in “emergency” funding, opening four new branch offices, hiring dozens of new agents and setting up elaborate stings when some guy at the border can catch a gun smuggler just by stopping a car?

In fact, why didn’t some astute media flak at ATF make sure they horned-in on the bust before it went public? You know; to catch those gun smuggling kingpins that the Inspector General wanted so bad. Or at least get some credit for doing good when they’ve been caught in a world of doing wrong.

Maybe the Customs and Border Protection (CPB) is slightly miffed that the ATF put guns in the hands of a drug gang that used the weapons to murder one of their own. Of course, if we wanna get REALLY weird, we could go the tinfoil hat conspiracy route . . .

Say, Agent Stan…didn’t you say you really wanted to ditch that woman you’ve been dating? Just give her this sweet ride we had in the impound lot and tell her to meet you in Del Rio for a ‘nooner. We’ll take it from there. We’ll get ourselves out of this Gunwalker scandal and solve your dating problems in one fell swoop! . . . Whaddaya mean CBP got to her before we could get across the border to stop her there?

A headline announcing a U.S. to Mexico weapons bust like this could have done a lot to mitigate the bad PR the ATF’s been a-gettin’ as of late. Notice the use of the past tense. I would imagine things are way past tense over ATF-way.

Why in the Wide, Wide World of Sports didn’t we get this collar? Who in the Hell let CBP get out in front on this thing? Why didn’t WE know about it? What are we spending all that money on, anyway?

I was just kidding about that last bit. Given the highly insular nature of all governmental bureaucracies, I’m sure nobody at ATF thinks anything about taxpayer money-fueled budgets other than “mine.” I’m sure they look on what they do as God’s Work, and how dare you impune their motives and methods with questions about filthy lucre. The nerve!

The simple truth: when guns DO head South, Me-hi-co way, the good Ole U.S. Customs and Border Protection is the best agency to interdict the flow. If the ATF knows there are guns headed south, they should simply give Border Protection a heads-up and let them take it from there. I guess that’s a problem when you’re the ones creating the trade in the first place.

What about ammo? Is there any ammo that you’d find to be a red flag to the police or prosecutors? There are expanding sabots for shotguns, LEO-only loads, the so-called “Talon” expanding hollow points, and so forth. Anything there private citizens should avoid?

I recommend that they use a good-quality, hollow point round, ideally something that’s been out there for a while, has a track record, and has been widely-used in law enforcement. If they are comfortable with the round that’s carried by their local police, so much the better, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a 100% requirement.

If it was 1995 and I lived in New York City, yeah, the city was still issuing ball ammunition for the 9mm, but I damn sure wouldn’t have it in my gun. Be able to articulate that police went to that type of ammunition because historically, the people that forced them to shoot them, tended to cease hostilities sooner, with fewer gunshot wounds. The bullets tended not to go through-and-through, and strike innocent, unseen bystanders on the other side of them. And the bullets tended not to ricochet, and strike unseen bystanders unpredictably.

On the other side will very often, with a civilian case, bring up the hollow point thing and they’ll use phrases like “dum-dum bullets” and blah, blah, blah. A good resource on that would be some of the legal writings of attorney Lisa Steele. Lisa is an appellate lawyer out of the Northeast, and she’s seen the same sort of thing that I’ve seen – the demonization of the hollow point thing, as an indication of malice on the part of the user and all that. And I’ve found it takes five minutes in court to shoot it down.

Mr. Ayoob, why did you cary that particular police-type hollow point? “Well sir, I was concerned about the same people police carry guns to protect us from. I figured that if the police determined that that was the best ammunition to use to protect me and my family, it was probably the best ammunition for me to use, to protect me and my family.”

Any thoughts on affordable guns for low-income families that live in high-crime areas?

Yeah, rather than buy a cheap gun, be looking for a reputable dealer that will sell you a good-quality used firearm. We’re seeing some of the traded-in police service autos, the older generation – you know, the Berettas, the Smith & Wessons, going in the mid-$300 range. The bottom line is, we’re talking life-saving, emergency rescue equipment here. And we’re also talking about stuff that’s built to last. None of us keeps food in our great-great grandmother’s ice box, but I know people hunt with their grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s guns. I’d rather have old than cheap.

Since this has been a hot topic virtually everywhere, what’s your opinion on the extended-capacity or high-capacity magazines?

Well the actual, extended-capacity magazines, the ones that go beyond the original design of the weapon, their use in crimes is extremely rare. Prior to the Loughner incident earlier this month, the last one that I even remember was in the mid-1990s, the Fairchild airbase, the psycho who had an AK-47 cloned, semi-automatic, with a 75-round, after-market magazine. Prior to that, the only ones I can think of off the top of my head, in the late 90′s, the infamous North Hollywood bank robbery, may have used one or more extended magazines in their illegal, fully-auto machine guns.

One perpetrator in the 1980s in Florida who had a 40-round magazine instead of a 30-round, aftermarket in a rifle, and prior to that, I’d have to go back to the 1930s, when “Baby Face” Nelson and John Dillinger had 1911s that had been made up with extended magazines for them by an outlaw gunsmith in San Antonio.

So when you get something that happens somewhere between once every decade and once every two decades, passing new laws to ban millions of people from owning multiple millions of a product that has been legal for God-knows how long, at a time when Camden, New Jersey has just had to lay off 40% of it’s police force, does not strike me as an exercise in logic.

On the other hand, we have home invasion situations, the thing we had a little over a year ago in Florida where the gang of people dressed as ninjas, broke into a home, terrorized the place, killed one or two people – there are situations where the defending good guy is going to need more than the average amount of firepower.

If you look at the several shootings, the watch repairman Lance Thomas, the Rolex expert was involved in, a chain of five gunfights with a minimum of multiple opponents. He often had to empty a gun, or another gun, et cetera, et cetera, to solve the problem. A situation some years ago, in Richmond, Virginia, the Beverly Hills Jewlers incident (also covered in American Handgunner magazine) where the people in the jewelry store emptied several five-shot revolvers at two very heavily-armed, professional criminals, before they finally managed to kill the two of them.

In a situation like that, yeah, we can see the advantage in the home-defense/store-defense scenario of the high-capacity magazine. It’s rare, but it’s not nearly so rare as the incidents of their abuse. To me, it’s a non-issue. Light-weight yuppies who don’t understand what really causes crime, what really causes murder, and look for simple answers to complicated problems.

Are there any words of wisdom you would like to pass on to the TTAG Armed Intelligencia?

I’m with a group of people that do the Pro-Arms Podcast, and we’ve had a lot of success with that. We’ve been able to interview people like Bill Allard, who was Jim Cirillo’s partner in the New York City stakeout squad. I recently did an interview with John Hanlon, one of the survivors of the epic FBI gun battle in Miami, 25 years ago. There’s a lot of stuff there that comes from the horse’s mouth that folks have found useful for their own personal preparation. The podcast is also on the Gun Rights Radio Network.

I also have a variety of classes coming up around the country. Visit my website, www.massadayoobgroup.com for the latest schedules and information.

Click here for Part I • Part II • Part III • Part IV • Part V

If you’re just now joining the party, we strongly recommend that you go back and start at the beginning with Parts I thorough IV. If you enjoyed Part IV, on flying and the Suarez controversy, sit back and get ready for some more thought-provoking ideas from the acknowledged expert on personal defense. Today, we cover personal defense in the home, and the burning question of the TTAG Armed Intelligencia: What about modifying my gun?

Here’s a controversial one – for the average person, what do you recommend for personal defense in the home?

I recommend if the budget allows and the mindset allows, a minimum of one serviceable   handgun and one long gun apiece per designated combatant. When I say “designated combatant,” the family has sat down beforehand and just like you’ll determine what will you do if there’s a fire in here, have determined what are we gonna do if we experience a home invasion.

The reason I don’t go with just the one, is if you’ve got to be moving, if you’ve got to go down the hall and scoop a baby out of the nursery and bring it to the safe room, you’ve got to go down the other hall where 85 year old grandpa with Alzheimer’s lives and you’ve got to lead him to the safe room, in this situation you’re gonna need at least one hand free.

You’re gonna need a hand free to work the phone, you’re gonna need a hand free to turn doorknobs, to handle light switches. Any time you take one hand off a two-handed weapon, if somebody jumps you out of the dark, you’re gonna lose it before you can retain it. I say that having taught handgun retention for 30-something years now.

The handgun is the easiest of all firearms to retain, one-handed, and that does leave a hand free. If you need to go mobile for any reason, I prefer the handgun. If we’ve counted noses and everyone is here in the safe room with me, and the bad guys are kicking in the bedroom door, now I’d like to have something more substantial than a handgun, and that’s where the AR-15, the Mini-14, the shotgun come in.

If the budget or the situation only allows the one, I’d go with the handgun for the greater flexibility, even though you’re giving up some firepower.

I know it’s probably the last thing you’d worry about in a life-or-death home invasion situation, but being a musician, I alway worry about my hearing, especially when shooting indoors. Any advice on ear protection?

Yes, I always keep a pair of active hearing protectors by the bed. If there’s gonna be time to grab the shotgun, there’s gonna be literally the two seconds it takes to grab those, slap them on your head and turn them on. You can still work a phone, you simply hold the phone near the microphone of the earmuffs. If you have to fire a shot, you’re not going to be stunned out.

If you’ve ever fired a high-powered rifle at close quarters without some sort of hearing protection, it literally rings your chimes. In the next few seconds, if you need to hear a soft footstep on a carpet to determine where the second bad guy is, you’re not going to hear it any more. And there’s the definite potential for hearing loss.

That said, when people say “Well, gee, I don’t wanna cary a gun, cause if I fire my gun inside the car in a carjacking, or I fire my AR-15 in the hallway, I’m gonna lose some hearing.” I ask them, “Look, you wouldn’t have fired unless you believed you’re about to die. How much are you gonna hear in the grave? Let’s have a little sense of priorities.”

So I think it’s a very nice thing to have handy for home defense. I can see it even having some purpose for SWAT teams. They are even available wired-up for communications devices and all that. It’s most unlikely they’ll be available in a field situation. Also in the field, where you’re outdoors, there’s much less likelihood of permanent hearing damage, than firing a powerful weapon in a hallway where the sound tends to reverberate much more.

What about modifications to guns – not just handguns, but pistol grips on shotguns, AR-15s, AKs, et cetera. What are the ramifications for prosecution goes when it comes to modifying a gun?

As far as the whole “evil black rifle” thing, your readers would do well to do a Google search for some of the stuff that’s been researched by Dr. Glenn Meyer. His focus group work with juries and that sort of thing indicates there is a very real prejudice out there in the public, which is the jury pool, against the what some would call the “Rambo-type” weapons.

It can be defeated in court, but it’s going to be more expensive. You’re gonna need to bring in expert witnesses, people from the gun industry, to say nah it’s not the avatar of death. Owning a red Corvette Sting Ray doesn’t mean you’re a chronic speeder, and owning an AR-15 doesn’t mean you have homicidal fantasies, blah, blah.

In so far as some of the gear that goes on it, ask yourself, what do you really need? I don’t see a whole lot that you need, more than possibly something that will carry some spare ammunition on it, because you’re not going to have time to throw on a spare shell bandolier when the burglar alarm goes off, and some kind of a white light as a last-ditch verification of target, which I think is critical.

The [shotgun or rifle] pistol grip only, I don’t like, because it is very difficult to hit well within a reactive situation if you haven’t been able to get yourself exactly set up for it. And if you have to struggle for the gun, again, going back to 30-some years of teaching weapon retention and disarming, it is very easy to get the pistol grip-only gun away from anybody who is not trained in gun retention. It’s going to be very easy to get the AR-15 configuration rifle, even with a fixed stock, away from somebody else.

There’s a certain movement that, at the instant of the attack, jams the base of the good guy’s thumb. You either let go of the gun, or the gun is torn out through the base of your thumb. I much prefer the conventional stock type of gun, possibly with a shorter stock, to allow for fast handling and the different statures of people within the family. The stock you’d find on the conventional 870 for example, or the stock you’d find on a conventional sporting model Mini-14 – anybody who’s been trained in basic stick techniques in a dojo knows how to defend that against a disarming attack.

Generally, as a rule of thumb, anything that will make the gun shoot better for the shooter under extreme stress and poor light is absolutely defensible. And the reason is, if it makes you more likely to hit under those adverse conditions, it concomitantly reduces the danger of a wild shot that might hit a bystander.

The two things I would strongly advise against doing and have strongly advised against doing, would be a trigger pull lighter than the factory recommends, and removal or de-activation of a safety device.

You try not to give weapons to your opponent. If I have an [opposing] attorney trying to nail my scalp to the wall, I’m not gonna give him the sound bite of “Ladies and gentlemen, you’re here to determine whether this man was reckless, and arrogant, and negligent. Ladies and gentlemen, he was so reckless, he deactivated the safety device on a lethal weapon. And he was so arrogant, he thought he knew more about this gun than the designer.” Tell me how you’re gonna get past that.

As far as the light trigger pull, your problem there, number one, is it has historically been linked to unintended discharges. So problem one, under stress, we SAY we’re gonna keep our finger off the trigger.

The trouble with that study done in Europe with trained emergency-response personnel, indicated that several times, the sensors that were put on the test gun picked up a finger touching it [the trigger], when the officers swore that during the high-stress exercise their finger had never entered the trigger guard. It apparently occurs unconsciously, as the mind says “Hey, if we have to shoot this thing, we want to verify we can reach the trigger.”

Second, you can go to court and say “I didn’t accidentally discharge the gun, I always keep my finger outside the trigger.” And they will then hit you with the bomb. “So, you want this jury to believe that you’re incapable of making a mistake? You’re the first perfect human being in two thousand and ten years. Is that what you’re telling this jury?” Now that is gonna be a pretty tough sell.

Where the accidental discharge theory comes, is they know you have a justifiable shooting, but you’ve got either the rare prosecutor that is politically driven and has some political hay to make by hanging you out to dry, or the much less-rare plaintiff’s lawyer who’s trying to sue you or your insurance company for something – mainly your insurance company.

They know there is no such thing as a justifiable accident. They know that in a state like Florida, or many other states now, even on the street, the so-called Castle Doctrine has been extended. Basically, particularly if you’re attacked in the home, the presumption is that you were right to shoot the intruder.

If you read the fine print, you’ll find all those laws are worded so they do not cover negligence. So all the other side has to come up with is say “Yeah, well, but he killed him by accident, and that’s not what this law is about. Our theory is, he accidentally shot him.” The light trigger lends itself to that. And you’ve basically just given them an argument they can use against you.

The prosecutor who is politically-motivated will use that argument, because he knows it’s a very tough sell to convince the jury that somebody like that, somebody like you, a productive member of society, with a clean criminal record has suddenly turned into Hannibal Lecter and decided to maliciously murder another human being for sport. They know it’s an easy, slam-dunk to convince the jury that somebody just like them got careless for just one second, and did something stupid.

So that becomes their theory of the case, and it’s a much easier sell. They don’t get bonus points for convicting you for murder instead of manslaughter. It’s really real simple, pass/fail. If you win the conviction, you done good. If the guy is acquitted, you’ve made an ass of yourself. So a lot of them will go for that low-hanging fruit, and that is where the false theory of “he shot him by accident” comes from. And that’s one of the reasons I don’t want to see a lighter-than factory spec trigger on a defensive firearm.

The other is in the civil case. The plaintiff’s lawyer is not looking for justice – they are  looking for money. There are damn few people who are both so rich and so stupid, that if I won a civil judgement of a million dollars against them, there would be an unprotected, liquid million dollars that I could put my claws on and seize to satisfy the judgement.

Probably everybody reading your blog has a million dollar homeowner liability coverage. The insurance company has the money. And bingo, that’s where they go. If they make their theory that he shot them by accident, it’s homeowner negligence, they can get into the deep pockets of the insurance company. If they say, no, he deliberately, maliciously shot my client to watch him die, the attorney knows there’s not a homeowner’s policy in America that covers you for what’s called a willful tort, the deliberate act that harms another person.

So if they say you deliberately shot him, basically, they are closing off their access to where the money is. So that’s why it’s so attractive to them to say you shot him by accident with a hair-trigger gun. I do not like to leave blood like that in the water for the sharks.

Someone might argue that with a lighter trigger, I’m gonna hit better, so therefore it comes under your thing  it’s safer for the bystanders. Actually, no, it fails to pass another legal test called the doctrine of competing harms. History tells us that light triggers are so often associated with accidental shooting tragedies, that trying to say “Well, I did it for safety,” just is not going to pass muster. It doesn’t pass the balance test.

So what I tell folks is, nothing lighter than “factory spec” in the trigger. Certainly make your trigger smooth, I’ve  never seen anyone accused of having too-smooth a trigger pull, in 31 years as an expert witness, and 39 years of teaching this stuff, and 40 years of writing about it. But what I have seen again and again, is that the trigger is too light, and therefore reckless and negligent, and guilt-producing, and culpability-producing.

If I don’t like the disconnector safety on a Browning, I would get another gun, or have the one I have smoothed up so my problems with it are solved. If I don’t like the grip safety on a 1911, I’d buy a pistol that did not have a grip safety and be done with it. And the other modifications I think are going to be very defensible, and I my experience has been that they are very defensible.

Click here for Part I • Part II • Part III • Part IV • Part VI

Wow. Who knew Russian national pride extended to firearms? Seriously, if Defense Secretary Gates appeared on TV and said “The M-16′s got some reliability issues when it comes to running the guns in less-than-optimal field conditions,” I think a lot of people would go “well…he’s got a point.” Others would say he’s a little light in the loafers. But nobody would look at his statement as an insult to the very fibre of the being that is the good ol’ U. S. of A. Not so back in the (former) U.S.S.R. . . .

Apparently, Russia’s Defense Minister, Anatoly Serdyukov, opined publically that the Kalashnikov and Dragunov SVDs sniper rifles, are “morally outdated.” To add insult to injury, he intimated that he’s considering replacing the weapons with something else. Let’s just say this didn’t play well in the Russian equivalent of the Borscht Belt. In fact, “firestorm of controversy” would be a pretty accurate depiction of the ensuing fireworks.

Evidently, Russians are a prideful people. And they take a lot of pride in Kalishnikov’s Greatest Hit of 1947. The AK-47 has withstood the test of time, doing exactly what it’s designer set out for it to do – function as a rugged, all-purpose weapon that was cheap to build, easy to use, and would run even if you filled it full of mud. Accuracy was not really high on the list of objectives, but I understand from people that know far more about the AKs than I, that they are far more accurate than most people believe.

The AK-47 is the equivalent of open-source software in the gun world. It seems as if every Soviet satellite country and a number of other third-world nations have made a cottage industry stamping out AK-47s like Pillsbury stamps out cookies. (Okay, technically the design was updated to the “AK-74″ but the term AK-47 in this case can be considered a generic for the entire AK family of Kalishnikov-designed/inspired weapons. As Fox News points out:

They’re known around the world for their durability in all conditions, firing reliability, ease of use, low production cost and lethality. Military lore holds that an AK-47 can be buried in the mud, dug up a year later and still be fired.

So for Mother Russia, their very own Defense Minister dissin’ the AK would be like Jeff Cooper bitch-slappin’ the 1911, and throwin’ in a little trash talk against John Moses Browning, to boot. But the times they are a-changin,’ and I’m not so sure Anatolovich doesn’t have a valid pointsky.

The venerable 1911 and AK-47 bear more than a passing comparison. They are both well-established, respected designs. They are both manufactured by multiple armories. And they both have several features that are seen in a modern context as design flaws at worst, and in desperate need of an update, at best.

When you stack an AK-47 against, oh, say an American M-4, many would argue the AK comes up short. After all, sometimes, battles are about who can get the most lead into the other guy’s soldiers while wasting the least number of rounds. And when it comes to that, the AK may be a sentimental fave, but a number of other weapons come out on top of Kalishnikov’s carbine.

But what’s the solution? Mother Russia’s not about to buy Americanski guns, or for that matter, weapons of the Frenchy French, the Germans or (not in a million, zillion years) the Israelis. Nope. I suspect a surge in nationalist pride will drive the Russians to find a young, talented designer in the mold of another Kalishnikov, and set them to the task to building a better rifle, by combining the advantages of an AK with the accuracy of a more modern design.

That’s no small order, for the AK was something of an engineering marvel of it’s time. To build a gun with better accuracy and precision, but retain the famous AK features – inexpensive to manufacture, virtually clog-proof, easy-to-use, and reliable as all get out – would be a feat to rival anything the gun world has seen. But to add to the challenge, Russia’s own gun manufacturing is dying due to low pay for the workers.

Eventually, something’s gotta give. So while our military thrashes about, looking to replace the 9mm handgun cartridge with something that has a little more stopping power, and once again flirts with the .45ACP, it’s nice to know other countries are in the throws of their own firearms fandango, fraught with frisson. (Sorry. Runaway Alliteration.)

Will Russia ditch their national firearm for something a little bit more accurate? Stay tuned…

So I’m driving around yesterday, all situationally aware and all that, and I get a call from my offspring on her new iPhone. (Santa been belly belly good to her this year, mon.) She tells me that she and her mom are in their car, driving near a Chase Bank branch less than a mile from their (my former) house. And they can’t help but notice the place is surrounded by police. Armed police. And S.W.A.T. guys. In full battle regalia, armed with either AR-15s (at least) or M-16s (I presume police get to go full-auto, right?). My ex wisely decided that the best way to avoid trouble is to not be there when it happens, so she pulls a u-ey and moseys on outta there, taking a different route to home base. This got me to thinking, though, and what I thought does not make for a pretty picture.

Okay, I’m sure if you’re a faithful reader of TTAG, you read the (sadly) regular feature Irresponsible Gun Onwer of the Day. How could you miss it? The reason nothing is ever foolproof is that fools are so bloody ingenious. A fair number of said stories regale us with details about the local constabularies around our nation and their negligent discharges. Some of them are pretty careless/stupid/idiotic. And a lot of them are completely and utterly avoidable. And the more avoidable, the more defensive the perpetrators seem to be. Call them “premature ejerk-ulators.” But let’s do a little math here and you’ll see why I’m more than a little unnerved.

I’ve got a couple of .22LRs in the house, one of which I bought to teach my daughter how to shoot. My ex once asked to borrow the gun because she was going to join the boys on a dove hunt. Pause with me for a nanosecond whilst we consider the physics involved and the possible outcome of such a project . . .

.22LR bullets can travel over a mile and a half shot flat. I’d presume that distance might even increase a skoche, if the barrel is aimed up where the birdies fly, right. So let’s say she misses (what are the odds?) and the round flies by the dove and off, into the wild blue yonder. Remember the kid’s limerick, I shot an arrow into the air, where it lands, I know not where? Yeah, um…like that, but with a potential police report, coroner’s inquest, and manslaughter charges for when Murphy’s Law rears it’s ugly head.

So I did the right thing. I told her you only hunt birds with a shotgun. (Although, in retrospect, I would have been funny in a cruel, sick sad world kinda way to have thought about the looks on my ex-brother-in-laws faces, had she brought a rifle to a bird hunt.)

So, where was I? Oh, yeah. We take an AR15/M16 platform black gun chambered in .223, perhaps, put it in the hands of a policeman who’s perhaps amped up on 5 Hour Energy or Red Bull, put them in a stress situation (maybe a bank robbery with a side of hostages) and then hope and pray that nobody chooses THAT day/time/location to have a negligent discharge of a weapon that treats body armor like tissue paper.

Now before you all start throwing trajectories, vectors, population densities, actuarial tables, probabilities and such my way, let me make a couple of sobering observations. It only takes one perfect storm of screw-ups to end somebody’s life. I realize that S.W.A.T. teams are likely better trained than your typical boy/girl in blue. But I also realize some of that can be offset by The Law of Unintended Consequences, plus a heapin’ helpin’ of plain ol’ bad luck. Wrong place. Wrong time. That sort of thing.

So without getting/sounding like some idiot from the Bloomberg’s Raiders, I’m wondering, just how far away do you want to be when the shooting starts? Seriously. How far away is far enough, when you’re dealing with high-powered rifles?

I mean, forget for a minute that the bad guys may actually have the local cops out-gunned (see the L.A. bank robbery from a few years back) and those guys don’t care WHO they kill. The cops are acutely aware of the downside to NDs, and I’m sure they train to avoid them. They are also well aware that a misplaced round can end their careers and result in years of legal actions that will drain their bank accounts faster than you can say “Johnny Cochran.” And I’m aware that an automobile is effectively “camouflage” – NOT “cover.” Get close enough, and a frame house’s walls wouldn’t be enough to keep you safe.

But my question stands – just how far away do you need/want to be when the shooting starts, assuming that Sgt. Murphy was an optimist?

I have no statistical basis for making that conclusion. For all I know, there’s never been less agitation to ban assault rifles in the United States than right now. Which would mean that the article The Return of the Assault Rifle at buffalonews.com represents a significant percentage increase in the amount of media clamor for a ban on assault rifles (a.k.a. modern home defense sporting rifles). See how that works? If not, try this . . .

AK-47 rifles and other high-powered semi-automatic assault weapons were the guns of choice for street gangs back in the 1990s during the crack cocaine epidemic.

Drive-by shootings and AK-47s were synonymous in some Buffalo neighborhoods as city homicide levels reached an all-time high.

But now, more than six years after a federal ban on assault rifle sales ended, the feared weapon and similar ones appear to be regaining a foothold in local crime.

AK-47′s were the guns of choice for street gangs in the 90′s? Citation? Every study I’ve ever seen on the type of guns used in crime has concluded that handguns are, overwhelmingly, the bad guys’ firearm of choice.

Back in 2000, firearmsid.com reported that “Of all firearm-related crime reported to the survey, 86% involved handguns.” More recently, guncite.com reports that:

Assault weapons are not the weapons of choice among drug dealers, gang members or criminals in general. Assault weapons are used in about one-fifth of one percent (.20%) of all violent crimes and about one percent in gun crimes.

Well duh. You try hiding an AK-47—which you might have to do if the yes Dan Baum gun grabbers have their way. I guess common sense and the Internet were not available to scribe Lou Michel at the time of writing, or his editors pre-publication.

And what of the statement that assault rifles “appear to be regaining a foothold in local crime.” Appear? If that’s not the definition of sloppy journalism, the rest of the article is.

During a 22-month period prior to the expiration of the federal ban on assault rifle sales in September 2004, authorities confiscated 40 such guns in Buffalo.

By comparison, over the past 22 months, 84 of these types of firearms have been seized. That’s a 110 percent increase in confiscations, based on figures provided by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Throughout all of Erie County outside Buffalo, only two assault rifles were confiscated during the 22 months analyzed shortly before the ban ended. But that number increased in the just-concluded 22 months to 32 assault rifle seizures. That’s a 1,500 percent rise.

I hate friggin’ stats. But if jobbing journos keep manipulating data to serve their editorial ends, then I’ll keep asking the obvious questions. Such as, show me the weapons! Are these all guns used in actual crimes, or does the ATF stat refer to traces run on assault rifles? Let’s skip ahead a bit . . .

“The ATF has several ongoing investigations into illegal possession and trafficking of these types of firearms out of our Buffalo-area office,” said Ronald B. Turk, special agent in charge of the ATF’s New York field division, which oversees the entire state.

The local ATF office, Turk said, has more than two dozen of these weapons in its evidence vault.

Read that one carefully. Turk is NOT saying that the ATF has confiscated two dozen “assault rifles” from Buffalo criminals. Nor does “several investigations” equal 24 investigations. Speaking of misdirection, what other variables might account for the increase in the number of AKs around town? Population growth? Increased law enforcement? Increased crime? More hunters? A single big bust? What?

Which reminds me: what IS an assault rifle Lou?

Assault weapons are generally defined as guns that have large-capacity magazines allowing for continuous firing of dozens of rounds, a pistol grip that permits spray firing from the hip and a folding stock that enables the weapons to be easily concealed.

Hang on; large cap mags are banned in New York. As well as, wait for it, “assault guns.” Anyway, it sounds to me like you’re describing a machine gun there big guy. And are you saying that all of the “assault weapons” confiscated had pistol grips? As far as I know, the vast majority of AK-47′s are not so equipped. And don’t have folding stocks. Using this definition, how many of the guns cited are assault weapons? Not many, methinks.

OK, I think I’ve made my point. The demonization of “assault rifles” is back, and it’s bad. Actually, pop another one of them blood pressure pills for one more non-empirical assault against your mental and physical well-being. (Remember: it’s all for the children.)

Officials at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence in Washington, D.C., say that since the ban expired, the pace of violence inflicted by assault weapons has increased and Congress needs to take action to halt it.

“The growing number of police officers and average Americans being killed by assault weapons should worry all Americans concerned about making our neighborhoods safer,” Brady Center President Paul Helmke said.

“These guns are the weapons of choice for mass killers, drug dealers, gang members and other rogue elements. And yet the NRA [National Rifle Association] continues to push harder and harder to put more of them in circulation. Assault weapons have nothing to do with the Second Amendment, and we as a nation should stop making it so easy for dangerous people to have access to them and create mayhem in our communities.”

The article ends with the usual coup de grace: a sad story of death and destruction where the victim’s survivor calls for a gun ban. While tragic, we should no more allow those touched by a rare instance of gun violence to set public policy for firearms than we should surrender that right to a journalist with an AK-shaped axe to grind.

An entertaining idea, for your Saturday Evening’s enjoyment. Only in the Land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave. CNN = fail.