because the sound of gunfire makes her precious snowflake nervous. “Brooklyn will actually cover her ears when the shooting is going on, and it just gives her anxiety and makes her a little bit scared,” O’Connor said. Several things to note about this story: Neither Ms. O’Connor nor anyone else signing petitions can reasonably be termed “nearby residents,” because everything for at least a mile around the gun club is suburban retail and light industrial; local law enforcement trains on this range; and finally, the range (as always seems to be the case) has been in the same place for decades. The gun club leases the land the range sits on from the county for $1 a year. The first lease was signed in 1979 for 20 years, and then renewed in 1998 for 20 more years. The county commission can break the lease early, but has to attempt to move the club to a new location. The commission is studying the issue, but has had little success finding better places to locate the range. On the list of things that have done the most harm to this country in the last 50 years, entitled NIMBY BS like this has to rank somewhere in the top three or four.
Last Thursday I told you about a man on his honeymoon who was arrested on Grand Cayman the previous weekend when customs officials found 50 rounds of 9mm in his luggage. They ended up charging him with attempting to bring live ammunition onto the island, and he was fined $3,000 and allowed to leave the island. I suppose it could have been worse. A lighter wallet beats a jail stretch in a foreign country ten times in ten.
Yet another story to put the lie to the statement by those who would disarm us that gun ownership is on the decline. Cincinnati.com has an article discussing how gun laws have been relaxed in Kentucky recently, and the number of concealed carry permits has increased dramatically. The number of permits issued had already increased from 11,000 in 2004 to about 30,000 in 2012, but by 2013 that number had doubled again, with more than 60,000 permits on the books by the end of last year. A concealed carry instructor in Louisville saw 300 students in the three months after Newtown, more than all of 2012. He said that the biggest increase in his students is made up of teachers, school administrators, and bus drivers. And that’s only the concealed carry permits. Kentucky also allows open carry without a permit, much to the consternation of some, like local MDAGSAA member Pam Mangas, who recently saw someone carrying a gun at a barbershop when she took her son to get a haircut. “I don’t want children terrorized by the sight of guns,” Mangas said. For my part, I doubt seriously that her son was terrorized, unless she’s instilled that fear in him. If he’s like most normal kids, he was either curious about the gun, or completely indifferent to its presence. Sounds like the civilian disarmament movement is trafficking in their standard fare of fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
Some sanity in Washington Township, New Jersey, where a student found a single round of ammunition on a sidewalk on the grounds of Flocktown-Kossmann Elementary School last Monday. The discovery was reported to the administration, and emergency protocols were activated. A K-9 was brought in and located two more rounds in the grass near the first one. Police said the ammunition was a specific type of .40 S&W that’s used for pest control. [So, rat-shot?] Here’s where the sanity comes in: Detectives were able to determine that the ammo had fallen through a hole in a specific student’s backpack. Investigators confirmed that the same ammo was present at the student’s home and that all firearms there were accounted for, secure, and inaccessible. Due to all of that, and because they had no proof that the ammunition was intentionally brought to school, they will not be pursuing criminal charges. So all’s well that ends well, right?
The same folks that brought the R.I.P. fragmenting ammo are working on a new thing they call Trident. It’s a non-fragmenting round that opens up into a HUGE three-pointed star shape upon encountering resistance. Richard Ryan got some pre-production samples in .300 BLK and tore up some water bottles, watermelons, and ballistic gel, all filmed in high-speed, of course. I usually try to point out what I think is the “cool part,” but this whole video is the cool part. Watching that round blow up and spin through the gel is awesome.
Also, note the triangle-shaped piece of plastic that gets blown out of the side of the water bottle in the opening sequence. If you click the Trident Ammo Test annotation at the end of the above video it will take you to an 8-video playlist of the different tests he ran, or you can just click here to jump straight to the full water bottle test.