But Guns ARE Designed To Kill – Despite the headline, English teacher Greg Camp dances around the truth about guns . . .
Some guns are designed to be used in fighting and self defense. Note that I didn’t say to kill, and this is not a mere quibble. The goal of a fight is to win—to survive, primarily, but also achieve the desired goal that made the fight necessary. Sometimes, survival is the goal. In other situations, it’s to gain ground or whatnot. But as the the famous rules of a gun fight inform us, the sooner the fight is over, the less shot you get. And the legal situation for civilians defending their lives is that we can use lethal force only so long as a threat to our lives exists, so for us, the purpose of a fighting gun is to bring that threat to an end.
I Spent a Year Reporting on NRA Lobbyist Marion Hammer. Read Her Emails With Florida Officials. – NRA vs. NAGR
In month June 2013, Hammer asked Governor Rick Scott’s then-general counsel, Pete Antonacci, to investigate the National Association for Gun Rights, a rival gun-rights group that frequently attacks the NRA from the right. Antonacci told Hammer that he referred the matter to a top official in the Florida Department of State and said he’d also reach out to the attorney general.
What is especially interesting is the context of this exchange: Around the timeHammer emailed Antonacci, she had lent her support to a bill that placed some gun-buying restrictions on the mentally ill. NAGR, stealing a page from Hammer’s playbook, had used her rare endorsement of a gun regulation as fodder for challenging the NRA primacy in Florida, launching a campaign accusing Hammer and her employer of selling out gun owners.
Reader: Take the damn guns out of the equation – A lot of people believe this . . .
The recent news concerning officers that failed to enter the Florida high school during the shooting identifies one of the glaring fallacies of “a good guy with a gun being able to overcome a bad guy with a gun” as the way to protect our kids. It depends solely on humans always doing the right thing in an horrific situation. Officers may have panicked, made wrong decisions, even as individuals trained to serve and protect.
Armed teachers would be even less trained and could easily have also panicked, avoiding the confrontation or shooting wildly in the moment. Arriving officers also facing a rapidly changing situation must make rapid and accurate decisions as to who to oppose.
New World’s Record Bighorn Sheep Officially Certified – Not hunted. If only . . .
The ram was found by Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks officials who determined it had died of natures causes. Because a hunter did not take the ram, the department entered the ram into B&C records on behalf on the citizens of Montana.
Key measurements from the ram’s horns that contribute to its final score are horn lengths of 48-3/8 and 49-6/8, circumferences at the bases of 16-3/8 and 16-4/8, and fourth quarter circumferences of 11-2/8 and 11-4/8 inches.
Spring said, “This ram doesn’t have the longest horns on record, or the largest bases, but the mass of his horns carried over the entire length of nearly 50-inch horns is what makes this ram the largest we’ve seen by a significant margin. The last three World’s Record rams have been 208-1/8, 208-3/8, 209-4/8 and now 216-3/8. That’s a jump we just never expected to see.”
Here’s why raising the gun possession age could cost some crime victims their lives – A Lott of stats revealing the latest gun control scheme is powering down the road to Hell, without good intentions (I might add) . . .
This isn’t the first time that the government has raised the age requirement for rifle purchases. In 1994 the first federal limits required buyers to be 18 years of age. Prior to that law, there was no federal age requirement for buying a rifle.
Thomas Marvell has done the only peer-reviewed study on this change. It was published in the Journal of Law and Economics, and concluded: “Where the 1994 laws seem to have an impact, the suggestion is almost always that crime increases; thus, there is no evidence that these bans had their intended effect.”
Marvell found that the 1994 age requirement was associated with a 5.1 percent increase in the homicide rate, and a 6 percent increase in firearm homicides. Beyond that, there was no real effect on crime rates.
But Marvell notes that if “juveniles are more vulnerable targets, the result is likely to be more crime, especially violent crimes involving juveniles.”
3 Items of Great Significance Unveiled at RIAC – Paging Monty Python . . .
A military-issued Colt Walker is the type of gun that has achieved “Holy Grail” status. They were Colt’s first successful firearms and allowed him to rise from the ashes of his first failed firearms venture in Paterson, New Jersey. It also established the relationship between Colt and the U.S. Government when 1,000 of the new, hefty revolvers were purchased by the Ordnance Department and saw heavy use in Texas. Many were destroyed in use, suffering from burst cylinders, while others were “ridden hard and put away wet.”
It is a rare Walker today that survives outside of relic status. Samuel Colt also had 100 Walkers made for the civilian market, likely intending them to serve as presentation pieces to those men who would assist in its further adoption in the military or commercial markets. With less than 10% of all Walkers known to survive, the Civilian Walkers are supremely rare.
The story of this Walker states that it was originally shipped to retailer Blunt & Syms in New York City, one of the very first stores to sell Colts. There it was purchased by visiting Danish sea captain Niels Hanson. It was passed down through his descendants until it was eventually sold to a Danish gun collector. During World War II and the Nazi occupation of Denmark, it was buried with its case in a garden, eventually being unearthed and re-entering the collector market. It sold shortly thereafter for a then-record $10,000 and in April, it hopes to set a new record all its own.
Right?