I’m not going to ‘take everyone’s guns away’

An expectation of casual, cynical lying has taken over American political culture. Seldom has this been more obviously displayed than Barack Obama’s address to police chiefs in Chicago two days ago. Here is what everyone in the United States of America except possibly a handful of mental defectives heard:

Vox is wrong – we don’t have too many guns, we have too many criminals

One of my followers on G+ asked me to comment on a Vox article, What no politician wants to admit about gun control. I’ve studied the evidence, and I don’t believe the effect of the Australian confiscation on homicides was significant.  You can play games with statistics to make it look that way, but they… Continue reading Vox is wrong – we don’t have too many guns, we have too many criminals

Review: Gun Control in the Third Reich

Stephen P. Halbrook’s Gun Control in the Third Reich is a book that every advocate of “gun control” in the modern U.S. and elsewhere should read – but almost certainly never will. Most other historians have ignored or outright suppressed the role of weapons law and weapons confiscations in the Nazi imposition of totalitarianism on… Continue reading Review: Gun Control in the Third Reich

Does firearms competency testing do any good?

My distant friend Kent Lundgren, one of the most capable and thoughtful firearms instructors out there, has written a blog post addressing the tricky question of how we might filter potential carriers of concealed weapons for competence without involving the government.

Published
Categorized as Firearms

Operator rules

Everybody knows, or should know, the basic rules of firearms safety. (a) Always treat the weapon as if loaded, (b) Never point a firearm at anything you are not willing to destroy, (c) keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot, (d) be sure of your target and what is beyond… Continue reading Operator rules

Published
Categorized as Firearms

Destroying the middle ground

Here’s a thought experiment for you. Imagine yourself in an alternate United States where the First Amendment is not as a matter of settled law considered to bar Federal and State governments from almost all interference in free speech. This is less unlikely than it might sound; the modern, rather absolutist interpretation of free-speech liberties… Continue reading Destroying the middle ground

Defense Distributed

I suppose it was inevitable, in a good way. Some friends of freedom have begun a project dedicated to developing and sharing open-source designs for firearms that can be manufactured with a 3D printer. Read about it here at Defense Distributed. I approve, of course. I approve of any development that makes it more difficult… Continue reading Defense Distributed

Published
Categorized as Firearms

Gun-free fantasy zones

After the Aurora theater shooting, it was of course inevitable that the jackals at the Brady Campaign and the Violence Policy vendor would be trying to make a political meal from the victims’ corpses before they had even had time to cool to room temperature. The usual round of inane honking about “common-sense gun control”… Continue reading Gun-free fantasy zones

Published
Categorized as Firearms

A civil rights victory

Today we scored what may be the most important civil-rights victory since the Heller ruling in 2008. Woollard v. Sheridan was found for the plaintiffs, and Maryland’s law requiring concealed-carry applicants to show “good and substantial reason” for their permit applications has been found unconstitutional.

Published
Categorized as Firearms

Examples and consequences

SF author and civil-rights activist Joel Rosenberg has been unjustly arrested. Good coverage at PopeHat; essentially this is harassment following a Nov 5th assault on Joel by a cop while he was pursuing a FOIA request related to his first arrest, on bogus charges that prosecutors subsequently dropped. I have very mixed feelings about this… Continue reading Examples and consequences

Fourteen months of carrying

It is now about fourteen months since, after receiving my second death threat, I started carrying a firearm almost constantly. This experience has taught me a few truths, some merely amusing but others with larger implications. The major lesson: people are amazingly oblivious to what they don’t expect to see. When I carry using a… Continue reading Fourteen months of carrying

Published
Categorized as Firearms

Maybe if moral cowardice cost money, it would be less common?

Heh. State representative Fred Maslack of Vermont has proposed a bill under which non-gun-owners would have to register and pay a fee. Entertainingly enough, there is actual justification for this in a careful reading of the Vermont state constitution. The Hon. Rep. Maslack is joking. I think. And I’m against requiring people who don’t want… Continue reading Maybe if moral cowardice cost money, it would be less common?

RFI on 1911-pattern carry guns

This is a bleg for information on 1911-pattern handguns optimized for concealed carry. Since receiving my most recent death threat, I’ve been carrying a Glock .40 pretty continuously. The .40 is an excellent weapon, but has two drawbacks from my point of view. One is that it has a 5-inch barrel and a relatively wide… Continue reading RFI on 1911-pattern carry guns

Published
Categorized as Firearms