Blog
Worldview
An Open Mind
I think that most people would agree that having an open mind can be virtuous. Using an open window as a metaphor: where an open window allows fresh air, an open mind allows fresh thought. But, experience tells us if we don’t put a screen up over the window opening, we are likely to get some bugs in with the fresh air. The same principle applies to an open mind; we had better have a screen over the opening. Most of us do. We screen current events through our own personal processor, a screen that we call a 'worldview'.
In the case of a Christian, our worldview is (or should be) based on scripture. Hence the term “biblical worldview.” It allows for plenty of fresh thought, without the bugs.
For starters, the Book of Proverbs is the prime example of “Wisdom Literature.” Proverbs 9:10 points out that “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.” The beginning is a good place to begin.
For a good daily ‘screening’ of current events, I highly recommend Albert Mohler’s Daily Briefing. It’s available as an downloadable (.mp3) podcast, and also as an iPhone app. at the App Store. Following his annual summer break, he will be resuming his daily podcast on Tuesday, August 1, 2017.
Do you have an open mind? How effective is your screen?
/fl
Shooting Sports
National Shooting Sports Month
Throughout the month of August 2017, the firearms industry will celebrate the first-ever National Shooting Sports Month, a nationwide celebration of the shooting sports. The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) is encouraging everyone in the industry to take part.
National Shooting Sports Month is being designed to:
- Celebrate the passion we all have for the shooting sports—a pastime that can provide a lifetime of enjoyment with family and friends.
- Remind the public that shooting is a safe, fun activity enjoyed by millions of Americans.
- Create opportunities for NSSF member retailers and ranges to help grow their business.
You can probably expect to see several better than normal promotional offers throughout the month.
/fl
Shotguns
Fostech "Origin-12" Shotgun
The Fostech website says that:
Due to the demand for the Origin Shotgun there is currently a 6 month lead time on all orders.
Even with its $2600 MSRP, I can guess why this thing is on backorder.
From a practical point of view, the Origin-12 would be no better at stopping a threat than a Mossberg 590 or a Remington 870; and, not only would you not have to wait six months, but you could buy a lot of shotgun ammo with an extra $2,000.00.
/fl
Law and Order
Land of The Unarmed Victims
We have all heard the story about Kathryn Steinle.
Now, this:
BART officials withholding crime surveillance tapes for 'fear of racial stereotyping'
It's obvious that San Francisco cannot assure its citizen's protection from violent thugs. Yet, the government there does everything that it can to ensure that the citizen's cannot protect themselves. In fact, we see that they are doing everything they can to cook the books and hide an escalation in violent crime.
Compare the San Francisco experience with data from places that allow citizens their right to protect themselves by bearing arms.
An armed society is not only a free society, it's a safer society!
Hopefully, for California's sake, logic will follow Horace Greeley's famous advice.
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"Smart Guns"
Only a fool...
It's obvious that some people believe that gun's have a mind of their own, but this video illustrates how foolish they are, and why only a fool would let a gun 'do the thinking.'
I'm sure that it's still possible to sell stock in this "technology" to some California Congress Critters and their ilk, but you'll not find any wise investor's.
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Interstate Reciprocity
The [Overdue] Need for National Reciprocity
A report from the Crime Prevention Research Center estimates that the number of concealed carry permits issued last year was the largest increase ever – continuing a four year trend of record setting increases in the number of concealed carry permits. This rapid growth of permits has been attributed to increases among African-Americans and women.
Economist John Lott estimates that there are now more than 16.3 million concealed carry permit holders in the United States, with more than 1.83 million new permit holders last year alone. In other words, about 6.5% of all American adults hold concealed carry permits. This estimate is driven down by the restrictive anti-gun regimes in New York and California; about 8% of adults outside of these two states have concealed carry permits.
The growing number of concealed carry permit holders underscores the need for national reciprocity. As we noted in May, it makes less and less sense to subject the right to carry a firearm for self-defense to the existing patchwork of inconsistent reciprocity laws that change from state to state as more and more Americans are carrying concealed firearms to protect themselves and loved ones, including while traveling. The estimated increase in permit holders in the last year means that another 1.83 million Americans could become accidental criminals if they happen to cross into the wrong state or aren’t aware of changes in state laws that often come with little public notice.
Concealed carry is not an issue driven entirely by the winds of electoral politics. Lott reports that the rapid growth in permits continued at a similar pace after the November 2016 election. The ability to travel across state lines with a lawfully carried concealed weapon for self-defense should not be denied by the political whims of anti-gun politicians but this is the current reality for many of tens of millions of law-abiding Americans who carry concealed in the United States.
Fortunately, momentum for national reciprocity is building in Congress despite hysterical, fear-mongering opposition. The Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017, S.446, has 37 cosponsors in the Senate and the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017, H.R. 38, is up to 205 cosponsors in the House. This legislation would simply recognize that the right to bear arms does not end at the state line.
Though support for national reciprocity and the number of law-abiding gun owners it would impact are both increasing, getting the legislation through Congress requires all of us to make sure our representatives know how important it is.
Please contact your U.S. Senators and U.S. Representative and urge them to cosponsor and support passage of S.446 -- the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017-- in the Senate, and H.R.38 -- the Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act of 2017-- in the House. You can contact your U.S. Senators and U.S. Representative by phone at (202) 224-3121.
/NRA-ILA
The Cost of Violence
Who Pays The Bill?
...the bills for their initial treatment were staggering. In his first 35 minutes at the hospital, Leyva had racked up $21,521 in charges...
Even when a victim is 'insured', the cost of emergency care can be devastating. This is one of the primary reasons why armed citizen's equip and condition themselves to stop thugs BEFORE they can inflict any injury that requires a trip to the hospital.
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Stokers
Google Gives $2 Million to Curb Gun Violence
Google has chosen two groups to administer the campaign: The Pico Live Free Campaign, a coalition of faith-based anti-violence organizations, and the Community Justice Reform Coalition, a violence-prevention advocacy group focusing on communities of color.
“We want to put resources in the hands of folks who are doing the most innovative work and taking big bets,” said Justin Steele, a principal at Google.org.
Speaking of bets, If I were a betting man, my bet would be that those "two groups" will blow through that 2 mil. faster than Chris Christie can eat a donut — with about the same results.
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Concealed Carry
Concealed Carry Permit Holders Across the United States
A new summary of national CCW permitting from the Crime Prevention Research Center:
During President Obama’s administration, the number of concealed handgun permits soared to over 16.36 million – a 256% increase since 2007. Unlike surveys that may be affected by people’s unwillingness to answer some personal questions, concealed handgun permit data is the only really “hard data” that we have on gun ownership across the United States. Among the findings of our report:
■ Last year, the number of permit holders grew by a record 1.83 million. This is more than the previous record increase of 1.73 million, set just the year before. Each of the last four years that we have been recording this data has set a new record. Despite expectations that permits were primarily driven by fears of Democratic presidencies, the growth in permits has continued at a similar pace after the November 2016 election.
■ 6.53% of American adults have permits. Outside the restrictive states of California and New York, about 8% of the adult population has a permit.
■ In eleven states, more than 10% of adults have permits. Alabama has the highest rate — 20%. Indiana is second with 15.8%.
■ There are four counties in Pennsylvania that have between 30% and 50% of their adult populations with concealed handgun permits: Potter (50.3%), McKean (34.6%), Warren (34.6%), Cameron (31.3%), and Armstrong (30.1%).
■ Florida, Pennsylvania, and Texas each have over 1.2 million residents who are active permit holders.
■ Another 14 states have adopted constitutional carry in all or virtually all of their state, meaning that a permit is no longer required. Some people in these states still choose to obtain permits so that they can carry in other states that have reciprocity agreements with their states. However, because of these constitutional carry states, the nationwide growth in permits does not paint a full picture of the overall increase in concealed carry.
■ In 2016, women made up 36% of permit holders in the 14 states that provide data by gender. Eight states had data from 2012 to 2016 and they saw a 326% faster increase in permits among women than among men.
■ From 2012 to 2016, in the five states that provide data by race over that time period, the number of black people with permits increased 30% faster than the number of whites with permits. Asians appear to be the group that has experienced the largest increase in permitted concealed carry.
■ Concealed handgun permit holders are extremely law-abiding. In Florida and Texas, permit holders are convicted of misdemeanors and felonies at one-sixth of the rate at which police officers are convicted.
You can download the full (pdf) report here.
Thanks to John Lott and his organization for providing this, and other, data.
/fl
Firearm Safety
Satire or Symbolic Idiocy?
I have long held an interest in people's perception of the so-called "gun culture." But, this is an example of carrying satire to an unsafe level; just another in a long list of contemporary examples that deal with social issues.
With a nation that has an estimated 300,000,000+ guns in the hands of its citizen's, its imperative that safety be a prime concern. The above video would serve as a good training aid for teaching gun handling procedure — if you are the kind of person that learns from negative input; but, that style of training doesn't have a very high success rate!
More to the point is this:
/fl
Law and Order
The Nose Knows
Police in Port St. Lucie are turning to canine crime fighters.
[D]ogs are capable of finding a needle in a haystack... It doesn’t take ‘em very long...
The dogs can find guns in two ways. Because of the human scent still on the gun from a person handling it. And from the scent of gunpowder.
Good dog!
/fl
Law and Order
"You kinda' look like a hypocrite"
The racist organization known as Black Lives Matter (BLM) was established in 2013 in response to the trial and acquittal of George Zimmerman, the man who shot black Florida teenager Trayvon Martin in self defense. The "special" prosecutor that concocted the duplicitous "probable cause affidavit" and then orchestrated that charade of a "trial" was booted out of office, by a 38% margin, by Florida voters in the 2016 election. But, the results of that trial have been festering chaos — due primarily to ignorance of the facts and the toxic impetus of fake news and Marxist ideology.
Colion Noir, in an attempt to stimulate some rational thought, asks those who are sympathetic to the BLM scheme: What are you really fighting for?
Indeed! All lives matter!
/fl
Firearm Safety
and 'The Tell'
There is an old saying that goes something like this: "if you want some insight into what kind of problems to expect from the upcoming generation, just take a stroll down the aisle's of your local Toys R Us store."
I'm sure that I'm not the only one with concerns about the faddish nature of the recent firearms frenzy. That concern is particularly intense when I read stories like this one.
It's a good time to remind everyone that the fundamentals of firearm safety have not changed since the NRA began teaching them in 1871.
Stay safe!
/fl
Freedom
Peace and Anarchy
There is plenty of evidence in today's media to support the conclusion that the forces of anarchy that we saw in the 1960's and 1970's are still active. I've seen enough of it to conclude that there will always be this kind of stuff going on. Some members of the 'media' are accusing the NRA of exploiting current events to sell guns, while they (the media) are obviously using the same events to sell their "news." This, a recent article from The Washington Post:
Dom Raso, one of the most prominent of the NRA’s growing stable of video commentators, condemns Democratic politicians, the media and activists as the catalysts for political upheaval in the United States, a narrative that has been pushed by pro-Trump Internet personalities.
Here is the video that the Post is referring to, but didn't link to, in their article:
The "pro-Trump Internet personalities" mentioned in the Post article are actually representative's of the citizen's who elected, and commissioned, our President to head a government administration that ensures liberty and freedom while keeping our borders, and our nation, secure from the devastation of anarchy. An important element of that "big picture" is the citizen's right to keep and bear arms in defense against a violent disrespect for law and order, like that illustrated in the above video.
The availability of arms in a free market is not only consistent with the freedom guaranteed by our constitution, including the second amendment, but ensures the means of defense against lawlessness.
Freedom to live in peace; that, in essence, is the reason why the Colt Single Action Army revolver got its name "the peacemaker."
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Law
Plaintiff's "ridiculous argument"
A trial court in Texas rejected a challenge to Texas’s campus carry law.
Plaintiffs allege that “classroom discussion will be narrowed, truncated, cut back, cut off” by the allowance of guns in the classroom. One professors [sic] avers in an affidavit that the “possibility of the presence of concealed weapons in a classroom impedes my and other professors’ ability to create a daring, intellectually active, mutually supportive, and engaged community of thinkers.”
Constitutional attorney David French wasn't buying it. "This, of course, is cowardly, ignorant nonsense. I’ve spent more than my share of time in college classes that covered contentious topics, and not once did they generate so much as fisticuffs, much less deadly violence," he wrote. "Moreover, lawful concealed carriers represent a segment of the population more law-abiding than the police."
/fl
Law
Hearing Protection Law
Republicans on Capitol Hill last week introduced bicameral legislation that aims to drop all federal regulation of suppressors and silencers...
The bill, entered as S.1505 in the Senate and H.R.3139 in the House, would not only remove suppressors from National Firearms Act requirements — a goal of the rival Hearing Protection Act — but also classify them as simple accessories which could be sold over the counter.
Now, it's time to get a move on interstate reciprocity!
/fl
Law and Order
Gunslingers
A Florida man who is deaf and has autism was attacked by another man who wanted to engage “Superman” in a fight, police said.
“He’s usually dressed up as Superman. Just doing his thing on the curb-getting everyone’s attention. Not bothering anybody,” said Abdool Shakur, who sees Pitt regularly.
I'm a proponent of having the freedom to openly carry a pistol, but human nature being what it is, this case illustrates an argument against the actual practice.
/fl
Chicago
Random? Pb Pollution
Neel Sukhatme said he was doing some work late Sunday night after his children went to bed when he heard a loud noise and felt glass flying.
He said a bullet came through the window of his parent's condo on the 56th floor of a high-rise in the 400-block of North Lake Shore Drive.
The 56th floor?
I know stuff happens in Chicago...
You can say that again!
/fl
Law
Maxima Ignorantia
MIAMI (AP) -- A judge ruled Monday that Florida's lawmakers overstepped their authority in updating the state's "Stand Your Ground" law.
In ruling the law unconstitutional, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Milton Hirsch said Monday that the changes should have been crafted by the Florida Supreme Court instead of by the Legislature.
Really? The Florida state legislature should avoid enacting law? Law should be "crafted" by the court's?
Critics have said the law makes it easier for defendants... the new law requires prosecutors to shoulder the burden... Prosecutors said the law made it easier for judges to dismiss criminal charges if they believe someone acted in self-defense.
Before Kleenex becomes a budgetary crisis in Florida's criminal justice system, I think the powers-that-be need to give some thought to where the burden of proof lies in a criminal prosecution — and why.
I think Judge Milton Hirsch should be relieved long enough to undergo some remedial education and training in history and constitutional law.
Judicial and prosecutorial misconduct are costing the citizen's way too much time and money.
/fl
Firearm Safety
The Importance of Rule 1
Sometimes the facts of a case are almost too painful to even think about. What kind of moron points a gun, even an unloaded one, at a child?
The girl's brothers told police that they had been cleaning their room when Eric Hummel came in with his 9 mm Glock model 17 and said things such as, "You should never mess with the gun," the affidavit states.
One brother said his father had pointed it at him two or three times and the gun made "a little pop sound," according to the affidavit. Eric Hummel pulled the top of the gun back once and had forgotten he "put the bullets back in" when he "shot our sister," a brother told police, according to the affidavit.
Evidently the gun had an empty chamber with a loaded magazine in it when it was being waved around and pointed at the boys; the perpetrator then racked a round into the chamber and had his finger on the trigger while pointing the gun toward his daughter when she walked into the room.
This presupposes a blatant violation of two vital safety rules: 1.) Always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction, and 2.) Always keep your finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot.
Rule 2 is especially important when you are using a striker-fired pistol, such as a Glock; a violation of rule 2 can (and did in this case) turn deadly when coincident with a violation of rule 1.
I doubt that the perpetrator had ever taken a firearms safety course, because these safety rules are firmly fixed in every student that receives a course completion certificate from an NRA course.
Serving as a fail-safe, adherence to Rule 1 can keep even a negligent discharge from becoming deadly.
/fl
Revolvers
Smith & Wesson Model 460XVR™
I suspect that most Dirty Harry, Model 29 .44 Magnum fan's are already aware of this, but the Smith & Wesson Model 460XVR™ has the highest muzzle velocity of any production revolver on earth. The Model 460XVR™ is so revolutionary that it required an entirely new designation...XVR, X-treme Velocity Revolver.
With a Muzzle Velocity of 2200 feet per second, and with 2149 foot-pounds of energy at the muzzle, the 460XVR could actually live up to Dirty Harry's claim, and do to a head what it does to this cantaloupe, "blow it clean off."
Firearm Safety
A Deadly Combination
A loaded gun in the hands of a moron!
Ruiz wanted to make a YouTube video of her shooting into a book held to his chest, and he believed the book would stop the bullet. Ruiz convinced Perez to participate in the stunt by showing her a different book he had shot, and the bullet did not go all the way through...
Perez told investigators she fired a 50 caliber [sic] handgun from about one foot away while Ruiz held the book to his chest. The book did not stop the bullet, and Ruiz was killed...
Youtube seems to have become a gathering place for patent stupidity; a 21st century version of the Roman Coliseum.
Strangely enough, nobody like this has ever shown up in an NRA Firearms Safety class. Why do you suppose that is?
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