Snowflakes in Hell

What a Beautiful day it is, a perfect day to do some BBQing and restock on some Vitamin D. Got some pork back ribs on the smoker as we speak, and I’m outside in the back yard enjoying a snifter of bourbon. Lately I’ve really liked Blanton’s Bourbon. I like mine with just a splash of water in a snifter, in this case my Monticello snifter, which is a souvenir I picked up while visiting. But the really important part of the first day of spring is getting the smoker going. This is my first smoke in this one. It’s a Weber Smokey Mountain. This winter I was considering whether I wanted to get an offset smoker, but decided, after a bit of research, that a quality bullet smoker was closer to what I was looking for. I have three racks of back ribs in it now, which were rubbed down last night. My previous smoker had difficulty staying at the right temperature, and always wanted to get hotter. This one seems to struggle to stay at a higher temperature, but I will say it holds a much more consistent temperature. I can throw in extra coals without getting a wild temperature flucuation. In a few hours I’ll be able to judge whether the end product of this smoker is better than the previous El-Cheapo Brinkmann. In the mean time I’ll enjoy the sun, the bourbon, watch the woodpecker fly around to the various trees in the neighborhood, and try really really hard not to think about the cluster fuck going on in DC right now.

They are instituting a bear hunt in New Jersey for the first time in five years. This is badly needed. There are many groups, including HSUS, the Sierra Club, and the North Jersey based BEAR group. They are already filing a lawsuit to try to stop the hunt. This is going to be a doozy for the folks who decide to do the bear hunt. Animal rights activists are a lot battier than even the battiest anti-gun activists. Expect the PSH to be particularly flowing and smelly on this issue. So fierce we might have to suggest one of these to animal rights activists, along with this handy chart.

HSUS claims that people hunt bears for trophies and nothing more. This is false. Otherwise how do you explain bear recipes here, here, here, and here. This is just the tip of the iceberg. And the great part about bear is you get a nice rug when you’re done with all the bear recipes. How often do you get a free rug when you stock up on meat at the local Sam’s Club?

No, not that NRA, the other NRA.

This is a really odd story. Neighbor buys a new dog Keira, doesn’t like Coco, one of the other neighborhood dogs. Accusations fly around about which dogs are mean to the other and neighbors stop taking to each other. Keira apparently mauls Coco once, leaving Coco’s owner with 3000 in vet bills. Keira escapes and charges at Coco and his owner  shoots Keira dead through the head, and ends up facing animal cruelty charges and disorderly conduct:

“Why didn’t you pick up a shovel, a stick or pepper spray?” Assistant District Attorney Shannon Crake asked Menichini.

I find the ADA’s attitude here more than a bit disconcerting. It is not her place to evaluate the man’s chosen means of self-defense. What he had available is a pistol, not pepper spray. I think pepper spray is a wise choice, but it’s a choice. Does she really expect him to carry a shovel with him? To search frantically on the ground for a stick big enough for self-defense? Sorry Ms. Crake the statute itself says “A person commits a misdemeanor of the second degree if he willfully and maliciously kills, maims or disfigures any domestic animal of another person or any domestic fowl of another person.” The key words here is “maliciously” which means the actor would need to be acting with malice. If this is a case of self-defense, that’s not a malicious act and not animal cruelty. There very well may be facts not reported here that would indicate malice on the part of the actor, but from this article, it looks like the ADA is more interested in second guessing the means of self-defense the actor had available and used, rather than making an argument for willful malice on the part of the actor.

I promise not to bore my non-classical-music-loving readers with this part of my life often, but my post yesterday comparing skills and knowledge got me thinking about piano again, so I was thinking back to some old pieces that I had started on and never finished. I have CDs of many of them so I was going back for a listen. The real danger of iTunes is that you suddenly have a world of music at your fingertips, and can go find, download, and listen to anything immediately. This can be a problem for the credit card if you lack self-discipline. But you can tell the pieces I’ve always been in love with by how many different recordings I have of them. One thing I never got to do when I played was play a piano concerto. One of my great disappointments in life that I never had the discipline to complete one when I could play. One day, when I have a lot of free time, I might finally learn one and then go find a local amateur orchestral group to play it with. It’s an oversight I’d really like to fix someday.

I started, but never finished Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor. You could just as easily say the Grieg Piano Concerto, because he only ever wrote but one. It’s fairly well recognized even by non-classical music fans though, and most people are familiar with the first couple of measures of the piece. I have only one recording of it though, by Pianist Santiago Rodriguez. Rodriguez is an excellent Pianist, but his interpretation of these pieces is a bit too fast tempo for my liking. Excessive tempo is a common pet peeve of mine in classical recordings. I feel that often a slower, more deliberate pace allows more of the color in the piece to come out. One exception to this is the complete recording of Beethoven’s Symphonies by John Eliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique, which are at faster tempi than normally recorded, and on period instruments. In this case I believe the pieces are enhanced by the faster tempo, and the period instrumentation and orchestra size produces a very clean sound. It’s so good I have a hard time listening to a slower recording with a modern orchestra without thinking how much better this recording sounds.

But back to the Grieg. I was looking for a different take on his piano concerto, so I just downloaded, and am really enjoying Arthur Rubinstein’s recording with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy conducting. It’s a slower, more expressive pace than the Rodriguez recording, but hey, it’s also Rubinstein, who is regarded as one of the great pianists, if not the greatest pianists of the 20th century. Along with the recording of the Grieg Piano Concerto I get yet another recording of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto Number 2 in C Minor. I have two others, one by Earl Wild, and the other by Vladimir Ashkenazy. I’m probably more partial to the Ashkenazy performance than I am by the Earl Wild performance, but there’s much to be said for both of them. We’ll see how I end up liking Rubinstein’s take of the piece.

Daley and his Chicago machine are going to be eager to pass this to get back at gun owners. How dare we stand up for our rights! He’ll make the downstate rubes pay for this one! Todd Vandermyde is making the argument, and it’s a good argument, that the several firearms manufacturers that are located in Illinois will leave the state if this passes. It’ll also shut down high-power competition in the state. Hopefully this can be defeated, but it’s amazing to me the IL legislature is willing to ignore a seven thousand plus rally at the State Capitol. If we turned out those kinds of numbers at our Harrsiburg rally, our politicians would crap themselves in fear. I guess when you’ve been gaming the system as long as the Daley crew have, you get a certain amount of arrogant cockiness about you.

The FDA released new rules for cigarette advertising. These things go so far that I swear, the next thing they will target will be my Christmas tree.

These restrictions are draconian – all in the name of the children.

1) No Sector Sixes. No manufacturer can use the name of a non-tobacco product in a tobacco product name, unless both products existed and shared the name prior to 1995.

2) No freedom to buy less than 20 cigarettes. This is kind of the like Pennsylvania’s beer laws. Bureaucrats want us to drink less, so we have to buy beer by the case at a distributer unless we buy it at a bar. FDA doesn’t want people smoking as much, so it’s only possible to buy cigarettes 20 or more at a time.

3) You may still buy cigarettes through mail-order, but you can’t use coupons or get any samples. (Damn coupon clipping kids!) Vending machines are now outlawed unless the premises bans kids at all times.

4) Free samples of cigarettes – even in a room full of adults – is banned. For smokeless tobacco, it’s severely limited and only about half an ounce per person per day provided that means they do it in a temporary facility surrounded by opaque material at least 7 feet high (and no more than one foot off the ground) where children and alcohol are banned and does not mention anything about tobacco on the outside. I guess that means they will have to start logging names if they hand out samples. Oh, and no samples to sports teams or entertainment groups. And none of these highly restricted non-advertising temporary structures may be set up at a football, basketball, baseball, soccer, or hockey event or any other sporting or entertainment event.

5) Any attempts to advertise outside of pre-defined limits (“in newspapers; in magazines; in periodicals or other publications [whether periodic or limited distribution]; on billboards, posters, and placards; in nonpoint-of sale promotional material [including direct mail]; in point-of-sale promotional material; and in audio or video formats delivered at a point-of sale”) must be be filed with the FDA at least 30 days in advance. Creativity and social media – damn you & your crazy innovation!

6) Declaring a war on color: all labeling or advertising for cigarettes or smokeless tobacco shall use only black text on a white background. Exceptions including the limited places where vending machines are allowed and porn magazines.

7) Declaring a war on music and sound effects: No audio advertisement can have anything other than a voice reading words. No video can have anything other than black text on white background and any associated audio cannot include music or sounds other than words.

8) Declaring a third theater of war on names, logos, and recognizable colors on non-tobacco products: No more hats, shirts, or products without tobacco can be released with the name of a brand, logo, motto, or even “recognizable color” of a brand.

9) Customer rewards are off the table. I remember people who used to clip the Marlboro Miles for random gifts – kind of like you credit card rewards. No more rewarding customer loyalty!

10) No more sponsorships of anything. Technically, the rule only says no sponsorships of any athletic, musical, artistic, or other social or cultural event, or any entry or team in any event. I know that UST has sponsored more than a few things in the gun/hunting world. Does these events qualify as athletic, social, or cultural? Well, we just lost a sponsor. Damn. They were good to our community for a long time. Technically, these companies can still sponsor, but only if they don’t tell anyone who they are or what they produce – which kind of takes the impact out of sponsorship.

So as you can see, it’s not completely a joke that my ornaments probably send the bureaucrats at the FDA into a tizzy. I just have to hope that the next round of rules doesn’t force me to keep the curtains closed while our tree is on display.

While  leading Democratic candidates for Governor in Pennsylvania are busy with the same old tired solutions to gun violence, namely passing more laws that restrict the law abiding, Tom Corbett is actually out there locking up straw purchasers using the laws we already have. We support Attorney General Corbett in this effort, and believe this is the way you fight straw purchasing.

We had no warning of this one before it passed in Conshohocken. MAIG is getting very good at sneaking these things in before we have a chance to react. They are depending on that, in fact, because when we show up and make a case against the ordinances, and point out that they are unlawful, we’ve generally been winning. This round goes to Max Nacheman, Bloomberg’s hired gun, but it’s worth noting that he can only win by subverting the democratic process and trying to sneak these ordinances in under the radar before we have a chance to organize and respond. This is how these people operate. If they can’t beat us by using above board tactics, they’ll beat us by being sneaky weasels. If you live in Conshohocken, I’d be sure to give your elected officials trouble over this. Show up at the next meeting and demand to know why they passed an illegal ordinance without any public notice. You can find contact information here.

UPDATE: I’ve corrected the record. All pro-gun channels were silent on this town, and I heard nothing in the media about it. These are the traditional channels through which we find out. As it turns out, this was put on the agenda in the February Borough Council meeting, and we missed it. MAIG has paid resources to identify and target towns to try to pass this ordinance. We rely on volunteers to keep us abreast of happenings, and sometimes these kinds of things slip by without notice. So I apologize for the accusation that there was no public notice, but Max Nacheman and Bloomberg are still weasels ;)

Mr. Completely is preparing to once again head to the European Steel Championship in Holland. What intrigues me is that the entire event is conducted at an indoor shooting range. It looks like they surround the steel with a ring that would appear to prevent ricochet and splatter. I actually talked to Mr. C. about this in Reno, and he assured me you could step up a steel course on an indoor range that was safe,. The Dutch certainly seem to be doing it! Given that Steel Challenge competition rules don’t require draw from holster for rimfire, it’s at least one speed game we might be able to do at my club if people could be convinced it could be done safely. When I tired Steel Challenge out at the Gun Blogger Rendezvous in Reno, it sure was a lot of fun.

Sailorcurt is not alone in his disappointment that NRA has picked an off limits venue for the Annual Meeting. I would obviously rather be at a venue that allows carry as well, and this has been a constant complaint I’ve heard from members. It was nice in Kentucky and Phoenix because it was allowed. But NRA has competing interests to deal with in this regard.

NRA moves its Annual Meeting every year so that every once in a while, if you’re an NRA member, one will be coming to your neighborhood and you’ll have an opportunity to attend. They try to have it in places where as many NRA members as possible are within the radius of a day’s drive. Because the NRA Annual Meeting draws approximately 60,000 to 70,000 people, prominent political figures, a fair amount of media, and has some very significant space requirements, the number of venues that are capable of handling it is very limited, and it’s getting more limited as the meeting gets larger. For instance, Phoenix’s convention center is brand new and was built large enough to handle a convention of our size, and that opened that city up as a possibility which NRA took advantage of last year. We set a record for the largest single meal ever served in the history of Arizona. The Annual Members Banquet drew, if I recall, something like 6000 people.

The fact is there just aren’t that many venues scattered around the country that can handle a convention that large, with NRA’s room and space requirements, that also don’t have issues with carry. NRA’s alternative would be to always have the convention in Pittsburgh, Louisville, Houston and Phoenix. That would be great for people who carry, but would kind of suck for people who would never get to go because there was never any venue that was good enough.

I would also consider that the amount of money NRA brings to an area is not an inconsiderable incentive to improve laws in an area. Governor Jan Brewer, at the Phoenix Convention, announced support for cleaning up the restaurant carry situation while we were in Phoenix, and it wasn’t that long after we left that we had a fix. If we go back to Phoenix, that’s going to be nice not to have to deal with having to run back to the hotel to dump off a gun because you go to a place for lunch that serves alcohol, even if you don’t plan on drinking. I’m not saying we’ll be able to repeat that performance with North Carolina, but it’s not outside the realm of possibility. If politicians are impressed enough with the amount of money we bring into the region, and the positive publicity we get for their convention center (a favorite pork project of state level pols everywhere), they just might come asking what they have to do to get us to come back.

Just some things to keep in mind before getting angry about the situation. Nobody really likes it, but choices are limited, and someone is going to end up getting stiffed one way or another, no matter which direction you go.

Many people who are unfamiliar with firearms, which includes many people who work or volunteer for gun control organizations, don’t really understand shooting as a skill. They tend to want to treat is as knowledge. Knowledge is beneficial, but it can’t make one a proficient and safe shooter. I’ve spent my whole life in pursuit of some form of skill based discipline at one time or another, and I find shooting to be most accurately compared to playing the piano, in terms of what it takes to achieve proficiency. Actually, piano is much much harder, but it’s learned the same way, just piano takes much more self-discipline to master.

I took concert piano from the time I was four years old until my junior year in college. I was far more proficient at that than I am, and probably ever will be at shooting. But ask me to play something now, and I’d be lucky to clunk out the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata (if you listen to the Wikipedia recordings of it, they are appalling, just to warn you). At one time, I could play all three movements. The last piece of music I ever played in public was this one, my junior year in college. I couldn’t even begin to play it now, despite a working knowledge of the piece, knowledge of how keys are laid out on the piano, what the pedals do, and knowledge on how to read sheet music. Why? Because when I quit piano, I really quit. I never went back to it, and that skill I spent all those years building up has been purged from whatever part of my brain controls muscle memory. Granted, if I picked the piano up again, I would pick up the skill much faster than someone who had never played piano, as my brain rebuilt all those connections from long term memory.

Shooting is the same. I can spend an afternoon and give someone enough knowledge to go out and become a safe shooter, and that’s really all training can do. Shooting, and shooting safely, is a skill. Skills must be practiced, over and over again, until they are muscle memory. Firearms training is a good thing, because it can impart knowledge, and help you on your way to skill, just like piano lessons can help you learn how to play piano. But proficiency, and safety in the case of shooting, are entirely up to the person to develop. If you aren’t committed, and don’t practice, you’ll never be any good at either piano playing or shooting.

Some might try to argue that this means no one except police should carry a firearm, but police aren’t immune to this problem either, and many of us who’ve been shooting long enough have a story about cops at the range who have appalling shooting skills and gun handling practices. And those are the ones who at least practice some! Imagine how bad the ones are who only ever shoot their qualifier? I can put someone in training for twenty or forty hours, and I won’t make a good shooter. I can promise you over that time they will improve, but that won’t last long once they head out the door if they aren’t committed to polishing and maintaining the skill on their own.

This is why I say training is a good idea, but shouldn’t necessarily be a requirement. I think we should teach the basic knowledge of gun and shooting safety in schools as part of PE requirements. But I am about as much in agreement that legally mandating a training requirement for firearms ownership or carry will result in safe and proficient shooters as I am that mandating taking a piano lesson as a condition to buying a piano will result in more concert pianists. People who believe that don’t get the difference between knowledge and skill.

I can almost hear the gun control crowd now, “But Sebastian, aren’t you concerned with all those people who might carry a gun and have no idea what they doing with it?” No more than I worry about cops. The people who will end up carrying regularly are going to be, far more often than not, the people who are committed and serious about their skills. The person who gets a permit for the macho/cool factor or some other bad reason is going to very quickly tire of it once the novelty wears off, and once they realize that carrying a gun around with you is a pain in the ass. Most people who get toters permits don’t stick with it, and even if they renew their permits, they aren’t carrying very often if at all. It makes sense even in a musical context. If you see a guy on the subway every morning with a violin case, I’m going to bet you serious money he can play. He might not be Itzhak Perlman, but I’m going to bet he can play well. He wouldn’t be carrying it if he wasn’t committed. I’d be willing to take the same bet with a guy who carries a gun every day on the subway too.

Go see over at Michael Bane’s. It doesn’t help make me feel any better. Especially this:

We are supporters of the Second Amendment and are not against people exercising that right. We also believe that every Right has a corresponding Duty. We believe training may very well be a key factor in retaining or losing the very right our Second Amendment provides. We applaud those who have willingly sought out training on their own to become educated on gun ownership.

That being said, as firearms instructors we see many students come into our courses for training who have no clue or idea what the laws (both State Statutes and case law) are in regards to owning or using a firearm in self defense or any other purpose, let alone how to safely and properly handle or store their firearms. We feel that it is the informed and knowledge gun owners who will play an important role in allowing us to protect our Second Amendment Rights, not those who choose to remain ignorant of the responsibilities that come with that right. It¹s sad to say, but there are many in our society who will not seek appropriate training on their own. It¹s those who choose not to get training, act negligently and make stupid careless mistakes, who are the greatest threat to protecting our Second Amendment Rights. Mandated training is not the enemy, yet, it could play a very important role in saving our rights in the long run. Therefore in order to protect our rights we will support mandated training whenever it is available.

This is like a love letter to the Brady Campaign. They support making exercising of your right conditional on training. How much training is enough? Do I have to take four hours? If four hours is great, twelve would surely be fantastic. If twelve is fantastic why not forty? Why not limit the right to anyone who hasn’t gone thorough police academy? Why not require it for every gun you buy, just to make sure you stay fresh, and all.

Insight wants to make sure no one bothers to become a gun owner. They do not want the option of gradual introduction into the culture. What they propose will destroy our numbers and our political power right along with it. Once you make gun ownership a priestly class, it will cease to exist as a right issue, and as a political issue. There will not be enough gun owners left to prevent tightening the ratchet. In effect, Insight are slitting their own throat, and ours along with it, by signing on to this. If you live in Arizona, and need training, I would take your business elsewhere.

I am not against training. I think it’s valuable. But if it had been a requirement prior, I would not be a gun owner today, and you would not be reading any of this. I was not unfamiliar with firearms when I bought a gun. I was introduced, or reintroduced into shooting in my mid-20s by a friend who took me out shooting, and I used his firearms before I bought my own. After some initial guidance to break a few bad habits I had, I decided to buy my own guns. I enjoyed my time on the range, but I was not committed to getting back into shooting at this point. If there had been hoops to jump through, I doubt I would have.

Once I got my own guns and started practicing, I started to really enjoy it, and got more committed to the sport. But I did not seek out formal training until I started carrying. Though it is not required in Pennsylvania, training is a good idea. But it’s not the end all be all, and the reason is because of the kind of skill shooting is. I’ll explain that later.

Thirdpower shows Abby Spangler what a protest is supposed to look like.

Looks like Fishermen are getting abused by the Administration just as we thought gun owners would. There’s even media apologists saying that the fishermen and their representative groups are nuts. Obama just wouldn’t do that, you see? Because he’s a smart politician. Sorry, not buying it. Barry is about the most incompetent politician I’ve seen in a while. The guy can give a rousing speech off a teleprompter, and that’s about the extent of his political talent. He definitely has people in his Administration who would like to end or severely restrict recreational fishing. Unfortunately for fishermen, most aren’t as involved with their issue politically as are gun owners and hunters. That’s a shame too, because they have pretty substantial numbers. If I were Obama, it’s not a sleeping giant I want to risk awakening, given that he’s been kicking more than a few others lately. If he’s really not intending to restrict or ban fishing, he needs to get control of his bureaucracy and put a stop to this. I wouldn’t hold my breath, however.

Jeff Soyer notes that Mitt is a panderer. Ask Bitter about Mitt. She had to live under him in Massachusetts, and being very involved with the pro-gun community there, is decidedly not a Mitt fan. The thing is, though, that all politicians are panderers. You really don’t have that many true believers out there among politicians. Everything is up for negotiation depending on where there’s money and votes. But you want your pandering politician to be a rational actor. The problem with a guy like Mitt is, you never know when he’s going to double cross you.

In the end, I don’t care if a politician only agrees with my policy preferences out of rational self-interest rather than true conviction. But I do care whether or not he can be relied on. That’s one reason I’m very wary of Michael Fitzpatrick getting his political career resurrected by the Bucks County GOP.  Fitzpatrick was one of those guys that never really got tested, and I have a lot of reason to believe he wouldn’t be reliable when push comes to shove. Mitt has a lot of work to do to convince gun owners. So does Fitz.

The Brady Campaign asks why Starbucks allows customers to carry guns, but doesn’t allow employees. That’s a good question. I think they should allow their employees to carry if they are legally entitled to do so! But I have no plan to make that part of this debate. A restaurant can rule its employees have to wear a uniform if they want to, even though it would be absurd to demand the same thing of customers. There’s a difference between customers and employees. But you can blame a lot of this on lawyers.

The primary reason that businesses have weapons policies is CYA. Businesses are far less liable for the actions of their customers than they are for the actions of employees when on the job acting as agents of the corporation. This doesn’t have much specifically to do with guns, it’s just a general fact. Your company has far more liability issues if you get into an accident driving a company car on company business than they would be if you hit someone on the way to work in your own vehicle. That doesn’t necessarily say anything about the danger of driving. It doesn’t have to make sense to get a jury award. Juries are sucker for a sympathetic client and a big, rich corporation. If that wasn’t the case, John Edwards never would have been rich enough to pay off a staffer to take the fall for a baby he sired with his mistress.

It comes down to this. If a pizza delivery guy pops an armed robber, we’d all completely agree that he was acting in self-defense, and that such an act would not be a misuse of firearms. But suppose the family of the armed robber decides to sue the pizza shop? What if the pizza shop allowed their employee to be armed? Doesn’t that make the shop more liable? For a mom and pop shop, they probably value the lives of their employee (often a relative) more than they worry about being sued. They have insurance for that anyway. But for a large chain pizza joint, they have entire HR departments that fret and worry about how the company may get sued. They get blamed for stuff like that, especially if an HR policy, or lack of one, becomes an issue in a lawsuit. Corporate HR departments are risk averse and very eager to avoid blame for anything. Blame in a lawsuit is far worse than dealing with a dead employee, who quite honestly, has more of a case against the armed robber than they do against the employer. Corporate HR would also like to inform your family of the wonderful death benefit they provide for employees.

The fact is that the life of an employee means far less to a big corporation than than the possibility of a giant lawsuit, especially one that results in finger pointing at corporate headquarters. They might make a public face about being concerned about violence in the workplace, but the real concern is liability. Everyone knows that someone intent on violence isn’t going to suddenly remember the corporate policy and change his mind. That’s the elephant in the room. But that doesn’t matter. What matters is having a workplace violence policy that forbids employees from having effective means of self-defense shields the corporation from liability for an employee acting in self-defense. Dead employees are an acceptable sacrifice on that altar. You can blame lawyers.

Met up with Traction Control tonight over at Ready, Aim Fire in Bristol. He rented an MP-5 submachine gun. Got to shoot a magazine through it. The house MP-5 was in some dire need of cleaning and some fresh magazine springs, but any time I get to shoot a submachine gun I think “Man, we really need to get rid of that Hughes thing.” Full auto is a lot of fun even when it’s not running as well as it could, and sometimes submachine guns can be finicky.

Two notables tonight are that I got to shoot my Webley Mark IV for the first time, and I enjoyed it. Much less recoil than I would have thought, but that’s probably because it’s a rather heavy pistol firing a relatively anemic round. That crossbar safety has to go though. It’s rough to switch, and a general pain in the ass. It gets in the way of the enjoyment of the pistol. Eventually I think I need to find a Webley that hasn’t been mutilated for the sake of being legally importable.

I also got to shoot my Glock for the first time in a length of time I’m embarrassed to admit. I compete with air guns and .22s these days, so not much trigger time on the Glock. The problem is, my club has a lot of stupid restrictions on how many rounds you can put in your magazine, and drawing from a holster, so I can’t really practice self-defense shooting there. I don’t end up practicing self-defense shooting as much as I really need to for carrying a pistol around in public. That’s not to say I shot badly. Getting trigger time, any trigger time, keeps your skills from totally going to s**t, but I was shooting better practical pistol two years ago than I am now.

Drawing from holster, using my iPhone shot timer, I was getting somewhere between 1.5 seconds and 2.5 seconds between buzzer and aimed shot on target. At least I think. It’s hard to tell on a busy range which shot registered was yours, so it comes down to “I know I’m not that fast, but I’m pretty sure I’m not that slow.” Overall, out of the holster I’m in an area of about the size of a DVD container at 25 feet. That’s decent, but I did pull one shot pretty far off, which I’m a bit appalled by. I’m also unhappy that on about a 1/4 of my draws I had a grip that caused the slide to scrape against the web of my hand. No bloodshed from a slide cut, but not comfortable either. Whatever mojo Todd Jarrett imparted with his instruction has definitely departed due to lack of practice. That seems like it was a long time ago. Hopefully I’ll get out to a few practice shoots this season and top my skills back up.

Who knows. Maybe one day my club will come into the gun culture of the 21st century and we’ll have some practical shooting, or steel plate shooting where I can get some more practice in under time pressure and from a ready stance or from the holster.

So the other day I highlighted a candidate for Congress who doesn’t have a chance. Then I pondered why Bob Brady wanted her off the ballot – I assumed it was because his ego was too fat to allow anyone else on it.

In all of that, I assumed her campaign didn’t have much money. Well, I still think that political reality shows this is an more than an uphill battle for Pia – more like climbing the Alps – but I was wrong about the resources in her attempt at a PR coup. She has full page ads in both Philadelphia papers today. They stop you in your tracks, and they get right to heart of matter – “Hate Philly Politics?”

Damn straight, people do hate it. And clearly enough people hate it to help her buy some these ads. And hopefully these ads will lead to more volunteers and votes.

I think this deceased equine by now is pretty thorough flogged, so I wasn’t going to respond to the Brady’s latest here on this blog, but since Opposing Views is a new place I figured I’d respond there. I thought it’d be a good idea to get into the debate there, despite there already being a good pro-gun presence, because Opposing Views has the benefit of being rated by Google as a news source instead of a blog. The gun folks over at Examiner.com also share that advantage. Blogs are good and useful, but if you’re a traditional blog, you’ll never be anything more than that to Google, but if you can get your message out onto something Google News can pick up, that’s something different. It’s important for our message to appear there too.

The Chattanooga Times can’t understand the legal difference between a State Capitol and other public places.

State legislators do not allow people to carry guns into the state Capitol for a good reason. They’re afraid a deranged person, disturbed over some perceived legislative intrusion, might walk into their chambers and start shooting.

Their caution is understandable. We’re all well aware of how frequently such violent episodes occur at other places of work. Furthermore, lawmakers and most citizens know that gun violence can be triggered for myriad reasons and can occur randomly in almost any venue, from shopping malls to schools, from churches to colleges to strips of congested highways.

First off, someone deranged isn’t going to be stopped by a law or policy. I don’t know much about how Tennessee’s State Capitol works, but ours is similarly off limits because it’s also a courthouse, containing the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. But a courthouse or state capitol is a vastly different type of public place than restaurants, rest stops, parks, or other places where we’ve been demanding our right to carry be respected.

It’s not just different because politicians are there, but is really a distinct kind of public place. The Supreme Court ruling in Heller suggests that state capitols and courthouses are the kinds of government buildings where it’s constitutional to restrict possession of firearms, at least temporarily. Whether you think that was right or wrong isn’t really what I mean to discuss here. The ruling says what it does, and it’s now law, so let’s speak for a minute about which “sensitive places” and “government buildings” might be covered, and why.

A courthouse or state capitol would, under Heller, likely be the kind of government building where firearms could be temporarily restricted. But given that the Second Amendment protects one’s right to self-defense, under what circumstances can this be the case? I think three aspects can make the case, substitution, screening, and storage. Let’s call them the three S’s. Let me explain what they mean.

1. Substitution. Is there an ample law enforcement presence in the building? In most state capitols and courthouses, the answer to this is clearly yes. In Pennsylvania, the Capitol is staffed by the Capitol Police, and courthouses in PA are staffed by the county Sheriff’s office. In both their presence is ubiquitous. There’s very few circumstances where they aren’t going to more ably to deal with a situation than an individual would be. If a gunfight breaks out in the capitol rotunda, I’m far more likely to leave it to the guys with the submachine guns than try my hand at dealing with the matter. There’s a reasonable substitution for your own side arm with the ubiquitous law enforcement presence.
2. Is the building screened? In other words, does everyone go through a security checkpoint? This isn’t perfect, but it’s a pretty good protection against someone disregarding the rules with intent to shoot the place up. In most courthouses I’ve been in, and in state capitols, there’s a security checkpoint with metal detectors and x-rays.
3. Storage is the third aspect. In Pennsylvania, the Capitol Police provide for checking your firearm as is required by state law. This means your Second Amendment rights aren’t infringed upon on your way to and from the building.

But how many public places even come close to passing the “Three S” test? Very few. If you believe in the right to self-defense, and believe in the Second Amendment, there might be reasons, as was mentioned in Heller, that you can’t carry a gun just anywhere, but there needs to be a higher level of concern than just “some random nut” as the Chattanooga Times implies. The random nut is always going to have a gun. If the government is going to disarm citizens, it should be for a damned good reason, and in an environment where the government can provide a reasonable substitute for personal protection. The old adage “I carry a gun because a cop is too heavy” applies. It’s not surprising that media outlets don’t want to go into this issue in that level of detail, but if it’s really a right, it needs to be treated like one. You can’t just declare, “It’s a right, but what about whack jobs?”  We don’t think of other rights that way, do we? “There’s a right to free press, but what about libel?”

Don Kates says he’s a good choice for California, and tells us some details we wouldn’t have known otherwise:

In contrast, I do know Jerry Brown. We went to law school together though we were not big buddies. And when I contacted him about supporting the pro-2d Am position in the McDonald case, he filed an influential pro-2d Am brief w/ the S Ct. I know that he personally made the decision to do this, overruling his staff; and he wrote the brief himself. (He is an able lawyer.) When he was assailed by anti-gun forces, his response was that the 2d am is a “civil rights issue.”

This is not to say that Brown is “pro-gun.” He just thinks – as does everyone rational and informed on the issue – that gun control does not help reduce crime; indeed, that it has nothing to do w/ crime.

I’d sure like more than lukewarm support, but it’s not like Ahhnold has worked out too well for California Gun Owners, has he?

It’s not just a little gun control the Democrats seeking the gubernatorial bid are going for – they are all in. It’s a sad thing to say – the most moderate only wants to ban your EBRs. And, to some degree, Jack Wagner really only said he supported it previously. I haven’t seen him release an action plan to take them. And, yes, that puts him far above the other options for Democratic gun owners have on their primary ballot.

Take Dan Onorato. Apparently, there was early speculation that he was pretty pro-gun. He squashed that rumor at his campaign launch saying that any speculation about his support of the Second Amendment was “a mischaracterization.” Turns out that may be the understatement of the year.

Yesterday, he released his “plan for safe communities.” In it, we find a plan to end preemption (say goodbye to carry in Philly!), a proposal for statewide lost-and-stolen, and a plan to challenge Heller/McDonald.

Say what?

Yup. Dan Onoranto wants to force all gun owners who have minors in the home to lock their guns. Apparently he missed that key part in Heller:

In sum, we hold that the District’s ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense.

You don’t lose your right to read scary news or watch violent movies just because there are kids in the home. You shouldn’t lose your right to self-defense over the same. There is a factor of common sense, but that hasn’t been a serious problem for the overwhelming majority of families. Just like most parents don’t let their 6-year-old watch a gory horror flick or read extremely graphic descriptions of war to them at bedtime, gun owners take care when children are around their guns. There’s a difference between discovering the right solution for your home and the state removing your right to immediately defend yourself and those same children you love.

I think we can all agree that any perception of Dan Onorato supporting civil liberties is, in fact, a mischaracterization. He was absolutely right about that – just about the only thing he’s been on right on in this campaign.

Looks like US Citizen of Traction Control is in my neck of the woods looking for some full auto fun. It’s not often that we get bloggers in the area, since not too many people are eager to partake in W.C. Fields Second Prize. The first prize was one week in Philadelphia. The Second Prize was two.

Dave Hardy points out something about the NFA and shotguns over at CleanupATF.org that I think might be incorrect. Dave says:

ATF has consistently taken the position that a shotgun that leaves the factory with a pistol grip and no buttstock, and is kept in that condition, is a pistol rather than a shotgun.

Except I don’t think that’s the case that they consider it a pistol. A pistol grip shotgun is still a shotgun [UPDATE: It's not a shotgun either] as long as its overall length is greater than 26 inches. The National Firearms Act’s definitions are highly convoluted. If you check the ATF NFA Handbook a few of their footnotes on page eight explain their view of the law. It rests in the definition in 26 USC 5845 of firearms and shotguns. See here:

(a) Firearm The term “firearm” means (1) a shotgun having a barrel or barrels of less than 18 inches in length; (2) a weapon made from a shotgun if such weapon as modified has an overall length of less than 26 inches or a barrel or barrels of less than 18 inches in length [...]

(d) Shotgun The term “shotgun” means a weapon designed or redesigned, made or remade, and intended to be fired from the shoulder and designed or redesigned and made or remade to use the energy of the explosive in a fixed shotgun shell to fire through a smooth bore either a number of projectiles (ball shot) or a single projectile for each pull of the trigger, and shall include any such weapon which may be readily restored to fire a fixed shotgun shell.

So I believe ATF still considers a pistol group shotgun to be a shotgun [See UPDATE below, they consider it to be a 'pistol grip weapon'], provided its overall length is greater than 26 inches. It is considered to be a weapon made from a shotgun, but because of its overall length, not subject to the provisions of the National Firearms Act. I believe if you were to saw off a shotgun with a pistol grip, it would fall under the definition of “Any Other Weapon” or “AOW” rather than a short barreled shotgun.

The interesting thing about shotguns is they would be subject to the NFA provision that regulates destructive device, except for language in the definition thereof which reads:

any type of weapon by whatever name known which will, or which may be readily converted to, expel a projectile by the action of an explosive or other propellant, the barrel or barrels of which have a bore of more than one-half inch in diameter, except a shotgun or shotgun shell which the Secretary finds is generally recognized as particularly suitable for sporting purposes

In 1994, this definition was used to reclassify the “Street Sweeper” shotgun as a destructive device under the National Firearms Act, since it was deemed by the Clinton Administration to have no sporting use. The same thing could be done with pistol grip shotguns, if the Obama Administration were so inclined. Definitions in the NFA are screwy, and there’s a lot of room to stick it to gun owners with nuance. This is something we should look at cleaning up at some point if we ever have the political opportunity.

UPDATE: A commenter points out this bit from ATF:

Pistol Grips and Shotguns Firearms with pistol grips attached: The definition of a shotgun under the GCA, 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(5), is “a weapon designed or redesigned, made or remade, and intended to be fired from the shoulder and designed or redesigned and made or remade to use the energy of an explosives to fire through a smooth bore either a number of ball shot or single projectile for each single pull of the trigger. Under the GCA, 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(29)(A), handgun means “a firearm which has a short stock and is designed to be held and fired by the use of a single hand.” Federal law provides under 18 U.S.C. 922(b)(1), that if the firearm to be transferred is “other than a rifle or shotgun,” the purchaser must be 21 years of age or older. Certain commercially produced firearms do not fall within the definition of shotgun under the GCA even though they utilize a shotgun shell for ammunition. For example, firearms that come equipped with a pistol grip in place of the butt stock are not shotguns as defined by the GCA. A firearm with a pistol grip in lieu of the shoulder stock is not designed to be fired from the shoulder and, therefore, is not a shotgun. Since it is a firearm “other than a rifle or shotgun,” the purchaser must be 21 years of age or older. Additionally, interstate controls apply. The licensee and transferee must be residents of the same State. Other questions raised pertain to entries made in the licensee’s required records with respect to firearm “type.” These entries should indicate the firearm type as “pistol grip firearm.”

Clear as a bell. Remember that next time Brady or some other group says firearms are unregulated. So they don’t mention that that it’s a “handgun” but they also don’t mention that it’s a “shotgun” either. It’s some other weird category called “pistol grip firearm” even though it’s treated the same way as a handgun for purposes of 922, since it’s not a rifle or a shotgun. Got that? I think my brain is going to explode.