Snowflakes in Hell

I decided to check out the FN booth.   FN is making some pretty cool stuff these days.   First I checked out the FS2000.

It’s very interesting, and certainly slick looking.  But when it comes to rifles, I’m pretty utilitarian.  For one, I’m not a huge fan of bullpups, even though this one ejects the brass out the front, which is pretty cool.   My main problem with it is that I have to flip up that black cover on the top rear of the rifle in order to check the chamber.   I much prefer to have easy visual access to the rifle’s chamber.  I’m also not a huge fan of the magazine release.  On the AR system, you can fetch yourself a magazine while you’re firing your last few shots, then drop the mag with a single finger, let gravity do the work of getting it out of the receiver, then just slam in another one.   On the FS2000, you can see a black button forward to the mag well on the receiver.  You hit this with the same hand you’re removing the magazine with, but you still have to yank it.  I prefer to let gravity do that work.

That’s me trying it out.   Don’t give me crap about fingers and triggers, I was actually trying out the trigger pull.  All firearms on the floor have had the firing pins removed.  I also checked the chamber before trying a dry fire.  The FN guy had to show me where the chamber was.

All in all, the collector in me loves this rifle, just for it’s uniqueness, but I’m not sure what it offers over other operating systems out there.

The Banquet is over.   I’ve gotten to meet several more gun bloggers today.   Michael Bane, and Yosemite Sam and Denise of The Ten Ring.  The weather is cold here in St. Louis, but we listened to some of Dave Hardy’s stories out in front of the Renaissance.   Once Dave decided to retire for the night, we went back inside and sat down with Dave Kopel and Stephen Halbrook.

It’s very cool for me to finally meet in person, people who’s papers, articles and academic research, I’ve read or seen cited for years.  I think it’s a great thing about blogging that it makes possible this kind of dialog.  But one thing is, you’ll never get to know half as many people as you’d like through blogging, and you’ll never get to know that half, half as well as you would like.  I still have more NRA convention blogging to come, including my impressions of Ambassador John Bolton’s keynote at the members meeting, plus a few pictures from the floor.

Stay tuned.

I’m getting ready for the banquet where John Bolton, former Ambassador to the UN, will be speaking. Bitter was telling me of the havoc that having Dick Cheney speak at the Pittsburgh Banquet wrought. Not because he shot someone by accident or anything, but from his secret service security detail.  I doubt we’ll have any such problems with John Bolton, as he does not require security; his mustache is trained to kill.

Every time I start thinking about getting a new pistol to carry, instead of my Glock, I always end up ditching the idea, because I don’t really like much else out there.  I’m only looking at pistols with modern actions and polymer frames.   I’ve never been too keen on regular carry of a DA/SA, DAO or SA.

I tried the S&W M&P line.   Damn nice pistols, but I just didn’t like the trigger pull all that much.  I thought the break was a little sloppier than the Glock.  I noticed on some of the display models they had, the slide lock release was really tough to push down.  I would take the M&P over a lot of other offerings.  I think it’s the second best pistol I tried.

H&K P2000 LEM I didn’t really care for.  The trigger pull with the hammer “cocked” was too light.  I prefer a trigger to have a smooth, rather light take up, then a heavier, but clean break.  The P2000 trigger I think broke pretty cleanly, but at too light a pull.  The one good thing about the LEM trigger is if you fire, and nothing happens, instead of having to rack the slide, you can just fire again, only with a heavier, double action type pull.   That is kind of nice.   But I won’t buy any H&K stuff unless they start making civilianized versions of their cool stuff.  Their booth only featured pistols.   None of their cool stuff.

If I was going to ditch the Glock, the one gun I’d most prefer to do it for is the Springfield XD series.   These felt very Glock-like to me in terms of feel, trigger pull, and overall operation.  There wasn’t much I didn’t like about them.

The Walther P99 just wasn’t really for me either.   I had a hard time telling where the trigger was going to break.  Other than that, not too bad, but it’s a bulky pistol.

I think I’ll be sticking with Glocks though, to be honest.   It’s just what I’m used to, and while there are other fine pistols on the market out there, I’m just probably too wed to Glock a this point to switch.   I’d love to test shoot a Springfield XD series sometime, and a S&W M&P series.  I think those are the two most solid American alternatives just based on a quick feel.

We took a VIP tour of the Budweiser brewery here in St. Louis yesterday. We decided that a brief break from the convention was in order, so we took a cab ride over to the brewery. From a home brewer’s perspective, the tour isn’t all that interesting, because it’s not done in a lot of detail. But the brewery is architecturally a work of art:

This is the view from the outside. It’s beautifully landscaped all over the Anheiser-Busch plant.

Inside the old brewery, they have a hop chandelier, that’s quite nice.

Anheiser-Busch’s Mash Tuns.

Brew kettles. Forgive the orangeness of the picture, as the light wasn’t very good.

The tour wraps up in the hospitality room, where we sampled a few of their beers. As best I can tell, the VIP tour is a small group, of about 10 people, rather than the giagantic tour groups, plus you get an “Honorary Beermaster” certificate at the end, and get to sample two bottles in the nicely appointed hospitality room. But in a regular tour you get to see the same stuff. The brewery is architectural art, so if you’re ever in St. Louis, I’d recommend stopping by for the tour.

As I look out at the crowd at this meeting, I’m struck by the fact that most of them appear to be over 50, and I see maybe only a handful of us that are under 40.   If this is a true reflection of the NRA demographic, we’re in a lot of trouble over the long term.   I go to the range quite often, and the place is teaming with people in their 20s and 30s, yet I come here and I feel young!

Why aren’t more young people involved in this issue, when I know they are involved in shooting.  Where are all the 20-30 year olds I see at gun shows on a regular basis looking at the latest black rifles?   Something’s wrong.

I’m at the NRA members meeting.   Thank God for WiFi at the convention center.   It’s basically just a pep rally for gun nuts, but there are some good videos they showed that I’m hoping they’ll put on Youtube.  I might have to find someone to talk to about that.

So last night, after dinner and the brewery tour, we headed out for some drinks with Cam Edwards, host of Cam & Company at NRA News, Dave Kopel, Research director for the Independence Institute, and Robert Cottrol, Professor of Law, History and Sociology at George Washingon Law School.

Pretty cool company.  I like interacting with academic types, which is good because I work with those types of people on a daily basis.

Speaking of Dave Kopel, everyone should check out his paper on Gun Control in Belgium (PDF):

After the shooting incident, the Government decided to vote a complete new gun legislation. In only a couple of days, this new gun legislation was discussed and approved by the Parliament.

Several observers stated already at that time that the Parliament did not give itself enough time to be able to realize a good and workable gun legislation …

The changes in the new legislation are very drastic : Only officially licensed sporting shooters and hunters can still possess arms, all the other owners of legal weapons will have to hand-in the weapons they already possess without financial compensation.

No other democratic country, except for Jamaica, imposed a complete Gun Ban for all its citizens (except for a limited number of officially licensed sporting shooters and hunters)

Amazing.  They will be confiscating millions of firearms, ordinary firearms, without any compensation to the owners.  Also of note are his statistics on suicide:

In Japan there is no firearm ownership, but Japan has the highest number of suicides of the whole world (28 per 100.000). People commit suicide by hanging, jumping from buildings or moving objects, drowning, …
In the USA there are 4 times more weapons than in Belgium, but only 41% of the number of suicides. In the UK and Australia (both countries have a gun ban) there are more suicides than in the USA. And after the introduction of the Gun Ban there has been a sharp increase in the suicide numbers.

Switzerland has twice as many firearms than Belgium, but lower suicide rates.

Germany has 1,8 times more weapons than Belgium, but only 60 % of the suicides.

Read the whole thing.

We’ll be on the floor of the convention most of the day today. If anyone is at the convention and wants to say hi, I’ll be wearing my T-shirt with “Peace Through Superior Firepower” blazed on the back. I’m about six feet three inches tall, and 235lbs, so I’m tough to miss.  Also, you too can be one of the rare people that knows what Bitter looks like! I just hope you know the secret hand shake.

I’ll have more stuff coming up from yesterday shortly. I wish I could have kept this in chronological order, but it’s tough. I only have limited times to blog.

Bitter and I attended an meeting at the convention today, after running into Scott Bach, a member of the Board of Directors and the head of the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs. Sandra Froman started off the meeting, and introduced former UN Ambassador John Bolton, followed by Wayne LaPeirre, Chris Cox, CEO of S&W Mike Golden, and a marketing guy from Gander Mountain. I can’t remember his name unfortunately.

Let me say, it was pretty neat to be in a small conference room with so many interesting people. And yes, Sandy really does know Bitter and gave her a hug. John Bolton gave a brief talk about the importance of fighting for gun rights as an international issue. Something you might have recently read about here. Then followed the meat of the meeting.

The main purpose was to help bring the industry together to support NRA membership, a project I wholeheartedly support. Despite the fact that the anti-gun rights groups like to talk about the NRA as being shill for the gun industry, the gun industry has in the past been pretty ambivalent about the NRA. Some of the industry leaders are trying to change that, and recruit more gun owners into the group through their industry connections.

I have to say that I’m very impressed with the new CEO of Smith & Wesson. They have come a long long way since they took a beating from shooters after colluding with the Clinton Administration to screw us. Smith & Wesson appears to be taking a leadership position on the issue of the industry helping to reach out to new potential members.

One thing I should also mention is that Chris Cox reiterated that membership numbers drive everything his organization does (for those of you who don’t know, Chris Cox is head of NRA-ILA, who handles lobbying all the Congress Critters and state legislators). Without membership, they can accomplish nothing. If they even had half of the people who actively hunt and shoot, they could accomplish anything they wanted. I know a lot of people have gotten pissed off at various things the NRA has done or hasn’t done, but that’s no excuse for not joining.

Politicians only listen to lobbying groups that can bring money and votes to the table, and if the NRA can’t deliver on either of those if it has no members, and no one in Washington or the various state houses has anywhere near the clout, or is as effective as the NRA.

So join and support other organizations if you wish, I’m also a member of the SAF, but membership in the NRA is critical, even if they piss you off sometimes. I’m sure if the Brady Campaign folks, that I know sometimes stop by, were to have an honest talk with you, they’d tell you they’d love for gun owners to abandon the NRA and join a lot of other smaller groups.

We hit the floor of the NRA convention this morning. Bitter had some business to take care of with Cam Edwards, and I headed off to talk to the guy at the Wolf booth about why it was so hard to find 5.45×39 for my AK-74. Interestingly also, the FBI has a NICS booth set up with an interesting brochure with statistics in it. I’ll go through it later and see if there’s anything to blog. We ran into Evan Nappen and Dave Hardy on the floor so far.

Dave had media credentials, and told us the NRA is giving them out to bloggers. All it takes is a business card. Maybe next year.

Later when I get a chance I’ll blog about the membership drive meeting we just went to with Sandy Froman, John “The Stache” Bolton, Wayne LaPierre, Chris Cox, and several industry CEOs, including Mike Golden, CEO of Smith & Wesson. Good stuff there to relay, but for now we have to get to the Budweiser plant for a VIP tour.

BTW, rumor has it that Mayor Dickhead himself will be coming down from New York City to speak at the AHSA press conference. I was hoping to see if we could hire those AHSA guys to go hold up NRA signs at their conference, but they were gone by the time we got back. I guess the AHSA only paid up until morning.

UPDATE: Turns out that Bloomberg was in New York today.  So the rumor was just that it seems.   I’ll see if I hear anything more about the AHSA press conference.

The American Hunters and Shooters Association has paid people to stand outside the NRA convention with signs. I’ll try to get pictures later. This following up on the announcement that they will support Bloomberg’s coalition of anti-gun mayors. You might notice AHSA has bought ad space on that article as well, though it doesn’t come up every time. Keep reloading.

Apparently AHSA is also running an invitation only press conference. One wonders what it takes to get an invitation, but I’m guessing only sympathetic media are allowed in.

UPDATE: The Ten Ring has a pic of the AHSA protesters, who were gone by the time I got back down there with a camera.

Tomorrow the convention actually starts. All six acres of guns. In the morning, we’ll be making a short trip to the St. Louis Arch, then to the convention. We stopped off at the Renaissance to see if there were any cool people there, and sadly there were not, except for Steven Halbrook, who was busy being cool with other people.

Now we’re back at the hotel, and I think are done for the night.  Bitter is pretty horribly ill, actually, and needs to get some rest.

A lot of gun control groups always try to portray the gun industry as deep pocketed, evil, large corporations.  The truth is that gun makers tend to be small time operations, often even cottage industries.

Here at the NRA convention, we have a live example of that.  I just saw Tom Knapp checking into our Holiday Inn Express downtown.   I guess Benelli can’t afford, or is too cheap, to put him up in the Renaissance across the street :)

I made it to St. Louis, and so did my Glock. The check in process was painless. They didn’t even ask to inspect it. I’m guessing the x-ray machine they use can see whether a round is in the chamber, but there was a big cable lock through the magazine well and slide. I thought I heard one TSA agent mention it was a Glock. Another actually came over, saw my NRA shirt, and asked me if I was a member, when I affirmed, he started asking me about good pistols to get started with handgun shooting on. I told him I was a Glock man, but that some people don’t like them, and SIGs are also pretty good.  Either way, I was happy it was such a painless process.   I will not hesitate to travel with a firearm again.