Having Wednesday off due to Veteran’s Day, I’ll be taking a few new shooters to the range.
One of them is a native Texan who, for some unknown reason, never handled firearms during her upbringing. She’s since moved to New Zealand, and doesn’t have much of an opportunity to shoot there. She’s vacationing in the US and has come back to Arizona (where she went to college) for a few weeks to spend time with friends (including me!).
The other is a native New Zealander, also vacationing in the US. She is a friend of the first new shooter (I’m still waiting on permission to use their names), traveled here with her, and has neither been to the US nor handled firearms before.
Hopefully the mild weather holds. Pictures will be posted when I get them.
Gun Free Zones
From the Brady Campaign:
America has seen an epidemic of horrific gun violence at churches and synagogues, workplaces, health clubs, high schools, universities, police stations and now Army bases.? This latest tragedy, at a heavily fortified army base, ought to convince more Americans to reject the argument that the solution to gun violence is to arm more people with more guns in more places.? Enough is enough.
Take a look at that list of places. Notice a common “feature” of these places?
- Churches, synagogues, and other places of worship are almost always listed as “gun free zones” in firearm-related legislation, overriding the choices of the individual attendees, the congregation as a whole, and the leader of that particular place.
- The majority of workplaces prohibit employees from possessing firearms on their property, under penalty of being fired.
- Health clubs, while perhaps not prohibiting firearms, are essentially “gun free zones” as people are more focused on exercise and carrying a gun while lifting weights or doing cardio can be impractical, if not dangerous.
- High schools and universities are near-universally declared, either in law or policy, to be “gun free zones”.
- It’s often illegal to carry a loaded firearm in a police station.
- The carriage of loaded arms on military bases is prohibited, except in very limited situations (e.g. MPs, soldiers undergoing training [and then, the guns are only loaded while at the range and soldiers are searched for ammo and brass prior to leaving the range], etc.). CCW is strictly prohibited.
Basically, all of the places where such horrific violence has taken place are places where it’s prohibited or extremely impractical for ordinary people to possess firearms for self-defense.
I noted the decided lack of violent crime at the NRA Annual Meeting, even though thousands of people were carrying guns. Violence at gun shows is essentially unheard of; I think there may actually be more violent crimes committed in courthouses than there are at gun shows.
Even so, violent crime can occur anywhere. Fortunately, a prepared person can fight back and defend oneself, even if they don’t end up firing their gun. An unarmed, unprepared person cannot.
To summarize,
- Be prepared. No need to be paranoid, but being wary and prepared is key to staying safe.
- So-called “gun free zones” are completely ineffective at stopping criminals. To put it bluntly, they Do. Not. Work.
Fortunately, I think that more people are catching on to the fact that gun control doesn’t affect criminals and helps enable these terrible massacres. When the only examples of terrible violence that the Brady Campaign can list are places where guns are already prohibited by lawful people, that says a lot about the effectiveness of their proposals.
Old Ironsides’ Cannons
The USS Constitution is the nation’s oldest commissioned warship that’s still afloat.
While admittedly a bit of a tourist magnet, the ship is soaked in history (and whatever else happens to be floating around).
One of those bits of history is that the ship fires a cannon at 8am and at sunset.
Now, some of the nearby neighbors are complaining, and want to either have the firing stopped or the charges reduced. While I can see their point (( My apartment complex has gardeners come by with gas-powered leaf blowers every weekend at 7am and they love to sit outside my window with the motors running. )), the ship has been there for longer than they have, and while they can ask that the ship accommodate their wishes (free speech and all), they have no real standing; the ship was there first.
As a commenter on Fark said, “Perhaps they should stop firing blanks.”
Crimes Committed With Machine Guns
The topic of machine guns used in crime came up in a conversation I had today. Specifically, the other person was saying that guns like the Glock 19 (( I had no idea why they included this common pistol as an example. )), the M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, and the G36 “enable these sorts of rampages” where “these sorts” evidently referred to the Ft. Hood and Florida shooting sprees.
I’m able to point out, from memory, the two cases since 1934 where a legally-owned machine gun was used in a crime. However, I’m not able to think of any noteworthy crimes committed with illegally-owned machine guns in recent history other than the North Hollywood shootout. Most references to machine guns used in crimes seem to relate to the prohibition era.
Anyone know of any more recent uses of machine guns, legally owned or not, in crime in the US?
Busy
Sorry folks, writing’s been light recently. Swamped with homework, graduate school applications, and tests.
Stay tuned.
Update: Did pretty well on the general. Next up, the physics exam.
I Did Not Know That
Evidently one of Break-Free CLPs uses is for “auto[motive]” purposes. I’ve refilled my little bottle of CLP so many times that the yellow lettering is all but worn off, so I must have missed that. One learns something new everyday.
Fortunately, I discovered this serendipitously today when I was trying to remove a small, screwed-in cover in the crankcase of my motor scooter. The blasted thing refused to unscrew, and I very nearly stripped the soft aluminum of the cover. Bad times. With a bit of Simple Green, I removed the built-up road grime on the metal, wiped it dry, and then remembered that CLP is a penetrating oil and might be able to help.
Unsurprisingly, after I applied a few drops of CLP to the cover and let it penetrate for a few minutes, the cover came free with only a moderate amount of effort. Now, to find a metric socket large enough to rotate the crankshaft so I can check the valve clearance ((I’m attempting to teach myself basic auto/motorcycle mechanical skills. Can be useful, and saves a lot of money.))…
Although my story is rather mundane, I’d imagine that people have come up with clever uses for CLP (and similar lubricants) in non-gun-related contexts. Although I might regret it, I’m curious what other uses for these substances people have found. Anyone care to volunteer?
Note To Self
When constructing a custom, non-sealed Geiger?M?ller tube in a chamber in which you can vary the gas mix and pressure, pay attention to sharp edges of electrified parts outside of the tube itself: you ensured there was no sharp edges inside the tube, so avoid points where the electric field is stronger, thus avoiding inadvertent ionization of the gas mix.
When the same potential is applied to parts outside the tube, also in the chamber, sharp parts (e.g. a nut and the end of a piece of wire) can cause strong electric fields to be produced. This can cause a fun, purple glow (( The gas in the chamber was mostly argon. )) from one’s apparatus. This is bad.
Fortunately the high-voltage power supply is current-limited, and no damage took place.
In related news, electrical tape is extremely useful at insulating (amazingly enough) electrical devices and can stop the aforementioned problem.
British Raid Safe Deposit Boxes
The Daily Mail has more.
Honestly, the only good thing I see coming out of that raid is the picture where the cops are displaying good trigger discipline. Everything else seems completely outrageous.
They also show a picture of a “gun” found during the raid:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but that looks completely different from any Glock pistol I’ve ever seen. The finger grooves suggest that it’s a third-generation Glock (previous generations didn’t have the grooves), but everything else seems suspicious: there’s no metal rails on the receiver for the slide to run on, the barrel’s “breech block” is grossly oversized and looks to be made out of plastic, there’s no ejector, the spring and guide rod in the baggie don’t look anything like the type of spring (real Glocks have a flat, coiled spring instead of the round, coiled spring displayed here) or guide rod (real Glocks have a plastic guide rod that holds the spring captive), the texture on the grip looks wrong, and the flat “label” at the bottom of the grip doesn’t exist on the left side of Glock pistols. Additionally, there’s no “GLOCK” emblem on the grip.
I’d show a picture of my Glock 19, but it has a Hogue sleeve on the grip, and so conceals the left side of the grip. As such, I’ll present this image of a third-generation Glock 17 that I found from Google Image Search:
Note the differences?
If the police and newspapers can’t identify a fake pistol (probably an airsoft knockoff), dare I ask how accurate the rest of the claims made by the police are?
While I have no doubt that some of the boxes raided belonged to criminals, I’d suspect that many of the boxes belonged to ordinary, law-abiding people. Hopefully they can get their stuff back. Good luck getting anyone to keep stuff in safe deposit boxes in the future.
Security Reminder
The internet can be a dangerous place.
Although one’s primary defense against internet badness should, like in the? real world, be ones own brain, that is often inadequate due to the cleverness of malware out there. Even so, be smart, stay away from shady websites, and don’t engage in shady behavior.
If you don’t have anti-virus/anti-malware software, particularly if you’re using Windows, please install some. The free Microsoft Security Essentials is an excellent choice and I highly encourage its use. Also, ensure that your automatic updates feature is enabled.
This post is brought to you by the people who get viruses due to their own irresponsibility and then come crying to Yahoo! Answers Computer-Security forum for help and ignore the dozens of previous posts about the identical issue and then post a new question.
On Getting Mugged
Caleb got mugged.
Threatening a competitive shooter with a knife is almost certainly a bad idea.
Fortunately, it ended with no shots being fired, Caleb being unstabbinated, and the bad guy suffering from HotCoffeeToTheFace Syndrome.
It also goes to show you that a Beretta Jetfire in .25 ACP is a “gun that you carry when you can’t carry a gun” — Caleb wears business casual to work, so concealing a full-size pistol is a bit difficult. Nevertheless, his Jetfire saved the day.