By George, I Think He’s Got It!

From this article:

And [DC v. Heller] will force liberals to focus on the real reasons for gun violence.
At some point, liberals and anti-gun folks will have to realize that it is failing families, schools and communities that lead to drug-related gun violence, not guns purchased by law-abiding citizens.

So, why do we do [gun “buyback” programs]? We do them because it allows incompetent politicians to feel as though they’re doing something. They want to be able to go back to their under-informed constituents and say, Hey! Look at me. I’m doing something about the 400 murders, on average, in Philadelphia yearly, or the five or six gunshot victims a day! When they really aren’t.

IN OTHER WORDS, guns don’t kill people – misguided, unloved, disconnected, uneducated, angry youth kill people. Youth without mentors and role models kill people.

By jove, I think he’s on to something. Read the whole thing; it gets better.

Carrying a rifle openly on a vehicle in Arizona?

While I know that open carry of handguns is legal in Arizona, I haven’t been able to dig up any information on the open carry of rifles.
Now, before people get all flustered, I’d like to clarify: this would be in the context of carrying a slung rifle on my back to and from the range while riding my scooter.
I suspect that carrying my Pelican hard case might not work so well, hence the question.
I figure that motorists seeing a scooter rider with a slung AR on his back might change their mental classification of such riders. It might also increase my visibility, making my ride a bit safer too. 🙂

Lefty Stuff

Dear Gun (and gun-related stuff) Store Owners,
I know that retail space is valuable and all, but could you please (pretty please?) stock at least a token few left-handed items?
It might not have to be big, expensive stuff like a lefty CZ 452 American (hint, hint), but it’d be nice if you had at least one lefty holster of each type you sold. Actually having lefty guns in stock (rather than having to order them) would be nice, but I understand why you don’t.
Sure, lefties might be only about 10% of the population, but lefty shooting products are still made, and it’d be really great for you to at least stock some stuff…
Sincerely,
AZR

Say what?

From the VPC‘s post-Heller statement:

Thankfully, because the plaintiff in Heller did not challenge the District’s ban on “machine guns,” Washington, DC?s ban on most semiautomatic weapons, including semiauto handguns, should be unaffected.?

Er, what?
After reading further, this is because DC defines a “machine gun” as any gun ?which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily converted or restored to shoot semiautomatically, more than 12 shots without manual reloading.” What a bizzare definition.
The VPC also claims,

In contrast [to semi-automatic handguns], revolvers hold only five to six ammunition rounds, fire more slowly, take time to reload, and represent only 27 percent of the handguns manufactured in 2006.

Jerry Miculek disagrees.

A Minor Detail

If we have the determination to reduce the roughly 30,000 people in this country who are shot each year by firearms, to reduce that to zero, we can do it…it is within our ability to do that. We just have to adopt the registration requirement that has been so successful in Canada.
– Buford Scott.

I’m not going to address the ludicrous claim that we can reduce gun violence by any significant amount (let alone to zero) by registration. That’s just absurd.
Rather, I’m going to focus on part of his first sentence:

…people in this country who are shot by firearms…

Maybe I’m just being pedantic, but I’ve never heard of anyone being shot by a firearm. Rather, I’ve heard of people being shot by other people with firearms.
The Brady Campaign has a flyer along these lines where they state that “In 2004, guns murdered…11,344 [people] in the United States.” For the sake of the exercise, I’m not going to dispute the numbers, but I suspect that the guns alone didn’t do the murdering…rather, a person used a gun as a means of murdering someone else.
Last time I checked, guns are inanimate objects without any will of their own.
Indeed, Assault Weapon Watch has been closely monitoring an AR-15 for over four years, and it has yet to move, speak, dance, or commit acts of violent crime. It’s just quietly sat there for four years in the corner.
Perhaps it’s a clever ruse on the rifle’s part? Is it behaving as such simply to serve as a decoy, so we won’t pay attention to other guns going out and committing crimes on their own? Who knows?

I Love the World


The Discovery Channel really hit this one out of the park. Really an amazing commercial for an amazing channel.
The only problem I’ve found with doing science is that it’s stupendously amazing and that there’s too damn much of it. I’d love to do just about everything they do on that channel, learn about ancient things, hot magma, space, explosions, and tasty, tasty crab. (Tasty crab is science! Really, honey!) Sadly, the world is too big for an individual to see and do everything…yet at the same time, that’s what makes it amazing.
xkcd has a similarly geeky and awesome comic related to this as well.
Ah, the world is an amazing place.

Heller is Big News

While certainly the news of Heller has been widespread online and in gun communities, I didn’t really expect to see much reporting in “traditional” media like newspapers.
Not many other Supreme Court rulings get a lot of coverage in the papers (as most of them tend to be fairly esoteric and not something most people really want to read headlines about), and usually only get small blurbs on national TV: “The Supreme Court affirmed that the individuals have a right to own guns, and now to Ollie with sports…”
Well, Heller made front-page, above-the-fold news in today’s Wall Street Journal. While not the main headline, it was quite prominent.
Very cool.
Now I just need to see about getting one of those “Come And Take It” flags with the M16 on it. That’d be a fun thing to have on the wall. 🙂

CZ 75

Today I stopped at the local gun shop here in the SF Bay Area (“City Arms“, if anyone’s interested — excellent shop, good guys who run it, good prices.) with one of my gunny friends and perused their wares.
One handgun, in particular, stood out — the CZ 75 Compact (.40 S&W). It fit my hand like a glove, and pointed incredibly naturally. The heft of the gun was moderate (it’s all steel), but not too bad. The DA trigger pull was long and pretty hard, but the SA was shorter and much lighter.
I’ve fired some CZs before, and I’m wondering why I haven’t bought any yet. Oh well, something new to add to the list…only I’d prefer to get it in 9mm rather than .40, mostly due to pricing and the fact that I have gobs of 9mm at home.