Is it just me or do you see a similarity in people that are fearful of guns and gun owners? I remember the rallies against I-676 (Washington State initiative to register handguns) where a few pro-676 people showed up and a couple years later attending a rally in Olympia (capital of Washington State).  The anti-gun people just looked different. Here I see the same look. I want to say timid but that’s not quite it. I sense a weakness. Perhaps a lack of assertiveness. Here’s the picture:

I keep thinking “grass eaters”, “sheep”, and “prey”. Why is that? And is it something that could be changed with training? Would a few hours on the range and in the classroom convert them to “sheep dogs”? Would their appearances change such that other “sheep dogs” such as I, and the “wolves”, notice the difference?

Update: It’s fear. That’s what I see. I figured it out when I was in the shower this morning. It’s like they are in a German concentration camp and they are submitting a petition to the camp commander.

I also should have commented on the text of the article. They say Cincinnati should ban handguns like Morton Grove, IL. That ordinance was held up as constitutional. There’s just one problem. The Ohio Constitution has a provision for the right to keep and bear arms that IL doesn’t have. And of course, there is Just One Question for these fearful people.

Be sure to read the comments to this post. More enlightenment is awaiting you there.

Keep your blood pressure medicine handy as you read this. USA Today doesn’t want to hear about defensive gun use. They made up details to avoid reporting about it in a story.

When you travel by air with your firearm do not leave the magazine in your semi-auto. Especially if the magazine is loaded. Claiming that having an empty chamber counts as an unloaded gun may not work. Some jurisdictions may even consider the gun loaded if the magazine is loaded and in a different suitcase from the gun.

I once had two TSA employees argue for 15 minuts about a loaded magazine I had even with the gun completely empty. The smarter of the two finally won that arguement but I could have had to argue that point myself to a prosecutor and/or judge. And one time I wait for over 30 minutes because the TSA guy claimed he couldn’t determine via the X-ray if the magazine in the grip of my Ruger P-89 was empty or loaded. The rules wouldn’t allow him to touch the gun and drop the magazine to check it out, I wasn’t allowed to touch anything once they had it under their control. So we to wait for a police officer to arrive from some distant city or something to take all of five seconds to pick up the gun drop the magazine, say, “It’s fine.”, reinsert the magazine, put my gun back in it’s case and walk off.

Even if it is a muzzle loader. A fifty caliber hole will let all the blood out and ventilate your insides. And in someways perhaps even do a better job than many of the more modern defensive tools.

From Clayton.

Interesting news from California. A guy had some incinderary bullets (not cartridges, just the bullets). He was arrested. Each bullet is a seperate felony.

Read the comments to the post.

The Canadian kook Cukier is blabbering away again:

REGINA (CP) – The shooting deaths of two RCMP officers in northern Saskatchewan and other crimes like it in recent years show the need to maintain the federal registry for long-barrelled firearms, gun control advocates say.

…

The deaths of constables Robin Cameron, 29, and Marc Bourdages, 26, have tugged at the heartstrings of people across the country and plunged the tiny farming community of Spiritwood, Sask., into a state of grief.

Police say the two young officers died after being shot by a man who fled the scene armed with either a hunting rifle or a shotgun on the night of July 7.

…

Wendy Cukier, a professor of justice studies at Ryerson University and president of the Toronto-based Coalition for Gun Control, says it doesn’t make any sense to dismantle the long-gun registry.

Just how does the registry prevent or help solve this crime? Was the criminal so stupid he left the gun, registered in his name or someone that could connect to him, at the crime scene? Nope. The kooks thinking is that of a simpleton.

But Cukier says registration is a tool that allows police to trace a firearm back to its original owner.

It’s a good way to prevent someone who shouldn’t have a gun from buying one legally and it forces legal gun owners to be accountable by making sure their weapons don’t fall into the wrong hands, she argued.

It can also serve as an early warning tool for officers, letting them know that a routine situation could turn dangerous because guns may be involved.

“No system is perfect, but it reduces the chances that people will be killed,” Cukier said. “The system, however imperfect it might be, is better than nothing at all.”

How does a gun registry prevent stolen guns or smuggled guns (think recreational drug smuggling) from ending up in the hands of anyone that wants one? And no it is not “better than nothing at all”. It took between one and two billion dollars (Canadian) to implement the registry which could have been spent on police personnel and equipment.

I have Just One Question for Ms. Cukier.

Update: I realize I should have explained things just a bit better. Cukier claims this crime shows the need to maintain the registry but the registry wasn’t a factor in solving this crime. And furthermore the last time I had an update on the topic since Canada started registering handguns decades ago there has only been one crime that the registry did help solve.

An anti-gun bigot targeted the SKS again. Pretty much every thing I said before when the SKS was singled out for “being evil” is true this time as well. The new stuff is taken care of by Kevin.

I just love it when they say things like this:

..no matter how much training is involved, or who’s holding it, a gun is always dangerous. This guy, it seems, thought that because he was a police officer (and weapons instructor– which probably means NRA member), that he could be above the law. After all, he’s a cop, right? He would never do anything wrong, right?

Wrong. These fully automatic weapons are illegal for a reason, and it’s because they’re not safe in anyone’s hands, police officer, NRA member, weapons instructor, “law-abiding gun owner,” or otherwise.

These “guys” have no clue. They don’t realize just how far out of touch with the rest of the world, and reality, they are. Or else they really are our friends and are trying to further discredit the anti-gun movement.

I wish it were true–that it were legal to actually carry your personal protection tools with you when you visited the Washington D.C. area. But this US News and World Report article does have a point, we are making some progress. We still have a lot of work ahead of us and we can’t back of. We need to drive them into political extinction.

Packing heat on the hill

The NRA is riding high; gun control is a political loser

Oklahoma Rep. Dan Boren’s Washington office features his hunting trophies, including a stuffed wild turkey and a mounted deer head. The freshman congressman’s enthusiasm for firearms might always have stood out in the Democratic Party, but Boren now finds himself among an even more endangered species: Democrats willing to discuss guns at all.

“When we as Democrats are trying to reach out and speak to voters in the center of the country, I don’t think that we can support gun control,” he explains. After seeing Democrats hammered at the polls for voting to regulate guns, many of his colleagues seem to agree. As a result, a number of pro-gun measures moving through Congress will most likely face little opposition, as advocates of gun control increasingly find themselves marginalized and ignored.

Not long ago, it was the gun lobby on the defensive from the passage of the Brady bill in 1993 and the 1994 ban on “assault” weapons. But some say support for gun control cost Democrats the House in 1994, and former President Clinton credited it with Al Gore’s 2000 presidential defeat. “It’s different than it was in the early ’90s. Those were, in retrospect, the glory years,” says Paul Helmke, former GOP mayor of Fort Wayne, Ind., who recently took the reins of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

Meanwhile, with little fanfare, National Rifle Association backers in Congress allowed the assault weapons ban to expire in 2004 and last year shielded gun makers from being sued over crimes committed using their products. Since 1999, nine states have eased restrictions on concealed weapons, and NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre says the freedom of gun owners is in “the best shape it’s been in decades.”