Archive for the ‘Guns’ Category

Murdoc is at the SHOT Show in Las Vegas again this year. Make sure to keep an eye on GunPundit for some quick hits and photos from the show.

Caption writers strike again:

U.S. Army Spc. Tara M. Morrow of Erie, Pa., Corps of Engineers, Alpha Company, 1st Detachment, 128th Brigade Support Battalion, fires a M240B machine gun at a heavy weapons range in eastern Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province, Oct. 11. Task Force Taskmaster Soldiers understand weapons familiarization and proficiency could make the difference in the fiercest of battles. Photo by Spc. Richard Daniels Jr.

The M240B is above her.

Anyway, girl shooting .50 machine gun. Don’t you love America?

UPDATE: Gah. Just noticed another pic in the series which shows her firing the M240. They call it an M249.

Just noticed this comment over on an article I wrote for Shooting Illustrated’s web site about the Guns of the Enemy in Afghanistan:

One type of rifle you didn’t discuss, that is frequently encountered: actual Lee-Enfield rifles (generally the No 1 Mk III type) made at the Ishapore arsenal, leavings of the British Empire. The .303 is another cartridge in the .30-06/7.62x54R class and vintage, and in the hands of a trained marksman, will easily outrange anything in 5.56

It was left by Heartless Libertarian, a very knowledgeable and experienced guy who frequently comments here and over at GunPundit. I have been under the impression that there were very few real Lee-Enfields in use, with the overwhelming majority of them being “Khyber Pass Copies.”

Well-built and not-ancient Lee-Enfields are definitely firearms to take seriously. I didn’t realize that there were more than a handful of them out in circulation.

How common are they?

The version of California’s AB1934 which the California Senate passed last night was amended and had to go back to the state Assembly, which had passed the original version some time back. But the amended version of the bill failed.

Some news organizations reported that the bill was now on the way to the governor, either because they were unaware that it had to be re-passed by the Assembly or because they assumed it would be re-passed by the Assembly based on its earlier passage.

I’ll admit that I had seen it had to go back to the Assembly but assumed it had passed because the report I was reading stated it was on the way to the governor. Murdoc should have known better than to trust anything he read.

So the ban on open carrying of unloaded guns in California is apparently dead. This is a near-term victory for gun rights and, given the state of things in Cali, probably a very good thing.

UPDATE: Apparently they just ran out of time.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Now it looks like the version of the ban that passed in the Senate FAILED 39-29 when it had to go back to the Assembly (which the original version had already passed) because of changes in the Senate-approved version.

Hat tip to Say Uncle.

Last night the California Senate passed AB1934. If signed into law by the Governator, it will outlaw the open carrying of guns in the state. An attempt to pass the bill failed on Monday, but they rallied and tried again late Tuesday, succeeding in the end.

Part of the problem (other than being in California) is that the existing open carry law only allows for unloaded guns. You can carry an unloaded gun, and you can carry ammunition for it. But the ammo cannot be in the gun. What happened, and what was a major reason that so many law enforcement agencies backed the ban, is that people were constantly calling in to report sightings of armed people. The callers couldn’t tell whether the gun was loaded or not, and, when they responded to the call, the police couldn’t tell whether the gun was loaded or not, so it was major pain in the ass.

Rather than recognize that it was the illegality of carrying a loaded gun that was making this an issue, the antis managed to convince enough people in the right places that a total ban on open carrying was the solution. And, in the end, they prevailed.

Never mind that the reason so many gun owners in California felt the need to open carry is the fact that concealed carry permit applications are very rarely approved. California is a MAY ISSUE state, and may issue also means may not issue. In many jurisdictions of may issue states, permit applications are simply rejected per standard operating procedures. Even when this isn’t the case, the burden of proof is often on the applicant to prove that he or she has a NEED to carry a concealed weapon. What constitutes proof of need is up to the local authorities and varies widely.

This is a hard blow for California gun owners and gun rights. Governor Schwarzenegger could do the right thing and veto the bill, but from what I gather that is very unlikely.

If there’s a silver lining, it’s the fact that the unloaded open carry compromise is now no longer a barrier to getting real open carry rights and shall issue concealed carry rights (where the burden of proof is on the state to deny the application, rather than on the applicant to prove a need) for citizens of the Golden State. The good is often the enemy of the perfect, and I think in this case the existence of the unloaded open carry allowance was enough to keep real legal recognition of rights at bay. Though the short term effects on legal gun owners are bad, maybe this will open the door for real reform in California.

However, Murdoc is not holding his breath. Or moving to California.

Instapundit points out Mainstream media ‘fractured’ in covering Katrina.

While many of us now realize how over-the-top some of the stories were, and some realized it at the time, it’s also important to realize that at least some of the blame for exaggerated stories lies squarely on the shoulder of Mayor Ray Nagin and New Orleans police commissioner Eddie Compass:

Mayor Ray Nagin said in a memorable appearance September 6, 2005, on Oprah Winfrey’s television show that “hundreds of armed gang members” were terrorizing storm-evacuees inside the Superdome.

The mayor also said conditions there had deteriorated to “an almost animalistic state” and evacuees had been “in that frickin’ Superdome for five days, watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people.”

The police commissioner, Eddie Compass, spoke of other horrors, saying “little babies [were] getting raped” inside the Superdome.

These are the same guys who decided that the best course of action was to disarm law-abiding citizens.

More Katrina links here.

Some photos from a recent operation. The riflemen in this unit are carrying M16s.

Democrats quietly cheer high court gun ruling

For them, the court’s groundbreaking decision couldn’t have been more beneficial to the cause in November. Now, Democratic candidates across the map figure they have one less issue to worry about on the campaign trail. And they won’t have to defend Republican attacks over gun rights and an angry, energized base of gun owners.

“It removes guns as a political issue because everyone now agrees that the Second Amendment is an individual right, and everybody agrees that it’s subject to regulation,” said Lanae Erickson, deputy director of the culture program at centrist think tank Third Way.

I guess I can see how this could possibly help some of them with November’s elections, but it certainly doesn’t help many in the overall scheme of things. And, particularly given Chicago Mayor Daley’s plans in the wake of McDonald, I don’t really believe that the gun issue is going to go away any time soon.

Claiming that most Democrats are pleased about this is sort of like claiming the Nazis were better off after D-Day because then they didn’t have to worry about defending the coast of Normandy.