2ndAmendment – Page 3

High Capacity Magazines and Other Mythical Creatures

The gun control elitists are always coming up with ways to restrict and disarm law-abiding citizens. One of the favorite techniques is incremental confiscation of things they determine are now too dangerous for the public to own. Enter the “high capacity” magazine. Along with this menacing term, they perpetuate myths designed to convince you a magazine with a limited number of rounds makes you safer, if they are going to allow you to have a firearm at all.

What exactly is a so-called “high capacity” magazine? Depending on where you live, it’s anything more than 10 rounds, although there are some states where “high capacity” is over 15. In New York, it’s anything over seven. You can still own a 10 round magazine there, but you can only put seven rounds in it. Add one more and it becomes “high capacity”. Somehow, somewhere 10 rounds is what the gun control crowd now insists is a “standard capacity” magazine. The logic behind this arbitrary number is anyone’s guess.

Consider the world’s most iconic pistol, the John Browning designed M1911 with a magazine capacity of seven. Even at the time of its inception in the year 1911, revolvers and other magazine fed firearms were made that held more than seven rounds. Since that time, the standard capacity of semi-automatic pistols has increased thanks to innovations in design and materials of the firearm and magazine, as well as the ammunition itself. True standard capacity magazines are whatever fits flush in the grip of the semi-automatic pistol. Something that extends below that is… you guessed it, an extended magazine.

In restricted states, the law-abiding citizen who wants to defend his/her life and family’s lives can only have a 10 round magazine. Criminals – the ones who don’t obey the law and are the ones you are defending against – are always going to be able to illegally obtain any kind of firearm and magazine they want. After all, they are criminals. Of course the government can have anything and everything they want, and they need larger magazines to defend themselves against criminals. Are you seeing a problem with this logic?

Much of the myth of 10 round civilian magazines centers around the idea that when a criminal pauses to reload, it gives people in the area a chance to jump and disarm them. An empowering idea, but I’m going to call bullsh*t on that one.

For those of you who have ever done a Tueller Drill, you know someone can cover about 21 feet in 1.5 seconds. If you are the attacker in this situation, it assumes you are standing ready to go on command. In real life, if someone is shooting and you haven’t been shot yet, you’re probably getting your ass behind cover or at least concealment, not standing OK Corral showdown style waiting for them to reload.

How long does it take to reload a semi-automatic firearm? A lot less time than you think. Anyone with even a little bit of practice is going to be able to pull off that not-so–complicated maneuver in less than 1.5 seconds. Sure, if the shooter is not so practiced there’s going to be a longer break. But how exactly are you supposed to know how long it’s going to take from a hopefully safe position?

Revolvers are slower right? A bit, but again it doesn’t take much practice to get very fast with a speed-loader. And I’ll submit to you that someone hand loading one round at a time is just as deadly. Why? If you start after someone who has managed to get only one fresh round into the cylinder, they still have ONE ROUND IN THE CYLINDER, aka, a LOADED FIREARM.

Here’s another thing to consider. When is the last time you tackled, disarmed and detained someone? Keep in mind this person’s primary motivation is likely to kill you or someone else, not to run away. And not to pop anyone’s macho self-image, but keep in mind highly experienced professionals with the latest and greatest law enforcement tools and training can’t always pull this off on their own.

Most certainly it can and does happen. There are a lot of true heroes out there with and without self-defense training who have taken on armed assailants and kicked their asses. But what we will never know is how many were not successful. How many decided to charge a shooter and didn’t make it? Their extraordinarily brave efforts will forever be anonymous since only they know what they did and why.

Am I suggesting your only option is to do nothing and wait to get shot? HELL NO!! You fight back with whatever you have be it a pencil, rock, chair, knife or your bare hands. You do whatever you have to do to survive. But you shouldn’t have to rely on improvised weaponry, or no weapon at all against armed criminals. The Second Amendment protection of the right to bear arms means you should always have an option to defend your life and the lives of your family with arms commonly in use, in other words, a firearm with whatever capacity magazine is supposed to come with it. OR, at least that is what it is supposed to be.

Anyone who thinks you are safer having a magazine of 10 rounds or lower, or that your first choice, self-defense tactic against an active shooter is to give up a position of hard cover to rush someone during a reload, bare handed, is thinking more about the safety of the criminals than about your sorry law-abiding ass.

Bob

#oddstuffing, #SecondAmendment, #BillOfRights, #RightToBearArms, #selfdefense, #standardcapacitymagazine, #highcapacitymagazine, #immillwall, #mewe, #medium, #instagram, #oddstuffing.com

Purging Our Politically Incorrect Past

In 2001, the world was aghast when the Taliban were purging Afghanistan of all remaining non-Islamic statues. Among them were two Buddha statues in the Bamiyan Valley dating back over 1700 years that were destroyed despite international outcry and numerous requests to allow them to be relocated elsewhere. The Taliban’s strict interpretation of their religion forbids any symbols of living things, so that meant they had to be destroyed. Today, we have a similar eradication occurring in our own country only in the name of political correctness instead of religion, the purging of the Confederacy.

This latest round of historical cleansing stems from the 2015 shooting at a church in South Carolina by a pathetic high school drop out and druggie. But this isn’t because of what he did; killing nine people. It was because he was white, the victims were black and there were photos of him with Confederate flags. Blasted across the media as proof that anything to do with the Confederacy is racist and dangerous to modern day living, statues have been removed, building and street names changed and the Confederate flag all but outlawed.

The South has long been a target of the moral elite and this latest purging is right out of current Chicago Mayor and former White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s playbook of “You never let a serious crisis go to waste”. This was simply a golden opportunity to progress an agenda that couldn’t get traction before. Now, because of this horrific incident, the offended could finally rid their world of the hideous reminders of a long gone era.

How widespread has this absurdity been? Just recently, the high school in the small Vermont city where I spent the majority of my law enforcement service lost their “Rebel” team name. Apparently the team name used since the school’s founding 55 years ago during the Civil War Centennial and chosen as the school colors were blue and gray and the city was ‘South’ of its major rival, was too closely associated with the Confederacy for the politically correct.

In another case, a Georgia police sergeant lost her job because someone saw the Confederate flag she had been flying at her house for over a year to display her pride in her Southern heritage and honor her recently deceased husband, and was offended.

In both of these cases, there was zero evidence of racial discrimination, bias, violent intent or any other factor – just political correctness at play.

If this same psychopath shooter in North Carolina had been wearing Mickey Mouse ears during his homicidal rampage and killed only men with facial hair, because that is what HE believed Walt Disney would have wanted, would we expect a nationwide movement to shut down all the Disney theme parks? Of course not, that would be stupid. But so is thinking that one demented little piece of crap’s interpretation of the purpose of the Confederacy should shape the rest of the world.

History is a mixed bag of great accomplishments and dark, disturbing events. Our nation’s relatively short 241 years of existence is full of examples of great strides in technology, arts and civil rights as well as horrific abuses of human rights, pain and suffering. But history is just that, history – events that occurred in the past. It is the path that got us to where we are today and as intellectual and enlightened as we like to believe we are, we wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for what we as a nation went through.

While the United States did not grant Confederate soldiers full US veteran status as some believe, the men who fought for the South were our own just as the Union forces were our own. Their young nation was split and at war with itself, and it was their geography that determined the Southern soldiers’ destiny. It is not an excuse or an apologist view to want to treat those who lost their lives in this or any human conflict with a little bit of respect.

You might wonder why someone who mostly writes on Second Amendment topics cares about the South or the Confederate flag. It is simply because this is just another example of politically correct censorship and eradicating the world of things that some moral elitist is now offended by. We’ve seen far to many examples of firearms being banned for their offensive cosmetic features, as well as other draconian gun control laws, laws that have absolutely nothing to do with public safety and will never do anything to reduce crime or save lives, only make some people “feel better”.

Sanitizing our nation’s history by erasing symbols of something we find offensive today is just another step towards living in George Orwell’s “1984” where the past is rewritten to match the current party line. Removing these memorials, names and symbols is a slap in the face to all those whose lineage goes through the South and dismisses any of the positive contributions from that era and region of our own nation.

Heritage doesn’t equal hate just as a firearm does not equal violence. It is the intent of the individual, and ONLY the individual that determines what happens next.

Bob

#oddstuffing, #SecondAmendment, #Confederacy, #ConfederateFlag, #Heritage, #Rebels, #1984, #mewe, #medium, #instagram, #oddstuffing.com

To Each His Own

As always, the world of self-defense and firearm training is a varied one. There are those who take the profession seriously, and those who do not. A recent addition to the drama was a so-called ‘instructor’ who’s methods and instructional techniques went beyond unsafe and straight into gonna get someone killed. Ever defiant of the establishment, even after his training credentials were yanked by the NRA, he perseveres since he, and only he, knows better than the rest of the industry. He really IS that good, just ask him.

Some say firearms in general and firearm training is inherently dangerous. I disagree. It most certainly can be, but it is not without something specifically added to it to make it so. The most common additive is of course human error. And when the errors occur, lives can be lost.

First, and foremost, let’s talk about what is considered safe. Those of us in the training industry LIVE by the Four Basic Firearm Safety Rules:

Treat all firearms as if they were loaded.
Never let the muzzle cover anything you are not willing to destroy.
Never place your finger on the trigger until your sights are on target and you have made the decision to fire.
Know your target, what is in front of it and what is beyond it.

No matter what you do after that, if you follow those four rules you and the people around you won’t get hurt.

Like many instructors, some of the training sessions I facilitate are designed to nudge people outside their comfort zone both physically and mentally. But that doesn’t mean they are unsafe. You never push anyone past what they are capable of and never, ever cross the line of safety. Yes, we may walk right up to that line and swear at it, spit in its face and beat it like it owes us money, but we don’t cross it. The line IS the line.

Firearm safety like most things is progressive. Things the industry used to do 30, 20 or even ten years ago we would never do today. Why? Because people have been hurt and killed in training. Fortunately, the industry learned from its mistakes and we’ve all become safer as a result. But not everyone buys into this way of thinking. There are some instructors out there who think that because nothing bad has ever happened to them doing things this way, it never will. They are above it all and say to each his own.

For example, force-on-force training is an incredibly valuable tool to prepare for real life encounters, yet every year a number of law enforcement officers and civilians are seriously injured or killed while doing it. It’s not because the training itself is dangerous, it’s because someone violated the rules.

Instructors who conduct this type of training are fanatical about safety. Even the slightest violation of the safety zone is enough to shut everything down, re-search everything and everyone, and then start again from scratch. Often the students or observers see reactions like this as unnecessary, but experience in the industry has proven otherwise. Regardless of how valuable the training is; it is not worth a human life.

Quality, cutting edge training doesn’t have to come at the cost of safety. And anyone who believes they are above the standards, knows better than everyone else in the industry or has a lackadaisical attitude towards safety is playing a very dangerous game. Maybe nothing will happen and nobody will ever get hurt doing what they’re doing… maybe. But if you play that game too long it will eventually bite you, or shoot you, right in the ass.

If something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. If your firearm instructor doesn’t take safety seriously and only responds to industry criticism with flippant remarks and boasts of their own tactical prowess, then it might be time to find a new instructor.

Train hard, but train safely.

Bob

#oddstuffing, #SecondAmendment, #Safety, #Training, #VodaSucks!, #YouKnowWhoYouAre, #patriotpatchco, #mewe, #medium, #instagram, #oddstuffing.com

Your Life Is Not Worth Defending

Every so often we get to hear politicians non-wordsmithed views on a given topic. Away from the speechwriters and handlers, their comments lend insight into how little they really care about their constituents. Thus was the reply of Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, the non-voting representative of Washington DC, to a question of allowing District residents to defend themselves with concealed carry permits in the wake of the shooting of Congressional members in Virginia.

The delegate’s at times laughing response on July 10, 2017 was:

“The city has taken the position that the best way to defend yourself is not to be armed. So, your notion…is an insult– quite an insult to the wards that have greater crime. They have not come forward to me and say, ‘Congresswoman we want to conceal and carry.’ So, I suggest that you approach the people you’re talking about.”

Washington DC has among the strictest gun control laws in the nation. It was the landmark case of District of Columbia v. Heller which overturned the District’s complete ban on handguns and the requirement that lawfully-owned rifles and shotguns be kept “unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock” when in the home. How strict was the law? The subject of the case, Dick Anthony Heller, a licensed special police officer for the District of Columbia was allowed to carry a firearm for work in federal office buildings, but was not allowed to have one in his own home.

What exactly was the District saying? Is it that the officer who is trusted enough to protect employees and visitors in a federal office building with a firearm isn’t trustworthy enough to protect his own family and home with one? Or is it what and who is being protected? A federal building and federal employees are worth protecting but an individual’s home and family isn’t.

Time and time again, gun control elitists have made it clear there is a caste system in place here. There are people worth protecting with firearms (them) and there are people who are not (everyone else).

Politicians and the economic elite work tirelessly to eliminate your right to self-defense, while simultaneously exempting themselves from any new restrictions they come up with. They say you don’t need a firearm to protect yourself while they are surrounded by heavily armed men and women who are expected to lay down their lives to keep them safe. In the Heller case, they denied the very people who are protecting them the right to protect themselves, right along with everyone else.

Concealed carry permits are now technically possible to obtain in the District, thanks to years of lawsuits and legal decisions against them. However with each step forward, the District raises the bar for demonstrating sufficient need even higher and enacts more costly, time consuming and discriminatory administrative practices to keep them from actually being issued.

So what does the District’s position on unarmed defense mean? It means you have a population with no effective means to fight back against armed perpetrators. That’s right, I said armed perpetrators. For all the effort the District puts into disarming law-abiding citizens, they still have yet to make an impact on those who are actually committing the crimes. Washington DC consistently ranks on the list of highest murder rate and highest violent crime rate in the nation. In other words, a District of victims.

I have no idea where Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton lives or what she has for personal security. Outside her secure federal workplace, her minimum Congressional salary of $174,000 is certainly sufficient to provide her a safe lifestyle. However that lifestyle sets her far above and apart from the average District resident she is supposed to be representing. I also don’t question that nobody is asking her for concealed carry permits. Like all good elitist politicians, no doubt she keeps herself surrounded only by those who think the same way she does.

Now take a look at your own congressional representation and see if they are doing the same thing. Are they working to keep you from defending yourself while enjoying the security and benefits of the office you elected them to? Is your life worth defending to them?

Bob

#oddstuffing, #SecondAmendment, #2A, #BillOfRights, #SelfDefense, #DCGunLaws, #mewe, #medium, #instagram, #oddstuffing.com

Shall Not Be Infringed

Time for a little rant. The last four words of the Second Amendment are “shall not be infringed”. Pretty simple and plainspoken, as are all of the Amendments comprising the Bill of Rights. Yet somehow, this clear and distinct phrasing has been bastardized by government entities small and large around our country in the name of ‘reasonable regulations’. If nothing else about the gun control elitists bothers you, those two words should. And it should scare the hell out of you.

Just to make sure we’re clear on the context, this is the text of the Second Amendment:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

It is short and sweet at just 27 words. Like all other parts of the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment is not a limitation on what “the people” can do, but clearly states what the government cannot do.

So where does ‘reasonable regulations’ come from and why is it so important? It stems from the Supreme Court’s District of Columbia v. Heller case which reaffirmed the Second Amendment protects an individuals right to own a firearm outside of military service; the militia noted in the prefatory clause of the Amendment. But at the same time, the ruling held that like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. This is what has become known as ‘reasonable regulations’ or ‘reasonable restrictions’ and is now the mantra for every gun control / gun ban scheme being formulated.

As we saw in the 2016 General Elections where gun control elitist candidates were so proud to say that they ‘respect the Second Amendment’ but in the same breath say they also supported ‘reasonable regulations’. Naturally, it was a political ploy to convince those who were not paying close attention that they wouldn’t come after their guns. In reality, that’s just what their so-called ‘reasonable regulations’ intend.

What sort of ‘reasonable regulations’ do they support? Forced government confiscations colloquially know as gun buybacks, banning newly created categories of firearms by their cosmetic features as so-called “assault weapons”, restrictions on dangerous levels of magazine capacity, limitations on the type, make and model of firearms you can purchase as well as strict limitations on how many you can purchase at once, and how long you have to wait to purchase a firearm, regardless of how many you currently own.

The latest insult to reasonableness is restrictions on ammunition purchases. Even though they have been shown to be wholly ineffective as a means to reduce criminal activity, new licensing of buyers and sellers are being put in place. While initially just a simple license to allow purchases, this system also enables the long sought after mechanism to restrict the quantity of ammunition purchased as well as limit the purchases to only those calibers of firearms that have been registered with the government. In other words, it forces a complete gun registration system.

You have to wonder why the Supreme Court didn’t answer what was and wasn’t a ‘reasonable regulation’ as well as the question of bearing arms outside the home at the same time as Heller. To be fair, that wasn’t the case that was handed to them and the Supreme Court doesn’t always resolve cases to the degree we’d like to see. In limiting the scope of the ruling, the Court virtually guaranteed decades of conflict and litigation against unreasonable restrictions around the country, as we’ve already seen since Heller.

At the core of our argument to protect our rights, we have to go back and look at the Second Amendment and determine the intent of the Founding Fathers. Yes, it is a decidedly originalism form of interpretation and is something the gun control elitists abhor. But how else can you claim the rest of the Bill of Rights applies to modern day society as it did when it was written if you say the Second Amendment does not.

And for those working in back rooms hidden away from public scrutiny concocting the next set of ‘reasonable restrictions’, I have just one question. What part of SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED do you not get?

Bob

#oddstuffing, #SecondAmendment, #BillofRights, #RightToBearArms, #originalism, #reasonableregulations, #Heller, #ShallNotBeInfringed, #TheCheapPlace, #mewe, #medium, #instagram, #oddstuffing.com

Gun vs. Firearm

When you hear the word ‘gun’, what do you think of? Depending on your political leanings, you may think of very different things. If you absolutely abhor guns of every type, shape and form, you probably only envision an object that kills innocent families and children. At the other end of the spectrum, you may envision a tool for empowerment, self-defense, hunting or sport. What if I had asked you the same question about ‘firearm’? Odd enough, the answer might be a little different.

Both words describe the very same inanimate object; the difference is the emotional tie to the word ‘gun’. Of course, there are many different terms that also describe the very same objects. Firearms, guns, arms and weapons are generic terms whereas pistol, revolver, rifles, shotgun, or hog leg are more specific. Some, such as ‘weapon’ are positively associated with military or police service. It is also negatively associated as belonging to a class of objects supposedly too dangerous for the public to own as the politically defined ‘assault weapon’ or ‘assault style weapon’.

Look at how those opposed to Second Amendment rights and ordinary citizens owning and carrying firearms describe them. The articles they post, the speeches they give, the so-called research they present; all emphasize how dangerous and deadly ‘guns’ are. They continuously blame the deaths on “gun violence” to the point where anyone listening to the message is going to naturally associate anything ‘gun’ with ‘violence’ and ‘death’. They are trying to make the word itself synonymous with something evil and dangerous.

All of this is why many of us in this industry, myself included, prefer to use the term ‘firearm’ generally or ‘pistol’ or ‘rifle’ specifically in our discussions, writings or when we teach. The rational behind it is simple. To present the most positive images of these inanimate objects, the people who own them, and the right to do so.

If you’re thinking this is pretty damn dumb; you are of course correct. It is dumb. It’s semantics at its best and political correctness gone wild. It’s a bit insulting to think that simply using the word gun vs. firearm changes the definition of what you are talking about. But it’s also the realty of the world we live in where far too many people listen blindly to the headlines and never bother to read the fine print.

Before you think about banishing the word gun from your lexicon, understand that it isn’t as simple as using one term for another. You would be hard pressed to find a firearmsmith instead of a gunsmith or try to buy a firearm sock instead of a gun sock. I even have the ‘g’ word in my company name because other more politically correct terms just didn’t make sense.

Of course, the point that tends to get lost in all of this wordplay is what are you doing with your firearms/guns? Are you a responsible firearm owner? Do you live by the four basic firearms safety rules like your life and everyone else’s depends on it? Have you taught your children about firearm safety? Do you store your firearms safely given your life, family and living situation? Have you trained with your firearms? Do you properly maintain your firearms? Are your firearms for the defense of your life and your family’s lives?

If the answer to these questions is yes, then I don’t give a tinker’s damn what you call that thing that goes pew. You are living proof that the term means nothing. What matters is intent, and yours is steeped in American tradition, family values and the Second Amendment.

I only ask that you be aware of the context of conversations and realize that there are those who wish to use every means at their disposal to portray firearm owners – gun owners, as negatively as possible to achieve their goal of denying our Second Amendment rights, even if it is simply using the word gun vs. firearm.

Bob

#oddstuffing, #gunvsfirearm, #secondamendment, #gunsvsfirearms, #responsiblefirearmowners, #mewe, #medium, #instagram, #oddstuffing.com

Time & Video: What Is A Life Worth?

You undoubtedly heard about the shooting at a Congressional baseball practice in Alexandria VA last week injuring four people, two critically. The entire incident is reported to have lasted less than 10 minutes. Putting aside all of the politics and who’s to blame for the attitude and violence, I want to take a look at this from what was seen and heard on a cell phone video taken of the incident.

This is the link to the video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHM73eJCa7k It is 5:45 minutes long. I encourage you to take a look at it then come back here.

First, let’s talk about time. The video is reported to have initiated at some point after the shooting started. You can clearly hear the rifle shots in the video. At about 50 seconds, you can hear someone giving commands to “put the gun down”. This is presumably the Capitol Police who were on site. Alexandria Police were reported to be on site within three minutes of the first 911 call.

Witnesses on scene said their lives were saved because of the presence of the Capitol Police security detail, which was only on site due to the Congressional leadership position of one of the participants.

I’ve written about police response times before and how the saying “when seconds count, the police are minutes away” is true. It’s unknown how long it took for the 911 call to be placed to get Alexandra Police responding. But very fortunately in this incident, the police were already on site acting as the security detail and able to pin the shooter down before he could shoot anyone else. The shooter was eventually shot and killed by the Capitol Police.

Most of us are not fortunate enough to have the police on site to protect us as part of our daily lives. Most of us are not in a financial position to have armed guards protecting us. Most of us have nothing but what we have on us as our protection. Think of what the death toll would have been if there hadn’t already been someone armed on site to engage the shooter. The time between something bad happening and someone else getting there to help is all about you.

Following this incident, there were simultaneous calls for tighter gun control and for concealed carry reciprocity for congressional members. Several congressional members and staffers have concealed carry permits in their home states, and while they may or may not have reciprocity in Virginia, they were all from the District of Columbia where they have some of the strictest gun laws in the country, there is no reciprocity and they very rarely issue concealed carry permits.

It is of course lunacy to think tighter gun control will prevent anyone from inflicting violence upon another, either with firearms or any other tool. And while our Congress considers increased levels of armed protection and reciprocity for their own, the remainder of the country is left to fend for themselves.

Now, let’s consider the video. Too many people seem to want to have one of their eyewitness videos go viral so they can bask in the requisite 15 minutes of fame. So what of the guy with the dog who took this video? About two minutes in you can hear someone off camera asking if he has called 911. The cell phone camera guy’s reply: “I assume people have been calling 911 already”.

Here’s my response.

1) Turn off the F’ING camera and call 911! You have NO IDEA if anyone has already called for help. You may be the 1^st person to call or the 100^th. You may have a perspective on what is going on nobody else has. Assuming someone else has called so you can continue to roll video is arrogant and stupid.

2) Help others who can’t help themselves. Others may already be injured or paralyzed in fear and not able to move. If you still have your wits about you, do something to keep others from dying.

3) Get your ass out of there! You’ve got hard ground and a couple of chain link fences between you and a shooter. If you’re not in a position to get involved to stop what is going on; run, shuffle or low crawl your ass out of the danger zone and get to safety behind hard cover. Those bullets are going somewhere and your soft, squishy skin is as good a place as any.

Your video may gloriously document an incident for generations to come, but at what cost? What could you have done to keep yourself safe or help save someone’s life?

More pointless laws and more gun control will never do anything to prevent violence. You are and always will be your own best first line of defense. And crying out loud, don’t be a selfish, fame seeking idiot. Put down the camera and either get involved, help others or get the hell out!

What is a life worth?

Bob

#oddstuffing, #SecondAmendment, #2A, #CCWreciprocity, #2017CongressionalShooting, #WhatIsALifeWorth, #mewe, #medium, #instagram, #oddstuffing.com

National Reciprocity – The Holy Grail Adjacent

One of the most significant goals of Second Amendment rights groups’ today is nationwide reciprocity for concealed carry permit holders. It’s not the Holy Grail, which would be nationwide constitutional carry, but it most certainly lives next door to it. Imagine an entire country where you can exercise your right to bear arms without having to worry about some line on a map.

Two bills in the United States Congress mean to address this, one in the House and one in the Senate. Both very similar in that they allow a permitted concealed carry holder to carry in all states and that they must adhere to the laws of the state they are in. The one major difference is the permitting authority. One version says the permit must be issued by your home state, the state where you permanently reside. The other version says reciprocity includes any state’s permit, so an out-of-state permit would be valid in all states, including your home state. Constitutional carry states just need their driver’s license. Lucky stiffs…

Neither of these options are acceptable to the gun control elitists and states where they determine who may legally carry a firearm based on nebulous and secretive criteria, and permits are only issued to the rich, famous or well connected. Political hacks posing as law enforcement heads are also up in arms about this. They contend this will allow people from all across the country with little to no training to come in to their state with firearms, putting the lives of their officers and every citizen in the state at risk. There will be ‘blood in the streets’ they say.

Of course, the visions of anarchy, Wild West shootouts and ‘blood in the streets’ have never come true, even as more and more states adopt permitless carry. Undeterred, the elitists keep pushing their false narrative to keep the people afraid while pushing for even stricter gun control laws. The truth is, law-abiding, concealed carry citizens are among the most law abiding in the nation. They carry not to cause problems, only to defend their own lives and the lives of their loved ones.

If one of the currently stalled national reciprocity bills eventually makes its way to law, we can expect a flood of legal challenges from the nanny states, propelled by activist jurists who are ready and waiting to issue their pre-planned rulings. We can also expect these non-permissive states to radically alter their own carry laws to make it as difficult and complicated as possible to comply with for anyone who dares come into their state with a firearm.

As anyone who currently has more than one concealed carry permit already knows, each state’s laws have subtle differences that must be strictly adhered to. Then of course there are municipalities who’ve decided they need to jump on the gun control bandwagon and further regulate firearms for their little slices of turf.

Among the many different regulations such as duty to inform on traffic stops, some jurisdictions ban so-called “high-capacity” magazines or anything above 10 rounds. In New York you can only put seven rounds in your ten round magazines, unless you are on a firing range. Some jurisdictions ban “enhanced lethality” bullets, a.k.a. hollow point self defense rounds, or other specific types of ammunition.

If you want to get a taste of how national reciprocity would be treated, there is one already we can look at. It’s called the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act (LEOSA), also known as HR218. This national law allows qualified current, former and retired law enforcement officers to carry a concealed firearm in any state. The NRA Law Enforcement Division has a good resource page on LEOSA. See the link below for more details.

So you would think this would be easy, right? Sadly it is not. Not only are many officers not aware of the law, some jurisdictions feel free to outright ignore it. Current and former officers lawfully carrying under this Act have been harassed, had their firearms confiscated and been arrested. Even when charges are later dropped, this type of enforcement follows the good ol’ days concept of “you can’t take back a night in jail”. It is designed to send a clear message that unless you are permitted by THEIR jurisdiction, you cannot carry there.

Consider if this is how law enforcement, a supposedly close-knit nationwide community, treats it’s own in non-permissive states, image how they’ll treat the average out-of-state concealed carrying citizen?

Nationwide concealed carry reciprocity is long overdue in our country. Your ability to defend your life and the lives of your loved ones shouldn’t be determined by the next dotted line on the map, controlled by someone who doesn’t believe your life is worthy of Constitutionally protected rights in THEIR jurisdiction.

Bob

#oddstuffing, #NationalReciprocity, #SecondAmendment #BillOfRights, #LEOSA, #HR218, #mewe, #medium, #instagram, #oddstuffing.com

NRA Law Enforcement Division / LEOSA – http://le.nra.org/leosa.aspx

Gun Safety Laws – IT’S A TRAP!

Every time I hear about another round of so-called “gun safety” laws, I tend to go full Admiral Ackbar. What is it about gun control, gun confiscation and gun elimination groups coming up with “gun safety” laws that make me nervous? Perhaps it’s that they have nothing to do with safety and everything to do with control, confiscation and elimination.

A recent case in Massachusetts highlights the issue. Massachusetts law requires all firearms to be secured in a locked cabinet or with a trigger lock when not “carried by or under the control of the owner or other lawfully authorized user.”

Based on a tip, police obtained a search warrant for the house of a 65-year-old male who lived alone and had “dozens of improperly secured firearms inside”. 98 mostly vintage firearms including shotguns, rifles and pistols, including Mauser bolt-action rifles and lever-action Winchesters, were seized during the search along with cases of ammunition. According to police, “Most of the items were improperly stored, strewn about his home”. Also seized were five “military grade ordnance shells” reportedly from a Naval Depot that closed in 1962 and several brass grave markers from the cemetery across the street from the residence. Following the seizure, the town’s police chief proudly boasted, “All the weapons are out of the house, the neighborhood is safe,”

For the sake of today’s argument, let’s skip over the grave markers and the so-called “military grade ordinance” which were reported to have gun powder in them, but didn’t have to be disarmed before being removed, a.k.a. probably demilitarized collectables with a little bit of residue, and deal with the subject of the search, unsecured firearms.

How did this happen? Most likely someone visited this person, obviously a collector of classic arms, and reported it to police who obtained the warrant. Seized were all the “improperly secured” firearms as well as those that were properly secured AND all ammunition on the property, secured or otherwise. Note: Massachusetts law also places restrictions on the amount of ammunition you can legally possess, with and without a special storage permit. None of the reports I’ve seen indicated he had more than the allowable amount of ammunition, just “cases” of ammo.

So what is a properly secured firearm in Massachusetts? Apparently one that is stored in a locked cabinet, has a trigger or gun lock on it or is under the person’s direct control. Typically direct control means being in the same room with it. Your firearm on the kitchen table would not be under your direct control if you are upstairs in a bedroom. It doesn’t seem to matter if your house is a locked, alarmed, has 24-hour video surveillance or otherwise inaccessible to anyone but you, the house itself is not considered “secure”.

The theory behind the so-called “gun-safety” storage laws is that they prevent thefts and suicides. Well, yes and no. Having a state-approved trigger lock or cable on a firearm isn’t going to prevent its theft since you just take it with you. Even full sized safes can be cut open or, as they are in many cases, moved out of the house to be opened later, even if they are bolted down. Trigger locks or cables may slow down the curious toddler, but any age above that is going to figure out how to get it off. And if you already have access to the firearm and locks, well… how is this going to prevent suicide?

Many states mandate some form of locked storage. More recently, municipalities have jumped on the gun control bandwagon and mandated their own stricter versions, including requiring firearms be unloaded with ammunition stored separately.

First off, proper firearm storage is critical for everyone who owns firearms; it is the single most important aspect of responsible firearm ownership. Those who rely on their firearms for self-defense inside their home are especially acute of this.

One of the things we discuss in basic firearms classes is safe storage in the home, but most importantly is that it is not a one size fits all solution. What constitutes “safe” may be look radically different for someone who has children vs. someone who lives alone. There are a wide variety of security products designed for rapid accessibility combined with high safety, but these options become progressively expensive as the features increase and may be out of reach for everyone.

We often think of our homes as our castles, our private domain where we are protected from the outside world, including government interference. We believe that as long as we are safe within our walls, nobody will bother us. However this case in Massachusetts, and many others like it, illustrate otherwise. Under the guise of “gun safety”, it is just another tool to be used to take firearms from the otherwise law-abiding citizen.

Whenever you hear someone proposing more “gun safety” laws, rules to “make you safer”, think about what happens when you don’t measure up to someone else’s one-size-fits-all standard, even if it doesn’t make any sense in your situation. You might want to think about whom we allow inside our castle walls as well.

Bob

#oddstuffing, #SecondAmendment, #billofrights, #firearmsafety, #guncontrol, #gunconfiscation, #mewe, #medium, #instagram, #oddstuffing.com

National Peace Officers Memorial Day

May 15^th is National Peace Officers Memorial Day, part of National Police Week. Throughout this week we take time to honor those men and women who have lost their lives in the line of duty. An estimated 20,000 officers, family and survivors will attend the candlelight vigil and ceremonies this week at the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial. Many more will honor their fallen in personal ceremonies all around the country.

Established by a joint Congressional resolution in 1962, President John F. Kennedy proclaimed May 15 as National Peace Officers Memorial Day and the week that it falls as National Police Week. Dedicated in 1991, the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington D.C. consists of two 304-foot blue-gray marble walls with the names of 21,183 federal, state and local law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty. Beginning with Sheriff Cornelius Hogeboom, the first known officer’s death in 1791 through today, new names are added to the memorial each spring.

During the past 10 years, an average of 151 officers have been killed in the line of duty, a rate of about one every 63 hours. As of May 14^th, 2017, 49 officers had lost their lives this year, as compared to 36 in the same time in 2016.

Where most people’s natural, and justifiable instinct is to run from the sound of gunfire, the law enforcement officer’s job is to run towards it. Where others seek shelter, the officer goes out to put an end to the danger. Where there is no one else to help, the officer is always there.

Those who enter this profession do so for a variety of reasons, but all commit to the difficult job of serving their community. They work shifts around the clock, in all weather conditions, in all situations; dealing with the worst our society has to offer, with ever-increasing public and media scrutiny, where their life is literally on the line every single day. Overwhelmingly, they do so with pride, integrity and honor.

Many current and former officers like myself know one or more of the names engraved on those memorial walls. We remember them not only for their service and sacrifice, but for the individuals they were. They were our friends and family. They were children, spouses, parents and grandparents themselves. They were the smile, the helping hand and the kind word when it was needed the most. They were much more than someone wearing a badge; they were a part of our lives.

This week we honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the name of safety, protection and justice of others. We also pray for those who continue to live a life of service in their communities, and thank them for their ongoing commitment.

You can learn more about the Memorial and ceremonies this week at the National Law Enforcement Officer’s Memorial Fund at: http://www.nleomf.org.

Bob

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