Another gun owner. It’s a good day.

Kevin has a report and pics, including our training gun the Gun Blog 45.

Video of me getting my steel plate on.

Joe has pics.

Ack! Ninjas.

Ahab has a report.

Hardy does too.

JR has a report too.

Run, gun and steel.

It is clear the Democrats understand nothing about politics. This may be the worst VP choice in history. Good luck with any cross over voters.

He chose poorly.

Did no one else want the job?

The polls right now show Obama ahead by 1.6%. How many points will Obama lose from this very dumb choice? 5%? 10%?

The only question left is how did Karl Rove do this?

A write up some first impression stuff here.

JR has a write up and a pic of our ride.

Caleb is having a bad day. (I kid, he left his computer unattended while Robb was around).

Hence, the no bloggy yet. Sorry about that.

At the ParaUSA event at Blackwater, 8,000 acres of kick ass. This morning, we spent time at Blackhawk. Got the skinny on their lines of holsters and their apparel line. Also, they recently aquired Knoxx and have a line of recoil reducing stocks. They have a new stock coming out for the 10-22 (sans recoil reduction, of course) that looks sharp.

Also, we have frangible ammo provided International Cartridge Company. More on that later.

And that other thing I forgot was my camera. Ack. But plenty of others will have pics.

Spent the afternoon time getting schooled by Todd Jarrett. I’ve probably learned more about what I do wrong shooting in three hours today than I’ve learned in the last ten years.

Also, the guns Para gave use are slick. The Para LDA loaded with Crimson Trace Laser Grips. I got to shoot steel plates with a handgun for the first time. Quite awesome and, though I’ve never done that sort of thing, did better than I thought I would.

I was also interviewed to appear on The Outdoor Channel. Michale Bane said some flattering things to me on the air. He also says I need an agent.

A feed of coverage of the event is here. And take the poll. Yeehaw.

Robb, like me, found it odd that people open carried in bars in Virginia.

Joe shot Caleb. Actually, his frangible ammo came back and hit him the nose.

Now, there will be beer drinking and other assorted merriment.

On the ground in Ohio. Think that’s officially yankee country.

About to board the plane. Looking forward to seeing some friends and meeting new ones.

Remember when I said I always forget something? Well, I forgot the manufacturer’s original packing for some ammo. Feh. Now, I gotta make another stop.

And you can track blog posts on the Para event via this handy aggregator.

PGP: Needless to say, at the end Lewis Black (who’s pimped for the Brady Campaign in the past) overrules the audience’s vote at the end of the show and declares the NRA the greater evil.

I was quite excited when I heard Lewis Black had his own show. He’s hysterical. However, his show sucks. I TiVoed it twice and gave up on it. Stick to ranting, it’s a strength.

How to feed your poodle-shooter.

A bunch of us gun bloggers are gonna go get some training from Todd Jarrett, hosted by ParaUSA. The top ten ways we’ll keep ourselves entertained:

10 – Debating exactly what the feminine form of the name Caleb is.

9 – Perusing the various conspiracy theory blogs that are discussing Blackwater and leaving comments from Blackwater IPs stating we’re watching you.

8 – Reminding Robb that proper range attire consists of pants.

7 – Showing sympathy to Todd Jarrett for having up to put up with us.

6 – Censoring Kevin’s shirts while ignoring Michael Bane’s choice in shirts.

5 – Placing side bets on Joe and Ahab’s friendly wager. note: I know my limitations, have never shot any practical shooting before (after this, I may start) and haven’t been to the range regularly enough to take Joe’s bet. And I’ve seen Joe shoot.)

4 – Referring to Todd Jarrett as the GLOCK guy.

3 – I hear we may do some shooting.

2 – Bandaging our fingers every few hundred rounds.

1 – Primping for TeeVee: Does this gun make my ass look fat?

Hearing reports of a school shooting in Knoxville at Central High.

Update: Yup. Details at KNS.

Update: The student has died. Tragic.

Getting my stuff together to go to the ParaUSA blogger event to train with Todd Jarrett. When I travel, I always forget one thing. It always changes and is usually important. Not sure what it is this time, but it will be major.

More on criminals and their gun skills from Denise.

A bad slogan made into law. It would be kinda neat to have a Prius that sounded like a Harley, though.

Update: And Tam: There oughtta be a law to protect inattentive morons.

Coincidentally, I had to explain to Junior what an idiot was this morning because I used that word in reference to some kid. You see, one idiot child in my subdivision was crossing the street this morning with his head buried in his cell phone or iPod or some such. My truck is much louder than a Prius and if I were as inattentive as said idiot, said idiot might be a squishy spot right now.

A muffled heh.

Women of the IDF.

Pics here.

Another at Firearms Blogs.

So, John McCain and Barack Bikini Inspector Obama are set to name their VP picks. Soon. Maybe today. Or in a month. All eyes are on the race. Actually, not really. No one but pundits seem to care. For Obama, there is good news: it won’t be Biden. Which is good and may mark the third time I’ve agreed with metulj.

I’ve said before I’ll probably vote for McCain’s veep pick but he’ll probably screw that up too.

Who do you think they’ll choose?

Update: See what I mean?

Be alarmed, they have HKs:

Cops In Sleepy N.J. Towns Stockpiling Firepower

Across Crimeless Parts Of Bergen County Police Departments Are Loading Up On Assault Rifles, But Why?

Err, so they can shoot back?

Are you scared? I hear those bullet hoses make killers out of mortal men!

In other news, UMPs?

R. Neal is heading to Denver for some blog coverage of DemCon.

Les buys a gun at Wal-Mart.

It occurred to me about a month ago that our new Wal-Mart doesn’t sell guns.

FBI looks at police shooting stats. Highlights:

Handguns mostly.

No gun came from a gun show.

Seems they take whatever is available and only one reported a weapon of choice.

Point shooters.

RTWT.

A kit to convert your gun to a boat anchor.

I have several of these conversion kits myself. They’re good on tool boxes.

John Rosenthal:

Gun Shows are the equivalent of al Qaeda terrorists walking right onto the airplane while law abiding citizens wait in the TSA line!

Gad, the hyberbole! He would know since he has admitted using the alleged gun show loophole along with an anti-gun reporter to engage in a straw purchase. And said reporter was investigated by ATF for it. Of course, there is the fact the dealer didn’t back up their story.

I dunno, I liked John better when he was a director for an anti-gun group. As a free agent, he’s kind of a hysterical twit.

Weerdbeard has more.

You see, most of us would have realized it was a scam and thrown it in the trash when we opened it. But not Rich Hailey, who gets to the bottom of how the scam works. Interestingly, it seems the dealer got scammed too.

Kim has more suggestions for survival guns on a budget.

My opinion is basically to forgo the shotgun altogether. You’re typically not going to want to carry two long guns in a Just In Case scenario. I’d probably advise spending $150-200 on a used SKS. Then another $150-200 on a decent used revolver, such as a Charter or Taurus. YMMV.

But Obama finally stands up for a gun owner.

Marko’s Prohibition Axiom:

Conservatives and Liberals alike will understand that prohibitions don’t work…whenever someone proposes to ban something they like to own, consume, or do.
[...]
Conservatives and Liberals alike will claim that prohibitions do work…whenever someone proposes to ban something they don’t like others to own, consume, or do.

Failure to plan.

Rachel has the top ten things that cause them on the internets. She left off AK v. AR and 1911 v. GLOCK.

The TSA at work. And more incompetence.

Update: It’s a TSA incompetence trifecta!!!!

Can you tell I’m looking forward to flying tomorrow?

I dunno what a butt fight is but Aunt B. is in the Nashville Dog Trainer. As are some other bloggers you may have heard of.

Gun mug.

What did you expect from state-funded daycare?

There comes a time in every man’s life, I think, when he must look back upon his home town, and be deeply ashamed.

That’s brilliant.

This whole mole at NRA thing can be used against CeaseFire PA. Think they’d drop it knowing that dirty laundry about their homophobic, bigoted board member who advocated violence could come to light?

Virginia no longer honors Tennessee Handgun Carry Permit? Well, crap. I’m spending Thursday night there.

In Mexico, worst weekend of violence this year.

David says: It’s the gun’s fault, and not just any gun, but evil “semiautomatics.”

That’s kinda odd since just last week it was automatic weapons and ammunition are flowing virtually unchecked from border states into Mexico.

Seems that our state troopers were doing background checks on political rivals of the powers that be.

The intimidation files.

Terry names names.

Journalists on the list?

Breda is digging the 1911.

That’s one mean obituary.

On occasion, I listen to the local morning talk radio. Sometimes, it’s entertaining and has some quality stuff. Other times, it reminds me my neighbors can be a little preachy. This morning’s topic was Barack I like the Sprite in you Obama’s position on abortion. Full disclosure: it’s an issue that I happen to agree with him on except for that whole part about believing in Roe v. Wade (whatever that means).

Anyhoo, first caller I heard said, and I am not making this up, that Obama was sent to run for president by God to punish us for our government losing its way with respect to using God’s law.

Second caller (we get back to back God Squad call ins today) basically gave another sermon about getting God back in our government and how God founded our government. I shit you not.

Third caller (the God Squad Trifecta!) said something about how people always say abortion is between her and her God but that was bogus because, ya know, God didn’t say it was OK to have an abortion.

Update: After that, I couldn’t listen anymore. It was kinda like an alert went out that they were talking abortion and everyone was told: Quick! To the God phone!

The Bloomberg Collection!

Attempts to tie the anti-gun mole story to McCain.

GSG-5 in SBR flava.

Jim W. on Detroit families moving their dead out of cemeteries:

Aren’t the dead an important democratic constituency, especially in the big cities?

All kinds of reports and pics over at Mr. Completely’s place. Keep scrolling.

According to ATF, probably. Ridefast notes some things that qualify:

# Drop in parts.
# Bluing and colorization.
# Sporterizing.
# Mounting a scope base.
# Installing a different sight.

Manuel Lora notes that coloring and heat-treating qualify as well.

Last night, I had a punch and big ass hammer out to fix the Enfield. I did not apply for a Federal Firearms License nor did I pay a Special Occupational Tax to do that.

Dougie Doug over at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership’s blog says:

AP has just reported that the winner of the D.C. gun case submitted to reasonable gun control and registered his handgun with the District police

Well, if your definition of reasonable gun control involves taking your case all the way to the Supreme Court, I suppose.

Where Great Britain used to be, council chiefs look at taking obese children from their parents.

Getting Started in Emergency Preparedness looks at guns.

Anti-gun billboards spread misinformation.

Update: Jeff has more and a pic.

Governor Perry is cool with arming teachers.

I can’t decide if this is targeted toward libertarian parents or neoconservative parents, though…

Heh.

Aunt B. takes a look. Probably tough to blog as a politico. I mean, everything you say has to be scrubbed, primped, and done with the thought of your political career in mind. That’s why politicians, for a group of people who spend so much time talking, don’t really have much of substance to say.

I was truly sorry he died, but knew I had made the right decisions.

Via David.

Donald Kaul:

So enjoy yourselves, gun-persons. Your end is coming. And when the black helicopters land on your lawn and AFT (sic) agents shoot you for resisting arrest, I’ll be proud to show up and pry your weapon from your cold, dead hand.

Laughing maniacally as I do it. So there.

Of course they don’t want you armed, they think you entertain the same violent fantasies they do.

Dear Internet,

This Saturday, I shot the Enfield rifle. It’s sights are horribly out of alignment. Started at 25 yards just to see. The bullet landed about 50 yards out and about 10 yards to the left. How do I sight this thing in?

Starting Friday, a few bloggers get to train with Todd Jarrett. The event is at Blackwater’s facility and hosted by ParaUSA. This event will eventually be televised on Michael Bane’s show. Looks to be a good time. Now, I’ve got to get myself in shape to fire 1,500 rounds of 45ACP. I practiced by shooting 200 rounds Saturday.

Centralized blog coverage will be found at the 2A Blogbash site!

Robyn Ringler says that her attempt at Reasoned Discourse^tm brought frequent death threats. I think she’s full of crap, as usual, or she’d produce some evidence. But she can’t, really, since she never let any comments that didn’t fit the narrative get on the blog. She loses, we win, she plays the sympathy card. And, of course, she says gun nuts are racists. Now, I read the comments there and think Robyn is full of it. However, this sums it up:

Most of the comments I received were so mean and lacking in compassion and empathy it was hard to believe people would write such things.

Well, people tend not to be to empathetic to those who want to infringe on their rights. They’re weird that way.

report at subguns.com about a shipped AR going off at a UPS hub?

This just in: Tron guy is a gun nut.

the dreaded 50 caliber assault pistol: Not only does it kill on both ends, it makes the antis cry from both ends.

Survivalist Blog looks at a basic three gun arsenal for under $350!

David Hardy has a look at the Fincher case and notes it doesn’t square with Heller.

AC confirms 31% of country is either retarded or authoritarian pricks.

I like bacon. I like bourbon. Not sure I’d want to mix the two though.

Report from the Pennsylvania State NRA Airgun Silhouette Championships. Lots of pics.

That didn’t work the first time, so let’s make it illegaler.

After equating all gun owners to racists in his opening paragraph, this bigoted genius is shocked that a person can engage in lawful commerce:

How did he get “at least 16 guns”?

Probably by engaging in lawful commerce. He continues:

It’s not only the Second Amendment Foundation that makes me sick when it comes to gun advocates, it’s the National Rifle Association, as well.

Last Wednesday, the NRA claimed Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign is trying to mislead voters in Montana about his past support of gun control, calling Obama “a poster child of the extremist, elitist gun control movement.”

Yeah, I mean, pointing out Obama’s record to people who might care is sickening. It’s like the truth might get out, or something.

America needs more “extremist, elitist gun control” people to help stop the killing of such people as Bill Gwatney, not laws that will enable more people to own guns and then kill people with them.

That approach hasn’t worked well for Democrats so they’re abandoning it faster than you abandoned any grip on reality with this piece.

Who’s a sad clown?

I’d probably have that look too if I were punked that bad.

All weekend sans the web since Charter is boogered. Seems it’s boogered statewide. So, no blog for you.

Blogged from my crackberry.

Dear ATF: How do I obtain a classification from ATF for my “potato gun?”

Via David.

Looking for an application to view and edit MS Office documents. There’s a lot of them and they’re spendy. Before buying one, I thought I’d get opinions on what you folks recommend.

86 year old man turns in gun he had for 70 years for $50 gas card.

And don’t hide guns in candy dishes.

Update: BTW, been seeing a lot of Save the Ta-Tas bumperstickers lately too.

Questioning the legitimacy of drug laws gets you kicked off a jury.

A look at domestic violence misdemeanors and gun rights.

New campaign symbol!

In Chicago, so it’s probably illegal.

Oh No! They hear what we have to say.

Handgun rounds suck, but that doesn’t really matter much.

In Texas, some teachers may be packing.

Broomhandled mauser.

Meanwhile, sticking a stock on your GLOCK can result in 10 years in jail.

Finding the fastest gun alive.

Overregulating our way to police abuse: blame the impossible missions given to police.

Congrats to Straight Line Stitch, who has apparently scored a major record deal, in addition to a new female singer. It was odd seeing them on TeeVee the other day. Back in the day, a band I played in opened for them a couple of times.

Here’s a vid.

TN Attorney General says a person who has been diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder can obtain a handgun carry permit.

Interesting. Doesn’t PTSD denote adjudicated a mental defective and prohibit one so adjudicated from possessing a firearm? Says the AG:

as long as that person has not been adjudicated as mentally defective, been committed or hospitalized, or been judicially determined to pose a substantial risk of harm because of PTSD.

So, I head downtown to get fingerprinted so that I can do an NFA transfer. For those unfamiliar with Knoxville, our downtown sucks. It’s inconvenient to get to. Hard to find parking. When you find parking, it’s spendy. Etc. I avoid it, generally. But I had to go to the KCSO to get printed. Seems the ATF requires their own special federal fingerprint forms and they must be done only by police and certified. Your regular old fingerprint forms done at the gun shop aren’t good enough. It’s like they make it hard to buy an NFA weapon or something.

Anyhoo, first bit is I found parking and it costs $5. Seems a bit high considering I figured my business would be concluded in thirty minutes. And it wasn’t convenient. It was near the federal building which across the other street from the city county building.

Then I walk past the federal building. I note the sweet, sweet irony of the bronze tablet displaying The Bill of Rights right next to the signs on the door that tell you that you’ll be subjected to an unreasonable search and the other sign telling you your right to arms is no good there.

I get to the city county building where I’m to empty my pockets and walk through a metal detector. I’m told by the officer working the station that he’ll have to keep my keys. I ask why and he says it’s because I have a handcuff key on there. I joke about them having to take it in case I’m arrested so that I can’t escape. He laughs and says that it’s because the jail is downstairs.

I get to the KCSO office and am a bit perturbed that fingerprints cost $25 for up to three (so far, this trip has cost me $30). I’m even more perturbed when I hand her a twenty and a ten and she says she has no change. Wow. This particular station exists to provide a service for money to the public and they don’t have the foresight to, say, get change. So, I have to go back upstairs to a coffee shop for change. I do. I come back. I pay up. Now, I have to go downstairs for prints. They have a fancy computer for doing that. They key in all my info and electronically scan my prints and no doubt save copies for their use, in addition to sending that info to every .gov agency in the world. No big deal, been printed before.

After he scans my prints, he hits print, and puts the fingerprint cards I brought in and tells the computer to make three copies. So, let’s make this clear. They charge $25 for up to three prints. You actually bring the fingerprinting cards with you. Their costs are minimal wear and tear on their printer and ink. For $25. What a gyp.

It’s like they make doing business with the public inconvenient and hard, or something.

Both the Trading Post and Ryan’s blog.

To those of you who hit the tipjar (over there on the right if you got money burning a hole in your pocket).

Unfortunately, the Amazon tip jar doesn’t tell me who sent the money so I cannot email you folks a proper thank you. So, I thank you publicly.

In light of Heller, Wayne Fincher (past coverage here) apparently appealed his conviction for possession of a machine gun. He lost because:

[U]nder Heller, Fincher’s possession of the guns is not protected by the Second Amendment. Machine guns are not in common use by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes and therefore fall within the category of dangerous and unusual weapons that the government can prohibit for individual use.

We gunnies pretty much said after Heller that that particular bit in Heller on common use was no good for us. See, the .gov put a cost prohibitive tax of $200 (adjusted for $3,096.97 in today’s dollars using consumer price index, much higher using other measures) on machine guns in 1934. Then, in 1986 when $200 became a minor inconvenience, the Hughes amendment banned transfers of new machine guns. Essentially, government action made these weapons uncommon. It’d be interesting if Fincher had made an M-16 (in common use by our military) or an AK47 (one in six guns on Earth is an AK47). Fincher made two 1919s and a Sten, IIRC.

Sebastian notes the circular logic and offers another measure to test common use: use of arms by police.

This could not have happened since New Jersey’s crime guns come from Pennsylvania.

Ninth stage:

Bill “Ten Round” Ruger must be spinning in his grave over this Mini-14 20 round magazine promotion.

Collegiate shooting sports safer than cheerleading.