Les Jones

Guns > Thursday Gun Links #21

Kevin at The Smallest Minority looks at actor's attitudes towards gun, via the special edition of Aliens.

Jeff has a kickass edition of the weekly check on the bias, including his appearance in Outdoor Life, which I spotted in my wife's obstetrician's office.

Bill Hamm and Boge Quinn have coverage and pics of the Ruger Collector's Association Show. So many Rugers you'll plotz. Also check GunBlast's reviews of the Savage Model 10FP-LE2 .308 rifle, Target Shooting Inc.’s New Model 1000 Rifle Rest, Buffalo Bore's .357 Magnum Defense Ammo, and lots more. In fact, check GunBlast every week for new reviews.

Speaking of reviews, here's my review of Lancer Custom Ammo's .38 special custom cowboy ammo from Midway. It's cheap at $6.43 per 50. It's more than accurate enough for plinking and informal target shooting. But when you shoot it, there's so much smoke you'll think you're at a Civil War re-enactment, and so much carbon on the gun you'll think you dropped it in a campfire. My favorite cheap .38 ammo is Remington-UMC for $6.99 per 50 from CheaperThanDirt. It even uses that new-fangled smokeless gunpowder that's all the rage.

Clayton Cramer (about whom more in a moment) describes the situation at the University of Ohio Utah. The university refuses to allow permit-holding students to carry on campus, despite the state legislature passing a law requiring them to do so. He also notes success in getting Boston Market to take down their "no handguns allowed" signs. A single letter from a Boston Market customer apparently prompted the change.

SmallestGuns.com covers just what it says. Two interesting guns: the ASP pistol and the Serbu Super Shorty, a modified 3-round Mossberg shotgun. Incidentally, I recall seeing some super tiny but functional revolvers at a gunshow exhibit. They were something ridiculous like 2mm. I'll be darned if I can remember the name. Onyx. Sphinx. Something like that. L'il help?

And a quote:

If gun cause crime, all mine are defective.
- Ted Nugent

The Clayton Cramer Reader

Blogger and historian Clayton Cramer received his first cite at the state supreme court level for his book, For the Defense of Themselves and the State. To celebrate, he's our featured writer this week.

You may already know that Cramer has a blog and is co-author of the civilian gun self-defense blog, which tracks defensive use of guns by citizens. What you may not know is that he's the author of a number of books, popular magazine articles, and scholarly historical articles, mostly relating to the second amendment.

On of his most interesting scholarly works is The Racist Roots of Gun Control, which tracks the rise in gun ownership laws to slave-holding states that were concerned about slave revolts and violence by freed slaves.

One example of the increasing fear of armed blacks is the 1834 change to the Tennessee Constitution, where Article XI, 26 of the 1796 Tennessee Constitution was revised from: "That the freemen of this State have a right to keep and to bear arms for their common defence," [9] to: "That the free white men of this State have a right to keep and to bear arms for their common defence." [10] [emphasis added by Cramer] It is not clear what motivated this change, other than Turner's bloody insurrection. The year before, the Tennessee Supreme Court had recognized the right to bear arms as an individual guarantee, but there is nothing in that decision that touches on the subject of race. [11]

Cramer also led the charge against Professor Michael Bellesiles's Arming America, a book that asserted that guns were relatively rare in America until the 1840s or so.

Bellesiles's Arming America: Worse Than Wrong, Part 1
Bellesiles's Arming America: Worse Than Wrong, Part 2
Bellesiles's Arming America: Worse Than Wrong, Part 2
Fraud in Michael Bellesiles’s Arming America

An excerpt from part 1:

As I researched my topic, it became apparent that Bellesiles was wrong--way wrong. As I read travel accounts, memoirs, and diaries of the period, it was obvious that America was a place where guns and hunting were common throughout the period that Bellesiles portrays as gun-free and hunting-free. While some parts of America were indeed, very peaceful in the years 1800 to 1840, other regions were brutal places where men gouged out eyes, bit off noses and lips, and ripped out guts with Bowie knives--and often these horrible acts were done out of sheer boredom.

At first, I assumed that Bellesiles was simply mistaken--that he had read unusual
accounts of early America. I also thought that in his desire to confirm his strange preconceived ideas, Bellesiles had simply misread his sources. This is a common problem among ideologues, and I can point you to occasional examples of pro-gun historians doing the same thing.

Having now read Bellesiles’s Arming America, and checked some of his sources with great care, I am sorry to report that the problem is more serious than I thought--Arming America contains intentional deception. Let me be very clear on this point. I am not saying that Bellesiles simply missed sources that showed that guns and hunting were common in early America. I am not saying that Bellesiles just misread documents that could be read several different ways. I am saying that in many cases, he read documents that directly contradicted his claims, and ignored the evidence. I know that Bellesiles read these documents, because I found most of the evidence by looking up Bellesiles’s footnotes. His misuse of these documents is so biased and consistent that no one can seriously argue that Bellesiles accurately described what he found.

Arming America was hailed by gun control advocates and the popular press, and won the Bancroft Prize for history books. Thanks to the work of Cramer and other scholars, the book has now been discredited due to the rampant errors, omissions, and falsifications of historical fact. A committee was formed at Emory University to study the matter. When their report was issued, Columbia University stripped Bellesiles of the Bancroft Prize and the publishers, Alfred A. Knopf, disassociated themselves from the book and stopped publication.

Gun Pic of the Week

Kevin at The Smallest Minority has amazing pics of a Marlin 45-70 kaboom. Cause is unknown, but it could be a reloading mistake or a squib round.

Posted by lesjones