Les Jones

Guns > Thursday Gun Links #25

AlphaPatriot points to SAFE (Secure Access to Firearms Enhancement), an effort to make concealed carry licenses transferable to other states, just like driver's licenses.

mASS BACKWARDS thinks Massachusetts police have an odd idea of what constitutes a kid's page.

John of Argghhh!!! looks at unusual ammunition here, here, here, and here.

SayUncle links to a news story recounting ten years of shall-issue concealed carry in Tennessee, and notes this quote: "There are no incidents that can be found where in a defensive incident a Tennessee Handgun Permit Holder shot or wounded in some manner, any innocent person. There are a number of defensive incidents where a Tennessee Handgun Permit Holder used his or her pistol to defend themselves or another party but, only the aggressor was harmed."

A 28 year old man in England stuck a sawn-off shotgun down his pants. The gun fired (probably because the drunken idiot pulled the trigger) and he shot his own testicles. Doctors have yet to determine if he'll be infertile, but if so this 12 gauge vasectomy should qualify him for the Darwin Awards, reproductive division.

My quick range report on the S&W 317 revolver and 22A pistol, both in .22.

Jeff Soyer has his weekly check on the bias. This week, he questions the NRA's opposition to working with the Sierra Club, though many of the commenters have different opinions (which Jeff, to his credit, invited).

My own position is that most environmentalists are well-meaning, but their views of nature tend to be Bambiist and Edenist. Those views don't coincide well with hunting or sustainable wildlife management practices that prevent overpopulation and late winter starvation. The top predators in many continental U.S. ecosystems have been eliminated, leaving hunters to fill that role.

The issue of roads and logging is trickier. I like having unspoiled wild areas, both for unselfish reasons (it's good for wildlife) and for entirely selfish reasons (I like to hike and backpack). Meanwhile, as an industrialized society we need to harvest trees. It's easy to value undefiled forests until we need paper, lumber, and their attendant products: books, houses, furniture, walnut rifle stocks, Sierra Club magazines, etc. It's hell living in a world of finite resources and infinite desires, but here we are.

Under our current system, we have designated wilderness areas and national parks where resource extraction isn't allowed, and national forests and BLM lands where resource extraction and multiple use is allowed. That seems to work pretty well, though some of the extraction rights are sold off pretty cheaply, leading to charges of political kickbacks. The current law in contention only affects national forest lands, and wouldn't lead to logging in national parks.

Quotes

I don't wanna get killed for lack of shootin' back.
- Clyde Ledbetter, Unforgiven

What drives our adversaries? I do not think it is race, though race certainly is an element in some cases. I do not think it is religion, though religion is obviously a part of the story. I think it is more simply the root of all evil, which is envy. Envy is indeed the root of all evil. It should be trained out of people of good character, but good character is not overwhelming us, at least not at this time.
- Jeff Cooper on the war against radical Islam

Online Gun Buying, and the Evil Gun Show Loophole That Doesn't Exist

I've talked about buying and selling guns online before. Here's a scam to beware of, whether you're selling guns or something else. The way it works is that you agree to sell an item. The buyer (frequently from another country), sends you a cashier's check. It turns out the amount is in excess of what they were supposed to send. They send you an urgent missive asking you to wire them the difference, and you do. Then you send them the item. A few days later, the bank tells you the cashier's check was bogus, and debits your account for the entire amount. Ouch. International shipping is fraught with these kinds of dangers, as I explain in one of my e-commerce articles.

I mentioned buying and selling guns online. People who aren't familiar with guns may assume there's some sort of freewheeling gun market online, so I'd better dispel that notion. Here are three examples of how gun buying and selling works in the United States: in a store, online, and at a gun show.

Earlier this year I bought a Smith &Wesson 642 revolver from a local gun store. The store had me fill out form 4473, asked for my ID, and fingerprinted me. They sent the form to the FBI NICS (National Instant Criminal Background Check System) system, mandated by the Brady Bill. While we waited I wandered around the store. NICS called the store with an approval number and I paid for the gun, including the $10 background check fee.

A few months later I bought a Smith &Wesson 686 revolver from an online auction at GunBroker.com. The seller - an individual in Texas who was getting rid of some of the guns he had used to shoot in competition - shipped it to a local gun store (which has a Federal Firearms License), as required by BATF regulations. The store charged me $30 for the service. Before giving me the gun, they had me fill out form 4473, checked my ID, and fingerprinted me. They sent the form to the FBI NICS system. While we waited I wandered around the store. NICS called the store with an approval number and I paid the store their $30 transfer fee, plus the $10 background check fee.

If you've listened to the anti-gunners, you've heard some nonsense about "the gun show loophole." Last November I bought a Browning Buckmark target pistol from a dealer at a gun show. The dealer had me fill out a form 4473, asked for my ID, and fingerprinted me. He faxed the form to the FBI NICS system. While we waited I wandered around the gun show. NICS called the dealer with an approval number and I paid for the gun, including the $10 background check fee.

In other words, there's no difference between buying a gun from a dealer at a gun store, and buying a gun from a dealer at a gun show.

It's true that if I had bought from an individual - rather than a gun dealer - in person at the show that he wouldn't have run a background check on me. But that's true in any private transfer between individuals. The gun show has nothing to do with it.

I'm going this week to look at a Smith &Wesson 63 for sale by an individual in a nearby town. He isn't an FFL holder; he's just some guy who wants to clear out some space in his safe and re-allocate some of his money. He won't have to run a background check on me.

The government could try to regulate this by making private transfers illegal. For instance, the individuals would have to meet at a gun store and register the transaction (and pay the store for the service). This would create a burden on law-abiding individuals, and could make criminals of parents passing guns down to their children. (A year before my dad died, he gave me his Winchester lever action because he wanted to make sure it stayed in the family instead of getting sold off.) Its effect on the gun trade among criminals, on the other hand, would be negligible. They'd simply ignore the law.

There are more than 200 million guns in private hands in the U.S. There are so many horses out of the barn that it's pointless to try to put them back in. Gun prohibition would and does work as well as alcohol prohibition or drug prohibition, which is to say not well at all. It would also be about as effective as prohibition on illegal immigration. There are an estimated 10 million illegal aliens in this country. If our borders are that porous to people, we don't have much hope of keeping out guns.

The conclusions are obvious. There's nothing special or nefarious about buying guns at a gun show. And once you start buying Smith &Wessons, it's hard to quit.

Gun Pic of the Week: Calico M-100

Though relatively rare, this is a gun I see at almost every gun show. It usually sells for $1000 or so. Calico guns use an unusual spiral-rotary magazine that achieves a high capacity in a compact space. The version below appears to be the 100 round magazine. That's an impressive number, but the mechanism looks incredibly Murphy-prone, which is probably why no one else uses it. The history of guns, like the fossil record, is filled with these sorts of dead ends. Guns.ru and the Calico Fans Web Site have more information about the Calicos.

Posted by lesjones