Les Jones

Guns > Thursday Gun Links #27

Administrative note: with the baby less than two months away, I'm going to spend less time blogging. The regular Tuesday E-commerce Report and Thursday Gun Links will become irregular for the rest of the year.

Gunner at No Quarters has the skinny on sweepstakes to win a
Barrett .50 Rifle, Remington 870, or Winchester Super Shadow (shown above).

Olympic Arms makes the case for .223 as a police round, noting its low penetration in domestic settings.

Last week I reviewed the Kel-Tec P3AT and Bersa Thunder, both in .380. If you like the Bersa you'll want to visit this Bersa Thunder page.

A woman turned in 1,300 guns as part of a Brazilian gun buyback program. The guns belonged to her deceased father. Via Interested Participant.

Der Commissar wonders why the U.S. is buying AK-47s to equip Iraqi national security forces, rather than re-issuing the thousands of guns U.S. forces seized.

Right to Keep and Bear Arms

SayUncle has lots of gun rights news. Click and scroll. The two stories about a local TV station segment on the "gun show loophole" are especially good.

Jeff Soyer has the weekly check on the bias.

Bush signed the Law Enforcement Officer's Safety Act, which allows off-duty and retired policemen to carry concealed in other states. As I've said before, I don't think off-duty and retired cops should have special privileges that the rest of us don't. This also seems to be an abridgement of states rights.

Cartoon: if Microsoft made smart guns.

Election Year Politics

Missouri governor Bob Holden - who vetoed a law providing non-discretionary concealed carry permits - has lost the Democratic primary. It's possible that veto helped cost him the primary, though it's muddied by the fact that the primary winner is also against concealed carry laws. We'll have to wait for the election to see what the voters want.

The NRA excerpts Bill Clinton's My Life to show what gun control has cost the Democratic Party.

Perhaps because of that experience, the Kerry campaign is split on gun control. Via InstaPundit.

Security moms may be the soccer moms of the 2004 elections.

Hunting Deer with a Double Barreled Shotgun?

This bit from John Kerry's campaign tour is getting a lot of attention in gun circles: [John Kerry] was in Wisconsin the other day, pretending to be a regular guy, and was asked what kind of hunting he preferred. "I’d have to say deer," said the senator. "I go out with my trusty 12-gauge double-barrel, crawl around on my stomach… That's hunting."

It's certainly true that shotguns are used to hunt deer, using slugs rather than shot. But slug guns tend to be single-barreled pumps and semi-autos with short barrels and rifle sights. Double barreled guns typically have a small bead front sight and no rear sight, which makes hitting anything at a distance with a slug difficult. Jeff and his readers discussed this last week.

The story, particularly the crawling around on his stomach bit, seems implausible, but some people have come forward to say that they have hunted deer with a double barrel. Here's one such story:

I shot my two first deer with a Fox Sterlingworth, 20 ga. double, using slugs in upstate NY. Worked fine. It was the only gun I had so it's what got used. We never did test it to see where it would shoot, on those deer it shot pretty much where it was pointed. Both were shot at less than 25 yards, which might have helped. It was my great-grandfathers gun and when he died it came to my father, who gave it to me. I still have it but don't use it.

So, suspicious as the idea of hunting deer with a double barrel shotgun sounds, it's not implausible.

This Week's Gun Pic: Rosco Benelli Magazine Extension

Rosco of Italy makes a rotary tubular magazine extension for Benelli shotguns. After shooting all the rounds in one tube, you manually rotate to the next tube. The tubes are color-coded if you want to use different loads in each magazine. The picture doesn't really do it justice, so you'll probably want to watch the video of it being fired.

Posted by lesjones