A Brit Joins The NRA

No clue. No clue at all.

They have a cursory look at my driving licence, then ask me to select my weapon. I've no idea. "A small one. For an idiot," I offer.

What I get is a 45 that shoots nine-millimetre bullets (mostly in the wrong direction, it turns out, but that's me not the gun). It's alarmingly heavy and complicated. Even loading the weapon requires thumb strength and dexterity I seem to lack. After the fourth time of showing me how it is done, my guide loses patience. "You left-handed?" he asks. "Or just retarded?"

The NRA Wins Again

That's the title of this screed in the New Yorker.

Ha!

But they say it like it's a BAD thing...

Mete The Press

Wayne LaPierre to David Gregory:

“We're in the District of Columbia right now, and possession of that magazine is illegal, even if it's not loaded. Even if it's not connected to a gun. It's still illegal. But you won't be charged, and do you know why? It's because you're white. If Ice-T was holding that magazine, he would be in jail before this program was off the air.”

           - I made that up, but wouldn't it be great if life were really like that?

ETA: I just realized that Matt G had a similar thought before I did. Hell, I'm gettin' old.

I Felt A Great Disturbance In The Force...

...as if a million gun-control advocates suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

The Washington Post published this opinion piece Tuesday night:

On Gun Control, Banning Semi-automatics Isn't The Answer

I don’t particularly like the AR-15, although it is one of the most popular rifles in the country. Three million have been sold, according to an NRA researcher. But to define it as an assault rifle because of how it looks — with a pistol grip, adjustable stock, flash suppressor and “high capacity” magazine — is silly.

You want to see a dangerous-looking gun, look at the one President Obama was photographed skeet shooting with at Camp David last summer. That shotgun of his was big enough to take down a woolly mammoth. When I pulled the trigger on the AR-15, one high-powered round came out. Maybe I hit something; maybe I didn’t. Obama can’t miss. He could clear a room with one double-barreled blast.

Why ban one and not the other? And once you start banning semiautomatics, where do you stop?

If gun control advocates were truly serious and not just well meaning, they’d be focusing a lot more on education and mental health. For instance, everybody knows that our children are being adversely affected by violent video games. So why aren’t schools deconstructing video games as part of the curriculum, explaining to students how the military uses these same war games to condition troops to kill without remorse? 

It just goes on and on like that. This piece is by one of WaPo's local opinion writers, Courtland Milloy.

Absolutely shocking that WaPo would publish something like this.

The "New" South

From the Washington Post "Fact Checker" blog:

Last week we looked at a National Rifle Association ad that made misleading claims about security at Sidwell Friends School, which President Obama’s children attend. Now let’s look at a tough anti-NRA ad sponsored by the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, an umbrella organization of 48 religious and other organizations.

The target of this ad is Rep. John Barrow of Georgia — the last white Democratic member of Congress from the Deep South. The CSGV video intercuts scenes from a campaign ad that Barrow ran in 2012 with television footage of the massacre of school children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. It certainly packs an emotional punch — but is it fair and accurate?

"...the last white Democratic member of Congress from the Deep South."?

Is that really true?

WOW!

And they accuse the Republicans of being polarized!

"I know you are but what am I? I know you are but..."

The hell with it. A pox on both their houses.

Via Shall Not Be Questioned.

WaPo: The NRA Is Awesome!

Boy Scout camp

Yesterday's Washington Post: 

 “What they do well is they really get people out,” said Illinois state Rep. Elaine Nekritz (D), who heads the House committee that was to consider the assault-weapons ban until gun owners, spurred by the local NRA affiliate, overwhelmed legislators with calls and e-mails. “That’s democracy. I can’t fault them for it. I have to applaud them for it.”

and:

“They can produce a small army for Election Day, and every elected official knows it,” said Rep. Mark Pocan, a newly elected Democratic congressman, who was a state legislator when the tide turned in Wisconsin.

Police seizing guns in California

Mayor Mike Makes A Mis-step

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has likened a teachers' union to the NRA:

Of all the polarizing things Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has said and done over the years, from banning large sugary drinks to supporting congestion pricing, few have generated the sort of viral backlash that has unexpectedly mounted after his weekly radio show on Friday.

The mayor had embarked on a lengthy stream of consciousness on the need to negotiate a new teacher evaluation plan with the United Federation of Teachers. Toward the end, Mr. Bloomberg, almost as an aside, likened the teachers’ union to groups like the National Rifle Association and others in which he said a few leaders were out of sync with large numbers of rank-and-file members. 

NYT.

This is the same union that was once headed by Albert Shanker. He attained immortality when he was the butt of a famous joke in Woody Allen's movie Sleeper. The hero is transported into a dystopian future. When he asks what happened to the world as he knew it, he is told, "Our history books tell us that the old world was destroyed when a man named Albert Shanker got hold of a nuclear warhead."

For his part, Shanker is said to have loved the joke.

Publish Or Perish

The New York Times has covered the controversy regarding the publication of the names and addresses of pistol-permit holders in Westchester and Putnam counties by the Journal News. The item in the Times generated a huge number of comments, evenly split between pro- and anti-publication.

Two of my favorites:

What has happened to the left that I used to be a proud member? This has nothing to do with protecting your children or helping public safety. This is pure revenge on a group the left despises … the NRA. The comments are beyond the pale in their stereotyping and demonizing these people. Just because someone might have a permit, doesn’t mean they have a gun or even belong to or support the NRA. Maybe the person is in law enforcement, maybe the person is an abused wife, wanting protection.

And:

We, on the left, objected loudly when the names and addresses of doctors who perform abortions were made public. Are our ethics so situational that we now embrace the tactics of our opponents? How sad for us.

It's Official: 8,000 New Members A Day

ABC News:

NRA News anchor Ginny Simone said Thursday that in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting, membership surged "with an average of 8,000 new members a day."

Range Report

After a 2-hour wait I was assigned to lane 9 and set my target out at 25 yards. I had a box of Federal XM193F, 5.56mm M193 Ball, 55-gr. boat-tail cartridges. I aimed at the target center and my first two shots landed 2 inches down and 2 inches to the right. That's disappointing, because it would be 8 inches at 100 yards, but at least I have some real-world results to ponder.

So rather than adjust the turrets I decided to "shoot a box": I turned the windage turret 64 clicks to the right and fired two more shots, then turned the elevation turret 64 clicks up and fired two more, then 64 clicks left windage and two more, then 64 clicks left and two more shots, then finally 64 clicks down and two more shots. I was shooting from a bag rest each time. The shots seemed to track the turrets pretty well. These turrets are 1/8" per click.

The second target was at 50 yards:

This seemed to be more like 3.5 inches to the right, or 7 inches at 100 yards.

I'm not really so concerned about the elevation because I'm so close to the target that the bullet is still rising to meet the line of sight; the scope is mounted about 2" above the bore.

The three shots above the bull were just to finish off the cartridge box.

The wind was really vicious today, so my plans to visit Clark Bros. in Warrenton had to be postponed. They have a rifle range with 25, 50 and 100-yard targets.

My goal is to use the adjustable rings to get the rifle on target at all ranges, for windage anyway, without adjusting the turrets.

I also fired eight magazines from the Ruger 22/45 with the red dot sight, and half a box from the Nagant "7-shooter". The Nagant has a formidable double-action trigger pull; I used single action. Nice shooter! Very quiet and very little recoil. Only 98-gr bullets.

The Smith & Wesson M&P 9mm compact sent some lead downrange, too, to test four new magazines (CTD has 'em in stock if you act fast).

Check out the unfired Nagant cartridge (far right) and the spent case next to it.

And I just noticed this: look at the unusual dimple in the primer. What do you make of that? 

And it wasn't just the Blaser, either. This one is Winchester White Box. It shows a dimple (at the 10 o'clock position) and a firing-pin "comma" (at 5 o'clock).

Bored

Reading a humor article in the New Yorker. A reminiscence (I'll spell-check that later) of a 17-year old boy who had a torrid affair with 77-year old Ayn Rand:

Anyone who knew Ayn knew that she was not big on sniveling. But I was devastated. We'd often talked about "stopping the engine of the world." Well, now she had stopped the engine of my heart. So, yes, I sniveled a bit. Although, in keeping with my Objectivist principles, when I sniveled, I did it in my room, while keeping my face as impassive and noble as I could. Or sometimes I'd call Alan Greenspan, and he'd go, "Oh, you too, eh?"

Yeah, I know. Reading the New Yorker at the NRA Range. I'll pay dearly for this.

Sent from my iPhone

A Great Day

I went to the NRA in Fairfax this morning. Put 40 rounds through the Garand and a dozen mags each through the Kimber 1911 (45 ACP) and the Springfield 1911 (9mm).

Then I spent a couple of hours in the museum.

A beautiful cased 1911A1 with a .22 LR conversion kit.

Hermann Goering's Merkel shotgun.

Julian S. Hatcher's Colt single-shot in .22 LR.
He wrote "Hatcher's Notebook".


A Fabbri O/U shotgun with bulino-engraved nudes.

A unique double-barrel bolt-action rifle, magazine-fed!

A beautiful FN 1910.

A Browning B-25 shotgun.
The engraving on the receiver shows The Man Himself, sitting at his drafting table.

My photography skills do not nearly do it justice.

Some movie guns: Nathan Fillion's gun from "Firefly".

Javier Bardem's silenced shotgun
from "No Country For Old Men".

Colt 1911, serial number 4.

Savage 1907 in .45 ACP, serial number 1.

And serial number 2.

Gun Control - A Movement Without Followers

In the WSJ.

h/t Joe Huffman.

P.S. Ooops, you're right. It's not in the WSJ, it's in Bloomberg Business Week.

"I'd Do Worse."

Youssouf Drame displayed scars from a gun battle in which he was shot seven times and killed two men trying to rob his Brooklyn store.

I started at the New York Daily News report of the "Bloody Weekend" in NYC. Mayor Bloomberg, true to form, calls for tougher gun control laws.

That led me to a 2008 NYDN editorial called "Wake Up, Mike", which chided hizzonor for, among other things, "abandoning Youssouf Brame."

Who?

Google reports that his real name is Youssouf Drame. So much for the "first, rough draft of history." But I wondered what happened to Mr. Drame, and why he was "abandoned."

Fortunately for us, the Gray Lady is on the case. The 2009 article, "Scars Linger..." recounts the experiences of several people who fought back against armed robbers. Most had some regrets and emotional baggage, some of it severe.

But for Youssouf Drame, who shot and killed two of the four men who tried to rob his Crown Heights electronics store last November, the pain is mostly physical: In the gunfight that broke out after he grabbed one of the robbers’ weapons, Mr. Drame was shot seven times. His left hand is permanently damaged, and scars remain where his body was pockmarked with bullet holes. But if he had it to do again, Mr. Drame said, “I’d do worse.”

His is the other face of the shopkeeper’s rage, the one that draws cheers from crime-weary citizens and business owners. At his store last week, Mr. Drame watched on the dozens of televisions on display as Mr. Augusto spoke about the Harlem shooting. “How are you going to rob an old man like that?” Mr. Drame said in disgust.

He opened his store nine years ago, after stints working as a fishmonger, a parking attendant and a cleaner of vendors’ carts.

“I worked so hard, and they wanted to take what is mine,” Mr. Drame, 35, said of the men who tried to hold him up.

Mr. Drame, who has five children, grabbed the man’s gun and started firing. When it was over, one of the robbers was dead, and another died in the hospital. The other two men fled.

Mr. Drame spent a few weeks in Kings County Hospital Center, then went back to work, installing security cameras that cover every approach to his store. If anything, the shooting gave him new strength, he said: “I didn’t come to America to die.”

Unarmed, he challenged four armed robbers, disarming one, killing two, and taking seven bullets, he nonetheless survived and has no regrets.

Bravo, Mr. Drame.

P.S. NRA News has a video essay here.

Long Ride

Friday was a beautiful day. Bright overcast, high seventies. No wind to speak of. So I took a long bike ride. Packed a lunch and set off from the old Lorton Prison, now called the "Workhouse Art Center". I pedaled up route 123 toward Fairfax along the paved bike trail. It's called Ox Road in Prince William County, and Chain Bridge Road in Fairfax County. Then back by the same route. I pedaled for 4:45 and rested for 25 minutes to cover nearly 35 miles. Not the longest trip I have ever taken but a grueling slog; I haven't biked in months and I'm out of shape.

Check out the display from the iPhone:


Notice how little battery is left after less than 5 hours of continuous GPS use. That battery was in a car charger until the minute I pushed off at 12:20. I brought along a neat little USB charger like this one:

But the iPhone didn't like it; it reported, "The charging device is not supported..." So the iPhone was nearly dead after five hours. This is an app called Cyclemeter.

Here's a snapshot from near the end of the trail:

Waples Mill Road in Fairfax. Just a mile from the NRA's HQ the country is surprisingly wild; I saw a large adult red fox a hundred yards farther down the road. And an eagle carrying a squirming fish in its talons.

The NRA building is at the 16-mile point. As you can see, I had some trouble finding a bicycle route across I-66!

When I got home I was exhausted and fell asleep for a couple of hours. Then I took a shower and the salty taste of the water surprised me.

The Fellowship Of The Ping!

I cracked open a case of Greek .30-06 and headed to the NRA range this evening.

But I spent the first hour wandering the NRA museum. Here's the Star Model B used by William Holden in The Wild Bunch.

Here's the H&K pistol used by Tom Cruise in Collateral.

And the gun used by the mysterious Kaiser Soze in The Usual Suspects.

But the highlight was the Peterson collection, just added to the museum. Check out this Holland and Holland double rifle in .700 H&H:

You would think that the recoil from one of those monster rounds would loosen the gold inlays!

There were THREE Fabbri shotguns, the most incredible shotguns in the world. This one featured bulino engraving of nudes and peacock feathers, visible through the magnifier:

When I got to the range, I tried to get a recording of the Garand. It is loud!

And ahhhh! the fragrance of 41-year-old military gunpowder! I fired forty rounds and no problems. This Garand was made in May, 1945 and has an unrelieved op-rod, but I am loathe to have it altered. The rifle fired about 3" to the right at 150 feet, which is the fault of the front sight being out of adjustment. It was caked with cosmoline when I got it from the CMP. I'm not complaining!

The NRA Range has new target gadgets with touch-screen controls, very high-tech. Now they need an iPhone app.

This is a Borchardt pistol, but what's that little wood-grained thingie in the lower left, that looks a bit like a magazine?

Do It To Larry!

Or Aaron, or Philip, or Alan.

Tough call. What would Heston do?

And what next? It's a slippery slope. License journalists?

Not many have the stones to stop sliding.

But Did You Actually Read The Book?

I wrote about historian Michael Bellesiles a few days ago here. Now he has a new book, 1877: America's Year Of Living Violently, and a new publisher, New Press. Preview copies of the book have been sent to reviewers, accompanied by a press release which states:

A major new work of popular history, 1877 is also notable as the comeback book for a celebrated U.S. historian. Michael Bellesiles is perhaps most famous as the target of an infamous ‘swiftboating’ campaign by the National Rifle Association, following the publication of his Bancroft Prize-winning book Arming America (Knopf, 2000) -- ‘the best kind of non-fiction,’ according to the Chicago Tribune -- which made daring claims about gun ownership in early America. In what became the history profession’s most talked-about and notorious case of the past generation, Arming America was eventually discredited after an unprecedented and controversial review called into question its sources, charges which Bellesiles and his many prominent supporters have always rejected.

One reviewer, Scott McLemee at Inside Higher Education had this to say:

These sentences have absorbed and rewarded my attention for days on end. They are a masterpiece of evasion. The paragraph is, in its way, quite impressive. Every word of it is misleading, including “and” and “the.”

Bellesiles has a certain claim to fame, certainly, but not as “the target of an infamous ‘swiftboating’ campaign.” He is, and will be forever remembered as, a historian whose colleagues found him to have violated his profession's standards of scholarly integrity. Arming America won the Bancroft Prize -- the highest honor for a book on American history. But far more salient is the fact that the Bancroft committee took the unprecedented step of withdrawing the prize.

It is true that he drew the ire of the National Rifle Association, and I have no inclination to give that organization's well-funded demagogy the benefit of any doubt. But gun nuts did not force Bellesiles to do sloppy research or to falsify sources. That his scholarship was grossly incompetent on many points is not a "controversial" notion. Nor is it open to dispute whether or not he falsified sources. That has been exhaustively documented by his peers. To pretend otherwise is itself demagogic.

If a major commercial press wants to help a disgraced figure make his comeback, that is one thing, but rewriting history is another. The New Press published many excellent books by important authors. It is out of respect for that record that I want to invite it to make a public apology for violating the trust its readers have in it.

Ouch! That's gonna leave a mark...

h/t Clayton Cramer.

Broken Guns

Some of the 200 firearms turned in at Uptown Baptist Church on Saturday as part of the city's annual gun buyback program. Virtually all of the guns were non-functional and not likely to be used to commit crimes.

Historian and author Michael A. Bellesiles got into a world of hurt when scholars began checking the sources of his book Arming America. Bellesiles had argued that early Americans were not nearly as well-armed as had been thought, and that gun-ownership in 18th and 19th-Century America was actually rather rare. Instead, he argued, the idea of an armed public was the creation of the 20th-Century NRA-rightwing-gunlobby, etc.

Bellesiles's sources for his book were probate records of the 1700's and 1800's. In poring over thousands of wills filed during the previous two centuries, Bellesiles said that he found very few firearms mentioned in wills, and those he did find were frequently described as "broken" or "damaged".

Arming America received glowing reviews in The Right Places (New York, Boston, The Bay Area) and also won Columbia University's Bancroft Prize for the best work of history by a new author.

Maybe Bellesiles's ambition got the better of him, because the unraveling began when other historians noticed that Arming America used wills from 19th-Century San Francisco as source material. These records had long been assumed irretrievably lost in the 1906 earthquake and fire, and no copies, facsimiles or summaries were known to exist. Anywhere.

When contacted for details on where he had discovered these long-missing files, Bellesiles mentioned the San Francisco Public Library; but they didn't have them. Then the California Historical Society in Sacramento; nope. Then the Mormon Research Library in Salt Lake City; nix.

Other researchers began looking deeper into the sources. They found many instances in which wills listed guns, and Bellesiles had appended "broken" or "damaged" where it did not exist in the original. An investigation was begun. The Bancroft Prize was rescinded and Bellesiles resigned his professorship.

In Chicago last Saturday, a gun "buy-back" program netted over 4,000 firearms, air-guns, replicas and what-have-you's.

At Uptown Baptist Church, one of two North Side collection points, area residents had dumped 200 rifles by 12:30 p.m. Saturday, including a machine gun that had been in a fire. Another man presented a box of replica handguns, each worth $10.

Virtually all of the guns turned in Saturday at Uptown aren’t the kind likely to be used to commit crimes.

“There’s not a functional gun in the lot,” said Sgt. Alex Silva, a 23^rd District CAPS officer.

I'd settle for a functional historian.

h/t Second City Cop.

The Tea Parties, The Constitution, And You

Interesting essay in the NYT by their Supreme Court correspondent about renewed interest in the U.S. Constitution. Excerpt:

The Supreme Court’s 2008 ruling that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own guns, as opposed to one tied to militias, is another example of a transformation of a conventional understanding, Professor Levinson said, this one based on a view of the Constitution pressed by the National Rifle Association and its politically engaged supporters.