An interesting read from Pew (putting the Pew in Pew Pew). A couple of things I found noteworthy:

Those who have fired their weapon tended to oppose gun control. Those that have not also tended to oppose it but less so.

Officers in larger cities have fired their guns more often.

The senate voted down Obama’s sill rule on reporting those on social security who are disabled to the background check system.

Polymer, of course.

And, yes, I know it’s not a lower. I’m making the obvious comparison to 80% AR lower receivers.

Husbands are deadlier than terrorists.

Schultz & Larsen RPLT-42: Danish Occupation Rifle

And here’s a review of the new GP100 in .44 special:

The NRA has a summary of coming legislative action. Seems to me that if you pass the permitless carry bill, you may not need the one that allows people who have taken out restraining orders to carry a gun sans permit.

And a bill to offer criminal and civil immunity if someone uses a gun in lawful self defense. We mostly already have the criminal immunity one. But the civil would be nice.

Don’t you hate when you’re shooting your SAW, your pistol grip breaks, and you almost SAW something you didn’t want to?

SAF and CalGuns want the case to be heard before the full court.

If you’re a felon, don’t put videos on snapchat of you with a stolen gun.

The first commercially available flying car.

Now, that’s what I’m talking about. The future is expensive.

An interesting read: It is a myth that the FBI dropped the 10mm for the .40 S&W.

You have a local chapter of the National African American Gun Association.

Brought to you by the Commerce Clause.

The Electric Walther FP

Exploded Glock. Not exploded like you’re thinking of.

Literally Hitler. I mean, every Republican since Clinton has been Literally Hitler to many on the left. And I just kind of yawn at the claim, even when applied to Trump. And, also, every Republican is a racist, fascist, sexist, bigoted, homophobe, etc. And that is always how they are portrayed by their political opponents. Always. Even milk toast Romney.

Of course, the younger voters probably don’t remember that Bush, McCain, and Romney were also Literally Hitler. So, they may actually believe that Trump is Literally Hitler. If I thought Trump was Literally Hitler, I’d be a little freaked out too. But I don’t.

This election cycle, the left and democrats decided that it wasn’t enough to call someone racist. It was bad to be white. Turning “white” into a pejorative rattled enough people’s cages to sway the election.

Tam nails it.

Tenth Amendment Center:

Bills introduced in the Tennessee legislature would reform asset forfeiture laws to prohibit the state from taking property without a criminal conviction. The legislation also takes on federal forfeiture programs by banning prosecutors from circumventing state laws by passing cases off to the feds in most situations.

Rep. Martin Daniel (R-Knoxville) introduced House Bill 4021 (HB4021) on Feb. 2. Sen. Todd Gardenhire (R-Chattanooga) introduced the companion bill in the Senate (SB316). The legislation would reform Tennessee law by requiring a criminal conviction before prosecutors can proceed with asset forfeiture. Under current law, the state can seize assets even if a person is never found guilty of a crime and sometimes without even filing charges.

Due process of law is a novel concept.

Some pants shitting hysteria over 80% lower receiver kits. And I really doubt that guy drilled out the lower with a hand drill.

In comments, HSR47 writes:

I am voting NO on the bylaw changes.

While I may not disagree with ALL of the proposed changes, I disagree with a bunch of them. If they were offered as a series of individual yes/no votes, instead of just one package deal, I might have been willing to support some of them. Instead, Im voting on all of them.

As far as the specific changes I object to, a lot of them come down to entrenching the power of the board, and making it significantly harder for the membership to retake control.

Given voting trends, the proposed changes would roughly triple the required number of signatures to get on the ballot. At $600 per life membership (Ive seen it offered at that price within the last week), and factoring in that he would likely need a surplus of signatures, that would raise Bloombergs cost to fund a batch of nominators from roughly $250,000 to roughly $750,000.

Bloomberg spent over $20,000,000 in Nevada alone in the last election cycle. Anyone who thinks that the proposed bylaw changes would prevent someone like Bloomberg from putting forward a slate of candidates to the board is naive at best.

The simple fact of the matter is that the proposal to increase the number of signatures necessary to get on the board is not intended to stop people like Bloomberg, its intended to stop the small guys like Adam Kraut.

Theres also the matter of the elimination of the ability to amend bylaws at the NRAAM: On the whole, I think this is also a bad idea: While those pushing this change are correct that changes by mailed ballot are more fair and that bylaws havent been changed at an annual meeting in decades, that doesnt change the point: Its the easiest way to wrest control from the board in order to fundamentally change the direction of the organization. If this process hadnt been possible in 1977 for the Cincinnati revolt, the NRA would not be the political juggernaut that it is today.

Honestly, I see pros and cons to both sides and am still undecided.

Rick Derringer has flown hundreds of times with a gun. And TSA caught him once.

Security theater.

And good thing he wasn’t caught with it in Mexico.

But for the second amendment.

From Where Great Britain Used To Be, this is a terrifying arsenal:

Lage

Astra 700

I mentioned a bit back that I got my first carry gun back. Dad came to visit today and he brought me the rest of the magazines he had for it. And look what I found (click to embiggenate):

Back in the old days, when I was a Sig fan boy*, those operators who operated operationally in operations in the know carried Hydra Shoks or Black Talons. And there’s two magazines loaded up with them. Modern carry ammo is better than both of those. Ah, nostalgia.

At a scientific, wild ass guess, I figure those magazines have been loaded since at least 2001. But more likely since 1998. And in the name of more sciency stuff, I’m going to run those magazines at the next range trip to see if really long-term storage of loaded magazines really mucks up the springs like internet commandos say. I’ve always thought it was compression cycles that did more to damage them.

I also got some after market magazine that I bought way back when. And I distinctly remember that magazine sucking rocks up off the ground. It was good for practicing malfunctions.

* Perusing my archives on the matter amuses me because I was that guy who would say YOUR GUN SUCKS. And nobody called themselves an operator. Even more nostalgia. How the gunny web has changed.

You may remember CA State Senator Kevin De Leon. He was made famous on the internet for saying some stupid and incoherent things about guns, displaying his complete ignorance on something he wanted to regulate:

Well, saying dumb things in public is apparently something he’s consistently good at:

I can tell you half of my family would be eligible for deportation under [President Donald Trumps] executive order, because if they got a false Social Security card, if they got a false identification, if they got a false drivers license prior to us passing AB60, if they got a false green card, and anyone who has family members, you know, who are undocumented knows that almost entirely everybody has secured some sort of false identification. Thats what you need to survive, to work. They are eligible for massive deportation.

With a guy as president who campaigned on deporting people, why would you publicly say you’re family is comprised of law-breakers?

Good news: Is the hashtag over? Researchers reveal Super Bowl ads have abandoned them (and Facebook and Twitter) for URLs

I’m an old school internet user and never got big into social media. I don’t twitter much. Sure, these posts go there automagically. But that’s about it. I’ve abandoned the facebook page because facebook is doing stupid facebook stuff. I have a personal facebook page to keep up with some friends but I find myself looking at it less often. I’d give it up completely but it’s the only way I keep up with some old friends.

And I’ve always hated hashtags.

And social media resulted in the decline of blogs. Everyone just hopped on social media to argue about politics. Here’s hoping for a return of content being on the content creator’s site. And not on some third party making money for your work. And selling your data to whoever.

A bit back, I linked to a pro/con of the various bylaw change proposals. The big con there was that it was set up to protect existing members. And Knox wrote about that here. Now, Sebastian has chimed in with a counter:

First, the bylaw changes: Im voting yes. NRA has grown a lot, and requirements for recall and petition candidates ought to change with the size of the voting membership. After Glenn Beck started promoting the recall against Norquist, I realized there was a lot of room for someone willing to burn some money to cause very serious mischief within NRA. Most of these changes are aimed on closing the door on that.

I suppose that is possible. He also lists who he’s voting for Board of Directors. John Richards on round up endorsements here. He’s also not a fan of the bylaw changes.

On the bylaw changes, I’m currently torn. Anyone else have any input they’d like to add?

Trump has tried to use eminent domain in the past to further is business. He even spoke highly of it on the campaign trail. Based on that, needless to say, I didn’t expect him to have a healthy respect for property rights. Well, at least he’s consistent:

In a meeting with county sheriffs from around the country on Tuesday, President Trump jokingly (we hope!) threatened to “destroy [the] career” of a Texas legislator who proposed requiring the government to obtain a conviction before taking property allegedly tied to crime. As Nick Gillespie noted, Trump’s knee-jerk support for civil asset forfeiture is troubling, especially in light of a growing bipartisan consensus that the practice should be reformed or abolished because it hurts innocent property owners and warps law enforcement priorities. Worse, the White House transcript of the president’s remarks about forfeiture shows he literally does not know what he is talking about, which suggests this “law and order” president is happy to go along with whatever cops want, even if he has no idea what it is.

This should be a red flag for my fellow Wookie-suited travelers.

Shannon Watts is none too happy that the NRA has a program to educate kids on gun safety. Their program actually works by teaching youngsters actual safety in an easy to remember way. But we can’t have that because OOGA BOOGA.

I do actually like that our political opponents aren’t too bright. It makes it easier.

A round up.

The SAF is encouraging the Justice Department to restore funding for the long-neglected rights restoration investigations for second amendment rights.