Tales of the Heliosphere

Like Jack Bauer in 24, Liam Neeson's character in Taken is a super competent gunman with a daughter. Instead of the 24 hours Jack Bauer has to work with, Neeson's character has 96 hours to rescue his daughter from the clutches of white slavers in France.

The movie's plot is guided by the question: What Would Jack Bauer Do? So, when Neeson's character finds his daughter's French kidnapper he beats him to try and make him talk. When he finds the Albanian thugs who held her, he kills all but one with knife and gun, and then tortures the survivor for information. So on and so on until the body count climbs into double digits and the property damage to six figures, maybe seven. Taken is a fix for Jack Bauer fans who can't wait for the next season of 24.

Neeson's character would make Jack Bauer proud, except for one bad habit. Jack knows how to hold a handgun. Neeson's character doesn't. Get that finger off the trigger guard, Liam!



-tdr

Labels: 24, Guns, Movies

You don't have to fork over $20,000 to own a gatling gun. (Here.) There's a company, RG-G, Inc., that provides blueprints and parts for the DIYer. (Here.) The company also manufactures gatling guns for considerably less than $20,000. There are some decent photos of the gatling gun on the the company's homepage and some mediocre videos of gun in action.

RG-G Inc.'s FAQ webpage has interesting information about the gun and the legality of owning a gatling gun in the United States. (Here.) The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, has determined the guns are legal. (BATF letter here.)

-tdr

Labels: America, Guns

Gun owners know that California is in its own universe when it comes to gun laws in the United States. The Second Amendment has limited scope here.

The specifications website for any handgun sold in the United States has a special category that states whether the gun is legal to purchase in California. The Ruger SR9 webpage is a good example. (Here.) The SR9 was not legal to own in California until it was certified by the Department of Justice back in December 2008 and placed on this list. (Here.)

Many handguns sold legally elsewhere in the US are not legal in California because the law here states that

" ... no handgun may be manufactured within California, imported into California for sale, lent, given, kept for sale, or offered/exposed for sale unless that handgun model has passed firing, safety, and drop tests and is certified for sale in California by the Department of Justice. Private party transfers, curio/relic handguns, certain single-action revolvers, and pawn/consignment returns are exempt from this requirement." (Here.)

Long guns don't fall under this law but long guns that qualify as assault weapons are illegal in California. (Here.) In general, an assault weapon is a semiautomatic rifle that accepts a detachable magazine and is outfitted with certain scary-looking design features like a pistol grip, a foldable stock, a flash suppressor, or a grenade launcher. (Okay, that last characteristic is probably reasonable to ban no matter how cool it would be to have.)

California's assault weapons ban also outlaws semiautomatic rifles that can hold more than 10 rounds in a fixed magazine, and some handguns and shotguns with certain characteristics. The characteristics are a bit detailed, so if you want to know more, go here and scroll down to section 12276.1.

Oh, and machine guns are forbidden in California, too. (Here.) But, surprisingly, Gatling Guns are not. This sweet-looking baby was for sale at Discount Gun Mart in San Diego, California, when I went there tonight to purchase my new Ruger SR9.


This fierce looking weapon holds 100 low caliber 22LR cartridges in its magazine. Gun owners would call this a plinker.

It's not a machine gun because it's a semiautomatic. It's not an assault weapon because it doesn't have the characteristics of a rifle. It's clearly not a handgun, even for Hellboy. And, best of all, it's perfectly legal to own in California. All you need to do is pass the background check and fork over $20,000. Who could have predicted that the state with some of the strictest anti-gun laws in the United States would have a Gatling Gun loophole? I'm falling in love with my home state all over again.

-tdr

Republished once for content.

Labels: California, Guns, San Diego

Perhaps the coolest application for the iPod Touch is a ballistics calculation program developed for Knights Armament. Install the application to your iPod Touch, attach the device to KA's M110 Sniper Rifle using a special mount, and you're good to go. (Pics at the firearm blog here.) Ready, aim, fire, insert ear buds, and rock on! Let's hear it for American ingenuity.

-tdr

Labels: America, Guns

Today is Christmas and you'll be giving to the people you care about. Tomorrow, it'll be all about you. Don't forget to hit the day after Christmas sales. The economy needs a stimulus package. My to-buy list includes a macro lens (here) to put on my Canon Rebel for extreme close-ups, binoculars for birdwatching (here), and a 9 mm handgun, probably a Sig Sauer (here), either the P220 or P226. Peace on Earth, people!

-tdr

Labels: Birds, Guns, Photography, Religion

Lawyers like to think we're at the top of the food chain in our society. Although a friend once told me, lawyers don't run the world, they just do the bidding of those who do. That shut me up for a few seconds.

Now comes a real blow to lawyerly self-esteem.

"Not only are doctors, nurses, and firefighters essential during a severe pandemic influenza outbreak. So, too, are truck drivers, communications personnel, and utility workers. That's the conclusion of a Johns Hopkins University article to be published in the journal of Biosecurity and Bioterrorism." (Here.)

The report goes on to include grocery store workers in its list of essential personnel. Lawyers, not so much.

The most important advice offered by the report is for individuals to be prepared, although that advice comes with a bit of weird trickle down theorizing.

"[I]ndividuals and families who can afford it should do their best to prepare for any disaster. The paper notes, the more initiative the general public exercises in stockpiling several weeks' worth of food, water, paper goods, batteries medicines, and other needed supplies, the less vulnerable they will be to a break in the supply chain. In fact, the report emphasizes, it is important for leaders to communicate to the middle class and the wealthy that it is their responsibility to prepare for self-sufficiency in order to free up scarce supplies and allow first responders to direct their attention towards those too poor or vulnerable to prepare themselves."

Speaking of surviving a disaster. Here's the most recent addition to my Second Amendment Disaster Preparedness Kit. It's a Henry, pump action 22 long rifle. -tdr

Labels: Disasters, Guns, Health

After litigating the right to possess his firearm all the way to the United States Supreme Court, Dick Heller had his application to register his firearm rejected. (Here.) Why? He owns a semiautomatic handgun, an ordinary and typical type of firearm owned by millions of Americans but not registerable in the District of Columbia. (Here.) Is this the kind of so-called reasonable regulation of gun ownership that the Phony Senator from Illinois supports? Who thinks that Heller's fight against DC is over?

-tdr

Labels: Guns, Law, Politics

The worst journalist in the world weighed in the other day on Justice Antonin Scalia. Scalia won the "worst person in the world" honor on Keith Olbermann's joke of a news show. What was Scalia's offense? Upholding the right of Americans to keep and bear arms. You know, the one that's right there in the Second Amendment.

It's inevitable in arguments over the meaning of the Second Amendment that the person who wants to disarm Americans will mock "original intent" or "strict construction" by saying something like what Olbermann says in his rant about Scalia:

"Despite years of fog created by the NRA and right-wing organizations, that isn‘t very complicated; for the purposes of forming a state militia, you‘re entitled to keep and bear arms. Obviously, those would have to be the kind of use in arms since 1791, when the Bill of Rights was passed, the musket, the wheel-lock, the flint lock, the 13th century Chinese hand canon. Stuff like that." (Here, scroll down.)

Of course, Olbermann's point is a stupid one.

Americans' right to travel embedded in the Privileges and Immunities Clause (here) is not limited to interstate travel on foot, horseback, carriage, or sailboat. Americans' right to petition their government for redress of grievances is not limited to sending notes by messenger to their elected representatives. The United States Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce is not limited to goods that travel by wagon, barge, or sailboat. Finally, Americans' freedom of speech is not limited to publishing pamphlets on hand-operated printing presses or standing on a soapbox in a local park and ranting at passersby. Although come to think of it, Olbermann's phony news show, and especially his very special comments, are the television equivalents of a crazy person standing on a soapbox in a local park ranting at passersby.

Today's worst constitutional scholar in the world: Keith Olbermann.

-tdr

Labels: America, Guns, Law, Media, TV

So it turns out that a popular role-playing game on college campuses is zombies versus humans. It's an elaborate game of tag in which the zombie team tries to tag all the players on the human team. The humans defend themselves from attack with nerf guns. The game field is the campus. (Here.) The game is not without controversy. Complaints focus on the use of toy guns.

"While the opponents acknowledged the game's benefits, they criticized its representation of killing and violence. Jenifer Jennings-Shaud, a member of the graduate education faculty, spoke of arriving on campus one evening and seeing a man with a gun run over the hill. 'I was terrified,' she said. 'Guns scare me. Nerf guns, regular guns. All guns.' Then she began to cry. English professor Jeff Myers raised questions about the ethics of 'playing war' while an actual war is happening in Iraq. Peace studies instructor Fran Donelan theorized about the possible link between fantasy violence and actual violence. 'There have been many studies done about how a society's games reflect the society,' she said. 'Most of the games in this country revolve around hunting people down and killing them.'"

Well, yeah. Humans are a predatory species and play naturally will reflect that evolutionary heritage. What is striking to me is not the so-called violence of the game. It's the fact that the game is played in public spaces among people who don't participate.

-tdr

-tdr

Labels: America, Education, Guns

For a guy who's presented himself as the candidate of a new kind of politics that transcends the usual categories, Barack Obama keeps painting himself into the liberal box. First, there was the right Reverend Jeremiah Wright's hate speech and Obama's moral equivocating about it. Now there's this statement by Obama:

"You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama, an Illinois senator, said.

"And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations," he said. (Here.)

The best thing about this statement is where he said it. He's talking about the plight of oppressed working folk at a fund raiser in Marin County, an exclusive and wealthy San Francisco Bay Area county.

No doubt the statement went over well there and nobody gave it a second thought. It reflects the view of wealthy liberals that the rubes don't know what's good for them. If only the rubes knew better they'd vote their economic interests and vote Democratic. It also reflects the liberal view that social issues that matter to conservatives are not legitimate issues. Gun rights, pro-life, and preserving the traditional definition of marriage? Just wedge issues!

Here's Obama developing the point today in Indiana:

"People don't vote on economic issues because they don't expect anybody is going to help them," Obama told a crowd at a Terre Haute, Ind., high school Friday evening. "So people end up voting on issues like guns and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. They take refuge in their faith and their community, and their family, and the things they can count on. But they don't believe they can count on Washington." (Here.)

Actually, people who vote on issues like guns and gay marriage instead of on economic issues, do so because they believe the former issues are important. Money isn't everything. And don't think for a minute that this election will put the conflicts over cultural issues, such as guns and gay marriage, behind us. California's Supreme Court will issue a ruling sometime this summer on whether gay marriage is a constitutional right. And the United States Supreme Court will issue another ruling sometime before the election on the meaning of the Second Amendment.

-tdr

Republished once because of editing.

Labels: America, Elections, Guns, Politics, Religion

The Politico has a story about Obama's effort in Pennsylvania to reach out to gun owners. Obama's strategy involves reaching out to a strongly pro-gun politician in Pennsylvania, Rep. Dan Surra, to make his case. (Here.)

Obama himself claims to believe that the Second Amendment confers an individual right, although it doesn't appear to be much of a right. Here's what his website says about the issue:

PROTECTING GUN RIGHTS
Respect the Second Amendment: Millions of hunters own and use guns each year. Millions more participate
in a variety of shooting sports such as sporting clays, skeet, target and trap shooting that may not necessarily
involve hunting. As a former constitutional law professor, Barack Obama believes the Second Amendment
creates an individual right, and he greatly respects the constitutional rights of Americans to bear arms. He will
protect the rights of hunters and other law-abiding Americans to purchase, own, transport, and use guns for the
purposes of hunting and target shooting. He also believes that the right is subject to reasonable and
commonsense regulation. (PDF here.)

Obama better hope that the pro-gun Pennsylvania politician he's enlisted to his cause is a persuasive guy because Obama's position will not go over well with most gun owners I know.

Obama's position on the Second Amendment is found on his website under the broad category of sportsmen. This makes sense because Obama's view of the Second Amendment seems to be that it only protects an individual's right to use guns for hunting and target shooting. In fact, the only promise he makes to America's gun owners is that he will protect their right "to purchase, own, transport, and use guns for the purpose of hunting and target shooting." Hunting and target shooting. That's it.

When you couple Obama's extreme limitation of the right to keep and bear arms to hunting and target shooting with his position that gun rights are subject to "reasonable and commonsense regulation," whatever that is, gun owners are left with a pretty hollow right.

Obama's gun-owner outreach strategy appears similar to his pro-life outreach strategy. Obama is about as pro-choice a candidate as there is. Yet he recently received the endorsement of Robert Casey, Jr., a respected pro-life politician. The endorsement gives Obama credibility with pro-life voters and provides cover for his pro-choice positions. Likewise, Obama's position is weak on gun rights but receiving the endorsement of a respected pro-gun politician gives him cover.

The guy's crafty, you gotta give him that.

-tdr

Labels: Elections, Guns, Politics

Christmas came a day early this year. The waiting period for the latest addition to my Second Amendment Disaster Preparedness Kit expired this afternoon. (To see the prior additions click here, here, here, and here.)


It's a Mosin-Nagant Model 1944 rifle. Notice the neat attached bayonet. Very useful for the zombie apocalypse. When the ammo runs out you can still poke the zombies' brains out.

This particular rifle was manufactured in the Soviet Union in 1946. Since the fall of communism former East Bloc firearms are plentiful and cheap. This one came from Big 5 sporting goods store for $89.00. Yet another benefit of America's victory in the Cold War.

-tdr

Labels: Guns

I've watched so many zombie movies, I've lost track. It hasn't been a complete waste of time as those movies have taught me something about surviving a zombie attack. Still, I've only got a 67 percent chance of survival, according to this web quiz at justsayhi.com. (Here. I just love the internet. It's so informative.)

One reason my percentage is so low is that I don't have enough canned goods in my house. Apparently what's good for natural disasters is good for supernatural disasters, too. Who knew?

Another reason could be that I still have below average aim. Today was a day off from work so I took my .38 snub-nose revolver to the shooting range and practiced a zombie survival trick, "not in the chest, head shots are best."* The results were not good with about 25 percent head shots on the paper target from less than 10 yards. Fortunately, I've got this.A killer kitty named Kimba and a Mossberg 500 Persuader.

-tdr

* That "head shots" quote is from a lesson taught to grade-schoolers in the Canadian zombie movie, Fido. More on that later.

Labels: Guns, Movies, Science Fiction

In Indiana today, two deputies were shot by a boy using an M-1 Garand. One was killed. One news story starts out this way. "A 15-year-old boy used a World War II-era sniper rifle to fatally shoot a deputy and critically wound another outside his southern Indiana home, authorities said Tuesday." (Here.)

The M-1 Garand is a great target-shooting rifle but it is NOT a sniper rifle. It was the standard issue rifle for American GIs in World War Two. Watch nearly any movie set in World War Two and the rifles being carried by the Americans are M-1s.

The news story then says this. "The gun is a showpiece, and possessing one is not illegal, the prosecutor said." Not only is it not illegal to own one, you can buy one from the Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP), which was set up by an act of Congress long ago. To be plain about it, the United States Government enables law-abiding American citizens to buy surplus military rifles such as the M-1.

The CMP was set up "to provide civilians an opportunity to learn and practice marksmanship skills so they would be skilled marksmen if later called on to serve the U.S. military." (Here.) (Note to liberals and libertarians. That's the purpose of the Second Amendment right there. The right to keep and bear arms is not about target practice and hunting. Nor is it about arming citizens so they can fight off the government when it comes for them. Instead, it's about having an armed citizenry, trained in the use of guns, available for use by our government in the military, the organized militia, or the unorganized militia, to combat enemies both foreign and domestic. But I digress.)

To get a gun from the CMP, you have to submit to a background check, and send proof of participation in a CMP-sponsored shooting match, an application form, proof of American citizenship, and your money ($550 when I bought mine) to the CMP. (Here.) A few weeks later, your rifle arrives in a box delivered by Federal Express. (That's mine pictured above.)

The fact that law-abiding American citizens can buy surplus military rifles from their own government is one of the things I love about this country. It says a lot about the relationship of trust between the federal government and its citizens that Americans can buy surplus military firearms from their own government. So much for the idea that governments should fear the people. In a free society such as ours, the ideal relationship between the people and their government should be one of trust. But as Reagan used to say about the Soviets, "trust but verify."

In that vein, watch for some in Congress to start making noises about banning sales of the M-1 to American citizens. Don't let 'em do it. Go out and buy your own instead. You'll be glad you did.

-tdr

Technorati: Guns, gun control,politics.

Labels: America, Guns, Politics

Researchers at Wake Forest have released a report critical of gun-storage practices in American homes. (Here.) Apparently, in the opinion of the researchers too many Americans don't store their guns safely. What do they recommend? "'Our primary recommendation is that parents should remove guns from the home,' [Robert] DuRant said. 'However, if parents are unwilling to do that, they should lock all guns with gun locks and store them separately from ammunition.'"

Well, that's a black and white perspective. Storing a gun unloaded and locked with ammunition stored separately may keep your home safer from accidents but it's not going to help you much for self-defense. Try unlocking your gun and loading it in the middle of the night with a burglar prowling around the house.

Safety exists on a continuum and as with most decisions in life, deciding how to store guns is about balancing costs and benefits. For instance, the former cop who taught my shotgun safety class last year showed us how to store a shotgun safely in the bedroom, butt down, loaded, and ready for racking a round. There's nothing like the sound of a round being racked in a pump shotgun to change the mind of a prowling burglar.

-tdr

Technorati: guns.

Labels: Guns