Archive for the ‘Guns’ Category

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Obit watch and more randomness for February 3, 2012.

Saturday, February 4th, 2012

Obit watch: prominent spy novelist Dorothy Gilman.

Ben Gazzara. I’m glad to see “Run For Your Life” get some mention in his obit; that’s another series RTN was re-running, and that I wish someone would bring out a full DVD set of. (And I’d also like to see “Anatomy of a Murder” sometime; I’ve read the book, but haven’t seen the movie.)

Hey, how about that lengthy Federal investigation into Lance Armstrong’s alleged doping? The Feds took their best shot…and turned up nothing. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the guy has been tested so often that either he’s telling the truth and is totally clean, or his doping technologists are not only ahead of the curve, you can’t even see the curve from where they are.

Finally, I wanted to make note of a developing local story. Early Friday morning, a guy wrecked his car near a railroad crossing in the Avery Ranch area of Northwest Austin. The guy walked away from the wreck. A little while later, the wife of a homeowner in the area heard voices outside and saw a man (the same guy) lying under her car. Her husband went out to investigate, and apparently attempted to hold the man at gunpoint. The homeowner ended up shooting the intruder three times, killing him.

And the homeowner has now been charged with murder.

The case is now in the hands of a Williamson County grand jury and the district attorney’s office, which will investigate the shooting and to what extent homeowners can defend their property with deadly force, said District Attorney John Bradley.
A grand jury is expected to hear the case in the next three months, he said. It will address the recent “castle doctrine” law justifying certain cases of deadly force to protect one’s property, Bradley said.

There are too many unknowns in the current press coverage to make me feel comfortable passing judgment in this case. I know the article quotes the homeowner as saying, “If you flee, I’m going to shoot you,” and then firing on the intruder as he tried to flee. But we don’t know what else the intruder did at this point; did he display a weapon? Was there a disparity of force involved (23 year old intruder, 47 year old homeowner)?

I think there is one thing we can say for sure:

Yazdi remained jailed late Friday in Williamson County on the murder charge and was held on $250,000 bail, jail records show.

Use your gun defensively, and even if it is a good shoot, your life is going to change; probably not for the better. Commvault Bryan and I were talking the other day about having an attorney on “retainer” and the various groups that offer that service for a small monthly fee; I need to get with Karl and get the name of the organization he recommends.

Posted in Books, Clippings, Guns, Movies, Obits, Schadenfreude, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

A little late for this year…

Monday, January 30th, 2012

…but I propose that, next year and every subsequent year, January 20th be celebrated as “National Buy an AK Day“. (The connection between this date and presidential inaugurations is purely coincidental. I am sure Mr. Cube did not plan things this way.)

If you already have an AK, I propose you observe the day by purchasing at least 50 rounds of 7.62 x 39 ammo. Or whatever it takes to feed your AK if you have a variant caliber.

(Hattip: Kottke.)

Posted in Guns | Comments Closed

Rumor control update.

Sunday, January 22nd, 2012

Following up on the previous post:

Scary Yankee Chick was kind enough to leave a comment pointing back to her blog post on the same subject. (Thank you, SYC, and again I apologize for not following you more diligently.)

It looks like Stuff from Hsoi (who I also should be following more diligently) has done some research into this; not only has he not turned up much supporting this rumor, but he’s found a response from the NSCA pretty much debunking it.

At a shoot last June, we and a commissioned officer investigated reports of marked vehicles and found no validity. There was no pattern or consistency among the marks that were identified to us, and we found that all the questionable marks reported to us were left there by manufacturers, tire services, or rental car companies. In fact, most marks were so worn or well covered that they could not have occurred in the parking lot.

We have read that because gun thefts from vehicles are so “rampant” in San Antonio that a police chief met with the 400 shooters at that event to warn them about the problem. That did not happen.

I’m still open to discussion and additional information on this. I also still think being conscious about how you store your guns when traveling and what signals you’re sending to potential thieves is a good idea. But right now, I’m not seeing a whole lot supporting that particular rumor.

(Thanks again, and apologies, to Scary Yankee Chick and Hsoi.)

Posted in Clippings, Guns | 2 Comments »

Holy…goat? Maybe. Kind of. Sort of.

Sunday, January 22nd, 2012

The German Sport Guns folks are putting out some interesting stuff. I’ve been tempted for a while to pick up one of their .22LR MP-5 clones (Mike the Musicologist has been pushing me to do so as well); they’re nice looking guns, I think they’d be a lot of fun to shoot, and I often see them at the gun show for reasonable prices. But I can’t find any practical use for them (other than “they’d be fun to shoot”) and I’ve got enough .22LR guns already, thankyouverymuch.

I do also kind of like the idea of an AK-47 clone in .22LR, but it has less appeal to me than the MP-5 clones. I’d rather have a full-on AK-47. (And that is on my list, just haven’t gotten around to it yet.)

New at the SHOT show, we’ve got the Mexican drug dealer line of guns from GSG: gold-plated AK and MP-5 clones. Yeah. Not on the list, but lord love GSG for trying.

On the other hand, American Tactical Imports (GSG’s US importer) is also going to be importing GSG’s .22LR version of the StG 44. This could be interesting; .22LR is a lot easier to find than 7.92×33mm Kurz, and I do have a certain interest in the StG 44 after reading Pale Horse Coming (in which the Audie Murphy clone uses one to great effect against a guard tower).

Also, if I’m going to be honest with myself, the wooden crate “handmade by a Amish community in New York state” pushes a button, too.

(Hattip: The Firearm Blog on both of these.)

Edited to add: Something occurs to me. You know what ATI/GSG could probably rake in the cash with? A Thompson clone in .22LR, complete with drum magazine. Especially if they sold it (and the drum) at a price that doesn’t make you think it is made out of compressed unicorn tears and ambergris.

However, I’d be willing to bet that the current owners of Auto-Ordnance might not take too kindly to that without some sort of licensing deal. Which I think actually raises an interesting legal question; to what extent is the physical look and design of a firearm protected by law? GSG was, after all, sued by H&K (“you suck and we hate you”) for trade dress infringement, but how long does trade dress protection last? Forever? The Thompson is, after all, an 84 year old gun…

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Law | Comments Closed

Rumor control.

Friday, January 20th, 2012

Before I left work today, my great and good friend Commvault Bryan told me about the latest “urban legend” he’d heard. He was kind enough to email a PDF discussing it; I’m not sure that posting the PDF is okay, but pretty much the same thing can be found on the TexasBowhunter.com forum.

Summarizing, the “urban legend” is that “gang members” are going around to shooting ranges, gun stores, gun shows, and other places where gun owners congregate. Once there, the gang members are marking the cars of gun owners, following their vehicles until they get someplace “safe” (for the gang members), and then breaking in and stealing their guns.

I have not previously heard of this happening, and I’m a little dubious. I could see this being a viable strategy if you were looking for long guns and watching for folks lugging cases; handguns are likely to go with the average gun owner out of the car, so that seems less likely to work.

The PDF and article mention “27 high end shotguns” being stolen from a sporting clays event. I’m not dismissing out of hand that this really happened, but:

  1. If I’m a gang member, I’m not looking for $6,000 Perrazi trap guns. Granted, 00 buck from one of those will still kill you dead, but if I had my druthers, I’d be looking for modern sporting rifles, not skeet guns. (And for those of you saying, “Well, you could sell or pawn the shotguns”, I have a feeling that the circle of people interested in those is a) limited, and 2) likely to know they’re looking at a stolen gun as soon as they pick it up and check the serial number.)
  2. Given the marking they show on the tire, I’m a little dubious that gang members would be able to pick up your vehicle and follow it. It just seems awfully small to keep track of.
  3. I suspect the traffic in the parking lot of most gun shows and ranges is high enough that someone tagging vehicles in this fashion would be noticed, and very probably stopped at gunpoint and held for police.

I’m not ruling this out completely, but it triggers my Snopes sense. Does anyone have any more information or verification on this?

In the meantime, a healthy dose of situational awareness never hurts. (I think Colonel Cooper said that once; if he didn’t, he should have.)

Posted in Clippings, Guns | 3 Comments »

A show of support.

Thursday, January 19th, 2012

Today is the first anniversary of l’affair TJIC.

“Brad in MA” apparently originated the idea of commemorating this date by going out on and purchasing something Second Amendment related, which we think is excellent. Our great and good friend Borepatch elaborated on this idea some more by suggesting folks patronize TJIC’s company, Smartflix, which rents learning DVDs. We also heartily endorse this idea; Smartflix has an amazing selection of firearms related DVDs for rent.

On this day, I encourage you to consider both options. As for myself, I’ve already set up a Smartflix account, specifically as a response to the illegal and unconstitutional actions of the Arlington, MA police, and look forward to a long and pleasant relationship with the company.

I also wanted to make passing note of this tweet by TJIC about the firing of Boston PD officer David Williams for beating a suspect. As the article notes, Williams was previously fired in 1998, and rehired after winning an appeal in 2005.

As it happens, I am currently reading Dick Lehr’s book The Fence: A Police Cover-up Along Boston’s Racial Divide about the previous case involving Williams. In brief, Williams and a group of other BPD officers beat a black man who they thought was a criminal suspect senseless; then, when it turned out he was actually a fellow BPD officer in plainclothes, more or less successfully covered up their actions. The one BPD officer who was actually convicted of a crime was later found to be telling the truth (that he hadn’t seen the beating) and had his conviction overturned.

I’m not far enough into The Fence to feel confident recommending it, but the story of Michael Cox is appalling and deserves to be better known.

Posted in Books, Clippings, Cops, Guns, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

The Journalist’s Guide to Firearms Identification.

Tuesday, January 17th, 2012

There was a bit of a kerfluffle last week. A group of “intruders with assault rifles” robbed a Walmart in the Houston area.

Television station KPRC reported that the assault rifles were AK-47s.

Today, the HouChron is reporting that they caught the alleged robbers. (Actually, the girlfriend of one of them turned them in.) And…

She said the three had a large amount of cash and a long-barrel weapon, which she said they called an “SKS,” records state. According to online information, the SKS is a widely sold copy of the Russian AK-47 assault rifle.

Yeah. Not so much.

(Hattip.)

Posted in Clippings, Guns | Comments Closed

Holy Cow. (Part 3)

Tuesday, January 17th, 2012

Rumor has it that these run for $50,000, so we’re talking lottery territory here. Plus there’s the cost of feeding it .45-70 ammo.

But I want one anyway.

As Sebastian notes, this isn’t technically a machine gun so NFA doesn’t apply. And it would be an awesome weapon for certain stages of Lovecraft action shooting.

(Hattip: The Firearm Blog, by way of Sebastian. I do love the comment there: “I think [Colt’s] marketing strategy is to put a monkey in charge.”)

Edited to add: I can’t directly link to the “Gatling” westerns on Amazon, but here’s the “Jack Slade” page which includes those books.

Posted in Books, Clippings, Guns | 2 Comments »

DEFCON 19 update.

Monday, January 16th, 2012

I have not been able to watch it yet (Vimeo is blocked at work) but video of Deviant Ollam’s “Safe to Armed in Seconds: A Study of Epic Fails of Popular Gun Safes” presentation from DEFCON 19 is up.

You can find the video (along with comments from various folks, including Ollam) at the Everyday, No Days Off blog.

Posted in DEFCON 19, Guns | Comments Closed

It is better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness.

Sunday, January 8th, 2012

(Click to embiggen.)

But it is much better not having to curse the darkness, or be afraid of it, because you have the tools to defend yourself and those you love.

(Smith & Wesson Model 36. Uncle Mike’s Sidekick holster. Safariland speedloader. Federal 110 grain JHP. Spyderco Civilian. Principles Of Personal Defense by Jeff Cooper.)

I’m no Oleg Volk, but I’m actually pretty happy with the way that photo came out. I didn’t use the flash; just the ambient light from the candles, and the normal background light from inside my apartment. This was a relatively long exposure: iPhoto says 1 second at f4.2, using the D40X, the 18-55 mm kit lens that I got with it, and a Dolica AX620B100 tripod. I used iPhoto to crop this photo, but other than that it hasn’t been digitally manipulated in any way.

(Explanation of what’s behind this photo can be found over at Weer’d Beard’s place.)

Posted in Guns, Photography, Politics | Comments Closed

Starbucks control.

Wednesday, January 4th, 2012

Choosy arsonists choose Starbucks Frappucino bottles for their firebombs.

“They are excellent for what you need, because it is a weak-sided bottle with a screw-on cap,” Mr. Barry said. “It is small enough to be concealed in your pocket and it fits in your hand, so you can throw it almost like a Nerf football. It’s a small projectile you can get a good grip on and you can toss it.”

(See also: this thread on gasoline violence over at Weer’d’s place.)

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Politics | 1 Comment »

A small rant.

Monday, January 2nd, 2012

If you apply for a concealed handgun license in the great state of Texas, you can do most of the work online. You still have to take a class, and you still have to submit certain things (certificate of class completion, fingerprints, photo) offline for understandable reasons, but most of the process can be done online.

So why in the name of all that is holy is it impossible for me to do a DBA search and file for an assumed name online? No, I’ve got to take time off work and go down to the county office. Or apparently, I can pay someone $99 to do this for me. No, I can’t even mail this s–t in.

(My amazing psychic powers tell me that Lawrence is going to come back with a one word answer: “Money.”)

You folks in other states: can you file DBAs online, or do you have to physically trek down to some county office?

(Ha. I clicked on a link I found at another site: “The Official Website of The Commonwealth of Massachusetts: Forming a Business, Step-by-Step”. Yeah, that would be a 404 error. Is this what we call “ironic”?)

Posted in Guns, Politics | Comments Closed

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