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Month: October 2024
Two guys were allegedly involved in robbing this credit union, while the White House was pushing a gun control measure that didn’t discuss crime prevention or holding criminals accountable.
Every story has a beginning, and this one involves the place where my family does its banking, the Sno Falls Credit Union in beautiful downtown scenic North Bend, Washington, where — on the afternoon of Jan. 26 —a pair of goofballs decided to rob the place.
This credit union was founded by my late mother-in-law and her long-deceased husband about 67 years ago, so there’s something of a personal angle to this story.
The two suspects were evidently determined, according to a statement by police on their Facebook page. The perp who actually went inside passed a note to a teller “stating he was armed with a gun and would kill everyone in the credit union and himself before police arrived,” the police statement said. That’s not just an “implied threat” of violence, which is normally associated with any kind of robbery note, but a real right-down-to-it promise of massive lethal violence. You betcha the tellers complied while hitting the silent alarm, and by the time police arrived within a couple of minutes, this guy was running to the getaway car, hopping in and fleeing the scene with his wheelman.
Not that it matters much, but a fair number of local residents have guns. I know this because a lot of them belong to the same gun club where I once served as president. While it is highly unlikely there might ever be a confrontation between any of them and an outlaw, anytime a holdup occurs in such a community, I’m reminded of the events of Oct. 5, 1892 in Coffeyville, Kansas, involving the infamous Dalton Gang, or the much earlier fireworks in Northfield, Minnesota on Sept. 7, 1876, in which the starring cast included Frank and Jesse James, the Younger brothers, plus Clell Miller, Charlie Pitts and Bill Chadwell.
Besides, the community has a fairly strong presence of state troopers who patrol Interstate 90, the city is served by the Snoqualmie Police Department and at any given moment, there may be two or three King County sheriff’s deputies in the neighborhood. There are only three ways out: east or west on I-90 or northwest on Highway 202. If I wanted to pull a holdup, this place would not be my first, second or even third choice.
The White House Plan
Coincidentally, one day before this caper unfolded, the Biden White House announced “new executive actions to help promote safe storage of firearms … to reduce gun violence and make our communities safer.” Right up front, the White House statement asserted, “Gun violence is the leading cause of death of children in America.” The irony of that comment will become clear as you finish reading.
This 1,254-word announcement offered details such as “76% of school shootings are committed with guns from the home.” (It overlooks the fact that 100% of school shootings occur in so-called “gun-free zones.”)
The White House notes how the federal “Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) reported that from 2017 to 2021, local law enforcement reported 770,642 private theft incidents involving 1,026,538 firearms. A rising trend has been firearms stolen from unattended motor vehicles.” It doesn’t mention that law-abiding citizens are often compelled to leave their guns in their vehicles because of “sensitive places” laws which prevent them from entering certain places with lawfully-concealed defensive firearms. There is also no acknowledgment that smash-and-grab after-hours gun store thefts account for quite a few stolen guns.
Buried about halfway through the Biden announcement is this revealing observation: “Local leaders, like school officials, community and faith leaders, and law enforcement can be trusted, credible messengers when it comes to providing guidance on gun violence prevention and safe firearm storage options.” Translation: The administration wants to use these local officials and leaders to spread Joe Biden’s gun control agenda, apparently because they are trusted in their local communities.
The Biden administration is apparently keener on so-called
“safe storage” than in going after criminals who misuse guns.
Biden’s Bullet Points
Here is more of the administration’s plan, which a lot of readers may not have heard about from the establishment media, with bullet points to emphasize their apparent importance to the White House scheme:
• The U.S. Department of Education will take new action on safe firearm storage by sending a letter to school principals across the country explaining the importance of safe storage and encouraging them to communicate with parents, families, caregivers, and the broader community about how safe storage can protect students in school and in their communities.
• The U.S. Department of Education will also issue a new communications template that principals and school leaders can use to engage with parents and families about the importance of safe firearm storage, and encourage more people to take preventive action by safely storing firearms.
• The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) will release a guide to safe storage of firearms in order to provide subject matter expertise on different types of storage devices and best practices for safely storing firearms. This is the most comprehensive guide on safe storage ever released by the federal government.
There is more, and some of it is actually laudable, such as efforts to prevent veteran suicide, and at least make some attempt to stem substance abuse, and address the mental health crisis. Even Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, has championed a pilot project in Washington State aimed at suicide prevention, for which he has received very little media recognition.
What Isn’t There
The administration has “urged states to enact and implement strong laws requiring firearms owners to safely store their firearms in their homes and vehicles. The laws should impose a clear standard to penalize those who do not safely store their weapons and whose weapons end up being used for violence.” However, there isn’t any mention of prosecuting and locking up criminals who actually misuse those guns.
You won’t find any reference to jailing and sentencing recidivist offenders to long stretches in the Gray Bar Hotel. There is nothing about deterring criminal activity. Apparently, the administration thinks it will be more effective to criminalize being the victim of a residential burglary or car prowl rather than jailing the miscreants who steal all of those firearms.
The White House says this project will save lives. It sounds like one more social experiment which puts more blame on honest gun owners than on criminals who ignore safe storage laws like they disregard any other gun control law.
And this brings us back around to the two guys who robbed the credit union
Snoqualmie Police quickly responded to the robbery and chased the perps down Interstate 90 toward Seattle. When they caught the suspects, they discovered both were 15-year-olds, and one had a criminal record.
End of the Road
Once the two suspects headed west on I-90 toward Seattle, with police and sheriff’s deputies in hot pursuit, their getaway didn’t get far. As the saying goes, “You can’t outrun Motorola.”
They hit another car when they tried to use an off-ramp as they passed through Bellevue and quickly got back on the freeway only to be stopped cold about two miles later by the Washington State Patrol, which pulled a PIT (Pursuit Intervention Technique) maneuver to bring their flight to an end. Fortunately, nobody was injured.
The wrap to this story is something out of a bad movie script. The perps in this case were both 15-year-olds, meaning they weren’t old enough to legally drive.
One of the two already had a criminal record, having been convicted of second-degree robbery. They were in a stolen car, taken earlier in the day, from a community several miles to the south.
Their entire grab came to a pitiful $10. They just swapped the rest of their lives for five bucks apiece because no matter where they go or what they do from now on, the events of Jan. 26 will be with them forever.
Had the stars been poorly aligned, one or both of these teens could have been hurt or killed, either by gunshot or in a crash.
Perhaps some bright bulb at the White House can explain how another gun control scheme, ostensibly about safe gun storage, will prevent minors like these kids, who should have been in school and planning a weekend instead of making stupid life choices.
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Mauser 8mm 1941 K98
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Mosin Nagant’s still a good deal
It was honestly the best time of my life. We were pretty much broke, and med school kept me sinfully busy. However, the kids were young, and life was pure. The children are all grown now, and I do miss them so. But I cherish memories of shooting a rimfire single action revolver together.
The Colt Frontier Scout Rimfire Single Action Revolver
My son was maybe 10, and he had a little money saved up from birthdays and Christmas. I had a Ruger Single Six pistol I could live without. The Single Six was a great shooter, but with its adjustable sights and convertible cylinder, it didn’t exactly look the part of the classic Western sixgun. Thusly equipped, my son and I struck out for the local gun show looking for trouble.
The Colt Frontier Scout was well-used but equally well-cared for. It sat among dozens of other pre-owned handguns on a table helmed by a local gun nerd. My son and I studied it closely and retired to the corner of the show to scheme.
Once we had an accord, we approached the gent about doing a deal. At the end of the day, my Ruger and a little bit of my son’s cash made the nifty little Colt ours. Back at the house, we pawed over it. The next free weekend, we took it out to the rural farm for a test drive. The end result was some of the finest memories a guy could ever want.
The Origins
Sam Colt was the only show in town for the first few years of the 19th Century revolver revolution. His radical designs were patented, and he defended those patents with near-religious zeal. While Colonel Sam was the consummate marketer and a comparably adroit showman, he was also a bit conceited.
When one of his machinists named Rollin White approached him about equipping a Colt revolver with a bored-through cylinder to accept metallic cartridges, Old Sam sent him on his way with remonstrations. He believed the Colt revolver was perfect and in no need of an upgrade.
White took a pair of Colt cap and ball cylinders that had been rejected from the production line, cut off the ends, and welded them together. The shooting version took a bit more effort, but the spark of genius was clearly there.
After Colonel Colt gave White his walking papers, the young man took his idea to Horace Smith and Daniel Wesson. Sam Colt’s narcissism set his revolver production back more than a decade.
Finally, in 1869, the Rollin White patent expired, and Colt was free to maneuver. Sam put his two most accomplished gun designers, Charles Brinckerhoff and William Mason, to work designing a new cartridge-fed revolver for the Army pistol trials of 1872.
The first production gun rolled off the line in 1873 as the “New Model Army Metallic Cartridge Revolving Pistol.”
Serial number 1 was thought lost forever until it turned up in a barn in Nashua, New Hampshire, soon after the turn of the century.
The M1873 – Colt Single Action Army
The gun was called the M1873 or the Colt Single Action Army revolver. However, in 1874 a Colt distributor named Benjamin Kittridge in Cincinnati coined the term “Peacemaker” as a marketing ploy. The end result became an integral part of Americana. The Peacemaker went on sale to American civilians two months after the revolver trials.
Those first Peacemakers were chambered for the .45 Long Colt cartridge. This straight-walled, rimmed round was immensely powerful by the standards of the day. Pushing a 255-grain hard lead bullet atop a charge of 40 grains of finely-ground black powder, the .45 LC became a recognized manstopper.
The Single Action Army handily took the Army revolver trials and served until 1892, when it was supplanted by the .38-caliber Colt M1892.
Architecture
The Single Action Army revolver was available with barrel lengths ranging from 4.75 through 7.5 inches in at least five major chamberings. However, there’s something weird about the basic Colt revolver design. That graceful arching grip has no finger grooves or stippling yet still seems to fit the human form better than any Information Age plastic pistol.
The massive hammer looks like it would catch on absolutely everything, yet it doesn’t. Thumbing the hammer back manually on the draw is a natural exercise. If you do this slowly, you can discern four distinct clicks. The inimitable sound it makes when done quickly has launched many a Hollywood career.
The hammer includes the firing pin as an integral component. While it was likely safe to carry the gun with the hammer down over a loaded chamber, most sensible gunmen didn’t. You could keep a handy dollar bill rolled tightly and stuffed into the cylinder or just leave it empty. If the tactical situation allowed, the astute shootist could drop one last round in place before stepping out into the street for a showdown.
The sights consist of a generous front blade that corresponds to a groove cut into the top strap. There is a loading gate on the right side of the gun. To load or unload the weapon, you place the hammer at half cock, open the gate and cycle the cylinder by hand.
The manual ejector is spring-loaded and rides underneath the barrel. Running the gun seems a bit tedious by modern standards. However, it was lightyears ahead of the same exercise undertaken with a cap-and-ball revolver back in the day.
A Manageable Round
Recoil in .45 Long Colt is present without being unpleasant, and every copy I have ever fired shot straight and true. On several occasions, I had my kids’ college buddies out to shoot machine guns.
Invariably at the end of the day, the stutterguns would fall silent while the kids would burn through whatever .45 LC ammo I had handy for my Italian Uberti Peacemaker replica.
Even if you load your own, .45 LC is a big, heavy cartridge that is component intensive. Factory ammo cost a fortune even before the recent ammo drought. Back in 1957, Colt found the answer to mitigate the costs of running the gun.
Frontier Scout
Ruger introduced the .22-caliber Single-Six in 1953. With Western movies occupying every theater in the country, Colt realized that a rimfire version of the classic Peacemaker would reach an untapped market. In 1957, they launched the Colt Frontier Scout with a price of $49.50. That’s about $456 in today’s money.
Those early Frontier Scouts featured a lightweight aluminum die-cast frame with a one-piece backstrap and triggerguard. The remainder of the pistol was blued steel. Colt called the combination their “duo-tone finish.” The grips were black synthetic. The barrels were cut on the same machinery used on the venerable Python, so performance was outstanding.
Unlike the original centerfire Colt Peacemaker, the Frontier Scout used a transfer bar action for added safety. Various combinations of finishes, grips, and frame materials came and went until 1986, when production was discontinued. Commemorative versions included two-cylinder .22 Magnum variants as well as a 9.5-inch barrel Buntline pistol.
Our Frontier Scout rolled off the lines in 1968 and features a blued finish and walnut stocks. When appreciated alongside my recent production Colt Peacemaker in .45 LC, the family resemblance is obvious. The 1968-era workmanship is flawless, and the gun offers the same inimitable aura in a package that is much cheaper to run.
Trigger Time
While I have myself never tried heroin, I suspect it is just a little bit like this. You can retire to your favorite shooting spot with the Colt Frontier Scout and a brick of .22 bullets and shoot stuff until hunger draws you home.
In fact, it is simply breathtaking to appreciate the pile of empty cases that remain after an afternoon at the range with this thing. Recoil is non-existent, and the gun shoots unnaturally straight. Additionally, it rides in the same holster rig that typically carries my centerfire version. In short, it offers most all of the cool at a fraction of the price.
My son and I whiled away countless hours ventilating disused beverage cans with our jointly owned Frontier Scout. Now nearly two decades after its acquisition, the gun is waiting on my son to settle someplace long enough to take it home.
I am a bit better financed these days and may scrounge up another copy for myself. It is a tangible connection to some simply delightful times.
Ruger Wrangler
The Colt Frontier Scout has been out of production for some thirty-five years. Vintage copies can be found at places like GunBroker, but they are typically fairly tired. With guns that are in decent shape prices seem to range from $600 to around a grand.
Up until recently, the American shooter looking for a top-flight rimfire Peacemaker at a good price was just out of luck. However, in April 2019, Ruger offered up the solution.
The Ruger Wrangler is a current-production facsimile of the classic Colt Peacemaker offered at a very reasonable price. Ruger makes extensive use of zinc and aluminum castings for the Wrangler to help keep costs low.
The gun features a 4.6-inch barrel and comes in 12 different colors. They include—I’m not making this up—one that is called “Crushed Orchid.” The MSRP is a paltry $250. I found mine on special via an online venue NIB at substantially less than that.
The Wrangler uses a transfer bar ignition system and some metal injection-molded internal parts. However, given the piddly recoil impulse of the .22 rimfire cartridge, the gun should still outlive your grandchildren.
The final MSRP is less than half that of the corresponding Single-Six, and the Wrangler is more fun than a barrel of monkeys. It is the Peacemaker simulator for the Information Age.
The five-member Okeechobee, Florida city council and Police Chief Donald Hagan may each be forced to pay $5,000 personally – without using taxpayer dollars – for violating Florida’s powerful preemption statute, which only allows the state legislature to regulate firearms.
As previously reported, the city adopted an illegal ordinance shortly before Hurricane Helene made landfall, which banned the sale of guns and ammunition and prohibited firearm possession in public by anyone other than law enforcement or members of the military.
After learning of the civil rights violation, Florida Carry, Inc. sent a demand letter titled Written Notice of Preemption Violation and Offer of Settlement, to the city council and Chief Hagan, warning the recipients they have violated Florida’s preemption statute.
The letter, which was written by Florida Carry, Inc. General Counsel Eric J. Friday, spelled out that the pro-gun group has sufficient standing to bring a lawsuit if the ordinance is not repealed within 30 days, and demanded the payment of $30,000 in damages and attorneys’ fees to “resolve this matter prior to initiation of litigation.”
Okeechobee City Attorney John J. Fumero, in a response sent Wednesday, claimed that the city’s Second Amendment violation was merely an “inadvertent mistake in using an outdated emergency ordinance form that, legally and factually, did not apply to the circumstances at hand regarding Hurricane Helene.”
Besides. Fumero wrote, no one ever enforced the illegal ordinance.
“At no time did the City, or the Police Chief, contemplate, nor take any action, to prohibit, confiscate or otherwise regulate firearms or ammunition in any fashion or manner. This was never the intention of the City. This was never implemented by the City. Moreover, to ensure this never happens again, the City has developed and implemented a new emergency ordinance form and process,” the city attorney wrote.
Fumero’s boss, Okeechobee Mayor Dowling R. Watford, Jr. and police spokesman Detective Jarret Romanello, gave numerous interviews to local media claiming city officials were reviewing the entire incident to determine how the “mistake” occurred. Romanello also claimed he looked forward to “providing more answers as soon as the review is complete.”
In his response, Fumero also balked at Florida Carry’s monetary demand.
“We see no legal, factual or public policy basis for your organization demanding payment of taxpayer dollars to satisfy your assertion of ‘damages and attorneys’ fees. The City is a rural small town that fundamentally believes in gun rights and the Second Amendment. From any standpoint, for Florida Carry, Inc. to take legal action against the City, under the circumstances described herein, is patently inappropriate and unjustified,” he wrote.
In an email reply to Fumero, Friday advised the city attorney to re-read Florida statute Sec. 790.33, which does not require actual enforcement of a preemption violation, since enactment itself is enough to prove liability.
“Inadvertence and ignorance of the law by government is no more of an excuse for violating civil rights than when a citizen ‘inadvertently’ violates the law and is arrested and prosecuted,” Friday wrote. “I will begin drafting my Complaint seeking relief, including personal fines against the city officials under whose jurisdiction this knowing and willful enactment occurred. You may want to inform the relevant officials that they are not allowed to use tax dollars to defend themselves from such liability, and that any fine assessed will be personally payable by them, to alleviate your concerns about tax dollars.
Lee Williams is a board member of Florida Carry, Inc.
This story is presented by the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project and wouldn’t be possible without you. Please click here to make a tax-deductible donation to support more pro-gun stories like this.
About Lee Williams
Lee Williams, who is also known as “The Gun Writer,” is the chief editor of the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project. Until recently, he was also an editor for a daily newspaper in Florida. Before becoming an editor, Lee was an investigative reporter at newspapers in three states and a U.S. Territory. Before becoming a journalist, he worked as a police officer. Before becoming a cop, Lee served in the Army. He’s earned more than a dozen national journalism awards as a reporter, and three medals of valor as a cop. Lee is an avid tactical shooter.
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