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Category: All About Guns
Last Monday, President Biden told a meeting of the National Governors Association that his administration was working hard to figure out why a flood of illegal aliens is coming to America.
He said, “I think one of the fundamental things we’ve got to do in addition to some of the changes we’ll make, which we won’t get into it today, is that if we figure out why they’re leaving in the first place.” It apparently never occurs to him (or his handlers) that he created the border crisis by opening our southern border and stopping construction of former President Trump’s border fence.
On Thursday, Biden met with New York’s new mayor, Eric Adams, and spoke about the ways to get the huge surge in crime around the nation under control. Biden spoke a lot of nonsense about background checks for gun purchases and such, which we’ll get to in a minute.
What Biden ignored is far more important than what he prescribed for controlling crime. He totally ignored the fact that the rise in violent crime in the United States is entirely due to the fact that liberal policies — gleefully administered by liberal governors and mayors — is the reason crime is skyrocketing in America.
Biden’s prescriptions for reducing crime are the same gun control nonsense that liberals have pushed for decades.
He should have listened to Dominique Luzuriaga before he spoke.
Ms. Luzuriaga is the widow of New York policeman Jason Rivera who, with his partner, Wilbert Mora, was murdered while answering a domestic disturbance call on January 21 by a career criminal using a Glock handgun. Ms. Luzuriaga spoke at Rivera’s funeral. What she said was the bitter truth that liberals refuse to face. She spoke to and on behalf of her husband when she said, “The system continues to fail us. We are not safe anymore. Not even the members of the service…. I know you were tired of these laws, especially the ones from the new DA. I hope he’s watching you speak through me right now. I’m sure all of our blue family is tired too. But I promise, we promise, that your death won’t be in vain.”
The point she made is simple and compelling. If the cops aren’t safe, neither is anyone else, and the cause is the way liberal prosecutors are failing to do their jobs. Alvin Bragg, New York’s new DA, was in the audience when she spoke.
According to the Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ), murder rates increased by 5 percent in 2021 over 2020 and by 44 percent over 2019. The number of cops on the street is less relevant to that increase than the liberal/progressive policies that are turning arrested criminals loose rather than keeping them in jail.
The CCJ study found an increase of, on average, 218 murders in twenty-two major cities including Atlanta, Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Memphis, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. Twelve cities recorded their highest-ever number of murders.
Murder rates had been dropping in those cities since the 1990s. What happened to cause the sudden increase?
What happened was that major cities, such as New York, have instituted cashless bail which has resulted in more criminals — including violent criminals — being put back on the streets instead of keeping them in jail. In some cities, thieves looting stores are not even arrested. Attacks on citizens and police officers are a real pandemic.
Liberal prosecutors have been reducing or dismissing charges that should be brought to trial. Some cities and states have cut appropriations for their police forces. Former New York mayor Bill de Blasio cut about $6 billion from the NYPD budget and disbanded a special anti-crime unit.
Across the country, defunding the police has been accompanied by liberal prosecutors refusing to charge criminals at all or reducing their charges to be more lenient. Again, this results in more criminals being on the street. Philadelphia’s DA, Larry Krasner, does this regularly. So do San Francisco’s Chesa Boudin, Los Angeles’s George Gascon, and Manhattan’s Alvin Bragg.
Biden is making matters worse by preventing the deportation of violent criminals unless they have been convicted of the most serious crimes.
Biden’s prescriptions for reducing crime are the same gun control nonsense that liberals have pushed for decades.
Biden called for “universal” background checks, a crackdown on “ghost guns,” and repeal of gun manufacturers’ immunity from product liability lawsuits.
Background checks — those that prevent the sale of guns to criminals — are already almost “universal” because every licensed gun dealer has to do those checks before making a sale. There are no background checks on the inheritance or gift of guns.
The fact remains that most guns used in crimes are either stolen or sold illegally. The Glock .45 used by Lashawn McNeil to murder NYPD officers Jason Rivera and Wilbert Mora was reportedly stolen in Baltimore two years ago.
“Ghost guns” are bought in parts, at least some of which require skilled machining before they are usable in a functioning firearm. Such machining is beyond the skill of most criminals.
Those guns lack federally required serial numbers because individual parts, sometimes sold in kits, are not serial number-stamped by manufacturers. Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego have made them illegal. An NBC Bay Area News report said that 24,000 non-serialized firearms were recovered by law enforcement from “potential crime scenes” from 2016 to 2020.
Any 7-Eleven, liquor store, or private home is a potential crime scene, not an actual crime scene until a crime is committed. The report is nonsensical and so is Biden’s call for a crackdown on “ghost guns,” which is already being done by federal, state, and local law enforcement.
So is Biden’s call for repeal of the gun industry’s immunity from product liability lawsuits. He said they are the only industry that has such immunity, conveniently forgetting others such as the manufacturers — Pfizer, Moderna, and others — of COVID vaccines.
If the gun industry were liable for misuse of their products, there would be thousands of lawsuits by states, cities, and victims of crimes. Trials would produce billions in liability for the manufacturers which would, quickly, result in the end of gun manufacturing in the United States. That would suit liberals just fine.
Biden also called for a ban on “assault weapons,” and large magazines such as the forty-round magazine used in a Glock pistol to kill the two New York cops. He had helped shepherd the original 1994 ban through the Senate (which expired in 2004) and strongly advocates its renewal.
The original “assault weapons” ban prohibited the manufacture and sale of various guns based on their configuration (vertical pistol grips, bayonet mounts, etc.), similarly-styled pistols, and that of high-capacity magazines defined as those which can hold more than ten cartridges.
There is no real evidence that the “assault weapons” ban had any effect on mass murders (which are variously defined as ones which kill three or four or more people). A 2004 Justice Department report found that the ban’s “effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.”
The AR-15 style rifle is the most popular rifle sold in America. There are at least twenty million in the hands of American hunters and target shooters. High-capacity magazines in Americans’ hands number about 130 million.
Another ban on “assault weapons” and high-capacity magazines wouldn’t prevent crimes with that many already in Americans’ hands. The only alternative would be a ban that not only banned their sale but also banned their possession and included a confiscation of “assault weapons” and high-capacity magazines.
The three-decade old California ban on the sale of “assault weapons” was held unconstitutional by a federal judge in June 2021 and is on appeal through the Ninth Circus, which will probably rule that it is constitutional, destining the case for Supreme Court decision. Any confiscation law — federal or state — would obviously violate the Second Amendment.
Biden may be thinking about confiscation of “assault weapons” and high-capacity magazines. One government agency is collecting data to support such a move.
According to various reports, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) has compiled nearly one billion records of gun sales to Americans in its “Out of Business” records center. That obviously includes firearm sales that are not included in the various definitions of “assault weapons” that Biden wants to ban again.
The government requires that licensed gun dealers keep records of their sales for twenty years, but the government is prohibited by law from keeping and compiling such records in “any central repository.” But that’s exactly what ATF is doing.
Speaking of the Second Amendment, Biden claimed that no one’s Second Amendment rights would be affected by what he proposed, adding that “there’s no amendment that’s absolute.” In other words, Biden was saying that he is willing to violate the Second Amendment in any way he can get away with.
Nothing Biden proposes will reduce violent crime in any way. What is needed is for liberal prosecutors to stop reducing or dismissing charges against criminals who perpetrate gun crimes and to keep those perps in jail where they belong.
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S&W Model 686-1
I sure would not want to bet my life on it if I was in a fight. But I guess that something is always better than just your bare hands! Grumpy
The battle rages on between point shooters and those who rely on sighted fire. Is there a true winner in that contest? What are the pros and cons of each and which parts of each, if any, are utilized by professional lead slingers who carry a gun for food?
Spanning from the late 1500s through the early 1800s, pistols were predominantly manufactured without sights. Even by the turn of the 19th Century you might have seen a front sight on a pistol such as the Colt Model 1873. However, it was later that both front and rear sight became the manufacturing standard. In essence, it can be said that at inception, there was only point shooting and that it lasted for the better part of 300 years.
Some would argue that even after the advent of sights and throughout the 1800s, using of “horse pistols” and “hip shooting,” one could extend that timeline through both world wars where point shooting can be found in U.S. Army training manuals (circa early 1900s), on up to the early 1970s when the FBI was still teaching hip shooting.
The term “point shooting” infers that, like taking your index finger and pointing it at an object across the room, you simply grasp the pistol and using only your body—not your eyes—aim and keep the gun oriented to the target throughout the firing process. You may have heard of other equivalent terms to point shooting such as “intuitive” or “instinctive” shooting which relate to this concept of pointing your index finger.
An argument that rages on to this day throughout both the defensive and competitive shooting communities is the comparison of point shooting (firing without using sights) versus shooting with the usage of sights.
The defensive shooting community claims its point-shooting roots from the days of lawmen like Wyatt Earp through the FBI’s legendary sharpshooter Jelly Bryce and distinguished sharpshooters such as British Royal Marine (and police officer) William Ewart Fairbairn, American military (and OSS) officer Rex Applegate, British soldier and firearms expert Eric Anthony Sykes, American lawman William “Bill” Henry Jordan (USMC), and others. One also cannot argue the efficacy of point shooting without mentioning the likes of 18-time world record holder Robert “Bob” Munden, Jr., who was well known in the shooting sport of Fast Draw as an ardent point shooter.
The two sides of the argument are based on the result of shooting performance—that is the measurement of accuracy and speed. The point shooting side of the argument claims that drawing the gun and using only your body for alignment reduces the number of steps needed to orient the pistol with your intended target and therefore reduces the amount of time required to break the shot.
The sighted fire side of the argument claims that without sighted fire for more technical shots—such as when greater distances come into play, reduced target area like hostage rescue (defensive shooting), moving targets or when the penalty for missing is very high—that the odds on missing with point shooting alone are arguably increased.
Rather than spend valuable time arguing one side or the other, I’ll ask a different question: How can we take the best that both sides have to offer and use it to become a better shooter?
Regardless of which side of the argument you may stand upon, presenting the handgun (drawing) is performed with your strong hand only. Up to and including the moment just before bringing the sights up to your line of sight, you are essentially pointing the gun in the direction of the target, or point shooting. It’s only if you add the steps of bringing the sights up to your line of sight and utilize them to refine your target alignment are you verifying your alignment with the sights or using sighted fire.
One of the arguments in favor of point shooting is that point shooting is faster. Standing at arms’ length or at 3, 5 or 7 yards, depending upon the shooter’s skill level, even 10 yards from the target, ripping it out of the holster with strong hand only and aligning the muzzle with the target is always faster than the added mechanical steps of bringing both hands together and making a secondary alignment. You can run this on a shot timer and compare the difference.
The advantages of point shooting are speed and accuracy up close at or under 7 yards (21 feet), which according to national statistics is where most gunfights occur. Whether using sighted fire or point shooting distance favors the trained.
Another argument for point shooting is that you can keep your eyes on the target without the need to shift your focal plain back to the front sight. With the advent of carry optics this is no longer the case, but still a valid point when referencing use of iron sights.
Modern competitive shooters of the Master and Grandmaster ranking (very skilled shooters) claim that they use both point shooting and sighted fire as both are part of the modern shooting process.
Former law enforcement officer and competitive shooter Ron Avery referred to the initial part of the handgun presentation (greater than 50 percent) as “kinesthetic alignment” followed by “Grip Force Vectors” which then adds stability.
Twenty-six-time world champion competitive shooter Rob Leatham refers to shooting well as 70 percent “by feel” (allow your body to teach you what it takes to make alignment) and 30 percent visual (eyes verify alignment) with emphasis on the motor skills of fire control such as grip, hold and trigger press.
Looking at it purely from a mechanical perspective, regardless of shooting camp (defensive or competitive), from the time you present the firearm to the time it is aligned using your body only, could be considered point shooting. Should you decide to use the back of the slide after that initial span, your carry optic window, or the actual sights themselves, then it could be considered sighted fire. You cannot use sighted fire until you’ve cleared the holster, have pointed the muzzle toward the target and then raised the sights up into your field of vision.
Instead of looking at it as two sides of a separate argument, what if you were to further develop your shooting skills by learning how to make better alignment by feel (allow your body to teach you) and then if needed—based on technicality of the shot—utilize additional muzzle-target orientation refinement?
The purpose of shooting is to hit the intended target. To shoot well is to hit the target with optimal control resulting in a measurable balance of speed and accuracy. Whether you accomplish this task using point shooting, sighted fire, or a combination of the two is not a matter of argument, but a matter of practical application.