Category: Born again Cynic!
While the right to keep and bear arms is a right recognized by the Second Amendment, it’s not a right all will choose to exercise. Despite the recent wave of interest in Second Amendment, self-defense, and guns as a means toward the protection of life, many are still on the fence as to whether to become a gun owner. Not sure if you’re ready? Here are some ways to determine whether gun ownership is right for you.
The answer is “no” if you simply cannot or will not be comfortable owning a gun. But let’s explore why that’s currently the case. Your reluctance is due to something: maybe the result of limited experience with guns; a bad experience with guns; the complexity of paperwork and/or gear required to purchase, own, or carry a gun; or the myriad negative media reports about guns.
Limited experience with guns?
It’s okay to admit you have limited experience with guns. At some point, we all were in that condition. But a gun is only as dangerous as the person handling it. In other words, proper training and professionally-guided introductory experiences can bring a level of understanding and comfort to gun ownership and use.
Bad experience with guns?
A bad experience with, well, anything certainly can affect your view of and approach to it, and understandably so. But one way to overcome the anxiety of a bad experience is to replace it with a healthy experience. Also, a bad experience with a gun usually requires someone breaking one of the rules of gun safety or breaking the law. This doesn’t detract from the difficulty of the experience but there may be some comfort in knowing and appreciating that bad experiences are the exception, not the rule.
Complexity of purchase, ownership, carry?
Background checks, permits to purchase, and long-form applications add significant complexity to gun purchases—and these can vary from state to state. Add the sometimes conflicting laws or statutes about gun storage, transport, and private sales and the level of complexity just goes up.
Finally, buying a gun usually includes needing a secure means of storage or transport, a wide range of ammunition choices, cleaning gear, and on and on. These things may seem to make gun ownership so complex that it just doesn’t seem worth it. But it’s not insurmountable. Yes, it requires care and yes it is complex. But lots of resources exist to help navigate all of these things.
Myriad negative media reports?
Anecdotally, people often say they can’t read the news without reading about another shooting. The key here is simply to make sure you are getting a truly balanced reporting of gun news. Moreover, your responsible ownership and safe use of a gun actually contribute to a safer society. Do a bit of research on gun ownership in the U.S., the number of firearms-related accidents and/or crime, and make some sound judgments about what is actually the problem. And consider how you can be a part of the solution!
Ready to Buy?
Let’s say you’re ready to buy your first gun—a handgun you intend to keep in your home for basic self-defense. You don’t intend to carry it concealed (at least not yet) but want something reliable, simple to use, and affordable. A great first gun that meets these criteria would a revolver chambered in .38 Special.
Reliable. Depending on the manufacturer, revolvers are some of the most reliable handguns made. Yep, they look “old school” and yet they’ve been around for a long time; and reliability is one of the main reasons for that. Compared to other handguns, they also require minimal care and cleaning to maintain peak operating capability.
Simple to Use. While virtually all police and military handguns are auto-loading pistols, these types of guns are also more complex to operate. They require additional skills for managing magazines and reloading, slide functions and clearing, and some may have external safeties to contend with. All skills that can be practiced and mastered, yes. Just more complex. If simplicity is your goal, it’s hard to beat a revolver. To shoot a loaded double action revolver, just squeeze the trigger. To keep shooting, just keep squeezing. Don’t want it to fire? Don’t put your finger on the trigger.
Affordable. You can find used revolvers in excellent condition at your local gun stores or on GunsAmerica. Also, .38 Special target ammunition is relatively inexpensive. And since a revolver likely holds five or six rounds (some hold seven or even eight), requiring you to stop and reload, you can stretch your time on the range.
A couple other notes about that first handgun: Revolvers have varying barrel lengths. A three- or four-inch barrel is a good compromise between a six inch or longer barrel (more suitable for hunting or target shooting) and a two inch or snub-nosed barrel (more suitable for concealed carry).
You’ll get very good accuracy from a four-inch barreled revolver if you do your part in aiming. Revolvers also come in a variety of calibers. .38 Special is a good medium-duty cartridge. If it’s too much for you to handle, you can downsize to lesser rounds. The key is to find a caliber you can shoot very well and most people can handle the .38.
____________________________________ Or maybe be just maybe you should just leave your friends out of it? In that they are within their rights to be left alone. Grumpy
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Good question!
What a waste of some good looking Hot Links is all I can say! Grumpy
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False Flag Information
Noncompliance Kneecaps New Zealand’s Gun Control Scheme
As of last week, only around 700 weapons had been turned over.
(Kyodo/Newscom)
Once again, responding to a horrendous crime by inflicting knee-jerk, authoritarian restrictions on innocent people proves to be an ineffective means of convincing people to obey.
Specifically, New Zealand’s government—which also stepped up censorship and domestic surveillance after bloody attacks on two Christchurch mosques earlier this year—is running into stiff resistance to new gun rules from firearms owners who are slow to surrender now-prohibited weapons and will probably never turn them in.
Specifically, New Zealand’s government—which also stepped up censorship and domestic surveillance after bloody attacks on two Christchurch mosques earlier this year—is running into stiff resistance to new gun rules from firearms owners who are slow to surrender now-prohibited weapons and will probably never turn them in.
Officials should have seen it coming.
“Police are anticipating a number of people with banned firearms in their possession won’t surrender them,” Stuff reported at the end of May, based on internal government documents.
As of last week, only around 700 weapons had been turned over. There are an estimated 1.5 million guns—with an unknown number subject to the new prohibition on semiautomatic firearms—in the country overall.
Traditionally relaxed in its approach to firearms regulation, and enjoying a low crime rate, New Zealand has no firearms registration rule. That means authorities have no easy way of knowing what guns are in circulation or who owns them.
“These weapons are unlikely to be confiscated by police because they don’t know of their existence,” Philippa Yasbek of Gun Control NZ admitted. “These will become black-market weapons if their owners choose not to comply with the law and become criminals instead.”
Yasbek’s organization advocates registering all guns in private hands. But that won’t help with gathering guns already in the possession of owners appalled by the government’s attack on the rights of innocent people—government attacks, it’s worth noting, that come in response to the crimes of one man who explicitly anticipated just such a response.
“I chose firearms for the affect it would have on social discourse,” the killer wrote in a document he released to explain his crimes. “The gun owners of New Zealand are a beaten, miserable bunch of baby boomers, who have long since given up the fight. When was the last time they won increased rights? Their loss was inevitable. I just accelerated things a bit.”
Politicians fulfilled the murderer’s predictions with panic-driven legislation.
That gun owners would, in large numbers, defy restrictions should have been anticipated by anybody who knows the history of government attempts to disarm their subjects—or who just glanced across the Tasman Sea to Australia.
“In Australia it is estimated that only about 20% of all banned self-loading rifles have been given up to the authorities,” wrote Franz Csaszar, professor of criminology at the University of Vienna, after Australia’s 1996 compensated confiscation of firearms following a mass murder in Port Arthur, Tasmania. Csaszar put the number of illegally retained arms in Australia at between two and five million.
“Many members of the community still possess grey-market firearms because they did not surrender these during the 1996–97 gun buyback,” the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission conceded in a 2016 report. “The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission continues to conservatively estimate that there are more than 260,000 firearms in the illicit firearms market.”
Just as Australian police named “outlaw motorcycle gangs, Middle Eastern organised crime groups, and other groups engaged in trafficking illicit commodities such as drugs” as beneficiaries of the prohibition-fueled black market in firearms, underground organizations are similarly poised to prosper in New Zealand. Gangs in the island nation announced very loudly after the new legislation was introduced that they wouldn’t be surrendering their own weapons.
“Will gangs get rid of their weapons? No,” one prominent gang leader told Stuff. “Because of who we are, we can’t guarantee our own safety.”
So Kiwis who actually do comply with the confiscation scheme will put themselves at a disadvantage relative to violent gangs that don’t intend to obey.
They would also be putting themselves at a disadvantage relative to the government, which is retaining its own weapons despite a distinct lack of competence (in April, a police station provided one-stop, discount gun shopping for an enterprising burglar) and intends to further squeeze the country’s liberty.
Even before the latest law has been fully implemented, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is planning more gun legislation, including registration. Additionally, the Security Intelligence Service stepped up domestic spying after the mosque attacks and saw a big boost in its funding courtesy of the latest budget.
Arguably, defiant gun owners are just being realistic in seeing little to gain by obeying restrictive laws that have their greatest impact on those who pose no threat to their neighbors.
Fulfilling internal police expectations, some Kiwis openly boast of defying the law—especially with compensation rates set well below the value of the firearms that are supposed to be surrendered. The low turn-in numbers suggest they’re matching words with action.
And who can claim to be surprised? By refusing to comply with restrictions, New Zealand gun owners are just following in the footsteps of their counterparts in Australia, Europe, and the United States. In each of these places, and many more besides, gun owners ignored laws, kept their property out of sight, and frustrated efforts to disarm them.
If New Zealand’s political class had looked to the history of gun control efforts they would have seen that they were walking a well-trodden path that leads to a dead end. But then again, if they had enough foresight to know that ill-considered restrictions on personal liberty are usually counterproductive and often breed rebellion, they probably wouldn’t have gone into government.
California’s mandatory background check law to buy ammo went into effect on Monday, and it’s not going well. The system is reportedly running very slowly with no customer support.
“I’ve had one customer, and I had to turn them away because I couldn’t get into the system,” Don Reed, owner of DGS Ammo & Airguns in Sacramento, told ABC News. “He seemed a little bit perturbed. … There’s a lot of people feel like they’re being held hostage suddenly — punishing the people who’ve been doing it the right way.”
“So far it doesn’t work at all. My system doesn’t let me access it,” said Steve Converse of Ade’s Gun Shop.
“I can’t believe the amount of paper it wastes,” remarked Scott Emmett, the manager of the Ammo Bros store in San Diego. “This one transaction for two types of ammo was almost eight pages long.”
Emmett said the system was down for the first 45 minutes and there was no support. “I sat on the phone for about 40 minutes and no one answered.”
In 2016, California voters approved the law and it’s just now coming into play. The law requires background checks for all ammo sales, and there are three kinds of checks.
Here’s the breakdown from the California Department of Justice, which administers the law.
- Standard Ammunition Eligibility Check: This eligibility check can be used by an individual whose information matches an entry in the Automated Firearms System and does not fall within a class of persons who are prohibited from owning or possessing ammunition. A determination may be completed in approximately 2 minutes. The fee for a Standard Ammunition Eligibility Check is $1.00.
- Certificate of Eligibility Verification Check: This eligibility check may be used by individuals who have a current Certificate of Eligibility to acquire or possess firearms. A determination may be completed in approximately 2 minutes. The fee for a Certificate of Eligibility Verification Check is $1.00.
- Basic Ammunition Eligibility Check: This eligibility check can be used by individuals who do not possess a current Certificate of Eligibility to acquire or possess firearms, or do not already have information entered in the Automated Firearm System. A determination may take several days to complete. The fee for the Basic Ammunition Eligibility Check is $19.00.
If you’ve registered a firearm in California, then you’ll probably qualify for one of the first two checks that cost just $1. You’ll need a valid California Driver’s License.
But, if you’re a new shooter you’ll be waiting days to get your bullets. Oh, and you’ll have to add $19 to the cost of that box of $6 shells. At least you’ll be able to buy more ammo under the same check for 30 days.
If you’re an out-of-stater, you simply cannot buy ammo in California.
The California DOJ says the law should keep ammo out of the hands of those deemed unfit. “The eligibility checks ensure purchasers are not prohibited from owning or possessing ammunition due to a felony and/or violent misdemeanor conviction or warrant, domestic violence restraining order, or mental health issue.”
The California Rifle and Pistol Association says they are “working in the field and in the courtroom to stop these ridiculous laws.” They have filed an active lawsuit against the Attorney General, Rhode v. Becerra.
Kim Rhode, an Olympic gold medal shooter who shoots thousands of rounds every week and is negatively affected by this law, is listed as the plaintiff in the case. The National Rifle Association is also involved in this suit.
This background check law was joined on July 1st by the law banning all lead from hunting use, though it can still be used for target shooting and self-defense.
With this huge impediment to purchasing ammo, how will the Pitman-Robertson revenues be affected? If you and I go to the range, and you give me some shells to shoot, is that an illegal transfer? Will this law lead to stockpiling ammo and illegally bringing ammo across state lines?
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Some things never change!
