posted by Caleb on Jun 30
Today is the last day to visit this link and vote for me to go to Blackwater! Remember, you could win the coveted 11th spot, and spend the weekend shooting guns with 10 of your favorite bloggers and Todd Jarret.
Winners should be announced early July!
posted by Caleb on Jun 30
Paul Helmke edition:
In public and political terms, gun control advocates “lost” the battle over the Second Amendment a long time ago.
He is a sad panda, right now. If you read the entire post, it’s basically “we lost now fire up the MIGHTY SPIN MACHINE!”
posted by Caleb on Jun 30
I love the God Not Guns blog. The latest post is called “Gundamentalism’s Day” (tinyURL to mess with pagerank), it is absolutely hilarious.
You know why it’s so bad? Because it reads like one of those really bad TV preachers combined with an After-School Special. I mean look at excerpts like this:
Rather than offering a vision of community in which we are bound together by our humanity, gundamentalism encourages fear, teaching us to see each other as “The Other,” a potential enemy, a threat endangering our family, our home, our person. Such fear blinds us to the image of God embodied in every human being. Even more it blinds us to our own connection to the Divine. How can we reach toward God with arms open wide if in one hand we are clutching a gun?
I honestly don’t know whether I should laugh or be insulted by the blatant attempts to essentially tell people that they’re bad Christians if they own a gun.
I will give the interns that write the blog some credit though, because they’ve gotten a little smarter. They’ve moved away from making poor, easily defeated Biblical analogies and have focused on the more nebulous “spiritual concepts” side of things. Of course, it hasn’t stopped them from, well, lying outright, but I guess breaking the 9th Commandment is okay as long as you’re doing it for a good cause, right?
So here are the quick hits of the different outright lies in today’s God Not Guns entry:
I guess I could cut them some slack, I mean they only had 5 statements that were nothing more than outright falsehoods, surely that’s okay since it’s for a good cause, right? Or maybe the interns Rachel Smith subscribe to the inverse of Romans 6:1, and believe that if they go on sinning, then grace will increase.
posted by Caleb on Jun 30
Unlike some guys, I have exactly zero problems with pretty/cute guns, because honestly it’s just a tool, and if someone decides they want their tool to be more aesthetically pleasing, more power to you.
This time, The Breda has put some dead sexy custom made grips on her Bersa Thunder, taking it from average looking to a hot little number.
I should also note that I approve of the pretty flower/handgun photo.
posted by Caleb on Jun 30
The monthly pin shoot at Marion County Fish and Game was a blast, as usual. I brought my Taurus Tracker in .357, which I shot like crap with, and my Walther P22. It turned out that I only shot one real bracket with the .357, as for the second bracket one of the regulars asked me if I’d like to try his Smith & Wesson 945, which is the Performance Center 1911. I have to tell you, shooting a $2k pistol was painful experience, but I did for you, my dear readers.
Here’s a pretty awesome picture from the shoot - the gun has opened up and you can see the empty casing in the air, and the bullet has just hit the left most pin. Click to embiggenate.
Even though this video is titled “Part 2″ it’s actually the first video with me shooting the 945; had a pretty good time shooting it.
The second video is a lot of fun - as you can see, I had fallen behind on the actual pins because I dropped a couple of shots. I made up the time on the reload, which lead to us having quite the photo finish. I give a little Tiger Woods-style fist pump right there at the end; and if you slow the playback down you can see how closely together our pins hit the the ground.
However, I saved the best video for last. Here’s my buddy Greg, who normally shoots a Beretta 92 in 9mm, trying out a guy’s S&W double action .45 Colt. He has a little bit of trouble with it, but the video is so great I had to post it. Everyone is yelling and hollering, which made what was already a fun round even more interesting.
I didn’t get any video of the .22 round this week, and even more sadly I didn’t get video of what we did after the pinheads match. We had some time to kill, so the ROs let people just kind of “have at it” at the little pinheads with whatever caliber they wanted. Let me tell you, a pinhead flies when you hit it with a .357 magnum round.
The next pins match is July 26, and there is a Friday night steel match on July 11. If I have my new Glock 35 by the 11th, I’ll make a solid effort to be there for the match.
As usual, the pin shoot was a great time - it really is one of the most fun things you can do with a pistol.
posted by Caleb on Jun 30
Joe Huffman (glad he’s on our side) decided to celebrate the DC vs. Heller decision in what was possibly the most awesome way anyone has celebrated.
With alcohol, tobacco, firearms…and explosives.
That reminds me, I need to figure out what my availability for Boomershot ‘09 is looking like.
posted by Caleb on Jun 28
The podcast is still a “go” for Tuesday at 11pm Eastern time; however to make our show less “Ahab centric”, we’ve changed our host URL. You can access old shows and stream new episodes live at 11pm Eastern time on Tuesdays by visiting this link to Gun Nuts: The Next Generation.
The new url for bookmarking purposes is http://blogtalkradio.com/gunnuts where you can hear us live on Tuesday at 11pm Eastern discussing DC vs. Heller and the various upcoming lawsuits.
posted by Caleb on Jun 27
Because every time I see the words “draconian gun ban” I think to myself “good luck getting that past the Kuritas”.
If you get that joke, you’re as big a nerd as me.
posted by Caleb on Jun 27
I couldn’t resist one last Heller pun, and for that I apologize. I was pretty busy with work yesterday, and didn’t get the chance to put my thoughts all together in one post. Plus, there was just so much information to digest after the opinion was released that I didn’t even know where to begin.
Overall, I am pleased with the decision; while I would have preferred a 6-3 or a 7-2 win, a win is still a win. Like many others I am concerned about the willingness of four justices to toss out the Constitution because they believe that it means something other than what it says. That concern is the genesis for my reasoning that once the celebrations are over, we need to saddle up and get moving.
I expected that the Court wouldn’t address the issue of licensing and registration; and while they definitely left the back door open on that one, I’m glad they put the “if it is not enforced arbitrarily and capriciously” exception in there. I think that you can make a very strong case to argue that a lot of “may issue” permit processes like those in New York and places in California violate that, as there is no clearly defined process for the everyman to get own a firearm.
Really, the thing that I feel like I need to stress repeatedly (and to use a poor analogy) this is not the end of the war, just a victory in a key battle. The fact that the Court didn’t address incorporation or licensing and registration directly means that we still have a long row to hoe on the right to keep and bears issue. While it is extremely nice to put the final nail into the “collective rights” coffin, we’re not out of the woods yet, not by a long shot.
Lawsuits have already been filed against Chicago, and are pending against San Francisco, and possibly New York.
You know, I haven’t done a “Wisdom of the Duke” post in a long, long time; but I think that today a little John Wayne wisdom would be appropriate. What Would John Wayne say to supporters of gun rights, in light of the monumental decision? From The Sands of Iwo Jima: “Saddle Up!”
posted by Caleb on Jun 27
And Paul Helmke last night was, for lack of a better word, really weird to watch.
You can watch the entire 15 minute segment here.
Chris Matthews doesn’t even bother to hide his bias; repeatedly trying (and failing) to trap Wayne into saying something - look at his questions about “walking down broadway with a bazooka” or “are the government helicopters coming for your guns now”. To his credit, Wayne doesn’t take the bait on any of those.
Paul Helmke though keeps repeating the same arguments that we’ve heard over and over again, and honestly he looked kind of beat up. If you watch the whole thing, a lot of it is him saying “well, yeah, we lost, but…”.
The oddest part was at the end, right after Matthews’ “helicopters” question, where he paid Wayne a kind of weird compliment, calling him “one of the best lobbyists” out there, and then turned to Paul and said “Paul, well…” and just sort of tailed off.
The whole thing is pretty fun to watch though - not only does Wayne do a great job, but Paul just looks defeated and tired.
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