NRA President Opposes Philadelphia Gun Bans: The day after crime victims
marched in Philadelphia to demand stronger gun-control laws, the
president of the NRA spoke to law students in Wilmington last night and
denounced efforts to combat crime by restricting gun ownership.
"Philadelphia doesn't need any new antigun laws to combat the lawless,"
said John C. Sigler, a Delaware lawyer who was appointed president of
the firearm-advocacy organization this year. "They simply need to
enforce the laws they already have." (Conspicuously absent from this
article is any mention that Sigler retired from law enforcement at the
rank of captain.)
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/pa/20071018_NRA_chief_denounces_Phila__antigun_effort.html
---
Under-21 Gun Ban Not Likely In Ohio: A proposal aimed at reducing gun
crime would ban any person under 21 from having a firearm. But the piece
of legislation, which is only in its initial stages, is already causing
controversy and drawing fierce opposition...In Ohio it is already
against the law to own a handgun if you are under 21, but a new piece of
legislation would add the word possession to the books. Opponents argue
that changing the vocabulary will ultimately change nothing about the
law...Backers of the proposed law admit it has less than a 50 percent
chance of passing because of opposition, Landers reported.
http://www.wbns10tv.com/?sec=home&story=sites/10tv/content/pool/200710/715568026.html
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Do Gun-Free Zones Encourage School Shootings?: ...This raises a
question. Do shooters consider schools "gun-free zones"? Do they
consider it unlikely that any authority figure - whether teachers or, in
some cases, security guards - poses an armed threat? But in some school
shooting cases, guns helped to end shooting sprees and minimize loss of
life and injury...Israel gets it. Since the 1970s, on school campuses in
Israel, policy requires teachers and parent aides to arm themselves with
semi-automatic weapons. The result? School shootings have plummeted to zero.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58200
---
From CCRKBA: While anti-gun organizations are demanding that Congress
quickly pass new legislation in response to the Virginia Tech massacre,
the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms suggests
another approach: Abolish the concept of 'gun free zones.' "Every tragic
school shooting, and attacks such as those at Salt Lake City's Trolley
Square, Luby's Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, and the Tacoma Mall had one
common denominator," said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. "They all
happened in so-called 'gun-free zones'."
http://www.ccrkba.org/pub/rkba/press-releases/abolish.gun.free.zones.htm
---
Texas Inhospitable To Housebreakers: This second article on a burglar
who was fatally shot, after a pet parrot alerted the homeowner of his
presence, mentions some other recent shootings of burglars or
home-invaders. Referral to a grand jury in many Texas counties is not
necessarily a suggestion of intent to prosecute but may simply be a
procedure of getting a "no-bill" ruling, clearing the shooter.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/5220185.html
Related Video:
http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=6879
---
Not The Best Tactics: ...According to deputies, a Brooksville man
returned home to find a red pickup truck in his Sunshine Grove Road
driveway. The man armed himself and then went inside to confront the
intruder. A struggle ensued, during which the homeowner shot the
intruder in the stomach and the backside with bird shot, which was
loaded in his .22-caliber pistol. (Why not call the police and let them
confront the intruder? How effective was birdshot on a human assailant?)
http://www.myfoxtampabay.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=4663788&version=3&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.2.1
---
Unclear On The Concept: ...The governor also snubbed the firearms lobby
and signed another milestone gun bill. It will make California the first
state to require all new semiautomatic handguns, starting in 2010, to
come equipped with "microstamping" aimed at helping police trace the bad
guys. When fired, the gun will stamp each shell casing with the make,
model and serial number of the weapon. Then the gun can be traced back
to the purchaser. (As I have pointed out earlier, the use of ejected
cases as primary evidence is related to the fact that pistols with
hammer-forged polygonal rifling don't impart distinctive toolmarks to
fired bullets; revolvers continue to be manufactured with
land-and-groove rifling, which does. Then there's the question of
tracing a firearm back to a purchaser, after it has been stolen or gone
through a few transfers of ownership, outside a restrictive state like
California...)
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-cap18oct18,1,1496850.column?coll=la-headlines-california
---
Mental Meandering In Wisconsin: Bullet holes clustered on the silhouette
of the paper target. For a nervous novice, my aim was fairly decent. Had
I known at the time that the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle was the same kind
a guy from northern Wisconsin used to kill six people last week, my
hands might have shaken a tad more...I'll file my own trip to the range
under "trying a new hobby" rather than "preserving fundamental rights."
But I won't clink champagne glasses with politicians who think outlawing
weapons like that means any kind of victory. Not as long as it's still
legal to have emotions...
http://www.journaltimes.com/articles/2007/10/16/columns/doc47157ada12fc8777270415.txt
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Columnist Bemoans Grassroots RKBA Efforts: ...Whenever I write about the
plague of gun violence, I get a huge blowback from the gun lovers of
America. The rabid response of the gun lobby is damning but impressive.
They out-gun, out-email gun control advocates by more than 20 to one.
Their ability to organize a rapid response is exactly the opposite of
FEMA's...The lethal success of the gun lobby is rooted in its ability to
sway both Democratic and Republican legislators. Democratic deer hunters
in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio are susceptible to NRA
dictates, which forces many faint-of-heart national Democratic
candidates to eschew gun control...
http://www.valleyadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=3661
---
Finally - S&W Reintroduces Model 40 Centennial: The Model 40 was the
original steel-frame Centennial, with grip safety. Some men preferred
the slight extension of reach to the trigger due to the grip safety.
S&W's attorneys seem to have allowed them to leave the integral key lock
off this model because of the presence of the grip safety. I would
assume that the current model uses the current, cheaper lockwork. S&W
does not seem to have bothered to reproduce the orginal, smooth,
high-horn grip stocks. Prices vary according to finish but, at an MSRP
of $765, the blued-steel version comes in significantly lower than the
previously rumored $1,000.
http://www.smith-wesson.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=11101&storeId=10001&productId=64978&langId=-1&parent_category_rn=15704&isFirearm=Y
---
Ruger Debuts Striker-Fired Pistol: Ruger provided a very exclusive group
of firearms experts with more than 50 of the SR9s on a private range in
Arizona. In the course of many thousands of rounds fires that afternoon,
I saw only two stoppages - both failures of the slide to fully close
(solved by a "tap" and both coming late in the afternoon. That is
reliability - something Ruger has always delivered in spades...
http://www.downrange.tv/ruger/specs.htm
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Front Sight Settles Lawsuit: A settlement has been reached between a
local gun range and its members. The $8 million dollar deal ends the
class action lawsuit against the Front Sight Firearms Training
Institute...Some members filed a class action lawsuit in 2005, alleging
among other things, racketeering, fraud and breach of contract. At
issue, according to court documents, were people who purchased
memberships between 1997 and 2003 and paid substantially higher prices
than those who joined later...
http://www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=7216884
---
Demand Boosts Gun Prices In West Bank: Two years ago, an M16 automatic
rifle could fetch $5,400 or more in the Palestinian West Bank. Now
buyers at Hebron's clandestine gun market are asked to pay more than
double. Four months after Islamist Hamas routed secular Fatah in the
Gaza Strip, fears that clashes between the Palestinian rivals could
erupt in the West Bank and uncertainty ahead of a U.S.-led peace
conference are fuelling a scramble for guns.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/16/AR2007101601891.html
--
Stephen P. Wenger
Firearm safety - It's a matter
for education, not legislation.
http://www.spw-duf.info
