Gun Talk

[M2]

God bless Ted Nugent!

[Guest Fogo]

The Nug is right on!

Wango Tango

[M2]

God bless Ted Nugent, part deux!

[Guest]

Nuge in '12.

Seriously.

[check6]

Potential Robber Dies In Burger King Shooting

MIAMI (CBS4)--Miami Police say a Good Samaritan confronted a would-be robber and killed him before he was able to rob a Burger King Restaurant on Biscayne Boulevard Tuesday afternoon.

Police and fire rescue responded to a double shooting call at the restaurant located at 54th Street and Biscayne Blvd., and when they got there they found a man injured, transporting him to Jackson Memorial Hospital. That man was the Good Samaritan who they say confronted the ski mask wearing suspect with a gun of his own. Gun shots were exchanged between the two as a result.

Panic set in among employees upon hearing the news of what happened.

"I received a call from one my relatives and they said there was a shootout at the Burger King and ask me was I ok. So now I'm kind of nervous. I don't know what happened," said one employee.

The suspect died on scene, but fire rescue transported the victim to Jackson Memorial Hospital where he was last listed in serious but stable condition.

"It was a lot of people inside that Burger King, he may have saved lives, so it was a brave act yes," said Jeff Giordano with Miami Police. "He confronted the robbery suspect, at which time shots were fired."

According to detectives, the Good Samaritan had a concealed weapons permit. The names of both men have not been released.

Anyone with information is urged to contact Miami-Dade Crime Stoppers at 305-471-TIPS.

:beer:

[cragspider]

The Nuge Rocks. If you haven't already read Ted, White, and Blue go read it. He has some great ideas for the gun control issue along with protecting our boarders.

[Vertigo]

Looks like the assault weapons ban is more than likely dead... for this year at least:

AG Eric Holder backs off his gun ban stance

After fierce resistance from the gun lobby and its allies in Congress, Attorney General Eric Holder has dialed back talk about reimposing a federal assault weapons ban to help curb the spiraling violence in Mexico.

As much as 90 percent of the assault weapons and other guns used by Mexican drug cartels are coming from the United States, fueling drug-related violence that is believed to have killed more than 7,000 people since January 2008, according to estimates by Mexican and U.S. law enforcement officials. But the political obstacles to addressing the U.S.-to-Mexico weapons flow are dramatically underscored by Holder's experience in just the last few weeks.

Speaking at a Feb. 25 news conference announcing a roundup of Mexican cartel members in the United States, Holder endorsed reinstituting the ban on assault weapons—a position that President Obama himself supported during last year's campaign. A federal ban on high-powered, semi-automatic assault weapons, originally passed by Congress in 1994, expired five years ago.

"There are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons," Holder said in response to a question from a Mexican reporter. "I think that will have a positive impact in Mexico at a minimum." Holder then ducked a follow-up question about whether he expected Congress to act on a renewed ban this year, saying, "I'm not sure exactly what the sequencing will be" on legislative issues that the Obama administration presses on Capitol Hill.

But his comments roused the gun lobby. The National Rifle Association quickly sent out "action alerts" to its members. Sixty-five House Democrats signed a letter saying they would oppose any new ban—as did Montana's two Democratic senators, Max Baucus and Jon Tester. "Senators to Attorney General Holder: Stay Away From Our Guns," read a press release sent out by Baucus's office. In addition, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid both shot down the idea that Congress would take up any new assault weapons ban this year.

[slacker]

Looks like the assault weapons ban is more than likely dead... for this year at least:

It's probably already been signed. No one bothered to read the Stimulus bill, so it could already be law, who knows. [/disgust]

[JarheadBoom]

Ammo update:

My local Wallyworld has been out of ALL pistol calibers for a while now, with no projected get-well date. I went to the Wallyworld near my parents' house (1/2hr. away) and they had Blazer Brass in several pistol calibers... so I reduced their inventory by two boxes of .45ACP. There is ammo out there...

*** EDIT ***

Price was $14.97 per 50rd. box of .45ACP 230gr. FMJ.

Edited April 1, 2009 by JarheadBoom

[M2]

Yeah, but many times you are going to pay out the ass for it!

For example, this weekend we went to two gun shows here in San Antonio (God Bless Texas!), and the cheapest I could find .380/9mm Kurz ammo for my P3AT was $30 for a box of 50 rounds of FMJ! Fuck me, that's more expensive than the .45 ACP I've bought. Luckily, the guy I bought the Kel-Tec from had a box of 50 rounds back home that he brought in and sold to me for $13 (what it cost him), plus an extra 7 rounds of JHPs he had left over.

The P3AT is not a shooter's gun anyhow, so I won't put many rounds through it. I bought it as a BUG, for the wife to occassionally carry, or for when I mountain bike or run and carrying a .45 just isn't practical. For that it is near perfectly designed...small, light and smooth!

Cheers! M2

p.s. The local Wallys, Bass Pro Shop, Dick's Sporting Goods and Sportsman's Warehouse have all been out of pistol ammo. There wasn't much of the more common calibers at the gun show either, except for reloads which I don't buy.

[slacker]

I found one box of .380 at Academy today, Monarch FMJ $13.99. Price was right.

[Guest KM]

11 acres of guns here this weekend. Hopefully we can find some ammo!

[Guest Unconfirmed Source]

11 acres of guns here this weekend. Hopefully we can find some ammo!

Damn I didn't realize the pilgrimage to gun mecca had started already only 5 days away.

[M2]

I found one box of .380 at Academy today, Monarch FMJ $13.99. Price was right.

Feel free to send it my way...

Cheers! M2

[JarheadBoom]

Yeah, but many times you are going to pay out the ass for it!

True. But I forgot to add the price to my post...

$14.97 for 50rds. Not bad in today's market.

[Vertigo]

Interesting read in the Arizona Republic about the Mexican gun control laws. Apparently Mexico thinks we, the U.S., are to blame for the drug war. Not because we buy the drugs but because we supply the guns. Umm hello... if you'd crack down on border security you wouldn't have to worry about guns coming in from our country and we wouldn't have to worry about drugs and illegals coming in from yours.

Mexico blames U.S.

I particularly like the quote from the NRA spokesman at the end of the article.

Mired in violence, gun-strict Mexico points to U.S.

MEXICO CITY - There is one gun store in Mexico. And it serves a very select clientele.

The store is run by the Mexican army and occupies two rooms in a heavily guarded building near the army's headquarters in Mexico City.

To shop here, customers need a permit that can take months to get. And once they buy a gun, there are limits on how much ammunition they can buy each month, where they can take the gun, who they can sell it to.

To shoppers here, the irony is clear: Mexico has some of the toughest gun-control laws in the world, yet the country's drug cartels are armed to the teeth with high-powered illegal weapons because guns are so easy to buy in the United States and smuggle over the border.

"If the United States had a system like ours, we wouldn't have so many problems here in Mexico," Agustin Villordo, 27, of Puebla, Mexico, said Tuesday as he shopped for a hunting rifle.

On Thursday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will visit Mexico to discuss ways to stop gun smuggling. The meeting is part of an effort by the United States to help Mexico in an increasingly bloody war against the drug cartels. More than 6,300 people have died in the violence since 2006.

But Mexicans say little will change as long as the United States continues to make it easy to buy guns.

"It is necessary to reduce the sale of weapons, particularly of high-power weapons, in the United States," President Felipe Calderón said during a visit to Britain on Monday.

He said there was a "correlation" between Mexico's soaring drug violence and the end of the U.S. ban on sales of assault-style weapons. That ban, which expired in 2004, barred sales of semi-automatic rifles with certain combinations of military-style features, such as folding stocks, large magazines or flash suppressors.

A strict system

Mexico's 1917 Constitution gave citizens the right to bear arms "except those expressly prohibited by law."

But the Mexican government has clamped down on gun owners in recent decades.

After students looted Mexico City gun stores during uprisings in the 1960s, the Mexican congress amended the constitution. The changes gave federal authorities the power to set "the circumstances, conditions, requirements and places" in which citizens could have guns. In 1995, the government abolished the last private gun stores and gave the National Defense Secretariat, which oversees the army and air force, a monopoly on gun sales.

The military's gun store, known as the Directorate of Arms and Munitions Sales, has averaged about 7,780 civilian gun sales a year since 2006, said Lt. Col. Raul Manzano Velez, director of the military's civilian gun sales.

All privately owned guns have to be registered with the Mexican military. To be able to take their guns outside their homes, owners need a transportation permit that must be renewed annually.

Even minor offenses are punishable by years in jail.

On Tuesday at the gun store, a few shoppers wandered among wooden cases filled with weapons imported by the army from all over the world. Buyers waited as soldiers fetched their purchases from a storeroom.

The heaviest stuff - assault rifles, flash-bang grenades and bulletproof vests - was in a separate room marked "For police forces only."

Under Mexican law, the military is the only source for such supplies.

The officers who run this system acknowledge that they face an uphill battle in their efforts to control Mexico's guns.

"I would dare say that Mexico has some of the strictest regulations about gun ownership in all the world, and we're right next to a country . . . that has some of the easiest ones," Manzano said. "That creates a huge vacuum between the countries and feeds weapons trafficking."

U.S. responds

President Barack Obama has promised a crackdown on guns from the U.S., which account for 90 percent of the weapons confiscated in Mexico.

Last week, the Department of Homeland Security announced it would send dogs, X-ray machines and 100 more agents to the border to search southbound cars and trains for guns and cash headed to Mexico.

"This is a two-way street," Obama said during CBS' "Face the Nation" news program Sunday. "We've got to do our part in reducing the flow of cash and guns south."

But gun-control advocates say the United States needs to restrict sales, not just smuggling.

"You've got guys driving around with high-powered firearms in their cars; you're putting law enforcers at greater risk," said Ladd Everett, a spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. "Why not stop those guns from ever being bought in the first place?"

Last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she would like to see the U.S. government reinstate the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban, though she added that such a move would face fierce opposition in Congress.

U.S. gun-ownership groups say they doubt harsher rules would stem Mexico's violence.

"Mexico has very strict gun laws, which clearly have done nothing to prevent criminals and drug cartels from obtaining firearms, and it's left many of the honest residents of Mexico defenseless," said Chris Cox, chief lobbyist for the National Rifle Association.

"I don't think anybody could argue that Mexico's gun-control laws have been an effective crime-fighting tool."

On an unrelated note I see that M2 was in New York for fashion week.

Edited April 2, 2009 by Vertigo

[M2]

Dude

First, thanks for the pic from NY! The photog said they would send me a copy, but you know how lazy those bastards are!

Secondly, as for Mexico securing their border with the US, how in the hell can we expect them to do it when we can't do it ourselves? I know it would work best if both sides made an effort, but even our ability to date has been less than impressive. I attribute that to a lack of trying, as there is no way we couldn't seal our border unless we weren't giving it our full measure.

So, until we take it seriously, how can we expect them to?

Cheers! M2

[schokie]

Interesting article Fox News just put out:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/elections/...number-claimed/

The Myth of 90 Percent: Only a Small Fraction of Guns in Mexico Come From U.S.

While 90 percent of the guns traced to the U.S. actually originated in the United States, the percent traced to the U.S. is only about 17 percent of the total number of guns reaching Mexico.

By William La Jeunesse and Maxim Lott

FOXNews.com

Thursday, April 02, 2009

You've heard this shocking "fact" before -- on TV and radio, in newspapers, on the Internet and from the highest politicians in the land: 90 percent of the weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the United States.

-- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it to reporters on a flight to Mexico City.

-- CBS newsman Bob Schieffer referred to it while interviewing President Obama.

-- California Sen. Dianne Feinstein said at a Senate hearing: "It is unacceptable to have 90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico and used to shoot judges, police officers and mayors ... come from the United States."

-- William Hoover, assistant director for field operations at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, testified in the House of Representatives that "there is more than enough evidence to indicate that over 90 percent of the firearms that have either been recovered in, or interdicted in transport to Mexico, originated from various sources within the United States."

There's just one problem with the 90 percent "statistic" and it's a big one:

It's just not true.

In fact, it's not even close. By all accounts, it's probably around 17 percent.

What's true, an ATF spokeswoman told FOXNews.com, in a clarification of the statistic used by her own agency's assistant director, "is that over 90 percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S."

But a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back to the U.S. for tracing, because it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S.

"Not every weapon seized in Mexico has a serial number on it that would make it traceable, and the U.S. effort to trace weapons really only extends to weapons that have been in the U.S. market," Matt Allen, special agent of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told FOX News.

A Look at the Numbers

In 2007-2008, according to ATF Special Agent William Newell, Mexico submitted 11,000 guns to the ATF for tracing. Close to 6,000 were successfully traced -- and of those, 90 percent -- 5,114 to be exact, according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover -- were found to have come from the U.S.

But in those same two years, according to the Mexican government, 29,000 guns were recovered at crime scenes.

In other words, 68 percent of the guns that were recovered were never submitted for tracing. And when you weed out the roughly 6,000 guns that could not be traced from the remaining 32 percent, it means 83 percent of the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico could not be traced to the U.S.

So, if not from the U.S., where do they come from? There are a variety of sources:

-- The Black Market. Mexico is a virtual arms bazaar, with fragmentation grenades from South Korea, AK-47s from China, and shoulder-fired rocket launchers from Spain, Israel and former Soviet bloc manufacturers.

-- Russian crime organizations. Interpol says Russian Mafia groups such as Poldolskaya and Moscow-based Solntsevskaya are actively trafficking drugs and arms in Mexico.

- South America. During the late 1990s, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) established a clandestine arms smuggling and drug trafficking partnership with the Tijuana cartel, according to the Federal Research Division report from the Library of Congress.

-- Asia. According to a 2006 Amnesty International Report, China has provided arms to countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Chinese assault weapons and Korean explosives have been recovered in Mexico.

-- The Mexican Army. More than 150,000 soldiers deserted in the last six years, according to Mexican Congressman Robert Badillo. Many took their weapons with them, including the standard issue M-16 assault rifle made in Belgium.

-- Guatemala. U.S. intelligence agencies say traffickers move immigrants, stolen cars, guns and drugs, including most of America's cocaine, along the porous Mexican-Guatemalan border. On March 27, La Hora, a Guatemalan newspaper, reported that police seized 500 grenades and a load of AK-47s on the border. Police say the cache was transported by a Mexican drug cartel operating out of Ixcan, a border town.

'These Don't Come From El Paso'

Ed Head, a firearms instructor in Arizona who spent 24 years with the U.S. Border Patrol, recently displayed an array of weapons considered "assault rifles" that are similar to those recovered in Mexico, but are unavailable for sale in the U.S.

"These kinds of guns -- the auto versions of these guns -- they are not coming from El Paso," he said. "They are coming from other sources. They are brought in from Guatemala. They are brought in from places like China. They are being diverted from the military. But you don't get these guns from the U.S."

Some guns, he said, "are legitimately shipped to the government of Mexico, by Colt, for example, in the United States. They are approved by the U.S. government for use by the Mexican military service. The guns end up in Mexico that way -- the fully auto versions -- they are not smuggled in across the river."

Many of the fully automatic weapons that have been seized in Mexico cannot be found in the U.S., but they are not uncommon in the Third World.

The Mexican government said it has seized 2,239 grenades in the last two years -- but those grenades and the rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) are unavailable in U.S. gun shops. The ones used in an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey in October and a TV station in January were made in South Korea. Almost 70 similar grenades were seized in February in the bottom of a truck entering Mexico from Guatemala.

"Most of these weapons are being smuggled from Central American countries or by sea, eluding U.S. and Mexican monitors who are focused on the smuggling of semi-automatic and conventional weapons purchased from dealers in the U.S. border states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California," according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.

Boatloads of Weapons

So why would the Mexican drug cartels, which last year grossed between $17 billion and $38 billion, bother buying single-shot rifles, and force thousands of unknown "straw" buyers in the U.S. through a government background check, when they can buy boatloads of fully automatic M-16s and assault rifles from China, Israel or South Africa?

Alberto Islas, a security consultant who advises the Mexican government, says the drug cartels are using the Guatemalan border to move black market weapons. Some are left over from the Central American wars the United States helped fight; others, like the grenades and launchers, are South Korean, Israeli and Spanish. Some were legally supplied to the Mexican government; others were sold by corrupt military officers or officials.

The exaggeration of United States "responsibility" for the lawlessness in Mexico extends even beyond the "90-percent" falsehood -- and some Second Amendment activists believe it's designed to promote more restrictive gun-control laws in the U.S.

In a remarkable claim, Auturo Sarukhan, the Mexican ambassador to the U.S., said Mexico seizes 2,000 guns a day from the United States -- 730,000 a year. That's a far cry from the official statistic from the Mexican attorney general's office, which says Mexico seized 29,000 weapons in all of 2007 and 2008.

Chris Cox, spokesman for the National Rifle Association, blames the media and anti-gun politicians in the U.S. for misrepresenting where Mexican weapons come from.

"Reporter after politician after news anchor just disregards the truth on this," Cox said. "The numbers are intentionally used to weaken the Second Amendment."

"The predominant source of guns in Mexico is Central and South America. You also have Russian, Chinese and Israeli guns. It's estimated that over 100,000 soldiers deserted the army to work for the drug cartels, and that ignores all the police. How many of them took their weapons with them?"

But Tom Diaz, senior policy analyst at the Violence Policy Center, called the "90 percent" issue a red herring and said that it should not detract from the effort to stop gun trafficking into Mexico.

"Let's do what we can with what we know," he said. "We know that one hell of a lot of firearms come from the United States because our gun market is wide open."

[Guest Fogo]

It's pretty simple from what I've researched myself.

If you are anti gun: 90% of the drug lords' guns are from America.

If you are in favor of upholding our constitution: You realize nearly 90% aren't from America.

Just an observation: Did anyone else notice how the administration seemed to float out this idea about all the guns coming from us, and after sensing the pushback from those of us non socialists out here; they have quieted down? Maybe I am just imaganing this.

As always: If you aren't an NRA member; join now.

[Guest Brewdog]

Here's a similar article on the issue from News Busters:

In Reality, Nearly Ninety Percent of Mexican Cartel Weapons DON'T Come From U.S.

By Mike Sargent

Created 2009-04-02 18:08

Apparently, America’s love of firearms has not rubbed off on our Mexican neighbors quite as much as the mainstream media led us to believe.

It has been widely reported that 90 percent of the weapons used in the Mexican drug cartel wars come from America. As it turns out, that statistic is simply incorrect. According to the figures obtained from ICE and ATF officials by Fox News, only about 17 percent of the weapons recovered from cartel-related crime scenes in Mexico actually originate in the United States.

Correspondent William LaJeunesse in an April 2 report (first aired at 12:27PM, then a shorter segment with an ATF agent at 2:55PM:

According to the Mexican Attorney General, in the last two years, they've recovered about thirty thousand, twenty-nine thousand weapons in Mexico. They have submitted about only one-third of those to the United States for tracing. And according to testimony that we have from the special agent in charge, in Phoenix, of the ATF, only about six thousand of those were successfully traced, and about ninety percent of those came from the U.S. But basically, the bottom line here is that according to our figures, which we got from them, eighty-three percent of the guns that have been recovered in Mexico at these crime scenes are not from the United States.

One might ask how the United States Secretary of State might have made such an error in her math.

LaJeunesse explains:

Well one reason is, it's basically the sampling issue. Number one, Mexico is finding guns at the crime scene which may have no markings at all. They may be clearly Chinese or Russian weapons, and so they are not submitting those to the United States for, quote, tracing. A U.S. weapon has a serial number on it, a manufacturer on it, it says where it is made. So clearly, Mexico is not going to give over weapons to the U.S. for tracing which clearly don't come from here. We had an ICE official, special agent in charge here in Phoenix tell us, and I'm quoting from him, “Not every weapon seized in Mexico has a serial number. Those are not submitted. Only we trace weapons with U.S. markings.

So to summarize, ninety percent of the traced weapons that Mexico decides to give back to us come from the United States – a sample which doesn’t include the vast majority of the weapons found. Seventy-three percent outside the mark is very selective truth-telling by the mainstream media.

Sun Tzu was never wiser than when he said “All warfare is based on deception.” So when Ben Tracy [0] (CBS News), Andrea Mitchell [0] (NBC News) and myriad hosts from CNN [0] all claim that the Mexican drug war is the fault of lax gun laws [0] in the United States, you know they're all reading from the same playbook.

[M2]

Yet the AP just put out another article on the alleged smuggling of arms from the US into Mexico...

Mexico trying harder to catch smuggled US guns

This was in yesterday's Texas Homeland Security Briefing. Fucking journalists!

On a related note, this was sent to me today. It is an old list but still a good one...enjoy!

Cheers! M2

Why I Carry a Gun

My old grandpa said to me 'Son, there comes a time in every man's life when he stops bustin' knuckles and starts bustin' caps and usually it's when he becomes too old to take an ass whoopin.'

I don't carry a gun to kill people.

I carry a gun to keep from being killed.

I don't carry a gun to scare people.

I carry a gun because sometimes this world can be a scary place.

I don't carry a gun because I'm paranoid.

I carry a gun because there are real threats in the world.

I don't carry a gun because I'm evil.

I carry a gun because I have lived long enough to see the evil in the world.

I don't carry a gun because I hate the government.

I carry a gun because I understand the limitations of government.

I don't carry a gun because I'm angry.

I carry a gun so that I don't have to spend the rest of my life hating myself for failing to be prepared.

I don't carry a gun because I want to shoot someone.

I carry a gun because I want to die at a ripe old age in my bed, and not on a sidewalk somewhere tomorrow afternoon.

I don't carry a gun because I'm a cowboy.

I carry a gun because, when I die and go to heaven, I want to be a

cowboy.

I don't carry a gun to make me feel like a man.

I carry a gun because men know how to take care of themselves and the

ones they love.

I don't carry a gun because I feel inadequate.

I carry a gun because unarmed and facing three armed thugs, I am

inadequate.

I don't carry a gun because I love it.

I carry a gun because I love life and the people who make it meaningful

to me.

Police Protection is an oxymoron. Free citizens must protect themselves.

Police do not protect you from crime, they usually just investigate the

crime after it happens and then call someone in to clean up the mess.

Personally, I carry a gun because I'm too young to die and too old to

take an ass whoopin'.

....author unknown (but obviously brilliant)

[LockheedFix]

I apologize if this has already been posted. I did a search but didn't find it. This was on the wall in a gun shop in Wheatland, OK.

[Guest Fogo]

The gun issue has been in the news more and more over the past week or so. Between the ongoing issues in Mexico, compounded with the rash of shootings lately, the anti-gunners are really going on the offensive with things.

Growing up on a farm and now as a gun owner myself; you don't have to convince me... But for some of you older wiser folks on here... How do we portray that to people who don't want to hear it? The issue of why assualt weapons (and a realistic definition... not them wanting to call anything that shoots an assualt weapon) should be legal is constantly brought up.

I haven't started "the sky is falling" mode yet... but it seems to be inching forward.... Perhaps I am just getting worked up because its Monday morning and I'm putting my blues on.

[M2]

I would say it is the Blues…

But you are also correct in being a little paranoid that the anti-gun lobby will try to exploit these recent incidents. But what you need to counter their rhetoric with are a few facts. For one, get and read a copy of Gun Facts. The people that put that document together do their homework, and it is hard to argue against the information. Secondly, consider supporting a pro-gun lobby. The NRA is one of the largest, but there are others such as the Gun Owners of America. Support those who support the Second Amendment.

Lastly, counter their argument that two of these recent shootings occurred in states that have some of the strictest gun laws in the country, California and New York. If the anti-gun argument is that more laws are the solution, then why didn’t the laws stop these two incidents from occurring? The truth is that gun laws don’t stop crime, they only stop law-abiding citizens from legally being able to defend themselves, their families and their property.

We would all love to live in a world where there is no violence or crime, but the reality is it will never be that way. As such, citizens must be empowered to protect themselves as well as others. Our founding fathers had the foresight to see this (albeit for other reasons, namely tyranny), but those principles of the right to bear arms are just as critical today as they were over 230 years ago.

The removal of guns from society does not make it a safer world, in fact, just the opposite. Hitler banned guns in Nazi Germany, as did Stalin.

In the end you have to resign yourself to the fact that the ignorant shall remain that way. About the only time someone from the anti-gun side crosses over to the pro-gun side is when they, a family member or a close friend is the victim of a violent crime; and even then they still tend to blame the gun and not the person using it, the same way you can blame a car for the accident caused by the drunk driving it or, as the old joke goes, Rosie O’Donnell’s fork for her being fat. In the end, it all boils down to these fourteen critical words: "…the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed."

Since every member of the Armed Forces takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution, consider it your duty to protect the one amendment that keeps this country safe…

Cheers! M2

[Vandal]

I am going to move off the political side for a second and ask for some advice.

I have a Kimber Stainless II that I bought as a Election gun on 25 Jan 09. It runs flawlessly and is much more accurate than I am. I take damn good care of my guns so that if need be they will take care of me. Yesterday I was cleaning the pistol and discovered a small spot of rust on my barrel about an inch from the muzzle. It is about one centimeter square in area. The Kimber shares residence with my XD45 in a GunVault with a silica desiccant pack to keep the moisture down even lower. I live in Northern Idaho where humidity is almost non-existent.

Do any of you gun nuts out there have any advice on how to get rid of this and prevent it from taking place in the future? My XD of course has no rust at all. Or should I make use of the warranty and send it home for a new barrel?

On the political side, CNN is asking people to chime in on whether or not we need stricter gun control in light of the 53 people killed in the last 30 days from gun violence. Of course while asking this they show tape from gun shows and a video of a cop or military guy shooting a Barrett .50 cal rifle. So far only one person has said we need to actually enforce the laws on the books, some lady from FL by way of New York basically said all of us gun owners need to under go psych evals and that guns need to be very hard to acquire.

All of these shootings are not helping our side at all. Of course we cannot predict what a man who just got laid off, let the foil hat fall off, or catches his wife with another man is going to do. One day they are responsible gun owners and the next they are killing indiscriminately. It will only get worse as the economy and unemployment continue to tank.

Edited April 6, 2009 by Vandal