Via The Firearm Blog:

U.S. charges 22 with bribery in arms sting

An executive of Smith & Wesson (SWHC.O) and 21 others have been charged with violating U.S. bribery laws after an undercover sting in which federal agents posed as arms-buying representatives of an African defense minister.

The defendants, including a senior Smith & Wesson sales official Amaro Goncalves, were accused of violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, or FCPA, and conspiracy to commit money laundering tied to the sale of guns, body armor and other law enforcement equipment.

The FCPA prohibits the payment of bribes to foreign officials in order to secure business contracts.

Twenty-one of the men were arrested in Las Vegas, where they were attending the SHOT Show, a large shooting-sports and hunting convention. The 22nd defendant was arrested in Miami.

I didn’t see or hear anything about this while at the show today.

Beretta CX4 Storm and TX4 Storm

The new TX4 Storm tactical 12ga shotgun with the CX4 carbine at Monday’s Media Day.

I will be posting a lot more SHOT photos over the next few days.

NSSF:

Data released by the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) reported 1,407,155 checks in December 2009, ranking the month in the top five for most NICS checks of all time.

This figure, while being a 7.6 percent decrease from the 1,523,426 checks conducted in December 2008 — the beginning stage of an ongoing surge in firearms and ammunition sales — is an increase of 14.4 percent over checks in December 2007.

Year-to-date background checks for 2009 total 14,033,824, an increase of 10.4 percent over the same time period last year. The total number of background checks reported since the beginning of NICS is 110,017,832.

Amazing that it’s still nearly 15% above 2007 levels considering the economy and the fact that everyone has been buying guns practically non-stop for a year now.

Pics as the Firearm Blog.

Also: British adopting AR-10 style sharpshooter rifle by Lewis Machine & Tool.

Big order by DHS:

The Department of Homeland Security has placed an order for 200 million rounds of pistol ammunition (.40 caliber, hollow-point) over the next five years for use by its Immigration, Customs and Enforcement division.

Let’s see now, ICE has approximately 15,000 employees. Not all of them are licensed to carry firearms, but just to keep the math simple, we’ll divide the whole shebang into 200 million. That works out to a little over 13,000 rounds per employee over five years, or approximately 2,600 per employee per year.

Someone points out that they’d be ordering FMJ if it was for training, but another commenter says that they use hollow points for training, too. Here’s more:

According to my source, who used to be a firearms trainer, each agent must qualify quarterly with his or her Sig P229R .40 caliber pistol. Each qualification requires 120 rounds. 4 x 120 x 10,000 x 5 = 24 million rounds. In addition, each agent is issued a least one 50 round box quarterly for practice. Most use considerably more. So if we conservatively estimate 100 rounds per quarter, we have 4 x 100 x 10,000 x 5 = 20 million rounds. It is not uncommon for conscientious agents to expend 250 to 1000 rounds a quarter in practice. Accordingly, it would be reasonable to expect that ICE would easily use 50 to 100 million rounds (or more) of the Ranger ammunition over five years.

Regardless, big government orders won’t do anything to help alleviate high ammo prices for civilians. But I also don’t mind seeing companies getting nice big government orders, either.

Via Instapundit.

I don’t think this is a big deal at all:

With the approval of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the Sig Sauer gun company has released specific information about the model of pistol that Federal Air Marshals will soon be carrying – data that both current and former Air Marshals say puts the Marshals and air passengers at risk.

“This is the last thing you want to give to anyone who wants to carry out an act of terror,” said Frank Terreri, president of the Federal Air Marshal Agency, a trade group representing the Marshals. “Anyone who wants to take over a plane can be proactive and research that type of weapon, basically know everything about that weapon before going on the plane,” said Terreri. “You really don’t want to give that playbook out to your enemy.”

This isn’t some super-secret classified weapon we’re talking about here, it’s a Sig P250. Were they thinking that no one would ever know which off-the-shelf gun Air Marshals were carrying? Getting worked up over this is just plain silly.

On the other hand, there was some other “improperly-redacted” information that should not have been released involving how many bags are physically checked, weaknesses in the x-ray equipment, and what size of wire can be missed by screening machines. Letting that out could cause serious problems.

TSA says that that version of the manual was outdated. Sure it is. Now, anyway.

Hat tip to the reader who sent this in.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation has launched a new and improved web site.

In the Shooting category, the lead item is about a grant program to support college shooting teams. Murdoc posted a quick link to a story on the NRA’s Intercollegiate Rifle Club Championship the other day. Gotta admit that I guess I thought college shooting teams were pretty much a thing of the past. I’m glad to be a little off-base.

Via Traction Control: US special forces prepare for additional SCAR influx

A total of 1,200 Mk 16 and Mk 17 SCAR weapon systems have been delivered to SOCOM to date, but FNH USA told Jane’s that it expected a larger order for around 20,000 weapons next year.

The expectation is that about 75% of them will be the 5.56mm SCAR-Light versions.

Here’s Murdoc trying out a SCAR-L at a demo in 2008:

Murdoc trying out the SCAR-L

The thrill of the hunt is still there, but hunting continues to fade

It’s that family tradition of hunting that introduces most people to the sport. And it’s what keeps them coming back.

But in the past few years, the number of people hunting has continued its decade-long decline in South Carolina. As the number of hunters has declined so have sales of shotguns and rifles in the state.

Earlier I posted that South Carolina, like many states, just set a new conceal carry permit record. Something else noted in that story, though, is that the sales of both shotguns and rifles are declining. Last year saw a 9% decline in the number of hunting licenses issued in the state since 1999. Not huge, but it’s a significant number. Background checks for rifles and shotguns in South Carolina have dropped by 18% over the same period. Though transactions between individuals for these guns won’t show up in those numbers, transactions between individuals will be used guns, meaning that the sales of new long guns are down.

It would be interesting to see if rifle sales saw an increase in 2009 due to the great AR Rush. Many of those buying new rifles are not buying them to hunt.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the Bushmaster advertisement in Maxim, but I just spotted another gun ad in Boys’ Life:

Savage Arms Ad in Boys' Life Magazine

I asked my son (a Life Scout) if he had notice that in there before, and he told me he thought it’s been in quite a few issues. As just noted, the Boy Scouts offer two shooting merit badges plus archery. Advertising in the magazine only makes sense and hopefully can do a little to fend off the fear of the idea of guns that so many seem to be pushing these days.