Media
Student of the Gun
Student of the Gun Television Show
The Pursuit Channel and TAG Entertainment are pleased to announce the premier of Student of the Gun, a weekly television program that highlights the education, application, and enjoyment of firearms. The program will be hosted by Paul Markel. As a USMC veteran, Police Officer, Professional Bodyguard and Firearms Instructor, Paul comes to the show with decades of practical experience carrying and using all manner of firearms.
Student of the Gun will cover diverse topics that will include, but not be limited to, Concealed Carry, Practice and Training with Handguns, Rifles, and Shotguns, Modern AR parts and Accessories, Long Range Shooting, Gear and Accessories for the Armed Citizen, Alternate Uses of Force, Gunfights with Lights, Selecting and Zeroing Optics, Personal Survival and Rescue tools, Pocket Pistols, and much more.
Episode #1 premiered on Tuesday June 28th, 2011. The program will air every Tuesday 1:30 p.m. and Thursday 5:30 p.m. EST. The Pursuit Channel is available in over 40 Million homes nationwide and is carried on Direct TV channel 608 (PRST) and Dish Network channel 240 (HUNT). Please check listings for show times in your area.
The first episode is available online.
Killer of 7 ‘seemed really nice and down to earth’
UPDATE: Okay, this sounds more like it: Friends call mass murder suspect Rodrick Dantzler ‘crazy’
Law and Disorder
Report: gun law poorly enforced
Grand Rapids Press, June 26, 2011
A story Sunday in Booth newspapers says that more than half of the 83 counties have failed to comply with annual reporting rules at least once, and many criminals have been allowed to keep their weapons.
The law’s sponsor was state Sen. Mike Green, and he says that many county prosecutors are falling down on the job. Green says prosecutors who oppose the law have simply decided to ignore their responsibility to enforce it.
Emphasis Murdoc’s.
This is the front page story in today’s Grand Rapids Press (which doesn’t exaclty have a real strong pro-gun reputation) but I haven’t been able to read it yet. As far as I can tell from glancing it over, it admits that there has been no huge wave of gun violence following the passage of shall-issue CCW a decade ago…but that OMG some counties aren’t keeping up with all the reporting requirements and that sometimes people that should have their licenses revoked aren’t contacted.
Yes, those are issues that should be addressed. But all the crime and violence predicted has NOT come to pass, even with those issues. Murdoc’s got no doubt that many will claim this somehow demonstrates that concealed carry or shall-issue or just guns in general are just plain wrong. What it really demonstrates, if anything, is that some of those responsible for overseeing the process are just plain wrong.
When Toyota had issues with some parts on some of its cars, those issues did nothing to call into question the validity of car ownership, car driving, or the whole premise of cars in general.
And when Murdoc says “front page story in today’s Grand Rapids Press,” he means the WHOLE FRONT PAGE.
Charlie Cutshaw
Murdoc just saw that writer Charlie Cutshaw passed away recently. He was a great guy and a great writer, particularly in the tactical field. Though I wasn’t what you’d call close friends with him, we shared a few beers here and there at industry events and I always felt like I’d learned something after talking with him. I was lucky to know him.
The last time I saw him was a couple of years back. He was climbing onto a shuttle bus at SHOT. I offered him the seat next to me, but he was just looking for his wife and had to go check another bus. So we agreed to meet up soon.
I was just looking over the list of attendees at an upcoming event and was disappointed to not see Charlie’s name on the list. I thought again of that quick meeting on the bus and wondered when we’d have that beer.
Laura Burgess Marketing notes:
In lieu of flowers: Please send donations to one of two of Charlie’s favorite charities. The first charity being ASPCA. Please use the following address of Linda Tiramani, ASPCA Special Giving, 520 8th ave 7th Floor, New York, NY 10018. Please include a note,”in memory of Charles Q. Cutshaw”. The second charity is Wounded Warrior Project, 4899 Belfort Rd., Ste 300, Jacksonville, FL 32256. Same note as before please.
Charlie will be missed.
The World’s Newest Celebrity Weapon
Face Time With the HK416—The Gun That Killed Bin Laden in Popular Mechanics.
Murdoc re-worked an article he had just finished in order to lead off with an HK416/ObL angle. And all this while the Army is looking at alternatives to the M16/M4.
Uninformed. As usual.
Banning Assault Weapons: Time For The NRA To Admit It’s All About Lifestyle
Some guy named Aaron Epple writes:
When George W. Bush quietly allowed the federal assault weapons ban expire in 2004
Wait. George W. Bush allowed the ban to expire? How? Did he veto the bill extending it?
That’s right. No bill made it out of Congress. The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act was voted down 8-90 in the Senate with an amendment to extend the AWB. The bill, without the amendment, passed 65-31, the following year.
Okay. Next sentence:
When Jared Loughner killed six people in 15 seconds with a Glock 9 equipped with a thirty-round magazine last month
Wait. A Glock 9? With a 30-round magazine? The weapon was a Glock 17 and he had a 33-round magazine.
This guy can’t even do the most basic simple research into his lead paragraph, yet he feels like he’s in a position to tell all the rest of us which parts of our God-given and Constitutionally-protected rights us citizens should be allowed to exercise.
The rest of his column pretty much goes downhill from there.
This is a gem from Susan in the comments section, though:
He has set out what those of us who don’t buy into the gun culture think about the subject.
To which Murdoc responded:
Yes he has. He starts his argument with statements about what happened that are just plain uninformed and show that he didn’t spend ten seconds on the internet to learn anything before deciding to tell everyone else which parts of which God-given Constitutionally-protected rights they should be allowed to have.
I’d say that he has EXACTLY set out what those who don’t buy into the so-called “gun culture” think.
The Three Gun Cultures
Kevin writes about Renormalizing the Gun Culture
Though I might pick some nits about terminology, I pretty much agree with his classifications and the fact that things are swinging back to where they’ve been for almost all of history up until the last few decades when it comes to weapons (and personal defense, for that matter) in this fine nation.
He also talks about the new Sons of Guns program on Discovery channel and that it isn’t very clear about how the types of weapons being built and sold are actually handled in America. While I think that a lot of the gun-related programming cropping up is going to help re-normalize things, presenting some things in a way that helps promote the lies of the anti-gun crowd could do terrible damage in a moment.
There’s Nothing Special About a Gun Show
People who’ve never been to a gun show should take the title literally – there is really nothing special about a gun show. From a legal standpoint, what occurs inside a gun show is no different than what occurs in a gun store or at a shooting range or even under a tree on Christmas morning.
Once Murdoc thought he had accidentally parked in the middle of the infamous loophole, but it turned out to be just a broken section of the parking lot. I don’t spend a lot of time at gun shows. I check out some local ones once in a while, but it’s not a big deal and they generally don’t have enough stuff worth the trip.
If all the stuff I keep hearing about being available was actually available, you can bet I’d make time.
UPDATE: Alphecca notes a Wichita gun show with thousands of attendees and 8 protestors. The protestors got the news coverage, of course.
“We need to have a dialogue about are we going to get serious about making our community and our nation safer or continue to have just basic wide open OK corale [sic] shoot out,” [protest organizer Micheael Poage] added.
Uh, Michael, where are these basic wide-open OK Corral shootouts happening?
From: Department of You Really Can’t Make This Shit Up
Shootings provide new opportunity
So says Lisa Price, Co-Founder of North Carolinians Against Gun Violence (NCGV).
She supports the “bill to ban magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of bullets.”
Via SailorCurt.
2A News Roundup at The Liberty Sphere
Murdoc doesn’t do a good enough job pointing out the excellent work day in and day out over at The Liberty Sphere. Their daily Second Amendment News Roundup is an excellent way to keep up with all the great gun blogs out there.
The 2A is a ‘Complication’
Sebasitan writes about a Car Analogy Epic Fail in the New York Times by Nicholas D. Kristof. Now, one of the Murdoc’s favorite pastimes is discussing gun control with those who say gun ownership should be like car ownership and make all sorts of driver’s license analogies. Good times.
But this is Murdoc’s favorite bit of the Kristof op-ed:
Granted, the Second Amendment complicates gun regulation (I accept that the framers intended for state militias, and possibly individuals, to have the right to bear flintlocks). [emphasis Murdoc's]
First, I love it how the self-evident God-given rights of all humans which are merely legally guaranteed in the US Constitution are simply “complications” when they don’t fit the view of the critic. Those pesky human rights; if not for all of that life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness jazz, we could really get things done.
Secondly, I have a true, heartfelt appreciation for the opinion a journalist who argues that Revolutionary-era documents defining what the government can and can’t do only meant as applicable to Revolutionary-era technology and society. Especially when he argues it on the internet.
“Arms” in the Second Amendment means “flintlocks only” as much as “freedom…of the press” in the First Amendment means “set and printed on hand-operated presses and distributed via horse-drawn transport and manual labor.”
As I noted on Sebastian’s blog, I doubt that Kristof is really that dumb or really believes any of that. He just thinks his readers are and that he can get away with it.
He goes on to argue
But even among those favoring a broader interpretation, the Second Amendment hasn’t prevented bans on machine guns
Which is sort of meaningless because “those favoring a broader interpretation” aren’t the ones who created the ban on machine guns. That’s like arguing that “even among those in favor of same-sex marriage, it is still illegal in most states” supports the idea that gay marriage bans are legally fine.
And, for the record, Murdoc thinks the Founding Fathers meant machine guns, bayonet lugs, pistol grips, and shoulder things that go up.
NPR Lying About Guns
In other news, the sun will rise in the east tomorrow, water is wet, and the Bears still suck.
