Trent Kimball, CEO of Texas Armoring Corporation (TAC), stands behind his own bullet-proof glass while a subordinate shoots an AK-47 at him.
If there’s a more impressive example of standing behind your product, I haven’t seen it.
(Hat tip: Stuff from Hsoi.)
I recently linked to Adam Winkler’s Atlantic article “The Secret History of Guns,” which I found quite interesting, but noted that I was not well-versed enough in gun and gun control history to ascertain the piece’s accuracy.
So I went seeking the opinions of experts. I emailed several people instrumental in exposing the academic fraud behind Michael Bellesiles’ Arming America to ask for their assessments of the Winkler piece. I’m happy to say that Clayton E. Cramer, one of the first and most persistent critics of Bellesiles, has taken the time to respond to my query on the Winkler piece:
Here’s what I sent to Professor Winkler:
I guess the only substantial criticisms I would make of this article are:
“To the gun lobby, the Second Amendment is all rights and no regulation.”
I don’t think that’s a particularly accurate description of the position of “the gun lobby.” There are certainly extremists who believe that any regulation of any sort is unconstitutional and unacceptable, but I am not aware that NRA, for example, opposed bans on those convicted of violent felonies from having guns. Similarly, I am not aware that NRA has opposed bans on the mentally ill owning guns. There are differences of opinion about exactly where the lines separating crimes that should be firearm disqualifiers from those that should not. There are differences of opinion as to exactly what standard should be used for determining whether a mentally ill person should be disarmed. But that’s not the same as “all rights and no regulation.”
Similarly, much of the gun lobby’s opposition to particular regulations is pragmatic: it does not work for its intended purpose, but it does create a serious obstacle to law-abiding adults obtaining a gun. Again, that’s not the same as “all rights and no regulation.”
Your statement that NRA endorsed the National Firearms Act of 1934 is not a terribly accurate statement. The original law as introduced would have put handguns under the NFA requirements, and NRA was strongly opposed to that. It was because of NRA’s efforts that the focus of the law changed from concealable firearms and automatic weapons to automatic weapons and short-barreled long guns.
Also, while Frederick may not have considered the constitutional provisions when he testified, take a look at the Ways & Means Committee hearing transcripts; both the A-G and his assistant acknowledged that there was a legitimate Second Amendment question as to whether Congress could simply ban machine gun ownership–hence the elaborate tax stamp provision copied from the Harrison Narcotic Act of 1906.
I’d like to thank Mr. Cramer for taking the time to respond to my query and Mr. Winkler’s article. Mr. Cramer’s blog can be found here.
Alphecca linked this interesting article on The Secret History of Guns. It talks about some of the ironies of gun control, such as the Black Panthers enthusiastically embracing the 2nd Amendment, while California Governor Ronald Reagan signed a law limiting the bearing of arms in government buildings.
I don’t necessarily agree with all of author Adam Winkler’s conclusions (such as they are), but he makes an interesting historical case, though I am not an expert. I would be interested to hear the take of some of the more prominent gun bloggers and historians on the piece.
It’s not yet sunset in the UK, so we don’t know if a fourth night of rioting will follow the first three. But the glee and impunity with which rioters torched and looted large sections of London are an indictment of two beloved projects of British and other European elites: a disarmed citizenry and an all-encompassing, cradle-to-grave welfare state.
It’s hard to imagine riots of these size going on for days on end in the American South or Midwest simply because so many armed, law-abiding citizens would stand ready to defend their lives, liberty and property. Once you’ve shot a few rioters dead, it does rather tend to put a damper on the festive mood of the others. An armed shop owner in Texas or Ohio wouldn’t have to stand idly by while his life work burned, waiting vainly for police that never come.
But London shopkeepers and home-owners never had that choice. As Instapundit noted, “Unlike L.A., there are no Korean shopkeepers with AR-15s to help contain the looting.” Since handguns were banned in the UK in 1997 (tightening already restrictive firearm laws), their per capita crime rate has skyrocketed compared to ours.
As Theodore Dalrymple and others have so depressingly documented, the welfare state has hollowed out the once redoubtable English character and replaced it with crime, inter-generational dole-dependency and general hopelessness. “These youths in hoodies and men in bandanas are not fighting for a principle, they’re trashing neighbourhoods for a plasma telly and a pair of new trainers. Masked gangs are looting department stores, not waving placards.”
Will this be a wake-up call for those pushing for an ever-larger welfare state? Of course not. My liberal British friends on Facebook are already trotting out the classic liberal phrases. “Underclass,” “powerless,” etc. Why “powerlessness” leads inevitably to someone looting a plasma TV is never adequately explained, nor how an ever-more-expansive welfare state would prevent this, unless they expect that taxpayers buying a plasma TV for every single person on the dole would remove the temptation.
Edited to Add: Greetings, Instapundit Readers! Take a look around and see if there’s anything else that might interest you, such as updates on the Texas Senate race or some tidbits on Rick Perry.
A new addition to the gun blog list is Stuff from Hsoi.
I first came across his blog with a link to this unnerving account of a “flash mob,” (i.e., a gang of black teenagers) smashing windows and looting cars in a suburban cul-de-sac in north Austin.
Doing another search today, I found out that Hsoi is employed my friend Karl Rehn at KRTraining, and that gives me a handy excuse to put him on the list.
This is a relatively short post, as I don’t currently have time to address some of the larger issues, like what should be the response when someone who shares at least some of the same beliefs you do commits a heinous act. Just as the violence of John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry did not automatically invalidate the moral underpinnings of the anti-slavery cause, Anders Behring Breivik’s rampage does not automatically invalidate concerns about the Islamization of Europe.
There’s been a lot of interest in what sort of weapon Breivik used. Though police have not released any details on what weapons were involved in his killing spree, in line with some comments here, Breivik appeared to own a Ruger Mini-14 and a Glock 17. The Ruger Mini-14 may be the gun shown here:
Though one knowledgeable emailer thinks it could just as easily be an AR-15 or an AK-47 with mounting rails, tricked out with what appears to be a mount (more below), a light, a bayonet, and maybe a laser sight? Though you don’t often see one mounted so far off the center line. He’s got so much tactical bling on there it looks like he’s trying to win a contest for Most Crap Mounted Off a Forward Rail. Seems deeply impractical. Though if it was tricked out like that during his rampage, obviously it wasn’t impractical enough.
Dwight located what appears to be the actual mount shown in that picture: the Botech Tactical Grip Pod Automatic Tactical BiPod Foregrip. As the animation on the product page illustrates, the two parts of the bipod telescope out to a standard bipod, making it a lot less useless than it seems in the picture.
I’m not enough of a gun expert to tell you what the light, scope, etc. shown are. Feel free to comment below if you do.
The Ruger Mini-14 Tactical Rifle fires 5.56mm NATO/.223 Remington, which is the same cartridge usually used in other “assault rifles” like the AR-15 and the M-16.
The Glock-17, despite some media scare-mongering, is a solid, reliable, bog-standard 9mm automatic pistol notable only for lighter weight achieved through the use of composites.
Both will indeed kill you quite dead in the hands of a knowledgeable shooter. Then again, wearing a police uniform, alone on an island with unarmed teenagers for more than an hour, Breivik probably could have killed just about as many with a bolt-action M1903 Springfield rifle.
So Ezell vs. Chaicago has been decided, and the three-judge panel basically bitchslapped Chicago into the 21st Century. Basically, Chicago was saying 1.) You have to get firearms training at a licensed firing range to own a gun, and 2.) We don’t need no stinking firing ranges within the city limits, and the court tore them a new asshole for blatantly disregarding DC vs. Heller.
Even more dramatically, the ruling makes explicit parallels between first Amendment and Second Amendment restrictions, which the Brady Bunch and their liberal Democratic co-conspirators have been denying for years.
I think any decision where the gun-grabber ordinance in question is actually derided in the decision as “thumbing of the municipal nose at the Supreme Court” has to count as a pretty overwhelming victory for the Second Amendment.
If I were a hardcore gun blogger, I’d read the entire judgment, quote chunks from it and offer closely reasoned, pithy insights.
If I were a semi-hardcore gun blogger, I’d skim the decision and offer some quick insights.
However, because I’m feeling very lazy tonight, I’m merely going to link to the writeup over at Snowflakes in Hell, since Sebastian has provided a far better, and more insightful, post than I could on the subject.
As a bonus, in the post just below that, he tears into Rahm’s ridiculous shooting range ordinance, another blatant attempt to deprive Chicago residents of their Second Amendment via absurd regulations, such as:
Requires that range operators inspect every gun brought into the range for safety, and that the caliber is appropriate for an indoor range. You must have a range master for every three shooting patrons. That range master must be on duty at all times. [Even by the standards of Chicago union featherbedding this is outrageous.] Ranges may only sell ammo for use onsite, and must ensure no one leaves the range with unauthorized ammo.
Et Freaking cetera. “Rahm’s ordinance is basically a joke, and an insult. I can’t imagine anyone would even try to operate a range under these ridiculous standards, and I suspect that’s the whole idea.”
Read the whole thing, on both posts.
I stopped doing This Week in Jihad because it was eating up too much of my time. But this week there were enough big Jihad-related stories to justify putting one up:
A few links of potential interest: