There are two types, as Colion Noir says in his video here, of people who ask the question, “Why do you need an AR-15?”
The first type, the type we prefer as educated firearm owners and 2nd Amendment advocates, is someone who is genuinely curious why. Why is the AR-15 useful? Why is it special? Why is it preferred by gun owners? Why are gun controllers wrong to want to ban it if it keeps being used in mass shootings?
These are all very genuine ‘whys’ and answering them honestly, in a manner to promote dialog and further education on the subject, builds these inquisitive types into more 2A advocates over time. They will, in most circumstances, come away with a variety of positive views on your point of view because you took the time to answer the questions in an honest, friendly, and reasoned way that didn’t strike them as hostile, confrontational, or irrationally conspiratorial.
All those latter which gun control groups love to portray gun owners as. The more tin foil they can reasonably imply that you wear, the better for their messages of “common sense” safety measures born of their own fear and impotence in matters of safety.
Remember, gun control fanatics need you to be wrong because they cannot be right otherwise. There position only holds if you, a gun owner, are more wrong than they are because their solutions are objectively terrible. They only become more ‘common sense’ if you, the “gun nut” are more nonsensical than they are. It’s all about scale.
The second type, the type you should feel no obligation to justify yourself towards, is the askhole. Not the traditional askhole, someone who asks for advice on a gun or gear and then picks the terrible option, no these askholes want to ask the question they’ve already made up their mind on so they can be confrontational about it. They ‘know‘ you don’t need an AR-15 because its a weapon of war and only good for killing lots of people really quickly, or whatever the fear line of the day is.
So they’re just there to cause you a headache, they’re there to get their mad out and you happen to be in the verbal line of fire. They associate you with the bad thing and no amount of reason is going to make them reconsider when their easy cathartic release for their anger is you.
It sucks. Its annoying.
Save your energy for the genuine askers. Smile and roll your eyes at the askholes.
Make sure you give the video a like on the Tubes of You.
Highland Park Response, via Northern Provisions IG
Illinois police officials and multiple news agencies are reporting that a 4th of July parade was attacked from a rooftop by a shooter with a rifle.
The reported death count is 6 and up to 26 are listed as wounded.
The suspect is still at large. He is described as a late teens early 20s male with long black hair. Having fled the scene and left the rifle on the roof, a rifle has been found and police are searching for a gunman who opened fire at about 10:14 a.m. No known motive for the attack has been attributed to the shooting at this time.
Parades and other gathering events like marathons are often targeted for terrorist acts. The Waukesha parade attack also killed 6 and left 62 injured. The Boston Marathon Bombing killed 3 but injured nearly 300.
Illinois has stringent rules in place for firearm owners, one of the few states requiring special renewed licensure to own a firearm with their FOID system.
Despite this Chicago is plagued with violence. While today’s attack will undoubtedly turn out to be an especially brutal event, and for no good reason beyond ego, the weekend had already seen 9 dead and many wounded in the city. Five people were shot in Grand Crossing just after midnight.
[Ed: There’s no better way to mark July 4th than to read our country’s Declaration of Independence. The original orthography is retained, but the specific complaints about King George and Parliament’s abuses are edited out in order to focus on the principles that applied then, do now, and always will. Reposted since 2019.]
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In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,
—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
—Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present [Government] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. . . .
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A [Government] whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to . . . rule . . . a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our [Governors]. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by [them] to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all [other] Allegiance . . . , and that all political connection between [us], is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
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— DRGO Editor Robert B. Young, MD is a psychiatrist practicing in Pittsford, NY, an associate clinical professor at the University of Rochester School of Medicine, and a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.
Caleb and I talk over just how bad the California DoJ’s epic failure of information security was.
In a move that is at best gross incompetence and at worst an outright doxxing of CCW permit holders, on Monday the Cali DOJ published a database which contained the names, addresses, and other personally identifiable information of everyone who had ever so much as applied for a CCW permit in Cali in the last decade. Nice.
Bad. Really bad. Like everything possible they should have protected about you except your social security number was yeeted upon the data streams of the internet for anyone to do with as they like.
Single mother with a protection order who applied for and got a permit? Your crazy ex whom you got the permit for has access to your address now. Single mother who applied for the permit for that exact previous reasons and got denied. Crazy ex still has your address and knows you didn’t get the permit to carry your gun and possibly whether or not you own one at all.
Oopsies.
I’m sure Attorney General Bonta’s, “We understand the seriousness of this situation, seriously.” Claims will make that all good though and the the DoJ is leveraging their law enforcement resources to protect California’s vulnerable citizens whose data being public facing put them in much greater harms way… Right?
In a move that is at best gross incompetence and at worst an outright doxxing of CCW permit holders, on Monday the Cali DOJ published a database which contained the names, addresses, and other personally identifiable information of everyone who had ever so much as applied for a CCW permit in Cali in the last decade. Nice.
West Virginia Attorney General sends letter requesting CCW reciprocity to Maryland Governor.
"The dictates of the Court's decision are clear. Through one means or another, Maryland must now afford West Virginians a way of publicly carrying in Maryland for self-defense." pic.twitter.com/7fLqtQjoJH
— Firearms Policy Coalition (@gunpolicy) June 28, 2022
West Virginia just let everyone know that the NYSRPA v. Bruen decision ended the restrictive and unconstitutional “May-Issue” permitting scheme once and for all. As a result, Maryland will have to come up with some other way to harass anyone trapped there. Fortunately for us, the 2A champions over at FPC were on deck to make sure we all got to watch.
Firstly, it’s bad enough Maryland doesn’t trust their own people to carry. Secondly, they also don’t trust anyone else! Because they’re such good neighbors, West Virginia has had this one in the chamber ready to go. Less than a week after the SCOTUS ruling, they apparently just said “Send it”.
Without solid legal footing to reject reciprocity, due to the Supreme Court’s shooting down may-issue permitting schemes, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Oregon, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York are all now potentially subject to the same treatment. They have long histories of rejecting other states permits, and we are looking forward to seeing what the final net result of this far-reaching decision will be.
How will Maryland reply? How quickly will this sort of request spread? It will be interesting to see how quickly this snowballs. Hopefully other states will be reminded to respect the constitution, their citizens, and the rule of law.
NEW: Heller v. DC (D. DC): Dick Heller files lawsuit challenging Washington DC's regulation that limits concealed carriers "to the amount of ammunition that would load [their] gun twice, but no more than 20 rounds total." https://t.co/VGhZ3kbToNpic.twitter.com/GVAnKcegGZ
Habitual challenger of unconstitutional gun laws Dick Heller is back. Once again suing Washington D.C., it seems he’s not satisfied with raking the feds over the coals four times. However this time, it’s about magazine capacity laws limiting citizens to 20rds. Heller’s filing cites not only the recent SCOTUS verdict on Bruen, but his own winning case from ’08, and others.
Heller became a household name in 2008 when SCOTUS sided with him against the District. His landmark case blew open gun control nationwide, and opened the door to later wins for civil rights. It dismissed the absurd notion that a militia was necessary for Americans to keep and bear arms. Resulting impacts have been felt in courts from New York to California. Most notably, Heller’s win led to restored carry rights to Illinoisans in McDonald v. Chicago.
Despite trouncing the nation’s capitol in court, the city government made it difficult to obey the new carry law. While DC is shall-issue, once you’ve got a permit, carrying in DC is difficult at best. They placed restrictions on where one can carry, from public land, to within 1,000′ of a visiting dignitary. Dignitaries don’t just stand in place the whole time, or announce their travel plans while visiting DC. While they are uncommon in most of the country, as you can imagine, it’s a regular thing in DC.
What isn’t uncommon though, is visiting other human beings in their homes, be it friends or clients. DC law made it a crime to carry in a residence without the property owner’s permission. Not satisfied with criminalizing hangouts, they also banned carrying in a church, without express permission. The laundry list of problems with DC’s carry laws is too long to cover here. Lets just leave it at “ballistic fingerprinting wasn’t even the worst of them”.
In light of this and many other issues with DC’s carry restrictions, Heller went back to court 3 more times. Winning some concessions, and losing others, he just won’t stop. Holding feet to the fire in DC seems to be his entire wheelhouse these days, and we’re glad for it. While some might expect Dick to kick back and relax at his age, it’s just not in him. Regardless, we’re thankful men like him exist to continue the fight against gun control, and look forward to another victory.
Brownells is one of 10 retailers that the New York Attorney General Letita James and NYC Mayor Mike Adams, along with support from Governor Hochul no doubt, have targeted in a series of suits they say are meant to combat ‘ghost guns’ within their states.
The suit alleges that these retailers sell parts that can be assembled into what the ATF is now referring to as a PMF, a Privately Made Firearm, and can be “sold” without a background check.
This is stretch of the truth as the only components that can be sold without a background check are ones the ATF has stated are not firearms. The ATF has additionally confirmed the serial numbers are not required when making a PMF but they are required when selling it. A person prohibited from possessing a serialized firearm is equally in violation of the law if they possess a PMF. Any retailer in New York transferring a PMF would be required to serialize it per ATF and conduct the state and federal compliant checks.
The AG and Mayor contend that ‘ghost guns’ have been found at an increasing number of crime scenes and are blaming companies like Brownells for it.
“These are dangerous weapons,” Adams, a former police officer, said at a Manhattan news conference with James and other officials. “We should not think these are just kits used for hobbyists. They are being used by murderers. All of them are illegal.”
From the start of 2016 through the close of 2020, the ATF reported some 24,000 suspected ghost guns were recovered nationally, not just in New York, by law enforcement from potential crime scenes. Roughly 325 homicides or attempted homicides were committed using the weapons.
To put that in scale. From 2016 to 2020 the FBI UCR states:
For 2016 – 2020, there were 30,133 homicide incidents, and 32,600 offenses reported in the United States by at most 7,114 law enforcement agencies that submitted National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data, and covers 33% of the total population.
For 2016 – 2020, there were 1,262,078 aggravated-assault incidents, and 1,573,778 offenses reported in the United States by at most 7,114 law enforcement agencies that submitted National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data, and covers 33% of the total population.HOW THESE NUMBERS ARE CALCULATED
The FBI does not filter by attempted murder in their statistics, it is only distinguished from aggravated assault by the premediated intent to kill in the assault so I use the AA stat here.
So even if we take the abbreviated homicide information from NIBRS and made that a totality of incidents, or we triple the number of ghost guns to account for fact the the NIBRS is only covering 33% of the population (both scientifically suspect but I’ll indulge it since it errs in New York’s favor) that means ghost guns account for less than 1% of weapons used in homicides if every single one of them was used in a homicide that made it into the NIBRS.
But they included attempted homicides, which means the percentage drops even further as some of those 325 ‘Ghost Guns‘ were used in the aggravated assault category and not the homicide. The ratio of offense is 50 to 1, which if we apply that to the 325 ghost guns means they were at 6 or 7 murder offenses.
Put another way, the CDC tracked 76,713 firearm homicides from 2016 to 2020. This means that if 324 out of the 325 were homicides and only one was an attempted homicide and if each ghost gun killed two people (both of these are absurd over estimations ) that ghost guns accounted for .84% of firearm homicide deaths during this five year period and the percentage of total homicides is even smaller.
So even by wildly overestimating and giving an absolutely astonishing benefit of the doubt to Adams, James, and Hochul, they are attempting to sue away less than 1% of the nation’s homicide problem because a piece of plastic or metal doesn’t have a number on it. So are they pursuing good fundamental policy or are they just sore losers who finally got called on their anti-2A agenda?
The numbers seem to indicate something when you do a bit of math, just saying.
I bought my wonderfully fun Zenith (MKE Era) MP5 from them while I was at school in Des Moines. I can tell you, first hand, that they were very cognizant of the rules for any manner of out of state purchaser. I was an out of state purchaser and we made arrangements to ship the gun so I could do all the proper transfer forms within my home state, as required by Federal law at a Michigan FFL. I essentially completed an online purchase in person and had it shipped to the appropriate FFL for all the final legal items.
GAT Editor running a ‘Break Contact’ drill at a Teufelshund Tactical/HSP MP5 Operators Course
My friend and classmate wanted to purchase an AR lower while we were there and Brownells was equally cognizant of his state’s requirements for the lower as they were with mine for the pistol transfer.
While I cannot say for certain that no violations have ever been shipped by the Brownells warehouse, their behavior during my direct interactions with them indicate an extremely detailed level of care when it comes to the legalities of each state.
Multiple sources have now confirmed that UPS is shutting down their shipping accounts, retailers who deal in products like the Polymer80 frame. The complaint is, allegedly, that these retailers are shipping 80% type PMF products to states that ban 80% PMF products. No confirmation has been given by UPS that they have packages with prohibited materials going to ban states, only that they believe it to be so, but one source GAT Daily has spoken with confirmed they filter out states where 80% type product SKUs are illegal.
In the letter, dated June 20th, the United Parcel Service (UPS) has shut down the shipping account of the retailer for selling ‘Ghost Guns‘. A second retailer, today, confirmed that their account was also terminated for the same reason.
If UPS is intercepting packages of legal products from these retailers and destroying them thinking they are ghost guns that is a massive breach of trust on the part of UPS with their retail customers.
Readers may remember that President Biden fixed the ‘Ghost Gun’ problem with the ATF by putting together the ‘readily assembled’ language. Retailers in the industry wishing to maintain their businesses made the necessary changes to the products to again place them in compliance with the regulations regarding Privately Made Firearms, now known as PMFs under ATF 2021R-05F.
Under 2021R-05F, PMFs still do not require serialization. Under the new rules, the defining factors make very specific mention of the inclusion of finishing tools, jigs, and included instruction, which combined can make an 80% frame readily completable, and thus a ghost gun, or just a normal firearm part if purchased stand alone.
UPS, a private company with no regulatory authority, has stated it has taken it upon themselves to “seize and destroy” private property. These retail companies worked directly with the ATF in order to establish clear criteria to continue to support PMF builders within full compliance of the new rules. UPS, apparently on their own initiative, and not with any cited request or noted directive from the ATF or a prohibiting state, shut down service and has declared they may destroy packages in their possession from the retailers.
Attempts to resolve this with UPS have been met with reported confusion on the part of local management and no response from the compliance department itself, according to the retailers.
Brownells has also now been caught up in this according to official social media posts on their Facebook and Twitter.
[Ed: Dr. Wheeler originally published this on American Greatness June 11.]
The failures of the same old gun control laws should warn us away from the easy route of penalizing virtually all American gun owners who will never commit a crime with their guns.
“Do something!” begged the crowd gathered before Joe Biden last week in Uvalde, Texas. And who could blame them? Racked with sorrow and fury at the massacre of 19 elementary school children and two of their teachers, they were desperate for answers. Do something! “We will,” promised Biden. But what?
The standard nostrums—more background checks, bans on scary-looking black rifles, bans on so-called “high-capacity” magazines—are always proffered hastily and in the fog of overwhelming emotion. Such laws passed in anger have burdened only innocent people and sometimes resulted in their deaths by depriving them of a life-saving self-defense tool.
Now the House reflexively brings forth the Protecting Our Kids Act, presumably intended to mitigate mass shootings. Each of its six bills is a recycled version of old and failed proposals. One aims to raise the age for legal ownership of semiautomatic rifles and shotguns from 18 to 21. It would surely face immediate legal challenges, a California version of this law having just been declared unconstitutional by a federal appellate court.
The second title tweaks well-established statutory law prohibiting so-called straw purchases, or covert gun purchases for third parties. Nothing new here except more ways for innocent people to run afoul of already complicated legal traps. Career criminals, the supposed targets of straw purchase bans, routinely circumvent the law anyway, acquiring the tools of their trade from family or business associates.
The final section of the Protecting Our Kids Act targets a perennial bogeyman of gun prohibitionists: firearm magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition. A magazine is the removable container (often erroneously called a “clip”) of ammunition. Although the bill exempts—for now—the tens of millions of such magazines currently owned by American gun owners as normal parts of their guns, a version of this law has already served as the first step down a slippery slope to a total ban on ownership. We have a real-life example of how it happened in California, which in a 2016 ballot initiative finally banned ownership of magazines holding more than 10 cartridges.
Most of the voters who overwhelmingly approved California’s Proposition 63 were likely unaware that magazines holding 15 or more rounds have been standard parts of America’s most popular handguns for over 30 years now. They remain unremarkable and legal parts of handguns in most of America today, with no evidence that they somehow cause mass murders. But the lives of Californians who own these pistols and similar perfectly legal firearms changed overnight with the passage of Proposition 63.
In a 2017 federal court decision striking down the California ban, Judge Roger Benitez noted, “On July 1, 2017 [the effective date of Prop. 63], any previously law-abiding person in California who still possesses a firearm magazine capable of holding more than 10 rounds will begin their new life of crime.”
Benitez further observed that “at the preliminary injunction hearing, the attorney for the Attorney General, although well prepared, was not able to describe all of the various exceptions to the dispossession and criminalization components of [California’s law regulating magazines] . . . the California matrix of gun control laws is among the harshest in the nation and are filled with criminal law traps for people of common intelligence who desire to obey the law.”
If even the government’s own law enforcement experts can’t parse this web of laws, how can the average citizen stay out of legal danger? Nevertheless, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals en banc ultimately reversed that decision, putting millions of Californians back in legal peril.
The lesson here is an old one. The founders gave us a system of government with carefully crafted controls on destructive human passions. When the wrath of mobs becomes the law of the land, innocent people always suffer. The failures of the same old gun control laws should warn us away from the easy route of penalizing virtually all American gun owners who will never commit a crime with their guns. Justice requires us to focus our efforts instead on deterring those very few flawed individuals who commit such evil.
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— Timothy Wheeler, MD is the founder and former director of Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership, and a retired head and neck surgeon.
I have to give full credit to a reader for this one, as an infantry Marine it never occured to me because my Geneva classification was combatant. As gun controllers cry about weapons of war on our streets, and in our homes, and assailing our classrooms, the actual written and recognized laws of war have something relevant to say on this issue.
The Hague and Geneva Contentions, along with other international agreements on the proper conduct of warfare, recognize certain weapons that can be issued to types of non-combatants for their personal protection and those under their care. The laws of war recognize certain personal weapons as having a defensive use only.
The individual rifle is considered a defensive weapon under the international articles, rules, and treaties that govern the conduct of war. That is the reason that non-combatant uniformed personnel are allowed to be armed with certain weapons, including a service rifle. You will not see them issued a grenade launcher, rockets, or a belt-fed to support fire and maneuver, only a personal weapon to protect them and those other non-combatants under their charge.
Medical personnel are the largest group of uniformed personnel covered under this, extending to medics, nurses, surgeons, and Corpsman. Certain clergical associated non-combats also carry weapons, although chaplains do not themselves.
Lawfully armed non-combatants.
Personnel who are uniformed and issued a personal weapon for protection. They are not involved in, nor or they legally allowed to participate in, direct offensive operations and the bearing of offensive arms to achieve combat objectives. That is the job of someone like myself, an infantry Marine and legal combatant.
The Corpsman attached to my squad is not there as another rifle for me to use, he or she is there for when someone gets hurt and their rifle is there to protect them and those hurt and under their care. As an infantry squad leader, my rifle, my squad’s rifles, explosives, and machine guns, and my available support from air assets and indirect fire like mortars and artillery, are all my offensive weapons to achieve my mission.
The Corpsman is legally not on my list of assets, they’re essentially just following me around in case of injuries in my squad. They’re right there to begin care should care be needed.
Should they violate the rules regarding the armament and conduct of non-combatants, they lose their protected status under international law and become a combatant.
A Medic or Corpsman carrying and using M249, or a new XM250, in the role that weapon is normally employed would violate the rules since that weapon is for offensive use. That same Medic or Corpsman using their issued personal rifle, or a soldier under their cares issued weapon to protect that soldier or soldiers from harm in their injured status, would not violate those rules. The use of the issued weapon or the use of weapons from a troop under their care in a specific manner would not make them a combatant.
In short, the personal rifle is recognized as a defensive weapon under international law. Even if it is an “assault rifle” by definition. Grenade launchers, belt-fed machine guns, man portable rockets, and crew served weapons all fall under offensively recognized weapons, but sidearms and personal rifles are defensive.
Federal and State law enforcement use the AR as a defensive weapon. International military law protects the personally issued rifles, including fully automatic ones, and sidearms of non-combatants as defensive weapons. So if we are to believe the actual laws of war, the rifle is a completely legitimate weapon of defense for non-combatants.
The Golden State of gun owner infringements is showing that their ‘oops’ with the personal identity information of concealed licensees keeps getting worse as the investigation is ongoing. The California DoJ has now confirmed that not only were all current permits shown with name, address, date of birth, driver’s license number, and criminal history, but they exposed everyone who applied in the last decade too.
Records from 2011 to 2021 of all applicants, whether they were granted a permit or not, were confirmed to be part of the exposed data by Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office. Other dashboards backend data was also launched as viewable to the public, but it is unknown at this time how much protected data was part of those other systems.
All of this stems from California DoJ’s launch of their Firearms Dashboard Portal, which it is clear now was not properly checked for security from the front end. This wasn’t a hack or a “leak” in the traditional sense so it seems. This was a website that was put live to the public with accessible searchable pathways that anyone could use to look up protected information. Whatever authentication scheme was supposed to be in place so that sensitive information could not be found in the open was not in place.
Deliberately done?
The timing of this egregious data breach has led to speculation in many parts of the internet that this was done deliberately. If it was, by a lone or small group of employees more than likely, that would be a far more devastating breach of the public trust than the negligence of publishing all the data in a forward facing manner was.
For the record, I do not believe this was deliberately done on the part of the government of California.
I am less convinced that it wasn’t a deliberate action by an employee angry at the result and new directives, but I consider it overall unlikely. I’m sure DoJ in CA would love if it was right now just so they could publicly throw someone to the wolves for the information breach instead of having to eat the incompetence line over and over again.
Being reported by the National Foundation for Gun Rights, the Supreme Court has allegedly given notice to the lower courts that several recent rulings of theirs must be redone under the standard affirmed by Bruen. Several lower courts have very predictably upheld rather absurdly anti-2A rulings under spurious logic.
‘It depends on what your definition of ‘Infringe’ infringes’ seems to have been the thought of the various lower courts who very predictably, by region, upheld items like magazine bans and ‘Assault Weapon’ bans, as well as shall issue carry in Hawaii.
The Supreme Court just struck down four anti-gun lower court rulings:
SCOTUS granted cert in all four of these decisions, and told the lower courts “You got it wrong in all of these. We’re striking down your opinions. Go do it again, and do it based on the actual text of the Second Amendment and the history/tradition of the right to keep and bear arms.”
Essentially, those courts have to review those state laws in light of Bruen and issue new rulings using the new “text, history, and tradition” framework.
They may try to wriggle out of it (they almost certainly will) but if they obey the Supreme Court, there’s no way any of these state laws can withstand actual Second Amendment scrutiny.
This spells doom for mag bans, assault weapons bans, and public carry bans.
-NFGR
We knew Bruen was big, but I expected much slower movement and far more lawsuits to be required under the Bruen standard before we saw the rulings begin to fall. Now, with the Supreme Court saying to the lower courts ‘go back and do it right’, we may see exceptional progress on the 2nd Amendment restoration around the nation.
9-Hole and Brandon Herrera discuss perhaps the saddest chapter in the AK’s history… the modern one.
The AK-12 is just a colossal colostomy bag of disappointment and takes everything that had been done so well with the Kalashnikov rifle series and undoes so much of it. The AK-100 and AK-200 series were excellent examples of keeping the rifle modern and companies have long since figured out how to run modern equipment on the rifle.
And then the AK-12 happened.
And then the Russian brought the AK-12’s to Ukraine…
And then the captured guns kinda… sucked. They didn’t even have optics on them despite that being almost entirely the point of modernizing the guns. Much fail.
Meanwhile companies like RS Regulate, SLR Rifleworks, and full on manufacturers like IWI have succeeded in modernizing the AK in various and highly competitive ways and the things are awesome! The additions, most very cost effective, bring the rifles into alignment with modern standards set by the AR-15, being plenty accurate for their respective calibers and able to work with suppression, lights, lasers, and optic suites.
It is puzzling why Russia would so short change themselves on a rifle when they were going to war. Budget cuts are a real thing but rifles aren’t that expensive.
My first automatic shotgun was the then new Remington 11-87. Introduced in 1987, no surprise there, the 11-87 isn’t a cut down Remington 1100, but a shotgun designed to be more reliable than the original 1100. The 11-87 was designed to get the measure of steel shot. The 1100 is among the most reliable shotguns in the world, proven in many field tests. The 11-87 just may be a tic better.
The 11-87, like myself, looks its age. It is just a little older than my two boys. The 11-87 has never failed and had fired several thousand shells in training, and a few in the field. The 11-87 has not been abused but it certainly has not been babied. The gas system has been cleaned and the bore swabbed out and the chamber given attention. That’s about the scope of maintenance.
The 11-87 features a self regulating gas operation. You may use field grade birdshot, turkey loads, full power and reduced power buckshot, and other loads without changing the gas setting or installing a different gas ring. It just always works. Only the lightest loads, such as the RWS frangible may not operate the action. There is a gas cylinder mounted on the barrel. The gas collar is separate, there is a gas piston and barrel seal with the Remington 0 ring. These ride on the magazine tube.
The 11-87 features checkered American walnut stocks and a matte finish. The 21 inch barrel feature rifle type sights in this Special Purpose version.
The barrel, interesting enough, isn’t a buck special or a slug barrel. The barrel features choke tubes. This is a handy outfit. I have a choke tube that is rifled for slug use, a neat trick, and the standard full choke tube for buckshot. The majority of 11-87 shotguns are sporting guns with twin beads and ventilated ribs and the like.
The only maintenance required is the occasional scrubbing of the gas cylinder collar and seal assembly. The shotgun weighs about eight pounds, a bit more than the Remington 870 pump on hand for comparison. Coupled with the gas action, this weight results in a light recoiling combination.
The magazine holds four shells. The trigger is clean and crisp, breaking at 4.4 pounds even. The 21 inch Special Purpose barrel is heavy enough for the strongest loads and patterns as well as any other with the choke tubes installed. Handling is fast. It swings quickly on targets and offers a stable platform. The hands line up one behind the other when using this shotgun. Natural feel and point are far faster than with the AR or AK type shotguns. For me that is what a shotgun is about, fast work and getting hits on a moving target.
I have fired the 11-87 quite a bit over the years with whatever load was available. Among the most useful loads have been Hornady’s buckshot loads. The Critical Defense load is ideal for home defense. This #00 buckshot load produces a tight pattern to 20 yards. An interesting load is the Hornady Varmint Express. Using #4 buckshot this load features a wide cloud of 27 pellets. With a full choke tube in place this loading should be murder on coyotes.
I have been interested in slug accuracy and fired the 11-87 with a number of loads. The Hornady American Whitetail slug breaks 1522 fps in the 11-87. That is a lot of power with a 438 grain slug. Accuracy averages a 3.9 inch group for five shots at 50 yards. For woods hunting at close range that is acceptable. Deer sized animals hit by slugs crumple and expire quickly. The 11-87 makes for a versatile, reliable and useful shotgun for all around hunting and defense use. It is a long serving and trusted shotgun.
