by permission from Stephen P. Wenger
comments in () by the same
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http://www.spw-duf.info
No Getting Away from Bears: A really big bear is causing big problems at the Lake Tahoe community of Incline Village, Nevada wildlife officials said. The black bear, estimated by some to be around 700 pounds, may be responsible for as much as $70,000 in damage this year, according to the Nevada Department of Wildlife. It has evaded traps and special night patrols sent to look for it. Even two bullets fired by a homeowner did little but slow him down for a couple of weeks… Lackey said that this summer, a homeowner armed with .44 magnum handgun confronted the bear after it broke into an Incline Village home that it had already broken into several times before. "He shot it right between the eyes and the bullet bounced off his skull. We know that because we found it," Lackey said. "He shot it again and hit it. We know that because there was a lot of blood, but it wasn't a mortal wound." Within a few weeks, the bear was back to its old antics, breaking into garages and going after trash or food in freezers…
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/11/18/state/n093531S32.DTL&tsp=1
Black Bear Size: Adolph Murie, the famous naturalist, once said, "A bear a long distance from a scale always weighs more." The general public often misjudges the weights of black bears. While they are large, they are not the 4,000-pound beasts that some visitors to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park describe.Weights can vary greatly depending on the age, health, and sex of the bear as well as the season and the condition of the habitat. Seasonality is a major factor - pre-denning weight in the fall is considerably higher than the weight of the bear when it emerges from hibernation in the spring. American black bears exhibit sexual dimorphism, where males are generally 33% larger than their female counterparts of the same age. American black bears on the East Coast of North America are larger than those found on the West Coast. Average weights are:
The Black Bear Skull: Black bear skulls are typically massive; much bigger than those of most North American wildlife. It is quite long and wide across the forehead, but narrower in the muzzle area. The eyebrow ridge is well-defined and the nostrils are quite broad. The jawbone hinge is large to accommodate the heavy jaw muscles. A female skull may be narrower and more pointed than that of a mature male. An average measurement is 11.5 inches in length and 6.5 to 7 inches in width. The longest black bear skull recorded with the Boone and Crockett system was 14.75 inches and the widest black bear skull was 8.875 inches… (The drawing is worth examining if you spend time in bear country.)
http://www.americanbear.org/anatomy.htm
---
Did Holder Spill the Beans?: …Here's what Holder said during a Q&A with anti-gun New York Sen. Charles Schumer: "The position of the Administration is that there should be a basis for law enforcement to share information about gun purchases. Fully respect the Second Amendment, fully respect the Heller decision. It does not seem to us that this is inconsistent to allow law enforcement agencies to share that kind of information, for that information to be retained and then to be shared by law enforcement." That sounds like registration to a lot of people, including my colleague David Codrea, who writes about Holder's testimony here. Retention of such information could easily translate to a permanent registry. Recall some months ago when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – another ardent gun prohibitionist – told ABC's Robin Roberts in a bombshell admission that "We don't want to take their guns away. We want them registered." And an equally candid anti-gun California Sen. Dianne Feinstein told CBS' Lesley Stahl in a '60 Minutes' segment that she is essentially waiting in the tall grass, waiting for the "time and the place" to introduce new gun restrictions, perhaps a renewal of the ban on so-called "assault weapons." In Feinstein's own words, there is "no question about that." …
http://www.examiner.com/x-4525-Seattle-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m11d24-Has-Holder-spilled-beans-on-Obama-gun-registration-plan
… The news of a pending push by Obama to ban many semi-automatic rifles was sparked by comments from newly-minted Attorney General Eric Holder, who told reporters that "As President Obama indicated during the campaign, 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." He went on to indicate that the administration had decided on a new angle of attack to push for the ban: the war on drugs…
http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/node/6990
The gun banning front group Mayors Against Illegal Guns, headed by New York's Mayor Bloomberg, came out with a full page ad in the Washington Post recommending that the Federal Government now link the secret No Fly list to National Instant Background Check System (NICS) and use this to prevent gun owners on the list from buying guns. And just last week, Attorney General Eric Holder endorsed this legislation on behalf of the Obama Administration. Fortunately for US gun owners, Congress has failed to act and that is why Bloomberg's MAIG is now pushing to connect the two…
http://www.ammoland.com/2009/11/24/mayors-against-illegal-guns-wants-to-a-secret-list-to-keep-you-from-buying-guns/
---
Obamacare Threatens RKBA: … Larry Pratt, executive director of GOA, said the chances of Uncle Sam using his power to regulate health care based on gun ownership was even better because Kathleen Sebelius is the head of the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency that would be in charge of specific health care regulations and their enforcement. Sebelius has a long anti-gun history, responsible for vetoes of concealed carry bills in Kansas… It wouldn't be the first time gun ownership has been tied to health regulation. GOA claims that over 150,000 vets with post-traumatic stress disorder are currently on a list that prohibits gun purchases. But Obamacare would expand government health care to millions of additional Americans. Calls to Sebelius' office were not returned, though a member of her press office laughed out loud when questioned about the prospect of health care being tied to gun ownership, saying, "that's crazy." But Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, said such regulations were quite possible. The problem stems from government's overriding cost-benefit assessments and their take on health issues…
http://townhall.com/columnists/JillianBandes/2009/11/25/obamacare_may_target_gun_owners?page=full
You might not necessarily think that health care reform would end up in the crosshairs of the gun lobby. But you'd be wrong. Gun Owners of America have been raging against the Senate health care bill for all sorts of imagined threats to the Second Amendment, and now the White House has taken notice… The White House says: "Section 2717 section creates guidelines for insurers to report on initiatives that improve quality of care and health outcomes, and it specifically lists what types of programs would be involved - such as smoking cessation, physical fitness, nutrition, heart disease prevention. There is no mention of guns, and there is no language that could result in higher premiums for gun owners or lower premiums for people who do not own guns." … (We have a regime that ignores the Constitution so guidelines can certainly be changed on a moment's notice.)
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11/white-house-takes-on-gun-lobbys-health-care-reform-attacks.php
… This definition is extremely broad, and the assertion that it is not broad enough to encompass gun ownership appears to be incorrect. There is a very large body of "public health" scholarship which claims to show that gun ownership is a very large health risk to the family that has a gun in the home. I believe that much of this scholarship is of poor quality, and some of it is mere junk science. However, the existence of dozens of articles in public health and medical journals would almost certainly be enough for an anti-gun definition of "Wellness Program" by the Dept. of Health and Human Services to pass the deferential Chevron standard of review…
http://volokh.com/2009/11/24/health-bill-and-gun-ownership/
---
Texas AG Signs McDonald Brief: Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott today (Monday) took legal action to protect Texans' Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. In a brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court and authored by Attorney General Abbott, 38 state attorneys general explain that law-abiding Americans have a fundamental right to bear arms – and that local governments cannot simply disregard that right and impose an outright ban on handgun possession… Last year, Attorney General Abbott and 31 other state attorneys general filed an amicus brief in District of Columbia v. Heller, in which they urged the Supreme Court to overturn a Washington, D.C., law that banned all handguns and required that rifles and shotguns be disassembled or encumbered by trigger locks at all times. In a landmark 2008 decision, the Court agreed with the attorney general's position and declared the federal city's handgun ban unconstitutional, holding that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms… (It's nice to see that there are six more AG's backing McDonald than there were backing Heller. That means only 12 declined to sign.)
http://www.kfdm.com/news/texas-35389-general-argues.html
---
Montana Senator Signs McDonald Brief: U.S. Sen. Jon Tester is part of a group of lawmakers signing a brief supporting a gun rights case before the U.S. Supreme Court. The court is considering whether the Second Amendment's right to keep and bear arms applies to state and local laws restricting guns. The case arose from a handgun ban in Chicago. Gun advocates want the court to strike down such local laws. Tester says 55 other senators, including 17 other Democrats, have signed onto a brief in support of gun rights he put together with Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. (It appears that this Democrat is telling Big Brother that what works in Billings should also work in Chicago.)
http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/article_6288a756-d8fe-11de-b65a-001cc4c002e0.html
---
West Virginia Supremes Support Protective Orders: The fear of physical harm is enough to grant a domestic violence protective order to West Virginia residents, the state Supreme Court ruled Monday in a precedent-setting decision. The opinion reversed a January ruling by Clay Circuit Judge Robert Facemire, who said that Kimberly Thomas, a Clay County resident who has since moved to Kanawha County, did not deserve a protective order against her ex-boyfriend, Joseph B. Morris. "We hold that the act of domestic violence defined in [state law] as 'holding, confining, detaining or abducting another person against that person's will' does not require proof of some overt physical exertion on the part of the alleged offender in order to justify issuance of a protective order," wrote Justice Thomas McHugh in the 16-page opinion… (Such a protective order generally makes one a prohibited possessor: http://www.atf.gov/pub/fire-explo_pub/i33102.pdf.)
http://www.wvgazette.com/News/200911230728
---
South Carolina Tax Holiday Riles New York Daily News: The great state of South Carolina is putting its own sick twist on Black Friday with a tax holiday on firearm purchases. Not cars. Not clothes. Certainly not books. Just guns. For the 48 hours following Thanksgiving, gun buyers will enjoy a break of up to 9% in state and local taxes. Firearms traffickers are not expected to pass the savings on to New York criminals, but what is called "the extrava-gun-za" and "Second Amendment Weekend" is sure to help South Carolina stay among the top five states that provide 85% of the illegal handguns recovered in New York City… Even without a tax holiday, South Carolina gun shops sold a half-million handguns in a 10-year period. The state's population is only 4.5 million. The number of gun sales is expected to grow ever higher thanks to Pitts, who also sponsored a bill that reduced the age for possessing a handgun in South Carolina from 21 to 18… (You wanna play with numbers? That's 0.111 handguns purchased per resident but that's over ten years; if you pretend it was distributed evenly over those ten years, that's 0.011 handguns per resident per year. At that rate, if I had started buying 0.011 handguns a year when I was born, I'd have accumulated a total of 0.689 handguns by the time I turned 62. That would leave how many for resale in Noo Yawk City?)
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2009/11/24/2009-11-24_dixie_dopes_shoot_holes_in_gun_battle.html
---
Georgia Legislator under Fire for Teaching Daughter to Shoot: As the father of a son who shot a Davey Crickett rifle for the first time at the tender age of five, I was rather perplexed by the recent uproar caused when Atlanta Journal Constitution columnist Jim Galloway published an article that mentioned Rep. Sean Jerguson (R-22) had told the GeorgiaCarry.Org Annual Convention attendees that he purchased a pink .22 for his daughter when she was turned four. He intended to buy a blue one for his son when he also turned four. The attacks started a week later, when a Democrat party operative sent a letter to the editor bemoaning Rep. Jerguson's choice of a birthday present… With their usual level of respect for the truth, the Brady Campaign Blog then claimed the training rifle was a pistol (it was actually a Davey Crickett single shot training rifle), and other blogs soon followed suit, one even posting a picture of a pink, full size Beretta and another posting a picture of a pink Glock. Nobody went so far as to post a picture of a machine gun…
http://www.examiner.com/x-5619-Atlanta-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m11d22-Rep-Jerguson-believes-training-starts-at-home?cid=exrss-Atlanta-Gun-Rights-Examiner
---
California County Supervisors Urge CCW Issue: The Riverside County Board of Supervisors Tuesday approved a resolution urging the sheriff to consider granting concealed firearms permits to law-abiding residents who cite "personal defense" as the reason for wanting one. "This is a way we can better protect ourselves," said board Chairman Jeff Stone, who authored the resolution that was approved on a 3-1 vote. "I want to make sure our citizens have that ability." Stone highlighted the prospective release of 27,000 inmates in the next six months from California prisons and the impact that might have on public safety as one of the motivating factors behind the resolution, which Sheriff Stan Sniff has the option - but not the obligation - to act upon… Stone said if more county residents want to arm themselves, and they pass background criminal checks and complete the 16 hours of firearm safety training required under state law, there is no reason why they shouldn't be able to obtain a concealed carry permit… (In Orange County, supervisors appointed a replacement sheriff who has undone the shall-issue policy of her predecessor. She has ignored similar requests from the very board that appointed her. Riverside County, on the other hand, has a sheriff elected in his own right and a history of not issuing to applicants lacking "special connections.")
http://www.mydesert.com/article/20091125/NEWS08/911250319/-1/newsfront/Supervisors-ask-sheriff-to-grant-concealed-firearms-permits
---
California County Considers Questionable Ordinances: County officials are targeting youth gun violence by considering tighter restrictions on where firearms and ammunition dealers can operate and requiring employee background checks and permits. The second of a set of proposed ordinances that came before the Board of Supervisor's legislative committee Tuesday would also require gun owners to report lost and stolen firearms or risk criminal charges. Both proposals are aimed at curbing gun violence, particularly among youth, said Supervisor Rose Jacobs Gibson who brought them to the committee… The first ordinance would regulate firearms dealers and ammunition sellers alike, requiring them to receive a permit from the Sheriff's Office, perform background checks on employees, enforce specific security measures and maintain sales logs… Likewise, a second ordinance aimed at owners would require all lost or stolen firearms to be reported to law enforcement within 48 hours of the time they should reasonably have known it was gone… (Regulation of deadly weapons is preempted by the sate in California.)
http://www.smdailyjournal.com/article_preview.php?id=120270
---
Army Seeks Funds to Convert M4 Carbines: The U.S. Army has finally addressed years of complaints about the M-4 and M-16 assault rifles. The M-4 is a short barrel M-16, and has become very popular with the troops. The army has asked the Department of Defense for permission to spend a few hundred million dollars on upgrades for its 400,000 M-4 assault rifles. The big change is replacing the main portion of the rifle with a new component that contains a short stroke piston gas system (to reduce buildup of carbon inside the rifle) and a heavier (by five ounces) barrel (which reduces barrel failure from too much heat, which happens when several hundred rounds are fired within a few minutes.) Much of this goes back to the decades old argument about replacing the recoil system in the M-16 assault rifles. This came to a head (again) two years ago, when the army ran more tests on its M-4 rifle, involving dust and reliability. Four weapons were tested. The M4, the XM8, SCAR (Special Operations Forces Combat Assault Rifle) and the H&K 416 (an M4 with the more dust resistant components of the XM8 installed)…
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htweap/articles/20091125.aspx
---
RKBA Documentary Released: Director Max Lemus today released his documentary on guns and the gun rights movement. It is entitled "Not Without a Fight," and is available for purchase at: http://notwithoutafight.net/download.html. Unlike Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine," which was a propaganda piece for gun control, Lemus looks at the gun rights movement through the eyes of gun rights activists. Moreover, he asks them fundamental questions, such as "What does the Second Amendment mean to you?" and "What motivates you to fight at all costs to preserve the Second Amendment?" and "What do you have to say to people who tell you 'it can't happen here'?" …
http://www.examiner.com/x-2698-Charlotte-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m11d25-Not-without-a-fight-Documentary-sets-record-straight-on-guns
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/11/18/state/n093531S32.DTL&tsp=1
Black Bear Size: Adolph Murie, the famous naturalist, once said, "A bear a long distance from a scale always weighs more." The general public often misjudges the weights of black bears. While they are large, they are not the 4,000-pound beasts that some visitors to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park describe.Weights can vary greatly depending on the age, health, and sex of the bear as well as the season and the condition of the habitat. Seasonality is a major factor - pre-denning weight in the fall is considerably higher than the weight of the bear when it emerges from hibernation in the spring. American black bears exhibit sexual dimorphism, where males are generally 33% larger than their female counterparts of the same age. American black bears on the East Coast of North America are larger than those found on the West Coast. Average weights are:
- Males — 250 lbs. (range from 125 lbs. to over 600 lbs.)
- Females — 150 lbs. (range from 90 lbs. to over 300 lbs.)
The Black Bear Skull: Black bear skulls are typically massive; much bigger than those of most North American wildlife. It is quite long and wide across the forehead, but narrower in the muzzle area. The eyebrow ridge is well-defined and the nostrils are quite broad. The jawbone hinge is large to accommodate the heavy jaw muscles. A female skull may be narrower and more pointed than that of a mature male. An average measurement is 11.5 inches in length and 6.5 to 7 inches in width. The longest black bear skull recorded with the Boone and Crockett system was 14.75 inches and the widest black bear skull was 8.875 inches… (The drawing is worth examining if you spend time in bear country.)
http://www.americanbear.org/anatomy.htm
---
Did Holder Spill the Beans?: …Here's what Holder said during a Q&A with anti-gun New York Sen. Charles Schumer: "The position of the Administration is that there should be a basis for law enforcement to share information about gun purchases. Fully respect the Second Amendment, fully respect the Heller decision. It does not seem to us that this is inconsistent to allow law enforcement agencies to share that kind of information, for that information to be retained and then to be shared by law enforcement." That sounds like registration to a lot of people, including my colleague David Codrea, who writes about Holder's testimony here. Retention of such information could easily translate to a permanent registry. Recall some months ago when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – another ardent gun prohibitionist – told ABC's Robin Roberts in a bombshell admission that "We don't want to take their guns away. We want them registered." And an equally candid anti-gun California Sen. Dianne Feinstein told CBS' Lesley Stahl in a '60 Minutes' segment that she is essentially waiting in the tall grass, waiting for the "time and the place" to introduce new gun restrictions, perhaps a renewal of the ban on so-called "assault weapons." In Feinstein's own words, there is "no question about that." …
http://www.examiner.com/x-4525-Seattle-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m11d24-Has-Holder-spilled-beans-on-Obama-gun-registration-plan
… The news of a pending push by Obama to ban many semi-automatic rifles was sparked by comments from newly-minted Attorney General Eric Holder, who told reporters that "As President Obama indicated during the campaign, 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." He went on to indicate that the administration had decided on a new angle of attack to push for the ban: the war on drugs…
http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/node/6990
The gun banning front group Mayors Against Illegal Guns, headed by New York's Mayor Bloomberg, came out with a full page ad in the Washington Post recommending that the Federal Government now link the secret No Fly list to National Instant Background Check System (NICS) and use this to prevent gun owners on the list from buying guns. And just last week, Attorney General Eric Holder endorsed this legislation on behalf of the Obama Administration. Fortunately for US gun owners, Congress has failed to act and that is why Bloomberg's MAIG is now pushing to connect the two…
http://www.ammoland.com/2009/11/24/mayors-against-illegal-guns-wants-to-a-secret-list-to-keep-you-from-buying-guns/
---
Obamacare Threatens RKBA: … Larry Pratt, executive director of GOA, said the chances of Uncle Sam using his power to regulate health care based on gun ownership was even better because Kathleen Sebelius is the head of the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency that would be in charge of specific health care regulations and their enforcement. Sebelius has a long anti-gun history, responsible for vetoes of concealed carry bills in Kansas… It wouldn't be the first time gun ownership has been tied to health regulation. GOA claims that over 150,000 vets with post-traumatic stress disorder are currently on a list that prohibits gun purchases. But Obamacare would expand government health care to millions of additional Americans. Calls to Sebelius' office were not returned, though a member of her press office laughed out loud when questioned about the prospect of health care being tied to gun ownership, saying, "that's crazy." But Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, said such regulations were quite possible. The problem stems from government's overriding cost-benefit assessments and their take on health issues…
http://townhall.com/columnists/JillianBandes/2009/11/25/obamacare_may_target_gun_owners?page=full
You might not necessarily think that health care reform would end up in the crosshairs of the gun lobby. But you'd be wrong. Gun Owners of America have been raging against the Senate health care bill for all sorts of imagined threats to the Second Amendment, and now the White House has taken notice… The White House says: "Section 2717 section creates guidelines for insurers to report on initiatives that improve quality of care and health outcomes, and it specifically lists what types of programs would be involved - such as smoking cessation, physical fitness, nutrition, heart disease prevention. There is no mention of guns, and there is no language that could result in higher premiums for gun owners or lower premiums for people who do not own guns." … (We have a regime that ignores the Constitution so guidelines can certainly be changed on a moment's notice.)
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11/white-house-takes-on-gun-lobbys-health-care-reform-attacks.php
… This definition is extremely broad, and the assertion that it is not broad enough to encompass gun ownership appears to be incorrect. There is a very large body of "public health" scholarship which claims to show that gun ownership is a very large health risk to the family that has a gun in the home. I believe that much of this scholarship is of poor quality, and some of it is mere junk science. However, the existence of dozens of articles in public health and medical journals would almost certainly be enough for an anti-gun definition of "Wellness Program" by the Dept. of Health and Human Services to pass the deferential Chevron standard of review…
http://volokh.com/2009/11/24/health-bill-and-gun-ownership/
---
Texas AG Signs McDonald Brief: Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott today (Monday) took legal action to protect Texans' Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. In a brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court and authored by Attorney General Abbott, 38 state attorneys general explain that law-abiding Americans have a fundamental right to bear arms – and that local governments cannot simply disregard that right and impose an outright ban on handgun possession… Last year, Attorney General Abbott and 31 other state attorneys general filed an amicus brief in District of Columbia v. Heller, in which they urged the Supreme Court to overturn a Washington, D.C., law that banned all handguns and required that rifles and shotguns be disassembled or encumbered by trigger locks at all times. In a landmark 2008 decision, the Court agreed with the attorney general's position and declared the federal city's handgun ban unconstitutional, holding that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to keep and bear arms… (It's nice to see that there are six more AG's backing McDonald than there were backing Heller. That means only 12 declined to sign.)
http://www.kfdm.com/news/texas-35389-general-argues.html
---
Montana Senator Signs McDonald Brief: U.S. Sen. Jon Tester is part of a group of lawmakers signing a brief supporting a gun rights case before the U.S. Supreme Court. The court is considering whether the Second Amendment's right to keep and bear arms applies to state and local laws restricting guns. The case arose from a handgun ban in Chicago. Gun advocates want the court to strike down such local laws. Tester says 55 other senators, including 17 other Democrats, have signed onto a brief in support of gun rights he put together with Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas. (It appears that this Democrat is telling Big Brother that what works in Billings should also work in Chicago.)
http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/article_6288a756-d8fe-11de-b65a-001cc4c002e0.html
---
West Virginia Supremes Support Protective Orders: The fear of physical harm is enough to grant a domestic violence protective order to West Virginia residents, the state Supreme Court ruled Monday in a precedent-setting decision. The opinion reversed a January ruling by Clay Circuit Judge Robert Facemire, who said that Kimberly Thomas, a Clay County resident who has since moved to Kanawha County, did not deserve a protective order against her ex-boyfriend, Joseph B. Morris. "We hold that the act of domestic violence defined in [state law] as 'holding, confining, detaining or abducting another person against that person's will' does not require proof of some overt physical exertion on the part of the alleged offender in order to justify issuance of a protective order," wrote Justice Thomas McHugh in the 16-page opinion… (Such a protective order generally makes one a prohibited possessor: http://www.atf.gov/pub/fire-explo_pub/i33102.pdf.)
http://www.wvgazette.com/News/200911230728
---
South Carolina Tax Holiday Riles New York Daily News: The great state of South Carolina is putting its own sick twist on Black Friday with a tax holiday on firearm purchases. Not cars. Not clothes. Certainly not books. Just guns. For the 48 hours following Thanksgiving, gun buyers will enjoy a break of up to 9% in state and local taxes. Firearms traffickers are not expected to pass the savings on to New York criminals, but what is called "the extrava-gun-za" and "Second Amendment Weekend" is sure to help South Carolina stay among the top five states that provide 85% of the illegal handguns recovered in New York City… Even without a tax holiday, South Carolina gun shops sold a half-million handguns in a 10-year period. The state's population is only 4.5 million. The number of gun sales is expected to grow ever higher thanks to Pitts, who also sponsored a bill that reduced the age for possessing a handgun in South Carolina from 21 to 18… (You wanna play with numbers? That's 0.111 handguns purchased per resident but that's over ten years; if you pretend it was distributed evenly over those ten years, that's 0.011 handguns per resident per year. At that rate, if I had started buying 0.011 handguns a year when I was born, I'd have accumulated a total of 0.689 handguns by the time I turned 62. That would leave how many for resale in Noo Yawk City?)
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2009/11/24/2009-11-24_dixie_dopes_shoot_holes_in_gun_battle.html
---
Georgia Legislator under Fire for Teaching Daughter to Shoot: As the father of a son who shot a Davey Crickett rifle for the first time at the tender age of five, I was rather perplexed by the recent uproar caused when Atlanta Journal Constitution columnist Jim Galloway published an article that mentioned Rep. Sean Jerguson (R-22) had told the GeorgiaCarry.Org Annual Convention attendees that he purchased a pink .22 for his daughter when she was turned four. He intended to buy a blue one for his son when he also turned four. The attacks started a week later, when a Democrat party operative sent a letter to the editor bemoaning Rep. Jerguson's choice of a birthday present… With their usual level of respect for the truth, the Brady Campaign Blog then claimed the training rifle was a pistol (it was actually a Davey Crickett single shot training rifle), and other blogs soon followed suit, one even posting a picture of a pink, full size Beretta and another posting a picture of a pink Glock. Nobody went so far as to post a picture of a machine gun…
http://www.examiner.com/x-5619-Atlanta-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m11d22-Rep-Jerguson-believes-training-starts-at-home?cid=exrss-Atlanta-Gun-Rights-Examiner
---
California County Supervisors Urge CCW Issue: The Riverside County Board of Supervisors Tuesday approved a resolution urging the sheriff to consider granting concealed firearms permits to law-abiding residents who cite "personal defense" as the reason for wanting one. "This is a way we can better protect ourselves," said board Chairman Jeff Stone, who authored the resolution that was approved on a 3-1 vote. "I want to make sure our citizens have that ability." Stone highlighted the prospective release of 27,000 inmates in the next six months from California prisons and the impact that might have on public safety as one of the motivating factors behind the resolution, which Sheriff Stan Sniff has the option - but not the obligation - to act upon… Stone said if more county residents want to arm themselves, and they pass background criminal checks and complete the 16 hours of firearm safety training required under state law, there is no reason why they shouldn't be able to obtain a concealed carry permit… (In Orange County, supervisors appointed a replacement sheriff who has undone the shall-issue policy of her predecessor. She has ignored similar requests from the very board that appointed her. Riverside County, on the other hand, has a sheriff elected in his own right and a history of not issuing to applicants lacking "special connections.")
http://www.mydesert.com/article/20091125/NEWS08/911250319/-1/newsfront/Supervisors-ask-sheriff-to-grant-concealed-firearms-permits
---
California County Considers Questionable Ordinances: County officials are targeting youth gun violence by considering tighter restrictions on where firearms and ammunition dealers can operate and requiring employee background checks and permits. The second of a set of proposed ordinances that came before the Board of Supervisor's legislative committee Tuesday would also require gun owners to report lost and stolen firearms or risk criminal charges. Both proposals are aimed at curbing gun violence, particularly among youth, said Supervisor Rose Jacobs Gibson who brought them to the committee… The first ordinance would regulate firearms dealers and ammunition sellers alike, requiring them to receive a permit from the Sheriff's Office, perform background checks on employees, enforce specific security measures and maintain sales logs… Likewise, a second ordinance aimed at owners would require all lost or stolen firearms to be reported to law enforcement within 48 hours of the time they should reasonably have known it was gone… (Regulation of deadly weapons is preempted by the sate in California.)
http://www.smdailyjournal.com/article_preview.php?id=120270
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Army Seeks Funds to Convert M4 Carbines: The U.S. Army has finally addressed years of complaints about the M-4 and M-16 assault rifles. The M-4 is a short barrel M-16, and has become very popular with the troops. The army has asked the Department of Defense for permission to spend a few hundred million dollars on upgrades for its 400,000 M-4 assault rifles. The big change is replacing the main portion of the rifle with a new component that contains a short stroke piston gas system (to reduce buildup of carbon inside the rifle) and a heavier (by five ounces) barrel (which reduces barrel failure from too much heat, which happens when several hundred rounds are fired within a few minutes.) Much of this goes back to the decades old argument about replacing the recoil system in the M-16 assault rifles. This came to a head (again) two years ago, when the army ran more tests on its M-4 rifle, involving dust and reliability. Four weapons were tested. The M4, the XM8, SCAR (Special Operations Forces Combat Assault Rifle) and the H&K 416 (an M4 with the more dust resistant components of the XM8 installed)…
http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htweap/articles/20091125.aspx
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RKBA Documentary Released: Director Max Lemus today released his documentary on guns and the gun rights movement. It is entitled "Not Without a Fight," and is available for purchase at: http://notwithoutafight.net/download.html. Unlike Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine," which was a propaganda piece for gun control, Lemus looks at the gun rights movement through the eyes of gun rights activists. Moreover, he asks them fundamental questions, such as "What does the Second Amendment mean to you?" and "What motivates you to fight at all costs to preserve the Second Amendment?" and "What do you have to say to people who tell you 'it can't happen here'?" …
http://www.examiner.com/x-2698-Charlotte-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m11d25-Not-without-a-fight-Documentary-sets-record-straight-on-guns
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