Recently in RKBA Category

Reason's article on the subject.

I've been driving by Ghost Town Burgers for years now going to and from Austin Rifle Club, but have never eaten there until this weekend.

The burgers are great, and the staff was friendly.

The only turn off was the big ol' 51% sign that you can't see until you go to order your food. It's a pretty big area, like an old west town, so I'm not sure if it would be legal to carry on the rest of the property or not.

So, good burgers, but I probably won't go back unless I'm in the mood to have a few beers. I don't blame the establishment at all, just our stupid laws. To me, it's not worth going around without my secondary self-defense tool (primary self-defense tool is between your ears) or opening myself up to some kind of legal troubles.

My wife was watching a neighbor kid this morning while his mom went on a field trip with his sister.

I work from home, and openly carry a pistol while at home (in a holster of course).

I went out to the kitchen this morning and forgot to un-tuck my shirt and cover it, and he noticed it and asked me if that was a gun?

I said "yeah" and he said "oh", and went back to what playing.

I thought it was kind of funny compared to the furor a gun ban organization is leveling at Starbuck's for complying with state laws. 5 year old boys apparently can handle open carrying without messing their pants, why can't they?

I once had a little debate on a friend's blog about some other guy's vow to boycott any manufacturer who developed "smart gun" technology. Their point of view is that this is bad for our gun rights.

I really can't agree provided the free market is allowed to work, and is not meddled with by our "representatives". Technology isn't inherently good or bad, and it certainly can't do anything on its own (until Skynet becomes operable that is).

Anyway, here is something for them to boycott on thefirearmblog.com. :)-~

Personally, I have no desire for the silly, yet expensive, thing, but if they ever came out with something useful I wouldn't hold this against them. I think it's interesting that you have to squeeze the grip to activate the "smart" stuff. It would be somewhat cool if they integrated the P7's squeeze-cocker into that. If you have to waste time doing that, you should at least get a single action trigger pull out of it.

Just to be clear, I think it's a waste of money and damned sure wouldn't trust my life to it, but if it appeals to you, go for it.

Why are gun control activists obsessed with everyone's penis?

Let's see what we have here:

• Penis obsession
• Racial stereotyping
• Using a person's picture without permission
• Distorting that person's face to look sinister
• Acting like a three year old when asked by that person to take the picture down

Classy.

I guess using reason, logic, and facts to argue his position was too "hard" for him.

I was sitting at my desk reading a PDF my friend Hsoi forwarded me from arfcom comparing some ammunition.

My son, who we shall call bar.c and is 3 1/4 years old, came in and saw some of the pictures.

After he said the usual, "That's for Daddy." He said, "guns go FIRE and make people cry." Obviously, guns don't go "FIRE," they go "BANG," and he parroted the word in such a way that I think he saw something where someone gave an order to fire. Or maybe he saw something with some muzzle flash. Who knows ...

Now I don't try to shelter my kids from the real world, but we don't allow them to watch violent stuff either.

I have intentionally exposed him and his brother, baz.c, to only a few gun related things:

• We have done the Eddie Eagle video and repeated the mantra
• They have seen me open carry around the house from the time they were very little
• Very occasionally I will have a rifle or shotgun out to move, clean, or what have you

These are all non-violent things.

We will have to be more vigilant about the TV.

I thought it was interesting how at a basic level it was similar to the anti-gun position. The guns went "FIRE," not the people. It might have some implication as to why people with no direct experience or knowledge of guns may become hoplophobes, or I could just be over-analyzing the whole thing.

Not working out that well.

It means there are over 2,000 crimes recorded per 100,000 population in the UK, making it the most violent place in Europe.

By comparison, America has an estimated rate of 466 violent crimes per 100,000 population.

Imagine that. Less guns, more violent crimes!

Better hope you don't get this guy.

I am getting a bit tired of hearing the same old arguments for gun control, so I thought I'd list out some responses. It might save us all some time.

Also, if you want to go right for the jugular, you can ask just one question.

A gun in the home means you are X times more likely to be killed

I've heard X range from 2 to 44.

First, correlation does not imply causation. Second, that study has been proven to be garbage.

Guns kill 70,000 people per year

The CDC lists just over 30,000 deaths per year attributed to firearms. That seems pretty high at first, but how does that compare to other causes?

Cause Number

Heart disease                                      710,760
Cancer                                                 553,091
Stroke (cerebrovascular disease)       167,661
Chronic lower respiratory diseases     122,009
Doctor's negligence                               98,329
Influenza and pneumonia                      65,313
Motor-vehicle                                         43,354
Suicides (all kinds, including firearms)  29,350
Firearms (Total)*                                    28,163

Suicides    16,586
Homicides 10,801
Accidents       776

Accidents (six causes)

Falls                                           13,322
Poison (solid, liquid)                  12,757
Choking on food or other object  4,313
Drowning                                     3,402
Fires, flames                                3,377
Firearms                                         776

Homicides (all instruments)         16,765

You can make all kinds of interesting arguments from here. Doctors kill 3 times as many people as guns do!

Another way to put these deaths in context is to point out that there are over 2 million protective uses of guns each year.

From Gun Owners of America Fact Sheet 2004

Source: Except for the figure on doctor's negligence, the above information is for 2000 and is taken from National Safety Council, Injury Facts: 2003 Edition, at 10, 19-20, 129. The number of yearly deaths attributed to doctor's negligence is based on the Harvard Medical Practice Study (1990) which is cited in Kleck, Point Blank, at 43.127
*The total firearms death figure above is a summary of the "Suicides," "Homicides" and "Accidents" subcategories. The Total excludes two categories: Legal Intervention and Undetermined.

Yes, but guns only have one purpose, to kill!

I usually point out how my guns have never been used to killed anyone, and I've had some of them for over 20 years now.

Sometimes I'll bring up competitions (there are several Olympic shooting sports, for example) and hunting, but I've found the real moonbats don't care. They don't think that's a good enough reason, so therefore you shouldn't be able to own one.

Sometimes, if I feel like being antagonistic I might say, well, so does an abortion doctor. That's usually a lot fun, but it tends to derail the conversation.

You can also bring up that killing isn't always illegal or immoral, and a gun is a great equalizer for the physically weak, but sometimes this might be viewed as conceding the point.

Gun owners are knuckle dragging, poorly endowed, insecure people

Usually if this is taking place face to face, at this point the other person is incredibly worked up, with spittle flying everywhere. It's probably best to just be the "bigger" man here and walk away.

Resist the urge to make comments about how it was enough for the persons mother.

If you are online, there's a great WSJ article here to point them to. Here's an excerpt:

It turns out [gun owners] have the same level of formal education as nongun owners, on average. Furthermore, they earn 32% more per year than nonowners.

The data say that the people in the approximately 40 million American households with guns are generally happier than those people in households that don't have guns.

Why are gun owners so happy? One plausible reason is a sense of self-reliance, in terms of self-defense or even in terms of the ability to hunt their own dinner.

In 2002, they were more likely to give money to charity than people without guns (83% to 75%).

In 2004, they were more likely than those without guns to strongly agree that they would "endure all things" for the one they loved (45% to 37%).

Doesn't sound like such a bad group of people to me.

These are the things I hear the most. For other things, the Gun Owners of America website has some great information, as does Gun Facts.

For even more in depth analysis, I recommend John Lott (book) and Howard Nemerov (book).

I haven't, but I've been "shot near".

The best description I can give is, that it was surreal helplessness.

About 12 years ago, I went to visit my good friend in the big city of Dallas, TX. This was way before I had any kind of self defense training, or knew about situational awareness, and to be honest, I didn't even care for handguns back then.

We went out messing around, eventually ending up at Dave and Busters. I drop him off at his place, and the first stop light I come to is where it all went down.

I'm in the left lane of a 6 lane road, stopped. There's cars all around me, but I am the first car in my lane.

A white Mustang rolls up coming from my left. There are cars in front of him, and he just starts ramming them and burning rubber pushing them out of the way.

While this is going on a panel truck comes up behind the Mustang.

A guy gets out of the truck just as as the last car gets out of the Mustang's way. The Mustang takes off through the intersection.

Well, the guy is in the intersection now and starts shooting at the fleeing Mustang.

Now, at no time did he point the weapon at anyone else (besides the Mustang), but if he had, there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn't go forward because of a car in my way that had been pushed there by the Mustang. Even if I could, I would still be vulnerable for a good while.

I won't say this was a life changing experience, because for the most part I just shrugged it off, but I do replay it my head sometimes and think about what could have happened.

Sometimes when I might be tempted to not carry, I remind myself that you never know what is going to happen.