National Rifle Association

Barack Obama has done more than any other person in the world to rescue US arms manufacturers. Good on ya Barack, NRA membership is surging.

Leaders of the National Rifle Association announced that its membership has surged to a record five million, a figure they aim to double in the “long war” to preserve gun ownership in America.

The organisation’s executive vice president and public face Wayne LaPierre told its annual convention that proposed legislation to introduce expanded background checks had “got the defeat it deserved” last month.

Mr LaPierre told members the fight over background checks had been “but one skirmish in what can only be defined as one long war against our Constitutional rights,” and that the NRA was in a “once in a generation fight for everything we care about.”  Read more »

You have to see this to believe it.

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) is feeling the heat from gun advocates after offering a confusing argument for a federal ban on high-capacity magazines that she has twicesponsored.

Speaking at a Denver Post forum on gun control Tuesday, DeGette pushed forlegislation that would prohibit the future sale of ammunition-loading devices that hold more than 10 bullets. Noting that Colorado had recently passed a ban on magazines capable of holding more than 15 rounds, DeGette suggested existing devices that are grandfathered into the laws would lose functionality after being used.

“I will tell you these are ammunition, they’re bullets, so the people who have those now they’re going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high-capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won’t be any more available,” she said, according to the Denver Post.  Read more »

I don’t know why politicians ever try to take on the NRA. They are quite simply the best political lobbying group in the world.

They always win.

Ron Fournier, a liberal panty-waist anti-gun sooky baby is upset about it all too:

The ban on assault weapons sponsored by Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California apparently died Tuesday with barely a whisper from media outlets or the White House. Black bunting should have hung from every window in Washington.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democratic ally of Obama, told reporters that Feinstein’s proposal could not overcome Senate rules requiring the support of at least 60 senators before allowing a final vote. The proposal “using the most optimistic numbers, has less than 40 votes. That’s not 60,” he said.

In fairness, the gun lobby deserves most of the blame for creating a political climate in which any regulation of firearms is viewed as an attack on the constitutional right to bear arms. This as much a financial issue to the NRA and its industry allies as it is a constitutional one.

But Obama and fellow Democrats shoulder a responsibility to reframe the debate around unassailable facts: The Second Amendment is not at risk; modest regulations would improve gun safety and strengthen the nation’s noble gun culture; and nobody outside the U.S. military needs an assault weapon. Instead, the White House and Democratic lawmakers signaled retreat on the assault-weapons ban almost immediately after Obama proposed it. He didn’t fight.

“We cannot tolerate this anymore,” a teary-eyed president told the nation after the Sandy Hook shootings. “We are not doing enough and we will have to change.”  Read more »

The world’s best gun salesman isn’t having a good time at the moment, First admitting that fiddling with the Second Amendment may not work, and also having armed guards protecting his daughters who attend a school which is supposedly a gun free “safe zone”.

In December, Obama told Meet The Press he was “skeptical” that placing armed guards in schools was “the only answer” to preventing future shootings like the one at the elementary school in Newtown.

“I think the vast majority of the American people are skeptical that that somehow is going to solve our problem,” Obama told MTP. -source

Now it looks like the anti gun outrage brigade are piping up and getting all upset over the NRA showing up Obama for what he is: an elitist hypocrite. Even NZ taxpayer funded leftie repeaters like Russell Brown are squawking along like a sick parrot running out of seed:   Read more »

Charles Krauthammer explains why gun control alone won’t work:

Every mass shooting has three elements: the killer, the weapon and the cultural climate. As soon as the shooting stops, partisans immediately pick their preferred root cause with corresponding pet panacea. Names are hurled, scapegoats paraded, prejudices vented. The argument goes nowhere.

It goes nowhere because no politician has the stones to actually call out American society for their ills. Krauthammer examines the role of gun control:

(1) The Weapon

Within hours of last week’s Newtown, Conn., massacre, the focus was the weapon and the demand was for new gun laws. Several prominent pro-gun Democrats remorsefully professed new openness to gun control. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) is introducing a new assault weapons ban. And the president emphasized guns and ammo above all else in announcing the creation of a new task force.

I have no problem in principle with gun control. Congress enacted (and I supported) an assault weapons ban in 1994. The problem was: It didn’t work. (So concluded a University of Pennsylvania studycommissioned by the Justice Department.) The reason is simple. Unless you are prepared to confiscate all existing firearms, disarm the citizenry and repeal the Second Amendment, it’s almost impossible to craft a law that will be effective.

Feinstein’s law, for example, would exempt 900 weapons. And that’s the least of the loopholes. Even the guns that are banned can be made legal with simple, minor modifications.

Most fatal, however, is the grandfathering of existing weapons and magazines. That’s one of the reasons the ’94 law failed. At the time, there were 1.5 million assault weapons in circulation and 25 million large-capacity (i.e., more than 10 bullets) magazines. A reservoir that immense can take 100 years to draw down.

Studies show gun control doesn’t work, and the logistics preclude grandfathering as a solution. What about the nutters themselves?

(2) The Killer

Monsters shall always be with us, but in earlier days they did not roam free. As a psychiatrist in Massachusetts in the 1970s, I committed people — often right out of the emergency room — as a danger to themselves or to others. I never did so lightly, but I labored under none of the crushing bureaucratic and legal constraints that make involuntary commitment infinitely more difficult today.

Why do you think we have so many homeless? Destitution? Poverty has declinedsince the 1950s. The majority of those sleeping on grates are mentally ill. In the name of civil liberties, we let them die with their rights on.

A tiny percentage of the mentally ill become mass killers. Just about everyone around Tucson shooter Jared Loughner sensed he was mentally ill and dangerous. But in effect, he had to kill before he could be put away — and (forcibly) treated.

Random mass killings were three times more common in the 2000s than in the 1980s, when gun laws were actually weaker. Yet a 2011 University of California at Berkeley study found that states with strong civil commitment laws have about a one-third lower homicide rate.

Locking the nutters up would work but for the civil liberties weirdos.

(3) The Culture

We live in an entertainment culture soaked in graphic, often sadistic, violence. Older folks find themselves stunned by what a desensitized youth finds routine, often amusing. It’s not just movies. Young men sit for hours pulling video-game triggers, mowing down human beings en masse without pain or consequence. And we profess shock when a small cadre of unstable, deeply deranged, dangerously isolated young men go out and enact the overlearned narrative.

That is a pretty good summary of the issues, and why the focus on gun control alone won;t stop the shootings.

If we’re serious about curtailing future Columbines and Newtowns, everything — guns, commitment, culture — must be on the table. It’s not hard for President Obama to call out the NRA. But will he call out the ACLU? And will he call out his Hollywood friends?

The irony is that over the last 30 years, the U.S. homicide rate has declined by 50 percent. Gun murders as well. We’re living not through an epidemic of gun violence but through a historic decline.

Except for these unfathomable mass murders. But these are infinitely more difficult to prevent. While law deters the rational, it has far less effect on the psychotic. The best we can do is to try to detain them, disarm them and discourage “entertainment” that can intensify already murderous impulses.

But there’s a cost. Gun control impinges upon the Second Amendment; involuntary commitment impinges upon the liberty clause of the Fifth Amendment; curbing “entertainment” violence impinges upon First Amendment free speech.

Interesting to know that the homicide has decreased as guns have increased…funny that…but then again it isn’t so funny if you know and understand that of you act like a prick in a society where guns are prevalent then you might just get capped for your troubles.

The NRA has endorsed Mitt Romney for president:

I’m proud to announce today that your NRA Political Victory Fund is endorsing Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan for President and Vice President of the United States.

Mitt Romney came to our annual NRA Leadership Forum earlier this year. He looked you, me and every one of our fellow NRA members straight in the eye and pledged to uphold and defend our Second Amendment freedoms.

Mitt Romney will appoint pro-Second Amendment judges to the Supreme Court…defend our sovereign Right to Keep and Bear Arms from the U.N. gun ban treaty…and protect our fundamental right to use a firearm in self-defense!

On the other hand, Barack Obama has spent his entire career trying to take away your freedom to own, use, and carry a firearm.

These guys are deluded, Obama has sold more guns than any other bloke ever.

ᔥ Mail Online

The NRA are the worlds best political campaigners…they staunchly defend their members (I am one) rights. Well, they are widely being credited with tipping over a UN initiative:

The United Nations is set to introduce a treaty cracking down on the $60billion global business of illicit trading in small arms.

The move is aimed at curbing violence in some of the most troubled corners of the world, but has unsurprisingly ruffled feathers with pro-gun activists in the US, including those of the National Rifle Association.

They have denounced the treaty as a threat to their constitutional right to bear arms.

Think about those lines for a moment. The UN was wanting to crack down on “illicit trading” of small arms…hmmm…illicit means it is already illegal. The moves wouldn’t have done anything as there is already “illicit” trade happening…they really don’t care about the law in lawless countries. The NRA strongly opposed this UN direction and now an impasse has been reached effectively killing it off:

The Conference on the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (U.N. ATT) has broken down and will not report a draft treaty to the member nations.

This is a big victory for American gun owners, and the NRA is being widely credited for killing the U.N. ATT.

For nearly 20 years, the NRA has worked tirelessly to warn American gun owners about the United Nations’ efforts to undermine the constitutional rights of law-abiding American gun owners by putting in place international controls on small arms.

NRA became a recognized Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) and has monitored all U.N. activities that could impact on our Second Amendment rights. As a result, NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre testified before the U.N. (2012 remarks, 2011 remarks) making it clear that the NRA would fight any international treaty that included civilian arms.

In any case the UN action will likely be overtaken by technology. A working assault rifle..at least a critical part of one has been made with a 3D printer.

Get ready. It’s now possible to print weapons at home.

An amateur gunsmith, operating under the handle of “HaveBlue” (incidentally, “Have Blue” is the codename that was used for the prototype stealth fighter that became the Lockheed F-117), announced recently in online forums that he had successfully printed a serviceable .22 caliber pistol.

Despite predictions of disaster, the pistol worked. It successfully fired 200 rounds in testing.

HaveBlue then decided to push the limits of what was possible and use his printer to make an AR-15 rifle. To do this, he downloaded plans for an AR-15 in the Solidworks file format from a site called CNCGunsmith.com. After some small modifications to the design, he fed about $30 of ABS plastic feedstock into his late-model Stratasys printer. The result was a functional AR-15 rifle. Early testing shows that it works, although it still has some minor feed and extraction problems to be worked out.

Good luck to the UN or anyone else controlling firearms now.

ᔥ American Hunter

Obama is simply the number one gun sales man in the world since Samuel Colt and John Browning departed this mortal coil. He has probably sold more guns than even Mikhail Kalashnikov.

After receiving more than one million order requests in the first quarter of 2012 alone, Sturm, Ruger & Co.has temporarily suspended the acceptance of new orders.

Ruger CEO Michael O. Fifer said that despite the company’s continuing efforts to increase production, the incoming order rate exceeds Ruger’s capacity to rapidly fulfill the orders. The temporary suspension is expected to last until the end of May.

Ruger’s success is part of what led the company to expand on its existing “Million Gun Challenge” with the NRA. The fundraiser became the “1.2 Million Gun Challenge” at SHOT Show 2012. The final results will be announced at the 2012 NRA Annual Meetings in St. Louis, MO.

ᔥ The Firearm Blog

From American Rifleman:

Whatever bias senior network executives once had against guns, it has appeared to have evaporated. In television, ratings rule (especially when it comes to hard-to-reach viewers through traditional programming, such as, uh, men), and those who produce entertainment have finally realized that firearms and shooting are part of mainstream America. And, perhaps more importantly, guns and the people that own and use them are interesting. While there is contrived drama and, at times, there are scenes that make this NRA Certified Instructor wince, these shows bring firearms ownership into literally tens of millions of homes every week. From such shows, people who have never been exposed to firearms and their lawful owners can see them being used, made, bought and sold, like the artifacts and tools they are. Whether it was through the Heller and McDonald decisions or the simple success of shows where firearms are featured (Hollywood and New York love to dog pile success), guns and shooting equal ratings, which is good news for the Second Amendment. Such programs demystify firearms, and they show what we have known all along—shooting is fun and marksmanship competition is challenging.

The pity is that we don’t get similar shows here.

The moment that I realized I was genuinely hooked on reality firearm shows was when my oldest son excitedly told me, “Dad, get down here. Big Mike is back!” Of course, he was referring to Mike Hughes returning to “Top Shot” late in Season Three of the hit History Channel show. Tuesday nights are reserved for the two of us, with the basement TV and the couch. “Top Shot” begins its fourth season this week, 10 p.m. EST on Tuesday, and I look forward to it. The first season, with its high-speed camera work, exploding or reactive targets, and the increasingly interesting guns and challenging shooting stages of Season Two and Three have made a good premise into a truly interesting and entertaining show.

I haven’t seen Top Shot…but there are other shows:

Firearms are a part of this genre’s most successful programs, as well as other shows doing well in the rating these days, including “Mythbusters,” “Pawn Stars,”  Sons Of Guns,”  “American Guns,” “Only In America With Larry The Cable Guy,” “Top Shot,” “Cajun Pawn,” “Swamp People” and even Discovery’s top show “Gold Rush.” Speaking of the latter, we had a great interview with NRA members Todd Hoffman and his dad, Jack, who plan to be at the NRA Annual Meetings in St. Louis. Todd and Jack did say there was a downside to the reality TV business, though—they missed out some prime hunting last season.

I love Sons of Guns. I’m not sure the other shows are shown here…with the exception of Mythbusters.

I think I will have to add an NRA Laser boresight to my Birthday/Christmas wishlist.

The NRA Laser Boresight is the most accurate, easy and inexpensive way to sight in your firearm. You get on target faster because a laser light is projected down the bore of your rifle and onto your target showing your bullet strike point. Great for sighting in or confirming your zero, your boresight can be used when and where shooting is not an option.

…Simply insert the boresight in your chamber and sight in from 15 to 100 yards. Dot size is 1” at 25 yards.