Truck Update

Despite the fact that this is a gun blog, and we’re in BOHICA mode once again, I wanted to follow up on my truck situation. As previously reported, I returned the Tonka truck to the dealership, and they have it up for sale again after repairing the problems I returned it for.

I have replaced it with a 2002 F250 I purchased from a different dealership because, well, they had it and at a price I was willing to pay.

I would have been more than willing to buy from the previous dealership again.  They specialize in trucks, and 4×4 diesels in particular, but they run across some interesting stuff.  They buy primarily vehicles that were stolen and recovered, then auctioned by the insurance company that paid off on the theft.  Interesting business model.  I have no qualms about recommending them: Wheel Kinetics.

If you’re interested in the now-repaired Nuclear Banana, here it is. Watch the video:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWyqiuTV1YI?rel=0]
Good guys. It was a nice truck, but I don’t think they’ll sell it this time for what I paid for it.  New EGR, new water pump, two more new injectors and a reprogrammed fuel injection control module.  That could not have been cheap, and I wasn’t going to put the $$ into it.  They have.

From the Front Lines

U.S. Citizen reported on Monday:

Firearms and Ammunition inventory levels continued their plunge at Nationwide Distributors which serve firearms dealers.

Ammunition broke the 50% level (less than half of pre-election day stock on hand remains).

One order for Magpul PMags was cancelled today at Traction Control.

At 5:30 AM I showed 9,330 units on hand, when the order was received (at 5:00 PM) the quantity available was zero. My distributor reported over 70,000 Magpul PMags were sold last weekend alone.

(My emphasis.)  My local favorite firearms vendor Dave reported this to me via email last night:

“Submitted for your approval”:

a) We sold more AR-platform rifles TODAY than we have in the past two months

b) We can’t replace the ARs that we have sold, because ALL of our distributors are sold out.

c) None of our distributors have any idea when they will see more.

d) Last week we received a shipment of over one hundred Mag-Pul 30-round P- mags and were worried about having them around through year-end inventory. As of today, we’re worried about finding more.

e) We are selling multiple cases worth of 9mm ball ammo every day. These are not being sold by the case, they are being sold as individual, 50-round boxes. (I bought two boxes myself today. I really have to sit down and do some handloading for 9mm. I have all the components. – Ed.)

f) I put out three to four Mosin Nagant M-91/30 rifles EVERY morning.

g) I put out two to three home defense shotguns EVERY morning.

h) ATF form 4473 (the “yellow form”) comes to us in case lots. The forms are shrink-wrapped 100 to a stack. Six stacks to a case. We have gone through three stacks since this past Friday. (This also counts forms that have to be destroyed due to mistakes, forms that are in a “delayed” status and forms that are in a “denied” status as well as forms that are not immediately processed for sundry other reasons).

i) We are totally sold out of AR lowers (in all manifestations), parts kits, and most other AR-related goodies.

j) The FBI maintains three call centers to process NICS checks. We have the 800 number on speed dial. The last two days I have had to keep pushing the “redial” button because of the “We’re sorry, all circuits are busy at this time. Please call back later.” message I hear when I try to call in for a background check. Average number of times I have to hit the redial button: fourteen. Conversely, once I actually do get through, the wait time to talk to a human, is seven to nine minutes. If the form I am calling in gets sent for “further review” it’s another five-plus minutes before I get to talk to the next human.

Markadelphia suggested in a comment yesterday that “People are really sick of it and there may very well be waning interest in guns.” Doesn’t appear that way, does it?  Standard response #7.

Quote of the Day – Geekwitha.45 Edition

Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?

Barack Obama, 12/16/2012

There was a time when an American leader that suggested that freedom was the root cause of evil committed against innocent children would have booed off the stage, and possibly ridden out of town on a rail.

You know, there are very constructive things that could be done, that meaningfully address the issues and are consistent with a society that is both formidably armed and free, which is what I would expect of a true leader.

But we all know that’s not where he’s going with this. He’s going to do something else, driven primarily by ideological agenda, because this crisis presents far too good an opportunity to waste.

Obama hears the blood lust of his increasingly grief unhinged base screaming for the heads of the NRA and their members, and senses his time has come, which for a man of hubris like him it is a time of great peril with respect to his decisions. Pride goeth before a fall, and pride is never more manifest than in a man who deems himself imbued with epic destiny having arrived at his moment in history.

Have no doubt: Had Lanza driven his mother’s stolen car in bloody zig zags through the school yard, no one would be screaming for the head of the chairman of the AAA, no one would be accosting car owners at lunch or on their facebook walls demanding that they justify their car ownership in the face such tragedy.

$DEITY bless this wretched nation, for it stands with thunderous applause at the precipice of a monumental stupidity.

A comment from yesterday.

And now, Judge Alex Kozinski:

The majority falls prey to the delusion — popular in some circles – that ordinary people are too careless and stupid to own guns, and we would be far better off leaving all weapons in the hands of professionals on the government payroll. But the simple truth – born of experience – is that tyranny thrives best where government need not fear the wrath of an armed people.

All too many of the other great tragedies of history – Stalin’s atrocities, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Holocaust, to name but a few – were perpetrated by armed troops against unarmed populations. Many could well have been avoided or mitigated, had the perpetrators known their intended victims were equipped with a rifle and twenty bullets apiece, as the Militia Act required here. If a few hundred Jewish fighters in the Warsaw Ghetto could hold off the Wehrmacht for almost a month with only a handful of weapons, six million Jews armed with rifles could not so easily have been herded into cattle cars.

My excellent colleagues have forgotten these bitter lessons of history. The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed – where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.

Newtown, Connecticut is not Dunblane, Scotland

But gun control forces desperately want it to be.

Back in November of 2004 after the spree killing of six hunters in a Wisconsin wood, I wrote Birchwood, Wisconsin is not Hungerford, England. It seems another comparison is equally (in)valid. Yes, 27 people and one creature are dead, eighteen of those dead people are small children – first-graders. Yes, it’s horrible, senseless, inexplicable.

And no, the guns were not at fault.

Moreover, banning them wouldn’t help.

This is where I normally cite charts, graphs, data tables, and numerous articles supporting my position. I’m not going to do that here. I’ve done it for the better part of ten years. If you’re interested, check the archives.

Instead, I’m going to quote the words of John Green, father of 9 year-old Christina Taylor-Green, who was killed in January of 2010 by another spree shooter here in Tucson:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXZOGNhw6p8?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0&w=640&h=385]

This shouldn’t happen in this country, or anywhere else, but in a free society we’re going to be subject to people like this. I prefer this to the alternative.

The gun control forces say all they want is a “dialog.” Joe Huffman’s been having site problems recently, but he said it well back in August:

We had the “conversation”. Your side lied, cheated, and took unfair advantage at every opportunity. But still your side lost. Big time.

Your side lost on the safety argument and your side lost the legal argument (see the U.S. Supreme Court decisions D.C. v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago). You have no arguments left. The conversation was over years ago and all you are doing now is whining about the outcome. Go tell your problems to a therapist because the adults in this conversation aren’t interested in your delusions of relevancy.

Tam put it even more bluntly:

Incidentally, this is one of my biggest gripes about wading into fact- and data-laden poo-flinging arguments with anti-gunners about crime rates and murders-per-100k and so forth. The correct answer is “Where the hell do you get off thinking you can tell me I can’t own a gun? I don’t care if every other gun owner on the planet went out and murdered somebody last night. I didn’t. So piss off.”

The tinfoil-hat crowd has been claiming that Obama (or his BATFE) will write an executive order or change the regulations making “assault weapons” and “large-capacity ammunition feeding devices” into Class III regulated items under the 1934 National Firearms Act, bypassing Congress and requiring licensing and registration. Others think that finally they’ll get a new “Assault weapon” ban through Congress, or even more.

Let me just say again for the record:

I won’t license.

I won’t register.

I won’t turn them in.

If you want to make me and several million other law-abiding, tax-paying citizens into felons, beware what you wish for. You may get it.

End of an Era

At 3:55 MST on December 14, 1972, the last human beings to visit the Earth’s moon lifted off from that body in the ascent stage of the Lunar Module Challenger.  Left behind with the descent stage:

  • A used car (the 3rd one left on the lunar surface), this one with a broken fender
  • multiple scientific experiment packages
  • a U.S. flag
  • a commemorative plaque
  • bootprints and miles of tire tracks

They’d also brought explosives, and used them (for geological purposes).

From Wikipedia:

Before reentering the LM for the final time, Gene Cernan expressed his thoughts:

“I’m on the surface; and, as I take man’s last step from the surface, back home for some time to come — but we believe not too long into the future — I’d like to just [say] what I believe history will record. That America’s challenge of today has forged man’s destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return: with peace and hope for all mankind. Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17.”

Forty years later, we’re no closer to going back than we were in 1972.

Mutually Exclusive

I saw a car today with an “I OBAMACARE” bumpersticker on it.  It took me a minute, however, to read the one below that:


(Click for full size)

My immediate reaction:

Like HELL you are!

So I dragged out the camera and snapped that shot just to show you.

When I got home and looked at the full-sized image, I noted that the lower bumpersticker is from ACLU.org.  Well, that explains it.  The ACLU is a supporter of the “living Constitution” idea, so for the woman in this Civic, obviously whatever she thinks is Constitutional is – by definition – Constitutional!

And people who think like that outvote those of us who don’t.

And people who think like that are likely to think like this:

http://static.photobucket.com/player.swf

Remind you of anyone?  Want to know where that video originated?  The California Federation of Teachers union.  But teachers don’t indoctrinate our youth, right? 

And Then There Were None

Remember this map?


As of 2011, only one state outright denied its residents the ability to carry a firearm for self-protection. Eight other states remained MAY-issue (California among them), but Illinois remained the only state insistent that its citizens weren’t responsible enough.

The Federal government has just reversed that.

Appeals court overturns Illinois concealed carry law in gun rights victory

SPRINGFIELD – In a huge win for gun-rights groups, a divided federal appeals court in Chicago Tuesday tossed the state’s ban on carrying concealed weapons and gave Illinois’ Legislature 180 days to craft a law legalizing concealed carry.

“We are disinclined to engage in another round of historical analysis to determine whether eighteenth-century America understood the Second Amendment to include a right to bear guns outside the home,” Judge Richard Posner wrote in the court’s majority opinion.

“The Supreme Court has decided that the amendment confers a right to bear arms for self-defense, which is as important outside the home as inside. The theoretical and empirical evidence (which overall is inconclusive) is consistent with concluding that a right to carry firearms in public may promote self-defense,” he continued.

“Illinois had to provide us with more than merely a rational basis for believing that its uniquely sweeping ban is justified by an increase in public safety. It has failed to meet this burden,” Posner wrote.

“The Supreme Court’s interpretation of the Second Amendment therefore compels us to reverse the decisions in the two cases before us and remand them to their respective district courts for the entry of declarations of unconstitutionality and permanent injunctions,” he continued.

“Nevertheless we order our mandate stayed for 180 days to allow the Illinois legislature to craft a new gun law that will impose reasonable limitations, consistent with the public safety and the Second Amendment as interpreted in this opinion, on the carrying of guns in public,” Posner said.

Now we get to see what Illinois politicians consider “reasonable limitations.”

Should be entertaining.

Global warming?  I think Hell is freezing solid…..