Rolling Stone's 5 Most Dangerous Guns in America List is Just a List of All the Guns

So, hey, Rolling Stone . . . how many kinds of guns you gonna put on your list of the 5 Most Dangerous Guns in America?

Ah.

But not literally every kind of gun, right? Because that would be pointless, except as a transparent cry for clicks. Let's see what you've got so far:

1. "Pistols." Like . . . all pistols? Well . . . OK. I see you've singled out Glocks and copy/pasted some weirdly irrelevant details from Wikipedia or something. Maybe Glocks are the most dangerous pistols? No? Well, good effort, champ.
2. "Revolvers."  Would you care to elaborate? Oh, you meant the handgun kind of revolvers and not grenade launchers? You're right, that does really clear things up. I'm sure that's what everyone was wondering. Is there, maybe, somebody else there who could--nope, moving on? OK then.
3. "Rifles." Created to address the inaccuracy of smoothbore muskets. I mean, the thing about that kind of statement is that it's true. It's not technically wrong. It's the idea that you thought it was relevant to your point that reveals your lunacy. It's like describing a sports car as an enclosed space in which one can listen to music using magnets. It's not false, it's just . . . . balmy.
4. "Shotguns." Well, I'm not going to pretend I didn't see that coming. So we've got pistols, revolvers, rifles and shotguns so far. Next pretty much has to be machine guns or replica miniature field artillery, right? Remember that one episode of Magnum, P.I. where Higgins was making Magnum and the boys pretend to be the French at Waterloo while he fired his little cannon at them? Good times. Also, I can't tell what you were trying to say about shotgun shells by calling them "fixed" in comparison to rifle cartridges, which were described as "metallic." Please advise.
5. Derringers. Ding-damned Derringers, y'all. I can't even. I don't know. All my feelings are . . . you know what, Rolling Stone? You're all right. All is forgiven, you goofy sonsabitches. Just don't ever start making sense. You're beautiful, just the way you are.

Holsters I Have Loved: BLACKHAWK! SERPA!

Why do people hate SERPAS so much?
(Full disclosure: my first SERPA was provided free by BLACKHAWK!, while my second was purchased at the gun shop. Both are gone now.)
I suspect that some of the Serpa hate is very sincere flattery being practiced as people imitate shooters and trainers they respect. But many reputable training schools actually ban the Serpa nowadays (with most willing to make exceptions for students who are issued Serpas by their employers.) But that's weird, right there, right? Why are there trainers banning Serpas in their classes while law enforcement agencies and entire military branches issue/mandate their use?

There are three basic issues that scare certain users away from the Serpa, all three documented, like all indisputably true things, on the internet:

1. If a grown man truly wants to deny you your sidearm, he can simply rip the Serpa holster off its paddle attachment. Presumably, at that point, he can draw it if he knows how, or he can throw it off in the distance. Either way, it will only end up as a funny story if you survive. Now, this is one of those things that a police officer or a soldier has to think about, and if we're being honest, I don't. When I carry a firearm openly, I'm generally on private property among friends. Notice the dichotomy? That's going to come up again.
2. If you need to use a sidearm in the mud, in the sand, or grappling with some dude on a gravel driveway, it is known that a small amount of crud that finds its way behind the retention-release lever can lock it up solid. The good news is that your pistol will not be taken and used against you. The bad news is that you will not use your pistol. I honestly don't know the odds of this happening, but they're not zero, and apparently it's not uncommon to see one lock up so badly that it literally has to be cut or broken off the pistol. Here comes that dichotomy again: I never once, in all the years I owned a Serpa holster, allowed it to get any dirtier than any of the other dusty stuff in the same drawer, so I never saw this problem for myself. But then . . .
3. The big one: I think it's hard to prove a causal link, but undeniably, several people have shot themselves while drawing from a Serpa holster. It would be even harder to prove, but if there's a holster that is statistically more dangerous to the user on the draw than on re-holstering, the Serpa is likely the only candidate. And it's possible, at least in my mind, that the Serpa is no more dangerous than other holsters in this regard. But a whole lot of people, most of them far more experienced and expert than I am, have concluded that there's something about using the trigger finger to press that lever on the draw that leads people to curl that finger inward, which leads to sheepish limping and application of direct pressure to gunshot wounds.

Now, here's where that dichotomy comes in: I never carried the Serpa with a serious worry about a gun-grab attack, so I never tested whether it could be ripped off the paddle plate. I never carried it in the dirty and gritty real world except on the range at the Gun Blogger Weekend where I saw one for the first time, and nobody was going to the ground there. And I'd like to say I never encountered a safety issue with my trigger finger going where it shouldn't on the draw, but I'm just not sure. I never had an accidental discharge with either of my Serpas, and I never noticed my trigger finger in an unsafe place. But does that mean it never happened, or that I was lucky enough not to shoot myself in the knee when it did? I honestly don't know. 

So . . . why do people love SERPAS so much?
Well, if you don't know about those three issues (and most Serpa users don't, I think) what's not to love? We're talking about an American-made, inexpensive, high-tech holster. The paddle attachment has much to recommend it, so much so that Dragon Leather Works uses it as the basis for their paddle holsters. The paddle is wide, the "claws" on the paddle just will not let go of your pants/belt, and although there are concerns about it breaking, Blackhawk's not alone there. I broke the paddle on my Comp-Tac International the very first time I tried to put it on; been running it with the belt slots ever since. I hear good things about Safariland's paddle system, but I haven't tried it for myself. If it's not a whole lot stronger, I'm tempted to try to develop a stronger, reinforced paddle attachment I can then sell off to holster makers. I think it could be worth tens of dollars, which might explain why makers haven't made that change themselves.
But I digress. Why do people love Serpas so much, aside from very low cost, availability in every gun shop across the land (right across the aisle from the FOBUS display) and the "Made in America" bonus? I can't speak for military or law enforcement procurement people, exactly, but I think the average guy with a Serpa carrying a 1911 in a Burger King or behind the counter of a gun shop is basically buying a feeling. Carrying a gun openly in public, or even on a private range or in competition if you're not used to it, can be an exposed and vulnerable feeling. Even with a concealed firearm, newly-minted CCL's are known for checking and re-checking, certain that the gun has shifted, been removed by a street urchin, or simply popped right out of the holster. It's not rational, but the feeling is real. A holster with a definite retention mechanism--one that's got a lever you have to push and everything--provides a feeling that I have Done Something About This. I have addressed the issue of my gun falling out of the holster in public or being snatched out of the holster by some robber who got the drop on me. Having Done Something About This, I can now stop worrying. I am allowed to feel better and go back to being comfortable. The fact that those worries are perhaps not all that practical (or, to be less kind, rational) doesn't really enter into this decision.

If you're reading this, and that description makes you uncomfortable, keep in mind that I'm saying that I felt that way about the Serpa. In fact, I wrote that last paragraph in the general 2nd person "you," and I just went back and put it in the first person just so that would be clear: I'm talking about me . . . and a lot of people I think are doing the same thing I was doing.


Why did you throw yours in the trash?
I try not to make decisions based on being fashionable on the internet, but I'm susceptible to influence just like anyone else except for Judge Mills Lane. No doubt, peer pressure squeezed and molded me as shooters, trainers and writers I respect weighed in with their verdicts on the Serpa. As trainers and training schools banned the Serpa, it also made sense to consider what the ones I was hanging onto were for--I wasn't going to wear them to those schools, right? And I wasn't going to be shooting the pistols they fit in competition . . . nor did I need a retention holster for that purpose. In fact, I had little use for a retention holster at all. The fact that I was switching pistols factored in, too; even if I did decide at some point in the future that I needed a retention holster with a paddle mount, I would still have to purchase another one, 'cause neither of the Serpas in my possession fit Glocks.

In the end, that was the deciding factor. I didn't need the Serpas for anything at the moment, and if I did find myself in need of a retention holster, I'd need to buy a new one--at which point, the Serpa would have to beat out other designs like the widely-recommended Safariland ALS series on a level playing field. These holsters just weren't for anything that I needed done anymore. I'm still honestly not terribly worried about the trigger finger issue, and if I were issued a Serpa for some kind of job, I'd make it work. But I'm not being issued one, and if there's even some danger in that retention mechanism, there's just not anything on the other side of the scale to balance it out for me.

(But you're not going to catch me pretending like I didn't think the Serpa was super-cool a few years ago, because dammit, the Serpa was super-cool a few years ago.)

Little, Yellow, Different: 5.11's Training Barrel

Like I said on Friday, my main reason for buying any training gizmos at all for dry fire was the desire to combine two traits my pistol simply cannot match:

1. Extra safety margin: make it as unlikely as possible to fire that "oops" round in dry fire, and
2. Do this so conveniently that dry fire is not made more difficult or tiresome.

The first thing I picked up for that purpose was a 5.11 yellow training barrel. This is a simple little yellow hunk of plastic that retails for about $10-$20 (it's currently $17 on Amazon.) At that price, it's going to whup on the SIRT pistol and the Laserlyte packages in the value category, and it really does represent great bang for the buck if you don't have one of the other two. However, now that the SIRT is in my home, I have to confess that the 5.11 barrel gets a lot less use. Some of that is likely temporary, as right now I only have one example of my carry/competition gun, a Gen4 Glock 17. A few months ago, when I began to think seriously about how concealed carry was going to change my approach to handguns, I only owned one example of my carry piece, a Springfield XD in .45.  Among the considerations that pushed me away from that gun (caliber/cost, concerns about Springfield reliability, ambivalence about grip safeties, difficulty finding accessories) the inability to get a 5.11 training barrel to fit it was prominent. When I made the switch, I picked up a 5.11 barrel right away, but when there's only one pistol to match it in the house, one encounters the first difficulty with the 5.11, namely . . .

You will field strip your pistol a lot.
If you're doing dry fire with your carry/competition pistol, you need to break it down and install the 5.11 in place of the barrel each time, then replace the barrel when you're done. It becomes a bit of a pain.  Again, this would be mitigated if I followed the advice most of Pistol-Forum.com would give, buying one or even two "backup" copies of the pistol so that one is dedicated to dry fire. That pistol could have the 5.11 in it all the time. Not only would that make it quick and easy to grab it for a brief dry fire session and toss it back where it came from, but if one locked the barrel in the pistol safe, it would essentially make the pistol with the 5.11 installed an inert, non-gun object that could be left lying on the counter, an oft-cited advantage of the SIRT. That would be nice, because other than this one issue, it's hard for me to come up with many downsides of the little yellow chunk, at least for home use.  If I had to find one more, I guess it would be that . . . 

There's no visual feedback to the user or a coach.
The SIRT and the Laserlyte pieces both give some confirmation of trigger discipline by projecting a laser dot; if your dot moves around, elongates, etc., then you're disturbing your sight picture with the trigger press. I don't know if this is a big deal, frankly, because I find that I don't want to look at the laser when I use the SIRT, and I don't have a coach. If I had someone else tracking the dot and giving me feedback, I could imagine making much better use of that feature, but as it is, the 5.11 is on a level playing field. So, what are some of the advantages of the 5.11? Well, for one thing . . . 

It provides instant visual confirmation that the gun is inert.
This is an important advantage over dry firing the pistol, but depending upon who's around, it could be an advantage over the SIRT or the Laserlyte inserts (in your "real" pistol) too. The SIRT is visually very close to a Glock 17 with a paint job, and the Laserlyte inserts make it obvious that the muzzle is obstructed, but only from the muzzle end. Actually, as I write this, it occurs to me that I never asked whether the Laserlyte inserts are designed to preclude the loading of ammunition. They have long "tails" that I could imagine blocking the chamber, and it stands to reason, but . . . I don't know. Hmmm.
Anyway, the 5.11 barrel doesn't have that issue. Both the exposed chamber and the muzzle are replaced with bright yellow plastic, and the muzzle is clearly not even a tube (surely no accident there.) Visual checks are near-instant, and even people from outside The Tribe are at ease, because they can instantly assure themselves that I'm not holding a g . . . g . . . g . . . gun!
Now, don't go letting that lull you into a sense of peaceful security that leads you to point guns at your palms or nothin' (I'm looking' at you, J.A.) but it's nice to have.

It uses your pistol's trigger, controls and sights, not approximations.
The SIRT is excellent at being a G17-shaped object that's roughly the right weight, uses standard sights, has weighted magazines, and has a trigger that pretty closely approximates a striker-action with a fairly light weight, a break and a reset. It does NOT feel the same as the trigger in my actual Glock pistol, being much lighter and with a less-defined break, plus no trigger safety. The grip is smaller than the grip on my G17 (I use the medium beavertail backstrap, but I've been wondering about the large lately.) And of course, although I can practice reloads with weighted magazines, I can't run or release the slide on a SIRT. The 5.11, in contrast, allows me to do all of the things a SIRT can do, plus running the slide for malfunction drills or reloads from empty. The only things that really favor the SIRT in this area are its ability to simulate reset and its weighted magazines. Otherwise, the 5.11 really is more versatile. Incidentally, I've tried the "rubber band trick" to fool the Glock into resetting the trigger, but I've never made it work yet. I could just be doing it wrong; maybe it's about getting exactly the right thickness of rubber in there. But for whatever reason, I haven't gotten it to work, and if I ever do, the 5.11 will shoot up in estimation.

It's installed in your pistol, so it absolutely fits in your holster.
I don't know that this really deserves its own individual, bolded line on a blog nobody reads, but it does matter. At one time, I thought it was a notch in the Glock's favor (as opposed to other 9mm service pistols) that it matched the SIRT, so I could use the SIRT in the same holster as the Glock. As it turns out, the SIRT doesn't fit my Glock holsters perfectly, and I actually use it without the holster more. I don't think that's been a big drawback for the SIRT, but if there's an advantage there, it clearly goes to the 5.11 barrel.

It's dirt cheap compared to a SIRT or a Laserlyte module.
I know, I've already pointed this out, but it bears repeating. Cheap things that work well should not be dismissed just because they're cheap. That's the definition of good value. A good friend was complaining the other night that Army units, in his experience, tend to point weapons at each other in CQB training. If you want to do something like that safely, and you need to do it in large numbers, there's not going to be a "cheap" option, but these little plastic gems are probably going to be the "cheapest" compared to "blue guns" or SIRTs or the like.

The verdict:
I don't use the 5.11 barrel nearly as much as I do the SIRT these days, but I'm not getting rid of it. I can imagine, at some point, having it more or less permanently installed in my second pistol, or maybe my third, and at that point I think it will be much more viable as an any time, any where tool on a par with the SIRT. In short, I like the 5.11 training barrel very much and I should very much like to be friends with it.

Glock 17 vs. Glock 19: Go Big or Go Home

I'm not gonna lie; there are two facts that define every aspect of my decision to purchase a Glock 17 and carry it in a Blade-Tech Phantom:*

1.  Everybody says the Glock 19 is the perfect size for every job.
2. Nobody puts baby in a corner and you ain't the boss of me.

These were, it must be admitted, not the whole story. It turns out that even though I don't like to be told what to do, the grip on a Glock 17 really does tend to poke out at people like an inconvenient erection (only smaller, ladies.)  This has led to a new plan: sell the XD, purchase a Glock 19, and carry that, possibly while sending the 17 off to get cut down for 19 magazines (but probably not, as that smacks of effort, and, when you think about it, you only need one Glock 19 carry magazine at a time. Having three factory G19 magazines, I have enough to carry it forever, 'cause I can always just carry G17 mags on the belt for every purpose. The G19 mag's only virtue, after all, is relative stubbiness.

Anyway, you ever start to talk yourself into something, and then hear the issue reframed so brilliantly that you realize you've been wasting your time trying to think it through with your own feeble brain? Me, too.

Hat tip to ENDO: 

*Like PDB, I like the Phantom. Unlike PDB, I'm not quite ready to declare it better than everything else. Also, I broke mine as soon as I got it in a way that I think made it work (completely unintentionally) better for me. But as a way to spend $20 to have a safe, workable IWB holster without a long wait, it's brilliant.

Wooden Swords and Laser Guns--How Do I Practice Using Deadly Force?

Remember Choose Your Own Adventure ™
 books? How about the Time Machine ™
 series from the same publisher? 
Were they great, or were they the greatest?

This is why people think I've read the Book of Five Rings.

Time's up, sucker. They were the greatest. I still quote facts about Jupiter that I learned from a Choose Your Own Adventure ™book about a mission to the moons of Jupiter, and I'm talking about teaching middle school science class, here. Did you know that Jupiter has 63 moons and 
Ganymede is bigger than the planet Mercury?

But my favorite was probably from the Time Machine ™series, and it was a mission to travel back in time and acquire a sword used by Miyamoto Musashi. I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but there was a successful ending available. The final choice was presented in a scene with Musashi in his famous cave as he lay dying. Musashi recognizes this weird, eternal person who keeps popping in and out of his life, and agrees to allow you to take one of his swords. After pondering what you have learned from Musashi (other than that bushido requires a willingness to cheat) you choose Musashi's well-worn bokken and leave his steel swords by his side. Musashi approves; this, he says, is the sword that he has used the most in his life, the one that taught him the most. The others are almost like your mom's fine china, only useful for special occasions. If one of the swords contains any of his soul, it will be the humble wooden training tool.

It wasn't until later that I learned that Musashi's legendary fondness for wooden weapons wasn't all about a philosophical decision to embrace training and learning; he also really had a thing for beating people to death with the bones of trees. We all have our quirks, I guess. But the impact it had on me at the time, which I think has lasted, was a fascination with the idea of a warrior as a student, someone for whom training gear and good teachers are much more important than the actual deadly weapons to be used. We're all fond of telling each other that you can't purchase skill, but if you're willing to pay in time, repetition and fatigue, and you're open to new ideas, you can. I think that's neato.

Nowadays, although I have a bokken stashed somewhere, that's not what need to train with my primary weapons. I used to carry a knife wherever I could; when I realized I could buy a blunt trainer, I did so, but my "training" was sporadic. I still carry a knife most of the time, but I've added OC spray to it. That's been more difficult to practice well with, and I know it's a hole in my options. But the big recent change has been the acquisition of an Illinois CCL this year. With the ability to carry a firearm with me has come the realization that I (speaking strictly for myself) was not completely comfortable with my level of skill. It's great to carry the thing, but to what avail, if you're not sure you'll have the confidence to use it if the time comes? So I started to seek out training.  I did MAG20 Classroom, followed by MAG20 Range. I did my 16-hour Illinois CCL training class. I've taken an 8-hour force-on-force class from Black Flag Training, four hours on Illinois law from Andrew Branca of LOSD fame, and the four-hour emergency medicine class from Kelly Grayson (the one I reviewed this week.) Every time I take a shooty class as opposed to a thinky class, I notice something: my performance starts slow and improves dramatically as I shoot more. That's a clue, I guess; these skills are perishable, and I'm not getting my money's worth from this or that course if I don't practice the skills over time.

So I've taken steps in 2014 to shoot more. I switched to 9mm to save money on ammunition, and I've begun buying 9mm ammo in greater bulk to save more. I've joined my local USPSA group, the Springfield Tactical Shooters, who run one stage of USPSA every Thursday night locally. And I've committed to shooting live fire once per week (a commitment, however, that I've already had to reset once after taking most of April off because of insanity in the family.) Right now, I do that by shooting Dot Torture once per week to try to establish a record of progress.

That's all great, but it's never enough. I want to be committed to dry fire at home, I do, but I have three kids in that home, and because of my family situation, security of my firearms is very important. Moreover, I've never really become comfortable with dry fire. I store the guns upstairs, but there are no safe directions up there. I have safe directions downstairs, and I generally have my carry gun on me at home anyway, but then I've got to separate from the ammunition--and I'm still not really happy with that solution. So I've invested in a couple of pieces of gear that promised to help out with these problems, and I think I'd like to think through what I've solved, what I haven't, and what's next in writing. You're welcome to read it if that seems like something you'd enjoy. Of course, because I live in 2014, my favorite "wooden sword" is a "laser gun." 

Pew, pew!

Short version: I currently have a $12 piece of yellow plastic and a much more expensive laser pistol. In upcoming posts, I'd like to explore what each one does best, what each one is lacking, and why I I'm still kicking myself for not buying yet another laser pistol at NRAAM this year. Also, if you are a time traveler and you're going to ask me for my weapon at the end of my life, I suggest you just time it to show up sometime after my actual death and then just take the one you want. I don't want to be a pain in the ass. Green light, bro.

IL Supreme Court Kicks MAIG/ICHV/LCAV While They're Down, Leaves Marks

The Illinois Supreme Court says it read Moore v. Madigan and it sides with the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.  Thus, in People v. Aguilar, the court finds that the 2nd Amendment not only protects the right to keep and bear arms inside your home, but also outside it.  That can't be welcome news if you're still recovering from your cheap-tequila hangover at MAIG headquarters or the ICHV intern desk today.  "The Colorado Thing," as it might delicately be put in the presence of such people, couldn't have been less than a crushing defeat.  They had it figured out!  They just knew it was going to work this time!  That roadrunner can't keep getting away forever!

And then, this.  Now, I'm not personally certain how much impact this will really have on most peoples' lives.  It certainly made a difference in young Mr. Aguilar's life; and I can imagine finding that the main benefit will be to people previously convicted under Illinois' now-defunct Unlawful Use of a Weapon and Aggravated Unlawful Use of a Weapon statutes. 

Less widely reported, probably because it was always an extreme long shot, is the fact that Aguilar also challenged Illinois' "Unlawful Possession of a Firearm" statute.  It was under that law that he was convicted of possessing a handgun while 17 years of age, and despite noting his argument that bearing arms was not limited to 18-year-olds in the colonial/founding era, the court ruled that this one is constitutional.  The case was remanded back to the lower state court for that reason; the lower court has been directed to sentence Aguilar for his UPF conviction, with the provision that they credit him all his time served for the AUUW conviction and also that he cannot be sentenced to a longer term than he would have served for the AUUW conviction, if they'd left it standing.

Illinois Speaker Mike Madigan: (217-782-5350) CALL NOW! LINES ARE OPEN!

If you want to see Illinois become a shall-issue, right-to-carry state this year, it's time to call your Representative in the Illinois House. If you're not sure who that is, you can type your address in here and find out who's your Representative and what his/her phone numbers are. Might as well call the Springfield offices; they should be back in town.

Done with that? Good. Now I'm going to ask you to do something that might seem odd: Call Mike Madigan and tell him you expect a fair vote on HB148 and you hope he'll vote for it.
Now, you might be scratching your head right now at the idea that Mike Madigan, Speaker of the House since 1983, leader of Illinois Democrats, father of Lisa Madigan, halfway-adopted-brother of Dick Daley, should be urged to vote for a right-to-carry bill. But please do it anyway. Remember that we don't actually need Madigan to vote for the bill (though that would help, Mike, if you're reading this) but we do need to show him that there's a true grassroots movement after this bill that will remember if he at least makes sure we get a fair floor vote, up or down.
If you aren't done with that because you're not sure of Mike Madigan's phone number, check the title again.

Got that done, too? Congratulations, you are now a hardcore grassroots activist willing to do more than 90% of gun owners can be bothered to do. Wanna buck for the top percentile? Call Glenn Poshard at Southern Illinois University and tell him to quit trying to kill right-to-carry in Illinois over his turf battle. Poshard is currently leading a group of college administrators lobbying to have the entire bill scuttled unless it makes it a felony to possess a firearm anywhere on campus; if you've ever taken a drive through Carbondale or Champaign, you know we're not just talking about the quad here. I know you'll all be polite and cheerful, but firm. Some of you may decide to mention that if Mr. Poshard doesn't call off the dogs, then even when we win right-to-carry, the fight won't be over for him, because I for one would become a near-full-time "Campus Carry" advocate in that event.

When you're trying to kill the carry bill that Chicago police unions want to see passed, you're so far out of touch that you might be out of sight.

QOTD: IGOLD Arithmetic

"I already posted about a TV person in the hall with all of us there in our GOLDEN finest. With a straight face she said that our count was "OVER ONE HUNDRED FIFTY people in attendance".

YEAH, LADY. IN EACH ROW!"
--"Badwater Bill" at www.illinoiscarry.com

Media accounts of numbers vary widely, but that's . . . . hmmm.

When this picture was taken, from the railroad viaduct next to 3rd St., the back end of the crowd still hadn't turned the corner from 7th St. four blocks back. Maybe I'm too generous, but it's enough to make me wonder whether she genuinely flubbed it.

IGOLD 2011: A winner is you!

So, IGOLD 2011 has come and gone, and it's the top story on the front page of the Springfield State Journal-Register, and apparently they're passing out live TV news interviews to fat gun nuts in yellow hoodies now . . . . so that's new.

The paper is estimating that there were only about 1000-1500 in attendance; I would personally estimate 3000-5000 . . . . 3500-4500 if someone wanted more precision. I thought the numbers were close to last year's turnout, which I estimated at around 4000-4500. I am absolutely no kind of expert on this stuff, though, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt (just a little one, though; I mean, it's not as if I'm not awfully smart or anything.) Also in attendance at IGOLD were a couple of less-desirable elements. One was an older gentleman who was passing out some kind of, as one organizer put it, "Jim Crow literature." He was tossed out of the convention center without putting up much of a protest; must have known he had limited time to do such a thing. Hey, this is not Wisconsin, and we don't owe you a place to peddle your crazy.

Insiders at the capitol are telling each other that the current right-to-carry bill, HB0148/SB82, is nearly inevitable. Of course, this is Illinois politics, where things can get weird and the insiders are sometimes as surprised as everyone else, so I'll believe it when I see it. Still, the logic of the situation does have a certain persuasive force. Senate President Cullerton really does have a lot of pressure coming from downstate Democrats, and he's starting to see more from suburban and even some Chicago districts, too. On the other hand, he has to know that the anti-gun contingent of Chicago legislators may not go completely quietly. Very likely, President Cullerton is wondering whether he can wait for Speaker Madigan's House to pass HB0148 and send it to the Senate, at which point he would have more cover to look for a solution. The big flaw in that plan (well, from my point of view, maybe not from his) is that Speaker Madigan might be waiting for Cullerton to make the first move, for similar reasons. I have this terrible vision of the two of them sitting across a table, each waiting for the other to make the first move, like two old men at the coffee shop sitting with the check between them, each trying his best to outlast the other . . . . casually.

However, listening to rank-and-file legislators talk to each other yesterday was a revelation. The buzz in the capitol hallways was entirely about right-to-carry, which I've never seen at IGOLD before. I don't mean legislators talking to IGOLD participants--that always sounds like someone trying to sell you your own ideas--but the little bits and bites of conversation you pick up between two staffers in an elevator, or a couple of lobbyists on the steps. These people are all talking amongst themselves about right-to-carry and the mood is infectiously optimistic.

Requests and Dedications: Is it OK for the state police to give the AP a list of all legal gun owners in Illinois?

If you read Roberta X (and if you don't, you should) then you've already seen several of my words on the latest anti-gun hijinks in Illinois (Roberta took them right out of my mouth.)

I've still got a few left that she didn't think of, though, and Keith asked in comments, "Are you going to address the FOID thing?" so I suppose I have an excuse.

First, consider the problem. Essentially, the Attorney General of Illinois, Lisa Madigan, has issued a letter to the Illinois State Police directing them to release a list of the names (but not home addresses) of everyone who holds a FOID card in Illinois. The FOID card is not a carry permit, but a license to possess, own, or transfer a firearm or ammunition. Outside narrow exceptions, an Illinois citizen needs a FOID card just to possess a single round of loaded ammunition. The ISP is fighting this order by asking for an official opinion from the AG and seems ready to take the issue to court. Several bills currently in the legislature, including HB 0007, would prohibit the release of such a list in the future. In practical terms, this doesn't affect me personally, because I'm out and proud and on all the troublemaker lists you can be on in this state. I can easily imagine a lot of others, especially the two-thirds of the population who live in Chicagoland, worrying about their jobs and their relatively harassment-free lives going away in some situations. Some of my other friends who try to "fly under the radar" as gun owners in their neighborhoods to avoid taking chances with thieves are now imagining their names in the newspapers as "gun owners." Chances are, though, that HB 0007 is going to would pass with a large majority after the firestorm they've created here, if it hadn't mysteriously been bottled up in a committee. Few people seem to realize that the Illinois Legislature is dominated by votes ranging from pro-gun to moderate on guns. Year after year, the other side introduces packages of anti-gun bills which go down to defeat, and most pro-gun bills short of repealing the FOID or creating right-to-carry pass.

If all that's true (and I think it still surprises even a lot of Illinois gun-rights activists to look at the legislature that way) then why doesn't right-to-carry pass? The answer is that Illinois has nearly all-powerful legislative leaders. Mike Madigan rules the House with an iron fist, and John Cullerton inherited a near-dictatorship in the Senate from Emil Jones. Right-to-carry would pass the Illinois House and Senate in a heartbeat without that power; Cullerton, like Jones before him, bottles up RTC bills in unfriendly committees and prevents floor votes entirely. Mike Madigan simply rules that RTC would affect home rule (another quirk of Illinois is that we have thousands of home-rule cities; it's not just Chicago) and therefore require SUPER majorities. In other words, everyone including Madigan knows, whether they acknowledge it or not, that there are clear pro-gun majorities in both houses of the Illinois legislature. Illinois readers will probably recall that the Attorney General mentioned above is Lisa Madigan, the daughter of the aforementioned Mike Madigan.

Now we consider one more question: why now? Why did Lisa Madigan decide that now is the time to make a push to join the ranks of the newspapers and state governments that have been pilloried over the years for publishing lists of CCW holders nationwide? I tend to agree with Thirdpower at Days of Our Trailers: this is a case of "Wagging the Madigan." The idea here is almost certainly to create a new controversy over gun control, one where the other side has at least some of the initiative. That's necessary because shall-issue right-to-carry legislation is gaining ground every day; Madigan's super-majority strategy could be overwhelmed this year by simply meeting his requirement, and some sources have been reporting rumors that Cullerton and even Governor Quinn have been feeling a lot of pressure to move. RTC is clearly coming in Illinois, so their three choices are to jump on the bandwagon, get run over by the bandwagon, or set the old warehouse district on fire and hope everybody has to jump off the bandwagon to pass buckets. It seems they chose the third. The problem for them is that this is an obnoxious and dangerous strategy that's already pissing off all the wrong people. They may be able to do some harm with it to a lot of innocent folks who didn't volunteer to be game pieces, but I don't believe they themselves have that much to gain. RTC is not going away, if that's what they were hoping. It's a genuine grassroots movement with no rent-a-crowds or astroturf involved . . . . just distracting the public and waiting for the furor to die down is not going to work. I attended the funeral a couple of months ago of a man who fought like a lion for RTC; we called him "Ol' Coach," but his real name was Gene Martin. Gene's fear was that he wouldn't live to see RTC pass, and his frustration came out in angry words from time to time. He was right, as it turns out, but if anyone thinks his friends will move on to something else if they wave a few distractions around, they've misjudged.

Tomorrow, at 2 p.m., there will be a committee hearing on shall-issue right-to-carry (The Family and Personal Protection Act, HB0148) at the Illinois state capitol. The bill will pass out of the committee; the important thing tomorrow will be the testimony and the press coverage. I've already been contacted by local TV news about this, so I know at least some are paying attention. Will they drop that attention to rush off and get quotes from Lisa Madigan about her Wag-the-Madigan scheme? I doubt it.

Then, on Thursday at 10:30 a.m. in the Prairie Capital Convention Center in Springfield, the doors will open for IGOLD. Thousands of gun owners will take the day off work and pay their way to the capital to spend the day marching, demonstrating, and meeting with their legislators. We will rally in the Convention Center, and we will march across town (the streets are closed by the Springfield Police.) We will meet and rally again in front of the capitol . . . . but we will also pour into the capitol by the thousands and meet individually with our representatives.

The problem, if you're Lisa Madigan or Mike Madigan or John Cullerton or Pat Quinn, is how to create a big enough distraction to stop a bandwagon that big. Ignoring the problem for the past few years has not made it go away. These people are hearing footsteps; shall-issue right-to-carry is coming. The only thing they really control in this fight now is how long it takes and how much credit or blame they get when the shouting is over.

Be still, my heart . . . . .

The Springfield State Journal-Register is apparently finished with hinting that they might slightly favor right-to-carry in Illinois, instead coming right out and saying so in a lead editorial in the Sunday edition:

"Our Opinion: Reconsider Ban on Concealed Carry"

They did a good job of recapping the history of concealed carry measures in Illinois, and I only have one or two small quibbles. Great job overall--in fact, when I showed it to my wife, she asked in all seriousness whether it was my guest piece. (It's not, of course.)

The only real trouble they gave me was in their suggestion that anti-gun politicians shouldn't be afraid to revisit right-to-carry because the McDonald decision endorsed "reasonable" restrictions and some compromise might be possible--for instance, that some cities could simply "opt out" of the right-to-carry law.

No. Just no. First of all, as the NRA's Todd Vandermyde has pointed out, the only Justices who wrote about "reasonable" restrictions when they weren't quoting anti-gun amici were the dissenters. That's a polite way of saying that the side that won did NOT endorse "reasonable" restrictions, though they did allow that some restrictions will likely pass muster. What they did was find that the individual right named in the Heller decision is incorporated into the 14th Amendment, which means that it has to be enforced against the states and local governments. That means, in this case, "Illinois" and "Chicago."

So, what is this individual right that now shall not be infringed by Chicago? Well, the Heller decision called it the "right to own and carry weapons in case of confrontation," though of course they didn't actually decide to order Washington, D.C. to allow right-to-carry since that question wasn't before them. But how can anyone figure that Chicago has a legal leg to stand on if they ask to "opt out" of this right entirely? No, right-to-carry is coming in Illinois, and the legislature's choice may very well be between acting in the next session and negotiating with us, or waiting to act and "negotiating" with federal court orders. Good luck with that.

The bottom line is that if the 2nd Amendment protects an individual right to carry weapons for personal defense, as the Supreme Court has said it does at least in dicta, then there's no legal way for Illinois to remain the one state in the union that won't allow any citizen to carry a loaded firearm for any reason (police officers and politicians excepted, of course.) And, once Illinois brings itself into compliance and provides equal protection before the law for its citizens, it's hard to see how Chicago could "opt out" and take that equal protection away from over half the citizens in the state. Last year, when many Illinois right-to-carry activists (including me) tried to make a push to get a right-to-carry law that would have allowed Chicago and other home-rule municipalities to "opt out," it would probably have been found legal for them to do it. But they weren't willing to talk about that deal, and the NRA torpedoed it behind the scenes in the Illinois General Assembly. A lot of people were angry about that, but let's face it now: the NRA turned out to be right on this one. We didn't want to wait for the McDonald decision, but that was impatience talking. As it turned out, we find ourselves today in a position where Illinois doesn't need to make that deal that Chicago and its puppets spurned back then. In fact, I'll just come out and say it clearly here: in the long run, I'm glad the other side was too foolish to take that deal, and I'm glad Vandermyde and the NRA killed it.

IGOLD 2010 is here

If you can't come to IGOLD 2010 in Springfield today, there are still two ways you can help. The first is to call your local Chicago news outlet of choice and ask them when their story on IGOLD will run.
The second is to go to www.illinoiscarry.org and donate whatever you can afford to support IGOLD and IllinoisCarry. IllinoisCarry is a not-for-profit corporation (but not, legally speaking, a charity, and donations are not tax-deductible.) running at a consistent loss, funded by donations from its "employees," none of whom are paid. Unlike anti-gun groups like the Violence Policy Center, which do little more than convert Joyce Foundation funds into 6-figure salaries for people who literally do Google and Nexus searches for a living, IllinoisCarry does nothing but advocate for right-to-carry in Illinois. I can testify that being a Director at IllinoisCarry has cost me a considerable amount of money so far, to say nothing of time, and the officers pay more for the privilege than I do. If you can help, you can be sure that your money will be spent wisely and gratefully.




IGOLD 2010 is today. Springfield will welcome thousands of gun owners. . . . .

We will fill the Prairie Capital Convention Center . . . .


We will march down Capitol Avenue in a throng of thousands . . . .


We will gather on the steps of the Capitol, under the well-polished nose of Lincoln's statue and the steady gaze of King's. We will celebrate our freedom and demand our rights.
Join us.

Overheard in the kitchen

Kids are flipping through a couple of gun reference books with one of their friends from school:

"Ah, the most basic name for the sniper rifle--the sniper rifle!"

Ess You What Huh What?

I'm glad I'm not the only one wondering what on earth the "States United to Prevent Gun Violence" is supposed to be. Their name is only slightly less stupid than the "Freedom States Alliance," which is just about a syntactically null statement (what are the "Freedom States," and why do they advocate cracking down on freedom?)
Seriously, "States United?" You idiots are claiming to be a coalition of state governments or something. You are, at best, a sort of shell corporation consisting of various vestigial state-level gun-banning groups that represent tiny minorities of the voters in your respective states. You are entirely full of crap, and I've never heard of you. My guess is that the SUPGV was created out of whole cloth quite recently as a way to pool that sweet, sweet grant money from the Joyce Foundation people so everyone can keep feeding, even if each goober had to accept less largesse than he's grown accustomed to.

Being a gun-ban astroturf activist is not a fun or respected life, but it beats working for a living, I guess.

Zombie gun control never stops coming back to life

Illinois handgun dealer licensing bill is back from the dead . . . again.
Now, no one get too alarmed, but it does seem that zombie gun control bills are beginning to rise from the dead in Springfield. The first lumbering corpse to claw its way out of the cold, mossy ground of the legislative cemetery known as the Rules Committee is House Bill 180, the "Handgun Dealer Licensing Act. This is the same bill gun owners have been stopping for years, over and over and over--but it always comes back. Normally, that process takes time, as a bill that went down to defeat in a floor vote the year before must be re-introduced and go through the committee process again before reaching the floor--which is why the Senate version of this same bill, SB3092, is some time away from a floor vote; it had to be introduced anew just this week. However, there was no floor vote on HB180 during the 2009 session, so it went back to the Rules Committee . . . which sent it back out to the floor late last week. That means that a floor vote could be taken at any time. But what would HB180 do that would lead gun owners to call their legislators in opposition?

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WANT--Makarov Edition

Every month, the Sangamon County Rifle Association gets together in the back room of the local buffet place. Somebody stands up and talks about the politicians, somebody else updates everyone on upcoming gun shows and demands volunteers, then someone stands up and talks about the damn politicians, followed by me standing up and droning on about McDonald this and Heller that and honestly, I'm not sure I could tell you everything I talk about.

But generally, someone brings in something to show around for "Tech Time." Tonight, Brent the Token Soldier brought in his Makarov. I'd never held on in my hand before, and now I want one. But I won't likely find a deal like the one Brent got; about ten years ago, he found this one at a household auction for $50. Fifty dollars. No kidding.

Brent's Makarov is an East German version of 1964 vintage, and it's a lovely little thing. The finish is a deep, nearly-black bluing on well-polished steel. The pistol is tight and solid, larger in the hand than I expected, and heavy for its size (well, by my standards, but remember that I was six years old when the first Glocks reached the U.S. People my age don't remember when guns could only be made of steel.) Throughout the gun (and on each of the magazines) most of the parts had been marked "48" with an electric pencil. In Corvette terms, this is a numbers-matching Communist oppression pistol.

Did I forget that part? Yes, under the grips of this elegantly simple little pistol are the markings of the East German Stasi--secret police.

I know there are people who can't stand to hold a Nazi-marked K98 or Luger, and would view this pistol the same way. But I can't hold a milsurp and keep from wondering what the original users would have thought of someone like me holding it. Tonight I had to wonder; could the Stasi agent who carried good old No. 48 have imagined that someday, maybe 30 years or so in the future, "his" issue pistol would be carried and plinked with by some American soldier on his own time?

New Woodsman .22 pistols? Great, but . . . .

Will USFA be selling new magazines separately? That's what I've been waiting for.

http://www.usfirearms.com/cat/woodsman.asp

Grandpa got . . . .

A semi-auto Thompson in .45. Kane ratted him out this morning.

Dad's wanted a Thompson for as long as I can remember--he's got an Airsoft and a .22, but I guess he couldn't stand not to have the .45.

Now I really have to get the loading bench back together.

OH! Why didn't you say so?

“Sure, the right to bear arms is an individual choice,” White said. “But that’s not a choice I’m willing to agree with.”

Well, now, that's a horse of a different color!
In that case, piss off, you nosy little shrew. Your agreement, like you, is irrelevant.

(That's just a very tiny part of a much larger brouhaha over women and guns, so read the whole thing at Aunt B's and SayUncle for the real outrages.)

OK, that's a new one.

I've seen a lot of . . . . interesting ways of writing out calibers from the "mainstream media." Reporters have no idea how firearm nomenclature works, and honestly, it really is a very complex topic if you don't grow up with it. Not only that, but most of these people don't even realize that there is a right way to write these things, so it doesn't occur to them that there is a wrong way, much less that they're doing things the wrong way.

But this one is new even to me. Maybe you've seen it before?

a fully-loaded 9 .mm semiautomatic handgun

I really don't think I have.