Michael R. Weisser's Blog, page 4

How Do We Make Schools Safe?

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              Our friend Shannon Watts is back in the news again
because her parent organization, Everytown, has joined with the two
major teachers’ unions – AFT and NEA – to raise concerns
about the value of active shooter drills which are now performed in 95% of all
public schools. This follows a report
on school safety issued by Everytown last year, which outlined some basic
strategies endorsed by the unions who represent most of the teachers working in
the 132,000 public schools every day.

              School security has become a major issue because some
of the worst mass shootings – Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland – have occurred
in both elementary and high schools. And while a school building is still a
very safe place, our friends in Fairfax and other loony-tunes gun nuts have
been pushing the idea of arming teachers and conducting exercises to protect
teachers and students from shooters, usually referred to as lockdown drills.

              When I was in the 5th grade, we had to squat
down under our desks because the Russians were going to drop an atomic bomb on
our city and lying down underneath our desks would protect us from harm.  I enjoyed these drills because it gave me an
opportunity to fool around with my seat-mate Brenda, who had been left behind
twice and was therefore already somewhat physically endowed.  I had absolutely no idea who the Russians
were or what the term ‘atomic bomb’ really meant. I didn’t know and I didn’t
care. All I really cared about was trying to cop a quick feel from Brenda
without Mrs. Morse interfering in our fun.

              The lockdown drills now being conducted by a security
industry are very unlike what I did to keep myself from being immolated by an
atomic bomb. The drills require students to simulate a situation in which a
shooter is roaming through their school, complete with warnings from teachers,
maybe viewing a life-size replica of someone who has been shot, lining up and
running out of the building in a minute or less. The companies which provide
this service are now raking in more than $3 billion every year. Meanwhile, the
kids often suffer from all kinds of psychologically-damaging reactions, and
there’s no evidence
that these drills make  schools safer or
more secure.

              Shannon gave a solid interview
on behalf of the new Everytown report. She was speaking on behalf of Everytown,
but when it comes to school safety, she knows what she’s talking about because
she also runs MOMS. And the MOMS organization must count at least several
million mothers whose children attend school. So, when Shannon says that she
hears again and again about kids who were terrified because they had to take
part in lockdown drills, she isn’t just pushing out some alarmist messaging
designed to raise more funds.

              Right after Sandy Hook, the boys from Fairfax rolled
out a school safety program called School Shield, which went nowhere fast. The program involved
doing safety audits of school sites, training teachers to watch for threats,
hardening school premises with better locks, more alarms and stronger doors. Nobody
who is seriously concerned about school safety paid attention to this PR
stunt because, after all, the NRA has been promoting the elimination of
gun-free zones such as schools for years.

              I have no issue with the security measures being
promoted by Everytown which are endorsed by the AFT and the NEA.
But perhaps as they move forward in this program, they might want to think of
one more safety initiative as well.

              Most school systems now have curricular attention being
paid to violence, but the violence is usually defined as bullying or other
forms of personal, physical abuse. Why not widen the definition of violence to
include teaching the kids about the risk of guns? After all, there isn’t a
school system anywhere that doesn’t expose its students to the risks of
smoking, drugs, obesity and unprotected sex. So why should gun violence remain,
as they say, the odd man out?

The Dumbest Pro-Gun Legislator This Year – So Far.

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              I used to think that Matt Goetz (R-FL) was the dumbest
pro-gun politician in America because when he was a State Senator, he
introduced a bill that would have made a business owner financially liable if his
premises were a gun-free zone and a customer got shot because some jerk walked in,
yanked out a banger and went bang. But I am beginning to think that
maybe Goetz has been upended by a State legislator from Michigan, Beau LaFave, who had
two guns, a handgun and an assault rifle, stolen from his residence last week.

Just
because someone has guns stolen out of their home doesn’t necessarily mean that
they deserve the Dumbest Pro-Gun Legislator Award (and yes, we also give out an
award to the dumbest gun-control public figure each year.) But in LaFave’s
case, his being situated at the lowest point on the left side of the bell curve
is much more a function of what he did before the theft took place, and what he
said after he lost his guns.

              Back on January 29, just before Michigan’s Governor,
Gretchen Whitmer, delivered her State of the State address, this jerk walked
into the State Capitol with an AR-15 slung over his shoulder to protest what he
claims are her “proposed unconstitutional gun laws.” Whitmer has proposed a red-flag law which is bottled up
in some committee; she is also on record favoring some kind of assault rifle
ban, although she claims to have no issue with state residents who own guns for
self-protection or sport.

              What does LaFave really want when it comes to gun
laws?  He probably doesn’t want any new laws.
After all, Michigan already requires background checks for private handgun
sales. Isn’t that enough? The fact that the state does not require persons convicted of domestic abuse to surrender their
firearms even if they are prohibited from owning guns should be reason enough
to consider the passage of a red-flag law. But according to LaFave, all a
red-flag law would do would be to disarm all those law-abiding state residents
who have the ‘right’ to own a gun.

              So, over the weekend, while LaFave was out wandering around,
someone broke into his home and stole the AR-15 that he carried into the State
Capitol building, along with a .40-caliber handgun. The two guns were nestled
side by side in the clothing chest drawer where LaFave keeps his underwear and
socks.

              Punto Stupido Numero Uno: The guns weren’t
locked up. The guns weren’t locked away. Want to break into someone’s house and
find something valuable in 30 seconds or less? Start by looking through the clothing
drawers – that’s the first lesson in Burglary 101. Why weren’t his guns locked
or locked away? Because according to LaFave, he needed to be able to get his
hands on his guns just in case he needed to “access them quickly.”

              Punto Stupido Numero Dos: Right after LaFave
pranced around the Capitol building he tweeted a picture of himself with his trusty
gun. That’s what he did. You don’t go to all the trouble of making a complete
fool out of yourself and then forget to make sure that everyone is reminded as
to exactly what a dope you happen to be.

              Did it ever occur to this idiot that maybe, just maybe
he was telling everyone that if they took the trouble to break into his house,
they might find a stash of guns? In talking to reporters, LaFave denied there
was any connection between his self-promoting armed march through the State
Capitol and the theft of his guns. Yea, right. No connection at all.

              My friends in Gun-nut Nation still seem unable to
accept the fact that somehow, don’t ask me how, every single gun used to commit
a fatal or non-fatal gun assault was first bought by someone who could legally own
a gun. So how do these guns wind up in the hands of people who commit an act of
gun violence against someone other than themselves? 

              I can guarantee you that the guy who swiped the guns
from Beau LaFave isn’t some gun hobbyist who just wanted to add two bangers to
his private collection. And Beau did everything he could, including advertising
the guns on his Twitter account, to make sure that his guns ended up in the
wrong hands.

The Latest in Concealed-Carry And It Only Costs Five Grand.

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              There is a gun company in the Czech Republic called
Laugo Arms which has just announced a new pistol for the American market which
is chambered for the standard 9mm round and costs – ready? –
five…thousand…bucks.  No sh#t Sherlock.
Five big ones and they say in Godfather II, or maybe it was in Godfather III or
whatever Mafia movie I was watching last night. 

              Guns have been coming out of this part of Eastern
Europe for decades, the most well-company, CZ, has been shipping their handguns
and shotguns to the United States since we first allowed imports from the
Soviet bloc, and CZ guns were also sneaking into the country when there was an
official imports ban.  Laugo has been
around for a number of years, basically operating as a design shop rather than
actually manufacturing guns. Now they want to get into the American market with
their own gun. But is the gun worth five thousand bucks?

              The company says the gun, called the Laugo Alien, a
name which I guess has something to do with Zombies and all that other extra-terrestrial
stuff. Is a wholly new, indeed revolutionary design. And what makes it
revolutionary, according to the company’s hype, is the placement of the barrel
fixed to the frame. Pistol barrels usually ride underneath the slide and are
connected to the frame through a locking device that both holds the barrel in
place but also lets it float back and forth as the gun is fired and then a new
round slips into the breech.

              Because the barrel is fixed to the frame, the only part
of the gun which moves during recoil is the slide, and if you make the slide
both narrow and lightweight by mixing the steel with an alloy, this will reduce
what is called the ‘felt recoil’ every time the slide ejects a spent shell and
slams home a new round.  Get it?  Don’t worry, I’ll explain what all this
gobbledygook means right now.

              What it means is that this gun can be shot more quickly
and more accurately because the shooter doesn’t have to bring the gun back down
to the line of sight after a round is shot off. So in theory, this will make
the gun more accurate and allow the shooter to deliver more firepower in a
briefer period of time.

              Does this make the Alien worth five mil? Well to begin
with, this product certainly isn’t being aimed (pardon the pun) at the law
enforcement market because cops don’t like to spend money on guns. Pensions,
medical plans, the widow and orphans fund – these are where law enforcement
dollars go – not for guns.

              So obviously, the owners of Laugo are hoping that there
are some civilian gun-owners out there who are willing to pony up five thousand
bucks in order to say that they are the only guy at the Rod and Gun Club who
owns one of these guns. Because believe it or not, if you really think you need
a gun for self-defense, you don’t carry a pistol that will shoot ten shots in
five seconds or less. You need to carry a gun that will deliver just one, accurate
round.

              Most, if not nearly all serious assaults begin to occur
at a distance between perpetrator and victim of 15 feet or less. Most serious
assaults, particularly gun assaults, occur in 2 seconds or less. How many shots
is someone going to get off in 2 seconds or less?  How many shooters have enough skill, training
and muscle memory to hit any target, particularly a moving target at a distance
of 15 feet?

              Know what they say about the gun business? Want to make
a million dollars in the gun business? Start with two million. I hope that
Laugo Arms has two million sitting in the bank.

The Bloomberg Super Bowl Ad Got It Right.

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Since everyone else seems to be
shooting off about Mike Bloomberg’s Super Bowl ad, I might as well inject my
two cents into the discussion as well. I not only liked the ad, the fact that
he used some questionable data about how many children are killed each year
with guns didn’t bother me at all. Given how far from reality most narratives stray
that are promoted by Gun-nut Nation about their so-called gun ‘rights,’ so what
if Mike’s advertisement claimed that 19-year olds were just kids?

The internet is filled with all kinds
of messaging saying that Mike’s ad was ‘hypercritical,’ ‘wrong-headed,’ ‘arrogant,’
‘elitist,’ all the usual anti-Bloomberg crap. But the best video of all was put
together by the boys at
Fairfax based on some ‘interviews’ at the big Pennsylvania gun show that took
place at the same time the Super Bowl was being played. These interviews were
so candid, so original, so individual, that it took me about 30 seconds to
realize that all the folks spieling about Bloomberg were working off the exact,
same script.

Of course the line-up of people defending
their 2nd-Amendment ‘rights’ was as inclusive as all gun-owning
populations tend to be; there was the cop, the mother wearing her Trump hat and
the Black dude who was particularly upset because Bloomberg spends millions on armed
security guarding his house so how ‘I can’t use a gun to defend where I live?’ 

Hey schmuck, did it ever occur to you
that the reason Mike has to spend money for armed security is because he wants
to make sure that the security guards he hires to protect himself actually know
how to use a gun? Did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe you don’t
have any ability to engage in armed, self-defense just because you sat in a
room while some old guy droned on and on for a couple of hours about how to
hold, clean and fool around with a gun?

At some point, I don’t recall exactly
the year, but it had to be after 2001 (because that’s when I went back into
retail guns for the third time and this incident took place) my friends at 1200
Roosevelt Avenue, which happens to be the address of Smith & Wesson,
decided to try and buy some ad space in that year’s Super Bowl magazine. The ad
agency producing the magazine turned them down. They also tried to do a
promotion at a NASCAR race except NASCAR also turned them down. I tried to do a
promotion with the local Harley dealer but the Harley corporate office wouldn’t
let the dealer get involved with anyone selling guns.

These incidents took place long
before Sandy Hook, long before Mike Bloomberg started bankrolling Shannon and
her Moms, long before all those shooting rampages that have focused significant
public attention on gun violence. In other words, for all the talk by Gun-nut Nation
about how guns are becoming a mainstream consumer product, the truth is that
there isn’t a single, mass-market venue allegedly favored by gun owners which
is willing to step up and do any kind of promotional activity on behalf of
guns.

It’s not very difficult to go to a
gun show and find some folks who will tell you all the reasons why they like
guns. But what kind of reaction would be found if Nielsen or one of the other
TV survey companies called up Super Bowl viewers and asked them what they
thought about Mike’s message on guns?

To me, what was different about Mike’s
ad was that it wasn’t really a political message; it was more like a PSA that
focused on guns rather than on Corona virus or some other public health threat.
And if Mike continues to run ads that focus on issues rather than on insults,
invectives and lies, he will be making an important and necessary contribution
to the current political debate.

GO MIKE!

Look Out Wayne-o. Here Comes Rob Pincus and Dan Gross.

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Watch out everybody!  There’s a new gun-control organization in town.  It’s called the Center for Gun Rights and Responsibility, and it allegedly made its first appearance at last week’s SHOT show, which I didn’t attend. But for those who did show up, they had an opportunity to meet the guy who’s going to be running this operation, who just happens to be a long-time gun-control advocate named Dan Gross. 

Is that the same Dan Gross who used to run the Brady Campaign?  Sure is. And if you want to get a little taste of what his group is going to be doing, you can watch a brief YouTube video of Dan giving a spiel about his new organization right here.  He appeared at a 2nd-Amendment rally in DC back in November, which was one of a number of events leading up to the big rally held in Richmond, VA last month. 

Now here’s the really funny part. Gross was introduced to the crowd by Rob Pincus, a self-promoting gun trainer who used his social media presence last year to publicly attack the NRA’s continued support of Wayne LaPierre. Once it looked like the boys from Fairfax might be going into free-fall, Pincus went out and started a new organization, Save the Second Amendment, whose raison d’etre is to reform the NRA and bring the gun-rights discussion back to where it belongs.

Except the real agenda of Pincus and his friends is to pick up financial support from enough pissed-off NRA members to get things moving their way. And their way is to replace the NRA with an organization that will promote gun ‘rights’ while keeping the discussion fair and balanced at the same time.

Sooner or later, someone would try to take advantage of the mess at Fairfax and try to attract disaffected NRA members to a version of NRA-lite. The terrain to the Right of the NRA has been owned for a few years by Larry Pratt and his money machine, a.k.a., the Gun Owners of America scam. So, the only direction that a ‘new’ NRA can move is slightly to the Left, which is where all these allegedly ‘reasonable’ gun owners can be found.

Pincus
already has his own organization called Save the Second Amendment,
which is basically a blog that promotes the idea of a smaller, more focused and
more open NRA. If anyone believes that by joining forces with Dan Gross,
these two airheads can even remotely begin to make their presence known in the
gun-control debate, you should also be willing to defend the proposition that
Martians have landed at Area 51.

Here’s
what we know for sure about Gun-nut Nation: When it comes to anything having to
do with protecting gun ‘rights,’ or the God-given ‘right’ to self-defense, or
any other marketing slogan which connects ‘guns’ to ‘rights,’ the members of
this brigade are ready, willing and able to piss away fifty bucks just about
every time they are asked. Know why Rand Paul is such an ardent promoter of gun
‘rights?’ Because he’s up to his ears in promoting and directing conservative, direct
mail campaigns.

The
first person to truly understand and take advantage of the desire of gun owners
to part with cash was Tim Schmidt, who used an internet marketing strategy known as ‘tribal marketing’ to build
a very successful product called the United States Concealed
Carry Association, which basically pushed the NRA out of the concealed-carry
training game. The idea is you sell products to people who will buy your crap
because they want to belong to a special family or group who share certain
common ideas and beliefs. And what stronger belief is out there than the idea
of protecting yourself with a gun?

The
problem with what Pincus and Gross are trying to do is they don’t have anything
to sell. And if you think the NRA has in any way lost the ability to
attract gun-owning bucks, I suggest you download their recent store catalog from which I just ordered a beautiful
polo shirt for only $49.95.

Hopkins Has A New Online Course About Gun Laws.

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Several years ago I ran a national survey asking gun-control advocates and activists some basic questions about gun laws. The questions covered the laws that have been part and parcel of the strategies of all gun-control groups: enhancing background checks, better regulation of dealers, purchasing and moving guns across state lines – the usual stuff. I ended up getting more than 250 responses from residents of 46 states, which was certainly representative enough for me.

The survey contained 12 questions; the average correct number was 6.  In other words, at least half the respondents who took the quiz on basic gun laws failed. And I specifically solicited responses from individuals who considered themselves to be involved in some kind of gun-control activity. Incidentally, I ran another gun-law quiz soliciting responses from individuals who considered themselves to be pro-gun.  The average score for that bunch was also around 6 correct answers – they also failed.

But the last thing you’ll find gun nuts supporting are more or stronger gun laws. On the other hand, the gun-control organizations that send me endless emails asking for more money (Everytown, Giffords, Brady – I support them all) consider laws and regulations to be the cornerstone of every strategy designed to reduce violence from guns. So, you would think that folks who donate time, money and energy to gun-control activities would want to understand how current gun laws work and what needs to be done to make such laws more effective.

In any case, our gun-research friends at the Hopkins Bloomberg School are trying to remedy this knowledge deficit by posting an online, interactive course covering the basic law which requires a background check before someone purchases a gun. The effort is part of a new distance-teaching approach being developed for internet users known as a ‘teach out,’ which is a digital version, if you will, of the old teach-ins that occurred on college campuses during the Viet Nam War. 

The Hopkins teach-out can be found here, it will be running for several more weeks, and I strongly urge everyone to register (for free) and support this effort before the course closes down. In particular, I think my gun-nut friends should sign up because the course also includes a nifty give-and-take between the instructors and the people who view the videos, an interactive Q and A that should be of value for both sides.

Now let
me make it clear that this effort, like everything that comes out of the
Bloomberg School, is a no-nonsense attempt to educate and inform. Which means
that anyone who just wants to drop some nasty or snarky comment about all those
tree-hugging, anti-gun liberals should stay away. The teach-in hosted by Dr. Cassandra
Crifasi creates a forum for a serious, respectful and informed exchange about
an important issue that should engage both sides. Want to rant and rave about
your beloved 2nd-Amendment ‘rights?’ Do it somewhere else.

At the same
time, I’m not about to simply let the other side off the hook. I learned about
this effort because one of my gun-nut friends sent me an email about the online
course. Did I get anything from Everytown, Brady, Giffords or one of the state-level
gun-control groups who were all vociferously complaining last week when Gun-nut
Nation showed up at Richmond for a jamboree? Not one, friggin’ word. And the
lack of interest and support for this effort by Gun-control Nation is, to put
it bluntly, a disgrace.

You
would think that an open-source program that advocates extending the
background-check system to private sales and permit-to-purchase licensing would
be exactly the kind of effort that would be front and center on the agenda of
every gun-control group. But if I have learned one thing from writing more than
1,500 columns on my website over the last eight years, it is the degree to
which most gun-control organizations are more concerned about protecting their
own, little turfs than getting together to promote a serious and sustained
response to the violence caused by guns.

Anyway,
enough complaints from me.  Sign up
for the course –
now!

What Should Mike Bloomberg Be Saying About Guns?

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Tout à coup, Mayor Mike’s entry into the Presidential sweepstakes is beginning to look serious, and not just a function of the money he can spend. The most recent Morning Consult poll shows him beginning to pull even with Lizzie Warren, and by the way, Bloomberg’s increased numbers have come at the expense of the three leading contenders – Joe, Bern, Liz – all of whom have lost a bit of ground since Mike began to surge after December 29th.

I hate to give Sleazy Don any credit for anything, but I believe that some of Bloomberg’s support stems from the fact that being a business guy and being a politician is no longer a contradiction in terms. The only other candidate who promoted himself politically based on his business career, was Ross Perot, and all he accomplished back in 1992 was to get Bill Clinton into the White House with a minority of the popular vote. Gee, how come all my liberal friends weren’t complaining about the electoral college back then?

What makes Bloomberg really different from the other guys and gals still in the race, however, isn’t the fact that he can spend a gazillion dollars on his campaign. I signed up the day he announced and of all the candidates who send me daily emails, he’s the only one who has yet to ask me for one, thin dime. That’s a refreshing change.

What
makes his candidacy different is the fact that for the first time the issue of
gun violence would be front and center in a national campaign. Because if
Bloomberg is known for anything, it’s not those bike lanes on New York City
streets that are primarily used by the kids who deliver Chinese food; it’s not
the tax he tried to put on soft drinks that was overturned
by an appeals court; it’s not even his ‘stop-and-frisk’ policy which became
a non-issue as soon as it was raised by other Democratic Presidential wannabees
in the current campaign.

Front and
center is the issue of guns. And most of Bloomberg’s baggage in this respect
isn’t due so much to anything he has done or said, rather, it’s because he’s
been a convenient target
for Gun-nut Nation’s continued attempt to push the false issue of 2nd-Amendment
‘rights’ into the national debate.

The only
thing Mike did in New York City to regulate gun ownership was to increase the
annual license fee for owning a gun.  Now
granted, a fee of $340 for a handgun renewal is a pretty steep price, but the
good news is that you can now do the entire application
process online. In the good old days, you had to shlep down to 1 Police Plaza, stand
online in front of Mrs. Skeba’s desk, wait an hour or so for Jose to find your
file, and wait another hour or so until your name was called. In other words,
you lost an entire day of work. Frankly, I’d rather pay the $340 and avoid the
trip downtown.

The law
covering gun ownership in ‘da friggin’ city’ has been in effect since 1912. It
hasn’t changed and it didn’t change under Mayor Mike. What did change during
his mayoralty tenure was a steep decline in the number of New Yorkers shot with
guns.  The year before he became Mayor,
the city recorded 650 gun deaths; in his last year the number was 325. 

The 2020
Presidential campaign will probably come down to the same swing states that from
blue to red in 2016 – Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida – a few more. If Mike is our
candidate, you can bet your bottom or top dollar that Sleazy Don will pull out
all the stops to sell himself as America’s staunchest supporter of gun ‘rights.’

What
Bloomberg needs to do is sell himself as a supporter of everyone’s ‘right’ to
walk down the street and not duck for cover if a gun goes off. That’s not a
violation of the 2nd-Amendment; that’s common sense.

GO
MIKE!

Josh Montgomery: Importance of Pistol Light.

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When it
comes to pistols, most people take into account only the gun’s model, power,
stability, recoil, and so on. In short, few people actually consider whether
they should use a light on their pistol.

This is
because most gun users and owners don’t understand that, when it comes to
self-defense situations, one has to expect danger at all times and be prepared
for it as well!

In
unpredictable circumstances, visibility makes a difference and can help you
overcome an attacker with ease. As such, in today’s article, we’ll talk about
the importance of pistol light – and why you should choose mounted instead of
hand-held.

Carry
Convenience

As
mentioned above, we’ll also point out some of the reasons why you should always
pick a mounted light instead
of a hand-held one.

When
talking about light in general, we have to admit that having a
flashlight, for example, would mean having to carry an extra thing on you, at
all times. After all, by doing so, you can deter attackers at any given time of
the day.

On the
other hand, when using a light specially designed for a pistol, you don’t need
to constantly remind yourself that you have to grab your flashlight. Moreover,
if you conceal carry, it will be easier to manage a mounted light.

Recoil
Counterweight

Believe
it or not, a mounted pistol light does a very good job as a counterweight, as it can
help reduce the muzzle climb of a handgun.

As such,
a pistol light can improve your accuracy on any follow-up shots, in case you
are required to fire them. Naturally, this comes in very handy when you are
surprised by an attacker and you need to fire your gun quickly and experience
little to no muzzle movement as well.

On top of
that, competitive shooters are known to add such counterweights to their handguns
to increase their accuracy for follow up shots.

Target
Identification

Obviously,
this is one of the main reasons why you should have a pistol light – namely,
for easier target identification, especially during the night.

First of
all, a pistol light can be very helpful even in locations with dimmed lights as
you can easily search and identify targets or suspicious places.

Then, it
is worth mentioning that the majority of self-defense situations occur either
during the night or in dark areas. Therefore, a pistol light is almost
mandatory for those that return home during and after the sunset.

Easier to
Shoot with Pistol Light

As
mentioned, when compared to a hand-held flashlight, a special pistol light makes it much easier to shoot
with the handgun.

First of
all, if you choose a hand-held light, you will instantly lose some stability
and accuracy as you will be holding the pistol with one hand only. True, you
can use the back of your other hand to stabilize the gun, but it wouldn’t offer
the same stability as a two-hand grip.

Moreover,
it is much more difficult to hold both a flashlight and a handgun – don’t let
yourself fooled by all of those movies.

Overall,
with a mounted light, you avoid putting your safety in a one-handed shot
that you can miss quite easily. On top of that, not having to prepare a
flashlight also makes you much faster in terms of fastening the pistol, so to
say.

Blind the
Attackers

Obviously,
a source of light directed straight to your eyes doesn’t feel good at all –
especially if the light is quite powerful.

As such,
you can already determine what’s probably the best use of a pistol light. With
it, you can catch your enemy off-guard and blind them. As a result, you could
even take them down without firing a single bullet. All you need is them
closing their eyes for a split second so that you could approach and take them
down – if they are not armed, of course.

However,
the fact that you can blind an enemy basically means that you won’t meet any
resistance when firing your gun, if necessary. Blinding them will also provide
you with a couple of seconds when you can decide whether the perpetrator is
dangerous or not.

Home
Defense

Naturally,
a pistol light is not meant to be used only by authorities or the military. For
example, if your home is
attacked, you surely won’t spend time turning on any lights – especially if the
noise coming from your living room is heavy.

In such
scenarios, a pistol light can also scare the attackers away! The light will
help you scout your house without fearing that there might be someone hidden
behind your minibar or in a dark spot of a certain room.

The
Importance of Pistol Light

Let’s now
take a closer look at everything that we learned today:

Defending Your Home –
a pistol light makes searching your home and protecting yourself from attackers
a lot easier. Stun Gun – when
aimed properly, a handgun with a light attached can blind enemies and leave
them unresponsive for a second or two – just enough for you to make your move.Target Identification – naturally, a pistol light makes it easier for you to
identify your target and not shoot randomly or waste bullets.Recoil Counterweight – as mentioned, a pistol light can improve your aim as
it reduced the recoil of your handgun when it comes to any follow-up shots.

The
Bottom Line

As you
can see, pistol light can be very important, depending on the situations that
you may have to face. For example, most police officers think that one
shouldn’t be given a service pistol without a mounted light. Why?

This is
because, as a police officer, you are often faced with tasks that require a
free hand – opening a door or checking something, without lowering your gun.

On the
other hand, a pistol light is just as important for the common folk, so to say.
No matter whether you conceal or open carry, you should have a light mounted on
your pistol as it will increase your chances of successful self-defense!

There Ain’t No Such Thing As Gun ‘Rights.’

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Our good
friend Eric Foner has just published a book, The Second Founding,
which gives a concise and compelling explanation for how the Federal Government
got into the business of defining our basic rights. Which makes this book
required reading for everyone who wants to have anything to say about guns and
gun violence, since so much of this debate turns on the issue of gun ‘rights.’
If you don’t believe me, just read any of the news accounts of the
demonstration which took place in Richmond, VA on MLK Day to protest a new law
that Trump claims is an infringement on gun ‘rights.’

The
Federal Government first started defining Constitutional rights following
passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments
following the end of the Civil War. These Amendments ended slavery (13th),
defined citizenship as a birthright (14th) and granted universal
suffrage to all male Americans. Foner refers to the passage of these Amendments
as a ‘second founding’ because these laws (to quote a Republican Senator from
Missouri) “made the liberty and rights of every citizen in every state a matter
of national concern.”

 Foner points out that none of these fundamental
Constitutional changes would have taken place were it not for the fact that
Southern legislatures were dominated by Black officeholders from 1867 through 1877
when Reconstruction came to an end. But precisely because Reconstruction ended
only ten years after it began, the Civil Rights laws passed in 1866 and 1875 to
give some legal teeth to the Amendments, were either watered down in court
decisions or simply ignored.

Both
civil laws were attempts to define what ‘rights’ would be protected under the
Constitution once the founding document contained protections which applied to
every male citizen in the land. The 1866 Act enforced the implementation of
laws that covered the following rights: “to ‘make and enforce’ contracts, own
property, testify in court, sue and be sued, and ‘enjoy the full and equal
benefit of laws for the protection of persons and property.’” (p. 64.)

See
anything here about self-protection?  See
anything here about armed, self-defense? You won’t find any reference
whatsoever to that terminology in the entire text of the Constitution or any of
its Amendments, not even in the blessed 2nd Amendment from which all
gun ‘rights’ allegedly spring forth. When the NRA proclaims itself to be the
‘oldest civil rights organization,’ is it referring to the rights embodied in
the 14th Amendment and enumerated in the Civil Rights Act of
1866?  No. It’s not referring to anything
other than what a clever advertising agency figured out would help promote the
sale of guns.

In fact, if you take the trouble to read the 2008 Heller decision where our late friend Tony Scalia propounded his view of gun ‘rights,’ you will note that it is not only a very narrow definition of what the 2nd Amendment says a gun owner can do with his guns (he can keep one handgun in his home) but it’s far from being an uninfringeable right because the government has great leeway in determining who can and cannot own guns.

Not only are gun ‘rights’ not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution, nor in any of the federal laws that have been passed to define or enforce Constitutional texts, there is also no mention of the other hallowed Gun-nut Nation ‘right,’ i.e., the ‘right’ to self-defense. When the Constitution talks about being protected from harm, the reference is to equal standing in the courts, not to passing a background check so that you can walk around with an AR-15 on your back.

There’s also
the non plus ultra for carrying your Glock, which is that self-defense
is a ‘God-given right.’ I hear this all the time from my Gun-nut Nation friends
and my answer is simply this: If you want to live in a country where laws are
first and foremost the handiwork of Almighty God, move to Iran, okay?

Foner’s book isn’t about guns. It’s a solid work about how the word ‘rights’ should be defined and used in any important discussion about current events. In this respect, the way our friends in Gun-nut Nation use the word fails both historical and legal tests.

Meet The Biggest Celebrity At The Richmond Gun Rally.

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Know who
was the most photographed person attending Monday’s big gun rally in Richmond?  It wasn’t Alex Jones who has finally
admitted that maybe, just maybe the slaughter of 26 adults and children at
Sandy Hook actually occurred.  It also
wasn’t Dick Heller who still can’t keep an assault rifle in his DC apartment
although, thank God, at least he can protect himself with a loaded handgun. No,
the day’s celebrity was a guy from Bergen, NY who showed up toting a sniper
rifle that can deliver a 50-caliber shell out to a thousand yards or more.

The
owner of this piece of equipment
lives in Bergen, NY, a small, upstate town located in the middle of nowhere.  In fact, where he lives is just a few miles
up the road from Attica, the maximum-security prison that holds several
thousand not-very-nice guys and is occasionally visited by folks who remember
the ‘uprising’ which occurred there in 1971. The town has about 3,000 residents
and the primary business location is Ralph and Rosie’s Pizzeria which has been
operated by the same family for more than forty years. In other words, Bergen
is a serious and strategic location and if you control Bergen, you probably can
easily threaten the major industries located in Rochester or Buffalo.

I have
to assume that the reason someone in Bergen, NY goes out and spends a couple of
thousand bucks on a 50-caliber sniper rifle is because, sooner or later, he
will find himself perched on some rocky outcrop over the town, trying to get those
terrorist invaders into the cross-hairs of his sniper scope. I can’t imagine he
would use this piece of hardware to defend himself and his loved ones if
someone just happened to try and break into his home. First of all, he’d have
to pick the damn thing up, swing it around, aim it at the intruder and drop a
cap (which means: pull the trigger.) That takes way too long.

For that
kind of threat, the guy probably has at least three Glocks sitting around the
house – one in the living room, another in the bedroom and a third hitched up
to the holster on his pants. So, if he’s got a Glock riding on his waist, why
does he need another one sitting next to his bed?  Because he’s not about to get into bed wearing
his pants, okay?  Being prepared means
always being prepared.

On the
other hand, those Glocks won’t help him at all when the parachutes start
dropping out of the sky and the invasion of Bergen begins to take place. And
the enemy won’t just be coming from above. Bergen is only 15 miles from Lake
Ontario, which means that the town is also potentially threatened by a
deployment of troops brought in through the St. Lawrence Seaway. I mean, you
never know.

When I
was 9 years old, this was 1953, I somehow saved up a few dollars, walked down
to the hardware store on the corner and bought myself a Daisy Red Ryder bb-gun.  I took the gun home, loaded it with bb’s, and
for the next year or so I managed to kill Cochise and his entire Apache band of
warriors again and again and again. Where did I think I was sitting? On some bluff
overlooking Monument Valley in Utah where every cowboy movie was filmed.  Where was I really sitting? In the backyard
of the home that was smack dab in the middle of Washington, D.C.

The only
difference between what I was doing in my backyard with my Daisy Red Ryder and
what the guy from Bergen was doing toting his rifle around the Richmond rally
is that I wasn’t old enough in 1953 to buy a real gun. Believe me, I have made
up for that situation many, many times over the past 67 years. I’m not a gun
nut for nothing.

And neither
is the guy from Bergen who told all those reporters that he wanted to demonstrate
his support for 2-Amendment ‘rights.’ The truth is he’s just like me. He likes
guns.