Michael R. Weisser's Blog, page 9

Dave Buchannon: Legislation Can’t Fix This.

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Congress returned to work this week and the first order of
business is gun control legislation, at least according to all the news we’ve
been reading since El Paso and Dayton. 
The mission seems to be, “do something, anything, to make this
stop.”  Everyone’s talking about banning
this gun or that high capacity magazine. 
There’s also the movement to pass a national red-flag law that will take
guns away from those who shouldn’t be allowed to have guns because of their
mental state.  Or the best one yet –
comprehensive background checks for every gun transfer.

It’s all hogwash that might make some people feel they’ve done
something meaningful, but it will not change anything.  Sadly, not one thing. 

Because, no matter how horrible gun violence has become in
America today, it is not something we can legislate away.  The problem goes much, much deeper than
anything a new law or background check can solve.  Some would say its root is in bad parenting,
genetics, is the result of our overcrowded prison system, a failed mental
health system, gangs, the list could go on and on.

Dear Congress, write all the new laws you want (whether the
President will sign them or not), wanna know why they won’t put a dent in gun
violence?  Because the bad guys don’t
care about laws – isn’t that part of the definition of “bad guy?”  No matter how many laws are enacted, the bad
guys have already figured out a way to get around it.  I could give two hoots what the NRA says
about this, I’ve seen it first hand as a cop – if a bad guy wants a gun, he’s
going to get a gun and there’s no law that’s going to stop him.  Nice try.

Universal background checks are a great idea, if all of the
agencies across the country are reporting as they are supposed to.  They aren’t. 
Remember the Sutherland Park, Texas 
church shooting in November, 2017? 
It most likely wouldn’t have happened had the US Air Force reported
Devin Patrick Kelley’s less than honorable discharge after his court-marshal
for a domestic violence arrest.  You see,
he passed the NICS check when he bought the rifle he used in the shooting…
because the US Air Force failed to report. 
Many states and municipalities do not report criminal or mental health
issues that would prevent someone from buying a gun. So long as there are
states, agencies, and armed forces that are not fully reporting to NICS,
universal background checks will not work. 
Another nice try. 

So what about those red flag laws everyone is crowing about?  Congress can pass a national red flag law
with the best of intentions.  At some
point an angry ex-spouse, ex-business partner, angry neighbor, or other person
who is upset with a legal gun owner will fraudulently report that person as
being a hazard to self or others.  The
lawyers will be circulating, waiting to sue the reporting party and challenge
the law.  The legal beagles will probably
be successful because many of the state red flag laws currently on the books
completely disregard any due process for the legal gun owner.  In my home state of Massachusetts, no hearing
is required before the police show up at the gun owner’s door with a warrant to
seize his guns.  After the gun owner has
sold his house to pay the legal bills and proves he’s in charge of his
faculties or never made any threats, how does he get his guns back?  He doesn’t, because in Massachusetts there is
no mechanism in the law to return the guns to the original owner.  He winds up having to keep paying the bonded
storage charges (yep, the owner has to pay for storage when’s guns are taken
away).  I give the red flag laws about a
year before the courts over turn them. 

What can be done?  My point
is that there is no single answer to the gun violence problem.  Anyone who tells you passing a law will solve
the problem is flat-out lying to you.  If
you believe and embrace this hokum-filled philosophy, I’m sorry, but you are
sadly misguided.  This is a much, much
larger problem that has less to do with the gun than with larger societal
issues. 

How Should We Deal With Gun Violence?

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Turner Syndrome is a genetic abnormality which results from an absence or partial absence of the X chromosome, preventing the development of healthy ovaries in women, as well as certain heart defects.  It can be detected by genetic screening prior to birth, but sometimes a diagnosis doesn’t take place until the teen or young adult years. Once diagnosed, “girls and women with Turner Syndrome need ongoing medical care from a variety of specialists,” so says the Mayo Clinic. In other words, it’s a complicated disease.

How often does this disease appear? Roughly 1 out of 2,500 live births. If we take the best estimate for the number of fatal and non-fatal injuries caused by one person shooting a gun at someone else, the incidence of this type of gun violence within the age cohorts 16 through 34, would also be around 1 out of every 2,500 individuals in those age groups.

If we didn’t experience 90,000 fatal and non-fatal intentional gun assaults each year, it would be difficult to argue that gun violence should be considered a public health problem at all. But wait a minute, you say. What about the 20,000 people who end their lives every year by using a gun? Isn’t gun-suicide also a problem that needs to be addressed?

Of course we need to eliminate gun suicides but the issue in that instance is quite simple because overwhelmingly, people who commit gun suicides happen to use a gun that they legally own. And they use a gun because they know using a gun will almost always get done what they want to get done.

But that’s not
the case with the homicides and aggravated assaults which account for more than
80% of all gun violence every year. This public health event is almost always
committed by individuals who do not have legal access to the gun used in the
assault. Which means that even before they use the gun to hurt someone else,
they have already committed a serious crime. It’s called ‘illegal possession’
of a firearm which, under Federal law, can be punished by as much as five years
in jail.

For all these
reasons, I find it difficult to understand how my friends who conduct public
health studies on gun violence seem to go out of their way to avoid contact
with criminologists who have produced significant research on violent crime. I
am referring, for example, to the study by Paul Tracy and Kimberly
Kempf-Leonard, Continuity and Discontinuity in Criminal Careers, which
analyzed the life histories of the 27,160 men and women born in Philadelphia in
1958, and followed them through 1984; in other words, from birth through age
26.

This
longitudinal study allows criminologists to do what public health researchers
do not do, namely, develop a profile of potentially high-risk behavior over
time, rather than relying on one data entry for one point in time; i.e., when
someone with a gun injury shows up for treatment in an ER. Here’s the bottom
line: “The frequency of delinquent activity is the most consistent and
strongest predictor of adult crime.”

What we get from
public health gun research are the immediate symptoms which appear when the injury
occurs. What we get from criminology is the case history leading up to
the medical event. Can we really develop effective public policies to reduce
gun violence without combining both?

This is why I
began today’s column with a brief discussion of a medical problem – Turner’s
Syndrome – that occurs within the overall population to the same degree as another
medical problem – gun violence – occurs within the age cohorts which exhibit
the overwhelming number of injuries caused by guns.

Diagnosing and treating
Turner’s Syndrome is a very complicated affair. To repeat: it requires ‘ongoing
medical care from a variety of specialists.’ Why should we approach gun
violence in any less of a comprehensive way?  When it comes to gun violence, public health
and criminology should stop avoiding each other and join together to solve this
dread disease.

Want Another Quid Pro Quo About Arms? Try Trump And The NRA.

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Last week the White House announced that it was going to
release details of a new gun bill ‘very soon.’ Instead, we now learn that Trump
had a meeting
with Wayne-o and asked him for support against a possible impeachment in return
for not pushing any new legislation about guns. Isn’t this kind of quid-pro-quo
exactly what Trump did with the President of Ukraine? After all, Trump tried to
extort a promise from Zelensky to dig up dirt on Biden in exchange for a
shipment of guns.

The White House, of course, denied that any such discussion
between Trump and the NRA took place. But this report was filed by
Maggie Haberman and she has never been accused of writing a story which turned
out not to be true.

It’s one thing, however, to try and enlist the head of another nation-state to help your political campaign. It’s another to ask a tin-horn nobody like Wayne Lapierre to save the ship of state. After all, if the NRA is keeping itself afloat by borrowing against the life-insurance policies of its executive staff, how much clout does America’s ‘first civil rights organization’ wield these days?

Which brings us to the report just issued by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) on the NRA and the Russian ‘spy’ affair. I am still convinced, and I have seen nothing to convince me otherwise, that the Russian ‘spy’ in this case, Maria Butina, was just a dopey kid running around on behalf of the Russian company, Izhmash, which makes the original AK-47 and has been trying to get a toe-hold into the American gun market for the last ten years. The American gun market is worth millions because the gun is the non plus ultra assault rifle of all time.

Wyden’s report, however, covers new territory and contains
information which, if true, could really put the final ka-bosh on Wayne-o and
the NRA. The 77-page report goes into great detail about a 2015 trip to
Russia by several NRA Board members, including Pete Brownell, whose
company makes and sells all kinds of accessories for small-arms, although the
outfit does not, as has been alleged at various times, actually manufacture
guns. Nevertheless, where there’s a civilian gun market, there’s a demand for
gun parts, accessories and all kinds of other gun-related junk, and during the
Russian trip Brownell evidently had meetings with various Russian businessmen
to discuss possible commercial relationships between Russia and the USA.

Here’s what the Wyden report is all about: “The minority staff investigation
confirms that members of the NRA delegation participated in the Moscow
trip primarily or solely for the purpose of advancing personal business
interests, rather than advancing the NRA’s tax-exempt purpose.” The
whole point of holding a tax-exempt status requires the tax-exempt organization
(read: NRA) to refrain from engaging in the sort of business activities
which might result in personal gain for a company owned or operated by a member
of the tax-exempt organization’s Board. Brownell was Vice President of the NRA
when he went to Russia in 2015 (he has subsequently resigned.) Several other NRA
members were specifically designated as representing the NRA on this
trip, and they also met with Russian business counterparts involved in the
manufacture and sale of small arms.

I think the Wyden report is much ado about nothing and is only getting some traction because it’s easy right now to dump on the NRA. Many non-profit organizations have business big-shots on their Boards and many of these big shots find it convenient, from a business perspective, to promote their own business interests while, at the same time, helping the non-profit achieve its organizational goals. The report could not cite a single instance in which any blabbing between NRA officials and anyone in Russia resulted in an exchange of money, goods or anything else.

But we’re not talking about
just any non-profit, we’re talking about the organization whose support of
Donald Trump is considered by many to have been what allowed El Shlump-o to grab
the 2016 brass ring. Now that it’s pay-back time in DC, what otherwise might
have simply been seen as ‘boys being boys’ could turn into the issue which
brings the NRA curtain down.

Thanks to Tom Johnson
for tipping us off about the Wyden report.

Should Doctors Base Their Response To Gun Violence On What Everyone Wants To Hear?

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              Yesterday the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing
on an assault-rifle ban, and what made the headlines was the testimony of a former cop,
Diane Muller, who told Jerry Nadler and the other Congressional gun-grabbers
that she wouldn’t give up her gun. Muller says that she is the organizer of The
DC Project, which describes itself as a ‘nonpartisan initiative
to encourage women to establish relationships with their legislators, and
reveal the faces and stories of real firearms owners and 2nd
Amendment supporters.”

              This ‘organization’ is nothing more than an online shopping cart selling the usual retail crap (clothing, concealed-carry purses, etc.) with some exhortations about personal safety, getting involved, protecting civil rights, the whole nine yards.  Websites which focus on female self-protection as a vehicle for selling gun-related junk keep popping up, but no matter how they slice it or dice it, the gun industry has never been able to persuade women to buy guns.

              Diane Muller’s claim to be running a ‘non-partisan’
advocacy organization is about as truthful as my claim that the 45th
President is smarter than Leonard Mermelstein, who  happens to be my cat.

              I don’t really care if hucksters like Diane Muller pretend to be committed to views from both sides. The fact that someone with so little real presence in the gun world would be representing the 2nd-Amendment bunch in front of a Congressional committee says an awful lot about the gun ‘rights’ movement during the waning days of Donald Trump. On the other hand, when physicians get together to talk about gun violence and also claim to be ‘non-partisan’ in their approach, this doesn’t just rankle me, it really gets me pissed off.

              Physicians aren’t supposed to be dealing with a medical
crisis like gun violence by finding a ‘non-partisan’ cure. But it has now
become fashionable in medical circles to talk about a ‘consensus’ approach to
gun violence, which is how the ‘historic’ Chicago summit meeting
in February of 43  medical organizations promoted
their Magna Carta for reducing gun violence. 
In fact, what they produced was nothing more than the same load of
recommendations which the medical community has been using to chase after its gun-violence-prevention
tail for the last twenty years: expanded background checks, safe storage, red
flag laws, blah, blah, blah and blah. Oh, and let’s not forget the
all-important research money from the CDC.

              Now we have a new medical group on the scene, courtesy
of a $5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, which calls
itself FACTS, a.k.a., Firearms Safety Among Children and Teens Consortium. Most
of its members are the same research crew which show up everywhere else, and
they also promise
to take a consensus-based approach to understanding violence caused by guns. The
consensus in this instance is provided by a single individual representing gun
owners who runs something
called Gun Owners for Responsible Gun Ownership, which like the DC Project,
is just a website but doesn’t yet have anything for you to buy.  I’m sure a shopping cart will appear in time.
The odds that what this guy references as ‘responsible’ gun behavior could ever
remotely pass muster with most people who own guns is about a great as the odds
that #45 is smarter than Seymour Sliperman, who happens to be another one of my
cats.

              Doctors who promote the idea that their research represents
some kind of consensus are doing nothing more than hoping that if the CDC starts
giving out research monies on guns, they can pretend that their work is not
intended to be used for gun-control advocacy because, after all, what they will
say reflects the views of both sides.

              The day that physicians all agree that treating disease
should be based on remedies which meet everyone’s interests and concerns, is
the day I stop going to the doctor and hope for the best. This is nothing more
than cynical pandering at its worst and physicians should know better than to
engage in such nonsensical crap.

There Really Is A Way To End Gun Violence.

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              One of the favorite games played by members of
Gun-Control Nation (myself included) over the last couple of years was to look
at the monthly background check report issued by FBI-NICS and announce
with glee that the number of checks for gun transfers each month was going
down. We all figured that if the slide continued through four years of Trump
(and God forbid eight years if he won again) that the problem of gun violence
would take care of itself because as a consumer item, the guns would simply go
away.

              Guess what? We forgot that gun sales have always been
pushed or pulled by the fear that guns might disappear. And now that virtually
every 2020 Democratic candidate has promised to do ‘something’ about gun
violence, the fear has returned within the ranks of Gun-nut Nation and the
virus is beginning to spread.

              When it comes to gun retailing, August is always the
slowest month of the year. Guns can’t compete with the beach. By the time you
pay for that beach house rental, buy some sand toys for the kids and eat at the
Clam Shack every night, the five hundred bucks you stashed away because you
just have to have that little walkaround Glock, is money that has been
spent.

              It turns out that not only did the August NICS
numbers show a 15% increase over the August numbers for 2018, they were the
highest numbers for any August going all the way back through the years
of the hated Obama regime. The increase was strongest in the ‘other’ category,
which happens to be the category which usually designates ‘black’ guns, a.k.a.,
AR-15’s. In Florida, where our friends are trying
to get a Constitutional ban on assault rifles on the 2020 ballot, the increase
in ‘other’ background checks was 48.7 percent.

              The good news for gun nuts is that this spike in sales
has not yet generated any upward movement in prices for either ammunition or
guns. One of the big online resellers, Cheaper Than Dirt, is listing
quality 22LR ammunition for five cents a round, which is a price in adjusted
dollars out of 1975. Another outfit has fully-assembled AR’s for less than $500
bucks. When Obama was turning America into a Muslim state, you couldn’t find a
black gun anywhere for under a thou.

              My friends in Gun-control Nation who are busily
promoting an expansion of background checks or Red Flag laws or some other type
of ‘reasonable’ restriction that will keep guns out of the ‘wrong’ hands, need
to remember that every, single one of the more than one million NICS checks
done in August represents a gun being transferred into the ‘right’ hands. How do
any of those new additions to the civilian gun arsenal wind up being used by
someone to blow someone else away, which happens to be most of the gun injuries
which happen every day?  We have
absolutely no idea.

              Back in 1993 and 1994, Art Kellerman and Fred Rivara
published research which definitively found that access to guns increased homicide
and suicide
risk. And by the way, these studies didn’t differentiate between guns that were,
or were not safely stored. These studies got the gun industry to push their
friends in Congress to delete gun research from the budget of the CDC, a
budget item that my friends in public health are now clamoring to restore.

              If there had been a grass-roots movement for gun
control in the 1990’s, the findings by Kellerman and Rivara might have been
translated into a law to strictly regulate the ownership of assault rifles and
semi-automatic pistols. This kind of law exists in every other advanced
nation-state, which is why they don’t suffer from gun violence and we do.

With all due respect to my liberal friends who remain enthralled by the 2nd Amendment, we don’t need no stinkin’ research,  we don’t need no stinkin’ reasonable laws.  We just need to get rid of certain guns which were never designed for hunting or sport.

Gee, that was a tough one to figure out.

Bye, Bye Miss American Pie.

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I bought my first AR-15 in 1977. It was manufactured by Colt and along with a 2X scope ran me around 400 bucks.  Filled out the form, showed the dealer my driver’s license, stopped off at the ol’ sand pit on my way home and ran a couple of hundred rounds through my new toy. I lived about a mile from a large military base, so getting my hands on some .223 military ammo wasn’t a big deal. In fact, I think I bought the gun because there was plenty of ammunition lying around.

Those were the days when nobody cared about guns, nobody cared about ammo, nobody cared about mass shootings, nobody cared about background checks, nobody cared about the 2nd Amendment, nobody cared about ‘reasonable’ gun laws, and most of all, nobody cared about whether anyone shared the 88 letters they posted on their Twitter account.

I was reminded of all this yesterday when Colt announced they were dropping the AR-15 from their product line, citing an overproduction of ‘black’ guns and an excess of military orders keeping their AR assembly line humming along. But even if Colt didn’t need to ship this gun to retailers, there’s no reason to make a public statement that the second-most iconic gun model the company ever produced (the first, of course, being the 1911 pistol) was being withdrawn. And by the way, for all the talk by Gun-nut Nation about how Dick’s Sporting Goods would ‘suffer’ because they were no longer selling guns, my bank account should suffer the way that Dick’s stock price has suffered over the past year.

The real
problem for the gun industry is that it simply isn’t all that easy to make a
convincing argument that civilians have any real reason to walk or drive around
with a military-style gun. When Bill Ruger designed the Mini-14 rifle, he
consciously gave it the look and feel of the 30-caliber carbine carried onto
all those Pacific Islands by my Dad and the Marines. Ruger shipped the gun with
a 5-shot mag because he wanted to get into the market with a ‘sporting’ gun.

The
AR-15 that I bought in 1977 was called the Colt ‘Sporter.’ But trying to pass
off an exact copy of the M-16 didn’t work. Nobody took an AR into the field to
hunt Bambi, so the industry then decided to promote the weapon as a
self-defense gun. This approach worked a little better, if only because the
idea of being able to defend yourself with a gun that held 20 or 30 rounds; oh
well, you never know, maybe the Taliban is right over the next hill.

What the
gun industry has never been able to reconcile is the fact that guns are
designed to do one thing and one thing only; which is to inflict serious damage
on living things. Now if the ‘living thing’ happens to be a duck or a goose
flying between Florida and Canada, that’s fine. If it’s an antelope in West
Texas or an Elk in Wyoming, that’s also okay. But if the ‘living thing’ happens
to be a human being, and that human being is sitting in a first-grade classroom
in Newtown or a high-school classroom in Parkland, then all of a sudden the
discussion about whether or not the AR-15 is a ‘sporting’ gun comes to an end.

When
Chuckie Whitman climbed to the top of the Texas Tower in 1966 and shot 44
people with a bolt-action hunting rifle, the one thing he forgot to figure out
was how to get back down. The AR-15 , on the other hand, not only delivers
massive firepower but allows the shooter to shoot and run at the same time.
Which is why it’s impossible for the gun industry to pitch the nonsense that
the AR is some kind of ‘self-defense’ gun.

Colt probably anticipates that sooner or later the gun will be banned. After all, even the most imaginative ad agency can’t figure out why anyone needs to defend themselves from a bunch of school kids or some shoppers in a Walmart store.

What Are You Doing on September 25th?

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Even if you have something else to do, you might think of coming to DC next week to participate in a national demonstration aimed at getting Congress to pass some rather obvious laws that will reduce gun violence. The laws are such draconian measures as expanding background checks, banning assault rifles, you know, all those terrible infringements on our beloved 2nd-Amendment ‘rights.’ Except the only ‘right’ protected by the 2nd Amendment in its current (2008) iteration is to keep a handgun in your home.

That being said, I guarantee you that in the morning’s Judiciary Committee hearing on banning assault rifles, virtually every member of the NRA – oops! – I mean the GOP, will make an impassioned plea to forestall any and all attempts to regulate anything having to do with guns. And what they will all say, because they’ve all said it so many times that they know the script by heart, is that they simply cannot allow a bunch liberal, do-goods from around the country to pressure them into backing down from their sacred duty to protect Constitutional guarantees.

And these do-gooders, incidentally, will represent various organizations from all over the place, and they will get together on the West Lawn of the Capitol Building at 1 P.M. This is hardly the first time that folks have come together in DC to ask Congress to do something, anything about gun violence and it won’t be the last. The simple fact is that most GOP politicians still feel they can respond to gun violence by voicing their thoughts and prayers whenever a particularly nasty shooting takes place. As my grandfather used to say, they’re basically a bunch of “dem fools.”

Incidentally, one of the largest contingents is coming to DC from the Windy City led by Father Pfleger and his Saint Sabina group. The buses they are renting for this trip don’t come cheap, and if you want to help them out you can make a donation right here. You know the old line: Money Talks, Bulls**t Walks.” We’ll hear enough bulls**t from the minority members of the House Judiciary Committee next week, okay?

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Let’s get it on, folks. Let’s keep Congress on their toes. Let’s show up in DC next week and get this thing done!

Why Do We Enact Gun-Control Laws?

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              Tuesday night C-Span carried the debate and vote of the
House Judiciary Committee about the ‘red flag’ law. The statute was sent to the
full House where it will pass and then no doubt languish until sometime next
year when the GOP begins to read the tea leaves seriously and decides what
legislation will and will not help or hurt them in the 2020 race.

              There’s a chance that three gun bills will be waiting Senate
action during the current Congressional session: comprehensive background
checks, red-flag laws and another assault-weapons ban. If there’s a blue sweep
come next November, we might even seen these bills consolidated into one, major
piece of legislation, which would mark the fifth time the Federal Government
enacted a gun-control law, the previous
laws having been passed in 1934, 1938, 1968 and 1994. The initial assault
weapons ban was also enacted in 1994, but it was stuck onto the Omnibus Crime
Bill which was also passed that year.

              The four statutes which got the Federal Government into
gun-control big time, defined certain guns as being too dangerous for ordinary purchase
and sale (1934), defined the role and responsibilities of federally-licensed
gun dealers (1938), created the definition of ‘law-abiding’ individuals who
could purchase or possess guns (1968), and brought the FBI into the mix to make
sure that people who claimed to be law-abiding gun owners were, in fact, what
they claimed to be.

              These laws approached the issue of gun control from
four different perspectives, but they all shared one common thread; namely,
they were enacted to help law enforcement agencies deal with the issue of crime.
Here’s the preamble to the 1968 law: “The Congress hereby declares that
the purpose of this title is to provide support to Federal, State and local law
enforcement officials in their fight against crime and violence….” The
other Federal gun laws basically say the same thing. In other words, these laws
may have been enacted to regulate the ownership and commerce of guns, but their
real purpose was to help fight crime.

              Every other advanced nation-state also enacted gun-control
laws, for the most part either before or after World War II. Most of these laws
were patterned after our initial law, the National Firearms Act of 1934, but these
laws were all different from our gun-control laws in one, crucial respect,
namely, they prohibited the purchase of handguns except under the most
stringent and restrictive terms.

              Why do we suffer from a level of gun violence
that is seven to twenty times’ higher than any other advanced nation-state? Not
because we have so many more guns floating around, but because we make it very
easy for folks to get access to handguns, which happen to be the guns that
kill and injure just about all those 125,000+ Americans every year. Oh, I
forgot. Some of them aren’t real Americans. They snuck in here, got on welfare
and deserve to get shot.

              The reason that countries like France, Italy and
Germany banned handguns had nothing to do with crime. The gun-control laws passed
in these and other countries were based on government fear of armed, rebellion
from the Left – Socialist and Communist labor unions to be precise. The United
States Federal Government also once had to deal with a serious, armed
rebellion, but this was a rebellion not about class oppression or workers
versus owners. It was a disagreement about race.

              For all the nonsense about how guns keep us ‘free,’ the
truth is that owning and carrying a Glock has nothing to do with freedom at
all. It has to do with a totally irrational belief that we are surrounded by
predators who just can’t wait to invade our homes, beat us up and run off with
that wide-screen TV. Since we know this to be a fact, how come the
violent-crime rates in countries
where nobody can protect themselves with a handgun are lower than the rate of
violent crime in the United States?

Josh Montgomery: 7 Tips To Overcome Your Fear Of Guns.

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Perhaps you are happy with the Second Amendment, but you’re jittery
about carrying a gun, it is high time you get over the fear so that the
amendment can benefit you. If you have made up your mind to overcome the
anti-gun culture, then adopt the tips in this post to overcome a fear of gun.

Tip #1: Face Your
Fears Head On

Just merely seeing a gun makes the guts of some people scream, and
seeing someone handle it makes the matter even worse for such people. A good
number of people have emotional reaction when they behold this piece of metal
called gun, even when it is obvious that the gun is not loaded. So, the first
step towards overcoming the fear of gun is to start handling it. You should let
someone who is already handling the metal properly to assist you in learning
how to hold a gun. You should practice with an unloaded gun.

#2: Proceed to Learning
How to Shoot Your Gun

You should move from handling a gun to actually shooting a gun, still
under the tutelage of an experienced gun user. One of the things you will learn
when you start shooting proper is that it takes a lot of effort to hit a target.
You will also get to know that many guns’ trigger pull is so hard that
accidental firing isn’t something that comes as simple as some TV shows present
it.

Tip #3: Reassess
the Gun You’re Using Currently

If it appears you are not getting along with your current gun, you
should make a reassessment and see if it’s time to change your gun. For
instance, a friend of mine started shooting with a little semi-automatic that
he termed mean, but later had to replace it with a revolver that was friendlier.

An experienced gun user can help you make a better selection. You can also
rely on your local Federal Firearms License holder to help you get the right
gun for you — in fact, the licensed
gun guys may be willing to help you sell your current gun and choose a more
suited gun for you.  

Those super-portable guns that easily fit into your purse can be hard
to control, and are bad tempered. The gentler ones are the big ones, and this
is because of their sturdy built. If you are a new gun user, you are likely to
shoot better with a gun that is not really trim.

Tip #4:  Get a Friendly Option When You want to Carry

Bear in
mind that when it comes to holsters, what you pay is what you get. So, the best
bet is to experiment with inexpensive ones, rather than go for the ones that cost a fortune. Particularly for ladies, finding a comfy and friendly way to carry
can be a tricky thing.

Also, there
are factors such as being straighter or curvier, especially for ladies —
there are different carry options for each shape. Also, the different dresses
such as pants or skirts or dresses also complicate choice making. The smartest
move is to locate the part of your body that a holster wouldn’t be very
obtrusive — then you can go ahead and make your choice.

Tip #5: Don’t
Practice in a Scary Way

Start
working on your aim and a laser grip will help you accomplish this. Get the
unloaded gun and point it and subsequently activate the laser, to help you see whether
you are aiming well or not. Experiment with different  positions — a ready position,  then a relaxed position.

Next, leave
your gun in its holster or storage and start the drill, so that you can
practice the entire motion. Try getting the feel of a trigger pull with
dry-firing (unloaded gun), accomplished without stress, bang, or even incurring
expenses on bullets. This practice is one of the ways to overcome fear and
anxiety of shooting an actual gun.

Tip #6: Don’t Get
too Worked Up

Also, in
order to overcome the fear of guns,
you need to loosen up. Perhaps, the International Defensive Pistol Association
may be a more fun way for a starter to start getting comfortable with the world
of gun. Look for a gun club and get in touch with the person leading the club,
so that he can assist you on becoming more familiar with your gun. Even the
club members with different shooting experiences won’t hesitate to show you
tactics for shooting safely and shooting straight. Well, the point is that the
Second Amendment did both good and ill —- good that you can defend yourself
if messed-up people pick up the gun to harass or attack you — bad that anyone
can now carry gun, thereby empowering the mess-up people to carry and use the
gun as they wish.

Tip #7: Watch Video
Tutorials on Using and Shooting Gun

It will
also be very helpful to locate valuable tutorials on how to start handing and
shooting with gun. This will help you learn gun shooting techniques. These tutorials
would also provide you with tips on how to overcome the fear of handling and
shooting with a gun.

However,
when you start to practice shooting gun on your own, especially with a loaded
gun, ensure there’s an experienced gun user guiding you. If you must start on
your own, do that with unloaded gun as instructed earlier, for safety and other
beneficial purposes.

Go ahead and adopt these tips to overcome your fear of guns.

Smith&Wesson vs. Walmart. Guess Who Wins?

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I Last week I promised to cut down on writing columns and already did a column this week, but a story out of Delaware caught my eye today and I just need to respond. The story, in a Delaware news website, is based on an interview with some Delaware residents who represent the gun ‘rights’ gang, and of course are extremely disappointed that Walmart has decided to stop selling handgun and assault-rifle ammunition because, after all, keeping a good supply of self-defense ammo around is just as important as making sure that your house gets clean water from the tap.

The problem for these pro-gun guys, of course, is that maybe they don’t need to get a latte at Starbucks or Panera, but there really isn’t anyone who can afford to boycott Walmart when it comes to buying the things we really need. And this creates something of a dilemma for Gun-nut Nation because the only way they can really express their anger or disappointment when a retailer says ‘no’ to guns, is to say ‘no’ right back and take their business somewhere else.

But the comment that really caught my attention was from Jeff Hague, who is identified as President of the Delaware Sportsman’s Association who said this: “It’s a shame (Walmart) made such a bad business decision based on a political issue.” And then he added this line: “I’m just glad I’m not a stockholder.”

That statement about not wanting to own Walmart stock may not be the statement which is furthest from reality in the gun debate this year, but it’s close. And to show you how desperate Gun-nut Nation has become in their efforts to craft a narrative that will bring them back to even with the other side, what Jeff Hague should do is pretend he owns Walmart stock and has decided to sell it so that he can buy stock in Smith&Wesson, just to show that he will put his money where his mouth is when it comes to guns.

Ready? Three years ago, Walmart stock was selling for roughly $70 bucks a share. Yesterday it closed at $115. Three years ago S&W shares were going for $26 a share, yesterday they closed under $6. And Jeff Hague says he’s ‘glad’ he doesn’t own Walmart stock? Does this guy live on the same planet that I live on?

See you next week.