Massad Ayoob's Blog, page 102

NEW PODCASTS YOU MIGHT FIND OF INTEREST

We on the ProArms Podcast have been absent from the airwaves for a while, due to all of us being busy as hell getting caught up with our day jobs.  However, Producer/Editor (a/k/a PrEditor) Gail Pepin has recently posted a couple.

For Podcast Number 92, it seemed appropriate to focus on the Beretta 92, the iconic pistol which as the M9 has been our nation’s primary military service handgun since the mid-1980s. Hear from a retired Special Forces Command Sergeant Major, a young competitor who’s kicking butt with his, and assorted other firearms professionals experienced with this particular handgun.

Podcast Number 93 is titled “The Aftermath: George Zimmerman Speaks.”  I interviewed him last November after his first public discussion of his shooting incident in Sanford, Florida four years ago last night.  The details of the incident and the trial that followed have been discussed exhaustively in many places, including this blog (beginning with the 7/13/13 post), but in the interview we focused on what his life has been like since, including an attempt on his life.

Feel free to comment, both there and here.

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IF I MAY HAVE A MOMENT STANDING ON THIS SOAPBOX…

From the new issue of Backwoods Home magazine:

http://www.backwoodshome.com/analyzing-obama-on-guns-by-massad-ayoob/

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MORE GOOD READING

Have you noticed that despite the vehement anti-gun sentiments of the mainstream media, there are more gun magazines on the newsstands than ever?  That’s true on the Internet, as well.

I’m proud to have a small part in the newest, called The Sear.  Go to The Sear and I think you’ll see more than a couple of familiar names.

The Sear is on Facebook, too .

I think editor Anton Runkles has put some darn good gun reading together.  But I’m biased, so let me know what YOU think.

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CHILLING…

I’m fortunate enough to be in Florida at the moment, on a day when weather.com says my old home town is at about 27 degrees below zero wind chill factor.  More chilling than that, however, was the unexpected death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

He was the Second Amendment’s strongest defender on the Supreme Court of the United States, though the quieter Justice Clarence Thomas comes close.  Across the gun forums this sad news is being greeted with the collective wail, “We are screwed!”  I’m not prepared to go so far as to say that yet, but we’ve certainly suffered a very profound blow.  A gun-wise veteran lawyer I know in Kentucky succinctly puts it this way: “We just lost the most powerful and important conservative in America and Barack Obama gets to decide who replaces him.”

Our side prevailed by five-to-four in the landmark Heller and McDonald decisions, with Scalia writing the majority opinion in the former and concurring in the latter. Obviously, the balance now tips.  We had all known that the single biggest reason we needed to elect a President this year who respects the Constitution is that there will be multiple new Justices appointed to SCOTUS in the next few years.  Scalia’s passing makes the bad dream of the tipped scales come prematurely. President Obama has already stated that he will soon nominate a replacement, and no one reading this needs me to tell them where an Obama appointee is going to come down on this issue. Republican Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, said yesterday that the nation should wait to appoint Scalia’s replacement until after the election; ‘tis devoutly to be wished, but I’m not sure he can pull that off.  Here, thanks to regular commentator Don-PA, are reassuring words from an observer whose opinion is more sanguine than mine.

The body wasn’t cold before we started hearing conspiracy theories. (It did seem that “death from natural causes” was announced earlier than I’d have expected; maybe Clarence Thomas should be looking over his shoulder?)

I bid adieu to Justice Scalia, a strong friend of all who believe in the right to keep and bear arms, a right he most articulately reinforced in Heller.

Opinions welcome here in the comments section.

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A GREAT READ

“In the fall of 1978 I packed everything I thought would be useful into my Toyota Land Cruiser and drove north to Alaska. I came to a land I had never seen to find something I wasn’t even sure existed: a wilderness cabin to use for a year or more to live, think, relax, read, and write.”

So begins the best book I’ve read so far this year, “The Alaskan Retreater’s Notebook: One Man’s Journey Into the Alaskan Wilderness” by my old friend Ray Ordorica.  If that name rings a bell it’s because you’ve read his meticulously-researched work in Gun Tests, American Rifleman, Gun Digest and many other venues.

Ray found a tiny old cabin that had been built and then abandoned by the US Army, fixed it up, and for three years lived there on game meat, the bounty of his trapline, and the proceeds of his superb articles and photography.  He found peace and happiness. He makes you feel his love for the wild things, like Cookie, the fox that becomes more his friend than his pet.

The book is a treasure trove of helpful hints and “life hacks” for wilderness existence.  The gun advice, of course, is worth the price of the book by itself, but it’s really only a small part of this particular reading experience.

My favorite parts were the excerpts from the journal he kept during those years.  When he talks about surviving in deep cold (read: colder than fifty below zero Fahrenheit), you can just about feel it. Halfway through that segment I felt an urge to huddle under some blankets while I read the rest of it.

Simply a great read.  “Five stars!”

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AS THE NH PRIMARY UNFOLDS…

The New Hampshire Presidential Primary is unfolding.  As the nation awaits their results, I notice an interesting column by our friend Dave Workman at the Second Amendment Foundation.

Dave doesn’t think gun control will be an issue in the Granite State as much as in some other areas. You’ll recall that during the Democrat candidates’ debates, particularly their first one, it seemed like a race to see which of them could be more anti-gun.  Check out Dave’s take on it.

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FROM THE QUESTIONABLE IDEA OF THE MONTH DEPARTMENT

In November, a starry-eyed professor postulated that the first cartridge in every police officer’s gun should be a blank.

Had the prof done the slightest bit of research, he would have learned that blanks won’t cycle the slide of a semiautomatic service pistol, leaving the gun “jammed” after the first futile loud noise. To make an auto pistol work with blanks for TV and movies, the gun has to be altered in such a way that it can no longer safely fire live ammunition. In a situation where you are on the defensive and have to shoot or die in an instant, loading a defensive weapon with blanks is not only spectacularly stupid, it can be fatally stupid.

In December, some rocket scientist decides the safest way to identify your target before you fire is by pressing your trigger…to activate gun-mounted white light what-could-possibly-go-wrong/ .  The first prototype I saw like this was 25 years ago that the inventor had planted on a Glock, leaving the shooter a startle-twitch away from shooting anything in the light beam that surprised him. We laughed at it then. It’s better to laugh than to cry now, a quarter century later.

Video link

And, at SHOT in January, we saw a resurgence of a trigger that fires the gun once each time you press it…and again as soon as you take your finger off!  It’s an idea that has been around for a while. The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives has thus far let that skate with the maker’s argument that it’s only one pull of the trigger, and nothing in the legal definitions EXPLICITLY bans a shot firing when the trigger finger is removed therefrom (a/k/a “release trigger”).  I am not sure how long it will be before the Bureau changes its mind on that, but I for one don’t want to be the test case. Yeah, I know: “because fun.” Still, a firearm that discharges when you take your finger OFF the trigger after firing an intentional shot is far enough away from a normal “manual of arms” that it strikes me as an accident waiting to happen.

How many things do YOU think can go wrong with the above?

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SHOT Show: “Pre” and “Post”

All the new goodies at SHOT Show were more than any one reporter – particularly me, who didn’t get there until the second night of the event – could cover.  But there were also new products I got to look at before…and after.

J-hook for belt on new Safariland holster at left of photo, and at lower right of same pic, pad which prevents holster from digging into body and levers muzzle outward away from groin and femoral artery if carried in appendix position.

Before: In early January the EP and I visited Bill Rogers at the Safariland facility in Jacksonville, FL and were sworn to secrecy on the new GLS inside the waistband holster scheduled for announcement at SHOT.

Regular pistol packers know that a holster inside the waistband is considerably more discreet and concealable than one worn outside: there’s less bulge, and the cover garment can ride up higher without revealing the holstered gun.  Except for thumb-break safety straps, there have been few with security features that might keep the holster from  yielding the gun to an unauthorized hand in a struggle with a violent criminal.  Greg Kramer came up with one, as did Strong Leather, both back in the 1990s if I recall correctly, but neither caught on.

 

J-hook secures on bottom edge of belt, and niche above secures as well: double security.

This one, designed by master holster maker Bill Rogers himself, incorporates the intuitive GLS security lock which is fast and natural for the wearer to release, but not so for someone standing in front of or behind the wearer.  Already well proven in outside the waistband designs, this one rode comfortably inside my own waistband for several days before the SHOT Show, and proved both fast and secure with the 9mm Glock I used for testing in daily carry. Rogers himself does not consider this a “security holster” per se, but it does give the wearer an additional margin of safety. Recommended!

 

WarLock barrel change option from Frontier Tactical is an ingenious approach to AR15 versatility.

After: The weekend following the Show, fellow Glock Sport Shooting Foundation contestant Tim Young joined us at a GSSF match in Boulder City, NV along with Tim’s friends Nate Love and Scott Gray, who run Frontier Tactical. I had missed them at the Show itself, but at the range got to look at their way cool switch-barrel AR15 conversions. Instead of changing the entire upper, you can keep the same optic to which you are accustomed in place, and switch from .223/5.56mm to .300 Blackout with NO other changes, and with bolt and magazine changes can swap to numerous other calibers. They’re working with an optics manufacturer whose product will allow, with a touch of the controls, for pre-determined zero to switch between calibers too, saving you the price of another optic and mount.

In both cases, proof that you don’t have to be in one place at one time to get the scoop on innovative, useful new gun products.  Change is constant. Insert additional clichés as necessary…but tell me, what new products have our blog readers spotted that I’ve missed? Feel free to share here, as this blog’s 2016 SHOT Show coverage ends.

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SAFE AT HOME

Woot! Today marks three years helicopter crash-free!

(Of course, it’s also been three years helicopter-free. “No. More. Helicopters. EVAH!” decreed the Evil Princess.  “Aw, honey,” I answered, “all we need are newer, bigger helicopters.” I have not yet won that argument.)

Our gang at the Glock shoot in Boulder City. From left: Tim Young, Me, Bill Goldstein, the Evil Princess, Scott Gray, Nathan Love.

She and I got to the house this morning about 2:30 AM, and were grateful for it.  Lots of folks at the SHOT Show in Vegas had their plane flights cancelled or horrendously delayed because of the Eastern Snowpocalypse.  We had planned to stay the weekend anyway, seeing old friends in Vegas on Saturday and shooting the Glock match in nearby Boulder City on Sunday. The best I could do at the latter was a second place in the Pocket Glock event, using a G42 .380 with AmeriGlo sights and otherwise out of the box. Congratulations to Seichei Ishakawa, who was clearly the man to beat there. When you are the guy who publicly said “Friends don’t let friends carry mouse-guns” and you do your best with one (and not for the first time), it’s sort of like you’re Ralph Nader and do your best rally driving in a Corvair.  I may need therapy.  EP, on the other hand, continues to shoot her best with the .45 caliber Glock 30, which she is adopting as her daily carry gun. And which may require more therapy still for .380 boy here. (Sniff.)

Driving home from the airport we noted that we managed to escape the creeping crud that usually infects a bunch of SHOT Show attendees, the result of spending several days in a giant Petri dish with 64,000 people and whatever germs and viruses they brought to the convention. (Me: “Well, my throat is a little dry.”  EP, with profound eye-roll: “Duh, you’d think you just spent days in the desert of something.”)

Each of these contain media kit thumb drives. Cute!

One thing I should also be grateful for is that the stacks of catalogs and dead-tree media kits I used to have to ship home have been largely replaced with much handier thumb drives, some cute enough to double as tchotchkes. 

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SHOT SHOW 2016, PART 6

At industry-only-people SHOT, as at the ordinary folks-accessible NRA annual meeting, you get to talk to the manufacturers and, more importantly, the engineers who are responsible for new guns and related gear.  I’ve found them to be generally responsive to questions.

Photo courtesy Laura Burgess Marketing

You also get to pick the brains of the many experts who congregate there. World champion shooters like Max Michel at the SIG booth and Rob Leatham at the Safariland booth are happy to dispense advice. 

At the Harris Publications booth I got to chat with Janelle Cooper, widow of the great Col. Jeff Cooper, and their beautiful daughter Lindy Cooper Wisdom, who wrote a superb biography of her ground-breaking dad.  Some good reminiscences, occasionally amusing, were shared.

Spent some time chatting with fellow gun writers and gun owners’ civil rights activists. It was good catching up on things with Sheriff Jim Wilson, and many others.

Gun owners being very much a persecuted minority today, it is good for us to immerse ourselves now and then in large groups of like-minded people.  It’s a recharging of the batteries for a political fight that’s going to last longer than any of us will live, and it never hurts to be reminded that we’re on the right side of that fight.

A lot of business is done away from the show floor. Here is a snapshot from a meeting of the Armed Citizens Legal Defense Network board of advisors. From left: Vincent Shuck, Lynn Givens, Tom GIvens, Marty Hayes, John Farnam, Gila Hayes, Dennis Tueller, Mas, Jim Fleming. Not visible: Manny Kapelsohn.

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