Massad Ayoob's Blog, page 35

THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT A .45…

Last June when the Evil Princess and I got back from our favorite shootin’ match, the Pin Shoot in Michigan (www.pinshoot.com, hope to see you there next year) and unpacked, there were more .45s to put back in the safe than anything else. My lovely bride is five feet tall with proportional size hands, and […]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO – WHO?!?

Oh, wait…it’s me! 74 revolutions around the sun today.  Damn…that happened quick. It’s been a fun ride. Some lives saved, some injuries prevented, some careers and futures I was privileged to have a part in rescuing in court.  (Check out the one in the current issue of American Handgunner magazine. I was honestly proud to be a part of that action.) […]

SHARING YOUR KNOWLEDGE LOCALLY

Every now and then, I’m a guest speaker at the weekly adult education lectures at my local library.  It’s done for free of course.  Earlier this month, I did a talk on Understanding Controversial Verdicts.  We talked about how a case can present at first as legitimate self-defense (“Why are they putting that poor person […]

GIVE THIS MAN A LISTEN

Most if not all who read this have firearms to protect their home and loved ones from violent criminal intruders.  But are they accessible? The Clutter family had guns when their farmhouse was invaded by two vicious murderers…but not where any of the family members could reach them. They were brutally massacred.  The crime was […]

DEAR PRESIDENT BIDEN, THERE IS SOMETHING YOU SHOULD READ…

Joe Biden, the most anti-gun President ever, is fond of saying that the Second Amendment has always been limited, and that at the time it was drafted a person could not, for example, buy a cannon. Au contraire. Historians agree that simply isn’t true.  As evidence, consider the fact that during the War of Independence, […]

A GREAT READ ON U.S. SMALL ARMS HISTORY

I just read “Gun Barons: the Weapons that Transformed America and the Men Who Invented Them” (St. Martin’s Press, 2022). Author John Bainbridge, Jr. starts off with this statement: “Americans love their guns. Hate them, too. They are on our hips, in our bedside drawers, welded to our psyche and our language. Our conversations are […]

FIREWORKS THAT BACKFIRED?

Independence Day is a time to consider, among other things, our right to vote in a democracy. “Hit pieces” attacking political opponents sometimes proliferate more at election times than ads promoting the given candidate. I spent several days last month in Illinois, teaching a MAG-40 class of 32 in the Kankakee area at the excellent […]

THOMAS WOLFE WAS ONLY PARTIALLY RIGHT

A few entries ago in this space, I wrote about my annual trip to The Pin Shoot in Central Lake, Michigan. I’ve spent a bit over 29 June weeks there since 1976, which may qualify me as one of The Summer People.  The place is classic small-town America. The one butt-wipe I’ve ever had to physically […]

FLYING WITH FIREARMS

I am writing this in Tennessee, having flown in from the South while my lovely bride drove down from the North to meet me.  The first thing I did when she picked me up at the airport was to crack the suitcase and the gun case therein, and load up a .45. I hear people […]

INFERNO

Finishing up our current homage to the veterans and the slain who secured our freedoms in the past, let’s look at the book “Inferno” by Joe Pappalardo. Its subtitle describes it well:  “The True Story of a B-17 Gunner’s Heroism and the Bloodiest Military Campaign in Aviation History.”  The author focuses on Maynard Smith, who […]