Massad Ayoob's Blog, page 85
November 21, 2017
COULDN’T FIND YOU A MOONBEAM, BUT…
November 16, 2017
November 11, 2017
VETERAN’S DAY, AND A CHURCH ON THE HOMEFRONT
On Veteran’s Day, we pay respects to the Americans who fought in uniform to preserve our nation’s freedom, one element of which is the freedom to protect ourselves and other good people. On this particular day, the echoes of the gunfire from a disaffected loser kicked out by our military still ring sadly in America’s ears. Let’s look more into the aftermath of the heinous church shooting in Texas last weekend.
We all know that the murders ended as soon as one armed citizen was able to return fire. Yet the prohibitionists blindly deny that, as seen here. The anti-gun writer says among other things, “The attorney general is delusional if he thinks an armed church member or even a security guard could have frightened Kelley into submission.” Actually, “shooting him into submission” is a little more what we had in mind.
Good insight into the misinterpretations and deceptions of the prohibitionists can be found here.
Stephen Willeford, the armed citizen who brought the mass murder to a halt with his own AR15, has given a thorough interview to NRA TV. Budget yourself 51 minutes to watch it. https://www.nratv.com/home/video/stinchfield-stephen-willeford-nra-member-and-texas-hero-exclusive-hour-long-interview. This articulate man shows himself to be the quintessential American neighbor – a family man, and a fountain of self-reliant common sense.
Mr. Willeford’s very first interview was on Louder With Crowder:
Video can also be found here.
Oddly enough, I had been on the same show a few weeks prior, in the aftermath of the Las Vegas mass murder, discussing related topics, at 25:00 minutes in.
A tip of the hat to Stephen Willeford, and to the brave unarmed citizen who joined him, Johnnie Langedorff. Their actions exemplify the self-reliant freedoms for which our American veterans have so long fought.
November 6, 2017
THOUGHTS ON THE TEXAS CHURCH ATROCITY
Less than 48 hours after the atrocity at the church in Texas, we’ve seen a lot of “breaking news is broken news,” but some facts appear to have solidified.
There is as yet no indication that anyone inside the church was armed and able to shoot back.
There seem to be solid indications that the murderer picked his target because the family of his estranged wife worshipped there, and his grandmother-in-law was one of the victims. Please discuss with those in charge at your house of worship, creating a culture in which people being threatened by a psycho (as this family apparently was) share that information with church staff. It comes under the heading of “warnings unheeded.” (GAIL PLEASE LINK TO ANDY BROWN’S BOOK ON AMAZON)
While the prohibitionists predictably scream for a ban on AR15 rifles because the murderer used one, they seem to be studiously ignoring the fact that the man who engaged the killer and stopped the murder toll ALSO USED AN AR15.
While the prohibitionists demand background checks for private sales, we note that the killer bought his guns over the counter, AND PASSED THE BACKGROUND CHECKS. The USAF had apparently failed to feed into the criminal justice machine the fact that this man’s violent crimes in the past totally disqualified him from legally purchasing a firearm.
We now learn that this walking piece of feces had spent a year in a military jail for fracturing a baby’s skull. He had terrorized his former wife with guns. He should have been doing YEARS for Felony Aggravated Assault. He obviously should not have been plea-bargained down to a Bad Conduct Discharge, instead of a Dishonorable Discharge which in and of itself would have prevented him from passing a background check.
The prohibitionists are trying desperately to marginalize the accomplishment of the armed citizen who shot the murderer and made him drop his rifle, and who in the company of an equally courageous and probably UN-armed citizen driver, hounded the escaping killer to his final doom. Some of the prohibitionists were claiming that the murders were over anyway, so the armed citizen’s engagement didn’t matter. The murdering piece of crap still had more guns and ammo on his person and in his SUV, and there is no reason to believe his rampage would not have continued without the heroic engagement of the killer by Stephen Willeford, 55, who apparently shot him with an AR15 and kept him covered until police arrived at the end of the chase, aided by Johnnie Langedorff, 27, at the wheel of the pursuing truck. The killer reportedly called his father on cell phone to tell him he was shot and thought he was going to die, during that pursuit…after that, tell me again that Citizen Willeford didn’t neutralize him!
The opinionated TV providers who now pass as news channels seem totally unaware of their own hypocrisy and hopefully unintentional complicity in mass murders. They give the pathetic punk who perpetrated this massacre 24/7 news. When disaffected losers like this perpetrator see the same happen to, oh, the Las Vegas mass murderer barely a month before, they see the operative part of “infamous” as “famous.” It’s an invitation to them to get national and worldwide attention via the slaughter of the helpless innocent. Yet the media continues to give them far more than Andy Warhol’s famous description, “fifteen minutes of fame.”
Texas Attorney General Paxton has stated publicly since the atrocity, according to thetruthaboutguns.com, “’Texans can help prevent mass shootings by carrying concealed guns, Attorney General Ken Paxton said Sunday, hours after 26 people were killed in a church in Sutherland Springs,’ mercurynews.com reports. ‘This is going to happen again. All I can say is in Texas at least we have the opportunity to have conceal carry. And so — there’s always the opportunity that gunman will be taken out before he has the opportunity to kill very many people.’” (http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2017/11/robert-farago/texas-attorney-general-paxton-guns-less-death-video/).
In my opinion, Attorney General Paxton nailed it. I wish Mr. Willeford had been inside the church with a pistol instead of at his nearby home when the cowardly exemplar of evil walked into the church and brought his wrongfully-possessed gun to bear.
More facts will come to light. I will have more to say about this here. In the meantime, I would like to hear what YOU have to say about it.
November 4, 2017
FASH-BASH FIZZLES, FECKLESS FELON FEARFULLY FLEES FIREARMS?
November 4, 2017, 9 PM Eastern. As I write this, the gigantic (and potentially violent) rallies announced for today by the Refuse Fascism group seem to have been the proverbial tempest in a teapot, drawing as few or fewer people than the pathetic turnouts of the anti-gun “Million Mom March” fiascos. Reader Liberal Dave, who predicted such, has every right to gloat, and all of us have a right to be thankful.
In other news, the other night a vicious SOB walked into the WalMart in Thornton, Colorado (near Denver), started shooting people, then suddenly and inexplicably turned and fled. When I heard the first news bulletin on that, I told the Evil Princess I was surprised that in Colorado, there weren’t some armed citizens who pulled guns of their own to fight back.
As things developed, it turned out that there were.
According to reports, several law-abiding Coloradans did indeed whip out their concealed carry handguns.
And, the gunman broke off his attack and fled, to be captured later.
The anti-gun Los Angeles Times sniffed that since armed citizens didn’t kill the guy, and cops had to determine who were the good guys and the bad guys with guns when they reviewed the multiple WalMart security cameras, those armed citizens had merely confused things and slowed down the investigation: http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-wal-mart-shooting-20171103-story.html .
Lots of folks on the Second Amendment side think it’s very likely more than coincidence that a multiple murderer stopped shooting and un-assed the scene at the same time people drew guns to defend themselves against him. I wonder if it’s also a coincidence that so many other mass murders have come to an abrupt end, one way or the other, as soon as the mass murderer met armed resistance or saw it about to happen.
My view? Not enough information has yet been released for the public to draw a solid conclusion. By one account, those who drew guns were in another part of the store when the gunfire broke out, and the bad guy couldn’t have seen them and been deterred by them. Well…if that’s the case, we have to wonder why police investigators would be confused, since the guy firing a gun at the shooting scene would be clearly apparent and readily distinguishable from other people in another location drawing guns they didn’t shoot anyone with, and apparently, didn’t even fire at all.
I think I’ll wait for more information, including what comes out of interrogation and investigation of the man in custody who police believe did the killing. Everyone who was present at that large homicide scene, including the parking lot when the killer made entry, has to be interviewed. That’s gonna take time, too. Did the killer target three specific people, shoot them, and then leave because he felt his sick mission was accomplished? It’s a possibility, though witnesses described him as apparently shooting at random.
What appears to be incontrovertible at this time is that none of those armed citizens shot the wrong person the way the Prohibitionists predicted they would in such a situation. And…none of those people who drew defensive firearms got shot.
AND…the bare bones show the killer started shooting victims, more potential victims drew guns, and the killer broke off his attack and fled.
October 30, 2017
AS NOVEMBER 4 APPROACHES
I wish you, your kids and your grandkids a happy and safe Halloween. It has become our country’s purest “fun” holiday.
Unfortunately, there are some other folks planning on wearing masks, and trafficking more in tricks than treats, a few short days thereafter.
There has been a lot of talk about the events of this coming Saturday, November 4, and mass demonstrations planned thereupon. Some say nothing is going to happen at all, and it’s all an alt-right hoax. Others say a new American Revolution is slated to begin. The truth seems to be in the middle.
One of The Usual Suspects is sending out a rather blatant call for revolution.
And many in law enforcement are – wisely, I think – taking it seriously.
Me? I’ll be surprised if it turns into anything more than another “Occupy Wall Street” sort of demonstration. That said, there are some violent, armed psychos on both sides of this just itching for an excuse to aggrandize themselves by doing harm. One rumor has it that some of the antifas are going to wear “Trump” logo clothing or “Make America Great Again” shirts and caps to further confuse the issue. Should violence break out, that will make it all the harder to tell “who’s who.”
My best advice? If one of these demonstrations is planned in or near your community, DON’T GO. I once again offer the advice of the comedic poet Ogden Nash: “When called by a panther…don’t anther.”
October 26, 2017
HATERS GONNA HATE
Regular readers here know that when the question of cops being “peace officers” or “law enforcement officers” comes up, my answer is, “They have to be both. They can’t keep the peace against law-breakers without enforcing the law, and the enforcement of the law does keep the peace.” I said pretty much the same in another publication I write for frequently, and a letter came in to the editor there from a reader I’ll call “W.” He said in part:
“There was nothing in (Ayoob’s) statements that wasn’t false or misleading. Back when we were living under the common Law, sometimes referred to as “Public Law” (set aside back in 1933 when the bankers stole our Lawful money), there was no such thing as ‘law enforcement officers,” because under the common Law there was only one Law, summed up in the golden rule; ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ Preserving the peace is what ‘Peace Officers’ are for. When Marshal Dillon made his rounds visiting the Long Branch, and other saloons in Dodge City, he was keeping the peace by letting his presence be known. Dillon’s purpose was to remind the ne’er-do-wells and rowdies to behave themselves. The people knew when they were interfering with the rights of others; the common law was considered to be self-evident—common sense, and ignorance of this Law was no excuse. Peace officers didn’t go around ‘enforcing’ anything; the People were free. But once Marshal Dillon ordered a person to turn over his gun while he was in town, he was breaking the law by enforcing an unconstitutional man-made rule. We all have the right and duty (if we are capable), to arrest those who violate the law, but that is not ‘enforcing the law,’ by forcing obedience to man-made rules. We have been dumbed down so far that today people actually believe that we cannot live without millions of statues (sic) to regulate us, and cops everywhere—to charge us (bill us) whenever we break a rule. Most, if not all of the 63-million statutes ‘enforced’ by ‘law enforcement officers’ today are unlawful; they do not even apply to most people, who put far too much trust in the British Accredited Registry (BAR Association) and it’s (sic)attorney members (including judges) who have taken over our judicial system.”
Wow. At first glance, one might have thought his writing “statues” when he meant “statutes” was just a typo, but a full reading showed he probably didn’t know a statute from a statue. Using TV fiction as an example is a dead giveaway (does this guy think Marshal Dillon wasn’t enforcing the law when he blew bad guys away on the streets of Dodge City in almost every episode?) But you couldn’t finish the above without getting a very strong whiff of the bizarre alternate history of the self-declared “sovereign citizen.”
I figured I should get a little more familiar with “W” before I responded to his strange screed, so I did a bit of research. It didn’t take long to determine why “W” didn’t like law enforcement: he had been convicted for illegally manufacturing and selling firearms subsequent to a BATFE investigation. I found a hilarious transcript from his time in court where one of the world’s most patient judges decisively shot down the meaningless drivel “W” pompously babbled in court for the record.
And “W” had enough hate to go around, way past law enforcement. Elsewhere, “W” had written among other things,
“I do not relate to homosexuality, suicide, or race mixing— especially with Negros.”
However, “W” reserved his most potent vitriol for his raging anti-Semitism. Some examples from his babbling elsewhere:
“All of the suppression and problems in this world can be traced to some agenda of the self-chosen Jews and the Protocols spell them out for us.”
“The reason for all the (JFK assassination) conspiracy theories was to distract us from the fact that Oswald was one of their own, a communist (the Jews invented communism through their god Lucifer), and they didn’t want us to focus on Oswald because we might begin to connect the dots and figure out how despicable these troublemakers really are.”
“Jews consider us, the true Israelites, goyim, non-Jew cattle or farm animals for their use and harvesting.”
Haters gonna hate…and sometimes, they hate everything and everyone. In poor “W’s” case, it apparently led him straight to a diagnosis of batshit crazy.
October 22, 2017
THE LAST PRINT ISSUE:
The last print issue (expect it to be a collectible,hint, hint) of Backwoods Home magazine is now out. Read founder Dave Duffy’s profoundly moving goodbye editorial.
While it’s the end of an era, remember it’s not a death, it’s a transition: Backwoods Home will continue in digital format. A sign of the times, I guess.
The magazine’s redoubtable Lisa Nourse is to Backwoods Home what sergeants are to soldiers and cops: the person who supervises getting things done where the rubber meets the road. Lisa reminds me that I started writing for the magazine with the January 1995 issue.
It has been a long, fun run.
The Evil Princess, who had been a Backwoods Home reader before she and I met in the latter part of 2002, and I have been able to meet the whole Duffy family – and Lisa, and Jackie Clay, and Jeff Yago, and more – in person. Wonderful people, each and every one. It has been a joy meeting many of you readers in person over the years, as well.
Stay tuned. The digital edition continues as, of course, does this blog.
October 18, 2017
FLASHBACK
After all the grimness we’ve recently discussed here, it’s time for some good old gun stuff. At one of the Half Price Books stores, I recently picked up a well-thumbed copy of Stoeger’s Shooter’s Bible from 1955. ’55 was a rich year for newly introduced guns that would become classics of their time.
1955 was the year that the first newsstand gun magazine, Guns, came out. I was seven years old, and in Corner Pharmacy across the street from my dad’s jewelry store, it sucked my eye right off the comic book rack. Not in my wildest dreams would I have thought I’d end up being Handgun Editor of that publication for about 40 years, right up to present times.
When I was a very little boy, the most memorable tome on the bookshelf in my bedroom was a 1947 Shooter’s Bible that my father had purchased the year I was born, and I imprinted on the thing like a little duckling on a momma duck. You have to remember that back then, gun periodicals were annual, not monthly, and there were only two games in town: Gun Digest and Shooter’s Bible. Each was part catalog of firearms and accessories then available, and articles from the firearms gurus of the time.
The 1955 edition, the 46th, had articles by many of the greats: Charles Askins, Fred Bear, Pete Kuhlhoff, Jack O’Connor, Warren Page, and more. Askins, the only one of those I ever got to meet and become friends with in later years, did a piece called “Handgun Hotshot In One Easy Lesson,” in which the former national pistol champion postulated that “Trigger control is 99% of the art, the other fundamentals shape up the remainder of the 100%.” The decades since taught me that while I wouldn’t go as high as 99%, trigger control was indeed The Heart of the Beast for accurate shooting.
Jack O’Connor wrote “The Battery for the African Safari” in which he suggested the .375 Holland & Holland Magnum for someone taking only one rifle for all game including the dangerous stuff, with something bigger preferred for elephant and something on the order of a .30-06 recommended for plains game. It proved to be timeless advice. A little over a quarter of a century thereafter, when I took a .308, a .375, and a .458 on my first African safari all my needs were met, and a year later I found a .375 and a .270 to suffice for my second and last safari there.
When we look at the old gun catalogs, we tend to drool too much over yesteryear’s prices. Let’s have some perspective. Average income for an American household in 1955 was around $5,000, per the yesiamcheap.com cost of living website. That comes out to $96.15 a week; today, it’s reportedly ten times that at least, which rounds off to a little under a thousand a week.
The Winchester section highlighted the 6.5-pound Model 70 Featherweight bolt action hunting rifle, in caliber .308 Winchester, both newly introduced. The Featherweight ran $120.95, well over a week’s income for the typical American family in 1955. If you want an equally accurate bolt-action .308 about as light for hunting today, the Ruger All-American is $489 MSRP, and almost half a pound lighter than the old Winchester Model 70 Featherlight…and, accounting for inflation, a helluva lot cheaper.
Going brand to brand, in 1955 Colt charged $64.60 for what they called their “Government Model .45 Automatic Pistol.” Today’s direct descendant, the Colt 1991, now carries the MSRP of $799, only slightly over the usual 10:1 ratio of inflation from 1955 to now. In shotguns, a Remington 870 in the 1955 Gun Bible started at $77.50, while today’s Remington 870 Express is an inflation-beating $417 baseline MSRP.
We also have to remember that this catalog with a 1955 title was put together the previous year. Some of the great introductions of 1955 were not listed: the iconic Colt Python revolver, Smith & Wesson’s .44 Magnum later known as the Model 29 and their ground-breaking Model 39 9mm semiautomatic, and Remington’s Model 740 .30-06 semiautomatic hunting rifle which along with its descendants like the 742, etc. were destined to be hugely popular among sportsmen.
The past was indeed prologue, in many ways. I am reminded of something my friend and fellow gun writer John Taffin has said more than once: “The Golden Age of Firearms is now!”
A blast from the past.
The .308 Winchester cartridge, and the Featherweight version of Winchester’s Model 70 rifle, were both new in 1955.
Shooter’s Bible hosted some of the best writers of the mid-20th Century.
October 13, 2017
IF YOU HAVE ABOUT AN HOUR…
So, last spring at the NRA Annual Meeting in Atlanta, the day after I spoke to the collection of attorneys at the NRA’s annual Firearms Law Seminar, I did an interview on the show floor with the folks from Viridian, who make many very cool firearms accessories.
I was there to speak mostly to what I’ve seen in four and a half decades in the criminal justice system: a sworn police officer for forty-some years until my recent retirement from that; 1988 to June of 2017 as a police prosecutor for a municipal police department in a northern New England state; and mainly, 1979 to present as an expert witness for the courts in cases involving weapons and deadly force.
Or you can find it at :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wfti70ZTyw&feature=youtube
It runs a little over fifty minutes. The topic was self-defense by law-abiding armed citizens, though some elements of line-of-duty police shootings were also discussed.
If you have the time and the inclination, you’re invited to watch…and of course, to comment here.
By the way, Viridian had just introduced a camera that fits on a gun to record its use. They are getting one of those units to me to test, and I’m looking forward to that … and you’ll see some of the results here in due time. But, interesting thing – they recorded the whole discussion on those gun cameras, and I am very impressed with how sharply and distinctly the images and sound came out.
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