April 12, 2019 Newsletter by Jeff Pittman
MidwayUSA has NRA memberships on sale. If you or anyone you know isn’t a member, now is the time.
NRA action item
NRAILA.org/2019Petition — You can sign without donating.
Who is the militia?
- The meaning of “militia” in the Second Amendment [Tenth Amendment Center]
National Police Shooting Championships competition returns to MS
The Mississippi Highway Patrol/Mississippi Department of Public Safety and the National Rifle Association have announced that it will host the 2019 NRA National Police Shooting Championships at the Mississippi Law Enforcement Officer’s Training Academy* in Pearl, Mississippi, September 23-25, 2019.
*Note that previous Mississippi-hosted NPSC events were at the Jackson Police firing range.
Mississippi Cannons
The WWI cannons which have stood watch from the south side of the Mississippi Capitol for decades have been removed to the Armed Forces Museum at Camp Shelby near Hattiesburg, where they will be restored (sic) and put on display. State Department of Finance and Administration officials (in charge of state property) said they were concerned about maintenance of the cannons and the safety of children who climb on them, and that the DFA, along with the Department of Archives and History and legislative committees (all weenies) approved the move. We don’t have a report on the real reason.
Litigation
RW Arms and The Modern Sportsman are suing the federal government, alleging that the Trump bump stock ban regulation, which forces lawful owners to destroy or surrender the device (more than 73,000 in this case), is a physical taking of their property without just compensation in violation of the 5th Amendment of the US Constitution. Their case, The Modern Sportsman et al., v. United States, was filed on March 29th in the Court of Federal Claims, Washington D.C.
Senior US District Judge J. Phil Gilbert has issued a permanent injunction (link is a .pdf) in the Second Amendment Foundation’s case against the East St. Louis Housing Authority’s (IL) ban on firearms possession by residents of government subsidized public housing. SAF’s Alan Gottlieb had this to say about the plaintiff, “Jane Doe”: “This situation was made even more outrageous considering what has happened to Ms. Doe while living at her home. We’ve explained how she was beaten and raped in January 2017, and her children stopped the attack only by threatening to use a gun. On two other occasions, Ms. Doe had to call police due to shootings in nearby residences. When the housing authority threatened to terminate her lease due to the gun in her residence, they insisted that the building is safe, so she doesn’t need a gun.”
It ain’t the Bill of Needs. And by the way, it applies everywhere in the USA. — JP
In the US District Court case Andrew Teter and James Grell, Plaintiffs, v. Clare E. Connors, in her Official Capacity as the Attorney General of the State of Hawaii, and Al Cummings, in his Official Capacity as the State Sheriff Division Administrator, Defendants, the complaint challenges, on Second Amendment grounds, the State of Hawaii’s ban on butterfly knives (or balisongs), knives “having a blade encased in a split handle that manually unfolds with hand or wrist action with the assistance of inertia, gravity or both.” The United States District Court, Southern District of New York, recently declared the state’s ban on gravity knives was unconstitutional. Mississippi 2A attorney Stephen Stamboulieh.
California gun owners’ groups estimated that easily more than a million standard and high capacity ammunition magazines legally flooded into California during a one-week window created when a federal judge temporarily threw out the state’s ban. Would have been more except for that limited supply thing.
Advice on home defense buckshot
Note that all buckshot is capable of perforating multiple household walls, including the ones behind which your loved ones may be esconced.
Federal Premium Law Enforcement has a comparison tool for rifle, pistol and shotgun defense loads.
Carjackings
You know this stuff. But did you know 92% of carjacking victims were alone in their car at the time of the crime? Stay focused.
Gun free zones
A Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant in Colorado Springs was robbed last week by two armed, masked men. I guess they didn’t see the sign.
One sailor shot and wounded another and then was fatally shot at a Virginia Navy base last week. Gun free zone.
Enemies
Instagram has deleted The Firearm Blog’s account and all its contents.
Gun-banning US Senator and presidential candidate Kamala Harris (D-CA) told reporters after a campaign event in Iowa that she is a gun owner, saying “I own a gun for probably the reason that a lot of people do: for personal safety.”
The US Postal Service has banned rifles from military commemorative stamps.
Marti Buscaglia, Executive Director of the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights, Commission Chair Brandon Nakasato, and Vice Chair Freddie R. Olin IV, have all resigned in the wake of Buscaglia’s psychotic anti-gun antics.
US Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) interviewed by Ammoland
Forensic DNA from cartridge brass
- A new method of DNA testing could solve more shootings [PoliceOne.com]
The Only Ones
The San Antonio police department confirmed that two unidentified rookie officers were fired after they ran off during an officer-involved shooting last month.
Be careful grabbing those “dead” turkeys
- A “Dead” Turkey Can and Will Hurt You [AllOutdoor]
John Farnam plugs Boondocks Firearms Training Academy (Raymond, MS)
Rossi revolver drop safe lawsuit
Products
Pachmayr now has its aluminum speedloader in a 6-shot N-frame version, to fit 44 caliber: S&W 29/629/Ruger Redhawk/Super Redhawk/Colt Anaconda/Taurus .44/.444 Raging Bull. Loaders were already available for J,K and L frame sizes.
Stevens 16 gauge O/U shotguns.
Mossy Oak + American Buffalo Knife and Tool Company + high end steels = knives under $60?
Nighthawk seems to be stealing Colt’s names, with two of its 1911 pistols being called the Agent 2 and the Trooper.
CELEBRATE PATRIOTS DAY, APRIL 19th
By E. James Adkins
We don’t celebrate the 19th of April anymore. It was never celebrated in a big monumental way, but we once celebrated that day.
“Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.”
— so wrote Longfellow in his poem that begins:
“Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,”
Revere and others went forth on the night of April 18, 1775 with the alarm, “The redcoats are coming!” They rode all through the night.
“It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.”
“It was two by the village clock
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.”
Why was it so immediately important, on the night of April 18, 1775, for all of the people to know that the “redcoats are coming?”
It was the practice in our colonial period for each village to have a “common” or “village green” that was used for public gatherings. The most significant use of the “common” was as a mustering point and drill field for the village militia, “every able bodied man between the ages of 16 and 60 years.” The militia was trained (as they termed it, “disciplined” and “well regulated”) in the use of arms, here at the village green. The militia provided protection for individuals and property of the village against all threats. A man would spend some time in the “gaol” if he missed a militia call. The militia, each man, was required to keep and bear his own arms. It was common for the militia to maintain a community armory for the storage of shot, powder, flint, additional small arms and any heavy arms that it might afford. Individuals could draw from these supplies as needed, as well as acquiring their own private supplies.
On the night of April 18, 1775, Governor Gage (British Governor of fortress Boston) ordered British “redcoats” to march to the many surrounding villages, to seize and destroy all stores of munitions and to arrest the country leaders, the “arch-conspirators.”
British Major Pitcairn led the march into the countryside. The prime objective was to still the voice of the people, disarm them and make them more servile. Rebellion must stop, they said. So, Revere took to horse to give the alarm: “To arms, to arms, the redcoats are coming!”
Early on the morning of the 19th of April, 1775, Major Pitcairn’s “redcoats” arrived at Lexington and met Captain John Parker’s company of colonial militia drawn-up on the meeting house green.
“By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Hence once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world.”
— so wrote Emerson in 1837.
Some colonials were wounded and some were killed. Resistance to the larger British force proved futile. Pitcairn’s return march to Boston became a humiliating rout as our colonial militiamen, Minutemen and individual countrymen harassed the British column from behind stone walls, rocks and trees, every step of the way.
The shot heard round the world, the first shot in our fight for independence from King George’s slavery, was fired to protect and defend the natural right of men to protect themselves, to keep and bear arms for the purpose of preserving liberty. This right to keep and bear arms was codified on the 15th of December 1791 when it became the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.
We don’t celebrate the 19th of April anymore. Perhaps we should.
“That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.
Spirit, that made those heros dare
To die, and leave their children free.”
— Emerson, 1837
The redcoats are coming!
April 19 marks the anniversary of the 1775 battles of Lexington and Concord that started the American Revolution with the “Shot Heard Round the World,” and the Second Amendment Foundation notes that the aftermath of events in Virginia clearly show that European animosity toward our right to keep and bear arms still exists.
In the wake of the horrible tragedy at Virginia Tech, noted SAF founder Alan M. Gottlieb, European media — and particularly the BBC — has bared its visceral disdain toward America’s Second Amendment and the traditions of liberty and independence it represents and protects.
“Clearly,” Gottlieb said following three days of combative day and night interviews and debates primarily conducted by BBC reporters and commentators, “there remains to this day a horrible, condescending attitude toward armed American citizens. Haven’t the British yet gotten over the fact that a ragtag, often disorganized force of American colonials, wielding their own arms, was able to defeat what at the time was the most powerful armed force in the world?”
“Our forefathers,” he continued, “armed with their own flintlock rifles and pistols, and an assortment of muskets — the ‘assault weapons’ of their era — threw off the yoke of oppression under which they were forced to live. When British broadcasters today demand to know just what it is about gun ownership that Americans defend so vigorously, the answer is too simple for them to comprehend. Simply put, we defend this individual civil right because without our own guns two centuries ago, we would still likely be saluting a king instead of electing a president.We would likely be British subjects instead of electing our own Congress and state legislatures.”
“We know our system isn’t perfect,” Gottlieb observed. “But America’s freedom and liberty are second to none. Otherwise, people would be waiting in line to leave instead of sneaking across borders to get in. April 19, 1775 gave us that, and the Second Amendment protects it. And just so the BBC and other European media aren’t misled, we’re not giving it up.”
