Only 20% of Gun Owners Hunt
"The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced." -- Frank Zappa
# SportsPickle.com - Spin-Off Product, "The Original Poopinator," Not Selling Well - My laughing woke my wife on this one. Hohohohohohohoho. [crackers]
# Malcolm Drury at DeadBrain - ID cards to be offered in three levels - satire. Hehe. [crackers]
# OpenCarry.org has two maps, which link to a page for each state, and a forum. The maps illustrate open carry and vehicle carry of a loaded gun, with a color code for levels of compliance with the Second Amendment. Not nearly the detail of Packing.org's concealed carry info, but a good summary for each state. Added to the "Legal" column of the RKBA section of my links page. [highroad]
# Jeff Quinn at Gunblast - Ruger's Super Redhawk Alaskan .454 Casull - he likes it. Hey, Mikey. Includes chronograph results for a number of commercial and hand loads in .454 Casull and .45 Colt. Ruger lists an $819 suggested retail price. [gunblast]
The barrel on this Alaskan has one of the smoothest interiors of any handgun barrel that I have ever seen from Ruger, and fouling was not a problem at all. The chambers were also well-finished. All cases extracted easily, even from the heaviest loads tested. Accuracy was very good with the Alaskan. I could keep six rounds inside of two inches at twenty-five yards, resting my wrists over a rail. The short sight radius made it harder to hit than with a longer barrel, but with the Mt. Baldy bullets loaded over Trail Boss, I could get the gun to group into one and three-quarters inches at twenty-five yards. If you are standing in the path of a large bear, wild boar, or even a mean bull, that is much more accuracy than you can use.
...
Ruger's cushioned rubber grips go a long way in helping tame the effects of recoil with the .454 Alaskan.
...
Author has always appreciated the original Super Redhawk, even if it was never a gun he had a burning desire to own. The Super Redhawk Alaskan is a different animal, offering bone-crushing power in a handy, controllable package. The folks at Ruger have done it again!
# benEzra at Democratic Underground - Dems and the Gun Issue--Now What? - very good article about why it's been incredibly stupid for the Democractic Party to propose all sorts of gun bans while pretending to support hunters. If they'd also get out of the forced income redistribution business, I could like them. [firingline]
Ohio, where the Presidency was lost, went heavily for Senator Kerry in urban areas, but rural gun owners went heavily for Bush, despite the senator's heavy emphasis on his support for hunting. Why?
The answer is very simple--so simple, in fact, that it's puzzling why the party has missed it for so long. Let's look at the numbers. It is estimated that there are estimated to between 65 and 80 million gun owners in the United States. There are between 13 and 16 million licensed hunters in the United States. Now do some math. Four out of five gun owners are not hunters. I repeat: 80% of gun owners are not hunters.
So why is the national party trying so hard to recast the protections of the Second Amendment as applying only to hunting firearms, if 80% of gun owners don't hunt and hunting has absolutely nothing to do with 2nd-Amendment jurisprudence? Or to turn the question around--why did party leaders think that demonstrating support for hunters would allow the party to go after nonhunting guns with impunity? Four out of five gunnies don't hunt; is it any wonder that a pro-hunting message didn't win the bloc?
The party platform-writers can talk all they want about supporting the Second Amendment, but if we nonhunters lose the right to choose to own nonhunting-style guns, we have lost our Second-Amendment rights. Period. As a nonhunter, I personally don't care if I am "allowed" to own a skeet shotgun or a slug gun suitable for deer; I want to keep my modern-looking small-caliber self-loader, thanks. I'm a Gen X'er, that's what I grew up thinking was cool, and that's what I as a law-abiding American citizen choose to own. And my wife would just as soon keep her 15-round defensive handgun. And apparently, a lot of gun owners feel the same way I do.
Don't get me wrong. I fully support hunters and the right to hunt-- indeed, the excise taxes my wife and I and millions of others pay on our nonhunting guns and ammunition helps fund the game lands that hunters enjoy. But I wish the Democratic party would practice a bit more tolerance for us law-abiding gun owners who don't fit its narrow ivory-tower stereotype of "acceptable" gun ownership.
...
Confront stereotypes. When I say I'm a gun owner, what image of me comes to your mind? A middle-aged white male who talks with a Southern drawl, drives a pickup truck, chews tobacco, likes beer, and owns lots of camoflage clothing? Or do you think of a thirtysomething college-educated guitar-playing, poetry-reading physics geek with glasses and a goatee, who drives a Toyota Camry and is dad to a special-needs kid? Because I'm the latter. I recently worked with a gun owner who happens to be a thirtysomething college-educated black female from New York state who often drives a Lexus to work. And I am married to a gun owner from Cambridge, Massachusetts who grew up in Maine, has a B.A. in English, and studies medieval history for fun.
But let's probe our prejudices a bit further. What if I tell you my most cherished rifle is a SAR-1, a civilian rifle that looks (but does NOT function) like an AK-47? Is your first response to view me as an incipient wacko, full of paranoia about "black helicopters" and "the gubmint"? If so, why? Because all the "AK" owners you've met are like that, or because the media told you to view me like that?
# Francis W. Porretto at Eternity Road - Niches And Infestations - some lessons from biology that prove Jefferson's thesis that the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. Nicely written. [clairefiles]
It's critical that Americans' understand that infestation by aspiring dictators is an unintended yet inevitable consequence of freedom. It's equally critical that we resolve not to compromise our freedom simply to be rid of them; that's precisely what they want.
# Ted Kaczynski, I mean Jim Lesczynski at The Village Choice - They're Not Laughing at Me, They're... Oh Wait, Yes They Are - scroll down to this "rant of the week". Mr. Lesczynski tells about the taping of a new segment for The Daily Show, which should run this coming Tuesday or Wednesday at 11pm eastern.
# Gary North at LewRockwell.com - EUthanasia - long piece on the death of the European Union at the hands of French and Dutch voters. Good riddance, says Mr. North, to a long-running conspiracy to create a socialist world government. Not that the goons will stop now. [clairefiles]
