Why Do I Own An AR-15?

The media adores the term "assault rifle" or "assault weapon". Now, if I assault you, then by default the weapon I used is an assault weapon. Cain killed Abel with a rock, making a large stone the first assault weapon. Last I checked, no one was advocating rock control.

 

Jealousy is a bitch.

 

 

 

 

 Historically the term "assault rifle" is generally traced back to the German Sturmgewehr-44 /Stg44  in the latter part of World War Two. Up until then their standard infantry rifle was a bolt-action rifle with an internal 5-round magazine. This was the Mauser Kar-98, fielded in 1935 and derived from an original design from 1898.  Starting in 1943, some units received a new semi-automatic rifle, the Gewehr-43 (or G-43) with a 10-round detachable box magazine. It was based on an almost identical weapon, the Gewehr 41/G41, field-tested two years earlier. The word Sturmgewehr literally meant "storm rifle"....as in a rifle to storm, or assault, a fortification. According to one account, the name was chosen personally by Adolf Hitler for propaganda reasons. It used a 30-round detachable box magazine and could fire fully automatic, and as a special-purpose weapon it was issued to Waffen-SS and other elite units. It was later the design basis for the Soviet AK-47 family of rifles.

Mauser Kar-98

Walther G-43

Haenel Stg-44

Herein lies the rub. Civilian models of military-style weapons, by law, are semi-automatic. They are incapable of firing the entire magazine off in a continual burst like the original assault rifles. A semi-automatic weapon requires you to squeeze the trigger each time you wish a round to be fired. The only "automatic" part of the operation is that the expended brass cartridge is automatically extracted & ejected as the next round is fed into the chamber from the magazine. It is not a machine gun. The US military's M-4 carbine, the latest permutation of the M-16 family that traces its lineage to the original AR-15, does not fire full auto except for a special variant used by Special Operations forces. Instead, the weapon has the S-1-3 trigger group, which means you have the options of Safe, Semi-Auto, and 3-round burst only. Back when I was a soldier, I carried an M-16A1 that was able to fire full auto, and even they were being phased out in favor of the A2 with a burst feature instead. This was in 1988.

The selector on an M-16A1, with full auto as a choice.

The selector on the M-16A2, which does not allow full auto, but has a 3-round burst selection.

My AR-15, with only two choices, Safe and Fire, with Fire being semi-auto only.

But, the media thinks anything with a detachable box magazine is an assault rifle. Uninformed talking head politicians on the Left who want to outlaw large-capacity magazines fail to realize that it's even easier to conceal three ten-round rifle magazines than to conceal a larger 30-round magazine, and anyone with a bare modicum of experience with a weapon can drop an empty magazine & insert a fresh one in under five seconds. Experienced shooters can do it in about three.

The media also likes to mistakenly refer to something they call an automatic pistol. Again, this is because they are either A) stupid, B) manipulating the masses, or C) both.  A pistol is either a revolver with a cylinder that holds on average 6 cartridges, you know, cowboy style six-shooters....or it is a magazine-fed semi-auto that (say it with me now, kids) fires a round each time the trigger is squeezed and it extracts & ejects the spent casing & a new one is loaded from the magazine. Depending on caliber, they will carry an average of 7 to 18 rounds. My preferred carry piece carries 8 in the magazine and I can have a ninth round in the chamber. I have others that carry a variety of loadouts.

By the by, I have been safely handling, operating, and carrying weapons of various types from pistols to rifles to shotguns to belt-fed machineguns to grenade launchers (though mostly rifles and handguns) for well over 30 years. I also have a 100% success rate at never injuring anyone with any firearm I have had in my possession, either for duty or for pleasure shooting. Not every gun owner is a homicidal maniac, despite what the media would have you believe.

On an almost daily basis I see people on social media bemoaning the fact that here in the good old US of A, one may own an AR-15 rifle. Note that I did not refer to it as an “assault rifle”, the way it is erroneously labeled by both the left-wing media and uneducated douchenozzles who know nothing about firearms yet are dead-set against you owning one, because they’re scary and other people did bad things with them.  This is because the AR-15 IS NOT AN ASSAULT RIFLE. SEE MY DEFINITION ABOVE.  The average everyday American citizen may not possess a fully automatic firearm and thusly, THEY DO NOT OWN ASSAULT RIFLES. Automatic weapons have been illegal since 1934 unless you have a Federal Firearms license for it that is EXCEPTIONALLY hard to obtain, and a Special Occupational Taxpayer certification.  And yet the media gets this shit wrong on the daily. 

 

 

You wanna see some crazy shit? Read on.

Y’know, a Ruger Mini-14 fires the same rounds as an AR-15. You can even use a 30-round magazine in it. But no one ever calls a Mini-14 an Assault Rifle, because it doesn’t look scary.

The Mini-14 Ranch Rifle. Often used to hunt coyotes and varmints on ranches. Fires the same rounds as an AR-15 that Liberals say isn't for hunting.

The media dearly loves their charts, because most American sheeple are so attention-deficient that unless it has pretty graphics no one will pay attention. So they add charts that are almost always PATENTLY WRONG, and the sheeple graze and take it as The Gospel and continue to perpetuate the wrongness by sharing it and quoting it. See this perfect example of ABSOLUTE WRONGNESS below, in a chart that from no less than the BBC that accompanied a recent article full of bullshit in the UK Daily Mail. It has “approximate rates of fire” on selected weapons. HOWEVER, let me make some corrections, or as you Leftists love to say, FACT CHECKING.

Revolver: Ruger LCR—So…which version of Ruger’s Lightweight Compact Revolver was tested? It comes in six calibers and depending on which caliber, it will hold 5, 6, or 8 rounds. If you carry extra rounds in a speedloader and are practiced, yeah, you can probably fire off 20 rounds in one minutes but don’t count on it. By the way, that’s not an LCR in the silhouette; it’s likely a Smith & Wesson Model 36.

Semi-Automatic Pistol: Colt Model 70—50 rounds a minute is a pretty fair rate for a semi-auto pistol with spare mags. But there isn’t a Colt Model 70. They must be thinking Series 70, the new reproduction of Colt’s venerable 1911A1. The silhouette is Sig Sauer P226 however.

Semi-Automatic Assault Rifle: AK-47—Um, there’s no such thing as a semi-automatic assault rifle which, by definition, is a fully automatic weapon. I’ll grant that 120 rounds in a minute is possible, but not likely. That’s 2 rounds a second, and you’ll need to reload.  And just because a weapon CAN, in some situations, fire at extremely fast rates, it is not something a trained and experienced shooter would do to their weapon because it causes a lot of strain and stress on the metal parts. At least the silhouette is right for an AK-series weapon.

NOTE: I’m changing the order of the last two weapons.

 

Fully Automatic Rifle: M-16 –Well, 950 rounds a minute is unsustainable due to reloading constraints. This pig isn’t belt-fed with a 950-round belt. They haven’t made a full-auto M-16 variant since the 80s. 

Modified Semi-Automatic Assault Rifle/ AR-15: 1,200 rounds per minute…

Please, dear people at the BBC, define just what the fuck these modifications are that allow a semi-automatic civilian rifle to fire even faster than a fully automatic military battle rifle? I don’t know of any combination of parts right now that would give an AR a 1200 rounds per minute cyclic rate.

So no, I’m certainly not trusting the veracity of firearms knowledge of a nation that is under severe gun control. How’s that knife crime problem these days, old chap?

The media seldom gets ANYTHING right when it comes to firearms nomenclature.

 

Oh, by the way, Liberal America, let me clear up another idiot misunderstanding of yours. The AR in AR-15 does not mean Assault Rifle. It is Armalite Rifle, Model 15. Originally made by the Armalite Company, designed by Eugene Stoner. 

Another common media misconception is the number of gun violence deaths in America each year. 

The media likes to play loosey goosey with facts and numbers. We don’t exactly have 40,000 deaths each year from gun violence; we have 40,000 deaths by gun. A full 60% of those deaths are suicides, while 36% are homicides. 

Beginning in 2008, the FBI used a narrow definition of mass shootings. They limited mass shootings to incidents where an individual – or in rare circumstances, more than one – “kills four or more people in a single incident (not including the shooter), typically in a single location.”

In 2013, the FBI changed its definition, moving away from “mass shootings” toward identifying an “active shooter” as “an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area.” This change means the agency now includes incidents in which fewer than four people die, but in which several are injured, like the 2014 Mother’s Day shooting in New Orleans where 20 were wounded.

This change in definition impacted directly the number of cases included in studies and affected the comparability of studies conducted before and after 2013 and aids the media in getting shit wrong when they even bother to research shootings instead of just parroting the DNC’s anti-gun made-up statistics. Even more troubling, some researchers on mass shooting have incorporated in their studies several types of multiple homicides that cannot be defined as mass shooting: for instance, familicide (a form of domestic violence) and gang murders. In the case of familicide, victims are exclusively family members and not random bystanders. Gang murders are usually crime for profit or a punishment for rival gangs or a member of the gang who is an informer. Such homicides don’t belong in the analysis of mass shootings.

Consider the mass shooting that took place in Platte, S.D., on September 17, 2015 that left six people dead. It was, by death toll, one of the eight deadliest shootings of 2015. Why, then, did few people hear about it? Because the victims were the wife and four children of Scott Westerhuis, who murdered them, then committed suicide. This was a tragedy, indeed, but not a mass shooting in the way the media prefers to sensationalize things.

Likewise, the mass shooting that caused the most injuries that year was the gunfight that took place between two biker gangs in Waco, Texas, in May. That was a heinous crime, with 9 deaths and another 18 wounded. 

So, yeah, I don’t trust mass shooting statistics. 

The question that always, without fail, accompanies this tantrum of boo-hoo  from the Anti Gun Crowd is, “Why does anyone need an AR-15?”

Well….why does anyone need anything? In most cases it’s simply WANT much more so than NEED.

A buddy of mine owns a Dodge Charger SRT with a 470 horsepower V-8 that can go 175 miles per hour. Why does he need that? After all, the speed limit here in South Carolina on the open highway is a mere 70 miles per hour. Who needs a car that can go two and half times the limit? Heaven forbid if he traded up to the SRT Hellcat version; that monster has a 707 horsepower powerplant to propel you at 204 miles per hour, nearly three times faster than one is allowed to go by law. Surely, he is a monster for owning such a weapon of murderous potential? After all, cars kill many thousands more per year than guns do. However, no one is protesting in the streets for the police to go garage to garage to confiscate Dodge Chargers. No one is calling for his car to be taken away for arbitrary red flags.

In the wrong hands, this is pretty damned dangerous.

Cirrhosis is the 9^th leading cause of death in the United States, responsible for 1.2% of all US deaths and kills 3 times more people annually than guns, but alcohol is still legal. Throw in drunk driving related deaths while you’re at it. No one is pushing for booze bans; that failed once before.

Over 480,000 people die each year from smoking-related causes but smoking is still legal.

Over 85,000 people a year die from diabetes, almost six times as many as homicide by gun. While the Left has tried to ban sugar, it still hasn’t happened.

So, do I need an AR-15? Probably not. However, it is my right as an American citizen to own firearms, and I choose to own an AR-15 platform sporting rifle. Specifically, I own a DPMS/Panther Arms MOE Warrior. Defense Procurement Manufacturing Services (DPMS) started in 1985 as a precision machine shop for manufacturing M-203, M-14 and M-16 parts for U.S. military contracts. DPMS later began producing AR-15 style rifles of their own. I chose a reputable manufacturer with a background in the AR platform. I wanted a quality weapon, well-made here in the States.

The MOE stands for Magpul Original Equipment. Magpul Industries Corporation is an American designer and manufacturer of high-tech polymer and composite firearms accessories. They make the grip, handguards, magazines, and 6-position stock for my rifle.

Why does Steve need a six-position stock? He must be trying to conceal it beneath his trench coat to shoot up malls!!!!

Um, no. The adjustable stock allows me to get the optimum comfortable cheek-to-stock weld necessary for accurate target shooting. Think of it like power seats and tilt steering in your car. 

You have a laser scope for precision murder and a front grippy thingie to make killing easier, right?

No, stupid. I do not have a scope, or any sort of electronic sighting aids. I aim and fire the old-fashioned way, on iron sights similar to what I learned on.  I rely solely on my own skills with target shooting on iron sights. I do, however, have a pop-up rear sight that folds down to avoid damage. My old M-16 had the rear sight built into the carrying handle on the upper receiver.  And as I never carried a weapon with a foregrip, I didn’t feel the need to have one on my own personal weapon.

I find target shooting very relaxing. It’s kind of a Zen thing, really. You clear your mind of  distractions. You block out everything extraneous around you, while still being aware of your surroundings for safety purposes, and concentrate your focus on the target, be it a paper target, a metal plate target, or a rubber Hot Box target.

What’s a Hot Box?

Google it, chummy. I can’t do all your homework for you.

Why do you need 30-round magazines like a mass murderer, Steve?

Honestly, because I’m lazy. I hate having to stop and reload once I’m sighted in and “in the groove” so to speak. I only load 27 rounds in a 30-round mag, because a trained shooter doesn’t load any magazine to full capacity. Why? Because constant full compression of the magazine spring can cause it to prematurely weaken and that can cause a feed jam. No Bueno, amigo. You also don’t store loaded magazines for extended periods, to keep the spring tension proper. So, I load 27 and that gives me 27 tries to hit my target before I need to break my firing position, drop the empty, reload, and re-engage. I have MAGPUL PMAG polymer magazines as well as standard military-issue steel magazines.

For the record, I’m not a fan of those big 100-round drum magazines. Those springs are under so much tension that they are prone to jam. In fact that fuckstick who shot up the theater in Aurora, Colorado had a drum mag that jammed, a jam that likely saved some lives. I might trust the MAGPUL PMAG D-60, which is a 60-round drum, only because they are an extremely reliable company with a stellar reputation for quality. I’m not ready to drop $129.00 on a magazine however, not just yet.

Extra weight, unwieldy and prone to jam. Nope, I'll skip thanks.

But Steve, why an AR-15?

Look…I carried an M-16A1 for 4 years active duty as a Military Policeman. I trained extensively with that weapon, as well as the M-1911A1 and M-9 pistols, the M-203 grenade launcher, and the M-60 machine gun. I am a graduate of the US Army’s Unit Armorer’s Course, which gave me a higher level of training on the inner workings, maintenance, and repair of not only the aforementioned weapons but also two types of .50 caliber machineguns (the M-2 and M-85), the M-249 Squad Automatic Weapon, and the M-240 series of machineguns. Hell, I’ve even fired AK-47-series weapons a bit too. I have about 34 years’ experience with firearms. I have a background in law enforcement and have passed multiple background checks; EACH TIME I have purchased a firearm in fact, and I have owned several.

As I am intimately familiar with the AR platform, wouldn’t it make sense to own a firearm that I am exceedingly comfortable with, can disassemble and reassemble with my eyes closed, can maintain and repair, and know the capabilities fully thereof? 

A weapon by itself is just a tool, a piece of machinery, a collection of parts…it is the user that kills.

For reals, people. Over 900 people were killed after drinking tainted Kool Aid in Jonestown in 1978. No one's ever tried to ban Kool Aid, because Kool Aid didn't kill those people; a man killed them; a guy who led their socialist cult who had them drink it after lacing it with cyanide. It was actually grape Flavor-Aid to be precise, and it was merely the delivery system. Guns were the delivery system that were central to the killings in places like Newtown, Vegas, Orlando, Dayton, or El Paso but it was a deranged human who killed those people.

Owning an AR-15 doesn’t make one deranged, or an instant candidate for being a mass-killer. No more so than owning a fast car makes one a street racing menace to the roadways, or having a drink makes one an alcoholic prone to drunk driving, or eating a Krispy Kreme glazed donut makes you an instant Type 2 diabetic. Personal responsibility goes a long way.

You’re just a stooge for the NRA!

Nope. I’m not a member. I do just fine without them asking me for money all the time to fund their political lobbying. No offense to those who are members; I’m just not much of a joiner these days.

 

I know my experiences don’t speak for every AR owner. I can really only speak for myself and my own reasons for why I own what I own. Thankfully I live in a nation with a Constitution that I swore an oath at age 18 to defend and uphold against all enemies, foreign AND domestic, a Constitution that states quite clearly that my right to bear arms shall not be infringed upon, and that I live in a state with a love of firearms and shooters’ rights. I know some of you are less fortunate in that regard.

So, I guess that leaves us with the biggest and best reason that I own an AR-15…

BECAUSE I CAN, AND IT WAS WHAT I WANTED.

Now get off my lawn.

Other Times I have written about gun control issues:

https://mojosteve.blogspot.com/2014/07/leftist-rolling-stone-gets-completely.html

https://mojosteve.blogspot.com/2013/03/even-more-gun-control-idiocy-and.html

http://mojosteve.blogspot.com/2012/12/my-hands-are-neither-cold-nor-dead-so.html

http://mojosteve.blogspot.com/2012/08/gun-control-means-using-both-hands.html

Crime is Down, except in my town...

I came across a rather interesting article on FOX yesterday. Conservative Scalawag beat me to the punch on mentioning it, though. Kudos, sir.

WASHINGTON — Unemployment is high, the economy is down. Yet for all the signs of recession, something is missing: More crime.

Experts are scratching their heads over why crime has ebbed during this recession, making it different from other economic downturns of the past half-century. Early guesses include jobless folks at home keeping closer watch for thieves, or extra benefits keeping people from resorting to crime.

Preliminary figures gathered by the FBI for the first six months of 2009 show crime falling across the country — at a time when many experts and police officials had expected crime to rise under the pressure of high unemployment, foreclosures and layoffs.

Murder and manslaughter dropped a surprising 10 percent for the first half of the year, according to the FBI's data.

"That's a remarkable decline, given the economic conditions," said Richard Rosenfeld, a sociologist at the University of Missouri-St. Louis who has studied crime trends.

Rosenfeld said he did not expect the 10 percent drop in killings to be sustained over the entire year, as more data is reported. But he said the broad declines are exceptional, given that past recessions have boosted crime rates dating back to the 1950's.

The professor said there are several possible explanations, including that extended unemployment benefits and other government attempts at economic stimulus "have cushioned and delayed for many people the big blows that come from a recession."
Those benefits will have to run out eventually, he cautioned.

Another possible factor is that with more people home from work, it is harder for burglars to break into a home or apartment unnoticed by neighbors, he said.

Rosenfeld said another possibility is that because big cities tend to have an outsize impact on crime statistics, those cities' so-called "smart policing" efforts are still working to drive down rates.

"What you see are the large cities, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York in particular are down considerably, and those large cities are driving the overall change," he said.

Overall, violent crimes fell by 4.4 percent and property crimes dropped by 6.1 percent, according to the data collected by the FBI. Crime rates haven't been this low since the 1960's, and are nowhere near the peak reached in the early 1990's.

The new figures show car thefts also dropped significantly, falling nearly 19 percent and continuing a sharp downward trend in that category. Some believe that big drop in car theft is due largely to the security locking systems installed on most models, as well as more high-tech deterrents like global positioning systems.

The figures are based on data supplied to the FBI by more than 11,700 police and law enforcement agencies. They compare reported crimes in the first six months of this year to the first six months of last year.

The early 2009 data suggests the crime-dropping trend of 2008 is not just continuing but accelerating. In 2008, the same data showed a nearly 4 percent drop in murder and manslaughter, and an overall drop in violent crime of 1.9 percent from 2007 to 2008.

According to the FBI figures, reports of violent crime fell about 7 percent in cities with 1 million or more people. But in towns with 10,000 to 25,000 people, violent crime ticked up slightly by 1.7 percent.

Each city's data was different, but collectively pointed to less crime in every major category.

Nationwide, rape fell by 3.3 percent and robbery by 6.5 percent. Arsons, which are subject to a variety of reporting standards, declined more than 8 percent.

The FBI's data for New York City shows 204 reported murders in the first half of 2009, compared to 252 in same period last year. By comparison, Oklahoma City saw reported killings increase from 26 to 32, the FBI said. Phoenix, Ariz., saw 10 fewer killings, dropping from 86 in the first half of 2008 to 76 in the first half of this year, according to the data.

Separate statistics compiled by the Justice Department measure both reported and unreported crimes.

Okay…what about the fact that once that imbecile and his cronies took over in Washington, gun sales went through the roof? Maybe crime is down because more people are armed & prepared for self-defense?

Maybe the chronic shortage of ammunition I keep hearing about has meant that the bad guys can’t get ammo for their cheap, poorly-maintained guns that they rob and murder their local citizenry with? Nahhhh, shortages only ever effect the law-abiding citizens. Criminals always find ways to get guns and ammo. Gun control laws only keep law-abiding citizens unarmed & defenseless while criminals just get better armed.

Maybe the economy is so bad that the few bullets that are left in stores are unable to be purchased because the economy is so shitty that no one can afford the ammo to go commit crimes with?

Wouldn’t you think that with Global Warming keeping it so damned hot, and with Al Gore claiming that the earth is a few million degrees just under our feet, that crime would be astronomical due to heat-related insanity?

Then again, you have cops bringing handguns to snowball fights…

But it’s not down everywhere, obviously…like in my backyard.

Unemployment in South Carolina is up…like 12.3% now. Gun crime in my town is UP. WAY UP. I live in a town of 6500 people 40 miles from Charleston. We’re the county seat for a very rural county of about 39,000. In the past year or so we had a deputy sheriff shot & killed, my wife & I were caught in a shooting at a gas station that ended with 11 arrests, one wounded (and armed) juvenile, and yours truly with a 9mm hole in his quarter-panel 8 inches from my kneecap. Being a law-abiding gun owner (and slacker who hasn’t gotten his concealed carry permit), my .45 was at home.


We’ve had a lady murdered in her driveway. We have had no fewer than 10 shootings, in town and just outside the limits, in the past 8 weeks alone. One of those was a drive by that killed three, including a 20-month-old baby, and sent several others to the hospital. Three assclowns recently broke into an elderly woman’s home and after she fired at the intruders, they maced her & shot her, kidnapped her, stole her car, and left her in the trunk of her car a few miles from my door. She’s recovering and should be just fine.

Beware of Owner: Gun Control means being able to hit your target.

The shitty economy means that I haven’t got the extra money to put towards getting my wife a weapon and getting us both our carry permits. It’ll be $300 to get our permits and then maybe another three or four hundred to get her something she likes and is comfortable with.

Maybe Obama will give me a Homeland Security bailout grant to arm my family? Yeah, right…


Due to economic hardship, it's harder to mack in a pimp ride. However, it's also easier to look like a Tru Playa with a smaller bank roll...

The Big Mexican Gun Lie!

Hats off to Guest Blogger Jim, who must be lovin' this!



Yeah, I saw this one coming.

The media has been touting this so-called shocking "fact" all over TV, radio, in print, and all over the Web, and from talking heads in Washington looking to get a sound byte second of publicity. They say that 90 percent of the weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the United States.

Bob Schieffer of CBS News referred to it in an interview with Obama. Secretary of State Shrillary Clinton said it to reporters on a flight to Mexico City. California’s second biggest idiot, after Nancy Pelosi, Senator Dianne Feinstein, said at a Senate hearing: "It is unacceptable to have 90 percent of the guns that are picked up in Mexico and used to shoot judges, police officers and mayors come from the United States."

Even William Hoover, the Assistant Director for Field Operations at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, testified to the House that "there is more than enough evidence to indicate that over 90 percent of the firearms that have either been recovered in, or interdicted in transport to Mexico, originated from various sources within the United States."

However, boys and girls, there’s a pretty big problem with this little 90 percent "statistic". It's a complete fallacy.In fact, it's not even close.

By all accounts, it's probably around 17 percent. Doing the quick math that’s a 73% differential.

A clarification from the ATF is that "over 90 percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S." Well, that kinda makes sense, since we do a pretty good job of keeping records on serial numbers and what not. But a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico don’t get sent back here for trace exams, because it is obvious from their markings that they don’t originate from the U.S. of A. Hell, a lot of them have the serial numbers filed off, and face it—we’re not the only country where guns get made.

In 2007-2008, according to ATF Special Agent William Newell, Mexico submitted 11,000 guns to the ATF for tracing. Close to 6,000 were successfully traced -- and of those, 90 percent -- 5,114 to be exact, according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover -- were found to have come from the U.S., but in those same two years, according to the Mexican government, 29,000 guns were recovered at crime scenes.

In other words, 68 percent of the guns that were recovered were never submitted for tracing. And when you weed out the roughly 6,000 guns that could not be traced from the remaining 32 percent, it means 83 percent of the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico could not be traced to the U.S.

So, if not from the U.S., where all of us bloodthirsty baby-killers and war-mongerers horde weapons in the hopes of slaying our neighbors, where do they come from? There are a variety of sources:
-- The Black Market. Mexico is a Sam’s Club for weapons, with Korean grenades, Chinese AK’s, and shoulder-fired rocket launchers from western European, Middle Eastern, and former Soviet bloc manufacturers up for sale.

-- Russian organized crime organizations. Interpol says Russian Mafia groups are actively trafficking drugs and arms in Mexico. Wait…there’s drugs in Mexico?

-- South of the Border…their border. U.S. intelligence agencies say traffickers move immigrants, stolen cars, guns, and drugs (including most of America’s cocaine) along the porous Mexican-Guatemalan border. On March 27, the Guatemalan newspaper La Hora, reported that police seized 500 grenades and a load of AK-47s on the border. Police say the cache was transported by a Mexican drug cartel operating out of the border town of Ixcan. During the late 1990s, Colombia’s home-grown terrorist group FARC established an arms smuggling and drug trafficking partnership with the Tijuana cartel, according to the Federal Research Division report from the Library of Congress.

-- The Mexican Army and Police. More than 150,000 soldiers deserted in the last six years, according to Mexican Congressman Robert Badillo. Many took their weapons with them, including the standard issue M-16 assault rifle. And as corrupt as Mexican government officials tend to be, many weapons are just outright sold to criminals or traded for drugs and other goods.

Ed Head, an Arizona firearms instructor and 24-year veteran of the U.S. Border Patrol, recently displayed an array of weapons considered "assault rifles" that are similar to those recovered in Mexico, but are unavailable for sale in the U.S.

"These kinds of guns -- the auto versions of these guns -- they are not coming from El Paso," he said. "They are coming from other sources. They are brought in from Guatemala. They are brought in from places like China. They are being diverted from the military. But you don’t get these guns from the U.S."

Some guns, he said, "are legitimately shipped to the government of Mexico, by Colt, for example, in the United States. They are approved by the U.S. government for use by the Mexican military service. The guns end up in Mexico that way -- the fully auto versions -- they are not smuggled in across the river."

The exaggeration of American "responsibility" for the crime and violence in Mexico extends even beyond the "90-percent" bullshittery. The Gun Control Lobby is using these falsehoods to more restrictive gun-control laws in the U.S. We all know how the Obamunists hate our guns.

The Mexican ambassador to the America, Auturo Sarukhan, remarkably claimed that Mexico seizes 2,000 guns a day from the United States. That would be 730,000 a year, and that's a far cry from the official statistic from the Mexican attorney general’s office, which says Mexico seized 29,000 weapons in all of 2007 and 2008.

And then you get this Jiverly Wong dickhead in Binghamton, New York. He walks into an immigration office yesterday and kills 12 people. Not illegal immigrants, mind you, but law-abiding legal immigrants preparing to take their citizenship tests. New York’s Governor Patterson is gonna use this as a springboard to further outlaw guns in New York, which in turn will fuel the nationwide anti-gun douchebags.


Hell, I couldn’t even drive through NY on my way to Maine with my .45 disassembled in a locked case in the trunk of my car without the Empire State Gestapo giving me a mandatory sentence. But that’s a blog for another day…

Liberals Hate Your Guns, Part Three: Armed Pilots

Like I’ve said before, the Liberals hate your guns, and they can’t wait to take them away from you. Despite protests to the contrary stating that they have no such intentions, The Obama Empire is taking steps quietly to shut down the program that qualifies commercial airline pilots to carry firearms in jetliner cockpits in order to ward off another 9/11-type attack.

The administration recently diverted $2 million from a program to train and certify pilots to carry firearms safely while on duty. Instead, it is using the money to hire additional field inspectors to help discipline pilots who step out of line, according to a report in Tuesday’s Washington Times.

Since Obama took office, the approval process for certifying pilots to carry firearms has ground to a halt, the newspaper reports. Pilots are afraid to speak out about the behind-the-scenes maneuverings, for fear of retaliation, according to the newspaper. No cases have been reported in which pilots have brandished a weapon inappropriately or otherwise abused their eligibility to carry firearms.

About 12,000 pilots have been authorized to carry handguns while flying aircraft as part of the Federal Flight Deck Officers Program. Congress authorized the program in a 310-to-113 vote following the 9/11 attacks to help prevent terrorists from turning jetliners into flying bombs that could be used to attack key sites like the White House, the Pentagon, or Capitol Hill.

Pilots are already required to pay for their own room and board during training, and use paid leave for the time they’re off the job. Every six months, the program requires them to be requalified for firearm use. So, it already costs them plenty to even get certified, so you know these guys are dedicated professionals.

The Washington Times points out that about 70 percent of airline pilots have military backgrounds. With airport screening less than 100 percent effective, it states, armed pilots provide a second layer of defense.

“Only anti-gun extremists and terrorist recruits are worried about armed pilots,” the newspaper editorial says.

Amen, brother. Are you asshats worried about a crazed pilot taking pot shots at passengers when he snaps? Trust me, that guy has control over the entire aircraft; if he was suicidal or wanted to kill passengers, he’d just point the whole frikkin’ thing straight down, and there really wouldn’t be jack-diddly-shit the passengers could do.

What you should be worried about are the 113 Congressional Dickheads who voted against having a terrorist deterrent onboard our flights. Sure, there’s the Air Marshall program, but there’s not enough of them and you never know what flights they’re on. If a potential terrorist wants to snatch a flight, what if there’s no Sky Cops around? The only possible deterrent other than brave passengers is the idea of the pilots being able to ventilate the skull and thorax of the aforementioned terrorist with a carefully aimed shot.

And before you sniveling whiners bring up the argument about shooting holes in the aircraft and suffering a massive blowout by depressurizing it, they already debunked that myth on the Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters show. Federal Air Marshalls, by the by, do not carry frangible ammunition either. By frangible, I mean that if they hit something they disintegrate instead of punching through intact. My sources tell me that FAM’s carry the Sig P229 pistol chambered for .357, with Speer Gold Dot ammunition, which is a rather high-velocity round. They’re just really well-trained. And if a small hole does depressurize the cabin, the most the passengers will suffer is some discomfort till the plane reaches a lower altitude.

So, Liberal gun haters are trying to take away your guns, and if they can’t do that, then they want to make it impossible to get ammunition, either by taxing it and pricing it out of range or by regulating it with excessive laws so that no one will want to mess with it. Like it says on the header to my friend Brooke’s blog site, courtesy of Thomas Jefferson: a government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take away everything you have.