Gersh Kuntzman, reporting for the hoplophobic New York Daily News, wound up psychically-scarred with a bruised shoulder and suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome after test-firing an AR-15.
What is it like to fire an AR-15? It’s horrifying, menacing and very very loud.
It feels like a bazooka — and sounds like a cannon.
One day after 49 people were killed in the Orlando shooting, I traveled to Philadelphia to better understand the firepower of military-style assault weapons and, hopefully, explain their appeal to gun lovers.
But mostly, I was just terrified. …
I’ve shot pistols before, but never something like an AR-15. Squeeze lightly on the trigger and the resulting explosion of firepower is humbling and deafening (even with ear protection).
The recoil bruised my shoulder. The brass shell casings disoriented me as they flew past my face. The smell of sulfur and destruction made me sick. The explosions — loud like a bomb — gave me a temporary case of PTSD. For at least an hour after firing the gun just a few times, I was anxious and irritable.
I will grant Mr. Kuntzman that ARs are noisy, but Goodness Gracious, Mercy Me! they shoot the .223 cartridge, a minutely-modified version of the old .222 Remington, a center-fire cartridge introduced in 1950 as a less noisy groundhog shooting cartridge offered as a less-powerful alternative to the .220 Swift and the .22-250 Remington.
Kuntzman ought to try shooting an African big game rifle sometime, or one of those super-handguns custom-made by John Linebaugh that fires the equivalent of an elephant round from a standard-size revolver. The last time I fired my .500 Linebaugh I found a large lump had developed at the base of my thumb. I wondered at the time if it was going to be a permanent souvenir, but it gradually went away.
Back in the old days, when men were men and not metrosexual bed-wetters, Sir Samuel Baker was renowned for using a black-powder 2-bore rifle on dangerous game. The 2-bore designation means that the gun fired a ball weighing a half pound of lead.
Kuntzman (2016) shot an Ar-15 firing a 63 grain .223″ diameter bullet at 900+ feet-per-second.
Samuel Baker (1866) used to shoot a two-bore firing an 8 ounce, 3500 grain 1.326″ diameter bullet at 1500 feet per second. So much has humanity declined in a century and a half.
In the police van, we can see a nifty Bren gun, a kukri, several swords, a few rifles, some pistols, a bolt-action with a barrel bent 90 degrees, and… (everyone lick his lips) yes, there is a German MG42.
Poor Martin Johnson of Penistone, Yorkshire died young at only 51. He seems to have led a quiet and harmless life, but despite his misfortune of residing in the pussified and socialized Britain of today, he was clearly a sound chap with a keen interest in WWII weapons, who had successfully over the course of a lifetime (despite living under a hoplophobic tyranny) amassed a pretty nice collection.
Not very long after the unlucky fellow’s toes turned up his busybody neighbors were summoning the local constabulary to check in on him. The rozzers inevitably stumbled upon the old boy’s collection, and this being today’s Britain, they all had panic attacks and wet their pants. 100 houses were evacuated, because Yorkshire’s finest somehow convinced themselves that Mr. Johnson’s collection had WMDs. His stash (of doubtless long emptied and defused) WWII mortar rounds were assumed to be loaded with mustard gas!
The Daily Mail shrieked aloud over the “terrifying cache” of “potentially dangerous” trinkets.
Who knows? Certainly not Yorkshire cops or Limey reporters. Mr. Johnson may very possibly have had a completely legal collection of totally deactivated pieces. The odds certainly favor that likelihood.
If any of those rifles or pistols were functional, he would, if caught, have been jugged longer than a Muslim terrorist for mere possession. If those machine guns were not deactivated, why! the government would probably have also fallen.
Despite grudging ackowledgements by officialdom that Johnson’s cache of shells was found to be unloaded, the bomb squad evidently could not resist eliminating some WWII collectibles with a “controlled explosion.”
Note that the Bren gun has been carefully labelled with a red tag reading “CAUTION FIREARM.” After all, someone might have mistaken it for a bicycle!
Editorialist Rich Schapiro and the New York Daily News this morning are insulting religious faith and calling Republicans who spoke of praying for victims of the terrorist shootings in San Bernardino, California “cowards.”
“God Isn’t Fixing This!” thunders the Daily News headline, obviously preferring to believe that the cult of the Leviathan state to which Mr. Schapiro bows down can do better via Gun Control. All we need to do is follow the example of democrats like Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O’Malley and support Gun Control, sacrificing the Second Amendment and American’s individual rights on the altar of Statism and we will receive safety and security in return.
People like Rich Schapiro cling passionately to their own twisted version of religion in which the State and the Rule of Experts and the Calculative Power of Human Reason are deemed totally omnipotent and beneficent, somehow managing to overlook the record their philosophy compiled in the last century of transforming civilization and the state into an abattoir resulting in the deaths of hundreds of millions, and also managing to overlook the fact that, only a few weeks ago, a much larger armed massacre took place in Paris, the capital of a country which has in place every element and detail of the gun control laws desired by the most hoplophobic of democrats. These kinds of people don’t even notice that the San Bernardino shootings occurred in California, one of the most gun-controlled states in the country.
There is more than a little irony in a bunch of metrosexual simps who disapprove of self-defense, who are afraid of the very sight of guns, who systematically delude themselves with fantasies of universal harmony and safety brought about by the unilateral disarmament of the peaceful and the law-abiding going around calling other people “cowards.”
Personally, if I had a laboratory need for a pure and authentic specimen of the coward, I feel certain that Rich Schapiro himself would function perfectly in the experiment.
We have gotten used to reading about these little-kid-expelled-from-school-for-possession-of-a-pocket-knife happening in the suburbs of New England or California, but in Pennsylvania?
Recently a ten-year-old female violinist was expelled from the toney Valley School of Ligonier because the young musician was found to be using a Swiss Army Knife to remove broken strings from her violin bow.
Her parents consequently attempted to enroll her in the public school for their local district, but found her admission jeopardized by the report of her expulsion for “bringing weapons onto school property” from the young lady’s previous school.
All this nincompoopery is connected, in Pennsylvania, to a Safe School Act (passed in 1995, and amended in 1997 and subsequently added to) which in the case of a student expelled due to a weapon or drugs being brought on to school property, obligates other schools to apply the same expulsion. The parents are suing on the basis that these zero tolerance policies have inflicted on their daughter a “defamatory stigma.â€
When a 72-year-old retired school teacher faces a 10 year felony sentence (a likely life sentence) for possession of an unloaded 18th century flintlock pistol, one knows immediately that we can only be talking about a handful of states in which such a travesty can happen. In this case, not surprisingly, it’s the “Garden State†of New Jersey. (h/t Sebastian over at the Shall Not Be Questioned blog.)
Gordon Van Gilder, who taught in the New Jersey school system for 34 years, is a collector of 18th century memorabilia. He acquired a genuine antique flintlock pistol from that era, and had it unloaded and wrapped in a cloth in his glove compartment when he was pulled over for an alleged minor traffic violation.
Van Gilder consented to a requested search of his vehicle, and when asked by the officer if there was anything in the car the officer should be worried about, Van Gilder informed him about the flintlock in the glove box. Although not arrested that day, the next morning several patrol cars woke him at his home and placed him under arrest.
New Jersey’s draconian gun laws explicitly include antique firearms such as this 300-year-old pistol. Indeed, possession of a slingshot is a felony under New Jersey law.
Van Gilder is represented by Evan Nappen, a well-known attorney specializing in gun law cases, and thus is as well-represented as could be hoped for in this case. It was Nappen who successfully represented Philadelphia nurse Shaneen Allen when she was charged with unlawful possession of her PA-licensed handgun in New Jersey. The mother of two small children was ultimately permitted to enter pre-trial intervention rather than be subject to trial and New Jersey’s mandatory minimum sentence of 3 1/2 to 5 years imprisonment. That outcome, however, took direct intervention by the state Attorney General, likely at the prodding of the presidential-aspirant Governor Chris Christie.
Van Gilder will be fortunate indeed if Nappen can win him a similar arrangement. Even a plea agreement that avoids jail time but convicts Van Gilder of a felony would likely jeopardize the teacher’s pension he spent 34 years earning.
As Van Gilder states in the video [below]–â€Avoid New Jersey. Don’t come here.â€
The Telegraph quotes French newspapers, detailing the cries of indignation at this kind of Americanization of French “surrender monkey” culture.
A controversial far-right mayor in France has been accused of turning the local police force into “Dirty Harry” after a poster campaign trumpeted their “new friend”: a 7.65-calibre handgun.
Bernard Cazeneuve, the interior minister, called the posters “deliberately provocative”. He said: “The best friends of the police are not their weapons … but the French citizens who respect republican values.”
The decision to arm local police followed a national debate on whether all French police should be armed with lethal weapons after Clarissa Jean-Philippe, an unarmed municipal officer, was gunned down by Islamist terrorists during the Paris attacks in January that killed 17 people.
All this fuss over cops carrying a Beretta 92 chambered in the antiquated and anemic .32 ACP/7.65 Browning cartridge.
Speaking at the ‘Taken 3’ press conference in Dubai on Monday, the Irish-born star of ‘Schindler’s List’, who once again plays Bryan Mills in the final film of the trilogy, responded to a question about the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris last week, which he linked to gun violence in the US.
“There are too many fucking guns out there, especially in America,†said the 62-year-old. “I think the population is, like, 320 million? There are over 300 million guns. Privately owned, in America. I think it’s a fucking disgrace. Every week now we’re picking up a newspaper and seeing, ‘Yet another few kids have been killed in schools.’â€
Reported by the Washington Post, Neeson added that there is a distinction between the violence of the movies and reality.
He said: “A character like Bryan Mills going out with guns and taking revenge: it’s fantasy. It’s in the movies, you know? I think it can give people a great release from stresses in life and all the rest of it, you know what I mean? It doesn’t mean they’re all going to go out and go, ‘Yeah, let’s get a gun!’â€
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Holier-than-thou Hollywood celebrities have been making millions from portraying armed heroes in movies, then taking public stands in real life in support of gun control, and they’ve gotten away with it. Except this time.
PARA USA, the company that rented the guns used by Neeson in “Taken 3” (2014), his latest action film, has responded to the movie star’s recent anti-gun, anti-Second Amendment remarks by stating publicly that they will no longer be providing the weapons for his cinematic fantasy roles.
Founded in Fredericksburg, Virginia as the University of Virginia’s women’s college in 1908, the Virginia Normal and Industrial School for Women, later renamed as Mary Washington College, named its college paper “The Bullet” in 1922, the name was an allusion to the college’s location on one of the greatest battlefields of the Civil War. Contemporary hoplophobic priggery has progressed so far, however, that the nincompoops in charge are changing the college newspaper’s name.
A Virginia university has decided to stop calling its newspaper “The Bullet†over concerns that the name was so insensitive and inappropriate that it could even make people violent.
“The editorial board felt that the paper’s name, which alludes to ammunition for an artillery weapon, propagated violence and did not honor our school’s history in a sensitive manner,†newspaper staff said in a release issued Monday.
“The board intends to remain faithful to the history our university stands upon, and we continue to honor this history both in a respectful and meaningful way.â€
Popular among handgun-owners, pistols are defined by their built-in barrel and short stock. They are the most commonly recovered firearm type reported by the ATF. With more than 119,000 pistols found at crime scenes in 2012, this handgun model holds an unfortunately solid first place in criminal weaponry.
One of the most popular pistols is the Glock, a short-recoil operated, semi-automatic pistol produced by Glock Ges.m.b.H. in Deutsch-Wagram, Austria. Glocks comprise 65 percent of the market share of handguns for United States law enforcement agencies and are also frequently used by international law-enforcement.”
Rolling Stones’ The 5 Most Dangerous Guns in America photoessay lists “Pistols, Revolvers, Rifles, Shotguns, and Derringers” as the five firearms “causing the most harm.” Rolling Stone journalists don’t seem to understand that Derringers and Revolvers are pistols, and they provoked a sardonic smile on my part by using a photo (above) of a Phoenix HP-22 to illustrate the pistol tirade which talks all about Glocks. I guess they don’t actually know what a Glock is either.
Good thing inanimate objects do not sue, or all those guns would be in a position to win a libel case based on being blamed for causing harm. I feel perfectly sure that not a single gun ever caused any harm absent human intervention.
Rolling Stone set a kind of new record for ignorant vapidity, and that accomplishment did not go unnoticed and unmocked. There was by last night already a Twitchy page featuring parodies.
Ann Althouse admires Hillary Clinton’s approach to balancing competing values and making hard choices with regard to public policies impacting Americans’ constitutionsl rights. Evidently, you balance those competing values by defining people interested in the ones you don’t like as “a minority” which you will not allow to terrorize the majority.
Hillary’s “guns” riff… contains [an] amazing assertion. … She begins:
First of all, I think as a teacher or really any parent, what’s been happening with these school shootings should cause everybody to just think hard.
“Hard” is Hillary’s key word. It’s her book title — “Hard Choices” — and it’s an all-purpose boast and excuse. She’s capable of doing what’s hard and, when things are hard, one can’t be expected to get everything exactly right. And yes, “hard” invites her critics to mock her in a sexual way, as Rush Limbaugh did on his show yesterday: Hard Choices? Hard?!! That’s going to make everyone think of Bill Clinton’s erections. I’m paraphrasing. What Rush said was: “Now, if Bill had a book and the title of that was Hard Choices with the foreword by Monica Lewinsky, then maybe you might have a book that would walk itself off the shelves.”
Back to the town hall transcript. We’ve seen that Hillary has led off with her core theme: It’s hard.
Which seems to say: We all should just first pause and think about how hard it all is. She expands on hardness:
We make hard choices and we balance competing values all the time.
This might make you think she’s about to give a balanced presentation with careful attention to the opinions and preferences of those who see deep meaning in the right to bear arms. But the values on one side of this values competition dominate:
And I was disappointed that the Congress did not pass universal background checks after the horrors of the shootings at Sandy Hook and now we’ve had more… in the time since.
And I don’t think any parent, any person should have to fear about their child going to school or going to college because someone, for whatever reasons — psychological, emotional, political, ideological, whatever it means — could possibly enter that school property with an automatic weapon and murder innocent children, students, teachers.
I’m well aware that this is a hot political subject.
Hot political subject, yes, but I thought you said there were values here and that it was hard to balance them. Are the gun-rights people just political heat you have to face or do you genuinely contemplate their values? …
But I believe that we need a more thoughtful conversation.
Yes? Do tell. We’re going to balance those competing values? We’re going to cool down and actually think about everything? NO! The next thing she says is:
We cannot let a minority of people — and that’s what it is, it is a minority of people — hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people.
Whoa! That’s the line I was looking for. Read it again and see how shocking it is. Not only did Hillary completely turn her back on “balanc[ing] competing values” and “more thoughtful conversation,” she doesn’t want to allow the people on one side of the conversation even to believe what they believe. Those who care about gun rights and reject new gun regulations should be stopped from holding their viewpoint. Now, it isn’t possible to forcibly prevent people from holding a viewpoint. Our beliefs reside inside our head. And in our system of free speech rights, the government cannot censor the expression of a viewpoint. But the question is Hillary Clinton’s fitness for the highest office, and her statement reveals a grandiose and profoundly repressive mindset. …
Hillary Clinton poses as the coolly thoughtful presider over a national conversation, but if you listen to what she’s saying, she already has her answers and she’s not going to let hold you hold any other viewpoint. The woman who once famously said…
I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration, somehow you’re not patriotic…
… is now ready to deploy the verb “to terrorize” against those who debate and disagree with her.