Month: February 2018

Heading back behind enemy lines.

I’ve mentioned it a few times here and there but, blog title notwithstanding, I’m not actually an Arizona native. I actually was born in San Francisco and raised in the Bay Area. How I got into shooting is a long story, but it involved a few locals, Oleg Volk, The High Road forum, and a few other online resources back in the day. I had moved to Arizona to go to university (Bear Down!), continued my interest in shooting, and started blogging, hence the name of this blog. Later, I ended up moving to Switzerland for grad school, but always planned on returning to the US (ideally to a free state) to settle down, work, etc.

Now, a decade later, I’ve got a bit more gray in my beard and a PhD hanging on my wall, and life is taking me back to the Bay Area for a new job (a postdoc), which I start in a few months. Although the job is fantastic and offers significant upward career mobility, benefits, the opportunity to be close to family and old friends, etc., the fact that it’s (a) in California and (b) in the Bay Area is a major downside in terms of gun stuff.

Things have really gone downhill on that front since I left years ago. Some things, like the absurd AWB, are still in place and haven’t really changed much (Banning “bullet button” guns? Really?), but other new things are really onerous (background checks for ammo purchases, no online ammo sales, soon state registration of each ammo purchase, etc.) and I’m not looking forward to that.

It’s likely that I’ll end up living in either San Mateo or Alameda counties, both of which are decidedly hostile to gun rights (though they have decent public ranges, shops, etc., but a CCW permit is essentially off the table), which is problematic. There’s also the possibility of living in San Joaquin county, which is a bit more CCW friendly (it’s not completely off the table). Cost of living in San Joaquin county is also significantly less, which is a plus.

The postdoc contract is only for two years, but many people are offered permanent positions upon completion of the postdoc, so I may consider it as a long-term career at the end of the contract. Who knows? I need to weigh many options, including career-related things, cost of living, family-friendliness, gun rights, etc. over the course of my time there to figure out what to do.

Anyway, I’ll continue to blog as usual (though hopefully more often, as there’s more opportunity to shoot there, clubs, etc. and I’ll have more free time). Wish me luck.

Knowing so many things that aren’t so.

Ronald Reagan once said, “It isn’t so much that liberals are ignorant. It’s just that they know so many things that aren’t so.”

Every day proves that statement to be more and more true.

In looking over the print media coverage of the Parkland , I’ve been astounded at the number of blatantly untrue things about the NRA, guns, I’ve seen reported as fact.

Some examples that stand out to me:

  • The NRA is “pro-slaughter”. (WTF?)
  • The NRA TV channel produces dangerous, violent content. (Really? Really? Even the most controversial stuff they’ve put out explicitly condemns violence.)
  • The NRA is primarily funded by and works for the interests of gun manufacturers and industry, who are unfathomably evil and complicit in the murders of innocents.
  • Gun owners and NRA members receive “marching orders” from the NRA itself and follow them like automatons.
  • The AR-15 is a “weapon of mass destruction”. (No, it’s just a goddamn rifle.)
  • Someone armed with a “conventional” weapon (yes, the article used that term) stands no chance against a bad guy with an AR-15. No chance at all, so why bother?
  • Groups like the CSGV, VPC, Giffords, or Everytown are even remotely credible sources for information about guns, gun specifications/technology, etc. Seriously, I’ve seen newspapers quote reps from CSGV and VPC as if they are reputable, credible sources. I had to physically restrain myself from guffawing.
  • Plans to “arm teachers” mean something more than “let willing, volunteer teachers carry concealed as a last-resort against violent attack”.
  • The “armed teacher” strategy would be something other than “standard lockdown procedures, getting behind cover/concealment like a desk, and aiming a pistol at the door”, and that training requirements would be too rigorous. One particular example, to which I won’t link, stated that soldiers need tons of practice and constant training for tactical movement, coordination, communication, building clearing, etc. (all of which is true!) and implied that similar training would be necessary for teachers, and so that proposals to arm teachers are ludicrous. Ok, fair enough, the training requirements for teachers are likely to be a bit more rigorous than “aim at the door and shoot the bad guy when they come in”, but it’s by no means necessary to turn teachers into Special Forces operators or anything.
  • Armed teachers would somehow make things worse in the event of a school shooting. Honestly, I can’t think of much worse things than a deranged killer rampaging through defenseless people. Even in the terrible, exceedingly unlikely situation where an armed teacher hits an innocent person, or a cop clearing the building shoots the armed teacher, that’s almost certainly a better outcome than what would come about if the bad guy was left unchecked.

In addition, I’ve had someone in a discussion claim that it’s equally as morally and ethically repugnant to be “forcing students to be in the same room as an armed teacher” [their position] (even if the teacher is safely carrying concealed with nobody the wiser) as it is to “forcibly deny people the right to self-defense, leaving them defenseless against a deranged bad guy” [my position].

I’ve seriously wondered if something has gotten into the water, because people are losing their minds over this. These are interesting times, and it’ll be interesting to see how things play out.

In the interim, I really need to stop reading the news and stock up on antacids.

Pistols are pistols, rifles are rifles

Evidently a radiologist has discovered that rifle bullets are, in general, much more energetic than pistol bullets, and this confuses her.

Routine handgun injuries leave entry and exit wounds and linear tracks through the victim’s body that are roughly the size of the bullet. If the bullet does not directly hit something crucial like the heart or the aorta, and they do not bleed to death before being transported to our care at a trauma center, chances are, we can save the victim. The bullets fired by an AR-15 are different; they travel at higher velocity and are far more lethal. The damage they cause is a function of the energy they impart as they pass through the body. A typical AR-15 bullet leaves the barrel traveling almost three times faster than, and imparting more than three times the energy of, a typical 9mm bullet from a handgun.

Yes, indeed, tissue damage is a function of energy. That’s precisely why different types of guns exist for different purposes.

Also, the good doctor is a bit confused with the math: a 55gr M193 5.56mm NATO round has roughly five times (not three) the muzzle energy of a 124gr Federal FMJ 9mm bullet according to Wikipedia and some data from my reloading books.

As a doctor, I feel I have a duty to inform the public of what I have learned as I have observed these wounds and cared for these patients. It’s clear to me that AR-15 or other high-velocity weapons, especially when outfitted with a high-capacity magazine, have no place in a civilian’s gun cabinet.

Wait, so now all rifles (“other high-velocity weapons”) are bad? I always heard the gun control types talk about how handguns are bad but rifles and shotguns are “sporting” and thus fine for “responsible gun owners” to possess. Now rifles are bad and have no place in a civilian’s gun cabinet?

Hmm.

The doctor then continues on for a bit with the usual gun control tropes (“AR-15s are bad!”, “Reinstate the AWB!”, etc.). No surprise there.

While I respect the doctor for doing an unpleasant, stressful job, they clearly less of an understanding of guns and wound ballistics than someone who’s ever shot a watermelon with a pistol and a rifle. Hopefully she can educate herself, so she doesn’t make such a fool out of herself in public again.

Attempting to de-legitimize the NRA and gun rights supporters

Although the pro-gun-rights side has numbers, a real grassroots movement, political influence, court cases, and intensity on our side (at least for now; who knows how our representatives will sell us out), the opposition has a substantial presence on social media and a willingness to use it. This has been made clear by a concerted effort to de-legitimize the NRA, supporters of gun rights, and millions of gun owners and sympathetic Americans.

As an example, various Hollywood stars are now calling for Amazon and other streaming service operators to remove the NRA TV channel or app from their services.

Why? Because they don’t like what they have to say and they are actively trying to make the NRA and its members seem to be not only less legitimate, but instead monstrous accomplices of mass murderers.

Certainly, Amazon and streaming services have the right, as private enterprises, to include or not include any channel or app with their services. It would be well within their rights to remove or de-list the NRA TV channel or app, but I argue that this is both a bad idea and extremely troubling. The content that NRA TV is producing is of interest to a wide audience (else they wouldn’t make it), is lawful, and does not harass, defame, or otherwise harm others. De-listing them would move Amazon and others from a mostly-neutral platform provider to an arbiter of content, which is something I very much doubt they wish to be.

Similarly, people have been pressuring a variety of companies (including Enterprise, Avis, Hertz, First National Bank of Omaha, etc.) to sever their longstanding partnerships with the NRA. I also find this troubling, but less so than the attempts at de-listing the NRA TV app. Again, private enterprises are free to partner (or not) with whomever they choose, but I don’t understand why they bend to the whim of a noisy group of activists who likely don’t use their product or service anyway. Perhaps they think it avoids bad PR and protests on social media? I have no idea: blogs aside, my only use of social media is sharing family photos and the like on Facebook with family and friends since I have a large extended family scattered all over the place. I studiously avoid Twitter like the plague it is.

But I digress: it appears that the initial attempts at de-legitimizing the NRA and gun owners, in that several companies have publicly de-partnered with the NRA (though it likely has little effect over all, and many partnerships like the NRA-branded credit card are likely to be replaced quickly by a more NRA-aligned proivder) has been moderately successful.

How could we, as the gun owning community, counter this? I’m open to suggestions.