NRA News: Pennsylvania: Urge Your State Representative to Co-sponsor Sunday Hunting
Cam Edwards talks to Pennsylvania State Rep. John Evans
Quote of the Week (So Far): Good to guns off the streets, wherever they came from
This week The Associated Press via The Wall Street Journal noted that 600 guns were collected in a buyback in Buffalo, New York. The city’s mayor, Byron W. Brown, had a choice quote according to AP:
“Brown said it’s good to get the guns off the streets, wherever they came from. The mayor said that guns can easily get into the hands of children, or they can be stolen in burglaries.”
Yet another mayor who wants to disarms the populace and pay “between $10 and $100 for their weapons.” Why exactly does the mayor think it is “easy” for guns to be stolen anyway? Clearly this mayor doesn’t believe guns could actually offer protection to home owners. And the point that the guns are off the streets, “wherever they came from,” just seems to imply that this mayor thinks that all guns eventually end up on the streets, which is utter nonsense.
Finally, the AP should get their facts straight, as they noted one firearm in particular:
“…a 12-guage ‘street sweeper’ assault rifle.”
What are they talking about? It sounds good, or rather it sounds ominous. But a 12-guage would be a shotgun, and not really that uncommon of a shotgun for hunting. But by no means is it an assault rifle.
This makes us question the validity of this entire piece.
FirearmsTruth.com Goes to The SHOT Show
Deadline Las Vegas. All this week FirearmsTruth.com will be reporting from the annual Shooting, Hunting Outdoor Trade Show – also known as the SHOT Show. This is the largest and most comprehensive trade show for all professionals involved with the shooting sports and hunting industries.
We’ll be looking at the newest and most innovative products that will be available this year for hunters, sport shooters and firearms enthusiasts. Last year’s show in Orlando saw nearly 60,000 in total attendance with more than 1,600 exhibitors and nearly 700,000 square feet of exhibit space – and this year the National Shooting Sports Foundation expects an even bigger show with nearly 2,000 members of the media in attendance.
Check back all week for the latest news from Las Vegas.
Pro Gun Story That is Also a Feel Good Story
NECN reported that a Vermont museum has acquired a large collection of vintage firearms, noting that these antique guns help document “the history of Vermont gunmaking.”
The collection will go on display at the Shelburne Museum next spring. The news site noted:
“The 106-gun collection, amassed by Terry Tyler, consists of firearms manufactured in the state in the 18th and 19th centuries. Among them: Hunting rifles, pistols and military guns from the Mexican-American and Civil Wars, some with stocks made of tiger maple, burled walnut and other decorative woods. The exhibit, ‘Lock, Stock and Barrel: The Terry Tyler Collection of Vermont Firearms,’ opens May 15 at the museum.”
Finally, praising of the history of guns in the media.
Gun in Truck Could Result in Expulsion for Honor Student
An honor student at Columbia Falls High School in Montana could face expulsion. The student reportedly went hunting over the Thanksgiving holiday and inadvertently left a rifle in the truck, which was parked on school grounds.
The first twist here is that the student is 16-year old female honor student Demarie DeReu, a member of student council and varsity cheerleader. Usually these stories involve boys, not girls so obviously this story will likely draw additional media attention given the student’s gender.
The other twist is that DeReu actually turned herself in. DeReu, according to the report from KXLH, reported that the gun was in the truck to school officials. She did so after learning that a contraband dog would be in the parking lot, and this supposedly made her remember the gun.
Did she make a mistake? Absolutely, but should she face expulsion. No, especially since she actually reported the gun to school officials. We realize that many schools have enacted a “zero tolerance” policy in the wake of school shootings, but this is policy often makes zero sense.
Firing Back: To Game or Not to Game
One of my “beats” as a writer and reporter has been to cover the electronic entertainment industry, or as it is more commonly known video games. One game that came out of nowhere in the late 1990s was Deer Hunter. Given the variety of strategy, simulation and shooter games the idea of a hunting game seemed odd. But it was extremely popular, in part because it didn’t demand the most robust computer to play it. It was also a simple enough game that offered a compelling experience.
The genre took off, with numerous follow-ups and many notable brands – such as Cabellas – joined in. Hunting season was open and it wasn’t just limited to deer season. But then like every other oversaturated gaming genre, the hunting games faded away.
The truth is that first person shooters really became far engrossing, and instead of just science fiction type games and their ilk, there was a wave of World War II, and now modern day military simulations. No doubt these took away from the audience. But the hunting games weren’t driven into extinction. Read more
Call for Texas Law to Impede Firearms Ownership: Lower the Drawbridge
Paul Kamprath, a writer for the Austin Liberal Examiner (need we say more?) is calling for a Texas law that would require any gun purchaser to prove that he or she passed a firearms safety course. At the beginning of the editorial Kamprath recalls the story of a recent and unfortunate shooting. A business owner shot a formal employee when that employee returned looking for his old job back. The owner shot the man after a verbal confrontation and was later arrested for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Read more
New York Democrat Calls Open Carry “Throwback to Wild West”
While U.S. News and World Reports offered the floor to both sides of the debate with editorials, it seems odd that Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) would be the anti-”open carry” voice. As a democrat serving New York’s 4th district on Long Island she lives in a part of the state has some very strict gun laws, as this is in a county adjacent to New York City. So when she says in her piece, “I have never been against people owning guns for protection, hunting, or sport,” we have to believe she doesn’t need to be against people owning guns as the state, city and county laws already make it very difficult.
This is the sort of smoke and mirrors that these liberal politicians play. She can say she isn’t against guns, but the district she represents has very strict gun laws already! To this point, she is not one who qualified to speak out about the “open carry” gun laws in other parts of the country. But she also attempts to make her point by bring up some key facts:
“In the summer of 2009, a man stood just outside a venue in New Hampshire with President Obama inside talking about healthcare reform. He had a gun openly strapped to his thigh. Another time while the president was giving a speech at the convention center in Phoenix, a dozen people were openly carrying guns, including one who walked around with an AR-15 assault rifle strapped to his back. In this session of Congress, laws were passed to allow guns on Amtrak trains and in our national parks. Where does it end? When will people realize that we are moving backwards in reducing gun violence? And now it is happening throughout the states.”
Let’s tackle these one at a time. The man who stood outside a venue in New Hampshire, was as she says “outside.” He didn’t attempt to bring the gun inside, and who is to say whether anyone “illegally” had a concealed weapon? We just don’t know. The same goes for the situation in Phoenix. The guns were never near the POTUS, and no one was hurt. To the Amtrak trains, passengers can’t take guns to their seats, and guns must travel as “cargo.” What’s the problem? Already people could just as easily bring guns illegally as well. Same goes with the national parks, just because the law is changing doesn’t mean that people weren’t previously breaking the law.
But to the final point in her above statement: “gun violence.” Violent crime in the country is down, as ownership of firearms is up. But Rep. McCarthy lives in, and represents a district that has such strict gun laws that she probably knows (or represents) few actual gun owners. This makes her unqualified to discuss Open Carry.
Boston Globe Mommy Column Weighs in on Gun Issue
The issue of guns and children comes up a lot, but a letter to the Child Caring column in The Boston Globe clearly had an anti-gun bias. First the letter was written (and/or edited) to make it seem a bit more sensational than it needed to be:
“I have a 9-month-old daughter, and her dad and I have split up. He has a .45 and he owns rifles that he uses to go hunting. He keeps the rifles in his gun safe but has his .45 sitting in a drawer right next to the baby’s crib.” Read more
New York Times Offers Biased Take on Canadian Gun Laws
In an article from The New York Times this week it sounds like the old gray lady believes Canada to be more enlightened about firearms, and health care!
“OTTAWA — Like public health care, Canada’s tight gun-control laws help distinguish the country from its powerful neighbor to the south. But as Canadians commemorated the 20th anniversary of one of the country’s most notorious shooting sprees on Sunday, their Parliament was on course to eliminate one of its most significant gun-control measures.”
The question we’d like to ask is whether these laws actually distinguish Canada in a good way? Anyone? But let’s look at some other questionable points in the article. First up, note how the firearm is described in this passage:
“A decade before the Columbine high school shootings set off a national debate on gun violence in the United States, an angry, unemployed 25-year-old armed with a semiautomatic hunting rifle stormed the École Polytechnique, an engineering school in Montreal.”
Then the article goes a bit further, and note the use of the wording here:
“The current debate does not involve handguns, whose registration has been required since 1934. Nor does it involve a variety of military-style weapons like assault rifles and sawed-off shotguns, which are banned outright. And the law’s repeal would not alter the requirement that gun buyers take safety courses and obtain a license.”
A “military-style weapon” is not a “hunting rifle” nor is a “sawed-off shotgun” a military weapon or hunting weapon. This is just another case where lots of different scary sounding words are thrown around to confuse the reader. Not exactly solid reporting, now is it?
