Gun Culture

Thursday, March 31, 2005

Doug Ritter Mini RSK

So who is Doug Ritter?
Rather usefully there is a bio at Equipped To Survive so if you’re interested you can go look.
Meantime though - what’s a Mini RSK?
No prizes for guessing that it is a smaller version of the RSK, which stands for Ritter Survival Knife.  The RSK is a variant of the Benchmade Griptillian folding knife.  The story of the development of the RSK is also at Equipped To Survive.  You also get a rather sweet animation of the inner workings of the axis locking mechanism, a locking mech that I’ve never owned before.
There’s nothing I can add to the words on construction, so I won’t try.
Some pics and description in the extended Read More thingy so those poor souls without broadband don’t lose the will to live.

Continue reading Doug Ritter Mini RSK...

Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Another Victim of Government

No doubt the internet will be full of people from both sides of the spectrum commenting on the teacher who gave some yobs The Fear with an air pistol.  Story in Telegraph

How about this for a comment:

Hang on folks. This woman discharged a potentially lethal weapon towards a group of children for God’s sake. She could have killed one of them or, worse, killed some poor bugger walking past. Two wrongs DO NOT make a right - she so totally deserves to be sentenced custodially.

However can any law abiding shooter condone her actions? I have no doubt she was stressed etc but that shouldn’t be viewed as an excuse. Sorry for sounding harsh but she has done lawful shooting untold damage

As the last sentence may have given away this comment was from a shooter.  Interesting that the commentor calls the gang of thugs children.  The main confrontee was actually 18, when did 18 year olds become children?  The use of the term children is exactly the sort of thing the gun grabbers do, it is a measure of their success that they have shooters using the same terms.

It’s pretty much redundant of me to tell you my thoughts, you could probably figure those out.  However there’s no point in a blog unless you are going to give people your various ramblings.

Did Mrs Walker do the wrong thing?
Context is important.  We are told that society will protect us, indeed we pay vast sums to the government to maintain an effective criminal justice system.  So if we are to assume that this system operates as it should then no problem.  Problem with yobs, no imminent threat - call plod and the job is sorted.
Alternatively let us assume that system does not work.  Let us assume that the plod either can’t be arsed or are hamstrung to the point of uselessness in the face of true antisocial behaviour/criminal activity.  Call the plod and they either don’t come or come and offer empty words of reassurance.

What now?  Suffer extended abuse and harrasment from the ‘chavs’ and thugs.  An effective white noise of anti social behaviour.  Even the best of us could crack under that, and why shouldn’t we?  We still have the duty to prevent a breach of the peace and the right to use force to ensure that peace.  Mrs Walker had a lawful duty and therefore a lawful reason to possess an ‘offensive weapon’ in order to enforce the peace.
Modern political correctness and generations of brainwashed lawyers mean that a defence of lawful duty was unlikely to have been mooted and highly likely to have failed if it had.

Yet another good person hung out to dry by the very legal system which failed them in the first place.

Monday, March 21, 2005

True Tory Colours

There are people (and by people I mean shooters) who still believe that if only the Tories were back in power then we would see some sensible approaches to gun laws.  This despite it being the Tories who started off the process which lead to the prohibition of handguns.
Howard himself teased them with this

“I don’t think the answer to every tragedy is to introduce a new ban or change the law whenever something like that happens.

“I was Home Secretary at the time of the terrible tragedy at Dunblane. We did impose restrictions after that. I think the Government then went too far in banning handguns altogether.”

Hopefully now they will wake up and acknowledge their misplaced faith.  In the Telegraph comes the killer line:

Later, a Conservative spokesman said: “The party has no intention of reversing the ban on handguns.”

Thursday, March 17, 2005

Labour has done a lot for shooting

What’s that you say?  Load of old what?
Well apparently not, according to the Parliamentary Spokesman for bullshitting Shooting & Fishing - Martin Slater
In today’s Telegraph Letters

Labour has done a lot for shooting and fishing

Sir - It would be refreshing if the chief executive of the Countryside Alliance, Simon Hart (Letters, Mar 12), acknowledged Labour achievements for the sports of shooting and fishing, all of which occurred outside the election period.

Labour has done more for angling than any other party and is about to update its 1996 Charter for Angling. It is also about to become the first party to produce a charter for shooting with the co-operation of shooting’s governing bodies.

Since 1997 the Government has taken action to protect fish stocks from cormorant predation by relaxing the licensing scheme to allow more birds to be shot. It has made changes to the Hunting Bill to protect shooting sports, consistently promoted game as food, maintained the ability of young people to shoot airguns unsupervised on private land, and excluded fish from the Animal Welfare Bill.

Many leading people in angling and shooting want nothing to do with the Countryside Alliance because they will always be a front for foxhunting. The way to protect fishing and shooting is to build a cross-party coalition of support for both sports.

Martin Salter MP, Parliamentary Spokesman for Shooting and Fishing, London SW1

I’ve highlighted the single bit that mentions shooting.  Odd don’t you think that Martin thinks we should thank Labour for backing down on something it wanted to do i.e. ban young ‘uns from shooting airguns on private property or to mention the disgusting hunt ban as a positive for shooters.  No mention of the fact that thanks to Labour the young ‘uns must be transported to and fro from same private land by an adult.  No mention of the fact that the prohibition was their idea in the first place.  And certainly no mention of the myriad of restrictions on shooting sports brought in by his Labour chums since 1997.  Let’s see:
completion of handgun ban
banning of SCGC air guns without either compensation or publicity (not to mention any gain in public safety)
restrictions on youths carrying secure airguns to and from private land
funding of IANSA and by association the Gun Control Nutters

I have absolutely no doubt that I have missed much but Mr Wolf Blass is doing his thing right now!

Labour has done a lot for shooting?
I don’t fucking think so.

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

UN Gun Debate

Readers and gun owners from Blighty can be (almost) forgiven for never having heard of The Great UN Gun Debate.  Despite this event taking place in London and featuring arch gun grabbing witch Rebbeca Peters versus Wayne La Pierre (hope I don’t need to tell you who he is!) this event was not mentioned by the UK NRA, nor by BASC or even the Countryside Alliance.  This is because our domestic representative bodies do not like to be associated with the NRA.  This is because the NRA speak some truths about gun ownership, they do not just cower behind their own little branch of firearms ownership hoping the bad guys will not notice them if they stay quiet.
The one organisation we have who are happy to associate with the NRA are the Sportsman’s Association.  Even they are slighty circumspect regarding ownership of firearms for self defence.  Whilst many members and a number of council members are in support of firearms ownership for self defence, the official line is not to promote this.  A mistake of course and one which has been repeated without exception throughout the UK ‘representative bodies’.
As usual, I digress!
This debate took place in Kings College Library London last year and I have bought a copy of the DVD from the NRA as I was unable to attend due to the short notice of the invite.  Only the Sportsman’s Association would co-operate with the NRA by inviting it’s members to attend - all the others did not want to be associated.  Cowards.
Clearly I held a very large bias towards the NRA viewpoint, but even so the contrast between the speakers approach was telling.  Peters (who looks a bit like a chimp - especially on fast forward) rattled off a load of off-topic, emotional toss in her opening statement.  Rubbish about the damage that firearms cause - all delivered with the implication that if only these firearms did not exist then crime would vanish, oppresive governments would see the error of their ways and that women across the globe would be safe.  A very bizarre moment when she described air guns and replica weapons as ‘loopholes’ that criminals exploited.  A couple of vague references to statistics ‘proving’ that gun bans in Oz and Blighty were amazing successes, how the hall did not erupt into laughter escapes me.  At the bell for end of time (there was also a one minute to go bell) Peters continued to ramble on, the moderator having to remind her twice to shut up and getting up to get her to wind up.
Wayne’s opening statement was well structured and stuck to the topic in hand, statistics where used were referenced.  He also had a couple of useful comments from Peters made elsewhere.  Comments such as her desire to ban all weapons capable of firing more than one hundred yards (i.e. all of them!) showed her true aim of banning guns of any kind, be they military arms, sporting arms, defensive arms or child’s toy guns.
Wayne’s professional manner also showed in the fact that his speech was completed within the alloted time - without running over or needing the moderator to interviene.
In the question & answer phase a couple of comments from the witch stood out.  Having had her ealier statistics shot down as either false or misleading she now declared that she didn’t care about the statistics because IANSA member organisations ‘knew’ that bans were successful.
Of course there was the more widely reported comment to a sporting shooter

Get another sport

Nice.
UK firearms owners/enthusiasts need a Wayne La Pierre.  We need an NRA.  We aren’t going to get one because we are as divided as the Judean Popular Peoples Front, too busy bitching amongst ourselves and blaming the other guy for this that or the other gun ban.  Divided we are fallling.

I’m glad that we have an organisation such as the NRA and a man of Wayne La Pierre’s calibre fighting international gun banners, this is why I’m a member of the NRA and delighted to give them some cash.

Thursday, March 03, 2005

Short Memory?

Cor lummy guvnor.  I’ve been quoted at The Edge of England’s Sword by Drake.
Admittedly he is saying he doesn’t agree with me, but hey I take it where I can find it....
Since TEES doesn’t do comments I’ll post my repost here.

The problem is that the rejectionist argument invariably seems to include things like “I am not one to pretend that such a threat does not exist, however I do doubt greatly the scale of the threat” even from people who are otherwise sensible. You see I just don’t believe that. I think the threat is real and awesome. I think that Blair probably sees terrible things come over his desk each time one of the batches of terror arrests is made here. Furthermore I think that in the name of good public policy we have to take him at his word that the threat is real: saying the threat is less is a good way to excuse oneself from the really hard decisions, because after all if the threat is less severe then you can reject all the proposed measures with a clear conscience.

My emphasis obviously.
Firstly ‘otherwise sensible’ can’t be referring to me!
But the other points regarding the things Blair sees and taking him at his word.
I really can’t see my way clear to that old chap.  Firstly Blair is a compulsive liar and secondly the last time we took his word regarding intelligence it proved to be a monumental load of old cobblers.
I can see Drake’s problem with siding with the Lib Dems, but I don’t think siding with Blair is an acceptable alternative.
More words on the matter from Samizdata where an excert from a letter in The Times is reproduced.

Tony Blair claims that “there is no greater civil liberty than to live free from terrorist attack”.
He is wrong. If the 20th century teaches us anything it is that the greatest threat to civil liberty comes from governments that have been allowed to exercise excessive power over their own people. The greatest civil liberty is to live securely protected from government intrusion. We have seen that, while terrorists can threaten the lives of hundreds and maybe thousands, governments can oppress and maltreat entire peoples and can do this for decades.

Quite.

Thanks for the link BTW Mr Drake!

ID Theft

The Which? story about ID Theft is all over the place at the moment.
Not surprisingly this is being used as a ‘reason’ for compulsory ID cards.

The survey of 975 people found seven out of 10 favoured compulsory ID cards as a way to fight fraud.

Fools.
ID cards will be superb for fraudsters, what better ‘proof’ of ID than a convincing official ID card.  Fake ID cards will be available before even the official ones have been distributed - count on it.
Oh and the estimated cost of ID fraud?  1.3 billion pounds per year.
Estimated cost of ID cards?  If you believe the government it is 5.5 billion over ten years, but when was the last time a large scale IT based government project came in anywhere near budget.

I recommend No2ID as a source of information of the downsides of ID cards.

Shattered Dreams

I type before you a broken man.  A shell of my former self.
What could have caused this singular tragedy?  Read on.
Since a young chap I have desired an MX-5, Mazda’s rediscovery of the archetypal British Sports Car.
A wonderful formula - lightweight, rear wheel drive, two seater, top down, basic mechanics.  Smashing.
Driven by a lot of blonde women, but I don’t let that worry me - it’s a great car.
However various costs (being a student, buying a house etc) lay in the way for many years.
Until yesterday when I discovered that an MX-5 can be had on contract hire for little more than two hundred dobbs a month!
Joy, delight etc.  I had thought that buying new windows for the Gun Culture Bunker had put the kybosh on a ‘5 for yet another year.
Hi me to the dealership to try one on for size.  I wasn’t too worried, a friend had a G registered one a while back and whilst the cockpit was snug it was do-able.  And there it was, gleaming in the showroom, this vehicle that was within a few short weeks of being in my garage.  Fold my (6’5") frame into the seat.........

Arrrrrgghhhhhhh.
The bloody steering wheel is jammed tight on my thighs!

No steering wheel adjust (only needs to go up an inch) and no travel left in the seat.
Shattered.
I managed to maintain the stiff upper lip in the face of the ponce masquerading as a salesman.
I found it quite hard not to smack the little twat to be honest.  He was Too Short to be a real man for a start and he had one of those ridiculous hair-do’s.  I’m sure you know the sort, spikey, way too much hair gel and dyed blonde with the roots being brown.  Wanker.  Not normally motivation enough to want to punch someone though.  No the reason for this is that he suggested I might consider an RX-8.  Yeah right.  I want a roadster and you think that thing over there is somehow similar?  Nob head.  When I pointed out it’s obvious lack of drop-toppery, his suggestion?

You could get a sunroof.

Arsehole.

So over to the nearby Toyota garage, where the salesman is busy on the ‘phone.  I can see his tasteless signet with a G on it, clearly from Argos or somewhere.  He is talking crap with someone.  Does he say to his caller “Excuse me I have a client who quite clearly earns at least double my salary wishing to purchase a brand new sports car”?  Nope, he continues to talk his banal talk.  Even when he is done he is no use whatsoever - Swiss Tony wanker.

Another garage has an MR2 on the forecourt which I duly squeeze myself into.  Relief.  It fits.  Well apart from the bizarre bit of scaffolding pipe pretending to be a door handle digging into my knee that is.  Not to worry soon have that off with an angle grinder or similar.
A quick look at the contract hire mob shows that the MR2 is some 100 notes more per month than the ‘5 though.  So bugger that, I’ll wait until I have the cash to buy it outright.
The thing is though, it just isn’t a ‘5 is it?

Update
JohnJo reminded me about the upcoming ‘5 the Mk3.  Whilst doing some research I found a video of the launch party in Geneva.  If you come across this, do yourself a favour and DO NOT BOTHER TO WATCH.  There is some 20 minutes of some tedious bird (not even tasty) banging on about the games and special drinks and entertainment at the launch of the “Massda MX-5” when you either want the insight or even better the footage of the vehicle.  Launch parties must surely be the biggest load of toss.
Anyway, the Chief Engineer was cracking on about how one of the briefs was to make the car more accessible to “the taller driver”.
Super.
Tears drying up a bit now.

Beginning of the end?

From yesterday’s Telegraph

How far this Government stretches its tentacles into everyday life. As of yesterday, anyone rough-shooting in a remote part of the country will have to satisfy the terms of a general shooting licence, number WLF 18. Whenever they take a pot-shot at a pigeon, they’ll first have to think: “Have appropriate non-lethal methods of control such as scaring been either ineffective or impracticable in dealing with this bird?”

The licence is a pointless one: it applies only to pests which are, by their very nature, harmful to crops and in no danger of extinction. But it is too much to expect logic in a paradoxical touchy-feely world, where the RSPB can condemn the shooting of magpies, even though magpies are plentiful and the songbirds whose eggs and young they eat are not.

After the hunt ban, saboteurs talked of spreading their net to shooting, which has the same wrongly conceived class connotations. The Government has shown few signs yet of backing a shooting ban; this licence is a straw in the wind.

Swift and the gang seem to think there is no issue

New wording in the general licences, which allow pest birds such as crows and pigeons to be controlled, will not restrict pigeon shooting or other pest control on shoots or farms.

BASC has issued advice to its 122,000 members that they will be able to continue to control pests - and in the case of woodpigeons enjoy sporting shooting - as they have done under general licences since their introduction in 1990.

The EU Birds Directive protects all birds with two exceptions: “game” shooting, subject to certain conditions such as closed seasons, and pest control under licence where there is no other satisfactory solution. This latter condition has always been implicit in all such licences. The new wording merely makes it explicit in order to show beyond doubt that the general licence complies with European law.

BASC Chief Executive, John Swift, said;
“Those who shoot or use traps to control pests do not themselves have to have tried other methods first. In the unlikely event of an authorised person being challenged by the police he would simply have to state that what he was doing was a contribution to crop protection and cite the extensive literature that demonstrates non-lethal methods to be ineffective and impracticable. He might also add that the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs states in the opening paragraph of the licence “that there is no other satisfactory solution”.

I’m afraid that doesn’t cut much ice with me Swifty.
This may not be used to restrict shooting this year, but once Bliar and Co are firmly ensconced back in Downing Street you can be sure that this will raise it’s very ugly head once more.  The familiar pattern of deny the issue, acknowledge a threat but reassure, deliver fait acomplie by saying ‘oh it’s too late now’.
In fact we don’t need to look very far at all to see the beginnings of this.
Remember the hoo-ha about Magpie Shooting in the self same publication?

A spokesman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs described the magazine as irresponsible.

“It is encouraging people to break the law because they can’t prove these magpies are predating on young birds – it is just their belief,” he said.

So in other words we cannot shoot pests unless we can prove a specific problem with a specific bird and have shown an effort has been made to resolve the problem in a non-lethal fashion.
The forerunner of the end of pest shooting for sport in the UK.  Within 10 years only licensed pest controllers will be able to deal with infestations - count on it.