I can’t get my head around the idea that it’s OK to keep a loaded weapon in the house.  There are many people that keep one for “self defense” or whatever but I just can’t do it.  Even the pistol I have locked in the pistol safe doesn’t have a round in the chamber…I can’t bring myself to keep a loaded gun in the house.  The risk/reward just isn’t there at all.

It’s these kinds of “accidents” that can easily be prevented.  These “accidents” are what keeps the ignorant public fearful of firearms and stories like this are used to back tighter legislation and further restrictions.  We need to enforce the laws on the books, this guy needs to be charged with what he can be charged with currently.

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FARGO – Police say no one was injured when a handgun accidentally discharged in a south Fargo condo early today.

Sgt. Bill Ahlfeldt said the gun’s owner had just had some repair work done on the gun and was testing it at about 1:45 a.m. to see if a round would cycle through. As he tried to extract the live round from the chamber, the pistol went off in the home in the 3000 block of 23rd Avenue South.

“It was either some type of mechanical malfunction with the weapon or operator error,” Ahlfeldt said.

The bullet traveled through an exterior wall and into an open courtyard-type area, he said.

Officers checked on residents of homes in the bullet’s likely trajectory but found no injuries and no signs that the bullet had entered another home, Ahlfeldt said.

Police plan to file a long-form complaint in municipal court against the owner for discharge of a firearm in city limits, he said.

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The Star Tribune reported that the victims included an 8-year-old boy who was shot in the head by a 13-year-old with a gun that shoots plastic bullets and a 4-year-old girl who was shot in the neck by a pellet gun as she sat outside her house with her father.

Reporting the pellet gun shooting is marginal at best.  I could see how something like that would get reported in a fargo (or smaller) news paper, but in the cities?  and to be reproduced in another town is pretty over the top…but the 8 year old shot with a plastic pellet gun?  In what world does that qualify as a “shooting”?  Are we going to start adding water guns to the list of shootings and the survival statistics?

Further down the article:

Police say three teenagers were also shot as they played football in the street.

Given that the first two “shootings” they reported on where a joke…when they come to one that sounds serious I can’t help but want more details…but naturally none are given.

That’s five of the shootings…the article reports seven…but there is no information about the other two people.  Maybe they were water gun related incidents.  Articles like this wreak of an agenda, and that’s unfortunate for the public.

full article:

MINNEAPOLIS — Seven people the age of 18 or younger were shot within seven hours in Minneapolis.

Inspector Mike Martin says none of five separate shootings Monday night appear related.

The Star Tribune reported that the victims included an 8-year-old boy who was shot in the head by a 13-year-old with a gun that shoots plastic bullets and a 4-year-old girl who was shot in the neck by a pellet gun as she sat outside her house with her father.

Police say three teenagers were also shot as they played football in the street.

The seven victims are either expected to survive or police didn’t release updates on their conditions

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Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the five justice majority saying “the right to keep and bear arms must be regarded as a substantive guarantee, not a prohibition that could be ignored so long as the States legislated in an evenhanded manner.”

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JAMESTOWN, N.D. — Jamestown police say a downtown business has reported the theft of about $4,500 worth of guns.

Capt. Gary Peterson says a window and a glass door were discovered broken at Gun and Reel Sports early Wednesday.

Eight handguns were missing. Store officials were doing an inventory to determine if anything else was gone.

Office manager Gary Docktor says the store has a security alarm but the window and door that were broken were not part of the system.

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press

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Why is it so difficult for educated people to grasp the intent behind the 2nd amendment?  It was put in place for two primary reasons.  The first was if the “state” needed to defend itself or “call up” (draft) people to the militia they

1. had their own guns
2. were proficient with said guns

It had pretty much nothing to do with “hunting” or “personal protection”, it was so the people were cheaply trained when the state needed them.

Also, look at the government and oppression that they just finished fighting?  Naturally they were mistrustful of big government and huge regulation dealing with what people can or cannot do, they just finished fighting a war and wanted to make sure they were prepared to fight another one.  The 2nd amendment wasn’t drafted by the founding fathers….think about that for a minute.  None of the amendments were “important” enough for the fathers to put them in the constitution itself.  These were additions to the constitution to get the states on board.  The states had an interest in protecting themselves against the federal government.  The second reason it was included in the bill of rights was so the states could use the citizens to protect the citizens.

Naturally, over time, the ideas behind what the “founding fathers” and infant states wanted have been warped.  What about the founding father’s intent to give states sovereignty?  what about their intent that the federal government not be bigger than the states?  this idea has obviously gone out the window…why are we clinging to these few “rights” that are specifically outlined…like they can’t be tossed aside at any time as well.

Things change as technology moves forward and a nation matures.  The constitution is just a piece of paper, some general ideas laid out by some white haired old guys.  I’m not even sure the ideas contained in it are good for the long term growth and prosperity of a nation.  Can anyone look at the state of the US right now and say we are the best nation on the planet?  or that we have the best ideas on how to do thing?  Is our average quality of living better than the French?  Italians?  Sweeds?  I really don’t know.  I do know that from my limited perspective it doesn’t seem like our government is very effective or efficient.

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I don’t get the opportunity to shoot much around here, so when it does come up I like to take full advantage of it.  I took the three pistols I own as well as the .270 and the kid’s .22.  I was planning on taking the .30-06 but I didn’t have any shells for it.  I had to buy shells for the .270, and if I also bought for the .30-06 we could have been looking at quite a bit of money for some pissing around.  I started digging out the essential gear for going to the range…and it quickly be came obvious why this isn’t something a guy can do on just a whim.  To be fair, if I was going with a pistol or the SKS, I could just grab a gun, ammo and some ear protection and fly out the door…but I wanted to dial in the .270 and to do that it takes the weighted rest as well as a spotting scope.  It doesn’t seem like those two things really add to much to the over all gear package…but with the weighted rest you have to bring the weight bags…I needed an extra ammo can for the extra brass and the kids little spinning gopher target.  More than enough shit to be hauling around for an afternoon.

When we got to the range there was one other guy there and two guys leaving.  This is a pretty good setup for me, I prefer to have no one there but on a sunny Saturday afternoon that’s an unrealistic expectation.  Not long after we arrived an older guy and 2 (I assume grand kids) showed up.  This gave me an opportunity to place some targets down range…well just one target as I soon found out the stapler was empty.  I had brought extra staples, but of course I didn’t check the damn thing before I walked the 100 yards down range to put up the target(s).  I decided to wait for another break in the action to put up more instead of holding everyone up.

The kid enjoyed shooting at her gopher for about 15 min…then she was ready to go off playing in the trees.  This is her usual entertainment out there and wasn’t a real big deal.  It keeps her occupied and gives me some time to focus on what I’m doing instead of watching her to make sure she’s safe and correct.  I set the .270 up on the weighted shooting rest and started turning the various knobs to adjust things.  I was a little skeptical about the usefulness of this contraption when I bought it, but it did look like it might be handy.  After putting a few magazines worth of ammo through the rifle I was wondering why I hadn’t bought something like this years ago.

I can’t remember exactly what brand mine is, and googling it seems to only return results for “cadwell lead sled”.  That’s not what mine is, it was about 40 bucks cheaper, but it does the exact same thing in the exact same way.  Maybe the cadwell one is lighter to carry around or something…but that was pretty much irrelevant to me.As you should be able to see from the picture, you set the rifle in the rest and adjust the up and down so it fits you right as you are setting at the bench.  Then you adjust the up and down to put it on target, as well as a fine left and right adjustment.  Once you have it dialed in all you really have to do is touch the trigger.  The weight bags helped to really cut down the recoil of the rifle.  I don’t know how much it cuts it down…but I went through 50 rounds and didn’t feel anything in my shoulder.  Had I been shooting the rifle against my shoulder without any form of reduction or just in the clothing I usually wear I would have been pretty bruised up and somewhat soar the next day.

It took me about 1/2 a box of ammo to figure out how to use the rest.  My first instinct was to position in the rest about on target then try to hold the rifle into my shoulder pocket as I normally would.  This turned out to give me very erratic results and frustrate me.  In the interests of being “safe” I would chamber a round, leave the bolt up and adjust things so the rifle is sighted in…then I would put the bolt down.  The force required to put the bolt down is pretty negligible but in a situation like this it’s enough to throw the cross hairs off target.  My option at this point was to either man handle the rifle into position or adjust things with the rifle in an unsafe state…neither was very appealing.  Then it finally dawned on me…drop the bolt and engage the god damn safety….

After I put the safety on I was able to move the dials to position the rifle exactly where I wanted it.  Flipping the safety off is a straight forward flick of my thumb, which didn’t move the cross hairs at all, then a brush of the trigger and we’re off.  I spent the next 20 rounds dialing in the sights.  This gun was my brother’s and he was a very good shot.  But obviously the gun was sighted in for his “style” and range.  Traditionally I sight the rifles in for 100 yards then adjust based on my judgment of the target’s distance once in a live hunting situation.  It took some turning and tuning, but after several rounds she got dialed in quite nicely.  I did all the “gross” adjustment on one target..then when I was able to put shots in the inner circle, I moved over to shooting at a fresh clean target.  I put about 10-15 rounds into the clean target, all but 1 within a 4″ group.  I don’t know what happened with that one shot…but we’ll call it an aberration.

Anyone serious about shooting needs to pick up a device similar to this.  It takes out most of the human factor and puts the gun right on target.  You get reproducible conditions so you can accurately make adjustments to the equipment each and every time.  The only real draw back to this rest is that it has to be, by nature, “loose”…meaning it has to be able to move every time the gun goes off.  If it doesn’t have any give in it and stays in a hard static position the rifle will be damaged after it’s fired.  I could spend significantly more and get one with some kind of shock…but it’s not that necessary yet.  The benifit of it jumping around after each shot was that it made me really think about the positioning and setup each and every time.  There were no (or almost no) throw away shots because it wasn’t seated right against your shoulder or you were holding different this time.  You got everything back into position…dialed it in and hit the trigger.  It takes more time…but it’s worth it in the end.

I also bought myself a spotting scope…now it’s a really cheap ass spotting scope and one day I’ll drop the cabbage on a better one, but I wanted to get one to gauge it’s usefulness at the range.  This helped me identify the location of each shot very easily and make adjustments accordingly.  The scope on this rifle isn’t good enough to do that…so I needed something else.  One day maybe I’ll teach sam to spot for me.  It would be nice to have her on scope with an identical target to what I have down range and mark off each shot with a pen.  Something like that might be necessary when I start reloading ammunition…but we’ll see.

I also shot a bit with the pistols…and it became clear very quickly that I need far more practice.  Shooting a rifle is a simple concept and so is shooting a pistol…basically.  With a pistol you are so much more unsteady and don’t have the different balance points…add to it the inherit inaccuracy of the firearm (compared to a rifle) and you have a whole lot of work to do.  I need to refine my stance and grip on the pistols then we can work on dialing it in a bit.  I was shooting at about 20 yards…which is quite a bit further away than I’d be shooting in a “self defense” situation…so I’m not all that concerned about it…still, it would be nice to be more proficient.

I’ve also decided that I need to start reloading.  I’ll get away with not reloading for the 9mm…but for the 40 and the .270 it’s going to get very expensive very quickly if I don’t.  I figure a guy can cut his cost in 1/2 with reloading (if not a little less) and you should get the same load every time.  To get that certainty with factory ammunition you have to spend quite a bit…so I guess maybe your savings/quality ratio will go up even further.  The old man has all the equipment and dies…the only thing I would think about buying is a tumbler.

We’ll see, I need to get some information from buddies that are reloading and I’ll use that as a starting point.

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A 2-year-old Milwaukee boy has died after playing with his mother’s handgun.

A Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s report says the toddler found the gun in a dresser drawer Sunday and accidentally shot himself in the face.

Authorities say Zaire Cameron was in a bedroom with two other children watching a movie. His parents were in another room when they heard the gunshot and found the toddler slumped over the end of the bed with the gun next to him.

WTMJ radio reports the boy’s mother caught him playing with the .38 caliber gun a day before, punished him and put the gun back in the same drawer.

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A BRITISH Army sniper has set a new sharpshooting distance record by killing two Taliban machinegunners in Afghanistan from more than a mile away.

Craig Harrison, a member of the Household Cavalry, killed the insurgents with consecutive shots — even though they were 3,000ft beyond the most effective range of his rifle.

“The first round hit a machinegunner in the stomach and killed him outright,” said Harrison, a Corporal of Horse. “He went straight down and didn’t move.

“The second insurgent grabbed the weapon and turned as my second shot hit him in the side. He went down, too. They were both dead.”

The shooting — which took place while Harrison’s colleagues came under attack — was at such extreme range that the 8.59mm bullets took almost three seconds to reach their target after leaving the barrel of the rifle at almost three times the speed of sound.

The distance to Harrison’s two targets was measured by a GPS system at 8,120ft, or 1.54 miles. The previous record for a sniper kill is 7,972ft, set by a Canadian soldier who shot dead an Al-Qaeda gunman in March 2002.

In a remarkable tour of duty, Harrison cheated death a few weeks later when a Taliban bullet pierced his helmet but was deflected away from his skull. He later broke both arms when his army vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb.

Harrison was sent back to the UK for treatment, but insisted on returning to the front line after making a full recovery.

“I was lucky that my physical fitness levels were very high before my arms were fractured and after six weeks in plaster I was still in pretty good shape,” he said. “It hasn’t affected my ability as a sniper.”

Harrison, from Gloucestershire, was reunited in Britain with his wife Tanya and daughter Dani, 16, last month. Recalling his shooting prowess in Helmand province, he said: “It was just unlucky for the Taliban that conditions were so good and we could see them so clearly.”

Harrison and his colleagues were in open-topped Jackal 4×4 vehicles providing cover for an Afghan national army patrol south of Musa Qala in November last year. When the Afghan soldiers and Harrison’s troop commander came under enemy fire, the sniper, whose vehicle was further back on a ridge, trained his sights on a Taliban compound in the distance. His L115A3 long-range rifle, the army’s most powerful sniper weapon, is designed to be effective at up to 4,921ft and supposedly capable of only “harassing fire” beyond that range.

“We saw two insurgents running through its courtyard, one in a black dishdasha, one in green,” he said. “They came forward carrying a PKM machinegun, set it up and opened fire on the commander’s wagon.

“Conditions were perfect, no wind, mild weather, clear visibility. I rested the bipod of my weapon on a compound wall and aimed for the gunner firing the machinegun.

“The driver of my Jackal, Trooper Cliff O’Farrell, spotted for me, providing all the information needed for the shot, which was at the extreme range of the weapon.”

Harrison killed one machinegunner with his first attempt and felled the other with his next shot. He then let off a final round to knock the enemy weapon out of action.

Harrison discovered that he had set a new record only on his return to UK barracks nine days ago. The previous record was held by Corporal Rob Furlong, of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, who was using a 12.7mm McMillan TAC-50 rifle.

Tom Irwin, a director of Accuracy International, the British manufacturer of the L115A3 rifle, said: “It is still fairly accurate beyond 4,921ft, but at that distance luck plays as much of a part as anything.”

News of Harrison’s success comes amid concern over a rival insurgent sharpshooter who in a five-month spree has killed up to seven British soldiers, including a sniper, in and around the Taliban stronghold of Sangin.

In a later incident during the tour, Harrison’s patrol vehicle was hit 36 times during a Taliban ambush. “One round hit my helmet behind the right ear and came out of the top,” he said. “Two more rounds went through the strap across my chest. We were all very, very lucky not to get hurt.”

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Department of Defense has reacted to the Ft. Hood shootings by imposing regulations on private arms possession. Muslim fanatic Nidal Hasan would certainly have stopped in his tracks if he knew he would have to violate regulations in order to carry out a mass murder. Now we only need to promulgate regulations forbidden unlicensed possession of explosives in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then never get around to printing up the licenses, to bring Al-Queda to its knees.

link to fox news

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has signed off on a new policy regulating how privately owned guns can be carried or stored on U.S. military installations.

The policy was developed following the shooting at Fort Hood in November, which left 13 soldiers dead. The suspect, Major Nidal Hasan was able to bring weapons he bought onto the base.

The new standardized policy is part of list of recommendations accepted by Gates and adopted by the Department of Defense after a review of the November shooting.

The Defense Department announced Thursday some near-term actions to be taken to remedy the intelligence failures, including 26 of the 79 recommendations made by a panel charged with reviewing the shooting. The panel, headed by former Secretary of the Army Togo West and retired Admiral Verne Clark, former Chief of Naval Operations, announced the findings of their review in January.

One recommendation is to expand the use of the FBI’s “eGuardian” reporting system to handle all suspicious activities. The report also suggests complete deployment of the “Law Enforcement Defense Data Exchange” system to share this information between DOD agencies.

The report establishes the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and America’s Security Affairs as the DoD lead for the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force program, according to Fox News.

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