TGO David

http://www.nraila.org/Issues/Articles/Read.aspx?ID=79 Americans for Gun Safety Spreads Lies In Its Desperate Quest For Political Credibility No claim is too outrageous for the anti-gun lobbyists masquerading under the name "Americans for Gun Safety" (AGS). Unfortunately, much of the media is willing to play along with AGS`s deceptions, depicting the group as a "moderate voice," a "third way" in the gun-policy debate. For the record, AGS has nothing to do with gun safety. It is an organization whose sole founder, a former board member of Handgun Control, Inc., has a highly focused and barely hidden agenda: licensing all American gun owners and registering every firearm they own. AGS is staffed by the architects of the anti-gun schemes of Bill Clinton and Sen. Charles Schumer. Its president is Jonathan Cowan, who served at the right hand of the self-appointed anti-gun Czar of the Clinton cabinet--HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo, whose agenda for fighting crime revolved around threatening nonsensical lawsuits against gun makers. Cowan is assisted by Clinton White House political aide Matt Bennett, and by Jim Kessler, the former gun-control advisor to Senator Charles Schumer. These credentials may explain the insistence of AGS in perpetrating clear falsehoods. The previous Administration championed the tactic of "tell a lie often enough, and soon it becomes the truth." AGS is clearly hoping that the same tactic will prevail in its assault on gun shows. In its latest gun show attack, AGS alleges in ads that: "As Governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Ridge signed legislation requiring background checks for handgun and assault weapons sales at gun shows." The facts say otherwise. Gov. Ridge signed "The Pennsylvania Uniform Firearms Act of 1995" (also known as Act 17), which simply specified that after the state`s instant check system became operational, all persons purchasing any firearm from a licensed dealer would be subject to an instant records check wherever the purchase was made. The requirements for transferring handguns between individuals in Pennsylvania were set in 1934, and Act 17 made no changes in the requirements for transferring handguns at gun shows. What Gov. Ridge signed--and AGS shamelessly praises--is much closer to the NRA-supported Dingell provision than anything in the AGS-supported McCain Lieberman-Schumer bill. Act 17 did: 1) define gun shows in a manner that specifically recognized and respected their unique and temporary nature; 2) recognize the superiority and effectiveness of an instant record check system and eliminate the state`s 60-year-old waiting period on handgun purchases; and 3) eliminate the need for a firearm dealer to obtain a separate license in each county where he might wish to conduct business at a gun show. When AGS claimed that Act 17 "requir[ed] background checks for handguns and assault weapons sales at gun shows," NRA responded that the law actually continued a longstanding exemption for rifle and shotgun sales by private citizens and noted the term "assault weapon" does not occur in Pennsylvania state law. Trying to salvage some credibility, AGS contended that it was "careful" not to make claims about rifles and shotguns and that it was really talking only about "assault weapons" that are "defined by federal law" and that have "barrel lengths that fit the coverage of Act 17, of which there are many." Anyone with a passing familiarity with federal firearm law will immediately see the nonsensical and mutually exclusive nature of this claim. "Assault weapons" as defined by federal law most certainly do include rifles and shotguns. However, under Act 17 the background check requirement only applies to "firearms" as defined in Pennsylvania`s Uniform Firearms Act--a very limited definition that only includes handguns with barrels less than 15", rifles with barrels less than 16", shotguns with barrels less than 18" and all guns that are less than 26" long overall. This definition of short-barreled shotguns and rifles mirrors the federal National Firearms Act of 1934 that severely restricts the transfer of such firearms and others such as machine guns. Such firearms are not available for over-the-counter purchase at any gun show or retailer anywhere in America. Far from including "many" of the federally banned "assault weapons," this definition would not include a single one of the standard production pre-1994 rifles or shotguns specifically defined as "assault weapons" in federal law. AGS`s ignorance or intentional misrepresentation of this key Pennsylvania definition of "firearm" makes its claim utterly worthless. Nonetheless, AGS continues to employ this obvious deception in its ads. In its desperation to abolish gun shows, AGS also continues attempts to fabricate a gun show "loophole." The truth, of course, is that existing firearms laws apply at gun shows the same as any other place guns are sold. Since 1938, persons engaged in the business of selling firearms have been required to obtain a Federal Firearms License (FFL). Engaging in the business of selling firearms--at a gun show or anywhere else--without an FFL is a federal felony. AGS also claims "convicted felons have known about this loophole for years." The truth is that multiple federal government studies prove that gun shows play virtually no role in criminal gun acquisition. Last year`s Bureau of Justice Statistics report "Firearms Use by Offenders"--the largest such study ever conducted--found less than one percent of U.S. "crime guns" were obtained at gun shows. This report is entirely consistent with previous federal studies. AGS wants to inject "terrorism" into the firearm policy debate at any cost, and it is willing to employ serial lies to forge a link between "terrorist" cases and gun shows. AGS continues to cite the case of an "IRA terrorist" even though the jury that convicted the man for firearm violations acquitted him of the specific charge that he was an IRA terrorist. That AGS continues its bald-face lie in the face of public record speaks volumes. Additionally, the record is clear that the guns in question were bought at gun shows by "straw" purchasers (individuals with "clean" records who are willing to violate federal law and illegally purchase firearms on behalf of criminals prohibited from doing so)--and absolutely nothing in the legislation AGS deceitfully promotes would have prevented those illegal acts. <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr><td class="copy"> AGS also continues deceptively to manipulate a case in which the FBI suspected a man of attending Detroit-area gun shows to acquire guns for shipment to the Hezbollah. After the FBI placed the man under surveillance, he was arrested, prosecuted and convicted in federal court--enforcing existing firearms laws worked. AGS`s ad deceitfully fails to note that the suspect, Ali Boumelhem, was a convicted felon and as such was prohibited from buying guns anywhere--including gun shows. To suggest he slipped through a "gun show loophole" is simply a lie. The best evidence available strongly suggests that the two shotguns Boumelhem was convicted for possessing were bought by a "straw purchaser." Again, nothing in the McCain-Lieberman-Schumer legislation AGS promotes would have prevented the illegal acts. AGS`s previous misrepresentations of the facts in this case are telling. In an e-mail to Members of Congress, AGS`s Jim Kessler states, "an FBI informant previously has seen Boumelhem in Beirut unloading shipments of weapons and explosives." The Middle East Intelligence Bulletin, which AGS cites as its source, is much more specific, saying the FBI informant "had seen Boumelhem in Beirut unloading shipments of automatic weapons, explosives, grenades and rocket launchers." Clearly, "automatic weapons, explosives, grenades and rocket launchers" was changed to "weapons and explosives." Why? Because AGS knows full well that none of those items can be bought or sold at any gun show. The intent was to mislead Congress. AGS`s continued pattern of deception was also seen recently in an AGS Foundation-released report, "Broken Records," claiming to document the need to mandate an indefinite waiting period for gun sales. State authorities, such as Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Paul J. Evanko, have blasted the report as inaccurate. AGSF "should be given a failing grade for its shoddy research," Evanko said. "The fact is that the group did not contact State Police for information, which we would have been happy to supply." In the end, AGS has proven only that its staff doesn`t know guns, gun laws or even the proposals that they tout. The group has no members, no gun safety programs and no credibility. </td> </tr> <tr> <td> </td> </tr> <tr> <td class="copy">Posted: 3/20/2002 12:00:00 AM</td></tr></tbody></table>

Found this on PoliceOne and thought it was worth reposting here. It has some good insight on how to train to develop practical shooting tactics not just for law enforcement officers but for anyone who carries a gun for self defense, IMO. Training Survival: Building shooting muscle By Ralph Mroz Since you carry a gun for self-defense or to save the life of another, then you are concerned with combative firearms skills rather than shooting merely for the experience of shooting. To reach this goal, you engage in training, mostly in the form of practice on a range. How close you get to your goal will depend on the effectiveness of your training. Let’s use weight lifting and body building as an analogy. If you want to get bigger and stronger, we know that you have to concentrate on working the large muscle groups of the legs, back, chest and shoulders. You do this by training mostly with the foundational exercises for these muscles: squats, dead lifts, bench presses, presses, rows, pull-downs and so on. There’s a total of maybe a dozen core exercises on which you spend most of your time. Yet there are hundreds of lifts you could do, and most of these work the smaller muscles. They are useful, but if your goal is size and strength, you use them sparingly, since you have only a limited amount of time and energy. Mostly these ancillary exercises are used to refine your shape and to add variety in your core routine to avoid boredom. But if you go into any gym, you’ll see people spending their precious training time on these secondary exercises. Either they don’t know any better, or they think they have invented a "better" way, or they read in a magazine somewhere that so-and-so does this exercise, or they’re bored with the core exercises. Now, go to any range and watch people there. You’ll see a great deal of shooting for tiny groups, with eyes focused on the sights of the pistol — regardless of the range. You’ll see people shooting at ten to thirty yards, rather than at zero to seven yards. You’ll see people standing still as they shoot. And so on. Now, it is certainly a better marksman and better shooter who can shoot tiny groups, particularly at long ranges. But in the light of our goals, these kinds of skills are secondary. They are far less likely to be needed for our job than other, more foundational, skills. How do we know this? Here’s three sources. The first is the consistent statistics from law enforcement shootings in which officers were killed. These FBI-compiled numbers have been pretty much the same for many years: 50% of LEOs killed are killed at five feet or less, and 75% killed are killed at ten feet or less. The second source is the Police Marksman Association survey done in 1992 showing the average police gunfight was won at about 20 feet seven yards (but note that this conclusion was from a pretty small sample.) Finally, there is the data from NYPD’s SOP-9 that indicates that from 1994-2000, 69% of their shootings (of all types) were at two yards or less, and 88% were at seven yards of less. These numbers are pretty consistent form year to year. So what do these statistics mean in terms of training? That the bench press and squats of firearms survival training are the techniques to handle threats at seven yards and in. We detail the techniques relevant to these distances below, but first, a caveat. We do most emphatically not mean to say that training at long handgun distances (15 to 50 yards) is not useful or even not important. Police officers certainly have to engage in long-range shooting on the job. We are just noting that these long-range skills are less likely to have to be used than close-range skills — that’s just the facts — and thus we suggest that they constitute your ancillary — not core — training. Longer range skills and super-tight marksmanship skills are the equivalent of weight exercises to develop the smaller muscle groups. They are less likely to be used, but they can 1) be useful in and of themselves, 2) they help to keep the training interesting, and 3) they round you out. Contact distance to 2-3 yards At this distance, if you do not already have your gun out, and you are facing a deadly force attack, you simply will not have time to draw your weapon. The physics of the situation dictate that you will have to at least initially deal with this attack with empty hands techniques. This reality, of course, means that the "equalizing" factor of the firearm — one of its chief advantages — is negated. It also means that life is unfair, as the small, the weak, the injured and the older are at a disadvantage to their undoubtedly younger, more fit attacker. Life is, in fact, not fair. Sorry. Your only choice here, if you want to honestly deal with your most likely self-defense scenario, is to pick up some vicious empty hand techniques. These, of course, work better if you are in shape, whatever your age. Such techniques are called "combatives" these days, as opposed to "martial arts". The integration of combatives with the use of the firearm generally goes by the term "extreme close quarters shooting", and the leading edge material in this area today comes from a man known as "SouthNarc", for the apparent reason. His DVD on the subject, "Fighting Handgun Volume I" is available from Shivworks, www.shivworks.com, and is highly recommended. 3 yards to 7 yards At this distance, if you are trying to hit an exposed person, the proven method of Applegate-style target focused shooting (as opposed to many other methods of "point shooting") is the most likely technique to be useful. This is for the simple reason that under a lot of stress (some combination of startle and fear), you are hard-wired to look at the threat, not anything less important from an evolutionary viewpoint, like your sights. (Of course, if you aren’t much startled, or not in much fear, you may well be able to focus on your sights.) Here the gun is held very firmly, the gun raised to intersect the eye/target line, and the trigger pulled. The technique works both one-handed and two-handed, and most people find that that the tighter they hold the gun, the better results they get (relaxed, "firm but not too tight" holds work well, by contrast, for precision and non-stressful shooting.) Since most shooters have been trained to look for their front sight, practicing target-focused shooting takes some mental concentration. Interestingly, when I am having a not-good day on the range with semi-sighted fire at these distances, if I force myself to target-focus, I can often improve results. If you are in a law enforcement or military unit, Lou Chiodo of Gunfighters Ltd (www.gunfightersltd.com) is a great source for instruction in this method of shooting. 7-10 yards and out At these distances, traditional sighted shooting is appropriate. And we strongly recommend that you practice it, and not only because longer range shooting may be necessary. When we cite the distances above, we are assuming that you need to hit a man-sized attacker. Hits anywhere on the torso are acceptable, with most instructors insisting on hits within a roughly 8½ x 11 inch area (the size of a standard piece of paper) as the goal. If you have only a part of your attacker available as a target, then the precision demanded of you increases, and thus the effective distance increases. A half a man target area available at 5 yards is about the same difficulty as a whole man at 10 yards, and so on.

Wow, Chris. I'm really glad the surgery went well for you. I know all too well the pain of an impinged nerve in your back. Mine acts up every so often and it just burns right down my left leg. I admire the courage it took to go through with the operation. Congrats on going through with it and here's to a quick recovery. I'm sure you'll be 100% before you even know it!

Interesting... SWAT uses 357sig as their round o' choice in a few guns.

Easy... we're on the same side. There are a multitude of ways that you could end up having to employ your defense attorney because it became apparent that you were carrying in an establishment where alcohol was being consumed on premises. You could have been printing and got made by an off duty cop who was also eating there. You could have bent over to tie your shoes and your weapon slipped into view of some worrisome nosy nancy who used her cell phone to report a "man with a gun" in the restaurant. It's called a gray area for a reason. Not because it's right or wrong, but because it could be either depending on the local juris-dick-ion and how they choose to railroad you with it. I've seen really good defense attorneys go against a corrupt system and get their butts handed to them, too.

Pardon me... just playing through... 1911 > all (running and ducking for cover)

Agreed on both points! But of course, I'd never break the law.

Oh ok. I think what you're referring to is the sear disconnect. The M&P should all have the sear disconnect but some are provided without the magazine disconnect. The mag disconnect is one of those things I just scratch my head at. Not sure why you'd really want it even though I have heard people say that it's a good safety in case you want to store the gun with a round in the chamber, but separate from the mag. Seems like a dumb idea to me.

I think this would be a gray area of the law. I'm the eternal pessimist I guess, but I tend to think that whenever there is any amount of slack in the way a law is worded, that slack can and will be used by an overzealous prosecutor to hang you. I prefer laws with concise, specific verbiage. Unfortunately we don't have too many of those anymore. I think that all boils down to acceptable risk. You have the risk of being caught vs. the risk of being unarmed when you might really need to be. Personal preference only can dictate which is more acceptable to you. Again, we really need to force our legislators to get this damn restaurant restriction lifted so that people wishing to arm themselves for self defense aren't criminalized.

Boooooo on the mag disconnect! Until S&W catches and retrofits all of the first run M&Ps with the weak plastic mag release button, you don't want a mag disconnect in your M&P automatic. Early production guns are prone to dropping mags at really inopportune times. No mag = no bang = serious pucker factor if you're in a firefight.

Mars... are you carrying a full size USP with hammer or a compact w/o? Thoughts on decocking levers on the "hammerless" design (or bobbed as the case is with the USP Comp)?

That's easy... upgrade to an M&P.

I've got to disagree with you there. A decocking lever really has no place on a handgun that doesn't have an external hammer, IMO.

Glad you found us, Tom!

It's not enforced here either but I think that's sort of a function of both everyone being willing to look the other way and a matter of who is there to police the police? One police officer and I engaged in a friendly discussion about this on another forum and he was fairly obstinate about the fact that my understanding of the law was incorrect and that he is legally allowed to carry in such places -- even off duty. But as I've been told by a few lawyers, if you want to know about the law, you don't ask a cop. You ask an attorney.

It's not even enough to be on duty. A police officer can only be on premise where alcohol is served for consumption in execution of his duties. Again, that means that they can't be there eating lunch on the clock and claim immunity because they were "on duty" at the time. They must be there for official police business. Personally, I think this is just as absurd as it is to forbid a law abiding permit holder to carry on such premises so long as they are not ingesting alcohol themselves. I would prefer that a police officer be armed anywhere they go. The more "good guys" that are armed, the better.

Not sure how you missed us, but glad to see you found us! Welcome from another Rutherford Co. resident.

John Harris (lawyer) of the TFA strongly disagrees with that statement as does the Tennessee Attorney General who has issued two opinions on the matter and clearly opined that police cannot carry weapons into any establishment that sells liquor for on-premise consumption unless they are on the property in execution of their official sworn duties. In other words, a cop cannot even eat lunch in an Applebees with his gun on his person without committing a crime. I'll post the relevant statutes if necessary.

I'm about 90% ambidextrous when it comes to shooting handguns. RH is always easier for me but LH is actually more accurate. Anyway, I have gotten to where if I shoot LH, I just knock the slide release on my 1911 with my LH index finger rather than try to reposition the gun where I can manipulate it with my thumb. Adapt and survive!

Reposting this from elsewhere... can't wait til the finished product is available as I'd like to order some for both my and my wife's compacts. One of the benefits shooting where I shoot is that one of our RSOs has a daytime job at Crimson Trace. This weekend he brought in an engineering prototype of the LG-660. This is the 1st Lasergrip to incorporate the new 3mm laser diode. It also uses a new type of on/off switch located below the activation switch. Rather than a slide switch, this one is a button-type switch. Press it once, the unit is energized. Press it again, the unit is off. As you can see in the illustration below: the laser grip simply replaces the interchangeable grip panel. It is installed in the same manner one would use to switch grip sizes. The LG-660 will be available in one size, replacing the MEDIUM sized grip. The unit uses two CR-2032 button cells for power. Use of the laser grip is intuitive. Power the unit on by drepessing the on/off swtich. Once the unit is energized, grip the weapon as you would normally. Standard grip pressure on the backstrip will activate the laser. In cases where you would prefer not to be lasing away, modify your grip slightly so that the laser does not activate. I find this easier to accomplish with this unit than with the LG-617 (for Glocks 17, 22, 24, 31, 34, 35, and 37). The new 3mm laser diode gives this unit an advantage for left-handed shooters. If you are of the sinister persuasion and have had the opportunity to fire a pistol with CT grips installed, you may have encountered some discomfort where the diode housing rubs against the knuckle of your strong side thumb. The smaller diode does not require such a large housing and the decrease in size is sigificant. I encountered none of the irritation I had with the Glock unit. This is a Good Thing. Current 3mm diodes are producing an aiming dot that is larger than the one produced by the 5mm diodes. This may or may not be desirable. Still, I found the nice bright red dot that this unit produces leaves no doubt as to where you are aiming. This dot may be all that is necessary to resolve the problem. Secondly, the reduced housing size should allow you to use your current holster without modification. There is a small change in grip geometry, caused by the need to accommodate the batteries. I find that this change acutally improves my ability to grip the weapon. All in all this unit looks like a great implementation for the M&P. At present it seems that the 660 will fit the full-sized 9mm, .40 S&W, .357 Sig, and .45 ACP models. I haven't heard if a model for the Compact M&Ps is under development. I would not be surprised to learn if one were.

Based on a quick eBay search, I'd say you're right about them being centered on Western style handguns.

Never heard of them either.

I think you just said what a lot of us here believe as well. Welcome, and enjoy your visits with us!

I'm a member of the TFA and just pass these alerts along as a service to all gun owners regardless of their TFA membership status. That said, I'm not 100% up to speed on these things yet myself. I would say that John Harris, director and founder of the TFA, generally has a good feel for what might and might not pass in the state legislature but I don't think these alerts constitute anything other than the facts of the matter. In other words, the alerts that I have seen so far have not contained any sort of editorial comment or prediction for what will pass or be shot down. If I had to guess, I'd say that Mr. Harris and the TFA at large remain cautiously optimistic about the WMA bill passing. But accurately predicting what our elected representatives will really do is about as futile as predicting Nashville's weather.

I use a program called SnagIt for screenshots. It has a rudimentary editor inside it that lets you apply various effects such as highlighting an area of the screenshot and dimming the background, and applying torn edges. Both effects were used in those screenshots.