Right to Opine

A gun store owner in Phoenix has been brought up on a number of charges related to fraudulently selling guns and helping the buyers smuggle them into Mexico. Looks like the BATFE has the goods on him, including the direct involvement of undercover officers in purchases the owner believed to be fronts for smugglers. If true, this is exactly the kind of operation we honest gun owners want shut down.

The thing that bothers me about this article is its dishonest and misleading use of terminology. For example,

the owner, George Iknadosian, will go on trial on charges he sold hundreds of weapons, mostly AK-47 rifles, to smugglers

This simply is not true. An AK-47 is a fully automatic military weapon and cannot legally be sold in the US to anyone outside the military, law enforcement, or the very few people holding a special license to purchase fully automatic weapons. The rifles in question are semi-automatic rifles, the function and capability of which is no different than many standard hunting rifles. One pull of the trigger gets you a single shot…not the kind of repeated rapid fire of an automatic.

Later in the article we see

the Mexican authorities have seized seven of the Kalashnikov-style rifles from gunmen

This is, again, misleading. A Kalashnikov is a fully automatic rifle. These weren’t, but were designed to look like them. The appearance of a weapon has no relationship to its function. (Just ask anyone who’s ever driven a Pontiac Fiero…looks great, but it’s a pooch.) Elsewhere in the article the meaningless term “assault rifle” is bandied about as if it, too, has a specific meaning. Gun grabbers like to use the term to refer to any rifle that looks like a military grade fully automatic weapon, regardless of its capability. The truth is that no military on earth would use the rifles in question, as they cannot be fired in automatic mode and don’t have the firepower needed for military use. They’re no more “assault rifles” than your uncle’s Winchester 30-30.

Think Daniel Pearl-style killings won’t happen here? A Muslim in Buffalo, NY, has beheaded his wife. Lest you think this is just an isolated incident, do a Google search for “Muslim honor killings in America” and browse around.

Two things I don’t get:

How is this guy just being charged with second degree murder? You don’t just happen to behead someone. It takes effort and deliberation.

Why wasn’t this woman safe? After all,

She had an order of protection that had him out of the home as of Friday the 6th.

according to local police. Oh, that’s right. Court orders of protection DON’T WORK! Regardless of what the “authorities” may tell you, you are responsible for your own safety. A nut job who’s bent on decapitation is not going to heed a court order. You. Need. A. Gun.

A graduate student was stabbed and decapitated in a restaurant on the campus of Virginia Tech this week. It’s been a decade since Columbine, a couple years since the mass murders at VaTech, and just a year since the killing at Northern Illinois University. What have we done to fix the problem? Nothing. Hand-wringing and memorials to the victims don’t help protect our young students.

The whole idea of gun-free zones must be eliminated from our collective thought or we’ll just continue to see more such tragedies. We must be allowed to take responsibility for our own protection. Campus cops obviously aren’t up to the job.

Today my family had an experience that should wake up other parents, as it did me.

As she does every day, my wife picked our kids up from their schools. Just after picking up my son, a 13-year-old who naturally thinks he’s invincible, they drove past an apartment complex where a rather nasty fight had erupted. My son started yelling at my wife to stop the car. He wanted to get out and stop the fight and, at one point, yelled at his mom that this was why she needed to carry a gun (she doesn’t…yet). He was rather irate when she did the right thing (in this situation), pulling the car into a safe place before calling 911 but not intervening directly. Now those of you who have been exercising your 2nd Amendment right for any length of time know the foolishness of my son’s reaction, but in his naive, “I’m Clint Eastwood” (insert whoever’s current in movies…Vin Diesel maybe?) mentality, my son didn’t. When I arrived home my wife apprised me of the situation so, after supper, I sat the kids down and had “the talk.” No, not that talk. The one I should have had with them earlier. We discussed the huge responsibility it is to carry with you the power of life and death, and how easy it can be to make the wrong decision. When he saw the fight, already in progress, did he know who started it? Who was in the right? If the combatants were armed? And so on. Anyone who has been through a basic CCW course knows the scenarios. My son, of course, didn’t. After going through a number of them with the kids, he became rather thoughtful and wanted to chew it over for a bit. I obviously have more work to do with the kids. We need to cover how they should react in a dangerous situation (e.g., don’t yell, “Dad, shoot him!”). My kids have been to the range with me often, so they have the skills, but do they have the knowledge and judgment? Nope. And that’s my responsibility. So parents, don’t put it off or think your kids will just pick it up from you automatically. You must take the time to talk with your kids about what it means to be a responsible armed citizen.

What happens when you disarm society…including your police? The cops flee from a rioting crowd they should be controlling. Watching the decline of England from a strong nation to one in which something like this can happen has been truly sad.

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Think you’ll be safe calling 911 when you’re attacked in your home? Brittany Zimmerman did, but police didn’t show up for nearly an hour. By that time she was dead.

Although the dispatcher claimed later to have heard nothing, the 911 tape captured screams, gasps and what sounds like a struggle, according to the court documents.

Your safety is your responsibility. This poor girl did what she had been taught to do and paid for it with her life. It is truly saddening to see the number of good people who die every day because they believe someone else—like the police—will protect them.

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A small town in Massachusetts is considering the idea of teaching children to fight back against armed attackers in the classroom.

Georgetown Police Chief James E. Mulligan told FOXNews.com the proposed technique was intended to be a “last ditch” thing to be used in cases where a gunman has been able to thwart police and get inside a classroom alone with students.

At least they’re moving outside the victim mentality which hampers real security in our schools. We should certainly teach our kids to defend themselves. This, however, is the wrong tack. A child with a book or backpack has a very low likelihood of thwarting a determined attacker who has a gun. The correct response is to allow concealed carry permit holders—staff and parents—to carry their own weapons on school campuses. As it stands, the only people in our schools who have guns are the bad guys, who ignore gun-free zone laws. Allowing responsible, licensed citizens to be armed on campus will only increase the safety of our children.

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A breath of fresh air and sanity from across the pond. It’s sad that it took the massacre in Mumbai to bring about a piece like this in a major British paper. Maybe they’ll come around to reason after all. Some day.

Personally, I’m glad I have the Second Amendment on my side. I exercise it every day and wish more of my fellow Americans did as well.

A company in New Jersey is coming out with a small, single-shot “Palm Pistol” which is intended to be easy for the elderly or disabled to use. While I do believe this market segment has a need for reliable self-defense, this just doesn’t seem like a good idea to me. A single shot just isn’t going to cut the mustard in many situations. Such a gun would certainly be better than nothing some of the time, but for just a little more money (less than $500) you can get a decent .380 semi-automatic which has a reasonable trigger pull, acceptable power (with hollow point ammunition), and low recoil. Those characteristics would provide a much better self-defense weapon for most of this market.

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In an interesting development, a group of India’s wealthy have filed a lawsuit against the government for failing to protect them from the terrorists in Mumbai.

It charged that the government had lagged in its constitutional duty to protect its citizens’ right to life, and it pressed the state to modernize and upgrade its security forces.

According to some reports (like this one), there were armed police forces in the area who simply cowered during the attack and refused to challenge the terrorists. So it does seem some, ahem, improvements are certainly in order. But the real problem is that the citizens of India have abrogated all responsibility for their protectiion to the government. Government police forces cannot, however, be omnipresent and so can’t prevent or protect from all such attacks. Individuals must be capable of defending themselves and must have the mindset to do so instilled within. A disarmed populace is nothing but a herd of sheep with no defense against the wolves that will inevitably attack.