Gun Nuts Media

Sebastian calls them “range assholes“, which is also perfectly fine.  Reading over the actual story at Bitter’s, she’s talking about an NRA Firearms instructor that demonstrated all the traits necessary to make sure that someone never picks up a gun again.

I really hate it when I go to the range and I see someone like that – and Bitter is right, it’s even more troubling when it’s someone who is supposed to be a trained, certified ambassador for the sport.

I’ll echo Sebastian’s sentiments here – if you’ve ever had a bad experience with an alleged “shooting instructor”, and you’d like to erase that ugly memory, let one of us know.

I’ve been thinking about this since yesterday’s awful loss to IU, and I’ve come to an inescapable conclusion. It’s time for a regime change in West Lafayette, and Joe Tiller needs to go. It’s not because he’s a bad coach, or that we’ve been having several losing years, because we haven’t. The problem is that we’ve gotten complacent. Since the glorious Rose Bowl year, we’ve basically won 7 or 8 games every year and gone to a crappy bowl each year. The problem is that the administration seems to be pretty happy with that, and as such are not out there recruiting the kind of top flight talent Purdue needs to stay competitive in the Big Ten.

Institutional complacency is a bad thing, and we have it in spades at Purdue. I think Tiller (and his staff) are partly to blame for that, but so are the Athletic Directors for not ripping Joe Tiller a new asshole every year we haven’t been competitive in the Big Ten.

Yesterday’s game at IU is a perfect example. If you watched the game, you saw that Purdue didn’t start playing with a sense of urgency until midway through the 3rd quarter. Once we played with passion, we outscored IU 21-10; but because that passion didn’t show up until almost the fourth quarter, we lost. That’s the kind of complacency that needs to go.

I’d love to see us get some hotshot new coach in here, someone that young kids from around the country are going to want to play for. Poach an NFL Offensive Coordinator who has a rep for making good QBs and make him head coach. Purdue used to have a rep for creating excellent quarterbacks, let’s get that back.

Come on Purdue. Let’s go shopping for new coaches.

DNR says that this should be a good season for deer.  Unlike last year, they’re not having issues with parasites wiping out 30% of the deer population.

The Indiana Department of Natural Resources says deer should be abundant for the state’s firearms deer season, which begins Saturday.

I have never been deer hunting in Indiana, although every time around this year I think to myself: “Self, I should go deer hunting this year”.  But then my wife points out to me that I’m not doing it for the hunt, but rather for the challenge it presents me as a marksman.  Invariably, I never end up going hunting, for a myriad of reasons – although admittedly this year I can’t use the excuse that “I don’t have a good gun for deer”.

Best of luck to the hunters heading out this weekend – I hope you get your deer!

Going down to the other, lesser Indiana school to watch the Boilermakers kick the crap out of those IU pansies tomorrow.  I might take some pictures.  I’m debating which gun to bring, because I can’t actually take it to the game itself, but I don’t want to be unarmed on a long drive or in a strange hotel.   I’ll probably just take the .45 ACP Taurus.

GO BOILERS!

In their previous issue, under the “Intelligence” section, Parade Magazine ran a brief anti-gun piece, called “Why Criminals are still getting guns”. I’ll actually copy and paste the entire thing here, because it’s really just a paragraph.

Even though crime is on the decline across the U.S., gun violence is actually on the rise. How do guns continue to end up in the hands of criminals? A small group of sellers is responsible: 57% of the guns used in crimes come from 1% of all dealers. Too often, they fail to run background checks or sell large numbers of weapons to traffickers who then resell them on the street. Due to weak laws and lack of enforcement, it can take an average of 11 years for authorities to order one shop to quit selling firearms. From 2003 to 2005, law-enforcement agencies reportedly traced an astonishing 1,424 guns used in crimes back to Trader Sports of California. The store had been investigated since the 1970s, but only last year was it forced to leave the firearms business. Progress is occurring, however. Under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the City of New York has sued 27 dealers in five states for engaging in illegal sales; so far, 14 of them have settled and agreed to stricter monitoring of gun sales and to tough penalties.

The blurb grossly misrepresents the way trace data is actually used, as that 57% number includes firearms that were legally purchased and then later stolen.

The little paragraph also holds up Mayor Bloomberg’s “gun stings” as an example of good work, but fails to mention that Bloomberg’s operatives committed multiple felonies during the course of their investigations, and that Bloomberg received a cease-and-desist letter from the Department of Justice, because he was compromising actual criminal investigations.

Parade Magazine rarely prints letters to the editor in their print version, however they will sometimes show them in their online format. Below is a copy of the letter I sent to their editor, Janice Kaplan:

Ms. Kaplan,

Regarding the short paragraph in last week’s “Intelligence” section, entitled Why Criminals are Still Getting Guns”, I wanted to address some of the areas where the paragraph falls short.

While crime, and especially violent crime, continue to be a problem in America, your article appears to place the blame at the feet of lawful retailers of firearms. The statistic “57% of the guns used in crimes come from 1% of all dealers” is tremendously misleading, as it misrepresents the way that ATF trace data is used. That 57% number includes more than just firearms sold by the dealer directly to a criminal, it includes firearms that were sold in legal transactions, and then later stolen and used in criminal activity; it also includes firearms that may have been confiscated as evidence during suicide investiagtions.

The short paragraph also holds up Mayor Bloomberg’s “sting operations” as positive examples of “fighting illegal guns”, but fails to mention that Mayor Bloomberg’s operatives committed multiple federal felonies during their investigations, and that the Department of Justice requested that the investigations be stopped, as they were compromising actual pending criminal cases.

It’s unfortunate that Parade, a magazine I otherwise enjoy, has chosen to display an anti-gun bias so prominently. I hope that future articles will display a more rigorous attention to factual details.

Regards,

Caleb

Uncle points out that maybe if the ATF wasn’t so busy trying to shut people down for making paperwork errors, they might actually shut down the bad guys.