I guarantee that Shelley Rae’s FNS is better than yours.
Jan Morgan: idiot, bigot, or both?
Jan Morgan, who I’d never heard of until this morning, apparently owns a gun range where she’s decided to ban all Muslims. I wish that some part of that sentence was a joke, but apparently this person decided to declare her range a “muslim free zone” and then post about it on her blog that no one reads.
It would be easy to dismiss Jan as a desperate attention seeker, someone who’s just trying to drum up a national media frenzy and get more eyeballs on her blog with this stunt, and honestly that’s probably the most appropriate reaction. We should, as a community, see something like this and say “ho-hum, another dreary bigot using a cheap PR stunt” – but the problem is that this is more than that. Instead, what Jan Morgan’s bigoted blog post and business decision have done is reinforce every single negative media stereotype that exists about gun owners. I can imagine the HuffPo getting a hold of this and gleefully driving all the attention they can to it: “SEE? We told you that gun owners are bigoted rednecks who hate people!” Thanks for feeding the negative stereotypes, Jan. We really appreciate that.
But maybe Jan’s not a bigot. Maybe she’s just a no talent ass-clown; a gun bunny in her 40s with no real shooting, writing, or commentary skills trying a desperate stunt to get attention. If that’s the case, her tragic, bigoted post becomes no less offensive, but sad in a way. You start to wonder if this is the eventual fate of all gun bunnies as they hit their later years. But even if that is the case, what part of you thinks that this is a good line to put on the internet:
Not all muslims are terrorists, but almost all terrorists in the world right now are muslim. Since you can’t determine by visual assessment, which ones will kill you and which ones will not, I am going to go with the line of thought that ANY HUMAN BEING who would either knowingly or unknowingly support a “religion” that commands the murder of all people who refuse to submit or convert to that religion, is not someone I want to know or do business with.
Here’s an important point: yes, there are terrorists. There are quite a few terrorists who are followers of this or that sect of radical Islam. Those are bad people. But the 2nd Amendment isn’t for those people, the 2nd Amendment is for Americans. All Americans. Regardless of race, religion, sex, or creed. Last time I checked, the important text of the 2nd Amendment didn’t say “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed – unless you’re black, Muslim, or gay.”
To me, that’s what the most frustrating thing about this. Yes, it reinforces negative stereotypes about my people; yes it’s bigoted; and yes it’s likely a desperate attempt for relevance from someone that no one’s ever heard of. But most importantly, and most frustratingly, it absolutely misses the point of what the 2nd Amendment, and what this entire country is all about. This is the United States of America, and while we’re not as good at the whole “freedom” thing as we used to be, we’re still the best in the world. People in this country are absolutely free to pray to whichever god they wish, and those same people are free to own and use firearms for self-defense, recreation, hunting, or any other lawful purpose. The 2nd Amendment is a civil right the same as the 1st Amendment. What Jan Morgan is doing is denying an entire group of people, an entire group of Americans, access to a fundamental civil right, simply because she doesn’t like the god they pray to and the holy book they read. That misses the entire point of everything America is supposed to be about.
For someone who claims to support individual rights, Jan sure seems to miss the concept of what the Constitution is actually there for. Stay off my side, Jan Morgan.
Universal gun truths
Everything in this post has been asserted as the absolute truth about guns at one time or another.
An inside look at a Taurus revolver
Smith & Wesson revolvers are elegant representations of early 20th century machining. Ruger revolvers are simple and rugged, reducing the revolver to as few components as possible. Taurus revolvers are…neither. In fact, the inside of a Taurus revolver is a confusing mess of design choices that look like a Brazilian simply turned up at the factory on a Wednesday and said “Here…here is good” and then went for a siesta or whatever they do down there.
An actual compromise
How come whenever an anti-gun person asks us to “compromise” or “meet in the middle” what they actual mean is “just give up some more of your rights?” I’ll be honest, if someone wrote a well-researched universal background check bill (instead of the crap they’re trying to push) I’d support it, on the condition that bill also provide for nationwide concealed carry reciprocity (Shaneen Allen’s Law) and the removal of SBR, SBS, and suppressors from the NFA list. That would be an actual compromise.
Which is why it will never, ever happen.
What makes a gun serious?
People are always talking about “serious guns” versus “fun guns.” For example, my Beretta ARX160 is a “serious gun” so I have it set up with a rugged optic and back up iron sights, so when I have to fight ISIS fighters in the mean streets of Sioux Falls I’ll be ready. But my Troy Carbine is a “fun gun” because I just have a 2 by 7 Leupold optic on it and I use for games and hunting coyotes.
Or take a Ruger Vaquero, that’s pretty clearly not a serious gun for serious things, because it’s a single action revolver! It’s really just an overgrown toy! But what about professional competition shooters? Their competition guns are pretty serious to them, right? And couldn’t you argue that any gun you carry is a pretty serious gun just by the fact that you carry it? So why does the internet spend so much time getting wrapped around the axle of “this is a serious gun?”
I have a theory. I think it’s because in general, the gun internet has lost its collective sense of humor. Sure, there are still a few people who can unclench a little bit, but the rising wave of Uber-Tacticality that’s dominated the landscape has complete erased the concept of “fun” from the shooter’s vocabulary. If you’re not dry firing for your next match, you’re doing it wrong. If you’re not training for a Sentinel Event (sorry John) you’re doing it wrong. Hell, I fall prey to this mindset all the time. I’ll go to the range and think “I need to work on this or that skill today and really bear down and focus” – which is all well and good, mind you. But sometimes you just want to do mag dumps with a shotgun because you can.
Lately I’ve noticed an even weirder reverse trend; since everything became uber-tactical and covered in Molle and rails, people would compete with each other online to see who was the most tactical. When that became gauche, people starting competing online to see who could APPEAR to be the least tactical, while still being tactical. “I don’t wear tactical pants anymore, they mark you as a gun owner. I only CCW in jeans and nikes with a ratty hoody on so I don’t stand out. #greymanoperations” – it’s bewildering to me, until I remember that the internet exists so people can argue about who’s better at stuff. Which is fine and everything.
Unfortunately, this leads to a real problem. Because some things are more serious than others. The gun that you use to defend your life or your home should be serious, and it should be well thought out and trained with. That doesn’t mean you can’t have fun shooting it, but it should definitely be something that works. This is where the problems start. Let’s take two examples here: I would rather someone use side by side shotgun made by a reputable company for home defense than a Kel-Tec KSG. Why? Because the KSG is fundamentally unserious. It’s a bad design from a gun maker whose quality is spotty on their very best day. A side by side shotgun probably isn’t the best choice, but if it’s reliable and you can handle it well, it’s better than a gun that looks better on paper but might crap out when you need it to work.
Let’s take it back to the Ruger Vaquero. It is not the best choice for concealed carry. But it’s accurate, reliable, and a well proven gun. I’d rather someone carry a Vaquero than a lot of guns, because the Vaquero is probably going to work when they need it to. That’s really what makes a gun serious – it’s going to work when you need it to. If you have a gun that you never “need” to work, it doesn’t matter if it’s reliable. Fun range toys are great, and there’s a world of options out there. Just don’t go being a tool on the internet about it.
Ruger SP101 Wiley Clapp and Wilson Combat Spring Kit
The Ruger SP101 is one of my favorite small frame revolvers, right up there with the all steel J-Frames I love. If you have a Ruger revolver, you owe it to yourself to get a Wilson Combat Spring Kit from Brownells for it. I have WC kits in all of my GP100s and my Security Sixes. They just make the guns better.
Follow me on Instagram if you like pictures of guns, booze, and my dog.
Why are short barrel guns marketed as “more concealable?”
One of the things that my continuing experiment with concealing a big handgun (Ruger GP100) has shown is that concealing the barrel is the easy part. Due to the way barrel lengths are measured, a 4 inch wheeliegun has just as much barrel to conceal as a 5 inch 1911. That’s not the hard part about concealment.
This is how I’m carrying right now. What do you think in this carry position is the hardest part to conceal? The barrel? Or the cylinder, frame, and stocks? It’s definitely the latter, because the barrel of any gun just sort of disappears down the holster if you’re using an IWB. So why then do we get these little guns with three inch barrels and full size grips marketed as “concealable?”
911 isn’t a self defense strategy
One of the key points of disagreement between pro-gunners and anti-gunners is on the concept of whether or not it is necessary, or even appropriate, for an “average” citizen to have ready access to a lethal weapon in case they are attacked. Anti-gunners often hold that the proper course of action when one is threatened by another is to call the police and let them deal with the problem. To the average person this might sound like a perfectly reasonable answer, but it really isn’t. The giant hole in the anti-gunner self defense plan is that even the best police response is going to be minutes out in a situation where seconds define the boundaries between life and death.
Sunday morning I had to deal with a trespasser with a long documented history of vagrancy, mental health issues, and most worryingly, violence. A police officer who did a check on the man described him as, and I quote, “a psycho”. I had a plan for dealing with the guy and calling the police the second he showed any hostile behavior was a prominent feature of this plan. It was not, however, my only plan. I knew that if the man got violent it was going to be my problem while we waited for police response. We did end up having to call the police, and the officers who responded (3 cruisers including a supervisor) were polite, professional, helpful…and arrived several minutes after the guy left.
This week the FBI released a detailed report about active shooter scenarios. I encourage you to follow this link and read it for yourself, as it contains all sorts of data about where active shooter events take place and how they tend to develop. I found it interesting that nearly half of these events take place in commercial spaces, and that commercial spaces and educational spaces have been the target of almost 3/4 of these attacks. The most significant part of the report, in my mind, was the “resolutions” section. I’ll reproduce it here:
“The majority of the 160 incidents (90 [56.3%]) ended on the shooter’s initiative—sometimes when the shooter committed suicide or stopped shooting, and other times when the shooter fled the scene. There were at least 25 incidents where the shooter fled the scene before police arrived. In 4 additional incidents, at least 5 shooters fled the scene and were still at large at the time the study results were released. In other incidents, it was a combination of actions by citizens and/or law enforcement that ended the shootings. In at least 65 (40.6%) of the 160 incidents, citizen engagement or the shooter committing suicide ended the shooting at the scene before law enforcement arrived.”
In other words, in the sizeable majority of active shooter incidents the event was over before police ever arrived on the scene. Keep in mind that an active shooter call gets the highest priority police response. When that call goes out police departments (in the US, at least) drop everything and get to the scene as quickly as possible. Even so, in the majority of situations priority police response to a mass-casualty event was still too late. Remember: I’m not saying that. The FBI is saying that. This is fact, not a talking point.
The only answer to an active shooter is force. The only way to limit the casualties inflicted by an active shooter is to apply that force immediately. The only way to do that is to have armed individuals among the intended victims of the attack…which is why, in the aftermath of the horrific events at Sandy Hook the NRA proposed putting school resource officers in every school. The NRA was mocked, you’ll recall, for proposing the idea as all the leading lights in society scoffed…but the NRA’s proposal was based on the same sort of sober analysis of these events mirrored in this FBI report. About a year after the horror at Newtown, another malevolent narcissist tried to pull off a massacre in Arapahoe High School…and he was engaged by gunfire from a school resource officer less than 90 seconds after he started shooting.
The politicians who like to mock the NRA and blame them for all the violence that takes place in our society conveniently ignore the fact that the NRA has a significant role in training police officers across our nation. Drawing on accumulated data and the combined experience of a lot of law enforcement professionals the NRA proposed making school resource officers standard everywhere. The leading lights of society proposed irrelevant legislation and a hashtag campaign.
The FBI report notes that actions by citizens on scene have limited the duration of active shooter events. Incidents like the attack at the New Life church in Colorado or the shooting at the Apalachian Law School were brought to a halt quickly by armed citizens who intervened quickly enough to limit the damage done by the criminal vermin.
There are, of course, more types of violent crime than active shooters looking to rack up a body count…but consider what this information tells us about police response to other types of violent crime. If the police usually can’t get there in time to stop a mass killing, what are the odds they’re going to be there in time to stop more pedestrian forms of violence directed at you? The factors that prevent police from being able to stop an active shooter before he/she has racked up a body count are just as much in play when there’s just one guy trying to do harm to just little ol’ you…and where a mass casualty event gets priority police response, a dude threatening you with harm might not get the same level of police response.
…and that presumes that you are in a position to summon police assistance in the first place, which is hardly guaranteed. In the cell phone era if four men burst into a mall with rifles and hand grenades intent on slaughtering as many people as possible it’s highly likely that multiple people will dial 911. What about the lone coed being plied with alcohol by someone intent on doing her harm? What about the guy at the ATM who is targeted by a violent criminal intent on robbery? What about the gas station attendant who is outnumbered 3 to 1?
I’m not maligning police forces in the US, nor am I arguing that 911 is a joke. There is a time and place when dialing 911 is the correct response to a problem…but 911 is not a substitute for taking effective action on your own.
You are, ultimately, on your own. At least for as long as it will take to determine the outcome for you and perhaps others. The good news is that with the right knowledge and a little bit of equipment you can make a world of difference: