Mexico Captures "Man with the Golden Gun": Jaime "The Hummer" Gonzales, the alleged leader of the country's most feared drug cartel death squad, was snatched in a raid near the US border, Mexican police said. They also seized the biggest arms cache in the country's history. The FBI believes he had stockpiled the weapons and ordered dozens of hit men to Reynosa, just across the border from McAllen, Texas, for a possible confrontation with US law enforcement. Mexican officials distributed images of the gold-plated gun and bundles of cash that they said belonged to Gonzalez, who is also wanted in the US for drug trafficking... (Note that the receiver and slide of the 1911 pistol are actually blued steel. The 1911 is highly prized in Mexico. When I grew up in Mexico, in the 1950's, it was not uncommon to see them in the holsters of police officers [chambered in .38 Super if the officers were not in federal service], with fancy grips made of silver, with design elements, such as Mexican eagles, made of contrasting copper and gold.) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/centralamericaandthecaribbean/mexico/3407353/Mexico-captures-its-man-with-the-golden-gun-in-vicious-drugs-war.html --- Cleansing the Gene Pool?: A teen-ager has been found guilty in Bisbee of manslaughter in the death of a 16-year-old who was shot in the face with a 12-gauge shotgun. Prosecutor Roger Contreras said the teens were tossing the shotgun around when the shooting happened in October 2007 in Hereford. Nicholas Murphy, 18, had faced a second-degree murder charge in the death of Joshua Olson, but the jurors convicted him of the lesser crime of manslaughter on Friday...Murphy had pleaded guilty in an agreement in late May to a lesser charge of recklessly causing the death. But a judge rejected the plea deal because Murphy wrote a letter to the victim's family stating he was innocent... (Shotguns and most rifles generally lack the equivalent of a firing-pin safety and can discharge when an impact disengages the sear from the hammer. This article errs in legal terminology. The lowest level of criminal homicide in Arizona is negligent homicide. Recklessness generally implies that the outcome was foreseeable and, in Arizona law, elevates a negligent homicide to manslaughter. Murder generally implies an intent to kill.) http://www.azstarnet.com/metro/266390 --- American Rifle, a Brief Review: Having read (and shared) an early review of Alexander Rose's American Rifle: A Biography, I jumped at the offer to receive a copy for review. It was inevitable that I would compare it to Philip Sharpe's encyclopedic classic The Rifle in America. The two are very different but complementary books, as is Rose's work complementary to a great many other books on America's various military rifles. Rose begins with the introduction of the rifled long gun to the American colonies by German immigrants and its subsequent integration into the core of the American character and military service. Rose then focuses on the American service rifle, making the cover illustration, of an engraved Winchester lever-action rifle, a bit misleading. Rather than replicate or collate masses of technical data, Rose, instead, offers a behind the scenes look at how and why the various rifles were adopted in military service, with great detail about the personalities involved. In fact, historian Rose is a bit lacking on the technical side, with minor errors such as the use of "bullet" for "cartridge" and "clip" for "magazine," at times when such errors would confuse the uninitiated. As a storyteller, Rose tends to skip back and forth a bit, a trait that would have been well counterbalanced by the inclusion, preferably inside the front and rear covers, of a timeline of the developments of firearms and ammunition. As a single source on the history of American military rifles, American Rifle could be a bit misleading but, at the risk of sounding trite, is a valuable addition to the library of any serious scholar of "the gun." (The notes alone run 63 pages and the bibliography is so lengthy that author and publisher elected to post it on the author's website [http://www.alexrose.com/RW/Home.html], rather than print it in the book.) I would not quibble over the list price of $30.00 and consider it a bargain at Amazon.com's price of $19.80. http://www.amazon.com/American-Rifle-Biography-Alexander-Rose/dp/0553805177/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1211918607&sr=1-1 --- From John Farnam: 3 Nov 08 Current retail front, from a friend who owns a big gun store in the Midwest: "We are experiencing a feeding frenzy here! We're selling guns as fast as our staff can run cash registers and complete paperwork. Yesterday expended our stock of Kalashnikovs, and today we ran out of ARs. We have virtually nothing remaining in stock. We've even run out of G17s! In the gun business, running out of G17s is like a bar running out of Jim Beam! At this pace, the pipeline's capacity is measured in only a day or two." Comment: Who are not already "set up" are going to have great difficulty from this point forward. /John 8 Nov 08 Feeding frenzy continues: Reports from every corner of the Nation unite in confirming that Americans are acquiring guns and ammunition at a rate that shatters all previous records. We've never seen anything like it! Here in CO, our State's automated buyer-confirmation system, normally able to approve purchases in seconds, is now so constipated that buyers have to return the next day to take legal possession of their new guns. I personally watched a single buyer spend over twelve thousand dollars in twenty minutes at a local retailer, buying literally every military rifle and pistol he could get his hands on. Another, in a single purchase, took possession of over a hundred thirty-round, AR-15 magazines, cleaning out the store's entire inventory! A number of friends have called me and asked what kind of military rifle they should buy. I advise them that they've already waited too long, but to get whatever they can, as soon as they can! Again, from Confucius: "A superior man, when resting in safety, forgets not that peril is ever present. When in a state of security, he forgets not that ruin is only a breath away. When all is orderly, he forgets not that chaos ever hovers over him. Thus, his state and clans are preserved." Exciting times are here- even at the gate! /John (While one person purchasing over 130 AR-15 magazines is probably speculating on how high there prices will go when Big Brother signs the next ban, most of these people are undergoing a political enlightenment that is in direct contradiction to the frustration that led to the election of Big Brother and his party members in the legislature. All of us "in the know" need to reach out to those who may either be newcomers to the shooting fraternity [or the gun culture, as some prefer to call it these days] or to the investment in firearms intended more for social work than sport and encourage them to join RKBA organizations and become active in the political arena. While I feel that my philosophy is better represented by Gun Owners of America than the NRA, a strong NRA is more crucial now than it has been in years.) -- Stephen P. Wenger, KE7QBY Firearm safety - It's a matter for education, not legislation. http://www.spw-duf.info .