Poll Claims Virginians Want Background Checks: Most Virginians say they want to close the so-called gun-show "loophole" that permits some gun sales without criminal background checks and they dislike the notion of someone carrying a concealed firearm into a restaurant that serves alcohol, according to a new poll. The survey, conducted by Christopher Newport University's Judy Ford Wason Center for Public Policy, found that eight of every 10 likely voters interviewed wanted to change a state law that allows someone to buy a firearm from an unlicensed seller at a gun show without first undergoing a criminal background check. If the same sale is between a buyer and a licensed dealer at a show, a background check is required. Support for closing the loophole was shared by people of all ages and political and ethnic backgrounds - and in all regions of the state, the poll found. Almost 17 percent of those polled said they favor keeping the law as it is. A strong majority of those polled - 68.4 percent - also do not want Virginia to allow people with concealed weapons permits to bring their firearms into eateries that sell alcohol. More than a quarter of those surveyed - 26.3 percent - disagreed, saying the ban should be lifted... (Of note, the actual questions asked by the poll are not divulged. Virginia has no ban on openly carried firearms in establishments that serve alcohol and I don't believe that armed patrons are barred from drinking.) http://www.roanoke.com/news/roanoke/wb/222951 --- A Personal Observation: On my training page (http://www.spw-duf.info/training.html) I remark: "I strongly encourage minimum calibers of .38 Special in revolvers and 9x19mm (Luger or Parabellum) in autoloaders. However, I have noted that some students who are comfortable shooting larger calibers, such as .40 S&W and .45 ACP, in autoloaders, with their usual two-handed shooting position at their home range, may no longer be comfortable when shooting with some of the one-handed techniques I teach." I was reminded of this last weekend when one of my students, a manly guy, well over six feet in height, complained of wrist pain when firing his SIG P229, with 180 gr. subsonic .40 S&W loads, from the protected-gun position. While I do have early arthritis in my right wrist, no doubt the product of firing thousands of .357 Magnum loads out of my S&W 640-1 small-frame revolvers, I am generally able to fire a few cylinders of .44 Magnums out of a four-inch S&W 629, without significant discomfort. However, I tried firing the student's P229 from the protected-gun position myself and I too experienced some discomfort in the wrist. Of note, if you scroll down to the third row of photographs on the linked training page, you will see a 4' 7" woman trying to get the muzzle high enough to hit the lower portion of the paper target, not the steel frame supporting it. This woman was firing my Kahr K40 with USBP-issue 155 gr. JHP loads, which are snappier than the 180 gr. subsonics. She had no similar complaints. The likely explanation? I don't know about the newer polymer-frame SIG pistols but the older metal-alloy-frame SIG pistols have relatively high bore axes. Kahr pistols, on the other hand use a slightly offset feed ramp to achieve an unusually low bore axis. The higher the bore axis from the hand grasping the gun, the greater the tendency for the muzzle to "flip" up in recoil. --- From John Farnam: 12 Oct 09 Battle Rifle Comments, from a friend in the Philippines: "A decade ago, our armed forces were desperately scampering about for additional rifles to issue to police so they could effectively combat local Islamic insurgents, but budgets were tight. A perfect, albeit short-term, solution was to issue a relatively cheap and available Kalashnikov in 223, but TRADOC (Training and Doctrine Command), in their infinite wisdom, quashed the deal, saying it would take too much time to reorient police officers, who were not accustomed to using rifles. Curiously, rebels, typically uneducated peasants with little military experience, seemed to be able to work an AK just fine, apparently without benefit of any TRADOC orientation. Imagine that! As the crisis deepened, well-meaning individuals spent their own money and donated AKs in 223 to police units. But, our National Police's General HQ refused to issue 223 ammo, stating that the AK was not in the police TOE (Table of Organization). Yet, there were government warehouses chock-full of 223, enough to supply all police units many times over. Political inertia and bureaucratic career-tending, so endemic to this civilization (and yours) is predictably the direct cause of countless needless deaths. We saw it, in spades, over here! We continue to see it!" Comment: John Garand, in the 1930s, designed his new, autoloading military rifle to shoot the 276 Pedersen round (ballistically similar to the current 6.8mmSPC). It was considered a "medium" cartridge, with 300m in range, but the rifle itself was short, slim, and handy. Only the direct intervention of Doug MacArthur caused Garand to up-size his rifle to fire the "heavy" 30-06 (7.62X63) cartridge, and in the process making it a good deal longer, fatter, and heavier. The result was the "M1," the biggest, heaviest, most powerful individual weapon ever issued to infantry soldiers, before or since! The "medium" cartridge, with more range and penetration than the 223 (5.56X45), but less than the 308 (7.62X51), represents today, once again, the wave of the future. In fact, the Chinese, weary of waiting on traditional American leadership in this area, have gone ahead and upgraded to their own version of the medium cartridge, the 5.8X42. The current American version of the medium cartridge, the 6.8mmSPC (6.8X43), despite promising reviews, is still languishing, as politicians and bureaucrats tend their careers! American Soldiers and Marines deserve something better than a maintenance-sensitive, 150m rifle, with poor penetration. We've had forty years to figure this out! Big wars are coming, ready or not! /John ("TOE" actually stands for "Table of Organization and Equipment." I don't know if the term is still in use in the US military but such a table used to spell out just how many people would be assigned to a unit at full strength, in which job and with what equipment.) 13 Oct 09 Rifles south of the border, from a friend familiar with the area: "In the 1960s, when Mexico decided to replace its inventory of 7X57 Mauser bolt-guns (along with their domestically-manufactured equivalent), those in charge at the time shared your disdain for the 5.56X45 (223), preferring the 7.62X51 (308). As a result, they settled on the HK/G3, with the condition that HK license Mexico to produce its own. The G3 was still the standard, military rifle when I last visited Mexico in 1986. It came as a surprise to me, a few years later, to see news photos of Mexican troops, involved in the suppression of the uprising in the state of Chiapas, now all carrying American-made M16s! I suspect, given their continuing contempt for the 223 round, the decision was far more influenced by M16s being furnished, compliments of American taxpayers, than by pragmatic tactics. In a similar vein, I noticed news photos of Israeli troops, also carrying American-made M16s, again compliments of the American taxpayer, while Israeli-made Galils, in the same 223 chambering, were being happily sold in the US retail market (prior to the Bush ban), to gain Israel badly-needed hard cash! Strange bedfellows?" Comment: In the interim, violent Mexican drug-gangs have also been lavishly furnished with these same American-made, American taxpayer-financed M16s, from corrupt Mexican Army sources, not from legitimate American gun retailers, the blatant lie propagated by the current Administration in an effort to falsely "justify" a new, paranoid gun-ban. We no longer live under a Constitution, nor the Rule of Law. We are governed, indeed ruled, by charlatans and poseurs who rush to the head of every mob, ever-eager to lead it in any direction its mindless members wish to race. "Moral decision" has become a preposterous, and laughable, contradiction of terms! /John (It was an interesting experience to see how the words I e-mailed to John morphed into the above "quotation." I had always wondered how it was that so many of John's subordinate instructors, students and friends so closely mimicked John's peculiar grammatical style. Omitted from my e-mail to John was the discussion of earlier 20th-century Mexican manufacture of firearms, including the Obregón pistol, one of the rarest 1911 variants, which used a rotating barrel instead of a swinging link; the Mondragón semi-automatic rifle, which saw limited use by the German army in WWI; and the Mendoza light machine gun, which was generally rated as the best of that scarce breed - a true machine gun that fires from a magazine instead of a belt.) 14 Oct 09 American guns in Mexico? Amid frantic calls for the USA to "... reinstate the Clinton-era ban on 'assault' weapons," (based entirely on superficial appearances) and "...stepping up investigations of American gun-dealers and owners, and more strictly regulating American gun-shows" come dubious assurances that such atrocious federal actions in the USA "... will weaken drug-cartels, disrupting their illegal activities and making it easier ultimately to dismantle and destroy them." Oh, please! Have we heard this rubbish before? Mexico's "government" hardly inspires confidence, and, when they've been so demonstrably incapable thus far in dealing with their own drug-cartels, they can scarcely make a persuasive case that the situation will miraculously change with new, restrictive laws passed in America. Either way, for any drug-cartel, with literally billions necessary to import cocaine by the ton, importing weapons from South America, Europe, and Asia is child's play. A US Senator, and one of our students, noted when he recently toured our southern border that he observed a steady stream of cars and trucks crossing the border, heading south. None were ever searched, on either side! One logically concludes that Mexico's government is vastly more worried about interfering with the southern flow of American dollars than they ever will be about interfering with the supposed flow, in the same direction, of weapons! For Liberals, justifying the degenerative extermination of individual freedom opens the door to progressive tyranny, for which they so earnestly, sincerely, and additively lust. On the way, their cockamamy rationalizations are comical indeed, as we see! /John -- Stephen P. Wenger, KE7QBY Firearm safety - It's a matter for education, not legislation. http://www.spw-duf.info .