A List Member Replies: While the handgun cited was not a Glock, in response to my comment yesterday about the utility of an accurate .22 revolver for taking small game in a survival mode, a list member has pointed out that .22 conversion modules are available for some centerfire pistols. I don't own such a conversion and have seen reports suggesting that not all are uniformly reliable but it's an interesting concept - a centerfire pistol for defense with a relatively compact conversion kit for when one elects to go into hunting mode. Comments about reliability and accuracy of the different conversions are welcome and will likely be shared with the list. --- The Beat Goes On: Strong nationwide gun and ammunition sales are helping El Paso gun dealers buck the recession that is hurting other businesses. "Certain items are practically impossible to get, including ammunition for certain caliber guns," said Shane Cook, manager at the Sportsman's Elite Hunting & Gun Pro Shop in West El Paso. "The hottest items at the store have been the .380-caliber pistol, which is our top seller, and the AR-15 style rifle. Ammunition has also been hard to get from suppliers. For example, if we get a case in on Monday with 10 to 20 boxes, and each box contains 50 rounds, by Friday it will all be gone." At the El Paso Gun Exchange, which also sells firearms to law enforcement, the surge in demand that began several months ago has started to slow a bit for some products but not others... In Texas, the uptick in concealed gun permits appears to correspond with a rise in purchases of small handguns that can be carried easily by gun owners, dealers said. Last year, Texas had a total of 314,574 concealed gun permits on file for the state, compared with 288,909 in 2007. Although a breakdown of existing gun permits by county was not available, more than 500 El Pasoans submitted new applications in the past year to the Texas Department of Public Safety... http://www.elpasotimes.com/ci_13745075?source=most_viewed --- Another Way to Revoke the RKBA?: Falling in lockstep with Speaker Pelosi's "Are you serious?" dismissal of a legitimate Constitutional question, 220 oath-breaking representatives voted to impose yet another authority-usurping federal mandate, and take over yet another huge chunk of the economy under cover of a shallow "power to regulate interstate commerce" sound bite. So what does this have to do with gun rights? ...While my natural sympathies lie with GOA, I'm not weighing in on that debate here. I'm raising another potential, with the caveat that it depends on whether or not the Committee on Ways & Means Republicans are also engaging in "overheated rhetoric." Because if they're not, this bill as passed poses a more immediate and direct threat... http://www.examiner.com/x-1417-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m11d9-Will-House-health-care-bill-create-new-class-of-prohibited-persons --- More on the FN Five-seveN Myth: One of the pistols used by Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan was the FNH USA's FN Five-Seven [sic], which afforded the Austin American-Statesman an opportunity to promote gun control. But their article hides the truth... While the article attempts a disclaimer - buried in the middle - it mentions that the ammunition is "available only to law enforcement and military personnel." No: Federal law states it's available only to agencies. Hasan had no free access to restricted ammo... The article's conclusion reiterates the assault weapon theme: "An assault rifle that fits in your pocket" is how one law enforcement official described the pistol in earlier Congressional testimony. The author mentions Brady Campaign twice, reiterating the armor piercing ability of the pistol... The Austin American-Statesman uses tragedy to promote the very policy which enabled a massacre. This is questionable journalism. (First, an assault rifle, by military definition, is one that is capable of full-auto fire from the shoulder; all military rifles are capable of penetrating soft body armor with their standard ammunition. Second, as I have sought to point out before, the issue of armor-piercing ammunition was irrelevant in this scenario, as it was in the only case of an American police officer known to have been shot with KTW ammunition, the load that prompted the entire "cop-killer bullet" scam - he too was not wearing body armor at the time he was shot.) http://www.examiner.com/x-2879-Austin-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m11d9-Fort-Hood-Austin-AmericanStatesman-promotes-gun-control Related Commentary: ...It may seem counterintuitive to many, but the high velocities that enable the Five-seveN's .22 bullet to drive through soft body armor are thought to be mostly wasted on unarmored targets. The 5.7 is a relatively new cartridge with limited distribution and so actual "real world" ballistic performance is anecdotal at best, but high-velocity pistol bullets like the .38 Super noted earlier and the 7.62×25 Tokarev have been around almost 80 years. Their established track record is that of bullets with excellent penetration characteristics but with questionable stopping power. The 5.7 round uses a far lighter bullet at higher velocities and the high velocity gives the bullet the distinct possibility of fragmenting. But even then, a high-velocity bullet that only weighs 40 grains (as does the legal SS197SR bullet Hasan used) is at a distinct disadvantage when compared to other pistol cartridges. Instead of dumping the bullet's energy into the body of the person shot, these high-velocity rounds typically stab a long narrow wound channel completely through a human-sized target, or they erupt into fragments that cause narrow wound channels... ("Energy dump" is a disputed concept, as is that of the temporary wound cavity, caused as bullets exceed the speed of sound. Nevertheless, I believe it is fair to say that a well designed modern hollowpoint round for a more conventional pistol would probably do more damage than a bullet fired from FN Five-seveN.) http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/thank-goodness-for-cop-killer-weapons/2/ --- Gun control advocates in this country know they are losing the hearts and minds of more and more Americans every day. Poll after poll has shown that support for gun control is at an all time low, repeatedly their agenda has been defeated in the courts, and pro-gun laws are still sweeping the country. Ever since the "assault weapons ban" (AWB) sunset in 2004, they have been waiting for the right moment to try to get it restated. Now, five years later, some think they have that chance thanks to the Ft. Hood shooting. The fact that what have been arbitrarily defined as "assault weapons" by these activists were't even used in this shooting is immaterial, this incident is little more than a means to an end for them... http://www.examiner.com/x-2206-Cleveland-Gun-Rights-Examiner~y2009m11d9-Gun-control-advocates-using-Ft-Hood-as-smoking-gun --- ...The argument that a prohibition against firearms will eliminate the possession of firearms by anyone is clearly refuted by the ample empirical evidence that prohibition simply does not succeed in its intended objective when the subject of the prohibition is something that enough of the population wants. No matter how draconian the restrictions or dire the legal consequences prohibition is defeated by desire. Prostitution, booze, and drugs are or have been prohibited by law with no appreciable effect on eliminating any of them. In fact, illegal drugs consistently find their way into prisons--the most secured, restrictive institutions in society. Obviously, if prison inmates can gain access to drugs, and military base personnel can gain access to guns, in spite of heavy security and strict prohibitions, how will laws prevent anyone from having either? ... http://www.thedailysound.com/opinion/111009rot Folks, there are some people who are saying that the incident at Fort Hood is just another glaring illustration of why we need gun control in the United States. Why we need gun control. If you are one of these people who think that the lesson of the Fort Hood massacre is gun control, may I remind you...? As Jay Nordlinger posts at National Review Online today: Yeah, yeah, right an Army base is no place for weapons. Right? Gun control on an Army base? Guess who was unarmed? There are 300 unarmed soldiers that were packed into cubicles in there with five-foot-high dividers. It was a cop, a 5'2" woman who took out the shooter. What a gutsy woman, a 5'2" local cop, 'cause these soldiers were unarmed on their own base. That makes a lot of sense, right? Gun control the lesson of this? Ha. I mean, that is just typical liberal knee-jerk, blindness, template, doesn't see the truth right in front of their eyes. Just amazing. http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_110909/content/01125113.guest.html --- A Plea for CCW on Base: ...The military rightly protects stealth bombers and intelligence assets so a successful attack at such a post is highly unlikely. They keep the number of personnel at such facilities lower so tighter security measures can be used without disrupting day to day life. Admitting that publicly at this point isn't giving terrorists a helpful tip - the massacre at Fort Hood gave them a great road map for similar attacks in the future. What most people don't realize is the huge difference in how individual posts handle security and access to the post itself. To be fair, in most cases it isn't a failing of the administration but instead simple logistics that create an opening for an attack similar to what happened at Fort Hood. The huge number of soldiers and civilians that work on post make it impossible to check every ID and every car. Looking at the Fort Hood attack in more general terms exposes that it followed the same pattern as nearly every killing spree in America, with the exception of the fact that it occurred on a military installation... (Nearly 12 years ago, I trained on a DOE range at one of the nation's higher-security military bases. Base policy was that state-commissioned peace officers were the only civilians authorized to bring firearms and ammunition onto the base. As a result we had to put all our firearms and ammunition into a van provided by the local police, then ride onto base in a separate van provided by the same department. The fallacy is that it is all basically an honor system, a fact confirmed recently by a well know firearms instructor, who worked there a few years back as a contract trainer.) http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=115494 --- Oops, Wrong Hunter: A Troy [MT] man shot and killed a grizzly in the Cabinet Mountains and state wildlife officials say he did it in self defense. Fish, Wildlife and Parks reports the man was hunting mule deer on Dad Peak on last Friday. He told officials he spotted two grizzlies about 50 yards ahead of him. The man said he yelled at them and waved his gun. But he says the bears started to move toward him. That's when the man realized there were three bears. He said he yelled again and hoped the animals would run off. But the larger bear reportedly charged and the hunter shot the bear about 25 yards out. The man hiked out and reported the shooting to wildlife officials. After an investigation, Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials ruled the shooting of the adult female grizzly was justifiable. (I will leave it to those who spend more time in the woods than I do to comment on whether it is reasonable to expect today's grizzly bears to respond to this type of display. My understanding is that, in some areas, the bears have come to associate the sound of gunfire with the presence of gut piles and are now attracted by it.) http://www.keci.com/Montana-Man-Shoots-and-Kills-Grizzly-in-Self-Defen/5633307 --- Self-Defense Shooter Speak to the Media: Karen Hankins said Monday she doesn't think she'll ever get over what happened last week, when she says she fatally shot her ex-husband in self-defense. But she wants to share her story to help heal and bring awareness of the dangers of mental illness. In her first TV interview, the Redmond [OR] woman talked tearfully about how, on a night much like any other, she had to react to a situation not many people could ever dream of facing. "I dropped the phone and took both hands on the gun, and pulled the trigger. Without even thinking. It wasn't a choice. It was a survival instinct... I said, 'Shane, I have a gun, do not come in here," Karen recalled. "Well, he's crawling through the window at that point. He's halfway in. So I shot into the ceiling, thinking I would scare him. He said, 'You won't shoot me.' I said, 'Shane, you're not supposed to be here. You're scaring me, please stop. And he says, 'I think you only have one bullet left.' He says, 'You're going to have to kill me to stop me." After firing another shot, this time into his arm, she says Shane came after her, and she fired the fatal shot... (Note the reluctance [lack of mental preparedness] to fire what proved to be the fatal shot. Had that shot not sufficed, she probably would only have had two or three left in the revolver. One of the problems with warning shots is that they may waste precious ammunition.) http://www.ktvz.com/Global/story.asp?S=11473874 --- Otis McDonald Speaks to the Media: Otis McDonald, lead plaintiff in the case challenging the constitutionality of the City of Chicago's handgun ban, has taken on challenges his entire life. And at the age of 76, he's not done yet... "Where I live [on Chicago's South Side], I'm always concerned about the neighborhood," he said. "I've lived here 30 some years, and I like it here, and I wanted to keep it clean, keep it protected, and keep the property value up... I'm concerned heavily about the kids, about the real young kids coming up in this environment, because they are being trained to be what the older ones are," he said. "They're recruited daily, nightly, to be drug dealers and gangbangers... I will not be pinned down in my house without anything to defend myself, while they walk the streets," he said. "I will not be victimized by the law that tells me I cannot have a handgun in my own home, when I know there's a right that's out there that's given to me. The people out there on the streets don't have the right to have a gun out there on the streets. But we law-abiding citizens - senior citizens, I may stress - have the constitutional right under the Second Amendment. It will make the residents, old people like myself, feel a little more secure..." http://www.heartland.org/full/26330/Handgun_Ban_Plaintiff_Urges_Gun_Rights_in_CrimeRidden_Neighborhoods.html --- Tangentially Related: L/Cpl Hodge, who was drafted in to compete in the Miss World contest after Rachel Christie relinquished her title following her arrest over an alleged nightclub brawl, said she planned to join comrades on the frontline in Afghanistan. The 22-year-old soldier has already served in Iraq but said she was hoping to join the effort in Afghanistan after stepping down as Miss England in July next year. She said: ''It is something I want to do'', adding: ''People just do not appreciate the Army enough.'' ...L/Cpl Hodge added that she had been due to be sent out to Afghanistan before she was crowned Miss England. She was previously given an award by her unit in the Royal Anglian Regiment for her actions during a posting in Basra and has earned the nickname ''Combat Barbie''... (What a breath of fresh air from England!) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/defence/6529042/Combat-Barbie-Miss-England-Katrina-Hodge-launches-Miss-World-2009.html -- Stephen P. Wenger, KE7QBY Firearm safety - It's a matter for education, not legislation. http://www.spw-duf.info .