The Threadless Nut

So you may have heard that Chicago recently had its gun ban struck down by the Supreme Court. Now the city has released this list of “unsafe handguns” that they are banning. Most of them are antique firearms, or things like disguised guns. A bunch of them are simply guns without trigger guards. I’ll admit that at first glance, something without a trigger guard seems very unsafe, but they are often single action revolvers, which can’t fire unless the hammer is manually cocked first.

However, here are a few puzzling items on the list:

• All handguns by Hi-Point, they are cheap and pretty ugly, but I’ve never read about them being inherently unsafe. There are several other manufacturers of “cheap” pistols listed.
• The Sig Mosquito, certainly a high quality manufacturer and I’d like to know why this is unsafe.
• The Walther P22, same as above.

It seems possible there is an attempt here to eliminate affordable guns that might be used for self defense by folks with fewer financial resources. We’ve seen “Saturday Night Specials” bans before and it, yes these cheap guns are sometimes unsafe, or used by criminals as throw away guns, but they are also used by folks who can’t afford more for perfectly legal means. The fact that there aren’t any reasons listed in the document is troubling. Even if someone like Hi-Point wanted to address the issues that these legislators “found”, there’s no info for them.

So Chicago, sorry you lost that big case, but show some good sportsmanship here, ‘k?

It appears that all the kerfuffle about the military brass destruction was either a mistake,  or the response was so strong that those involved reversed the policy. Not sure which, but it’s good news. Georgia Arms has updated their site and it appears that the mutilation order only applies to shells larger than .50 caliber.

Now I’m off to buy a 25mm rifle.

I recently caught wind of this little gem via a post on Michael Bane’s blog. It seems that somewhere it was decided that the government will no longer be releasing it’s fired shell casings to the commercial reloading market. Currently the homepage of Georgia Arms, whom I’ve purchased ammo from before, talks about how they can no longer supply .223 and .308 ammo at all. Here is the notification they received:

Effective immediately DOD Surplus, LLC, will be implementing new requirements for mutilation of fired shell casings.  The new DRMS requirement calls for DOD Surplus personnel to witness the mutilation of the property and sign the Certificate of Destruction.  Mutilation of the property can be done at the DRMO, if permitted by the Government, or it may be mutilated at a site chosen by the buyer.  Mutilation means that the property will be destroyed to the extent prevents its reuse or reconstruction.  DOD Surplus personnel will determine when property has been sufficiently mutilated to meet the requirements of the Government.

Not only does this have a significant impact on ammunition availability and prices, which are already bad enough, but it will also incur additional financial penalties. The value of quality shell casings is much higher than the value of the brass as scrap. That’s additional income that will be lost. There is also additional expense as the casings have to be “mutilated” and that process needs to be approved and inspected by someone. So not only is it an anti-shooter move, it just doesn’t make any financial sense. It’s like busting your house up to sell off the wood.

What really sticks in my craw about this is that it’s a sneaky and underhanded way to discourage firearms ownership and hurt existing shooters. These “policies” and “regulations” don’t go through any legislative process and can have huge impacts on the firearms community. It’s certainly not a new tactic, but it’s one that really irks me.

If you are upset about this, please do as Georgia Arms suggests and contact your representatives.

So this is the morning of an historic (wait, aren’t they all historic?) inauguration of President Obama in our lovely little corner of the world. I’m deep in Blue territory here in NY and the refrains of “change” and “yes we can” are everywhere. I’m almost done burying all my guns in the woods, hold on, maybe I should be digging them up?

Yet, on my way to work this morning, there’s a car stuck in a snow bank on the side of a main road. An EMS guy is alternatively trying to dig  it out with a window scraper and push it out, but he’s not having much luck. There’s a woman in the car and a kid in the back. Even if they were only there for 10 minutes, hundreds of cars would have gone by and no one, besides the EMS guy, was there helping.

After stopping, getting the tow strap and pulling her out with the truck, a whole 5 minute operation, I learn that she was making a U-turn to meet him. So the one guy that was helping was her husband. 3 or 4 people could have pushed the car out with minimal effort and time.

So maybe, if we want a better world, we shouldn’t be looking up at our new President, but back at ourselves. After all, doesn’t change come from within?

With all the scams running rampant out there, it seems that this Venn diagram pretty accurately represents the Internet:

Watch out Granny!