Tag Archives: Handgun

When things are so bad that you have to send it to the people

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So in California, which has had an assault weapon ban going all the way back to 1989 and yet still have mass-shootings with California-compliant firearms, lawmakers tried to pass over 20 legislative actions on increased gun control this session.

A baker’s dozen of these made it through the legislature in Dem-heavy votes of which Gov. Jerry Brown signed 7 into law and returned five with vetoes.

Since gun rights groups and Republican lawmakers couldn’t derail these, a group of gun owners on a gun forum (Calguns) got together and decided, “Let’s try for a ballot referendum to repeal these…”

And that’s exactly what they are doing.

With a pressing deadline of Sept.29, they are trying to get 450,000 signatures on 7 different propositions. Of course, California has 13 million gun owners, which by definition should all be capable of registering to vote, so it’s not far-fetched.

I’ve spoken with the man behind the effort, a San Diego tech company executive, and it’s a hail Mary play with a lot of spunk behind it.

More over in my column at Guns.com here and here.

Bringing the Second Amendment to the hood

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The Black Lives Matter movement has embraced gun control and allied with anti-gun groups while their leadership has very publicly painted the group as non-violent and non-confrontational.

Not affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement, 29-year-old community leader Maj Toure is a gun owner and a card-carrying member of the National Rifle Association and believes that the right to keep and bear arms is fundamental. And he is bringing that message, without any outside support, to the black community through outreach and free firearms training conducted by certified instructors.

I had a chance to talk with Toure this month about his Black Guns Matter group, his vision, and why it’s needed. In short, he wants to replace more gun regulations, buybacks and rhetoric with firearms training, education, and concealed carry permits.

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“Charlton Heston said it – you basically got to pry this out of my cold, dead hand. I’m not going down that way because we are citizens, Americans,” Toure told me. “We are citizens. We have the right to exercise the Second Amendment and anyone that’s tryin’ to infringe on that is not only in violation of the Constitution but they’re also just a dick.”

I told him he needed to put that remark on a T-shirt.

More in my column at Guns.com

One 3-D printer away…

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I’ve been covering the story of a DIY gun maker who goes by derwoodvw, a 47-year-old carpenter, and his very AR-ish/Tec-9 looking Shuty MP 1 semi-auto pistol made almost completely of plastic for a minute over at Guns.com.

His latest version uses an aftermarket Glock 17 barrel along with a 3D printed lower and upper designed to use G17 mags. He says he has gotten 3K rounds out of it without jamming thus far.

A big step from the homemade guns of yesteryear. You can almost picture resistance armorers in occupied wherever peering at their desktop 3D printer in the dim lights of their basement workshops, the hand-rolled cigarette of the 1940s replaced with a vape…

Hessian SEK comes correct

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So last Thursday a “confused” man entered the Kinopolis in the Rhein-Neckar-Zentrum shopping center located in the town of Viernheim around armed with an unidentified weapon from which he fired at least four shots in the air. This initiated a response from Hessian state police Spezialeinsatzkommando (SEK) members from nearby Frankfurt who ended the hostage situation (four workers and 14 visitors held against their will) with judicious use of chemicals (CS) and surgical use of small arms.

At the end of the incident, the gunman was expired but all the movie-goers were fine with the exception of a whiff of CS.

Post-shooting analysis show the 19-year old German at the root of the incident to be a disturbed young man armed with blank firing alarm guns and fake grenades, which is sad and seems leaning towards suicide by cop.

Not to be confused with the smaller and more counter-terror focused federal GSG9, SEKs are more akin to special response/SWAT teams and by looking at the imagery coming from the incident, there are a few uniquely German take-aways.

Beards are definitely in German LE. Something that is frowned upon in the States. Also, check out the Heckler and Koch MP5A5. Very nice.

Beards are definitely in with German LE– something that is frowned upon in the States. Also, check out the Heckler and Koch MP5A5. Very nice. Further, Mechanix and Motorola aren’t just for Yanks…

Turn out gear is tactical need based-- grab it and go-- as noted by this officer's drop leg rig, which is obviously optimized for the use of hard-plate armor if you note the drop leg holsters. As for the extra handguns (note all the HKs), it looks like the Blackhawk SREPA was there before he threw the balaclava and other gear on and he just hasn't taken it off yet.

Turnout gear is tactical need based– grab it and go– as noted by this officer’s drop leg rig, which is obviously optimized for the use of hard-plate armor if you note the drop leg holsters. As for the extra handguns (note all the HKs), it looks like the Blackhawk SREPA was there before he threw the balaclava and other gear on and he just hasn’t taken it off yet. Still the balaclava and shorts combo is suspect…

Finally, it looks like SEK is perfectly fine rolling in short pants and sneaks. Again we have MP5s and HK pistols. Also note the abbreviated expandable baton on the officer to the right, worn cross draw at about the 11 c'clock

Finally, it looks like SEK is perfectly fine rolling in short pants and sneaks in the interest of saving time. The team came from Frankfurt which is about an hour away so they likely just grabbed and ran. Again we have an MP5, what looks to be a very chopped HK33, and HK pistols along with dropleg rigs and beards. Also note the abbreviated expandable baton on the officer to the left, worn cross draw at about the 11 o’clock on an officer that is obviously right-hand dominant.

On a semi-related note, HK is bringing their newest civilian-legal version of the MP5K to the U.S. in coming days.

I fooled around with one last month in Louisville and have to admit it is kinda sweet.

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The good news is, the SP5K is still made at the HK Oberndorf factory in Germany and comes with a STANAG 4694 Profile mounting rail.

Bad news is it’s $2,699 MSRP and if you add the optional folding buttstock you are still looking at the stamp. Still, the closest competition, the Zenith MKE Z-5 series, runs close to that and no matter how nice they are, still don’t say HK on them…

The Army’s surplus gun pipeline may be fixing to run dry

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Last week the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly passed the 2017 defense authorization act– but hidden inside its pages is a section that could destroy the military’s current stock of surplus rifles and pistols.

The Senate’s version of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act authorizes some $602 billion in spending and despite President Obama’s threat to veto the annual policy measure over issues including a ban on closing the Guantanamo Bay military prison, saw widespread support, passing 85-13 last Tuesday.

While many have noted the measure includes such items as requiring females to register for the draft beginning in 2018, others have been lost in the almost kafkaesque layers of the bill.

In short, within 90 days of the bill becoming law, the Army would transfer almost all of the surplus guns it held at Anniston to Rock Island for meltdown. The only exceptions would be for up to 2,000 M1911 pistols and 2,000 M14 rifles that could be donated to military museums for preservation.

This could mean the death knell for surplus guns for CMP, the 1033 Program which supports some 8,000 local police agencies, and the Ceremonial Rifle Program which provides guns for veterans’ groups such as the VFW and DAV.

More in my column at Guns.com

CMP may get into the 1911 business

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An add-on to the upcoming National Defense Authorization Act that passed committee includes a plan to transfer the U.S. Army’s remaining stock of .45 ACP 1911A1 pistols to the Civilian Marksmanship Program.

Added as an amendment by Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Alabama, while the NDAA was in debate in the House Armed Service Committee, it could see potentially the largest remaining stock of military surplus World War II-era handguns in government hands sold to the public.

The lawmaker disclosed that the military currently spends about $2 per year to store 100,000 Model 1911s that are surplus to the Army’s needs. While 8,300 have been sold or disposed of in recent years – largely through the controversial Department of Defense’s 1033 Program, which offers eligible law enforcement agencies up to one pistol per full-time officer – the guns still on hand have in many cases been stored since the 1980s when they were withdrawn from service in favor of the then-new Beretta 92F (M9).

More in my column at Guns.com

A chat with a controversial sheriff

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So I write a lot of shit. I do fiction (zombie, military sci-fi books and short stories), non-fiction (firearms and history pieces and books), intelligence analysis, and other papers, articles ad nausea. Well I also write a lot of gun politics/legislation/litigation stuff as well– mainly for Guns.com where I have published, according to WordPress, some 1,042 articles since 2012 .

I typically don’t reblog my Guns.com articles over here as I try to stay non-political on LSOZI but decided to make an exception with a story I covered this week.

You see, in Milwaukee there was a horrible double murder after a tragic accident last weekend. In a nutshell, the a 40-year old man, Archie Brown Jr, with his 15-year old nephew in the car accidentally hit a child with his car at a birthday party. When he stopped to tend for the stricken youth, he and his nephew were shot at close range by a party goer and killed. Three people dead. Just like that.

Then the mayor and police chief of Milwaukee jumped in the issue with both feet and decried how lax gun laws in Wisconsin led to this, to which Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke–  a champion of gun rights– took exception.

In the meantime, when the long arm of the law caught up with the birthday party assassin who was hiding out (ironically) in Chicago which has some of the toughest gun laws in the country, he self-terminated. This guy has been in and out of jail since he was 17, was a felon (bank robbery, sexual assault) on parole and prohibited from possessing guns. I guess he didn’t want to go back to Boscobel for the rest of his life and live in a 12×7 with a stainless steel toilet.

So I caught up with Sheriff Clarke and talked to him for 20 minutes or so to get his take on the fall out, and I thought he was very candid.

The article is here.

And if you live in Wisconsin you can donate at your local Associated Bank to the Archie Brown Jr Memorial Fund to help cover funeral expenses.

Want to own a gun in Puerto Rico?

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While writing a piece on a federal indictment of a police detective lieutenant in Puerto Rico for Guns.com, I took some time out and read the 20-pages of gun laws in the Commonwealth as well as talked to some folks back and forth down there.

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Here’s what I found out:

The island territory requires those who want to legally own a firearm first obtain a weapons license or “Licencias de armas,” which costs $125 and has to be renewed every five years. This permit allows the holder to possess a maximum of two firearms, which have to be registered with the police, for which they can only purchase ammo in the same calibers as their declared firearms. Ammunition purchases are limited to just 50 rounds per calendar year per firearm.

Then of course you still need to buy a hunting permit if you want to use your guns for sporting purposes.

Those who want a concealed carry permit must already have a weapons license, become a member of a gun club recognized by the police, obtain an additional $25 Target-shooting permit (“Permisos de tiro al blanco”), which allows the possessor to purchase larger amounts of ammunition and then file an application to appear before a judge to argue their case for a CCW. This typically requires using a lawyer to expedite the process and obtain additional training.

The process costs upwards of $1,000 and the number of permits issued are so low as to classify Puerto Rico as a “No Issue” jurisdiction when compared to such notoriously strict “May Issue” handgun permit states as New Jersey and Hawaii.

However, the Commonwealth also suffers from a crime rate that is seven times higher than that found in the rest of the U.S. despite strict control over legal firearms.

The elusiveness of legal permits on the island has led to a burgeoning black market in illegally procured permits.

Hence the indictment for bogus permits…

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