Last Call to Vote

Don’t wake up November 4th and sulk to work knowing you didn’t vote; that some election and your future may have hinged on your participation.

Ten days from the date of this publication is the most important election of your lifetime. Balk at your own peril. If you are voting absentee, get your ballot in today. Ditto if you are being forced to vote by mail because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

One party seems determined to pass lots of legislation aimed at placing limits on Second Amendment rights. The other party has been pretty good at stopping them.

One look at what happened in Virginia earlier this year provides a strong hint about what will happen nationally if Congress changes hands and there’s a new face in the White House. That party gets lots of support from the billionaire-backed Everytown for Gun Safety Victory Fund, which recently circulated an email message that warned, “With less than a month before Election Day, (Republicans) trying to ram through the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett, an NRA-backed Supreme Court nominee who poses a threat to gun safety legislation across the country.”

She might only pose such a threat if the so-called “gun safety legislation” is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.

Everytown was looking for phone bank volunteers to help get the anti-gun voters out Nov. 3rd in key battleground states. They want to “flip the Senate, win the White House and make sure we have a Gun Sense federal government that works for us.”

Translation: A government that works for Everytown doesn’t work for gun owners. As Sen. Ted Cruz notes, the Second Amendment is on the November ballot whether you like it or not. He’s written a book, “One Vote Away: How a Single Supreme Court Seat Can Change History.” He expects constitutional conservative Judge Amy Coney Barrett to be confirmed to the high court by the end of this month.

Gun owners are responsible with their firearms, so you need to be responsible with your voting power. Use it — vote.

https://gunsensevoter.org/priority-phonebank/

Location, Location, Location

Where you live might also be a factor in whether you get popped by some thug misusing a firearm. FBI data reveals that 73.7% of all murder victims nationwide last year were killed with a firearm, and 10.6% were stabbed/slashed to death.

But there’s a little more to it. If you live in the South or Midwest, 79% and 76%, respectively, of all murder victims were shot. In the Northeast, your odds of getting fatally shot are a little better as 64.5% of all the murder victims were felled by gunfire. But not to worry, because 16.2% of all the people murdered last year were stabbed/slashed in that region. Out West, 65.9% of murder victims in 2019 were shot, and 14.6% fatally stabbed.

Sort of on this same subject, the FBI data also revealed four states reported fewer than 20 murders in 2019. They were Vermont (11), Wyoming (13), South Dakota (19) and Maine (20). These may not be complete numbers, but they certainly provide a good estimate.

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-7.xls

https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-2019/tables/table-20

As might be expected, Alan Gottlieb at the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms weighed in matter-of-factly.

“Why should this surprise anybody,” he wondered. “We’ve been treated to months of images on the nightly news showing cities under siege, businesses being vandalized, looted and even burned. People have been killed, more have been injured including scores of police officers, and all we hear from protesters are demands for cuts to police departments, while radical city councils work overtime to appease the mob.

“The last six months have taught millions of people the importance of having a constitutional right to own a firearm,” Gottlieb observed. “They’ve learned how restrictive and pointless some gun control laws can be. Now they’re being asked by two anti-gun career politicians, and their party, for support so they can enact even more restrictions while they erode public safety and expect the American public to accept this as the ‘new normal.’ No wonder people are buying guns. They’re praying for the best but preparing for the worst.”

Point taken!
https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/gun_control/22_of_gun_owning_households_have_added_a_gun_since_anti_police_protests_began

https://www.ccrkba.org/americans-who-own-guns-feel-safer-says-ccrkba-about-rasmussen-report/

More Range Time Needed?

It finally happened; Insider missed a shot at a grouse using a .22-caliber pistol.

It should have been an easy shot. Two-hand hold on a Ruger MKIV Target model with a 5” bull barrel, sights dead on at only 25 yards away and the stupid bugger was just holding still under the branches of a vine maple. Blue grouse do that a lot — it’s why we call them “fool hens.”

The bullet went just a tad high; one of those “missed it by that much” shots. The bird did a little hop, looked at me as if to ask, “What the hell are you shooting at?” and scampered into the brush only to take flight a second later.

Couldn’t figure out why until I extracted the magazine and discovered the only possible explanation. I’d been practicing most of the summer with 40-grain RNL bullets. The magazine was loaded with 32-grain hollowpoints. That may not seem like much, but it was enough. Either that, or Insider is just plain getting too long in the tooth to be trying pistol shots at small game.

Nah, couldn’t be that.

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