Boberg XR9-L is now shipping. The barrel is 0.9″ longer than the S variant. Not a huge difference, but it gives the barrel full length of 4.2″ (halfway between Glock 17 and Glock 19), a Picatinny rail sufficient for a C5L light/laser and slower slide velocity that allows the L to feed even uncrimped ammunition like CCI Blazer. The same low recoil and great mechanical accuracy as the shortie, but with extra 0.9″ of sight radius.
What would you think if a prospective date confirmed the time, the place and the plans for the evening, then added: “Make sure that you come unarmed”? Would you go to the date anyway or wonder what he’s up to? I wonder much the same when politicians and gun control pushers declare over and over their ardent wish to see me and my compatriots disarmed. Gun control has one very unique feature that sets it apart from other forms of victimization. Any incremental success makes further oppression easier.
Gun control pushers already advocate using deadly force against tens of millions of people whose only crime is peacefully possessing something the rulers do not like. With the actions of a few criminals and psychopaths held up as their excuse, they propose victimizing tens of millions of people who are innocent of any wrongdoing. Like muggers and rapists, gun control pushers rationalize their actions by blaming the victims.
Back in 1938, Nazis fined Jews for the damage inflicted on Jewish businesses by Nazi pogroms. Today, mostly certain politicians want to victimize the American people who have been harmed already by violent criminals in government-enforced “gun-free” zones. Taking away personal arms and restricting future availability would make future mass shootings that much harder to counter. Worse, gun control would make more destructive government excesses harder to counter as well.
Gun control pushers have even less shame than typical rapists. A repulsed rapist doesn’t start whining: “OK, so I can’t rape you now, but how about just dropping your pants? I won’t penetrate you now, but you can’t refuse a reasonable compromise! How about just an inch, no more than two, honest.” Taking away defenses and property of innocent people is a molestation and should be treated as such.
We talk often about the technical aspects of gun control. Arbitrary specifications, capricious enforcement, massive mis-allocation of resouces… What are the financial effects of gun control as proposed by Feinstein and others of her kind?
The most immediate effect is the financial victimization of the entire population of the United States. Tens of millions of people would be stripped of their property and have the use of remaining property sharply restricted. Those who are not gun owners now will see their tax burdens go up greatly — the great amount money for the enforcement of these laws has to come from somewhere. Ask Canadians how many millions their useless registry cost so far.
Gun control pushers claim that gun owners will be compensated. First, one cannot be “compensated” for things she doesn’t want to sell. Second, there’s not enough money in the world to buy all the guns held by Americans because the marginal cost of each next weapon goes up tremendously. For example, relatively common AR15 cost under $1000 before the recent rush started, but severely restricted M16s cost $15,000 and up. Third, paying a person for confiscated guns with taxes taken from that same person is a travesty. Fourth, no monetary compensation can make up for the loss of unique utility.
Going forward, gun control makes arms and related R&D much more costly because of arbitrary constraints added to the real technical considerations. As the direct results of 1986 machine gun ban, US is now falling behind China in automatic weapons for military use. Chinese government uses considerable state funds to prop up their R&D, while the US has always relied on private and commercial development. Back when Browning and Stoner were active, they could work mostly unhampered, but today’s inventors are unable to conduct technical research due to the Byzantine yet viciously enforced regulations. Gun control reduces national security.
Private and public health costs will rise as violent criminals are able to commit more mayhem unopposed by good people. A middle-aged defender with a firearm can stop a typical young thug or two…but has no chance unarmed. The increased impact of criminal violence will affect women and old people most as they have the least amount of brute strength to compensate the lack of technological defenses.
Gun control is a bad — even criminal — idea in many way. And it is expensive, too.
…for the muzzle flip from 1600fps of muzzle velocity!
Nominally a part of the US but an upper-tier third-world location in reality.
(Photo by Tatyana Volk)
I am streamlining my camera and lens line-up and upgrading lenses. Old gear has to go. Prices do not include shipping.
Canon 10D body $225 (comes with charger, spare battery, 4GB memory card) – good starter camera for a kid or a student. (sold)
Canon 35-70/3.5-4.5 lens $65 (sold)
Canon 50/1.8 II $85 (sold)
Canon 100/2.8 macro (the original with better manual focus) $385 (sold)
Canon 300/4 IS lens $845
Canon 200/2.8 lens $575
Panasonic LX3 camera (with 4 batteries, 8GB card) $195
Canon 420EX flash $175
Canon SD950 IS (with two batteries, 4GB card) $95 (sold)
Any gun control will be viewed as the fault of the Democrats. The electoral fallout from that would push the Democrat social agenda back by many years. So what do liberals want more, gun control or all those other changes, such as gay marriage?
Most violations of the myriad of Byzantine laws and regulations are prosecuted as felonies. Having an 11-round magazine in a state that forbids anything over 10 opens a person for prosecution. If that prosecution succeeds — a lifetime disenfranchisement AND a lifetime prohibition on gun ownership! If the prosecution does not succeed, at least the victim suffers a massive legal defense expense in money, time and stress. That is why the gun laws go into so much seemingly pointless trivia.
The push to restrict magazine capacity focuses on the apparently magic number “ten”. Reduce Americans to ten-round magazines and no more mass murder, they claim. Let’s look at where this leads.
Ten rounds has been the standard capacity for military rifles for a long time. 1895 Lee-Enfield held ten, as did the Soviet SVT and the German G43 rifles. Post-WW2 SKS, FN49 and SVD held ten also. No one would claim that they aren’t formidable weapons even today. So why stop at ten if the goal is to reduce capability of any rifleman?
The first military rifle designed for high-velocity smokeless ammunition, the 1886 Lebel, held 8 rounds in the magazine. So did the first rifle with detachable box magazine, the 1888 Lee-Metford. As did the “finest battle implement ever designed”, the US M1 Garand. Nobody can claim that these aren’t suitable for bloody mayhem in the wrong hands, so could we claim that fewer than 8 should be the limit.
That brings us to six rounds. The Italian WW2 Carcano (including that which was used to shoot JFK), the superb Swiss Schmidt-Rubin, the American M1917 and many Mannlicher bolt actions held six. Too many still?
Five, do I hear five? That would be the capacity of Mauser, Springfield, Mosin, P1914, MAS38, Arisaka, Krag, Winchester 1895 and many other guns that were front-line military weapons until the 1950s.
Four? No, that would give us certain Winchester and Remington sniper rifles in common military use since the Vietnam War. No anti-gun legislator would admit sniper rifles suitable for civilian ownership. The substantial similarity of a deer hunting rifle to the military sniper rifle is purely coincidental, of course.
Maybe three would be the magic number? French Berthier infantry rifle with a three-shot magazine was widely used through WW1. So the real number would probably be two. At which point anti-gun propaganda would harp on the similarity to double-barreled dangerous game guns and the few remaining gun owners would end up with single-shot low-power guns grudgingly permitted after much red tape…until the next confiscation. It’s a lot easier, you see, to go after people reduced to pre-1850s defensive technology. Not that the gun-banners would go after us in person — even a musket or a pike in steady hands scare them — but they would send their uniformed thugs with modern guns. That scenario played out in Soviet Russia, in Communist China and more recently in Venezuela. Once the gap of arms between the government and the people is great enough, such minor matters as civil rights cease to matter much to the rulers.
The mostly disarmed British subjects may still possess a few guns of limited specifications, but they lost the right to use those for self-defense. Storage, transport and other uses are so severely restricted as to make the remaining arms of minimal use. That’s the end game for the American gun banners — but they won’t live to win it. Their demented numerological plots matter less than the million defensive rifles sold this week. Those gun purchases are the true vote — with money, personal time and effort — that will override the hateful propaganda broadcasts and the squawking in the bully pulpits of the legislative sessions.
Supposedly, some totalitarian regimes bill the families of executed criminals (or dissidents) for the bullets used by firing squads. Probably an urban legend, but our great leader and his friends in congress are trying to top it.
All the proposed restrictions on guns and confiscations of property affect the surviving families of the school shooting victims just as such as they affect the rest of the Americans. So our government is out to victimize the same people who have already been harmed by the murderous nutcase. The nutcase, by the way, was enabled to inflict disproportionate harm by their mandated so-called “gun-free zones”! “So sorry your kids died, now give up your guns!” Who needs Communist China for the symbol of modern evil when Washington is so much closer…
1. Mass murderers who plan on killing themselves after the spree are not deterred by posthumous legal penalties. Really. Trying to disarm everyone who can theoretically snap is impossible — witness the Russian cops doing mass shootings against the disarmed population.
2. Mandatory lock-downs deny escape to those whose only hope is being a swift and difficult target. Interior doors usually have glass sections and do little to stop armed intruders.
3. At the colleges where I taught in the past decade, about 25% of the teachers and engineering school students carried pistols, up to 10% of the graphic design students. When VT shooting happened, a co-worker said “Thank god our students carry! If this crap happens here, we can hide behind them.” Granted, I wasn’t teaching at a K-12, but the same reasoning applies to them. In a typical school with a hundred or more staff and teachers, it’s likely that a half-dozen armed first responders are on site, and at least one of them would be close enough to fight back.
Turns out that vampires are now real. Stakes won’t work on them because of armor, and other means may be at the defender’s peril because they have official backing. Curious to see how long it will take before the first legal challenge. Also curious why Americans aren’t shunning DHS the same way they shun klansmen.
What happens when some legislator votes for a gun control bill to make it into a law? Adding restriction on gun ownership makes violent crime more frequent. It makes defensive weapons more expensive. And it puts a few people in harm’s way, often without any actions by them. A person doesn’t have to know that some minor item in their home has become illegal by administrative fiat, but a SWAT team would no-knock the residence anyway, kill his pets and destroy his kids’ hearing with flashbangs. What do you think will happen then?
Most people have friends and relatives. Not everyone is young enough to still be afraid of prison. Grandpa might lack the agility to hunt the SWAT team members involved, but would have no ethical problem with using his deer rifle on those he would hold responsible for the raid against his kids and grandkids. That would be everyone who voted for the enabling legislation, and the person who gave the go-ahead on the local level. Friends would regard everyone from the enforcement agency to the legislators as targets of opportunity. The chances of one of them finding an opportunity over the next few years would be considerable. Rifle, IED, an “accidental” vehicle strike or gasoline at every office entrance would do.Those who’d rather not risk going after hard targets could do in individual local gun control supporters many of whom helpfully advertise with bumper stickers.
Most people won’t do this. But harm enough families and the small percent who would become numbers distinct from zero. Anyone perishing in the attempts becomes a center of a new epicenter of resistance. At the end, we have a civil war or — much more likely — certain people being handed over for the new Nuremberg trials. Obama administration proved its lack of loyalty to their own already. So think long and hard before voting for gun control — your political masters would set you up as the fall guy as soon as it becomes convenient. You won’t rate Secret Service protection to blunt the full force of your compatriots’ vented ire.
Imagine a store with ten rifles in stock, average wholesale price $500, retail $600. One sells per week, on average. What should the store do when the customers buy five rifles in a day?
They would want to re-stock immediately or risk running out by the next night. Only they can’t re-stock at once due to delivery times, so they might up the prices to $700 to reduce the sales and still have inventory by the time new stock arrives. They may find out that the manufacturer of rifles now charges $700 wholesale — so the first five rifles sold at $600 didn’t even bring enough money to re-order fresh stock!
The factory has similar problems. Springs, barrels, magazines, sights and other parts have jumped in price, but the factory still owes deliveries contracted earlier at lower prices. The factory costs — not just parts but also staff overtime — just went up. They have to scramble to keep up.
In a situation like the current rush, the manufacturers cannot expand production much because the demand will drop off eventually, either because their products become illegal or because the threat of restrictions abates. So they have to make do with limited staff and equipment, with rising cost of parts and supplies. If they don’t keep up, they lose market share. If they regulate the demand by adjusting wholesale prices, they may alienate some dealers. The same is true for the retail stores, some people will object to the so-called “price gouging”, a Communist term if I ever heard one.
Without cash flow to keep the entire very long chain of production going, we’d have shortages. What would you rather have, rifles available at $700 or unavailable at $500? And the same question applies to ammo, gasoline and other scarce goods. A person with five rifles in the safe will balk at the higher price tags, a person who has none might spend the extra $200 and become armed. Thus those in more dire need get what they need — through the magic of “price gouging” also known as free market.
This process self-regulates. Raising the price too much loses market share, but people should be free to ask whatever they please. After all, they own the goods in question and it’s their right to part with them or withhold from sale. Instead of selling gasoline at higher price to passing strangers, a gas station owner may choose to close shop and give away the product to friends and neighbors, gaining more in good will and favors owed than he would in cash under a price control regime. The motorists fleeing natural disasters or merely passing through would run dry and really be in trouble. Had they been able to offer a more realistic price for the suddenly scarce gas, they would have had a choice of taking the offer or leaving it. Under price controls, the choice is gone. Forcing the sale at the point of government bayonets simply ruins the business slightly slower as the funds for re-stocking the next day’s goods would be lacking. This pattern has been tried world wide and brought us such “prosperous” countries as North Korea and Cuba. Let’s not try it again in the US. It didn’t work in 1971-73 and won’t work now.
