Use Your Manners When Shooting in Public

I’ve been disappointed on countless occasions to pull up to my favorite shooting spot on BLM land and see it littered not just with brass, but shotgun shells, wood crates, glass bottles, televisions, computers, water heaters and all sorts of other trash left behind by people too lazy to pick up after themselves.

I see it as a privilege to be able to shoot on that land without range fees and without the need to follow someone else’s rules. Apparently others see it as an invitation to leave the manners at home and litter openly—in most cases to a severity they would never even consider doing on the side of the road or in their neighbor’s back yard.

When I go to this area, I take garbage sacks with me and when we’re done shooting, we spend a good 20 minutes cleaning up other people’s garbage (in addition to our own) in the hopes of dispelling the reputation that shooters are so often labeled with. I encourage you to do the same.

If getting rid or improving that stereotype weren’t enough, maybe the threat of being banned from shooting on BLM lad will be. Check out this article:

Obama Pushing Shooters Off Public Lands

“Gun owners who have historically been able to use public lands for target practice would be barred from potentially millions of acres under new rules drafted by the Interior Department, the first major move by the Obama administration to impose limits on firearms.”

From the proposed policy:

“When the authorized officer determines that a site or area on BLM-managed lands used on a regular basis for recreational shooting is creating public disturbance, or is creating risk to other persons on public lands; is contributing to the defacement, removal or destruction of natural features, native plants, cultural resources, historic structures or government and/or private property; is facilitating or creating a condition of littering, refuse accumulation and abandoned personal property is violating existing use restrictions, closure and restriction orders, or supplementary rules notices, and reasonable attempts to reduce or eliminate the violations by the BLM have been unsuccessful, the authorized officer will close the affected area to recreational shooting.”

Let’s all work together to keep the freedoms we enjoy—in this case, I don’t believe it’s so much about politics as manners and a common sense.

Brady Campaign Scorecard – Flip it and Reverse It

The Brady Campaign came out with their 2008 State Scorecard today. The scorecard ranks all 50 states as determined by how close they stick to Brady’s common sense gun laws.

I’ll leave it to you to decide if being at the top of the list is a good thing or not, but it seems to me that those states at the bottom have a generally smaller problem when it comes to crime committed with firearms.

Turn the scorecard upside-down, and you get an accurate ranking of true common sense gun laws—where law-abiding citizens have the right to defend themselves and their families from criminals who show little respect for any gun law—”common sense” or not.

That puts the following in our top three (including several ties)—congratulations to:

  1. 2- Oklahoma
  2. 2- Louisiana
  3. 2- Kentucky
  4. 4- West Virginia
  5. 4- Utah
  6. 4- North Dakota
  7. 4- Missouri
  8. 4- Alaska
  9. 5- Mississippi

* Numbers are calculated out of a high score of 100

You’re all doing something right.

THE NEW WHITE HOUSE ON GUNS

A direct quote from the new whitehouse.gov website today:

Address Gun Violence in Cities: Obama and Biden would repeal the Tiahrt Amendment, which restricts the ability of local law enforcement to access important gun trace information, and give police officers across the nation the tools they need to solve gun crimes and fight the illegal arms trade. Obama and Biden also favor commonsense measures that respect the Second Amendment rights of gun owners, while keeping guns away from children and from criminals. They support closing the gun show loophole and making guns in this country childproof. They also support making the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent.

Read the full agenda here (see Urban Policy: Crime and Law Enforcement).

The language in this policy opens the door (or perhaps more appropriately, the flood gates) to making it more difficult for people to buy, own, trade, gift, train with, and use guns, as well as the establishment of a gun registry, a ban on guns that sound and/or look scary, and I’m predicting, a massive buy-back in the near future.

And so it begins…

The Possibility of Widespread Solar Disturbance

sun

An interesting report from The Register talks about NASA’s warning of a “Space Katrina” in which our communications and other electronics could be knocked out by massive solar winds.

The US military has previously warned of the risk of a “space Pearl Harbour” – a devastating surprise attack against America’s space presence, which could leave the world’s sole superpower blinded and crippled. According to the National Academy, though, the USA should forget about a space Pearl Harbour and worry instead about “a space Katrina, a storm that we should have been prepared for but were not”.

Solar storms have had significant effects in modern time:

  • In 1989, the sun unleashed a tempest that knocked out power to all of Quebec, Canada.
  • A 2003 sunstorm included 10 major solar flares over a two-week period, knocking out two Earth-orbiting satellites and crippling an instrument aboard a Mars orbiter.

And in the future, due to our becoming more dependent on satellites and other electronics for nearly every facet of our modern lives, the potential effects of any such event would undoubtedly be much greater:

Impacts would be felt on interdependent infrastructures, with, for example, potable water distribution affected within several hours; perishable foods and medications lost in about 12-24 hours; and immediate or eventual loss of heating/air conditioning, sewage disposal, phone service, transportation, fuel resupply, and so on…

Attacks in space and from space, in addition to the more common terrestrial threats we face, certainly provide plenty to keep us occupied in our preparations.

Related links:

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