The Wandering Minstrel

This just in from the NRA:

New York City Lawsuit Against America’s Firearm Industry Dismissed

Fairfax, VA-The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act proved the basis for today’s dismissal of a lawsuit by the City of New York against the American firearms industry. This lawsuit by the City of New York and Mayor Michael Bloomberg sought to hold manufacturers responsible for the criminal misuse of firearms.

“Today’s dismissal of this bogus lawsuit against America’s firearm industry is an important victory,” declared Chris W. Cox, executive director for the National Rifle Association (NRA). “New York City’s lawsuit was a politically motivated attack by an anti-gun mayor to bankrupt a lawful industry.”

The Manhattan-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which NRA helped pass into law in 2005, is constitutional and that Judge Jack B. Weinstein erroneously interpreted that law in his district court ruling. Similar suits have been dismissed in the Seventh Circuit, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, and in other courts throughout the country.

“We think Congress clearly intended to protect from vicarious liability members of the firearms industry who engage in the ‘lawful design, manufacture, marketing, distribution, importation, or sale’ of firearms,” noted Judge Robert J. Miner, writing for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

This decision represents another setback to Mayor Bloomberg, who has also been publicly rebuked by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for his unlawful “sting” operations against firearm retailers in several states.

Bloomberg will continue to harass legitimate firearms owners and dealers. I’m not sure what can be done, but with enough perseverance, maybe we can dethrone this ignorant self-righteous asshole.

This just in from the NRA:

The U.S. Department of Interior (DOI), through the National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, today issued a proposed rule to amend regulations prohibiting firearms in National Parks and Wildlife Refuges.

The proposed rule was filed today and will be published in the Federal Register tomorrow, and can be found online at: http://federalregister.gov/OFRUpload/OFRData/2008-09606_PI.pdf.

It provides sixty days for public comment.

These new regulations will provide uniformity across our nation’s federal lands and put an end to the patchwork of regulations that governed different lands managed by different federal agencies. In the past, only Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Forest Service lands allowed the carrying of firearms, while lands managed by DOI did not.

The mere right to transport firearms through National Parks means you won’t have to go around one of our scenic National Parks while on your way to go hunting, or to a sporting event involving guns.

I’m hoping the new rules go into effect before summer vacation.

Chicago outlawed handgun sales in 1981. In the past week, there have been 40 shootings.

CHICAGO—Deputy Police Chief Eugene Williams had a tough week. Wednesday morning, a two-story house in his jurisdiction on the South Side. Five people, shot dead. The following afternoon, two more shootings. Another that night, non-fatal, shot in the leg and back. And all of this following a hail of gunfire that had peppered the city’s toughest neighborhoods just a few days before: In less than a week, more than 40 shootings, at least a dozen of them fatal.

Hey Chicago - how’s that workin’ for ya?

These nice 135 gr. rounds are now my choice for the little wheel gun.

Pardon the lame attempt at a clever title.

I picked up one of these at a local sports chain outlet for twelve bucks.

I’m going to try out some Speer .38 +P GDHP (Gold Dot Hollow Point) ammunition for the little wheel gun. Here are some specifications in a report from The Gun Zone:

Projectile: 135-grain Gold Dot electro­chem­i­cally bonded hollow point bullet, optimized for performance in short barreled revolvers.

Primer: Small pistol type utilizing lead styphnate priming mixture, sealed with nitrocellulose lacquer.

Case: Nickeled brass.

Nominal Velocity: 1125 ± 50 ft/sec from a standard SAAMI barrel. Expect 860 fps from a 1-7/8-inch J-frame revolver, 935 fps from a 4-inch revolver.

Pressure: Not to exceed SAAMI +P pressure specification, Maximum Average Pressure below 20,000 psi.

Accuracy: Average of five, five shot consecutive groups not to exceed three inches at 50 yards.

Operational Strength: the propellant powder is selected to minimize muzzle flash and residue, and to perform under temperature extremes. The bullet is specially designed for this velocity operating range through different barriers. This ammunition also works equally well in longer barreled firearms.

Expansion:
A surprisingly large portion of today’s models of the modern martial artist are very much concerned, for an amusingly diverse array of reasons, with the terminal performance of handgun rounds.

While it’s always been TGZ’s position that the primary objective should be to get anti-person­nel rounds on-target and into a vital area, enough folks are still obsessing about “expansion,” that it was decided to satisfy their requirements… to a degree.

Herewith is a comparative expansion image of a pair of popular 38 Special rounds fired from the same S&W snub-nose J-frame into the author’s favorite test media: four gallon hard-plastic Sny­der’s of Hanover Pretzel jars filled with 4% saline solution… creek water!

An oldie but goodie flick - Antonio Banderas and Sylvester Stallone both play the role of assassins who engage in a deadly competition. This is one of the better roles given to Stallone and he has been given some pretty terrible ones. The plot deviates from reality in almost every sense, but delivers the sort of action scenes that we love.

Synopsis (from WikiPedia):

Robert Rath (Stallone) is a paid assassin who wants nothing more than to get out of ‘the business’, haunted by the death of murdering his own mentor years ago. Rath is quiet, morose professional who is on an assignment to kill someone when someone else gets to the ‘mark’ (the target) before he does. That person is Miguel Bain (Banderas), a fellow assassin and a competitive psychopath. Rath then has the trouble of trying to figure out who sent Bain, while at the same time being offered a job that could financially allow him to retire - killing the customers of a computer hacker named Electra (Moore) and retrieving her alive along with a disk that contains sensitive information. Electra has a voyeuristic fetish, she set up cameras in her neighbor’s apartment and watches their bedroom.

The problem is that Bain is assigned to kill Electra as well. Bain kills the customers and tries to kill Electra, but Rath comes to the rescue. His pay for the job is given to him in a briefcase — which turns out to actually contain a bomb — his backer tried to kill him. When this attempt fails — along with the fact that the disc he turned over was a fake — the backer hires Bain to terminate him. Now having become a ‘mark’ himself, he must try and extract enough money out of his backer so he can disappear for good, while avoiding the bloodthirsty Bain.

I give this one about 4¼ stars. I subtract most of a star due to the following: 1. assassins will not hesitate to off a woman as Stallone’s character did; 2. it seems like assassins with hot tempers who pursue their tasks with reckless abandon would not survive as long as Banderas’ character does; 3. Moore fades from a confident con artist to a helpless bumbling female toward the later stages of the flick - convenient for Stallone’s character, but dulls Moore’s.

Gunography (text borrowed from IMFDB):

1. Beretta M92F - A security guy is using a Beretta M92F after the attack in the graveyard scene.
2. Ruger .22 - Both Stallone and Banderas use silenced Ruger MK1 or MK2 .22 caliber pistols, fitted with suppressors. Even though it only has a 10 round magazine, they seem to have those infamous bottomless Hollywood magazines that never run out.
3. Goncz GA-9 - In the cemetery scene Antonio Banderas uses a 9mm Goncz pistol fitted with a stock and scope to take out the mark at the funeral. This is the weapon he later uses in the cab.
4. Walther PP - In the beginning of the movie, we see Stallone taking out another assassin. He allows him to use his own weapon to kill himself. It is a suppressed Walther PP in either .32 or .380.

Like Greg, I can’t bring a camera into work, so I’ll share this mug with the community.