The Wandering Minstrel

Last night I was browsing on the USA Carry website when I discovered that they have set up their interactive map to allow you to select more than one state where you have a CCW permit. Since The Better Half and I have both Arizona (as residents) and Utah permits, we found that there are thirty-nine states where our permits are honored.

The difference of having the Utah permit only allows for us to carry in two additional states - Washington and Minnesota. Unless our travel plans happen to include these two states (which they currently do not), we’re probably going to let the Utah permits expire in 2013. Hopefully, HR 822 will get moving again and if it passes, then it won’t matter.

The usual anti-gun contingents of the northeast and on the left coast continue to deny you of your Second Amendment rights. Clickable image for the fine print.

UPDATE: Readers DrJim and Crotalus point out that I did not comment on the black hole of 2A freedom: Illinois is the only state in the union that denies the right to concealed carry to its citizens. Say, isn’t the Obamination from there?

We missed our trip to the range last week. We both just decided not to go - maybe it had something to do with it being Friday the 13th? Naaaah.

Anyhow, we made it out there today and fired The Better Half’s S&W 686 .357 revolver, my S&W 908 9mm pistol and my Glock 26 9mm sub-compact pistol. We fired 100 rounds of 9mm and 50 rounds of .38 special.

We set up a single silhouette target and paced off 7 yards to establish our firing line. By the time all rounds had been fired, most were within the center 30 percent of the target with a few outliers around the edges. I’m pretty sure all rounds actually hit the target somewhere. Keep in mind that we let ourselves get rusty while we were building and furnishing our new home. We’ll get better, I’m sure.

In the (clickable) image above, The Better Half is practicing shooting from her weak side. She likes the little S&W pistols just because they don’t kick a lot and she can practice single-handed shooting with them.

I am currently reading “America Disarmed: Inside the U.N. and Obama’s Scheme to Destroy the Second Amendment” written by Wayne LaPierre. I downloaded a PDF file (~1.6Mb) containing the electronic copy of the book. Click on the following link to download your copy:

The foreword, written by Chris Cox, summarizes the intent of the United Nation’s so-called “Arms Treaty” to subvert our American Constitution, specifically, the Second Amendment.

In 2009, the United States joined 152 other countries in endorsing the United Nations Small Arms Treaty, a resolution designed to disarm America and others across the globe.

Specifically, the resolution establishes an international conference to be held in 2012, where leaders from various countries—many of which have deplorable human rights records—will craft an international scheme to severely restrict our right to own a firearm.

As Professor Larry Bell detailed in a popular column for Forbes magazine in early 2011, this global agreement will surely pave the way for gun bans, mandatory gun registration, and eventually, the confiscation of civilian-owned firearms. President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and the U.N. all claim that the only purpose of the treaty is to fight terrorism and international crime syndicates. Americans should not be fooled.

According to Professor Bell, should the U.S. Senate ratify the treaty it will almost certainly force America to:

• enact firearms licensing requirements, creating additional bureaucratic red tape for legal firearms ownership;
• confiscate and destroy all “unauthorized” civilian firearms;
• ban the trade, sale, and private ownership of all semiautomatic firearms; and
• create an international gun registry.

Bell also notes that the treaty will override our national sovereignty and, in the process, give license to the federal government to assert preemptive powers over state regulatory powers guaranteed by the Tenth Amendment. You can see why gun control activists in the United States have been lobbying for this treaty for a long time.

Former U.N. ambassador John Bolton, the preeminent expert on the inner workings of the global body, recently told me there is no doubt that the U.N.’s real agenda here is domestic firearms control:

“After the treaty is approved and it comes into force, you will find out that it has this implication or that implication and it requires the Congress to adopt some measure that restricts ownership of firearms,” Bolton warns. “The [Obama] administration knows it cannot obtain this kind of legislation purely in a domestic context…They will use an international agreement as an excuse to get domestically what they couldn’t otherwise.”

Emphasis added. There is another page of Cox’s foreword that I did not include. The Smashwords license for the .PDF copy states:

Thank you for downloading this free eBook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

From the American Rifleman:

In 1976, Col. Jeff Cooper founded the American Pistol Institute, which became Gunsite. Here, Cooper preached the Modern Technique of the Pistol and purveyed what might be considered his personal motto: D.V.C. D.V.C. is an acronym for three Latin words; Diligentia (accuracy), Vis (force) and Celeritas (speed). Cooper believed that a balance of speed, power and accuracy defined the Modern Technique of the Pistol, and that the .45 Auto cartridge was the best fit in this formula.

Ammo image from Oleg Volk. Poster by The Wandering Minstrel.

We went to the range today for our weekly target practice. We took three handguns with us: “Jerry Lee,” my .357 magnum revolver, “Little Boy,” my Glock 26 9mm pistol and The Better Half’s unnamed S&W 908S 9mm pistol. We shot 50 rounds of .38 special and 100 rounds of Luger 9mm parabellum ammo.

Video - The Better Half shooting “Jerry Lee.”

Now that we’re getting back to shooting on a regular basis, we can see ourselves improving after the long period of not shooting while we were building and getting moved in to our new house. The Better Half put a nice group of rounds on the small target at the top of the stand and I got three or four rounds out of 10 within two inches of the center of the big target. The other rounds were all in the black. We were shooting at a distance of about seven yards.

Before heading to the range last Friday for target practice, we stopped at the Gun Trader to renew our family membership to the Wickenburg Sportsmen’s Club. The renewal was quick and practically painless; we filled out the application and signed the waiver forms and paid our $75 2012 family membership fee. We used to pay about $400 for two yearly memberships at the indoor range near our old house in California. We like this range better at less than one-fifth of the price.

There is another CCW class coming up a week from Monday that will include a range orientation refresher for members. We’re planning to attend and ask some questions about some of the bays and how to use them, where to get target stands and so forth. We’re looking forward to participating.

The Better Half and I have made an early New Year’s resolution; we will be going to the range on Fridays (weather permitting). We were there two Fridays ago but missed last week doing pre-Christmas chores. We went today and had a great time.

Clickable Image - A Great Day at the Range

We brought our 9mm and .357 guns today. The Better Half brought her S&W 908S 9mm pistol while I brought both “Little Boy” and “Jerry Lee,” my Glock 26 pistol and S&W 686 revolver, respectively. In the image above, she is shooting “Little Boy” and I am getting ready to shoot her 608. We each shot about 50 rounds of 9mm and we both shot about 50 rounds of .38 special ammo. We stayed about an hour at the range before heading back to our nice little house.

We went to the range yesterday and afterwards cleaned our guns, as usual. Before we started, I posed “Rosie,” my Smith & Wesson .38 special 442 J-frame revolver on the felt workbench cloth and snapped this nice photo (if I do say so myself). Clickable image.