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Month: June 2021
USS Cowpens rolling in heavy seas in Typhoon Cobra in the Pacific Ocean, 18 December 1944.
And this was a Light Aircraft carrier! Imagine the poor Bastards in say a small Destroyer! Poor Adm. Halsey, he really screwed the pooch on that one. But overall he was one of the Last Real Fighting Admirals that the USN had. Grumpy
If you take the time to sift through the gobbledygook of the text of the bill, you might get lost quickly. When these bills get introduced, well for starters, they don’t post the bill text right away. This is a problem that was highlighted by one of my colleagues, Dave Workman, at AmmoLand in a recent article. More often than not those looking for proposed bill text must sift through press releases by whomever introduced the bill in order to actually see what law changes are on the table. Another interesting fact is the “summary” of the bills does not come for some time as well. The summaries are important, as they try to put in plain English what the bill intends on changing. This bill is no different. The side bar conversation is that in 2021 there is zero excuse for the bill text and summary to not be posted the day they are introduced. I get it, the Library of Congress has a lot going on. But, we have the internet. If our NICS system, which is electronic in nature is instant and good enough for guns, an instant system should be good enough for the the bills introduced by the gun grabbers.
Jamie’s Law is a bill that has not seen a lot of press or coverage, despite it was introduced in the past. From a press release by Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-23) we have some information though:
…Jaime’s Law, a commonsense bicameral piece of legislation that would require instant background checks to prevent criminals from illegally purchasing ammunition.
Jaime’s Law is named in honor of Jaime Guttenberg, one of 17 victims in the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018.
I have yet to meet a person of any political affiliation or group that has celebrated the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. What happened was a tragic domestic terroristic event and occurred because of the failures of many people, systems, and law enforcement agencies. This is another piece of proposed legislation that would not have made a difference in the outcome of what occurred that day.
What would the bill aim to do? Require every person to submit to a background check prior to purchasing ammunition. More on the bill:
“To impose background checks on purchases of ammunition is really the epitome of common sense. It’s the reason why six states, including Connecticut, have imposed such life-saving background checks,” said Senator Blumenthal. “There is no infringement on the Second Amendment, and there’s no inconvenience involved. The purchase of ammunition is seamless and quick for people who are law abiding. The point is to keep ammunition, as well as guns, out of the hands of people who are dangerous to themselves or others. We are inspired to work to pass Jaime’s Law and to make it the law of the land.”
They further expand on the states that already have these “common sense” laws on the books:
Many states – including Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, California, and New York – have led the way in requiring a background check to obtain a license to purchase or possess ammunition. However, it is clear that gun safety measures save far more lives when they are enacted nationwide, and don’t allow purchasers to evade background checks by crossing state lines, or shopping for lax state regulations.
And to save you the time of deciphering the bill text, the press release is capped off with:
Jamie’s Law would close this loophole by requiring all buyers of ammunition to undergo an instant background check using the FBI National Instant Background Check System (NICS), the same quick and easy process that applies to the purchase of firearms. Participants will discuss these and related issues.
Here’s the issue. Taking Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, California, and New York, and using them as an example of the way things should be done is daft. All the states listed house some very dangerous cities and areas. Chicago, is that a bastion of safety when it comes to crime and murder committed with a firearm? This past weekend says no. Illinois has also completely jumped the shark when it comes to the use, abuse, of the NICS system, as they run a background check on every single firearm licenses holder daily. Does that really make Illinois safer? No.
Let’s consider what New Jersey brings to the table concerning ammunition and background checks. Yes, if an individual wants to buy pistol ammunition on the Garden State, they must furnish the dealer with a firearms identification document, pistol purchaser’s permits, or permit to carry. Yes, an individual must pass several background checks in order to get those documents. No, a NICS is not required to buy ammunition in New Jersey. That is for pistol ammunition. The press release and introduction of the bill leaned heavily on the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in order to trump up support for the bill. Well, that event was committed with the use of a rifle. The inconvenient thing that the press release fails to mention is that in New Jersey, you know one of the states that is being applauded for their great laws, a person does not need any special identification to purchase rifle or shotgun ammunition. A valid driver’s license showing the individual is over the age of 18 is all that is needed.
Another fun fact about New Jersey, they don’t use the federal NICS system, but their own, imposing a $15.00 fee for each check. How much sense is it going to make to charge $15.00 for a $5.00 box of .22 caliber ammunition?
Like most freedom limiting measures that are being branded in the interest of public safety, if this were law, there would be zero effect on crime. The fact that in New Jersey one can purchase rifle ammunition without a background check, while both applauding NJ’s laws, and saying we need this because of the Stoneman shooting is just false advertising. Unfortunately the uninitiated public at large that may have little familiarity with the nuance of gun control laws gets exploited, leaning on those emotional arguments. Forget the facts, lean on the emotions. Honestly, how many background checks are enough for the anti freedom caucus?
President Joe Biden is teaming with anti-gun advocate George Soros and several other liberal groups in his bid to reduce violent crime by focusing on guns and legal gun sellers.
Included in his plan is hosting meetings over the next 18 months in 15 high-crime cities where Soros’s Open Society Foundation and 12 other pro-gun-control groups will spell out “best practices” to help city leaders with the explosion of violence in their cities.
A scan of the policies of those 13 groups shows that all are anti-gun and, like Biden, blame firearms for violence plaguing some cities.
The list does not include any gun industry groups, notably the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which has several programs to cut crime and stop guns from getting into the wrong hands through straw or other illegal purchases.
The groups Biden chose are proponents of gun registration and bans.
Open Society, for example, has called for a new 1994-style ban on popular semi-automatic sporting rifles.
In describing its teaming with the groups, a White House fact sheet read, “A group of philanthropies that have been leaders on this issue will support this collaborative learning network by deploying [community violence intervention] experts to provide training and technical assistance, identify best practices, integrate proven and innovative public-health approaches, and help local community-based organizations scale CVI efforts this summer and beyond.”
The move comes as Biden is trying to install an anti-gun advocate from the Giffords organization as the head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Second Amendment advocates predicted that the groups Biden planned to team with would be proponents of gun control and not have any industry representatives.
Soros is a well-known funder of anti-gun groups. Over one 10-year period, for example, he spent nearly $7 million funding them. He has funded at least one other gun control group being tapped by Biden, the Joyce Foundation.
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CHICKEN GUNS BY ROY HUNTINGTON
Wait! It’s not what you think. Before everyone runs to their computers to send me e-mails telling me I’m a horrid, vicious murderer for shooting innocent chickens — rest easy, ‘cause I’m not. Well, at least usually I’m not.
A while back we thought it would be a good idea to raise some chickens. Soon there were nine chickens in residence. Our neighbor raised about 40, so they were kind enough to bring over a mini-flock, including one rooster. Now comes the part about not usually shooting chickens. Within 30 minutes that rooster had attacked most of the “girls” as we call them, pecked them, foisted himself “upon” them, tried to attack me and generally made himself unwelcome. I called my neighbor and encouraged him to take a “return” on the rooster. “Nope, he’s yours now,” came the reply. I heard a laugh too, I’m sure of it.
I tried to catch that damn rooster but that was a no-go, so for about 30 minutes he terrorized the girls and Jenna The Wonder Dog, all the while deftly avoiding my flailing at him with a hoe, steel rake and even a concrete block on one memorable run-by. I’d soon had enough and reached for my at-hand semi-rusty .22 rifle — problem solved. The girls settled down nicely, letting out chicken-sighs and coos of relief as if saying, “Thanks, glad he’s gone.” He was tasty for a rooster, by the way.
A bit later we added another 20 girls and now have eggs over-flowing. But life is hard when you’re a chicken and you live in the country, especially when you to free-range around the property. Which they certainly enjoy, with much pecking, scratching, fussing and eating of bugs and other tasty treats. An added benefit — no bugs around the house. Since we raised them from chicks, if you call to them (“Bwock, bwock … bwwocckkk!”) they hoist their skirts and come bounding over like a bunch of old ladies wearing bustles. Great fun. They also like watermelon, by the way.
But, all has not been chicken nirvana at the Huntington spread. Coyotes, hawks, raccoons, feral dogs, snakes and any number of other critters also like the fact we have chickens. Of the original eight “girls” there’s only one left. We call her “O.C.” for Original Chicken. All the other first-stringers have gotten eaten. We still have the 20 new ones though, mostly through vigilance on our part. A chicken-tip: If you decide to keep chickens and let ’em free-range — don’t name them. It’s bad enough when you lose one, but if you lose “Rosie” or “Zelda” or “Hawk” (a long story there), it’s suddenly personal.
When a coyote snatched Rosie (our favorite) right outside our kitchen window (Suzi was banging on the window and yelling, but it happened fast and she couldn’t do anything about it) — we officially declared war. Which brings us around to chicken guns.
Before we moved onto our land and were city-locked in Southern California, I spent more time than I probably should have trying to figure out the “perfect” land-gun. Something I’d always have with me and could protect us and our animals from those things we needed protection from. Once moved, I quickly found out what you “imagine” and what actually works can be two different things. What I learned is there isn’t a single gun that does it all — but one does come close. In my real world, the shotgun always managed to be someplace else when I needed it, my handgun wasn’t always the right one for the moment (I have a .44 Magnum at-hand when what I really need is a .22), and my lever-action .30-30 is, um … challenging, when you’re trying to connect on a coyote blasting 48 mph across the pasture. After stealing a chicken, by the way. I missed — all five shots.
Now, almost five years after moving here, I find myself just about always within reach of one kind of gun. While it’s not perfect, it does many things pretty darn good and is lightweight, very accurate, easy to feed and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.
And the winner is? The not-so-lowly .22 rifle.
I keep one in a rack on our E-Z-Go chore vehicle (photo) and another strapped in a rack on the ATV. Another’s in my pick-up, and there’s one at the garage door, one downstairs in my office and one in the shop — all with empty chambers and loaded magazines. All are semi-autos, all are magazine-fed and all are either beaters I picked up at Brandon’s gun store, or inexpensive plinkers bought at retail at Wal-Mart or Academy.
While tube feeds work fine, they’re a pain if you chamber a round. To get an empty chamber again, you have to pull the follower, dump the rounds out of the tube, run the bolt to eject the chambered round and any others stuck, double check the chamber, drop the striker, load the tube and reinsert the follower again. A pain. With a magazine, you drop the mag, eject the chambered round, reload it into the mag, and snick the mag back into the gun. Simple.
In a pinch, an accurate .22 rifle can manage a coyote (or at least drive him off), can handle a feral dog, raccoon, ground-hog, field rat, pesky squirrel and can even be used for self-defense in a pinch. All of the ones I’ve scrounged or bought shoot under an inch at 25 yards, which is farther than we usually shoot them, and are easier to shoot accurately than any handgun.
We still keep “real” guns handy, but about 95 percent of the time problems get solved with a .22 rifle. I recently heard a “bap” from the living room door where it opens onto the deck. When I walked in, Suzi was just topping off the .22’s mag. “That damn squirrel that’s been tearing the bird feeder apart? Not anymore.” There you go.
While it makes perfect sense to have a good shotgun (a .410 is my second most-used gun), center-fire rifle and a cross-section of handguns to meet your needs, make sure you have a .22 semiauto rifle close at-hand. After all, the “girls” may need defending.
“Bwocckkkk …”
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Nice is all that I can say!
Historian: ‘Africans must be condemned for the slave trade’
Professor Abiola Félix Iroko gave an interview on Benin Web TV where he contradicted the notions of the history of colonialism as represented by cultural Marxists. He recalled that blacks themselves sold black slaves.
Published: July 28, 2020, 6:18 am
Beninese historian Abiola Félix Iroko gave an interview to local media Benin Web TV. He reminded viewers of the real history at a time when anti-colonialists are busy unbolting statues from their plinths and shouting that white privilege should be abolished because of slavery. He explained how Africans themselves took advantage of the slave trade.
This professor at the history and archeology department of the University of Abomey-Calavi (Benin) declared on July 25: “When we talk about the slave trade, people only accuse whites. But they came (to Africa) as buyers and we [Africans] were sellers.”
He assured viewers that the sale of slaves was not only an isolated phenomenon, since “the king himself sold them”. Abiola Félix Iroko detailed these transactions: “King Adandozan sold the mother of his consanguineous brother (Prince Gakpe) who later became Guézo”. As the Salon Beige website pointed out, he was the ninth king of Abomey between 1797 and 1818.
This historian – holder of a doctorate in letters and human sciences from the University of Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne – did not mince his words: “There are no buyers without sellers, we (Africans) were sellers.”
Abiola Félix Iroko (74 years old) is a Beninese historian, author of several books on African civilizations and slavery in Africa. Holder of a doctorate in literature and human sciences from the University of Paris Panthéon-Sorbonne, he is Professor in the Department of History and Archeology at the University of Abomey-Calavi (Benin). He is also the president of the Scientific Council of the university (HECM), High School of Commerce and Management of Benin.
He continued: “When the slave trade was abolished, Africans were against abolition. King Kosoko of Lagos (Nigeria) was against abolition at the time. A king of Dahomey whose name I do not mention was also against abolition. The slave trade which lasted four centuries is an unfortunate phenomenon of long duration that must be classified among the crimes against humanity for which Africans are also partly responsible.
“It is a question of co-responsibility. It is not the buyer who must be condemned, the seller must also be condemned and moreover the seller because the seller has ties of affinity and kinship with the one who is sold. Of those who were sold and had offspring there, many returned after the abolition. Some returned home with Portuguese-sounding names, Da-Silva, D’Oliveira. Unfortunately, some of them who came in the 19th century became, in turn, slaveholders and bought slaves for their correspondents who remained in Brazil. Africans resumed this trade after abolition.”
He said that eventually machines accomplished more in one day than a slave could accomplish in five days. The slave trade was thus abolished, but those who initiated it “did not do it” because “they loved blacks”. Abiola Félix Iroko explained. “It was not out of philanthropy as many think,” concluded the professor, adding that capitalism actually wiped out the slave trade. “It is because they noticed at a given moment that with the development of capitalism and especially of machinery, they no longer need as much labor.”
In his book, La côte des esclaves et la traite atlantique : les faits et le jugement de l’histoire, the eminent historian firmly dismissed “the rhetoric of the supporters of the thesis of reparations” in no uncertain terms. “The Africans haggled for almost half a millennium with slave traders over the price of their kin they were selling. They still want to continue today to haggle with the descendants [of slave traders] over the market value of the blacks that their ancestors sold to the detriment of the development of their own regions,” wrote the historian (pp. 148-149).
He also explained that historical place and context were important. “The statue of King Leopold II of Belgium in Brussels does not have the same meaning as the same statue in Kinshasa, for example. We must therefore avoid amalgamation. The statue of King Leopold in Brussels seems very welcome to me. He is a very important character for them and who represents something glorious for their past. They dominated a colony which they exploited. It is a good thing for them and I am opposed to the acts of vandalism consisting in unbolting such a statue in Brussels (Belgium).”
He said the same statue [statue of King Leopold II of Belgium, editor’s note] had no reason to exist in Africa, regardless of the location. “King Leopold II is like an insult to Africans, an insult to Zairians […] But if there are Congolese who are in Brussels and who are embarrassed by these statues, let them go home calmly.”