Israeli open carry go bye-bye?
The owner of a gun store (not shown) in the Parkdale Mall in Beaumont, Texas was arrested last week on charges of disturbing the peace after he was seen walking through the mall toward his store, Golden Triangle Tactical, with an AR-15 slung barrel down over his shoulder. Open carry of long guns is legal in the state of Texas. Police stopped him on December 28th after receiving calls from shoppers who said they were “very afraid” and “terrified” at seeing the weapon. He was not arrested at that time, but the weapon was confiscated. A warrant for his arrest was issued later that week, and he turned himself in on the misdemeanor charge Friday morning. The gun will remain in police custody until the case is settled.

Fox News reports that gun control groups spent $14.1 million on TV ads compared to just $1.9 million for gun rights groups, with most of the larger figure ($12 million) coming from Bloomberg and MAIG, and had this quote from Tim Graham of the Media Research Center: “The media assumed their ‘news’ blitz and an anti-gun ad blitz would carry the day. They couldn’t imagine grass-roots groups like the NRA would beat AstroTurf billionaires like Bloomberg. Money matters, but the gun controllers keep learning that the passion in ‘Flyover Country’ for the constitutional right to bear arms burns up the phone lines and melts down the e-mail servers.” Damn right.

With Democratic legislators in Colorado feeling burned by the reaction to their gun control legislation, civilian disarmament supporters are taking their efforts straight to the voters. A group of gun control supporters have received permission to start gathering signatures for a voter ballot measure to ban concealed weapons on public college campuses. Colorado is one of only two states (with Utah) that allow concealed weapons on public college campuses. Folks on both sides of the issue are confident that the voters will see things their way, so we’ll just have to wait and see.

A year after the passage of the NY SAFE Act, Division of Criminal Justice Services data showed 1,291 charges under the new gun law, of which 1,155 were for felony firearm possession, formerly just a misdemeanor. 1,041 of those cases were from New York City. Separate from those, 17,751 people were charged last year with misdemeanor weapon possession, with nearly 90% of that number coming out of New York City. Clearly, their policies are working.

If you want your own personal silencer, but don’t want to go through the hassle of dealing with the ATF, you don’t need a solvent trap or some other shadetree engineering solution. Just use a squash. That’s what a man in Charleston, South Carolina did recently. Security camera footage shows him firing two shots at the building from a gun with a squash on the end of it, then throwing a cinder block through the window and making off with the lottery ticket case. I never thought about it, and I’m certainly not going to try it, but I can’t imagine a squash would have any real effect on the sound of the gunshot. Especially not the second shot. [H/T: ENDO] [Due to the content of this story, I want to give a shout out to NSA Agent Mary Costa. Mary will be monitoring this thread for the next 24 hours. Mary enjoys hiking, cooking and tennis. She likes long walks on the beach at night and is looking for that special someone to share her BDSM dungeon with. Everyone wave to Mary!]

In a happy coincidence, we get two helicopter videos today. First was Kirsten’s Moving Target Challenge, and now it’s Richard Ryan with a Dillon Minigun mounted in a Huey. Fullscreen and hi-res it. If it takes a minute to buffer, it’s worth the wait. The slow-mo shots of that Huey just a couple dozen feet off the ground are spectacular.

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95 COMMENTS

  2. I ain’t payin’ a $200 tax for no squash. No how, no way. A rutabaga? Maybe. But not a squash.

    • Ralph, I’m your man. I’m putting in an early garden this year and I’ll lay out some space for your choice of root vegetable. Just let me know what you are looking for. Personally, I think someone should try using beets as a silencer. Maybe on some old, long barreled Makarov. Hell, maybe even on an AK. Russians have been using beets for everything for centuries… You never know.

    • Vegetable-based Accessories: Once as a consolation for a very bad day we were invited to eat dinner at the relatively fine restaurant MACV ran in Quang Tri. Among our hosts was an SAS guy. As we were leaving he felt we deserved yet more, so he told us “if you ever need a suppressor and you don’t have one, a potato will suffice.” So there’s some tradition involved. As we lifted off from their helipad it occurred to me that I should quickly have asked “baked or raw?” So would one of you with a backyard private range perhaps find the answer for me?

      • I think I’d go with raw. Pretty sure baked would come apart too fast to provide any real benefit.

        If I ever have the opportunity to figure it out, I’ll be sure to not do it and not tell you about it.

      • I assume raw is the answer. It wouldn”t have been much of a tip if a recipe was required. I do have faith, though, that a large raw baking potato with good moisture content will work better than a rutabaga or squash.

      • I’ve tried the raw potato trick. The result was a total mess, and a loud one at that.

        A two liter plastic soda bottle works better.

      • Closed up tight with a mostly hollow and stringy center I’d go with the squash. Maybe a butternut or acorn cause its got that nice big bell bottom to get onto a rifle. I swear I don’t have a backyard range nor potatoes and squashes I’ve grown this year, and would never try anything like this, Mary. Pinkie swear. But if a, ahem, neighbor tries this lil experiment, I’ll offer feedback.

        • …but you have to go to the store for a 2 liter coke bottle. The coke bottle trick reminds me of “No Country for Old Men,” which reminds me of Jennifer McCarthy, which is just nauseating. Must be TPPS (Traumatic post-post syndrome)?

  3. That aside about NSA Agent Mary Costa is ripped word for word from a comment on an article about the Rolling Stone Boston Bomber cover, from July 17th 2013.

    • Aha! I knew I copied it down from somewhere, but I couldn’t remember where. I actually thought I snagged it from arfcom somewhere. I was reading that blog heavily at the time, because their coverage of the Zimmerman trial was outstanding. I knew it was good when I read it, and that it’d come in handy someday.

  5. lol. Hi Mary! Say hi to Dave at Maryland Live Casino for me when you are there on your lunch break.

  6. that girl’s pant have me thinking:

    “New from the partnership between Urban Outfitters and 5.11, turn you IWB holster into a thigh rig with our new ‘Tactical Sag System’!”

    Also, even skinny people might need to go a size up to properly fit there IWB, or… you know, hide their muffin top.

  7. I went outside and waved to Mary.
    Then I had to look at that lead photo again.
    Hate to see her leave, but love to watch her walk away…

    Now to watch that video again.

  8. sort of get tired of seeing his 10+ year old picture from Israel. why? because Israel is not open-carry friendly at all, unless you have special permit, or are active/reserve IDF – on-duty or going to/from a training exercise. just because a lot of the IDF are allowed to carry weapons in plain clothes does not make it the same as a civilian open-carrying.

    Israel’s gun laws are a joke, and are the model for many anti-2A states in the US today. really, have a lot of you ever read up about it?

    http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/israel

    • Sorry. I wanted a picture of an open carry, muzzle-down AR, and that was the only one already in our media library.

      • I can understand why, Google “women of the IDF” and she’s relatively close to the top, or at least she was. Not that I would check that sort of thing….

      • eh maybe my comment was misplaced here. I just see a lot of other gun sites post this image as an example of a gun-friendly society. it’s definitely not. no gripes with your choice specifically.

    • Mostly I agree with you, certainly about the regulation state vs citizen disarmament issue.

      However, maybe the photos show that it’s not a bad idea (otherwise why would they do it?) to have people who want to keep their rifles on them, not just pistols (though I don’t know if that’s allowed even of the general military), not just specific dangerous places, not just “hunting” rifles or limited capacity magazines. They carry their “weapons of war” with them, so that should indicate to folks here that there’s probably a reason these folks carry. Also there can still be a crime reducing factor in having off-duty or reserves carry out or keep weapons at home to protect themselves even if, sadly, “normal” people can’t.
      A similar example is the famous Switzerland (known for its armed nature), which has relatively strict (compared to the USA) “gun control”, but because so many people are officially in the military, or were in the military and are still armed, there’s still a high “gun owner” effect.

  11. “have received permission to start gathering signatures”

    The fact that their petition is about gun control aside, does it bother anyone else that you need permission to send out a petition in the first place?

    • Well, for what it’s worth, the permission verbiage came from the original article, and I think it’s actually less about permission and more about procedure. You tell them you want to do it and they say okay, here’s what you need to know, with regard to how many signatures and by what date, etc.

      • I’m from Michigan. Until the middle of last year you had to ask permission from the local sherriff before you could buy a handgun. It wouldn’t surprise me if it really meant permission….

  14. FYI, it is not illegal to CC on California college campuses. California PC 626.9 (L section) allows for licensed CCW holders to carry.

    HOWEVER, the colleges can still make their own rules for students and faculty. But, as far as i know, they only relate to employment/enrollment and carry no criminal penalties.

    Just gonna let that sink in…. 🙂

  15. I’m convinced that our politicians are hastening the end of America and democracy.

  18. We should all be thankful that clowns like the Derek Poe (owner of Golden Triangle Tactical) get charged every now and then for their stunts. These guys are one of the biggest threats to our rights.

    See:
    http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=clown+militia

    These clowns aren’t happy until their antics get OC banned for people who use it for more than just attention whoring. They already accomplished this in California, and a variety of retail establishments. The Clown Militia is particularly focused on getting guns banned from every coffee shop in the US.

    • I disagree. He was doing something perfectly legal, and what’s more, he wasn’t even going to Starbucks, he was going to his own friggin’ store, presumably from the parking lot. He didn’t break any real law; disturbing the peace is a bullshit charge. The peace was disturbed by the pearl-clutching people who didn’t realize he wasn’t doing anything wrong. He shouldn’t be charged, they should be educated.

    • A couple of related comments:
      1. If the rifle had been in a case, no one would have noticed and no one would have complained. A lock on it, and he would probably be GTG even under Texas law.
      2. Derek (and Leonard) don’t seem to understand that Open Carry, regardless of its status as the presumptively lawful way to carry (all early gun laws were restrictions on concealed carry or safe storage of gunpowder, and concealed carry is licensed to this day) is simply not normative behavior in urban areas and WILL draw a OMG!MWG! call to 911, even if it is perfectly legal–and after that call is made, the police will use any excuse in the book to arrest, no matter how strained, in order to discourage such conduct.
      3. Because people are “terrified” of “guns,” the day of open carry in most places is a bygone era.
      4. Just a question–why are so many soccer moms so scared of EBRs, when they probably would not give a Garand or a bolt action a second glance? What is it about EBRs that bring out these fears?

      • because their dads probably owned rifles that looked like a Garand.

        give it another 20 years, and the soccer moms may just look at an AR as something their dad used to plink with.

      • Maybe because the media tells them that ARs are only used for shooting up schools? And then we get these guys using those very same guns to attention whore and giftwrap something for anti-gunners to use to change the law. Good job, clowns.

      • I just put an “e” on it, pronounce it ” Dirté.” It’s no big deal. It actually sounds pretty cool.

    • That urban dictionary article is dripping with the butt hurt:

      “They do things like organizing groups of people to openly carry guns into coffee shops to scare people.”

      “The Clown Militia is usually made up of middle-aged video gamers and people who play Dungeons and Dragons or dress up for LARP (Live Action Role Playing). They plan their protests in their mother’s basements and on internet chat sites that cater to the gun culture/single men looking for love. They don’t have a standard uniform, but are encouraged to wear camouflage, SWAT gear, or t-shirts with the phrase “MOLON LABE” (Greek for “I take it up the ass”).””

      While Ive never heard the term Clown Militia before, there is most definitely a difference between the types of OC’ers, but it seems to be an even bigger divide amongst the gun community as the fight for (gun) freedom continues.

      The fact that antis whine about laws laws laws and then when carrying a long gun is legal, WHAT LAWS WHO GIVES A SHEEIT BOUT DEM THANGS?! , gets me every time.

      • I’ve only heard of the clown militia recently, only twice, and both times were here. It may have even been from the same commenter both times.

        • I concur. For what it’s worth, I open carry a handgun every day and have never had a problem, with either Law Enforcement, nor the general populace. Must be regional (or urban).

          • ISTR some decades ago, there was some news item about FL relaxing carry restrictions, and the rate of crimes against locals plummeted but skyrocketed among foreign tourists, because the thugs knew the foreign tourists would be unarmed.

        • I have to presume that “clown militia” is a made-up term used by just a few folks (or possibly just one) who have a strong bias against long gun open carry and throw a fit anytime anyone open carries a rifle (despite it being the only legal way to open carry in Texas).

    • The fears of a few do not trump the rights of others and just because someone calls the law does not constitute illegal activity by another.

    • I agree with Matt that the disturbing the peace charge is b.s., in the sense that it’s trumped up. I wouldn’t call this guy a clown, though, as that disturbing charge is serious. Nominally, it’s a Class C misdemeanor in Texas, equivalent to a basic traffic ticket. However, it’s the only Class C that gets your concealed carry license suspended, which I’m assuming the guy also has. I don’t know what impact the charge might have on his FFL, but no doubt it isn’t good. So the guy has some skin in the game.

      His style of OC, as reported, has to be the absolute least confrontational there is. If no one in Beaumont (about 80 miles east of Houston), not a CHL nor mall cop nor anyone else, had enough nerve to approach him and simply ask what’s up, before sending up the Bat Signal, then shame on their paranoid butts.

    • Due to my irrational fear of clowns, the idea of a large group of well armed circus clowns scares the living sh*t outta me…

    • I read this morning that the charges were dropped. Can’t remember where – could have been the Beaumont e-paper.

  22. The chopper with the mini gun video was great! I noticed once in a while there would be a bright flash coming out with or behind the bullet, were those tracers?
    The only thing I didn’t like was all that brass being thrown out. Couldn’t they use a heat resistant bag of some sort, to save the brass? I think they dumped more brass in three minutes of shooting, than our local gun club shoots in a year.

    • Because then they wouldn’t have that fantastic slow-mo shot of the brass and clips fountaining out of the gun.

  23. This may be a stupid question from a Brit but what was the Guy open-carrying a rifle in Texas arrested for if its both permitted by your Constitution and legal in Texas, what would the charge be? I know Ive made this point before and your all probably getting bored with it, but what is the point of a formal Constitution incorporating your rights and responsibilities and defining the relationship between citizens and the state if those public servants who have sworn to uphold that Constitution ignore it? When will efforts to undermine and subvert any element of your Constitution become an individual individual criminal offense, with those individuals found guilty getting serious jail time?

    • The article said the charge was “disturbing the peace,” presumably because it put people all in a tizzy: ‘… shoppers who said they were “very afraid” and “terrified” at seeing the weapon’.

    • I’m guessing that they are saying he intended to cause a ruckus. It is legal to open carry a rifle in Texas, but the law isn’t as open and shut as that. You cannot brandish the rifle, and you can’t carry it in a way that a reasonable person would be afraid. I think the police are saying that a reasonable person in a shopping mall would be afraid to see a rifle being carried, even slung over the shoulder, because it is not a normal place to be carrying a rifle.

      They are probably going to argue that open carry is intended to facilitate hunting and a more rural environment is the expected place to carry a rifle.

      I would compare this to the ruling by the Supreme Court of Texas that it is unconstitutional to forbid women to be topless since men can be topless. This was done before the conservatives spent a lot of money to oust almost the entire court and install conservative justices, but last I saw it was still valid law.

      Anyway, women can go about topless in Texas legally, so long as they are not doing so for prurient interests. That is, if they want to be topless in an appropriate place like the beach or a lake, they are fine. But if they are topless for the purpose of soliciting sexual responses then they’re in trouble. So, if a woman were to go topless at night on a street filled with bars she would have a hard time convincing a jury that she was not trying to be sexy.

      Likewise, it may be hard to convince a jury that carrying a rifle in a crowded mall in Beaumont was not going to to cause alarm to reasonable people.

      It will be interesting how this comes out. I can see it going either way.

    • The enemy of freedom works under the guise of security and who doesn’t want to “feel” secure. It takes time to weed out unconstitutional or bad policy. Many of those public servants think they are doing good work. just look at the NSA scandal. While not perfect by any mean and a very slow process our system still works, sorta. Making criminals out of everyone with bad ideas isn’t going to help. Balance and patience.

  24. Frack the NRA. They received $10 million from midwayusa round up alone. Seriously they do not have interest…just want the money.

    • I can’t say one way or another if the NRA is all about the money – and I like to think they aren’t. If they don’t do their job *very* good, then they are out of a job. And since they are pretty much the oldest civil rights lobby, they’ve been doing this gun rights thing for a while. Every special interest has a lobby, from PETA to NRA, and since you, nor I, can stalk the politicians full time, we donate to the special interests that have the time, the contacts, the experience, and make it their business to be the absolute best for that particular lobby.

      My perception is that the NRA, the POTG, and the gun industry all have a sort of symbiotic relationship.

      • The NRA IS about money! I tried to get them to mention my shooting product that I manufacture, in their rag, no luck. Then I realized you needed to spend thousands of dollars for advertising in their magazine, before they will notice you. They have many gun related ads for items such as chrome additions for your truck, metal detectors, toweletts, and ignition tune up kits!
        Look closely, next month they may have an ad for “Ladies camouflaged panties” explaining that mademoiselle can wear these while hunting Cape buffalo in the wildest parts of Africa!

    • So what? They’re effective in looking out for our rights, even if it is true. Who (besides the antis and you) cares?

      • Me. The NRA has done nothing to progress gun rights, they have only made half-hearted defensive stands. If the NRA had their way, we’d never have the victory in Heller v. DC. They’ve been around for a long time, now claiming they are the “oldest civil rights” organization, which is dubious, yet they never once brought a case to court that I am aware of. They let Miller dangle in the wind. They helped institute background checks and the Brady Bill.

        I do not like the NRA. I want an organization that will fight to repeal the GCA and the NFA.

  26. Thanks for the Dillon Aero video with the Huey and the minigun. Go 1st Cav – light ’em up!

    For your listening pleasure – Garryowen. (www.1cda.org/Garryowen.htm)

  27. My Pops was a Green Beret in Vietnam (’70-’71) and he told me a story about some down time inbetween missions when he was bored, so he and some other SF guys took a Huey with a minigun out bear hunting in the mountains of Vietnam/Cambodia…..they shot the bear clean in half!

  29. Good! This idiot (if people want to call him a clown, I can’t disagree) forced the mall’s hand and now they posted signs banning concealed carry! If those signs are compliant, everyone who carries gets to decide whether they need to avoid the mall or become a criminal.
    http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/default/article/Mall-posts-signs-barring-guns-after-rifle-incident-5131044.php

    Some of you people really don’t get it. This stuff does NONE of us any good. So yeah, I hope his CHL gets taken away and I hope he loses his FFL too. This @#$% needs to stop.

  30. It seems like a “tactical error” to run a gun shop out of a mall, even in Texas. Malls are shrines to Die-Versity and the Political Correctness, where people go to tithe in oversized shorts and overpriced ugly basketball shoes. I’m surprised he even got to open a store.

  31. See how this works in real life all you absolutist OCD open carry YouTubers?

    You get your 15 minutes and ego stroked
    and the rest of us lose our rights to CCW.

    Heres a clue:

    Force the cops to respond to scared shoppers and ehat do you exoect?
    Force the mall to consult their lawyers (who get paid to say no) and what do you expect?

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