OMG! A school librarian! Holding an AR! OMG! . . . Students find photo of librarian holding assault rifle – “Don’t be late returning books to this Bronx high-school library. Students last week spread around social media a photo of the Taft Educational Campus chief librarian holding an assault rifle inside a gun shop. One student at the Claremont school reposted the picture of Elizabeth Ervin, 47, with the snarky caption: ‘Don’t return the books in the library and you’ll see. Only ppl [sic] from Taft understand.’” Rest easy, though…the New York City public schools’ “Special Commissioner of Investigation will look into the incident.”
That’s Brett from Lantac showing off their latest idea for a California-legal AR. You have to have a Facebook account to view the video (click the image above), but it allows you to quickly load (what looks like) ten rounds of ammo into a fixed-magazine scary black rifle. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: You can’t stop the signal.
The latest hashtag campaign from change.org . . End the use of the “Human Black Target” at shooting ranges – “Shooters weren’t just faster to fire at black targets; they were also more likely to fire at a black target. We are calling on the International Association of Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors to update and modernize the instruction and teaching techniques being used to train the majority of law enforcement officers by taking into account recent research on trigger bias. Our end goal is to eliminate the use of the most popular target for shooters when learning to use their firearm: a black silhouette. There should be #NoMoreBlackTargets in shooting ranges, permitting, and instruction environments, or anywhere someone is learning to use a firearm.”
Crisis averted . . . Dublin woman facing trial charged with possessing three shotguns – “Ms (Tracy) Deegan, of Cherrywood Park, Clondalkin, is charged with possession of eight 12-gauge shotgun cartridges at her home on February 17 last year. She is also charged with possession of a Baikal 12-gauge double-barrel shotgun, a Reno 12-gauge double-barrel shotgun and a Winchester pump-action shotgun at her home on the same date.”
BLUE FORCE GEAR® AND Q™ PARTNER TO DEVELOP SILENCER POUCH AND WEAPONS CASE – POOLER, GA., Feb. XX, 2017 – Blue Force Gear®, the designer and manufacturer of the world’s finest weapon slings and tactical equipment, today announced a partnership with Q™ to create a custom silencer pouch for Q’s latest line of high-design silencers and a weapon case for its newest bolt-action rifle “The Fix.” The new silencer pouch and weapon case will be available beginning in June 2017.
Springfield Armory® Teams With Industry Leaders To Offer Ultimate Gear Package Giveaway – Winner To Receive Safe, Gun, Ammo, Gear, And Training Package Valued At Over $9,500 – GENESEO, ILL. (2/21/17) – Springfield Armory® is pleased to announce the Ultimate Gear Package Giveaway. The company has teamed with Cannon Safe, HexMag, CrossBreed Holsters, Action Target, Crimson Trace, Personal Defense Network, Propper Apparel, American Trigger, GunTalk Media, PACT, and Freedom Munitions to offer one lucky winner the guns and gear prize package of a lifetime (click image above to enter).
https://youtu.be/LHlT3tngm4s
List of people and places to avoid: 1. Excessively exuberant wedding celebrations in certain Asian and Middle Eastern countries.
Daily Mail has its civilian disarmament-loving mind blown by the prospect of putting John Lott’s premise into practice . . . What could possibly go wrong? ‘Black Guns Matter’ campaigner claims he will cut violence in inner cities like Chicago by arming residents with more LEGAL firearms – “A pro-gun campaigner is claiming he can cut inner-city violence in cities like Chicago – by giving people greater access to legal firearms and knowledge. Maj Toure is the founder of Black Guns Matter, a pro-gun organisation that aims to educate urban populations about their Second Amendment rights. He believes that years of prejudice have convinced people living in cities to associate guns with crime rather than defending themselves, their communities and their rights.”
And in the category of worst appeals to authority this month . . . Gun-free zones make sense – “But let’s go back to the ‘gun-free zones are easy targets’ argument. The problem is there is no empirical evidence, no data to suggest mass shootings are ever chosen because a place is marked a gun-free zone. In fact, research by Mother Jones and other independent research organizations has shown in mass shootings where a motive was eventually discovered, the killer was tied personally to the place where the shooting occurred: workplace shootings, school shootings where the shooter attended the school or had close personal connections there, shootings motivated by religious discrimination, racism or hatred over lifestyle choices. Were some of those places gun-free zones? Yes, but there is no evidence to suggest they were targeted because they were. And more poignant still, there is no evidence to suggest people carrying concealed weapons in those places would have done anything to stop the carnage. Empirical evidence and data show armed citizens either don’t try to stop the shooters or are unsuccessful, often injuring themselves or shooting innocent people in their drive to hunt down the killer.”
Behold, the wooden Deagle:
Hey I’m cool getting rid of black targets. You pay homie…wow Dublin sucks. 12 shotgun shells. Makes you want to go all IRA. NO JOKE…arm good black folks. I’ve preached it before and I’ll say it again.
Hey, if ya wanna get an AK47 from the PLO or a Barrett from the American Republican Party to kill some damn dirty protestants with, be our guest, but don’t say yer keepin a shotgun for “home defense” unless ya kin prove ya got protestants crawlin in yer winduhs at night.
Black targets are stupid.
There was a woman at my outdoor range today preparing for her CCL qualification, shooting at a life-size black silhouette target. She couldn’t see her own bullet holes without walking right up to it.
I advised her that 8 1/2 x 11 white copier paper was cheaper, and you can see the holes from ten yards.
Really? She couldn’t see the holes in her black target?
You need to use a range that can afford lights.
Or stop shooting outdoors at night.
Or maybe even get a cheap pair of binocs.
I really love the idiotic statement that people are known to shoot faster at black targets. Say WHAT?! We will shoot as fast as we are capable of/required at whatever target is posted downrange. If there is ANY validity to this “finding” at all, it will be because it is easier to SEE black on white targets than most other color schemes – that’s why black targets on white background have been the norm for 200 plus years. And for the lady who couldn’t see her bullet holes in the black target – that’s GOOD! If you can’t see ’em, it means they’re in the damn black, hitting the bulls eye! It’s when you see holes showing up in the white area around the bull (or silhouette) that you need to do corrective stuff. If you want to shoot for greater accuracy, then get a smaller bulls eye, but keep it black on white so it’s easier to see sitting on top of your front sight! Good Grief!
Black Targets Matter.
ALL targets matter you racist!
Never seen many skin tones that were actually black. Would dark brown silhouettes be out of the question?
When I see a black silhouette, I think of those ANTIFA assholes and most of them are Caucasian.
Yeah, let’s get rid of the black targets and use pregnant women targets like the police use instead. Will someone get offended if I use a paper plate for a target because its like I’m shooting the food for hungry kids in Africa? Sheesh.
wow… I had some pretty cool wooden guns growing up that my dad made for me on his band saw, but that Desert Eagle? Wow, that’s really impressive
Also, I love that the left’s defense of GFZs boils down to, “well, they maybe don’t hurt!”. Even the most insane anti cant claim that they help
The best argument to use with them is this: OK, I let’s assume that mass shooters don’t actually target places because they are gun free. Why would you want the places they are likely to target to be gun free? Sounds like your are actually assisting the shooter.
Outside of the home, school and work seem like the most likely places for someone to “snap” or to plan a mass shooting. Those two places account for most stress and unpleasant interactions in peoples’ lives.
Every mass killing I can think of / google happened in a gun free zone. Ok students might attack the school they attend but plenty of other people just pick easy targets.
Back when I did serious competition in various target events I had numerous photos published of me receiving trophy with firearm shown in photo. Seems a stupid policy
My girlfriend. Is a teacher here in Austin. When she posted pictures of herself shooting on Facebook and Instagram one of my first thoughts was “I hope she doesn’t catch some crap from this.” Me second thought was “What kind of gun should I buy her?”
One coworker gave her a harsh look when she saw her next.
And I am getting her a Tiffany Blue 10/22.
Joel Myrick. Pearl high school shooting.
I know a good gun with a gun doesn’t make a difference, but when you’ve seen that’s wrong, it’s hard to forget.
http://www.davekopel.com/2A/OthWr/principal&gun.htm
An even better example is the Arapahoe High School shooting. The guy came in armed with a pump action shotgun, extra ammo, and several molotovs. Just over a minute into the attack, he realizes a Sheriff’s deputy and resource officer are coming for him, so he breaks off, retreats into the library and kills himself. One girl was killed, but if the guy had had the customary unlimited time that a gun free zone normally allows, it likely would have been much worse.
‘…research by Mother(effer) Jones and other independent research organizations…’ – Incontrovertible evidence that ‘independent’ and ‘unbiased’ have two completely different and unrelated definitions.
The sentence construction, Mother Jones AND OTHER independent research organizations” suggests that MJ is an independent research organization. Really? Since when?
Since they’re not an official subsidiary of the Democratic Party. They’re completely independent commie pinkos.
Talk about an oxymoron. Mother Jones independent! Too funny
Glad to see that was pulled for emphasis.
Quoting or citing research from MJ, The Trace, Everytown, Illegal Mayors, Mom’s Demand, HuffPo, etc. is a certitude of containing 107% confirmation bias.
I provisionally accept that there is insufficient empirical evidence to sustain the hypothesis that targets are chosen due to being ‘gun-free.’ First, as she says, most people going on shooting sprees do tend to do it based on other important criteria. Second, I’d say that any correlation between ‘gun free zones’ and shootings likely have a confounding variable- namely, that many such targets (schools in particular) tend to be ‘gun free’ in some way and therefore skew the stats.
So, lacking sufficient evidence, I’m not willing to say that gun-free zones are targeted due to the nature of their legal status. But wait a second… “Empirical evidence and data show armed citizens either don’t try to stop the shooters or are unsuccessful, often injuring themselves or shooting innocent people in their drive to hunt down the killer.”
Show your work. You, little missy, are now making a claim. That claim needs to be held to the same standards you held ‘pro gun’ claims to just a sentence ago.
But you won’t, will you?
The theater in Aurora was chosen because it had two specific attributes: 1. It was showing Dark Knight (or some other Batman movie), AND 2. It had a “No Guns” sign posted. The evidence suggested that the killer passed up other theaters because they did not have “No Guns” signs.
Stop with the bullshit about James Holmes OK? That shit actually kinda pisses me off. Friends of mine were shot at that particular little cluster fuck and one of them died leaving her son alone in this world.
There is abso-fucking-lutely NO reason to think that James Holmes knew about the sign, nor any reason to believe it played into his thinking.
Let’s drop some goddamn facts about this:
1) The other theaters he passed up were much smaller and either closed or not showing the movie of his choice. One was a Spanish language only theater and the other was so tiny I wouldn’t have known it existed if I didn’t drink at the bar next door. The next closest large theater was in Stapleton and it’s in a bar district that is crawling with LEO’s and didn’t have a showing of TDK until the next morning. The next closest and quite large theater showing the movie was a great distance from Holmes place, which coincidentally was about a block and a half from my pad at the time. His only other major option would have been The Movie Tavern which wasn’t showing the movie that night.
2) In Colorado that sign carries no weight unless it’s backed up by a magnetometer. If you’re caught with the gun all they can do is ask you to leave. If you refuse it’s simple trespass. I’ve carried in that particular theater quite a bit.
3) The “no gun” sign on that theater was, and still is, tiny. I didn’t even know it was there until people brought it up on the interwebz and I’d been there a dozen times while packing.
4) Unless James Holmes was stupid, which he quite clearly was not, the place being a GFZ would be meaningless because it’s quite literally across the fucking street from the cop shop. He even noted that in his diary and estimated the response time at 3 minutes or less.
There is no reason at all to think that Holmes targeted that theater because it was a “GFZ”, which, in reality it was not. Stop just making shit up. There are plenty of good arguments against GFZ’s but James Holmes ain’t one of them.
John Lott has mentioned Holmes’ theatre choice among other evidence of mass killers targeting GFZs. Now maybe Lott doesn’t have all the relevant facts on this, but most people of the gun trust him enough to repeat what he writes. We’re not just making it up.
Spot on Strych9!!!!
Disregard the comment on John Lott. Lott is the pro-gun version of Leftist abortionists: he quotes statics out of context to make his points. For Example: ‘Wyoming has one of the highest gun ownership rates and a low crime rate’ forgetting to mention that Wyoming has a mostly rural population and most rural places have low crime rates.
We need to stick to proven facts in this debate to win over anti-gunners, not unprovable stuff about GFZs. Image management is crucial!
John Lott discredited himself long ago and should NEVER be cited as a voice of authority. You are doing a disservice to gun rights by even mentioning him.
WRONG. Actually, Holmes and the Aurora theater mass shooting offer the BEST example to make the case against “gun free zones.” I read your rundown of theaters and I know you stole that analysis from Mother Jones. The MJ piece does present some evidence that would seem not to support the GFZ targeting theory. However, neither does it conclusively refute the theory. It’s suggestive, at best, and not at all dispositive.
The most compelling and conclusive evidence comes from James Holmes’ own handwritten journal. It has been made public and us widely available online. In it, the killer rambles on for a couple dozen pages, before finally getting to his planning.
He starts off evaluating the proposed method of murder. He considers and rejects:
Bombing (materials are too regulated, too suspicious)
Biological (too impatient, requires extensive knowledge, chemicals, and equipment)
Serial murder (too personal, too much evidence, easily caught, too few kills)
He accepted spree shooting (easily performed with firearms, maximum casualties)
Next he considered the venue: airport (rejected, his first reason being: “SUBSTANTIAL SECURITY”, [i.e., men with guns.] or movie theater.
He then accepted movie theater. He chose that specific theater because, in his words, it was isolated, proximal, and large. Those are the same criteria MJ laid out, BUT only after MJ IGNORED that he chose a theater at all in the first place because it lacked substantial security.
This case is exceptional because we have a killer who survived his attack and who penned his reasoning in advance.
Not wanting to attack an airport due to known, obvious security (yes, men with guns) and choosing a movie theater instead has nothing to do with gun free issues. In fact, much of that airport is also ‘gun free’ legally speaking. So unless you’re suggesting we put armed guards and TSA checkpoints everywhere your argument is specious.
That’s a pretty neat AR reloading device. I wonder a) how much it costs, and b) whether it is as hard to load it up as it is to load a regular mag. It is certainly a more elegant solution to the fixed mag conundrum that the Patriot Button and the ARMagLock. It may not be too popular, though, for the folks who have dozens of mags stored up in their garages. Since my rifle is a plinker, and since I am not into the mag dump game, I have only three.
Oh, I don’t have a FacePlant account but I could watch the video. You just have to click the “not now” button when it asks you to sign in or create an account.
“That’s a pretty neat AR reloading device. I wonder a) how much it costs,…”
That’s a good thing to keep in mind, being California, at the next state house session expect it to banned the same way the bullet button was banned.
Just amortize the cost out to how many rounds you will put through it for as long it will be legal, and if you can live with it, pick one up.
Because you know they will outlaw it as well…
Just Black targets? I say end the PC scourge of anonymous targets at ranges. H.J. Thomas, I’m looking at you…downrange. Two to the chest and one to the CPU. You know why.
Hmm, black targets auto linked to an amazon link selling black targets. Is this a new feature in comments?
In a war its the merchants who always win big, sigh.
The black target thing is colossally retarded.
The GFZ thing is a perfect example of how stupid people view the world. Yes, it’s true that there is no real evidence to suggest that GFZ’s are targeted specifically for being a GFZ. I’ve said that here many times. That doesn’t mean that “A GFZ is a good idea” is a proper conclusion to draw from the lack of evidence on that specific point. The GFZ remains stupid because the reason the folks there are targeted doesn’t matter, the fact that they can’t defend themselves is what matters.
“Yes, it’s true that there is no real evidence to suggest that GFZ’s are targeted specifically for being a GFZ.”
Except for the fact that James Holme, the Aurora, CO killer, explicitly considered airports and movie theaters as venues for his spree shooting. In his own hand written words in his journal (available all over the Internet(, he specifically rejected the airport because it has “substantial security” and therefore accepted movie theaters as his venue of choice.
So much for the “Spree shooters don’t target gun free zones” myth.
Let the fisking commence!
…there is no empirical evidence, no data to suggest mass shootings are ever chosen because a place is marked a gun-free zone.
A rhetorical framing device — mostly factual, but highly misleading. We can rarely prove that a mass shooting location was chosen specifically because it was a known “gun free” zone; by the same token, there’s no way to prove that it wasn’t a consideration. But the writer hopes you won’t realize that.
Here’s one thing we DO empirically know: approx. 90% of mass shootings (that meet the FBI criteria) are perpetrated in…wait for it…”gun free” zones. The writer hopes you don’t know this and won’t bring it up while you’re busy arguing about the impossible-to-prove causation factor.
…Mother Jones and other independent research organizations…
This leads me to believe that the writer wouldn’t recognize an independent (meaning disinterested and accurate) research organization if it bit her on the ass.
…has shown in mass shootings where a motive was eventually discovered, the killer was tied personally to the place where the shooting occurred.
Here we see our intrepid author setting up a false either/or scenario, also sometimes known as the black-or-white fallacy. Yes, spree killers do usually have personal connections to the location of the crime. AND said locations are almost always…wait for it…”gun free” zones. See, not either/or at all.
Were some of those places gun-free zones? Yes, but there is no evidence to suggest they were targeted because they were.
Again with the red herring. Causation is impossible to prove, and arguing about it only obscures an empirical fact that’s actually relevant: that 90% of mass shootings happen in “gun free” zones.
And more poignant still, there is no evidence to suggest people carrying concealed weapons in those places would have done anything to stop the carnage.
Well, let’s see…could the lack of evidence have anything to do with the fact that 90% of these incidents happen in “gun free” zones where law-abiding people are prohibited from carrying concealed weapons? (No, couldn’t be. It’s too logical.)
Empirical evidence and data show armed citizens either don’t try to stop the shooters or are unsuccessful, often injuring themselves or shooting innocent people in their drive to hunt down the killer.
This is what we in the marketing business call a “lie.” If we make an unsupported claim that is contrary to fact and easily disproven, we can be held liable. But it appears that our intrepid writer is not engaged in an exchange of value, but is instead a journalist, and therefore unhindered by traditional notions of truth and fact.
Still, I can’t escape the nagging suspicion that facts do matter. A quick Google search for “mass shooting stopped” yields a whole page full of exactly that. Here’s one from Buzzfeed: https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/10-potential-mass-shootings-that-were-stopped-by-someone-wit?utm_term=.pfKpvVVMq#.qm7V1xxAq
Looks like empirical evidence to me. And there’s a lot more of it out there.
——————–
Ahhh, that was fun. Wouldn’t mind doing more of it. I could give TTAG a couple of Bruce Krafft style fiskings a week if the reading public had an appetite for it. (Hit me up, Robert and Dan. First one’s free!.)
So the real truth is they turn likely targets into gun free zones.
It’s also a matter of definition. If only one or two people are shot, it’s not a “mass shooting”. Now, if it so happens that it’s because a “good guy with a gun”, well, good for him, but he stopped just a regular shooting, not a mass shooting. Never mind that maybe if he doesn’t intervene it escalates into that territory.
The lesson being, if you want your name in more news stories, let the shooter shoot more people before intervening.
[/sarcasm] (That’s for the humor impaired)(Yes, I have a sick sense of humor. Old news.)
“Ahhh, that was fun. Wouldn’t mind doing more of it. I could give TTAG a couple of Bruce Krafft style fiskings a week if the reading public had an appetite for it. (Hit me up, Robert and Dan. First one’s free!.)”
I support that idea!
Of course, this is only useful is said “fisking” is posted not to a place where “only” POTG will read–ie.g., “preaching to the choir”–but rather is posted as a comment or reply to the original source, with the OP copied/tagged, so that non-POTG will see it and have a chance to get knocked off the fence.
Remember the angry gun shop employee who shot up his workplace? Me neither. Why could that possibly be the case…?
But didn’t the guy who shot up the batman premier choose a cinema relatively far away because some others weren’t gun free zones?
Since the shooter in that case is batshit crazy, we will never know why he did anything, including use the toilet.
Well, that last may be a slight exaggeration. It’s possible he is potty trained.
Actually, we know exactly that killer’s reasoning because he wrote thirty some odd pages in his journal detailing his reasoning and his planning.
In it, we learn that he considered a spree shooting at an airport, but his first reason fir rejecting that option was that it has “substantial security.” So he chose a movie theater, instead, a place where, again, in his own words, he could cause “maximum casualties.”
Those are facts and they affirm the conclusion that at least this killer chose a venue where he could inflict carnage in the face of miminal resistance, aka gun free zone. Strych’s comments above and throughout are devoid of the facts.
I trust that Strych9 knows his facts.
You’re hearing “minimal resistance” and substituting “gun free zone,” but the two are not the same thing (overlapping circles, but not the same).
Whether Holmes or any other psycho targeted a place *because* it was a gun-free zone or not is a secondary question at best. It’s a red herring. We don’t need to know causation, and most of the time we can’t know it.
The salient fact is that the multitude of “gun free” zones in our nation are repeatedly targeted by murderous psychos. The anti-gun response is to create more of these target-rich zones; we contend that reducing the number of helpless targets is a better answer.
“Actually, we know exactly that killer’s reasoning because he wrote thirty some odd pages in his journal detailing his reasoning and his planning.”
Wrong. And I said why: He is batshit crazy. The fact that he was able to string a bunch of words together does not mean they came from a person without deeply serious problems, it merely means he is literate.
Anyone who writes pages about why he wants to carry out a mass killing spree is a psychopath, which means he’s batshit crazy.
Never assume that because someone tells us WHY he commits a mass killing spree is sane.
I can write several pages about nuclear physics; that doesn’t mean they relate to reality.
See Strych9 reply above. No he did not choose the theater because it was a GFZ.
Only the really deranged and stupid people commit crimes using guns, the smart ones wear suits and ties.
And run for office…
Well as long as there’s going to be an Investigation…
I don’t know about you, but Mother Jones is where I turn to for solid empirical research.
“He believes that years of prejudice have convinced people living in cities to associate guns with crime rather than defending themselves”
And he would be correct. IOWs he KNOWS this, and doesn’t just “believe” it…
Hey, English majors, is “research by Mother Jones” an oxymoron or a non sequitur?
All of the above.
OOH! OOH! I KNOW!
It’s an oxymoron.
A non sequitur would be:
Teacher:”Name a legitimate research organization.”
Student: ” Mother Jones.”
I thought oxymoron was an antibiotic.
No, an oxymoron is the result of an overdose of pain pills.
Not a booth babe with a real firearm, and she can probably read the owners’ manual without moving her lips. (It is tough to comment without being politically incorrect when women are involved). Maybe we have avoided changing from, he/she to he-it/she-it, with this last election.
It seems the BBC has no historical perspective when discussing Maj Toure. It was British governor of Lord Dunmore who first gave guns to black slaves promising them freedom if they fought against the rebellious colonists. General Washington said that was unfair. He would latter change his mind and also arm free blacks in the war against the British. Yes, that’s correct the American revolutionary war was fought with racially integrated armies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunmore%27s_Proclamation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Americans_in_the_Revolutionary_War
Didn’t care what the color/race/religion was covering my ass.
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