TTAG Morning Digest: White Guys Heart Guns, Gun Buyback Nets Fork and Hawaii Confiscates Dopers’ Guns

1. I look out my office window and see Baylor U to the right and the new stadium to the left. They are strange to say the least.
   Some Baylor students didn’t like what William Cowper Brann had to say about them and tried to tar and feather then lynch him in 1898.

   • But it was Baylor parents who got him. That dude was awesome.

     • Yes he was. Just shows you that there have always been “issues” at Baylor…

2. Oh yeah cause you know when I think safe I think California, England, and Australia. Yep totally safe there….

3. Guy in the main picture is willing to battle it out but couldn’t run more than 20ft without gaveling a heart attack.

   I swear, I laugh at the physical condition of some of these people.

   • Good physical condition is a worthy goal, absolutely. And the gentleman in the photo probably could manage to achieve a little better shape and strength, but we don’t know why he does not. Can we afford to throw him under the bus and assume he is incapable of using that gun because he is not in good physical shape?

     There are millions of people who are elderly, disabled and unable to obtain good physical condition. We have an even greater need for self defense, actually, since we cannot run or fight hand to hand.

     The man pictured has rule one covered. Rule 1… have a gun.

     • Yep, he’s doin alright. Got his hat’s brim folded on one side. He’s doin alright.

     • A little better shape? Guy needs serious reconditioning.

       Yeah, he has a rifle, but what good is it if he can’t move or die of a heart attack while attempting to move?

       Fat people and combat don’t mix.

       • Tell that to Stephen Willeford, an aging, overweight and barefooted true American Patriot. Stop painting folks with a broad brush. That’s what the filthy, Liberal Terrorists™ do.

       • Shooting at a man fleeing and fighting in combat is apples and oranges.

         Plus being stationary and moving with 75lbs of gear are night and day.

         • Except aging and overweight people won’t be engaging in either. For the purposes of self defense, although neither is optimal, isn’t catastrophic either.

       • Civil wars require all hands on deck. Fat, gray it don’t matter. If there’s another American civil war, I don’t believe there will be, women will be in the lines also.

         The side that is too picky about it’s troops is the side that will lose.

         Towards the end of the second world war American troops were arriving as replacements in front line units that had been civilians less than a month before. Many had never fired their rifles before the front and there were some that made it thru the physical exams with injuries and birth defects that effectively made them cripples.

         Manpower is essential. Being pretty isn’t.

       • +10 to what “jwm” said.

         You don’t pick your G’s, your G’s pick you.

       • “Stop painting folks with a broad brush. That’s what the filthy, Liberal Terrorists™ do.”

         …he said, painting a broad picture of all he disagrees with.

       • The old, fat or disabled can guard supplies. They can navigate when driving vehicles. Nothing stopping them from loading magazines or repairing gear.

       • I shoot Garand matches with men who are what some in this post have called “old and fat”, etc. With iron sites mind you, using Garands, Springfields, Mosins, Swiss K, etc. they rarely miss the black of the target which goes to 13in for the 9 ring. And most of their shots are in the 10 ring (7in) and X (3in). All 4 positions, standing, seated, rapid prone, and prone slow. At late 60s and 70s they out shoot guys half their age by large margins regularly and those guys typically are shooting a mouse gun. And no bipods or sandbags, just a sling. Give them a palma rifle or f-class and go back to 800-1000yd and they also rarely shoot anything but 9 and 10, mostly 10 and X. Be careful to not judge a rifleman by their looks, age, etc.

     • Bundy Ranch. The hundreds of armed citizens who showed up may have been imperfect physical specimens but they nonetheless demonstrated a perfect sense of patriotism and courage. When the chips are down, it’s often who shows up that counts.

       • Bundy is an idiot and a thief who has been stealing OUR natural resources (grazing land) for years without paying for it, with no excuse other than the clam that the federal government doesn’t “lawfully” own the land, a clam that has been dismissed by two federal trial and two federal appellate courts. Patriotism has nothing to do with the question. I rather expect that he and his son will soon be spending time in a concrete cage.

       • Mark hasnt been reading the news. Most of the trials are coming back with all charges dismissed.

   • I laugh at judgmental people.

     • Laugh all you want.

       There’s a reason why someone that size isn’t allowed in the military.

       • May I direct your attention to Army National Guard, a variety of Reservists of almost all branches, and many senior personnel in both the Army and Navy (mainly those that are at their terminal rank or Retired on Active Duty—AKA cruising into a GS job). The standards have dropped during the past 16 years of war.

   • Most regular readers will know that I harp on fitness a lot. However, this is one area (in the context of this conversation) where Notorious B.I.G. got some things right when he said:

     “Runnin’…Ni**a, I’m too fat, I fuck around and catch a asthma attack/That’s why I bust back…”

     A man’s gotta know his limitations…

     • That stuff around the middle, that’s just “PROSPERITY” baby. : )

       It’s like “The King and His Court” softball team.

       Not greatly in shape, but you don’t have to run too fast or hard if you always hit it over the fence. ; )

       But yes, I am also one that thinks fitness should be an integral part of your daily regime.

4. Hmm. I didn’t really start buying a lot of guns until I achieved financial stability. Funny ol world now inant?

   • ANYONE THINK THAT ACTUAL GUN OWNERS LET BAYLOR UNIVERSITY STUDY THEM?

     ~ maybe one or two?

     HOW MUCH FEDERAL GRANT $$$ DID BAYLOR GET FOR THE STUDY ? ? ? AND HOW FAST WILL THEY FLIP IT BACK TO THE (D)NC.

     F the Trace and their real bs Fake News.

   • I think he’s using financially unstable as a new way to say fat christian white male with a tiny pecker.

     • ATF Boob. Why are you such a judgmental prick???
       I ask because you seem to fulfill all the requirements of a jerkoff federal agent in fact as well as deed. Every ATF thug I’ve ever met was a jerk and a prick. Seemed to be a job requirement.
       I’m just sayin.

5. Have to bookmark this article about Hawaii for a present day example about how registration always, inevitable leads to confiscation. Perhaps it’s time to consider instead of turning in Guns, using them as intended?

   • Not only that, but what is the reasoning? That someone with a gun and a med card might be high?

     By that logic, anyone over 21 should be compelled to turn in their guns and cars, because they might be drunk at any given time.

     • Supreme Court recently upheld the prohibition of gun rights for marijuana users. Doesn’t matter if it’s legal in their particular state. It’s still illegal under federal statutes and of course, they take precedence. It’s implied and accepted, according to the courts, that if you have a card, you’re a user.

       • Yeah, well, “the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” is *the* law of the land, and yet…infringements, as far as the eye can see. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

       • Except it’s the city, not the feds, doing the taking. Thus, it’s a city (state?) law/rule being enforced.
         I say that partly in jest. Locals usually don’t enforce federal law unless they are presented with the law being broken right in front of them. Using their computers to discover the illegal act isn’t seeing it being done.
         But Hawaii (as most states) has their own peculiarities, and do pretty much whatever they want.

     • The 4473 specifically asks about addictions–and if you have a card, you are using or addicted to an illegal (under federal law) drug, you are prohibited from buying guns through an FFL. One of my local FFLs in a conservative part of California will not sell to anyone who has a card, and this is the reason. If he did so, he could lose his license.

       • We have similar, informal, advice from the BATFE, being in a state next to Colorado as we are here in Wyoming.

       • I understand that kind of CYA behavior, and that was not the point I was making, and it’s not what is happening in Hawaii.

         Treating people who smoke pot like killers who just haven’t gotten around to it yet is fucked up.

         It’s especially galling when a genuinely physically addictive drug, alcohol, gets a pass. I don’t have to tell anyone here that alcohol is orders of magnitude more dangerous and destructive than pot.

       • “Addiction.”
         An interesting word. Evidently, it means different things when applied to different activities.
         Drinking a few beers every night after work is OK, but smoking a joint now and then is an addiction?
         I don’t buy it.
         The problem is this (as I see it): legislators (federal and local) drink, but would not want to be caught smoking. One is legal, the other is illegal. Never mind that drinking costs society (remember, it’s society that laws are supposed to protect) far more than smoking MJ does.
         But we are talking about the government, here; why expect logic?

         • The prohibition is of users of illegal drugs and those addicted to them. I don’t know why Mark was focused on the addiction part. Going from memory, the court on that medical marijuana card case said it was okay for the state to assume anyone with such a card was using marijuana, which is an illegal drug. Since that would make them a prohibited person, the state could deny them the right to buy firearms.

           As to confiscation, the 4A is all about reasonableness. It protects against unreasonable searches and seizures and sets up the major rules for issuing search warrants. It is generally unreasonable for the state to conduct a search or seizure without a warrant. If someone is known to have a medical marijuana card and have firearms, it is then it would be easy to get a warrant to search and seize the marijuana and firearms, evidence of being a prohibited person.

6. +/- 0.0005″? Really? Come on guys, that would mean that your measurement device is accurate to +/- 0.00005″ or 1.25 microns… for a bore diameter measurement on a complex 3D surface, I call bullshit.

   • you could wire a go\no go gauge that should get you within the half thou range

     • Not for rifling you can’t. +/- 0.5 Thou requires a level of mechanical interface that would cause your gage to seize.

   • Barrels are air-gaged.

     I don’t have time to type up a lesson in how air-gaging of barrels works, but this is how barrel makers measure the uniformity of their bore diameters.

     And, BTW, +/- 0.0005″ in a bore is fairly mundane. Match rifle barrels are usually air gaged to have 0.0001″ or less difference from one end to the other… pistol barrels don’t need (or produce) the level of precision that rifle barrels do. If you really wanted a super-high quality pistol barrel, then go buy a rifle barrel blank and machine it down to what you need for the pistol barrel. That’s what Clark does with the S&W Mode 41 barrels they sell, and it works just fine, from what I’ve observed.

     Most measurements of small internal dimensions in guns are performed with ground gage pins and gages. Use of a variable reading instrument isn’t usually cost-effective, because of the resolution/precision requirements to obtain statistically useful information (as you allude). It’s much, much more cost-effective to just send out to a gage shop to get the correct gages ground for your use, and then send them in for calibration checks every so often.

     • The problem with air gaging is in complex geometries. It gives you a good idea of the total cross section, but minute surface details are not resolvable.

       The problem with Pass / Fail gages is two fold.

       1. They are subject to wear, and +/- 0.1 Thou is a joke in metrology terms, I can get your gage to change dimensions by that much just by breathing on it.

       2. The second problem is the complexity of the internal geometry of the bore. You’d basically need to thread it on to the rifling for it to work, and that introduces a whole mess of tribology and interface issues.

       OD is easy, but micron level ID for small diameters with complex geometries is the holy grail of measurement. It’s just not possible without VERY expensive equipment that’s designed to inspect a few parts per hour.

       This is kinda an area of expertise for me. Resolution != Accuracy.

       • That’s why metrology in machine shops is done in a temperature-controlled environment. Met shops are supposed to be held to 68F, etc.

         For the purposes of barrels, the level of surface finish inside of a barrel depends mostly on how the barrel is machined & rifled. Match rifle barrels, which are usually cut with single-point cutters, are bored, reamed straight, then checked for straightness with a gage, then lapped, then rifled, and some are lapped again to remove any burrs sticking up from the groove cutting. Button/broach barrels can be pretty rough. Cold hammer forged barrels can have a nice finish, but an inconsistent interior dimension.

         It is very easy to get lost in the weeds about machining precision/resolution/finish in guns and gunmaking. In the end, some of it is supported by results downrange. Lots of it isn’t.

         eg, Below a certain level of finish, more lapping won’t increase accuracy/precision out of a barrel – and that level of finish is “rough.” I have AR barrels that, if you put a borescope in them, look as tho they were rifled by a rabid beaver on crack. I have one AR barrel (on a truck gun) that not only looks like it was rifled by a crack-smoking rabid beaver, the damn thing won’t pass a mil-spec straightness gage pin – ie, the barrel’s bore isn’t straight enough. That’s why it was cheaper than a boot full of piss at Sarco. But I’m forced by results to admit, it shoots well. With ball ammo, it will hold a sub-2″ group at 100. That’s not shabby for what it is. Now, the rough finish means it copper fouls like crazy, but it’s a reasonably good-grouping barrel. How much can we say that dimensional correctness lends to precision groups? I’m told by many people shooting for smallest groups that it does… but I can’t use that barrel to support the hypothesis.

         The BR/F-Class guys have been doing their homework for decades, and I trust their results – mostly because they insist on 5 and 10 round groups, and their results are witnessed, checked and verified. They claim that having a well-made barrel, that is straight, with good diametric consistency, helps wins matches. Some even tell me that tight (ie, under-SAAMI spec) sized bores can help. Even if the bore isn’t consistently tight (because it will raise pressures a bit), there are many precision/accuracy people who believe that having a slight taper to the bore, with the bore becoming tighter towards the muzzle, is preferable. This is why many of the match rifle blank suppliers will mark the barrel specifics on the breech end. When you buy a rifled blank from Krieger, Bartlein, etc, the information is stamped on the end that you should be using for the chamber.

         Then, almost as if to be merely obstreperous, there are BPCR competition shooters who prefer a little relief to the diameter of their barrels within the last 2 to 4″ of their barrel – maybe as much as 0.001″.

         Then there are the gain twist guys, who have been playing with the gain twist game since Harry Pope came back east after the San Francisco quake of ’06. 1906, that is. They’ve been playing with the idea of tightening the twist of rifling in the bore as it gets closer to the muzzle. Sometimes, this results in a small discontinuity in the rifling as it runs towards the bore. Does gain-twist improve precision of groups? I haven’t seen a consistency in the data.

         Right now, air gaging is the standard of the high end barrel business, and I’m going to guess that’s what the above-mentioned guys are doing. 0.0005″ isn’t a difficult result to achieve over short barrels with a gundrill and reamer setup.

         There’s a reason why the high-end machinists sneer at gunsmiths and gunmakers – this level of machining precision doesn’t matter in guns. Lots of people would like to pretend it does, but it doesn’t. This might cost us the professional respect of the high-end machining industry, but it also works to our advantage: many of the gun banners, who suffer delusions of intellectual adequacy by virtue of having a credential in what amounts to reading and writing lots of turgid prose for political purposes, presuppose that making guns requires high-tech machines and skills akin to those used in the highest precision machining trades, with even higher-end metrology to back it up.

         Nope. Not even close. If we all agree that Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov was able to invent an effective weapon that can be handled by illiterate peasants and third worlders to military success, then it would seem that becoming highly invested in precision measurement of firearms components is a misplaced effort, other than for the lenses in optics.

         Most of the numbers (such as you see above) are tossed around by marketing people, in order to give American gun buyers something to brag about. It’s like Glock bagging on their “Tennifer” finish. It’s ferritic nitro-carburizing, that’s all. It’s been around for decades. It’s merely a bath of the finished steel in a molten cyanide salt bath – chemical case hardening, in other words. What does it lend to precision/accuracy of a Glock? Not a damn thing. What does it do? Eh, it makes the surface harder to scratch, and provides a superior corrosion-resistant finish. Ok, that’s nice. They could have made the slide out of stainless steel and achieved similar results, but Glock being Glock, hey, you don’t make the millions of bucks and get the trophy wife and girlfriends by making a gun with a lower profit margin, do you? Similarly, their polygonal rifling is done in a quest to lower their barrel production costs, not to improve accuracy. Real match pistols don’t worry about either feature.

         Still, we see endless hand-wringing and debate on gun boards about “is it genuine Tennifer finish?” and more debates about the polygonal rifling vs. classical rifling. It’s specmanship, that’s all.

       • Gunsmith, I’m not arguing that their barrels don’t work. I’m arguing that the spec they claim is bullshit unless their “tolerance” isn’t what the rest of the precision machining world means when they use that word. I spent almost a decade working on high end metrology equipment. If I had a device that could reliably hold half a thou on internal bore geometry dimensions, I would be retired living in a mansion, driving my tank to and from the range every day just for giggles. There are literally thousands of companies that would cough up hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars for equipment that could do that.

         I can believe half a thou in average bore diameter consistency, that’s easy with an air gage and will detect gross defects. There is no way in hell you’ll convince me that they are inspecting the rifling geometry to that level, which is what their marketing bullshit is implying.

       • It could well be just more marketing BS. There’s more than enough of it to go around in the world of firearms. It could be that their marketing people took something their machinists/engineers gave them and effectively re-wrote it, which is now setting off your BS detectors. I’ve had that happen to me LOTS of times as an engineer. And it could be that they’re just spouting numerical nonsense.

         I’m still back up a level from where you’re at – they’re putting this level of barrel production, QC, fluting (WTF?) and other nonsense onto a barrel that goes into a Glock. If they were talking about shipping a barrel that goes into a S&W Model 52, or a Target Masterpiece wheel gun, or any one of several high-end target .22 pistols? OK, now I’m all ears. But a Glock? Pffft.

7. The church people should get some GSW training too. At least TQ’s. Any place where folks gather.
   A box of band-aids begat CPR begat AED’s begat TQ’s, wound packing and chest seals.

8. I used to like Hawaii….

   • I used to live there, Pearl City, when I was 5.

     Chinese New Year was interesting. The men who lived on the street put their galvanized steel trashcans on the street centerline and filled them with fireworks. The climbed the powerpoles and strung up 12 foot-long strings of firecrackers.

     Then, they lit ’em all off. It was *deafening* to 5 year-old me, standing there with my fingers stuck in my ears. The ones in the trash cans seemed like they were amplified. It *BOOMED*. The smoke was thick and when it was over, the street was covered inches thick in shredded Chinese newspaper used in the firecrackers.

     Yeah, it *was* cool to ‘lil tyke me.

     Hawaii probably has outlawed all that fun now…

9. “Compared to their white counterparts, male gun owners from other racial backgrounds do not derive the same degree of empowerment from their weapons.”- So…for blacks and hispanics they are just tools of the trade? LOL

   • This…

   • Bingo.

     White liberals are nothing if not consistent in their racism… and have been since before Dred Scott.

10. The only problem with America is white males?

    Damn, that’s deep, right there.

11. Is it possible that the firearms feel a lot like an investment to these individuals? What if they see their buddies doing poorly in the economy as well and they aren’t libtarded so they reason people out of work might get violent(I’m looking at you chiraq)… Lord libtards jump through mental hoops to fit their narrative. Too bad that’s the only mental workout they get.

12. “Prosecutors had pushed for a jail sentence but the judge, satisfied the guns had been for recreational use, opted for a community corrections order.

    “I accept this offending has had a significant impact on you and your capacity to engage in your passion,” the judge said.”

    I may have some dumb today, but this sentence doesn’t quite parse for me. Is the judge saying that it’s not as much of a big deal because the offender really likes guns? If so that’s very near cool.

    • I think that’s the judge saying he knows the law is ridiculous, but he has to enforce it in some way nonetheless.

    • Some of the charges he was up against would have been felonies here in the states. Which would have been a lifetime prohibition if convicted.

      The way I read it dude could be using firearms, legally, after a year.

    • From what I read, I think the judge was saying that the offender didn’t have the guns because he wanted to do anything harmful with them, just that he enjoyed shooting them. And losing them was, by itself, a punishment.

13. Well the whole state of Hawaii just stepped on a land mine and good luck with that
    demanding 2nd RIGHTS be invalid because you use medical marijuana
    So if mom or daddy is in Hawaii and a cancer patient??
    and uses POT to keep eating?
    get a lawyer and become a millionaire!

    • Actually- this issue was upheld in the Supreme Court already. Read my comment above. Right or wrong, this is settled law.

      • Which is why Plessy vs Ferguson and Dred Scott are still the law of the land. The Supremes are well known for getting things wrong. Terry vs. Ohio is another they got wrong. No reason to allow a government employee to touch a citizen who is not under arrest.

        • Really? Ok, first of all, it’s settled. The current court won’t revisit their own decision, which means the majority of justices would need to be replaced before rehearing. It’s more likely that pot becomes legal on the federal level first. You did mention something about “touching” a Citizen not under arrest. These users find themselves currently illegally possessing firearm. Warrants could be issued, fwiw.

        • What is settled is that the government has the power to restrict who may be disqualified from owning a gun.

          This may be changed with simple legislation, which the US Congress has not seen fit to pass.

          The SCOTUS is looking at the issue from a different perspective – same outcome of denying someone’s rights, but from a perspective of “did the government have this power?””

          It, like the SCOTUS cases you mention, are prime examples of why “the law is an ass,” and why many people think that lawyers are often intellectual perverts.

      • What is settled, that owning guns while addicted to pot results in the loss of 2A rights? I don’t know of any case that says THAT. And that really is the question here–although it is true that you cannot purchase firearms from an FFL if you have a card (and in Hawaii, there is no other way, I think, to purchase a gun), but does that necessarily mean that one loses the right to possess firearms legally purchased prior to the acquisition of a marijuana card? That question has not been answered.

        • Correct. The issue here is two-fold:

          1. Does a pot smoker/user have the RKBA? I think we can agree that the answer is “yes.” If they’ve not been convicted of a felony and had their rights taken from them, then they may possess a firearm.

          2. Does the government have the power to regulate the sale of firearms through federally-licensed dealers, to include denying transfers to users of pot? This is what has been addressed, and the answer is ‘yes’. The government set the conditions under which a FFL may transfer a firearm and keep their license.

          So: as a FFL, I cannot knowingly transfer a gun to someone I know to be a pot user (ie, they have a medical pot card, which is pretty strong evidence they use pot).

          But if I were just John Doe, I have no such restriction. If I have no reason to believe the buying person in a private sale to be a felon or disallowed from owning/possessing a firearm, then I can sell them a firearm that I own in a private sale (in states where I don’t have to force the sale to go through a FFL). Smoking pot isn’t a prohibition on owning a firearm, it is a prohibition on a FFL being allowed to transfer a gun to the pot user – because Uncle Sugar may set conditions on the FFL.

          • I disagree. The law makes no difference in illegal drugs. All illegal drug users are prohibited.

        • You are trying to make a distinction between purchasing a firearm as a prohibited person and owning, possessing or borrowing a firearm as a prohibited person. There is none.

        • The state governments, and indeed the federal government, seem to have made a de-facto determination that pot isn’t like other illegal drugs.

          In many/most states, mere possession of a user-level quantity of pot is a misdemeanor. If the states wanted to do so, they could make it a felony (as they do with other drugs) and mere possession, upon conviction, would go into the NICS database as a disqualification for transfer of a firearm.

          We needn’t re-hash the legalization of pot for medicinal use in umpteen states, or Colorado’s decriminalization of pot consumption completely. Let’s instead talk of what happened in the spending omnibus bill that was slammed through Congress in 2014.

          Therein, the Congress effectively ended enforcement of raids on medical pot distributors – and they loosened the rules on security clearances (various agencies are free to adhere to the strict interpretation prior to 2014). When I held a clearance, they not only tested for drug use, if you admitted to any pot use in your past, no matter how far back, you were probably denied your clearance, almost certainly at the TS or EBI level.

          The Congress is now speaking out of both side of their mouth, as is usual. They haven’t amended the issue of pot being a controlled substance, but they’re also trying to end enforcement of the controlled substances law on pot, where legalized by state. It’s stupid, but it also makes a colorable argument that the federal government no longer considers medical pot to be something that strips a person of their rights.

14. Could we suggest an even trade? Hawaii for something like New Brunswick or Nova Scotia?

15. How can I get those shotguns masquerading as walking canes?

    • You buy them.
      One source:

      http://micksguns[dot]com/cane-guns-walking-stick-guns/

16. Well nothing here of interest either. Is there anything onthis blog related to firearms. All I seem to be getting is opinions on just about everything except.

17. The man’s belly is the biggest threat to him.
    Many white guys see society changes as threatening them and cling to their guns for comfort. They would be better off going to the gym to fight the belly and working on their education to make them competitive in the job market – a good paying job will make them feel far more secure and probably afford to buy a house in the safe part of town.

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