Today I had the pleasure of spending 4 hours in a classroom with a few of my fellow GunBloggers — D.W.Drang from The ClueMeter, Phil and Scott from Random Nuclear Strikes and I attended Shawn Mahood’s Utah CFP Class. Utah is one of the most pro-2nd Amendment states in the country. They have worked hard to make their Concealed Firearm License accepted by as many states as possible (33 states recognize Utah resident permits, several of these will not honor a non-resident permit). The requirements for a non-resident Utah permit are that you need to take a class from an instructor certified by Utah, and be able to pass a background check. If you have a WA CPL then you should have no problems obtaining a Utah permit.

In the interest of full disclosure, not because the .gov tells me to but because its only fair to those reading, I won the chance to attend this class for free. I have attempted to make sure that did not affect my opinion of the class.

Shawn Mahood's Utah CFP Class

The class was held at the Federal Way Wholesale Sports location, we had about 12 people in the class with varying backgrounds. Several were former military, some were former cops and the rest were normal folks like me. Mr. Mahood was an excellent speaker, easy to understand, dynamic and interesting to listen to. The class covered a wide range of subjects from the 4 rules, to firearms nomenclature to detailed Utah laws covering the use of deadly force. The material could be a bit dry at times, but Shawn did an good job of holding my interest and I didn’t find myself looking at the clock once. We took breaks every hour and spent some time getting to know our fellow classmates, including one guy who was present at the Tacoma Mall shooting.

I highly recommend this class for anyone interested in being able to exercise their rights in as many states as possible. I plan on doing some camping next summer and this will come in handy for those western states that don’t recognize my Washington CPL. Shawn’s company is also running a NRA Basic Pistol and WA Concealed Carry Basics classes in February. Check his website for details.

Once you have completed the class and received the stamp on your application you have 1 year to submit it to Utah along with a passport photo, a fingerprint card, copy of your driver’s license and $65.25. They are supposed to process them within 60 days, but because of the popularity they are running at about 65 days or longer. Once you have your permit you can then legally carry in states that recognize non-resident Utah permits. You can use sites like Carry Concealed as a guide to which states recognize your new permit — but you really need to verify directly with the state, as well as familiarize yourself with that state’s laws. Internet sites are not always up to date. For example Nevada no longer recognizes the Utah permit, but Nebraska now does.

I tried to find something about the class to complain about. The only thing I can come up with is that it would have been nice to have some extra time for more ad-hoc discussions. I’d like to thank Shawn for the chance to take his class. I encourage you to tell your friends and family about this excellent resource that we have available to us.

In the UK they are discovering what happens when you disarm your population. According to this article muggins are now commonplace occurrences, with the thieves so bold that they will rob you in front of witnesses and so called security guards.

…and I speak as someone whose car was carjacked and whose house was broken into, with us in it, listening to his every stumble.

When my husband chased the robber down the street, the dutiful police officer advised us to install even more expensive security.

I can only hope that at some point our friends in England will realize the error of their ways and allow their subjects to arm and defend themselves as all people should be able to do.

H/T to John Lott

For a number of months now the fate of the land that Kitsap Rifle and Revolver Club sits on has been uncertain. The land is leased from the WA State Department of Resources (DNR), and they recently announced that they want to swap the ownership with Kitsap County for some other property that the County owns. There was concern over how the County would administer the lease.

Back in March we packed the land use hearing, and on Monday there was a meeting (that I missed) of the County Commissioners to vote on selling the land to KRRC outright. All of our pressure worked! Because today we have this:

The Commissioners signed an agreement to sell the 72 acres that the club sits on to the club! No more lease hassles!

I just got back from the hearing tonight and KRRC members turned out in force! I estimated at least 250 people there, the county commissioner’s room was packed and people were standing out in the halls.

The quick summary of the situation is that the land KRRC is on is leased from the DNR, who wants to swap the land with Kitsap County for some other nearby land. The Lease would then be transferred to the County, which has a spotty track record with upholding leases.

There were lots of good questions for the State and County officials there. Questions like “why wasn’t KRRC told about this proposal until just this month?” and “why has shooting been left out of the county’s proposed land use plans”. The last one is especially telling, given that the club has been there since 1928 and by some accounts the area has been used for recreational shooting since the late 1870’s — before Washington even became a state.

The KRRC executive committee is standing their ground on their insistence that there be a legally binding contract ensuring the continued existence of the club before they will support the proposed land swap.

In other words we don’t trust our government, at the State or County level, to do the right thing, unless we have it as a legally binding document.

I picked up on this over at Smallest Minority. He posted a question to the Shooting USA forum over on AR15.com asking if they were going to cover the BoomerShoot event that Joe Huffman puts on every year.

Scoutten’s reply was essentially that he doesn’t want to put those kinds of events on TV because it could alarm the anti-gunners!

Here’s my reply to him:

Scoutten: But our greater purpose is to do no harm to our gun rights, to put nothing on TV that could alarm the anti-gunners.

That, Jim, is the core of what is wrong with this country right now. Don’t alarm the other guys. Don’t do anything that might make them mad at us. Don’t publicly support anything that might make them dislike us. That kind of appeasement only leads to our side losing. We don’t have anything to hide! We are not second-class citizens! We do not have anything to apologize for, so why kowtow to them?

If you don’t already understand that the anti-gunners hate us and our gun sports then you will never get it. They have no reason behind their attitudes, it is all emotion. There is nothing we can do to convince the majority of them that being pro-gun is the right philosophy.

Who is your audience anyway? Is it the anti-gunners? I highly doubt that. Who buys all the products you advertise and review? Not the antis, that’s for sure!

Thanks for your show, but you are way off track in only covering events that the antis would approve of. I must say that I am very disappointed in you.

Maybe you should add a disclaimer at the start of the show ‘This show should be in no way construed as supporting guns, gun rights or gun sports that may alarm or challenge your sensibilities’.

Joe Huffman, SayUncle, Snowflakes in Hell, Random Nuclear Strikes also have something to say about this.

Salem, Oregon—Today, the Oregon War Veterans Association (OWVA) publicly announced its decision to file a lawsuit against Western Oregon University (WOU) for its violation of the Second Amendment right to carry a gun and its decision to expel veteran Marine, Jeff Maxwell. The university suspended Maxwell for a year upon discovering he carried a concealed handgun onto campus.

Read the rest of the story here on the OWVA blog

Dave Workman has a guest opinion up at The Tuscon Citizen today.

One should not be required to obtain a license or pass a government-administered test to exercise any constitutionally-protected civil right. If the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s taught us anything, it is that all civil rights are sacred, one is no less important than another, and all of them are worth defending because a threat to one puts all rights in peril.

Dave Workman is senior editor of Gun Week as well as an excellent holster maker.

Well, this is some merry news to end off the year with! The US Dept. of the Interior has changed its rules regarding the carrying of concealed weapons in the National Park System so that legally licensed individuals may now carry their weapons in the Parks.

The full news release is available from the doi.gov website. I think (IANAL) this becomes a law as soon as it is published in the Federal Register — which seems like a silly way to do things, but they are the Federal Government after all. They don’t have to make sense.

“The Department believes that in managing parks and refuges we should, as appropriate, make every effort to give the greatest respect to the democratic judgments of State legislatures with respect to concealed firearms,” said Laverty. “Federal agencies have a responsibility to recognize the expertise of the States in this area, and federal regulations should be developed and implemented in a manner that respects state prerogatives and authority.”

I can only hope that this isn’t the last victory before the Obama administration starts stripping away our rights again.

The NRA has an announcement on this, as does the CCRKBA.

I am really liking this gun! I have about 300rds through it now and it shoots like a champ. I’m now to the point where I’d trust my life to it and carry it every day — which means I’ll have to get another Undershirt holster made since it won’t fit in the one for the Kimber. I continue to have some problems anticipating recoil so I’m hitting low to the left as usual.

I went to the range with a couple of friends yesterday. It was pouring down rain, but thanks to the cover at the Kitsap Rifle and Revolver Club we were dry. Lots of fun was had with the Ruger Mark III. The only problem there is that the 10 round mags are just too small. The AR-15 worked like it was supposed to, with the exception of a couple of rounds of Radway green that didn’t fire the first time.

The High Road, one of the largest pro-gun websites has been hijacked by its hosting provider. The hosting provider, Derek Zeanah owner of WellBuiltNetworks.com, was asked to change the domain registration from its original owner, Rich Lucibella, to the forum’s actual owner and moderator Oleg Volk. He instead changed the ownership to himself and locked out many of the admins who disagreed with him.

Background by an original moderator

Mr. Lucibella says:

At no time was I aware that Derek was acting as anything but Oleg’s personal agent. Had I been aware that Derek was acting for his own benefit I would never have transferred the domain name to him. It is my position that Mr. Zeanah had fraudulently misrepresented himself to me. If he persists in publicly hiding behind my statements, taken out of context, I will have little choice but to join this legal fray, recover the domain name thru the courts and pursue Mr. Zeanah for my legal fees.

Here is Oleg’s request for support and an Update from Oleg where it appears that Derek Zeanah has also hijacked Oleg’s Armed Polite Society forum as well. At this time it is in maintenance mode and still pointing to the same server that hosts The High Road forum.

This Derek Zeanah guy gives IT people a black eye. His job is to host the site, not try and steal it from its rightful owner. He has a hosting company, wellbuiltnetworks.com, and if you are a customer of his or thinking about becoming a customer I’d look elsewhere. Unethical behavior like this is bound to carry over into the rest of his business dealings.

Mark Levin has a short interview with John Lott covering what he knows about Obama and his views on guns. Lott and Obama were both teachers at the University of Chicago Law School. Lott says Obama wasn’t around campus much, but on the occasions they did meet Obama referred to him as ‘that gun guy’ and refused to discuss the issue at all. You can listen to the interview on Lott’s site.

from 2003-2007 according to this article from the Kitsap Sun. IIRC WA is one of the best armed states (although I need to re-discover my source for that). They interviewed a number of people from the Kitsap Rifle and Revolver Club, of which I am a member. The article is pretty good, much better than I expected when I first heard that it was being written.

I’ve added some new blogs to GunBloggers.com, Blackfork, Cemetery and The Gun Shots

Somehow Cemetery’s feed triggered a bug in the feedparser module that I use to parse the RSS feeds, I added an exception for his site and got it all fixed up so that titles look ok.

Welcome guys!

The Gun Shots blog over at Outdoorlife is reporting this observation from Devline Rossell who was shopping in New Orleans for supplies in preparation for Gustav:

I just left a sporting goods store and you would think that the number-one selling item would be plywood or potable water or gasoline right now,” he said. “Apparently it is AR-15s and .223 ammo. I watched at least 20 people buy AR-15s and cases of .223

Looks like the people of New Orleans learned their lesson from Katrina.

Hat Tip to The Firing Line

Georgia recently passed a law that increases the number of places where concealed carry is legal. The State Legislature wrote the law, passed the law and the Governor signed the law. You would now expect the law to be in effect, right? That people, especially government officials would obey the new law.

Nope. At least not the city officials of Atlanta, who seem to know which laws to follow and which laws to break. From this AJC article –

Top city officials will announce Tuesday that despite a new state gun law that went into effect at midnight, they will have anyone carrying a weapon at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport arrested.

It is legal to carry in the non-security restricted sections of the airport. So if you are picking up someone or dropping them off you are fine as long as you don’t try to pass through security. Here was have another case of the bureaucrats knowing better than the law, and imposing their bigoted anti-gun views on the people that they purport to represent.

But that isn’t the end of the story. The legislator who sponsored the legislation is going to stand up for the rule of law -

The state lawmaker who sponsored the new gun law says if they do, the city will immediately be sued. And state Rep. Tim Bearden (R-Villa Rica) said the plaintiff in the lawsuit could be himself.

“I have a permit, and I have family I have to pick up at the airport tomorrow [Tuesday],” Bearden told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Monday. “I’ll have one [a concealed weapon] with me at all times.”

I think this is just the beginning of the fallout from DC vs. Heller, gun owners are now no longer on the defense, trying to stem the tide of anti-gun zealots. Now its time to take stands like this and say ‘we are not going to take this anymore’. It has taken too long for us to grow a backbone, but now that we have the Supreme court on our side I think we will be seeing more challenges to these petty tyrants who are used to making illegal proclamations and having them accepted at face value.

Government officials are now on notice. You are supposed to follow the LAW, not what you want the law to be, not the parts of the law you agree with, but the whole LAW. I wonder what it is going to take for the Police Chief in DC to get the message? Currently they think they can still ban semi-auto handguns…

One of my favorite geeks, Eric Raymond, has returned to blogging with a couple of great posts related to yesterday’s Heller decision. He lays out a good argument for voting for McCain, even though he isn’t the ideal candidate. And he says he is willing to be a test case to challenge Pennsylvania’s Concealed Carry License requirements. I wish him luck, although I don’t want to see him spend any time in jail.

esr is also well known in the open source world for his books, “The Cathedral & the Bazaar“, “The Art of UNIX Programming and “The New Hacker’s Dictionary“. You can read more about his background on his Wikipedia page.

Needless to say, he has now been added to the GunBloggers list. Welcome back Eric!

The ruling will be here at the SCOTUSblog eventually.

The ruling is here in pdf

Today we are supposed to be getting the Supreme Court’s decision on the DC vs. Heller case. I think its a sad state for the country when we are hanging on the words of 9 Justices. The US Constitution is clear and un-ambiguous. The rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights are for the People, and therefore individuals. Only Alaska and Vermont have figured this out with their no-license concealed carry laws.

To those of us who understand and believe in the constitution today’s ruling means nothing other than an indicator of how difficult it is going to be to continue the fight for freedom. It will be a gauge of how far we have slipped from the path of Liberty and Freedom for All. Washington DC’s laws, as well as that of thousands of other states and cities, are clearly un-constitutional. Here in Washington State we are having to fight the Mayor of Seattle who wants to violate State Law by banning CPL holders from carrying on City property. Washington’s laws clearly restrict the city from making any laws more strict than those enacted by the legislature. But he’s is trying it anyway.

Vast amounts of taxpayer money are wasted every year fighting against our own government, trying to rein in the power that they constantly seek to grab. I can only hope that an affirmative ruling from the court will curb some of this bureaucratic power struggle.

I’m sitting here watching the liveblogging from scotusblog, waiting to see if the Supreme Court issues its ruling on the Heller case today.

No matter which way it goes the fight will never end. If we win, the anti-gunners will find other ways to infringe on our rights. If we lose we will continue the fight in Congress. I expect that they will release the decision last, but maybe that’s just my TV watching mentality.

Nope. No decision today. Draw out the drama until the end I guess.

From the Colorado Springs Gazette comes this report:

El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa wants more guns – not for his deputies, but for citizens. “Offenders in the jail system tell me they avoid crimes against people because they know there is a very high concealed-carry rate,” Maketa told The Gazette.

Read the rest of the story here

HatTip to Say Uncle