Instead of trying to come up with an original post while crammed into a hotel room with 2 small kids on our annual excursion to the coast I’ll post a roundup of observations from my fellow gunbloggers.

Starting off we have some Thomas Jefferson coverage with The Declaration of Causes and Necessity of Taking up Arms and more coverage of Citizens, Not Subjects over at Sispey Street Irregulars.

You can read the Declaration of Independence from Boots & Sabers and Walls of the City.

Borepatch looks at what the Founding Fathers would think of the Tea Party movement. New Jovian Thunderbolt has some awesome videos of Anvil Shooting, a 4th of July tradition.

Les Jones has a bunch of cool infrared pics of fireworks, and Breda has John Adams’ thoughts on the even of Independence.

I will update this post as the day progresses, and I have time between trips to the beach.

Flag credit to Jonathon Colman

And Thomas Jefferson realized this after writing the 1st draft of the Declaration of Independence. According to new information discovered by the Library of Congress he obliterated the word subjects so thoroughly that it took modern technology to determine what he had originally written.

But in a moment when history took a sharp turn, Jefferson sought quite methodically to expunge the word, to wipe it out of existence and write over it. Many words were crossed out and replaced in the draft, but only one was obliterated.

Over the smudge, Jefferson then wrote the word “citizens.”

Read more at this Washington Post article.

Happy Independence Day my fellow Citizens!

HT to Standard Mischief

And it looks like WA Ceasefire’s Ralph Fascitelli got a reminder of this at the recent hearing on an attempted WA ‘assault weapon’ ban. From Dave Workman’s Examiner column:

Prior to the hearing, as several Open Carry activists gathered in the hallway of the John A. Cherberg Senate Office Building, Washington CeaseFire’s Ralph Fascitelli approached a member of the State Patrol’s security team and, after pointing out that there were visibly armed citizens in the building, demanded of the trooper: “Do you know if they’re loaded?”
Sources have confirmed to the Gun Rights Examiner that Fascitelli appeared both irritated and unnerved, and he wanted the State Patrol troopers to check every firearm at the door of the building to see if they were loaded. He was told by the WSP that troopers do not have the authority under state law to do that.

That, Mr. Fascitelli, is what is known as freedom.

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.

“I, Sylvanus Wood, of Woburn, in the county of Middlesex, and commonwealth of Massachusetts, aged seventy-four years, do testify and say that on the morning of the 19th of April, 1775, I was an inhabitant of Woburn, living with Deacon Obadiah Kendall; that about an hour before the break of day on said morning, I heard the Lexington bell ring, and fearing there was difficulty there, I immediately arose, took my gun and, with Robert Douglass, went in haste to Lexington, which was about three miles distant.”

Read the rest of Mr. Wood’s account here at Eye Witness History

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

It is hard to be optimistic about the future of our country when I keep reading things like this:

Bank nationalisation gains ground with Republicans

Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator for South Carolina, said that many of his colleagues, including John McCain, the defeated presidential candidate, agreed with his view that nationalisation of some banks should be “on the table”.

The US Constitution is now a dead document. The political parties in power are simply fighting over the scraps, with no significant difference between them. And without anything to constrain the power of the federal government anything can happen. And it will. The gigantic bailouts and so called stimulus bills are only the start.

America is a good country, but as the cliche goes — “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

ETA: Glenn Beck had John Lott on to talk about this.

The point is, they’re going to have — look at what we’ve done to the banks in terms of the current financial situation, where we forced them through different laws to make loans that they didn’t want to make, make loans to people who didn’t have any down payments on it. That’s going to be on steroids when you have government there as a direct owner and it’s not going to be as obvious because you won’t have regulations that you can point to. You can just have the presidents of the bank doing what they’re being told by the politicians behind the scenes to go and do.

Liberty Belle over at Redistributing knowledge has helped organize a Porkulus Bill Protest in Seattle today (President’s Day).

The protest against the porkulus is on for President’s Day!

Date: Monday, February 16th
Time: 12:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Where: Westlake Park in downtown Seattle, 401 Pine St., in the open area by the big arch.

The idea is to use what we’ve learned about dissent over the last eight years. We need loud protests with lots noise and visuals. So, what should you bring?

Bring AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN! Bring your families, your friends, neighbors, bring everyone!

Bring SIGNS!! Get those craft making juices flowing and make signs and banners and pictures and paintings. Just imagine that you are a left-wing college student with nothing else to do and that should help you get started!

Bring something to sit on and appropriate clothing.

Most importantly, JUST BRING IT!!!

H/T to Michelle Malkin for this.

for gun bloggers. When I went through the broken links on gunbloggers.com last week I found that a number of them that had converted their blogs to static pages because of problems finding a decent blog hosting company. Others were just gone. It looks to me like there is a need for a stable host for like-minded gun blogs.

Among other things I am an experienced system administrator (at one time adminstering over 100 servers), I have my own webserver here in my basement and bandwidth to spare. So here is the deal — If you are a gun blogger or other conservative blogger I will host a WordPress site for you. I will maintain the blog software, managing upgrades and backing up the database. You can have this for free as long as you run my google adwords ads on your pages.

Or for $10/mo I will do the same, but you don’t need to put up my ads.
Domains can be XXXX.gunbloggers.com, or if you register your own domain you can point it here for no charge.

These accounts include ssh access to your user account, nightly SQL dumps of your blog database and optional delivery of the backups to a remote server if you wish.

See www.gunbloggers.com/hosting for more details. If you want to sign up, email me at the address on that page and I’ll get you going.

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.

The Senate confirmed Pres. Obama’s choice for Attorney General, with the help of 19 spineless Republicans. If one of these folks is your representative I suggest you give them an earful. And come next election do everything you can to defeat them.

Now, can we expect the NRA to adjust their ratings of these Senators based on this vote? I sure as hell hope so.

Alexander (R-TN)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Collins (R-ME)
Corker (R-TN)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hatch (R-UT)
Isakson (R-GA)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Lugar (R-IN)
McCain (R-AZ)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Sessions (R-AL)
Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (R-PA)
Voinovich (R-OH)

Thanks go to the 21 who stood up against this anti-gun bigot. You can read the full roll call here.

HT to The Freehold

Here is what the GOA had to say about Holder in a January 13, 2009 letter:

Holder, who served as Deputy Attorney General from 1997-2001, supports a 3-day waiting period for handgun purchases, one-gun-a-month rationing, licensing and registration of all gun owners, mandatory so-called smart gun technology, a lifetime gun ban for certain juvenile offenses and regulating gun shows out of existence.

As Janet Reno’s top deputy, Eric Holder was the go to guy on gun control issues. In a 1999 statement, Holder told members of Congress not to cave in to “the special interest that value the cold hard steel of guns more than the lives of children, neighbors and police officers,” and urged them to pass legislation that would have destroyed the gun show industry.

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.

In his own words

The full audio can be found here.

From stoptheaclu.com, hat tip to Dave Workman.

Sebastian at snowflakesinhell and Steven at Bucks Right have also posted about this.

Pretty much sums up how I feel about the whole lot of them.

H/T to Sith by SithWest

I’d better start this off with a disclaimer – I’m glad the Republicans picked her to be the Vice President. She’s a breath of fresh air to the party. But we need to stop treating her like she’s the Conservative incarnation of Barack Obama.

Let us be realistic about this. She’s not running for President. And if elected won’t have much, if any, effect on our lives. John McCain is still the one who will be signing or vetoing the laws. He’s the one who will still be making deals with the Democrats. He’s the one we have to hold accountable for carving away at our rights. Out enthusiasm for Sarah Palin is understandable. Just look at who we had to choose between during the primaries this year. If we’d had someone like Palin running maybe we wouldn’t have to settle for John ‘Lets gut the 1st Amendment’ McCain.

I stand by the slogan of my newest political shirt from We’re Screwed ’08. No matter who wins this election the US Constitution is still guaranteed to be be on the losing side. McCain has a history of compromise and disrespect for the Constitution. I don’t expect him to give that up just because his running mate is an NRA member and has held an AR-15.

The Palin nomination seems a bit like a magician’s trick of mis-direction. “Don’t mind the white haired man, just look at the pretty lady” as he signs away the rights that our forefathers fought so hard to protect. John McCain is still the one with the real power here. Palin might make a good Presidential candidate some day but that isn’t what this election is about.

What this election is really about is the choice between the lesser of two evils. Who will do less damage to the Constitution during their time in office? That’s who I have to vote for, no matter how unhappy it makes me to do so.

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.