. More than 28.1 Million Modern Sporting Rifles in Circulation.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) recently released a “Firearm Production in the United States and the Firearm Import and Export Data” report which indicates that 28,144,000 modern sporting rifles (MSRs) have been put into circulation since 1990. MSR production increased 32 percent from 2020 to 2021 alone.

The figure includes the latest data provided—up to and including 2021—by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (BATFE) Annual Firearms Manufacturing and Export Reports. “The data continues to show that the modern sporting rifle is the most popular centerfire rifle sold in America today with over 28.1 million in circulation and being used for lawful purposes every day,” said Joe Bartozzi, NSSF President and CEO. In addition, he added, “The continued popularity of handguns demonstrates a strong interest by Americans to protect themselves and their homes, and to participate in the recreational shooting sports.”

In 2021, according to the findings, more than half of the 21,037,810 total firearms made available for the U.S. market were either pistols or revolvers. In all, 12,799,067 were handguns, 4,832,198 were rifles and 3,406,545 were shotguns. The figure includes firearms domestically produced plus those imported (minus exported firearms).

Total domestic firearm production reported in 2021 was 12,521,614—an increase of 28.6 percent over 2020 reported figures. Firearm and ammunition manufacturing accounted for more than 12,400 employees producing over $5.6 billion in goods shipped in 2021. “This report demonstrates the strength and durability of the U.S. firearm manufacturing sector and the U.S. firearm sales markets,” Bartozzi said.

As for more recent figures, BATFE’s interim 2022 estimate showed a total of 11,217,388 domestically produced firearms. Of those 6,148,877 were pistols, 830,800 were revolvers, 3,575,322 were rifles and 662,389 were shotguns. The Bureau’s interim report will be updated once complete figures are compiled.

In all, NSSF estimated the total number of firearms in civilian possession from 1990 to 2021 is 473.2 million.

Please to be excusing the minimal posting today.
Life gets in the way of many things and today some of my doctors get to play with it.

MILESFORTIS WILL RETURN

MSNBC Legal Lunatic Frets Over America’s ‘Deep Commitment to Free Speech.’

In the ever-leftward marching world of the erstwhile American political party known as the Democrats, assaults on our most cherished constitutional freedoms are the cornerstone of their efforts to fundamentally transform the Republic.

We’re all used to them making a lot of noise about their disdain for the Second Amendment. The right to keep and bear arms is one of the few freedoms that they’re at least a little bit honest about wanting to take away. They may not admit to their gun-grabbing fantasies, but many of them now don’t say “no” when asked if that’s the end game.

The assault on due process is mostly denial-based. They’ve been using college campuses to test market their gulag/kangaroo court approach to justice for years now. That approach was put into public practice with their treatment of the J6 defendants. When any of the Democratic elite are pressed about the J6 victims of injustice, however, they get the kind of blank stare that Joe Biden would if someone told him to find the exit on his own after a speech.

The Democrats’ assault on the First Amendment has always been the most complex of their anti-American initiatives for a couple of reasons. One is that they love to cherry-pick the First Amendment when needing justification for their war on religion or their right to riot and burn everything to the ground peaceably assemble. The other is that they need to avail themselves of the very right that they seek to destroy.

Awkward.

Leftists come at free speech from a variety of euphemism-laden angles, the most popular one of late being a concern about “disinformation.” Caterwauling about disinformation was key to the Democrats’ political weaponization of the COVID-19 pandemic.

They had so much success with it that they’re not letting it go.

The New York Post:

MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade argued Monday that the United States’ “deep commitment to free speech” makes Americans uniquely susceptible to disinformation campaigns.

McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor, went on “The Rachel Maddow Show” to promote her new book, “Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America.” She said her “goal” with the book was to spark a “national conversation about truth and our commitment to it.”

She added, “I hope that by dissecting it, explaining it, and educating the public, we can all see disinformation for what it is so that we can begin to push back against it.”

Oh, don’t worry, Toots, freedom-loving Americans do see what you call “disinformation” for what it is — an excuse to shut down conversation about anything that runs counter to your false narratives. Because everything is “Opposite Day” when dealing with the Democrats, those rending their garments over the dangers of disinformation are far and away the greatest disseminators of disinformation. Pathological liars love to say that everyone else is lying.

While it’s fair to say “consider the source” when discussing MSNBC, the network did play a role in the aforementioned success that the Left had with their disinformation contortions in 2020.

Ms. McQuade should have borrowed a Mao jacket from Hillary Clinton for this appearance. Hers is one of the most blatantly commie opinions on free speech offered on a network that traffics in commie opinions.

March 1, 2024

March comes from Martius, the first month of the earliest Roman calendar. It was named after Mars, the Roman god of war, and the mythical ancestor of the Roman people through his sons Romulus and Remus

CHUCK SCHUMER, N.Y. DEMS, CAUGHT ON VIDEO WAVING CHINESE FLAG

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and other New York Democrats are in hot water after being caught on video appearing to pay homage to China, which is supposed to be the United States’ most significant rival on the world stage.

Schumer waved the flag “just moments after the organizers of a Lunar New Year event blasted China’s national anthem in the middle of Manhattan,” the National Review reported.

“Schumer’s apparent willingness to wave the flag of a foreign authoritarian government calls attention to the strange nature of the New York political world’s engagements with community events that feature a pro-Beijing twist,” NR reported further.

The Senate leader and other leading New York politicians were onstage at a rally ahead of an annual parade in Manhattan’s Chinatown district with Huang Ping, a hard-line Chinese ambassador who has denied China’s human rights abuses, as well as “Wu Xiaoming, a senior consular official linked to China’s secret police station in New York,” the outlet added.

Besides Schumer, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, NYC Mayor Eric Adams, and several New York legislators and city council members were also in attendance.

The “Star-Spangled Banner” and “March of the Volunteers,” the national anthems of China and the United States, respectively, were both performed near the event’s conclusion by a singer.

NR noted further:

At one point during the latter song, Schumer appeared to put his hand over his heart, before quickly removing it. Then, someone in the crowd attempted to hand Hochul — who waved China’s flag at last year’s event — an American and a Chinese flag. She appeared not to accept them. Instead, Schumer grabbed the two flags and vigorously waved them for a moment. 

During his speech, Schumer also called for more immigration from China to the U.S.

“I am proud to say that I am a fighter to get comprehensive immigration reform to allow many more Chinese to come to America,” he said.

In December, Chinese President Xi Jinping warned President Joe Biden that he planned to absorb Taiwan at some point, even if it meant doing so by force, during their recent summit in San Francisco, according to sources who spoke to NBC.

The outlet noted that the sources said Xi told Biden that China would unify with Taiwan but did not give a timetable. The Chinese leader added during “a group meeting attended by a dozen American and Chinese officials that China’s preference is to take Taiwan peacefully, not by force,” NBC News reported.

During the meeting, the Chinese leader also addressed public forecasts by U.S. military leaders suggesting that Xi intends to annex Taiwan in 2025 or 2027.

According to two current and one former official briefed on the meeting, Xi informed Biden that such predictions were incorrect because he had not specified a specific timeframe for such actions.

Before the summit, Chinese officials requested that Biden publicly affirm that the U.S. supports China’s pursuit of peaceful reunification with Taiwan and does not endorse Taiwanese independence.

The White House declined this request, NBC News reported.

The newly revealed information sheds light on a pivotal meeting between the two leaders to ease tensions between their respective nations, which did not appear to happen.

Biden Is Destroying the Firearm’s Industry

The Biden administration is driving gun dealers out of business and radically transforming the firearms industry. Unfortunately, President Biden is only getting started, and four more years of these policies will have truly detrimental impacts on the ability of people to buy guns for self-defense.

Biden sold his  “zero tolerance” policy as going after “rogue gun dealers” who “knowingly” sell guns to violent criminals. Of course, no one wants dealers secretly selling guns to criminals out of the back of their stores. But Biden’s zero-tolerance policy isn’t about that. Instead, it makes trivial and inconsequential paperwork errors into grounds for losing one’s license and going out of business.

Tom Harris of the Sporting Arms Co. in Lewisville, Texas, is a disabled father of five who made two small paperwork mistakes fifteen and sixteen years ago. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (BATF) during the Obama administration cleared Harris, who has made a single paperwork mistake since then. But now, the Biden administration is reopening closed cases, including Harris’s. Harris had to create a crowdfunding page to cover his legal costs.

By the middle of last year, Biden’s zero-tolerance for paperwork typos had put nearly two thousand dealers out of business.

It’s not the only policy that is making life difficult for gun sellers. A gun dealer must comply with new, costly reporting requirements if he has sold at least 25 guns that were traced to crimes committed over a year. The guns traced were purchased within the past three years.  This doesn’t even require that the guns were used in a crime, only that the BAFT traced them.

However, identifying gun stores based on the number of guns traced is problematic. It is one thing for a store that sold 50 guns to have 25 guns traced. It is entirely different for a store that sold ten thousand guns to have 25 tracks. Identifying stores based on the percentage of crime guns, not the total number of traced guns, makes much more sense.

 The Biden administration has publicly released the list of these stores, presumably to give negative publicity. Unsurprisingly, the 1,300 outlets targeted in 2023 by the BATF include the largest firearms dealers – Bass Pro Shops, Cabela’s, Scheels, Rural King, and Sportsman’s Warehouse. Large gun stores in higher-crime areas are more prone to fall victim to the new policy through no fault of their own.

The new detailed reporting requirements might create costs that cause some stores to stop selling guns. If that isn’t enough, Biden may hope that publicly demonizing stores will cause them to stop selling guns.

At the same time that Biden is driving gun dealers out of business, he is proposing other regulations that will force everyone who transfers or sells guns to be a licensed firearms dealer. The BATF released a 150-page proposal last year that would require you to have a licensed dealer if you sell a friend a gun once and then even discuss the sale of a second gun. Or if you sell one gun and keep any record of what it was bought and sold for. Or, for that matter, if you rent a space at a gun show without selling any firearms (anyone who has been to a gun show knows that most tables aren’t selling guns).

Leaked information reports the BATF’s proposal has ballooned to 1,300 pages and effectively bans private gun sales. One can only imagine how much more complicated these rules will be.

These rules will only make Americans less able to afford protection, as guns will become increasingly expensive amidst so many regulatory obstacles. The rich won’t have a problem buying firearms, but many low-income people who are the most likely victims of violent crime will be left vulnerable.

On top of all that, Biden has re-imposed Obama’s policy of pressuring Banks from doing business with “high-risk” industries, reviving what was called “Operation Choke Point.”

It’s clear that Biden is working hard to stop Americans from owning guns, and that he is destroying many law-abiding businesses.

Nashville rideshare driver claims self-defense, kills passenger in alleged kidnapping

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WZTV) — A Nashville rideshare driver is claiming self-defense after shooting and killing a man he says kidnapped him at gunpoint.

Metro Police report 44-year-old Davin Campbell called 911 twice Monday night, first saying that he had been kidnapped by someone in his vehicle and secondly that he had shot a man who robbed and kidnapped him.

Campbell told the 911 dispatcher during the second call that he was at the intersection of Herman Street and 16th Avenue North after shooting 23-year-old Kyrin Gardner.

When officers arrived, Gardner was found unconscious on the ground at the intersection, suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. He died at the scene, police add.

Officers also found a loaded pistol on the sidewalk near Gardner and Campbell’s pistol in the driver’s seat of his vehicle.

Campbell fully cooperated with Homicide Unit detectives and provided a detailed statement at police headquarters, Metro Police report.

He said while giving Gardner a ride to a public housing area, he became agitated, pulled out a gun and started making threats.

Campbell first called 911 around 10 p.m. Monday from the 1100 block of Broadway. The call disconnected before the dispatcher was able to obtain additional information. Campbell then called 911 again at 10:14 p.m. after he had shot Gardner.

The shooting location is only 0.2 miles away from Fisk University’s campus in West Nashville.

Campbell was released after giving his statement. This is an ongoing investigation.

Findings will be staffed with the District Attorney’s Office at the end of the investigation.

Lawman Tactical offering course to teach women about gun safety and self-defense

EVANSVILLE, Ind. (WEHT)- Lawman Tactical Guntry Club is holding a new event to teach women about gun safety and self-defense.

The series, called ‘Women’s Wednesday,’ launched last week. The next session begins on March 13th. Women who attended the first session last week will spend the next couple of weeks practicing in the shooting range.

“I think that just knowing that I am capable as a woman of protecting myself and learning the correct way, when, how, and what to do is super important,” says Ginger Whitler.

Whitler says her husband offered to sign her up for the series as a birthday present. The first session was held in a classroom and started with the basics. Instructors say nearly a dozen women attended.

“Women can learn how to handle a gun, and what the parts of the gun are,” says Whitler.

Bryan Bishop owns Lawman Tactical and created the curriculum for the sessions.

“You know, learn how to hold a firearm, how to operate a firearm, and just get more comfortable with holding a firearm to protect their family,” Bishop says.

And the feedback was great, so we had to try it out for ourselves. Bishop taught us how to load and fire a gun.

Bishop says classes like these and self defense classes are needed now more than ever.

“We want to give women the confidence that they can protect themselves. We want to provide some realistic training, just for females. With hand-to-hand combat training, like learning how to defend themselves when someone is trying to choke or grab them and get away from that,” Bishop says.

More information about ‘Women’s Wednesday’ and self-defense classes can be found here

February 29, 2024

Leap Day of a Leap Year

What Is a Leap Year?

The Short Answer:
It takes approximately 365.25 days for Earth to orbit the Sun — a solar year. We usually round the days in a calendar year to 365. To make up for the missing partial day, we add one day to our calendar approximately every four years. That is a leap year.

In an ordinary year, if you were to count all the days in a calendar from January to December, you’d count 365 days. But approximately every four years, February has 29 days instead of 28. So, there are 366 days in the year. This is called a leap year.

Illustration of a February calendar in a leap year.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Why do we have leap years?

A year is the amount of time it takes a planet to orbit its star one time. A day is the amount of time it takes a planet to finish one rotation on its axis.

Animation of Earth rotating once, indicating a day, and Earth orbiting the Sun, indicating a year.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

It takes Earth approximately 365 days and 6 hours to orbit the Sun. It takes Earth approximately 24 hours — 1 day — to rotate on its axis. So, our year is not an exact number of days.

Because of that, most years, we round the days in a year down to 365. However, that leftover piece of a day doesn’t disappear. To make sure we count that extra part of a day, we add one day to the calendar approximately every four years. Here’s a table to show how it works:


Year Days in Year Leap Year?
2017 365 No
2018 365 No
2019 365 No
2020 366 Yes


Because we’ve subtracted approximately 6 hours — or ¼ of a day — from 2017, 2018 and 2019, we have to make up that time in 2020. That’s why we have leap day!

Are leap years really that important?

Leap years are important so that our calendar year matches the solar year — the amount of time it takes for Earth to make a trip around the Sun. Subtracting 5 hours, 46 minutes and 48 seconds off of a year maybe doesn’t seem like a big deal. But, if you keep subtracting almost 6 hours every year for many years, things can really get messed up.

For example, say that July is a warm, summer month where you live. If we never had leap years, all those missing hours would add up into days, weeks and even months. Eventually, in a few hundred years, July would actually take place in the cold winter months!

Illustration of two snowmen on the 4th of July with fireworks and snow in the background.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

 

Constitutional carry bill receives final approval in legislation and heads to governor’s desk

BATON ROUGE – A bill that would remove the permit requirement for concealed handgun carry in Louisiana has received final approval from the legislature and is heading to Governor Jeff Landry’s desk for signing.

The bill allows any law-abiding citizen over 18 to own and concealed carry a weapon without the need for a permit or training.

Proponents of the bill, one of whom being Governor Landry himself, say the bill will allow gun owners to defend themselves “with crime running rampant” in Louisiana.

Those who oppose the bill say the removal of a need for a permit would hinder police investigations where guns are used as evidence.

Don’t mess with Texans..

Homeowner shoots burglary suspect during attempted car break-in on East Side

SAN ANTONIO – A man is hospitalized after police say he was shot by a homeowner while attempting to break into a car.

The shooting happened around 3:30 a.m. Tuesday off Caribou Creek near Farm-to-Market 78 and Woodlake Parkway on the East Side.

The homeowner told police that he saw two people trying to break into his car. He confronted both of them and opened fire.

One of the suspects was shot in both legs.

Police said the two men ended up driving off in a red car, but a few minutes later, the injured suspect walked into a nearby hospital and collapsed.

That red car was found abandoned in a nearby parking lot. Police are trying to find the second suspect.

The investigation is ongoing.

 

SCOTUS heard oral arguments today in the ATF bump stock ban case

SCOTUS Justice Jackson Just Said the Dumbest Thing About Guns and I Can’t Stop Laughing.

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson must have fallen asleep last night watching a vintage ’80s Chuck Norris movie as part of her preparation to hear oral arguments today in the Garland v. Cargill bumpstock ban lawsuit because her understanding of firearms is even less realistic than your typical Cannon Films production.

While I don’t have the transcript yet for you — arguments are going on as I write this column — the Firearms Policy Coalition has been doing the good work of posting highlights to Twitter/X.

(Don’t miss the update below from the official transcript)

When it was time for the Biden Department of Justice to present its side to the Court, Justice Clarence Thomas asked what happens, according to the FPC, “with the trigger in a bump stocked rifle vs a full-auto rifle.”

Please don’t wet yourself laughing when you read the government’s response.

My 14-year-old self, forever trapped in 1983, would have just one thing to say to a rifle that would let me fire 600 rounds a second: “BITCHIN’!”

Justice Jackson, with images of Chuck Norris killing an entire battalion of Vietnamese soldiers with a single magazine in “Missing in Action 2: The Beginning” still fresh in her mind must have thought, “600 rounds? I raise you 200 rounds to 800 — each and every second.”

ASIDE: Every time I read the words “Justice Jackson” I can’t help but think that’s what Action Jackson went into after he retired from the force.

Anyway, this was Jackson’s contribution to the discussion.

I dunno, maybe she wasn’t paying full attention and misheard the government’s ridiculous claim.

I’m not singling out Justice Jackson for any special mocking here — just the regular amount. Jackson was speaking off the cuff, and everybody makes mistakes doing that. While it’s extra unbecoming for a Justice of the Supreme Court to demonstrate such laughable ignorance about a case she’s supposed to be hearing with her own ears, the government took its time to prepare its case — they wrote stuff down and everything — and still managed to come up with 600 rounds per second.

Some days I wish firearms could do all the things that gun-grabbers claim they can do.

Do I really want an AR-15 that can fire 800 rounds per second? I mean, assuming I could find a magazine with that kind of capacity? No, obviously. The barrel would melt, the bullets would spray all over the place, and I’m having trouble imagining what would happen when 800 brass cartridges go flying out all over the range in a single second.

That one second would also put a serious dent in my .223 stash.

Still… what a glorious second that would be.

UPDATE: SCOTUS did a great job of getting the transcript posted, so I found the relevant bits for you.

MR. FLETCHER: [speaking to Chief Justice Roberts] What you are doing is just pushing forward. Now, if you look at the videos that we cite in Footnote 1 of our reply brief, some of them are in slow motion, and they show that when the shooter is doing this, the hand is moving back and forth very fast, 600 times a second. That’s not happening because the shooter is able to move their hand back and forth 600 — or, I’m sorry, 600 times a minute.

So the Firearms Policy Coalition got the first part right but then missed the correction. Easy to do while essentially liveblogging — I should know. Still, 600 rounds per minute is only slightly less impossible than 600 rounds per second. Even if under some extreme circumstances a bumpstock-enhanced cyborg were able to fire that quickly, a semi-automatic rifle wouldn’t stand up to the strain — and where would the rounds come from?

And here’s Justice Jackson: “And when, you know, ‘function’ is defined, it’s really not about the operation of the thing. It’s about what it can achieve, what it’s being used for. So I see Congress as putting function in this. The function of this trigger is to cause this kind of damage, 800 rounds a second or whatever.”

I think “or whatever” pretty well sums up Jackson’s interest in learning about firearms.

 

This Is Why Biden Didn’t Take a Cognitive Test As Part of His Physical

President Joe Biden made a surprise visit to Walter Reed Medical Center Wednesday morning for his annual physical.

“I’m squared away,” Biden said after the appointment and before a meeting with law enforcement at the White House. “They think I look too young.”

During the daily press briefing in the afternoon, Secretary Karine Jean Pierre said Biden didn’t take a cognitive test as part of the physically because he “doesn’t need one.”

She also refused to make Biden’s physician available for questioning, arguing it isn’t “the norm.” Former President Donald Trump’s physician was made available to the press for robust questioning inside the briefing room.

The statements are at odds with a report put out by Special Counsel Robert Hur, which states Biden wasn’t charged for a serious of felonies because of his failing memory and lack of recollection.

“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during out interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” the report states. “Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former president well into his eighties — of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”

Georgia Bill Makes Property Owners Liable for Injuries in Gun-Free Zones

Georgia House Bill 1364 makes property owners liable if a legal concealed carrier is harmed while barred from being armed for self-defense on the owner’s property.

HB 1364 says, “Any lawful weapons carrier who is prohibited from carrying… and who is injured… shall have a cause of action against the person, business or other entity that owns or legally controls such property,” according to 11 Alive.

The bill is sponsored by State Rep. Martin Momtahan (R).

Momtahan explained his motivation for introducing the legislation.

He said, “All we want to make sure is, if you’re in the store or anywhere and it has a ‘no gun’ sign, then that store needs to understand they have absolute custodial care of that person [who’s denied the ability to be armed].”

The text of HB 1364 clarifies that any posting that bars legal gun owners from being armed for self-defense must be accompanied by signage that makes clear the land owner understands his custodial duties:

Any public notice posted on a property that includes language which provides that weapons are prohibited on such property shall also contain language citing this Code section and providing that any lawful weapons carrier who is prohibited from carrying his or her weapon, including a concealed weapon, while on such property shall be under the absolute custodial care of the person, business, or other entity that owns or legally controls such property.