Travel Tips for Flying with Firearms, Ammunition, and Silencers

While innumerable people love to travel and see the world, it can still often times be a stressful event until you arrive at your destination. Sometimes you cannot get to the airport on time, your shuttle is late, the security checkpoint is log-jammed with people, and/or you get an all too friendly pat down you did not sign up for. All in all, I love to travel, but like many people there are a lot of tiny, stressful obstacles in the way. If you are also a firearms lover and are traveling to a hunt with firearms, ammunition, and/or a silencer that adds another layer of difficulty to your journey. If you have never flown with firearms and the like before we have a few travel tips to help ease the pain of that additional baggage you will be bringing with.

If you are traveling with firearms, silencers, and/or ammunition you will want to check the regulations for the airline you are traveling with before your flight. While every airline is different, they simultaneously have a lot of overlap in their rules and guidelines to follow. As an example, these are the baggage guidelines from Delta Airlines regarding “Flying with Firearms, Ammunition & Explosives:”

We allow small arms ammunition, in quantities not exceeding 11 lbs. (5 kg) per person, as checked-baggage only. The weapon must be securely boxed and intended for that person’s own use. More than one passenger may not combine quantities into one package. See more details/guidelines under shooting equipment.

You are responsible for knowledge of and compliance with all Federal, State or local laws regarding the possession and transportation of firearms.

Note: Gunpowder (e.g., Pyrodex, black powder, mace, pepper spray and tear gas) is never permitted.

While this talks about weight and predictable jargon of “follow local laws,” it gives no guidance on how to store your actual arms and ammunition. Can you use a brown paper bag (please don’t)? Is a duffle bag OK? While it might be comical in your head to attempt some of my joke ideas above you will quickly land yourself in a chat with airport security and you might lose your flying privileges for some time. Here are a few travel tips that are easy to remember:

  1. Use a Pelican brand or similar style, robust case – When traveling, similar to your normal luggage, it is going to get chucked around the airport like a baggage handler is auditioning for shot put in the Olympics. So, bag your ammunition, firearms, and/or silencer in a very sturdy case for protection.
  2. Use TSA-Approved locks on the exterior of your case – While I have always thought the actual TSA-Approved locks were some of the cheapest and flimsiest locks on the market, if you use different ones they might be prone to cut them to look into your box and you could be ushered through an additional verbal interview (interrogation) before your flight. So, opt for the cheap TSA-Approved locks on your case.
  3. Bring documentation even if it is unnecessary – If you have a copy of your Tax Stamp for a silencer, a receipt for the ammunition you bought, or home owner’s insurance documentation for the firearm you own and are traveling bring it all with. It is “better to have and not need than need and not have” especially when dealing with the TSA.

None of us surely want to get an extra “talking to” while at the airport and while we have firearms in our luggage so hopefully these few travels tips were a bit of help. As exciting as it can be to go on a hunt in a faraway land, hopefully it goes as smoothly as possible. As always, let us know all of your thoughts in the Comments below especially if you have some travel tips of your own. We always appreciate when you give us feedback.

The Cult of Safety

It was the 1970s.  Dry cleaning bags lurked quietly behind couches waiting patiently for the opportunity to pounce on the hapless child who dropped a Lego nearby.  Unguarded five-gallon buckets stood brazenly in the middle of basement floors hoping to entice their next drowning victim.  Discarded refrigerators prowled the land looking for unsuspecting eight-year-olds to gobble up.  GI Joes and Barbies, with the help of their little owners, were making out everywhere.

It is the 2020s.  Entire schools ban peanut butter and jelly sandwiches because maybe one kid might have an allergy.  Parents get visits from county protective services for letting their children play unsupervised in the park across the street.  Jungle gyms are an endangered species.  And third-graders are taught to not impose cisnormative constructs, let alone behaviors, on anyone or anything.

The odd thing is that the events described in the first paragraph (except the GI Joe one) were not actually happening on any grand scale.  The sad thing is that the events in the second paragraph are.

There has to be a middle ground.

Continue reading “”

HOW MUCH HAS THE EARTH ACTUALLY WARMED?

Maybe the only good thing about covid hysteria is that it has, for a while, drowned out global warming hysteria. Still, many people have the impression that global temperatures have warmed alarmingly in recent decades. Unfortunately, there is no reliable record of surface temperatures for a number of reasons, including the fact that the activists who are in charge of the records keep changing them to promote the alarmist position.

But that is all right, since warming due to carbon dioxide doesn’t occur at the surface, it occurs in the atmosphere. The only reliable, unfudged record we have of global temperatures is the satellite record in the lower troposphere, which only goes back to 1979. This is the global temperature trend from then until now:

This means that “[t]he linear warming trend since January, 1979 remains at +0.14 C/decade (+0.12 C/decade over the global-averaged oceans, and +0.18 C/decade over global-averaged land).” In other words, at the warming rate that has prevailed since 1979–assuming it continues–the Earth’s average temperature would rise by one degree in 70 years.

How much of that is due to human activity, as opposed to natural variation (e.g., rebounding to normal temperatures after the Little Ice Age), no one knows.

Juveniles don’t have the mental development to make such decisions.
Not that those who have reached the age of majority who want this have a fully developed adult mentality either.


Arkansas Legislature Overrides Governor’s Veto, Bans Gender-Transition Surgery for Minors.

The Arkansas General Assembly voted Tuesday to enact a ban on gender transition surgery for minors, overriding a veto by Governor Asa Hutchinson.

Arkansas is the first state to ban transition surgery for minors, although similar legislation is under consideration in other states. The bill also prohibits doctors in Arkansas from administering hormones or puberty blockers to residents under age 18.

 

Hutchinson acknowledged on Monday that the General Assembly would likely override his veto, which state lawmakers can do with a simple majority vote.

However, Hutchinson said the bill “would put the state as the definitive oracle of medical care, overriding parents, patients, and health care experts,” adding that the legislation was an example of government “overreach.”

“Government under a conservative philosophy should be restrained,” Hutchinson said. “This is an example of where restraint is better than over-broad actions that interfere with important relationships in our society.”

Hutchinson’s veto came after South Dakota governor Kristi Noem vetoed a state bill that would have restricted girls’ sports at public schools to biological females. Noem said her veto stemmed from concerns over possible punitive measures from national organizations, such as the American Civil Liberties Union or the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

The South Dakota legislature will consider overriding Noem’s veto, which would require the support of two-thirds of state lawmakers.

‘Woke’ politics isn’t a liberation movement. It’s the State Religion of the the oligarchs. And this is one of the priesthood issuing marching orders.


CEOs are the new lawmakers

American CEOs, forced into politics by cultural trends and staff demands in recent years, are hitting a new phase — actual lawmakers and rule-shapers.

Why it matters: Every CEO has been hit by the radical transformation of what the country demands of its corporations. And with each controversy comes CEOS scrambling, sometimes clumsily, to handle a power many would rather not have.

It’s not just Georgia: Corporate America is under growing pressure to put its muscle behind voting rights around the country, Axios’ Courtenay Brown and Sara Fischer write.

Texas is shaping up to be the next big battleground: American Airlines, based in Fort Worth, said in a statement it is “strongly opposed” to a state bill with “provisions that limit voting rights.” Dell CEO Michael Dell tweeted against another voting bill.
Between the lines: Employees and customers are increasingly looking to corporations to take on a bigger role in social and political issues. Many of them have leaned into that role — and gotten results.

Big companies, entertainers and ultimately the NBA and NCAA canceled big-ticket events in North Carolina after the state passed its anti-LGBTQ “bathroom bill” in 2016. The state lost roughly $3.8 billion in business and ended up repealing that measure less than a year later.
The MLB yanked the All-Star Game from Atlanta.

In Colorado, They’re Cracking the Code on Gun Control: It Doesn’t Work

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- Writing over the weekend in the Denver Post, George H. Brauchler—former district attorney for the Centennial State’s 18th Judicial District—wrote something that might be considered blasphemy among anti-gun politicians and gun prohibition lobbying groups.

Brauchler was discussing mass shootings in Colorado in a story headlined, “Gun laws may prevent some crimes, but mass shootings isn’t one of them.” He mentioned shootings dating all the way back to Columbine High School and included the carnage at the Aurora theater in 2012. His summation boiled down to this:

“But linking current federal and state legislation to preventing horrors like Boulder is mere political opportunism. We must continue to work to keep firearms out of the wrong hands, but we must also recognize that we cannot legislate away evil.”

Almost simultaneously, CPR was reporting that gun owners in the state “are gearing up to oppose any new proposed restrictions, despite the fact that the most controversial proposal has not yet been introduced.” The story quotes Mario Acevedo, a Denver novelist “who is both a Democrat and a gun owner.”

“Acevedo does not think new gun laws provide the solution,” the story reveals. “He said data has convinced him that gangs, drug trafficking and mental illness are the drivers of gun deaths, not firearms.”

Perhaps this excerpt from the story says it best, quoting Acevedo:

“Colorado passed the universal background check and the high capacity magazine ban that was done under the premise that it was going to prevent mass shootings. The state passed the red flag law, the ERPO [Extreme Risk Protection Order] that again was done on the premise of preventing mass shootings. And it didn’t.”

Colorado has seen its share of trouble over the past 20-plus years. But at least some residents are realizing what many in the Second Amendment community have been saying for years is correct:

Gun control doesn’t stop people from committing mayhem because those determined to harm other people will find a way to do it.

Continue reading “”

Cimarron’s Mike Harvey Introduces the Legendary 1887 Lever-Action Shotgun

BLUF:
The problem is: Straight partisan victories will be nearly impossible in the Senate as long as the filibuster is in force for non-taxing-and-spending legislation – like new gun laws.

The filibuster is supposed to encourage bipartisanship – but given the new hyper-partisan reality, what it really encourages is gridlock.


Applause, because when Congress is in session, no one is really safe.


The political calculus on the gun issue has changed

President Biden will find it difficult – if not impossible – to get bipartisan support in Congress for new gun control measures, like a new assault weapons ban, which passed with bipartisan support in 1994 and expired ten years later.

Most gun control measures get broad public support, including requiring background checks for private and gun show sales (83 percent in a 2019 poll), a ban on the sale of high-capacity ammunition magazines (61 percent) and a ban on the sale of semi-automatic weapons (57 percent). But what matters politically is intensity of support. Getting gun laws through Congress has always been difficult because of single-issue voting by gun rights supporters.

The gun issue drives their votes; for most other voters, it doesn’t.

Continue reading “”

David Codrea:
I guess anyone dumb enough to get their information from  ABC13 WBKO, “Your Hometown Newsleader,” is dumb enough not to question whose voice “responsible gun owner” Matt Robeson really represents


 

Pro-reform gun owner says he wants to see more background checks and restrictions

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. (WBKO) – A pro-reform gun owner says he wants to see more background checks and restrictions.

Former Bowling Green citizen Matt Robeson says he comes from a gun-owning family and is open to Biden’s proposed reform. This could include banning assault rifles and stricter background checks.

Following the mass shootings in Boulder, Colorado, and Atlanta, Georgia, lawmakers are meeting about possible gun reform legislation.

Robeson says guns that are sold or traded privately in Kentucky don’t require background checks.

More Guns, Less… Suicides? In 2020, That Was The Case

A philosophical and psychological test Jim had me take many years ago was not all that revealing when it indicated my level of ‘compassion’ was lower than most other people’s. So, excuse me when I say that I hope the ‘Reverend’ Warnock actually believes this and puts his faith of salvation in his own works.
And yes, I figure you all understand exactly what I mean by that.


Sen. Warnock — a PASTOR — Preaches Damnable Heresy on Easter

On Easter Sunday, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) — pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, the same church Martin Luther King, Jr. pastored — tweeted a message that subverted the gospel of Christianity and preached utter heresy, rejected by Christian churches for more than a millennium.

“The meaning of Easter is more transcendent than the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Whether you are Christian or not, through a commitment to helping others we are able to save ourselves,” Warnock tweeted.

Warnock Easter Jesus
Twitter screenshot.

The senator received swift backlash for this heretical message.

“This is a false gospel and heresy. We cannot save ourselves. The absolute truth and only meaning of Easter that matters is the literal, physical resurrection of Jesus Christ, and we must accept Him as Lord and Savior. Read Romans, ‘Reverend’ Warnock,” constitutional law attorney and former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis responded.

Continue reading “”

Gold Star Spouses day will be observed on Monday, April 5, 2021.

The terms Gold Star family, Gold Star Spouses, and Gold Star Wives traditionally refer to the surviving loved ones of military members killed in the line of duty in combat. Gold Star Spouses Day was created to honor these loved ones.

The True Story Behind Tom Threepersons and His Holster

While little is known about Tom Threepersons, the larger-than-life exploits of the Native American lawman reveal him to have been a jack-of-all trades, but master of armed conflict.

It isn’t big enough to deserve the title of “library” so I can’t logically call it one, but there are sure a lot of books in that back room. Ever since I settled in one place, I have given free rein to my quiet thirst for all kinds of books about guns, gun equipment and gun people. A purge is inevitable, but it pains me to think of such a thing. I need them all. There’s always another pressing research project (with another pressing deadline) just over the horizon.

For the matter at hand, after a detailed search of my accumulation of material, as well as that of the local library and the encyclopedic internet—I’m stumped. I am unable to find anything meaty, solid, substantial or documented about a particular Western personality. I don’t doubt his existence—I just want the whole story. If a couple of tales are true, this frontier character had exploits that could have kept a phalanx of lurid, dime-store novelists hard at work for many suns.

His name was Tom Threepersons. Right out front, you have to understand that there were two of them and both were of Native American heritage and both were avid rodeo competitors. The one who was also known for gun work spelled his surname Threepersons, while the rodeo star made it Three Persons. A Native American of Cherokee descent, our Tom was born in 1889 in the Indian Territories and grew up there and on Montana’s border with Canada.

Continue reading “”

Biden Reverses Trump Sanctions on International Criminal Court, Eroding American Sovereignty

In another reversal from the previous administration, Joe Biden on Friday lifted sanctions and visa restrictions that President Trump had imposed on officials of the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The ICC is an international tribune based out of The Hague, Netherlands, and claims the jurisdiction to prosecute crimes within member nations. It deals in cases involving genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

The Trump administration had placed penalties on the ICC because of the court’s efforts to investigate the actions of the American military in Afghanistan.

Continue reading “”

The Appeal of the New Totalitarians.

I am not a follower or a fan of baseball. But I understand that it is, or has been, an important national pastime, beloved by many, not least, as Andrew McCarthy observes in a recent column, because it offered its acolytes a respite or oasis from politics, an arena where our differences of opinion could be redeemed or at least temporarily forgotten in the benign if intense partisanship of fandom.

It is for this reason that, impervious though I am to the charms of the sport, I regard with disdain the decision on the part of the woke commissars who run Major League Baseball to abandon Atlanta, Georgia. The reason they gave was that Georgia had passed new voter rights legislation requiring, among other things, that voters present valid identification in order to be eligible to vote. They called that a violation of “fair access to voting” when in fact it is legislation, very similar to that in effect in many other states, whose chief effect will be to make elections fairer. You need an ID to board a plane, check into a hotel, enter most urban businesses, but not to vote?

I see that Delta Airlines has also joined the woke brigade by taking a public stand against the Georgia legislation. How will the airline respond if you refuse to show a valid identification before boarding? (After Delta finished with its woke high horse, American Airlines borrowed it to present its own little exhibition of politically correct grandstanding with respect to similar legislation in Texas.)

This is all just business as usual in what more and more seems like the twilight of the republic. The cultural critic Stephen Soukup has anatomized the phenomenon in a new book that we just published at Encounter called The Dictatorship of Woke Capital: How Political Correctness Captured Big Business.

Continue reading “”

This moron level, word salad BS is what passes for ‘higher education’ today


University researcher: ‘Intelligence is a White man’s mythology.’

A University of Cincinnati graduate assistant wrote that “intelligence is a White man’s mythology.”

“Stop calling your female colleagues ‘smart,’ or ‘clever,’ or ‘brilliant,’” wrote Mel Andrews, who studies cognition and evolution. “It’s sexist and infantilising… it shouldn’t be surprising to you in 2021 that women are capable of thought.”

 

“You’re doing the same thing when you describe your Black and Latino students as ‘very bright,’” added Andrews.

“Intelligence is a White man’s mythology. A phantasmal concept. A non-referring term. Syncategorematic,” Andrews wrote.

Indicating that the post was entirely serious, it was followed by an excerpt from a chapter Andrews wrote for a book entitled Handbook of Parenting.

Andrews cited works claiming that “more than a century of wanton reductionism and definitional vagueness in the study of intelligence and human potential has perpetuated a stratified social order and obscured the true dynamic complexity and diversity of human cognitive development.”

 

Andrews’ most recent research paper received several thousand downloads.

“I was addressing a phenomenon that I have noticed to be common in academic philosophy wherein individuals emphasize the intelligence of minority scholars and students over the quality of the work they produce,” Andrews explained to Campus Reform.

“It is the same phenomenon that occurs when a white instructor says to a Black student, in a surprised tone, ‘oh, you’re so articulate!’ It implies an expectation that Black students will be ineloquent. It was not—as is contextually obvious from what I had initially posted—a condemnation of intelligence ascriptions simpliciter.”

“The Handbook is a text written for scholars in the field of developmental psychology, it would not be used in undergraduate or even graduate coursework,” Andrews clarified.

Andrews also asked to be referred to as a “Marxist and an anarcho-syndicalist” with “they/them/theirs” pronouns, adding, “Your readers should love that.”

That which does not fit or support the narrative must be erased!


Facebook Quickly Scrubs Capitol Assailant Noah Green’s Facebook Page Praising Farrakhan As Jesus.

Facebook quickly removed self-described “follower of Farrakhan” Noah Green’s profile page shortly after media identified him Friday as the assailant who was shot dead after driving into U.S. Capitol Police officers and lunging at them with a knife.

Describing himself on the since-deleted page as a follower of the Nation of Islam, the 25-year-old Green effusively praised the radical Farrakhan and his predecessor, Elijah Muhammad, as incarnations of Jesus Christ whose teachings changed his life.

Explaining the social media’s company’s reason for the deletion, a spokesperson for Facebook told The Daily Wire: “After this horrific event, our thoughts are with the Capitol Police and their loved ones. We have designated the incident under our Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy, which means we have removed the suspect’s accounts from Facebook and Instagram, and are removing any content that praises, supports, or represents the attack or the suspect. We are in contact with law enforcement as they conduct their investigation.”

According to the policy the spokesperson cited, Facebook does not allow anyone, living or dead, to maintain a presence on the platform if they are a mass murderer or if they attempt mass murder. “We consider an attempted mass murder to be one where an individual uses a weapon or vehicle to attempt mass harm in a public space or against more than one person,” the policy says.

As The Daily Wire noted, MSNBC’s Jesse Rodriguez tweeted reporting from NBC’s Pete Williams about Green’s identity at 3:43 p.m. Journalists Ian Miles Cheong and Andy Ngo scoured Green’s Facebook page almost immediately, taking screenshots and posting them to Twitter until 4:15 p.m., by which time Cheong reported that the page was gone. “Facebook just confirmed the identity of Noah Green by yeeting his page,” Cheong wrote. “It’s gone.”

FDA approves at-home, non-presecription COVID-19 tests.

April 2 (UPI) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved two more at-home COVID-19 screening tests that can be purchased over-the-counter.

The FDA made the announcement in a release Thursday, stating the approvals were given to “get more tests for screening asymptomatic individuals on the market.”

The federal agency approved BinaxNOW COVID-19 Antigen Self Test by Abbott Laboratories, a U.S. medical device company, and QuickVue At-Home OTC COVID-19 test by Quidel Corporation, a U.S. diagnostics healthcare products manufacturer.

It also approved a third test, BD Veritor System’s Rapid Detection of SARS-CoV-2, for use in point-of-care settings.

Continue reading “”

Caddo County Homeowner Involved In Shootout With Home Invasion Suspects

LOOKEBA, Okla. –  Caddo County investigators said a homeowner opened fire on two suspects breaking into his home.

Deputies were called to a home on County Road 1140 in Lookeba on March 22 after the homeowner noticed two suspicious men circling his home.

“He called his brother-in-law which lived down the road from him and told him he might want to come down because he is fixin’ to get burglarized,” caid Caddo County Sheriff Spencer Davis.

Deputies said Tyler Cuccias, 22, and Scotty Runzel, 30, began kicking in the homeowner’s back door.

“When he (the suspects) entered the house, the homeowner fired a shot in his direction, didn’t hit anybody,” said Davis. “Then the suspect fired a shot back at the homeowner.”

The homeowner’s family member began chasing both suspects as they drove away. The suspects began firing shots through the sunroof as they did.

The suspects eventually crashed into a tree nearby and ran away on foot.

Calls were made to dispatch as citizens spotted the two suspects in a field.

Runzel gave himself up to law enforcement shortly after the crash, while Cuccias launched an hours long manhunt.

Cuccias eventually surrendered to police in a nearby field.

The sheriff hopes both suspects learned a valuable lesson.

“I would not advise breaking into anything in rural Oklahoma because they don’t mess around,” said Davis. “Somebody might end up getting hurt.”

Both suspects were found with meth on them and are already convicted felons.

Runzel and Cuccias were booked on complaints of possession of a controlled substance, first-degree burglary and shooting with intent to kill.

I’ll take ‘Answers in the Negative‘ for $500, Alex.


Is A “Ghost Gun” Ban Really Needed (Or Workable)?

Two Democratic congressmen are pushing a bill to limit so-called ghost guns. This runs along with a push to get President Joe Biden to restrict incomplete lower receivers, doing essentially the same thing administratively.

H.R. 1454, introduced by Reps. Adriano Espaillat (NY-13) and Brad Schneider (IL-10), seeks to redefine firearm kits as actual firearms. Currently, the ATF only classifies complete lower receivers as the actual firearm, which has created a cottage industry of incomplete receivers many people purchase to finish and build their own guns.

I know, because I’ve built one myself and it was a great time.

In a tweet, Espaillat said, “The Ghost Guns Are Guns Act is critical to addressing gun violence in the United States, and will undoubtedly save lives.”

Will it really?

See, we’ve seen a lot of news reports all about how the threat from so-called “ghost guns” was growing, but there tends to be a distinct lack of numbers. The few times they’re provided, they generally show that the “problem” is minuscule in relation to the broader issue of violence in our society.

Why is that? Well, I reached out to the ATF a while back to find out.

April Langwell, the chief of the Public Affairs Division of the ATF, noted that her agency was ill-equipped to provide any insight into how many such firearms were recovered. “ATF cannot provide a number of recovered crime guns that were privately made. For a number of reasons, ATF does not believe that the number of privately made firearms that has[sic] been reported to ATF would be indicative of, or representative of, the number of privately made firearms actually recovered by law enforcement.”

Langwell notes that the ATF typically provides tracing data on recovered firearms, yet many local departments may not submit information about homebuilt, and thus unserialized, firearms.

The FBI’s Uniform Crime Report lists, among other things, the number of violent crimes committed with different weapon types. While it contains numbers for handguns, rifles, and even fists, no information breakdown shows just how many of these firearms may have been ghost guns.

The FBI did not reply to requests for whether they tracked the information despite its omission from the report.

Continue reading “”