An interesting article by Marshall Lewin just out in the September issue of the NRA’s First Freedom publication (available at NRANews.com) takes a look at a study released recently by the FBI titled “Violent Encounters: A Study of Felonious Assaults on America’s Law Enforcement Officers.” The article states that in this study the FBI looked at 800 cases submitted by agencies from around the U.S. and culled them down to 40 incidents involving 50 officers and 43 offenders in which both victims and officers were interviewed in depth.

Two quotes really leaped out at me:

“Of the 33 handguns used to assault the officers who participated in the current study, 32 (97 percent) were obtained illegally.”

“None of the rifles, shotguns or handguns connected with this study were obtained from gun shows or related activities.”

Todd Smith

Hollywood has a gun problem. It can’t make up its mind whether to worship guns or wallow in ignorance about them. Because greed defines tinseltown as much as anything, perhaps it isn’t surprising that Hollywood has chosen to do both.

Movie makers treat firearms with fetishistic reverence and, in fact, seems nearly unable to create films without them. They are in love with the gore, violence and sense of menace that firearms bring to the screen. Yet the distain of this crowd towards sportsmen, shooters and the Second Amendment is hardly a secret.

Whether it is Rosie O’Donnel’s incoherent logic , the vilification of hunters (see #20) in the all-time greatest piece of animal-rights propaganda , or Jodie Foster opining that the last thing a person in a life-or-death situation should have access to is, gasp, a gun—the Hollywood bias against firearms couldn’t be more apparent.

Of course worship and ignorance go hand in hand. Hollywood’s cluelessness about firearms is not unlike that of the prehistoric shaman who is convinced that the best way to stop the ground from shaking and the lava from flowing is to toss a virgin into the volcano’s smoking maw.

The recent proposal to ban the use of lead bullets by deer and varmint hunters within the range of the endangered California condor is being hotly contested, and for good reason. (For full details CLICK HERE.)

First of all, one has to wonder just how many deer and varmints are actually harvested by hunters in condor country. Then, since most bullets pass through the animals that are shot, one has to wonder how many bullets are actually being left behind. Since hunters are packing out any deer taken (either whole or quartered) for meat processing, I can’t help but think that the actual number of bullets left behind in gut piles by deer hunters must be infinitesimally small.

Even assuming the highly unlikely scenario that every gut pile left behind contained a bullet, how many condors are actually going to feed on those gut piles? And of those feeding, how many are actually going to ingest a bullet? This, in turn, begs the question: How many bullets does a condor have to ingest before its health is negatively impacted?

As if you needed another indicator of how dominant AR-type rifles have become, Brownells, purveyors of everything that is right in the world, have announced the launch of Brownells AR-15/M16 Catalog #1, the company’s first AR-15 specific, well, catalog. You can get yours by digging around HERE, or calling 800-741-0015. Mine’s already on the way.

—John Snow

Why not, is the easy—and certainly for gun guys—adequate answer. For most of us, I suspect, the appeal is obvious. But if you need more explanation, here goes. Guns are fascinating. Guns are fun. Guns are controversial. They are frequently inserted into the skirmishes, scraps, kerfluffles and battles that define our culture wars. They are revered. They are reviled. And too often they are misunderstood. Above all, guns matter.

They are an important part of our history and an equally important part of our present. The right we have as citizens to keep and use them—set out in both state and Federal law—is sinew that provides strength and support to the body of other rights that defines us and defines our freedoms as Americans. Remove or diminish our right to firearms and you’ve created the condition that threatens our other rights as well.