Starting today in Venezuela, you are presumed to be an organ donor according to a new law. (link to the news item in Spanish.)

According to the Law for Organ Donation, Human Transplants, Tissues and Cells, if you have not made clear to the authorities via a notarized document or registration in a .Gov website your desire not to be an organ donor, it shall be assumed that your body can be harvested for organs without having to ask the family for permission.

All your organs belong to us!

It is Brave New World.

Back in 2007 IRRC, OSHA attempted to bring under its jurisdiction the storage & distribution of commercial small arms ammunition. The regulations that wanted to impose treated your regular ammo as if it was explosives used in demolitions and it would have pretty much killed ammunition sales as we know them. One can imagine that regulations such as storage magazines built to OSHA specs, special electrical wiring that would guarantee zero sparks, 50 foot prohibition of matches, lighters and any other device that would create a flame including firearms would put a kibosh on ammo retailing. The regulations on transportation alone are so onerous that you could pretty much kiss goodbye your UPS delivery of ammunition & reloading components. For a “summary” of the OSHA regulations, click here for the 69 page OSHA document.

SAAMI (Small Arms & Ammunition Manufacturers Institute) stepped in and demonstrated that the perceived dangers were more Hollywood lore than actual risk.  They produced this 25 minute video that I saw last nite for the first time and it is now in my favorites’ list to be used in future discussions if needed.

Warning: you will probably cringe at the amount of ammunition destroyed (400,000 rounds) in the making of the video, but it was for a good cause.

Back to my personal peeves about Mom & Pop Gun Stores.

Some stores looks like the reenactment of a Turkish Military bazaar. I have been to places that are so cluttered with aging stuff, I was expecting to see a coolie smoking opium hidden behind a stack of empty mortar crates. Although I am one of those weirdos that enjoy rummaging stacks of retired military paraphernalia searching for things that “I cannot absolutely live without” like an authentic G.I. stapler remover (the forefather of the Tactical 5.11 staple remover,) most people are not into shopping in the set of Hoarders. The new Gun Generation is used to have a clear view and not feel like they are in a maze extracted from a horror movie; so having a well designed and well-lit store is a good idea. If your shoppers can easily identify where the holsters-cleaning kits-range bags-etc are, the less questions & distraction you’ll get and more money gets into your pocket. Sometimes people simply do not have the time to subject a gun shop owner or employee to a game of 20 questions for the location of a bottle of Hoppe’s 9.

Another thing: please look professional. Those ripstop BDUs that you have been wearing since the Clinton administration? Toss them. The “Kill ’em all let God sort them out” T-Shirt? funeral pyre time. I kid you not, I went to a gun store where the top honcho was wearing a wife-beater and flexing muscles after every sentence. I am not demanding ties, shirts & suits but a business casual, polo shirts or even T-shirts with the company logo project an aura of professionalism that injects confidence in the new buyer or even a seasoned one. Stop looking like Hollywood’s version of a gun shop.

Cut the bullshit. Nothing makes me leave a store faster than hearing a sales person say “Well this gun here is what the Blue Ninjas in the Spec Ops community use and you should buy it too.” Welcome to the era of the Internet: the information is out there and people will find it the truth and some will even go prepared even if they never bought a weapon before. Your aim is repeat business not an expensive sell for that month’s commission. Make recommendations based on what the buyer needs and can afford and you will get him/her back and very possibly send business your way. Oh, and do not try to sell a pink .38 Special to a woman just because it is a woman and you think they are too dumb/weak to operate something heavier & bigger.  I have seen way too many ladies handing their better-halves’ asses over with a full size 1911 to take them for granted.

And to close this rant, WHAT THE (BLEEP) IS A “NO LOADED GUNS ALLOWED INSIDE” DOING IN YOUR DOOR? Seriously, a gun free zone in a gun store? Should I even go into how big a fail we are talking about?

OK. I am done.

One of the eternal conversations among shooters is the one in support of the Mom & Pop gun shops and how they deserve our support. While in general principle I agree, I also have to point out some things that they do that more than once made me go online instead of doing business with them. I had several less-than-stellar interactions with different places and I will like to address them here.

First one is communication. Is there a reason why gun shops (and even some big gun companies) suck so bad at communicating? If you have a store phone number, you will be getting calls from people that know what they want and those who are new to the gun culture but amazingly just the fact that anybody would answer a phone appears to be a minor miracle and when it happens is some gruff-sounding voice that acts like you just drag him out of bed where he was enjoying himself to the favors of two sexually depraved super models and you are interrupting his bliss. The person calling might be ready to drop some cash into your till and having his/her call answered by a growling idiot is a good way to make sure that money is going somewhere else. Answer the phone promptly (within 3 rings) and have a smile in your voice. After that the rest sells itself.

I recently was looking for an FFL near my house to have a gun transferred from another state. I used Gunbroker.com’s FFL finder and the first number never bothered to answer even though I was calling 2 hours after posted opening, the second sent me to a computer who announced that all associates were busy at this time, to please hold and 20 seconds later the computerized voice came back to tell me once again that nobody was available, said good-bye and hang up on me. On the third one, I actually got a human who treated me like I was an ATF agent announcing I was on my way to check his bound books. It was the fourth one that sold me as a young man answered in a polite manner, gave me the price and instructions to follow for a smooth transaction. That store got my business.

And after paying some pimple faced nephew to build you a web presence, How come it is almost impossible from some gun shops to answer an inquiry that came via email? No one is stupid enough to deny that the Internet is fueling sales across the board so why would any business ignore email info requests is beyond my understanding. If you do not have a dedicated person to answer email or are swamped in business, set up an auto responder saying that you will get back to the person within an acceptable time frame (no more than 24 hours and hourly if you are smart) so you do not lose that piece of cash. I had people email me back three months after the fact which it is rather insulting. The internet is all about speed and emails cannot be treated as if delivered by the Pony Express.

More to come……

The winner of the Tam Cause Raffle is: CJarvis!

He’s got a package coming as soon I get a snail mail address. Thanks to all that participated. The winners of the online discount card will be contacted via email.

Thanks to Cathy DeSorcy from SuperBrush for the raffle prize.

Again, thanks to all who contributed with the Tam Cause. We may disagree on many a thing, but we are strong because we believe in ourselves and our culture.

Lourdes Guzman-DeJesus was on a private school bus heading to her charter school in the Homestead area when another passenger, 15-year-old Jordyn Alexander Howe, pulled out a loaded gun to show it off. And sure enough, the gun went off, accidentally striking Lourdes in the neck and killing “a beautiful angel,” as her grieving mother calls the honor-roll student.

………

We can look for scapegoats, sure, but the truth is everyone should claim responsibility, starting in the home all the way up to the governor’s office.

Yes, Gov. Rick Scott. Why?

Because his administration continues to defend the Republican-led Legislature’s new law that would ban pediatricians and other doctors from even asking their patients the simple safety question: Do you own a gun and do you keep it locked away from your kids?

via Guns and children – Editorials – MiamiHerald.com.

Having to write the editorial of a news paper used to be a very important task heavily laden with responsibility. It was publishing an opinion based on facts and careful thought with the intention to illustrate and guide the readership on a particular subject of interest to all.

But those days are long gone.as it shows above. According to the Miami Herald, the shooting of Lourdes Guzman-DeJesus had nothing to do with an irresponsible teenager knowingly bringing a gun to school in violation of the law and school regulations,  playing with it as if a toy; no, the only reason that Lourdes Guzman-DeJesus is because the “eeevil” NRA passed legislation forbidding medical personnel from asking about guns in the Howe household.

Now, if the Miami Herald is to be believed, prior to the passage of Florida Statute 790.338, not one single incident of kids bringing guns to school ever happened in the State of Florida or anywhere else in the country. Before such “eeeevil” law was passed, thousands of doctors, totally unprepared and untrained on firearms kept our school grounds and school buses 100% gun free. Yeah, right!

Some researchers blame the tryptophan (a protein found in turkey) for making people relaxed & sleepy after a good Thanksgiving meal. I will also add to its properties that in conjunction with having to prepare an editorial, it makes you write stupidities by the bushel.