My first one in over 20 years and I was and was not disappointed.

But first, let’s play Gun Show Bingo!

Beef Jerky? Check!
Cheap, crappy nylon holsters? Check!
Free Space
Nazi Memorabilia? Check!
Fantasy Knives’ booth with ninja stuff? Check!
BINGO!

One big difference from the shows back in South Florida was the variety of firearms, especially old classics bolt actions. Most of them were in great shape indicating lots of love and care through the years. AR 15s are the kings of modern rifles, followed by the AK variants in a distant second place. I was amazed to see one SCAR and no Styers. About equal parts of new and used handguns including one booth with several Colt 1903s and a couple of stands with a good variety of revolvers, old and new and all insanely expensive. The prices of all guns are still absurd, including SKS for $650 the cheapest!

Ammo was plentiful but other than a small reduction in 9mm, the prices are still absurd. I refused to pay almost $50 for a box of .357 Magnum and I am happy I still have some from Remington for defensive use bought long ago and plenty of components for reloading. Speaking or reloading, there was next to zero on that area. I think I saw one 8# jug of some old powder, some bullets and cases (I have more in my stash) and ZERO primers. Some used dies in uncommon calibers and one RCBS press made for all Reloading in the show.

The best of show was the people: Friendly and talkative which I enjoyed to interact with, even though I am not gregarious or enjoy crowds at all. Amazingly very little political chat was overheard, but then again, I was not looking for it.

I did try to buy a muzzleloader, but the wife vetoed the idea with fury. I really don’t know why she was so against it, but I know better than contradicting her.

Here is a pic.

DeSantis got re-elected, turned most of Florida a solid Republican red and helped deliver 29 electoral votes for Trump. And I won’t even get into the how DeSantis weathered the COVID bullshit and kept the state into becoming a shithole.

Being better than him seem to be an unforgiving sin for Trump.

But when he insults DeSantis, he also insults those of us who voted for the governor.

As of right now, my next presidential ballot will not be check-marked for Trump if he is the one selected to run for President under the Republican ticket. If he stops behaving like a disgruntled carpetbagger and apologizes, I may reconsider.

Matt is out there fighting for the safety of the people of New Jersey. You know this because Louis tells you so. But it is fun to look some of the fun things he has to say Here in New Jersey, we have the fourth-strongest gun laws in the country. We also have the third-lowest rate of firearm deaths in the country and the lowest rate of firearm ownership with just 8.9% of New Jersey households reporting to own firearms. Id.

Is he proud his state has some of the worse gun right infringements in the country. He is proud of the infringements in the concealed carry permitting. He is proud of the infringements on individuals making firearms. He is proud of the infringements on people right to purchase firearms without permission. He is proud of being a tyrant.

But he is very upset that some people aren’t taking a knee to these infringements. Unfortunately, this was almost instantly challenged by gun-rights groups who claimed the law was unconstitutional because it violated the Second Amendment. id.. Yep, you read that right, they claim it was an infringement, not that it was.

And it just gets worse for him. To add insult to injury, the Supreme Court ruled in June that the Constitution provides a right to carry a gun outside the home Id. How horrible it is that the Supreme Court reaffirmed in Bruen that Heller is still good law and that if it is an arm in common use it is covered by the Second Amendment and if it is even a little infringement it is too much.

So Louis doesn’t get to have Matt go to the courts and whine that his law should make people safer so it should pass constitutional muster.

But let’s take a look at some of Louis’s claims, that New Jersey is somehow special in the reduction of violent crimes. Of course he might be cherry picking to just crimes committed with firearms:

Every statistic tracked in violent crime in the FBI’s UCR shows that crime is decreasing. That might be meaningful.
Read More

There is a store here in Murfreesboro when I go to get my Venezuelan coffee to brew and other treats that my wife became addicted while we lived down there.  To my surprise, today I found the brand of malta (non-alcoholic malt beverage brewed from barley, hops and other things) that I loved since I was a tiny tot.

After chugging half the can of the almost frozen delight, I realized that this company had closed down during the mid Presidency of Hugo Chavez alongside many other private enterprises. Naturally my curiosity was piqued as to where the old elixir was being produced and I was a bit (a lot) surprised):

Poland? And for a Miami company? At first, I was upset, this is a brand that was not only truly a part of Venezuela but represented my home city.  Many hot tropical days through my life were chilled with a cold bottle or can of Malta Caracas and many discussions were help among friends who swore by it versus the uncouth who liked the competitor Maltin Polar. And it was indeed a sad day when I found out that the company had shut down, unable to deal with the communist idiocies of Asshole Hugo and his band of thieving Communists.

And then, the idea that the former communist country who gave the USSR so much agita is producing my beverage of love for a company in Miami, struck me as a beautiful irony and had to chuckle.

Sometime life balances itself.

When looking at Boland v. Bonta, the “Unsafe Handgun Act” out of California, it was nice that the judge “got it right”.

Unfortunately the reasoning that he had in his opinion niggled at me. There was something wrong. It should have been this hard.

Then Mark Smith applied the clue-by-four and it made things obvious.

The UHA is a gun ban. Full Stop.

Consider a law that said “A firearm with a barleycorn front sight is banned” We would instantly recognize that as a gun ban. If it is a gun ban then the plain text of the Second Amendment is touched on and it then the state must prove that there is a history and tradition of regulating classes of guns with particular features.

When the feature was “pistol” then Heller found that a ban was Unconstitutional. The holdings of the Supreme Court have shown that it doesn’t have to be a complete ban, it only has to touch the plain text of the second amendment in order for regulation to be presumptively unconstitutional. It is up to the state to prove history and tradition.

But what if we turned the statement around? What if we said “Any firearm without a barleycorn front sight is banned”. This is still a ban, the state has just inverted the logic from “can’t have” to “must have”. It is a ban. Treat it like a ban in court.

Now if the state chooses to hide that ban inside a bunch of other regulations, it might be harder to see.

For example what if the law said “you can only buy firearms on this list” and “We are only going to put firearms with barleycorn front sights on the list”. It is still a ban, it is just a two step process.

Think of it the same way we think of machine guns. According to the law, machine guns are not banned. You are free to buy them if you can find somebody willing to sell them to you. All you need is to jump through NFA hoops.

But because of the Hughes amendment no NEW machine guns have been added to the transferable NFA list. This has caused the cost/value of machine guns to sky rocket.

I don’t think any gun infringer really wants to be told that the difference between an AR-15 and a M-16 is $75 in parts and an extra hole. Which means that the cost of a machine gun should be about the same as its semi-auto version.

The closing of the NFA registry for machine guns is a ban on machine guns.

The UHA is also a ban. No matter how much lipstick is slapped on that pig, it is still and always will be a gun ban.

Two tweets:

I have one of these one my keychain that a friend made me. It has a solid steel ball at the end. If he and I got into a fight he’d be knocked out in 1 second. I’ll tell you that much. pic.twitter.com/OckQzPZhSl

— Nox ??? (@noxthesplicer) March 24, 2023

And

Someone replied to me saying "women will do anything but buy a gun" to a self defense post I made. Like Yeah. You know how many women have gotten murder charges for killing their abuser. Work smarter not harder.

— Nox ??? (@noxthesplicer) March 25, 2023

I don’t think she realizes that in most states, a sap, cosh, or blackjack is illegal to carry.

I disagree with the law but it’s still the law.

This woman is so concerned with being convinced for defending herself from abuse that she chooses to carry a felony keychain.

Not just that, but her felony keychain is almost guaranteed to be ineffective.

I honestly don’t see a woman beating a man down with a weighted keychain.  That seems highly improbable.

These people are filled with such bad information and advice it’s mind numbing.

This is a follow up post to a previous post: Why I support shooting unarmed attackers.

A judge reduced the bond of the purse snatcher who paralyzed a woman in an attack.

Houston teen accused of paralyzing woman in ‘jugging’ robbery has bond cut in half

A Houston teen has been accused of slamming a mother of three into the ground during a “jugging” robbery that left the victim paralyzed — and he appeared this week in court, where he had his bond slashed in half to $100,000.

Joseph Harrell, 17, was ordered held last week on $200,000 bond following the harrowing, caught-on-camera Feb. 13 attack that left Nhung Truong unable to walk, Fox News reported.

Prosecutors had asked for the $200,000 bond because he had just been released on a $100 bond on Jan. 26 on an unlawful carrying of a weapon charge.

But his court-appointed attorney argued Wednesday to have his bond reduced to $100,000, saying his family could not afford to spring him.

In addition to the counts for aggravated robbery and unlawful carrying of a weapon, Harrell is facing a charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon stemming from another incident on Feb. 25.

During that incident, Harrell and at least one other suspect allegedly stole a woman’s purse as she was leaving a business in southeast Houston. 

This piece of shit targets women, especially Asian women, to rob beat them up and rob them.

He was arrested on an illegal possession of a gun charge and was let out and now they cut his bond in half.

In recorded jail calls, he clearly has no remorse.

https://twitter.com/Tr00peRR/status/1639282134710906883?s=19

The law will not protect women in Houston.  He will not stop until a victim stops him.

The lesson is to take your self defense seriously.

Nobody is coming, prepare to defend yourself.