They have tried to unseat Republican Congresspeople via ballots and bullets.

And they failed miserably.

I’ll be here all week. try the veal.

While checking an article in ThinkProgress about Brady Background Check Delayed Transactions allowed to go forward, I bumped into a name that seemed vaguely familiar: “former ATF Special Agent David Chipman, now a senior policy advisor at the advocacy group Americans for Responsible Solutions.” And I was right, I had mentioned him once before in the blog, but back then he was  Senior Vice President of ShotSpotter, the gunfire locator company and before that a senior advisor for Everytown for Gun Safety where he landed after his 20+ career with ATF.

I had not checked on ShotSpotter for a while. Last I had seen was last year and I had detected a subtle negative press about cities dumping the system because it did not return the expected results. Miami Dade PD had dumped the system back in 2013 for being inefficient (out of 1,000 detections,  only 50 were real), but it was being forcefully shoved back in but county commissioners according to an article from September 2016 in the Miami Times.

So when I googled ShotSpotter today, I get returns that amaze me: According to many press articles, it is the best thing for crime since the movie Minority Report and Eric Holder. Basically anything written about ShotSpotter in 2017 is to celebrate the system and a true crime fighter tool. They even got an official congressional attaboy from none other than Charlie Schummer and demand DOJ to pour money into it. And you are hard pressed to find any article with a negative side.  I wondered if the managed to improve their software or sound detection to get more accurate results so I searched some more and nothing. What I did find however is that ShotSpotter announced in May that they were going public and in June 7th they started trading.

I know the stock is up, but since I have no idea how the market works, I can’t tell if they have really made a profit or it is just huff and puff. But if I were somebody with a suspicious mind, I’d think the sudden onset of good press  might be somewhat remotely related to the company going public.

I would love to know who bought stock and specially who may have had a chance of own company stock prior to the company going public, past and present officer included.

Cui bono.

We are at 49 now.
H. R. 2620 covers several pro gun issues but the most important in my opinion is the elimination of the “sporting purposes” clause:

The new additions are:

This appeared in my timeline originally without the edit, just the announcement they had Blue Glocks:

For those who do not know, blue is the color given to training non-firing replicas of firearms. It is the standard across the Gun Community pretty much as when you see a white box with a red cross, you know it is a first aid kid or something to that effect.  Although the ones that are just inert replicas are totally blue, the ones that fire Simmunition rounds look exactly  like the one above.

So yes, a bunch of people jumped in and cried foul as loud as possible and with good reason, and Arnzen Arms LLC smartly recognized the screw up and fixed it, so they get kudos for that and my respect.

What drove me nuts was those commenting that the gun painted like that was not a big deal and in fact it was plumb silly that people would complain about the gun painted in blue.

People like these scare me. Not only they have not gotten the idea of Gun Safety right, but they think themselves above making mistakes. Why? Because they have the training, they are professionals in their fields, they know their shit. But we have heard that before:

The reason the Gun Culture is one of the safest to be around is because our almost fanatical respect for Gun Safety.  It is not only the adherence to the Four Rules, but the constant check and double-check and the three back ups for the double checks. It is constant vigilance because we have acknowledged that even the best and safest of us will have a day off and we know the safety instilled in our actions will lessen a screw up or even stop it.

Or you can be Chest-Thumper and end up with unscheduled extra holes in your body.

The Pin Shoot I’ve been talking about the last couple of entries is in the history books now. Great time had by all.  Only about 140 or so shooters, when in the old days it was hundreds, but after a near twenty-year layoff, the word many not have gone out soon enough. On awards night, I lost count of the prize guns somewhere around sixty or so.

Source: Massad Ayoob » Blog Archive » FINISHING UP

If you read John Ross’ book “Unintended Consequences” you will remember that one of the best chapters was the Pin Shooting. The gentleman in the pic? Rich Davis, founder of the match and founder of Second Chance body armor. Yes, that Rich Davis.

Unfortunately there is no place nearby to shoot pins in Miami Dade. hell I don’t know if there are bowling Alleys anymore.

Only Gun People.

I don’t think Brad even knows I have a blog, but I had to steal this.

Get well soon 🙂