My apologies. I forgot I had a post scheduled to be a reminder for me  on a bill in the Fl legislature. It was not supposed to go public but it did, so disregard

Sorry!

You might well think that the catastrophic destruction of firearms caused by shooters leaving their cleaning rods inside their guns was a rare occurrence, but you would be wrong. It happens far to often.

via .338 Lapua Magnum KABOOM – The Firearm Blog.

That hurts just looking at it.

Hat tip to Joethefatman™ via Twitter.

On the post before this one, I mentioned Armed With Ethics as the group spearheading a “new” initiative for “gun safety” and “keeping our children safe” with the submission support & approval of several South Florida members of Illegal Mayors Against Guns. (MAIG)

First thing I did was to check their website.  Not surprisingly, you can’t find much in it regarding information on who is who or much of anything else. This is the new trend among Gun Control groups: The less they put out there, the less it can be fact-checked. Even Mayors Against Illegal Guns has eliminated its list of mayors from its website and now only gives you a slow-scrolling list of cities that are “partners” with MAIG.

But you can find almost anything in the Ineternets, including the articles of incorporation for Arms With Ethics INC, a Florida Non-Profit Corporation.  In its articles they state that their mission is:

So who are the principals of this organization? Firearm experts? Former Federal Law Enforcement officers with an expertise in Gun Trafficking? Let’s see, shall we?

WOODS, CASEY 9480 BYRON AVENUE
SURFSIDE, FL 33154
Former reporter with the Miami Herald. And if I am not mistaken, she now does commercial photography and is a freelance writer.

HUGHES, LAURA 60 EAST 8TH ST #8G
NEW YORK, NY 10003
The names is also associated with a New York company specialized in “Oil and Gas Pipeline and Related Structures Construction” … Huh? And also to a South Florida Company called Eco-Pure Construction that builds homes with eco-friendly solution…whatever that means.

O’DONNELL, MAURA 5900 COLLINS AVENUE, APT 1607
MIAMI BEACH, FL 33140
Not much info on her other than the address appears to be  a very nice condo building in Miami Beach.  I’ll have to keep searching.

MURSULI, JORGE 600 NE 97TH ST
MIAMI SHORES, FL 33138
Now here is something interesting. No, not a gun expert or a LEO but a “community activist”, former president of Democracia USA and member of The National Council of La Raza. He was the Florida State Director for the People For The American Way and appears to have some sort of connection with the Tides Foundation.

But that is not all! Just this month, another Non-Profit corporation was created under the name “Arms With Ethics In Action.” (The Action word keeps appearing with anti gun groups, doesn’t it?) and besides Mursuli and Woods as principals, we have:

BARBOT, CANDACE 2526 ADAMS STREET
HOLLYWOOD, FL 33020
Former photo Journalist for the Miami Herald (That makes two former Herald employees and explains the special treatment by the newspaper) and filmmaker.

MINKIN, SAMARA 315 CENTRAL PARK WEST
NEW YORK, NY 10025
Another one involved with film and art.  Married to Trent Gegax, a former Newsweek writer who now helps run The Gramercy Fund. He was involved in helping write Al Gore’s book “The Assault on Reason.”

MINKIN, GLENDA 36 DELTA PLACE
ATLANTA, GA 30307
Her Linkedin profile has her as “Independent Fund-Raising Professional.”  She has sent monies to the campaigns of gun control politicians such as Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schummer.

So what we have is a load of people who can raise money and make cute pictures but apparently have no inkling on the issue of illegal firearms transfers, straw purchases or anything gun related. It makes you wonder that if your humble blogger managed to do a quick research on these people and find out that frankly they are not the experts to solve a problem, how come a bunch of frigging mayors were led by the nose and sat pretty while Snake Oil was being sold to the public with their blessings.

Unless the orders came from New York and they were faithfully were obeying them.

A group of Miami-Dade mayors — some of them gun owners, all taking a politically risky stance — launched an effort Tuesday to try and sidestep state firearms laws by forcing gun distributors and manufacturers to disclose training techniques and methods used to keep firearms out of the hands of indicted traffickers.

via Miami-Dade mayors to gunmakers: Disclose staff training techniques and trafficker weapon sales – Miami-Dade – MiamiHerald.com.

I am not 100% sure, but I do not know of any firearm manufacturers in South Florida. And for distributors, I want to know what is exactly what they mean by that word.  Either way, the “unregulated” firearms business has to follow this 243 page guide called Federal Firearms Regulations Reference from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms which includes  the Gun Control Act of 1968, National Firearms Act,  Arms Export Control Act, National Instant Criminal Background Check System Regulations and Rulings, Procedures, Industry Circulars and State Laws. Damn… and they keep telling us guns are less regulated than Teddy Bears.

Now, if I were a gun store owner and any of these clowns were to show up demanding to reveal my techniques, I would tell them to go pound South Beach sand.  They are politicians so they cannot be trusted to open their mouths and tell people who do not need to know, what I’d be looking for to avoid sales to Straw Buyers. Plus I am pretty sure ATF itself will tell them to f*** off and stop screwing with possible investigations.  But if they really-really need to know about retailers and Straw Purchases, they could always ask about the Don’t Lie For The Other Guy program sponsored by the BATF and the NSSF. Then again they are not really interested in that and we know it.

The group [of MAIG Mayors, how unsurprising] pledged support to a nonprofit called Arms With Ethics, which is pushing for laws in cities throughout Miami-Dade that would force gun sellers to disclose if they train their staff to out straw buyers, and admit if indicted traffickers buy their weapons.

And who the heck is Arms With Ethics?  That shall me material for another post.

SCENARIO: Your big day as a sponsored pro shooter has arrived. The truck has just dropped off your ammo shipment and your first day has you with your publicist in a photo shoot with your guns and ammo as a back drop. In the middle of the photo shoot some dangerous people attempt to take you out to get your ammo hoard.

I don’t k now you, but this is funny right there.  Basically IDPA is saying (not on purpose, of course) that every competition shooter that is not sponsored by an ammunition manufacturer is coming after your ammo!

And that is why we need High Cap mags and IDPA to get rid of the 10 round limit. 🙂

Somebody hung a turd under a lever-action rifle.  Why dear God? WHY?

Hat Tip (reluctantly) to The Firearm Blog.

The failure of the jury in the Michael Dunn case to convict Dunn of First Degree Murder or any of its lesser included offenses in the killing of Jordan Davis has led to a predictable outpouring of claims that that the case reflects societal racism, if not racism in the judicial system.  Dunn was convicted only of attempted murder and unlawfully firing a missile into an occupied vehicle — none of which relate to his killing of Davis.

As with the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the killing of Trayvon Martin, there was a rush to blame Florida’s Stand Your Ground (SYG) law.

Unfortunately, many of the people writing about SYG are doing so in apparent ignorance of what SYG is and what it is not.  By conflating “SYG” with other completely distinct self-defense legal concepts they only contribute to confusion over these self-defense law issues and complicate good faith debate of them.

via Michael Dunn Trial | Stand Your Ground | Paul Campos | Salon.

Andrew Branca does a double here: A nice fisking that also gives us a detailed and concise legal explanation on SYG and Self Defense. You may want to bookmark it for future reference.