Gun Free Zone

Weapons seizure uncovered Holyoke family’s love affair with illegally obtained firearms —Stephanie Barry | sbarry@repub.com, Weapons seizure uncovered Holyoke family’s love affair with illegally obtained firearms, masslive, (last visited Aug. 6, 2023)

It is a shitty picture of some lovely old weapons. I haven’t even attempted to identify any of them.

The box of stripper clips in the foreground is nice, the pile of magazines in the sink is interesting. I would be happy to take all of those off his hands.

I’ll spare you the search, the Uzi they are referring to is a semi-auto version. There are no NFA items in the collection.

As always, the reporter is trying to induce a panic. Was this a large collection? Yes. If this was in a free state, the actual collection would not have been an issue. In MA, it is unlikely that they had registered all those firearms. Much less the magazines and ammo.

English is tricky. Were there hundreds of firearms? Were there hundreds of magazines? Were there hundreds of rounds of ammunition? Or did they just lump them all together to get scary numbers? The statement made in the court filing was that there were more than a dozen semi-automatic rifles … in one of the bathrooms …—Sentencing Memorandum – #16 in United States v. Augusto (D. Mass., 3:22-cr-30048), No. 3:22-cr-30048

The state is attempting to make it sound horrible, they are attacking this man for not having all of his guns in safes.

… obsessively collected firearms to the point that they could not store them safely.—id.

I didn’t know there was a “not for money” clause in the don’t buy guns for others.

This man is going to lose his Second Amendment protected rights because the government is infringing on his father’s Second Amendment protected rights.

I didn’t find what the father was convicted of doing that made him a prohibited person. It is pretty obvious that he has not been doing evil in a long time.

I’m watching the §922(g) cases wind their way to the Supreme Court. I believe that the court is going to spank the government hard. In Heller, in the dicta, they indicated that §922(g) was presumed to be constitutional. They didn’t clarify that “presumed” means, “We didn’t look at it. That is a question for another day.”

There is no historical regulation nor tradition of stripping The People of their right to keep and bear arms because they are not virtuous people. That is what §922(g) does.

This is just an example of how there are intended consequences.

Of note, I’ve not seen a single story come across my feeds of a person being convicted of straw purchases that was a bad person.

Maybe that’s because they are either getting a sweetheart deal OR they are getting so stitched up that they didn’t stack the federal gun crime on top.

Message from Con Security (Lawdog): Please stay off the mezzanine for a bit. The alpacas and the sheep raided the armory of the 501st, and are currently reenacting ‘Romeo and Juliet’ up there.

Jonna Hayden and Rita Smith, please stop providing ‘Period Correct’ costumes — it’s not helping.

Jim Aepilot, please drop by Con Security regarding someone switching out the 501st replica blasters for the real thing.

Thank you.

A Message from ConSec | The LawDog Files

It goes downhill from there. Go read the whole thing and consider this a beverage warning.

I caught this post on X (formerly Twitter).

?Our brand new article on concealed carry and homicide is out today in the Journal of Urban Health. The big finding? More concealed carry permits = more gun homicides. We find no evidence that CC permits stop gun deaths. More?(1/)https://t.co/UCjmPZg2LH

— Dan Semenza (@dsemenzcrim) August 1, 2023

Dr. Daniel Semenza, according to his website:

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Criminal Justice at Rutgers University – Camden as well as the Director of Interpersonal Violence Research with the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center. I have a secondary appointment as Assistant Professor in the Department of Urban-Global Health in the School of Public Health at Rutgers University. Finally, I am a faculty researcher with the Regional Gun Violence Research Consortium at the Rockefeller Institute of Government at SUNY.

I earned my PhD in the Department of Sociology at Emory University in 2018, specializing in criminology and the sociology of health and illness under the direction of Dr. Robert Agnew. I aim to adopt a multidisciplinary approach to my research and teaching whenever possible across criminology, sociology, public health, and public policy.

Broadly speaking, my research examines (1) the causes and consequences of community gun violence and (2) the connections between health, criminal justice exposure, and violent victimization. The study of health disparities is a central focus across both areas of research. I have published my work in a range of outlets including Social Science & Medicine, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Justice Quarterly, Journal of Criminal Justice, Preventive Medicine, Homicide Studies, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, and Health & Place. I am currently an editorial board member for Journal of Criminal Justice, Homicide Studies, and Journal of Marriage & Family,.

My hackles suggest that he is not an impartial academic, but an anti-gun activist with an agenda, and that his research will be shoddy and biased.

I was not disappointed.

His article is available on Research Gate.

The Relationship between Concealed Carry Licenses and Firearm Homicide in the US: A Reciprocal County‑Level Analysis

Abstract This study investigates the reciprocal county-level relationship between the number of concealed carry weapon (CCW) licenses issued and homicides between 2010 and 2019 in a sample of eleven states. We utilize a random intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) approach accounting for reciprocal effects over time between homicide and concealed carry licenses, providing a robust methodological approach to the study of concealed carry and homicide. The results of the RI-CLPM found that increases in the number of CCWs in 2010–2017 were statistically associated with increases in total gun homicide in 2011–2018. Reciprocally, we found some limited evidence that increases in gun homicide were associated with changes in the number of CCWs issued in subsequent years during the early part of our study period. Far from concealed carry making people safer, our model finds acute safety risks associated with expansion of legal firearm carrying. As the right to carry firearms expands in many states, we emphasize the importance of responsible gun ownership practices, and draw attention to the need to implement preventive laws that keep guns out of the hands of people with prior violent histories and from places where violence risk is amplified.

Note two things in this excerpt: The results of the RI-CLPM found that increases in the number of CCWs in 2010–2017 were statistically associated with increases in total gun homicide in 2011–2018. Reciprocally, we found some limited evidence that increases in gun homicide were associated with changes in the number of CCWs issued in subsequent years during the early part of our study period.

First, the choice of the phrase total gun homicide.  Homicide is the killing of one person by another.  It can be legal or illegal, however, the implication is that homicide is a criminal act.  Total gun homicides could, and probably do, include legal defensive shoots.  When a criminal is killed by a CCW, that is a gun homicide.  It’s a legal gun homicide, but it will count toward the total.

This is a form of academic dishonesty.  Of course, an increase in legal concealed carry will increase the number of criminals who are killed.  The question is, does the increase in legal concealed carry increase the number of criminal homicides? To conflate good shootings and murders for the purpose of making concealed carry look like a danger is mendacious and dishonest.

Second, the very order of that statement seems like it puts the cart before the horse, i.e., increasing concealed carry increases the number of homicides (implied criminal homicides), but the number of homicides only marginally increases the number of concealed carriers.

What we’ve seen is that concealed carry goes up as violent crime rates go up, as people react to rising crime by wanting to be able to defend themselves.

Let’s look at the text of the article, itself:

Many researchers argue laws that enable more people to carry guns in public will increase shootings [1–4] and crimes committed with a firearm [5, 6]. In opposition, others claim concealed carry laws enable citizens to defend themselves or other citizens against potential attacks [7–9]. Despite substantial scholarly attention to the issue of how concealed carry influences firearm violence, there are several limitations to past research. First, most studies that examine how concealed carry impacts rates of firearm violence rely on measurements that codify the presence of particular state policies related to concealed carry [2–6] or self-report surveys of carrying behaviors [10]. Although these studies are informative, there is a need for research that leverages objective data about both concealed carrying behaviors (e.g., permit applications, licenses issued) and firearm violence (e.g., standardized homicide data). For example, different state provisions in their permitting policy may alter the specific number of licenses issued, such that no two shall-issue states, or may-issue states, may be alike [5]. Second, few studies have incorporated longitudinal data to analyze the reciprocal relationship between concealed carry and rates of firearm violence. Firearm violence may influence the number of concealed carry licenses if people are concerned about high crime rates and want to protect themselves.  We leverage a series of longitudinal, reciprocal models to assess the association between concealed carry permitting and total firearm homicide rates.

Note the bolded text.  This is undoubtedly true.  When the news is full of stories about violence and murder, people want to be able to carry concealed.

The next question is, does this increase in a statistically significant way, the overall number of homicides?

In essence, are concealed carriers contributing to the homicide rate?  Keep this thought in mind.

This Study

The review of the literature described above reveals ample theoretical and empirical reason to expect that recent expansions in right-to-carry laws may have profound implications for public safety. We seek to assess the impact of change in the number of licenses issued (as a different proxy for expanded public fire-arm carrying [9]) on firearm homicide, while simultaneously accounting for potential reciprocity between homicide and local firearm carrying. Additionally, we control for other potential indicators of gun availability, including the number of gun stores in local areas and the percentage of suicides commited with a firearm, in addition to commonly used macro-level correlates of homicide [19, 20]. Most of the research described herein focused on state-level laws related to conceal carry rather than the actual number of licenses issued at the local level. This involves using a treatment variable, where a 0 indicates times and places where concealed carrying is prohibited (or a may-issue law is in place) and a 1 is used for the times and places where a shall-issue law goes into effect [3, 5, 7]. A limited number of studies have alternatively assessed the impact of concealed carry permitting on crime using a measure of the number of licenses issued. Using a county-level analysis for four states, namely Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Texas, Phillips and colleagues found no relationship between lagged licensing rates and crime rates [21]. In another study of Florida counties, Carter and Binder examined the association between firearm violence and concealed gun applications and permits [22]. In their diagnostic testing, they found that concealed carry applications in the previous year had no effect on armed violent crime. Notably, however, these studies are limited in time frame and geographic coverage. We utilize a unique longitudinal dataset with annual counts of the licenses issued for each county in a sample of eleven states. The issue of reciprocal relationships was one of the major methodological problems highlighted by the National Research Council in its review of studies examining the effects of gun laws and firearm availability on firearm violence [23]. The potential for changes in violent crime to be reciprocally related to the passing of shall-issue laws and license applications has been discussed in many of the studies mentioned above [24]. Scholars have suggested that protective gun ownership and carrying may be driven by a fear of crime in a person’s community [22]. Recent Pew Research data suggest that protection tops the reasons for people owning a gun in the US, where over two-thirds cite protection as the primary reason [25]. Failure to account for reciprocal causation could result in inconsistent and biased estimates of firearm licensing or legislation on crime [23, 26]. While some studies have attempted to address these concerns in studies of licensing and violent crime [27, 28], they have largely documented effects from a policy change in a single state or over short periods of time, whereas many other state or local factors may explain crime changes in states with a concealed carry law change. We hope to overcome some methodological concerns of prior studies on this topic by using a cross-lagged panel modeling approach that accounts for the reciprocal effects over time between firearm homicide and the number of concealed carry licenses issued over a 10-year time period. We specifically test the following two hypotheses:

H1. Increased change in the number of concealed carry licenses issued will be associated with increased changes in firearm homicide.H2. Increased change in the number of firearm homicides will be associated with increases in the number of concealed carry licenses issued.

If I understand the bolded text correctly, they didn’t look at the effect of concealed carry on crime in a local way, but in a global way across eleven states.  Ergo, if crime increased in one locale, people may have gone out and gotten permits in other locales.  This I don’t disagree with.  If you see stories of crime in the big city, but you live in the suburbs or in the country, you might get a permit for those few times that you have to travel into the city.  However, the idea that people in the suburbs or country getting concealed carry permits drives up gun violence in the city is ludicrous.

Data and Methods

Data for our dependent variable, the count of firearm homicides per county year, come from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Multiple Cause of Death data. These county-level mortality data are based on death certificates for US residents and provided to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). We defined gun homicide using ICD-10 codes X93 (assault by handgun discharge), X94 (assault by rifle, shotgun, and larger firearm discharge), and X95 (assault by other and unspecified firearm dis-charges). All deaths caused by a homicide with a fire-arm were counted per the county year of the victim’s place of death. These data were advantageous given that the NCHS combines detailed information from death certificate data with information from autopsy reports and police records, providing a more complete picture of the incident, including distinguishing between firearm and non-firearm homicides. These data are also advantageous because they are more complete and more accurate than other official data sources, such as the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) or NIBRS, concerns about which have been extensively documented [29]. The current study only utilizes data from the eleven states for which the numbers of concealed carry licenses issued were also available for all counties during the time period of our study, 2010–2019 (Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Utah). States including Iowa, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Utah have since passed laws allowing residents to carry concealed weapons without a permit, although these laws were not in effect during the time period of this study. As such, changes in licensing between 2010 and 2019 should reflect changes in the ability of people to publicly carry in these states. Kansas did allow permitless carry beginning in 2015. Observations for Kansas counties after 2015 were excluded as a result. These eleven states combine for 832 counties available for analysis. Table 1 reveals that the average number of firearm homicides per county in our sample ranged from 2.27 per year in 2010 to 3.53 in 2019. Homicide is a rare outcome to study at the county level per year, especially for smaller, more rural counties. In part, this is why many prior studies of firearm availability and homicide either conduct research at the state level or pool county homicides over several years. We discuss this further in the analytical strategy, below.

Note the bold.  This goes to what I said earlier about counting both good defensive shoots and murders as homicides.

Results

Figure 1 illustrates the RI-CLPM examining the reciprocal effects of firearm homicide on the number of CCWs issued with limited control variables. The estimates presented in Fig. 1 represent the unstandardized regression coefficients (single-headed arrows) and the unstandardized residual covariances (double-headed arrows). Focusing on the between-construct regression coefficients, increases in the number of CCWs issued in 2010–2015 and 2017 were statistically associated with increases in firearm homicide in 2011–2016 and 2018, respectively. Specifically, a one thousand license increase in the number of CCWs issued was associated with between a .266 and a 1.898 increase in total firearm homicide. Alternatively, increases in firearm homicide in 2010 and 2018 were associated with increases in the number of CCWs issued in 2011 and 2019, but increases in firearm homicide in 2012, 2015, 2016, and 2017 were associated with decreases in the number of CCWs issued in 2013, 2016, 2017, and 2018. Figure  2 provides the RI-CLPM examining the reciprocal effects of total gun homicide on the number of CCWs issued with all of the control variables. The results of the second RI-CLPM support the find-ings of the first RI-CLPM. In particular, increases in the number of CCWs in 2010–2017 were statistically associated with increases in firearm homicide in 2011–2018. The estimates suggest that a one thousand license increase in the number of CCWs issued was associated with between a .385 and 2.128 increase in total firearm homicide. Regarding the reciprocal pathway, it appeared that increases in firearm homicide in 2010, 2011, and 2013 were associated with increases in the number of CCWs issued in 2011, 2012, and 2014. Taken together, the models suggest that the number of CCWs issued the previous year was associated with increases in total firearm homicide the subsequent year. On the other hand, firearm homicide the previous year had limited little impact on the number of CCWs the subsequent year.

Here is where this falls apart.  I absolutely believe they conflated correlation with causality.  As crime rates increase, people got permits.  Year over year as crime went up, people got permits.  Crime continued to go up, people got more permits.    There is no evidence that the people who obtained the permits were the ones who went out and committed that many homicides to drive up the numbers the following year.

Now we get political.

Discussion

With nuanced evidence of an association between CCW licenses and homicide, it is imperative that discourse on the topic of gun violence avoids simplified notions such as “good guy with a gun” or “bad guy with a gun.” Such depictions obscure the everyday interactions and disputes between ordinary people that can boil over into violence and the lethal potential of access to a firearm in such a context. Instead of considering good guys and bad guys with guns, it is far more productive to focus on a broader harm reduction framework that does not rely on an oppositional “us versus them” framework. More guns in public can create significant harm in everyday interactions, whether through accidental shootings, road rage incidents, or domestic incidents between people that are estranged. And a move towards shall-issue and permitless carry policies may increase the likelihood of prohibited buyers and persons with prior violent history obtaining guns [35]. The adoption of shall-issue laws is particularly risky for future violence when states allowed people with prior misdemeanor violent convictions to obtain a CCW [5]. These findings together speak to the instrumentality effect of fire-arms, with mounting evidence that increases in guns contribute to fatalities that would otherwise have been non-fatal assaults [16]. Therefore, the first major policy implication is to ensure guns do not end up in the wrong hands. In response to the Bruen decision, some States including New Jersey submitted legislation to strengthen background checks and ensuring permits could only be obtained after extensive review and gun safety training. This is not a policy to limit the right to gun ownership, but part of a broad standard that gun owners and non-owners alike support [36]. Data suggest that an increasing majority of gun owners and people identifying as either Democrat or Republican support universal background checks, stronger regulations of gun dealers, and requiring tests of safe handling practices prior to carrying a concealed weapon [36]. This public sentiment is echoed in recent iterations of the National Survey of Gun Policy [37], revealing high support among gun owners for conceal carry applicants to demonstrate competence in safe and lawful gun use. While public support exists, however, ordinary citizens may need to be more activated to discuss these policies with their elected representatives.

They present no evidence of what is in the bold.  They present no evidence that it is the people with carry permits driving the increase in homicide.  They simply note that there is an increase in homicide and an increase in issued permits, but nothing to show that the increase in permits caused the increase in homicide.  Everything in bold is speculation and anti-gun talking points.

In addition to strengthening standards at the point of purchase and demonstrating responsible gun ownership, concealed carry also needs some guard rails control-ling the carrying of handguns in public places, such as schools, alcohol serving outlets, sports arenas, and other highly populated public spaces. The National Survey on Gun Policy in 2019 and 2021 also revealed broad declining support for expanding the locations for civilian gun carrying [37]. Yet recent reports have detailed upticks in the number of guns carried into airports in the US [38]. And several recent studies reveal double digit increases in homicide as a result of weakening carry laws and expanding carrying in public [1, 3–5], including a 29% increase in firearm workplace homicides [4]. Thus, restricting customer and employee firearm access in the workplace and allowing private business and public buildings to enforce these restrictions may help to reduce lethal escalation. Colleges and universities have had some success in prohibiting legal gun owners from carrying weapons on to campus. But policies allowing gun carrying on campus have increased the risk of assault, self-harm, and lethality [39].

Finally, we are mindful of the generalizability of our findings. Concealed carry licenses are not required in permitless carry states, making it more difficult to ascertain numbers of people carrying firearms in public in those states. But by using data on licenses prior to the rapid expansion in permitless carry policies, we highlight the need for research to consider the role that increased numbers of guns in public can play in creating additional harm. It is clear that study of the dynamics between legal firearm availability, right to carry legislation, and the extent of gun violence is far from over. Instead, researchers moving forward must consider how increases in carrying of firearms can impact certain types of gun violence, for certain groups, and in certain contexts. These inquiries will likely lead to more consistent conclusions around the harm generated by increases in firearms in public.

This is activism, not academia.

Again, the most salient aspect of this study is the total lack of evidence that it is concealed carriers who are causing the increase in homicide.

In many states, the large urban cities have turned to shit due to a number of progressive soft-on-crime policies.

Violence has been increasing in nearly every major metropolitan area since the Ferguson riots in 2014, then again after the George Floyd riots in 2020.

Consequently, more and more people have gotten concealed carry permits as they have watched large civil disruptions, murder, and crime happen with inadequate police response.

This study implies that it is concealed carry that is driving the homicide increase, not other factors, and concealed carry increases is a response to that.  This study uses vague anti-gun talking points about concealed carriers shooting people over road rage incidents but cites no examples of it, let alone enough to make a statistically significant impact.

This study is an academically dishonest attempt to use data to push an anti-gun agenda.  It’s the sort of farce that could only come out of Leftist academia.

A buddy seny this to me.  It’s a post from the Nextdoor App in a neighborhood down the street from where I used to live.

I’m suspicious that this guy was looking to steal things.

I believe he was checking to see if anyone was home and possibly break in.

The son did the thing we warn you not to do and break your perimeter, but at the sane time, these people left their perimeter wide open with the garage door open.

Once someone enters your garage, they are in your house.  They have access to all the stuff you store in there.

I don’t think it would have been legal to yeet that guy, but I definitely would have had the cops arrest him for trespassing.

What would you have done?

AWA reminded me that a couple of months ago on a Friday Feedback, reader It’s Just Boris asked this question:

Hm. How about an article looking at 5.7×28 out of handguns as a self defense round? Seems to be a blooming (mushrooming?) caliber these days.

I finally got around to answering it.

The short answer is that the 5.7 in its commercially available form is a novelty round that fails to adequately answer the question asked of it.  I say that as someone who has owned an FN Five-Seven for over a decade.

A brief history of the 5.7×28 is where we should start.

The 5.7×28 was developed in the early 90’s at the request of the miliary for a PDW.  A PDW or Personal Defense Weapon is a small arm that has power between a pistol and a rifle, for soldiers who don’t primarily use rifles but may need to in an emergency.  Perfect examples are artillery crews, tank crews, communications specialists, etc.

Traditionally, these soldiers were equipped with pistols.  At times, specialty pistols like the Artillery Luger and C96 Mauser that could be fitted with buttstocks (and sometimes in a full auto configuration) were issued to extend the range of these guns to provide more than short-range pistol defense.

After the development of the submachinegun, that weapon filled that role.  The M3 Grease Gun was issued to tank crews until the 1980s.

With the advent of body armor, the submachinegun became somewhat obsolete.  The idea of the PDW was a weapon that was the size and weight of a submachinegun but had the body armor penetrating capabilities of a rifle and a slightly extended range.

That required a new cartridge to be developed.  FN created the 5.7×28 and H&K created the 4.6×30.  Both took advantage of the weakness of soft armor and steel plates, that a high velocity, small diameter bullet would penetrate where a large diameter, slow bullet with more energy would not.

Both cartridges pushed very light, small-diameter bullets at velocities above 2,000 fps, which would defeat 90’s era military body armor.

The irony is that the PDW eventually became useless.  All the global powers that issue body armor, issue armor that can defeat the 5.7×28 with ceramic plates.  The military hates issuing multiple types of rounds (the Army hated supplying 30-06, 30 Carbine, and 45 ACP in WWII, and one reason to go to the 5.56 was a common platform of long gun simplified ammo logistics).  Weapon technology improved so that guns in rifle cartridges like the 5.56 could be shrunk down in size enough to make them effective as PDWs.  Why issue the M4 and P90 with different rounds and different magazines when you can issue a SIG Rattler that is the same size, and even out of a 5.5-inch barrel, the 5.56 has better performance than the 5.7×28?  The last holdout was the US Secret Service, who wanted a gun the size of the USI they used to issue, but could defeat body armor.  They ultimately came to the same decision as the military and switched to very short barrel AR pattern guns in 300 BLK, which has better knockdown and armor-defeating capabilities than the 5.7×28 (a 110 gr bullet 300 BLK from a 5.5 inch barrel is running 1700 fps, which is 700 ft-lbs of energy).

Back to the 5.7×28 and the two FN guns designed to shoot it, that would hit the commercial market.

The problem is that in the US it is illegal to sell armor-piercing handgun ammo.

So, to make the round commercially viable, FN partnered with Fiocchi to download the 5.7×28 to a lower velocity and use a heavier, polymer tip (Hornady V-max) bullet that made the round non-armor piercing.  It was neutered to make it legal.

There was, briefly, an American company that loaded several variants of the 5.7×28 to its original glory, and he got shut down by the ATF.

There are a few commercially available rounds.  A 40-grain FMJ at 1650 fps and 240 ft-lbs, a 40-grain polymer tip at 1750 fps and 270 ft-lbs, and a 40-grain Speer Gold Dot at 1800 fps and 290 ft-lbs.

Notice how all of them have less energy than a standard pressure 9×19 mm which is 115 grains at 1150 fps and 340 ft-lbs.

At low velocity, 224 caliber FMJ are not known to yaw, which is one major complaint about the 5.56 at extended distances.  The polymer tip bullets also, were designed to expand at much higher rifle velocities.  Their performance is reduced from pistol velocities.

The Gold Dot seems to be the best performer, with a bullet actually designed to perform out of a pistol-length barrel.  Vista product literature shows expansion in the approximately 0.35 inch range.  Which is the diameter of an un-expanded 9mm.

There are some YouTube videos that show the Gold Dot penetrating some forms of armor panels, but inconsistently.

Knowing the firearms industry the way I do, I suspect that the Gold Dot is not a regular armor piercer, because if it were, the ATF would take a giant shit on them and then they would open themselves up to lawsuits for selling cop-killer bullets.  My suspicion is that the armor panels being tested on are not the best quality armor.  I certainly wouldn’t start carrying a 5.7 loaded with Gold Dots in case of a bad guy wearing armor.  Any plates rated to stop rifles will stop this.  The only defeats I saw were on handgun-only rated panels.  Again, the irony is that plates have become so cheap and prolific that you are more likely to encounter a bad guy in rifle plates with plate carriers than you are in more expensive soft armor.

The one advantage that the 5.7 has is that the smaller diameter increases magazine capacity, but again, just barely.

The Five-seveN and Ruger 5.7 hold 20 rounds, and M&P 5.7 holds 22.  My SIG P320 holds 21 rounds of 9mm in a magazine that is only three-quarters of an inch longer, and my P365 holds 17 in a much more compact pistol.

My honest assessment is that the 5.7 is more of a novelty than a serious replacement for the 9mm in any sort of personal defense for concealed carry application.  The ballistic performance isn’t substantially better in any way.

If armor penetration were a concern, I’d rather have a 5.56 or 300 BLK pistol or SBR where I know my performance is more of a guarantee than a hit-or-miss YouTube test.

I have one that I haven’t shot in years.  I bought it when I was young and dumb and didn’t have kids and was making stupid money for a single guy.

Also, the ammo is more than $1 per round for a box of 50, so it’s an expensive gun to feed.

If you want one, this is America, you can go and buy one.  If I didn’t already have one I wouldn’t.

One for the FAFO Archives:

Dude attacks cameraman and pays the price ? pic.twitter.com/5tiZDuM7hZ

— Crazy Clips (@crazyclipsonly) August 3, 2023

Less lethal method applied, aggressor changed his behavior and other than bumping around like a fly in a window, he eventually goes home without major blood loss.

PS: Leave the foolish Ego home.

I love that I can trust the left to be an echo chamber. I caught an article in an online rag. They gave me the first two paragraphs, then said, “Pay for more.” I declined.

What I did do, was to use their title and ask Miss Google for links to the article. She obliged and gave me a list of about 20 different rags, all making the same complaint.

This is nothing new. Back in the days of BITNET I discovered an AP Wire feed. I could read the AP Wire just as if I were a real reporter.

One day, a story went by on the wire that I was interested in. That same story was in the University student paper. It was also covered in the big-city newspaper from a few counties away.

In reading the newspaper articles, it was obvious that they both got the base facts from the same source, the AP Wire. It was obvious that the by-line writers added no new facts to the story. The University paper gave a left leaning (Think 45degree lean to the left.), the city paper gave a more right leaning view. Call it about 5 degrees lean to the right. At the time, I would call the AP Wire story to be pretty neutral.

Here’s one of the headlines, “Winnie-the-Pooh book teaches Texas kids to ‘run, hide, fight’ in a shooting.” That is the most neutral headline I spotted.

They also had to tie it back to Uvalde. See, it is never the right time to discuss Second Amendment protected rights. It is always the anniversary of some event that makes it a third rail subject. It is always “too soon” after an event. The only thing you are allowed to do is listen to the preaching of elites blaming you for some assholes evil.

No, she is absolutely mistaken. The issue is that she will never be satisfied with what is done. Unless the answer is giving up all arms, she’s not going to be happy. If we were to give up all the guns, she would then be advocating removing knives from the subjects/slaves.

They hit all the major talking points, “Texas has some of the most lax gun laws”. Translation, you can exercise your right to keep and bear arms without a government approval slip. As a complete non sequiturs, they add As part of the Republican-led charge towards censorship in schools, meanwhile, Texas has banned more books that address LGTBQ+ issues, race, gender and abortion than any other state.

What the school boards and states allow into the schools has always been within their power. The issue the left has been that now the school boards and state are listening to the parents instead of the left.

Now, all of this noise is just that, noise. Run, hide, fight are the tactics advised by the FBI “should the unthinkable occur”. What all of this upset is really about is that somebody was giving power to the children.

“… the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Notice that it doesn’t say “guns”. It says “arms.” While the schools are supposed to be “gun free zones”, they aren’t.

I have had my children report that their teachers keep arms in their classrooms. The schools teach the teachers how to have arms in the classroom that don’t look like arms.

The schools talk about using fire extinguishers as weapons. One teacher kept a baseball bat next to her desk, not that she nor any of her students played baseball. Another had some big rocks on his desk.

All of these exist because a teacher thinks it is better to go hands on with a shooter and beat them to death with a club, rock, or fire equipment. They want their students to see the blood and gore of somebody having their head bashed in. All of that is so much better than two to center of mass and followup shots if the threat isn’t neutralized.