Rifles and Pistols and Guns, Oh My!

I do some work for the Weatherby Company, makers of some of the finest rifles in the world, including the renowned and vault-like Mark V, and I went to my local range yesterday to play with their new ladies’ model, called the Camilla.

It’s a private, unsupervised range, and the only other person there was an older gentleman shooting a few tables away. When I turned to signal for down time to check my target, I noticed he was shooting a Weatherby and that his truck had a “Semper Fi” sticker on it with the cursive Weatherby W decal right above that. I had never met this gentleman before, he had no idea who I was (we didn’t even exchange names until later), and I said nothing to him about my having any connection to Weatherby. This, paraphrased and condensed, is what came out, unsolicited, in our conversation:

His name is Jim Neal and he is an eighty-year-old former Marine, originally from Montana. He and his family (children and grandchildren) drive up to Dillon, Montana ever year for a couple of weeks of deer and elk hunting. His rifle is a synthetic-stocked Mark V .340 Wby that he bought secondhand thirty-two years ago as his all-purpose hunting rifle. He had Weatherby install a muzzle brake a few years back when age began to make the recoil a little unpleasant. He had a Kahles scope on it originally, but earlier this year, when he started to practice for his family hunt, the focus ring froze up. He sent the scope back to Kahles, but they told him it would be months before they could repair and return it. He mounted another scope and found, to his horror, that his shots were going all over the paper. He asked a friend to shoot it as a double-check. Same thing. Another scope. Same thing. He called Weatherby and then drove the rifle across the state to them in Paso Robles. He dealt with a lady named Cheryl in the Service Department who took him in back to talk to a gunsmith named Vladimir, who examined the rifle.

How it happened, or how he had been able to shoot the rifle, I don’t know, but this is what they found:

The stock was cracked, the magazine was bent, the floorplate hinge was cracked, and the safety wouldn’t engage properly. Weatherby put on a new stock, repaired the magazine and the floorplate, fixed the safety, and installed a new trigger, but the new trigger had too much creep in it, so they replaced their replacement. Then Cheryl and Vladimir gave Mr. Neal a Weatherby cap, a butt-stock ammo carrier, a sling, and Vladimir gave him his own ratchet screw-driver because Mr. Neal likes to do his own gun-smithing.

The total cost to him for all their time and labor was exactly zero. On a secondhand, thirty-two-year-old rifle.

Ask me why I’m proud to be associated with Weatherby.

Really, sometimes the Grey Lady just makes it all too easy. No, no. Hillary is the Shady Lady; the Grey Lady is The New York Times.

Jameson’s Law of Convincing Argument states that if I wish to convince you of the absolute and infallible correctness of my point of view, I would be well-served not to cite sources that are known for agreeing with me or being on my side of a particular argument.

For example: I recently wrote an article for a magazine about a gun control initiative being launched in the state where that magazine is published. In the article, I quoted President Obama repeating a lie he has told frequently. He stated that, “The law already requires licensed gun dealers to run background checks, and over the past [twenty] years that’s kept millions of the wrong people from getting their hands on a gun. But it’s hard to enforce that law when as many as forty percent of all gun purchases are conducted without a background check.” [Emphasis mine.]

If I had then refuted that lie, which has been repeatedly refuted and debunked, with facts and figures from the NRA, you would have been wise to suspect me of being biased, lazy in my research, and even perhaps dishonest myself. Instead, I quoted the “Fact-Checker” column in the notoriously anti-gun Washington Post, which gave Mr. Obama three Pinocchios out of a possible four for dishonesty.

So, enter the Grey Lady, stage left, ranting wildly about the “myth” of defensive gun use, specifically as it pertains to concealed carry. The Editorial Board of the Times (wisely, no individual wished to attach his or her name to the piece) proceeded to trot out “statistics” purporting to show the relatively few (according to the Times) occasions firearms were used throughout the country for legally justifiable purposes of defense. Then the Grey Lady solemnly informed its readers, most of whom are sheltered and pampered urban and suburban dwellers unlikely to question any dishonest garbage the editorial board dishes as out, that their source for these “statistics” was The Violence Policy Center.

Oh dear, oh dear, Grey Lady, that’s just embarrassing. Anyone with an I.Q. larger than his hat size will hear alarm bells going off. Actually, the editorial board must have realized how embarrassing it was, because a disclaimer was immediately added to the effect that the Violence Policy Center’s figures were, “…necessarily incomplete, because the gun lobby has been so successful in persuading gullible state and national legislators that concealed carry is essential to public safety, thus blocking the extensive data collection that should be mandatory for an obvious and severe public health problem.”

(That, by the way, is an old trick, cynically summed up by the lawyer, Billy Flynn, in the musical Chicago, when he tap dances and sings the song Razzle Dazzle:

“Give ‘em the old flim flam flummox,

Fool and fracture ‘em,

How can they hear the truth above the roar?…

…Long as you keep ‘em way off balance,

How can they spot you’ve got no talents?”

In other words, if your argument is completely bogus, blame it in an outraged tone of voice on your opponent.)

The problem, dear Grey Lady, is that “the extensive data collection that should be mandatory” is in fact carried out and is available to anyone willing to look at an unbiased source. The United States Bureau of Justice, hardly a rabid pro-gun institution, estimates that firearms are used defensively in America 235,700 each year. Other sources, some pro-gun and some neutral, estimate legal defensive firearm use from an approximate low of one million, to a high of two-and-a-half million times a year.

You do see where this is going, right? If the Grey Lady can convince its naïve and uneducated (about guns) readers that the number of legal and justifiable defensive uses of a firearm is a tiny, insignificant amount, then no one can refute the old, emotional “if it saves just one life” gun control argument. Because the reverse of that argument is that if having a gun saves just one life, than there is no reason to ban firearms. And, in fact, as the very low Bureau of Justice figures show, many, many lives are saved by defensive use each year, a great many times more than are taken by criminals.

Then the Grey Lady went on to say, “Clearly, concealed carry does not transform ordinary citizens into superheroes.” That is possibly the only honest thing The Times Editorial Board was able to write in the entire article. Concealed carry does not transform anyone, but it does at least give him a fighting chance not to become another lamentable statistic.

Someone (or possibly several anonymous someones) takes me to task from time to time for my love of firearms and my support of the second amendment. I recently received an email on my “Comments” page that contained (in part) the following: “Have you seen the father of the boy who was killed in the Santa Barbara shooting? Have you seen him on television? How does he make you feel about your gun rights [sic]?”

(I am being persnickety about the “gun rights” correction, but guns are inanimate objects and have no rights. He or she meant second amendment rights.)

Yes, I have seen him, and my heart goes out to him. His pain and grief are unimaginable, and no one in their right mind could fault him for lashing out. I pray God will give him the strength to come through this and to eventually find some peace.

Having said that, I have to point out that his anger is misdirected. The gun didn’t shoot his son anymore the knife killed the three young men who had the misfortune to share an apartment with a monster, anymore than a BMW SUV killed (injured?) the bicyclist who had the misfortune to be on the street that night. Nor were craven politicians responsible, nor was the NRA. Nor were the police who obeyed the law and respected their own oath and the Constitution of the United States by not “doing more” (that seems to be the phrase I hear most frequently on the news) the night they went to the monster’s apartment. Nor were his parents. Nor were the mental health providers he saw. Nor was his Asperger’s Syndrome.

The young man who is responsible for the horror in Santa Barbara was a spoiled, narcissistic, jealous monster. He was evil, and there is no explanation for evil. Evil exists, just as good exists. Fortunately, there is far, far more good in the world than there is evil.

There are approximately ninety million gun owners in the United States, who enjoy sport and recreation with their firearms and never use them to commit any crime. More than that: legally-owned firearms are used defensively (to save lives and prevent crimes) approximately one million times a year in America. Those goods far outweigh the evil that is done.

Many tens of thousands of people (no one knows precisely how many) have Asperger’s and harm no one. Should we judge them all by the actions of an evil monster?

It is normal to cry out in pain, and it is normal to try and assign blame after a horror like this, but the blame lies solely with the monster. As my friend, gun-writer Dave Workman said in an email, “[He] had everything a kid could want, but nothing a young man needed: Character, self-reliance, a sense of responsibility, self-control, a sense of right and wrong.” No new laws, no further restrictions on the rights of gun owners or people with mental problems—or any other citizens—will ever prevent evil. We might just as well try to make ourselves feel good by banning BMW SUVs.

I read somewhere that over 2.2-million people have read the monster’s “manifesto” on line. I will not.

Arguably the most beautiful state in the West, Colorado seems to have veered off onto a course that has more in common with California, New York, Connecticut, and possibly Oz than with any semblance of sanity. Let’s review the bidding:

Just a little over a year ago, Colorado passed four questionably constitutional anti-gun laws, laws that a majority of the state’s county sheriffs publically announced they neither could nor would enforce. The passage of the laws, coupled with an extraordinarily insensitive response to a rape victim by then state Senator Evie Hudak, resulted in a recall election in which two other senators lost their seats and Ms. Hudak resigned. The passage of the laws also prompted one of Colorado’s larger employers, Magpul, a manufacturer of firearms and firearm accessories, to leave Colorado entirely. (They are still technically in Colorado, but are in the throes of moving their manufacturing plant to Wyoming and their corporate headquarters to Texas.)

Just a few months later, the state passed Amendment 64, legalizing the use of marijuana. Regardless of your views on drug usage, marijuana use, possession, sale, distribution, or cultivation is still illegal under federal law. In my state of California, marijuana is cultivated by drug cartel employees in remote places where both hunters and Fish and Wildlife agents have come under fire, making the once bucolic job of Fish and Wildlife one of the most dangerous law enforcement jobs in the state.  (Marijuana is also, according to the Sheriff’s Department in my county, considered to be as much of an impediment to driving as either alcohol or cell phone use. It is further considered to be a “gateway” drug, meaning it—pick a word—encourages, inspires, tempts young users to try other more dangerous drugs.)

And now, a U.S. District judge in Colorado, Christine Arguello, has handed down a two-year sentence for a woman who was convicted of buying a gun for a recently paroled felon and known white supremacist who subsequently used that gun to murder two men, to severely wound a Texas Sheriff’s Deputy, and to fire multiple rounds at other police officers during a high-speed chase. Purchasing a firearm for a person who is himself legally unable to buy a gun is a straw purchase. It is a violation of multiple federal and state (specifically Colorado) laws. Since in this particular case, the gun was knowingly bought for a convicted felon, and subsequently used in two murders, it would not be a stretch to charge the woman in question as an accessory to murder. Instead, Ms. Arguello chose to give the woman in question a slap on the wrist.

So what is cumulative message being sent here? We can deduce that Colorado state legislators regard federal laws more as suggestions than as laws and that they, the state legislators, may pick and choose which of those suggestions they wish to enforce. We can deduce that the state legislators also regard the (federally illegal) marijuana business as more desirable than the legal firearms manufacturing business. We can also deduce that Colorado state legislators regard passing laws restricting the freedoms of law-abiding gun owners to be an effective way of discouraging criminals, even as we also deduce that at least one federal judge regards being an accessory to the murder of two men and the wounding of third as a relatively insignificant crime. We can further deduce that if violating existing federal and state gun laws (conducting a straw purchase, for example) is not taken seriously by judges, those laws become as meaningless to criminals as, oh, all other gun laws, or let’s say the federal drug laws the Colorado legislators choose not to enforce.

And finally, we can deduce that perhaps Colorado is no longer the crown jewel of Western states. Unless of course you’re in the marijuana business.

Oh, ho!