Category: The Gun Thing

On my way back home this morning, I got a call from the NRA, wanting me to renew my membership.  The lady was very pleasant, with a deep Southern drawl, but was obviously reading from the standard NRA fund-raising spiel about upcoming legislation brought by Democrats, Chuck Schumer wants to take your  guns away, etc. etc.  Then she switched to the “Now I need you to renew your NRA commitment, so let’s get that taken care of” closer.

My response was not what she expected, nor I think what she wanted.

“Frankly, I’m more than a little disappointed in how the NRA is spending our membership dollars — for starters, I don’t want my money being spent just so Wayne LaPierre can look good on TV, and I’m pretty sure Col. Oliver North could point to a few similar misuses of the NRA’s cash.  So I’m not going to renew my NRA membership today, or, most likely, in the near future either.  Instead, I am going to send the equivalent amount to the Second Amendment Foundation who, it appears, have been quite successful in arguing our cause before the state courts and the Supreme Court as well.  Feel free to pass these sentiments on to the senior management of the NRA.  Good day to you.”

…and I hung up.

Or have I missed something here?  (I should point out that I have a three-year membership of the TSRA, which I have every intention of renewing.)

Feel free to enlighten me in Comments.

I’m going to add my two cents to this opinion (found via Insty, thankee) about keeping your magazines loaded:

Even when kept fully compressed, a magazine spring will retain its energy long past the operational life of the ammunition.

Here’s my take.  I own dozens of magazines, of all types and calibers, fitting all sorts of guns, and I’ve owned most of my Chip McCormick (CMC) 1911 PowerMags for close to twenty years.  I keep all of them loaded, all the time.  When I was cleaning out my house, I found a box of what I first thought was junk (but wasn’t).  At the very bottom, underneath all sorts of stuff like photos and old papers were two 10-round CMC Powermags, loaded.  Judging from the other stuff in the box, I packed it when we lived in suburban Chicago back in the late 1990s, and had never fired the two mags — for twenty years.

With some trepidation, I unloaded them, expecting to find that the last couple of rounds were loose in the magazines — i.e. that the springs had “taken a set” when loaded to capacity and lost their tension.  In both mags, the bottom cartridges were held as tightly against the mag lips as the first round.  So I reloaded them.

The next time I went to the range, I fired off both mags through the Springfield 1911.  Both mags and ammo functioned flawlessly.   I put another ten loads of “new” .45 ACP through each (200 rounds in total) and the mags again worked as though I’d just unwrapped them.

The same has been true of every single magazine I’ve ever owned.  The only time I’ve ever had an issue with a magazine was a cheap one that came with a Taurus .380 pistol — the “second” mag, not the one actually in the gun — and I think it was broken from the start.  Magazine, say hello to Mr. Hammer.

As I said earlier:  all my magazines are loaded, all the time.  An unloaded magazine is just a box with a spring inside, just as an unloaded gun is just a heavy (and expensive) cosh.  Whether they’re .22 LR mags for my Marlin 880SQ rifle, the Mec-Gars for the Browning Hi-Power or the many CMC PowerMags, if I pick one up or take it out of the bag, it’s ready to go.  Even the several AK-47 mags that were tragically lost along with the gun in that canoeing accident were kept loaded.  (As an aside, the mags that absolutely MUST be kept loaded are those that would be needed for your carry- or SHTF guns.)

That has been my experience, and that is my advice.  YMMV.

As the Socialists (you know, politicians, mainstream media, teachers’ unions etc.) are going all “NO MOAR GUNS!”, the people who were actually affected  by the recent gun violence seem to be taking a different approach:

More El Paso residents than ever before crowded into a class over the weekend to become certified to carry a concealed gun in public in Texas after this month’s mass shooting at a Walmart store that killed 22 people.
…
The vast majority of people at the classes were Hispanic; El Paso is a predominantly Latino city. Police say the accused gunman deliberately attacked Hispanics in the Walmart.
…
“We actually had two people buy guns here who were actually in the Walmart on the day of the shooting. The other people are just saying, ‘Hey, you know I want to be able to protect myself in the event of something going on’.”

And, of course, most of the guns being bought were handguns — the eeeevil killing machines that were once the named target of an organization known as Handgun Control, Inc. (and now known by a pseudonym, although it’s the same bunch of assholes).

Whatever.  Despite the moanings of the aforementioned gun confiscators, it seems as though a lot of people are not going to be helpless victims anymore — which is exactly as it should be.  (I just wish that little turd had walked into a Wal-Mart where a dozen or so of his would-be victims were already  carrying guns — I suspect that the outcome would have been a whole lot different, in a good way.)

And now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to do a little practice myself.  In the spirit of our buddies in El Paso, I’ll be doing handguns today:  an hour or two of dry-fire drawing practice at home, followed by a couple hundred rounds sent into a target at the DFW Gun Range.