Front Sight, Press

This tragic incident is what is called an “accident.” It is legally recognized as a class of event that is different from volitional crime, negligence or even depraved indifference. It is one of the heartbreaking manifestations of chaos which occur from time to time to visit grief and suffering on humankind. It is also of the same order of event that took the life of an 8-year-old boy at the Westfield Sportsman’s Club in Westfield, MA. The boy lost control of an Uzi he was firing and shot himself. (I wouldn’t have allowed him to shoot the gun, and I question the judgment of the adults involved, but that is a different issue.) It was an accident, and both incidents have approximately the same level of probability – extremely low. We will probably all live out the rest of our lifetimes without either of these events repeating themselves.

Montana gunsmith Dan Cooper has been ousted as chief executive of the rifle company that bears his name after pressure from gun owners who are angry that he is supporting Democrat Barack Obama.

The Chief Executive of Cooper Firearms of Montana, Dan Cooper, likes Obama’s general policies so much that he’s redistributed $3,300 to the Obama presidential campaign. Thanks to Downright Dusty via Days of our Trailers for the heads up. I was happy to inform them via their website that in the future I will redistribute MY wealth to a couple of those Illinois firearms manufacturers.

I was at a match recently and one of the shooters was a long-time friend and a recently retired Army Lieutenant Colonel. We got to talking about the election. He said, “You know, if Obama is elected, you’ll go on the ‘known terrorist’ list.” “Yes, I know,” I answered, about half seriously.

Topics: The open carry battle, “I don’t carry a gun…” Why do we practice reloads? Guns I like: the Ruger 10/22

“I am not in favor of concealed weapons,” Obama said. “I think that creates a potential atmosphere where more innocent people could (get shot during) altercations.” Barack Obama–Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, April 2, 2008

The Obama campaign in Indiana, on September 27, unlawfully obtained and made unauthorized use of a proprietary media list belonging to the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) – the trade association for the firearms industry. Sen. Obama used this list to e-mail a press release concerning National Hunting and Fishing Day.

During Obama’s tenure, the Joyce Foundation board planned and implemented a program targeting the Supreme Court. The work began five years into Obama’s directorship, when the Foundation had experience in turning its millions into anti-gun “grassroots” organizations, but none at converting cash into legal scholarship.

The plan’s objective was bold: the judicial obliteration of the Second Amendment.

I watched John McCain closely last night in the first presidential debate against Barak Obama. What I saw in McCain was an elder statesman, competent, intelligent, accomplished and even likeable, but he is no Moses who will part the sea and lead the children out of the wilderness to the Promised Land. He is no Reagan, no JFK, not even a William Jefferson Clinton, and it would take a Moses to pull this one out of the fire for the Republicans. Unless John McCain learns to walk on water in short order, we are staring down the barrel of an electoral apocalypse.

This is the nature of Mr. Obama’s particular kind of charisma. People project their best wishes on him, they fill in the blank of a very attractive and plausible outline. His is not, emphatically, a charisma of deeds. For what has he done, save run for president? He is an accommodating vessel - cool, smart, biracial and “unfinished.” This is the Gatsby quality of him that others have noted. Like Gatsby, he is a receptacle of others’ glamorous invention.