Check me out On Substack

Trying out Substack, which seems promising … come see if you are interested. Here’s an excerpt

Shoot Better

Most of us firearms types are gear heads. We have a problem called Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS). We buy stuff for our guns just because some YouTuber claims it will make us shoot better, faster, stronger. Like the 1970’s show The Six Million Dollar man, with a bit of high tech, we will be better, faster, stronger.

Well, I’m here to tell you that you are only going to be a better shooter if you invest in one specific thing.

What’s that thing?

https://securityncigars.substack.com/p/shoot-better

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Gun Rights Policy Conference

Day One: First Impressions

First! My friend, Glenn Reynolds, was honored by SAF as a Defender of the Constitution. That was cool to hear. And, as we all know, he most definitely deserves this.

Well, I just finished my first day of my first time attending this conference. And it was definitely a day spent on gun rights. I was not sure what to expect at all, but got much more than I hoped for. It was a dense, information filled day. The content today really broke down into two different groups. One was attorneys telling us how things are going with various court cases and litigation. The other was people talking about the future looks like, how to get better, and what comes next.

Both groupings were very interesting, with a ton of information to absorb. I have pages of notes I need to re-read and think about and then write probably 3 or 4 posts covering different pieces of the conference, my impressions of the Second Amendment Foundation, and what all of this means.

Meanwhile, two speakers that I really enjoyed were Mark W. Smith of the Four Boxes Diner and John Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center. A few thoughts I garnered from each.

Mark Smith tackled a current Supreme Court case and the future of the 2A

Mark Smith speaking at GRPC

Mark Smith speaking at GRPC

The US v. Rahimi case was the topic of Mark’s talk. That case will be in front of the Supreme Court and Mark talked about why it is there and what it means. Basically, Merrick Garland did everything possible to get it there. And the reason is that Garland wants to use Rahimi to gut Bruen. Basically, Garland is posing a Hobson’s choice to the Court. Either they follow Bruen methodology and overturn the portion of Federal law that prevents someone with an active restraining order from purchasing or possessing a firearm, or they leave all that in place by carving out exceptions in the Bruen methodology of text and tradition of the Constitution. Mark thinks there are a couple different ways for the Court to get through this without handing Garland a victory. I think he’s right.

John Lott, of course, talked to us about numbers and statistics.

John Lott at GRPC

John Lott speaking at GRPC

Dr. Lott pointed out that in the hundreds of schools in 22 states that allow teachers to be armed, there has not been even one mass murder school shooting in a school that had armed teachers. There’s an obvious and clear lesson here. Arm the school faculty. You can get far more information on this and many other topics at Crime Prevention Research Center.

And no conference would be complete without SWAG ….. and this one had SWAG for days. Here’s what was on the table when I sat down.

All the GRPC SWAG

GRPC had a bunch of SWAG for attendees

And, in case you are wondering, after reading my post on Traveling With Firearms …. yes, I am carrying.

Final thought for today. This conference is great. Much better than NRA.

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Traveling with Firearms

Traveling with firearms is a fascinating experience.

First, you need some interesting equipment. Your firearms have to be completely contained in a hard sided case, with appropriate latching mechanisms, and locks. Your firearms must be unloaded. Even if you don’t have a round in the chamber, a magazine in the pistol with ammo in it constitutes a loaded firearm. Given this, I have chosen to travel with unloaded magazines. But you can have ammunition in the same case as the firearms. The ammo has to in a box that separates the cartridges so they are not touching each other. All of this is detailed by your airline as well as by the TSA.

Here’s what that looks like:

A Pelican Vault

Pelican Vault with two pistols

Pelican Vault with two pistols

Pelican Vault with ABUS padlocks

Pelican Vault with ABUS padlocks

Now, once you’ve got that, and you are ready to travel, you have to check in with your airline with a specialty item. At the airport, the airline will have a special line for checking speciality items, pets, etc. You have to declare to the agent that you have firearms, open your case for the agent to see them, and sign a declaration that they are unloaded. Once that is done, you will take your firearms case to TSA. This process takes about 30 minutes at SeaTac.

TSA will have a special location for you to check your firearms with them after you are done with the airline. At SeaTac this is the same location where oversize luggage, like golf clubs, get dropped off. There, you will open the case again and a TSA officer will inspect everything. And, for some reason, they swab the whole case for explosives. You have to verbally declare that the firearms are unloaded, the TSA person checks your signed declaration and then you lock the case and hand it off to TSA. That’s kinda nerve wracking since I don’t ever leave my firearms unsupervised except at home in the gun safe.

When you get to your destination and have picked up all your other luggage (if need be), then you go to the airline’s baggage services office. This time I was flying with Delta, who has a policy that the case must be zip tied and escorted by airport police. A very nice police officer checked my identification at the destination, handed over my case and told me about the Delta policy. We joked a bit about whether he could cut off the zip tie for me (he can’t) and then I headed off to my hotel.

Zip tied Pelican Vault

Zip tied Pelican Vault

Once I got to my hotel, I had a dilemma. To make life easier, my EDC knife was also in the case. Which I needed to cut the zip tie. Fortunately, a very nice hotel clerk went and found a pair of scissors for me. All set.

And now I’m in Phoenix, ready for the Gun Rights Policy Conference. That starts tonight with an opening reception. And I’m able to exercise my fundamental rights to self-defense and to keep and bear arms. Not as difficult as I thought, but not as easy as it could be.

Last but not least, you need to safeguard things in your hotel room. For that, I have a Vaultek Lifepod, the Pelican Vault, 2 ABUS padlocks, and a cable to secure everything to something sturdy. Like this

Securing everything in a hotel room

Hotel room security setup

Here’s the gear I have for firearms travel.

Make sure that you know the laws of the destination you are traveling to, the rules that your airline has for traveling with firearms, and TSA rules. Goofing on anyone of those can land you in prison. So, don’t do it if you don’t know the rules and are prepared to follow them.

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Attending The Gun Rights Policy Conference

The Second Amendment Foundation (I’m a Life Member) is hosting the 38th annual Gun Rights Policy Conference in Phoenix this weekend. Some of the speakers include Massad Ayoob, Mark W. Smith, and Phil Fortunato, who is one of my state senators.

This will be the first time I’ve attended GRPC. I’m definitely excited about it and about ways to deal with advancing the 2nd Amendment. Plus meeting some great folks in the gun community. I plan on sharing some thoughts from the conference here.

Road to Liberty - GRPC

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79th Anniversary of 81 Days In Combat

I thought today I would related a real story of a real American soldier. A truly great soldier, an Army Tanker who served in combat in WW2 for 81 straight days.

Let’s ponder that for a moment. Most of us can’t imagine 1 day in combat. I served for 100 hours in combat in 1991, just 4 days or so. This guy was in the fight, every day, for 81 days. This is insane. None of us today knows what this means.

Here’s his story. He is, by the way, considered the American Tank Ace of Aces.

Many of you have probably seen the movie Fury and know that Brad Pitt’s character was called War Daddy. What you may not know is that there was a genuine American combat hero nick named War Daddy. Here is his story.

His name is Lafayette G. Pool …. His actual nickname in WW2 was War Daddy. His tank was named In The Mood. He is a genuine American Bad Ass

Lafayette G. Pool was born and raised in Odem, Texas. He graduated high school in 1938, attending an engineering school and had an amateur boxing career. He had a twin brother who joined the Navy. He joined the Army in the summer of 1941, prior to the US entering WW2 in December. He ended up in the Armor Corps and eventually in 3rd Armored Division.

79 years ago Lafayette G. Pool, aka War Daddy, was in his 81st day of combat in France in 1944. He was leading Combat Command A of 3rd Armored Division as they assaulted the Siegfried Line on the German border.

After 81 straight days in combat, losing 2 of his own tanks already, killing or capturing over 1000 Germans and destroying over 250 German tanks and armored vehicles, his tank was ambushed by a German Panther.

His Sherman tank took two rounds from the Panther as it was backing up out of the ambush. His gunner was killed, his driver, bow gunner, and loader were wounded, and War Daddy was thrown out of the tank by the explosions. He ended up having his leg amputated above the knee.

War Daddy is one of the great all time American soldiers of WW2. Sadly, Fury did a poor job of actually telling the story of this genuine hero.

All 3 of Pool’s tanks were named “In The Mood”. The first tank was destroyed in early July, 1944 by a German soldier with a Panzerfaust (basically, a bazooka). The second tank was destroyed in August, 1944 by friendly fire from an American P-38 Lightning fighter-bomber. The third tank, obviously, was destroyed a German Panther. Pool and his entire crew were together for all 81 days of combat.

Later, after rehabilitation, War Daddy was able to re-enlist in the Army. He served until he retired, in 1960, as a Chief Warrant Officer 2. He continued, after retirement, to spend time with the Armor Corps in a consulting role.

Today, I remember Lafayette G. Pool, War Daddy, one of the greatest American tankers to ever live.​ He is considered to be the American Tank Ace of all Aces.

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How Many Guns Have Americans Really Bought?

How many guns have Americans really bought over the last 3 1/2 years? This is an interesting question, since there is no gun registry in this country and it is impossible to count precisely for that reason. We do know how many firearms the gun manufacturers have made. That’s not the same as bought, though.

Any time you go in a gun store, you see dozens, even hundreds, of guns on display that haven’t been sold yet. Multiply that by thousands of gun stores across the country. Add to that all the guns in inventory at the manufacturer, something that some gun stores allow you to see via their own inventory system. There are literally millions of guns in stock waiting to be purchased. And millions more being built every month.

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A Mandatory Permit to Purchase a Firearm: Opposed

The Washington State Senate is considering a bill to force citizens to get a mandatory permit to purchase a firearm. Like I have done with some of the other gun control bills in the Legislature this session, I have submitted formal, written testimony to the Senate on this bill.

Senate Bill 5232 establishes a firearm permit requirement to purchase ALL firearms in the State of Washington. The first thing that the bill does is require us to get permission from the Sheriff or Chief of Police of the jurisdiction we live in to purchase a firearm. Any firearm:

The dealer is notified in writing by (i) the chief of police or the sheriff of the jurisdiction in which the purchaser resides that the purchaser is eligible to possess a ((pistol)) firearm under RCW 9.41.040 and that the application to purchase is approved by the chief of police or sheriff;

The Sheriff or Chief of Police is required to run Federal, State, and Local background checks and mental health checks. The applicant is required to take a fairly expensive class every 5 years and apply for a permit. That permit has to be acquired BEFORE any possible gun purchase.

Following the break is the written testimony I submitted to the Senate.

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An Overlooked Piece of Martin Luther King Jr’s Legacy

An overlooked piece of Martin Luther King Jr’s legacy and impact on America centers around the right to self-defense and the Second Amendment’s protection of the right to keep and bear arms. Unstated in the Amendment is for self-defense. The Founders thought this was obvious and not necessary, although they talked about self-defense of person and community significantly during the period.

The Reality: The Constitution protects your right to keep and bear arms

We discussed this reality  that the Founders, and their heirs and successors in the 19th century, believed that the right to keep and bear arms was in order to defend life and property. Just as importantly, it entailed the owning and using “weapons of war”. Throughout American history, political elites, governments, racists, and bigots have understood the importance of this as well. And worked to ensure that the minorities that they feared, distrusted, and hated were unable to exercise this right to protect themselves and their communities with firearms.

Why would they do this? For the obvious reason that firearms make you equal and able to fight back against your oppressors. For deeper research and explanation of this topic as it relates to the black community, I highly recommend Nicholas Johnson’s “Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms”. But the short story is that the black community in America has long embraced firearms as a means of protecting themselves and creating equality to the people that would oppress them.

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The Best Way to Celebrate MLK

Is to celebrate the things he believed in. Including freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, and … yes …. The right to self-defense, which means the right to keep and bear arms.

The best way I can figure to do it. By going out with good friends and training my ability to defend my life, liberty, and property.

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Gun Bans Mean Citizens Are Punished ….

For the behavior of criminals.

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