From Mr. Zimmerman. He and his daughter are to be commended for putting up a stand and seeing it through! Thanks to the people of Pahrump and the Commissioners who stood against this. UPDATE: The monthly meeting was held today with a noticeably small crowd but still several familiar faces watching the meeting. I was present for a meeting that was to be uneventful given the rather mundane agenda items shown. What I was NOT expecting was the library director to give a public statement, on the record, which said: 1. The efforts to date to ban guns were only "common sense" measures (really tired of anti-gun proposals being touted as common sense when they are counter to that) to protect the children in the 16'x16' room for the storytime events. 2. They were in no way trying to ban guns throughout the library (though the first meeting in October made it clear that was the end goal). 3. It was made clear to the library staff and board that accidents with the children present were not a true risk. 4. All efforts to continue the ban would cease immediately. 5. The existing ban on weapons in the library code of conduct would NOT be enforced. Also, following the last meeting in January, I mentioned that my wife had a very productive conversation with the director about holding firearm safety classes with children. Well, since then the library has ordered the Eddie Eagle materials and scheduled the first class to be at the end of April! The Nye County commissioners have also created a new liaison position between the library board and commissioner board with Com. Keonig serving in that role. This means that there will be a commissioner at all meetings going forward. Two members of the board are terming out in their service, so this writer has thrown his hat into the ring as well. Oregon is facing a slew of absolutely abysmal gun bills; it doesn't look like a Bloomberg lawyer wrote these, but a drunken money with a typewriter. This article from the Oregon Firearms Federation (OFF) shows just how bad it can get. Coming to a 2021 Nevada near you? The short version is this; under this bill, any school or local government body can declare their property and surrounding property off-limits to CHL holders. This is Burdick’s dream child and a bill she has introduced before.Here is what’s important to know. If you, as a law-abiding concealed handgun license holder, go into any building controlled by any school or government entity that has declared themselves off-limits, you will face 5 years in prison. That’s five years for doing something you may have done lawfully, peacefully, while threatening no one, your entire adult life. Brian S. reported on Facebook that he attended the Pahrump Library Board of Trustees meeting and they announced that the library will no longer be pursuing it's anti-gun policies. This information does not show up on the agenda. Thanks Brian! Could your favorite shooting and off-roading spots near Las Vegas and Pahrump soon be off-limits? Clark County and environmental groups have been pushing to designate large tracts of land in the area as protected areas. While no legislation is pending in Congress, the county and environmentalists are working on a bill to place BLM land under special protections. Over 422,380 acres or 660 square miles are slated to be protected areas. That’s three times larger than the incorporated area of Boulder City; Nevada’s largest city by area. The county proposal would also allow development south along I-15 east to the Jean Lake bed, partway up toward Mt. Charleston, nearly to Lake Mead, and into the undeveloped hills behind Henderson. Most stunning is the scope of the expansion of wilderness areas and Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC). These ACECs exist across the country and the Mojave Desert. Could your favorite shooting and off-roading spots near Las Vegas and Pahrump soon be off-limits? Clark County and environmental groups have been pushing to designate large tracts of land in the area as protected areas. While no legislation is pending in Congress, the county and environmentalists are working on a bill to place BLM land under special protections. Over 422,380 acres or 660 square miles are slated to be protected areas. That’s three times larger than the incorporated area of Boulder City; Nevada’s largest city by area. The county proposal would also allow development south along I-15 east to the Jean Lake bed, partway up toward Mt. Charleston, nearly to Lake Mead, and into the undeveloped hills behind Henderson. Most stunning is the scope of the expansion of wilderness areas and Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC). These ACECs exist across the country and the Mojave Desert. The vote followed nearly two hours of public comment, most of which was opposed to the measure. A large contingent of off-road enthusiasts expressed outrage at the prospect of losing what they said was the last remaining tract of recreation land still open for organized OHV use and off-road racing events. [source] The question I have is whether or not these designations are designed to stop the spread of development through protection. In California, county initiatives designating greenbelt or “open space” areas limited generally to agriculture only are being used to stop the rest of the state from turning into a conglomerated megalopolis like Los Angeles and the Bay Area. Is this what this is? The ability to develop in Clark County is often limited by the Southern Nevada Public Lands Management Act, a 1998 bill that delineated what BLM lands could and could not be purchased and transferred from the BLM to private companies within Clark County. The proposed federal legislation, according to the August maps, would expand the “disposal boundaries” — lands available for purchase — by about 38,000 acres. The move would come with wilderness protections and could create more land for businesses. But environmentalists have raised some concerns. They worry more construction could increase sprawl and further strain resources like water. [source] While many questions exist, the grow of Las Vegas isn’t projected to stop. Water will be the determining factor in its growth. I personally think our economy is headed for a catastrophic drop that will stop development in its tracks before the metro area really begins to grow outside of the valley. What should be concerning is the huge scale of these designations. Off-roaders would be forced far out into the desert, along with target shooters who have seen where they can free shoot move further and further away. Whether or not the areas are designated and shooters lose access, the growth of public shooting ranges is vital. The Clark County Shooting Complex is only 30% complete; a fact that should outrage the Nevada shooting community. Mrs. Froman of Piggott Academy reached out to us recently for help with the fifth grade class's exhibition project. They needed to interview someone in the gun world, and while the questions are enough to make one choke, I was happy to provide the kids with some correct information. 1. What have you or your organization been doing to stop gun violence? We want people to be able to protect themselves from criminals who would use a gun to rob them, hurt them, or kill them. We help people become well-trained so they can shoot back safely and only when it is necessary. We can only help law abiding citizens protect themselves with guns; we can’t stop or control what a criminal decides to do. Groups that claim they are trying to stop “gun violence” or promote “gun safety” are most often just trying to make it harder for good people to buy guns. They don’t teach kids to stay away from found guns, how adults can lock up their guns, or how someone can shoot safely. None of their programs tries to get gang members out of their gangs or get the mentally ill into a treatment program. These groups think that average people need to be told what to do. The biggest groups were founded by and paid by a man who wants to tell people they can’t drink big sodas. Imagine if someone told you that you needed to be smarter, so the government was going to tell you how much TV you could watch? Gun safety is about teaching people, not taking things away. 2. What can kids like us do to prevent gun violence? No one can stop mentally ill people or criminals from breaking the law or hurting people. Guns do not hurt people all by themselves or have some sort of magical power to make a person do bad things. Many people become violent and hurt others because bad things happen to them. If someone is angry and wants to hurt others because of what someone did to them, that person should get therapy. Kids should stay out of gangs; fighting or killing someone because they’re wearing the wrong color is stupid. Never take a gun to school if someone is bullying you or because you found it and it’s cool. Kids can protect themselves from accidental shootings by staying away from guns. The four rules kids should remember if they find a gun is: Stop! Don’t touch it. Run away from the gun or the person who has it. Tell a responsible adult. Parents should make sure guns are locked up so children can’t access them. 3. What steps are already in place to monitor gun ownership? No person or system can predict when a person decides to break the law, turns violent, or becomes suicidal or mentally ill. Background checks for buying guns are already in place. Laws already require guns to be secured away from children. Laws only exist to stop honest people from breaking them and to punish criminals that don’t care whatever they’ve done is illegal. 4. What could we do to make gun ownership safer? Access to training, education, and safe shooting ranges is vital. We need to encourage safe and responsible gun ownership, storage, and carry. Many kids bring guns to school because parents don’t know better that they need to secure their guns; for example how many people know you can get a free gun lock at every police station? If we treat guns like bad things and refuse to talk about it, we can’t keep people safe. Guns aren’t bad and talking about them isn’t either. Guns are used to protect people, at least 100,000 to over a million people, every year, often without a shot being fired. That is way more than the total number of people who are killed or hurt by guns. It might be scary for little kids to talk about strangers, but Stranger Danger has kept many children from being kidnapped. Kids don’t know not to play with guns because gun safety isn’t taught in school like fire safety. Who knows Stop; Drop; and Roll? When was the last time someone heard of a kid catching on fire? 5. What is a Smart Gun and how can we use it to make gun ownership safer? A “smart gun” uses an electronic key, fingerprint matching, or other technology to prevent a gun from firing except by authorized users. These devices are easily bypassed, are not robust enough to withstand the abuse guns take, and can fail when a police officer or citizen needs the gun most. There is no technology that can tell a gun it is pointed at an innocent person or is being used to hurt someone. A criminal who was foiled by a smart gun could easily find a “dumb” gun or just use a knife or another weapon. A proper lock or gun safe is the best way to protect guns from being fired accidentally by children. 6. Do you think that people should get their gun/guns taken away? Gun ownership is a natural right, protected by the Constitution, and no one should arbitrarily have their guns taken away. The Constitution states that property should only be taken by the government after due process of law and upon probable cause. The government should have to prove that a person is dangerous, and give the person a chance to answer, before guns are taken away. 7. Do you think that the USA should have stricter laws for guns and why? We don’t need more laws. The USA already has over 20,000 gun laws and strictly regulates weapons like machine guns and explosives. Many times, when a criminal tries to buy a gun and his background check is denied, he is never arrested or charged with a crime. Making more laws doesn’t stop a criminal who has already decided to break the law; for instance, murder is illegal but that doesn’t stop people from killing each other. America is at a time when the murder rate is as low as it has ever been in history. Americans are safer than they ever have before. The crime rate all over the country has dropped to historic lows and more people than ever before in history own and carry guns. In fact, over a century ago, it was illegal to carry a gun in practically every state, but yet the murder rate was many, many times higher than today. If guns were the problem, the crime rate should be sky-high, but isn’t. 8. What guns do you think people should be allowed to have? There should be no restrictions on what type/kind of guns you can own, how many, or how much ammunition they can hold. It is the same as no one should be able to tell you what you can or can’t say, what you can or can’t read/watch, or what you can believe. Restricting types of guns does nothing to make people safer. A gun that can shoot 10 times before reloading is just as deadly as one that can fire 30 times. Many laws make guns illegal for reasons that don’t make sense, such as the gun looks scary. A hunting rifle is just as powerful as the “military” style guns people want to ban. The 2nd Amendment was intended for the people to have the same weapons as the military so no army could opress Americans like the British did. The Founding Fathers wanted citizens to be the army. America has a long tradition of target shooting so that its citizens would be better soldiers. The “well regulated” portion of the 2nd Amendment means that the citizens would be well equipped and well trained; not regulated by a bunch of laws. In 1775, the Battles of Lexington and Concord started because British troops were marching to seize gunpowder and rifles from the colonial militias. The first combat in the Revolutionary War was over gun control. In those days, owning military weapons meant things like rifles; guns that could shoot accurately for hundreds of yards in a time when men lined up shoulder to shoulder to shoot inaccurate muskets. Rifles allowed the Americans to win in battle over the British. Even back then, rifles that could fire many shots without reloading were known. Early machine guns had been invented and a silent air-rifle that carried many shots were carried by Lewis & Clark. As strange as this sounds, the Founding Fathers would want Americans to have machine guns. This would give the average citizen the same power as a soldier. Too many times in history, evil governments have taken away guns and did horrible things to their people who couldn’t fight back. If citizens have powerful weapons--as powerful as the government--it ensures that the government can’t oppress the citizens because they can fight back. A man attempting to burgle a house was shot in downtown Las Vegas. Read more at the Review-Journal and 8 News Now. The NVFAC responds to the unjustified smear by Bill Dentzer of the Review-Journal regarding security appropriations for the governor. Read the whole reply. What the Nevada Firearm Coalition does not agree with is the way you, the Las Vegas Review Journal, decided to author this report while taking a cheap shot at every legal gun owner in Nevada. In one small article, you took a swipe at every person who is legally exercising their 2nd Amendment, every parent who takes the time to safely train their children in safe weapon handling/use and every business which deals in the firearm industry or any auxiliary industry attached to them...Your effort to demonize us by attempting to create a false panic is a perfect example of why citizens of this country do not believe in the media any more. An excellent response, but one wonders, where did Dentzer's assertion come from? Perhaps it was leaked from the governor's mansion? The M1 Garand Rifle by Bruce N. Canfield John Garand’s iconic rifle is rightly viewed by both young and old as the epitome of American firearms. Technologically, it has been surpassed by modern assault rifles and even its own derivative M14, yet this is the gun that commands respect from all who appreciate firearms. On the range, the eighth shot ping as the clip is ejected will instantly cause heads to turn and lips to smile. Canfield’s book is the definitive work on the M1 rifle, starting with the first autoloading rifle development and ending with the development of the M14. Despite the heft of 872 page tome, the book is jam-packed with interesting information and priceless details. One can spend hours poring through the book, only to return and find out something new. Canfield makes what could easily be an overwhelming jumble of data and history into a compelling read. For those who prefer pictures to dense blocks of text, there are color pictures galore—over 2,100 images! Garand’s genius is shown through the evolution of his rifle designs, beginning in the early 1920s, and gradually growing through his career at the Springfield Armory until the rifle matured during WWII. Garand was intricately involved in the testing and troubleshooting of his weapon. What made him such a remarkable engineer and the weapon so successful was that Garand designed his rifle around ease of manufacture; he even designed the machines that made the gun. While not as prolific an inventor as John Browning, Garand rightly stands on the podium among the revolutionary For Garand owners, this is an indispensible resource to the history of your rifle and dating each part. Detailed production history of each individual component and the changes to each are catalogued. Precise dating of weapons and the parts used to rebuild and modernize weapons after WWII and Korea is possible. Canfield’s book truly is everything you ever wanted to know about the US Rifle M1 .30 Caliber and then some. $95 new on Amazon, it’s worth every penny to the serious Garand owner and gun historian. 8NewsNow has the story. Sounds like dude was targeting SHOT Show attendees, in part. Good work by Metro. A couple of quick things.
Yes, theft is always the fault of the thief, but you can make it harder for them. Too many guns are stolen out of cars because people don't secure them, don't lock the doors, and assume criminals won't break the window. Even if you car is boring, someone might rifle through it. Lock it up or take it with you. And frankly, part of this is the fault of the casinos who discourage people from carrying or bringing guns up to their rooms. The Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety is reported to have put Nevada in the lowest ranking of states for traffic safety laws. Local news outlets report the Silver State got a “red light” grade, however, the Advocates’ own Nevada page for 2019 shows “yellow light” status. Whatever. Traffic safety and collisions are my other passion, besides guns, but cars are often used as an example on how firearms should be treated. Let’s start with the Advocates’ suggestions to make Nevada roads safer:
None of these things will reduce traffic collisions, which are the primary and only cause of traffic deaths. Yes, I’m being facetious, but it’s true. Speeding doesn’t cause accidents as much as you might be led to believe; sure, if the road is wet and you close control that’s speed. Going to fast may cause you to be unable to negotiate a curve in dry weather, but in the report (because making speed the primary collision factor requires a lot of investigation and math) it’s easier to put “unsafe turning movement” for failing to make the curve without incident. Doing 90 MPH on I-15 from Primm to Vegas does nothing more than give a state trooper a hard-on, especially if you have California plates. What speed does do is make it more likely that you or someone else will die when you crash (or makes crashes more inevitable because greater speed equals less reaction time). With that tangent over, let’s look at some of the suggestions. These laws are predicated on enforcement: people don’t want to get tickets, so they will comply with the law or will engage in learned avoidance behavior after being cited. Many of these laws are easy to comply with and little burden on a journey, in contrast with doing, oh say doing the speed limit through boring stretches of Nevada. Seat belt laws and booster and car seat laws add safety; fewer injuries and ejections lower the fatality rate. They do not eliminate car accidents. Restrictions on minors have the potential to reduce deaths, but only in a statistically insignificant way, by reducing crashes as the result of inexperience. Raising the bar on who can drive and the time/manner can be compared to restricting who can and can’t carry a gun. While not a good analogy, kids still drive with their friends and when they aren’t supposed to, just like criminals still have access to guns. The Advocates’ suggests are a laundry list of reforms they want, not ones that Nevada will particularly benefit from. The “headlines” are misleading and make it sound like our state lacks basic laws like “don’t run the stop sign” or hasn’t criminalized drunk driving yet. The Advocates’ priorities read like anti-gun groups suggestions on gun laws; laws that would make gun ownership more restrictive and do little to curb crime. For instance:
Neither these gun laws or traffic laws target criminals or serial traffic offenders who break the law with little regard for the consequences. None of the suggestions in either category are meaningful reforms for safety. Instead, they are the wishes of self-appointed experts pushing a false narrative. Reducing traffic deaths starts with enforcement; and enforcement for safety, not revenue. Safety enforcement takes time and effort when parking with a radar gun/laser out the window is easy—too many local governments prioritize high statistics (numbers of citations) and revenue over safety. No one wants his citation number to go down because he’s spending more time on Boulder Highway busting jaywalkers. However, busting jaywalkers has more potential to save lives and reduce pedestrian collisions than popping someone for speed or cell phones at a red light. Likewise, gun control is easiest when you just pass a law to look tough on guns and keep the campaign donation checks coming from billionaires. Most guns laws are enforced by chance on criminals who are caught doing something else and the cop happens to come across the gun. Practically no one puts effort into hunting down prohibited persons who try to buy a gun and get their background checks enforced. Busting bad guys on gun crimes is a lot of work for little perceived return. If we want to live in a state that gets a “F” grade on gun laws, then so be it. If we want to ride around in truck beds without seatbelts, have a BAC of .10 for DUI, carry guns to school when dropping off our kids, or doing 80 MPH with a AR-15 in the backseat, we should be able to have that. So the Advocates’ and the Gifford/Bloomberg/Brady groups can shove their “suggestions” up their tailpipes. |
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