Archive for the 'firearms' Category

Simple solution to gun-free zones

Published at 7:30 pm on August 25, 2010 in Deep Thought and firearms.

Right now, anyone who owns private property can prohibit people from carrying guns on it. These are known as gun-free zones, and are often marked by signs such a gun inside a circle with a line from it, or a notice citing the particular state law that regulates gun-free zones.

I’ve always been conflicted over this. On one hand, I think you should be able to defend yourself wherever you are. On the other hand, I get that it’s the owner’s right to ban firearms, just as it’s their right to ban people wearing “fuck you” t-shirts or loudly preaching the merits of racial purity.

Today it struck me how to reconcile these two viewpoints, and it’s pretty darn simple: enable the banning of open carrying, leave concealed carrying alone.

To reuse my examples above, stores can’t ban someone from wearing a “fuck you” t-shirt underneath a hoodie, or ban someone from having a quite conversation with their Nazi buddy where no one else can hear them. Likewise, businesses should not be able to ban someone from carrying a firearm (or any other weapon) where it cannot be seen.

Simple, logical, awesome, now gimmie a frigg’n Nobel Prize or something.

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Side mount scope on a Marlin 80

Published at 8:39 pm on April 11, 2010 in Random Stuff and firearms.

Do a Google search for “side mount scope” and you get absolute shit results. “Marlin 80 side mount scope?” Forget about it. So to anybody looking for information, here you go.

Who this applies to: anyone who has a rifle with rail mounting holes on the side of the rifle rather then the top. Like my Marlin 80. You need a Weaver side mount (this page also has a complete list of applicable firearms) and a ring mount. I have the shorter one; the longer one is, I guess, for really long scopes.

You put the weaver side mount on — which is really just a riser with two screw holes in it — then onto that, you mount the rings. Then you stick the scope on and you’re done! And yes, the scope is in the same place as normal — when I was looking at the pictures of the parts, I couldn’t quite figure it out and was imagining the scope sticking out from the side or something. Happily, that is not the case.

One thing to note is that at least with my rifle, the scope was so low the bolt handle can interfere with the power adjustment knob on the scope if you’re not careful. One way to fix this might be to weld/glue/magik on a wee little bit of metal to the base of the bolt handle, which would remove the extra play it has and eliminate any possibility of the handle touching the scope.

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Global Gun Control? Probably not, but keep an eye out…

Published at 3:30 pm on March 22, 2010 in Deep Thought and firearms.

Uzi

The oft-maligned Uzi. It’s on my wishlist, even though I have no compelling reason to own one.

Over the past few months I’ve been seeing articles on the UN’s Small Arms Treaty pop up in various places. The articles warned of one world governments, global civilian disarmament, and how Hillary Clinton was the Antichrist.

In other words, I thought, your standard tinfoil hats. Until today, when I actually looked up the treaty, and realized that tinfoil hat types are similar in function to the canaries miners use to have to warn of poisonous gas.

As it turns out, the Small Arms Treaty has yet to be written. However, the group pushing it — Control Arms Campaign — has enough information to get me slightly worried…

Extracted from their FAQ: “…but it would most likely not affect national laws allowing private citizens to be properly licensed to own and lawfully use a firearm in cases where they have a compelling reason to use a firearm and can do so safely.”

No, they’re not taking your guns away. Providing, of course, you have a compelling reason to own them… and something tell me “resisting governmental tyranny” sure as hell won’t cut it.

Of course, things change. The damn treaty isn’t even written, and once it has been the US still needs to sign it — something far from guaranteed. I’m not opposed to the main ideas put forth in the treaty — that is, keeping small arms out the hands of wannabe dictators and warlords — though I do think it’ll do little good. The final version will probably be quite tame and do jack shit about anything, just like the rest of the UN.

But keep an eye out.

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