Hi Guys!
Show Files are up on the Podcast Page!
We had a fun show today:, some of the topics are listed below.
This makes me Angry!
The Michigan State Police Reports are available on line, the last page of the monthly report is posted below. You can download the complete Monthly report at the this link below
Monthly CPL Report as of May 1st 2017
Additionally they have an Annual report available at this location
2016 Annual Report Oct 2015 through September 2016
Do not Forget to download the file and sign up for the June 10th Women on Target Event
Be careful not to get complacent with you gun handling and safety!
Conservative Columnist Suspended for Defending the NRA
A conservative columnist who was suspended by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch after she defended the National Rifle Association from comparisons to ISIS fired back with her resignation and a series of targeted tweets.
The newspaper on Friday suspended Stacy Washington after a column entitled “Guns and the Media” disputed an anti-NRA article that argued since more Americans die from guns than from ISIS, the Second Amendment advocacy group is the greater danger.
“[W]hen has a member of the NRA ever decapitated, set on fire, tossed from a rooftop or otherwise terrorized another American? The linkage is not only rife with improper context; it is false on its face,” Washington wrote in her column, which also decried the lack of conservatives in U.S. newsrooms. “This failure to represent the opposing, especially conservative, view is an increasingly apparent deficit in the news reporting apparatus in our country.”
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch asserts that Washington was not suspended for the views expressed in her column, but for failing to disclose her promotional work and professional affiliation with the NRA. Washington has appeared several times as a co-host and commentator on “Cam & Company” on NRA TV and contributed to an NRA documentary in August 2016. However, she has never been paid by the NRA.
“Her active promotional activities and professional association with the National Rifle Association represented an unacceptable conflict of interest in her most recent column, which resulted in our suspension of her work,” Tod Robberson, the Post-Dispatch’s editorial page editor, wrote in a response to Washington’s suspension and quitting.
Robberson added: “Columnists are expected to fully disclose conflicts of interest when writing about topics where such a conflict might arise. We apply this standard regardless of the lobbying or advocacy group being written about in a column.”
Following her suspension last Friday, Washington mounted a Twitter broadside at her Post-Dispatch editors, insisting she is not a paid “shill” for the NRA and noting the irony of a column calling out the lack of conservatives in the mainstream media getting a conservative suspended from a mainstream newspaper.
“What they’re losing, according to their own readers, is the juxtaposition between what their current editorial side is putting out, which is coming from the Democratic side, from the left, and then someone on the right,” Washington told the Riverfront Times.
“I’m not ashamed that I’m an NRA supporter, a Bible-thumper, that I love Jesus Christ. I’m all the way out there. There’s nothing else that I can do to articulate my perspective any more clearly on where I stand.”
The Islamic State magazine that has published tutorials on vehicle, knife and arson attacks as a tool of lone jihad is now encouraging terrorists to acquire guns at shows and shops and take hostages not for ransom but “to create as much carnage and terror as one possibly can.”
The latest issue of Rumiyah magazine, distributed online in 10 languages including English, offers another installment of the “Just Terror Tactics” series, praising lone jihadists including U.S. terrorists who have “set heroic examples with their operations.”
The objective of taking hostages, would-be jihadists are told, is “not to hold large numbers of the kuffar hostage in order to negotiate one’s demands,” but to sow terror with “the language of force, the language of killing, stabbing and slitting throats, chopping off heads, flattening them under trucks, and burning them alive, until they give the jizyah [tax] while they are in a state of humiliation.”
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“The scenario for such an attack is that one assaults a busy, public, and enclosed location and rounds up the kuffar [disbelievers] who are present. Having gained control over the victims, one should then proceed to slaughter as many of them as he possibly can before the initial police response, as was outstandingly demonstrated by the mujahidin who carried out the Bataclan theatre massacre during the course of the blessed Paris raid,” the article instructs.
Orlando nightclub shooter Omar Mateen “superbly demonstrated this scenario” of taking hostages simply to delay police while killing them “when, having armed himself with an assault rifle and a handgun, he single-handedly slaughtered 49 sodomites.”
Jihadists are told that Europeans should try to acquire guns in conflict zones or from underground dealers, and “much like its Crusader European counterparts, the UK faces a gun control dilemma as it feebly attempts to fend off the influx of weapons, but to no avail” so attackers are advised to find guns “readily available for purchase on the streets of Britain.”
In the United States, “anything from a single-shot shotgun all the way up to a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle can be purchased at showrooms or through online sales – by way of private dealers – with no background checks, and without requiring either an ID or a gun license,” ISIS states. “And with approximately 5,000 gun shows taking place annually within the United States, the acquisition of firearms becomes a very easy matter.”
They include a picture of an unidentified gun show with the caption, “Gun conventions represent an easier means of arming oneself for an attack.”
Jihadists are advised to refrain from casually asking people where they can get guns, lest they end up “bringing upon oneself unnecessary suspicion.”
Another suggestion for gun acquisition in the ISIS article is staging a ram-and-grab burglary driving a car into a gun shop when it’s closed.
Different types of airguns have different uses, but like firearms at the end of the day they’re all pretty fun. (Photo: Andy C)
I stumbled into ownership of some airguns for the first time since I was a child about a year ago. They were given to me by a family member who knew about my shooting hobby and was getting rid of them. They spent some time sitting in cases before I figured if they were going to occupy space in my house, they’d better pull some weight. I loaded up a case of nothing but airguns and went to my usual shooting range for a decidedly quieter day of shooting, not sure what to expect.
Today I am a bit of an airgun enthusiast, though hardly an expert. I’ve learned to leverage these guns to benefit my firearms shooting and as their own type of tool. There’s a few practical benefits I’ll describe here and hopefully a few appeal to you. I’d like to convince every firearm owner that at least one quality airgun belongs in their safe.
Low cost practice
Everybody knows that ammunition is costly, and that cost is one of the main reasons people don’t practice shooting. Even ‘inexpensive’ practice ammunition, when used at a moderate rate, quickly chews holes through your budget. This doesn’t even factor in the cost of range memberships and trips. While dry fire practice can provide an ultra-cheap and effective means to sharpen your skills without going broke, it can’t simulate putting ammunition into a target.
Airguns come into play here in providing an extremely cheap way to practice shooting, with the ability to simulate most disciplines you need to practice in. Whether you’re a precision rifle enthusiast, IPSC pistoleer, or want to brush up your self-defense abilities, there’s likely an airgun that can help with it.
I do a lot of high-volume handgun shooting for ICORE, IDPA and Bullseye. The cost of ammunition adds up over time, even with handloading, when spending 200 rounds a week trying to improve my skills with various guns and disciplines. Two hundred rounds a week handloaded comes out to about $30, plus the time spent on the handloading! The same cost in firing one of my airguns to simulate shooting a revolver is a measly $3.20—next to nothing. It’s not the same, of course, but it’s still valuable, giving you good immediate feedback on your trigger control unlike dry fire, where you have to be strictly self-analyzing.
Then, consider that I can practice the airguns in my own home and it becomes a slam drunk. I have a simple pellet trap setup in my garage, and by standing on the other end of the room, I can shoot at a distance of 7 yards. That’s not very far, but by scaling the target down and considering the airgun I’m using is far less accurate than the revolver I shoot in competition, I’m still getting some quality trigger time. And I can do it without the noise, cost, time or hassle of packing up to go to my range. It allows for very consistent practice sessions, and by augmenting a weekly live fire session with two or three airgun sessions and daily (as much as possible) dry fire, I’m getting better scores and more practice for less cost than when I used to go to the range and fire more ammo.
From this perspective, over the long haul the airgun and its consumables are a fantastic investment. If you go through four boxes of 9mm practice ammo a week, it totals up to $30 using the cheapest ammo I can find. By cutting that in half, you’ll have enough to pay for a very good replica airgun and lots of consumables in a month, allowing you to practice more frequently and effectively spend less.
There are some downsides to airgun practice—obviously, the lack of recoil is the biggest shortcoming, but also shotgunners are left out in the cold for the most part. I’ve never seen a convincing airgun version of a shotgun that would be useful for trapshooters or winged game hunters.
But for the rest of us looking for affordable practice tools, airguns can be hard to beat.
Useful as standalone tools
While my personal focus on airguns is as firearm training tools, they have lots of uses independent of their louder brethren as well. The .22 cartridges are great pest control tools, but sometimes even they’re too much gun, or there are additional considerations. Noise is a big one. Not having to explain to the police you were just protecting your garden from furry invaders is another. In these instances, there’s a wide range of well-built and effective airguns.
There’s endless designs for simple pellet and BB traps online, so you can make one tailored to your needs. (Photo: Andy C)
For pest control in particular, I consider an adequately-powerful airgun more useful than most firearms. Various rodents and winged vermin are ideal targets for hunting pellet guns, and the pellet causes far less disturbance to a garden or fence than any bullet. For legal considerations it’s also easier in some places to keep a pellet gun handy for when a rogue animal is trying to claw its way into your attic.
In the hunting realm, airguns have also made huge leaps, in particular with the pre-charged pneumatic guns. These can put out tremendous foot pounds of pressure, and some highly specialized airguns are being used to take down deer-sized animals. For those of us uninterested in such a pricey investment, much cheaper airguns can serve you well afield when hunting small game like grouse or squirrels.
An essential tool for preppers
For people interested in self-reliance beyond the 72-hour kit, I think an airgun is a top-tier addition to any well-stocked emergency supply stash, perhaps even before actual firearms (though not in place of). While not ideal for self-defense, in a pinch I’d take it over nothing and for most practical food gathering tasks in an emergency situation, the low profile and meat-sparing characteristics of a quality hunting airgun are huge priorities.
Reading accounts of survivors of nightmarish scenarios like the Siege of Sarajevo or the financial collapse of Argentina, most “hunting” quickly boils down to taking care of small game as quietly as possible. Next to trapping, an airgun is the ideal tool in these situations. Additionally, for those living with more oppressive governments, the lowly airgun is unlikely to be registered, confiscated, or cause trouble otherwise with authorities in stressful situations.
The perfect introduction to sport shooting
Hopefully you’ve done your part to try and introduce new shooters to our hobby, and maybe managed to convert some people into lifelong enthusiasts. For showing newbies the ropes, the airgun is the ultimate tool. It requires all the same fundamentals, particularly in safe handling, but helps mitigate some of the concerns a new shooter might have: there’s no recoil, no loud noise, and it generally provides a very soft introduction to shooting. If you’d like to introduce somebody to shooting but they seem a bit skittish about it, nothing will let you ease them in better than popping some cans with a pellet rifle.
This is doubly true with children, who can be safely given a low-velocity pellet gun at a relatively young age to show them the fundamentals without breaking the bank or risking putting them off with recoil and noise. If you have children, do yourself a favor and create some quality time showing your children to shoot safely with a low-powered airgun. It’s not much trouble to set up an indoor range and it will really ease them into it.
Conclusions
Airguns have more to offer to firearms enthusiasts than you might think. I have to admit they weren’t on my radar before I ended up in possession of a few, but they’ve become integral parts of my firearm training and general shooting hobby time. If I could go back and get into guns again from the ground up, one of the first purchases I would have made would have been a quality air pistol. I have a hard time thinking of any item in my gun safe that’s provided a better return on investment.
For training, hunting, and just recreational shooting, don’t overlook the humble airgun. They fit seamlessly into the hobby for just about anybody.