I haven’t taken the time to read the actual text of the bill, but this announcement marks an interesting turnaround in disaster-related firearms policy.

Fairfax, VA- The National Rifle Association (NRA) and law-abiding gun owners scored a significant victory yesterday when the United States Congress acted to prohibit the confiscation of legal firearms from law-abiding citizens during states of emergency, barring practices conducted by officials in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. This action was included in the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations bill that passed both chambers of Congress. This bill now heads to President Bush for his expected signature.

I remember some years ago that CDC was pushing a rather odious idea known as the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act (which later came under the “Turning Point National Collaborative on Public Health Statute Modernization”).  The model legislation had been around for a while, and 9/11 gave them the excuse to push it under the guise of homeland security.  Here’s a brief summary of the key points of the act (emphasis added):

Under the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act, upon the declaration of a “public health emergency,” governors and public health officials would be empowered to:

1. Force individuals suspected of harboring an “infectious disease” to undergo medical examinations.
2. Track and share an individual’s personal health information, including genetic information.
3. Force persons to be vaccinated, treated, or quarantined for infectious diseases.
4. Mandate that all health care providers report all cases of persons who harbor any illness or health condition that may be caused by an epidemic or an infectious agent and might pose a “substantial risk” to a “significant number of people or cause a long-term disability.” (Note: Neither “substantial risk” nor “significant number” are defined in the draft.)
5. Force pharmacists to report any unusual or any increased prescription rates that may be caused by epidemic diseases.
6. Preempt existing state laws, rules and regulations, including those relating to privacy, medical licensure, and—this is key—property rights.
7. Control public and private property during a public health emergency, including pharmaceutical manufacturing plants, nursing homes, other health care facilities, and communications devices.
8. Mobilize all or any part of the “organized militia into service to the state to help enforce the state’s orders.”
9. Ration firearms, explosives, food, fuel and alcoholic beverages, among other commodities.
10. Impose fines and penalties to enforce their orders

Sometimes I really worry about “health professionals.”  So often when you scratch the surface of one you run into an unalloyed statist, and this proposal is just more of the same (it’s interesting to note that one of the key players in this nonsense was also deeply involved in the Hillarycare debacle). 

I can only hope that this new legislation overrides or invalidates any confiscation-related firearm provisions that might have been adopted in various states:

As of July 15, 2006, thirty-two (32) states have introduced a total of one-hundred and three (103) legislative bills or resolutions that are based upon or feature provisions related to the Articles or sections of the Turning Point Act. Of these bills, thirty-nine (39) have passed.

A lot of the provisions that have passed were related to reporting of diseases, so you’d have to check state-by-state for emergency firearms laws.  But that this passed is a positive step in the direction of invalidating odious laws.

Update.  The new law forbids the Federal government, or anyone working for or on behalf of (takes Federal funds), from confiscating firearms, etc.

‘‘SEC. 706. FIREARMS POLICIES.
‘‘(a) PROHIBITION ON CONFISCATION OF FIREARMS.—
No officer or employee of the United States (including any member of the uniformed services), or person operating pursuant to or under color of Federal law, or receiving Federal funds, or under control of any Federal official, or providing services to such an officer, employee, or other person, while acting in support of relief from a major disaster or emergency, may—
‘‘(1) temporarily or permanently seize, or authorize seizure of, any firearm the possession of which is not prohibited under Federal, State, or local law, other than for forfeiture in compliance with Federal law or as evidence in a criminal investigation;
‘‘(2) require registration of any firearm for which registration is not required by Federal, State, or local law;
‘‘(3) prohibit possession of any firearm, or promulgate any rule, regulation, or order prohibiting possession of any firearm, in any place or by any person where such possession is not otherwise prohibited by Federal, State, or local law; or
‘‘(4) prohibit the carrying of firearms by any person otherwise authorized to carry firearms under Federal, State, or local law, solely because such person is operating under the direction, control, or supervision of a Federal agency in support of relief from the major disaster or emergency.
‘‘(b) LIMITATION.—Nothing in this section shall be construed to prohibit any person in subsection (a) from requiring the temporary surrender of a firearm as a condition for entry into any mode of transportation used for rescue or evacuation during a major disaster or emergency, provided that such temporarily surrendered firearm is returned at the completion of such rescue or evacuation.”

The repeated references to “Federal, State, or local law” have me wondering, though.  Reading (3), it would appear that if a state passed a law in advance that gave the police power to confiscate firearms in an emergency, that it might just fall under the “not otherwise prohibited by Federal, State, or local law” phrasing.  I suppose the proof will be in whether we see anyone actually win a suit based on this law and the size of the verdict (it’s somewhat telling that no criminal liability appears to be attached to violation of the new statute).

I see this morning that Col Jeff Cooper has died.

World-renowned firearms expert Jeff Cooper, founder of the Gunsite firearms training center in Paulden, died Monday afternoon at his home near the training center.

Cooper, 86, had been battling several health problems in recent years.

The family plans a private burial ceremony and will announce a memorial ceremony at the National Rifle Association Whittington Center in New Mexico in the near future.

Cooper had been a member of the NRA Board of Directors.

Born on May 20, 1920, in Los Angeles, as John Dean Cooper, Cooper who always went by “Jeff,” earned a master’s degree in history and taught history.

He served in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II as well as in Southeast Asia and Korea.

In the 1960s, he organized a group called the Bear Valley Gunslingers and the Southwest Combat League. During the organizations’ shooting competitions at Big Bear, he formulated the Modern Technique of combat handgun shooting which incorporates a large-caliber semi-automatic pistol, a two handed Weaver stance, breath control and a surprise trigger break.

In 1976, he founded the American Pistol Institute, or Gunsite, at Paulden to teach those pistol techniques and later added a full curriculum on pistols, rifles and shotguns.

Since then, more than 18,000 students, including celebrities like Tom Selleck, law enforcement officers, military members from many nations and many civilians have graduated from courses there.

He was quite possibly one of the most, if not the most, influential gun writers and instructors of the modern era.  His writings on mindset influenced hundreds of other instructors and may be more important than any of his tactical or technical methods (although those must not be discounted).

It seems that animal rights terrorists have succeeded in getting a researcher to abandon his work.

Colleagues suggested that Ringach, who did not return e-mails seeking comment, was spooked by an attack on a colleague. In June, the Animal Liberation Front took credit for trying to put a Molotov cocktail on the doorstep of Lynn Fairbanks, another UCLA researcher who does experimentation on animals. The explosive was accidentally placed on the doorstep of Fairbanks’s elderly neighbor’s house, and did not detonate.

I can’t help but note that this is in California.  I wonder if these idiots have tried this in Texas?  If they ever get the idea to try, I’d suggest they (as well as their potential victims) keep section 9.42 of the Texas Penal Code in mind:

§ 9.42. DEADLY FORCE TO PROTECT PROPERTY.  A person is justified in using deadly force against another to protect land or tangible, movable property:
      (1)  if he would be justified in using force against the other under Section 9.41;  and
      (2)  when and to the degree he reasonably believes the deadly force is immediately necessary:
            (A)  to prevent the other’s imminent commission of arson, burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, theft during the nighttime, or criminal mischief during the nighttime;  …  (emphasis mine)

I wouldn’t weep for these idiots should one get his or her just deserts at the hands of a potential victim.

Via Instapundit.

I’ve been fiddling around with the Google Maps API for a couple of days.  I got the idea that I could use it to display my DFW gun show listings on a map. 

Displaying a basic Google Map via the API is pretty simple.  You just import their Javascript library (you have to register for an API key for it to work, though) and use the various objects that they provide.  For a simple map, all you need to do is create a <div> in the HTML body of the page and associate the map object with it by name.  The map will take its size and location from the div.  Once you declare the map, you just have to center it on a point (by Lat/Long) to get it to display (I chose a location in Irving, since that’s fairly central to the D/FW area).

The map itself (as noted above) uses Lat/Long to display points and to place markers.  They provide a Geocoder object that allows you to get back a Lat/Long from an address.  Since the Geocoder has to call back to Google to do the lookup, and that can take some time, the interface is asynchronous.  So you have to provide a callback function to get the “point” object back and do something with it.  This function will create a marker with an “InfoWindow” (the little pop-up balloon that Google Maps uses) that contains HTML. 

However, getting to the point where you can create the markers requires a bit of care.  My choice to put my map creation code into an “onload” event caused me some grief at first until it got through my thick skull that I needed to gather all the addresses (and their associated shows) while the page was being created, then do the actual marker creation in the function.  Part of this was caused by the fact that I’m working with EE, where you have to use one of their weblog entry loops to cycle through the entries.  What I ended up doing was to create an array of “address” entries such that each one contained a list of shows for that entry.  As the weblog loop runs, it generates Javascript code that adds new entries to the array.  Finally, once the page is loaded, my other function gets invoked and cycles through the array, invoking the Geocoder, which in turn (eventually) invokes the marker creation function.

Finally, once the last marker is actually created, the code recenters and resizes the map to fit the markers.

The result is something like this:

It’s kind of interesting to watch, since the markers just kind of “pop in” and then the thing recenters/resizes.  Here’s the link.

Kim du Toit reminds me of an issue that often drives my travel plans, or at least factors prominently in them.

In general, I try to avoid places where I am legally required to be disarmed.  In day-to-day life, this means not going into the Post Office, schools, bars, courthouses, sporting events, etc.  Fortunately, I can, for the most part, get by without frequenting these places.  This doesn’t mean I’ll never go, but I will think long and hard about it ahead of time and will plan for alternative (although less effective) methods of defense.

Mainly, though, the only reason I go is if I’m somehow required to.  If my work requires me to travel, I generally don’t have much choice about it, and it occasionally entails travel to GFW locations (New York state comes to mind).

Aside from work, though, I have absolutely no interest in going to Washington, DC or any of the other GFW locales.  It’d take a congressional subpoena to get me to Washington, DC.

My CHL will expire in July so I completed my renewal class today at The Shooting Gallery (the site has funky spacing in Firefox, just scroll down for page content).  Overall, it was a pretty good experience.  The only thing that I’d have done differently would have been to have reserved the range specifically for the group undergoing requalification.  We did our test on a live range with target shooters on either side of us.  This caused communications problems, since I couldn’t hear the range officer very well.  The other problem was that the I was the farthest left of the CHL group and there were two other shooters to my left, one of whom was firing some sort of hand cannon.  Every time he fired that damn thing I could feel it in my chest.  It also didn’t help that his shells kept flying over the divider and landing on my head.  Of course, par for the course, the bastard with the hand cannon packed up and left right after we finished.   

In trying to sign up for a renewal class, I came to the conclusion that a lot of gun people have missed the boat when it comes to being online.

I say this because I picked up several cards for instructors from a couple of different places.  All of them had websites and email addresses, so I thought I’d be able to contact them via email.  Of the ones I emailed, I got one bounce (mailbox full) and one response (unfortunately, they didn’t have a class soon enough).  The others never even acknowledged my email.  Eventually, I had to fall back on old-fashioned synchronous electronic remote vocal communication channels (i.e. the phone, which kind of defeats the purpose of having email in the first place).

Finally, I was a bit taken aback that there were people there who hadn’t fired a gun since their last range qualification.  Heck, one guy there hadn’t previously fired the gun he brought. 

Anyone out there have any experiences with Fiocchi ammo in .40 S&W?  I recall using a few boxes of Fiocchi in .45ACP without problems, but I haven’t shot a full case worth. 

Sportsman’s Guide has what looks like a fairly good deal on Fiocchi 170gr FMJ at $161.47/1000. 

Alternately, they’ve got Armscor 180gr FMJ for $165.97/1000, but I know even less about Armscor.

Finally, there’s the old standby for cheapness, Wolf, at $128.22 per 1000 rounds of 180gr FMJ.  Wolf has always worked for me, but it’s kind of dirty.  I’ve fired many thousands of rounds of it in my Glock and the cleanup after each session is a cast-iron bitch compared to PMC or S&B (not only powder fouling, but that damn lacquer).  However, I see that they’re now using a new polymer coating instead of the the lacquer, though. 

I’m looking for the least expensive, but clean and reliable, ammo that I can find for practice, since I tend to go through so much of it.  I may have to pay a visit to this weekend’s ELGS to see if anybody has any deals (and I could skip the shipping costs).

This news is most unfortunate for gunnies in the DFW area.

(Monday March 20) — Sunday afternoon alone, Dallas police had nearly 230 calls of people in danger.  Parts of Stemmons Freeway and the Dallas Tolllway were closed.  Heavy rain caused the roof to cave in at DFW Gun Range near Love Field.  Workers heard what they thought was thunder—turned out to be the roof collapsing which, in turn, caused an outside brick wall to give way.  About ten people inside were okay but one man outside had a fairly minor cut to the head.

At least no one was seriously injured (which is kind of a minor miracle, given that people were in the building at the time). 

WFAA TV mentioned this last night, and they had video, but they maddeningly didn’t give the name of the range.  They did, however, show the location and I knew that it had to be DFW Gun Range.  I wonder why they didn’t give the name? 

Update.  I guess I’m not watching the right stations.  Channel 11 has more details, including video.

Has anyone else noticed how the drive between Raton, NM and Texline, TX just seems to go on and on and on and on?  About the only thing that breaks the monotony is the occasional moment of sheer terror as you come over a hill to be confronted by some impatient asshole who is passing in a no-passing zone.

Anyhow, this wasn’t intended to be about U.S. 87.  Before leaving for Colorado I took a bit of time to refamiliarize myself with the carry laws in Colorado and New Mexico.  The last I had seen was that CO was honoring Texas CHLs, while NM did not (although they had car carry).  I was pleasantly surprised to learn that as of 11/30/2005 Texas CHLs were valid in New Mexico.  However, I was unpleasantly surprised to learn about the restrictions on carry in NM.  Specifically, their law forbids carrying firearms in any establishment that is licensed to “dispense” alcohol.  The current interpretation of that law is that this includes convenience stores.  So Texans beware.  I made it a point to avoid stopping for gas in New Mexico and only stopped at the McDonalds in Raton for a bathroom break and to get some coffee (fast food joints being the only place I could think of that wouldn’t risk running into the convenience store problem).

The other restriction that I find interesting is that they allow a person to conceal only one handgun at a time (i.e. no backup).  You can have as many as you want in your vehicle, though.  It’s just once you get out that the restriction applies.

On Tuesday we all piled into my truck and went off into a National Forest area to do some shooting. 

Here’s my niece, Elizabeth (12), with the Cricket .22:

And here’s Jessica (10) with the Cricket (even as small as it is, it’s still a little too big for her):

Finally, my sister gives my Para Carry a try:

(The angle of the photos makes it look like we were shooting downhill, but there was a small hill off to the right that we were using for a backstop.)

Yes, there is hope for the next generation.