One of the areas where I think Texas is overly restrictive with regards to handguns is in vehicles.  Texas law says that you can’t have a handgun “on or about your person”¹ unless you have a Concealed Handgun License.  A number of states (Colorado and New Mexico come immediately to mind) have laws allowing you to carry a handgun in your car without a license. 

I’d like to see Texas go that way as well.  A lot of people I have encountered don’t really know that this isn’t already the law, so they’re carrying guns in their cars/trucks anyway.  In some states, they actually accomplish this by defining your automobile as an extension of your home.  That sounds reasonable to me.  Further, given that you’re more vulnerable in your car than your home, it makes sense to make self-defense as simple as possible. 

¹  There are a few exceptions to this, such as when “travelling” (which isn’t defined in the law, so it’s up the courts to decide if you’re really travelling), when on the way to or from the range or somewhere else it’s legal to have/use the handgun.  However, it should be noted that you’re supposed to go directly to/from those locations, otherwise you might be subject to arrest if found with a handgun (carrying a handgun without a license is a Class A misdemeanor).

One of the more annoying facets of Texas law is the way alcohol is treated.  In particular, the one that I find onerous is the restriction on concealed carry in any place that makes more than 51% of its revenue from the sale of alcohol.  Whenever I go out with people I tend to be the designated driver.  I’m just not fond of drinking in public as I don’t like being out of control.  Further, being intoxicated is an automatic “condition white” situation.  I just don’t want to go there.

Given that criminals tend to be “full service” types (i.e. they like to go where the easy targets are), it’s no surprise to me that Dallas has been dealing with a crime problem in Lower Greenville and Deep Ellum.  People coming out of clubs usually have a little money, they’re usually unaware of their surroundings, and they’re unarmed if they’re following the law.  This makes for a perfect situation which stick-up artists can take advantage of. 

My thought is that we already have a statute that makes it illegal to carry a concealed weapon if you’re intoxicated.  Let’s repeal the 51% prohibition on concealed carry and let people take care of themselves when they leave the club.

We’re constantly admonished to designate a driver.  Why not designate a carrier as well?  Perhaps after a few stick-up artists are shot the others will think twice before flocking to the area.

A while back I took some time to look at Ohio’s new concealed carry law (along with several other states’ laws) and discovered a provision in the law that pretty much guts the concept of concealed carry and makes vehicles potential attack-prone gun free zones (or invites “panic” on the part of GFWs).  Here’s what I said at the time:

But given what I’ve been reading of the law, the CCW law they just got has a huge stinking problem.  Specifically, you can’t carry on or about your person in a “motor vehicle”, even if you have a permit, unless the handgun is “in plain sight on the person’s person or it is securely encased by being stored in a closed, locked glove compartment or in a case that is in plain sight and that is locked.”  Why does this provision sound like it was added by some GFW police chief somewhere?  What’s the damn point of having a concealed handgun if you have to expose it everytime you get into a car (or worse, lock it up)?

In the most recent issue of Gun Week I came across an article about someone who is suing the state over this provision.

Parts of Ohio’s new concealed carry law are unconstitutional and were written by “idiots,” contends a gun-rights advocate who sued the state on June 30, according to The Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Stephen Miller, a lawyer and handgun instructor from Independence, sued in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, asking a judge to strike down the law’s language governing how guns may be carried in vehicles.

The law requires that when people licensed to carry concealed firearms get into a vehicle, they lock their guns in the glove compartment or a box, or wear them holstered “in plain sight.” But the law doesn’t define “plain sight.”

…

Hanson, who lobbied for the law, said the State Highway Patrol wrote the language in question. Miller wants the “plain view” language stricken so people in vehicles “would be able to carry in their cars the way the license indicates: concealed.”

It would appear that I was close when I wrote about the “GFW police chief.”  It seems odd that they went to such lengths concerning carry in a vehicle.  All they had to do was ask one of the many states that have concealed carry about how to handle this. 

It occurred to me after reading the article that the Ohio State Highway Patrol may have actually made their jobs harder by insisting on this provision.  Let’s ignore the implicit (and wrong) assumption that concealed permit holders are lawless criminals for a bit and just consider the tactical situation.  If the permit holder has chosen to use the “plain sight” option, you now have a firearm that is in the open and quickly accessible.  If permit holders are the lawless trigger-happy criminals that the Highway Patrol assumes them to be, this just means that they can more quickly get the drop on the trooper when he approaches the vehicle.  One of the tactical problems with concealed carry is that it can hinder ready accessibility to the weapon.  A concealed weapon would likely take longer to deploy and would afford the trooper more time to react. 

Of course all of this is based on the GFW assumption that everyone who gets a concealed carry permit is a trigger-happy bloodthirsty criminal just waiting for a chance to “waste somebody” (blood in the streets at every fender bender, etc).  Real world experience has shown that people who jump through all the hoops to get a carry permit are far more law-abiding that the population in general.  Perhaps the Ohio State Highway Patrol should talk to some Texas State Troopers (and not the political hacks who run the DPS, but real patrolmen), who deal with concealed handguns on a daily basis and manage to do so in a professional and respectful way (or at least that’s been my experience and that of a lot of other Texas CHL holders).

I had the opportunity on Friday to introduce another new person to the world of shooting.  A friend of mine at work had a programmer working on his project who is here from Brazil.  She had never been shooting before and wanted to see what it was like. 

We met at Bass Pro on Friday evening and after getting setup in the range, I gave her the basic lecture on the three rules and then showed her the basic operation of the S&W 22s.  I set the target pretty close for the initial shots, and she took to it pretty quickly and was soon putting most of her shots in the 10-ring.  After she’d gotten comfortable with the .22 she wanted to try something a little bigger, so I let her try the Taurus 92 (she picked this one because it was made in Brazil ).  While she put the shot in the bottom of the 10-ring, she decided that it had too much recoil for her (I also think she was uncomforable with it because it’s a double-stack and she had very small hands).  But overall, she really enjoyed the experience.

Afterwards we all went to dinner at Big Buck’s.  We got to talking a bit about guns and guns laws in general, since she mentioned that Brazil’s laws were so restrictive.  It turns out that they just made them worse.

Now, under a new law hailed by supporters as the most sweeping gun-control measure in South America, only Brazilians with valid reasons — police and security guards, for example — are allowed to carry firearms in public.

Ordinary citizens who own guns either must register their weapons, turn them in or face jail time.

…

The new law requires background checks for prospective buyers, raises the legal age for gun ownership from 21 to 25, demands that all guns be registered and imposes prison sentences of up to four years for violators.

One of the things that she told us is that almost everyone there has a gun, but they don’t know how to use them, since the restrictions keep them from actually getting out and practicing.  In general, the problems in Brazil seem to be more related to drug gangs and other criminals than to people owning guns.  They have trouble with crime in general there, with criminals kidnapping people to drain their ATM accounts and with carjackings.  She mentioned on seeing my Avalanche that a vehicle like that in Brazil would make me a target for criminals, where it’s a pretty common vehicle here. 

Of course, the fact that gangs will have guns regardless of the law seems to be lost on the gun-grabbers.  Perhaps if a few of the targets were armed (and knew how to use their guns) and killed a few gang members these problems would start to take care of themselves.  Maybe what Brazil really needs is a Louisana carjacker law.

Now that I’m getting the hang of Expression Engine, it didn’t take me very long to convert my gun show listings to an EE weblog. It took a little hacking of the EE code itself, because it doesn’t display future entries by default. However, the support forums and knowledge weblog explained what to do.

Now, each show is a weblog entry whose entry date is the date of the show. The table of shows on the main page is generated from the weblog entries, displayed in ascending order. In addition to being automatically generated (in the past I had to hand edit the HTML every time the page changed), I now allow comments on each show (although they’re moderated to prevent any spam nonsense).

To prevent anyone who linked to my old page from being broken, I installed a custom 404 handler that uses PHP to look at the requested URL and determines where to send the user. Here’s what that code looks like, in case anyone is interested in doing something similar.

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I’ve been tinkering with using an Expression Engine weblog to manage my gun collection pages.  I’ve gotten it to the point where it’s now usable.  It can be accessed at “http://www.aubreyturner.org/armory” (at least for the time being).  I’ve got a few tweaks I want to make to the templates and I need to figure out how I’m going to handle the current links before I move the new page into the current location.

One feature that I’ve added to the new collection weblog is that comments are accepted.  From time to time I’d get a question via email about part of my collection.  If people have questions now they can ask them in the comments and I can respond there.  This will also capture the answer for any people who read the page later.  However, to prevent any shenanigans, I’ve turned on comment moderation.  I’ll receive the comment in email and can then approve or delete it from the control panel.

I’ve been bad of late in failing to keep my ammo locker stocked up.  I was down to only two or three hundred rounds in each of my most commonly used calibers, and I’d practically run out of .22LR (scandalous, I know).

I put together a shopping list of what I needed in preparation for a trip to Cheaper Than Dirt over the weekend.  That list really brought it home to me the proliferation of calibers in my safe.  When I originally started buying guns it was for self-defense and I vowed to keep it simple and try to keep it down to a couple of calibers.  Then I started buying guns just because I took a liking to them.  Well, that blew my original idea of just having a couple of calibers all to hell. 

So I went with my friend Rodney over to Cheaper Than Dirt and bought a case of .45ACP, a case of 9mm, 500 rds of .380ACP, 500 rds of .357Mag, 500 rds of .38Spl, two bricks (1000 rds each) of .22LR, and 100 rds of .30Cal Carbine.  All told it was just a hair over $600.  It’s a definite shock to the system when you buy all of it at once.  It’s a lot easier when you do it a little at a time (a case here, a few boxes there, etc).

NRA News will start broadcasting on Sirius satellite radio today.  So far their broadcast consists of a talk show called “Cam and Company”, with Cam Edwards.  They also do regular news reports, although they focus on news related to guns, gun legislation, and self-defense.

I wish they’d get on XM, which would give me the excuse to get that Skyfi radio for home use (I’m already an XM subscriber, so I get a discount on a second radio, as opposed to paying another $12.00/month for Sirius).  But for now I can listen online via the website. 

Update: Thanks to Kevin for pointing out Cam Edwards’ weblog in the comments.

Another police department is replacing its 9mm handguns with .40-caliber Sigs.

Village police stepped into the cutting edge of law enforcement this week with $183,700 in equipment upgrades approved by trustees.

The Village Board voted 4-0 Tuesday with two trustees absent to install digital video cameras in 20 police cars and replace the department’s 9mm handguns with .40-caliber pistols.

…

Lansing police purchased the 9mm handguns 17 years ago, “when they were the best thing going,” he said. Since then, the FBI, Illinois State Police and U.S. Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms have switched to .40-caliber guns, officials said.

“The .40-caliber is an excellent choice, because you’re dealing with larger, heavier bullets,” Hoekstra said. “They’re very close to the 9mm as far as velocity, but they have more momentum.”

A lot of police forces went to 9mm all at once because it was the latest buzz in the industry at the time, even if it wasn’t the best decision to have been made.  That having been said, I wouldn’t hesitate to carry a 9mm (in fact I’ve done so).  As someone so wisely said, “The first rule of gunfighting is to have a gun.”  Whatever gun you have certainly beats the one you didn’t bring.  Still, bigger is better in terms of administering the Maximum Lifetime High-Speed Lead Allowance to a goblin.

Link via NRA News.com.

I bought my Kimber Ultra CDP II just about two years ago as a primary carry piece.  At the time I just didn’t like any of the options in my “arsenal” for carry.  The Glock 19 was a little too big and heavy.  The Sig P232, while the right size, is a .380ACP which didn’t inspire confidence, even with Hydrashoks.  The Kel-Tec P11 was both small and light, but I always had a bit of nagging doubt about trusting a $230 gun. 

Anyhow, the Kimber seemed to be the answer to all of my needs.  It was small, light, concealable, and packed a respectable punch.  I promptly put 500 rounds through it to verify its reliablity.  I learned that it only likes certain brands of ammo, but when fed with that ammo using good magazines that it was very reliable.  In order to maintain proficiency with it my usual range routine was to start off the session with one box of .45 through the Kimber, followed by firing whatever other guns I had brought, and finishing up with another box of .45 in the Kimber.  I try to get to the range every week, although there have been a number of times where I went two or three weeks between sessions.  Because of this it’s hard for me to exactly estimate how many rounds I fired through the Kimber.  If I had gone every week for two years, it would be over 10,000 rounds.  My best estimate, though, given the missed weeks, would be somewhere over 8,000 rounds.

When I bought the Kimber I was sure to read the manual and learn all of its controls and how to disassemble it.  There was also this interesting chart on Page 7 concerning spring replacement.  I remarked that it seemed to be a pretty short replacement cycle for the springs, but then promptly forgot about it.  The replacement cycle is every 1800 rounds for the recoil spring, every 5000 rounds for the firing pin spring, and every 5000 rounds for the mainspring.  Given this, it’s kind of surprising that the recoil spring hadn’t broken a long time ago.  It finally failed the Friday before my trip to Colorado, causing me to rely on the KelTec for the trip, as it was the most concealable (at least with the holsters I currently own; the Glock and Sig tend to print more as they ride kind of high—I need to find a nice low-rider IWB rig for the Sig).

This is just a friendly reminder for all you gun owners to read your manuals and replace your springs if you have been neglecting it like I did.  In the meantime, this has pointed out to me the need to have a high-quality .45 backup (or perhaps a .357 snubby).  Something small, light, trustworthy, and highly concealable.  I’m going to go to the Dallas Market Hall gun show this weekend and take a look at some of the small .45s and lightweight .357s.  I’ve had my eye on the Para Carry as well as the Springfield Ultra Compact as good small .45s.  Para also has a new double-stack .45 called the Warthog which might be promising.  The downside is that they’re all in the $900 range (although I’d hope to get a better deal at a gun show).  On the revolver side, perhaps something like this Taurus might do the trick.  What will ultimately decide it will be how it feels in the hand and how concealable it seems.