A lady of my acquaintance, who is a certified left coaster, triumphantly brought me a copy of a recent Newsweek magazine article celebrating the fact that California now has the strongest anti-gun laws in the country. In this article, California was favorably compared to Mississippi which was castigated as having the weakest anti-gun laws. This nice lady, a retired school teacher, was happily convinced that she was living in the safest of all states. She pointed out to me that the anti-gun o...

Don’t I Get CME Credit for my NRA Training?  I'm kind of not joking. I'm putting in many educational hours toward obtaining my National Rifle Association Basic Pistol Instructor Certification. We're talking a couple of hundred dollars investment, and about 20 hours of educational activity. This is a significant investment of my time and treasure in order to learn the skills needed to teach people how to safely use firearms. (more…)

Due process, the Constitutional protection against government imposing its unconstrained will on individuals, is guaranteed in the Fifth Amendment.  But in Second Amendment issues, it is more the exceptions that remind us of the rule. We’ve discussed the lack of due process in psychiatric record reporting and firearm confiscation before. (See Gun Violence Restraining Orders, Is It Mental Illness or Is It Guns? and Violence and Mental Illness: Treatment Is Good!)  Here is the latest exampl...

The National Firearms Act of 1934 (NFA) was primarily a response to Prohibition era gang violence. It mandated the registration of all suppressors, machine guns, short-barreled shotguns and rifles, and imposed a lengthy approval process and added enormous expense for these devices.  The $200 tax on manufacturing and transferring the covered items was exorbitant at the time, roughly $3,500 in today’s money. (more…)

Discussing firearms in public is fraught with peril. It is a subject I often tread carefully around until I know my audience. I have lost contact with friends and even family over such discussions. I have had all kinds of ugly accusations thrown at me because I defend my Second Amendment rights—such as "Fine, more dead kids, just so you can have your toys!" Thus, unless I know I am among like-minded friends, discussing the topic gives me heartburn. Nonetheless, here I go again. (m...

The anti-firearm activist and researcher Bindu Kalesan made headlines recently with her latest advocacy piece, which DRGO’s Publication Review Team gutted in Tuesday’s blog entry.  We take this opportunity to show how Kalesan is just another practitioner of a long tradition of scientific disgrace—abusing scientific credentials to advance a culture war against gun owners. And this is how the public health gun prohibition movement’s future is in doubt under our new political leadership. (more...

[Editor: With this article, we introduce the work of our Publication Review team of medical scientists and statisticians who add their expertise to countering the 'political' science endemic to anti-gun 'research'.] We have blogged about Boston University anti-gun advocacy researcher Bindu Kalesan’s commitment to attacking the very culture of American gun owners.  Now, with five coauthors and a little help from her friends at Michael Bloomberg’s billionaire-fueled gun control group Ever...

(from: learnbonds.com)[Editor: Snopes.com appears to be branching out from objective myth busting to politicized myth creation. We read Dr. Mauser's explanation on Tuesday. This is the so far unanswered request for correction he sent two weeks ago.] Barbara & David Mikkelson                                                                        Snopes.com Dear Mr. and Mrs. Mikkelson: I am writing to request that Snopes.com retract “Harvard Flaw Review,” by Kim LaCapria. This review makes...