Category Archives: Gary

Target addresses open carry…With predictable results

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We were fortunate enough to get two sides of this issue out there for debate with Terry Holcomb, CJ Grisham, and Charles Cotton. To their credit, the leaders of the Open Carry movement recognized that dragging private businesses into this issue has been counter productive. And Mr. Cotton made us aware that the TSRA and NRA have been making strides but, it’s not necessarily at a pace that keeps everyone happy. Still, I cannot help but think Target’s announcement yesterday is a predictable result of negative attention brought to them through earlier protests even if no one from Texas Carry, OCT, CATI, has officially gone into a Target store in months the damage was done and the media campaign started. Public opinion does matter folks. It matters a great deal. While this issue continues to be a point of division in the firearms community, we really, really need to find a way past it.

As you’ve likely seen in the media, there has been a debate about whether guests in communities that permit “open carry” should be allowed to bring firearms into Target stores. Our approach has always been to follow local laws, and of course, we will continue to do so. But starting today we will also respectfully request that guests not bring firearms to Target – even in communities where it is permitted by law.

via Target Addresses Firearms in Stores | A Bullseye View.

-GM

Chicago’s criminals are its biggest gun-control advocates

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Not that it’s much of a surprise but, criminals, especially rapists, robbers, and murderers, love gun-control. The idea of keeping guns out of the hands of citizens makes the criiminals’ lives that much easier. What’s funny is, in Chicago, they don’t even try to hide it. They are prominent members of the gun-control groups like Mr. Richard Hernandez. Hernandez is just the latest member of an anti-gun group out of Chicago to be busted for assault, rape, or murder. But, he’s no lightweight. he’s facing 36 counts for sexual assault and kidnapping!

richardhernandez

On the streets, Richard Hernandez was supposed to stop violence as an “interrupter” in the celebrated CeaseFire program.

But Chicago cops have another name for him: rapist.

Hernandez faces 36 counts charging him with sexually assaulting and kidnapping a teenage girl while he worked for the program, the Chicago Sun-Times has learned. He’s among at least nine employees of the anti-violence program to face serious criminal charges in recent years.

via Crime fighter and rapist? CeaseFire worker charged in attacks on teen – Chicago Sun-Times.

Yup. Rahm Emmanuel and the President have that city all sewn up! Great example of the wonderful benefits of some of the strictest firearms laws in the country.

-GM

Active Response Training article about weapon mounted lights

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Weapon mounted lights have become part of the “tactical Gucci” that many shooters want on their home defense pistol and even their EDC pistol of choice. And depending on agency policy, they are also increasingly common among patrol officers. At the same time, there have been a number of recent reports about officer-involved, negligent discharges/shootings with guns equipped with weapon mounted lights. The media doesn’t often dig quite that deep into negligent shootings with civilians as we always here, “the gun just went off.” We all know that’s not what really happened but, Greg Ellifritz of Active Response Training offers some very candid commentary on this issue.

Here’s the dirty little secret about police training…it rarely happens. If the common citizen knew how poorly trained the average cop is there would be complete anarchy. Most agencies have a wholly inadequate firearms training program. In talking to cops around my state as a firearms instructor for the last 15 years, I’ve found that most departments do very little firearms training. Shooting more than 100 rounds per year is unusual.

via Weapon Mounted Lights and a Dirty Little Police Secret | Active Response Training.

Ellifritz’s commentary can be applied to the average armed citizen as well. We all are quite ready to claim our right to keep and bear arms. And most of us do so specifically with self-defense in mind. And yet, so many of us carry guns as some sort of talisman to ward off the boogieman. Because we are familiar with firearms, many equate that familiarity to being competent enough to fight with them. The reality is something different but, since so few of us ever have or ever will get into a gunfight or defensive use of a handgun, people don’t know what they don’t know. As a CHL instructor (when we still were doing renewals) less than one in ten of my students had ever bothered to fire their handgun since their previous class, four to five years earlier. As Ellifritz points out, cops shooting more than 100 rounds a year is unusual. I find that civilians shooting more than 100 rounds in five years is unusual. Adding weapon mounted lights to this mix is not generally a recipe for success. You can read the rest of Ellifritz’s commentary at http://www.activeresponsetraining.net/weapon-mounted-lights-and-a-dirty-little-police-secret.

-GM

I Used To Come For Your Guns – Now I Support Your Right to Defend Yourself | TheBlaze.com

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An interesting post popped up on TheBlaze.com yesterday. It’s a post by a former NYPD officer who went from being a gun grabber to realizing the hypocrisy of the government for which he worked.

“Believing that ‘if you have a gun, the criminal will take it and use it on you,’ I was going to be a do-gooder. I was going to aggressively get those evil guns off the street. We were the cops. We were trained. We had guns, you didn’t need one. We were there to protect you.

How wrong I was.” – John Cardillo (NYPD Ret.) via I Used To Come For Your Guns – Now I Support Your Right to Defend Yourself | TheBlaze.com.

It’s worth a read. He’s a convert. May be there’s hope for New York City. We’ve long known that the state is largely held hostage by the likes of Bloomberg and the Cuomo family. But maybe, just maybe, the city itself isn’t quite as deserving of being wiped off the map like the crap stain it often seems to be.

-GM

In Memoriam: Louis Awerbuck

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None of us a GOTR had the opportunity to train with Louis Awerbuck directly. Still, I’ve been in the gun business long enough to have seen and experienced his influence dating back to a time before some of today’s popular “young guns” were twinkles in their daddy’s eyes.  If you look up old school gunman, you’ll find a picture of Awerbuck among others.

Awerbuck was widely respected throughout the industry. He immigrated here from South Africa where he’d served in the 1 Special Services Battalion of the South African Defence Force. He was the real deal. Not just someone who taught mechanics of shooting but, why we do what we do and when to do it. He was a Range Master at Gunsite and later started the Yavapi Firearms Academy.

His passing was untimely to say the least. We’ll leave it at, we respect the way he lived…On his terms to the end.

– GM