American Defense Enterprises

Assemblywoman Saldana, has put forth a somewhat ill-conceived piece of anti-firearm legislation that has the very real consequence of increasing the firearm accident rate.

Specifically, AB 2498 will make it more difficult to teach or learn about proper firearm usage by requiring that firearms schools validate a student’s eligibility to own a firearm BEFORE providing instruction.

Currently this bill is with the Assembly Public Safety Committee. I urge you to please contact the members of the committee and ask them to prevent this bill from moving forward.

Contact information for the members is available here. Please both call and write! Mailed letters carry significant impact. If all you have time for is an email, the NRA will distribute your email to all of the committee member for you as described here.

Here is a sample letter:

Dear Assemblyman ______,

I am petitioning you to, please, reject AB 2498 (“Firearms training: eligibility to possess firearms”), which is currently in the Assembly Public Safety Committee.

While I would support legislation that both reduced crime and increased safety, AB 2498 will do neither. Rather this bill will place an inordinate burden on those that do provide safety training and those that are seeking safety training. Therefore, the most likely effect will be severely reduced access to responsible training.

AB 2498 would require that certain training groups validate a student’s eligibility to own a firearm before providing firearm training. This bill presupposes that there is a significant number of convicted criminals (or entities that have otherwise lost their right to firearm ownership) that are actively seeking and paying for firearms training.

What this bill neglects is that the vast majority of people seeking firearms training are law abiding citizens seeking to become safer, more responsible gun owners. Many students are the spouses or children of gun owners that, while they do not intend to own a gun themselves, desire to learn about guns and gun safety. Many other students are people seeking classes to become proficient and safe BEFORE they purchase a gun.

These individuals should NOT be discouraged nor should access to training be made more difficult. We, as a society benefit from these people gaining this training.

In short, this law will have very little impact on criminals and a major impact on on law abiding citizens. Further, this bill is in clear conflict with other California legislation that clearly seeks to enhance firearm safety (e.g., the handgun safety certificate which includes a written test and a study booklet).

I reiterate my plea to please stop AB-2498

Thank you

Famous actor and activist Charlton Heston passed away yesterday in his Beverly Hills home with his wife of 64 years by his side.

Whether or not you agree with all of his beliefs, in many ways, he was a model for what a man should be.  For many people, rational thought has no place in activism — to be part of a cause means that you have to accept every half-reasoned belief that is part of the dogma for the cause; this was not true for Charlton Heston.  He looked at issues, intelligently, came to his own conclusions and stood by them.

He was against affirmative action, said “white pride” was as valid as “black pride” or any other type of pride,  yet he was far from a raciest.  Long before it was socially fashionable, he was actively rallying for racial equality.  Amongst other things, he picketed segregated theaters showing his movies and he accompanied Martin Luther King in his 1963 Civil Rights march in Washington DC.

While he is well known for his “from my cold dead hands” comment when he was president of the NRA and for his vocal criticism of CNN for news coverage he felt was undermining the 1991 Gulf War efforts, people forget that he was also against the Vietnam war and was a strong supporter of the Gun Control Act of 1968.

In a time where people all too frequently will just say “war is bad” or “guns are bad” or call somebody a homophobe because they believe “gay rights don’t need to extend beyond your rights or my rights”, Heston knew that such blanket generalizations and political correctness actually hampered real progress.

He wasn’t a “liberal” or a “conservative”, he looked at issues, he looked at his heart and he stood by his honest convictions –  people should be treated equally truly independent of race, some wars are just, some gun restrictions are ok, abortion is not ok, the media should be balanced, our environment should be preserved, people should avoid personal attacks when debating over issues, political correctness hurts progress, ….

Taking a lesson from Charlton Heston, I agree with some of his points of view, I disagree with others.  I respect all of of them — he has earned that respect.

Rest well.

Links of interest:
Wikipedia
MSNBC Coverage
Heston’s Speech: “Winning the Cultural War”

The LA Times web site shows various statistics and map information on the 197 homicides this year so far with a well done interactive searchable map. Check it out: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/crime/homicidemap/

Last week, an armed pilot on a commercial passenger aircraft accidentally discharged his firearm resulting in damage that grounded the plane for several days (Washington Times  story).  Thankfully nobody was hurt, unless you consider the pilot’s career.

The blame?  Most peoples’ opinion is that the TSA policy for armed pilots is dangerously flawed.  Specfically:

• Armed pilots must use a TSA approved holster (um… ok)
• Armed pilots must secure the gun whenever the cockpit door is opened (ok)
• The method of securing the gun involves placing a padlock through the holster and through trigger guard of the loaded firearm on a holster never designed for this operation (WHAT?).

A basic rule of firearm safety — don’t shove things in the trigger guard unless you are intending to discharge the gun!  There is a youtube video that has been posted that shows just how dangerous this procedure is.

The question to you:  This is not an isolated example of mandated unsafe practices.  What do you do when you are being required to engage in what you consider an unsafe practice.

In ADE I have encountered this routinely when training military and law enforcement personal…  SWAT teams that insist on stacking tightly together with rifle muzzles one bump from being pointed at a guy’s head.  We see sheriff deputies that insist on flaying their support hand fingers away from their body during a pistol presentation because that is how they were trained.  Inevitably, these actions end up with somebody hurt or dead.   In training, we stop them — zero tolerance.

But… What do you do…. When your supervisor insists that you put that padlock through the trigger guard of your loaded pistol against your firm knowledge of proper firearm safety?

When all is said and done, if your firearm ends up killing or injuring somebody it is you that will have to live with the consequences and the emotions.