OK. That’s it. Enough is enough.

So Barack Obama wants to place “a heartbeat away from the Presidency” the guy who said circa 1993, “Banning firearms is an idea whose time has come”?

That’s it. I’m throwing my hat in the ring.

Actually, the above is yet another manifestation of my significant other’s evil sense of humor. This neat little Internet ditty comes from: http://www.thelopezfamilyonline.com/aol4pres.php

Bless those people for giving us some humor to share with our friends and family. Just go to the link, plug in the name of your chosen victim/candidate (as the cruel significant other did to me, sniff sniff), and email it right to ‘em.

I have a feeling that as the campaign goes on, we’ll need more of this welcome light-heartedness to keep us going.

There’s something yellow and vaguely familiar outside. It’s…it’s…sunshine! Yes, I remember now.

Tropical Storm Fay didn’t do much damage where I live. Bunch of branches down on my property, a tree down on my neighbor’s, some flood damage elsewhere in the area. The phrase I keep hearing is, “We dodged the bullet.”

That’s technically incorrect. We didn’t dodge nothin’. Basically, we were awfully lucky and it just missed. The worst part of the storm unexpectedly veered away from this particular county. Others were not so lucky: Fay killed a dozen or so people in the Caribbean and seven to eleven in Florida, depending on which source you believe. One city to the east of us saw 70,000 people without power and dealt with a lot of severe flooding, and another 12,000 people were without electricity in a community about equidistant to the west. And, as Dan predicted in a letter to this blog, there were indeed alligators in the streets, at least in Melbourne, Florida according to reports.

Folks are accusing the Governor and other officials of having overreacted in opening shelters, evacuating some communities, and all the rest. It’s easy to call it overreaction, after it’s over. However, the folks who needed evacuation and shelter were damn glad it was there, and that help appeared Johnny-on-the-spot when they needed it.

After something like this, you feel a little like the guy who got a terminal cancer diagnosis and feverishly put his affairs in order. Then the doctor calls and says, “We got your diagnosis wrong and you’re fine.” “What,” shouts the patient, “I went through all that for nothing!?!?”

It’s something on which we need to maintain perspective. I see it as having an excellent drill to prepare for the next such crisis that does hit full force. At my place, the power only went out briefly and intermittently. Didn’t mean a generator ain’t worth its price for peace of mind. I didn’t get a flat this week, either, but it doesn’t mean I’m gonna throw the spare tires and the jacks out of the vehicles.

Today, we just relaxed and looked at the bright side. It’s helped the drought conditions. The waters have receded quickly here. Last night, on the way to the Policeman’s Ball in the last of the driving rain (yes, policemen do have balls), we noticed that the water was up to Smokey Bear’s knees, on the fire danger sign, and look how low it is already.

So here I am in North Florida right now, battening down the hatches as Tropical Storm Fay makes her approach. According to the Weather Service predictions, the small community where I am is right in Fay’s crosshairs. They’re speculating that she might have achieved Hurricane status by the time she arrives.

Most folks are preparing as usual. The last of these storms that hit this part of the state was more of an adventure than a disaster for me and those I hang with. Generators, food, chainsaws et al were in place and ready to go. They are this time, too.

Some folks overlook less common preparations until it’s too late. Have extra cash and keep it on your person. I like it folded into secure ZipLoc bags in a money belt. When power goes out, so do credit card machines, and many of today’s generation of moneychangers don’t seem to know how to process a charge card other than electronically. Stock up on bleach. Yes, it can be used to purify water in a pinch (retch!) but mainly, there are cleanup issues. Floods tend to accompany hurricanes, and floods float sewage everywhere. Friends who were in New Orleans for weeks after Katrina reported sometimes being chest-high in water that was brown with feces. Bleach is a most effective field decontaminant. Stock up on pre-moistened towelettes, a.k.a. “baby wipes.” They’ll seem worth their weight in gold when the water stops running.

My corner of the Backwoods Home bailiwick is the gun room. When emergency services are stretched to the breaking point by natural disaster, the Bad Guys know they are more likely to be able to literally get away with murder. Ask Miamians about the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew, or New Orleans survivors about what happened after Katrina. In such situations, I would be keeping a semiautomatic .223 carbine close to hand at all times. Where I’m posting from right now, that sort of thing is low on my list of concerns. In time of disaster, the back-country folks here come out in force, but to help others, not to plunder.

Greater concerns are suddenly-homeless dogs that go desperately feral…large livestock maddened by terror sufficiently to attack humans after escaping from blown-down fencing…and, here, venomous water moccasins that get very temperamental when flood waters move them unwillingly from their swamp to your front yard.

Every piece of equipment you deploy is going to face a ruinous hostile weather environment. My fancier sporting guns with their deep blue finishes and Circassian walnut stocks will stay in their (dessicant-filled) gun safes. On my hip will be a Glock 31 pistol with polymer frame and Tenifer finish. The cops who worked Katrina told me that the Glocks were the only firearms among them that didn’t rust in constant exposure to that environment. It will be in a synthetic holster on a synthetic belt: the septic environment you face in floods will ruin leather, but the pathogenic filth can be wiped off plastic and machine-washed out of heavy duty nylon. The G31 holds 16 .357 SIG cartridges – powerful, likely to penetrate deeply enough into large animals, flat-shooting enough for long shots – and will be backed up with its subcompact 10-shot baby brother in the same caliber, a Glock 33, where my other hand can reach it. The smaller gun will take the 15-shot spare magazine for the larger.

For any serious shooting needs, my “hurricane gun” is an old beater 12-gauge pump shotgun, a Remington 870 traded in by a police department on AR15 rifles. Mechanically perfect on the inside, it has enough pitting on the outside that I no longer worry about what will happen to it in the rain or the muck. One-ounce 12-gauge rifled slugs at about 1400 feet per second should take care of any large, “hard target” that requires emergency shooting.

As they like to say at the police Street Survival© Seminars, it’s about “preparation, not paranoia.” The longer I’m alive, the more experience confirms for me that bad things are most likely to happen to the people least prepared for them.

Mas loads a well-worn Remington pump gun with Remington 12-gauge rifled slugs, with spare shells attached to the stock in a butt cuff. Glock .357 pistol rides in Kydex holster by FIN on nylon mountaineer belt by Jack DeShong.

Next year will make three decades that I’ve been involved in shooting cases as an expert witness in the courts. I took my first case in New York City in 1979. It’s been an instructive part of my life.

One thing I’ve learned is that most private citizens who go through legal ordeals after they’ve had to use a gun in self-defense find themselves feeling terribly, terribly alone. They’re being demonized by the anti-gun media locally, and find themselves shunned by neighbors, friends, co-workers, and customers. Their identity as the good person, the good neighbor, the competent professional at whatever they do, has been subsumed by the new identity given them by the press: He Who Kills.

It’s easier for cops. They have unions and fraternal organizations to stand up for them, and to stand with them. They’re surrounded by peers who think, “That could have been me who had to shoot that dirtbag and bring down this crapstorm. There, but for the grace of God, go I.” The private citizen forced to do the same thing generally doesn’t have much of that peer support.

One guy who understands is my old friend and colleague Marty Hayes. He’s an ex-full time cop who went from patrolman to chief law enforcement officer, and who for the last several years has worked full time to bring responsible armed self-defense training to law-abiding private citizens as well as to law enforcement. First as Director of the famous Firearms Academy of Seattle, and now also as the founder of the Armed Citizens’ Legal Defense Network, he understands that people who’ve defended themselves and their families may need support in many ways in the aftermath of the incident.

Gail Pepin recently did an interview with Marty for the ProArms Podcast. It’s on Episode 005. The interview explains what the organization is about and what it does. I’m on board with the Network as an advisor. So are John Farnam, Dennis Tueller, Jim Cirillo, Jr., and some other folks who’ve spent decades dealing with violent encounter survival at both the street level and the court level. I for one think the Armed Citizens’ Legal Defense Network is an idea whose time has come. You can go to the Network’s website, which has lots of good info. As my old friend Farnam would say, “Strongly recommended!”

I apologize for being kind of in and out on the blog lately. In the eight weeks of June and July, I was on the road for six. Internet, etc. was not always accessible.

It was fun, though, to read some headlines on the ground where the news was taking place. I was driving through Virginia and DC when the Washington Post front page headlined the story of the city’s resistance to the Supreme Court itself. Sure enough, when Dick Heller, the eponymous plaintiff in the landmark Heller v. DC SCOTUS decision went to register his Colt Government Model .45 pistol, he was turned down. Even though he had only seven-shot magazines for it, the District told him it was unacceptable. Don’t you know, they have a separate law in the city banning as “assault weapons” any firearm that can possibly take a larger than twelve-round magazine. They lump them in with prohibited “machine guns.”

Will Dick Heller take them to court again over this? Well, do bears go potty in the woods? And do winos do the same on the streets of the District, for that matter?

The aftershocks of Heller are even more amusing in the Chicago area, where Mayor Daley (aka King Richard the Second) is not handling it well and promises to fight. Uh, yeah. The vehemently anti-gun Chicago Tribune first responded to the Heller decision with the editorial suggestion that the Second Amendment be repealed. Shortly thereafter, the Trib’s editorial board apparently got smacked with the clue bat and publicly suggested that it would be unwise for the mayor to whiz away millions of taxpayers dollars fighting an unbeatable reality.

Chicago, like DC, banned handgun possession long ago within the city limits. There isn’t even a firearms retailer in the city proper, though a ring of fine gun shops surrounds Chicago in the suburbs. The satellite community of Morton Grove became notorious as the first municipality to ban handgun possession. It was followed by Wilmette, Winnetka, Oak Park, and Evanston.

Morton Grove has given up and surrendered the ordnance. Ditto, I’m told, Wilmette. Didn’t want to explain to the voters why they urinated away millions of dollars fighting the law. I’m reasonably well connected in Chicagoland for someone who doesn’t live there, and my sources tell me that while Oak Park wants to fight, Winnetka will probably cave. Evanston has reportedly been asked by the Brady Center to wait to throw in the towel until they’ve looked at the anti-gunners’ “alternate” legal proposal that they’re feverishly drawing up now.

It’s good to have the enemies of our rights on the defensive for a change. Morton Grove is where they used to manufacture those hideously kitschy plastic pink flamingoes. A few years ago, SWAT Magazine did a hilarious spoof on “Hunting the Morton Grove Pink Flamingo.” If I can lure one of those plastic pink posers onto my range, maybe I can shoot it with one of my Colt .45 auto pistols, in tribute to Dick Heller and the SCOTUS approved demise of a pathetic exercise in politically correct stupidity.

All this cyber-stuff is scary to old people like me. I could be perfectly comfortable with a ’55 Chevy, a dial telephone, a typewriter, and some postage stamps. (And a good revolver, bolt action rifle, and double barrel shotgun, I suppose.)

If someone had told me a couple of years ago, “Hey, Mas, let’s go podcasting,” I would have been dumbfounded. My reply would probably have been, “Uh, pods? Dude, whales travel in pods. You think you’ve got tackle big enough to go casting for them?”

Time goes by fast. Now I’m on a podcast, and I wanted to share it with you folks. It was founded by Jon and Terri Strayer, rural-dwelling shooting champs who just opened a small gun shop and are in the process of building a big one, called Pro Arms. The producer is Gail Pepin, who has held the Florida/Georgia Regional Woman’s Championship in IDPA (International Defensive Pistol Shooting) since 2005. The host is Steve Denney, a retired public safety professional whose experience includes police supervision and SWAT. Also on board are gun writer/outdoor writer Chris Christian, Class III firearms dealer Herman Gunter III, retired NYPD street cop Mike Larney, me, and assorted guest experts. We do it in a round-table format, with inserted interviews with industry firearms professionals.

So far, it’s been a ball. We may not all take the same positions, but we’ve found we can “disagree without being disagreeable.” The topics tend less toward hunting than subjects such as why we’re armed; how to legally, comfortably, discreetly and competently carry a gun, whether male or female; the inside skinny on IDPA competition shooting (we have two of the seven five-gun Masters of the sport on board); and straight up, no BS gun tests. Downloadable now (or soon, when editing is complete), we have some Ruger and Smith & Wesson no-holds-barred reviews “in the can.” Guest lecturers include top instructors, and among those I’m happy to say are some of the best female instructors in the country, such as Gila Hayes of Firearms Academy of Seattle, Kathy Jackson of the outstanding Cornered Cat website, and Vicki Farnam.

You can take the Pro Arms Podcast for a test drive on your computer or download it to your MP3 player, at http://proarms.podbean.com. For more good info, check out the Gun Rights Radio Network at http://gunrightsradio.com. This will link you to some great folks whose podcast topics range from Second Amendment civil rights advocacy to self-defense issues to pure gun fun. They also have a forum for good folks who appreciate freedom and fine firearms alike.

I hope you enjoy it all as much as we do. It’s so much fun, I’m thinking of doing a podcast of my own. If I make it snide and snarky, maybe I can call it…a sarcast.

A while back, I posted about “grail guns,” items collectors have a particular yen for. Mine was the full-size Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum revolver in the iconic 3.5” barrel configuration. We got lots of good, nostalgic comments from readers about their particular “grails.”

Well, after a lot of false starts, I can quote Hagar the Horrible and happily say, “I got mine!” I just had one of those landmark birthdays with a “0” at the end, and my sweetie and some friends chipped in and got me one from an Internet gun auction source.

Marked with a little bit of honest wear that just gives it more character, this sculpture of finely finished blue steel and well-worn checkered walnut is a five-screw (read: “Old World detail and craftsmanship) revolver whose serial number indicates it was produced in late 1954 or early 1955. In the name of production economy, Smith & Wesson eliminated the upper sideplate screw about a year after this one left the factory, and decided it could do without the one in front of the trigger guard circa 1961-62. Smith & Wesson introduced this gun and its cartridge in 1935, calling both simply “.357 Magnum.” Along about 1957, S&W went with numeric model designations, dubbing this one the Model 27. Thus, earlier specimens such as this one are known to collectors as “pre-27s.”

This one is as tight and functional as the day it left the factory. This deluxe series was always famous for its smooth action, but this one is particularly slick and light of pull, in both double action and single action modes.

As I sit here fondling this long awaited masterpiece of the gunmaker’s art, my significant other sighs and mutters, “Men…they’re so easily satisfied.”

I don’t understand why she says it as if it was a bad thing…

Below, the “birthday gun,” a pre-Model 27 with 3 .5″ barrel. Gorgeous finish has wear that “shows character.”

“5th screw,” below rear sight on sideplate, and “4th screw,” at front of trigger guard, have long been gone from modern Smith & Wessons.

The barrel configuration of this particular model is unique and distinctive.

SCOTUS’ opinion in District of Columbia, et. al. v. Heller, is probably the most welcome official document in memory for gun owners’ rights activists. As such, it bears multiple re-readings.

Savor this, for example, from Justice Scalia’s majority opinion:

“By the time of the founding, the right to have arms had become fundamental for English subjects. See Malcolm 122-134. Blackstone, whose works, we have said, ‘constituted the preeminent authority on English law for the founding generation,’ Alden v. Maine, 527 U.S. 706, 715 (1999), cited the arms provision of the Bill of Rights as one of the fundamental rights of Englishmen. See 1 Blackstone 136, 139-140 (1765). His description of it cannot possibly be thought to tie it to militia or military service. It was, he said, ‘the natural right of resistance and self preservation,’ id., at 139, and ‘the right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defence,’ id., at 140;see also 3 id., at 2-4…Thus, the right secured in 1689 as a result of the Stuarts’ abuses was by the time of the founding understood to be an individual right protecting against both public and private violence.” (Pages 20-21 of the Heller decision.)

In his dissent, Justice Stevens wrote, “The Court would have us believe that over 200 years ago, the Framers made a choice to limit the tools available to elected officials wishing to regulate civilian uses of weapons, and to authorize this Court to use the common-law process of case-by-case judicial lawmaking to define the contours of acceptable gun control policy.”

Yes, Justice Stevens, the Court would have us believe the obvious truth, as confirmed by the vast majority of the substantial body of Constitutional scholarship that exists on the topic…

Editor Dave Duffy tells me this blog is getting a good response.  Being a Luddite who doesn’t know from blogs, I’ll take his word for it. 

            I’ve tried not to be intrusive to reader responses, and let everyone have their say. Lots of good stuff!  A few comments do cry out for response, though.

            Anyone interested in more on the Dillinger matter may find my reconstruction of his shooting death at the Biograph Theater in Chicago in 1934 to be of interest. It’s on the stands now, in the July/August issue of American Handgunner magazine, under the continuing “Ayoob Files” feature..

            I mentioned that I was teaching in Harrisburg when the Heller decision was announced, and Jason the Saj commented that he’s from that area, and he was sorry he missed it. No sweat, Jason, we’ll be doing it there again next year. Stay tuned for date announcement at the Lethal Force Institute website at www.ayoob.com.

            Speaking of Heller, Dex wrote, “Scalia’s trips to the metaphorical woodshed with Stevens and Breyer are the most entertaining part of the opinion.”  I’ll second that!

            In re: the discussion of the Hi-Point pistol, lots of folks made cogent comments about the value of low-price, entry level firearms. Armed Jew remarked, “I’d really like to see Mr. Ayoob put these critters through their paces on the range.”  Been there, done that, bro.  Found the most reliable (100% so) and accurate was Hi-Point’s .380 model. I’ve also noted here already, as did several who commented, that their 9mm carbine is particularly nice.  I can also tell you that, according to dealers I’ve talked to, Hi-Point customer service is second to none.

            When I sent in a dispatch from the Midwestern floods, Brogan was concerned about cops entering homes without warrants under those circumstances. He saw it as “…another Katrina wrapped in a different package.” I hear where you’re coming from, Brogan, but I have to say I didn’t see any trampling of rights here.  In life-threatening disasters, emergency service workers – including police – have not only the right but the duty to check apparently abandoned dwellings to make sure there are no injured or infirm people inside who need to be rescued.

            Lots of folks shared their personal thoughts on “grail guns,” and every one mentioned was a fine and desirable firearm.  I only saw one I could help with: Heavyduty wrote that he’d love to own a round-butt, four-inch barrel specimen of the Model 681, Smith & Wesson’s fixed sight  L-frame (.41-frame) .357 Magnum in stainless. Almost all those revolvers were produced with square butts. There’s hope, though: attached is a photo of one of my 686s, the more common adjustable sight version of the same fine revolver. This one had its grip-frame reconfigured to the round butt shape by ace gunsmith Bob Lloyd. I can’t find Bob’s address, but there are lots of good Smith ‘smiths who can do the same job on the still available (if increasingly hard to find) square butt Model 681. Some 686s in the 4”/round butt configuration were also produced by S&W for US Customs, and surface occasionally on the collectors’ market.

            And finally, darn it, the bobcat never did come back.  L

4” S&W 686 rebuilt to round butt configuration (grips are Hogue) by ace gunsmith Bob Lloyd, who also trimmed the cylinder latch, bobbed the hammer, and did an outstanding action job. This gun won the New Hampshire IDPA Stock Service Revolver state championship a few years ago.

In the Comments section under Part Two of “Reflections on Heller” in this blog, reader azasu writes, “Hey Mas, I was wondering if you were going to do a post or article on the whole Joe Horn thing in Texas. I’d be interested to hear your take.”

Joe Horn of Pasadena, Texas made national news twice. The first time was last year, when he shot and killed two illegal immigrants who were burgling his next-door neighbor’s house. The second was this past week, when he was no-billed by the Grand Jury. Since it was publicized as two unarmed, fleeing men being shot in the back, most of the public expected him to be indicted for Murder or at least Manslaughter. Some were shocked by the Grand Jury’s decision, and some pleasantly surprised. Since both of the deceased had long and ugly criminal records, there was not a great deal of sympathy for them in some quarters.

There are a lot of subtleties that haven’t made it into the mainstream media yet, azasu. Many have heard his 9-1-1 calls, in which the dispatcher advised him to stay inside and he excitedly replied that no, he was going to go outside with his shotgun. The tape picks up Horn saying “Move and you’re dead,” and then three shotgun blasts.

What many do not realize is that one of the burglars was armed with a crowbar, and that they had faced him at fairly close range and were moving toward him – on his property by now, not just the neighbor’s, Horn said – when he opened fire. News reports say both men were shot in the back, but I’ve seen several cases where the suspect broke off his attack in the instant he realized he was going to be fired upon, and his turn came faster than the shooter could react to the change in the threat level. The average adult male can make a quarter turn in a quarter second, and a 180-degree body turn in half a second. Reaction time to an unanticipated stimulus takes longer than that, which means that the initial aggressor is likely to be shot before the defender can react to the turn and halt a trigger finger that is already in action.

Horn was in his sixties, and the two men he shot were much younger and stronger. That constitutes disparity of force. The crowbar one allegedly held constitutes a deadly weapon under these circumstances. Lunging at Horn as if to disarm him, under these circumstances, can also constitute lethal force, and Horn’s unleashing his 12-gauge Magnum could thus be justified three times over by a good defense attorney. In his videotaped walk-through at the shooting scene, recently released by the police department, Horn told the lead investigator, “I thought they were gonna get me…if they got the gun away from me, I knew what they were gonna do.” Moreover, Texas law is the most forgiving in the nation of private citizens who use deadly force in protection of property as well as life. Grand Jury proceedings tend to be super-secret, and we do not know to what degree a backlash against crime (and illegal aliens) may have influenced the Grand Jury’s decision not to render the true bill that would have set the stage for prosecution.

In a great many jurisdictions – including some in Texas – a citizen who went out and shot these guys would be under indictment for Murder or Manslaughter by now. Joe Horn’s willingness to risk his life for his neighbor’s goods is commendable, but not necessarily a role model for the rest of us. He is out substantial legal fees already, and he has received death threats. While many see him as a hero, I doubt that he feels like one. His attorney has stated that if Mr. Horn had it to do over again, he would stay inside and leave his Winchester Defender Model 1300 shotgun silent. I suspect the rest of us can learn from that.

As more information becomes available, azasu, I might be doing a full-length article on this in my continuing feature, “Self Defense and the Law,” in Combat Handguns magazine. If you’re interested in a full-length treatment in my Backwoods Home column, let editor Dave Duffy know. He is very responsive to article suggestions from readers.

Best wishes to all for a safe and meaningful Independence Day.