First off, in case you have not heard a few days ago a deranged man walked into a gym in Sasebo on the 15^th of December.  He killed two people and injured six before fleeing and later turning the gun on himself.  (Note: his name has been made public but I won't use it so as to deny the shooter any posthumous fame.)  The crime is somewhat unusual in Japan, but it is also not unheard of either.  While gun crime is rare in Japan it does occur, and that in and of itself is noteable as a failure of gun control.  The mayor of Nagasaki was murdered back in April (See a news story about that here.)  As far asking why these things happen, I have found that it usually tends to be wasted and futile effort, it is impossible to know what motivated a person to murder unles they are alive to be asked or they left a such information behind.  Even then the answers given may or may not be truthfull or even coherent.

     This crime and similar events of late have led to calls for the already draconian firearms legislation in Japan to be tightened even further.  The focus on the means of the crime is to miss the entire point.  The how of a crime does not matter to the victim of crime.  The criminal must be apprehended, given a fair and impartial trial and punished as the law provides.  When as in this case it is not possible to punish the criminal, one conducts a full investigation so as to learn what was done right and what was done wrong and how to better hnadle such incidents in the future.

From the Yomuiri Shimbun: Killings raise doubts over gun permit system

     Senior officers at the National Police Agency have been puzzling over how a man who randomly shot two people dead at a sports gym in Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture, on Friday evening, was able to obtain a permit to own a hunting gun.

     This latest incident, after which suspected assailant Masayoshi Magome took his own life, comes after previous fatal shootings with shotguns this year in Kagoshima and Kochi prefectures.

     In all these cases, the suspected assailants had been granted permits by prefectural public safety commissions to own such weapons.

     This latest incident will inevitably stir debate over whether police forces are making sufficient background checks on those wishing to own guns.

     "The permit system has become emasculated and inspections are a mockery," one expert said.

     According to the NPA, permits had been granted for about 305,000 hunting weapons such as rifles and shotguns across the country as of the end of June 2006.

     Last Sunday, a drunk man used a shotgun to shoot dead a female neighbor and wound a man at the woman's home in Tsunocho, Kochi Prefecture.

     In the latest incident in Sasebo, the suspect is believed to have behaved strangely prior to the shooting, doing things such as calling on a neighbor out of the blue in the middle of the night.

     A local resident is reported to have asked the prefectural police to revoke Magome's gun permit.

     Human nature is largely an unchanging thing, it has exsisted for thousands of years and will far out last all those who are alive today.  The purpose of the social contract between citizen and government is simple, that the government will maintain order and protect its citizens from attack by foreign powers and other duties as agreed to by both parties. In return the citizen agrees to obey the laws of the state and to serve the state when needed.   But the state also agrees to be bound by the same laws and to respect and protect the rights of its citizens, which pre-exsist the state.   Why mention this, simple the difference between gun control in the US and Japan is the understanding of the concept of the social contract and other ideas that spring form the enlightenment and the preceding age of reason.

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     Ah, the 1911A1, perhaps the finest self loading handgun ever created.  A testament to its quality and reliability is that after ninety six (96) years it is still the preferered side arm of anyone in the US military who can lay their hands on one.  The Beretta M-9 is a good gun sure, but the 1911 is the 1911.  It is the supurlative of sidearms, accurate, reliable, rugged and good looking to boot.  That and it fires nice big and heavy 45 caliber ammo that will put some one down and keep them there.  Now modern bullet technology means that any good hollowpoint im 9mm or larger will do the job, but due to the US's cotinued observance of an outdated and scientifically disproven treaty soldiers on the battlefield are limited to ball ammo, in which case bigger is most definately better.  But then again a 9mm or .355 inch JHP will probably grow to be about 12.7mm or .5 inch at full expansion while a .451 or 11.7mm JHP will probably be nearly .750 to .800 inches or 22.5 to 23.25mm in size and a bigger hole is a better hole no matter how you slice it.

     As for simplicity, here she is fully detail stripped, and to get to this point all you need is either a combination tool which is little more than an L shaped piece of steel that doubles as a screw driver and punch.  In a pinch the gun can be stripped with nothing more than a round of 45acp ammo and its own parts doubling up as tools, now that is genuis.  Shown in the pics above leaning against a box of Federal 230 grain Hydrashoks.  I feel for my readers who live in less civilised and forward thinking places where owning such a fine weapon as this verboten.  As for me, I need to get off my backside and get me a licensce to carry concealed.

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From the Yomuiri Shimbun: Man resisting arrest shoots cop in buttock.

     A police sergeant was shot in the buttock at point-blank range by a man who grabbed his gun while resisting arrest on suspicion of stealing from a roadside vending machine in Tagawa, Fukuoka Prefecture, early Friday, police said.

     The sergeant arrived at the scene at about 4:40 a.m. with two other officers after a security company reported to Tagawa Police Station that a vending machine on a national highway selling DVDs and other items had been ransacked about 20 minutes earlier, according to the police.

     The police tried to restrain two men they found in a car near the scene. One, Akira Uranaka, 29, of Kama in the prefecture and a member of the Taishu-kai crime syndicate, tried to escape, but was caught by an officer about 40 meters away. The other, unemployed Masamichi Oda, 21, of Tagawa, tried to break free when being held by the other two officers, grabbed the 29-year-old sergeant's gun from his holster and shot him.

      Since nothing more is said I think we can safely assume that the officer is going to make a full recovery.  No matter how much time passes he will be hearing about this form his buddies until the day he dies.  I would also venture a guess that he is going to be shopping for a level 3 holster as well.  This time its funny, but it reinforces the lesson that weapon retention is important for any one who carries a weapon.  The only thing worse than being shot is being shot with your own gun.

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     Shown above is the newest piece of genuis to emerge from Kel-Tec firearms.  Called the RFB (Rifle, Forward ejecting, Bullpup) this .308 (7.62x51 Nato) rifle is a whopping 26 1/4 inches long while featuring a 16 1/2 inch barrel.  The bullpup layout has long been controversial, namely because the ejection path often meant that the weapon would only be suitable for right handed shooters.  Kel-Tec following in the footsteps of FN figured that the best solution to the proble was to simply to use a tube paralell to the barrel and push the empties down it and out the front.  The amazing thing about this rifle is not however its ejection system, but rather its size.  It is smaller than many .223 (5.56 Nato) bullpups like the SA-80, FA-MAS or FN-2000.  The mold of large calibers coming in large packages is undone with this rifle, and that promises interesting posibilities for the future.(Kel-Tec has hinted at 6.5 Grendel and 6.8 SPC chamberings at some later date.)

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     Some guns become famous, some infamous, but a rare handful become iconic, and one of those is the SMLE or Short Magazine Lee Enfield aka smelly to the Brit and Commonwealth soldiers that carried her.  The melding of an American designed action courtesy of John Parrish Lee and rifling developed at RSA Enfield the rifle went through dozens of variations.  The one seen here is perhaps the definitive version.  Offically Rifle No.4 Mk. I, this gun saw a refinement of every aspect of the rifle, from the stock arrangement, sights, bayonet mounting system and bolt assembly with it unique interchangable bolt heads to control headspace.  Firing the equally iconic .303 round the SMLE made a fine reputation among its users, their allies and enemies, no mean feat.  After world war one someone noted that the Germans built the best sporting rifle, the Americans the best target rifle and the British the best battle rifle.

     This beauty was built by BSA Shirley in 1944 and came to me a number of years ago from the racks of a local gunshop.  She is a fine shooter and all matching except for a few Savage made parts she picked up during a postwar FTR (Factory Through Repair)  Ammo is handloaded match grade, using CCI large rifle primers, 55 grains of Varget powder in Winchester brass driving a 173 grain Sierra MatchKing hollow point.

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From AP via Fox News

     WASHINGTON —  District of Columbia officials said Monday they plan to petition the Supreme Court as they seek to defend the city's 30-year-old ban on most handguns.

     A federal appeals court panel struck down the law in March, rejecting the city's argument that the Second Amendment right to bear arms applied only to militias. The full appeals court refused to reconsider the decision in May. The law has remained in effect during the appeals process.

 Read it all here

     So D.C. goes for another bite of their losing apple, not surprising.  They fear that they will be looking at a mountain of lawsuits and massive settlements if they lose.  When the 2^nd Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the D.C. handgun ban was unconstitutional they effectively threw out all convictions under it since it went into affect in the 1970's.  What is even more disgusting than that is that they Mayor of D.C. is claiming that this piece of $h!t law has actually saved lives.  This when D.C. consistently has one of the highest murder rates and overall violent crime rates in the U.S.

     One of three things is going to happen here, the least likely is that D.C. wins on appeal.  The current court os decidedly conservative, and given that on conctitutional issues to which the U.S. government is not party to it is routine for the court to ask for the position of the U.S. from the solicitor general.  The current position is that the second amendment is an individual right and subject to the protection that entails.  Furthermore this case could well see the 2^nd amendment incorparted through the equal protection clause of the fourtteenth amendment, meaning that similar state laws would be struck down.  Even of that is not the case it will force those state to modify their laws to come into compliance with the standards the court will set for what is constituional.  The second option is D.C. loses yet again, this is probably what will happen (results detailed above) if it actually gets Cert**.  But the two scenarios above will only happe if the SCOTUS* agrees to hear the case, if they allow the 2^nd circuit ruling to stand is a victory, but a smaller one in that it means that SCOTUS agrees with the lower court ruling and finds no reason to reopen the matter, but the ruling will only be enforcable as precident in the 2^nd district, but it still sends a clear message to the other districts as to thinking of the court.  Now to watch and wait.

NRA  Go check it out, and join, they help make lawsuits like this possible.

*SCOTUS=Supreme Court Of The United States

**Cert.=Certiari, Latin for to hear, menaing that the court agrees to hear the case.  The Supreme Court hears only a couple hundred cases a year out of thousands of petitions.

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     I don't know what it is, but even though I own a couple of automatic pistols there is something that just draws me to revolvers.  Wether it is the simple elegance of their form and function, ruggedness and reliability or just that unidentifiable it that they have.  Some of the wheelguns I own are strictly utilitarian, like my Ruger GP-100, a strong modern design rendered in stainless steel.  But this gun has a different appeal, this Colt Police Positve Special was likely made in the late fifties from a design that dated back to the turn of the century and remained basically unaltered untill it was dropped in the mid seventies.  Made with lots of hand fitting and a fine hand polish this gun marks in many ways the end of an era.  An era when craftsmanship in the builing of revolvers was a necessity.

     While many today lament the end of such attention I certainly don't.  Modern production methods allow for parts to made with tolerances were impossible to conceive of in a era before computers and robotic manufacturing.  Metal alloys are stronger and more durable, coatings and finishes are more restitant to wear, sight are more precise, and reliabillity is at an all time high.  The craftsman maybe gone from the hardfitting* lines of modern gunmakers.  But his passing ushered in era of affordable, reliable and accurate firearms.

Additional photo below the fold.

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     There are few things that I enjoy more than anime and manga, one of them just happens to be guns.  Yeah I loves me some firepower, and I own quite a bit too.  For now I will avoid the long drawn out political diatribes and just show some glorious American* engineering and know how.

     This particular specimen is an M-1 Garand, or more properly US Rifle, Caliber 30, M-1.  She was made in early 1955 at the Springfield armory in Springfield Mass. and came to me as a USGI service grade from the CMP.

      Follow the link above to learn how to purchase M-1 Garand's, M-1903 Springfields and M-1 Carbines from the CMP.

*And yes I know that John Garand was a canadian.

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