San Francisco Repeats Gun Buy-Back: San Francisco officials are handing out gift cards in exchange for guns in an effort to reduce the number of illegal firearms on city streets. The city's second "Gifts for Guns" event is being held today at the Civic Center Plaza in San Francisco. A first event in July brought in 117 handguns and 2 shotguns. People don't need to show identification to participate, and officials promise not to ask any questions about the guns' origins. Participants will receive $100 gift cards for rifles or shotguns, $150 cards for revolvers or semiautomatic pistols and $200 cards for assault-type weapons like AK-47s. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-guns2dec02,1,3837791.story?coll=la-headlines-california --- From John Farnam: 26 Nov 07 New stuff! Microtec, a company who makes knives, is now the one producing a domestic AUG in 223! I handled one this afternoon at Jensen's, and it is pretty much an exact copy of the original, right down to the integral, optical sight. Retailing for $2,000.00, it is on the high end price-wise, but will surely garner a following. Arsenal, another domestic manufacturer, is producing a wonderful Kalashnikov in 7.62X39/Soviet. As nice an example as I've seen, nearly equal in quality to those produced by Krebs. At $1,200.00, it is a very acceptable, utility, military rifle. Red Rock Arms, formally known as Bobcat, is producing an FAL in 223! It takes AR-15 magazines, but looks, for all the world, like an FAL otherwise. At $1,300.00/copy, they are moving out briskly. DSA's excellent FAL in 308 is perennially popular, starting at $1,400.00 At a retail price of $650.00, Kahr's M1 Carbine is a nice gun and is also selling well. Hard to beat as a car-gun. Fulton Armory's version is nice also, but retails at $1,200.00. Robinson Arms XCR in 223 retails for $1,500.00 and relentlessly moves out the door! I now have a copy of the RA/XCR in 6.8mm/SPC and will be testing it shortly. One can buy a perfectly serviceable AR-15 in 223 from DPMS, DSA, and RRA, starting at $700.00, and it will run just fine. You're probably not going to get into an acceptable military 308 for under $1,000.00. Consistently strong sales of all the foregoing indicate to me that, at least here in CO, people (many who never thought about owning a serious gun until now) are heavily arming themselves with serious weapons. Apparently, government's dubious "we-have-everything-under-control" message is getting lost in the translation! /John (Note the implication that a "military rifle" is chambered for a larger caliber than M1 Carbine or .223. Bullpups, such as the AUG, are generally limited in their flexibility to shift from shoulder to shoulder without ejcting hot brass into the shooter's face when fired from the "wrong" shoulder.) 27 Nov 07 Sage advice from Doc Gunn: "Apparently, football player, Sean Taylor, died yesterday as a result of at least one close-range gunshot (pistol) wound to his upper thigh. The bullet(s) struck his femoral artery. By the time he got to the ER, blood loss was catastrophic. This is a classic example of a death that was probably preventable via the simple/aggressive application of an IBD, as we teach in our Tactical Treatment of Gunshot Wounds Course." Comment: Unfortunately, no one at the scene knew what to do, nor did they have a legitimate trauma kit handy. These are life-saving skills that should be well known to every Operator. Some GSW deaths are not preventable, but most are! /John (TangoDown offers a Guardian Trauma Kit, which includes an instructional video -http://tangodown.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=60) 28 Nov 07 Mismatch! This from one of our instructors in WI. "During regional, in-service training, a local PD showed up with EOTech sights, mounted atop the fixed, carrying-handles of their AR-15/A2 rifles. Officers did their level best to make this set-up work, but with such large bore-line/sight-line span, a consistent cheek weld (or any cheek-contact with the stock for that matter) is nearly impossible. I saw heads aimlessly wobbling in space at all kinds of weird angles! Results were disappointing, as officers could hit (eventually), but too much valuable time was squandered just trying to get a sight picture. The chief of this department did not show up, so he did not have the opportunity to see for himself the problems associated with this flawed set-up." Comment: When the brass don't show up for training, they don't know what is being presented, how it is being presented, and, without the experience of personally participating, they tend to have only a cursory, shallow understanding of critical training and equipment issues, such as described in the foregoing. Effective leaders have mud on their shoes! /John (The carrying handle of an AR-15 is mated in height with the front-sight tower, affording most users a decent cheek weld on the stock while using the iron sights. People who intend to use some sort of electronic or optical sight on an AR-15 are better served to purchase a flat-top version.) 28 Nov 07 From a friend at Glock: "The first copies of Glock's 30SF are in country. Will hit retail shelves soon. ambidextrous magazine release buttons are an option. Default is the normal, left-side magazine release." Comment: Manufacturers will, of course, supply customers with what customers think they want. However, a magazine-release button facing to the outside as the pistol is carried is an invitation to a missing magazine at a painfully inconvenient moment! Again, this button should only face to the inside where an inadvertent release of the magazine is much less likely. /John (This may be largely a matter of how well the holster is mated to the pistol and something to be considered when replacing stock magazine-release buttons with extended ones.) --- From Gun Week: Feldman's Insider's Memoir Getting Deserved Attention by Joseph P. Tartaro, Executive Editor December 1, 2007 I first heard the adjective "Byzantine" used to describe the inner machinations of the National Rifle Association (NRA) some 40 years ago, and I thought it very apt. So I was not surprised to find it on Page 5 of a new book by Richard Feldman who noted that "...beyond the Byzantine inner sanctum of the senior association executives, the NRA still has its share of decent human beings with whom I had worked closely for almost two decades." This is near the opening of Feldman's new book, Ricochet: Confessions of a Gun Lobbyist. The book is a very personal memoir of a high-voltage, charismatic and creative policy wonk who became, for a while, a go-to guy for the NRA and the industry before making a career-altering deal with Bill Clinton's White House. The reference to the complex, devious and intrigue-laced Byzantium comes near the book's opening when Feldman comes in from the cold to attend an NRA function to honor the late Harlon B. Carter, years after he had been ostracized by NRA leaders and some in the gun industry for cutting a voluntary gun-lock deal with the Clinton gang. Feldman's story offers a brief history of the NRA as well as a personal biography that takes him from his liberal, gun-free Long Island upbringing through college-life and political action in New England to a minor job with the Reagan Administration and then to a "dream job" with the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action (ILA). From his "dream job" at NRA-ILA, Feldman was an eyewitness to the NRA's handling of the Bernard Goetz affair, the Waco fiasco and other historic events. I first met Feldman in the early days of his career at the NRA-ILA when he was assigned as liaison to volunteer grassroots activists and firearms civil rights organizations in the northeastern states. As a representative of the NRA he dealt with elected officials and their staffs in the state capitals of his territory. His 24/7 job was a lot like herding cats. He was required to be a constant go-between in a varied field of interested parties: his superiors at NRA; the executive and legislative branches of state governments; the media; organized grassroots gun organizations that had diverging agendas, and the general public. His job involved expressing official NRA positions on gun and hunting legislation, negotiating with officials when necessary, and establishing close working relations with a large gunowner base in each state which is the most powerful arm of what some people like to call the "gun lobby." Feldman was then and still is a high-energy guy with a breezy, fast-passed way of speaking and writing--a style that permeates his "Confessions." I not only worked with him during his years at NRA-ILA but also when later he wore other hats, including as head of the now defunct American Shooting Sports Council (ASSC). Our most recent association was as co-panelists at the Oct. 5-7 Gun Rights Policy Conference near Cincinnati, OH. (That panel is one of several summarized by Dave Workman in this issue as the second part of his post-GRPC report.) Feldman has always been a bright, innovative and energetic force on the gun rights landscape and was forced out of the mainstream of the movement after his "gun lock" Rose Garden episode pageant involving many top leaders of the gun industry. But that is just one of many episodes recounted in Feldman's Odyssey. Ricochet: Confessions of a Gun Lobbyist, published by John Wiley & Sons (phone: 800-762-2974; on-line: www.wiley.com) hit store front and Internet book outlets at the end of October. It immediately scored with anti-gun reviewers, most of whom misunderstood a very personal, backroom look at the entire pro-gun movement as an attack on the NRA. Many of these reviewers focused on only a small portion of Feldman's book, which by the way is dedicated to Mister NRA himself, the late Harlon B. Carter. How anyone could interpret a pro-gunner's book dedicated to Carter as being an insider's attack on the Association is mystifying. I can only assume that having long ago solidified their own hatred for anything having to do with guns and gunowners--and especially the NRA, they interpreted parts of the book as new fuel to keep their anti-gun, anti-NRA zeal at fever temperature. Some NRA officials and some of their most devout followers will not like Ricochet. The NRA has dodged queries by officially saying they do not comment on "fiction." Feldman's assessment of Wayne LaPierre and the association's focus on increasing membership numbers and fund-raising are likely to inspire some indigestion among NRA insiders and their less knowledgeable acolytes. However, most members would be well served by reading the book. However, Ricochet is not fiction; far from it. Having been involved in the movement and close to its center for many years, I can assure readers that Ricochet accurately recounts factual incidents over about a quarter of a century. However, it is also subjective in its observations, especially about some of the key players. It is one gunowner's--an NRA-endowment member's--view of how he first got into guns and the gun rights battle while hailing from an unlikely New York liberal background. He tells with a chuckle in his prose that even his liberal, professional-class parents overcame their original anti-gun position as they were immersed in the pro-gun milieu. Most of all, Feldman's breezy, easy-reading style conveys his subjective observations of what has gone on and is going on at the gun movement's largest and oldest rights organization and many of the key people in the NRA, the gun industry and politics. Wayne LaPierre, NRA's current EVP, who has survived in that job longer than Harlon Carter or anyone else, does not fare well in Feldman's book. Neither do a number of other people who played key roles in gun rights history. I think Feldman's characterizations of some may be colored too much by his own personal experiences. But then I might not like some of the people he does. Taking potshots at the NRA is nothing new, but that isn't what Feldman is doing in Ricochet. The anti-gunners will keep doing that, and Feldman is far from an anti-gunner. He's as pro-gun today as ever and still advising gunowners to join the NRA or other gun organizations. In Ricochet, I think he's holding up a lamp to some things about the pro-gun movement and the industry that all gunowners and NRA members need to know. If you are interesting in an important perspective on what goes on behind the scenes in the long struggle to preserve the right to keep and bear arms in America--one that is much more candid and historically accurate than commonly found in gun activists' libraries--Ricochet is a fascinating and illuminative purchase. If you can't afford to buy many new books these days, ask for it at your local library. Ricochet: Confessions of a Gun Lobbyist by Richard Feldman is a 296-page hard cover book, including an excellent 10-page index. The retail list is $24.95, although some outlets, such as Amazon, may discount it. Anyone who wants an autographed copy at full retail can order direct from Feldman on his website: www.gunlobbyist.com. This article is provided free by GunWeek.com. For more great gun news, subscribe to our print edition. -- Stephen P. Wenger Firearm safety - It's a matter for education, not legislation. http://www.spw-duf.info .