Weekly Reminder: HR 45 has not even gained one co-sponsor in committee and S 2099 died nine years ago. It is not necessary to forward the hysterical mailings to me. Friday, January 23, 2009 U.S. Representative Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) recently sponsored H.R. 45, also known as "Blair Holt's Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act." The bill is, at its core and as its name implies, a licensing and registration scheme. The measure calls for all handgun owners to submit to the federal government an application that shall include, among many other things: a photo; an address; a thumbprint; a completed, written firearm safety test; private mental health records; and a fee. And those are only some of the requirements to be licensed! The bill would further require the attorney general to establish a database of every handgun sale, transfer, and owner's address in America. Moreover, the bill would make it illegal to own or possess a "qualifying firearm" -- defined as "any handgun; or any semiautomatic firearm that can accept any detachable ammunition feeding device..." without one of the proposed licenses. Additionally, the bill would make it illegal to transfer ownership of a "qualifying firearm" to anyone who is not a licensed gun dealer or collector (with very few exceptions), and would require "qualifying firearm" owners to report all transfers to the attorney general's database. It would also be illegal for a licensed gun owner to fail to record a gun loss or theft within 72 hours, or fail to report a change of address within 60 days. Further, if a minor obtains a firearm and injures someone with it, the owner of the firearm may face a multiple-year jail sentence. H.R. 45 is essentially a reintroduction of H.R. 2666, which Rush introduced in 2007. H.R. 2666 contained much of the same language as H.R. 45, and was co-sponsored by several well-known anti-gun legislators--including Barack Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. H.R. 45 currently has no co-sponsors. Rest assured that NRA-ILA will continue to monitor this bill closely, and will keep you informed of any developments if they materialize. http://www.nraila.org/Legislation/Federal/Read.aspx?id=4329 Friday, May 29, 2009 In the last few weeks, NRA-ILA has received hundreds of e-mails warning us about "SB-2099," a bill that would supposedly require you to report all your guns on your income tax return every April 15. Like many rumors, there's just a grain of truth to this one. Someone's recycling an old alert, which wasn't even very accurate when it was new. There actually was a U.S. Senate bill with that number that would have taxed handguns - nine years ago. It was introduced by anti-gun Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), and it would have included handguns under the National Firearms Act's tax and registration scheme. This has nothing to do with anyone's Form 1040, of course. Fortunately, S. 2099 disappeared without any action by the Senate, back when Bill Clinton was still in the White House. We reported about it back then, just as we report about new anti-gun bills every week. Now, it's time for gun owners to drop this old distraction and focus on the real threats at hand. http://www.nraila.org/Legislation/Federal/Read.aspx?id=4925 --- Tennessee Panel Will Debate CCW Confidentiality: The First Amendment Center will host a panel discussion about the intersection of First and Second Amendment rights on Nov. 3 at the Center. The discussion will focus on whether the public should have access to gun owners' personal information found in state right-to-carry permit records... A controversy erupted in Tennessee, as it has in other states, after the CommercialAppeal.com earlier this year published the names and addresses of permit holders. Legislation was introduced in Tennessee to close or restrict public and press access to the state database. The bill failed, but is expected to be reintroduced in the next legislative session... (I don't recall any controversy about confidentiality in Arizona.) http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/news.aspx?id=22261 --- Oops, Wrong House: When a team of robbers returned to a Rowan County [NC] home police say they'd robbed up earlier in the week, the homeowners were ready Friday. One suspect is in the hospital after being shot by the couple's son. Two other people are in custody... The house was first held up Monday night. NewsChannel 36 spoke exclusively with the Deadmon family after the first home invasion. They told us how the robbers forced them to open the safe at gunpoint. They reported the robbery to police, and they believe that's why the suspects returned. "He told my husband they had come back to kill," Sherry Deadmon said, speaking for her husband Randy, who has a disability that affects his speech. It was Randy and his son John-Ross who were home Friday afternoon when two men arrived. Randy explained how one of the robbers grabbed his son by the collar and lead him into the house. He said both men had guns. There was a scuffle - pushing, punching, and then shooting. The family had placed several shotguns around the house because of Monday's crime. When police arrived at the home, they found one man shot in the garage. He was wearing black clothing, a black mask and a bulletproof vest... (North Carolina requires a permit issued by the sheriff to purchase a handgun, which might help explain the use of the shotguns in this case.) http://www.charlotteobserver.com/breaking/story/1030076.html --- Rule Five Reminder: The Dallas police are once again looking for thousands of dollars in stolen equipment after an unmarked SWAT vehicle was broken into on Thursday. Police said the thief broke into the car when it was parked on the 2700 block of Fitzhugh and made off with weapons, ammunition, police uniforms, badges and body armor... A raid jacket, police radio and department-issued pistol were stolen July 18 from a Dallas officer's personal car in Red Oak. Just eight days earlier, another officer's assault rifle and 15 magazines of ammunition were stolen from his DeSoto home. "A lot of police equipment has been taken, not just in Dallas, but throughout the Metroplex," Senior Cpl. Janice Crowther said... Former FBI agent Danny Defenbaugh said the seemingly random break-ins may be part of a worrisome nationwide trend... Last August, law enforcement experts expressed concern that criminals could use the stolen gear to infiltrate high-profile events such as the Super Bowl being held in Arlington in 2011 - which will likely have police support from several departments. (Rule Five: Maintain control of your firearm. The nationwide trend suggests that gang members are targeting police vehicles for firearms, something to consider before putting NRA stickers and similar labels on private vehicles. An aspect which I had not appreciated previously is the value to terrorists of police uniforms, ID and communication equipment.) http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local-beat/DPD-Once-Again-Victim-of-Theft-67583492.html --- NRA-ILA Alerts: List members are encouraged to check the alerts for the week, posted on the NRA-ILA website. http://www.nraila.org/GrassrootsAlerts/read.aspx --- Tangentially Related: Republican Dede Scozzafava has suspended her bid in next Tuesday's NY 23 special election, a huge development that dramatically shakes up the race. She did not endorse either of her two opponents - Conservative party candidate Doug Hoffman or Democrat Bill Owens. Scozzafava has "probably made her last campaign appearance between now and Election Day," spokesman Matt Burns told POLITICO. "She's releasing her support to the two other candidates." I had a discussion with her last night, and we made the decision after I spoke with her. We talked about it, what this came down to was spending. It came down to the ability to defend herself from the get-go. And that's the reality. She was unable to define herself where the people didn't know her." ... (This is the race where GOA-PVF sought support for the Conservative candidate, Doug Hoffman.) http://www.politico.com/blogs/scorecard/1009/BREAKING_Scozzafava_drops_out_of_NY_23.html One name is notably absent from the list of prominent conservatives who have lined up against the GOP nominee in the Nov. 3 New York special election: former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. Even as other past and prospective Republican presidential candidates have offered their endorsements, Huckabee has conspicuously declined to officially support Conservative Party nominee Doug Hoffman, a decision that has left bewildered many of the social conservatives whom he assiduously courted in his 2008 bid... http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1009/28908.html --- A crucial server appears to be down today so I am including this report from Force Science Research Center, which would normally have been in tomorrow's mailing. But first, a clarification of my own: ...Point shooting means different things to different people. To some people it means hip shooting, with the gun well below the line of sight. To others it means shooting with the gun at or near a conventional position for aimed fire but with the vision focused on the selected target, not on the sights. For others, dating back to Fairbairn and Sykes, and increasingly including more of today's trainers, it is part of a continuum that begins with shooting from the hip and ends with traditionally aimed fire, depending on the distance to the threat... For all the variations of point shooting being advocated or taught, I think that Walt Rauch once explained the common denominator with the term "target focus." He emphasized that whatever the system, the shooter's vision was focused on the target, not the sights or the shape of the gun. Any element of visual confirmation of the gun's alignment would be out of focus... http://www.spw-duf.info/point.html Editor's Note: In Transmission #134 [10/9/09], Part 1 of this series reported significant new findings from the Force Science Research Center about how an officer's "gaze pattern" in evaluating a potential assailant affects his or her ability to win a gunfight. The research reveals that "elite," highly experienced officers are better able to quickly and accurately read visual threat cues, focus sooner and longer on where a possible attacker will present a weapon, and draw and fire faster to defeat an assault, compared to less experienced and less successful officers. Part 2 addresses the training implications of this research... First, a clarification.... Some readers concluded from Part 1 that the Force Science Research Center "endorses" so-called point shooting, where a handgun's muzzle is positioned toward the target and the gun is fired without significant reference to the sights. That assumption apparently was drawn from one of the important discoveries of the gaze-pattern study, which was conducted in the United Kingdom by Dr. Bill Lewinski, FSRC's executive director, and Dr. Joan Vickers, a visual tracking expert at the University of Calgary in Canada. The researchers found that just before firing in an armed confrontation rookies tended to look away from their target and search for their sights for reassurance of their aim, thereby, in Lewinski's words, "pulling themselves out of the gunfight at a critical moment and negatively affecting their accuracy, their speed of response, and their awareness of what the suspect was doing." Most of the highly experienced officers in the study, in contrast, concentrated their visual focus on the target/suspect, catching only a fast glimpse of their sights in their peripheral vision and relying primarily on "an unconscious kinesthetic sense to know that their gun is up and positioned properly." "This should not be interpreted as sanctioning or promoting any training method in shooting, especially under life-threatening high stress, becomes problematic, and in this which the sights are ignored," Lewinski emphasizes. "It's true that point shooting can be effective at short distances and probably is instinctively used by many officers in responding to close encounters. But at greater distances, the accuracy of just pointing and study officers were responding to a lethal threat that was 15-20 feet away. "The rookies had successfully completed firearms training that emphasized traditional sight alignment, but they had no actual street experience. The elite officers began their careers with that same training. But at the time of the study, they were members of a specialized SWAT cadre with years of hard-core street experience. They train constantly and consistently win international competitions. "Through innumerable repetitions they have developed a highly accurate feel--a strong kinesthetic sense--for raising their gun to a proper alignment without consciously thinking about it or making a pronounced visual or attentional shift to it. If you ran a laser beam from their eye to the target, it would shine right through their sights. "Careful sight alignment was an important step in starting them toward that point of excellence. Experience and intensive training are ultimately what brought them there. Over a long time, they were able to transition from one emphasis to another. Yet even at their exceptional performance level, referencing the sights in some manner, however fleetingly or peripherally, was still part of their response in the type of rapidly unfolding encounter designed for this study." As to the training implications of the gaze-pattern study.... More specifics may be known in 1 to 2 years when a new study soon to be launched in England is completed. That research, Lewinski says, will attempt to identify scientifically which teaching methods are most effective for addressing individual student needs and aptitudes so that trainees can more quickly and confidently acquire elite-level use-of-force skills, including firearms performance. "That study will explore how to fit teaching styles to the individual learning styles of trainees, how much and what kind of training most rapidly and lastingly influences behavior, how to maximize benefits in restricted teaching time, and so on," Lewinski says. "We will then be able to set standards based on the science of human performance, rather than on tradition, trainer suppositions and preferences, and lawmakers' dictates, which will be a major breakthrough." Meanwhile, Lewinski says, there are important lessons to be drawn immediately from the gaze study so far as instructors, investigators, and individual officers are concerned. For trainers. For those departments that have not yet joined the 21st century, the message is clearer than ever: It is time to move beyond conventional "qualification" firearms training. "We are not teaching officers to shoot accurately at the speed of a gunfight before they graduate from academy training," Lewinski declares. Much more instruction and practice is needed to prepare them to deal with rapidly unfolding, dynamic, high-threat encounters." In the recent study, he explains, "the elite officers were able to read danger cues early on and anticipate the suspect's actions ahead of time so they could stay ahead of the fight. They knew where a gun was likely to appear and were focused there before it did. So they were able to get protective rounds off sooner than the suspect and sooner than the rookies. "That anticipatory skill can only be developed through experience. At the training level, that means extensive experience with dynamic force-on-force encounters and realistic simulations in which you learn by 'being there' over and over again in a wide variety of encounters what to expect and how to look for and recognize danger cues." At the same time, repetitive exposure to weapon manipulation at gunfight speed is critical. "There needs to be a much better level of pure shooting skill developed than most departments teach at this point," Lewinski says. "A gun is a tool, and officers need to be so practiced with it that the mechanics of using it become automatic and unconscious. That frees up more time and attention for decision-making and for concentration on the adversary's behavior." In the study, for instance, the superior mechanical skill and anticipation of danger exhibited by the elite officers allowed them to expend more time and stronger concentration on the suspect's shooting hand when he spun toward them in the encounter. As a result, they scored significantly better at correctly identifying a cell phone vs. a gun in his hand and tailoring their responses accordingly than did the novice officers. Training to a gunfight level may well require more time and money than is currently allotted, Lewinski concedes. But departments should ask themselves a tough question, he says: "What level of liability are you willing to accept with your training?" And they must acknowledge that "meeting some current state qualification standard does not in itself mean that officers are going to be successful on the street and make great decisions and deliver great performance when the chips are down and lives are on the line. Any department owes nothing less than the best training for its officers." For investigators. The sophisticated eye-tracking device used in the study revealed an important finding for investigators. As the testing scenario unfolded, the visual field of expert shooters and rookies alike narrowed significantly. At the moment of firing, the elites tended to have full concentration on the suspect's weapon. Many of the novices, because they were searching for their sights, did not even see the suspect himself when they pulled the trigger. "What is not given attention cannot be remembered," Lewinski says, "and investigators need to stay conscious of this. There may be much about the gunfight environment, including details about the suspect's behavior, that an involved officer simply cannot remember because it didn't register on his narrowly focused brain. And that should not be equated with his being evasive or deceptive. "The more an investigator pushes an officer to elicit facts that the officer doesn't know, the more likely the officer will 'guesstimate' in an effort to satisfy the questioner and the higher the probability of error and inconsistency. "Investigators should probe with their questioning only to the extent that officers are comfortable in responding. Their being unable to remember everything should not diminish their credibility in any way." For officers. "So far as line officers are concerned, the study presents a challenge of personal commitment," Lewinski says. "What the study proves is pretty straightforward: Your success in an armed confrontation is likely to be determined by your training and experience. "Is the training provided by your department sufficient to convince you that you can perform accurately at the speed of a gunfight when your life depends on it? "If not, what are you doing on your own to bridge that gap?" Note: Our thanks to Sgt. Craig Stapp, a technical advisor to the Force Science Research Center and firearms training supervisor for Tempe (AZ) PD, for consultation on this article. Another FSRC technical advisor, Ron Avery, president of the Practical Shooting Academy, is preparing an article for our strategic partner, PoliceOne.com, on how the eye and brain work together to ensure accuracy in shooting. Dr. Lewinski wishes to thank the National Police Federation of England and Wales, which co-funded the gaze pattern study with the FSRC. ================ (c) 2009: Force Science Research Center, www.forcescience.org. Reprints allowed by request. For reprint clearance, please e-mail: info@forcesciencenews.com. FORCE SCIENCE is a registered trademark of The Force Science Research Center, a non-profit organization based at Minnesota State University, Mankato. ================ -- Stephen P. Wenger, KE7QBY Firearm safety - It's a matter for education, not legislation. http://www.spw-duf.info .