Gun control - My thoughts and my recommended solution

My thoughts on gun control and the recent shooting this summer in America

If you are reading this then you probably already know this summer (July 2012) a man walked into a packed movie theater in Aurora Colorado armed with legally purchased firearms and began randomly shooting people. He killed 12 people including a 6 year old little girl.

A month later (August 2012) a man walked into a church in Oak Creek Wisconsin armed with at least one legally purchased handgun and began randomly shooting people. He killed 6 people.

Same month (August 2012) a man walked up to a former co-worker on a busy NYC sidewalk, pushed him to the ground and shot him in the head in broad daylight at around 9am. 

It has definitely been a summer of highly publicized gun violence.

When you hear of news like this what is the first that comes to mind?

For me its…what would I do if I were there? What would I do if my family were there caught in the middle of these situations? I have 2 little boys and a wife and I can’t help but think what would I do if an active shooter were to try and kill us while we are out in public somewhere? 

Another thought that comes to mind is… why didn’t at least one person have a gun to defend themselves? At least in the Colorado massacre that is. Its legal to carry a concealed weapon there.

Many people see this on the news and say to themselves “oh that will never happen to me”. I on the other hand say to myself, it can happen to anyone at any time at any place. Only a fool would think otherwise.

Believe it or not there are people out there who think that statistically there are over 200 million people in America and the odds of being hurt or killed by random acts of violence are extremely low. 

They believe they have a better chance of getting struck by lightning or being bit by a shark or winning the lottery.

They say, “I refuse to live in fear” so they go about their business as usual without a care in the world and do absolutely nothing to prepare themselves for any kind of threat to them or their family. They say things like…”If its my time to go then that’s just life and there is nothing I can do about it. Why waste time thinking about it”.

I am not made this way personally. If you believe in God then you believe that God helps those who help themselves. If you believe in luck then you believe luck favors the prepared.  

Another thing I think of is how are these massacres going to affect our gun laws? In other words, how are these crimes going to affect how I can defend myself after ridiculous gun control laws are made in a knee jerk reaction to these crimes?

I painfully remember the 1994 Clinton assault weapons ban . I was born in California and I cant stand the idiotic 10 round magazine limit, bullet button and the featureless nonsense they have to put up with that does absolutely nothing to stop crime. 

For those who don’t know, crime actually went up after the assault weapons ban. Why? Probably because criminals never stopped buying stolen weapons and never stopped carrying illegal guns. Simply put, they never stopped being criminals. They didn’t care about the law before the ban and they didn’t care about the law after the ban. They don’t care about laws in general. That is why we call them criminals. 

The gun control laws only affected the law abiding citizens who followed the law. It effectively disarmed and punished Americans who never committed a crime.

Ironically cities like Los Angeles, Oakland, Chicago and NYC have the country’s strictest gun control laws all in the name of “safety” and “to reduce crime” yet they also have the highest firearm crime rates in the entire USA. How is it possible to have high firearms related murders if guns are so restricted? It simply cannot be possible. It is a fact that the anti-gun liberals refuse to recognize. It’s clear gun control does not work. 

Ironically in states that allow ownership of class III machine guns… there has never been a single case of a registered owner of a machine gun committing a crime with it. Las Vegas has lots of dirt bags and machine guns are completely legal to own there yet no one person has used a machine gun to commit a massacre or rob a billion dollar casino? How ironic. If you are an anti-gun advocate? Please answer that question?

These 3 recent shootings have only reinforced my decision to carry a concealed weapon every day. Not because I live in fear, but because I refuse to put my family at risk of being one of those defenseless victims.

Those who subscribe to me already know, I carry my Glock 26 7 days a week.  I always encourage my friends and family to have a certain “situational awareness” and stay armed if you can. Especially if you live in a state where you have the freedom to carry?

A few people have watched my youtube videos and have criticized me for being a “typical paranoid American”. I can only assume these comments are from a European socialist? But no matter who it is, I have to laugh at these kinds of comments because these are the same people who probably put a seat belt on their child. You don’t put a seatbelt on your child because of the law. You put a seatbelt on your child because you want to protect them just in case something bad happens. 

This is the exact same reason I carry a concealed weapon. I carry it to protect my family in case something bad happens. That’s not being paranoid. That’s being intelligent and prepared.

I fear these recent massacres will push law makers into creating new gun control laws to try and make us safer. With the Presidential elections just a few months away I fear whoever wins will feel compelled to enact some form of gun control to make us safer. 

The anti-gun movement has been working hard to find new ways to restrict guns in America. Many openly wish for an all-out total gun ban. The NRA and the 2^nd Amendment itself has been difficult for the anti-gun movement since the constitution clearly protects our right to bear arms. 

What I fear is what the 2^nd Amendment does not protect. It doesn’t protect magazine capacity or the amount of ammo we can buy. It doesn’t protect against high taxes on ammo or protect against caliber restriction.

I fear the federal government is going to try and push all of America to adopt the same gun control laws as California, New York and Illinois all in the attempt to make us safer…but as history has already proven…it wont. The shooting at the Empire State bldg. in NYC is proof of that.

Here is the sad truth about humanity. Criminals will always kill. Mass murders will always happen. With strict gun control laws there will be millions of defenseless law abiding citizens for killers to prey upon. 

A “gun free zone” might as well have a sign that says “mass murderers please come here. No one can stop you”. 

Thankfully banning all guns is impossible at this point but even if we did ban all guns today, the fact remains that guns are here to stay whether legal or illegal. If we stopped making guns and stopped importing guns, we shut down all gun stores and made all face to face gun sales illegal…the fact remains that guns are still on Earth. 

If you restrict them, you will create a powerful black market demand for them. Look at history. What happened when the Government banned something we love like alcohol? It created the bloodiest time in modern history. It created the entire organized crime phenomenon.

What do I think is the answer? My opinion is that instead of restricting guns, we should give law abiding citizens the power to defend themselves from random acts of violence. 

Do I want everyone to carry a gun? No. My fellow gun advocates will probably hate me for saying this but I believe we should allow gun ownership (not restrict it) but allow it with some strict rules.

The die hards hate this idea because they feel that once you give up an inch of the 2^nd amendment, somehow we will lose a mile. But for me, I feel if you own a gun you should have “mandatory” firearms training. Make gun buyers take a competency safety test. If you cannot pass an in-depth background check, and cannot pass a standard safety class then you are not competent to carry a gun. But if you are proven to be competent then we should be allowed to carry a concealed gun “IN ALL 50 STATES”.

We should create a national concealed carry law instead of individual state CCW laws. Give the good guys the power to stop random acts of violence. If one person had a concealed weapon in that movie theater they could have stopped the killer or at least injure him to the point where he could not concentrate because he is being shot at. People would probably still die but not 12 people.

Many argue that a handgun would have been suicide against a man with an AR15. True but I would rather die fighting to protect my family’s life than to just sit there and do nothing. 

Some will say having a restaurant or grocery store or theater full of armed citizens is a disaster waiting to happen. If 3 or 5 people respond to a single man with a gun, there will probably way too many shots fired and actually hurt or kill more people than the killer could. (if there are people behind the bad guy).

To a certain degree I agree. The NYC shooter killed one man but the police who responded shot him and 8 bystanders because the shooting happened on a busy NYC street.

As much as I would like to think all gun owners are good people. The fact is that there are a lot of people out there with bad attitudes, short tempers and violent personalities, or have a low intelligence but they are completely legal to own a firearm. 

Because of this I do think it would be wise to do more extensive background checks.  Make it mandatory for firearms owners to take firearms competency tests and safety classes. Educate them before they can own a gun. 

Here is the biggest problem. Mentally ill people! Every one of the shooters had emotional or mental issues. Many of them even had a history of mental illness or emotional problems. Why focus on guns when we all know the real problem is crazy people with guns! 

If you take away the guns you are still left with a violent mental person who still has access to knives, machetes, swords, chainsaws, needles filled with poison or diseases, homemade pipe bombs, fertilizer bombs and other explosives they learned to make from the internet. The capacity to kill does not go away by simply banning all guns. Humans have been killing long before the invention of the gun.  

I know I will piss off a lot of people by having this opinion but it is my opinion. 

I can understand the fear of my idea of gun control. Just look at what happened to the gun rights in the UK and Australia. Massacres we committed in those countries and the citizens voted for gun control. Next thing you know their guns were over restricted and banned totally. 

It was a clear case of over-reaction. The anti-gun movement was given an inch but they took a mile. Once they restrict your guns its almost impossible to repeal the law unless it has a built in expiration date.

I think the proper reaction to a massacre is not gun control but the right to carry a concealed weapon. Just like what Texas did after the Libbys restaurant massacre. Before the massacre Texas did not allow concealed carry of a firearm. After 22 people were killed in Libbys at lunch time, Texas wised up and gave their citizens the right to carry a concealed weapon. They did exactly the opposite of what politicians normally do in these cases. They empowered the citizens not leave them defenseless. 

Look at Texas now. Yes they still have crime but when was the last time you heard of a mass murder in Texas?

Not true...look at the Ft. Hood massacre, you say? Well guess what… The Army does not allow it soldiers or visiting civilians to carry a loaded firearm on base. It’s essentially a gun free zone even though there are hundreds of troops trained to shoot. It’s extremely ironic. 

The shooter knew everyone in the bldg. was unarmed. He knew he had a large window of time to conduct a massacre before anyone with a gun would arrive. For example at Virginia Tech 30 people were killed in 12 minutes. 12 minutes is all a mass murderer needs. It’s fairly common knowledge that it takes SWAT 15 minutes to even show up. 

So there you have it. That is my opinion on gun control here in America.

#1 Don’t ban guns. Make CCW permits legal in all 50 states and actually allow more guns to be in the hands of legally checked and trained citizens.

#2 Mandatory safety training for all firearms owners. Yes all of us. It’s a compromise but it’s the only compromise I feel makes sense. Restricting mags to 10 rounds, restricting barrel lengths to 16 or 18 inches, restricting pistol grips, restricting flash hiders, restricting, suppressors, restricting collapsible stocks, restricting folding stocks, restricting mag release buttons does nothing to make us safer. Let us keep all these things but make us take a safety class to do so. That makes the most sense to me. 

#3 Focus on the mentally unstable, not the gun itself. Guns don’t commit mass murder. Crazy people do.

What is your recommendation?

Like it or not that is my opinion (for now) unless someone can make a better case.

Ruger mini 14 Ranch Rifle “tactical” model

 First, the basics of the Ruger mini 14 in general...

The Ruger mini 14 family of rifles was first produced in 1974.

Mini 14’s are chambered in .223/5.56mm, 6.8spc, 7.62x39mm

Mini 14’s are popular because they are traditional styled, light weight, simple, compact, quick handling, affordable rifles. Good or bad…mini 14’s are an American legend. My father’s mini 14 (187 series) was the first center fire rifle I ever shot.

They are gas piston operated, Garand style rotating bolt, detachable magazine fed, semiautomatic rifles that are basically miniature versions of the Springfield Armory M14, hence the name mini 14.

Mini 14’s are famous for being extremely reliable and durable and can cycle almost any quality of ammo you feed it. They are also popular for being a nice alternative to AR15’s and AK47’s which have negative reputations in non-gun friendly states. The mini 14 looks more like a hunters rifle vs. a military style rifle.

Mini 14’s have a long history of proven performance under fire with police departments and prisons in America. The AR15 has pretty much taken over the role of patrol rifle today but in the 1970’s & 1980’s thousands of police officers trusted their lives to a mini 14. Many prisons still choose the mini 14 over the AR15.

Average prices today range from about $600 up to $900 depending on the model. In the old days they were a lot more budget friendly at about $250.

Ruger makes various models – 

-standard ranch rifle = 18.5” barrel

-tactical and NRA = 16.12” barrel

-heavy barrel target model = 22” barrel chambered in .223 only (not 5.56)

-mini 6.8spc = 18.5” barrel

-mini 30 (7.62x39) 18.5” barrel

-AC556 model has a 13” barrel and is select fire made for police & military use only. Very rare.

The older (pre-2005) mini 14’s were made with a thin profile barrel which was notorious for stringing its groups as the barrel heated up.

The sights have changed over the years from peep sights with a single front blade, to flip down rear sights to clear scopes to ghost ring sights with 3 blade protected front sights.

Ruger has been making the “Ranch Rifle” model since 1982 starting with the 187 series. You can tell a Ranch Rifle by its scope mounts on the receiver and side ejecting shells to clear a scope. Previous models had no factory scope mounting options and shell ejected out of the top of the receiver. Ruger did not start stamping “Ranch Rifle” into the receiver until 2005.

In 2005 Ruger began production of the new 580 series with a thicker barrel profile.

 The all new and improved 580 - 581 Series Mini 14

Produced from 2005-Present.

Designated as the Mini-14 “Ranch Rifle” which is stamped on the heel of the receiver.

The 580 series are built off of all new tooling machines with thicker profile “heavier” barrels which improved accuracy due to the barrel being stiffer and decreased heat sensitivity due to the thicker barrel. This basically put a stop to the reputation of mini 14’s being inaccurate when they heat up. 

Now you can shoot all day and expect 2 to 4 inch groups at 100 yards which is a significant leap forward in accuracy for the 40 year old design of the thin barreled mini 14’s of the past. Of course quality ammo helps with accuracy also.

The Tactical model mini 14

The tactical models come with a blued 16.12 inch barrel.

Ghost ring rear peep sight adjustable for windage & elevation, Winged (3-blade) Front Sight.

Some tactical models come with a birdcage style flash hider and some have no muzzle device at all.

Integrated scope mounts machined into the receiver.

Side ejecting shells to clear any optics mounted to the receiver.

Polymer traditional style rifle stock. Some models come with an ATI stock with a folding buttstock and multiple picatinny rails on the handguards.

Tactical models weigh roughly 6.75 lbs in the standard rifle style polymer stock.

Integrated front sling swivel in the gas block and a sling swivel mounted on the rear of the stock.

Ships with 2 Ruger factory 20 round steel magazines.

It’s easy to see inside the chamber just by glancing down. No need to tilt the gun to inspect the chamber.

The magazine release is ambidextrous, similar to the M14 and AK47. The down side is that it uses a “rock in” style vs. a straight insert and drop free style of an AR15 magazine. Mag changes are only slightly slower than an AR15 but it’s still quick with practice.

The safety selector is ambidextrous. Its styled after the M1 Garand and M14. The down side is that you have to insert your finger into the trigger guard to disengage it. If you make a mistake or have an accident as you go to disengage the safety, you could have a negligent discharge? This is why this style of safety is not copied in any modern rifle today. Its old but it works and as I mentioned, it is ambidextrous.

It has a “last shot- bolt hold open” feature. This obviously makes mag changes easy. When the bolt locks to the rear it needs a new mag. The downside is that it does not have a bolt release button like an AR15. You must insert a fresh mag, then “rack” the charging handle to release the bolt. With practice it can still be done quickly.

It field strips quick and easy. No pins to push. Simply yank on the trigger guard and the whole assembly pops out and unlocks from the barreled action.

The bolt can be a little tricky to remove and re-assemble but with practice it can be done quickly.

It has a plastic handguard. While it does a great job of protecting your hand from heat and the reciprocating op-rod...I think it looks freakishly ugly. I want to replace mine with an older style vented handuard with no op-rod portion.

Lots of magazine options. 5, 10, 20, 30, 40 round magazines and drum mags. It’s said that the factory Ruger magazines are the most reliable. From my own personal experience I would have to agree. I own a 40 round mag and it has malfunctioned more than I am comfortable with.

Final thoughts…

The Ruger mini 14 tactical is a great rifle for all kinds of uses from law enforcement to home defense to hunting to SHTF to the zombie apocalypse. 

Its rock solid reliable and rugged and can take a fair amount of abuse, neglect, cheap steel ammo and keep on shooting.

It may be almost the same price as an AR15 but some people actually don’t want an AR15 believe it or not. Some people actually prefer the look and feel of a more traditional rifle setup. 

It has its strengths and weaknesses just like any other gun. Some may not be a fan of the M14/AK47 style where you have to “rock in” the magazine vs. straight insert and drop free AR15 magazines?

Some may not be a fan of the Garand style safety lever in the trigger guard?

All in all, I think the Ruger min 14 tactical is a fun American classic that has been upgraded with a new barrel and better sights, that is worth every penny. Inside of 200 yards I think it is just as effective as almost any other .223/5.56 rifle that costs twice as much.