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I saw a linkback to Balloon Goes Up which referenced my article on revolvers being criticized by Michael Bane of Downrange TV. My first thought was, "What did I get wrong?" I don't know much about Michael Bane - anything, really. In a podcast on Downrange TV (it's 53 minutes long, the parts I quote are at about the 33:50 mark) he appears to be referencing my article, although I cannot be absolutely sure. He starts off by saying that the article he found on the internet stated "If you… Read More

In the dry corners of legal academia, few topics cause such storms of passion as the debate over originalism. What did the Founders mean when they wrote this passage or that in the Constitution or Bill of Rights? Does their original take matter? If so, for how long? Originalists argue for a careful hewing to their preferred interpretation of specific passages based on the Founders’ “original meaning,” which anti-originalists correctly criticize as conveniently supporting originalist arguments for smaller government. Anti-originalists have cleverly responded by giving originalists a taste of their… Read More

Late last year, I read a study in the JAMA Network Open which purported to conduct a deep dive into firearm homicides in Boston over a five-year period. I read it thoroughly and with great interest because it appeared to be conducted to meet some professional standards and was claimed to come from an objective point of view. I’ve been intending to write about it for a while, but that was on the back burner until I saw that the New York Times noticed the study and breathlessly repeated its… Read More

News of the mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand hit me in a different manner than most other mass shootings have. Part of that is because I've been to Christchurch and found it absolutely idyllic. The other part is because one of the first things I saw was that video had been livestreamed by at least one of the shooters. I was immediately reminded of the murders of Alison Parker and Adam Ward, the two Virginia journalists murdered by a former coworker who streamed his attack on the internet. I… Read More

I was walking through downtown Seoul when I heard that Mattis would be resigning as Secretary of Defense. My first thought was that the next loud noise I heard would be incoming North Korean rocket artillery, but it turned out to just be a garbage truck. As I compose these words, I'm sitting at the Killing Fields - rather, the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center in Cambodia. It is one of the hundreds of places where the Khmer Rouge executed people, and where you can find a tall ceremonial "stupa" with… Read More

In mid-January, YouTube released guidance regarding the requirements to remain a “YouTube Partner.” In mid-March, YouTube released new guidelines for videos containing or related to firearms. YouTube is free to set its own rules for the content it hosts. I do not challenge the notion that they should have the right to determine what they allow on their servers. I do challenge their recent actions to clamp down on certain forms of speech, however, on a philosophical basis. Put simply: just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. It’s important… Read More

As I have been quite busy lately, I failed to notice that my hosting account had expired...then I took so long to pay for it that GoDaddy had removed the data and wanted another sum of money to restore it. I finally gave in and paid the ransom, but then it took several more calls to their customer service folks before the site was actually restored. The blog will now go back to its usual blistering publication rate of at least two articles per decade.

Two nights ago I saw the movie Thank You For Your Service - not out of a burning desire to see the movie, but because we'd driven quite a ways to the theater and it was the only movie showing that night with decent seats available. The movie follows three soldiers upon their return from Iraq in 2007, and it's based on a book written by David Finkel. I have not read his book, but my understanding is that the movie follows real-life soldiers Finkel knew and wrote about after… Read More

I apologize for a lack of updates to the blog. I have been working feverishly for Omaha Outdoors writing product descriptions and creating video reviews. As a result of one of those reviews, we discovered that the Sig P320 would fire when dropped at certain angles on the rear of the slide. At almost exactly the same time, a lawsuit was filed against Sig Sauer by a police officer who was injured when his holstered Sig P320 fell from the rear of his vehicle and discharged a round upon impact… Read More

I firmly believe that law abiding individuals have a right to carry concealed firearms for self-defense. The passage of constitutional carry in Arizona, an effort of the Arizona Citizens Defense League, was hailed by many as a step forward in this regard, but I found it objectionable for two reasons. One was practical, in that it, at least for a time, limited the number of states which recognized my Arizona concealed handgun permit, thus actually reducing my ability to legally defend myself. The other was theoretical, in that people without… Read More