Editorial

Gun News
Arizona legislators have come up with a plan to legalize loaded weapons in places that serve alcohol. Senate Bill 1363 breezed through the Senate Judiciary Committee on a 5-2 vote and appears headed toward a promising future in the full Senate and House.

Downside: Arizonans would have to avoid drinking an alcoholic beverage while carrying the loaded weapon. The measure would apply to restaurants, bars and nightclubs that served alcohol. The measure fell one vote short of passage last year.

The reasoning behind the measure? Law-abiding gun owners should be able to dine in restaurants without leaving their weapons at home or in the car, where they are useless for...

News reports have said a bodyguard who was once assigned to protect anti-gun film director Michael Moore was arrested by New York Port Authority Police in January.

Michael Moore is certainly no friend of gun owners, but this episode also shows him to be hypocrite. He actively campaigns against gun ownership, but he has retained an armed bodyguard - see entry under Rosie ODonnell.

But in this case, it wouldnt be Moore who would be put at risk. Bodyguard Patrick Burk was reportedly arrested at JFK International Airport when he declared a pistol in his baggage at the ticket counter, as required by law. New York authorities routinely arrest nonresident travelers who do not have a New...

BE THANKFUL YOU DONT LIVE IN D.C.

Gun owners across the county often grouse about how difficult it for them to own firearms in certain jurisdictions - or impossible in others.Certainly, one of the worst gun-rights offenders is the District of Columbia. There, sportsmen are liable to be arrested and imprisoned, no questions asked, merely for owning a gun.

There are cases in which firemen responding to fires have found unloaded rifles or shotguns in private homes. The owners have been threatened with prosecution. There are other cases where homeowners have kept hidden firearms for protection against intruders, and when they used the weapons, they were prosecuted for more...

The Lead Boogeyman
There were 20 million metric tons of lead bullets fired in the United States in the 20th century. Is that lead having an environmental impact? Not according to research done by Virginia Tech geological scientists.

Analyzing samples from a U.S. Forest Service firing range near Blacksburg, Virginia, Donald Rimstidt, a professor in the Department of Geosciences at Virginia Tech, and other researchers found very little lead damage to the environment. This is a big issue for gun owners, who face opposition from environmentalists over lead deposits. There are 9,000 nonmilitary shooting ranges and a lot of military ones in the United States. Some 60,000 metric to...

[IMGCAP(1)]In this space, I usually stick with discussions of politics or gun ownership that apply to broad audiences. This month is a departure from that formula, because of the unique nature of a stolen gun thats just come to light. That this priceless gun is one of a kind isnt so newsworthy; expensive firearms are stolen from individuals every day, here and abroad. No, this gun was stolen from a manufacturer, which itself is curious. And that the thief cherry-picked this specific item from among thousands is confounding as well. Heres the full story:

SIGARMS Inc. is offering a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the individuals responsible for the theft and the...

Gun Tests reader Ben Shaw of Clarke County, Alabama, wrote me the day after the Clinton Gun Ban expired. His comments on the ban, the banners, and various talking heads on television parallel my own. I think youll enjoy reading what he had to say.

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The reason that gun experts laugh at these anti-gun legislators and lobbyists is that they do not know anything about firearms. An example: One of the features that was banned as causing a rifle to be an Assault Weapon was a bayonet lug. Will anyone please tell me when a bayonet mounted on a rifle was used in a crime?

How does one detect these ignorant anti-gun legislators and lobbyists? By knowing the proper terminology,...

JOHN KERRYS GUN-VOTING RECORD

According to the National Rifle Associations Institute for Legislative Action (NRA-ILA), John F. Kerrys voting record makes him the most anti-gun presidential nominee in United States history. NRA records show that since his election to the U.S. Senate in 1984, Kerry has cast 59 votes (NRA did not score 4 of them) on issues involving firearms rights and hunting.

In addition, Kerry currently is a co-sponsor of S. 1431, which would ban all semi-automatic shotguns, all detachable-magazine semi-automatic rifles and many other guns, calling the whole lot assault weapons.

In a 20-year career, Kerry has voted on nine separate occasions on issues...

It should come as no surprise to U.S. gunowners that much-ballyhooed gun-control efforts in Canada have failed to control crime since a new gun-registration program was started. Also, the registration programs costs have gone beyond the $1-billion mark, or more than 500 times what was originally earmarked.

As a measure of registrations failure, the Canadian government recently admitted it could not identify a single violent crime that had been solved through registration. But rather than scrapping the measure, some Canadian politicians may want to travel southward into the United States and impose the scheme here! This radical solution advocates going across the border to the U.S. and a...

Accidental gun deaths do claim childrens lives, but they are much rarer than you might think. During 2000 there were 37 accidental gun deaths for children under 10 in the U.S. In 1999 there were 31, and only six of these cases actually involved a child firing the gun. From 1995 to 1999, the entire United States saw only between five and nine cases a year where a child under ten either accidentally shot themselves or another child.

With more than 90 million adults owning a gun and almost 40 million children under 10, it is hard to think of almost any other potentially dangerous products kept in American homes that have as few accidental deaths associated with them. Over 1,260 children und...

This issue was just so packed with gun and other equipment reviews, I ran out of space for Short Shots. Herewith, then, is an abridged version for this month:

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GUN COMPANIES WELCOME. The legislature in Oklahoma has passed an invitation for gun makers to open manufacturing facilities in what The Daily Oklahoman calls this gun friendly state. An editorial describes the joint resolution from the Senate this way: The resolution notes that firearm manufacturers have plants in places that are hostile to gun ownership. Why not move here? Lawmakers have asked the Commerce Department to develop incentives to attract weapons makers. Murray State College, the resolution says...

OF AWARDS, GUNS, AND COOL CARS
At Gun Tests, theres only one award that ultimately makes a lot of difference to us, and thats your subscription. If you or a friend subscribe, and later renew, because you like our special brand of call-it-like-we-see-it product reviews, then weve done our job.

Still, I occasionally enter Gun Tests work in contests, mainly to get what I call a fresh read on the execution of the material. Having other professionals backstop our work can show me holes in what we do, and perhaps show me how to make the magazine better.

In March, I attended the Texas Outdoor Writers Association (TOWA) annual meeting in the friendly southwest Texas town of Uva...

Seven states now ban certain types of semi-automatic guns, and there has been a federal ban on certain semi-automatic guns since 1994. Gun-control advocates ominously predict that eliminating the ban will result in a surge in police killings or, as Sen. Carl Levin claims, a rise in gun crimes.

Yet, despite the rhetoric, there is not a single academic study showing that these bans have reduced violent crime. Even research funded by the Justice Department under the Clinton administration concluded merely that the bans impact on gun violence has been uncertain.

The 1994 federal assault-weapons ban applied to semi-automatics that fire one bullet per pull of the trigger. Rebuilding semi-...