From the Heartland

This is my soap box, on these pages I publish my opinions on firearms and any other subject I feel like writing about.

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Pin Shooters mark your Calanders

Bowling pin Shooters it is that time of year again. The first Bowling pin shoot of the year is just a couple of weeks away.



Load up on ammo and wipe the winter dust off your guns and come on out to the Lincoln Izaak Walton league range March 26th 2006.

The event is open to all Caliber classes from twenty-two on up.

If you are new to the game check out the web site for the Nebraska Pin Shooters. The site has just about all of the information that you'll need.

The concept for Bowling Pin shooting was first started by Rich Davis the original maker of Second Chance Body Armor. In the early days in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of his product to the various police departments Rich would kneel down, shoot himself in the chest with a revolver and then turn the firearm on 3 bowling pins set up some feet away.

Since a bowling pin closely aproximates the scoring area of the FBI target Rich proved that an officer could take a hit in the vest and still fight back placing rounds in the center mass of a violent adversary.

These demonstrations turned into a yearly competition called the Second Chance Shoot. It was vastly popular for over a decade. Second Chance body Armor stopped sponsoring the national shoot years ago, but people did not stop shooting pins.

There are still club sponsored shoots all over the country and it is a sport that can get a shooter hooked after only a competition or two.

Massad Ayoob in his book "Hit the White Part" writes that pin shooting combines all of the elements needed for serious self defense practice; Stress and muliple reactionary targets.

Paraphrasing Ayoob from Memory

The stress part comes from competing man to man. (Two shooters stand on the firing line engaging 5 or more pins, the first shooter to put all pins on the ground advances)

Mutiple targets means the shooter must be sure of his/her accuracy moving to the next target before the last one is off the table and on the ground. (Most shooters will shoot once at each pin and then scan back across the table eliminating any that have not yet fallen to the ground)

Since the targets are reactionary the shooter has immediate verification of a hit, miss or wound.
(target falls over but is still on the table.)

As previously mentioned a bowling pin closely aproximates the lethal zone on the FBI Q target, so speed and accuracy is definately the order of the day.

As a final note the I would like to address a few mistakes that I see most novice pin shooters make their first few times out.

The first is going to fast. This causes a lot of misses and frustration. Better to concentrate on accuracy. Speed will come by itsself if you let it.

The second is concentrating too hard on one pin. Many new shooters upon missing a pin will continue to shoot at that pin until they get it off the table or run out of ammo. Concentrate on one shot to one pin for all five pins then sweep back across the table picking up those that were missed or only knocked over on the table. remember they have to hit the ground.

For an in depth look at bowling pin shooting I highly recommend Ayoobs book "Hit the White Part". It was written many years ago, but it is still the definitive work on the sport of pin shooting.

Copies can be ordered through any of the major book reatailers like Barnes & Noble. They can also be ordered from Ayoob directly on his Lethal Force Institute web site. If fact all of Ayoobs available books and CD's can be ordered directly from him. So if you have been wanting a copy of something and haven't been able to locate it, you'll find it there.

Friday, March 10, 2006

Good news of sorts for LB 454 Supporters

UPDATE 3/11 14:30: The Lincoln Journal Star weighs in on the Pre-emtion issue, as does Omaha's Channel 6 WOWTV.

The Nebraska State legislature, aka; The Unicameral, handed Ernie Chambers an other defeat this morning. A 33 vote for cloture passed Lb 454 out of Select File and sent it to it's final reading. That is if Brashear will put it back on the agenda. I am guessing he probably will.

This means however that it may be enacted into law without statewide pre-emtion, meaning that the political subdivisions could enact local ordinances to prevent carrying inside city limits. Talk around is the Municipalities could, if LB 454 is passed as is, enact their own permit systems make it tougher to carry in city limits or just outright ban it all together.

Personally I don't know how all of this will work if LB 454 is passed into law. I have written on most of these issues in the past specifically what the Political Subdivisions can and can't do under the State Constitution.

Refresher:

Public Servants only have those powers given them by the people they represent, that are enumerated in the Constitution.

In the original Constitution there were no powers given to regulate firearms.

In the early 1900's the State Supreme Court held that a political entity CANNOT envoke the Doctrine of Police Power over powers that they have not been granted.

Despite that the Legislature enacted Statute 28-1202 (banning the carry of a concealed weapon) and gave power to Political Subdivisions to ban the carry of concealed weapons.

In 1988 the people of Nebraska voted by ballot at General Election to enact Initiative Measure No. 403, that among other things took away the power to infringe or deny the right to own firearms.

In 1990 the Unicameral spit in the faces of the people that elected them by passing the Handgun Permit to Purchase law. A Personal property aquisition law that definately infringes AND Denies the right to own firearms.

Addittionally since that time the Political Subdivisions of Omaha, Lincoln and others have passed ordinances that infringe on a Citizen of Nebraska's Right to bear arms and in some cases deny such right.

The crutch that these Municipalities lean on for enactment of these unconstitutional ordinances is their supposed "Home Rule Authority".

I have covered that in the past too. Under "Home Rule Authority" a Political Subdivision cannot enact an ordinaces that are repugnant to or inconsistant with the Constitution.

Purpose of home rule charter provisions of Constitution is
to render cities as nearly independent as possible of state
legislation, subject to the general public policy of the state. State
ex rel. Fischer v. City of Lincoln, 137 Neb. 97, 288 N.W. 499 (1939).

If Lb 454 by some miracle does pass without statewide pre-emtion I anticipate that most if not all of the State's major population centers will be crafting City Ordinances to "opt out" of the law and either ban concealed carry outright or make it so difficult it will be impossible to get a permit in those areas let alone carry if a person had one.

The bottom line here is that our elected officials from the state house on down have routinely disregarded the Nebraska State Constitution:

They (Unicameral) enacted a prohibition on concealed carry, when they did not have the power to do so and the Supreme Court had ruled that it could not be done under the Doctrine of Police Power.

They (Unicameral) gave a power to the Political Subdivisions they they themselves did not have to give. Specifically the power to ban concealed carry.

Case law concerning Article CI-26 supports that contention in that the court ruled the following concerning Article CI-26: A state agency may not, by invoking the doctrine of police power, exercise powers not granted it by and inconsistent with provisions of the state Constitution. First Trust Co. of Lincoln v. Smith, 134 Neb. 84, 277 N.W. 762 (1938).)

Since 1988 the Municipalities, mainly Omaha and Lincoln have adopted ordinces that go beyond the only supposed power they do have in regards to firearms by enacting laws contrary to Initiative Mearsure No. 403 that infringe and/or deny the Citizens the Right to keep and bear
arms.

Since 1988 the Unicameral has enacted the a permit system to purchase handguns and is currently attempting to enact another concealed carry law that further infringes and/or denies the Citizens of Nebraska the Right to keep and bear arms.

Read it for yourself;

CI-1
Statement of rights.

All persons are by nature free and independent, and have certain inherent and inalienable rights; among these are life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the right to keep and bear arms for security or defense of self, family, home, and others, and for lawful common defense, hunting, recreational use, and all other lawful purposes, and such rights shall not be denied or infringed by the state or any subdivision thereof. To secure these rights, and the protection of property, governments are instituted among people, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Source:
Neb. Const. art. I, sec. 1 (1875);
Amended 1988, Initiative Measure No. 403.


As I final note I would like to point out that CI-1 specifically states that the right to keep and bear arms is an inherent and inalienable right. CI-1 goes on to affirm that the right applies to all other lawfull purposes.

CONCEALED CARRY IS A LAWFUL PURPOSE.

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Nebraska's CCW bill back on the Unicameral floor

Lb 454, Nebraska's latest version of a CCW bill is back on the floor and being discussed for the second time this year.

All of this is a moot point however. The bill is laden with amendments many of which have been proposed by Senator Ernie Chambers.

One such amendment requires a formula to determine the number of firearms a licensed person can carry. It is complicated and involves something like: Taking the birthdate of the licensee and multiplying it by the date the permit was issued divided by the number of the current century minus the combined ages of all the applicants children .... Anyway you get the point.

Another Chambers amendment requires the violator, upon conviction to be transported to the law enforcement training center where the bills sponsor will be required by law to (with the weapon of her choice) shoot the trigger finger off of the offender.

Senator Chambers has vowed to kill this bill and is pulling out all of the stops necessary to do so.

Granted this is just another typical year in the Nebraska Unicameral, but one thing I had not seen in past years was the race card being played. That was done so today.

A Senator (not Ernie Chambers) stood up on the house floor today and addressed "all of the minorities listening to my voice or watching this on TV" that this bill is not for you, it is for the white people of this state. "Oh you will be able to get a CCW", he went on, but you will be treated different if the cops find out your carrying a gun and God help you if you ever have to shoot a white person with it."

Yes that was stated in the public record on the Unicameral floor today by a WHITE Senator from a district that encompasses part of Omaha.

The most disturbing rhetoric to me centers around the speeches given by those that are against LB 454. Their consensus is that the Nebraskans they represent cannot be trusted to make their own decisions for their own families safety and welfare.

Do you people understand that; Your elected leaders do not trust you. It doesn't matter whether you are for, against or just don't care about LB 454 you elected leaders do not trust you.

They think that you will turn the streets of Hometown, Nebraska red with blood if your allowed to carry a "hidden gun". Even though this has not happened in any of the other 20 plus states that have passed CCW in the last 20 years they are sure that the Citizens of Nebraska will be the exception to the rule.

I don't care how you feel about the issue, but I am outraged that the people that represent me think so little of me that they can proclaim on the house floor for the public record that they don't trust me.

I have not given them or anyone else any reason to doubt my maturity and/or level of intelligence to make my own decisions. That they file one after another up to a microphone on my house floor and state for the public record that I can not be trusted is an outrage and an affront to the very Republic we call the United States of America.

In closing I would like to think that every Nebraskan would be outraged by their elected leaders stating for the public record that they do not trust their constituency.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Hi-way Diner - 2 City of Lincoln - 0

In a legal battle that has been going on since last year the City of Lincoln was again soundly defeated in its effort to have a bus removed from private property.

The bus belongs to, Gary Walker the father of the Hi-way Diners owner. The son has given Dad permission to park the vehicle on his property. The Hi-way Diners smoking Customers are allowed to use the bus to consume their meals and smoke.

Certain officials took exception to this, in that they felt it is an end run around the smoking ban that is breaking the city coffers. They took the matter to court, as a zoning law violation and have so far have lost at both the County and District level.

Although the City of Lincoln probably won't appeal this decision they are not done with the Walker family yet.

City Attorney Dana Roper Had these words, in the Lincoln Journal Star for the Walkers and any other local business that dares to challenge the Power's that be:

“This is not the last, I suspect, that Mr. Walker has heard from the city,” Roper said. “He may be in violation of other ordinances that we’ll have to pursue.”
And for restaurant owners thinking of investing in a bus, Roper had a warning: “It’s not open season on this.”


Sounds like a threat to me!!!!