At about 8:45 a.m., the department opened shop for a gun buyback at its east precinct in Alberta, offering gift cards to anyone who brought in a gun.

Officers handed out $50 Visa gift cards to those who brought in handguns, $75 gift cards for rifles and shotguns and $100 for assault rifles. Those who brought in inoperable weapons received a $25 gift card.

No names or addresses were taken during the event and no charges were made against those who turned in a gun without a license.

The department had $1,400 in gift cards to trade for firearms, and by 9:30 a.m. the cards had run out.

People continued to drop off guns, however, and by the end of the buyback at noon, the department had collected more than 30 guns.

–Wayne Grayson, Tuscaloosa News

So, the Tuscaloosa Police Department just crapped $1400 down the toilet. The article goes on to say:

Anderson said most folks who dropped off guns had no use for them and simply wanted them out of the house.

“And most of the guns we see used in crimes are those just laying around the house, readily available,” he said.

“This was a huge success,” said Police Chief Steve Anderson. “Any gun that we get off the street is a gun that we can be assured won’t be used at a later date in an assault or robbery.”

–Wayne Grayson, Tuscaloosa News

A “huge success?” What are the odds that most of the people that turned in those guns have at least one other gun in their home? I’d say the chances are pretty high. And from looking at the picture that accompanied the story, I’d say that most of the guns that were turned in look like gun show surplus stuff anyway. Who wouldn’t turn in a beat up old AK-47 and get a $100? I would in a heart beat.

Look, I can sympathize with people being concerned about gun violence, but programs like these do absolutely nothing. You might as well just put up a sign in the yard that says: “Come get free money for that extra gun you were gonna sell on gunbroker.com anyway.”

They got 30 guns “off the street. Only about 60 million to go and they can call it a day.

Capt. Jeff Hartley pointed out the large amount of small weapons collected during the buyback.

“This was our main goal here. We wanted to get these easily concealable weapons out of people’s hands,” he said

–Wayne Grayson, Tuscaloosa News

I bet it was. The main goal of government is always to disarm the people. The less guns we have and the more guns they have the better they like it.

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A bill to legalize possession of small amounts of marijuana for medical purposes has been approved by an Alabama House committee.

The sponsor, Democratic Rep. Patricia Todd of Birmingham, acknowledges that with only five days remaining the bill has little chance of winning final passage this session.

The bill would allow a patient suffering serious pain because of cancer or other ailments to possess up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana. The patient would need permission from a doctor and could grow his or her own marijuana.

One committee member, Democratic Rep. Yusuf Salaam of Selma, expressed concern that allowing marijuana use for medical purposes might open the door to full scale legalization of the drug.

The bill now goes to the full House.

–AP via al.com

While this may instill fear of quickening societal decline in the hearts of Christians, when you sit back and think about it logically, it really doesn’t make any sense for drugs to be illegal in the first place. And, there is no solid biblical or ethical reason to criminalize drug use. Now, I don’t expect you to just take my previous statement on face value. So, I’m going to step through my argument and try and convince you.

Here’s my argument:

• Christians should support the repeal of all laws that criminalize the use, possession or cultivation of drugs, because the enforcement of those laws, and resultant negative externalities, cause more harm than the drugs themselves.

Here’s my disclaimer:

• I, personally, do not use/take any illegal drugs whatsoever. And, if any currently illegal drug was to be made legal, I still would not put it into my body. In short, I do not and will not use drugs, now or in the future.

Now, my argument for repealing all drug laws is based on what I think is a set of obvious, common-sense observations about the consequences of criminalizing human behaviours that don’t harm others. I’m going to go through these observations one by one using marijuana laws as my example, but please note that I believe this applies to all drug laws. Not just marijuana.

1.) Marijuana’s legal status is not the determining factor upon which people decide to smoke it or not. Think about it for a moment. If you don’t currently use marijuana, is it because it’s illegal? Of course not. The reason you don’t smoke pot is because you’ve made either a moral, or a health decision to abstain from it. Marijuana’s legality doesn’t play into that decision making process at all. There are plenty of things that are legal to ingest that you, in fact, do not ingest. Tobacco for instance. Tobacco is fully legal, yet only about 21% of the U.S. population smoke cigarettes. Furthermore, that 21% number represents a drop in smokers from almost 43% in 1964 to 21% in 2005. That’s a 50% drop in 40 years, with smoking still being fully legal the entire time.

So, what is the reason for this drop in tobacco smoking rates? The overwhelming factors are social stigma and health concerns. Legality has nothing to do with it. As a matter of fact, most people begin smoking early in life, before they are of legal age, only to quit later as adults. This fact shows how ineffectual bans on personal behaviour are. If a majority of people begin using a drug when it’s illegal and then quit when it’s legal, that blows the whole theory out of the water from the get go. The bottom line is that legality doesn’t influence usage among behaviours that have moral stigma attached. If a person doesn’t smoke weed now, it’s about 99% certain that he won’t smoke it when it’s legal.

2.) Drug laws put people in prison for engaging in a behaviour that doesn’t harm anyone. People should not go to jail for ingesting something into their body. I believe it’s immoral to lock someone in a cage for eating, smoking or ingesting something into their body that we don’t approve of. But, let me be clear. This is an entirely different argument from things like drunk driving or negligence. What I’m talking about is the simple act of picking a plant out of your back yard, sticking it in a cigarette paper and inhaling the smoke. Knocking down a person’s door, kidnapping them from their family and throwing them in prison for months or years at a time simply for doing that act is immoral.

3.) Drug criminalization creates violence and suffering. You know what’s worse than smoking dope? Children being killed in the crossfire of Mexican drug wars and innocent people being murdered to keep them quiet about drug trafficking in inner-city neighborhoods. If prohibition taught us anything, it’s that making the personal consumption of certain substances illegal instantly creates a black market. And, that black market spawns gangs, violence, murder and all sorts of horrible side effects. What finally brought down Al Capone’s gang? It wasn’t the FBI. It was the repeal of prohibition. Want to destroy Mexican drug cartels? Repeal all of the drug laws. When things are made illegal, people fight over them. When those things are legalized people engage in commerce. It’s been said that when goods can’t cross borders, bullets will.

4.) Being an addict is not the same as being a criminal. Drugs are addictive. That’s a fact. Putting someone in prison doesn’t make them any less addicted to heroine. In fact, it complicates their recovery from that addiction. There’s plenty of drugs in prison. There’s also plenty of rape and violence. And, in the mean time, the addict is now isolated from their family, church and other loved ones. It’s sick. Showing the love of Christ to an addict is only complicated and frustrated by locking them up in a cage. And treating them like a criminal, so that they have to hide from public view, creates in them a sense of criminality that leads to worse behaviour and possibly real crime. What’s better? Having a prison ministry to go and preach to drug offenders, or not having them be prisoners at all and witnessing to them on their own front lawn.

5.) Enforcement of drug laws consume tens of billions of tax dollars each year. The DEA(Drug Enforcement Agency) has a budget of $2.6 billion dollars. When you take into account all of the thousands of enforcement agents, local police, state troopers, marshalls, court employees, etc. that are required to enforce the U.S. drug laws, it’s just insane the amount of money that is wasted on this nonsense. There are now roughly 50,000 people in prison in this country on marijuana charges, at a cost of $1 billion per year to the tax payer. When drugs as a whole are taken into account, the numbers are far higher. Again, I believe it’s wrong to be in favor of the caging of my fellow citizens for simply smoking a plant. If they get behind the wheel of a car or neglect their children in favor of drugs, let’s intervene as a society, but anything less is just bullying.

6.) Drug laws are completely inconsistent. This is an easy one. Marijuana is illegal. Alcohol isn’t. There is no difference between the two. Case closed.

7.) Sin is not the same as crime. There are lots of things that are sinful, that aren’t criminal. For instance, coveting your neighbors possessions is sinful. But it’s absolutely not criminal. The same applies to drugs and alcohol. Scripture tells us that our bodies are the “temple of the Lord.” Therefore, we should take care of our bodies and not damage them carelessly. But, using that as the basis of a civil law is silliness. Where does it stop? Sure, some people drink too much and some people smoke weed, and that impairs their judgement. But, many people also willingly push their bodies to the physical limit and get drowsy behind the wheel from overwork. Should we imprison them too? Also, many people willingly don’t eat right, so that their bodies get sick and they can’t take care of their families like they should. Should we imprison them too? Of course not. Smoking marijuana may be sinful, but it isn’t criminal any more than becoming addicted to Ambien is criminal. Both impair your judgement, but you only go to jail for one.

8.) Drug laws increase State power at the expense of social power. Christians should be the first in line to come to the aid of those in the grip of drug addiction. But, we have acquiesced to the impersonal, faceless, cold State. They might get somewhat better after the State puts them through mandatory drug rehab programs, but where is the love of Christ? Drugs have always carried social stigma. And, even before there were marijuana laws(The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937) those addicted to drugs were social outcasts. Christ told us to minister to those people, not throw them in a cage. That effort is hindered, not helped, by zealous District Attorneys that just need another notch on their belt in an election year.

9.) Drug laws just simply don’t work. I heard it said recently that the drug wars are over and the drugs won. That’s a very true statement. It’s estimated that roughly 100 million Americans have smoked pot at some point in their lives or actively smoke it now. Statistically, this is an absolutely dismal failure. While this isn’t an argument in and of itself, it lends us an insight into the feasability of outlawing non-harmful behaviour. In short, banning a behaviour doesn’t stop that behaviour. It just empowers the State. The only thing that keeps people from doing drugs is shame and lack of funds. Not laws.

And finally:

Legalization of marijuana is inevitable. It’s going to happen folks. It’s just a matter of time. California could legalize marijuana as early as this year. And, if that happens and they successfully tax the crap out of it, you will see a rapid domino effect across all of the other states as they join in the action to save their dwindling budgets. What you won’t see is millions of non-pot smokers going to the pot store to buy some weed for the first time when it’s finally legalized. That’s just not the way things work. As a Christian, I want people to refrain from behaviour that could harm themselves. But, so much more harm comes from drug law enforcement than from the actual drugs themselves that I believe it’s the appropriate Christians stance to support repeal of drug laws. At the very least, it would put us back to the pre-1937 stance of curbing drug use simply through societal shame and addiction treatment, not laws.

PITTSBURGH — Pittsburgh police Chief Nate Harper said three plainclothes officers have been reassigned during an internal investigation into the beating of an 18-year-old student violinist from the city’s Creative and Performing Arts High School.

Police charged Jordan Miles, 18, with assault and resisting arrest Jan. 11 because, they said, he fought with the officers who thought a “heavy object” in his coat was a gun. It turned out to be a bottle of Mountain Dew.

Miles said he resisted because he thought the men were trying to abduct him and didn’t identify themselves as police.

Miles’ family and attorney said he was hit with a stun gun and hospitalized after the violent Homewood struggle during which a chunk of his hair was yanked out and a tree branch went through his gums.

“I was accused for something I never had anything to do with,” said Miles, an honor student at CAPA. “I was completely innocent. They couldn’t find anything.”

Police took Miles to a Pittsburgh hospital for treatment. The student said he had to go back after he was released from custody.

“I want my son’s life restored, that’s all,” said Miles’ mother, Terez Miles. “I just want his life to go back to the way that it was before.”

City officials are conducting a full investigation, spokeswoman Diane Richard told Channel 11 News.

Reportedly the officers identified themselves as police. According to officials, the officers have been moved from plain clothes detail to uniformed duty.
–WPXI News, Pittsburgh

Notice that they still charged him with resisting arrest and assault even though they couldn’t find anything he had done wrong. Things like “resisting arrest” are complete fabrications made up by the state police machine to be a catch all in case they screw up and try to arrest the wrong guy. Anybody in their right mind that isn’t guilty of any crime would resist being forcefully marched to jail. It’s legitimate human nature.

Now, if instead of being beaten almost to death, he had actually walked up to the cops and asked them for help he most likely would have been told to get lost. The best way to get a cop to leave you alone is to ask him for help. The best way to get beaten to a bloody pulp is to mind your own business. The fact remains though – now days we have to protect ourselves from the police and from criminals. Which is which can be hard to distinguish sometimes. When the state gives itself a total monopoly on the use of force it’s inevitable that the people who get to legally exercise that force will eventually become corrupt and drunk with the dishing out of physical power.

Firearm Sales Up as Murders Drop

The FBI recently issued its preliminary 2009 crime report, showing that the number of murders in the first half of 2009 decreased 10 percent compared to the first half of 2008.

If the trend holds for the remainder of 2009, it will be the single greatest one-year decrease in the number of murders since at least 1960, the earliest year for which national data are available through the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Also, the per capita murder rate for 2009 will be 51 percent lower than the all-time high recorded in 1991, and it will be the lowest rate since 1963, a 46-year low.

Final figures for 2009 will be released by the FBI later this year.

According to gun control supporter dogma, “more guns means more crime”, the number of privately owned firearms must have decreased 10 percent in 2009. To the contrary, however, the number rose between 1.5 and 2 percent, to an all-time high.

For the better part of the last 15 months, firearms, ammunition, and “large” ammunition magazines have been sold in what appear to be record quantities. And, the firearms that were most commonly purchased in 2009 are those that gun control supporters most want to be banned, AR-15s, similar semi-automatic rifles, and handguns designed for defense.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation already estimates record ammunition sales in 2009, dominated by .223 Remington, 7.62x39mm, 9mm and other calibers widely favored for defensive purposes.

Looks like the lowest crime rate in 50 years just so happened to come about during the highest level of personal gun ownership in history. Hmm.

But, the more disturbing part of this line of thinking jumped out at me as I was reading some more in John Chodes excellent book Destroying The Republic: Jabez Curry and the Re-Education of the Old South. He has a good section on Ulysses S. Grant’s post-war mental transformation toward radical republicanism. And in it, he quotes Adam Badeau’s book Grant in Peace:

On the 18th of December, at the conclusion of his tour, Grant reported to the President that “the mass of thinking men of the South accepted the situation in good faith”; and while he recommended that a strong military force should still be retained in the Southern States, he declared his belief that “the citizens of that region are anxious to return to self-government within the Union as soon as possible.”

–Badeau, Grant in Peace

Do you think that the men and women of the South would be so quick to go along with the whims of a General if it was us that he was wanting to retain occupation over? I don’t think so. The South was occupied under military rule for years after the war ended. We were in the same position that Iraq and Afghanistan is now. We wanted the occupiers out of our land so we could get back to living our lives after they destroyed them. Let me re-phrase the above quote and see if it doesn’t make my point a bit clearer:

On the 18th of December, at the conclusion of his tour, Patreaus reported to President Bush that “the mass of thinking men of Afghanistan accepted the situation in good faith”; and while he recommended that a strong military force should still be retained in Iraq and Afghanistan, he declared his belief that “the citizens of that region are anxious to return to self-government as soon as possible.”

It’s always easy to find justification for military action after the fact. We can look back now and say that we “liberated” a million Iraqi’s from Saddam Hussein. Grant could also look back later after the war and say that he “liberated” a hundred thousand blacks from slavery. But, the fact remains that post-facto justifications don’t absolve from properly justifying our actions at the outset. Our military is there in Afghanistan now, doing what? Sitting around getting killed by random insurgency and destabilizing society by our very presence. And Iraq still has car bombs going off in Baghdad. Remember all the car bombs that struck Baghdad before we invaded? No, of course you don’t. Because that kind of street terrorism didn’t start until we got there.

If you are reading this and interpreting anything I said above as some kind of left-wing nutjob craziness then think again. I’m not anti-war. I’m anti-government. I’ll say it again: if we, as conservatives, don’t trust the government to do even the simplest of tasks then why would we trust them with guns and weapons of mass destruction? When wars need fighting then it’s every able-bodied man’s responsibility to grow a chest and go into battle. But, that’s a far cry from just placing unfettered loyalty in a government-run death machine that, evidently, nobody in the world can even come close to matching. I have many friends and family that are or used to be in the military. They have my love and respect. The government that puts them in harms way for stupid reasons does not.

It’s time for us as honest conservatives – and especially Southern conservatives – to re-learn the words of Thomas Jefferson:

“The Greeks and Romans had no standing armies, yet they defended themselves. The Greeks by their laws, and the Romans by the spirit of their people, took care to put into the hands of their rulers no such engine of oppression as a standing army. Their system was to make every man a soldier and oblige him to repair to the standard of his country whenever that was reared. This made them invincible; and the same remedy will make us so.”

–Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, 1814. ME 14:184

Before we start, I want to give one hugely important warning: never use hand loaded bullets for self defense. Only use them for practice. Your true self defense rounds should be bought from a reputable manufacturer. Hand loaded self defense rounds are a no-no for about a hundred different reasons. Trust me. Don’t do it.

First, the tools. There are quite a few things you’ll need if you are starting from scratch. I’ll list and link them here:

Now that is the main equipment you’ll be needing. You can expect to spend about $350 on everything. You will easily make your money back after a few months of reloading if you shoot often and pick up your brass at the range. Off the shelf .45ACP ammo will run you about .50 cents per round right now. When you load your own you can get that cost down to about .12-.15 cents per round. You can even get below .10 cents per round if you take care of your brass and cast your own bullets. You’ll find that you will want/need more stuff as you learn more about it, but the above list will at least get you started and let you recover your investment quickly. Next, lets look at the basic cartridge components you’ll need:

And that is what you need for the actual ammunition itself. I chose these bullet components because they are relatively easy and foolproof. As you get more into it, you will want to reduce your costs by buying lead bullets and recycled brass. You may even want to cast your own bullets, which I’ll show how to do in a future post. But for now, this will get you started. One last thing though. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that right now(6/4/2009) is perhaps the worst time to get started reloading in the last decade or more. You’re going to have a really hard time finding primers. They are simply out of stock everywhere. The demand is astronomical. If you can find some, buy them quick. All the other components should be readily available. Even powder seems to be in good supply. Just be sure to go to gun shows to buy your powder and primers. You’ll save yourself a lot of money, because ordering online incurs a $25 hazardous shipping fee for all explosive material.

Here is the outline of basic steps you will do in order:

That looks like a lot of steps and I guess it is. But, once you know what you’re doing you can zip through it pretty quickly and turn out about 300 rounds in a couple of hours. I know many people skip the extra step of de-priming/re-priming and just let the progressive press do it for them. I don’t like doing that for two reasons. First is safety. If you were to have a primer detonation while the cartridge is actually on the press then you run the real risk of detonating the powder in the powder hopper also. Secondly, the Lee press that I use and recommend above has a truly horrible progressive priming mechanism. But, other than that it’s the best press for the money on the market. So it just makes sense to use a little of the extra money you save and buy the stuff to prime seperately. This has the added benefit of getting you set to load rifle cartridges down the line. You’ll have a full single stage setup to use, since loading rifle bullets on a progressive press is a no go.

I’ll update this post with a video later, showing each step of the process. If you decide to go ahead and take the pluge, just do me two favors. Always wear safety glasses during reloading. I don’t want anyone to lose an eye because of me. The other thing is to read the first sections of the reloading manual thoroughly before diving in and starting to reload. This will give you plenty of good background about how ammunition actually works and what to look for at each step to keep yourself safe. Happy Loading.

This is a sad and unfortunate truth in our country. Moral arguments are almost non-existant. It’s all about what is legal or what someone’s rights are. We often here the phrase, “You can’t legislate morality.” But that is totally bogus and everybody knows it. If you aren’t legislating morality then what exactly is being legislated? Take even the most benign law, such as voter-id. Why is that law on the books? Because it keeps people from lying. The presumption being that it’s not fair. In other words, it’s wrong.

The knee-jerk reaction to my prior example would be to say that the law exists not because lying(and cheating) are wrong, but because in those circumstances it’s harmful to others. We are all familiar with the refrain, “Well, if it isn’t hurting anybody…” But that is bogus. As Greg Koukl so astutely points out. Peeping Toms don’t hurt anybody but nobody thinks it should be legal. Why? Because it’s wrong. We wouldn’t need laws if everyone always acted morally. And that fact tells us that there is a moral component to legislation. It’s common sense, and to speak otherwise is just playing word games.

“An established and well-respected outdoors writer, Bob writes for Shotgun News, Handguns, SWAT Magazine, American Gunsmith, Knifeworld, Police, Women and Guns, and GunWeek, among others. He is Contributing Editor of Women and Guns and Executive Editor of Boar Hunter. Bob has also published occasionally in Tactical Knives, American Handgunner and Guns, and he is a regular at Krause Publications’ Gun Digest and Handguns. He also wrote a significant portion of the 4th and 5th Editions of Assault Weapons.”



“Bob has also authored three books: Holsters For Combat and Concealed Carry (Paladin Press), The 1911 Semi Auto (Stoeger Publishing), and The Handgun In Personal Defense (The Second Amendment Foundation).”

He was very nice and gave me some good advice during our e-mail conversation. I highly recommend his book The Handgun in Personal Defense. It’s a very good primer on the selection, use and carry of a pistol or revolver for personal defense. I was able to read it in less than a week but I’m a slow reader. Most people could get through it in a couple of nights. It’s one of those rare books that can be read straight through and also kept around as a reference later. I guess I like his writing mostly because he shoots straight and tells you what he really thinks of a gun. Most gun reviewers will never say a bad word about any gun. I guess they don’t want to hurt their relationship with the manufacturers.

Corresponding with Mr. Campbell reminded me of the good ol’ days of the internet when people actually responded to e-mails. In the mid-nineties when e-mail and the web were starting to get big you could e-mail just about anybody and they would happily reply to you. Those were the days when Bruce Campbell was giving out his AIM address like it was no big deal. Now people treat e-mail as if it were a nuisance. I guess all good things come to an end, but R.K. was a refreshing change. You can read his latest article on concealed carry at Gunblast.com.