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The Watcher’s Council

The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast and the results are in for this week’s Watcher’s Council match-up.

If a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, a decent amount of knowledge is a real safety factor.

This week’s winner, The Right Planet’s So, You Bought a Gun, Huh?, is packed full of highly useful knowledge aimed at Americans who’ve recently decided to arm themselves, perhaps for the first time in view of President Obama’s assault on the Second Amendment and includes some highly informative videos aimed at firearms beginners. Here’s a slice:

It has been an interesting week in regard to some of my discussions with people who have recently purchased firearms. Gun dealers and manufacturers are struggling 24/7 to keep up with the current demand. I’ve never seen anything like it. It is as if Americans are preparing for war, thanks in no small measure to the left’s war on guns and the Bill of Rights.

Gun dealers and gun manufacturers are not the only ones dealing with the increased workload to satisfy demand. I spoke with a law enforcement official this week who handles gun permits for our local jurisdiction and she stated she was two weeks behind on issuing permits due to everybody and their brother wanting a concealed-carry permit (CCW) these days.

Additionally, I’ve talked to some people who have just purchased their very first firearm. I’ve spoken with others who have owned firearms, and are reasonably proficient in their use, but are now purchasing stuff like expensive gas-piston AR-15-style hybrids that would make a SWAT team member drool over. Still others are purchasing firearms that they aren’t really that familiar with, and only understand their operation in a strictly cursory sense.

I feel compelled to write this article for one reason only: if it can help just one person from injuring themselves or others (or worse), then it will definitely be worth the effort. First, since this subject matter is so important, I highly recommend that if you have just purchased a firearm for the first time, or you are not that familiar with the safe handling and operation of a firearm, to take a gun safety course taught by a certified firearms instructor. I can not stress this enough.

DO NOT assume you know everything about a firearm, when, in fact, you don’t. I guarantee you, if you get with a certified gun instructor, you will be surprised (maybe even “shocked”), at how much vitally important knowledge you will gain on the proper handling of firearms.

And to really drive this point home, be sure to double-check anything I may have included in this article with a qualified gun expert so that you are sure, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that you know how to safely handle a firearm. I only to wish to share my experience so that you can double-check it with a qualified gun expert to see that it lines up with standard and universally accepted safe-handling practices for firearms.

I’m not going to go outside my field of expertise here by getting into any martial use of firearms, or any highly-technical aspects of firearms; that’s better left to people who are specifically trained in those areas of self-defense and the tactical use of firearms. I only want to touch on some of these matters, just so you can be familiarized with the some of the important basic concepts. My focus in this article is focus on the critical importance of gun safety fundamentals and to encourage the reader to seek further education in the subject matter.

First off, let me just clearly state the level of my experience with firearms and Class 3 “restricted” weapons; and how I was trained to safely handle firearms and weapons. This is not rocket science, folks. But these fundamental rules of proper handling of firearms applies overall to all firearms and weapons, short of artillery and above. I’m talking about guns—guns of all sorts.

Back in the early 90′s, I was involved with a historical reenactment society—specifically, World War Two reenacting. Since I was nine years old, I’ve been a student of World War Two history. Naturally, being asked to get involved piqued my interest and I joined up. The particular group (or “unit”) I was involved with were led by two members of the National Guard who had federal firearms licenses (FFL) and were able to legally own and purchase Class 3 “restricted” weapons—meaning: machine guns, i.e. fully-automatic weapons. (Civilians who do not possess an FFL cannot purchase Class 3 weapons legally.)

Our first “leader” of the group maintained a collection of American and British weapons from the Second World War. Our second “leader” maintained a very impressive and extensive collection of German weapons, as well as numerous Allied vintage arms. Since live rounds are never, ever used in a reenactment, it was necessary to fit some of these automatic weapons with blank adapters.

For example, the German MP-38 / MP-40 (commonly known as the Schmeisser) cannot create enough pressure in the chamber to properly cycle rounds when firing blank rounds. Blank rounds are crimped shell casings that contain a charge, but no bullet. Typically, the end of the barrel would have to be threaded to receive a cap with a small, precisely engineered hole to create just the right amount of pressure in the chamber to allow the weapon to function normally. Over-pressurization of the chamber can cause the weapon to possibly rupture or explode. Naturally, all this required the expertise of real gunsmiths and armorers familiar with vintage arms.

Every month or so, a live-fire exercise would be held that gave invited members a chance to fire live rounds from Class 3 weapons, as well as our own personal firearms, at a proper range. We just had to supply the ammo—which wasn’t cheap, by the way. Machine guns chew up ammo quick! I never missed an opportunity to participate in a live-fire exercise. I consider myself fortunate now, considering the current “climate.” I had the opportunity to fire the Thompson submachine gun w/ box mag; an early model slow-fast, select-fire Browning Automatic Rifle (BAR), the MP-38 submachine gun, and numerous other weapons and firearms. During reenactments, I ran a MG-42 belt-fed machine gun (blanks only) that was a real handful. It could jam in a number of different ways.

The people who conducted these live-fire exercises were certified firearms instructors with military and law enforcement experience. I highly recommend seeking out gun experts with this sort of background when you first start handling and shooting firearms for the first time, or if you have little or limited experience. My experience and training on these weapons by no means makes me an expert. I just want to share the experience I had and how much gun safety played the prominent role throughout.

Before I was ever allowed to handle weapons like the ones mentioned, even blank-adapted guns, I had to display proficiency in handling firearms safely to those who owned those weapons. And this is where it gets serious—deadly serious. Guns don’t kill, but guns in the wrong (untrained) hands certainly can. The fundamentals of gun safety must be practiced at all times, no exceptions … EVER! Firearm accidents happen all the time, mostly due to the improper handling of a loaded firearm—operator error.

In our non-Council category, the winner was Sultan Knish with It’s Not Easy Being Red and Green submitted by The Noisy Room. It’s an interesting examination of both the differences and similarities between Islamism and the Left, written in Daniel Greenfield’s unique style.

Okay, here are this week’s full results:

Council Winners

• *First place with 3 votes! – The Right Planet – So, You Bought a Gun, Huh?
• Second place with 2 1/3 votes – The Noisy Room – Obama and the Leftist Infiltration of Israeli Media
• Third place with 2 votes – The Razor – The Elephant In The Room – Having Kids Out-of-Wedlock Culture
• Fourth place with 1 2/3 votes – Bookworm Room – Dems are troglodytes about women and self-defense, and they’re selling this as a virtue for the next election
• Fifth place with 1 1/3 votes – The Political Commentator – Another Obama snow-job: Sequestration = Republican-owned recession!
• Sixth place with 1 vote – Joshuapundit – State Of The Union?
• Seventh place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Mellow Jihadi – 1 Billion Rising and the Qu’ran
• Seventh place *t* with 2/3 vote – Rhymes With Right – Sen. Dan Patrick Moves To Dumb-Down Texas Graduation Requirements, Eliminate Government And Economics Requirement
• Eighth place *t* with 1/3 vote – VA Right! – Gluttony – Big Government’s Deadly Sin
• Eighth place *t* with 1/3 vote – The Colossus of Rhodey – Heaven forbid! A conservative comics writer is against gay “marriage”
• Eighth place *t* with 1/3 vote – The Glittering Eye – Multi-Tasking the 2013 State of the Union
• Eighth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Simply Jews – Guardian – confirming the obsession

Non-Council Winners

• *First place with 2 2/3 votes! – Sultan Knish – It’s Not Easy Being Red and Green submitted by The Noisy Room
• Second place with 2 votes – Amity Schlaes – The Coolidge Lesson on Taxes and Spending submitted by Joshuapundit
• Third place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – Sarah Palin – #SOTUGottaBKiddingMe submitted by The Watcher
• Third place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – Victor Davis Hanson – Obama’s Hypocritic Oath submitted by The Razor
• Fourth place with 1 vote – The City Journal – The Pension Fund That Ate California submitted by The Political Commentator
• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – Zombie/PJ Media – 1 billion rising San Francisco submitted by Bookworm Room
• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – Penelope Trunk – Universal pre-K is bad for everyone submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – Max Fisher/World Views – Is Israel the only U.S. ally in the Middle East? An answer in map form submitted by grEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote -The Sad Red Earth – The Israeli-Palestinian Textbook Study Fraud submitted by Simply Jews
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Sister Toldjah – #GunControl: Washington State Democrats forget a little thing called the 4th amendment submitted by Rhymes With Right
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Right Turn – The right to an awful defense secretary? submitted by Gay Patriot
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – The Examner – New study confirms economy was destroyed by Democrat policies submitted by The Right Planet
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Amil Imani – Interview with Amil Imani submitted by The Mellow Jihadi
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Khaled Abu Toameh – What Is Really Blocking the Peace Process? submitted by The Watcher

See you next week! Don’t forget to tune in on Monday AM for this week’s Watcher’s Forum, as the Council and their invited special guests take apart one of the provocative issues of the day with short takes and weigh in… don’t you dare miss it. And don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter… ’cause we’re cool like that!