Net News – Small Arms Review

Net News: November 2001

SAR Staff — Thu, 01 Nov 2001 02:18:45 +0000

By Jeff W. Zimba

We will always have the upper hand in the battle of gun rights for one simple reason; We have the facts on our side.

Those who are opposed to firearms ownership or even further restriction on firearms often make uneducated decisions in this field. Their emotions often rule their decision making process and debating them is a fairly easy task when you learn how they think.

I tend to classify anti-gunners into three categories. Some of them are not necessarily bad people, just folks who have no experience with firearms or have had firearms touch their lives in a less than pleasant way. Some are misled by the propaganda thrown at them by anti-gun hate groups like Sarah Brady’s Handgun Control, Inc (recently renamed The Brady Project) and have just never thought about it beyond the lies. They feel safer believing that there are no firearms in close proximity because of the lies they have heard. Others are those who know exactly what they are doing and simply perpetuate lies and deceit to attain their goal of total civilian disarmament. As long as we keep the facts on our side we can always win a war of wits with anyone listed above.

Lies and tall tales are tough to battle because anyone can make a statement, false or not, and if the person is somewhat believable in their presentation anything can be passed or sold as a fact. Most people will never look into it and just believe the first thing they heard. It is when we can prove beyond a shadow of doubt that their first source was wrong or even intentionally lying, the wolf starts to become apparent from beneath the sheep’s clothing.

Once it has been established that someone you once believed and trusted has led you the wrong way, future things they say will come under immediate scrutiny and their credibility will dissolve fast.

The reason that the anti-gun groups are able to spread deceit so easily, and mislead so many otherwise intelligent people is due to the lack firearms education in our more populated areas. It is easy to make up about a story about a subject your audience knows nothing about and pass it off as believable. It is when you try and convince someone with an education on the subject you are speaking about that lies are obvious. Imagine telling a firearms enthusiast that a 9mm ball round will penetrate 1” of steel. They will look at you like you have three eyes. Now tell that same story to someone who doesn’t shoot and they will probably say “Wow! What does anyone need something like that for?” I think you can see my point.

This is something we need to watch very closely among our own ranks as well. There are a few statements I hear coming from our own pro-gun side occasionally that are not truthful either. Most of them simply started as urban legends and once repeated enough just become common statements. As we actually have truth and honest fact on our side, it is very important not get some of these urban legends mixed in and allow the anti-gunners to use them to discredit us.

This leads us to my website pick of the month. http://www.guncite.com is an excellent website to educate people about the Second Amendment. They have several pages from their main page dealing with every aspect of firearms ownership you could possibly imagine. The site is full of facts, gun laws, constitutional explanations, case law, definitions, statistics and even links to pro-gun and anti-gun websites. One area of the site I found particular interesting was the section regarding bogus gun control quotes. You can find it direct at http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcbogus.html or follow the link there from the main page. There you will find a few quotes that never existed, and a few items we have been told were true in the past. Make sure you look these up and remove them from your pro-gun debates. You will be pleased to find that there are hundreds of reinforcements to our side of the debate at this site and only a few we need to stop using.

If you think you know of a website the readers of Small Arms Review would be interested in learning about, you can e-mail me directly at: Production@wtvl.net

-Jeff

This article first appeared in Small Arms Review V5N2 (November 2001)

Net News: September 2001

SAR Staff — Sat, 01 Sep 2001 01:51:56 +0000

By Jeff Zimba

Being very short of facts but ridiculously long on emotions, there seems to be no bottom to the barrel where the antigun crowd pulls out their lame arguments against firearms ownership.

It seems as though every year, in their desperation, they create another problem that needs immediate legislative attention. To accompany the newly invented “National crisis” new buzzwords and catch phrases must be invented as well. This is the process that brought us such fictional items as “Cop-Killer Bullets”, “Semi-Automatic Assault Weapons”, The “Plastic, Undetectable Handgun”, and the “Gun Show Loophole”.

One of the entrées on the crisis du jour menu today is the dreaded “Internet Gun Sale Crisis”. Some of our legislators, either through misinformation or just sheer ignorance, believe that because business’s and individuals post firearms for sale via the internet that there is a massive proliferation of illegal gun sales that never existed before. Rather than just stepping back and examining the foolishness of this claim, many jump feet first into “crisis mode” and demand restrictive legislation.

Lets shoot this latest nonexistent crisis full of holes. First and foremost, posting a firearm for sale over the internet is no different than placing a classified ad in your local newspaper. When a firearm is sold, whether the seller is an individual or licensed firearms dealer, Local, State and Federal firearms laws must be adhered to. The medium the firearm was advertised in has absolutely no bearing what so ever. To believe any different is laughable.

When a firearm is sold to an individual in another State, the seller has to ship it to a Federally licensed firearms dealer in the area of the buyer. The buyer then picks up the firearm from the licensed dealer, and the transaction is treated just like any other new gun sale. All Local, State and Federal laws necessary for the dealer to comply with are applied as usual. This is it. No problem, no loophole, and certainly no crisis. As a matter of fact, nothing has changed at all.

All the internet has done for firearms sales, is to expand the advertising to a larger audience. All the rules are exactly the same. Try and imagine for a second, the foolishness of applying different laws to specific forms of advertising. Think of the questionnaire: Question 1: If you learned of this firearm through your local dealer, check box 1 and proceed to question 2. If you learned of this firearm through your local classified newspaper, check box number 2 and proceed to question 2. If you learned of this firearm through word of mouth, check box number 3 and proceed to question 2. If you learned of this firearm through an ad in a national classified ad, check box number 4 and proceed to question 2. If you learned of this firearm through an ad on the internet, check box number 5 and proceed to question 2…

I have several friends who have purchased and sold firearms through internet auctions. I have found some pretty good deals out there myself. Most deals I have heard of have ended with satisfaction to both parties as far as price, condition, shipping, etc. Like anything else, it is probably a good idea to try and deal with those who have a good track record or reputation. I would advise checking on the “feedback” of any potential buyer or seller as it seems to be a fairly accurate indicator of past business deals.

Below are a few auction sites that came up when I typed “Gun Auction” on the search engine “Dogpile”. The only one I have had any personal experience with is Auction Arms, and I never had an unpleasant experience with them. This is not an endorsement of any of these auction sites, just a listing to get you started in the right direction. Happy buying and selling.

Bid For Guns

~~http://bid4guns.com/index.cfm~~

Auction Arms

http://www.auctionarms.com/

Ebang

~~http://www.ebang.com/~~

Gun Broker

http://www.gunbroker.com/

Armsbay

~~http://www.investorseek.com/auction/index.html~~

Gunhouse.com

~~http://www.gunhouse.com/~~

Guns For Sale

http://www.gunsforsale.com/

GunShow Auction

~~http://www.gunshowauction.com/~~

For The Hunt

http://www.forthehunt.com/

This article first appeared in Small Arms Review V4N12 (September 2001)

Net News: August 2001

SAR Staff — Wed, 01 Aug 2001 01:31:31 +0000

By Jeff W. Zimba

Just shut-up and watch the movie. I would be willing to bet that most of you reading this magazine have heard those words from your “significant other” while pointing out that the guy shooting the revolver just fired 14 rounds without re-loading. How about when the bad guy’s M11 SMG is captured and used by the good guy to fire it’s “9mm Cop Killer Bullets” through the 1” thick steel blade of a bulldozer and kill the other bad guy? When loudly proclaiming it is impossible, did you get “the look”? How about bursting into laughter whenever a criminal uses his shotgun and it blows up an automobile or helicopter, something that could never really happen off the silver screen? Well, you are not alone.

If you are educated in a particular field, firearms in the above case, mistakes and bloopers are easy to pick up on. If you don’t have a background in a particular area, things you see and hear may not raise any red flags, and in many cases may even seem believable. While we can find humor in this while watching television and movies, it is also a problem we desperately need to overcome. You see, many people in our society have forgotten that movies and television shows are for entertainment, and not for education. This may have come from too many parents using the television as an electronic babysitter, or may have come from not spending enough time talking about the difference between movies and reality. Either way, we seem to have a problem in society today differentiating fact from fiction.

The first time I noticed this was actually a problem was several years ago. I owned a retail gun shop and a few kids stopped in on their way home from school. One of them was telling his buddy about some armor piercing 9mm bullets that could shoot right through a bulldozer blade. This kid had obviously watched one of the Lethal Weapon movies and had believed what he had seen. I told him it was just a movie, but he insisted that those bullets were real and he knew it. I wish this kid was the only example but there were several cases, and many were adults.

This blur between fact and fiction would seem quite harmless except it reaches well out of the movie realm and far into society. One quick look at Handgun Control, Inc’s. literature will show its ill effects. They used to brag about their important role in banning something they called “Cop-Killer Bullets”. The particular ammunition they were making reference to was only available to law enforcement in the first place, and had never actually been involved in the homicide of a policeman. Many Police officers actually felt that their life was being placed in jeopardy by HCI as they were publicizing the fact that many of them did wear body armor, something that was not widely known in the early 1980’s. Still, fiction being more interesting than fact, the Brady Bunch found legislators to buy into their story.

It is on this note, that I will give you my Website pick of the month: http://www.movie-mistakes.com. This is a very cool website that lists movies and their mistakes, and solicits new finds from the readers. At the time I last visited the site it listed 1,408 films with 8,680 entries.

Check it out and send them any mistakes you have found while watching movies. And, oh yeah, when you are in front of the silver screen with the wife or girlfriend, just shut up and watch.

If you find an interesting site our readers may be interested in, drop me an e-mail at Production@wtvl.net.

This article first appeared in Small Arms Review V4N11 (August 2001)

Net News: July 2001

SAR Staff — Sun, 01 Jul 2001 01:19:23 +0000

By Jeff W. Zimba

Greetings fellow Emma-Geeks. (For any of you who have not followed this column from the beginning, Emma-Geek is my favorite reference to the computer literate machine gunner.) Until a few short years ago, the shooting, hunting and gun collecting crowd looked a whole lot different than the stereotypical computer crowd. Back when I was in High School, there were not many computers around except for the big old main frames we used to learn “BASIC” computer programming. They were very slow by today’s standards and difficult to use. Personally, I found nothing “fun” about them and took the classes only to earn the credit I needed to graduate and earn my diploma.

It was shortly after that time when the Commodore Vic-20, and later the Commodore 64 started to bring personal computers into the home. They were a little easier to use, and I remember seeing a few text driven games available for them, but they still really failed to catch the interest of the majority of us.

I was forced into regularly using a computer, an 8088 I believe, in the early to mid 1980’s for inventory and billing and a little desktop publishing. It seemed to make work a little easier, and I had the ability to make my own ad copy and signs, but it was strictly for work. It wasn’t until the original Windows® operating system replaced the necessity for countless DOS commands that computers started to get interesting to me. Games were starting to get interesting, processors were growing from the lightning fast 286 to the 386 and 486 and the Pentium® was just around the corner. Power and processing speed we could not even imagine a few short years back would be at our fingertips in no time.

With the upgrade of my computer to a 486-25, I added a modem and it was time to start looking into this Internet people were talking about. It was slow and boring to me at first, and then I was introduced to chat rooms. The one I was introduced to was on the “Undernet” and I used to frequent the topic areas (channels) of “Politics” and “Guns” regularly enough to get to know a few familiar names. It was fun to dial-up, engage in a little debate on current news, and scare off the occasional liberal who would wander into the “guns” channel just to stir the pot.

Another friend introduced me to one of the major search engines a short time later and the rest is history. All it takes is a few minutes of web-surfing to see the amount of information available at your fingertips and you almost instantly need to be wired. Like it or not, we have been dragged into the computer age. It might have been kicking and screaming for a few of us, but we are here and there is no going back.

If you are not “on the web” yet, do yourself a favor and check out this valuable resource. If you are trying to be stubborn about it, you are only hurting yourself and stand a chance of getting passed by those in the faster lanes. Believe me, I know. I am one who doesn’t mind change, I just hate things being different.

Here are a few gun related web-sites you may enjoy. If you would like to have your site listed in a future Net News column, you can drop me an e-mail at: Production@wtvl.net and I will check it out.

Bowers Board
~~http://www.subguns.com/~~
This is probably one of the most popular sites on the net for the recreational machine gunner to stay in touch. Of interest may be the Machine Gun Discussion Board, The NFA Sale board and the NON-NFA Sale Board.

AR-15.Com
http://www.ar15.com/
This site will be a favorite for any fan of The Black Rifle.

Antique and Collectable Firearms and Militaria Headquarters
http://www.oldguns.net
A cool place to look up some of the older U.S. Military guns for information. Enter the serial number and manufacturer and a database will be searched on your particular firearm for the date of manufacturer, rarities, etc.

Knob Creek Range
http://www.machinegunshoot.com/
Here you can keep up to date on events at the famous KCR. They do a good job of updating the page and you can always find the date of the next shoot at the click of your mouse.

Golf Ball Cannon
~~http://diamondbackembroidery.com/cannon/~~
I have no idea if these are being built, sold or delivered yet, but they certainly look cool. Just looking at the photos available are enough to get my “gears” turning.

The Institute for Research on Small Arms in International Security
~~http://www.smallarmsresearch.org~~
Founded in 1989 to fill a void in the field of Small Arms Studies. Interesting site with a lot of information relating to small arms.

E-Bang
~~http://www.ebang.com/~~
Internet Auction Site. This was brought to me attention by a friend who is a fellow emma-geek. I don’t know very much about the site other than it appears very professional and is pretty simple to navigate. At the time I last visited the site there were 1,375 items for sale in 39 categories.

Hiram Maxim Historical Society
~~http://www.hirammaxim.com/~~
This is the official site of the annual HMHS Military Firearms Shoot & Expo. You can obtain shoot dates, lodging information, directions and look at photos from shoots over the past 5 years. There is an area to join HMHS and an area to purchase HMHS merchandise.

The American Firearm Page
~~http://www.teleport.com/~ldddad/~~
A huge site of up-to-date links to firearm related manufacturers, businesses, and services found throughout the internet community. You will want to bookmark this one.

Small Arms Review’s Website
http://www.smallarmsreview .com/
I would have to be foolish not to mention our own little home on the web. Here you can subscribe, buy back issues, read a few sample articles, buy machine gun books from Moose Lake Publishing, search our article index (using the “find” command in your browser) and much more.

This article first appeared in Small Arms Review V4N10 (July 2001)

Net News: January 2000

Jeff W. Zimba — Sat, 01 Jan 2000 20:43:08 +0000

By Jeff W. Zimba

The Denim Wall or the Berlin Wall?

It was brought to my attention recently that Levi-Strauss was running an anti-gun campaign on their website. A friend led me to the following URL:

http://www.levismusic.com/fuse99/pax_petition.html

Once there you will see the following text with a petition following it:

We are the future of America and we demand a future free from gun violence. We will no longer remain silent as a preventable epidemic devastates our towns, our homes and our schools.

We call on our nation’s leaders to develop a comprehensive plan to end the crisis of gun violence in our nation. This plan must include:

1. A national campaign to educate all Americans, both gun owners and non-gun owners, about the threat of gun violence and how it can be prevented.

2. Common sense gun violence legislation which is already supported by the majority of Americans, including the majority of gun owners, such as: Child access prevention laws to hold gun owners responsible for what happens with their guns and prevent children and others from having unauthorized access. Elimination of assault weapons and other weapons of war. Nationwide laws to eliminate illegal gun trafficking and keep guns out of the hands of criminals. Licensing and registration of guns, like automobiles. We demand solutions, not political debate, and we demand those solutions now.

As you can imagine, I was quite shocked. I wrote a letter to Levi-Strauss stating my disappointment in finding this. I told them I was writing a column for a National firearms magazine and wanted to give them the opportunity to respond before going to print. Their response to me was the following:

Dear Jeff:

Thank you for taking the time to write us. Customer feedback is very important to us and we appreciate your taking the time to express your opinions about this issue.

PAX is a non-profit, anti-violence organization which strives to reach youth all over the country by making a difference and attaining a society free of gun violence.

Levi Strauss & Co. supports PAX’s goal to bring all Americans together to support common sense solutions to the gun violence epidemic. PAX does not seek to ban firearms. It only seeks to end firearm violence through measures which the majority of Americans, including gun owners, can support.

Levi Strauss & Co. believes that all students should have an opportunity to learn in a safe environment free of violence and by supporting PAX and their petition, we hope to help put an end to gun violence in our schools.

Your views have been registered and we appreciate your taking the time to write and express your thoughts about this important issue.

Sincerely,
Donna
Levi Strauss & Co

I was disappointed again. The letter says that they are not in favor of banning firearms, but their website clearly states “…elimination of assault weapons and other weapons of war…” I guess it is getting clearer and clearer that the realm of political correctness knows no boundries. When I wrote to them to give them the opportunity to respond I stated that our readership represented an enormous amount of spendible income and it was my opinion that it would be spent somewhere other than Levi-Strauss. Damn, I really liked them too.

Handgun Control, Inc. Grades States

Although not brand new, cutting edge news I thought you may be interested in this. HCI, Inc put out a press release on August 27, 1999 grading all the states based upon their gun control laws. Each state is given a grade, and an explanation of why they received their grade. After the explanation, the number of “children and teenagers” who died in that particular state in 1996, as “a result of firearms” is listed. Now in all fairness, I have no idea of what their definition of “children and teenagers” is and I would assume it includes everyone under the age of 20, regardless of their background or the circumstances of their death. For instance, it would be my guess that 18 and 19 year old convicts involved in Police shootings are grouped into the category of “children and teenagers” as we have seen this in the past. For crying out loud, the Commander in Chief, who is certainly in bed with these people, can not even define the word “is” as seen in his testimony just prior to his impeachment. We may never get to the bottom of this one.
I included a quick chart giving the State, the grade and the number of “children and teenagers” deceased in 1996 for your reference. You can see the entire 10 page detailed press release at the following URL:

http://www.handguncontrol.org/press/release.asp?Record=71

I have had many who have seen this, recommend that it be used as a pro-gun mover’s guide, ensuring that the state you move to has a low grade, and is therefore on the higher end of the “Free State” scale. As a brief note, you will notice that Maine, who received an F ranking lost 5 “children and teenagers” in 1996. Maryland who received an A- ranking lost 109 during the same period. Good thing they have those strict gun laws, huh?

This article first appeared in Small Arms Review V3N4 (January 2000)

Net News: February 1999

Jeff W. Zimba — Mon, 01 Feb 1999 20:39:58 +0000

By Jeff W. Zimba

We have a few new and exciting things in progress that I think you just may be interested in. First and foremost, SAR has a new Web-site. Our last one got a little stale, mainly due to inattention and lack of time and this has now been rectified. Actually that is a fancy way to tell you that one day Dan said to me “Jeff, do you know how to build and maintain a web-site?” Without any necessity to think about it at all, I quickly answered him with a “Hell no.” He thought about it for a second and followed up with something like “Isn’t it about time to learn?” And here we are.

Anyway, our new site is on-line and being updated on a regular basis. It’s main purpose is to provide information about the magazine, and the firearms we cover. It should be a good reference source for you to utilize at your convenience. On the new site, we have included a complete listing of all our back issues. There is a photo of each cover, and when you click on one, you will see the table of contents for that issue. Something else many of you may find useful is a complete index of every article in Volume 1. This should assist you in locating information on particular firearms, or on articles written by a particular author.

For your convenience, we will provide a listing on our new web-site of retail locations where the Small Arms Review is available. This information is being posted only after receiving written permission from our venders and we will update it every month. We have included some advertising information, a full list of contacts, and a page for the other publications available from Moose Lake Publishing. We have included a page of some interesting links, and would welcome requests to add others. If you have any comments or ideas for our site, please feel free to e-mail me at Production@wtvl.net, or write to my attention at the office.

The thought of hosting a “Chat Area” and “Bulletin Board” came up and was squashed in about 2 minutes. There were two immediate reasons we made this decision. Number one is that I don’t have the time to provide our site the constant attention necessary to maintain and moderate areas of that nature. The second reason is that Tom Bowers is doing such an awesome job with his site we have decided it would be counter productive to start another. I spoke with Tom about throwing our support behind his effort since he provides such an important service to our community and we were met with open arms. (That is just a matter of speech. Big, hairy machine gunners don’t often actually hug!) If you have not been to his board, you are really missing quite a good resource. He has areas to buy and sell related items, and chat areas. He also has quite an impressive collection of Mac parts he sells. He does a great job moderating the board and doesn’t put up with any B.S. for very long. Check it out. It can be reached at http://www.subguns.com. As a special feature, in an upcoming issue we will be publishing an interview with Mr. Bowers.

While on the computer subject, another computer related item has crossed my desk recently. While not really Internet related, I certainly think it is of interest to all. The first is a collection of gun related “Wallpaper” for your computer Desktop. Arizona Corporate Productions has compiled a CD-ROM assortment of over 40 images that range from machine guns to antique firearms. The CD is packaged very professionally, the software is very user friendly, and their instructions are easy to follow. The CD retails for $19.95 and are currently available through Brownells and Dillon Precision. Quantity dealer discounts are available by contacting Arizona Corporate Productions. System requirements are 16MB of RAM, and Windows 95 or newer operating system.

Arizona Corporate Productions (ACP)
9393 North 90th Street
Suite 102-169
Scottsdale, AZ 85258
Phone: (602)-391-1191
Fax: (602)391-3303
Email: AZCorpPro@worldnet.att.net

This article first appeared in Small Arms Review V2N5 (February 1999)

Net News: May 1998

Jeff W. Zimba — Fri, 01 May 1998 00:37:37 +0000

By Jeff W. Zimba

Greetings and salutations. First a quick re-introduction. The Internet is an invaluable source of information for each and every one of us. We basically have the resources of the entire world at our fingertips, and we would like to use this column as a means of assisting one another in our search for information. We are gladly soliciting tips from those of you who have some helpful hints for other web surfers in our audience. We would like to hear from some Sysops who may have ideas on proper internet etiquette for some of the newer internet users as well.

Other data we will accept in this forum could include new hardware we should be aware of, new firearms related software; including programs related to testing and evaluating ballistics, CAD software that may be of interest to our Title II’s, compendiums and data bases of related interests, and so on.

It is our intent to make Net News a regular column, and the amount of input we receive from you will dictate it’s frequency. If you have anything you would like to contribute to Net News, you will find our contact information at the end of this column.

We have been getting quite a few requests to run a list of gun related web sites and that is exactly what we are going to do this month. The following are just a sampling of the sites you have sent to us and we will list more as they come in. We have not had time to check each individual site, so the following listing is not any type of endorsement by SAR. We are simply passing your requests along. At a later date, we will actually get you some interesting updates on cool sites that we recommend, and hope to have a “Hall of Fame” and a “Hall of Shame” listing.

Mongo’s MG Board
http://xpointcgi.digiweb.com/cgi-bin/users/3081/wwwboard/wwwboard.html

Tom Bowers Board
http://www.subguns.com

F.U.N. Supply NFA
Firearms Board
http://www.tecinfo.com/~jayhawk/wwwboard/wwwboard.html

Vollmer’s Board
http://www.fjvollmer.com

Long Mountain Outfitters
http://www.longmountain.com

Big Jim’s Machine Gun
Sanctuary
http://www.tiac.net/users/bigjim/HTML/wwwboard/wwwboard.html

Small Arms Review
https://smallarmsreview.com

Impact Tactical Weapon
Systems
http://www.impactguns.com

Hiram Maxim
Historical Society
http://www.hirammaxim.com

Trader’s Den Message Board
http://www.centuryarms.com/forums/trader/trader.cgi

Dalphon – Military Weapons Sale Board
http://www.dalphon.com/wwwboard.html

Heckler & Koch
http://www.heckler-koch.de