Rattler

It has less to do with passion about guns than it does to do with passion about your RIGHTS! If people cannot get that through their heads, I have no respect for them, because if they don't cherish their rights, they're not worth the air they breath. I don't expect everyone to think like I do, but I do expect people to believe in their rights, because if they don't, they're a threat to mine! I've been trying to talk sense into these people for decades. I'm done with them. I no longer believe their minds can be enlightened. They will come to realize the truth when it's too late. To me, they are no better than the people who are striving to remove our rights. They are the ignorant electorate, the useful idiots, the apathetic minions tyrants love. I stand by my opinion and will continue to say it to everyone who helps to destroy the rights Americans have died for. And I couldn't care less what anyone thinks about my position.

I don't know how many times this has to be said before the whiny gun owners get the message. If the NRA had 50 million members, we would not be seeing any of this anti-gun hogwash happening. So, if you are not an NRA member, you are helping the anti's. I don't care what your excuse is. If you are a gun owner and not NRA, I don't have any respect for you, nor will I hunt or shoot with you. You're nothing. If you are an NRA member and trash talk them, you need to be slapped. IMHO, being an NRA member is the minimum level of commitment to the 2nd Amendment you must possess to consider yourself in the fight to preserve our rights. If you can't even commit to NRA membership in this fight, you really need to reevaluate your priorities. I'm not saying the NRA is perfect or without flaws. I'm saying they are your only choice if you want to protect your rights. Make no mistake. There are plans to remove your rights and time is on the side of those who wish to take them. ALL of them! If the current attacks on the NRA succeed in marginalizing their power, anyone who didn't support them must accept responsibility for the demise of their rights forever after.

NY gun owners had the chance to vote Cuomo out of office. The NRA supported Astorino and made every NY gun owner aware of the absolute need for every one of them to vote for Astorino. Many of them didn't vote. Some Fudds actually voted for Cuomo. What do you think the NRA can accomplish in a state with gun owners like that?

"They have the numbers here but provide crappy LEADERSHIP that's more interested in double dipping their expense account." What leadership are you referring to? Those in National NRA positions or those in NY State positions? I hope you can provide proof of that statement, otherwise you are simply helping the anti-gun cause with your undocumented opinion. OK, since you feel OK with criticism, what's your suggestion? Someone once said criticism without a solution is just whining. I agree with that. Let's hear it. If you could have the NRA do your bidding, what would you have them do? Also for your edification regarding felons. I assume you are referring to Oliver North. Where do you get your info? He was convicted in the Iran–Contra affair of the late 1980s but his convictions were vacated and reversed, and all charges against him dismissed in 1991. Be careful how you make accusations without merit.

In their war on hunting and firearm ownership, the anti's aren't aware of, nor care about collateral damage. Zealots never consider the total consequences of their demands.

Must be one of those "Full Semi-Auto" versions I keep hearing about.

The NRA is more like a boxing coach than a fighter. They prefer to fight anti-gun laws with legislation, rather than lawsuits. That means they need grass roots support and votes to accomplish change. They don't run from a fight. They give up on fighters who have no heart and turn tail and run from a fight, like many here in NY who expect the NRA to do all their fighting for them.

Nothing. Just sit there and watch her get tired of holding on and listening to what she has to say as her last words. That might get real interesting. Can't charge me with murder for refusing to save a life.

I love the new rifle and have no problem with the cartridge being a little off the beaten path. In my experience, taking the path less traveled often leads to great things. I agree the 8mm bullet has never been popular in America, but it is a great bullet. When I consider some of the things that are popular in America, being unpopular can be a good thing. I made my decision based on hard facts and ballistics, not popularity. When considering ballistics and energy in a flat shooting Elk rifle, the two best rounds seem to be .338WM and .325WSM. I wanted a lighter weight rifle in a shorter action and the Kimber Montana just felt best to me. It also sports all of the features I really like in a bolt gun as well. (Ironically, it seems Kimber has dropped the .325 WSM offering in it's new rifles. Bad move IMHO) I'm not worried about ammo, as I have already stocked up on 200 rounds, most being 200 grain bullets with some 180's and 220's in there also. I've also acquired the reloading equipment needed and will be loading my own as well, just as soon as I have 100 empties to work with. Reading some of the history of the round, I found Winchester wanted it to be a .338WSM but found loading the .338 diameter bullet in the case didn't achieve the results desired, which was to equal or exceed the ballistics of a .338WM. Going to the .323 diameter bullet (8mm) got it up to speed with energy that is very close to the .338WM, yet produces noticeably less felt recoil with the same bullet weight due to less powder being required to attain the same ballistics. The drawback is fewer bullets of heavier weight offered in the .325WSM than the .338WM. However, I don't expect to ever need a bullet heavier than 220 grains for my hunting situations. Considering this rifle is more than adequate for taking any large game on the North American continent, and knowing I will likely never be hunting on any other continent, I believe the rifle was a great choice for my big game needs.

Since this was originally posted, I have acquired a Kimber 8400 Montana in .325 WSM and put a matte finish Leupold VX-II 3-9x40mm on it. I have been shooting the 200 grain Winchester loads in it and it will easily do 1" groups at 100 all day long. I find the recoil to be very comfortable, not much more than my .30-06 in my opinion. I will be reloading with 200 grain bullets also, probably using the Barnes TTSX all copper as they seem to be the best bullet for my hunting applications. Everything I've studied about the ballistics of this round leads me to believe it is very under rated and under appreciated. But for my needs as an Elk and Black Bear rifle, it seems perfect.

Since people are so convinced Russia influenced Trump's election, maybe they will be just as concerned about Russia influencing the fracking ban in NY State. After all, Russia stands to gain the most from NY's fracking ban. https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/04/22/the-connection-between-russia-and-2-green-groups-fighting-fracking-in-us/?utm_source=TDS_Email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MorningBell&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWkRZMFlXRmtNVE5oTWpVNCIsInQiOiJnVmErY01WSnlScmxmUm9lOVJ4XC8rM0FCZmhrWk5WR09PbVFBdzA0S1I5bnFXZVlqV20xdWNQTGJUK0lZbDRraU9iVlpnNndZV3NEbU9aSmcyaVpWa3ZieHdOSnBBdFN2a0ZMUmpBaVNhWHlkalhKQUphYmJxRmowU1VNbGtGNmsifQ%3D%3D New Yorkers who are missing out on the natural gas revolution could be victims of Russian spy operations that fund popular environmental groups, current and former U.S. government officials and experts on Russia worry. "One way for Moscow to conceal its sponsorship of anti-fracking campaigns in New York or elsewhere in the U.S. is to move its funding indirectly and anonymously through various entities, the former CIA analyst told The Daily Signal. “I think the groups and individuals on both sides of the debate over fracking and pipelines have a tendency to just look in their own back yards, without looking at the larger geopolitical picture,” Stiles said. “If it was more widely known that anti-fracking, anti-pipeline operations may be benefitting from a foreign source of funding, this would certainly impact the debate.” The agents of influence described by Stiles range from “controlled agents” and “trusted contacts” who know they’re working for a foreign government to “manipulated sources” who have no idea that they’re doing the bidding of a foreign power."

I have a 1964 Marlin 336 in .35 Rem with a Leupold 2.5X on it, a Rossi Heritage .357 Mag (Replica of a Win 92) with 20" barrel and no scope and a 1910 Marlin 1893 in .30-30 with a 24" octagon barrel pictured below. I hunt with them all on occasion and they all do their job well.

Bank of Al-Qaeda.

They're pushing Wells Fargo to stop financing them. http://www.shootingwire.com/story/0b3ea45b-705f-4195-9446-6bad22ae03aa

I've heard some real horror stories about the punitive measures Pay Pal takes when you violate their firearms policy. They seem to go to extremes against any firearm transaction. I was warned about using them years ago by people on gunbroker.com and stopped then.

Everything there is to know about the 2nd Amendment and your rights regarding self defense in one article. https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/the-second-amendment-as-an-expression-of-first-principles/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=second-amendment-first-principles Some of the text inside: Expressing a widely held view, Elbridge Gerry remarked in the debate over the first militia bill in 1789 that “whenever Governments mean to invade the rights and liberties of the people, they always attempt to destroy the militia.” The Second Amendment is unique among the amendments in the Bill of Rights, in that it contains a preface explaining the reason for the right protected: Militias are necessary for the security of a free state. We cannot read the words “free State” here as a reference to the several states that make up the Union. The frequent use of the phrase “free State” in the founding era makes it abundantly clear that it means a non-tyrannical or non-despotic state. Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), rightly remarked that the term and its “close variations” were “terms of art in 18th-century political discourse, meaning a free country or free polity.” The principal constitutional debate leading up to the Heller decision was about whether the right to “keep and bear arms” was an individual right or a collective right conditioned upon service in the militia. As a general matter, of course, the idea of collective rights was unknown to the Framers of the Constitution—and this consideration alone should have been decisive. We have James Madison’s own testimony that the provisions of the Bill of Rights “relate [first] . . . to private rights.” The notion of collective rights is wholly the invention of the Progressive founders of the administrative state, who were engaged in a self-conscious effort to supplant the principles of limited government embodied in the Constitution. For these Progressives, what Madison and other Founders called the “rights of human nature” were merely a delusion characteristic of the 18th century. Science, they held, has proven that there is no permanent human nature—that there are only evolving social conditions. As a result, they regarded what the Founders called the “rights of human nature” as an enemy of collective welfare, which should always take precedence over the rights of individuals. For Progressives then and now, the welfare of the people—not liberty—is the primary object of government, and government should always be in the hands of experts. This is the real origin of today’s gun control hysteria—the idea that professional police forces and the military have rendered the armed citizen superfluous; that no individual should be responsible for the defense of himself and his family, but should leave it to the experts. The idea of individual responsibilities, along with that of individual rights, is in fact incompatible with the Progressive vision of the common welfare. This way of thinking was wholly alien to America’s founding generation, for whom government existed for the purpose of securing individual rights. And it was always understood that a necessary component of every such right was a correspondent responsibility. Madison frequently stated that all “just and free government” is derived from social compact—the idea embodied in the Declaration of Independence, which notes that the “just powers” of government are derived “from the consent of the governed.” Social compact, wrote Madison, “contemplates a certain number of individuals as meeting and agreeing to form one political society, in order that the rights, the safety, and the interests of each may be under the safeguard of the whole.” The rights to be protected by the political society are not created by government—they exist by nature—although governments are necessary to secure them. Thus political society exists to secure the equal protection of the equal rights of all who consent to be governed. This is the original understanding of what we know today as “equal protection of the laws”—the equal protection of equal rights. Each person who consents to become a member of civil society thus enjoys the equal protection of his own rights, while at the same time incurring the obligation to protect the rights of his fellow citizens. In the first instance, then, the people are a militia, formed for the mutual protection of equal rights. This makes it impossible to mistake both the meaning and the vital importance of the Second Amendment: The whole people are the militia, and disarming the people dissolves their moral and political existence.

If you read the written documents from the founders that detailed their intentions when the Constitution was written, they mention weapons that are in common use by the people. The weapons at that time were equal to those possessed by the British. They wanted the people to be a force to be reckoned with, in order to defend liberty against tyranny. It would be illogical to assume they didn't mean for the people to remain a force to be reckoned with in the future. Would we be willing to say all technological advancements since the signing of the Constitution and Bill of Rights are not subject to protection under those documents? I believe that type of thinking attempts to confuse the Rule of Law over time. Those founding documents are legal documents. Legal documents say what they say, and do not say what they don't say. They are not subject to interpretation and application as time passes. To do so is judicial activism, which means the courts start making law, rather than ruling on law, which violates the powers granted to the three branches of government, which are meant to be checks on the powers of each of them. Nothing in the Constitution authorizes the federal government to ban anything. Doing so is government abuse of power. The founders wanted rule of law to cover criminal activity, not criminalize people for possession of anything that could be used to commit a crime. It's obvious to me, people with an agenda that is stifled by the Rule of Law will try to bastardize what the law means in order to achieve their goals. It's up to the people to put a stop to that.

When you consider Vermont is a state steep in hunting heritage, besides having probably the lowest crime rate in the country and the most permissive gun laws in the country, I see no reason this post shouldn't be in this forum, especially in a Gun and Hunting Laws and Politics Discussions thread. I was unaware of this development until I saw this and I believe it should be a warning to others who live in a state where they believe it can't happen. As residents of NY State, I don't see where we can do much about what Vermont's elected hacks do in their quest to get re-elected. But it does help motivate others to become more supportive of gun rights and organizations that fight for their gun rights.

And that's why they have so many violent crimes happening there. They're basically "defense free zones". The politically connected and wealthy have no trouble getting a carry permit in any of these cities. Trump has had one in NYC for decades.

You need to get past the cartoon and get the message. Meme's are not meant to be documents. They're a means for conveying a message in few words, so even low IQ people can get the message. And don't assume I mean you here. I don't. It's similar to people who try and refute a message because a word in it is spelled wrong.

Unalienable rights are not granted to people. They are born with them. Where they reside is irrelevant.

The words "shall not be infringed" in the 2nd A refer to possession of arms. The founders were only concerned with crimes committed by individuals. They certainly would not agree with making mere possession of firearms a crime. Any government that agrees with making possession of an inanimate object a crime, believes in "Preventative Law", or punishing individuals for crimes committed by others. Anyone who doesn't comprehend how that is unconstitutional, doesn't understand individual rights and the Bill of Rights. They also don't understand how ignorant they are.

For those of you who think the government's desire to disarm the populace and repeal the 2nd A is a fantasy, setting yourself up as a superior intellect is hilarious. If you believe everything the government tells you is truth, or the media is honest, or elected officials are interested in your well being, or money doesn't control power, you're not too intelligent. A Pro Sports player! You're killing me. LOL! Oh and Rob, I most certainly do know the meaning of any verbiage I choose to employ, and you can bet your azz I'm physically and financially involved in protests, demonstrations and the political and legal arenas in this never ending fight to defend the 2nd A. Anyone who doesn't vehemently defend vicious attacks on the 2nd A at some point, hasn't the heart or guts to stand up for what they cherish. There can be no compromise when it comes to firearm freedom. If you think there can be, you haven't been paying attention the last few decades.