I’ve been meaning to learn more about Buz Mills – Gunsite owner and candidate for Arizona Governor.  Yesterday, I received a Buz Mills brochure in the mail, and I was struck by a simple, yet powerful statement made on the back cover:

BUZZ MILLS

Committed Conservative

Successful Entrepreneur

NOT A POLITICIAN

Sounds good, but I’m going to need to know more.  If he’s half as good as he sounds, I’m all in.

Looks like I’m not the only one that’s liking what they’ve  seen so far.  Rasmussen Reports conducted a telephone survey of likely voters in Arizona last week , and in a head-to-head match up with Terry Goddard (current AZ Attorney General), Buz Mills leads Goddard 43% to 37%.

Congratulations to Kevin at Exurban League for not only surviving the extremely challenging 2010 Superstition Mountain Mystery 3 Gun Match, but finishing 19th in the Tactical Iron division. SinistralRifleman has posted a comprehensive video of the stages that you may find interesting.

3Gun Stuff has also posted video of Sunday’s 3-Gun Nation Shootoff.

Whew!  There’s a slew of shooting events in Arizona this weekend.  I’d need a few clones to make it to all of them.  The ‘plan’ included a road trip to the Big Sandy Shoot outside of Wikieup, AZ.  The Big Sandy Shoot is the biggest machine-gun event in the United States.  Spanning three days, the shoot includes flying targets, tracer rounds, pyrotechnics, and lots of automatic fire.  You can check out the night shooting on YouTube.  R. Lee Ermey featured the Big Sandy Shoot in his Lock ‘N Load television show on The History Channel last week.  Unfortunately, a babysitter couldn’t be found for the puppies, so I’ll have to catch the shoot another time.

Another big event this weekend is the Arizona Game & Fish Department’s Outdoor Expo at Ben Avery Shooting Facility.  The Outdoor Expo is designed to introduce people, young and old, to the numerous outdoor activities we have available in Arizona.  Mz. VRWC was introduced to the various competitive shooting disciplines at this event last year.  She’s been hooked on shooting ever since.

The Dillon Aero demonstration at the 2009 Expo

Arizona’s Game & Fish Department is operated on a “user pay, user benefit” business model and receives no Arizona tax dollars (no tax dollars are used in conducting the Expo either).  AZ Game & Fish is a Government agency that’s awesome to deal with and views the public as current and future customers.

This huge event includes archery, a catch-and-release fishing tank, ATV and offroad vehicles, birds of prey, hunting field courses and education, as well

Cowboy Action Shooting Bay

as a full range of shooting disciplines that visitors can try for essentially the cost of ammo.  You can try your hand at shooting sports such as, the .22 Schoolastic Steel Challenge, rimfire steel, Blackpowder, Cowboy & Cowgirl Action Shooting,  youth .22 and airgun competition, practical pistol, silhouette, and you can try Glock, Ruger, and Smith & Wesson guns too.  I’m sure I’ll spend way too much time there on Sunday.

The other big shooting event this weekend is the Superstition Mountain Mystery 3-Gun match Rio Solado Sportsman’s Club.  This is a huge match with incredibly challenging stages.  Exurban Kevin is working and shooting the match.  You can check out his posts about it here and here, but the photo he posted here on Twitter really tells the story of how challenging stage nine of eleven is.  Cowboy Blob, another gun slinging blogger, was also spotted among the competitors.

If you can’t make it to the three gun match, you’ll be able to watch part of it on Versus, since they were filming the match for their new series, 3 Gun Nation.

Here’s a juicy post-Health Insurance Company Jackpot bill law (aka Health Care Reform) quote:

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators. – P.J. O’Rourke

Judging by the pants-wetting fear expressed today, these legislators forgot to pay protection money to the Chicago “friends” they were sucking up to.

Here’s a great quote of the day, after the House passed “Health Care Reform (sic)”:

If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual.  — Frank Herbert

I found a list of crazy Arizona laws today.  As I tried to verify the existence of these mythical laws, I came across numerous laws that I had been blissfully ignorant about. As a public service to my visitors, I’ll pass along these pearls of legislation, so you don’t end up in jail like Mongo.

Dueling
Dueling in Arizona is an absolute no-no. You might think it was already illegal to have a duel in the street, but Arizona Revised Statute (ARS) 26-114 makes it a crime to promote a duel, be concerned in, connive to have, or even have knowledge of the pending gunfight without notifying “the proper authority”.  A violation of this law is punished as determined by court martial.

Tripping Horses
If you come to visit Arizona, make sure you don’t trip a horse, pony, mule, donkey or hinny. If you do, you could be facing a class 1 misdemeanor under ARS 13-2910-09.

Slaughtering Horses for Food
Arizona’s gastronomical diversity apparently has a wide range. ARS 3-2122 makes it illegal to slaughter horses for public consumption without first obtaining a license. This law also requires that the contact information and purchase data for each buyer of Trigger meat is retained for at least one year.

Gathering Cattle for Tournament or Contest
ARS 3-1301 makes it a Class 2 misdemeanor to use other people’s cattle for amusement or contest, if it’s done without their written permission. How’s a suburbanite going win a state fair ribbon if he can’t appropriate someone’s limosin?  Organized cow tipping is probably out of the question.

Toy Guns
ARS 13-3109 makes it a class 6 felony to give a child a toy pistol, if that toy pistol might discharge “dangerous and explosive substances”. This could probably be twisted to cover cap guns (explosive), Nerf guns, and spud guns. After all, you could put an eye out with that thing.

I’ll post more of these laws as I come across them.  If you hear about someone being arrested for giving a kid a toy gun and having duel with him or her, while eating a horse burger and riding a stolen prize winning Brahma bull, it wasn’t me.  Mongo did it.

Sebastian over at Snow Flakes in Hell notes that Arizona has a slew of pro gun rights legislation in the pipeline this year. The proposed laws include the Firearms Freedom Act, legalizing defensive display of a firearm, allowing university professors to carry guns on school grounds, and eliminating the requirement for a permit to carry a concealed weapon (HB 2347 and SB 1102).

The New York Times points out:

There would still be an advantage to obtaining a permit; carrying a gun into a bar or restaurant that serves alcohol would require one, and the permit would be valid in some other states. Permit holders can also buy new guns without a background check.

Permit reciprocity between states, restaurant carry, and an easier process for gun purchases would still make it advantageous to obtain a Concealed Carry Weapons Permit. Under the proposed law, a CCW permit would also prevent law enforcement from confiscating a weapon possessed lawfully by a CCW permit holder. As expected, the sky is falling for gun banning, anti-civil rights groups like the Violence Policy Center and the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.

“That’s sheer insanity,” said M. Kristen Rand, legislative director for the Violence Policy Center. “If you remove the background check requirement, you’re literally writing a death sentence for law enforcement officers, family members, just people in the street.”

No, Ms. Rand, criminals won’t be affected by any changes to our gun laws. Stricter gun laws never encumber criminals, just law abiding citizens. If you could get criminals to comply with laws, then we wouldn’t call them criminals.

“You have no laws meant to reduce gun violence and protect the public, and you have an active gun lobby there that wants to do away with even the bare threshold of laws you do have,” said Ladd Everitt of the Washington, D.C.-based national Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.

Contrary to what Everitt believes, we have a plethora of laws intended to reduce all types of violence, including violent crimes involving firearms. I’m sure that Everitt would be comforted to know that we still have capital punishment in Arizona. If the death penalty isn’t a good enough deterrent against gun violence, a background check surely isn’t going to stop it. Perhaps, these groups should campaign against violent people, instead of inanimate objects.

As a lifelong Arizona resident and a CCW permit holder, I support the passage of all of these bills, with one exception. I have reservations about Senate Bill 1102 allowing concealed carry without a permit. Arizona is a battleground against human and drug trafficking through our Southern border with Mexico. Phoenix has the second highest rate of kidnapping in the world, human smugglers often have running gun battles on our freeways, and home invasions have become routine.

We have a systematic failure to enforce several existing laws, due to vote pandering policies that circumvent the rule of law. These corrupt policies prevent law enforcement officers in many municipalities from arresting human smugglers and criminals, unless they have solid proof a serious crime has occurred. Allowing police to enforce all laws would solve this problem. Otherwise, our carry laws are one of the few ways law enforcement officers have to easily distinguish law abiding citizens from criminals.

Law abiding citizens open carry weapons, or carry with a CCW permit and notify an officer when encountered under current laws. A criminal won’t have a permit and can be easily removed from the streets for the weapons violation alone. If the bill allowing concealed carry without a permit passes, we will take away an effective tool for removing criminals from the streets.

I know my position puts me at odds with AzCDL, but I believe that passage of this bill will provide effective ammunition for the anti-civil rights groups. As an unintended consequence, these groups will be able to disingenuously point to any crime involving a firearm and claim that the crime is due to our “lax laws”, when the lack of enforcement our existing laws and borders would be the true cause. I believe passage of SB 1102 could cause the pendulum to swing against lawful gun owners, undoing much of the headway made on fully restoring our 2nd Amendment rights.

Kevin over at Exurban League has different concerns about this bill that you may find interesting.