By Glen Wunderlich

Charter Member Professional Outdoor Media Association (POMA)

While city slickers continue their cry to do something about guns, I must confess I agree with them.  I was up for the task, when our 8 year-old, twin, great granddaughters made the trek from the Detroit area to our Shiawassee County home.  The opportunity presented itself, as we found ourselves in the garage that routinely doubles as a shooting house for a 100-yard shooting range.

Learning to respect firearms and what they can do is a good first step and gun the NRA’s safety rules never get old in this regard.  Teaching a youngster to shoot a firearm properly requires a solid understanding of firearms safety and youngsters themselves.

The challenge was to keep things simple and safe for these first-time shooters. Eye protection, hearing protection and a firearm that doesn’t kick at all were introduced.  All shots would be taken from solid sandbag rests and I would operate the action of the Savage .17 HMR rifle topped with a good, clear scope.  It would be the youngsters’ responsibility to position, aim and fire the gun by themselves with direct supervision at a target exactly 75 yards downrange.  As an extra measure of safety, single loads only were used.

I know how competitive these kids are – especially between themselves, so when I offered $10 to the youngster that could produce the best shot on target, things got exciting real fast.

We flipped a coin to see who would go first at the bench.  The first shot was no shot at all; the unloaded firearm would be dry-fired, so that they could learn what it took for a good trigger squeeze.  Gun control starts here.

Since this firearm is used for pest control, it was sighted in already and known to be highly accurate.  The second trigger pull would be with a live round, but it wouldn’t count in the contest – no matter how good or bad the shot would be.  The final shot would be for the money and the closest to the center would win the jackpot.

There is no way a child can shoulder a gun engineered for adults, so the object was to learn the optic and the trigger, while the gun “held itself” solidly on the rest.  Eye relief is always problematic, because many first-time shooters must learn to position themselves at a proper distance from the ocular lens to get a full view downrange.  This is where teachers demonstrate the technique.

Surprisingly, Ava’s first shot was less than two inches from center with the practice shot and about one inch from perfect with the money shot.  Adalynn had her chance at the prize and came in a close second place.

After the payout, we popped a couple of reactive targets – water-filled cans at 50 yards and not a single miss!  Even though a total of only four shots for each young lady had been taken, it was enough for the challenge of introduction.

The girls had so much fun, they were already setting up another competition later in the year, when their older brother, Landon, could be present.

NEWTOWN, Conn. — NSSF®, the firearm industry trade association, listened with keen interest to President Joe Biden’s nomination of Steve Dettelbach for Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). NSSF has long-advocated that the ATF needs a U.S. Senate-confirmed director, and that person must be an individual who will faithfully execute the duties of regulating the firearm industry in accordance with established laws and regulations. Any nominee for this position of public trust, that has direct oversight of how law-abiding Americans are able to exercise their Second Amendment rights, must be a person wedded to the rule of law, and one that will not politicize the ATF to advance a partisan gun control agenda that exceeds what is established in law by the U.S. Congress.

NSSF is committed to a thorough examination of Dettelbach’s record and qualifications and will listen carefully to his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. NSSF has significant concerns regarding Dettelbach’s previous public statements supporting bans on Modern Sporting Rifles (MSRs), or AR-15 semiautomatic rifles, universal background checks, which are unworkable without a national firearm registry that is already forbidden by federal law, and extreme-risk protection orders, or so-called “red flag” laws, without protections for Due Process considerations. Dettelbach was also previously endorsed by the gun control group, Everytown for Gun Safety, for his support for policies restricting Second Amendment rights. Read more

HARTFORD, CT – Yesterday, the Biden administration announced the final ruling for ATF 2021R-05, “Definition of ‘Frame or Receiver’ and Identification of Firearms.” Among its provisions, the ruling will effectively eliminate the distribution of “80% kits” and require FFLs and gunsmiths to serialize such firearms upon acquisition. The rule will go into effect 120 days from the date of publication in the Federal Register. The President also announced his nomination of Steve Dettelbach to serve as Director of ATF.

“This ruling will have significant regulatory and operational impacts on FFLs, gun owners and the entire firearms industry,” said Phil Milks, Orchid VP and Lead Attorney at FFL Law. “It’s imperative firearm manufacturers and retailers review the ruling in detail and evaluate their manufacturing, serialization and recordkeeping processes to ensure compliance when the new regulations go into effect. We urge FFLs to contact Orchid to learn more about this ruling and how it may affect their firearms business.”

Following the announcement, Orchid LLC and Williams Mullen’s Firearms Industry Group have organized a 90-minute discussion at the 2022 Firearms Industry Conference (FIC), to be held in Atlanta on April 26–27, in which ATF executives will review the new ruling and take moderated questions from conference attendees. Agency personnel will also be available during scheduled regulatory breakout sessions and private FFL/ATF meetings. Read more

BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation and Defense Distributed today are celebrating a court victory in a long-running battle to allow online publication of information related to the 3D printing of firearms, thanks to a ruling by the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that returns claims against the New Jersey attorney general (NJAG) to its jurisdiction.

A district court order had wrongly severed the case against the NJAG, from a lawsuit filed by the plaintiffs, and transferring it to a federal court in New Jersey. Today’s ruling in the Fifth Circuit directs the district court in Texas to “request retransfer from its counterpart in New Jersey.”

“It’s a huge victory for us,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb, “because New Jersey wanted to be severed from our legal action in their effort to prevent publication of the information by Defense Distributed, thus violating the company’s and SAF’s First Amendment rights to promote the exercise of Second Amendment rights.”

This effort began when anti-gun-rights attorneys general, led by Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson, filed suit in the Western District of Washington to enjoin the State Department from authorizing the release of Defense Distributed’s files on the internet under a settlement from a previous SAF and Defense Distributed lawsuit. That effort was an offshoot of attempts by then-New Jersey AG Gurbir Grewal and several of his peers to prevent the plaintiffs’ distribution of materials related to the 3D printing of firearms. Read more