NEWS
When her competition shotgun was stolen, four-time Olympic medal winner Kim Rhode was crushed by her loss. Using a shotgun she said was "thrown together" she still finished second in the Selection Matches to represent the US at the World Championships in Belarus. In this morning's edition of The Women's Outdoor Wire, an exclusive conversation with Kim's and exclusive news of a big surprise for one of our favorite world-class shooters. We're not giving it away because you can read the story in this morning's edition of The Women's you're there, you might also get a subscription for the female outdoor enthusiasts in your life. They'll thank you for caring enough to get them the very best news for women in the outdoors.
Three-time Olympian and 1996 bronze medalist Lance Bade (Colorado Springs, Colorado) lead the way for the men, while Susan Sledge (El Cajon,California) finished atop the women's leaderboard at the 2008 Shotgun Fall Selection Match to select team members for the 2009 World Shotgun Championships in Maribor, Slovenia.
US Firearms of Hartford, Connecticut introduces the world's first 12-shot .22 long rifle revolver. The new model 12/22 is a full-size, 12-shot rimfire that features a new lockwork that accomomodates the 12-shot cylinder through internal changes and a new ratchet design.
It's not normally a Shooting Wire item, but this week's episode of Pheasants Forever Television features a shotgun with a blast that sounds only slightly louder than a BB gun? You'll have to hear it to believe it on n Outdoor Channel on Thursday, September 25. Wendell Diller, a Minnesota inventor has created the "Quiet Gun," a shotgun with a barrel extension containing a series of holes that mutes the typical noise of a shotgun blast. OK, the shotgun's seven-feet long, but it's quiet.
Brownells has just announced the September release of AR-15 Catalog #3. The latest edition has 76 pages of accessories, parts, tools and supplies dedicated to the most popular semi-auto rifle in the U.S. today. 595 new products help bring the total number to more than 2000, plus almost 400 factory parts.
The 'Gunny,' R. Lee Ermey, will make a special appearance Wednesday evening at the Awards Ceremony of the 46th National Police Shooting Championships, which concludes this week at the Shooting Range Park in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Wednesday's NPSC ceremony will award more than $250,000 in trophies and prizes, offering competitors one of the finest prize tables in all of law enforcement competitive shooting.
This week's episode of Shooting USA on Outdoor Channel features banging and clanging in the fastest of handgun sports, the US Steel Championships from Anderson, South Carolina.
The 46th National Police Shooting Championships are at the center of the NRA's General Operations blog, www.NRAblog.com, which focuses on representing the programs of the NRA as the Media Relations division is blogging from the Shooting Range Park in Albuquerque this week.
Daisy, the world's oldest and largest manufacturer of air guns and air gun related accessories, announces their new model 1998, a lever action BB gun with a painted solid wood pink stock and forearm which commemorates the 10th Anniversary of Women in the Outdoors, a division of the National Wild Turkey Federation.
FEATURE
News Event On The RadarA significant event on the radar for this coming weekend as the 2008 Gun Rights Policy Conference takes place at the Sheraton Crescent Hotel in Phoenix. From Friday through Sunday, gun rights leaders and hundreds of the nation's gun rights activitist will gather to look at the challenges to the American right to keep and bear arms.
U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl, representing the Republican John McCain - Sarah Palin ticket, will speak during a Saturday luncheon, and Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr, former congressman from Georgia, is also expected.
This is the 23rd annual Gun Rights Policy Conference, sponsored jointly by the Second Amendment Foundation and the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Other participating organizations include the National Rifle Association, Gun Owners of America and National Shooting Sports Foundation. Representatives from several grassroots groups, including the Arizona State Rifle Association, Firearms Coalition, Virginia Citizens Defense League, Association of New Jersey Rifle & Pistol Clubs, Illinois State Rifle Association, Canadian Institute for Legislative Action, Gun Owners Action League of Massachusetts, Buckeye Firearms Association and Students for Concealed Carry on Campus will also attend.
The weekend conference will feature panel discussions on state legislative and congressional affairs, international firearms regulation, court battles over firearm civil rights, media bias, the right of self-defense and more. There will also be a report on the upcoming congressional elections and on this year's landmark Second Amendment ruling in the District of Columbia v. Heller case, with remarks from attorney Alan Gura, who successfully argued that case before the U.S. Supreme Court.
There will be appearances by Alan Gottlieb, SAF founder and CCRKBA chairman; Joe Tartaro, SAF president and Gun Week executive editor; Charles Cunningham, director of federal affairs for the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action; authors John Lott, Alan Korwin, David T. Hardy and David Kopel, and many others.
The issue hasn't dropped off the radar screens despite this spring's landmark Supreme Court decision upholding the individual right of arms ownership. The District of Columbia continues its foot-dragging on compliance, Congress has taken action to compel the District to adhere to the ruling, and the battle within the Democratic party itself continues to roil as we enter the final few weeks before the presidential election.
Perhaps most telling in the division of opinion regarding the Second Amendment is the split of Democratic members of the House of Representatives to leave the party's anti-gun platform and vote in favor of a measure to force Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty and the city council to follow the Supreme Court decision. In that split last week, eighty-five Democratic Congressmen voted to support House Resolution 6691 calling for the immediate end to the most restrictive gun ownership prohibitions in the nation.
The Gun Rights Policy Conference won't get a ton of mainstream media attention, despite the fact that gun ownership is, once again, shaping up to be one of those issues that might not get you elected, but might once again seal an anti-gun politician's fate with voters.
Despite the certitude of some readers crying "foul" over this reference, it is fair to note that the Democratic Party is not sending a representative to the Conference to speak on behalf of their presidential ticket. With Senators Obama and Biden having both gone on record with their statements - and their votes- against gun ownership, it appears the ruling members of the Democratic Party, despite statements to the contrary, have clearly taken sides when it comes to gun ownership.
That was pretty obvious Monday, when Gottlieb blasted Democratic VP candidate Joe Biden for a "pro gun" comment Biden made in Virginia. There, Biden said he's a devoted gun owner who will not allow presidential nominee Barack Obama to "fool with my Beretta."
Wrong comment. In response, Gottlieb said, simply, Biden must think gun owners are "dumber than rocks." Biden is, he said, "a man who has supported every restrictive gun control and gun ban law that ever landed on his desk, suddenly telling Virginia residents that he's a gun owner, and very pro-gun."
"Biden tried to sound folksy in Virginia, talking about his 'little over and under' Beretta," Gottlieb continued. "Senator, it's not your Beretta that concerns American gun owners, but their own Colts, Smith & Wessons, Kimbers, Winchesters, Marlins, Remingtons, Mossbergs, Springfields, Kahrs and Brownings.
"If Biden really does own an over-and-under Beretta, has he fired it lately," Gottlieb wondered. "What model is it, what's it chambered for, and where is it? Why does he think that's a more worthy gun to own than, say, an AR-15, or a Benelli semi-auto? What makes a Beretta shotgun more deserving of protection against Draconian legislation than a .45-caliber Model 1911, a .357 Magnum Ruger Blackhawk, a .50-caliber Thompson/Center or a .22-caliber Colt Diamondback? Would Joe Biden know the difference between any of these guns if he saw one?
"Joe Biden has spent the last three decades on Capitol Hill voting not merely against guns, but against the law-abiding American citizens who own these guns," Gottlieb stated. "He has voted against their civil rights, and against their traditional values, and now he is running as second fiddle to a Chicago suburbanite who has dismissed such citizens as bitter, and clinging to their guns and religion.
"And now we are supposed to believe that Joe Biden is a gun-toting defender of the Second Amendment, after years of trying to dismantle it," Gottlieb concluded. "This guy has spent a career in Washington, D.C. assaulting the civil rights of gun owners. Now he's insulting their intelligence."
Maybe now I know why there won't be a Democrat there.
As all this progresses, we'll keep you posted.
--Jim Shepherd
• For The Agenda Of The Gun Rights Policy Conference, Click Here
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