Pennsylvania Reciprocity: "Note: It has come to the attention of the Office of Attorney General that there has been confusion over the applicability of Pennsylvania's reciprocal privileges with regard to the residency status of an individual who has been issued a valid license/permit. It is the position of the Office of Attorney General that recognition within Pennsylvania is based on the issuance to an individual of a valid license/permit by the reciprocal contracting state, and not on the license/permit holder's place of residence. " http://www.attorneygeneral.gov/crime.aspx?id=184 --- Bloomberg Has Gun Lobby, Presidency In Sights: ...The challenge for Bloomberg, a fiscal conservative with liberal leanings on social issues, has been to find an issue that might resonate around the country as strongly as Giuliani's 9/11 appeal - and which might help the rest of America overcome its likely resistance to too many New York politicians in the race.... http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article1942898.ece --- From The Firearms Coalition: The House Appropriations Committee is expected to vote on the Tiahrt amendment sometime next week, possibly as early as Monday. Whether your Representative serves on the Appropriations Committee or not, it is important that he hears from you, urging him to do whatever he can to ensure inclusion of these important protections in the BATFE budget appropriation. Mayor Mike Bloomberg and the Brady Campaign Against Guns have made defeat of Tiahrt their number one target in this session of Congress, turning what should be an administrative matter into a contentious political issue. The Tiahrt Amendment protects firearms trace data from indiscriminate release, restricting it to law enforcement agencies in connection with bona fide criminal investigations. This keeps such data from alerting criminals to possible investigation, being used to fuel bogus civil suits against gun makers and dealers, or being promulgated in misleading ways for political purposes. A message to your Congressman could say something like this: Dear Representative ________, My friends at The Firearms Coalition tell me that the Tiahrt Amendment to limit release of firearms trace data is nearing a vote; I urge you to do everything you can to ensure that these important safeguards continue to protect those who enforce the laws against illegal gun trafficking and also to protect law-abiding firearms dealers from defamation and ill founded lawsuits. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives and the Fraternal Order of Police support the continued protections of the Tiahrt Amendment. They recognize that disclosure of this information in the past has interfered with investigations, alerted suspects to official scrutiny, and endangered officers, agents, and those assisting them. BATFE has a separate division solely dedicated to analysis of trace data to detect criminal patterns, identify questionable dealers, and track illegal gun flow. They have programs and special units specifically dedicated to assisting local law enforcement agencies in effectively utilizing the data in efforts to reduce local crime, and they have their own enforcement division which actively work to shut down illegal dealers and traffickers. Please take an active roll in ensuring that this sensitive data remains in the hands of proper law enforcement agencies and is not allowed to be carelessly released to the public or to government agencies which do not have a pressing need for the data or an understanding of how best to interpret or use the information. Please vote for the Tiahrt Amendment to ATF appropriations when you have the opportunity to do so and urge your colleagues to do the same. Please let me know what you intend to do to protect this data, police officers, and innocent firearms dealers. Sincerely, ______________ This could be coming up for a vote in the Appropriations Committee any day and then will face a vote of the entire House of Representatives. Your immediate action is needed. Send an e-mail today and make a phone call on Monday to make sure your Representative is effectively representing you, not Mike Bloomberg and Sarah Brady. For more information about the Tiahrt, see the latest Hard Corps Report; in mail boxes this week. Yours for the Second Amendment, Jeff Jeff Knox Director of Operations The Firearms Coalition --- From John Farnam: 12 June 07 S&W M&P Revolver! Today, I handled a copy of S&W's M&P, eight-shot, 357Mg revolver. It comes complete with a rail under the barrel and is clearly designed as a police/patrol sidearm. One may load/reload it using eight-shot, full-moon clips that come with it. The clips also make policing brass a good deal quicker and easier than picking up individual cases. Police departments and individual officers who never fell out of love with revolvers may well abandon their autoloaders and gravitate back to this updated version of the traditional American police workhorse. I like it! S&W is clearly a player again! /John (I just don't see it happening. Remember, among other things, that this is an N-frame revolver and the last S&W .357 Magnum revolvers that saw widespread issue among police were L-frames, which came in only because the even smaller K-frames did not stand up to a steady diet of full-power Magnum loads.) 15 June 07 "Wrong," or just "Inferior?" Any weapon operational procedure, administrative or tactical, "works," to one degree or another. However, we instructors gravitate toward those methods that are (1) quickly learned/absorbed/practiced, (2) easy to teach, (3) forgiving, that is, the technique will "work," even when not done exactly right, (4) universal, that is, the technique is neither gun-specific nor situation-specific, and (5) can be accomplished with gross, body movements, rather than precise, finger movements. Complicated, unforgiving, gun/situation-specific techniques may look great in the movies, but, in the inadequate amount of time we have to work with students, they must come away with something that has at least some chance of being successful, even when they are involved in a gunfight that very night! An example is teaching students to close a locked-back pistol slide by depressing the slide lock/release lever. The technique "works," but the slide lock/release lever varies from pistol to pistol in both shape and location. Once you teach your thumb to sweep down the lever on a Glock, then you are subsequently compelled to use a SIG, you'll unhappily discover that the same lever on the SIG is in a location with which you are not acquainted. In addition, when the slide is forward on an empty chamber, depressing the lever, in any fashion, will accomplish precisely nothing! So, this technique is not only gun-specific. It is also situation-specific. Thus, not recommended! As such, the technique is not "wrong," but it is inferior to yanking the slide all the way back and then letting it go. That procedure involves only a gross, non-precise, body movement, will chamber a round on any pistol I know of, and the starting position of the slide will be irrelevant. I rarely accuse a technique of being "wrong," and, even the best techniques, the ones we currently teach, are still not perfect. It is incumbent upon us instructors to identify the best of the best, even when we didn't personally invent any of it, always acknowledging that better methods are doubtless still yet to be discovered. Of course, we need to avoid superficial fads, but, in order to relentlessly advance our Art, which is our charge, we must instantly recognize genuine advances, no matter what their source, and be prepared to embrace them. "If thou would not be forgotten when dead and rotten Write something work reading, or read something worth writhing." /John (My grandfather was fond of saying, "Differences of opinion are what make horse races." In my view, the slide-release lever does not require a particularly fine motor movement and is very useful if you do not have two hands available to operate your handgun. I prefer to reduce the number of techniques need to operate the weapon under the widest variety of circumstances and regard the placement of the slide-release lever on SIG pistols as a weakness because it is not friendly to left-handed operation. Yes, there is an emergency technique to rack the slide one-handed, catching a projection such as the rear sight on the belt or the edge of the holster, but it seriously compromises muzzle control.) -- Stephen P. Wenger Firearm safety - It's a matter for education, not legislation. http://www.spw-duf.info .