Declaration of War

I’d like to address the open declaration of war against gun owners by the race-baiting, blackface wearing, man child posing as the prime minister.
I have been asked what this means and unfortunately I can not tell you exactly.  His statement was vague.
There are several possibilities of what his words can mean.  As time goes on, I hope to get a more accurate picture of what his ill-targeted intent actually is.

The most likely scenario is a ban by OIC.  Easy OICs have already been established by the passing of C-71.  They will target AR-15s and some big firearm names.  Some of these firearms will be bought back like he says, but costs will quickly spiral out of control forcing them to put the bulk of their bans in the Mystery 12(9) class.  Storage regulations can be changed by OIC to allow lower governments a say in storage but this will be challenged in court and I expect it to be defeated.
OICs require no parliamentary debate.  They are easy and the limited attack on gun owners and our previous pattern of “taking it” will ensure their agenda advances without resistance.

The most dangerous scenario is a legal change.  If they attack by OIC, gun manufacturers can adapt with new designs just like they have in the past.  If they change the law to ban all magazine fed semi-autos, the gun industry and our sport will never recover.  People taking up hunting is down but people taking up target, sport and action shooting is way up.  It is the later groups that will be criminalized.  They proved they can make changes with C-71 with no repercussions.

More information is needed to determine what path they will take.

C-71 and the 12-9 Mystery

C-71 has passed.

Friendly senators have done a valiant job of delaying this bill for months on end but the political bag of tricks ran out today.

Rather than focusing on what the bill means (which I have discussed already) I would like to take the time to lay out what possible scenarios are for the future.

This bill was created for a hidden purpose.  We all know it creates a shadow registry, we also know it eliminates most authorizations to transport, it shuts down gun shows and we also know it bans two rifles.  But C-71 has a mystery provision called 12-9; an empty prohibition class.

Under the law a firearm may be banned by decree, this is called an Order In Council.  This has been part of firearms law since the 90s.  Almost every time this provision was used, the law was altered to create a grandfathering class so people owning those guns, did not lose them.  However, the law does not grant automatic grandfathering.  In fact any OIC issued before C-71 would of required confiscation and destruction of any named firearms.  The SPAS-12 was an example of a firearm banned by OIC that was seized and destroyed.

12-9 allows for the OIC ban wagon to go full force without the legal challenge, political cost or monetary cost associated with seizing firearms.  There is literally nothing holding back the Liberal overlords from banning away.  Without C-71, I would go so far as to say (in a practical sense) gun bans would of been impossible.

This is a problem.  Industry has responded to past OICs by producing new products; products that were previously secure from OICs.  We got the XCR, the Modern Varminter, the VZ58... the list goes on;  all guns that would of been banned in 1997 if they had existed or were popular enough to be in American magazines.  C-71 allows the government to quickly throw guns into the 12-9 ban category.  We can't count on industry to save our sporing rifles this time.  As fast as they can build and develop them, the government can declare them verboten.

Consider most guns are imported.  Before a gun can be imported CBSA must get the RCMP's opinion of the gun in the form of a FRT entry (firearms reference table).  While the RCMP are obligated to classify based on the law (Section 86) they can also pass on the name of guns they don't like to the public safety minister who, in turn, can rapidly OIC it into oblivion.

The only viable sporting rifles will be ones domestically produced.  There is no law.... NONE... requiring manufacturers to get a FRT.  The manufacturer needs to respect the provisions of Section 86 but there is no reason (except for export) to get RCMP attention (and thus a potential OIC) targeted on their product.

Now, with all of this being said.  I don't think we are going to see a massive 1997 style ban list;  that is a worst case scenario.  I think it will be 1 to 5 firearms with one of those being the AR15 platform.

Time will tell.

The Shadow Registry and Specter Arms

The new bill, C-71, is poised to create a nightmare scenario by establishing a Shadow Registry.  It is essentially a registry jointly maintained by both the government and licensed firearms dealers as a condition of their license.

So what is the purpose of the Shadow Registry?  Firstly if we think the registrar will follow the letter of the law and not ask for the make and model (like the law suggests) we are deluding ourselves.  But let us assume that they follow the law to the letter.  With private transfers, there is nothing to say that non-restricted transfers need a model or serial number.  Just a verification that a transfer has taken place.  This allows for the government to accurately determine how many firearms are owned.  Inevitably this will help prevent enterprising individuals from using methods to obscure the Shadow Registry kept by gun dealers.  You might ask “what value does knowing that a gun has been transferred with no other attached information?”  To get the answer you need to look at the inferred and stated goals of Canada’s gun control scheme; disarm everyone.  By recording how many people had firearms transferred to them and how many went out, the government can accurately determine the real amounts of guns owned by new generation shooters.  When it comes time to send the door kickers to take the guns, they either get them all or arrest the gun owner because the numbers don’t match up.

And then there is the lie that gun records from retail businesses will need a warrant to access.  Retail records do not need a warrant.  This is a holdover from the old Long Gun Registry (LGR) (which became irrelevant when it was abolished).  Although it is said the records will require a warrant, it does not repeal the section that permits “looking at the books” and making copies whenever they want.  It is not common knowledge but a firearms business is given their ledger to record firearm sales.  This ledger is provided by the Chief Firearms Officer of the province they are operating out of.  This alone is a subtle reminder that you don’t own the ledger or the information within.

What does this mean for Specter Arms?

Specter Arms has built its business on the philosophy that information and privacy are valuable.  As soon as the LGR was abolished, we stopped keeping this information.  We would check if the license was valid yes, but never did we hold on to that information.  Our sales literally rose over 1000% when the LGR was gone.  What once was a struggling business became viable with our annual growth (post 2012) at 13% per year.  Why was this?  Well, privacy was the big thing.  Pre 2012, there was no reason to buy from anyone except a large retailer.  There was no privacy because of the LGR and buying from a large online retailer was convenient.  This sentiment is mirrored by the fact that from the inception of the LGR to its demise, gun businesses evaporated to only 1/6th of their previous numbers.  Post 2012, new businesses flourished.

Over 99% of SA revenue comes from gun shows.  Without the means to transfer non-restricted firearms on the weekends (CFO offices are closed), the gunshow is destined to die.  No gun shows, translates into a projected decrease in revenues of over 99%.

We at SA have a sneaking suspicion that the large gun dealers and importers are happy with this scheme.  It only serves to drive more business their way by resuming the LGR trend of wiping out small and medium business competitors.  It wipes out the gun show and all the private and grey market dealers as well.

With the new Shadow Registry, we at SA need to re-evaluate our business model.  If we are unwilling to change, we will die a swift death along with the hundreds of new small firearms businesses that are destined to die.

SA has always subscribed to an intelligence driven model which uses social media, statistics and online forums to predict trends and follow those trends.  The Shadow Registry is not a surprise to us and we started transitioning away from sales to manufacturing.  This plan is uniquely the safest but also the most dangerous; it is quite the oxymoron.  It is safe because re-investing in inventory for sales is bound to leave us caught with thousands of dollars in inventory that will never be sold.  It is dangerous because if we can not get the S3 and S5 rifle projects to market before the money runs out, we will be finished.

It is a gamble but the alternative is to close down and wait for a friendly government to undo this damage.  We will not go down without a fight; who dares, wins.

An Open Letter to Students

You created these school shooters.

You viciously bullied people.

You tormented people with social media.

You used technology to share intimate pictures.

You consumed violent music and video games.

You ostracized people for being different.

You embraced a progressive culture devoid of morality.

And these school shooters?  They come from your peers; they are you.

The school violence is not inflicted by forces outside of your school, they all come from within.  They are the people who sit next to you, they are the people you tease and prank.  They are the people that you deliberately strip all human dignity from.

You want to find the source of gun violence?  I can promise you gun violence does not come from a gun.  It comes from you.  You can choose to fulfill the Millennial stereotype; be lazy and act like this is not your fault... blame the guns.  I have come to expect it from your generation.  Eating Tide pods and being lazy is your hallmark.

But the truth is, you are the ones making school shooters.  Stop being lazy morally and intellectually and realize that the power to change comes from you.  Look in the mirror kids, see the real perpetrator.

You want your victims disarmed so you don't have to change.  You want a situation in which you can bully people into committing suicide without the fear they will come back and take revenge.  You brats make me sick.

Re-Entering 3-Gun (Fitness)

After a long 3 year break, I plan to re-enter the 3-gun world once again.

I feel it is necessary for me to maintain and prove my skills in order to maintain my legitimacy as a competent ‘advice giver’ on tactical topics.
After all, would you trust an overweight running coach or a Call of Duty champion to lecture you on war?  Or worse yet some self-proclaimed internet firearms journalist with no legitimate firearms experience (there are a lot of those).

I plan to post periodically about my training regimen and events that I enter.

So I have started training for 3 gun about a month ago and I have yet to even head to the range or even pick up a firearm.  A fundamental that is
overlooked is fitness.  That is where I have started.

I have always been fairly good at medium to long distance running but that is not what 3-gun requires.  3-gun requires explosive short term energy
where you are constantly starting and stopping, getting down and up, possibly crawling and bending.  It is less an aerobic exercise and more an
anaerobic exercise.  What I mean is one primarily strengthens your heart so it can work harder longer and the other strengthens your body’s ability
to metabolize and hold oxygen as well as building up Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP).  It is long term power versus short term power.  3-Gun needs the intense, short term power.

3 times per week I do a shuttle run.
I sprint 55 meters stop abruptly turn around and run 50 meters back to the start line.  I stop, turn around and run back 45 meters. Then back to the
start line.  I repeat this at distances 30m, 24m and 16m.  Note how each leg of my trip gets shorter and shorter before I have to reverse direction.  The most difficult part of this exercise is changing direction.  In total this run is only 340m and I can run 2km easily but when I first did this I found myself gasping for air.  I simply could not breathe in enough oxygen.  After only a few sessions I was fine and now I have moved to the next step, you see, this is not about running; it is about improving my body’s ability to hold oxygen.  So my next step is to do this run with my CF gas mask… first without the filter (where I am right now), then with the filter attached.  Finally I will add body armor.

So why is Oxygen so important?  The more my heart pounds and the more Oxygen starved my body becomes, the more my body will tremble with every heart beat and breath, making aiming quickly and accurately harder.

My skill on the 3-gun feild will always be limited by my fitness level; that is why I am starting here.

Running The Lever Action – A Radical Departure from the Conventional

In the gunfighter program we are taught to keep our control hand on the rifle and conduct all our manipulations with the support hand.  To make this easy we will raise the rifle and rest the buttstock on our bicep pointing the barrel up.  The magazine will naturally point to our centerline and allows us to do our manipulations while watching what is ahead of us simultaneously.

From a kinematics standpoint we only rotate joints no more than 90 degrees and along the arc of greatest mobility. The arc of greatest mobility is the wrist rotation that allows you to rotate further away from its natural “zero” position then the other direction.  On your right hand this is clockwise (CCW on the left). 
Your maximum range of motion should be 100 degrees clockwise on the right hand compared to about 90 degrees counter clockwise. (If you rotate your forearm too, these angles increase)
Because one direction has a larger travel range, it is faster and more comfortable to go to 90 degrees in that larger travel range.

In cowboy action shooting, the lever action is the go-to for riflemen.
The typical lever action has a loading gate on the right side. Traditionally, a rifleman employing a lever action will have the rifle in his left hand and twist counter clockwise (short arc) to expose the
loading gate.  He then grips the forend with his support hand and releases his control hand to load more rounds into the loading gate which necessitates a counter clockwise wrist rotation to push the rounds down into the gate.  Once loaded he re-positions his hands and twists the rifle back into a shooting position.  Unless he is super-practiced and has a good means of carrying his rounds, he will need to look down at what he is doing taking his attention away from what is ahead of him.

What I propose for the lever action manual of arms is aimed at people who are right handed but cross eye dominant, someone who is left handed or ambidextrous*.  All sets of people will quickly come to appreciate this new method of employing the lever rifle.

The rifle is held in the left hand.  Upon needing to reload, the user puts the buttstock onto his bicep.  This has his rifle pointing up and in his view while he watches the terrain in front of him (ideally to move safely to cover). 
His support hand loads the rounds into the exposed loading gate which naturally sits facing the user.  When finished reloading, the rifle drops naturally back into position and because the all-important control hand has never been moved, it does not need to be re-positioned.  Situational awareness and speed are vastly improved.

For those who have run the lever for years, this will be a difficult transition but one that I feel will be worth it in the evolution of firearms as a martial art.




* All gun fighters should practice with both hands to be gun-ambidextrous.

Stocks - Learned Something New

My expertise lies in modern sporting arms and military surplus. I have an interest in firearms that are appropriate for 3-gun or surviving SHTF.  I am no expert on long range shooting.  When I say that, I mean anything past 600 meters.

I was invited out by a friend who wanted to show me his newest load for his Remington 700…. Or maybe it was a 783… I can’t remember.  He was really proud of his rifle and happily gushed over his carbon fiber stock, his Leopould scope, his custom muzzle break and most of all, his newest reloading formula.

He invited me to shoot.  I did.  With his help on how many ‘clicks’ to set his scope for various distances, I was pleased to see that I could hit what I shot at.  Previous to this, the farthest I had (successfully) shot was at the 500 meter mark with the C7 running PWT2 in the military (And yes, I know PWT2 is not shot at 500 meters; we were fucking around to see who could do it).

I have an eye for detail and as I stood up I noticed something off about his rifle.  He was so proud of it, I was really afraid to tell him… his buttstock was bent.  Not a large amount, it was barely visible, perhaps offset about 3/16” to 1/4" to the side.

“I think your stock is defective” I mentioned and showed him that it bent slightly to the side.  I expected anger.  What I got instead was a lesson on how the slight bend allowed it to fit better in the shoulder.  I accepted his answer but I did not really believe it.*
I looked into what he had to say and found that people wiser than me agreed – The offset buttstock (known as cast off) was a help in rapidly shouldering the rifle.

I wanted to include this link because it is a good reference article about the fit of guns.  It is more imformative on the subject then I could ever be:

http://home.insightbb.com/~bspen/fit.html




*Hey… you know who you are… sorry for doubting you; it just sounded really odd.