New Gov’t Operation Denies Citizens Access to Guns & Gold

By Damon Geller

As first exposed by the Wall Street Journal, the Department of Justice and bank regulators are unconstitutionally pressuring banks to refuse banking services to perfectly legal industries, under the guise that they pose a “reputation risk” to the bank. Not surprisingly, two of the main industries targeted by this illegal program just happen to be two of the biggest threats to the federal government: guns and gold. That’s right, the federal government is actively trying to choke sellers of guns & precious metals out of the financial industry. The government’s stunning objective with such an operation: to cut off American citizens from access to guns & gold completely. So if you’ve been waiting for the opportunity to defend your savings & retirement from government overreach, you better act soon.

Operation Choke Point

As initially reported by the Wall Street Journal, “Operation Choke Point” was secretly launched to cut certain industries off from banking services, under the pretense that they jeopardize the “reputation” of the banks. Since no company can survive in today’s world without the ability to make banking transactions, Operation Choke Point’s clear objective is to destroy certain industries.
Which industries? As reported by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, critics believe “it’s a thinly veiled ideological attack on industries the Obama administration doesn’t like,” such as gun sellers, precious metals companies, and coal producers.  After a huge public outcry, the FDIC issued a light retraction to the policy, but reports have recently surfaced that the gov’t & banks are still targeting industries they don’t like.

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Operation Choke Point is conducted without first having shown that the targeted companies are violating the law. All of the targeted industries are perfectly legal, and the companies have not been charged with any crime. So the government is shutting legal companies out of the financial industry – effectively shutting them down – without any shred of due process! And this comes on the heels of numerous government programs to unconstitutionally confiscate citizen savings & retirement. The U.S. government is officially out of control!

Why Gold?

There’s no need to explain why the federal government would want to shut down gun manufacturers & sellers. A well regulated militia — although necessary to the security of a free state — is a direct threat to a tyrannical government. The question is, why target gold? The obvious answer: gold is as great a threat to the nefarious interests of the state as guns are!

Why? Because the United States and governments across the globe are increasingly turning to private wealth confiscation in order to manage their massive debts and maintain their power structure. Throughout America, police seize cash from innocent citizens without ever charging them with a crime. Bankers conspire with the IRS to seize the accounts of innocent citizens with no notification, no court order, and no charge of crimes. The IMF proposes global wealth confiscation as a means of funding bankrupt governments. And Congress passes controversial new laws to make your savings & retirement a prime target for confiscation.
So with our desperate government gaining unprecedented access to your personal savings anywhere in the world, naturally the government’s interests are threatened by the one asset — gold & silver — that takes your money out of the digital financial system and beyond government control. Gold & silver are the ONE asset class this sits outside the financial system and is completely secure from government confiscation and global economic collapse. So when you keep some of your savings & retirement in physical gold & silver, you keep it out of government reach.

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The Time to Act is Now

Gold & silver have been the best wealth protectors for over 5,000 years and have survived every government & currency collapse in history. But now the government threatens your ability to access gold & silver at a time in history when you most need it — a time when governments are going bankrupt and global banks teeter on the edge of total collapse. So the time to act is now.
Protect your savings & retirement with physical gold & silver while you can still get it… before you have nothing left to protect.
(Call (855) 335-7400 to receive your free copy of Damon Geller’s popular book, “Defend Your Money against Gov't Confiscation” AND your free Gold & Sliver guide, or fill in the form below)

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Breaking: Guccifer 2.0 Releases More DNC Docs, Exposing More Corruption

New evidence proves Clinton was always the Democratic choice

By Michael Sainato • 09/23/16 4:45pm

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. Photo: Justin Sullivan for Getty

On September 23, hacker Guccifer 2.0 released more documents obtained from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).
Last week, WikiLeaks directly released files from Guccifer 2.0 through their Twitter account. Among them was a high-profile donor list revealing the pay-to-play appointments of several ambassadorships and other positions by President Barack Obama. On September 15, Guccifer 2.0 released several DCCC memos on a WordPress site, including one from Ohio dated December 9, 2015 that referred to Hillary Clinton as the Democratic presidential nominee before the primaries began, even though Sen. Bernie Sanders was just a few points behind Clinton in most polls. “With former Governor Ted Strickland and Secretary Clinton on the ballot, there will be a boost from the top of the ticket,” read the memo.
Based on many similar memos and documents released by Guccifer 2.0 from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and DCCC, it appears the Democratic Party leadership felt strangely self-assured Clinton would be their presidential nominee before a single vote was cast. The Clinton campaign and DNC have not disputed the veracity of any files or documents leaked, rather they have portrayed themselves as the victims of Russian hackers to divert attention from the content of the leaks.
Guccifer 2.0’s latest release includes a dossier file of DCCC Chair Ben Ray Lujan, a Democratic congressman from New Mexico. The extensive file includes hundreds of pages of statements, speeches, financial data and weak and strong points in anticipation of his re-election bid this November, and likely to prepare his political career for bigger ambitions. Among the weak points listed in the dossier is nepotism, as Ben Ray Lujan’s father, Ben Lujan Sr. was the Speaker of the New Mexico House of Representatives, and helped Lujan initially get elected to congress. Lujan’s cousin, Michelle Lujan Grisham, also serves in congress for a separate district in New Mexico.
One document provides talking points for Lujan to make a call to controversial New Jersey Democratic donor George Norcross in March 2015. “We need Mr. Norcross’ help in recruiting top targets such as State Sen. Van Drew, to run in NJ-2.  Ideally, he would call the recruits that we feel are the best and encourage them to run,” read the memo. “Likewise it would be ideal if he could mention his support when asked by others in his powerful circle. This will help to validate our candidates with the political and donor classes.” In a 2013 article, Philadelphia Magazine called Norcross “the man who destroyed democracy.” The DCCC memo reveals the Democratic Party has not only embraced wealthy donors influencing the political system but aggressively courts their input in pushing for their mutually preferred candidates.
Another memo dated April 2016 details a congressional race in Utah and notes, “Trump is extremely unpopular in Utah. Public polling has shown that Hillary Clinton could beat Trump in the very conservative state.” The memo provides further evidence the Democratic Party developed their short-term and long-term strategies with Clinton in mind as their nominee. Sanders wasn’t mentioned at all as a possible option or alternative; strategies incorporating him as the potential nominee were never discussed in these memos.

Watch The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah Accidentally Destroy The Case For Gun Control

Watch The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah Accidentally Destroy The Case For Gun Control

"Maybe he's onto something, because if you think about it, we've never tried that. We've never actually tried to repel terrorists with signs. Yeah, maybe that's all the airports need is a sign that says 'No Terrorists.'"

September 22, 2016 By Sean Davis

Trevor Noah, the host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, accidentally destroyed the case for gun control during his show on Wednesday night.
Noah’s accidental broadside against gun-free zones came during a portion of his opening monologue in which he made fun of a Minnesota man fed up with Islamic terrorism. The target of Noah’s ire was an ice cream shop owner in a small town southeast of St. Cloud, Minnesota — the site of a mass stabbing at a mall last weekend — who put up a sign outside of his restaurant that read, “Muslims Get Out.”
Noah mocked the store owner for a little bit, but then he moved on to the meat of his opening bit by mocking the man’s rationale for his “Muslims Get Out” sign:

You know what’s also strange is this man genuinely thought people who go around blowing people up would be stopped by a sign? You realize you’re talking to terrorists, not vampires. They don’t need to be invited in, alright? Or maybe he’s onto something, because if you think about it, we’ve never tried that. We’ve never actually tried to repel terrorists with signs. Yeah, maybe that’s all the airports need is a sign that says “No Terrorists,” yes? Yeah, and then guys are going to be walking going, “Oh, I was going to blow up the airport, but the rules are rules and they said I can’t come in. They said I can’t. They said I can’t come in.”

Does that argument sound familiar?
Noah probably doesn’t know it, but he just accidentally made an airtight case against gun-free zones in particular and gun control in general. He is 100 percent correct: people hell-bent on murdering as many people as possible don’t really care about silly signs or laws that tell them not to murder people. A sign that says “No Guns” will no more keep a violent jihadi from gunning down a bunch of innocent people than will a sign that says “Muslims Get Out.” And how do we know that gun-free zones, nearly always marked with signs designating them as such, don’t deter murderous psychopaths? Because mass shootings, rather than happening at gun ranges or in gun stores, keep happening in gun-free zones.
Contrary to Trevor Noah’s snarky assertion that “we’ve never tried to repel terrorists with signs,” our country has fecklessly tried for years to “repel terrorists with signs.”
The Sandy Hook massacre? Gun-free zone. Columbine? Gun-free zone. The Aurora movie theater shooting? Gun-free zone. The shooting last year at an Oregon community college? Gun-free zone. The shooting at a movie theater in Lafayette? Gun-free zone. The attack on a military recruiting center in Chattanooga? Gun-free zone. The Ft. Hood shooting? You guessed it: gun-free zone. The San Bernardino attack? Gun-free zone. And the massacre perpetrated by an ISIS enthusiast at an Orlando night club? Gun-free zone.
While Noah clearly doesn’t grasp the logical implications of his argument, his particular insight — that evil people who want to do evil things will find ways to carry out their schemes regardless of what signs you post or laws you pass — forms the foundation of the entire argument against gun control.
Bad people who want to murder you don’t care about your stupid signs and stupid laws.
New York City, for example, is a pressure cooker bomb-free zone. That mall in Minnesota was most definitely a weaponized knife-free zone. And yet… Terrorists don’t care that terrorism is illegal. They care about killing you. And they’ll kill you with whatever they can, whether it’s a gun, a knife, a pressure cooker, or a box cutter.
“Yeah, but this just proves we need to have stricter gun laws to prevent terrorists from getting guns in the first place,” Trevor Noah might respond. “Gun control is about more than just signs telling people not to do stuff.”
Except it’s not. The entire premise of gun control is that words on a piece of paper somewhere will prevent a terrorist from killing people. What is a law if not a sign that says what you’re allowed and not allowed to do? Yet time and time and time and time again, strict gun control regimes have completely failed to prevent mass murderers from committing mass murder. Chicago and Washington, D.C., have some of the strictest gun control laws in the nation, yet those laws have done little to stem the tide of gun crime in those cities.
As Trevor Noah demonstrated via his mockery of the Minnesota man with the “Muslims Get Out” sign at his restaurant, the logic of gun control that says signs forbidding bad stuff stops bad stuff from happening is nonsensical. “Words stop bad things from happening” is just dumb. A sign that says “Muslims Get Out” will do absolutely nothing to prevent radical Islamists from wreaking havoc. Trevor Noah understands this. If only he would learn to apply his logic to the argument from gun controllers that all we need to end violence are a few more signs telling terrorists not to use guns.

Government shouldn't seek to direct or control press coverage

Government shouldn't seek to direct or control press coverage

There’s a disturbing tendency in the Obama White House to lecture journalists on how to do their jobs. But if journalists only report what government officials wish them to report, and only when those officials deem it the proper time, then where’s the accountability. Here’s President Obama, on Monday, following terrorist bombings in New York and New Jersey.“I would ask that the press try to refrain from getting out ahead of the investigation,” Obama said in a press conference. He praised law enforcement, but scolded the media for concluding (from bombs going off) that bombs had gone off.“It does not help if false reports or incomplete information is out there,” he said.The irony here is that even as Obama spoke, reports were being confirmed that Ahmad Khan Rahami, the man allegedly responsible for the bombs, was in police custody following a shootout. Obama made no mention of that. Were reporters supposed to “refrain from getting out ahead” of the president on this important development?Then there’s Secretary of State John Kerry, who sees global warming as a bigger threat than ISIS.He says journalists shouldn’t cover terrorism, because it only serves to inform people.

“If you decide one day you’re going to be a terrorist and you’re willing to kill yourself, you can go out and kill some people,” he said. “You can make some noise... perhaps the media would do us all a service if they didn’t cover it quite as much. People wouldn’t know what’s going on.”
Yes, that’s the point.
Of course the administration would love to have greater control of what newspapers print and broadcasters say. The administration’s narrative is that terrorism is, in fact, a battle of narratives. Actual bombings disrupt that portrayal of things.
Yet a free press is a fundamental component of our system of government.
“The only security of all is in a free press,” Thomas Jefferson wrote to his friend the Marquis de Lafayette. “The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure.”
He went on to tell John Jay, “Our liberty cannot be guarded but by the freedom of the press, nor that be limited without danger of losing it.”
That doesn’t mean Jefferson was always happy with the press; he excoriated the newspapers of the time - but never sought to limit them.
“Our printers raven on the agonies of their victims, as wolves do on the blood of the lamb,” he wrote to James Monroe.
Yet still, he said, “I am for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents.”
It’s not just the Obama administration, of course. Many levels of government would love to be their own watchdogs.
But that’s not how it works. The press must remain independent of the government it covers

Republicans Are Recruiting Observers To Monitor Rigging Of Election

 ALL 900,135 REGISTERED VOTERS IN CUYAHOGA OHIO VOTED OBAMA IN 2012 ELECTION, NO REPUBLICAN,NO INDEPENDENT ,NO WRITE IN....????? WATCH THEM


If you think that there is no possibility of voter fraud in the upcoming election, you are naive or a democrat. People have been known to vote for democrats from the grave. In some instances in the last election, whole districts have voted 100% democrat. so if you do not think illegals, migrants are getting the right to vote republican you are vastly mistaken. So Donald Trump, who always seems to be a step ahead of Hillary, will find a way to make sure the election is on the up and up, as best as possible.
According to Tea Party:

GOP nominee Donald Trump is actively recruiting supporters in order to form an army of ‘Election Observers’ to monitor polls on Election Day and ensure that voter fraud is prevented and exposed. A section has been added to Trump’s campaign website describing how supporters can get more information and  sign up to be a “volunteer Trump Election Observer.” Trump has specifically pointed to the fact that in the past fortnight, five courts in five states have ruled against voter ID and proof-of-citizenship laws. Trump said he is worried that the decisions will lead to widespread voter fraud.

Mr. Trump has a valid concern as all that wish no improprities. There has been speculation and acquisition since 2000 and the “Clinging chad”. This should not be in the United States, we are not a banana republic and should not act like one. The democrats have to be watched, they will try anything to keep power.

HOMELESS VETS BEFORE REFUGEE

Sniper takes out ISIS executioner from a mile away

A sharpshooter killed a top ISIS executioner and three other jihadists with a single bullet from nearly a mile away — just seconds before the fiend was set to burn 12 hostages alive with a flamethrower, according to a new report.
The British Special Air Service marksman turned one of the most hated terrorists in Syria into a fireball by using a Barett .50-caliber rifle to strike a fuel tank affixed to the jihadi’s back, the UK’s Daily Star reported Sunday.
The pack exploded, killing the sadistic terrorist and three of his flunkies, who were supposed to film the execution, last month, the paper said.
The ISIS butcher — who reportedly delighted in burning hostages alive — had been on a US “kill list” for several months, sources told the paper, which did not identify the sniper or the executioner.
He and his band of wicked men had been traveling around ISIS-held compounds in Syria slaughtering civilians labeled as spies.
Their prisoners were tied to stakes or thrown in cages before being torched by the executioner, according to the report.
ISIS started using flamethrowers after the torture method was popularized in North Korea.
The ISIS killer was so feared that his victims would beg to be shot rather than be set on fire.
Just before the sniper rescue operation outside of Raqqa, Syria, “the SAS team moved into an overwatch position above a village where they were told the execution was going to take place,” a source told the Star.
“Up to 12 civilians were going to be murdered — eight men and four women.
“The executioner gave some sort of rambling speech . . . then when he finished, the SAS sniper opened fire,” the source said.
The captives were then rescued by British and US special forces.
The rescue comes just months after another SAS sniper killed two ISIS car bombers as they drove toward Libya. The sniper’s bullet went through the driver’s skull and into the passenger’s neck, taking both out.

Obama helps BLM Steal Land

Land made for you and me

The controversies that go with creating new national monuments

From the print edition | United States

Sep 8th 2016, 15:47

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IN GENERAL, any law that presidents mostly use in their second terms has unusual power to cause rows. Take the American Antiquities Act of 1906, giving presidents the right to protect landmarks and landscapes by declaring them national monuments—in the process bypassing Congress, which must approve new national parks and formal “wilderness” reserves. Safely past his last election, Barack Obama has been using the act with a will in recent weeks, creating a new national monument in the woods of Maine and more than quadrupling the size of a marine monument north-west of Hawaii, itself declared by George W. Bush during his second term. In all, Mr Obama has created more than two dozen national monuments, protecting more square miles of land and sea than any predecessor.

If these actions delight some, they alarm others—notably folk who run cattle, mine, log or otherwise exploit nature’s bounty in picturesque bits of America. One such place is the Owyhee basin of eastern Oregon, a remote landscape of wild rivers and vertiginous cliffs, and high desert edged with red and pink rocks. Before Mr Obama steps down, environmentalists, outdoor-leisure companies (including Keen, an Oregon-based shoe-maker) and some Democratic politicians want him to create an Owyhee Canyonlands National Monument covering as much as 2.5m acres.

Lots of monument-backers say that their main concern is possible oil and mineral extraction on what are today federally owned rangelands overseen by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), not grazing cattle. But ranchers are deeply wary. Bob Skinner, whose family reached the Owyhee basin in 1863, is so alarmed that, one morning earlier this summer, he took Lexington up in his own light aircraft on an endearingly transparent mission: to badmouth a landscape that, deep down, he clearly loves. That’s lava from an eruption 600 years ago, Mr Skinner shouts over the Cessna’s engine, pointing to an otherworldly expanse of crusted black rock. Terrible, razor-sharp lava, he scowls: “Will cripple a dog in ten minutes.” A deep canyon is “pretty”, he concedes. But as he putters 100 feet above flat, sagebrush-scented steppes that lie beyond it, he demands: “Once you’ve seen one mile of it, what’s more of it?” He is echoed by Larry Wilson, an elected commissioner for the surrounding region, Malheur County, also along for the ride. Temperatures can exceed 100 degrees down there, says Mr Wilson: “This isn’t the kind of stuff that draws tourists.” Should any hikers try their luck, Mr Wilson adds doomily, the county has a tiny search-and-rescue budget. As the steppes roll on below, the men point out dirt roads that they fear might be barred to motor vehicles in a national monument, or creek-crossings that might be closed, forcing ranchers on 60-mile detours. Perhaps most of all, ranchers fear that a monument will open the door to endless lawsuits by environmental groups.

The West has long seen arguments over land. Mr Skinner’s grandfather, as a boy, was posted to watch for free-roaming sheep that could strip pastures bare, until a 1934 act regulated grazing. The 1970s and 1980s saw “sagebrush rebels” chafing against the federal government, which owns half of all land west of the Rockies. The Skinner Ranch lies a short drive (by Oregon standards) from the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, a remote spot occupied by armed anti-government militants early this year to protest against the jailing of two local ranchers for setting fires that spread to government property, and to challenge the feds’ legal right to own land at all—an occupation which ended with a protester’s death in a stand-off with FBI agents. Some Republicans, including Congressman Rob Bishop and Senator Mike Lee of Utah and Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, want federal lands transferred wholesale to the states. There are eco-absolutists, too, who call ranchers crony capitalists, exploiting too-cheap BLM grazing permits: some would ban cattle outright from public lands.

Still, on the ground, compromise does not sound impossible. Mr Skinner sympathises with his ranching neighbours jailed for arson; but he has no truck with anti-government radicals, and thinks that the BLM has every right to exist. Nor does he think local control a panacea. Though rural Oregon is conservative, political power resides where most people live, in such left-leaning cities as Portland. If Democrat-run Oregon took over land management from the feds, Mr Skinner thinks ranchers’ problems would be “multiplied tenfold”. He also suggests that, if federal officials called for a smaller reserve, perhaps covering 48,000 acres, many locals would be willing to talk.

A young neighbour, Elias Eiguren, says militants hurt the ranchers’ peaceful, law-abiding cause. Most came from out of state, he sighs: “Those people look like us, but aren’t us.” The local congressman, Greg Walden, walks a fine line. He has joined fellow-Republicans in seeking to bar new national-monument designations, but has not endorsed sweeping transfers of federal land to the states. Mr Walden says the right way to protect precious places is with legislation passed by Congress, to ensure individual rights are protected from bullying, far-off majorities. Alas, a polarised Congress has passed hardly any public-lands bills in recent years.

The rural-urban canyon

Malheur County (population, 30,000) held a referendum in March, with 90% of votes cast opposing a national monument. Mr Wilson thinks his county’s wishes should weigh “very heavily”. Local voices must be “respected”, agrees Neil Kornze, director of the BLM. But public lands are owned by all Americans: 60m visit them to hike, camp or river-raft there each year. Decades ago, Mr Kornze notes, his bureau’s badge showed five working men: a surveyor, a miner, a cowboy, a logger and an oilman. Now, reflecting public priorities, it shows a pretty mountain and a river. Managing that change will require national, state and local leaders to find common ground: a seemingly monumental task.

Long Distance Shooting | Pushing 1255 Yards

Looking for long distance shooting tips?
Want to hone your skills for a future long distance shooting competition?
Read on…

Long Distance Shooting | Pushing 1255 Yards

Our friends at Gun Carrier have a weekly show called Everything Guns, hosted by competitive shooter Amy Jane. In the latest episode, Amy takes a trip to the desert to put her shooting skills to the test as her friend Kevin helps her shoot at 1255 yards with an average hunting rifle.
As Amy Jane herself could tell you, even an experienced shooter has room to improve. In this case, Amy tries to beat her personal best in distance shooting with the help of distance shooter Kevin, and the Applied Ballistics cell phone app.

Distance shooting requires precision that can only come from calculating elements such as wind speed, barometric pressure, etc. The Applied Ballistics app helps you calculate these factors quickly and accurately, and apply them to your shooting for optimal precision, distance and accuracy.

The app allows you to specify your gun, ammunition, target distance, barometic pressure, wind speed, sea level and more.

 Once all of your information has been entered, the app will give you a a trajectory table that will help you shoot with accuracy.

 

After using the app to calculate her ballistics, Amy tries her hand at shooting a target at 1255 yards.

In this video, you will also learn how to use a chronograph to measure feet per second, which is a key component in long distance shooting.

After a few frustrating setbacks, Amy finally hits her target — she’s successfully shot a hunting rifle 1255 yards!

Check out the full video below:

Like what  you see? Watch more episodes of Everything Guns with Amy Jane here, and be sure to check out Gun Carrier for more gun tips and news!

5 Steps for Better Rifle Marksmanship

A rifle should be considered an essential tool whether you are bugging out or bugging in.  Your rifle can be used not only for defense but also for food procurement.   You should consider your rifle to be a tool with a simple “point-and-click” interface.  Although firing a weapon is a relatively easy task, hitting the target isn’t always so easy.  After 20 years of military service training hundreds of young men and women to engage and shoot their targets, I began to recognize a short list of common mistakes that prevented soldiers from qualifying as Expert Marksmen.

Marksmanship Tips: Don’t Be Too Proud

It is essential to remember your main reason for taking marksmanship training which is to improve. Via army.mil

The first mistake is pride. It may not seem evident at first, but pride often is the biggest barrier for me to overcome as a trainer on the firing line.  I noticed over time that soldiers who had never fired a weapon were the easiest to train.  Young men and women from urban areas seemed to adapt quickly to instruction with women being the easiest of all to train.  Why?  The answer is quite simple: soldiers who had never fired before have little, if any preconceived notions about marksmanship.  They are “clean slates” and their skills can be built over time.  Young men and women who grew up with firearms were the most difficult to instruct because they brought with them bad habits they had developed over time.  These bad habits are hard to displace and even harder when the student is a young man because their pride often gets in the way of learning new skills.  I have seen many young men fail to even qualify on the range and when I ask them what they think went wrong they almost always say, “I don’t know, I usually shoot better than this.”  The truth is they always fire poorly but pride prevents them from learning new skills.  The best marksmen in the world will tell you that they never stop learning something new and are always seeking to improve.

Marksmanship Tips: Sight Picture

To maintain a good sight picture, train your body on proper cheek-to-stock weld. Via tommyclarke.com

The second mistake I often see involves sight picture. Basically, sight picture is the term used to describe the alignment of the front and rear sights.  Most trainees tend to change sight picture frequently.  This occurs because they place the weapon against their cheek in an ever changing way.  Where your cheek rests on the weapon when sighting in is called the cheek-to-stock weld.  Ensuring that the cheek is always in the same place is key to maintaining a good sight picture.  With the M-16/M-4 series of rifles I usually instruct the firer pull the rifle firmly into the pocket of the shoulder and to place the tip of the nose against the edge of the charging handle to ensure a consistent sight picture.  On weapons larger than 5.56mm, I usually have the trainee find the spot that is most comfortable for them on the stock and then we mark the place where the cheek bone rests on the stock with a piece of duck tape.  When the soldier places his or her cheek bone on the tape, he or she can be assured that they have the same sight picture every time.  This one simple step often results in a soldier that qualifies on the range.

Marksmanship Tips: Watch Your Breathing

Controlling your breath is critical in achieving accurate and consistent shots. Via globalsecurity.org

It seems simple because we have done it every day since we were born, but breathing is almost always a cause of missed shots. When we breathe in our chest expands, causing the rifle barrel to rise.  This causes the bullet to strike higher than we intended.  Conversely, when we exhale the barrel dips, often putting the round in the dirt.  The tell-tale sign this is occurring is often noticed down range when you collect your target.  If your shots are striking the target in an up-down pattern, then breathing is the culprit.  The simplest way to resolve this is by controlling your breathing.  There is a natural pause between when we exhale and before we take our next breath.  Practice breathing in and out until you notice this pause. Before they take a shot, I instruct the trainees to breathe in, breathe out, and then fire during this natural pause.  This often eliminates the up-down pattern observed down range on the target.  If you wait too long during that pause to fire, however, your muscles will begin to shake and your sight picture will not be consistent.  If this occurs just relax, take a deep breath, exhale and fire.

Marksmanship Tips: Trigger Squeeze

The fourth issue I often observe is trigger squeeze. Most people pull a trigger using the first joint of the index finger.  This is the most frequent bad habit brought to the range by people who have fired weapons before.  This habit is easy to spot and correct on the firing line, but is even more evident when you examine the target. A side-to-side pattern of bullet strikes on the target is the tell-tale sign of trigger squeeze issues.  This pattern occurs because the weapon is being pulled sideways off target by the pad of the finger tip.  You can practice this by holding a pencil vertically in your non-firing hand and pulling back toward you with the index finger of your firing hand.  You will notice that when you pull the pencil back using the joint of your index finger, the pencil is pulled sideways and backward instead of backward.  For a right handed firer, this means you are pulling the barrel off target and to the right. When pulling the trigger, you should use the pad on the tip of your index finger and pull straight back.  Practice this with your pencil and it should come straight back at you.

Bad trigger squeeze.

Good trigger squeeze.

Marksmanship Tips: Anticipating the Shot

Anticipating the shot is not as easy to observe as breathing and trigger squeeze. This tendency only becomes evident after the other bad habits have been eliminated and is characterized by a random pattern of bullet strikes on the target.  What generally happens in this instance is that the trainee anticipates the noise and recoil of the rifle just as he or she pulls the trigger.  When this happens they may close their eyes and cringe, losing their sight picture along with muscle control.   I will often instruct them to pull the tension out of the trigger before fully pulling the trigger back so that the rifle surprises them when it goes off.
By better understanding and applying the concepts of consistent sight picture, breathing and trigger squeeze, and techniques for eliminating pre-shot anticipation, anyone can become a good marksman.  By eliminating pride from the equation and recognizing that even the best marksmen strive for improvement, anyone can become an excellent marksman!

the basics of shooting

ATF Regulations That Could Wreak Havoc On Ammo Supply Delayed

Sep 1, 2016

7 733

The ATF is backing down from new regulations that had the potential to bottleneck ammunition production. These regulations would have reclassified nitrocellulose, a key component of smokeless powder, as an explosive. It seems like trying to quietly sneak regulations that will effect ammunition past the public is becoming a regular occurrence over at Obama’s ATF.
The NRA has more:

Earlier this summer, ATF released an Explosives Industry Newsletter that changed the agency’s treatment of nitrocellulose, the primary component in smokeless powders used in modern ammunition. This change had the potential to seriously disrupt ammunition supply in the United States because it changed a long-standing ATF policy that exempted properly “wetted” nitrocellulose from treatment as an explosive under federal law.
NRA and industry raised these concerns to ATF and any change in ATF’s treatment of nitrocellulose is now officially delayed. In an addendum to the earlier newsletter, ATF announced that it “will conduct further industry outreach concerning wetted Nitrocellulose. In the interim, previously authorized industry practices concerning wetted Nitrocellulose will not be affected.

This seems to have gone down in a similar fashion to the green tip ammo ban. The ATF floats new regulations, then the NRA raises hell and shuts them down. It also could be the case that the folks over at the ATF don’t know what they are doing and don’t realize the ramifications of their actions. Given the anti-gun history over at the ATF, it’s doubtful that these are unintentional consequences of well intended regulation.
Just because the ATF choose to delay these nitrocellulose regulations and the green tip ammo ban, doesn’t mean they won’t try to implement them in the future. You can check out the proposed regulations (or reinterpretations of existing law) here. Stay vigilant!

GOP Senators Protest State Dept. Attempt at Backdoor Gun Control

 Tom Cotton (AP)

 

• Twee

The senators, Tom Cotton and Chuck Grassley among them, are upset that the State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls (DDTC) is trying to impose new fees and regulations on gun or ammunition related businesses in a back-handed manner that tries to bypass or at least limit the Second Amendment guarantee of the right to bear arms.
One such example is new guidelines from the DDTC that would make some gunsmiths register as firearms "manufacturers" on the grounds that they do work such as changing the sights on a pistol. This means that they would have to pay a fee of $2,250.
The National Rifle Association notes that this hefty fee tries to stymie legal behavior and also threatens to put small commercial gunsmiths out of business.

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The senators are especially upset because the DDTC is issuing these directives under the auspices of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), even though the Obama administration promised a reform that would remove firearms and ammunition from DDTC's purview and transfer it to the more business-friendly jurisdiction of the Commerce Department, Breitbart reported.
The purpose of the reform was to strengthen controls on the most sophisticated defense technologies, while reducing unnecessary regulations on less sensitive items, such as firearms and ammunition.

The letter from the senators demands a specific date by which the reform enabling the transfer of businesses dealing in firearms and ammunition to the Commerce Department would be completed and said that "the last thing [the affected small businesses] need is an edict from the federal government imposing crippling fees and requirements which are wholly unnecessary and nonsensical."

Violence erupts as Native Americans resist oil pipeline

Nova Safo,AFP 9 hours ago

Cannon Ball (United States) (AFP) - Protesters camping near Native American lands in North Dakota to protest the construction of an oil pipeline clashed late Saturday with construction company workers they blamed for destroying ancient sites.
Hundreds of protesters confronted a bulldozer crew in an area known as Cannon Ball, amid the vast grasslands of the northern US state.
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe claims the crew dug up and destroyed sacred burial grounds, places of prayer and other cultural artefacts -- even after the pipeline developer had voluntarily paused construction in the disputed area less than a mile (1.6 kilometer) from the tribe's reservation.
Angry protesters broke through a fence and fought with private security guards, who employed dogs and pepper spray.
"They tried to push us back with their trucks and their bulldozers, but we just kept on coming," Seeyouma Nashcid, a protester from Arizona, told AFP.
Some protesters were left bloodied, and displayed signs of dog bites. The Morton County Sherriff's department said three private security guards were injured after being struck with fence posts and flag poles.
The tribe, whose reservation is located just south of where the 1,200-mile (1,900-kilometer) pipeline would cross the Missouri River, has been locked in a court battle to stop the project, which it says would endanger its drinking water and destroy historic sites.
Members of American Indian tribes from across the United States have rallied in support, gathering for months in a makeshift camp near the reservation.
On Saturday, protesters were suddenly alerted to renewed digging, a day after the tribe filed evidence in court of dozens of newly discovered artefacts, grave markers and sacred sites.
The tribe said in a statement that a two-mile stretch was destroyed before the bulldozer crew was confronted and stopped.
"This demolition is devastating," Standing Rock Sioux Tribe chairman David Archambault said in a statement. "These grounds are the resting places of our ancestors. The ancient cairns and stone prayer rings there cannot be replaced."
Witnesses said law enforcement officers were nearby during Saturday's clashes but did not immediately intervene. But sheriff's spokeswoman Donnell Preskey said deputies "were not on the scene when the conflict initially occurred," and arrived later.
The sheriff's office was notified of the situation by an emergency call from a private security officer.
Citing the safety and security of law enforcement, Morton County Sheriff Kyle Kirchmeier said that the number of protesters made it "unsafe for officers to directly respond until further officers were able to respond."
A federal judge is expected to decide by September 9 whether to grant a temporary injunction to stop the pipeline construction under the river, as the tribe pursues its lawsuit.

The pipeline's US developer Energy Transfer Partners did not return a call for comment placed during a holiday weekend.