quotes from our Founding Fathers…

“Firearms stand next to the Constitution itself. They are the American people’s liberty teeth and keystone under independence. To ensure peace, security, and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensible.”
-George Washington
“The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny of government.” ~Thomas Jefferson
"I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them." ~George Mason

The M4 Carbine at 750 Yards and Beyond

The M4 Carbine at 750 Yards and Beyond: Three Simple Things to Know

We took our 14.5-inch BCM M4 carbine upper to the Best of the West shooting range in Liberty Hill, Texas, to try our skill (and luck!) on their long-range, reactive steel targets. It may seem completely counterintuitive to all common knowledge on the Internet to take a non-free floated, 14.5-inch barreled 5.56 NATO with a mil-spec trigger out to 1,000 yards, but we live in the real world, with people crazy enough to try it.
And here are our three main conclusions after an incredibly fun day at the range.

Your rifle doesn’t really matter

A standard AR-15 with a non-free floated barrel is far more accurate than many shooters think, and it makes sense if we consider how an AR-15 is built.

Never judge a book by its cover…or an AR-15

It doesn’t have a complex, multi-faceted action to bed, operating rod or finicky top handguard like other military rifles (we’re looking at you, M14 and M1A). In theory, the AR-15 is actually configured more like a standard bolt-action rifle in terms of how the barrel is mounted to the receiver and how the handguards interact with it: straight in, with consistent outside influence. This makes the overall design inherently accurate, and the fact that an AR-15 doesn’t need bedding helps as well.
While our little gun isn’t an M4 carbine in the purest sense—it lacks a full-auto capable lower—the upper half is true to form, right down to the side-mounted sling swivel. It also has an extended and pinned flash hider, to comply with arbitrary federal barrel length laws.
The gun was configured with a standard, single-stage AR-15 trigger housed in a Rock River Arms lower. While having a crisp, lightweight, two-stage match trigger like a CMC would certainly help, it’s not a requirement to get good hits on practical targets. After all, ample practice with a standard trigger beats no practice with a match-grade unit every day of the week.
We’re not going to be shy: shooting an AR-15 without a free floating barrel at long distance isn’t easy, even off the nice concrete shooting benches at Best of The West. It takes practice, practice, and more practice. But with that practice comes ability, and the AR-15 is more than capable enough for the job… as long as the shooter is.

Your ammunition does matter

Quality ammunition will make a bigger difference at 750 yards than a match-grade rifle will. Take an off-the-rack M4 carbine to the range with excellent ammunition, and you’ll likely see better results than you would with a custom-grade rifle shooting crummy ammo.
We originally started out with standard, non-match PMC XP193 ammunition, which shoots a 55-grain ball projectile at around 2900 feet per second out of a 14.5-inch barrel. This round perfectly mimics the old military-issue M193 load, right down to the tar sealant on the case neck.
Unfortunately, making contact with the steel targets at 500 yards and further was difficult at best. The bullet simply isn’t heavy enough, and velocities aren’t consistent enough to produce a consistent group. Additionally, the light bullet doesn’t fare well in the wind. It’s just not very ballistically efficient, which, incidentally, is a big reason the military switched to the heavier 62-grain M855 round.
That being said, the XPM193 performed very well on 10-inch steel plates out to 250 yards. Missing was pretty much impossible at these close ranges; point and click accuracy was the norm. It’s still fantastic, clean ammunition for stockpiling and general target shooting.
Thankfully, we had brought the “big guns” for everything past 250 yards: Reloads carefully crafted with Hornady 75-grain BTHP bullets and a stiff charge of Varget powder, as well as factory Hornady steel match, also in a 75-grain flavor.
Switching to the higher quality bullet and hand-weighed powder charges made a night and day difference. We went from occasional hits at 500 yards to consistent performance all the way out to 750 yards.
With high-quality ammo, making contact with the 18-inch x 24-inch steel plate at 750 yards was simply a matter of calling the gusting winds correctly. The 10-inch plates were slightly more difficult, and required a precise elevation hold and exact wind call.

Your optics matter

Right after good ammo, you need to have good glass on your rifle. It’s certainly possible to hit what you’re aiming at with iron sights, but it’s going to be incredibly difficult (if not impossible) to call wind corrections without some kind of optic.

The Vortex Razor HD Gen II 1-6×24 is definitely up to the task

We were shooting the excellent Vortex Razor HD Gen II 1-6×24, and were clearly able to see 5.56 impacts at 1,000 yards. Much like the idea that a standard rifle is good enough to make hits, this is another slightly counterintuitive principal: more magnification isn’t a good thing, unless the quality is there.
I would readily choose a 6x riflescope with the quality of the Razor HD series over a 25 power optic of lesser repute. Magnification isn’t everything.
No doubt, the Vortex Razor HD II 1-6 has the resolution needed to shoot past 500 yards. It also has an appropriate reticle.
Thanks to free ballistic programs and apps, figuring out your bullet’s exact rainbow-like trajectory at extended ranges is no longer guesswork. Furthermore, this drop can be expressed in useful angular measurements like milliradians (mils) and minutes of angle.
Conveniently, the Vortex Razor HD Gen II reticle has seven mils of drop built right in, represented by hashmarks along the vertical stadia line. This made it easy to look up on a computer-generated ballistics table how many mils the bullet dropped at a given distance, and hold over at the proper mark.
Once that was accomplished, it was a simple matter to favor left or right of the target depending on how far the wind pushed the bullet. The day we went, wind holds were typically one to two target widths left.

View through the Vortex Razor HD at 750 yards. Targets at 1,000 yards can be seen to the left.

Most of our time was spent on the 750 yard targets, with only a handful of shots taken at 1,000 yards. Winds were fluctuating wildly, and our heavy 75-grain bullets had definitely crossed the sub-sonic threshold at that distance.
It’s not that the 1,000 yard targets were impossible to hit; they were merely improbable. Lighter weight match bullets in the 62-69 grain range would probably help this.
It was far more fun to shoot at 750 yards with reliable results, so that’s what we did most of the time.

Give it a try!

The 5.56×45 cartridge should definitely not be your first choice if you’re going to be shooting at long distances, especially at the reduced velocities that a compact 14.5-inch barrel brings. There are far too many ballistically superior chamberings currently available, if your primary goal is hitting tiny targets ten football fields away.
That being said don’t stay home from the range if you don’t have a fancy match-grade rifle or a non-free floating barrel. Load up some quality ammo from Hornady, Winchester or Prvi Partisan, grab the gun you already own, and get out there!

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Clinton, O’Malley Say Americans Are Their Enemies

In the days since last week’s debate between candidates for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, some commentators have suggested that Americans have seen enough, that no additional Democrat debates are necessary. In one respect, those commentators are right. In just a few seconds during the debate, the two candidates who harbor the most extreme views on guns showed why they shouldn’t be entrusted with our country’s highest elected office.

It happened when the candidates were asked, “which enemy are you most proud of?”

Of the five candidates onstage, the only supporter of the right to arms, former U.S. senator and Secretary of the Navy Jim Webb—who had already answered a question about gun control by saying that people have the right to defend themselves—said that the enemy he was most proud to have had was the one who wounded him with a grenade during the Vietnam War. Webb didn’t elaborate, but he was referring to an occasion on which, as a Marine Corps 1^st Lieutenant, he led an attack against a communist bunker system, an action for which he was awarded the Navy Cross “for extraordinary heroism.”

However, the other four candidates—gun control supporters one and all—reflexively associated the word “enemy” not with America’s overseas adversaries, but with other Americans.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and former Rhode Island governor Lincoln Chafee tempered their answers, at least, Sanders saying only that “Wall Street and the pharmaceutical industry . . . do not like me,” Chafee saying that the “the coal lobby” is a group he’s “at odds with.”

By stark contrast, however, Hillary Clinton and former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, far and away the most extreme gun control supporters running for president, showed no such restraint. O’Malley said his enemy is the five million member “National Rifle Association.” Clinton went further, naming not only “the NRA,” but also the health insurance companies, the drug companies, Republicans, and only one group of people who are not Americans, “the Iranians.”

How things have changed. In 2004, during the keynote speech at the Democratic Party National Convention, then-Illinois state senator Barack Obama said, albeit with questionable sincerity, “We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the Stars and Stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.” In 2007, presidential candidate Obama claimed that he wanted to unify the country and break it out of what he called “ideological gridlock.”

Today, tempted with the opportunity to indulge herself in the deadly sin of hate before a national TV audience, the leading candidate for the same party’s presidential nomination did so without hesitation or remorse. She gleefully said that she considers tens of millions of Americans to be the “enemy.” She equated the NRA, American business interests, and Republicans with those whose signature chant is “Death to America.” And the party faithful in the debate hall cheered her with the same enthusiasm Obama’s “one America” speech received 11 years ago.

It was an ugly moment, but it shouldn’t define the character of our political disputes going forward. In deciding to whom to entrust the presidency of the United States between now and Election Day 2016, all Americans, regardless of viewpoint, should hold candidates to a standard higher than what Hillary Clinton appears capable of delivering.

Hillary Adopts the 40% Myth to Argue for Gun Control

Hillary Adopts the 40% Myth to Argue for Gun Control Among the many issues standing between Hillary Clinton and the White House is what various media outlets have delicately labeled a “credibility problem.” Politico was more blunt in an August 27 article, asking, “Can Hillary overcome the ‘liar’ factor?” That piece went on to cite a Quinnipiac University poll, in which 61% of respondents indicated they did not believe Hillary was honest and trustworthy. Worse, when voters were asked the first word that came to mind about Clinton, the top three replies were (in order of popularity) “liar,” “dishonest,” and “untrustworthy.” According to the article, “Overall, more than a third of poll respondents said their first thought about Clinton was some version of: She’s a liar. … [T]he striking reality is that, for Clinton, a lack of trust is the first thing many think of.” Count us in on that.

NEWS Trustworthiness Issues? Politifact Calls Out Clinton Deception That there are apparently still people (though, increasingly few) that find Hillary Clinton at all trustworthy is becoming more and more incredible. Late last week, Politifact took Clinton to task over comments she made about the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA). According to Politifact, at a campaign event in Iowa, Clinton remarked “[p]robably one of the most egregious, wrong, pieces of legislation that ever passed the Congress when it comes to this issue is to protect gun sellers and gun makers from liability… They are the only business in America that is wholly protected from any kind of liability.” Politifact properly branded the statement “False.” That Politifact has been known to skew their work in favor of gun control advocates, shows just how patently false Clinton’s characterization of the PLCAA was.     NEWS  LEGAL & LEGISLATION Tell Your Congressional Lawmakers: No New Federal Gun Control! Recently, we reported on a partisan gun control rally on the Capitol steps that sought to exploit recent tragedy and loss to build momentum for a longstanding agenda. Anti-gun members of the president’s party, always quick to do his bidding, have been emboldened by Obama’s own not-so-thinly-veiled call for confiscatory gun control. This week, the air on Capitol Hill remains thick with rumors of the impending gun control debate. Word is that it may come in the very near future. With local elections days away in several states, the anti-gun, anti-constitution wing of American politics is looking to activate its base.

How refugees from terror strongholds could bring tragedy to the homeland

State Department and Homeland Security officials are putting American lives at risk by ignoring the fact that violent extremists will exploit the U.S.’s compassionate immigration policies and infiltrate refugee camps within the nation’s borders.
That’s according to a letter sent to Secretary of State John Kerry and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson Wednesday by Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) and Rep. Randy Weaver (R-Va.).
The Republican duo acknowledged that the U.S. “is a compassionate country and has a role to play” in alleviating the refugee crises sparked by violence in the Middle East. But the lawmakers added that U.S. officials can’t let that compassion put American lives in danger.
“We must be aware that groups like ISIS will infiltrate refugee camps and try to seek admittance into the United States. As you move forward with the process of admitting more refugees into this country, it is critical that rigorous background checks and security measures are in place,” they wrote.
Kerry, in September, announced, “The United States will significantly increase our numbers for refugee resettlement in the course of this year and the year after … We are going to go up to 85,000 with at least, and I underscore the ‘at least’ — it is not a ceiling, it’s a floor — 10, 000 over the next year from Syria specifically even as we also receive more refugees from other areas.”
Kerry added that State Department officials are aiming to bring in excess of 100,000 refugees into the nation’s borders during the next fiscal year.
Lankford and Weaver said that in addition to conducting rigorous background checks on refugee applicants, the federal government should prioritize applications from members of religious minority groups — such as Yazidis and Christians — most at risk of persecution by ISIS in conflict-torn regions Middle East.
Despite the lawmakers’ recommendations, it isn’t likely that the government is going to do a better job vetting refugees any time soon. Top officials have admitted that decisions to let more refugees into the nation have been made without consideration of limitations in the vetting process.
Kerry, who directed State officials to open the refugee floodgates over the next year and a half, recently admitted that there’s no way the vetting process can keep up with the onslaught of refugees.
“We have new [post-9-11] laws and new requirements with respect to security background checks and vetting, so it takes longer than one would like and we cannot cut corners with respect to security requirements.”
Even if federal officials don’t “cut corners” in vetting refugees flowing into the country from terror hotbeds, many will still never have their backgrounds, affiliations and beliefs scrutinized because they don’t already exist in government databases.
FBI director James Comey said as much during a House Committee on Homeland Security hearing Wednesday.
“We can only query against that which we have collected,” Comey told lawmakers Wednesday.
“And so if someone has never made a ripple in the pond in Syria in a way that would get their identity or their interest reflected in our database, we can query our database until the cows come home, but there will be nothing show up because we have no record of them,” he added.

Proof our southern border is under attack by Muslim extremists

Hello I’m Wayne Allyn Root for Personal Liberty^®. America is in deep trouble. Your families are in grave danger. Imminent danger. I have breaking news that has been shared by a border agent with only me. The question is: Why isn’t your government sharing this threat with the American people? And why aren’t major mainstream news organizations like The New York Times, CNN or Fox News reporting on it? Why is there a media blackout?
The breaking news that I’m talking about is the grave imminent danger of radical Muslim terrorists crossing our open border with Mexico to attack our homeland. I’ve warned this was likely happening in hundreds of media interviews, speeches and columns for over a year now.
My prediction is no longer a fear. It is now a fact.
My trusted insider source at U.S. Customs and Border Protection called me only days ago to ask me to tell the American people about this imminent threat. He told me to “imitate Paul Revere” and get the message out to all Americans, before it’s too late. His quote was: “We don’t need to wait for Middle Eastern military-age males to invade our border. They are here. The Obama administration will not report this. But the American people need to know.”
Here is the news, as reported to me from a trusted border agent.
First, the U.S. government has received an urgent alert from the government of Mexico that Syrian military-age males are on the ground in Mexico and feared headed for the U.S. border. U.S. border agents are on extreme high alert.
This crucial threat has not been announced by our government. Why are the American people being kept in the dark? Why isn’t major media like The New York Times, CNN or Fox News reporting this? Why am I, a conservative political commentator, the only person with this important information? If one brave border agent wasn’t a close and trusted friend of mine, no one in the American public would know about this. That’s remarkable.
Now comes the second piece of the puzzle, also unannounced to the public. Connect the dots.
At this same time, alarm bells were set off across the entire border agent community by the capture only days ago of 11 Pakistanis at the San Diego border. This is another giant, blinking red flag. This is the first capture of its kind, according to my border agent source. Very few Middle Eastern military-age males have ever been captured at the U.S.-Mexico border. But even more alarming is the fact that there has never been a capture of 11 Middle Eastern military-age men in one group before. Let me stress, this has never happened before.
Again, this capture has not been reported by the U.S. government. Why? Don’t the American people have a right to know?
To make matters more alarming, my border agent source says they all entered Mexico with passports. But when they were captured crossing the border in San Diego, suddenly they had no passports. They claimed their passports were “stolen.” Their identities were confirmed from the Mexican database that originally logged their entry into Mexico. Why were they trying to hide their country of origin? Were they trying to blend in as “just more Mexicans crossing the border” so as to not set off alarm bells? Again let me stress: Why isn’t this story in the mainstream media?
Then yesterday, I received a new urgent message from my trusted border agent friend. Six more Pakistanis were captured crossing in the same spot from Mexico into San Diego. This is no longer a “coincidence.” This is a pattern. This is a sign of a new threat against our homeland.
This is bad news, folks. Something is wrong. My border agent friend says this has never happened before. And if 17 Pakistanis were captured within days, how many more have evaded capture? Are there hundreds already in the United States that were never caught by border agents? How many more are on the way? Will our border soon have a massive Muslim illegal immigrant crisis just like our allies in Europe?
And here’s the million-dollar question: Who is sending Middle Eastern military-age males to America? Who is paying for them? Is ISIS footing the bill? With what intent?
My source warns this is “the real thing.” These are likely bad guys coming to do us harm. This is proof positive of the disaster we’re facing from Obama administration policies that have produced a porous open border with Mexico. And let’s not forget Mexico is warning us that Syrian military-age males are also on the ground, headed our way.
Our government has made no announcement of these alerts and incidents. Connect the dots. This is a very bad sign. Our borders are open. Thousands of miles are poorly guarded. There is no wall. There aren’t enough border agents. Bad guys from the Middle East know our border is wide open. They will send thousands of bad guys our way, knowing they only need a few to get through.
These are just the first bad guys from the Middle East caught. But this is a surefire sign that hundreds, or perhaps even thousands, of others have already crossed into America. Or they are en route. We face imminent, grave danger.
Military-age males are not coming here from Muslim war zones to play golf. They are not coming here for jobs. (By the way, news flash: There are no jobs. We have over 94 million working-age Americans not working) They are coming here to do us harm.
And how do dirt-poor Middle Eastern military-age males from across the globe get to Mexico? They can’t walk. There is an ocean to cross. They are penniless. It costs thousands of dollars per immigrant to be smuggled from Syria or Pakistan halfway around the world to Mexico. Common sense tells us these are radical Muslim terrorists smuggled into Mexico by ISIS or al-Qaida to carry out terrorist attacks in the United States. If not, why not smuggle in women or children? Why only military-age males?
Common sense dictates the only way Pakistani or Syrian military-age males could get to Mexico or America is with the help of ISIS or other terrorist organizations. This is a plan. This is a coordinated attack upon America.
Until our borders are secured, until a wall is built, until drones are placed along the border to warn border agents of security breaches, America faces imminent danger and potential mass tragedy.
You are not safe. Your children are not safe. Our economy is not safe. One more massive 9/11-like terrorist attack in the middle of an “Obama economy” (already on the verge of collapse), and we all face economic Armageddon. And our enemies know that. The question is: Why doesn’t President Obama care?

6 charged in 'wholesale slaughter' of animals in Leon County

A pair of seemingly unconnected investigations by law enforcement officers in Leon County - one by Texas game wardens looking into a landowner's report of a suspected poaching incident, the other by county sheriff's deputies investigating incidents of vandalism and other property crimes - resulted this week in arrests tied to what state wildlife law enforcement officials say ranks as the most egregious, disturbingly vicious poaching-related case any can recall.

Six Centerville residents, four charged as adults and two juveniles, face a flood of criminal charges, including a total of 120 felonies and 58 Class A misdemeanors, for violations of state wildlife laws tied to what Col. Craig Hunter, director of Texas Parks and Wildlife Department's law enforcement division, called "wholesale slaughter of game animals, non-game wildlife and domestic animals."
According to officers, the group illegally killed at least 68 white-tailed deer, an assortment of other wildlife including alligator, blue heron, vulture and egret, six head of cattle (one of which was hacked to death with a machete) and several domestic cats during a three-month frenzy of criminal acts that included more than a dozen burglaries and several acts of vandalism and other damage to private and public property.

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  6 charged in 'wholesale slaughter' of animals in Leon County
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The suspects also face criminal charges in those non-wildlife-related cases; the Leon County Sheriff's Office has filed charges on three of the suspects and is preparing to file charges on the other three. The six, facing felony charges that carry prison terms of as much as two years, also could face federal wildlife-related criminal charges and, if convicted of state charges, well over $10,0000 in civil restitution for illegally taken wildlife.
'Beyond poaching'
Game wardens seized nine firearms, including a .22 rifle fit with a homemade sound suppressor, from the group.
All of the charges involve violations alleged to have occurred in Leon County, a rural county located about midway between Houston and Dallas and bisected by Interstate 45.
Those charged as adults are Daniel Wyatt Pate, 20, and John Edward Persaud, 19, along with two 17-year-olds.
Two juveniles also face charges in the cases.
"I don't know how to compare this to anything I've seen before," Capt. Mike Hanson, Rusk-based supervisor for TPWD's law enforcement division and 23-year veteran Texas game warden, said of the case. "The scope is just way beyond poaching deer."
State game wardens began investigating the case after a Sept. 1 call from a landowner who had found a whitetail doe, dead from a gunshot, in his pasture the morning after his wife told him she had heard a shot during the night, Hanson said. At the same time, the Leon County Sheriff's Office was investigating a series of property crimes in the rural county. Those investigations began turning up information that tied suspects to both cases. TPWD wardens Oscar Hensen and Randy Harper and Sgt. Brian Stafford of the Leon County Sheriff's Office worked together and broke the case.
According to investigators, between June 4 and Sept 1, the six were involved in serial illegal activity that regularly included poaching whitetail deer at night.
'Some kind of record'
The investigation documented 68 illegally taken deer, most of them shot from motor vehicles at night from public roadways. In some instances, officers allege, the poaching occurred on the feeder roads of Interstate 45; officers said at least 15 deer were poached from land adjacent to the heavily traveled highway. In several instances, the suspects returned multiple times to the same areas, killing deer and committing other crimes, officers said. They killed as many as five deer in a single night of poaching, sometimes removing back straps and hindquarters from the deer but often simply leaving the animals to rot where they fell, Hanson said.
The total tally of deerillegally killed by the group almost certainly is much higher than the 68 whitetails they are charged with poaching, officers said. That total could easily exceed 100 when deer that were wounded and died later or were poached and not found or otherwise documented are included.
"We've really got no way to measure how many deer, total, were involved," Hanson said.
But even at 68 deer, the total far exceeds the largest number of deer involved in a single poaching case any TPWD law enforcement officers can recall.
"There have been cases where we've had people take a dozen or so deer over a period of time; I think 17 or 20 is the most I've ever heard of," Hanson said. "This case has got to be some kind of record."
'Pretty vicious crimes'
Officials underscored that the poaching of deer and illegal killing of other wildlife was just a part of the three-month crime spree that included shooting out the window of a business, shooting road signs, destroying mailboxes, shooting a parked truck as well as the burglaries (most of hunter's deer camps), the killing of livestock and the shooting of house cats and other animals.
The extent and range of crimes alleged against those charged shocked even veteran game wardens.
"I don't think I've ever see a case like this in the 41 years I've been in law enforcement," Hunter, TPWD game warden chief, said. "There are some pretty vicious crimes in there."
The charges filed against the group reflect the extent of those alleged crimes. The 120 felony charges filed against the group are for killing a white-tailed deer on private property without the consent of the landowner; each violation is a state jail felony punishable by as much as two years in prison and a fine of $10,000. The 58 Class A misdemeanor charges are for hunting from a public roadway and carry a penalty of as much as a year in jail and a $4,000 fine.
Game wardens said they were surprised that the poaching ring could operate for three months, firing what they suspect was hundreds of rounds of gunfire, usually at night, sometimes within view of travelers on Interstate 45 and leaving dead deer and other wildlife - evidence of crimes - scattered around the county without anyone reporting suspicious activity to law enforcement.
"It's baffling, particularly when you know how protective most landowners and hunters are of deer and other wildlife," Hanson said of how the group seemed to operate without fear of being reported or caught.
During their investigation, officers learned many landowners and others had heard gunshots during the night but never reported the incidents to wardens or other law enforcement.