There have been a number of recent robberies in the Forest Hill and Woodland Heights sections of Richmond, as reported in Hills & Heights - two in just the last few days. A robbery on Stonewall Street was staged against two people sitting in a stationary automobile on July 27th. The second was made against a lone man walking down the street in broad daylight; a car pulled up, the perpetrator got out and robbed the man. In both cases the robbers were armed with handguns.

Update: Hills & Heights is reporting on another, just last night. Sounds like the same M.O. but they seem to be getting bolder.

The cover story of the August 2010 issue of Harper's Magazine is titled "Happiness is a Worn Gun: My Concealed Weapon and Me," by Dan Baum. It's unusual.

It's certainly not the kind of cover story that Harper's would have run under the editorship of Lewis Lapham, whose trademark leftist rants became too frequent and too detached from reality for me to continue purchasing the magazine. Lapham is still listed in the masthead as "National Correspondent", but his name is not among the writers in the table of contents. If the Harper's Index were to to somehow quantify the contempt for America and Americans spread throughout each issue of the magazine, it would certainly record a substantial drop from the closing years of Lapham's editorship. Good riddance to an old fool.

I would not have picked up the August, 2010 issue if not for the promise of the first-person narrative in "My Concealed Weapon and Me." That phrasing in the title, and the cover image of a vintage High-Standard Sentinel "belly gun" revolver suggested authenticity, so I paid my $6.99.

The article itself lives up to my hopes. Baum is a lifelong gun owner and the article is free of contempt for those who hunt or own guns for defensive purposes. He gives a fair appraisal of the state of concealed and open carry in the United States, why and how people choose to do it, and what the societal effects have been and might be in the future.

Baum is at his best when he is gently dismantling anti-gunner beliefs. Playing to Harper's readership, he presents John Lott's More Guns, Less Crime with a fair amount of skepticism and neglects to mention the Bellesiles fraud. Immediately after, though, he brings forth this defense:

It's not a new article, but I found this Guns & Ammo 2005 primer on home defense shotguns to be very helpful in describing the options available.

It's got little nuggets of wisdom, such as this passage:

What kind of barrel do you want on your fighting scattergun? First of all, you want as short a tube as possible. This is not because a short-barreled shotgun has any ballistic advantage but rather because it handles better in confined spaces like hallways. The legal minimum is 18 inches (as long as that length does not result in a gun with an overall length less than 26 inches). Many shotguns are currently made and sold with 18-inch barrels, so they aren't hard to find. You can have a shorter barrel if you live in a state that permits it, can qualify for the transfer and are willing to pay the $200 Federal Tax Stamp. I am sort of a shotgun nut, so I have a 14-inch 870 Remington, and I guarantee you that it handles much better than an almost identical gun with an 18-inch barrel.

[The Home Defense Shotgun - Guns & Ammo]

Ryan Nobles of NBC12 interviewed Congressman Bobby Scott of Virginia's 3rd District recently, on the topic of the "gun show loophole". A sample of his scintillating rhetoric:

Scott: Well, I think it's important that we have a matrix where people who are not able to buy firearms shouldn't be able to buy firearms. People who have felonies, people who are mentally unstable, who are found not to be entitled to buy firearms, they go into a gun shop, they will be a background check. All we're asking is that the background check requirement also apply to gun shows where lots of weapons are sold. We found and seen videos of people going in to gun shows and not showing any ID at all, and certainly don't have to show anything but the money, and they come out with a firearm. Hand guns, military assault weapons and everything else without any background check at all. And all we're asking is the same requirement for a back ground check applying at gun shows as it applies everywhere else.

Anyone who frequents gun shows knows that the background check already applies to every gun sold by every dealer at every show. The only exception to the rule are private sales between individuals, and it doesn't matter if that sale occurs at a gun show, in a living room or on someone's porch - it's not a "gun show loophole"; it's a "private sale loophole". Private sellers are already required to verify that the purchaser is a resident of the state in which the transfer occurs and are strongly recommended to keep a record of the purchaser's name and address to exclude themselves from being a suspect in the event the gun is later recovered after being used in a crime, to say nothing of civil liability.

There's a terrific article in the August/September issue of Handguns by Greg Rodriguez, called "A Clean Sweep". I looked online but couldn't find it.

As someone who received only minimal training in cleaning guns, I found the article to be extremely useful. It identifies both cleaning techniques and useful products. The variety of products and brands listed tends to suggest to me that it was not influenced by advertising concerns, which can often be a problem with gun publications.

Anyway, check it out - I picked up my copy at the Books-A-Million at Broad & Parham.