Black Belt Nun

As anyone who attended a Catholic grammar school in the years gone by can attest, nuns were considered deadly with rulers. Now comes a story about a nun in North Carolina who is a black belt in karate.




Sister Joan Pearson works at Our Lady of Mercy Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. In one of those odd coincidences of fate, Joan was a couple of years ahead of me in high school. Her sister Mary was a friend of mine who graduated in my class. I vaguely remember Joan - now Sister Joan - as one of those all around nice girls who everyone liked.

Sister Joan says she got into karate for the "focus and awareness" she got from training. She was just awarded her first-degree black belt in August. As to what her fellow nuns think of her karate training, she says:

At times during her years of practice, Pearson has gotten some "giggles and eye rolls" from her fellow sisters when seen shadowboxing inside the church.

But that never bothered her.

"You may find that many nuns like to sew, knit or crotchet — I myself could never crochet," she said, bristling at the thought. "But golly, you know what? I can do a great roundhouse kick!"

And They Wonder Why Gun Owners Are Wary Of The Media

Today's San Francisco Chronicle had a story about new lawsuits filed against the City of San Francisco. These lawsuits challenge a city requirement that handguns must be kept either in a locked container or have trigger lock and a city ban on the sale of hollow-point ammunition. With regard to the latter, reporter Rachel Gordon wrote:

The other, which has been on the books in various forms since 1994, prohibits the sale of hollow-point bullets and similar ammunition that fragments or explodes upon impact.

Hollow-point ammunition does not explode nor fragment upon impact. It opens up, becomes wider, and is designed to stop the bad guy without passing through and hurting an innocent bystander. That is why most police officers are issued such ammunition. The only ammunition that fragments upon impact is frangible ammunition which is designed that way to prevent pass throughs or ricochets at a shooting range. Even then, it only comes apart when it hits a hard object like a target backstop.

The only "exploding" ammo I've ever read about was in Frederick Forsyth's Day of the Jackel where the assassin had special ammo made with a drop of mercury in a sealed bullet.

Jeez!

Dave Workman - "It's Not Just Walgreens"

Among the things that Cam Edwards and Dave Workman, editor of GunWeek and the Seattle Gun Rights Examiner, discussed last night was Jeremy Hoven - the Walgreens' pharmacist fired for defending himself with a firearm during an armed attack. As Dave notes, it's not just Walgreens that has the policies forbidding employees to provide for their own safety at work.

Quote Of The Day

Investor's Business Daily has been running some very hard hitting editorials on Project Gunwalker. The latest published this evening is entitled Alcohol, Tobacco, and Murder and included this conclusion.

The administration that has given us "cash for clunkers" has also given us "guns for gangs" in a cynical attempt to foment violence in Mexico for which the U.S. gets blamed in pursuance of its gun-control agenda.

As bad as the crony capitalism of funding insolvent green energy companies in exchange for political contributions might be, no one died at Solyndra. As we've said, if the president knew, he should be held accountable.

Go For It, Sean!

If you've ever read An NC Gun Blog, you know that Sean Sorrentino loves the KRISS Vector and it is one of his dream guns. Look at the smile on his face after shooting a full-auto version for the first time at the 2011 Lucky Gunner Memorial Day Shoot.




I ran across a little PR tidbit last week that should excite him. Laura Burgess, the North Carolina-based PR and marketing maven to numerous gun companies, has just signed KRISS Arms Group on as a client.

LBM will be working with the KRISS Arms Group to grow their market share, implement emerging media strategies, manage press and writer programs and develop creative and targeted consumer campaigns. LBM has been providing public relations and marketing services to the firearms industry since 2003 and has been a leader in bringing clients into the rapidly evolving world of Internet and emerging media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, blogs and email newsletter campaigns.

 He may not have made enough from the sales of the Gunwalker T-shirts to buy a KRISS but now, just maybe, he could get one on a Test and Evaluation basis.

Go for it, Sean!

Do Gun Numbers And Fatalities Correlate?

The answer is yes - negatively. In this case, negative is good. The more negative it is, the better.

We know that because of a lot of hard work and number crunching by Linoge at Walls of the City blog. He has just put out his Graphics Matter, Year the Third. He has examined the available data from the last 28 years and has thoroughly debunked the gun prohibitionists' theory that more guns equals more deaths. His analysis leads him to conclude:

1. The hypothesis of "more guns = more deaths" is demonstrably false over the past 28 years of documented American history. The number of firearms in civilian circulation have been steadily increasing over that time period, and the number of firearm-related fatalities has not been equivalently increasing. However, again, since there seems to be some confusion on the concept, proving "more guns = more deaths" to be false does not prove "more guns = fewer deaths" to be true. Doing so would require accounting for far more variables than I did, and involve far more interesting math than I employed, and require controlling for far more variables than I care to.

2. When comparing raw numbers, there is a weak, negative correlation between the number of firearms in America and the number of firearm-related fatalities, and that correlation seems to become more negative with additional data.

3. When comparing rates, there is a strong, negative correlation between the number of firearms per person in America and the number of firearm-related fatalities per person, and that correlation seems to become more negative with additional data.

And unlike the gun prohibitionists, he provides his full analysis and data. That is very important in this sort of research. It allows other researchers the ability to replicate his results. Being able to do that serves to confirm the validity of his findings.

The work that Linoge did is very sophisticated but very understandable. I have had 5 semesters of statistics over the years and I would say the work he has done here is every bit as rigorous as what would be seen in a peer-reviewed journal article. Unlike a journal article, he explains what he did every step of the way and didn't fill his page with academic jargon mumbo-jumbo.

The post that Linoge just put up should be read by everyone involved in the fight for gun rights. It is that important.

Rep. Trey Gowdy On The HR 822 Hearings

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) is a member of the House Judiciary Committee and its Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security. He discussed HR 822 and the hearings with Ginny Simone of NRA News.

Wayne LaPierre On National Right To Carry Reciprocity

The House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security held hearings on Tuesday on HR 822 - the Nation Right-To-Carry Reciprocity Act of 2011. Wayne LaPierre was interviewed about the hearings and HR 822 by Ginny Simone of NRA News.