Can you pass the 'Citizen's Guide to Firearms ID' test?

I shoulda saved it but I didn't when I was clicking around the other day and saw this photo of a cop holding up an AR-15/M4 variant, which some clueless journalist had labeled in the caption as an "AK-47 assault rifle" used in a crime somewhere.

I worked as a journalist for more than 30 years and stupidity about firearms is just one of the many failings of the vast majority of the leftwingnuts that populate the media these days. And they can't spell either.

Anyway, I stole the image at right from Fark.com where it was used to poke a bit of fun at the clueless about guns.

So let's use it for a Gun IQ test. I'll go first. Starting at top left, we have a genuine AK-47 7.62x39mm then an AR-15 .223/5.56mm. Either could be semi-auto or full auto.

Second row is FN PS-90 5.7x28mm semi-auto bullpup carbine (or perhaps the full-auto version) and then the Israeli Uzi 9mm submachine gun, could be full-auto or semi-auto.

Third row, Barret .50 cal. semi-auto sniper rifle (or perhaps Armalite, certainly I got the type and caliber right) and then a Walther PPK or PPK/S .380 ACP semi-auto pistol. It's hard to tell the two apart without a ruler.

Third row is a CZ-75 9mm semi-auto (or one of the many clones of that great pistol) and a Russian RPG launcher with the rocket-propelled grenade it launches (or maybe a Chinese copy).

Fourth row is some kinda pepper spray device, don''t know for sure. And last could be a Plymouth Valiant, but that's just a guess. It is a genuine klunker and I seem to associate that awful shade of puke green/blue with the Plymouth Valiant. Now you give it a try.

World's first AR FiveSeven Carbine? Possibly

The gun shop where I work may well have created the world's first AR Five-Seven Carbine. What's that, you may ask?

The FN Herstal Five-Seven Pistol (top right) and the FN PS-90 Personal Defense Weapon (top left) share a new cartridge developed by FN, the 5.7x28mm, basically a short version of the .223/5.56x45mm NATO. If you convert the 5.7mm into its equivalent in inches it comes out to about .224 caliber, so it's just 1/1000th larger in diameter than .223. But the latter number indicates the length of the two cartridges, 45mm for NATO and 28mm for the FN 5.7mm.

But now the differences between the two have been bridged by a company that creates the AR Five-Seven upper assembly, designed to fit on the lower assembly of most AR-type rifles and carbines. Which is exactly what we did at our shop as seen in the third photo.

We took an AR Five-Seven upper assembly, which fires the 5.7x28mm round, and installed it on a Rock River AR lower assembly and voila! The world's first AR Five-Seven Carbine. Maybe. At least it's the first one I've ever seen or heard about. But since the AR Five-Seven upper assembly is on the market, surely some enterprising gun shop has put it on an AR lower assembly and is selling the duo as a complete AR Five-Seven carbine or rifle. Maybe so, but this is know for sure. Our shop has one and I listed it today on gunbroker, so you can have one.

Or you can buy yourself an AR Five-Seven upper and put it on your AR. Or you can buy both the AR Five-Seven upper and the Rock River lower assembly and build your own. But if you do, don't forget you gotta have the FN Five-Seven PDW magazine to make the thing work. And you gotta have some 5.7x28mm ammo too. If you can't find those, give the shop a call. We've got 'em.

Obama's instant economic stimulus plan is working

One of the leading Internet gun dealers where I shop reports:

...we have managed to stabilize our replacement cost on our best selling ARs and AKs. As reported on ABCs Nightline tonight, distributors nationwide raised prices as much as 200 percent on Wednesday.

How's that for an instant economic stimulus? Well, on second thought, the only economy getting stimulated is gun distributors who are price-gouging because they know their supply of assault rifles will soon be cut off by President Obama. It's called supply and demand. When supply goes down -- in this case to zero -- demand goes up and consequently the price goes up. So us gun buyers are the ones getting stimulated, but it ain't a good stimulus. More like a cattle prod.

But, you say, he's not even President yet, so why this sudden panic buying and price-gouging?

The NRA-ILA has the juicy details of President-Elect Obama's first "official" action.

Senator Barack Obama's presidential campaign slogan, "the audacity of hope," should have instead been "the audacity of deceit." After months of telling the American people that he supports the Second Amendment, and only hours after being declared the president-elect, the Obama transition team website announced an agenda taken straight from the anti-gun lobby--four initiatives designed to ban guns and drive law-abiding firearm manufacturers and dealers out of business:

"Making the expired federal assault weapons ban permanent." Perhaps no other firearm issue has been more dishonestly portrayed by gun prohibitionists. Notwithstanding their predictions that the ban's expiration in 2004 would bring about the end of civilization, for the last four years the nation's murder rate has been lower than anytime since the mid-1960s. Studies for Congress, the Congressional Research Service, the National Institute of Justice, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found no evidence that gun prohibition or gun control reduces crime. Guns that were affected by the ban are used in only a tiny fraction of violent crime-about 35 times as many people are murdered without any sort of firearm (knives, bare hands, etc.), as with "assault weapons." Obama says that "assault weapons" are machine guns that "belong on foreign battlefields," but that is a lie; the guns are only semi-automatic, and they are not used by a military force anywhere on the planet.

"Repeal the Tiahrt Amendment." The amendment--endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police--prohibits the release of federal firearm tracing information to anyone other than a law enforcement agency conducting a bona fide criminal investigation. Anti-gun activists oppose the restriction, because it prevents them from obtaining tracing information and using it in frivolous lawsuits against law-abiding firearm manufacturers. Their lawsuits seek to obtain huge financial judgments against firearm manufacturers when a criminal uses a gun to inflict harm, even though the manufacturers have complied with all applicable laws.

"Closing the gun show loophole." There is no "loophole." Under federal law, a firearm dealer must conduct a background check on anyone to whom he sells a gun, regardless of where the sale takes place. A person who is not a dealer may sell a gun from his personal collection without conducting a check. Gun prohibitionists claim that many criminals obtain guns from gun shows, though the most recent federal survey of convicted felons put the figure at only 0.7 percent. They also claim that non-dealers should be required to conduct checks when selling guns at shows, but the legislation they support goes far beyond imposing that lone requirement. In fact, anti-gun members of Congress voted against that limited measure, holding out for a broader bill intended to drive shows out of business.

"Making guns in this country childproof." "Childproof" is a codeword for a variety of schemes designed to prevent the sale of firearms by imposing impossible or highly expensive design requirements, such as biometric shooter-identification systems. While no one opposes keeping children safe, the fact is that accidental firearm-related deaths among children have decreased 86 percent since 1975, even as the numbers of children and guns have risen dramatically. Today, the chances of a child being killed in a firearm accident are less than one in a million.

I got a post from the aptly named "anonymous" here on my blog just before election day, commenting on an Obama anti-gun post I made.

No, he's not 100% pro-gun, but he's not as bad as the NRA is making him out to be.

Really? Just how anti-gun can he be? We shall see indeed.