Some good info on firearms

Christmas is the day after tomorrow. Don’t forget the reason for the season amidst all the rushing around and stress that seems to be a normal part of our modern holiday season. Here’s wishing you and your family a merry Christmas from my wife and I, and our four little dogs. They don’t care what holiday it might be, as long as they get their treats on schedule.

As the holder of a federal firearms license (FFL), I have been receiving a firearms industry monthly magazine for the past several years. This magazine, Shooting Industry, contains a lot of business and company personnel news and discussion, as well as news about the ongoing national gun control debate, and also regularly offers tips to dealers on new industry products and marketing tips.

Let’s look at one quick item, part of the national gun control debate, from the current issue of the magazine. Gallup recently released poll results taken this past October that shows a record-low 26 percent of Americans support a legal ban on the possession of handguns in the United States by citizens other than police or the military. In 1959, when Gallup first asked this poll question, some 60 percent of Americans favored banning the private ownership of handguns. Since 1970, the majority of Americans polled have opposed banning handgun ownership, with that figure reaching 74 percent in this latest poll. Keep those figures in mind when you listen to the national news media reporting on firearms ownership polls.

These results, along with other pro-gun ownership views, are contained in Gallup’s annual crime poll, which was conducted from Oct. 6-9. The last statistic I’ll mention from that poll is that Americans favor enforcing existing gun laws more strictly and not pass new laws (60 percent), rather than pass new laws in addition to enforcing existing laws more strictly (35 percent).

In my Christmas gift suggestions column involving the shooting sports, I mentioned many folks give firearms as Christmas presents. The classic example is that first firearm for a son or daughter from their parents, usually dad. The other rapidly growing reason for giving a firearm is to allow the recipient — usually a wife, daughter or significant other — the ability to provide for their own personal defense. I had suggested using a gift certificate from the local gun shop to accomplish that end because the actual recipient would be the one picking up the firearm and doing the federally mandated paperwork involved in a firearms transfer.

I was happy to see an article in the current magazine suggesting exactly the same approach to giving a gun for Christmas. The article views the situation from a dealer’s point of view, where I was approaching the situation from a mixed giver/dealer perspective.

Let’s look at the dealer’s point of view dealing primarily with the adult-to-adult giving of a firearm. A gift certificate for a specified value means the dealer won’t have to deal with an exchange because the wrong firearm was purchased. By having the recipient pick out the gun he or she wants, everyone is happy, including the dealer, who can then handle the transfer of the gun to the person who actually is getting the firearm. Trust me here, that eliminates a whole lot of potential minefields in dealing with federal laws governing the legal transfer of a firearm. It also provides some peace of mind for the giver, especially if that person is not familiar with buying firearms.

A perfect example here involves a couple I’ve known for decades. The wife, who does know a little about guns and shooting, wanted to give her husband a handgun he had wanted for a long time. Rather than get caught up in model and caliber, barrel length and grip configuration discussions, she basically ball-parked the cost of the gun and made sure her husband had all the certificates and money necessary to cover the cost in an envelope under the Christmas tree. This was not an inexpensive handgun and she spent some time getting everything together.

After Christmas, he went down to the gun store, picked out the model he wanted, completed the paperwork and presented the certificates. Everybody walked away from this Christmas gift-giving scenario very happy indeed and the transaction was as legal as can be.

While we’re talking personal defense, not everyone is comfortable having a deadly force weapon like a firearm to use in these situations. Frankly, if you’re not willing to kill another human being in defense of your own life, you should not have a firearm for protection. However, you might still want some ability to ward off an attack on your person. Pepper spray is a nonlethal way to disable an attacker if you can spray the stuff into their eyes and nose or mouth.

Spraying a mist of this nasty stuff in a wind can be problematic in actually hitting the assailant with enough pepper spray to disable them and you run the risk of disabling yourself and others if you failed to pay attention to wind direction. There’s a new product out on the market that is a pepper gel, rather than a mist, that is sprayed. The marketing says the gel has an 18-foot range and significantly reduces blowback. I have only seen an ad, but it might be worth checking out as another self-defense option.

I’ve been dealing with some health issues for the past couple of weeks and probably will continue for a few more, so I haven’t been able to get out and about like I would prefer. Bear with me and we should be getting some hands-on information out to you in the near future. Again, merry Christmas!

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. You can leave him a message by emailing sports@frontiersman.com.